Time to get out of the bubble

It was for me an Areopagus moment. Maybe you have had one of those? No, huh? I'll bet you might have, and didn't know it. My moment came when I was forced me out of my religious bubble and into the real world.

Last year I had an encounter that I still think about. Some of you may remember me talking about it. It happened one day last summer when I was walking through the mall. I was wearing my "official" clerical garb. I went to the cell phone kiosk to do something or other, and while I was there both another customer and the clerk treating me with a noticeable deference and even with good humor. After a lot of banter about phones with some religious humor thrown in, we parted company smiling.

As I was walking out of the mall, I saw a group of high school aged young men. One of them made eye contact with me and would not let go. This was not a friendly connection. His friends noticed his stare and turned to look. They all folded their arms and watched, waiting to see what would happen next.

He was wearing a black T-shirt that had on the front a red circle and slash over a cross over the caption "no bad religion." I decided that his stare and his shirt were connected. He was clearly trying to draw my attention. Maybe he wanted to stare me down. Instead, I decided to stop and ask about the shirt. After all, if I am going to wear the symbol of the church’s ordained ministry in public, I had better be able to take the brickbats as well as the bouquets.

I complimented him on his shirt. Then I asked him, “Tell me. What do you mean by ‘bad religion’?” What he said was "no bad religion, man!"

“Okay. I hear that. But what makes religion to you?” My hunch was that if the two of us could compare our lists of what constituted "bad religion", our lists would be more alike than different.

My list would start with violence and persecution perpetrated in God's name. I would also add the many examples of hatred that some justify on religious grounds. I also think that "bad religion" is religion that is uncritical or reactive or which puts institutional life ahead of people's well-being. Religion that excludes or belittles people based solely on race, gender or sexual orientation would be on my list of “bad religion.” Religion that doesn't drive us to leave a world better than how we found it is to me "bad religion".

Most of all, I wanted to know his story. What were his encounters with bad religion and what would constitute good religion to him? My hunch was that we probably shared a lot on that score, too--maybe more than he might have expected.

But we never got that far. His answer to my follow up query was only this: “Bad religion stinks.” (That’s not how he said it, but you get the idea.) And then he and his friends walked away. I guess he was not ready to step outside of his bubble, either. Which was a shame.

I thought of this as I read about the Paul’s encounter at the Areopagus, located on a place called Mars Hill in the ancient city of Athens, debating the philosophers in this religious marketplace. As I thought about the young man and his t-shirt in the mall—the Areopagus of our day—I realized that Paul stepped out his religious bubble and entered into a new world to share good news in a new way.

Paul had gone to Athens, the center of intellectual and religious life in Greece, and, for that matter, in the whole Roman world, to meet some friends. This was the place where Greeks worshipped their pantheon…their line-up of gods…they had a deity for every purpose…rain, war, fertility, you name it. To hedge their bets, they set up a temple to the god they had not discovered yet, the one that covered some reality that had not yet occurred to them.

In terms of religious experience, Paul may as well have been from another planet! Paul was a Jew—a Hellenized, cosmopolitan Jew, trained in both Greek philosophy and Hebrew tradition—and that meant that for him there is only one God. And the first commandment says that Jews only worshipped the one God and did not use idols of any kind. But he thought he knew who that Temple of the Unknown Deity might have pointed to.

Problem was that any one from the Greek and Roman world would have considered Paul at best strange and at worst a crazed zealot. Believing in only one God was foolhardy, narrow-minded and sacrilegious. They has strange and strict rules about food and things. Like all Jewish males, he was circumcised which was considered both gross and barbaric.

And Paul was one of those Christians who believed that God not only became human but that he died and rose again. He believed that everyone would experience resurrection someday.

Paul has some choices here.

He could have stayed away from Idol Central and stayed with his own kind. Which is what happened a lot: in many cities right up to our own day, people who think and worship alike often end up living in the same neighborhoods, or hang around the same pubs, or friend each other on Facebook.

Or he could have started trashing the place. Tearing down false idols certainly would have attracted attention! But he would have simply turned his space into an attack bubble...kind of like that thing that used to chase down Number 6 whenever the Prisoner tried to leave The Village. But he didn’t go there.

He could have just gone along to get along, as some of the folks back home in Jerusalem accused him of doing.

Instead, he chose to leave his bubble and engage them. He decided to tell them about Jesus of Nazareth, the messiah who lived and died and rose again. He decided to talk about how God was at work through Christ and wanted a relationship with everyone.

