Beautiful Doctrines from Ugly "Cults"

I've always hated the term "cult." After all, today's religious minority is tomorrow's state religion (cf. Christianity). Also, because the definition of "cult" is so broad that it usually just gets thrown around as a weapon. The word "cult" is the contemporary version of the medieval "heretic" and the colonial "witch!"

That being said, I recognize that religious groups can exert a type of control over its followers, threatening them with physical, familial, eternal, spiritual, financial, and societal loss should the believer stray. This is deplorable and should be pointed out time and time again. Having been a part of some small religious groups within a larger religious "family" (i.e. Landmark Missionary Baptists, Oneness Pentecostals), and also part of the mainstream versions (Southern Baptists, Episcopal, Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian), this much I know...we all have weird doctrines and sticking points, and we ALL use our brand of community to try to keep people in and people out.  Power, money, control.

So, that brings me to the groups of Christians whose doctrines and/or practices are so glaringly different that it makes it easy to excommunicate them from the "pale of orthodoxy." We've all seen the way that Jehovah's Witnesses have an uncanny knack to make someone feel uncomfortable on their own doorsteps--they're a cult. We know about the secret temple ordinances of the Mormons--cult. The Seventh Day Adventists will wear polyester but won't eat bacon--cult. Oneness Pentecostals deny the Trinity and invalidate all Trinitarian baptisms--cult. The list could go on.

But "cults" don't emerge from vacuums. Remember, Christianity was/is a cult too. And Jesus didn't just show up and start spouting eternal truths that had no real contemporary context. No, there were political and social upheavals, religious evolution, demographic shifts and much more that set the scene for Jesus. Luther didn't just go nail shit to a church door because he had a bee in his bonnet one morning...he nailed that paper to the church door to speak the minds of many more people than just himself.  Religious movements are often a reaction to the institutional church and its excesses and transgressions. And they gain a huge following, not always because they have a really great set of doctrines, but because they speak out against the kind of stuff that many people have been uncomfortable with in polite religious society for some time.

So, the following is a short list of my favorite doctrines from maybe not-so-favorite Christian sects. I realize that these doctrines are taught in other iterations of Christianity and sometimes better...but I find some elegant beauty in these concepts I have found in unlikely contexts. Maybe you do too...don't worry, I won't tell your church...

Christian Science and the doctrine of Atonement

Yes, they're crazy. Other Christians will balk at the language used, and I might use different words. But the important point here is that what Jesus of Nazareth experienced is something that we must enter into and experience ourselves...and isn't confined to ancient language about blood atonement or legal satisfaction theories.

Quotes from Mary Baker Eddy (Founder of Christian Science) from her book "Science and Health With a Key to the Scriptures."

“The efficacy of the Crucifixion lies in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind.”

“Wisdom and Love may require many sacrifices of self to save us from sin. One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin. The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part. That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved Son, is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made….Its scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of sinful sense which Truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting Love."

I am a little conflicted on word choice at the beginning, but that last phrase about "sin and suffering falling at the feet of everlasting Love"? Exquisite.

Jehovah's Witnesses and the doctrine of Priesthood of the Believer

Yes, they're crazy. And they don't have a corner on the market on this one...but they do express it well...they express it in the negative (a favorite for them), by pointing out the particular weakness of having different classes of callings in a church.

The Watchtower, August 15th 1974 Issue, Page 491:
Christendom's religious architecture distorted truth in yet another way. The interiors of cathedrals and churches were designed in such a way as to separate the priestly or clergy class from the laity. In the special area set aside for them, priests performed ritualistic ceremonies at the altar. Greater sanctity was thus attached to one group of professed Christians than to another. This contradicted the truth that all of God's devoted servants are "holy," all are "brothers."--Matt. 23:8-10.

The next quote I especially like...the JWs, so often called a cult, point out that the clergy/laity distinction present in mainline Christianity leads to idolization of human beings and cult leaders.

