Learning how to be hungry...

This last Sunday, I spoke at church about the gospel reading from Matthew 14:13-21, where Jesus feeds 5000 men, not counting women and children.  Here is a good portion of my sermon and notes about it all.


When I read today's gospel, I notice a couple of important points that help us get started with this story.  First is that compassion draws hungry people...even as Jesus was in mourning over his cousin John's beheading and death, he has compassion on the crowd that follows.  He heals them...and they stay with him.  Second is that this was clearly a eucharist story for the early church...a story that would bring some meaning and memories to what they did very often; they shared communion...they made eucharist.


This story also raises a question.  Why did the disciples decide the crowd was hungry? Sure, there was scarcity everywhere but nothing in the text tells us why...I wonder if they were projecting? “I'm tired. I'm hungry. Can we please get rid of these people Jesus?”  After all, it seems like the crowd wasn't too concerned about dinner or sleep.  They would've stayed with Jesus all night.

 In John, Jesus bypasses them and feeds the crowd himself which resonates with the theology of the Johanine community from which the gospel comes...but in Matthew, Jesus says “no—you feed them.”


Our eucharistic theology is so screwed up that we have rules and regulations about who can bless the damn bread! We do the same thing the disciples did... “Lord, send these people to an ordained clergy person who can administer sacrament to them.” And I know we don't do that here at this church...but do we? Do we have our own rules about where and how and by whom God's bread is broken to share?


In the church world, we are so busy building up our baskets, the Lord has gone hoarse from telling us to give these people something to eat. I fear the church, like the disciples, doesn't really have any food to offer anymore. Certainly, with all churches in decline by traditional metrics, everyone else seems to have concluded the same thing.

But, then, maybe we as church aren't the disciples here...maybe we are the crowd...and Jesus is sending people to US to break bread among us. Unlike the crowd here, we are so worried about who made that food and whether or not it was kosher (“Who is the mother of that boy that gave his lunch?!” we would've asked in another gospel's telling of this story...), we would rather starve than be fed. And we encourage the rest of the hungry crowd to abstain. And the Lord who wants to feed us tries in vain as the church in God's name proclaims from pulpits “DON'T EAT THE BREAD!”


Instead of seeing yourself in the shoes of the disciples today, find yourself among the crowd and call that crowd “the church.” If the crowd is the church, then the question becomes who are the disciples who are breaking bread to us in this narrative?

I would like to think they are unchurched people who are learning what real compassion without strings attached looks like.  They are apostates who left the church long ago because of many reasons, but have found that they aren't different people except in ways that make them happier, and gentler, and yes, even godlier.

The disciples are messengers of peace from other world religions and even other Christian denominations we would so easily dismiss, because we think that truth is confined to one outlet...and if we would listen to Truth, in whatever costume it dresses itself up in, we would find that we are less hungry for it after we eat...even as most of us would continue to focus on Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith.


In my take, the disciples are atheists or agnostics who value faith only if it can be questioned and tried...and if we would accept the bread they are offering us, we would find our faith enlivened and relevant because of the questions we would ask of ourselves...or we might find ourselves abandoning our faith in pursuit of truth outside the religious answers we've always known.


Does that scare you? Am I too radical to preach this in a Christian church? I mean, if we all preach this, won't everyone leave the church because they don't need it? I'm suggesting exactly that to you—you don't NEED the church...but we do need each other. And church is as good a place as any to really find each other...but only so long as we tell the truth about ourselves and others. Church has no value simply because it's the church...the value church has is in what people bring to it.


And the story today teaches me that too. Yes, the bread will come from the hands of disciples we are so quick to dismiss and reject. But, more than that, it's important to remember that they aren't providing the food that will feed us all...we are. It's a little counterintuitive in this story isn't it? The disciples don't save the crowd...the crowd has the food it needs to survive. Jesus just gathers it and redistributes it. Now instead of one boy with a sack lunch, they all have plenty with leftovers.


