Blog Review: Slacktivist's Bonfire/Quilt/Mosaic

In the world of Facebook and news sites and RSS feeds, it's becoming easier and easier to surround ourselves with people and information we find comfortable and familiar.  But as far as I'm concerned, getting to know people who are different from me is a matter of faith- I feel called as a Christian to truly get to know people from all walks of life and to recognize their status as a beloved child of God, equally worthy of God's love as I am.

And in this world of mass communication on a scale never seen before, the Internet is a great place to do that.  Blogs in particular offer a chance to get to know the authors rather well.  But the Christian blogosphere can start to feel a little stuffy after awhile, and there's a lot of feedback.  And it overwhelmingly feels dominated by straight white men.

Which is why, a little while ago, Fred Clark of Slacktivist put together three lists.  The Bonfire is a list of Christian blogs written by women.  The Mosaic is a list of blogs written by Christians who aren't white.  And the Quiltblogs are written by Christians who aren't straight.

I know I got really tired of reading the horrible things a lot of powerful dead men had to say about women long before I finished seminary.  So seeking out living Christians to counter those dusty voices has been an ongoing process.  Because the Holy Spirit is active in the world, God is with us, and is speaking through people we'd never expect (as God always has).

I'm proud that this blog is listed on the Bonfire.  It's no mark of distinction- all I had to do was to tell Fred I'm a Christian woman writing a blog, and he added the link- but seeing this place listed with all those other Christian women is a strong reminder of the community I'm a part of- of all the Christian women who have gone before and who will come after me.  Thanks be to God!

Lutheran Look: Suggestions?

I have plenty of ideas for these posts, but due to not currently being in a ministry position, I don't get asked questions like these as often as I used to. So, since I want to post on topics that interest people, do you have any suggestions?  Questions you've always wanted to ask?  Offbeat topics you'd like to see addressed more often?

Ask away!  I'll try to link to this post every so often to keep the suggestions coming.

Lectionary Post: 3/24/2013- Palm Sunday (C)

Prayer of the Day
Sovereign God, you have established your rule in the human heart through the servanthood of Jesus Christ. By your Spirit, keep us in the joyful procession of those who with their tongues confess Jesus as Lord and with their lives praise him as Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

On Palm Sunday we are surrounded by joy and triumph, but we know what's coming.  We've known since the beginning of our Lenten journey where we are going, On this Sunday, we turn the corner from Lent into Holy Week.  This Sunday, the story is about to change.

Procession with Palms - John 12:12-16
The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord— the King of Israel!” Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

Comments:
Jesus enters Jerusalem, triumphant!  And yet humble, riding on a simple donkey rather than a warhorse or a more noble steed.  He's surrounded by adoring crowds, shouting "Hosanna!" and calling him King.  Though this is not the Messiah they were expecting- the Old Testament is full of talk about the Messiah, and most of it involves expectations of war and conquering and probably a certain amount of riches.  Jesus has avoided conflict, gathered no armies, and lives simply.  For that matter, Jesus doesn't really sound like the kind of savior we'd expect today, in our culture that worships wealth and popularity.

If this were a movie, we might expect this part to be the ending- Jesus was born, grew up, started his ministry, wandered around Judea for a few years healing people and performing miracles, gathered some followers, got a lot of death threats.  And finally arrives triumphant in Jerusalem, surrounded by cheering crowds!  But we who know the story, we who have been here before, know otherwise.  The story is about to turn.

Isaiah 50:4–9a
The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear
   to listen as those who are taught.
The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious,
   I did not turn backwards.
I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
   he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together.
Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.
It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

Comments:
As Christians, we often see this passage as a direct reference to Jesus.  After all, we have a teacher whose words bring comfort and who speaks with God.  We have a person who does not rebel against God and who practices nonviolence- the parallels to "turn the other cheek" are obvious here.

So the next few lines are rather surprising- if it's Jesus we're talking about, he was not disgraced?  He was not shamed?  We aren't to the crucifixion yet, but we know it's coming, and it was the most disgraceful and shameful way a person could die in that time- so much so that full citizens of the powerful Roman Empire could not be put to death that way.  It tells us something about Jesus' death, and his path to it, that there is no disgrace or shame involved, no matter the intentions of the other people involved.  And what an appropriate ending line- who will declare Jesus guilty, indeed?

Psalm 31:9–16
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief,
   my soul and body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing;
my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away.

I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors,
an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me.
I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.
For I hear the whispering of many— terror all around!—
as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.
But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’
My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.
Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.

