Multicultural yet single-minded (Sunday Reflections for February 13, 2011)



Persian rap (this and picture below)


Last week, in a speech to world leaders, British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that multiculturalism has failed. From a report on MSNBC:

“Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream,” Cameron said during a panel discussion attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.”

Merkel had expressed similar views last fall. Cameron went on to say that such cultural separation was partly to blame for the development of domestic terrorists in the UK.

“Multiculturalism” is a hot-button issue around the world, including here in the US. One of the problems with discussing it, however, is that it means so many different things. Cameron and Merkel are right in some of what they say—and very wrong in others.

The whole issue has arisen because of the recent and historically unprecedented movement of peoples around the globe. This has been made possible by the revolutions in both transportation and communication of the past fifty years. For the same reasons millions of people left Europe for North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of people are migrating from so-called Third World countries to the developed nations in search of economic opportunity.

While in the US most concerns have been economic (e.g. the effect of immigration on wages and jobs), in Europe the concern has been more cultural and primarily with Muslims. Immigrants are not integrating into European society, say these critics, but are living separately in cultural if not physical ghettos. Being disconnected from mainstream British society, Cameron believes, leads disgruntled immigrants to more likely act out their frustrations through terrorism.

One response to Cameron has been to question how culturally disconnected Muslims in the UK actually feel. Surveys have shown them to actually have a high regard for the country’s institutions, three-quarters saying they strongly identified with their British homeland. The terrorist connection also seems more complicated on closer examination. Several of the most prominent British Muslim terrorists actually were well educated, wore Western clothes, and had culturally mixed friendships. Their families were often as shocked as anyone at their involvement.

At the height of the US immigration wave over a century ago, concerns were similarly expressed about lack of cultural integration or even threats to American culture. Immigrants then, too, were chided for not learning English or adopting American dress or habits. Many Protestants were concerned about the numbers of Roman Catholics entering the country. Business and political leaders feared immigrants were bringing radical European labor and socialist ideas. Despite that, most everyone today agrees America’s immigrants proved to be one of the country’s greatest assets.

The Muslim world is in an increasing state of unrest, and not for the reasons people have often assumed. The domestic protests and demonstrations of recent weeks have shown that much of its people’s dissatisfaction is due to economic issues, rather than ideological or cultural ones.

For some time, extremists have taken advantage of that frustration and used it to pursue their own political or religious agendas. It has been said all along, for example, that the West never really understood al-Qaida or how small its base of support really was. Lacking other options, millions of impoverished and oppressed Muslims cheered some of its attacks as ways to vent their anger at whoever was bigger and more powerful than they. In many of the recent protests, the familiar Muslim extremist groups have largely found themselves on the sidelines. At long last, and ignoring most recognized anti-government leaders (many of whom live outside their countries in exile), people have spontaneously and on their own brought down governments which were doing little or nothing for their welfare. This is truly remarkable.

There is no real evidence that Muslim immigrants are more resistant to cultural assimilation than any other group. Instead they seem to be following the same pattern as immigrants of previous eras. Those who actually make the move from one country to another are typically least likely to adopt the customs of their new land—as we all know, old habits die hard. Where real change comes is in the following generations. The children of immigrants almost always learn the native language and are much more likely to adopt local dress and other habits. Childhood, and especially adolescence, is an enormously leveling experience.

There is a big difference this time, however, but it has nothing to do with any unique traits of Muslims. What’s different now is the rise of a genuinely global culture. Just spend a little time watching some international TV or other media. Never have the world’s youth looked and acted more the same. On every continent you see the same uniform: t-shirts, jeans, baseball caps, athletic shoes. Music is truly the global language with almost every style having some international influence. Rap has become the universal music of the underprivileged. You can Facebook, Twitter, Google, and game online in every major language and many minor ones. And the list goes on and on of franchised or syndicated TV shows, restaurants, stores, magazines, clothing lines, electronics, cars, and much more that now have a global presence.

Multiculturalism really can’t be said to have failed. It simply is what is happening. It is what our world is becoming. It can be disruptive and make us uncomfortable. Yet those who are finding it most uncomfortable are those who have it coming. The ideas inspiring, and technology enabling, the overthrow of Muslim despots are very multicultural—but it’s the Muslim world that is shaking and benefiting.

On the other hand, the mass migration of people is also challenging the economic domination of business and political oligarchies around the world. Is it a threat of multiculturalism for people to decide that poverty is no longer an option—anywhere? Yes, a threat to some but a means to hope and empowerment for far more. And as for a multicultural source, we need look no further than the ancient Near Eastern world of the biblical prophets and of Jesus.

What Cleopatra knew (Sunday Reflections for February 6, 2011)

While most of our attention has been on the weather this past week, we are also aware of the demonstrations and upheaval in Egypt and elsewhere. This is big news, as the networks remind us when they send their top reporters to be on the scene (a bigger deal than before in these days of slim news department budgets).

While events in Egypt have gotten the most attention, they are part of a chain of uprisings across the Arab world. It began in Tunisia with the popular overthrow of a decades-long dictatorship, and then spread to Yemen, Egypt and Jordan. There have also been calls for demonstrations in other countries, like Syria.

Hosni Mubarak was relatively unknown when he succeeded Anwar Sadat as Egypt’s President, following Sadat’s assassination. Nonetheless, he has remained in power for thirty years. On paper Egypt is a democracy, but elections are assumed to be rigged and opposition parties are heavily restricted or banned outright.

