Creatio Ex Nihilo

Grand Theft Theo

It was the summer after eight grade and my good friend Stephen and I were exploring the brand new K-Mart - the centerpiece of the new Wayne Hills Mall.  For some unexplained reason we found ourselves in the outdoor sports section when Stephen eyed a fishing lure hanging on a display rack.  

“I’m taking that,” he said.

“Huh,” I asked, quite puzzled.

“Go to the end of the aisle and keep a lookout,” he told me.

“A lookout?”  What were we Alias Smith and Jones here?  It’s a K-Mart.

So I walked uncomfortably to the end of the aisle and pretended to be “looking out” for something.  Meanwhile, Stephen stealthily slipped the fishing lure under his jacket.  He rushed up behind me and said, “Come on!  Let’s get out of here!”

As we hurried to the front of the store, suddenly lights flashed and sirens blared all through the store.  Oh no, I thought, “the jig is up.”  (I don’t even know what a jig is, but that’s what everyone in movies always said in these situations.)  We looked around in a panic.  Blue lights were flashing everywhere.  Yet we were just standing at the front of the store alone.  It took a few moments for it to sink in that we had not triggered an alarm.  It was just another one of K-Mart’s infamous Blue Light Specials.

We breathed a deep sigh of relief and made our way to the door.  There we were met by the store manager, who asked to see what was in Stephen’s jacket.  He sheepishly unzipped his sweatshirt, revealing the fishing lure, tucked against his side.  The manager left me at the door and took Stephen away to the back office, where he called Stephen’s father to come in for a little talk.  Believe when you’re a fourteen year old boy and someone calls your father for a littele talk about you - it’s never good.

As I look back at this story of Stephen stealing the fishing lure, it brings back a lot of different emotions - nostalgia, regret, but most of all, puzzlement.  Puzzlement for this one simple reason: Stephen didn’t fish.  He got into all this trouble for stealing a one dollar fishing lure, which he would never use. 

Why is it that we humans have such difficulty resisting the temptation to take what isn’t rightfully ours?  Sometimes it’s for the meaningless adrenaline rush.  Sometimes it’s because of our indoctrination to never pass up the chance to get something for nothing.  Oh, but that’s not stealing, is it? It’s the reason we can’t help but pick a twenty dollar bill we see laying on the floor, even in a crowded room where it’s rightful owner is probably nearby.  It’s an opportunity for personal gain that’s too good to pass up.  So we put our ethics on hold and grab what we can while the grabbing is good.  It’s the same attitude that often fuels the sin of adultery which we discussed last week.  For many people, especially men, sex can be like money found on the ground.  It doesn’t come along often and it’s too good to pass up. It only makes sense to grab it at any opportunity.

The Felix Unger Principle Strikes Again!

A few weeks ago, I edited and appeared in this video for the TransFORM, a network to help form new missional faith communities. Apparently, the comment I make, "For many of our people we are their last stop on the way out of Christianity", has created a stir in some circles. So allow me to clarify for those who drew a false conclusion I had not anticipated.  

Many of the people who come to our church are giving Christianity one last shot. If this doesn't work, they tell me, they're giving up on the whole idea of God. Some have had bad experiences in church, some have been hurt by Christians, experienced tragedy in life or have deep theological questions that they do not feel comfortable asking in other faith communities.  For many of them, Vision is the place where they rediscover God and Jesus.

Contrary to the wrong assumptions made by commenters on other blogs, Vision does not happily usher them out of Christianity and celebrate it. Vision's calling is to introduce them to a love of God through Jesus Christ so that they would stay and become fully committed followers of Jesus. Sometimes God works and that happens, sometimes it doesn't, but it's a risk worth taking.

I find it disappointing that in an eagerness to condemn, our critics jumped to a false conclusion. As my wife Pam always advises, perhaps it would be wise to heed the advice of St. Felix of Unger...

It's Not All About Sex

In Ocean City NY, it is against the law to slurp your soup.  In Greene NY, it’s illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalks during a concert. In New York State, women may go topless in public, providing it is not being used as a business. Also in our state, while riding in an elevator, one must talk to no one, and fold his hands while looking toward the door.

Obviously, such laws are relics of a previous era.  They were written in a time of travel by horseback and predate the age of computers, or even electricity for that matter.  We can safely ignore them without fear of slipping into some downward spiral of immorality.  “First it starts with wearing hats indoors and before you know it horses are tied improperly!”

