Wherever Time Goes, There's a Pile of It!

Deanna and I had fun this past weekend. We went back to Elizabethtown, KY, the first place we called home together so that I could perform a wedding for the son of our oldest friends. We've known Jesse since before he was born, and it was a special privilege to be invited to preach for his wedding (a Protestant/Catholic event that will likely generate another post). Deanna and I were teachers when we lived in E-town in the '70's. I taught high school English; she elementary music at St. James School, the school connected to the church where Jesse and Kelly were married on Saturday, so the event gave us plenty of opportunity for strolling down memory lane. The children at St. James who were receiving their first communion on Sunday were the children of the elementary school children Deanna taught to sing way back when. We also saw a few of my former students who have various connections to Jesse and Kelly. Some of them I remembered, and some I had to have some help remembering. I was doing fine when they told me how they remembered hating to read Billy Budd and when they still complained about how hard my tests were. I puffed up a bit when they told me how much they remembered learning when I was their teacher, and how different it had been when their kids went to the same high school. They could have stopped talking then and we'd have been fine. But they went on to talk about having kids in college! My students! Their kids in college. We left E-town in 1980. Intellectually, I know that that's twenty-nine graduating classes ago, but at some other level, I still think of my students as they were when I left them. I was only twenty-one when I started teaching, so my earliest students are nearly as old as I am. I wasn't altogether sure that some of them were going to make it to college, and now they're sending their kids. One of them is assistant principal at an area school. Another one is an investment broker. Another manages a local business. But they have kids in college! Time stands still for none of us, I know, but I was pretty shaken by that one. They were gracious and didn't say much about how much older I am. They were polite and didn't shout, assuming that someone of my advancing years must be hard of hearing by now. It was fun to be back at one of the many places I have called home for a brief visit, but, as much as I love that place, I think I'm glad I don't have to live there and see former students all the time. When they discovered that I live in Florida, they all promised to come and visit. I suspect they won't, but if they do, I hope they hurry before my memory of them is gone forever.

Is This Supposed to Be Fun?

We're settling back into a more routine schedule at church after all the calendar shifting involved in Lent and Easter. That means our Kerygma Bible study groups are diligently moving toward completing that fourteen-week study of that Gospel we began in September! This week, we had a newcomer--not to the church, but to this particular study group. I'm always happy to see newcomers at educational events or other things we do, and it's particularly interesting to see how those folks perceive what goes on in those settings. Our conversation this week was lively (When is it not?), and we didn't cover nearly as much ground as we had set out to do. The group was small, but everyone there, including the newcomer, participated in meaningful ways. I talked to our first-timer at another church event (We all do spend a lot of time together! Welcome to new church world.) and asked what she thought and if it might be something she'd be interested in continuing. One of the descriptors we used for the session was that it had been fun. Then she asked, "Is it supposed to be fun?" I certainly hope so! I suspect that's why our Kerygma groups are not any larger than they are (couldn't be my teaching, surely. Who the heck knows what Kerygma means in the first place? And how many are going to venture out of their comfort zones to find out. If it has to have a Greek name, it must be over my head, right? Wrong! At least if I do it. That got me to thinking about how people with even less understanding of who we are and what we do must perceive what we're doing in the Church. I suspect fun is not usually among the words they choose to describe what they think we're doing. I know the authors of the Westminster Confession and Catechism are probably not the first folks who come to mind when we think about having a good time, but they did begin the Catechism with the classic statement that our chief end is "to glorify God and enjoy God forever." Somewhere along the line we decided that glorifying God and having fun had become mutually exclusive. It's about to be Shrimp Festival weekend here in Amelia, and I doubt there will be a Bible study booth among the fun things to do there. But that doesn't mean that Bible study or worship or anything else we do in the Church can't be fun. It may say more about my social life than it does about the quality of my teaching, but that study group has provided some of the most fun I've had this week. I look forward every week to see what kinds of new understandings members will bring and how others will agree or disagree with them. I hope our newcomer comes back to Kerygma. And I hope we keep having fun discovering God's Word together. Even more, I hope whatever study follows this one (We really are going to finish Matthew in May--or at least quit!) will be something on which other newcomers will take a chance.