Since the Camp David peace accords, Egypt has been a staunch ally of the United States. It is the second largest recipient of US military aid, after Israel. It has no real threats on its borders but its military is viewed by American officials as a stabilizing force in the Middle East. Nonetheless, that military power has served primarily to keep the Egyptian government in power and has earned the US considerable hostility with the Egyptian public. Pictures of tear gas canisters with “Made in the USA” on the side have been widely seen.

Sadly this repeats an all too familiar pattern of US intervention in other nations’ affairs. Since the Cold War it has often adopted a policy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This has resulted in our support for dictatorial governments whose policies would seem to be anathema to our own liberal democratic principles, but are perceived as allies against other threatening powers.

In the long run these policies have almost always backfired. Perhaps the biggest debacle was the US support for the Shah of Iran, for which we are still paying the price. Ironically, one consequence of his overthrow and replacement by a hostile Islamic republic was our support for another dictator, neighboring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. We all know how well that turned out.

Egypt is a large country with a history unmatched by any other. I’ve watched developments there a little differently since finishing the new biography of Cleopatra. Egypt was already ancient in her day, and living a century before Jesus we think of her world as ancient. By the time of her reign, many of Egypt’s famous monuments were already in decay (with graffiti!) and some were even unknown by her, lost in the sand only to be rediscovered centuries later.

Mubarak should have studied Cleopatra because he would have learned some pertinent lessons. While she was ultimately undone by the rise of Roman power, her rule over Egypt was one of the most prosperous and peaceful times it had known. What most people don’t know about Cleopatra was that ethnically she was not Egyptian but Greek. Her family the Ptolemy’s had ruled Egypt since Alexander the Great’s conquest three centuries earlier.

Egypt was a wealthy nation, often called the bread basket of the Mediterranean. Its capital, Alexandria, was a rich and cosmopolitan city, an ancient combined version of New York and Paris. (At this time Rome was viewed as kind of a “cow town,” a sprawling urban mess yet to have its great monumental building spree.) Cleopatra made Alexandria even more fabulous.

The key to Cleopatra’s domestic success was her intentional efforts to bridge the cultural gap between herself and her people. Unlike her predecessors, she was fluent in Egyptian and studied Egyptian culture. Cleopatra actively participated in Egyptian religious festivals and hence was viewed as both a queen and a goddess. She planned for agricultural disasters and stored food for emergency distribution. She worked to make the Egyptian bureaucracy and legal system responsive and fair.

Today, in Egypt and the other nations in turmoil, hundreds of millions of young people have become overwhelmed with frustration. Many have grown up in poverty or just barely above it but see no prospect for change or economic opportunity. They see leaders who have been in power for decades yet have done little but build their own personal fortunes and those of their cronies. Tiny wealthy oligarchies live in gated McMansion communities, untouched by the impossibly frustrating lives of most of their fellow citizens.

The rise of the Internet, mobile phone networks, and global TV, however, is creating a new international community among the down-and-out. And in numbers and knowledge there is power. They are now in communication with each other, are inspired by each other, and respond to each other. All these uprisings are linked by global telecommunications and this is a genie that can’t be put back.

The gap between the haves and have-nots has been growing around the world, including in this country. While such a gap may be inevitable, it is has its limits and those limits are becoming tighter in this electronically connected world. Out ranking both religion and politics, the basic concern of all people is fairness and opportunity. In times of distress, everyone must share in the suffering. In times of prosperity, everyone must receive some part of the growth. In many places that hasn’t been happening. But where in the past those disparities could be kept under wraps, today they are being displayed for all to see. As in Jesus’ parable, the lamp is on the stand illuminating all in the house, whether they like it or not.

A script in need of a re-write (Sunday Reflections for January 30, 2011)

(What follows is my 2011 report for my congregation. This year it was a summary of my view of the state of Christianity and of the church in general.)

I’ve just finished one of the most satisfying and important books I’ve read in a long time. It’s by one of my favorite authors, the English theologian and philosopher Don Cupitt, and is titled A New Grand Story. I like Cupitt because he is incredibly insightful and honest. An Anglican priest now in his 70s, Cupitt long ago paid the career price for his honesty, being shuffled off to Cambridge University. Nonetheless his career has been distinguished, valuable and, most importantly, satisfying to him, even if not in limelight. I doubt you have ever heard of him.

What’s a new “grand story?” Over the centuries, religion’s primary purpose has been to help people understand themselves and the world they live in. Religions do this by telling stories—“grand stories”—about human origins, purpose, and destiny. These stories answer questions like: Who are we? Where did we come from? What should we do or not do? How do we live with each other and with those different from us? How will it all end? The biblical story, used and adapted by Jews, Christians and Muslims, is one of creation, suffering due to sin, and redemption.

As Don Cupitt has been saying and writing for many years, it is just this biblical grand story which no longer is meaningful, or even makes sense, to the majority of modern people— many of whom are still active in the religions which tell it. Hence this book, which is an attempt to shape a new story of human meaning and purpose for the 21st century and beyond. In it he attempts to show the relevance for what he believes was at the heart of Jesus’ message—a message obscured and even intentionally lost by the church which followed in is name. It is a call to live our lives freely, fully, creatively, and without holding back. I believe he makes a persuasive case.