Some suggest that the Ten Commandments are further examples of such outdated rules.  Which is curious since few people advocate stealing, lying and murder as admirable behavior.  When proposals are made that we have moved beyond the laws on these famous stone tablets, there is usually one commandment in particular the proposer has in mind.  It is this one, “You shall not commit adultery.”  In fact CNN founder Ted Turner suggested just such an update to the Decalogue a decade ago.

After all, we live in an era of friends with benefits, websites to hook us up with others seeking affairs, and our old standby, the one night stand.  How can we be expected to follow such an ancient rule?  Hasn’t the world changed?  Hasn’t there been a paradigm shift in sexual mores?  Don’t we live in a generation, the likes of which no one has seen before? 

Ah, but we talked about that a couple of weeks ago. The commandment to honor our parents is God’s corrective for generational narcissism, the belief that our generation is somehow special or unprecedented.  As we will see, these Ten Commandments, or ten utterances of God are not just a random list of rules.  Instead, I believe they inherently all build one another.  When it comes to these principles for living, our generation is not so special.  God’s same ethical imperatives that applied to our ancestors also apply to us.  In fact, they apply even more so to us.

How can that be, we wonder? Aren’t these rules merely cultural artifacts from a world that no longer exists?  For instance, in a place like ancient Israel, how did you define adultery in a society where men had more than one wife?  Ever wonder that?  I did.  Although I don’t recommend asking it in Sunday School as a young child. I rarely hear preachers from the Religious Right ask that question. 

Death by Humiliation - by Pam Heatley

Today, I'm featuring a guest post by Pam Heatley, who founded Vision with me eight years ago and is our Director of Ministry.  She preached this sermon on Sunday.

I was driving in my car a family friend who comes here to church.  She told me (sort of in a half joking way) that since we’ve been doing the 10 Commandments she realizes that so far she broken the first 5 we’ve talked about.   But the consolation for her she said,  “was that we’re getting to Thou Shalt Not Kill soon right?  “At that’s good – because I know I don’t do that one.”

Some of you may be feeling the same way.  How many of you have been arrested for murder lately?  No one.  Whew!  Ok then, finish your coffee and we can all go home!

Oh how I wish I could tell you that.  I wish I could say this is the easy commandment.  The one you can emotionally skip over and tell yourself you don’t have to worry about because there “ain’t no way I’m killing somebody”. Well, don’t relax so fast.   The problem for us is that this commandment is about much more than we think it is.  Even if we stick with the literal meaning of this commandment you’ll find endless debates over what constitutes murder and what is justifiable killing.  For many of us even those things seem far away and removed to many of us.  So I’m not even going to go there today.

I want to talk about the part of this commandment that effects everyone of us, the part of this commandment that’s going to leave everyone of us saying, “Uh oh, I do that one too” because we all do.

Behind every murder is a thought.  A thought that can sometimes lead to the literal murder of someone but more often lead to just plain hurting each other.    You know it’s possible to kill a person in little tiny ways by chipping away at their self-esteem, trust, joy, sense of worth, security and sense of self.

Maybe you’re saying “When have I ever done that?”   We all have times in our lives when we let our anger rule us or when we let those things that emerge from our anger like resentment, jealousy, competition or even our self-centered drive to survive entice us to treat each other without dignity. When we do that, we compromise the chance that the person we hurt can have the abundant life that God wants for them.  In other words, we take a life and we commit murder.

Yes, I am saying that a hand gesture at a car that is annoying you is just as bad as murder, because it comes from the same place, anger.  That does not diminish the act of murder in any way, but it does increase our understanding that everything we do has the potential to chip a way at someone’s soul.   I believe there is a real death that occurs in people whenever we speak unkindly about them, throw thoughtless insults at them.  Or make little digs in our conversations with them, often disguised as humor.

The Sabbath Question - by Bob Scott

Today, I'm featuring a guest post by Bob Scott.  Bob preached this sermon last week while I was away.  He is the Director of Trinity Institute at Trinity Wall Street in New York City, a good friend, and was one of the members of our core team when Vision began.

