By what measure – in general – can we say the church has succeeded or failed?
I think about that question a lot, and I think it is impossible to answer definitively. Typical answers include measuring attendance or membership, looking at budgets or buildings, examining the vitality of programs and outreach.
But somehow those measurements fail to get at the idea of “faithfulness.” If you think about it, the church is not called to “succeed” or to “grow” or to “expand” like an empire or a business or a disease. It is called to faithfully follow Jesus. Jesus teaches us that we will be known by our love for each other – not our big buildings, not our media campaigns, not our large worship services. Our love.
In that light, a recent sign of real failure has emerged. This survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that people who attend church more often are more likely to think that torture is either often or sometimes justified.
This is despite the fact that every mainline church body I know of has publically opposed the use of torture. Futhermore, it is hard to find a moment in scripture when Jesus infers some kind of support of torture. If we are to be known by our love and are to give our lives for others and love even our enemies, then the torture of another human being would be in the category of “things that are incompatible with Christian teaching.”
If the church has failed to communicate such a basic value to its own membership, how on earth can anyone take the church seriously? We are failing because we are not faithful. We are failing because we are not authentic. All those other measures of success seem irrelevant when you consider this monumental failure.
We ask you to consider your sins. We remind you of your mortality. We call you to repentance.
It’s not exactly fun. But it’s part of a process – a process that takes some time, requires some soul searching, demands we face some tough realities. But the process doesn’t stop there. It ends in new life, new possibilities, new hopes. It ends in the ultimate promises of our God, who never abandons us and always welcomes us home.
But you can’t get to the end without starting with ashes. Jesus began his ministry with a 40 day struggle in the desert. There he faced his demons and temptations, and discovered who he was and what he was made of. He learned the truth about himself. And once we learn the truth about ourselves, there is no power that can overcome us. We are ironically liberated by our awareness of our limitations. We come to terms with our fundamental humanity. Ashes mark us as mortal, less than God, limited, frail.
It is true that there is much goodness in each of us. It is also true that we have all fallen short of the glory for which we were intended. Ash Wednesday points us to both of these truths – it reminds us that we are worthy of God’s love – but it also reminds us that we are frail. The frailty is hard to face. But it is only conquered by facing it.
This Lent, I hope to take the steps I need to take to face myself – to honestly assess all that I am and all that I am not. I hope to better understand why I do some of the destructive things I do. And I hope to overcome one or two of my bad habits. Most of all, I hope to realize the love of God – a love that accepts my frailty and faults, while also calling me to be more than I presently am.
I’ve been getting a lot of email expressing outrage at the selection of Rick Warren to offer up his prayers for our new president. One friend has sent me a laundry list of outrageous videos showcasing the offensive comments Pastor Rick has made about gays and lesbians. For instance:
His logic evades me. Yet there are a lot of people who listen to this guy and give him credit. Most pastors I know, even progressive ones, have a copy of Warren’s Purpose Driven Church and many have his more recent and more popular Purpose Driven Life. He’s had an enormous impact on the church in the US. But his language on homosexuality is laughably ignorant and blatantly homophobic. I have both his books. The “church” one is a helpful book for pastors to think creatively about church structures. But the “life” one reads more like a laundry list of do’s and don’ts, and expresses his right-wing agenda in a no-compromise way. I understand that Warren had done much to help victims of AIDS and has tried to reach across boundaries of “liberal” and “conservative.” Nevertheless, he has also expressed hateful opinions about gays and lesbians, comparing homosexuality to child rape and bestiality. Sadly, he doesn’t get it. I’d like to put a reading list together for him, and I’d include the following for his information and enlightenment:
Now, I realize he isn’t going to read that stuff, but those books, along with a host of others, really helped my perspective on these issues. More to the point, though, is the fact that the media has almost totally ignored the man Obama has selected to give the benediction. Rev. Joseph Lowery has a distinguished career as an advocate for the outcast. A civil rights leader, he has been in the trenches for a long time working for justice. He is a United Methodist pastor, which of course makes me proud. But he is also a clear voice for justice for all God’s people, and has publicly called for the full-inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church and beyond. I wish progressively-minded people would focus as much attention on Lowery and his message as they have complaining about Warren. Heck, we should all just ignore Warren and turn our attention to a man who has really struggled, advocated, fought and risked for the least and the lost – a man who has embodied the gospel message with his whole life.
Here is Lowery speaking controversial yet prophetic words at the funeral of Coreeta Scott King – embodying the spirt of MLK:
And here is some more information about Lowery at Wikipedia.
A recent Advent sermon from Steve Bauman struck a cord:
How this season before Christmas has devolved in our time is quite pathetic. The post-modern Christmas phantasmagoria is all about escape, distraction and consumerism and has little to contribute to the living of our days beyond a bit of merrymaking, which is alright so far as it goes, I suppose. Those of you that know me, know I’m all for some excellent merrymaking.
Merrymaking is one seasonal obligation, the other concerns buying lots of stuff and whatnot to keep our economic engines humming — especially this year. Don’t you find it darkly ironic that one our most sacred ritual seasons has been so completely subsumed by global consumerism that our political class would just as soon all of us spend ourselves into oblivion as the year comes to an end as a kind of sacrifice to the economic gods?
Each year I walk through the elaborate displays at my local mall. In the center of the mall is a fantastic altar to the Consumer Gods of Christmas and their symbols: Santa Claus, reindeer, candy-canes, gingerbread houses. No sign of Jesus. No sign of anything that might transcend the mall itself, let alone the limits of our lives and the powers that be.
What if the church offered a real alternative? What if we refused to be complicit with all the simplistic merry-making and saccharine sentiment and destructive overindulgence and instead simply offered a baby, born in a manger, born to transform the world, born to show us a new way of living, born so that we might have life – abundant life – not discounted, mega-sized, tinsel-wrapped life – but authentically abundant life? What if we were faithful to that?