In the mean time the ancient church stumbles on, as Cupitt well knows and understands. Christianity (like other religions) has hung on even after people stopped believing its story because it serves other purposes, as well. It provides us with an identity; the community of a congregation can be like a second family for us; and moved by the gospel message, the church is a means for us to serve people in need. In addition worship, liturgy, prayers, hymns, scripture, art and church architecture all provide us a vehicle for emotional expression and a spiritual connection with a reality greater than ourselves.

Without a believable, central “grand story,” however, the way the church meets these needs seems increasingly antique and artificial. To outsiders worship feels like a step back in time, like those “living history” re-enactments you see in parks. In Europe and elsewhere, it’s not uncommon for churches to exist wholly or in part as museums for the tourists. So the church rolls on but like a tire with a slow leak. How much further can it go?

Unfortunately, few church leaders want to acknowledge let alone talk about this reality. They can’t even begin to imagine what’s to be done. Those that are bureaucrats often can only focus on immediate issues of budget and personnel. Increasingly I hear the criticism that they really just want to hang on long enough to get to retirement. But honestly, I can’t judge them for that concern because, at my point in life, I understand the feeling all too well.

And frankly, it’s nearly impossible (as Cupitt has discovered) for those living in the church to honestly grasp what is occurring. Bluntly, Christianity as we have known it is slowly but surely coming to an end. And this is the case for all the world’s great ancient religions. Yes, people still claim traditional religious identities. And a significant, though much smaller number, are active members of congregations. Yet worshiping communities everywhere are getting smaller and older, year-by-year. Religion provides little if any creative fuel for contemporary culture’s fire.

Where the ancient religions do still possess energy, it is increasingly directed into conservative, and often violent, political movements. This is true of fundamentalist Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and sometimes even Buddhism. While appealing to some, this politically militant and extremist religion is increasingly alienating to most residents of modern countries and cities. This is especially the case for young adults, where recent surveys show that those in their 20s and 30s now more often view traditional religion as a source of division and conflict in the world, rather than a force for peace or spiritual growth.

I have written and spoken many times about the impact of these developments on our own congregation and our denomination, the ELCA. The past two years especially have been difficult and—literally—dark times for our denominational leaders. Past and present staff members have told me of large portions of the ELCA Higgins Road office tower virtually shut down due to staff layoffs and reductions. The lights have been turned off on thousands of square feet of cubicles and meeting rooms.

Locally, multiple synod congregations now close every year, especially in Chicago and the older suburbs. Most others are shrinking, with a growing number served by part-time or only pulpit supply pastors. As a synod staff member reported awhile back, the few congregations that are growing do so mostly by gaining the former members of other ELCA churches.

Inevitably for us in the church, these developments seem grim and depressing. As with all change, important things are being lost. Yet I am convinced that these movements in our society and world will ultimately prove to be for the better. Cupitt’s story is one of the human species on the move. While not always in a positive direction, humanity’s track over-all is towards freedom, understanding, and responsibility—in short, towards maturity.

For all its benefits, traditional religion has tended to keep people dependent and is suspicious of human freedom. For these and other reasons many people now view religion as holding them back, or at least largely irrelevant to their lives. Yet living as a free, independent and responsible human being remains an enormous challenge. It’s hard work, and we all need guidance and support in that journey.

People are looking for that help but often with very unsatisfactory results. A genuine need is there, and ultimately I believe the church will evolve into a community that is dedicated simply to helping people in this challenge we call life. We’re not there yet, however. We carry too much baggage. We can’t let go of our past, of our memories of what the church once was. As Lot’s wife learned and as Jesus admonished those holding the plow, if you’re looking back you can’t be moving forward.

My own understanding of all this continues to evolve. I understand well the appeal of just continuing to do and say all the same things as before. It feels so much safer, yet I’m convinced that way leads only to stagnation and death. The hope and promise of life is always the challenge and risk of going forward, even if into the unknown, into a fog where sometimes you can barely see a foot in front of you.

So in the coming year I will continue to try to strike the balance of offering the traditional services our church provides, yet at the same time exploring what new direction the Spirit is leading us. I thank all of you for your continued support of our work in a very challenging time. We are a community of good and deeply caring people. You are our church’s most important asset and your love and life are the most important gifts you have to offer. I hope you will join me in continuing to give all you can with joy, and without looking back.

Be it resolved (Sunday Reflections for January 16, 2011)

(It's taking me a while to get back in blogging mode and a couple friends have prodded me about it--thanks for the push! So I will be playing catch up publishing the past few Reflections articles and apologize that these may feel a little out of date.)

How are those New Year’s resolutions coming? If you’re like most people, some or all of them may have already fallen by the wayside. Or if your intended resolution was to procrastinate less, perhaps you haven’t gotten around to making any yet. Hey, 2011 is only a couple weeks old—plenty of time.

I don’t know how long the idea of New Year’s resolutions has been around. Nor do I know when they became focused almost exclusively on issues of diet and exercise—and thereby exercises in futility. This is the time regular gym goers complain about the flood of new members crowding the facilities. “But just wait a few weeks,” they continue. “They’ll be gone soon and things will get back to normal.” And they’re right.

The difficulty of these resolutions, I think, is that they usually are about us trying to be or become people different than who we are. They’re about doing things we really don’t want to do but have come to believe we ought to do. It’s hardly a surprise most of these plans and good intentions quickly crash and burn.

Most of the health issues these resolutions try to address are due to our modern lifestyles (sitting at a desk rather than working out in the fields) and/or compensating behaviors for other problems. In other words, we eat, smoke, drink, etc to deal with boredom, anxiety, depression or other emotional conditions. Trying to change the behavior without dealing with the underlying cause is, as we all know, nearly impossible.

