Broken Windows; Broken World

“Oh my!”  My priest texted me in the middle of my day.  “Wow!”  “Amazing!”  Now, it’s not very unusual for him to text me.  We are 21st century friends; we like immediate answers and convenience.  Also, this year is my turn as a warden of our parish and there are about a dozen things going on at church, a few with which I’m directly involved.  However, when your priest starts sending you random interjections of amazement in the middle of the day, without any context, it’s a little concerning.  My response, “What the hell?”  (We don’t stand on ceremony much.)  His reply doesn't exactly answer my question, “Watch this video, right now.  It’s everything we’ve been talking about.”  He wanted me to watch a video.  What?  I texted, “What are you talking about?  Quit messing with my head.”  He replied, “I’m not messing.  WATCH IT RIGHT NOW.”  Yes, sir!

So, I pulled up Dirt, by Florida Georgia Line on Youtube and sat down to watch.  Holy Ash Wednesday:  there was everything!  The song was a beautiful portrayal of a life well-lived, a life anchored in the dirt from which we come and to which we will return.  It was the perfect sermon for Ash Wednesday, and for our season of Lent. It embodied all the ideas I’ve been struggling to enact, loving people in your life, honoring the everyday world, living in love with the people in your life.  And then there was this line, from the wife to the husband, “I don’t need to go see the world.  The world comes to my kitchen window--even if it’s broken.”  

See for yourself right now: Dirt by Florida Georgia Line

“The world comes to my kitchen window--even if it’s broken.”  What’s broken?  The kitchen window?  The world?  This statement stretches beyond the context of the song into a larger reality.  As Christians, especially during this season of Lent, we see the world through broken windows.  We are flawed, longing for God, desperate for salvation.  We want peace, but instead we get the world.   In our personal lives, the world doesn’t care if we are not feeling well, if we’re sad, if we didn’t sleep last night because our two-year-old was sick.  The world needs us.  People are hurting, people are poor, people are sick, people are broken-hearted.  We view it through broken windows and we decide.  We decide to go out and do something about it, we decide to act in love.  We decide to listen, we decide to help, we decide to show up for someone else.

As a church, we see the world through broken windows, too.  The world doesn’t care that our budget is tight, our parking lot is covered in snow, or our heating bill is due.  The world needs us and it keeps coming to our door, with challenges and with blessings.  We are tired, but we’ve got a job to do.  We meet the world at the resale shop, at fish dinners, at community events, at mass, at the soup kitchen and the food pantry, and we strive to love it through the broken windows of our souls.

However, the windows are not all that’s broken, friends.  The world itself is broken; people are lost and longing for something they don’t even know they are missing.  People we meet within and from outside of our community are searching for something.  I know I can’t give them the answers.  Honestly, I doubt that the incredible combined faith of this entire community is enough to heal someone, on our own.  But we can respect, love, and serve all the people we meet.  In our brokenness and our longing for God, we can love God so much that we see Christ in everyone we meet.   Love is a verb--an action--and God is the loving.  God is in the action that we do for the world and for each other, as we see the broken world through the broken windows of our hearts.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

I wish you a blessed season of Lent, my friends.

What are we serving? Evangelism (Part II)

“In a world where people believe they are not hungry, [churches] must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food that we cannot provide.”  (Rollins 2006) In his book, How (Not) to Speak of God, Peter Rollins, one of my personal theological superheroes, gives us the evocative metaphor of the church as a restaurant, luring people in by the smells of tantalizing food that the public doesn’t even know they’re craving.  I love this image for many reasons, most of all because it reminds me of Dwayne Johnson, AKA The Rock.  You know, Dwayne Johnson, the professional wrestler turned actor, the guy with the handsome face and catchy catch phrases back in his wrestling days.  The guy who used to taunt his opponents with, “Can you SMELL what the ROCK is cooking?”  The Rock was a great evangelist; he really made me wonder what he had in store for his opponents.  He lured viewers in by the aroma, just like a church should do.

Which leads me to wonder, what is MY church cooking?  Well, since it’s Lent, the literal answer is, “Fish!”  We serve lots and lots of fish on Fridays during Lent, and the delicious aroma and buttery taste does bring in the crowds sometimes.  With the fish and potatoes, we serve up some friendship, some moral support, and some teamwork.  We serve the community with our smiles and our sugary treats.  Which makes me wonder again, what other aromas do we put out into the world?  Do we help people hunger for God?

Rollins warns churches not to pretend to answer questions, to offer security blankets in an insecure world, and to promise easy fixes for complicated problems.  Rather than patching wounds with band-aids and promising heavenly salvation at the end of a sad, sad life, we need to challenge the easy answers, ask tougher questions, and strive to love in a broken world.  If we live into the love of Christ, we live into a messy, mundane mystery, one we cannot understand, but one we can only hunger for as we follow the aroma.