Did anybody stop off on the way to church this morning? Maybe you went by the grocery store to pick up food for later. Did anybody stop at the liquor store? You don’t need to raise your hands. A few years ago you couldn’t have done that. At one time most stores, and until recently all liquor stores, had to close on Sundays because of Blue Laws. These laws started with the Puritans in the 17^th century. Over the years every state passed blue laws forbidding things like playing baseball or changing wagon wheels on Sunday. In Massachusetts holding hands on Sunday was against the law. In some states you could sell hammers but not nails on the Sabbath.

And there lies the rub. The laws were to protect the Sabbath, specifically the Christian Sabbath, since the Jewish Sabbath is Saturday. In the 20^th century people sued to overturn Blue Laws. The Supreme Court decided they were constitutional, because while they began for religious reasons, they now had other value, such as guaranteeing workers a day off or decreasing public drunkenness. Recently, though, many of the laws have been disappearing, mostly for economic reasons. Why shouldn’t a liquor store owner make money on Sunday? Today a lot of states forbid car sales on Sundays, and people are asking whether we can afford that when car companies are hurting.

Now, since we’re in church and we’re studying the commandment to honor the Sabbath, you might expect a pitch for reinstating the Blue Laws. And in fact, a study by professors at MIT and Notre Dame found that in states where selling liquor on Sundays is legalized, church attendance and giving go down noticeably and use of alcohol and drugs goes up, particularly among youth, and particularly among youth who are religious.

And yet, churches aren’t always big supporters of Blue Laws. In 1920 the New York Times reported that the rector of Trinity Church Wall Street, which as some of you know is where I work, preached a sermon saying that the return of the Puritan Sabbath, which was being advocated by a group called The Lord’s Day Alliance, would “injure religion.” Instead of outlawing sports, he said, pastors should be playing them. Why? Because “God is near in our joys also,” he said. The problem with a legally enforced Sabbath is that it takes the joy out of a day that according to the Jewish Hassidim “should be anticipated like a bride.”

For several weeks we’ve been reading the Ten Commandments. Number four is “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Sabbath is from the Hebrew “Shabbat,” which means “to cease” or “to rest.” It was understood as a time to stop our labor. That’s what the Blue Laws were getting at – don’t do business, don’t play games. Cease.

Video Highlights of Christianity 21

Here's the highlight video I shot and edited from Christianity 21.  I know it has been posted elsewhere, but I just wanted it to have a home on my blog.  Many thanks to the wonderful speakers, and to Tony and Doug for producing the event.

The Least Generation

Let me tell you about a generation living during a pivotal time in history, a time of change and new ideas.  A time of new technology making the world a smaller more connected planet.  A time of questioning old belief systems, religions and the supernatural.  Financial turmoil.  A rise in socialist ideas about the economy.  New forms of art.  The passing away of old racial divisions.  The blurring of the line between black music and white music.  Rethinking long-held concepts about sexuality, about what constituted a family and parental authority.  A generation living through one of the most important times in human history.

What generation am I describing?  Some of you, especially the teens, may assume I am talking about our children, the Millennial Generation, Gen Y, or whatever term demographic studies call them now.  Some of you, perhaps some Baby Boomers, assume I am describing the 1960’s and all the social upheaval of that era.  Those of you from the WWII era probably thought I was talking about you, what Tom Brokaw termed “The Greatest Generation”. In fact, I was describing the generation that lived through the 1920’s, the generation of my grandparents and great-grandparents.  The time of jazz music, Harry Houdini, Sigmund Freud, Red Scares, and the stock market crash.  

Unless you know history well, or lived through that time, you probably didn’t make those associations.  Instead, you associated the cultural phenomena I described with the experience of your own generation.  That is to be expected since we are all guilty of what Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann calls “one generation narcissism” and think nothing important happened in history until we showed up on its stage.  Every generation believes they are living in a time of cultural, technological, artistic and political revolution the likes of which the world has never seen.  In a sense, they are correct.  Each generation does face challenges that are unique and in some way unprecedented.  Each generation’s character is shaped by new influences.  Yet when we wrongly imagine that those who came before us have nothing to teach us, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past.

Last weekend, Pam and I attended the Christianity 21 conference in Minneapolis during which twenty-one women speakers explored faith in the 21st century.  One of them, Diana Butler Bass, a church historian, said, “People who really know history … are people who are not afraid of change…because we’ve seen it all before.”  A connection to those who came before us provides us with the wisdom to deal with the challenges of the present.