Now, I tend to believe that this is a miracle story based on some historical event rather than a historical report about a miracle event...so the multiplication of the loaves and fishes isn't all that important to me except to teach us about how much we truly have when we only think it is a little. But many if not most of you will say “absolutely not...it's important that Jesus multiplied those loaves and fishes.” And maybe you're right...but even so, it's completely significant that Jesus doesn't turn stones into bread to feed the people. He uses what they have. The crowd has all it needs to be fed. But isn't that how the Divine that we see at work in the world goes about doing things? Doesn't the spirit take a little of what we have, sift it through the hands of some people who might have even tried to just be getting rid of us, pass it among our various crowds—churches, friends, families, dance clubs, supper clubs, schoolrooms, etc—until we are all amazed at how interconnected we are with one another?

I don't know what your idea of eucharist is, but if it is confined to this table at church, you'll always go hungry. God is feeding the world at many tables. Some of them in churches today, yes...but at many other times and in many other places.


What it comes down to for me is this—I do believe. Today, anyway. And I believe in the good news so much that I believe it can withstand any doubt or disbelief and that those who search for truth will find it...and I care very little if they find it in a church or in a bar or in a movie theatre or a synagogue or mosque or a temple or a country chapel or a orchestra concert, or a band rehearsal, or a music festival or any other place. Because I believe...in a God that is found in all of those places by many names and in many different forms.


Does this sound completely apostate and heretical?


That must have been how this story sounded to the first century listeners who heard it. God doesn't masquerade as a carpenter from Galilee. God doesn't call fishermen and publicans. God doesn't party with hookers and get drunk on the weekends like Jesus. That's not how God works, they say. But it is.


So, join the crowd. Seriously...the crowd in this story...and find eucharist outside these walls. You'll starve if you only look for it from the church. Because I fear the church has seen itself as the disciples in this story for so long instead of the crowd, that they've starved to death, rejecting the bread God is bringing through unlikely sources. But the bread is there. It is exactly where Jesus said the kingdom of God is. Among us.


I haven't lost hope. I believe food will come from somewhere...but not until we start asking the right questions of ourselves and others. Not until we start caring about people rather than personal utility or the groups we are trying to use people to build up. And I DO believe that the church of Jesus Christ can be disciples, distributing the bread of hope that the crowd had with them all along right back among them and feeding the hungry. But we'll never get there until we can begin to find our own hunger again and bring our own stories and struggles and questions to the table.

 Let us pray.



May the God who satisfies the hungry soul help us to see what we have need of in our own souls. May She bring out from among us the gifts that will feed not only our souls but the hearts of our neighbors and the stomachs of a physically hungry world. And may we never be satisfied with believing that God is confined by one sack lunch, or by our ideas of propriety, or by our concepts of what is “best” or “right.” In other words, Lord, thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And give us this day our daily bread...

It Happens To You

Frederick Buechner defines sacrament this way:

A sacrament is when something holy happens. It is transparent time, time you can see through to something deep inside time.  

Generally speaking, Protestants have two official sacraments (the Lord's Supper, Baptism) and Roman Catholics have these two plus five others (Confirmation, Penance, Extreme Unction, Ordination, and Matrimony). In other words, at such milestone moments as seeing a baby baptized or being baptized yourself, confessing your sins, getting married, dying, you are apt to catch a glimpse of the almost unbearable preciousness and mystery of life.

Needless to say, church isn't the only place where the holy happens. Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, at any place, and to anybody. Watching something get born. Making love. A walk on the beach. Somebody coming to see you when you're sick. A meal with people you love. Looking into a stranger's eyes and finding out they are not a stranger's.

If we weren't blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.

The thing about a sacramental theology is that God doesn't wait for us to be in the right place to break through to us. God doesn't live in houses (of worship or otherwise), or bread, or water, or books, or candles...but, at the same time, God lives in all of those places at once and, indeed, is confined to none of them. When sacrament happens to us, we might mistakenly believe it was because of where we were or what we were doing...and we are wrong, but even then we are ok, we are not lost.  For even while we are thinking those things and boxing God in or coming up with a way for us to act first so that God will respond, God is always somewhere else too, waiting on no one to act first.  God is always reminding us and surprising us that sacrament is God's doing--the work of Divinity meeting us in the most basic, fundamental signs and symbols...so that we are never confused to think that it was the water, or the words, or the bread, or the building, or even the person. "No," we say in these moments, "It was more than that." The "unbearable preciousness and mystery of life"--I love that quote. When the life that wears us down and runs us ragged is somehow, out of no where, lifted up and elevated to the heavenly...Where the gulf we mistakenly sense between the natural and the divine becomes so very thin that we could almost reach through and redefine "natural" altogether...that redefined "natural" where God exists so close to you that you can feel God's breath almost sighing into you...That Reality?  That moment?  That sacrament?  We call that "Grace."  If only I could always live and breathe into that...how different my life would be.