Hard to Stay Excited?

I don't listen to or watch national news quite as much as I once did anymore. I know I should, but part of my hesitance stems from the entertainment style that broadcast news has become and part of it is the same weariness with bad news and frivolous reporting of it of which I hear many speak. That said, I do keep NPR on the car radio, so I get some idea about what's going on in the world. Yesterday afternoon on the way home I heard an interview with a young adult about his take on the ongoing financial crisis we face. He talked about his excitement during the recent presidential campaign and the hope he had for the new administration. Then he said something close to, "But it's been a while now, and it's hard to stay excited."
Whatever your attitude about the current presidential administration, by my count, it has been in place for sixty-six days. Given a day to celebrate its beginning, a few days to move in, get settled, and learn e-mail addresses and phone extensions, that's about two months. And what a two months they have been! To go from get-out-the-vote excitement to it's-hard-to-stay-excited this soon says much more to me about the culture we've made than it does about that one young adult. Instant gratification seems to be what we all want in most areas of our lives. Those of us who want to lose weight (And who doesn't?) want a pill or a meal plan that will have pounds falling off behind us as we walk across the room, which is about as much exercise as we're willing to commit to the task. Those of us who live in relationships that need attention (Again, who doesn't?) want ours to be like the ones we read about in magazines or romance novels, and we want to wake up in them tomorrow morning. Honest conversation about expectations? Acknowledgments of what we're willing to commit to make these relationships happen? The magazines and novels don't spend much time on those, so why should we? Those who want the economy fixed (You know anybody who doesn't?)want it fixed yesterday, including the restoration of our retirement funds. I'm no economist, but even I know that kind of fix is not likely. It is hard to stay excited when things don't change much. So I wonder if we might not ought to ask if excitement is all it's cracked up to be.
It is late in Lent. Those of us who have been on this journey have been at it for nearly five weeks now. We had good intentions when we started. We'd read that devotional guide every day and set aside some time to pray. Some of us took on other disciplines, denying ourselves something we thought might make us think or taking on tasks and responsibilities that might do the same. We had every good intention of making those special services at church or doing something to observe the season. Where'd we put that devotional guide? I know it's here somewhere. Don't you think that agency we meant to call probably has enough volunteers already? I guess someone would wonder where I'd been if I showed up at extra worship now? At the root of all that lies the wonder if anything we do can keep us excited about being faithful.
Somewhere along the way, we figure out that living faithfully involves a lot more ordinary days than it does exciting ones. For every sermon that makes the hair stand up on the backs of our necks, there are four for five that we don't remember. (Remember, this is the preacher talking. No need to let me know you agree!) For every time we go to the Scripture and find inspiration, there are more times that we wonder with the Psalmist, "How long, O Lord, how long?"
But yet, we continue to do the things we know how to do to understand more about who God is and who God is calling us to be. We worship. We pray. We turn to the Scripture. We sing. And sometimes we might even try something new, some new form of worship, a new song, a new guide for understanding God's Word. All in the hope of finding something to stay excited about.
I'm no more sure about what will happen to us economically or politically than anyone else is. But I am sure that spiritual growth can happen, that God, who calls us into that process, is faithful, and that whatever steps I am willing to take, God will bless and use to my advantage. As weary of the Lenten imagery as we all are, the hardest words to hear and images to see lie ahead of us. But so does the joy of Easter morning. There's a day that might generate some excitement among us. Wonder how long it will last?

Coming to Terms With...