How do we have that connection with the past?  Is it soley through watching the History Channel or academic study?  As we have seen these past few weeks, the God of the Ten Commandments is not some abstract concept but a God who acts in history, not in vague generalities but with great specificity.  The God of Mt Sinai comes to people in very personal ways.  So it should come as no surprise that in order connect us with our past, God comes to us through one of the most personal of relationships, that of parent and child.

As we continue our study of the Ten Commandments, we come to this the fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother that you may long endure on the land your God gives you.”   Now some of you may have difficulty with this commandment.  Perhaps you have a parent or parents that were neglectful, even abusive.  Some of you have parents who did not and not honor you.  This commandment does not endorse such behavior.   Nevertheless, we can’t be afraid to lift up the values of parenting and family just because so many people have been hurt by their family.  In fact we need to speak up even louder to say that’s not the way  a family is supposed to be.  This commandment invites us to rethink parenting, to be the kind of parents God calls us to be and not shrink back from being so.  How can we do that?

A few things we must note about how this commandment is phrased.  First, we are told to honor our parents.  Not blindly obey, or excuse abusive behavior.  The Hebrew word for honor is a softer gentler word.  Bruggemann describes honor as a more “delicate transactive maneuver whereby both parties grow in dignity through the process.”  Think of God’s family, the Trinity, where the members honor one another without dominating one another.  Honoring our parents is not an excuse for parents to beat down their children either physically or verbally.  Since history teaches us that we have seen it all before, we can surmise ha there were inadequate and abusive parents in ancient Israel.  God was certainly not endorsing that sort of parenting in that time and surely is not endorsing it in our on time. It is not the divinely-ordained endorsement of the old parental rationalization “because I said so.”  Instead it is yielding our wills and sometimes even narcissism to those who came before us.  It is realizing that our parents, whether they were good or bad parents, may have something to teach us.  

Videos of Pam and I @ Christianity 21

Pam and I were interviewed by Sparkhouse while we were at Christianity 21 this past weekend.    We also appeared on the 2nd hour of Doug Pagitt's radio show.

Can You Convince This Guy to Become Methodist?

Recently I had a conversation about ministry with a very creative person.  He was bright and could articulate theology in new and exciting ways.  Within his church, this expression took form both in his preaching, as well as the arts and music. Besides his creative approach, he was also entrepreneurial, having started a church and done quite well.  As we spoke, I shared my background and interests with him, which was very similar.  One main difference between us is that I am a United Methodist pastor and he is non-denominational.

At one point he shared that he had thought of joining a denomination, but wasn’t sure what if any advantages it would afford him.  I suggested he might want to consider the United Methodist denomination.

Then he asked me the big one.  It should have been an easy question for me, but it wasn’t. 

“So Don, why would I want to be Methodist?”

Stumbling a bit, I mentioned some of the institutional benefits like a guaranteed appointment and a pension (neither of which I have, but that’s another story).  In any case, it wasn’t convincing to my friend, since both of us believe tenure often rewards mediocrity.  I explained how Wesleyan theology was very close to his viewpoints, but he wondered why he couldn’t just have that theology on his own. I also resisted giving the standard answer people always gave me, “Oh we could use someone like you.”  I was never that into being used by an institution and neither was my friend. 

“No.  That’s not what mean,” he said.  “I don’t care about all that stuff.  Why would the United Methodist church be a good fit for me?  Why would it be the best place for me to do this ministry?”

I knew what he meant.  Here was this innovative entrepreneurial guy asking if my denomination was the kind of organization that welcomed those qualities.  From my own experience, I knew most UMC people would say they would welcome a creative self-starter.  Yet in actual practice, I have found the pressure to make such a person fit in can far exceed people’s best intentions.

Like me, my friend wanted to be in the place where he could rise to his greatest creative potential and where he could be who God created him to be.  I must admit I had to struggle to explain how the United Methodist Church, or any denomination for that matter, was such a place.   Sure I could have sold him on the institutional perks and explained that with a little skill he could learn to work the system, find back channels, and ways to bend rules so he could do what God called him to do, all the while defending himself from the suspicions and criticisms of his colleagues.  But how appealing is that?  How old and burnt out will he be when he masters those skills? Wouldn’t it just make more sense for him to follow God’s call and do what God is calling him to do?