Spy Wednesday

Wednesday of Holy Week is traditionally known as "Spy Wednesday," the day Judas spied out an opportunity to betray Jesus.  We can only speculate as to the historical nature of Judas' betrayal (though the spiritual nature is made quite clear to us in the gospels and in ourselves).  It's easy to dismiss a Judas.  As easy as promising that we'll never deny Jesus (Peter) or asking rhetorical questions to appear to be concerned ("Is it I, Lord?").  I wonder if Judas is really that different from me.  I wonder if Judas didn't look at his friend and think "if only I could push him from without to really take charge of this revolt...if only I could motivate him to do what I know he really wants to do!"  I wonder if Judas was really spying out an opportunity to "help" Jesus be what Judas thought Jesus should be...using the very religious authority that had battled the kind of rules-don't-matter good-news that Jesus taught.

I bet Judas is a lot like me.  Don't we all sometimes look at our friends and dream about who we wish them to be?  Don't we all try to change others into who we just KNOW they really want to be?  Don't we try to manipulate by bringing in systems and empire and programs to try to "jumpstart" what we think will be their transformation?  Don't we tell ourselves that we love our friends we are trying to help by turning them over to the authorities?  We betray with a kiss...a handshake...a hug.  Nothing sinister here.

Judas was just trying to save Jesus from Himself...manipulate him to greatness.  It was never about the money...it's why he ultimately threw it back in the faces of the clergymen. He realized that he had certainly set things in motion but that Jesus wasn't playing his game.  It's why he killed himself...because in trying to save the Savior, he lost himself.

Maybe I can learn a lot from Judas.  If I can just stay present with the Savior, in every face that I see Him, in every disappointing reflection...perhaps I can stop trying to manage people and instead start loving and being in relationship with people.  Maybe I can stop expecting so much from others and be gentle with myself as well...maybe I can see that everyone is just being the person they can be right now.  Just as I am.  And in realizing that, pray God I can avoid unwittingly betraying my own friends into the hands of unreasonable expectations, religious systems, political ideologies, and selfish desires.

The hand of the betrayer is usually at the table...within, not without...friend, not stranger.  And the love of the Savior endures even in the face of that kind of betrayal...He loved them to the end.  Judas spied out a way to manipulate Jesus.  Jesus simply was...present in the moment, loving to the end, the same loving Savior on the hillside, on the shores of Galilee, at the table, in the garden, in the courtyard, and on the cross.  People were changed and transformed by who Jesus was and not through manipulation or clever programming adapted for local use.  Jesus was fully divine and fully human...and when people came into contact with that kind of RIGHT-now-nothing-missing-everything-at-once Life, they were different because of it.  They found something in their own humanity that they had lost.

Jesus never lost Judas.  Judas lost himself.  May I find myself first...before I try to go "saving" others and end up forever remembered as the friend who betrayed with a kiss.  And when I've gone to far, losing myself and my friends...may the hand of the Savior at the table, dipping his bread into the sop with me, reaching out to me one last time...wake me up to the reality of a God who never loses one sheep and who hasn't lost me.  Amen.

Talking about the Fall in early Spring

A few weeks ago a friend inquired as to my thoughts about whether or not there was death in Eden before "The Fall."  This blog is my thoughts about that subject...some that I conveyed, and others that are added here in this Lenten blog. 