The Watchtower, February 15, 1994 Issue, Page 7:
It is precisely because of this close adherence to Bible teachings that the veneration and idolization of human leaders so characteristic of cults today is not to be found among Jehovah's Witnesses. They reject the concept of a clergy-laity distinction. The Encyclopedia of Religion aptly states about Jehovah's Witnesses: "A clergy class and distinctive titles are prohibited."

The Watchtower, July 1st 1958 Issue, Page 409:
Jesus gave no instruction about a clergy and a laity. Hence Jehovah's witnesses recognize no such distinction. Jesus made no room for clergymen, doctors of divinity, or "fathers" as distinguished from the 'common herd' of sheep. In fact he warned against it, as did his apostle Paul. So to be one of Jehovah's witnesses one must be a minister. In the organization of Jehovah's witnesses all are brothers, all are preachers of the good news of God's established kingdom.--Matt. 23:8-12; 1 Pet. 5:3; Matt. 24:14. 

Now, if only they would realize that their shadowy Watchtower organization and its leaders are just as bad as a man in a stole. But that line about no distinguishing of clergymen from the "common herd of sheep"? That's beautiful.

Latter Day Saints (and/or "Mormons") and the Doctrine of Modern Day Revelation

Yes, they're crazy. But whatever you may think about Joseph Smith and his vision and revelations, they teach something really beautiful. The concept is that if you want to know the answer to your questions, you can ask God and God will reveal it to you...personally...through revelation...even if you're just a 14 year old farm boy praying in the woods. So they have a few crazy books, I know (to be fair, so does the Bible) but the doctrinal idea is what I'm talking about--the doctrine of continuing revelation. That God isn't finished writing scripture. Or, as the United Church of Christ puts it "God is still speaking,"

From the Ninth article of Faith:
"We believe all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal, and we believe that he will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God."

Joseph Smith in History of the Church, 6:308
When we understand the character of God, and know how to come to Him, he begins to unfold the heavens to us, and to tell us all about it. When we are ready to come to him, he is ready to come to us.

I wish the LDS church and movements didn't feel so certain that the revelation is confined to their institution, expressed through their concept of the "priesthood." But who can argue with the beauty of the words "he will yet reveal many great and important things...he is ready to come to us"?

Christianity and the Doctrine of Divine Unfairness

Yes, Christians are all just as crazy as the rest. Yes, I am one. And the doctrine that I think gets expressed so well in the Bible (but not in the church many times) is what I'm calling "Divine unfairness."  Jesus teaches it in parables. A son spits in the face of his father, takes his dad's money and squanders it and the father restores him with all the benefits of his older brother who had been a faithful son. A vineyard owner pays the people who showed up and worked for 30 minutes the same generous wage as the ones who had worked since morning. A shepherd leaves the whole damn flock for one stupid sheep. The doctrine is beautiful because it reminds us that God doesn't work on a system of meting out what's "fair." Because our sense of "fairness" as humans is skewed...and in the end, we don't really desire to get what we "deserve." We really just want to be loved. And God offers that in abundance.

Jesus tells the story of the vineyard owner who said:
"I decided to give to the one who came last the same as you. Can’t I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I am generous?" 

 And Jesus added:
"Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first.” Matthew 20:15-16

So, what can we learn from the ugly "cults" and their beautiful doctrines? I learn a few things. Like, yes, all truth is God's truth and it's beautiful. But I also learn this--just because my particular brand of faith has some beautiful truths, it doesn't mean that the system those truths are housed in is good or right. In one sense, the latter lesson is more important to me. 

 If groups that I can so easily see as harmful, exclusionary, false, and sometimes dangerous, can teach some really beautiful things but are still really ugly...well, maybe my church is just as ugly to people on the outside looking in.  I also learn that no matter how beautiful the "doctrine" may be, the institution will fail to live up to it in some way as well.  

Perhaps followers of Jesus should start breaking those beautiful truths free of the systems and institutions and creeds and traditions and present them to a world seeking all the beauty without all the bullshit. We can hope and pray, right?  Amen.

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.