As you can probably tell, I have mixed feeling on this question myself.  So let me throw this question out to all of you.  Without saying “We could use someone like him,” how would you convince an innovative creative and entrepreneurial person that United Methodism was a good match their personality type?  Or is it more accurate to say that the UMC is a great denomination for those of a certain mindset, just not someone with those traits? Do hierarchies inevitably squelch creativity?  Is the kind of innovation and creativity that works and is needed in our churches compatible with the UMC structure? For those of you in other denominations, is it compatible with your structure?

What in God's Name Are We Doing?

Once there was a man who wanted to host a Super Bowl party.  Unfortunately, he felt inadequate inviting people to his home since he was pixel-deprived. Embarrassed by his 19” screen, he desperately wanted a high definition television.  Occasionally he would drop into his local consumer electronics store to stare at the same football game playing on all the high definition screens, only to leave in disappointment.  Despite all his desire to enter the 16:9 world, his wallet couldn’t swing it.  They were just too expensive.  He would just wait until the price dropped. “After all,” he said,”Look what happened with DVD players. They started out costing over a grand and now you can get one for fifty bucks. ”

One day, as he passed by a usually deserted strip mall, he thought he was in luck.  In what was once an empty storefront hung a banner, “Discount Hi-Def TV’s!”  Immediately he swerved into the parking lot and rushed into the store.  It was as if someone had granted his impossible wishes.  There they were, 52” high-definition screens for under a thousand dollars.  Most surprisingly, they were brand names, Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba.  Giving it little thought, after all this was a no-brainer, he bought the biggest screen Sony TV he could find for under a grand, loaded it into his minivan and brought it home.

Things were fine for a few weeks.  The man enjoyed the his new HD television, watching sports and  movies all in stunning clarity. A few days before the Super Bowl though, things went awry.  One evening after work, this man sat down on the couch, clicked the remote and - nothing.  The screen didn’t come on.  No sound - nothing.  The next day he went back to the strip mall where he bought it, only to find an empty storefront.  The Discount Hi-Def store was gone.

The Super Bowl was approaching fast, so he went home, loaded the TV into his van again and brought it into a consumer electronic chain store.  Of course, they said they only repaired products bought from their store, but the man convinced the service department to take a look at it.  They carted the big screen into the store and a technician put it on a test bench.  

The man said,”I don’t understand.   I just bought it.  It’s a Sony.  They’re usually pretty reliable aren’t they?”

The tech just chuckled as he looked over the TV, “This isn’t a Sony.  It’s a cheap knockoff made in Vietnam.  They just slap a Sony nameplate on it.”

Even though he was disappointed, the man ignored his embarrassment and pleaded, “Can you fix it?  I really need to have a hi-def TV for my Super Bowl party this weekend”

“Hi-def?” the technician laughed. “This isn’t a hi-def unit.  They just take a standard def picture and blow it up to fit the screen.  It’s really a piece of junk.  Where did you buy it?”

The man’s heart sunk.  He knew he had been had.  Desperate to get what he wanted and valued most, he had been fooled by a cheap counterfeit.  He thought he bought a Sony, but it was just a piece of junk with a brand name he never heard of and couldn’t even pronounce.

There are particular qualities we associate with certain brand names.  We all know the quality that a Rolex watch or Gucci handbag represent.  We have all heard stories of people being fooled by cheap knock-offs that don’t live up o the reputation of the real thing.  A dishonest manufacturer puts together something cheap and slaps a brand name on the product in order to give it more perceived value.   A good name is used to fool people into accepting an inferior product.

God (not actual size)

A few months ago, we cleaned out a basement closet in the Heatley household.  This closet was primarily used for storing my old and now obsolete video equipment.  As our kids helped sort through the old items, they were confounded by such artifacts as VHS tapes and players.  Most puzzling was my old Motorola flip phone from the late nineties.  In their world of ultra-thin cell phones, such a monstrosity was inconceivable.

“How did you fit that in your pocket?” they asked.

“It didn’t fit in my pocket,” I explained. “I had a belt clip for it.”

“You wore that on your belt?  What a geek!”

I didn’t mention that, at the time, I also wore a pager on my belt so clients could reach me when I was out of cell phone range - which was just about everywhere.  This exhibit of the last century’s technology demonstrated how far we have come.  In the interest of convenience, cellular devices have become increasingly smaller and more portable.  Ironically, the more convenient we make them, the more inconvenient they can become.  Many of us feel we are at the beck and call of Blackberries.  They have taken control of our lives.  Portability has led to enslavement.