Comments:
Here we have a Psalm about persecution, one which reminds us of what kind of situation Jesus really is in.  Because while he was welcomed just a few minutes ago (in the service) into Jerusalem to the shouts of crowds, in a festival atmosphere, in less than a week the crowds will turn on him.  We are on our way to Good Friday, and this is a Psalm written by someone who understood what it meant to not be able to trust the people around you.  Soon people will flee from Jesus in the street, the whispers all around will come.

And yet, in the end, we will find parallels between the Psalmist's reaction, and Jesus'.  But that's next week.

Philippians 2:5–11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.

Comments:
This text is commonly known as the Christ Hymn. As I mentioned earlier, during the processional text, Jesus did not fulfill all of the expectations of the Messiah who would save the Jewish people.  He was humble where sovereignty was expected, he was peaceful where war was expected, and his parables never quite meant what the disciples first expected.

Here we also have a bit of the "first shall be last and the last shall be first" theology that we're going to hear about much more in the Easter and post-Pentecost Sundays. But Palm Sunday, a day of reversal, is a very appropriate time for it.

(Luke 23:1-49)
This text, when I was a kid, was strictly understood as optional on Palm Sunday, because this was before the whole Passion Sunday idea became a... thing.  It's become more encouraged to do this text as well (or an even more extended version!) in addition to the processional text as the years have gone by.  But I won't do it.  No.  I refuse.  See, if you look this text up in the Bible (which, by all means, I encourage!) you'll notice it's the Passion story.  It's the crucifixion.  And the idea that's been getting more popular these days is that lots of people won't come to the Three Days services (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil/Holy Saturday) so you may as well tell the story on this Sunday too.

And that's the kind of thing that gets right up my left nostril, frankly.  I don't think I could keep it up for the entirety of Holy Week, but I would rather hold a Good Friday service every two hours until past dinner on Good Friday, than to tell the Passion story on Palm Sunday.  Because it messes with the narrative, and it messes with the Lenten journey, and that's not something I'm willing to do.  We've spent weeks upon weeks getting up to this point- I'm sure there were a few Christmas sermons that mentioned this, so months of time, getting to now- and I will not ruin the journey we've been on this whole time right at the end.  If a movie messed with pacing like this at the very end, after a complicated and riveting plot, you'd leave disgusted, wouldn't you?  I won't do it.

So, read this text, certainly, please do.  Study it, pray with it.  But I'm keeping Palm Sunday about the procession, here- there's plenty of sermon there, lots of both Law and Gospel, it's a necessary part of the journey.  I will not skip it.  We will get to Calvary at the proper time.

Go in peace, remember the poor.  Thanks be to God.

Book Review: Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

I've always made a point of getting to know people who think and believe differently than I do, and reading about a variety of people and belief systems.  The reading in particular was always mainly the cheaper option to international travel, but now that I'm entering the clergy, I'm taking it more seriously as a part of my call to the ministry, because more and more I find that reading and learning about things I disagree with helps me clarify my own beliefs and understandings.

Which was why I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw Lawrence Wright (the author) interviewed on the Colbert Report a few weeks back.  I'd heard a few things about Scientology over the years, but nothing really concrete.  I wanted to learn more about it, but what little I did know led me to take the things the "church" said with a large grain of salt.

So, having read it: I think this book was very carefully researched and written- everything is cited, every piece of information the author gives you, he tells you where and from whom he got it.  Every item that has been denied by the people or groups involved, he tells you that, too.  There are a lot of footnotes (though most of them are very short).  I found this book very readable- the chapter that's essentially the biography of L. Ron Hubbard drags a bit in the middle, but the rest is all vivid and suspenseful.

It paints a picture of an incredibly disturbing cult- one that involves child abuse, indentured lifetime service that essentially turns into slavery, forced divorces and abortions, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse, and an incredible amount of in-group-out-group pressure.  It painted such a disturbing picture, in fact, that afterward I did a little digging on the Internet to do a bit of my own fact checking.  Scientology has its own website, which I won't link to, but you can find if you're interested.  Those of you who have some experience with psychology, sociology, or just weird group dynamics will probably find it fascinating in a bad way.  I also found a website called exscientologykids.com which has a lot of information as well, from another point of view.

And if you're looking for just one fact to check up on- Scientology has had one leader since L. Ron Hubbard died.  That leader has been married to the same woman since before LRH died.  She has not been seen in public since her father's funeral in 2007.  Missing persons reports have been filed to no avail, and her husband won't talk about it.  Does that sound healthy to you?

So, certainly a fascinating read and a well-researched piece of journalism.  Thanks to reading this book, I'm going to be adding a few things to my list of ideas for future posts- including how to recognize a group or a leader as just bad news.  And add a few things to my readings list.