I do think, however, that making intentions and plans for ourselves can be a good thing. Rather than trying to do things we really don’t want to do though, I think better and more realistic resolutions are to do things we actually like doing or want to try doing.

Unfortunately, many of us still carry around a kind of Puritanical view of life—one which religion often reinforces. We have voices in our heads constantly telling us that we ought to be doing or not doing one thing or another. Then add the real voices of our family, boss, and our doctor—no wonder we want to drown in a bag of potato chips or M&Ms!

Life is not a game or a contest, though. There aren’t rules to follow and points awarded for following them. Nor is life preparation or training for something else. Our lives are infinitely valuable and worthwhile in and of themselves, right here and now.

So in thinking about “2011 Resolutions,” rather than asking what I need to change about myself, I could instead ask what more do I want to do or become. In talking about New Year’s resolutions (and why he doesn’t make them), Deepak Chopra makes the unprofound yet absolutely true observation that what most people want is to be happy.

Of course! And why not? Again: what are we waiting for? There is nothing wrong with doing things for the simple reason that they make us happy. And so there might be our first resolution: I’m going to do more things that make me happy, and for no other reason than that.

This raises the problem that we often don’t know what makes us happy; or that we’ve forgotten what used to make us happy. One simple place to start in figuring this out is with childhood memories. What did you enjoy doing when you were 8 or 10? Very likely there is some related adult activity that would give you as much or more enjoyment today.

Adulthood should be about expanding our horizons so we should also wonder about things we’ve never done but perhaps might enjoy. Here there is almost no limit. And in a city like ours there are countless opportunities to take a class or otherwise try some new activity.

Adulthood is also about becoming less self-centered and more involved in relationships. Many of our interests are made more enjoyable by doing them with others. Like to read? Join a book group. Like sports but the joints aren’t cooperating like they used to? Coach in a youth league. Enjoy some field like history, science or art? Share your enthusiasm by volunteering as a docent or guide. And don’t forget the value of just helping someone in need. Again, there is no end to the human service organizations needing volunteers to help in their work.

Sadly, the enthusiasm and curiosity most of us have as children seem to get lost somewhere along our journey into adulthood. It’s no wonder that as we feel more and more burdened by duties and responsibilities, and then begin to experience the physical challenges of adulthood, we try to find simple pleasures to compensate. Unfortunately many of these are self-destructive and really don’t make us very happy anyway. No amount of TV watching or calories can really do the trick.

What would you like to do—really? Is there some itch in you that needs scratching? Maybe it’s as simple as committing to reading a book an hour each day (okay, half-an-hour). Or maybe you really want to learn to play the violin, or help someone else learn to play the violin.

In any case, rather than resolving to deny yourself something, why not resolve to give yourself something? Rather than resolving to constrain yourself in some way, why not resolve to expand who you are in some new or renewed direction? Rather than committing yourself to some drudgery, how about committing to something enriching, exciting, or perhaps even a little scary?

How about resolving to start doing something, regularly, that makes you happy? What could possibly be bad about that? And who knows, it might even help you forget those potato chips and M&Ms waiting in the cupboard.

Milton Bradley was wrong: Life is not a game (Sunday Reflections for January 9, 2011)

(After a month's long break, I will be back to posting again. First, I'll catch up with my Sunday morning bulletin Reflections.)

What do these stories have in common?

• Thousands of people, including prominent professional athletes, wear a metal wrist band believing it will improve their strength, balance and other aspects of physical well-being. A recent admission by the retailer that there is no scientific evidence to support its claims for the bracelets seems to have had little or no impact on the beliefs of current users or on sales.
• Based on the calculations of a radio evangelist, thousands of people are preparing for the return of Jesus Christ this May 21. Specifically, they believe that Christian “true believers” will be raptured into heaven on this date while the world will come to an end five months later on October 21. This news is being spread via religious broadcasts, billboards, and individual witnessing. Some have had the message painted on their cars and vans. Previously this same evangelist had said these events would occur in 1994 but later revised his biblical interpretations.
• Thousands of people, mostly parents, believe the little understood psychological condition called autism is caused by childhood vaccines. Though there has been little scientific support for this belief, in recent years there has been a drop in vaccination rates and an increase in outbreaks of the diseases the vaccines prevent. This week the one peer reviewed study supporting the vaccine-autism connection was shown to be “an elaborate fraud” involving faked evidence by the researcher.

You may view some or all of these ideas as simply silly and evidence of how gullible people can be. Nonetheless, the people who bought into these notions are generally not especially different from our friends and family, or even ourselves. They are not particularly dimwitted or have a diagnosable psychological disorder. Believing what they believe and doing what they do seems reasonable to them.

What these stories do point to, though, is a commonly held assumption that fundamental truths about life and the world are often hidden from us. Sometimes these truths are hidden as part of a deception by others and sometimes that hiddeness is just part of their nature. We often believe that we aren’t being told the whole story; that things are happening “behind the scenes” which are being kept from us.

In the modern world we are susceptible to such beliefs because life is so complex. We often have to deal with large bureaucracies. Advanced technologies force us to trust in countless experts. When we can’t get the results we want we are prone to think we aren’t talking to the right person or somehow we aren’t being told the whole truth. We all understand the frustrating dilemma of Dorothy and her companions: How do we get to see the Wizard, the one who has the answers?