I've about come to terms with the impending reality that my Kentucky Wildcats will not be in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament this spring. I know some bracketologists are still predicting they'll make it, but they must not have seen them play the past several games. If I'm wrong, and they do make it into the tournament, I'll follow them as far as they go. (I suspect that's an easy promise to make that won't require much of me this year.) If they don't get in at all, their absence will seriously alter my life's schedule during March. I may fill out a bracket on selection Sunday anyway, but it won't be nearly as much fun, and Deanna will tell me I'll have to take that process much more seriously because I always have Kentucky winning it. That's not likely this year, although I'd like to be proven wrong there, too. And I guess I can go to work most days without worrying about when to run home to catch a Kentucky game. Looks like March will be a much different month for me than it usually is. In case you haven't figured out what rabid basketball fans we (and many of our friends) are, this time of year always reminds me of the Saturday afternoon when Marquette was beating the tar out of Kentucky in the tournament and our phone rang with less than two minutes left. Caller ID is a great gift during basketball season, so when I went to the phone and saw the name and number of a dear friend who was near death, I knew I had to answer. My friend's son (who is as rabid a KY fan as I am) opened the conversation this way, "Bob, you know I wouldn't bother you now if Daddy weren't dead!" We were both glad his dad didn't have to watch the outcome of that game, which ejected KY from the tournament. I'm coming to terms with the distinct possibility that there won't be drama like that this March.
I'm also thinking about Lent, which began yesterday, as a time for coming to terms with some other realities that I can't control. Every year, I set out to improve the quality of my spiritual life, and every year I fall short of my goals. Even though I know and believe that guilt is not a particularly helpful thing, I get caught up in it like everyone else does. One of my goals for this Lent is to come to terms with the reality that I will never be all that I think God is calling me to be. But an even greater goal is to remember that God knows that, and that God has promised to stay in relationship with me anyway.
The Kentucky basketball parts of this post won't mean much to most who read it. I hope my Lenten coming to terms thinking will. We belong to God. God loves us. God has promised that that will never change, regardless of our worthiness or lack of it. Come to terms with it.

Who's On Your Mountain?

Transfiguration Sunday is never a favorite time to preach for me. I've had more than my share of mountaintop experiences, but I never know quite for sure how to deal with the supernatural side of what we believe. I read about another mountain experience the other day, though, that I thought was fun. ESPN has created Mt. Rushmore lineups for all the major football conferences and many of the big football schools (Roll, Tide) with four of the most notable people from the history of those conferences and schools on the mountain like the four great Presidents in South Dakota. That got me to thinking about some of the people who have been especially helpful to me on my spiritual journey. It's hard to narrow it down to four, but, today at least, my mountain would have the likenesses of Hubert Morrow, Paul Brown, Beverly St. John, and Jean Hunter carved onto it. Dean Morrow and Dr. Brown were seminary professors of mine. Dean Morrow exuded a Reformed understanding of Scripture and understood grace better than most people I have ever known. Paul Brown was one of my preaching teachers who taught me things I relearn every week when I sit down with a text, not the least important of which is to work hard enough to have something to say and to shut up when I've said it. Both Dean Morrow and Paul are gone from this world. I miss them. People get tired of hearing me talk about Beverly St. John. She epitomizes grace. Enough said. Jean Hunter will be upset if she discovers she's on this list. That's why she's here. She doesn't practice her faith to be noticed. But those of us who love her notice. (Jean, if you ever read this, I put you here because I'm grown and I wanted to.) I've got a whole list of people who could fill another mountain, but those are my top four.
So, who's on your mountain? Think about it. If you feel up to it, leave a comment to let us know who has been particularly helpful to you on your journey.

Pre-, Post-; Is There Another Option?