I suppose for the reader without fundamentalist Christian experience, I have to explain the whole question.  You see, we were taught that, before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the garden, there was no death.  All the animals were herbivores (including the humans), nothing died, everything perpetually lived.  It wasn't until Adam sinned that death entered the world and people and plants and organisms began to die.  Now, if you don't have a fundamentalist background, you're thinking what I do now--what about the multiplication rates of micro-organisms that would have multiplied and covered the Earth, leaving no room for humans, within the week?  Well, I suppose we were thinking so theologically, that the science didn't really matter.  But I say the theology matters far more in the case of this story than science (something that we should point out as often as possible to anyone who wants to use Genesis as a science textbook for God's sake).  

It is a sacred story not a literal history. But even then, there is something significant about how the Bible tells the story of death entering the world.  And it informs, I think, how we need to approach the process of dying during this Lenten season, and while we live as Easter people in a Lenten world.In the context of this story, was there death in the garden?  Yes, I think so.  If not, were insects multiplying daily without ever dying?  What of grass and trees etc?  We could infer miraculous sort of existence--an okay hermeneutic as well, as long as you don't see the story as scientific history, of course.  But I don't think that's the way this ancient story went.  I believe that death existed before the fall.  There was a cycle of life and death as there is now.  The difference is that death was in its place before the fall...like winter that gives way to spring.  Only, it was the kind of death that gives way to new life.  It was perfect union with God. The way Christ experienced it in His death.

After the fall, death then reigned. Death meant separation. Perpetual winter, with no hope of new life. In Adam, all fell. But in Christ, the second Adam, all are raised. Death is put back in its place. Eden is restored internally (and, ultimately, externally) so that, yes...we still die, but that death is always the necessary step to life.  "Oh death, where is thy victory?"  So now, in Christ, we die to live instead of living to die. We die to self and are raised to new life, in what Fr. Richard Rohr calls "true self." (What Paul would call "Spirit" rather than "Flesh"). We die physically at the end of this life, only to have mortality put on immortality.  We die to self daily, only to find room for the Divine where once God was crowded out.

Death before the fall? Yes, but nothing like we really know or understand it today. Death the way death was supposed to exist...in its place as part of life.  Winter that gives way to Spring, seeds that are thrown to the ground, cracked and burst open only to grow life far greater than just a seed.  After all, if we die with Christ this Lent, will we not also live with him?  The ellipsis is everywhere in scripture, and like my story and yours, the story of Eden is not yet finished...

Fear Not!

They were the words of every angel to show up out of no where.  It's what Gabriel said to Zechariah, to Joseph, to Mary.  It's what the angels said to the shepherds.  It's what Jesus said to the trembling disciples.  "Fear not."  "Do not be afraid."  Sure.  That's easy enough, right?

This advent, our church has been journeying with Mary.  Seeing things from her perspective and gaining our own.  We've prayed a form of the rosary weekly.  I've found myself becoming a character in the nativity story as we pray, as we sing and worship on Sundays, in communion, in worship planning even.  But as I pick which character I am, I'm never Mary.  Not at first.  I've seen myself as Elizabeth, doubting Zechariah, a shepherd in a field, an innkeeper with a little compassion but no room.  And yet, the more I pray...the more that God prepares the way of the Lord and makes a road in my wildernesses...the more I just sit with the story...the more surprised I become again and again as I begin to see myself as the most unlikely character for me--as Mary.

The four Sundays of Advent are a progression in our worship this year.  Advent 1: God loves us (the Annunciation to Mary that she will bear a son).  Advent 2: God loves others (the Visitation to Elizabeth).  Advent 3: God loves in strange places (a journey to the most unlikely places where God already is...and ultimately to a stable in Bethlehem).  And Advent 4: For God so loves the world (the message of the angels to common shepherds of the birth of Messiah).

And I sketch all of that out for you for this one reason...I honestly don't think I can get past Advent 1.  If I can ever latch on to God loving me and seeing me the way God loves and sees Mary, the rest just makes sense.  Of course if God loves me, then God loves others and God loves in strange places and God loves the world...because I AM the other, I've been in strange and disappointing places, and within my complex personality and being is a microcosm of all of humanity (and not just within me either, but within all of us).  Yes, Jesus loves me, this I know...but do I really believe it?  Sure, I feel and know that I am loved.  But can I presume to see myself first as a Mary...first as a God-bearer...primarily as someone who is giving birth to hope, who has been the recipient of such unfathomable favor and grace?  Isn't it arrogance to think that?

