What 4?

Got this message in an e-mail yesterday: 

EMBRACE OREGON

On Thursday, May 16th at 7 p.m., Imago Dei will bring together families and leaders from local churches as well as DHS staff for an evening of stories and dialogue about how the church can partner with DHS to care for children and families in Oregon’s child welfare system. Feel free to invite your friends and neighbors!

The event will be held in Imago Dei's sanctuary at 1400 SE Ankeny Portland, OR. Childcare is available by RSVP for children ages 0-5 years old. If you'd like to arrange this, visit the Embrace Oregon Facebook page and send a private message with the number of children you're bringing and their ages.

As usual, this bunch of faith leaders is responding to the clear call that echoes (cries out!) from a number of Karen Spears Zacharias' blog posts and comments:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/karenspearszacharias/

About time the church embraced the problem.

Meanwhile, when will we wake up to the other cries sailing past our ears? A couple of "screaming A's" that have come to our fragmented attention spans here lately:

1) Suicides. Not just soldiers but across the population. Numbers are up.

2) Sexual assault and harrassment in the military. 3K+ reported annually. Estimates of 20K+ occurring annually. It suggests to me far more than a military culture problem. It suggests to me a raw material problem.

3) Brothers arrested in New Orleans in connection with shooting 19 people at a Mother's Day parade. Gang members. How macho is shooting into a crowd of women and children--that are your NEIGHBORS?  Young man in Portland who survived a gang shooting refuses to testify as a witness. Rather spend a month in jail on contempt of court charges than press charges against his would-be killers... People wanted him dead, but now that he's not, he's afraid to speak up for fear that... people will want him dead?

We seem to be drowning in numbers of people--especially men--who have no clue, NO clue, how to answer this question: What the heck am I for on this earth?

What 4?  Without an answer, any person is a lost cause. 

Father, help us answer that question.  Amen.

Cleveland, USA

"I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us...  I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."  John 17:20-21a, 26  NRSV

Jesus prayed.  For us.  Was it effective?  Was He praying for the girls in Cleveland?  Or not?  One?  What is that? 

Discussions of divine prayer always seem to end in human dilemmas and conundrums--because that's all we know. According to the best theology that two millennia of Christian tradition have produced, I am a human being "conceived and born in sin" and condemned equally by sins of commission and sins of omission.

The sovereign God who allows, tolerates, or permits sin and grievous evil would seem to be as equally implicated, then, as I am when called to account for my sins of omission. How can God come away clean while I am on the hook when, after all, the cards were stacked against me before I was ever born? Who was it again that was "conceived and born in sin?" Seems like God could end the whole sin issue rather quickly by simply making no more of us.


Thus we can drive ourselves in vortices by attempting logical, finite answers to infinite questions in turf that is not ours. In reply to my own musings above, maybe God's got another plan that makes no sense through our backward view of the lens. I think so.
So I like to ask questions I cannot answer, stack 'em up before God. I'm not alone. Rob Bell's stunning work in the video "Open" is about the best piece on prayer I've seen in my 6+ decades of life. Just because we can't get exhaustive answers, we have no excuse to stop asking better and harder questions--or to stop living.

Meanwhile, I can fret about what makes national news. Here locally, an equally tragic story leaked a few drops in the AM's paper. A man 33 was shot to death at 2:32 AM outside a nude bar. Argument over a woman...

The deceased had, in his short life, "fathered" five children, according to the paper. Had a bit part in their creation I would say. Fathering them, not so much, I'd bet. Who is fathering them now, and who ever will? While we puzzle over the senselessness of questions surrounding Cleveland, alarm bells are sounding in every community and neighborhood where we live.

Five children conceived and born in sin. Like me. Children. Like their father once was.

How many more? there's a question...

You Can't Pray A Lie

Recently, my friend Karen Zacharias asked her readers what adventures of goodness we had been on lately?  Avdenture of goodness...?