People in the ancient world had much the same experience, however. For them it was simply the mysteries of the pre-scientific world that were so frustrating. So much of day-to-day life, like illness or natural disasters, just seemed random and haphazard. “That’s just the way it is” was no more an acceptable response then than it is now. Religion, in countless forms, was often the primary response to this confusion. Scriptures, prophets, and soothsayers claimed to know things that were hidden from ordinary people.

The Judeo-Christian tradition certainly got pulled in that direction many times over the centuries, and still can be today. Yet I think that is not its essential nature. Despite the claims of many fundamentalists, the Bible is not an “answer book.” Rather, as Luther said, its goal is to create and build faith, which is probably best understood as “trust.” As Einstein said (in another context but I think still reflecting his Jewish upbringing), “God does not play dice with the universe”—nor with our lives, we might add.

In this respect the Bible’s message is simple and reassuring. Life is not a game. There are not winners and losers. There is not a grand and hidden “Meaning to Life” which we must discover but rather we are simply given the gift and the challenge of creating the meaning of our own individual lives.

There are a few rules but even the Bible treats them as simple and obvious. Both testaments have famous versions of them. In Micah we read, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” And Jesus congratulates the man who responds to the question about the greatest commandment this way: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

Yes, there are many things about the world we don’t know or understand. And, yes, undoubtedly there are things that people intentionally keep from us which ought to be made public. But when it comes to the essential questions and challenges of our lives there really is no mystery or conspiracy. Our life is a gift, as is the lives of all those around us. Our challenge is simply to enjoy them and make the most of them, and do so with a spirit of gratitude.

Candlelight--the music video

Hanukkah ends today so I thought I should promo this YouTube video one more time (I shared it earlier on Facebook). From The Maccabeats--enjoy!



If you enjoyed that, be sure to see the video that inspired it, Mike Tompkins' version of Taio Cruz's Dynamite--incredibly clever and cute.

Advent dreams (Sunday Reflections for December 5, 2010)

One look out the window and it’s obvious: the world has gone dead. After a long and pleasant fall, we’ve finally experienced a hard freeze and even the first snow. My neighbor’s pear tree still has quite a few leaves on it and the grass still holds some residual green color but that won’t last long.

There are also reminders of the “green season” in some of the annuals and other plants that keep going to the very end, e.g. potted and now shriveled geraniums and marigolds. There’s a large rose bush that I walk by with a couple dozen blooms, now all freeze dried—kind of weird looking.

Balancing all this dying is the growing life and energy involved in preparations for Christmas. Malls and retail districts are bustling with shoppers. Holiday lights are glowing everywhere. Nonetheless, the shortening days, increasing cloudiness and our exhaustion at all the extra activity leave us feeling like some of our life is draining out, as well. When Christmas is past and we head into January, we hunker down for the slog to the time when life begins to return with the first signs of spring.

One of the geniuses of the ancient liturgical calendar is that it not only tells the church’s story of Jesus, it also repeats many of the experiences of nature and life. The current season of Advent is characterized by themes of expectation and preparation. The liturgy and music are generally more subdued and reflective.

For quite awhile this has put it at odds with the secular “Xmas season” (as C. S. Lewis called it). Popular culture tends to “front-load” its holidays. In other words, the holiday is usually the climax of a period of celebration. Once the actual day has come and gone, culture moves on to the next thing. In the church, the holiday begins the season. So when Christmas comes (or Easter as another example), the church’s celebration is just starting while secular culture has hit its peak and now it’s all downhill.

Wisely, the church has mostly stopped trying to impose its agenda on secular culture, or even its own members. At the same time, however, I think people have come to appreciate the church’s observance of Advent as a place of calm in the midst of the storm. I don’t hear the clamor for Christmas carols during Advent the way I used to. I suspect that’s due in part to the fact that we now start hearing Christmas music on the radio and in stores not long after Halloween.

The music and liturgy of Advent encourages us to pause and catch our breath. In the midst of the chaotic shopping, decorating and partying, Advent provides us a place to stop, think, meditate, and enjoy some silence. “Just come in, sit and be quiet,” the season seems to say.

In this sense, Advent is much in harmony with the natural world right now. While we may lament the cold and dark descending on us, nature is also “clearing the decks” we might say. In the Middle East, ancient Christians went to the desert as a place to clear their minds and renew their spirits. The barrenness of winter can provide the same service for us.

Barren times are not unusual. Not only are they built into the cycles of nature, we also know them as regular occurrences in our own lives. This is true individually and collectively. Today we are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Many people have lost jobs and lost their homes. Nearly everyone has experienced some financial reversal.

It’s a barren time and it’s gone on a long time. And while it doesn’t seem to be getting worse, it doesn’t seem to be getting better very fast. Things will get better, of course, but it’s looking increasingly to be the case that things won’t just go back to the way they were. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The Bible has repeated stories of success and reversal, often quite dramatic. In fact, in some ways those cycles are what the Bible is about. One of its most profound ironies is that while God’s people are repeatedly promised and looking forward to better times (“a land flowing with milk and honey”), success and prosperity is almost always a prelude to disaster. Here indeed is support for that popular wisdom, “Be careful what you wish for.”

After the various disasters that befall them, people in the Bible then have a period of time to reflect on what’s happened and how they can do better. The prophets are the people we most associate with facilitating this process. These times in the wilderness or in exile are indeed barren, yet spiritually they become the incubators for faith and hope and new visions of life and community.