Don't panic! This is not about millennial theology. I continue to be of the school that believes that God knows all there is to know about that, and that we don't need to know much beyond "The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord of the Christ," although sometimes, like everybody else, I wish I knew more.
The pre- and post- things I'm thinking about today are of a different sort. Those are terms we use to set ourselves in some kind of history. I'm part of that big post-war, Baby-boomer generation that has caused our culture grief at every stage of our lives (and will continue to as we age and retire!). I grew up in a pre-cellphone, pre-internet world and wonder how we did it.
These days we talk about more post-things than pre- ones. Postmodernism has now morphed into post-Christian. What that means, I think, is that while we in the Church weren't paying attention, many people stopped paying much attention to us. The new administration in Washington tells us that we're living in post-racial and post-partisan times. I'm not holding my breath for either one of those.
My problem with all this is that we keep thinking about the present and the future in terms of what we've experienced. We measure what we can't know by what we think we do.
I don't know, of course, what the future holds anymore than anyone else does. As a new church pastor, I might think about that more than someone else. I'm looking forward to seeing what our new congregation develops into, but I caution our leaders all the time to be careful about bringing too many expectations from previous experiences to our work. I have my own ideas about what a church looks like, and everyone else has ideas about that, too. We all bring those expectations to this work. Some of them are helpful, and some of them are not. For the first time in my life, I'm part of a church without a Sunday School. But that doesn't mean that meaningful, purposeful Bible study doesn't happen here. Our Tuesday Kerygma groups have struggled with the Sermon on the Mount in ways that have challenged us all. Our PW group is serious about its study of Luke's Gospel this week. Our children gather with people who care about them during a portion of the worship service every week to work on the same ideas we're talking about on the other side of the wall. They also meet for special events occasionaly to play and sing and learn together. Now we have a group of young adults looking for a regular time and resource that will help them figure out what Scripture says to them and their world and a group of young adult women in particular who want to get together to talk about how their faith informs and enriches their roles and women, wives, moms, and all the other things they are. Who knows what else people are thinking about that they haven't shared with me yet? All of that adds us to Church that looks different than anything most of us have ever seen, but Church that comes from peoples' perceptions of God's call in their lives. If that makes us post-traditional or post-Sunday School, I guess that's OK.
What I think it really means, though, is that we are learning to trust God's vision for our lives and for our church. I'm not altogether sure what that vision is, but when some of us begin to see and hear the same things, we figure God might be leading us, and so we follow. I'm trying to be very careful to avoid the pre- and post- labels for what we're doing. I'm trying to tell myslef so I can assure others that what we're doing is trying to figure out where God is in our midst and trying to stay there until God calls us to be somewhere else. I'll let you know how it goes!

College football season is finally over! I know that's a bigger deal form some of us than for others, but bear with me; I've got a point to make here. From Tim Tebow's emotional speech after the Ole Miss loss until the championship game last night, the season became more and more focused on him. That's OK, even for those of us who are not Florida fans. Tebow is an impressive young man, and I wish him well whether he comes back for his senior season in the Swamp or goes to the NFL. I don't know that I remember an athlete the media has touted the way they have Tebow. Let me hasten to say, I don't build my life around the values the media sets before us, but we're all influence by the media more than we want to grant. It has been impossible to watch football this season without hearing about him--not just his abilities on the field (which pretty much speak for themselves), but his Christian witness and his personal character, which are also pretty impressive. We've heard about mission trips, speaking engagements in prisons, and all kinds of other things he does in response to God's call in his life. I'd much rather hear about those things than the things we hear more often about college and professional athletes. It's refreshing to hear about a kid whose family has grounded him in Christian faith so that it is foundational to his understanding of himself. I wish I had done a better job of that with my own boys. What concerns me, though, is that the media talks about this as though it has never happened before. At one point in last night's championship game, one of the commentators, who had apparently recently met Tebow for the first time (I still haven't.) said on national television that he thought that anybody who spent as much as five minutes in Tebow's presence would experience a positive change in his or her life. I began to wonder if the Second Coming had occurred and found me in the wrong pew. One of the sports message boards I read every morning before I engage the world was abuzz today with the so-called man-crush the media has had with Tebow this season and the spiritual overtones it has taken. One poster asked if maybe Tebow had turned the water into Gatorade last night.
I'm for Tebow as a Christian witness (although I still wish Shula had recruited him to Alabama as he should have). I'm grateful for the opportunities he has that I'll never have to communicate about Christ with people. But I'm concerned about a society that is willing to elevate a college athete to near deity. (This from someone who lived in Alabama where everybody knows about football and God!)
Two important questions come to mind: 1.) are we so desperate for something to believe in that we'll expect a kid to be what we need when we know that sooner (sorry, Okies) or later he'll disappoint us. (I, for one, was thankful for the Gator chomp taunt that got him penalized, not for the penatlyl, but because it means he's still a kid!) and, more importantly, 2.) have all the rest of us mere mortals who claim faith in Christ as the foundation of our lives been so ineffective as witnesses of his presence in our lives that the world doesn't recognize him in us, or anywhere? That one stings.