And if any kind of real meeting was to take place, everyone would have to step out of their bubble...at least a little bit.

Where do we start? How can we communicate the Gospel with any kind of effectiveness when we are all floating around in our own little bubbles? Paul’s encounter teaches us a few things.

The main thing is that all of us—each and every one of us—communicates the Gospel. Like it or not, once someone figures out that you are a Christian and that you take your religion even a little bit seriously, then you are communicating the Gospel. You don’t have to ring doorbells. And you don’t need to wear a clerical collar or a habit. Every day we all communicate the Gospel.

That’s good because, as Paul noticed about the Athenians, everyone is on a search for God. Know it or not, every one of us seeks meaning and purpose for their living. And when we do that, we are seeking to fill a God-shaped space in our hearts. And since that search is not always conscious, it affects our choices and behavior. So our quest for intimacy is also a quest to be known and loved. Our quest for more stuff is also a yearning to have our hearts filled. Our quest for recognition reflects a longing to be understood and valued. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Just as Paul looked around and saw in all the idols and temples a religious people yearning for meaning, purpose and connection, we can look around and see a lot of spiritually hungry people.

Today's Aeropagus is everywhere, not just on Mars Hill and not just in the mall. Only 17% of Americans go to church, synagogue or mosque, and yet the Gallup people tell us that 90+% of Americans think of themselves as spiritual. 78% say they pray and three quarters of Americans say they believe in God. So, just as we always communicate the Gospel, there are people all around us who are searching to fill a god-shaped space in their lives. We could rest on advertising or Facebook to get out the message and hope people step into our bubble. But as important as marketing is, it is not really what tells the story.

What fills the God-shaped space is when one person meets another person who is also on a journey of faith; because Jesus shows us that Godself is best shown in relationship.

God calls each of us—seeker and believer—to step out of our safe zones and to explore discovering God in the real world.

That means that, sooner or later we will have to step outside our bubble. Maybe you won’t encounter the stares of young men wearing t-shirts the way I did. But you might encounter a thank you from a person you’ve cared for, or driven to the hospital, or brought a meal to. You might have helped fill a God-shaped hole when you listened to a person when they were sad, or comforted them when they were alone. Maybe you have communicated the Gospel as you have been present to a person in trouble or as you have taught a child.

And you’ll know you’re out of the bubble when you have to name who it is you are serving and why. Maybe you’ll be asked why you did that small act of kindness. Maybe someone will tell you of a need and you will offer to pray for them. Or maybe in some small way you’ll be asked about God who animates and fills that space in your heart. Maybe you will have a talk about how you can have both strong faith and big questions at the very same time. Whatever happens, we all have the power to be a messenger of good news in the middle of God’s hurting world. Whether they ask you why you’re doing it or not, it will help you be and live the Gospel when you know the story of how God is filling your God-shaped space.

Sooner or later, you’ll have to leave the bubble.


6 Easter A, May 29, 2011 - Acts 17:22-31

The Slee memo and the Feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury

Yesterday, Andrew Brown wrote a report in Guardian describing a memo from the late Dean of Southwark Cathedral, the Very Rev Colin Slee, in which Slee describes the machinations of the House of Bishops in the Church of England over the question of whether a gay man can be elevated to the Episcopate.

It is not a pretty picture. We see the Archbishop of Canterbury, a man who can be given to great kindness, as well as the Archbishop of York, brow-beating, intimidating and threatening other members of the nominating committee who disagreed with him. We see Williams' throw a friend, the Very Rev. Jeffrey John, under the bus--not once but multiple times. (Even though Williams' claims to have "no problem" with celibate gay men being bishops.) We hear how England's Equality Law is manipulated and parsed for the state church of England. We see how Episcopal appointments happen in back rooms and in secret. (Which makes me appreciate our sometimes messy electoral system with the checks and balance of Standing Committees and/or General Convention.)

It appears that Williams and Sentamu will apply the same technique to the ordination of women to the Episcopate. They plan to ignore the General Synod and continue Flying Bishops after female bishops are regularized, ensuring at once the continuance of division and the demeaning of women clergy.

Let's assume for just a moment that the motivation for this behavior is a passion to hold the church together. Let's assume that this is done to allow those who don't agree with the ordination of gays or the blessing of same sex unions (or the ordination of women) room to stay in Communion. The way to do that is not to give into bullying, neither is it to bully those with whom you disagree.