Our country and in some ways the whole planet are at a turning point. Free-market capitalism, along with science and technology, have produced standards and qualities of living unimaginable just a few generations ago. Within our country, and even more so globally, these riches have been shared grossly unequally. This isn’t a new problem, and not coincidentally it is one the prophets railed against more than any other over two thousand years ago.

History has shown that such inequality simply cannot last. No society can function that is grossly imbalanced and we are seeing that the same is true for the planet. In this “barren time” we have an opportunity to reflect on what has past and what we wish now will come. What is our hope, our vision, our dream? Can we imagine a world of prosperity as well as one of fairness and equal opportunity?

In his Pentecost sermon in Acts, Peter repeats the words of the prophet Joel: in the days when God’s Spirit is poured out on the people, “your young shall see visions and your old shall dream dreams.” Such experiences rarely happen in the normal hurriedness of life but more often in the dark and the quiet. May these times of darkness and barrenness be, for each of us and for our world, times of visions and dreams, courage and hope.

Will the real Jesus please stand up? (Sunday Reflections for November 21, 2010)

Most adults remember the long running game show To Tell the Truth. Three contestants would each claim to be someone with an unusual occupation or experience when, in fact, two of them were imposters. By asking questions, a celebrity panel would try to figure out which person was genuine. After making their guesses, the narrator would intone, “Would the REAL _____ please stand up?” All three contestants would make motions as if to stand until the actual person finally did so.

That scenario isn’t a bad description of the state of biblical study into the life of Jesus. For one of the truths biblical scholars have been uncovering almost since beginning their work is that the New Testament contains multiple Jesuses. By that I mean that the various ways he is depicted in the gospels and other writings just can’t be merged together into a single person.

As scholar Robert Price says, there are just too many Jesuses: teacher, sage, miracle worker, prophet, mystic, reformer, revolutionary, etc. All the ways he is depicted in the Bible simply can’t be brought together into a single, coherent individual. The result is that over the centuries people have constructed multiple Jesus figures from the materials available, selecting some bits and ignoring others.

Over a century ago, and before his medical missionary days, the scholar Albert Schweitzer exposed this practice among theologians. It’s only been more recently that we’ve realized the problem goes all the way back to the New Testament itself. “Will the real Jesus please stand up?” Unfortunately we seem stuck in that moment when the contestants each make the gesture of standing up—but no one ever does.

The past few weeks I have been writing about the problems of religion in the modern world. Standing in the middle of any discussion about re-thinking Christianity or re-making the church is, of course, the figure of Jesus. In reality, though, we don’t have one Jesus to deal with, but many. Some New Testament scholars talk about the difference between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. I think a variation on this that is more helpful is to think about the Jesus of Galilee and the Christ of Calvary.

It doesn’t take a literary or theological genius to realize that a dramatic shift takes place in the gospels when the rabbi Jesus leaves Galilee for Jerusalem, to become the crucified Christ. Nor is it hard to recognize that the gospels struggle to make this transition convincing or logical. Jesus’ “trial” is never really believable because the story of his prior life doesn’t set the readers up for it. The evangelists try to make this support the notion of the unfairness of Jesus’ death but it really just leaves a dramatic hole. Asking “What did Jesus do to deserve this?” is as much a question about the story as it is about theology.

The conclusion of many scholars is that the gospels in essence are two stories awkwardly pasted together: one about Jesus’ Galilean ministry and the other his death in Jerusalem. Some have described the gospels as passion stories with long introductions. I think this is wrong, but it certainly has been a popular interpretation and probably the prevailing one over the centuries. In any case, it points to that sense of disjunction, resolved by making the Galilee story a prolog to the Calvary story.

The reality, which preachers and most scholars both prefer to ignore, is that the origins of the New Testament and the church are hidden in a fog that will never clear. Modern New Testament scholarship has taught us a lot. Yet one of its most important realizations is that there is much we almost certainly will never know. One consequence is that it is unlikely the “real Jesus” will ever stand up.

This has been the source of many of the biggest fights in the church over the centuries. Yet paradoxically this diversity has probably also been a source of strength. People have claimed the label Christian while constructing in their own minds a Jesus that suits their personalities and needs. The church today needs again to take advantage of its “multiple Jesuses.”

Around the world, even among non-Christians, Jesus remains a popular figure. Yet it isn’t just any Jesus. It is almost always the rabbi Jesus of Galilee. Today most people, including many Christians, have relatively little interest in the crucified Christ of Calvary. Yet it is this latter Christ that the church has promoted and built itself upon—and that’s a problem.

Salvation through faith in the crucified Christ has been the church’s primary “product.” In Catholicism and the churches which remained close to it, people received salvation through the sacraments, especially baptism and communion. Salvation was very real as people literally “got” Jesus this way. For evangelical Protestants, salvation was more of a psychological or emotional experience. People got Jesus by believing in or “accepting” him and often by having various spiritual experiences so that they “felt” saved.

Yet whatever the tradition, the result was the same: people received salvation through Jesus’ death on the cross. It was tangible and very personal, as this well-known 19th c. hymn declares:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Today, most people are not interested in possessing Jesus as the ticket to a heavenly reward. However, this is the Jesus promoted and “sold” by the church through most of its existence. As that market has dried up, the church’s fortunes have fallen. People’s concerns are for their lives here and now, not for some intangible existence that might come later.