The same is true about God.  When we try to make God portable and controllable, we inevitably end up creating a false god that controls us.  In turn, these false gods become more important to us and lead us away from the one true God.

A portable containable god?  What in the world am I talking about, you may wonder.  To understand this concept, we must first look at how gods and idols functioned in the ancient world.  Some anthropologists theorize that many ancient  idols were in fact just representations of the values and traits of the collective community.  In other words, a group of people would develop a set of values, come up with a totem or image to represent those values (such as an animal), and then worship this symbolic representation of their own values.  The origin of these gods and idols was not from outside of human beings, but projections from within their own collective consciousness.

Many critics of the Judeo-Christian tradition would say we have done the same thing.  God is merely a projection of our own best ideals and values - and that’s the nicer critics.  However, such a criticism fails to take into account that built into our beliefs about this God is a self-awareness that humans tend to create gods.  It is as if there is a safety mechanism built into the Ten Commandments to keep us from constructing God in our own image.  As we explored last week, the commandments begin with the assertion that they have their origins not in our own best wishes, but in a source outside ourselves.

Have you noticed that people who believe in God tend to agree with what that God teaches or commands?  As a result, that god never seems to challenge them or stretch their beliefs?  When was the last time you felt God tugging on your heart to change your beliefs about something or someone?  When is the last time you felt God challenge you or your assumptions?  If it’s been a long time, it may just be that the god you believe in is not the God of Mt. Sinai, but an idol of your own construction.  Or it may be that you are trying to fit God into a manageable and convenient package.

Why Do Churches Need to Make Teens Cry?

This weekend I, along with others, am heading out to take seventeen kids on a Confirmation retreat.  Youth ministry is not my specialty, mostly because of my own personal aversion to it.  It’s not kids that bother me.  They’re always great. It’s the youth pastors and programs I have seen over the years.  Sometimes it’s due to a youth leader’s uncomfortable blend of neediness and ego.  Sometimes it’s the arrogant assumption that they know the kids better than the kid’s parents and as such these children must be saved from their families.  However, most of the time, the source of my squirming is the content of many youth educational materials.

As I put together the teaching sessions for this weekend, I relied on a denominational resource for youth retreats.  Overall, it was very good.  I selected a program with the theme of “Following Jesus” since I thought it would avoid all the heavy-handed emotional manipulation typical of “how-to-make-sure-you-go-to-heaven-if-you-die-tonight” curriculum.  I was wrong.

There it was, in the outline of the last session.  After a weekend of discussing the teachings of Jesus, fun activities and songs, but before closing the deal with an altar/campfire call and communion, there was the “make them cry” moment.  Wedged into a very intelligent retreat program was a reading to share with the kids about the forensic details of crucifixion.  Written by a doctor, it described in harrowing accuracy the physiological horror of this method of execution.  My guess is it’s supposed to make the girls cry while the gory details add a veneer of masculinity for the boys.  It was almost as if mainline denomination's resources were trying to emulate more Evangelical resources, in a desperate attempt at relevance.

I understand the need to discuss the suffering of God in Jesus.  After all, I just got back from a week with Jurgen Moltmann.  However this strikes me, not as a means to encounter the God who suffers with us, but a way of pushing the emotional buttons of teens.  Face it, you talk to a fourteen year-old kid about someone who died tragically and they’re going to cry and think it’s God.  Combined with the inherent sleep deprivation common to youth retreats, a more cynical observer would say this resembles brain washing.

This is not to single out a particular book since I have experienced this time and time and again.  For each of the past six years, our youth have gone a mission trip coordinated by a large Christian publishing house.  Each year, we are warned that the last night will be very emotional for the kids.  The worship program always includes a video that is melodramatic and sensational.  There is always an overtone of violence; clips from “The Passion”, testimonies about kids cutting themselves, or a horrible tragedy.  It works every time.  Afterwards many of the youth sit on the ground crying, consoled by their friends and counselors.  It makes us adults feel very useful.  But sometimes it strikes me as slapping a kid in the face just so we can kiss it and make it feel better.   In my evaluation form, I wrote that I found this emotionally manipulative.  A few weeks later, I received a form letter from the organization that parroted my comments back to me and said they were sorry the experience did not meet my expectations.  I think an airline once sent me the same letter when they lost my luggage.