Over the last decade, we have seen Williams' approach to this whole crisis. We have seen that it has made everything worse by rewarding bad behavior and consistently promoting a legalistic solution to a pastoral problem.

Every time he has given in to the folks most angry at "these issues" they have not only demanded more, they have participated less. At the end of the memo, Slee wrote the Archbishop about the Jeffrey John fiasco in 2003: "I still believe that had you stood your ground at the time, all that has followed would have been a short-lived blip instead of a deeper and deeper morass."

He has ignored the power dynamics--and the reality that the division in this country was funded by outside right-wing political groups--as so much "conspiracy theory" and still has given in to them. He has rarely refused a chance to insult or ignore the Episcopal Church.

I used to think that those who sowed division counted on Williams' good intentions to be used against him. I used to think that he "understood" the obscure levers of power in Lambeth and was really working for a good outcome, but in secret. But no more. What may have started as a failure of nerve has now become the ground he chooses to make his stand.

This memo demonstrates that the task of preserving the institution is not the same thing as preserving unity. He is choosing institutional stability over the hard work of Communion every time; and, sadly, it only makes the problem worse.

I don't understand how it is that a smart guy like Rowan apparently can't grasp that Communion is neither the same as conformity nor dependent upon agreement. Christ's promise that we all will be one has in fact been accomplished--on the Cross, in the resurrection and in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our communion is built on common role the baptized share as disciples of Jesus Christ. The fact that we follow Christ and carry out His mission even when we disagree, that we share in His body and blood even as we differ, is the real sign of our unity.

(Lesley's blog talks about this, too.)

Today I found this reflection by Lowell Grisham, on the feast of Augustine of Canterbury (which is today), which describes well--and in thoroughly Biblical terms--what it really means to be in Communion and how the earliest Church handled clashes over apparently life-or-death theological and pastoral issues.

On the day we hear about the ugliness inside Lambeth, this comes as a useful corrective:

Paul wrote to a mixed community of Christians who came from different backgrounds and who had strongly held opinions. The major conflict in Paul's churches was between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Jewish Christians observed the sabbath and the kosher laws of their tradition and of the Hebrew scriptures. For Gentile Christians, every day was a workday, the sabbath was no better than another day.

Gentile Christians did not observe kosher dietary laws. However, for some Gentile Christians, their conscience was bothered by meat sold in the public market, for that was meat that had been dedicated to Apollo or one of the gods that they formerly followed. For others, there was no bother because they now believed there was no such thing as idols.

"Let all be fully convinced in their own minds," said Paul. Diversity in many of these beliefs is fine. Everyone does not have to come to the same conclusion about everything. Honor your conscience, and live together in unity with charity toward one another, Paul advised. "Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.... So then, each of us will be accountable to God."

Pope Gregory gave Augustine great flexibility when dealing with the various traditions that he encountered when he arrived as "Archbishop of the English Nation." Augustine was not charged with enforcing Roman customs on the indigenous Celtic churches, but rather he was to honor whatever he could "profitably learn from the various Churches." People are more important than things.

Later in Romans we will see Paul urge those whom he calls the "strong" to be especially flexible with those whom he calls the "weak." He urges those who have a more mature freedom in the faith -- those whose consciences are not bothered by kosher laws or scruples about meat from the public markets -- to be charitable toward their more scrupulous brothers and sisters. When you are eating at home among your own family, feel free to eat what you wish. But when you are eating among the scrupulous, the "weak," refrain from eating what might trouble their conscience, even though your conscience is free.

Yet elsewhere, Paul does draw some strong lines. Especially over circumcision. Jewish Christians, following their tradition and the requirements of the Hebrew scripture, were certain that circumcision was a required sign and practice for those who would be acknowledged as God's people. They pointed to the testimony of scripture and tradition, and demanded that uncircumcised Gentiles be circumcised in order to be incorporated into the community of the church. Paul was vehement in his opposition. "No!," he said. Life in Christ was liberation from such legalistic traditions. Jewish Christians could not require circumcision from their Gentile brothers and sisters, regardless of their convictions, their traditions, scriptures or beliefs. For Gentiles to do so would nullify the glorious freedom that Christ has gained for us through the cross.