Or is it pure humility to acknowledge it?  Is it not the singularly most important fact of my life that God has "chosen" me...loved me...favored me...poured out grace into my life without even an inkling of merit or qualification (and if me, then surely all the world)?  The more I pray, the more I sit with Mary, the more I just be and become...I find myself letting my guard down, and just when I least suspect it, I'm Mary.  The divine messenger shows up out of nowhere, and before I'm able to gather my pious wits about me, I'm hearing the pronouncement "Fear not!  Hail, Mary, full of grace..."   Then the questions come..."how can this be seeing as I am..."

Do I dare to be a Mary?  Do I dare to tell the world that it's happening to me?   What will they think of me?  Will they ever see past the shadow of me that is easier to see than it is to see my Self?  If I enter into this journey as Mary...as a mother of God...will anyone ever believe me?   These must have been questions in Mary's mind, too, I imagine.

I've got a long way to journey with the Blessed Mother.  Advent probably won't be long enough for this journey I have begun.  I still pray the rosary each week with others, and I still put myself in the story everywhere else except right next to the manger...I'm still trying to identify with everyone else in the story, because surely I'm not a Mary.

My vicar, Wendy, asked me one time "Why do you not trust sacrament?"  Why, indeed?  Why do I question and analyze these divine experiences in my life...why do I weigh them down with so much of myself...why am I hesitant to call them sacrament at all?  Why am I so afraid?

God must have known it would be this way when God shows up in the lives of ever-holy and ever-wholly-unsuspecting people.  That's why he sent an angel declaring "DO NOT BE AFRAID!"

May it be with me, according to Thy word.

Isaiah 1:13-17 and Why People Don't Go to Church

It seems fashionable these days to blog about why people don't go to church.  There are lots of reasons given as to why, depending on who you read. It's "contemporary worship" services that keep people away.  Or traditional ones.  It's conservative culture war rhetoric.  Or social gospel liberalism.  It's leadership.  Or laity.

I spoke not long ago with a United Methodist pastor who shared that his bishop says people not attending church is a "cultural problem."  The Bishop meant a problem with society, not the church.  I wonder.

The church in America is dying.  Or it is transitioning.  Or on the verge of a great awakening.  Or really hasn't changed much, it's just an illusion of the way people attend church.  Depending on who you read.

I think I agree with Fr. Richard Rohr that we are so trapped in dualistic thinking that we can't truly evaluate what's going on.  We think it is a "conservative/liberal" problem, rooted in theology.  We think it is a "contemporary/traditional" problem, rooted in form of worship.  We think it is a "churched/unchurched" problem rooted in culture.  We always think it's the Devil...and the Devil is external (the problem with that thinking, for me, is that an external Satan necessitates an external God which leads to all sorts of other false dichotomies that keep us from ever really seeing God, ourselves or others).

I've said for quite some time that there is no such thing as "secular" and "sacred."  It's all God's world. That means hymns and gangsta rap...including the parts that need to be redeemed.  And I'm mostly talking about the misogynistic, abusive language of that music that needs to be redeemed...and I mean the hymns, of course.  The gangsta rap isn't usually as offensive or influential as those terrible hymns we sing.

There are other false dichotomies that we use..."conservative vs. liberal" which often has both sides as rooted in ego and false self as they are rooted in some kind of "theology" (and I use the "" because it really isn't a study of God...it's still just about us...the false self).  "Traditional vs. contemporary" is a ridiculous distinction, I don't care how many books by people far more educated than me have been written about it...or how many churches have been divided asunder into "Contemporary service" and "Traditional service" while still worshiping in the same building.  It's a false distinction and any student of the history of church music should know that.  It's just easier for us to say that people aren't coming because they don't like our style of music and our liturgy (whether we say we have a liturgy or not)...yeah, that's it.  It's not that there's something fundamentally wrong with who we are as church.  We know this because we've been this way for centuries. "Clergy vs. laity" is a false dichotomy rooted in roles and labels and expectations that we define people by and rooted in the scarecrows that we set up in the field of the church...it's just an illusion that we've created to make us feel like we've got it together.  Well, we probably don't.  And the terms "clergy" and "lay leader" and "laity" and "church member" and "non member" are really just straw with clothes on.  It's ok to admit it now...the rest of the world already knows.