How do we speak of our church to those we meet?  Do we speak as though our work there is an obligation?  Do we use it to sound necessary and important to the community?  Do we use it to sound like “a good person”?  Or do we share the excitement we find?  Do we share the frustration and our desire to do more, help more, and serve more?  Do we share the challenges we find there, the richness it brings to our life, and the important questions it raises?

What aromas are we creating in our relationships with each other?  Do we accept and value differences of opinions?  Do we recognize individual’s gifts, even when those gifts are different from, or challenging to our own?  Do we speak honestly and respectfully in times of conflict?  Do we support each other in times of need?  Do we gossip?  Do we backstab?  Do we apologize when we can’t help but fail, from time to time?  Do we forgive?  Do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and accept help graciously?

Churches often talk about how to attract more people, to get our message out, to be seen in the community.  What aroma do we evoke to the community?  Are we looking to serve our needs:  balance our budget, work our fundraisers, or teach our Sunday School classes?  Or are we looking to open our minds to other people's perspectives, to question our own views, and to challenge us into a greater love?  Do we strive for justice?  Do we help the needy, while working for a world in which the needy won’t need us anymore?  Do we proclaim the gospel?  Do we enact the love of Christ until every last person we meet feels loved?  Do we hunger for God so much that we seek to meet him in the face of every person we encounter?

In a world where people don’t know they’re hungry, what are we serving them?

Rollins, P.  (2006).  How (not) to speak of God. (5th ed.)  Brewster, MA:  Paraclete Press.

Can you SMELL what the CHURCH is cooking? Evangelism, Episcopalian-style

My husband likes sports; I like books.  If it is some sort of competition that involves hitting, throwing, bouncing, or kicking a ball, or two people competing in some sort of hand-to-hand combat, he is fully attentive.  I usually read while he’s watching some sporting event.  Once in a while, something causes me to look up from the words on my page.  Professional wrestling fascinates me a bit, with the over-the-top costumes, the soap-opera backstory, and the trash-talking.  My favorite used to be Dwayne Johnson, AKA, the Rock.  Everyone loved the Rock, with his chiseled physique, classic features, and witty discourse.  He had his famous eyebrow, and his catch-phrase, “Can you SMELL what the ROCK is COOKING?”   Those other guys, strutting and posturing, didn’t interest me at all, but the Rock, he was mysterious.  I don’t really know what he was cooking, but you can bet I was enticed by the aroma.  Back in the 2000s, The Rock was the best evangelist in the world of professional wrestling.

Evangelism is a difficult word for many Christians, especially for many Episcopalians, especially for me.  When I hear the words, “Let me tell you about Jesus…” I freeze and look for the nearest exit.  Even now, as a baptized, confessed Christian, an every-Sunday attending, Sunday-school-teacher, vestry member, heavily invested, lay-person in the Episcopal church, I’m a little frightened by the question, “Have you taken Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”  The classic television, or street-corner evangelist reminds me of those screaming wrestlers, proclaiming victory and threatening punishment--ridiculous and a bit crazy.  No way were those weirdos going to threaten me into salvation.  Even my well-meaning friends put me off when they start talking about JEE-sus.  

I had a college friend, on the path towards seminary, who seemed genuinely concerned about my morality.  He often questioned my faith.  He was politely relentless, until I told him, “I know all the answers to your questions.  I passed my catechism.  I sang in the choir.  I went to Vacation Bible School.  I just don’t FEEL the answers anymore.”  He left in frustration.  He was a nice guy, but I wasn’t buying it.  All of his questions felt like threats, no matter how politely he worded them.  I wasn’t going to come back to church through interrogation.

In his book, How (Not) to Speak of God, Peter Rollins gives us this excellent image.  “In a world where people believe they are not hungry, we must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food that we cannot provide.”  (Rollins 2006)  This is exactly how evangelism worked for me, and the only way I can manage to swallow it.  Rollins explains that Jesus flavored his teaching with salt, to make people thirst for God.  It is through the hunger and the thirst, through the enticing aroma that arouses our desire, that we find God, not through answering multiple choice questions.  Is God a.  the Father,  b.  the Son, c.  the Holy Ghost, d.  All of the above.  We find our faith through the seeking, through the questioning, through the hunger.