Well, some may not see it so; but it came during the prayer time at Operation Nightwatch worship on Sunday. We, of course, had the people of Boston, the runners and families, the community of West, Texas on our list. Our soldiers and their families. Then, someone led by the Spirit of God piped up and said we should pray for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his family. We did.

After catching our spiritual breath over the shock of that, the still, small voice of grace finally leads us to ask, "Why would we not?" Indeed. A few seconds later, someone else asked that we pray for the President and his family and advisors. Indeed, why would we not? And just a thought... with the approval of Congress at an all time low, why would we not be praying for them? Instead of complaining.

It was Mark Twain who perhaps gave the advice on prayer that to me ranks only a short step below the Lord's Prayer itself. It's actually a chapter title from Huckleberry Finn: You Can't Pray a Lie. Praying for wounded, grieving people comes naturally. Praying for those who cause such things is hard. Because it can't be a lie. But the gospel we had just shared from John 10 is about the voice of the Shepherd who calls together a disparate bunch of sheep who would otherwise never hang together. Whose voice do we hear? Whose voice did the Tsarnaev brothers hear? What voice could they no longer hear? Who are our shepherds?

Good prayer doesn't come easily. It comes hard. I'm thankful for the homeless voice who led us to that hard spot of necessary prayer. An adventure of goodness, you might say. No lie.

Hearing Voices

The Lord be with you!

On Monday, my daughter in California asked that we pray at Operation Nightwatch Bible study (Tuesday evenings) and worship for the tragedy of Boston. She's a runner, planning to be in PDX next month for only a half marathon this time. I told her, "We pray at Operation Nightwatch every time there is good news and heartbreaking news." We pray.

Been thinking again about the sheep metaphor from John 10, as I do whenever the image comes up. Perhaps 15 years ago, a friend brought me a news item from the Capitol Press, an agriculture newspaper published in Salem. A local Jewish man, Dan Florea, had contracted with an area farmer to raise a flock of "Jacob sheep", direct genetic descendants of the sheep tended in Palestine 2K years ago. They were being raised as a source of the ram's horn, shofar, for the call to worship.

Eye opening, this sheep story. Little buggers are only half the carcass weight of modern breeds. Anything but dumb white cotton balls. Brown, white, black, tan, blotchy, spotty, speckled. All different. Rams have huge horns. Even mature ewes do. But mostly, Florea's description of their personality is what struck me. Strong-willed, stubborn, fiercely independent. Pretty well capable of taking care of themselves in the wilderness alone, thank you very much. They bear about as much resemblance to modern day sheep--and our understanding of them--as wolves and coyotes do to lapdogs.

Jacob sheep would never submit to being herded by a sheepdog. In fact, the only way they could ever be turned into a flock or community of any kind was by learning as young lambs to identify the voice calls, the songs, of their shepherd who led them out in the AM to pasture. That's why sheep of several flocks could all be gathered into a single shelter overnight and separate themselves out as their shepherds called and sang to them in the morning. And of course the shepherd knew his own. No two looked alike!

Jacob sheep. Not at all unlike congregations. Not at all unlike the human community that finds itself in the wilderness of chaos, war and strife. Bombings. Shootings. Bickering over everything and going nowhere... 

What voices do the perpetrators hear? What voice can they no longer hear? What voice do they need to hear? What voice do our leaders and caregivers hear? Who are our shepherds?

Blessings in being that voice!

Whodunnit? Why?

Whodunnit?

Why? 

The list of enemies without is nearly endless, the default list we go to when asking why.

The list of enemies within is more problematic, much more difficult for us to see and confront.

Discipline yourselves, keep alert.  Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.  Resist him, steadfast in your faith...  1 Peter 5:8-9  NRSV

Peter uses the metaphor of the lion only because he didn't know the metaphor of the booby trap, the Bouncing Betty mine, the IED, the sniper, the Stealth fighter, the Predator drone and the Hellfire missile, or the backpack pressure cooker.

At least a lion roars and breathes. The things that lurk inside us are quiet. The first thing they go for is the window shades, the curtains, the blinds. If these can be drawn around our minds and our hearts isolating us from our common humanity, we can be led into anything. We can be walking in the broadest daylight with 20/20 corneas and retinas and yet be stone-cold blind, enveloped in darkness. Let us pray for light and the ability to see.