Yet this practicality is exactly what we find in the rabbi Jesus of Galilee. This Jesus rarely if ever offers “pie in the sky, bye and bye.” His concerns are consistently with how people treat one another, with their values, and with their appreciation of what a gift they have in each day of living. He focuses both on individual relationships and on the justice and injustice of social structures. He is concerned with the abuse of power and the need to protect and care for the weak. In this Jesus we encounter someone who treats each person as an equally valued individual.

Admittedly, Jesus is a person of his ancient world. Not everything he says or does has equal relevance to life in our time. Yet there is much that does speak to life in this world and that people are still listening to. Putting this wise, prophetic and compassionate Jesus front-and-center would be a step toward remaking the church into something contemporary people could find of value. But that can only happen if the church is willing to move the crucified, savior Christ into the background and let go of the ancient baggage he carries with him.

Getting out of the salvation business (Sunday Reflections for November 14, 2010)

What business is the church in? What is the church’s product? As I said last week, this can be a bit complicated to figure out. Over the centuries, the church has always offered a variety of products and services. This has been part of its strength as it allowed people to connect with the church in a variety of ways. Still, however people valued it, the church has understood itself to offer one primary product more important than any other: salvation. That product, I believe, has become the church’s buggy whip.

Theologians and church historians will tell us that salvation has always been understood in a variety of ways. That is true, but let’s accept that for the vast majority of Christians, as well as for most people who have heard the Christian message but didn’t accept it, salvation has meant escaping the judgment and wrath of God and receiving the gift of eternal life. That is what has been the church’s primary product and that is what it can’t sell anymore, or even give away for that matter.

In my ministry, I can honestly say I have encountered only one person seriously concerned about going to hell, and she was in a hospital psychiatric unit. Not only are people not concerned about this for themselves, they show no concern about it for others they know (hence our evangelism problem).

My most memorable example of this was a young man whose life was basically one screw-up after another, hurting a lot of people along the way. He finally took his own life and at his funeral (which was well attended) I quoted his brother’s summary of him and of people’s feelings about him: “He was a son-of-a-bitch but we loved him.” Afterward, people congratulated me on my message. No one expressed any concern about his soul.

Salvation and its alternative are simply not on people’s radar screens anymore. Generally we’ve all become pretty vague about what we think does happen in “the next life” or even if there is one. That’s a topic for another time but for now I’ll just note that whatever is awaiting us, very few of us are concerned about it. The experience of dying may scare us (especially our loss of control) and we may be anxious about all those potentially unfinished items on our to-do lists. Yet the idea of being dead doesn’t seem to bother us much. The very-old often look forward to it. In any case, the once awesome image of “meeting our maker” hardly gets a thought.

And to that I say, “Well, it’s about time.” For to me this is testimony that the church’s message has finally sunk in. Whoever or whatever God is, people have concluded, God loves us. God is the personification of love. God is love. That’s all in the Bible but so is a lot of other less positive God-talk. Yet I don’t think the God-of-love has ever been reconcilable with the God-of-wrath. It’s just been too obvious that the God of hellfire and brimstone has been a convenient tool of religious authorities to scare people into propping up religion and its institutions.

As the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, Paul and Luther all discovered, a genuine message of grace inevitably generates violent opposition from religion and the people in charge of it. They just have too much to lose if people ever genuinely believed it. And they’re right, of course. As I wrote a few weeks ago, the Christian message of freedom also means freedom from religion. The inevitable conclusion is: I don’t need it anymore.

In short, humanity has been growing up but religion, including Christianity, hasn’t been keeping up. In fact, it often has been resisting that development. It has been to the church’s advantage to keep its members in a child-like, dependent relationship. Over the past century or two, however, people throughout the modern Western world have been maturing and leaving the church by the millions.

Aimee Semple McPherson

And so to repeat, people don’t need to be “saved”—not from God’s wrath and judgment, not from hell and damnation. That buggy whip won’t sell. Now as I indicated above, for many theologians, as well as many church leaders and even ordinary Christians, this is old news. For them salvation long ago became a metaphor for other human needs and experiences. For them, the gospel is about our experience of God’s love and grace in this life rather than some reward in a life-to-come.

Fine—yet the truth is that even in so-called moderate and liberal denominations like ours, this is rarely said explicitly nor has it significantly influenced our liturgy or the materials we use in Sunday school, adult education, evangelism, and so on. I think there are two reasons for this. One, as I’ve talked about before, is the unwillingness of clergy, especially, to do anything that might provoke those who retain old traditional religious beliefs. Why kick the hornets' nest? Yet, protecting their sensibilities has resulted in the loss of far more people for whom religion has become increasingly disconnected from real life and therefore irrelevant.

The other reason the church has resisted moving beyond “salvation” is that it will take hard work to, quite frankly, recreate Christianity. It will take admitting, once and for all, that ancient Christianity is dead and that the only alternative now is for something new to take its place. It will take major rethinking, remaking, and even some killing off of much if not all of the church’s sacraments, liturgy, liturgical calendar, scripture, institutional structures and self-image.

Billy Sunday & Mae West

It will require re-imaging an adult God for adult people. This God can no longer simply be Santa Claus on a cosmic scale, who’s got a list, checking it twice, to see who’s been naughty or nice; a God who brings treats and toys to good girls and boys but puts coal in bad children’s stockings. This God must somehow encompass a 14 billion year old Universe, vast in space and time beyond our imagining, yet also relates to a human species on one small planet and whose history encompasses only the tiniest last fraction of the Universe’s existence.

