From Teapots to Billy Graham

Well, I know how to create some "steam." Light a fire of words under a teapot. It seems that some of you out there in the blogosphere have some "heated" opinions about the tea party movement and what it is and what it is not. I will close that "conversation" from my side by saying I still think such "movements" in our culture today are foils against which we can ask what is the nature of community in light of what are "my rights" and what am I willing to offer, give up, share, in order to create the kind of "people" that Jesus calls us to be....so I'll put the teapot on the shelf for a moment and switch to Billy Graham.

How is that for turning down the heat so the steam subsides? Of course there are some people that even get "hot" about dear old Billy. They say in his prime that he was a little too cozy with certain Presidents. Then there are others who may not like his style of Christianity that focuses on the need for an "hour of decision."

But then how many people found out about this Jesus I talk about all the time from the lips of Billy Graham? My style of talking about Jesus is sure not Billy's but you need to know that he is in part responsible for me talking about him...Jesus, not Billy.

This blog is being offered because of the recent newspaper picture of Billy in a wheelchair being ushered into the library named after him. He can't hear anymore and his speech is limited. He said a few words and offered a prayer at the event. He said he was glad that the library named after him was not a "memorial to him" but a place where people could see ways to study about and ponder the one he talked about most of his life...that would be Jesus.

Billy touched my life the night I went with mom and dad to one of his crusades when I was ...O around eight I think. Dad went only to appease my mom because they had a dispute about something to which I was not privy. All I know is that the "peace settlement" for the evening included my father saying he would go to the crusade. That was not like my Sunday-go to early Mass-then get to the golf course father. But he went.

So since they went I had to go. Billy did his usual thing that night. I have no idea what he said. He usually said the same thing with a little variation. It all ended with the "time of decision" and all those people getting up out of their seats and flocking toward the podium. My dad got up. I assumed he was going to the bathroom so I followed him.

He walked by the bathroom and joined the crowd that was standing in front of Billy. "Just as I Am" was filling the room but as I looked up at dad I wondered "just what he was." Here was my rather stoic father crying and looking up. I reached up for his hand but he was somewhere else. He probably held my hand but he was being held by something else.

I went with him to the little "counseling" area where he and I, since I was there with him, were told that we would be receiving materials as a follow up. The "minister" who talked with dad challenged him about his Catholic faith and the way he was living it. I'm not sure that was correct or sensitive or theologically savvy but that's what he did.

Dad returned and was in agony. The next week he informed his priest that he would be joining the Methodist church so that he could be with his family and start anew his "real" spiritual journey. Dad received a letter in a few days telling him that his soul "was in danger of hell-fire." Don't you love the church?

Anyway, dad and I received the promised "materials." I remember answering the questions and sending in the completed work that was returned to me and us with comments.

I went a different path later on. It was not my father's path nor was it in the style of Billy. But as I saw him looking out at me from that wheelchair I spoke a prayer. "Thank you Billy...for being a part of my journey and so many journeys. May this last part of your journey be peaceful and may you know how many people are different because you spoke about the man we both love."

Bless you
jody

Would Jesus Have a Tea Party?

America is a great place. We seem to be able to have a "party" at the drop of a hat. There are Supper Bowl parties, St. Patrick Day parties, parties for benchmarks such as anniversaries; and now we are having "tea parties."

I've tried to listen to the reasons for the tea parties. A lot of people get together, make signs, and make a lot of noise. This time the noise is not about celebrations but about "rights." As I listen to the voices it seems that a good number of the party goers seem to think that their rights are either being taken away or infringed upon. One voice screamed that "I don't want to pay for someone else's insurance." Another voice said, "I don't want anyone messing with my life and especially my guns."

Well talk about guns and taxes and you have an argument for sure. I just got through listening to the tax lady tell me how much I paid in taxes. It was a lot, I think. I could sure use the money for some things on my list rather than someone else's list. I don't own any guns. Well, that's a small lie. I do own two BB pistols that I in the past used to ward off those dog-gone squirrels from eating all the birdseed...that is until I...well...accidentally killed one of the rascals with a lucky shot. It was a sad scene that reminded me of something like original sin. I killed not for food or protection but for rage...anyway that's another story for another time...and besides the guns are now in a drawer.