Which reminds me: seminary friends, I remember there was a book on cults and how to recognize them that was very popular in seminary, and I think came out either while we were there or just a few years before.  I had a chance to browse it in school, but never actually read it, and always wanted to.  But I can't remember enough of the title to find it now.  It had five or six primary characteristics that each had a chapter focused on it.  Can anybody help me out?  Thank you!

Lutheran Look: Why membership?

My apologies for missing the lectionary post this week, life has been unexpectedly hectic (in good ways!).  Back on track now, though.

I've been asked this question a lot: Why bother being an official member of a congregation?  What's the point?  In today's world, where you can sign up for social media in a minute with an email address and a password, why bother with the actual paperwork it almost always takes to sign up for church membership?  (I think a lot of congregations could change the paperwork part up pretty easily, but adjusting to technology in a systemic fashion like that is hard.)  Especially since you can attend services just fine without.

There are a lot of reasons for church membership, though.  I think a lot of reasons for it are implicit in the differences between spirituality (and its growing popularity) and religion.  Both seek a connection to the divine, both explore what's beyond our immediate senses- but spirituality is inherently individual and ultimately isolating, and religion is naturally communal and relationship-based.  Therefore religion is messier than spirituality- when your relationship with God is tied up with your relationship with a bunch of other people, none of whom are perfect and perhaps quite a few of whom you don't like, keeping up a relationship with God is harder, because you also have to keep up your relationship with those other people.

And yet Christianity insists on community- where do you think the word "Communion" comes from?  We are called by Christ in the two great Commandments to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love one another as God loves us.  We see God in each other, because we have each been created in God's image.  The Bible is filled with stories of community and rules for community and illustrations of faith through community, and if all that weren't enough, God came down and was one of us to be in community with us, as Jesus Christ.  We cannot separate our faith from our community with one another, no matter how hard we try.

So, in recognition of that, we gather in community together in congregations, and we publicly acknowledge our commitment not only to God, but to each other, by maintaining membership in our congregations.  By doing that, we acknowledge our needs for mutual support and instruction, care for young and old, sick and downtrodden, and relationships which comfort us in our grief and celebrate with us in our joy.

However, if you prefer a short, practical list of what membership does, here goes.

• Public affirmation of faith.
• To the congregation: by becoming a member, you are telling the other members that you want to worship with them, and you want to support them and be supported by them.  There may be some days when you arrive at church and find yourself nurturing someone, there may be days when you're the one being nurtured.  By seeking official membership, you're signing up for this.
• To your community: this tells your family and whoever else you tell (coworkers, friends, random people in the grocery store who you're inviting to join you for services- you do that, right?) about it that you've made a decision about your faith, what kind of faith community you want, and where you're going to go (well, one of the places) to grow and mature your faith.  Congregations are often known for various traits in a community; often, telling someone where you go to church will tell them quite a bit about your priorities.
• Planning for the larger denomination.
• Membership Numbers:  knowing how many members each church has determines a lot of things.  The ELCA is broken up into 8 regions; those regions contain 65 synods around the country (and the Bahamas); each synod is broken up into conferences, all for infrastructure and planning purposes.  Membership numbers help the ELCA keep up with population trends, and what areas will be needing more pastors soon, and the like.
• Financial Planning: as mentioned below, the denomination has many ministries going on at any one time, and having an accurate idea about membership (and what that membership is interested in!) helps plan the future of those ministries.  Some of that planning is, by nature, financial.
• Decision Making:  Membership helps the ELCA keep the conferences and synods approximately even in population, which helps when it comes to choosing delegates for the General Assembly.  The Assembly makes the major decisions about the direction of the church, and each conferences selects a delegate to go.  The delegates vary each Assembly, and are about 40% clergy and 60% lay people.
• Planning for the congregation.
• Time and Talent: look, the Sunday School teachers, ushers, lectors, and committee members have to come from somewhere.  You didn't think that worship service or Bible study planned itself, did you?  The members of a congregation drive its mission, and its ministry.
• Financial Planning: we get nervous talking about this part, but membership also helps the congregation know where it's going in terms of financial planning.  Often, congregations ask members to "pledge" their giving (which just means the member tells the congregation in advance how much they expect to give each year) so they know what resources they have to devote to various ministries in advance.  Just as you wouldn't get in the car without your GPS (or a map, at least) for a cross-country trip, congregations can't plan their next few years without an idea of what their budget is going to be.
• Recordkeeping: congregations also keep track of church records- including attendance, funerals, weddings, and other special events.  These church records are hugely popular with genealogists, but also used for more prosaic purposes as well, by the congregation itself in understanding their history, and by churchwide in knowing what congregations are up to.
• Decision Making: members can vote in annual and special meetings.  These meetings often make major decisions in the life of a congregation, such as which pastor to call, other church staff hiring decisions, and decisions about which ministries to support and how to run them.