Paul did not say that Jewish Christians should refrain from circumcising in their own families, nor did he say that they should remove the signs of circumcision, as some Hellenized Jews did. But he also did not say that the Gentiles should be "flexible" with regard to the scruples of their Jewish Christian neighbors a be circumcised themselves for the sake of the scruples and conscience of their brothers and sisters.

I think these discussions and controversies are helpful guides for the present church and our own Archbishop of Canterbury. We are in a discussion in the Anglican Communion over the scruples of those whose consciences are troubled by the grace and fruitfulness that others have found in the faithful committed relationships of their gay brothers and sisters. "Let all be fully convinced in their own minds," seems like good counsel from St. Paul.

Those of us who recognize God's blessing in gay relationships may believe that heterosexual marriage is "no better than" the lifelong commitments of those of homosexual orientation, while other parts of the church may not. Let those who observe their commitments, observe them in honor of the Lord. Let those who are strong, whose scruples are not troubled by heterosexism, be charitable toward those whose consciences are troubled by the freedom Christ gives us. We need not require an acknowledgment that violates their consciences.

But, there is a line, as Paul insisted in the controversy about circumcision. Those who have scruples about their tradition of heterosexual-only relationships may not require "circumcision" of their gay brothers and sisters. They must not force their gay brothers and sisters to be circumcised "like them" in order to be welcome in the church's fellowship. Heterosexually oriented Christians cannot demand of homosexually oriented Christians to be either celibate or married unnaturally to someone of the opposite sex in order to be part of the Christian fellowship. To do so would nullify the glorious freedom that Christ has gained for us through the cross. To do so would ignore the fruits of the Spirit that we recognize in the committed, loving relationships of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things." (Galatians 5:22-23)

Heaven comes to earth

It is the silly season in the religion world again.

I am assuming since you are reading this then you were not taken up at the appointed hour. By now, you have no doubt heard about the Rev. Harold Camping, the radio preacher who said that the world was going to end starting at 6 pm Pacific Time on May 21, 2011. Everyone has been having fun with this…including me. Late night comics, satirists and columnists, reporters and commentators and clergy have been making all kinds of jokes out of this.

It’s easy to see why. But I have to admit that as much fun as I have been having making fun of those who have been buying billboards and radio time to tell us about the end of the world, I had mixed feelings about all this. The media makes it look like every Christian believes like Camping…or at least every evangelical…when the truth is that Camping and his follower represent the tiniest sliver of Christian believers.

On the other end of the spectrum came an interview with physicist Stephen Hawking. He said that there is no heaven at all and that in his view those who believe in one are only in denial about death.

Somewhere between these two polls—one of total denial and one that envisions a dramatic and violent end at the hands of an angry God—is perhaps where most of us live.

Every week, we say together that line in the creed “We believe that he will come again….” And then comes today’s lessons. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us he is going to prepare to a place for us and that God’s house is made up of many rooms. And in Acts we hear Stephen, the first Deacon of the Church and the first martyr, as the crowd is about stone him that he has a vision of Jesus coming from his throne in heaven to come get him. When he proclaims his vision out loud, it is the last straw for those who have seized him and they pick up stones and kill him.

Acts tells us that the Church was growing in leaps and bounds. Stephen got into trouble for doing "wonders and signs." He is hauled into court for telling people about Christ. You can read his testimony in Acts chapter 7. But before he launches on his re-telling of the history of God and Israel and the story of people’s response to God—a not too flattering picture--we learn but before he speaks, "his face was like the face of an angel."

But an angelic countenace did not save Stephen from trouble. In those days, when someone said something outrageous, they did not drag him before John Stewart and the the internet for ridicule. Nope, in those days when someone said something like “God requires us to change” they did not make jokes. They took him out and killed him in the most up close and personal way they could think of.

In Acts, Stephen’s message of salvation through Jesus Christ was intimately tied to the mercy he helped the Church give to widows and orphans--people who were tossed aside to fend for themselves with no family, no identity and no hope. His vision of Christ coming in glory was also a vision of God ready to forgive everyone, even those who were about to kill him.

There is another vision of heaven in today's lessons. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is talking to his disciples, in particular Thomas and Philip, about where Jesus is going. Jesus moves the conversation from GPS coordinates to the way we make the journey...and what God has in mind for us when we make it. Jesus says something outrageous: that when we see Christ, we see God. If we want to know what God is like, see Jesus.