I wonder though if Jesus would have or go to a tea party? Would he be upset to pay for someones health insurance if they could not pay for it. Would he stand at the door and protest and respectfully tell someone that they could not have any of his guns? What would he have to say about his "rights?" I do not remember him ever using the phrase "big brother," but I do remember he often talked about his "father." Who did he consider his "brothers and sisters" to be if he claimed that we could all have one father?

Rights are important. I want to live in a world, however, where people value community more than individual rights. Did I take a wrong turn somewhere in the past? The old stuff talks about the rights that this Father of Jesus "required" was to "care for the orphan and widow...and to make sure that the stranger had a place to stay and the poor had shoes." I do not remember much being said about rights.

Last time I checked I'm as bloody a capitalist as it gets. I like my things. I do not much like anyone threatening to take my stuff away. I believe people appreciate life more if they work for what they get. All of this is fairly important to me, but you know....it's not all about me. This Jesus I kept bumping up against often challenges me. His words about thinking of others first and the risk of giving without expecting returns is...well...not my nature.

Anyway....this is a blog and I was just wondering if Jesus would go to a tea party.

blessings
jody

Recovering from the Resurrection

Well if Jesus had to "recover" from the resurrection I suppose it is okay for those of us who proclaim the old story to make it new every year to do the same. This year there were four funerals leading up to Easter, the last of which was for dear eight-year old Caroline. I needed Easter.

But of course since I am one of those clergy-types I am partly responsible for "helping Easter happen" for the crowds that come that day. People come out of the woodwork for Easter. We again had overflow spaces filled. Lots of people "need" Easter.

There's a bit of pressure I feel to make sure it "happens" for all those who show up. Sounds kind of silly does it not? Me, thinking I have to make Easter happen...Like that Native American tribe that believes if they do not do the morning prayer to the sun that the sun will not come up.

Jesus seems to "come up" with or without me...thank heavens. Easter is something very deep it seems. Resurrection is part of the DNA of life. We long for it, we need it, and it is there. Jesus is once again set free to battle the principalities and powers that he tangled with long ago. We are to join him in that battle.

When the lilies are limp and the Easter baskets are empty the work of Easter is still needed. So for right now I think I'll "recover"....take a deep breath and go back to "work" on what Easter is really all about...a resurrection power that invites us to join in the healing of the world.

Blessed Easter
jody

Too Nice for Black Friday

It's Good Friday but it's too nice a day. Good Friday was "black Friday" before it was "good." As a child I asked the question anyone ought to ask unless they get too religious too quick: What's good about Good Friday? I mean he gets betrayed, denied, beat up, and hung out to dry on a tree of death. Did Pilate wash his hands in that bowl and say to a bloody Jesus, "Well, have a GOOD day" just before he sent him off to that barren hill to be crucified?

So I'm driving up in the church parking lot with the top down on my car. The pink petals are falling off the cherry trees like a spring-time snow shower. The tulips are starting to break open at the front door of the church. All is "good" with the world....and then I think...in a few hours the sanctuary lights will be dimmed...the story will be read...and the Christ candle will be taken from the room to remind all who gather than the "light of the world" is "gone out."

It's too pretty a day for such a story. I came in and told Linda, our church receptionist, "to cancel Good Friday services...It's too nice a day to kill Jesus." She looked at me like she's looked at me before when I say strange things. "I'm serious," I said. "It should be cloudy with rain dripping from the cross atop the church roof."

But then that is what makes Good Friday, good. It is a day for all our days. He is after all "fairest Lord Jesus...ruler of all nature...a nature that is "robed in the blooming garb of spring." But then he is also the one whose sacred head is wounded,"with grief and shame weighed down."

It is good because what we have today in this sudden spring with pollen ready to break out is an advertisement for Easter. But before we get to the beauty of the sunrise of resurrection no matter how pretty a day it is we have to stop....stop at the cross and remember how much this God of ours loves us on good days and bad days.

So who knows, it might be pouring down rain on Easter morning when we long for it to be a pretty day. Now, its a pretty day on "black Friday" but that is "good" because no matter what the atmospheric conditions are the cosmic weather person says on the other side of the dark clouds that surround a cross, "the sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun...just thinking about tomorrow wipes away the cobwebs and the sorrow till there's none..."