I hope that helps in understanding the point of membership in a congregation.  Community may be messy at times, and a denomination as large as ours does require some pretty prosaic infrastructure, but when we put all those members and all those ministries together, we can do enormous good in the world, and spread the love of God to all people.

Go in peace, love and serve the Lord.  Thanks be to God!

Podcast Review: Day1 Weekly Radio Broadcast

So, I currently have a temporary position at a company that shall remain nameless, which allows me to listen to my mp3 player (which won't remain nameless for reasons I'll expand on in a moment) during my shift.  So as you might imagine, I've been exploring podcasts a lot lately.  I've run across several I enjoy, some of which are religious in nature, and I thought I should probably add them to my list of reviews, in case others are also looking for audio content.

So, Day1 is a website that's fairly well known among the clergy I know, and it turns out they have a podcast.  Their website has a lot of sermons, based on the RCL, from various mainline Protestant pastors.  Once a week, they do what they call their "Radio Broadcast" (I dunno, perhaps it does go on the radio somewhere, but the Christian radio stations I know wouldn't touch it) and that is available for free online: http://day1.org/weekly_broadcast  It is also available for free on iTunes, which outs my mp3 player as an iPod.

I've looked at the Day1 website on a regular basis while prepping sermons for some years now, and I've been listening to this podcast for a few weeks.  Each sermon I've heard has been brilliantly written and stirringly preached.  There's also a time before we hear the sermon when we hear the pastor talk a bit about their context, history, and current charity work and ministry, and then a time afterward when we hear about their preparation process.  Also, the text the sermon is written on is always read, by the pastor, before the sermon as well. 

All in all, it's a wonderful resource, and I've found it devotional as well as good background for sermon prep.  I would absolutely suggest it to both pastors and lay Christians who are looking for a little extra reflection on the week's reading.  I hope you find it helpful!

Lutheran Look: Do I really have to honor my parents?

And what does that mean, anyway?  The Forward Thinking prompts over at Love, Joy, Feminism by Libby Anne seem to be great starts to exactly the postings I want to do anyway, so you may start to see them regularly here; fair warning, we'll see.

I find this is exactly the kind of post where you have to state your own context up front, so: I love my parents, they have always loved and supported me, they always believed I could do anything I put my mind to, and they took the trouble to get to know me and tailor their parenting styles to me, which helped a lot, being an only child and all.  Parts of my childhood were less than ideal, but not the parts that involved them, and they got divorced in the middle of all that, so that's saying something.

That said, I know perfectly well how lucky and blessed I've been.  I have friends, and I know other people, who were not so blessed.  Whose parents didn't see them as potentially independent adults, but rather extensions of themselves and their desires.  Or tools to their own ends.  Or decorations for their lives.  Who did not recognize their humanity, and their rights, and their status as a fully formed child of God who deserved their love and the very best of care.  And, yes, I know a few whose parents saw them as punching bags.

Which is why I hope to never be one of those pastors who falls back on the easy sermon on Mother's Day weekend, or Father's Day.  Which is why I do not talk about the universal characteristics of a mother's love, or the protectiveness of being in a father's arms.  Because we live in a broken world, and there is nothing universal about parenthood except that the parents (or guardians) are, for a few years at least, in absolute power over the child's life.  And you know what they say about absolute power.

And to those who would say that speaking of such things speaks against family values and traditional Christian understandings of the world, I would say that Jesus spoke very strongly for the powerless, not the powerful.  And if they wanted an example of "traditional" understandings of family, I have a number of Bible passages to point them to.

So, what do we owe our parents?  What does "Honor thy father and mother" truly mean?  Well, being Lutheran, one place I might start is Luther's Small Catechism, which discusses each of the Commandments, among other things.  However, both there and in his Large Catechism (written for pastors, whereas the Small is written for everyone) he starts from the assumption that all parents wish their children well, are loving and nurturing toward their children, and never ask their children to do wrong.  These days, we're more willing than Luther was to acknowledge that that isn't always true.  But life has changed a lot since Germany in the early 1500s, and many of his views on authority also require us to remember that there was no such thing as democracy at the time, and Divine Right of Rule was still an accepted concept.