But wait! There's more! Jesus also says that we can do what Jesus does...and more! In other words, if we are following Jesus on the way to God, people can see Christ in us on their way to God. And where is he and we going? To the place God is preparing for us. A home inside of God's home. When Jesus says "in my father's house there are many rooms" he is saying there is room for all us. God looks at humanity and has a vision...a vision where there is room enough for all of us in God's home.

So the lessons today give us two startling visions of God who comes to us: Jesus saw God making room for us. Stephen saw that God is ready to forgive. In both lessons we learn that God is present to us even when things are going wrong. This is the vision of God coming to us in today’s lessons. God is bringing heaven to earth.

One of the problems the radio preacher has is that he thinks that God is out there somewhere faraway and has to come down and rescue us and take us to that faraway heaven before he destroys everything. This misses that the whole point of Jesus’ coming to us was to bring God down to earth…that God is with us.

Retired Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, in responding to physicist Stephen Hawking, described heaven this way:

… in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when they die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, ‘the cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, [in] the persons of Christians because they, too, [are] ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

In Christ, heaven comes to earth. God’s space and our space meet. And as Christians, as God’s people, we are the ones who show off God’s presence in the world. As people who are baptized into Christ’s body, we are ones who discover and communicate God’s transforming love.

This is a very different vision than either Pastor Camping or Professor Hawking. God is not out to destroy an irretrievable creation, as Camping says, and heaven is very real…it’s just different than what Hawking assumes Christians believe.

As we meet Christ in the sacramental life, as we yearn to know God more and more, as we look for Christ in the face of the people we meet, we develop a different kind of vision of heaven; vision that knows that God is with us in Christ, and see Christ at work in us and in the world we live in, a vision that changes us and makes a real difference in a world desperately in need of healing.

Instead of waiting to be snatched up to heaven in a second, most believers do great things and often unnoticed things that show us how heaven and earth intersect every day.

This week I heard the story of Mary Johnson and Oshea Israel . Their story shows off how God is at work redeeming creation. The story begins in 1994 when Oshea killed Johnson's only son during a scuffle during a party. Oshea went to prison for murder and toward the end of his sentence, he and his victims mother made peace.

The NPR story says:

Israel recently visited StoryCorps with Johnson, to discuss their relationship — and the forgiveness it is built upon. As Johnson recalls, their first face-to-face conversation took place at Stillwater Prison, when Israel agreed to her repeated requests to see him.

"I wanted to know if you were in the same mindset of what I remembered from court, where I wanted to go over and hurt you," Johnson tells Israel. "But you were not that 16-year-old. You were a grown man. I shared with you about my son."

"And he became human to me," Israel says.

At the end of [that first] meeting at the prison, Johnson was overcome by emotion.
"The initial thing to do was just try and hold you up as best I can," Israel says, "just hug you like I would my own mother."

Johnson says, "After you left the room, I began to say, 'I just hugged the man that murdered my son.'

"And I instantly knew that all that anger and the animosity, all the stuff I had in my heart for 12 years for you — I knew it was over, that I had totally forgiven you."

Here is a woman doing what Jesus did…and more. She forgives, yes, and then she took on her son’s killer as if he was her own, and then she founded From Death To Life: Two Mothers Coming Together for Healing, a support group for mothers who have lost their children to violence.

What did Mary Johnson see when she looked into Israel Oshea’s face? What changed when they hugged? Whatever changed…it is a vision of God making room in two people’s hearts. It is a vision of God who is present to us even at the darkest moments ready to receive us and ready to forgive.

If you think that Johnson’s forgiveness of her son’s killer is, well, crazy then let me ask you this: which kind of vision of God do you prefer? The empty vision of no-God, or the fiery vision of a vengeful God? Or can we see God's vision for us? Can we see like Mary Johnson? I think her holy, naïve, risky vision shows us that it is possible to see the face of angels anywhere. It is possible to know right now the place that God prepares for us. When she finally found the place of forgiveness it changed everything.

Over and over again, we see the faces of the holy. It often comes to us in strange unexpected ways. When people saw Stephen, they saw the face of an angel. When Jesus saw us, he saw that God makes room for each and every one of us. In Christ, heaven and earth have come together and when people see us—we baptized, forgiven, people of God--I believe that it is possible, in fact even likely, that they see the face of angels. And as Christian people it is possible for us to see God's vision of making room for everyone, of everyone having a place in God's home.

And this is how heaven comes to earth. This is how God transforms creation. One vision at a time.

The Fifth Sunday of Easter– Acts 7:55-60, John 14:1-14