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Learning the language of Christianity

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Forget New Year’s resolutions, how about a commitment to renewed spiritual practices? Or, dare I say, disciplines? I know, I know… the word “disciplines” doesn’t roll off the tongue in our Protestant, post-modern circles, but perhaps reviving it would help sustain our strangeness. Maybe such oddities of word and deed would make us stand out enough to get the attention of others and we could share with them why we speak and live as we do. Will Willimon in his book, “Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized,” says, “We must learn Christianity, even as we learn a foreign language.” If this analogy holds, then strange words, difficult to pronounce without direct translation, should be expected. Words like disciplines, fasting, Eucharist, worship, baptism and repentance are part of the Christian lexicon even if they seem challenging to express in the lingua franca. I hear your protest now: This is insider language. Insider language alienates. Insider language distances. Insider … [Read more...]

Tagged With: spiritual practice

Forming a new family

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Black lives matter. I must begin there, and if I begin there then I must confess. I must confess that I was ignorant for far too long of the need to say unequivocally, publicly: Black lives matter. I am embarrassed to confess that I was oblivious to the systematic racism and injustice so prevalent in our society and that obliviousness is the very essence of white privilege. Recent events have caused the scales to fall from my eyes. I still have a lot to learn. I moved from Nova Scotia to North Carolina the summer before I started fourth grade. The first day of school I sat nervously in the third row. Midway through the morning, I jumped, startled because I felt someone touch the back of my head. I turned around. The African-American student seated behind me said, “I just wanted to feel your hair.” The truth was, I wanted to feel his hair, too. My shyness prevented my doing so and eventually the strangeness of our respective hair, and one another, was bridged by a shared dislike of … [Read more...]

A home for the holidays

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"Away in a manager, no crib for a bed." The beloved Christmas hymn came vividly alive to me one Advent when I asked a little girl, “How did you sleep?” “Great!” she exclaimed, “It was sooo good to have my own bed!” She went on to tell me how difficult it had been to sleep with several of her siblings beside her. One sister, she complained, “elbowed me every night!” This little girl had just spent her first night in a Sunday school room in the church. I had been in the room across the hall from her. We’d just sat down to breakfast when I asked her how she’d slept and got her enthusiastic reply. She did indeed have her own bed, even if her entire family was still in one room. The classroom was better than the cheap hotel room where she’d been living previously. She would stay for a week in our church and then move on to another for the duration of her family’s stay in this ministry designed to move families out of homelessness and into permanent housing. Her delight over her own … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Christmas

Come, Lord Jesus

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I am tired of waiting for Jesus. The wrangling of a national election that had the tenor of a raunchy reality show, the endless violence of war, the blatant racism of our country, the tsunami of mistrust that swamps us, the vitriolic hate ubiquitous on the web. Enough already. Come, Lord Jesus. I don’t know what the Parousia will entail, but some days I think it can only be better than what we’re living. I looked back at pastoral prayers I’d written not years ago but over a decade ago, and I realized that I could have written them last week, or yesterday. Change the name of the country devastated by war or natural disaster, insert a different person in need of healing, replace one grieving family with another, and there you have it: the prayer for the day that was the prayer for yesterday and for the day before that. And for tomorrow, too. Liturgical Madlibs that make you cry instead of laugh. Come, Lord Jesus. I am weary of waiting for reconciliation, for redemption, for … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Advent

Theology matters

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The only way I ever walked into a hospital room to visit the sick, or a home to meet with a bereaved family, or a pulpit to preach after a tragedy in community or country is thanks to theology. I love Jesus. I trust the promises of God. I count on the presence of the Holy Spirit. I read my Bible every day. But if I didn’t have Reformed theology and a Book of Confessions and all the tradition that comes alongside it, I would have had little of any value to say about the Triune God I follow. Theology matters. This may border on heresy, but loving Jesus isn’t enough. Articulating what you believe about Jesus is critical to bearing witness to the One we seek to glorify and enjoy forever. The first person I ever walked with to the grave was a middle-aged woman dying of AIDS. She wasn’t Presbyterian. She grew up in another tradition. That tradition’s theology espoused that AIDS was a punishment from God, so when she could no longer hide the nature of her illness her family looked … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Reformation

Look for the supports

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I entered the sanctuary hoping to slip into a back pew, but the church was crowded. A summer Sunday during late June in Portland, Oregon, would normally mean a choice of seats, but this Sunday the space was packed. General Assembly was in town and the congregation swelled as a result. The pews were all but full and finding a seat that allowed for anonymity and a quick escape (if summoned to work) was difficult. I went to sit on the narrow wooden bench that lined the wall under the stained glass windows. When I arrived there was one lone man seated there, just beside the chancel doors. I sat down and he jumped up waving his hands like a ref does when a runner slides safely to base. But his was a gesture not of safety but of urgent warning. “No, no, no!” he said as gently as his troubled face could muster. “It is old!” Seeing the alarm on the man’s face, I instinctively stood up. He was so small I might have mistaken him for a child except for the gray hair around his temples. He … [Read more...]

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