In the end, Luther's explanation of the Commandment boils down to a few main points: don't abandon your parents when they're elderly, even if they have dementia; don't beat them up; treat them with basic respect; and when you're a child, obey them.  The first three points I have no problems with: Christianity instructs us to care for the helpless and treat all people with basic respect, which certainly includes not beating people up.  The last point, however, has some potential problems.  So, to examine that more closely, let's have some case studies, and talk about what "honor" means in each case.  All of these are based on real life situations I've run across (none of them happened to me).

Case Study A: Alicia, an adult who has moved out of her parents' home but still lives in the same town as them, has recently noticed that her father's driving is getting steadily worse, but her mother isn't willing to confront him about it.  His driving is beginning to get dangerous, and she's worried not only for her parents' safety but the other people on the road. Should she:

1. Respect her father's wishes by not doing anything about it.
2. Go down to the local precinct and start the process of having his license taken away without consulting her parents.
3. Sit down and have the difficult discussion with both her parents, after having done some research, and talk about alternate transportation ideas that won't put anyone at risk.

Case Study B: Brandon, a 10 year old, is in the checkout lane with his mother when he sees her put a pack of gum in her purse without paying, and motions to him to hide some candy in his jacket.  The cashier hasn't noticed. Should he:

1. Steal the candy like his mother told him to.
2. Ask "Mom, why did you just put that gum in your purse?" really loudly so the cashier will hear and his mom will have to put it back.
3. Refuse to take the candy and try to return the gum to the display rack, and then talk about the incident later.

Case Study C: Carly, in her early teens and starting to think about what she wants to do with her life, tells her dad she's thinking about being a pastor.  Her dad tells her women can't be pastors, and walks away.  Should she:

1. Put the idea of being a pastor out of her mind forever.
2. Yell at him a lot and cut him out of her life as fast as she can.
3. Try to maintain a healthy relationship with her dad while growing up, and then, if she is so called, becoming a pastor once she's an adult.

Case Study D: Danielle, an adult, is just starting her career and also getting married.  Her parents offer to help pay for the wedding, but after having given the money without mentioning any strings attached, start adding their friends to the guest list and insisting she follow some wedding traditions she can't stand because they're helping to pay. Should she:

1. Have the wedding her parents want: they're paying.
2. Have the wedding she wants: it's her wedding.
3. Sit down and talk all this out with them, perhaps making some small, reasonable concessions but also explaining that it is her wedding, and perhaps offering to return the money. 

These multiple choice options are simplistic, I know, and certainly do not address the complexity of human relationships, let alone parent-child relationships which are usually more complicated than your average one anyway.  But I'm trying to use them to illustrate a larger point- what does honor mean, anyway?  Mindless, thoughtless obedience?  Knee-jerk contrariness?  Or something a little more... mature?

See, as far as I can tell, not being a parent myself, the baseline goal for parenting is getting the kid to a point where they can function on their own as an independent adult.  Now, sometimes those goalposts move- in cases of severe mental of physical disability, for example, or deeply communal cultures where independence is not as prized as in American culture.  But most parents I know personally try to get their kids to a basic level of resourcefulness, "common sense" and knowledge of the world where they can live on their own if they have to.  Or at the very least expect their kids to get there without the parents having to put in a lot of effort at it.

That requires a certain amount of critical thinking, and the ability to make judgment calls, and to have an opinion.  None of those are well fostered by either blind obedience or blind rebellion in the childhood and teenage years.  The ability to hold a reasonably polite, rational conversation about a difficult topic with people you care for deeply requires all of those in large amounts.

So, let's turn this around: when a parent honors their child?  It's most often by treating that child as an adult.  As a person who is capable, mature, and trustworthy.  Why shouldn't that be turned around?  Certainly, with younger children who don't yet understand all the forces at work around them, the scales tip more towards obedience- especially in emergencies.  With adults the scales tip more towards independence, and the sometimes-difficult teen years are often centered around this very balance.  But if the child treats their parents (within  reasonable bounds of safety according to the situation) as a capable, mature, and trustworthy adult?  That sounds like honor to me.

And sometimes, when we're interacting with capable, mature, reasonably trustworthy adults?  The best way we can honor them is to share our opinions, our concerns, and to follow our own conscience, even when it does lead to disagreement, or worse.  But I have to believe that sometimes, honoring one's parents means confronting them about their lies, their bigotry, or their criminal activity- because all of those things are done by parents, somewhere, and if the alternative is ignoring or enabling it, well, those don't sound very honorable to me.

So: following this commandment may, for many people, be more complicated and difficult than we'd think at first.  But ultimately, are the ways in which we honor our parents going to be all that different than the ways we honor our friends, our mentors, our coworkers?  Perhaps not.

God bless.