Yea, I know, it's not so religious and it's not a hymn but it is why this is Good Friday....no matter what the weather....good or bad...it's good.
jody

Hey Jesus, I Need a Little Help Here

It was time to go upstairs and do what I had prayed for seven years not to do. She was eight years old and I had walked the road of constant chemotherapy and radiation with her parents for seven of her eight years. At least three times the odds dictated that she would not make it. Every time she paid no attention to the odds and continued to dance. She loved to dance.

Every morning I started my prayer time out in the tradition of the Jewish way of "demanding" something from God in a very bold way. We Christians clean up spirituality and make it "nice" but in our heritage the Hebrew scriptures are full of "in your face" language. So I said to God, "I do not want to do her funeral." Then I went on and prayed for her and her dear parents.

I guess it sounds selfish but so be it. Yesterday I had to do her funeral. I was with her when she struggled to breathe her last. I saw the pain in the face of the parents who held her as they said their goodbyes. I wrapped my arms around the three of them knowing that all I could do was "tell" God to wrap bigger arms around them.

But it was time to go upstairs and do her funeral. There would be dance, and celebrative songs, and planned laughter to go with the tears...but...I still had to "do" it. I had seven years of requests built up in me and I was a bit worried about "how I would do." I knew me. I wrote her a poem and I crafted a service of celebration. It all looked good on paper, but I now had to do it.

As I started to walk out of the office a bit of fear and emotion swept over me. That was not good. So I turned back and walked over to my wall that held a special crucifix given to me by Edith. Edith took that large crucifix off her mother's chest. Edith' s mother requested that she be buried "with him." But just before they closed the casket Edith reached in and grabbed Jesus and said to her mother, "Mother I need him more than you do."

For many years he hung on Edith's wall and she told me that she would look up at him looking down at her and he always helped her in time of need. Edith asked me to come by to see her before I moved from the church I had served for eight years. I was her pastor and she was undergoing treatments for cancer.

She brought me up close to him, hanging on the wall and she told me the story of her grabbing him. Then she reached up and took him off the wall and handed him to me, "Here, you need him now."

I did Edith's funeral a few years ago and I brought him with me. I again took him off the wall and told her story. I said to all who listened that he was Edith's but she had given him to me and I still needed him.

So...yesterday I walked over to that wall and I looked up at him looking down at me. I cried a bit and said, "OK, I need you." I did not "hear" any response but there was one. Edith heard it too. I walked upstairs and lead a church full of people in a real celebration. I "did" fine. All kinds of people beginning with her dear parents hugged me and thanked me and told me what a marvelous job I "did." I thanked them and told them it was a honor to have been invited in to such a sacred space with this dear family.

I "held up" fine. My fear of coming apart was contained. I walked downstairs and back into my office. I took off my robe. I walked over to him. I leaned up against the wall and I looked up at him and I came apart. I leaned against the wall and I leaned against him....and as I softly cried I looked up into his face with his silent head leaning down from his cross and I said, "Thank you...thank you."

I suppose it is what this week ahead we call Holy is all about...
Thank you....thank you.

jody

March Madness: The Other Version

It's called March Madness for a reason. The brackets are full of big name schools and some names that even after you hear the name you ask, "Where is that?" As the brackets shrink and the days toward the finals approach there are fewer and fewer names.

My strange mind thought of all this as I helped put together our church's "stations of the cross." The stations are composed of original art pieces made by members of our congregation. The walking prayer journey begins with a sculpture by none other than the resident artist of our house, Betsy. It depicts Jesus with his hands wrapped in prayer kneeling in the garden. He leans against a large rock and of course, since this is Betsy's doing, there is a garden around him with small tress and plants.

His eyes are closed and he is offering that now famous request that is heard through the years, "Can you take this cup away from me?" As you leave Jesus in the garden you walk toward a musical selection that can be listened to through ear phones of a piece from a requiem that our Chancel Choir did recently. Then there comes the stations where Pilate condemns Jesus, he picks up his cross, he falls, Simon of Cyrene helps him, he is nailed to that ugly tree, Mary holds the body of her dead boy, and he finally is placed in a borrowed tomb.