Over a century ago, Black Elk prayed a good prayer:

"Grandfather (Tunkashila), Great Mysterious One (Wakan Tanka), You have been always; and before You, nothing has been. The star nations all over the universe are yours, and yours are the grasses of the earth. There is nothing to pray to but You. Day in, day out, You are the life of things. Grandfather, all over the world the faces of living ones are alike. In tenderness, they have come up out of the ground. Look upon your children with children in their arms that they may face the winds and walk the Good Road to the Day of Quiet. Sweeten our hearts, and fill us with light. Give us the strength to understand and the eyes to see. Help us, for without You, we are nothing. Hetchetu aloh (this is true)."

Amen.

Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk, "Joseph Black Elk" after his baptism) was truly a seer whose words we do well to ponder. One of the most sacred spaces I have ever visited is the little Lakota prayer garden built outside the little Neihardt Museum in tiny Bancroft, Nebraska. It was there that newspaper editor, poet and author, John G. Neihardt, wrote of Black Elk's life and the end of "Sioux" culture, after visiting Black Elk whose life spanned from the Civil War to the candidacy of Dwight Eisenhower. He was nearly blind, but certainly able to see. The composite prayer above written by Neihardt is basically a summary of how Black Elk saw himself, life, the Creator, creation and humankind. It's a timeless creed for life that I know by heart and say frequently to remind myself.

American Idyll

In the small apartment building where my wife and I lived in Yalova, Turkey from 1971-73, there was a crack in the plaster above one doorway. The cracked plaster had appeared after a small earth tremor in this very seismically active area. Early one summer morning as we were awakening, the bed shook a bit. We looked up to see the ceiling light fixtures, suspended only by their cords, swinging gently. After several seconds they stopped. Thankfully. We are alive today because that gentle tremor was just that, not the huge shock that destroyed the entire town in 1999.

How we wept when the day came in 1973 to leave this small apartment that had been the only home we had ever known as a young married couple. I would not trade our humble beginnings there for anything. For all around us was a seaside town that supplied everything we needed for life. There were little corner stores and neighborhood bread bakeries on nearly every block. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Hardware stores. Paint stores. Lumber dealers. Flower shop. Butcher shops. Car repair. Ceramic tile manufacturing. Restaurants. Appliances, housewares. All there. Women wore head scarves and more traditional attire--OR current fashion with their hair down and skirts above the knee. Even blue jeans. And five times a day the call to prayer.

Best thing of all was what people did on summer evenings before television changed even this part of the world: whole families went out for evening strolls. Mom, Dad and the kids--children walking holding their hands, infants and toddlers in strollers. Talking, greeting neighbors. Eye contact. Fresh air, exercise. Family. Music at outdoor cafes and restaurants along the sea wall. Doors to apartments not only unlocked but even left wide open when people went out to shop or stroll.

Nobody looking at glowing displays in their hands. 40 years ago but within living memory. Food, clothing, shelter, basic health care and work that provides these things, or community that does. None of the other "stuff" is really of value unless there is community. Too much stuff, which isn't really all that much, comes at a very high price: our souls.

It wasn't America, yet it was far more like the America that we were--but no longer are--than we might care to admit.

What else do we have in common with the rest of the world that we seem to have lost in pursuit of American exceptionalism?  Has the thought ever occurred to us?

Farming With Jesus

Ever since Tabitha Schulke's story ran in Thursday's Oregonian,
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/02/monmouth_mom_faced_with_terrib.html 

 I've been thinking about her and the questions posed by today's text from Luke 13. In Jesus' own day, the default questions were:

1) Why did this happen?

2) Who is to blame?

3) What is this all for?

4) When will the bad people finally get what's coming to 'em?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

But that's really a stupid question. Why do bad things happen at all? To anyone? But then, we can ask those questions 'til we are blue in the face. And I can ask another "w" question: Where do all of those other questions get us in the first place? Nowhere. Wrong questions. Wrong letter of the alpahbet.