Why must we continue to ask all the wrong questions in our church institution?  Why must we treat the people we live and work and play with as a market for church?  We're just asking the wrong questions.  We're having the wrong meetings.

So why do I think people don't go to church?  I have no idea and I don't know how important it is.  Why do you still go?  What is so important about church for you?  Is it ok that those things aren't important to everyone else?  If not, why not?  And why aren't those things important to others?

Is the church in America dying?  Probably.  That's great news.  The church needs to die.  Put some buildings up for sale.  Cash out some endowments.  It will be ok.  Are we really worried about the church or just about this tent of our own making?  Why are we so worried about the death of the church, our local church, our denomination, our religious institutions...and why isn't the rest of America blogging about it?  When someone who doesn't go to church and doesn't want to start going writes a book about "Reasons why people don't want to go to church," I'll be the first to buy it.  Otherwise, I'm not very interested.  Because, honestly, I don't care if "the church" lives or dies.  I care if people live or die...and survival is not the same as living, either.  And if the church in America or anywhere else...or any other institutional body or organization on Earth...isn't bringing about life, then I'm ok with it dying and something else taking its place.  I've always heard that we have to wait for some people to die before the ship of state for the institutional church can alter its course...let's not tie it all to physical death, shall we?  Let's hope that some of us might die to our notion of church first, before we give up the ghost on this side of eternity.

Of course, I don't think the church ever really dies...but it's awfully funny watching all of us fret about the significance of new religious and social polls about church attendance as if we were D.C. politicians gearing up for the next election.  And the church acts that way...we want to change our talking points and the way we do meetings and how we brand ourselves and hope that no one will notice that we never fundamentally became a different creature...a new creation.

So the best message I can think of for a dying church (not that that's a bad thing) is the message of Isaiah in the first chapter.  I've taken some liberties with it.  Feel free to dismiss them as bullshit.  It's what most of America has done to the church and what we have to say anyway.

Isaiah 1:13-17...sort of.

Stop bringing all of your "revolutionary" yet meaningless "changes" to the table--all this ridiculous talk hurts my ears. As for your conferences about church transformation and worship style and your special emphases on restructuring and cultural relevance...they're as false as your motives for talking about them.  I hate your meetings.  You're always meeting about something...Your meetings are as annoying to me as they are to you, deep down, anyway.  You sure are busy, but I'm not impressed.  Because you bear the guilt of innocent victims.  You know, the ones you blame for not supporting your precious institutions anymore.  Sweep out your own house, get rid of what's wrong with you instead of trying to fix something "out there." 

Try this for a church transformation program:  Learn how to do good.  Seek justice.  Worry about people who are oppressed.  Defend people who get ignored.  Fight for the rights of those who don't have enough clout to fight themselves.

Have I really hit on the problem?  Maybe not.  I'm perfectly ok with being wrong about if and why and when the church is declining/dying/transitioning.  It just doesn't matter to me.  I do know this--If the institutional church were to heed a few of the ideas above, we'd realize that the church living or living again is as simple (not easy but simple)...as simple as taking in Breath.

The Power of Presence: How sitting at the table subverts abuse of power and changes the world

They don't want you there.  They see your very presence as an affront.  Who do you think you are anyway?  Why must you always have an AGENDA?

It's been my experience that in places where power is concentrated, especially political power in the religious world, the above statements are often implied, if not outright said or asked.  Especially the part about an agenda.  Power is concerned with agendas...specifically those that don't conform to THEIR agenda.