It's March Madness. As I walked through the stations I felt the "brackets" narrowing. Jesus is still in the "game" to the surprise of many who look on. In fact he makes it to the finals even though most of his "team" fouls out.

The odds makers are proven right after all as he is defeated. His hoped for "one shinning moment" is shrouded in darkness as a cloud appears over the scene of his loss. The crowds who were shouting earlier go back knowing that business as usual is around the corner and March Madness will soon take its place along side other left over newspapers that will be tossed. The brackets are no more.

Except in this "game" the loser ends up being the winner. It takes a few days for the dust to settle but the "madness" of it all ends up being a road to victory after all. Why does it take such madness to get to a final one shining moment for the guy whose image is frozen in a kneeling position at that first "station?"

It is because the one who created this teaming cosmos of ours decides to "play the game" with us knowing that our defeats matter. He does not just show up and declare victory. He comes, offers a game plan, and then takes the court with all the madness involved.

The difference here is that with the cut down nets still hanging around the neck of the team that thinks it holds the trophy there is a sunrise a few days later that ends up being a final victory. It seems that even though the brackets were completed by those who bend and abuse the rules to get to the finals there is one who offers a last comment that is perceived as "real madness" by a world bent on going its own way. Just as people start to go back to work after March Madness God whispers, "O death where is thy victory, O death where is thy sting."

It seems that Jesus is "not" frozen forever in that kneeling pose nor is he frozen by the power that always reaches the finals. So...when we get to the "finals" March Madness will have a different ending. So as I say at the conslusion of all the funerals I do, "Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ."

Blessed March Madness to you....
jody

If Now Was Then

I spent the last week interviewing new candidates for ministry. To be a United Methodist minister you have to complete 3 years of seminary then go before 3 committees and defend your "call,"answer questions about a sermon preached, and explain your doctrines and theology. If you pass that, and 40% of them did not, you are examined for 3 years as to how well you "perform" in a church setting...then you do the committee thing all over again.

I don't think I would pass now. I'm not sure how I passed "then." That was 38 years ago. Maybe they were more lenient back then. I know I had trouble with some of the doctrine stuff...and the audio tape of my sermon did not work the Sunday I taped it so I had to preach it again the next day... this time in an empty room.

One of the Board of Ministry members "back then" said the quality of the tape sounded almost like it was done in an empty room. I did not respond. He then asked me if I preached this sermon in front a congregation and I simply responded, "yes." Well, I did the first time.

So is my whole ministry in fact built upon a lie? Anyway, after examining these new folks last week I'm glad I"m on this end of the interviews. I never took a preaching course, my beliefs "then" and "now" are not exactly orthodox, and my call was one I continually wrestled with. I think if the tables were turned and those folks with whom I am now on the Board of Ministry got the chance to put me down at the "other" end of the table, I might be selling cars for a living.

The truth is that the longer I live the bigger God gets. Doctrines that are the basis of hard questions asked of candidates do not seem nearly as important to me as making ways for people to find the various handles that open doors to paths that lead to an authentic spiritual journey. Preaching for me is now more of an exercise in engaging imagination than technique.

I really felt for some of my younger colleges that didn't "measure up." Some of them should not have. Some of them probably should not be ministers, but some of them simply did not answer the questions the right way or did not preach up to par.

Ah but alas my credentials now hang on the wall. I'm "in" so to speak. Now my test comes most every day when someone sits across from me and asks questions with their lips or with their eyes as to why they have cancer or if God really is involved in the challenges they are having with their family?

The "examination" now is done by a large number of faces into which I offer "the Word" most every Sunday. I can sometimes tell if I'm passing or failing by looking into those faces.

I'm glad it's "now" and not "then." I've grown comfortable with my hybrid heretical thoughts. They are like an old pair of shoes that I wear because I have no interest in breaking in new ones. I'm too old and set in my strange ways to finally "learn" how to preach...and...in terms of examining the credibility of my "call"...well...God simply would not let me alone and I could not escape. Jonah's fish is a good image and I was spit up on the shore long ago only to find that this wonderful and crazy thing called ministry is what I simply have to do...

Blessings
jody