The church must get off its high-horse and finally say to itself and to the world, no one needs us. We are not God’s instrument of salvation for the planet. We are not essential to the life or well-being of humanity.

Then, having said it and genuinely believing it, perhaps the church can re-create itself to be something people want in their lives. Then, perhaps, we can rediscover the genuine hope and wisdom of our scriptures and of our saints, buried by centuries of institutional self-interest and stagnation. Then, perhaps, we can again be a genuine force for justice and peace in the world and a source of courage and love in people’s lives.

That could be a viable business plan, with a product that will sell. But first we must accept, once and for all, that the church is not any longer in the salvation business.

The best buggy whip money can buy (Sunday Reflections for November 7, 2010)

Imagine it is 1905 and you are president of Acme Buggy Whip Company. Your sales are dropping alarmingly. Without questioning why this is so, you assume you need to improve your product to make it more appealing to your customers. As a result, you begin making buggy whips in different colors, different sizes, and with different grades of materials. You begin having contests, two-for-one deals, a buggy whip of the month club, and other promotions. Result? Sales continue to drop and you are soon out of business.

The problem, of course, wasn’t with the quality of your buggy whips or their price. The problem was that fewer and fewer people wanted buggy whips at all. The problem was the arrival of something brand new and which you did not anticipate: the automobile. As a result, there was nothing you could have done to improve your buggy whips that would have made any difference. What you really needed to do was change your product.

Businesses have become very introspective. They are all followers of Socrates: “Know thyself.” Business guru authors, seminar leaders and consultants all preach that businesses need to better understand their operations. They need to have a clear understanding of their “mission,” of their customers, of their products, of their internal operations, and of their company culture.

To be successful (they are told) businesses need to know who they are and what they are trying to accomplish. In short, they need to know what business they are in. Remarkably, this is much more difficult than it sounds. Like people, businesses are reluctant to change, preferring to keep on doing what they are familiar with. Plus, there are those monthly bills to pay. If there is enough cash coming in to cover expenses, why do something risky? And we don’t want to alienate our stockholders.

In recent years, there have been attempts to apply MBA-style thinking and concepts to the church. In general, they haven’t accomplished a whole lot but frankly I suspect that is because churches find it difficult to be as honest or as ruthless as such thinking often requires. The church isn’t a business but it certainly has business aspects, as the Crystal Cathedral, the ELCA national operations, and countless congregations around the country, including our own, have learned. Churches, too, have a bottom line.

Yet as my example above illustrates, business thinking doesn’t start with dollars and cents. It starts by asking a more fundamental, and therefore more difficult, question: What business are you in? Acme Buggy Whip was making a product which its customers no longer needed. It had to re-imagine itself and understand its primary objective was to meet customer needs. If customers no longer needed buggy whips, Acme needed to re-create itself to meet some other need—or go out of business.

Today, the church needs to be asking itself: What business are we in? Like Acme, the church has been offering a variety of products and services for which there has been a steadily falling demand. Also like Acme, the church has responded by trying to improve those products making them more appealing, more consumer friendly, more affordable, etc. Result? “Sales” have continued falling with hardly a pause. Could it be that, like Acme, the church’s real challenge is not to improve its product but to find a new one altogether?

Of course, the church’s product is not as tangible or simple as a buggy whip. Over the centuries, the church has provided a variety of services and, as a result, people have joined churches for a variety of reasons. Take worship, for example (the church’s most well-known service). I have learned during my years as a pastor that people come to worship for many reason. For some it’s the liturgy or the sacraments, for others it’s the sermon, or the music, or having some quiet time, or the fellowship, or the coffee and donuts afterward, or for the kids or to keep their spouse happy, or just habit.

Because the church as a whole has this multi-faceted nature, it’s made it hard to figure out what isn’t working (maybe we just need better donuts). A big part of the church’s success has been the variety of products and services that it offers. It’s given people many different ways to connect with the church. So when, despite that variety, and the tweaking and improving that’s gone on lately, participation in church life is still falling, then that would indicate something has fundamentally changed.

Remember again our beloved Acme: the reason it couldn’t sell its buggy whips wasn’t because it didn’t make good buggy whips. They were the best. It was because people no longer needed them. Their horses and buggies had been replaced by automobiles. What could Acme do? Assuming its whips were made of leather, it could have found a different leather product to make. If it wanted to stay in transportation, perhaps it could have shifted to leather wrapped steering wheels or gear shifts, or leather interiors, or something we can’t imagine.

What business is the church in? That’s been a difficult question for church leaders to look at. When you think you’ve been given your mission by God it’s pretty hard to imagine that mission changing. Acme’s management couldn’t imagine a world without horses and buggies, or that they could be replaced by those noisy, dangerous, unreliable auto-mobiles, motorcars, or whatever you wanted to call them (“Menaces is what I call them!”). And yet….

It’s probably true, as some people say, that the phrase “out of the box thinking” is overused. It is a useful image, though, because our thinking often does get trapped inside of mental “boxes.” Cars were outside the box of Acme’s leaders. And being unable to imagine such a world, they couldn’t imagine how Acme could fit into it—and so it didn’t. End of Acme.

The church is now in a new world. Thus far, it is a world the church cannot imagine and therefore can’t imagine its place in it. Its thinking is still in that box with the horses and buggies. Surely some people will always want our buggy whips, won’t they? For awhile longer, yes. However, that time seems to be coming to an end. But imagine the opportunities in this new world! Can we get out of our box, put aside the buggy whips—and imagine?