I was hungry for Christ, but I didn’t know it.  Almost ten years ago, I spent some time with my relatives at their church in Georgia.  It’s what you do when your uncle is a priest and you want to hang out with the family.  I remember my uncertainty in the unfamiliar liturgy, as my aunt guided me to the well-worn pages of the prayer book, nudged me to kneel and stand, and led me up to receive communion.  I remember the sermon speaking of social justice and care for the poor and marginalized.  Most of all, I remember the fellowship hour afterwards.  During the Sweet and Low Jazz Tea, members of the congregation snacked, sipped, and supported each other.  I had interesting conversation with a number of people, about my life in Chicago, my views of the South, the latest books I’d read.  No one asked about the state of my immortal soul; they just treated me like a person they would like to know better.  Later that day, I attended a class for new members to the Episcopal church.  I thought I understood that Henry VIII started the church so he could marry Anne Boleyn and take over the church property.  I had no idea that Celtic spirituality was a separate, integral branch of Christianity for centuries before the Wars of the Roses.  I had no idea of the beauty and poetry of the Book of Common Prayer.  I was fascinated.

Upon returning home to the cold north, I asked my uncle, Dan, the priest **, “Are all Episcopal churches like yours?  I think I could go to a church like that.”  Instead of pouncing on an opening to add another convert to the books, he sent me a basic primer of mainline Christian denominations, with thoughtful comments considering my free-thinking views.  I saved the conversation in my email and decided to wait and see.  The aroma from the church drifted into the background, but it lingered, along with my intrigue.  How fascinating!  A church that just met me where I was, didn’t ask me uncomfortable questions, didn’t try to help me, and didn’t exploit the smallest chink in my I-don’t-need-God armor.

After exploring Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, humanism, and a few other theologies, the hunger for Christ grew a little stronger.  I was craving something and I wasn’t sure what it was.  Hymns from my childhood captured my attention.   I opened up the Bible.  I prayed The Lord’s Prayer.  I stumbled across sermons on facebook and blogs.  I googled churches, and the one that “smelled” the best was the Episcopal Church.  As I stalked the website of St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, I saw pictures of people who seemed to enjoy each other’s company, even when they looked like they were working pretty hard.  I read a newsletter article by the priest, who wrote about cleaning up a mess from the Pascal candle, and how he found meaning in the midst of the spilt candle wax.  A few short weeks later, I walked through those red doors, and I have not looked back since then.  Like the Rock to his fans, the Episcopal Church had lured me into its fold.  I could SMELL what the CHURCH was cooking!

Rollins, P.  (2006).  How (not) to speak of God. (5th ed.)  Brewster, MA:  Paraclete Press.

**This particular priest is currently the Episcopal Bishop of Nevada**

What is a congregation? It's where sh*t gets real

What is the mission of a congregation?  How can it be structured?  The Acts 8 Moment posed that question this week. There are so many eloquent answers, so many ideas.  A congregation is the in-breath and out-breath of the church.  It is where the mundane becomes the sacred.  It is God’s money laundering service, taking our junk, our baggage, our brokenness, our pride, and turning it into service. Where God mashes our dirt around and churns out love for the world.  It is where our shi*t gets real.  It is where we learn to love each other, and to love ourselves, even when we seem unloveable.

It isn’t easy to let God take our crap and turn it into something useful.  It takes some honesty and some bravery, and quite a bit of trust.  It takes the courage to admit our anger with each other.  It’s not all calm conversations, devoted prayer, and careful consideration.  Sometimes it is passion, anger, and heated words.  Sometimes, it is hissy fits before the altar of God.  Recently, I had my own temper tantrum towards my priest, in front of the new vestry, after a congregational meeting, in which I’d just been voted one of the new wardens.  Not one of my most eloquent, thoughtful moments, let me assure you.  But, it was real.

My priest had made an off-hand comment during the meeting, venting his frustration at a vestry discussion.  He didn’t mean to target me, but man, did he hurt my pride!  No one else in the room would have realized how personally I reacted, if I could only have settled down.  Instead of making nice, I got my back up and clenched my fists.  I had it out with him.  “How could you say…  How could you imply that….”  The actual issue didn’t really matter anymore; I was pissed and I wanted people to know it.

Thank God that priests are trained to deal with hissy fits and temper tantrums.  He acknowledged my frustration and embraced my passion.  He didn’t back off and he didn’t blow up.  As we spoke, I regained my equilibrium and began to see things rationally, with a deeper understanding of each other’s point of view. As we spoke, my prideful anger bounced around in God's cleaning machine and was transformed into a commitment to God's mission. Moments like this are where God burns our dross into gold.  When we disagree with passion, we clear the air of pretension.  When we respect each other enough to speak honestly, when we trust each other with the burdens of our heart, we practice listening to the other.  One on one, we can see beyond our perceptions, and understand the perceptions of another.

I do not know the best way to structure or govern a congregation, but I know this.  No matter what the system, it must allow for differences of opinion, it must challenge conventions, it must raise expectations for its members.  It must teach members not to convince or destroy the point of view of the other, but to see their own selves  through others’ eyes.  When we get real with each other, in the midst of our brokenness, anger, and pride, we learn to love each other.  When we learn to love God and to love each other, we can love the rest of the world.  That is the mission of a congregation--the only one that matters.