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A church member once told me about serving in the Army in the 70s right after the debacle of the Vietnam War. It was a low point for the institution. The military today, on the other hand, ranks among the most highly esteemed institutions in the United States.

In any event, he told me of his frustration with the Army and the sense that it had become a kind of “Mickey Mouse” operation. Those serving with him tended to agree.

Then one day, while looking in the mirror, he noticed the name attached to his uniform – his own. It struck him. He thought, “I am the Army. It’s not just some abstract entity. And if there’s a problem with it, it’s up to me to do my part to make it better.”

Continue reading “Homogenized and Interchangeable, Part I”

I’m shocked – but really shouldn’t be. After all, it’s not as if I haven’t witnessed this time and again. Specifically, I’m talking about how flummoxed Christians seem to be when confronted with adversity, as with the current pandemic.

One notable example (about which I’ve previously written), occurred during the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. PBS ran a documentary entitled, Out of the Ashes: 9/11, the basic thrust of which was that amid such unmitigated evil faith has no good answers.

As proof, they paraded a bunch of bewildered religious leaders before the cameras who solemnly lamented that doubt was about the best one could hope for.

Continue reading “Vulnerability”

Years ago I heard a story, a parable really, about a young boy whose mother would pick him up every day from school. One afternoon she arrived at the appointed hour but he was nowhere to be seen. After about 15 minutes or so, he finally came running to the car.

“Why are you so late?” his mother inquired.
“A girl in class dropped her pottery jar,” he answered.
“So you stayed to help her pick up the pieces”?
“No,” the boy explained, “I stayed to help her cry.”

This story reveals something intrinsic to suffering. That what we really need when we’re suffering is to know someone else understands what we’re going through. People can sympathize with our lot but only those who’ve gone through something similar can truly empathize.

Continue reading “Why Is the Resurrection Joyous?”

One of the effects of the recent church lockdowns is that many if not most churches are now using technology to broadcast Sunday services, as well as other online opportunities for members to get together.

Yesterday being Palm Sunday, my wife and I tuned in to three separate services using my laptop. The following are my observations:

The first service was very creative. It used a script of various characters describing from their perspective the events of the first Holy Week, from someone who had witnessed Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers, to the woman who anoints Jesus with expensive oil, to Judas who was to betray him. Curiously, no attempt was made to connect any of this to what we’re going through with the coronavirus, something presumably uppermost in people’s minds.

Continue reading “Toothless Old Dog”

Crises tend to reveal who we are and what we believe. And that goes for the church as well. Consider these two examples.

I recently read a message from a local pastor about the COVID-19 outbreak. Did the pastor take the opportunity to delve into the deep spiritual, theological challenges confronting us in this time of need?  

Well, not exactly. Mostly the message was a plea that we recognize our interconnectedness, especially to the global community. The climax of the message focused on the central issue of our day – the sin of wrongly identifying the epidemic as “the Chinese virus.”

Continue reading “A Non-Essential Service”

Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, famously stressed the importance of interpreting the Bible as “narrative.” By this he didn’t mean it isn’t true, but that its underlying meaning is grasped in the form of story.  

Noted for his almost indecipherably dense Germanic writing style, with dependent clause upon dependent clause, our assignment in divinity school was to read only about ten pages at a clip of his landmark four-volume tome, Church Dogmatics.

So, years ago, I based a children’s story on it. With the youthful trusting faces surrounding me up in the chancel, I asked them if they liked a good story. They did.

Continue reading “The Stories We Tell”

Back when I was deciding whether to seek ordination or not, I wrestled with the fear that being a pastor would place a barrier between me and others.

I had noticed that many of my friends and acquaintances had reacted poorly to the news I was attending divinity school. Many thought it odd and not especially worthwhile. Like many today, they couldn’t quite understand why I would commit to such a thing. Christianity, after all, was on the ropes, and being a pastor a dead-end proposition.

Indeed, over the years I’ve officiated at any number of weddings. More often than not the young people treat me as if I’m a Martian or something, an odd creature whose life-sensibilities are mysterious if not just plain weird.

Continue reading “Faith in the Time of COVID-19”

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An extraordinary event occurred this past Friday, though its significance is likely to go unnoticed. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, various medical experts and industry leaders gathered at the White House to announce to the nation various steps being taken collectively to address the virus’ looming threat.

This was an exceedingly rare instance of normally competing worlds agreeing to work together on a common problem for the common good. I was heartened by it.

Generally, in today’s economic climate, multinational corporations have little loyalty to the nations within which they operate. In an era of rampant financialization, the only loyalty is to the shareholder, not the country or its people.

Continue reading “Love in the Time of COVID-19”

As if beating a dead horse, I must yet again propose this simple truism – that the mainline church today is far more influenced by the secular culture than the other way around. And to make matters worse, they don’t seem to recognize it.

Perhaps the greatest fallout from this is the loss of “fellowship,” the sense of belonging, of being inextricably bound to one another, of being “in Christ.”

The surrounding culture has largely jettisoned this rather quaint notion, to disastrous result. Yet despite its pronounced effect, it remains largely unnoticed.

One of the root causes is the hyper-politicization of every aspect of modern life. One must choose sides. You’re either with us or against us. It’s Manichean, black or white.

Continue reading “Abstract Me-ism”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to say a prayer to change the weather. For some reason it’s a popular joke, implying that pastors have some special pipeline to God. More to the point, it betrays a shared sense that pastors are holy creatures, closer to God and immune to sinful pressures.

Now, I do think pastors should be held to a higher standard and that they should strive for holiness. But I also know every single one of them is a sinner. It’s biblical, after all, as well as confessional, doctrinal, and in accord with lived experience. We all fall short of the glory of God. No news flash there.

Yet some pastors seem to believe their own “press releases,” so to speak. The temptation is to assume that because you serve a religious community, you’re somehow immune to non-religious influences.

Continue reading “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”