After a while, you'll learn your place.  You won't be asked to do anything significant...you're there to learn, surely.  You have a lot to learn from Power, they think, because if you knew what they knew you wouldn't believe what you believe or behave as you do.  So, keep coming to the church conferences and meetings and conventions and conclaves--but please be quiet; you're here to learn, not teach.  Oh, Power has heard what you have to say...you're so loud and obnoxious, Power thinks.  And it must be true, it often feels like you're shouting because you are the only voice in the room saying anything different from what everyone else is saying--"Why can't you get with the program?" Power will ask.  "Why don't you see things our way?  Shhhhhh!  We're trying to help you!"  So as the lone voice that no one ever listens to, you gradually raise your voice until someone notices...and cuts you off.  It's discouraging.  It's disheartening.  It makes you lose your faith in Christianity.  And maybe it should.  Because Christianity has failed.  The fact that the church of Jesus Christ even exists today is a testimony to the resurrected Lord, for only a living God could keep such a failed institution alive.  Even as I write this, I am aware that I might be misunderstood...as though I did not value education, or faithful service, or history, or traditions.  None of that is true.  But I do not hang my hat on any of those things.  I hang my hat on Christ.  I believe education is what frees and empowers the people of God, that faithful service is what sustains the church, that history is God's activity with humanity bringing us to today and helping us dream for tomorrow, and that traditions reflect the values that we have as God's community.

Yet, if church history and education and tradition teaches me anything, it is that it was most often the dissenters that were right.  Only later does Power get with the program and try to downplay the centuries of not listening to those obnoxious and annoying naysayers.  And the death rattle of mainstream Christian denominations and sects in America is a testimony to the failed ventures of Power and Influence and Empire.  Why would you even go back?  Why even be a part of the conversation anymore?  Why even show up?  Why go forward for communion if you know you'll be refused?  Why attend the conversations if you know they are only monologues and not dialogues?

You show up, because real transformation happens when you show up.  Don't get it wrong, either--not just transformation for Power (which desperately needs the transformation that only dying to self can bring), but transformation for you.  Showing up at the table that you were only invited to as a formality, with the silly notion that your non-establishment, non-member-of-this-club status really makes you equal to those sitting with you at the table, offers an opportunity for you to learn and grow.  (I should probably add that even though these are valuable lessons, it's also perfectly good and right and just to vociferously protest such treatment!)  Being treated like "the help" may make you a better servant...and when you leave that table to go to the table that really DOES include every voice and makes every person important, it will certainly make you a better leader.  It will help you see that person who is dead wrong as important...because it really wasn't about being right or wrong anyway.

You show up because it subverts the power of Empire that constantly threatens and overpowers the church of Christ.  The Power that sees its authority derived from lineage, pedigree, education, connections, or length of service.  And when you show up, claiming only Christ as your creed and claiming only the title "Child of God" and recognizing no greater distinction than this, you chip away (ever so slightly) at the walls of the church institution that keep out even Christ at times.

You show up because you being there opens up a seat for the person that wasn't invited.  You open up a spot for the one wasn't thought of.  You thought of them because you know what it feels like to be ignored, muted, put down, the object of condescending statements and glances.  And you will mention those children of God who should be at the table but who are left out because they are even further out on the margins than you.  If you don't show up, who will mention them?

You show up because inside of you is the Spirit of God burning like a flame.  John Wesley said it best; "Catch on fire...and people will come from miles to watch you burn."  Lest you become haughty, remember that the Spirit of God is present as well in the hearts of those sitting at the table with you.  Even those who ignore you.  The bush was always burning...Moses was just the first to see it.  You show up because when you see the Spirit of God in even the hardest of hearts, you are able to point Power to where Real Power is.  Not in buildings and cathedrals and constitutions...but in wind and in crowds of people all speaking different languages at once...and in a fire that burns within you.

You show up because the notion that the people in charge are really in charge of anything is as ridiculous to you as it is to the Spirit-Wind of God Who blows where She wants.  It's as ridiculous to you as it is to the rest of the world who shakes their head at institutional Christianity, wondering if anyone there will start talking about things that matter.  Those in Power don't have any Real Power so long as they continue to point to all of the man-made constructs of religion to validate who they are.  They have no Real Power so long as they continue to believe that ecclesiastic office means ministry and church titles mean leadership.

You show up because you realize that any authority or Real Power they might ever have, exists outside of all of those trappings.  Behind the robes.  Behind the stoles.  Behinds the desks with nameplates.  Behind the credentials.  Behind the titles.  In the heart. Of every person.  Where God is.

 You show up because someone has to keep saying THAT.