Instead of "w" for why, I like "h" for how. Now that life is this way, whatever way it is, HOW do we live with this, whatever "it" is? Tabitha Schulke and her mother could certainly waste their entire lives asking why this gorgeous, loving, 18-year-old got some lethal infection that took her legs in order to save her live. But because there is something else in Tabitha's heart and soul, I predict they don't. I predict they ask the question, "How do we live with this?" And then they proceed to do so: live with it.

After questions about human disasters and loss of life, Jesus told a story in Luke 13 about a barren fig tree. And a vineyard owner who wants the barren tree taken out. Now. But there's a hopelessly optimistic gardener who has some sort of miracle grow fertilizer: manure.

Until this week, I've heard that story putting God in the place of the landowner. And Jesus in the place of the gardener... Which means that Jesus' whole purpose is protecting us from the God who wants us out of the picture--and who could fire the gardener at any time and finally carry out three-strikes justice. So much for Jesus' revealing the heart of steadfast love... Or...

Maybe the story works better if the "vineyard owner" equals the way much of the world works: Three strikes, you're out. You've had your chance. Time's up. No hope, no forgiveness, no future. Buzz off!

So maybe we could see God as the crafty gardener who has a sly smile on his face and says, "I got a plan. I got this miracle-grow stuff. I don't need three years, just one. I'll bet the whole farm, the entire future on my "fertilizer", because I know that all it needs is just one chance to work. Just one."

Interesting. Cause that makes Jesus Messiah the manure, doesn't it? The natural, organic, life-giving substance that the gardener (God) has been willing to stake everything on, you and me included.

"For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin:  that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."   2 Cor. 5:21 KJV. 

That's some high quality manure. Gotta love that divine nitrogen cycle. 

Back up to Luke 13.  After the fig tree parable, Jesus is met by a woman who has been beset by a crippling condition that has kept her hunched over and contorted for 18 years, same span as Tabitha Schulke's entire life to date.   Then, instead of going down every rat and rabbit hole with questions of why and who's to blame, who's at fault, Jesus does something with that fertilizer of steadfast love and compassion.

"Woman, you are set free from your ailment,"  Jesus says according to Luke 13.  Nice.  She straightens up.  Fixed.  Cured.  Fairytale world of the Bible. 

But that was then and this is now...  Does that kind of miracle ever happen today?  I think so...

Tabitha Schulke will never wake up some morning and find her amputated legs and feet restored. But she, like the woman Jesus healed on the Sabbath, has been freed of her ailment. She is not stuck in the death spiral of asking why. She and her Mom are busy answering the question "how". The fertilizer of Christ has been spread on their hearts.

My friend Karen whose father was KIA in Vietnam in 1966 when she was nine will never look across the room and see her father standing there alive.  Not until the next life, anyway.  Karen, along with her sibs, has lived with the "ailment" of his death nearly all of her life.  In pain, denial, anguish and confusion to be sure, her life has taken turns and been transformed into a life of compassion, understanding, healing, comfort and hope for so many people who have also suffered great loss.  Gold star wives, parents, children, siblings.  Communities and households shattered by the horrible death of battered children.  Parents who lost loved ones in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Countless readers around the globe.    

There's a common ingredient here:  the miracle growing stuff of the parable.  Tabitha's life and story are yet to be written, mostly.  Yet I predict that her loss becomes a source of life and grace according to a script none of us could have written.  A miraculous product exists:  grace around the roots of our barren fig trees.    

A wily gardener knew what he was doing back when.  Still does.   

Jesus called on his hearers to repent, to turn around to see the kingdom of God right before them, right beside them, right behind them.  He calls them to see life where others see only death; to see a way forward where others see only dead ends.

Can you smell the fresh fragrance? Life, I tell ya. Life. Happy farming with Jesus!

There is a way to live with this, whatever "it" is. Fertilizer's guaranteed. Amen.

Pastor Roger