My intention is not to bash youth ministry or even teens having emotional moments on youth retreats.  I had a few of my own campfire moments growing up and I turned out all right.  The teen years are certainly an emotional time and many of our teens are going through emotional struggles.  What I question is the church’s need to manufacture these moments through specious theology.  Why do we presume that unless teens are crying, the message of the gospel is not getting through to them?  Why is the gospel presented almost exclusively as merely a way to avoid a tragic fate? Most of our churches don’t treat adults that way.

When Jesus invited people to follow him, he did so by casting a vision of nets cast to catch people.  He didn’t titillate his audience with tales of poor Schlomo who died in a chariot accident on his way to hear the Sermon on the Mount.  He told open-ended stories about God’s reign and usually left it to his hearers to put the pieces together for themselves.  Why can’t we trust teens to encounter God’s Kingdom in the same way?

I would love to hear from those of you who work in youth ministry.  Have you had similar misgivings about the “make them cry” moment?  Are there healthier ways to form young disciples of Jesus, and how have you used them?  Where is the line for you, between honest emotional conversations and manufactured manipulation?  How do we honestly talk about the suffering of Jesus, as well all humans, without falling into this trap?

Who Says So?

There is an embarrassing social faux pas I make when I meet new people.  In an effort to be outgoing and say something nice, I meet someone, shake their hand, smile and say, “Hi!  Great to meet you.”  Unfortunately, there have been too far too many times when my greeting is not met with, “Great to meet you too.”  Instead, I hear the words, “Actually, we’ve already met - about three times before.”  Then there’s that awkward moment when I pretend that of course I knew that I meant that it’s great to meet you this particular day.   It rarely works.  The person is offended anyway. What I thought was a new aquaintence was actually someone who was already a part of my life.

Discovering you already know someone isn’t always an awkward experience.  Sometimes as adults we meet someone from our hometown, or school, and realize we knew each other way back when.  Or we meet someone and find we have a mutual friend.  That can a be a great feeling.  “How cool,” we think.  We already know this person.  They have already been a part of our life, even if we didn’t recognize it before.  We share a common story with them.

Likewise, when God gave the Hebrew people the Ten Commandments, it was not a first-time meeting.  The Hebrews were meeting the God whom they had not only met before, but this God had been already been working in their collective story to liberate them and give them a bright new future.   This is evident in the the very first words of the Ten Commandments, “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  

In Jewish tradition, this is considered the first “commandment”.  Actually it doesn’t sound much like a command.  That’s because the Hebrew word which we translate as “commandment” literally means “word”.  So Judaism speaks of the ten words or ten utterances of God. Although different traditions number the Ten Commandments differently,in the coming weeks we will be following the Jewish schema for numbering them.  So we start with the commandment that doesn’t seem like a commandment, yet is the lens through which we see all of them, “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” 

If you were God and you wanted to tell human beings how to live their lives, how would you do it?  Would you just give them rules about religion?  Would you tell people just to be nice to each other?  Would you ask for their input?  What would be the first thing you tell them?The first thing God tells people is not a law, but a proclamation of who God is and has been for them. 

Plant A Seed!

Once there was a man who wanted to be a gardener.  After reading about all the benefits of growing one’s own food, he was excited to get started. He cleared a space in his backyard.  He spent weeks reading books about gardening and watching TV shows on the subject.  Every night he spent hours debating in his mind which crops would grow in his garden. Sometimes, he would imagine what his new garden would look like when all the plants grew.  Tomatoes here.  Squash over there. In fact, he even envisioned losing weight and improving his health by eating all this self-grown food. Excited about his new hobby, he told everyone he knew about his new garden.  It was going to be great, he told them.  

When the harvest season rolled around, things were not great. It was a season of disappointment.  He went out to his garden, looked over the plot of land, and it was nothing but stark dirt.  Each day he went out and looked - still nothing.  This gardener had done all his homework.  He thought his gardening over very carefully.  He wasn’t lacking in desire. Unfortunately he forgot one thing.  He never planted any seeds.

I know it sounds silly. What could be more foolish than to think of oneself as a gardener but neglect to plant seeds?  I don’t know.  Maybe something like coming to church expecting to meet God or become more spiritual, but never planting the seeds of spiritual growth.  

Every Sunday, we gather here as the people of God to worship God.  As important as it is to celebrate God each week here, it is not enough.  Put aside his politics and outrageous statement for a moment.  I once heard Jeremiah Wright say that just showing up on Sunday and saying “See you next week, God” as you leave the building is like trying to lose weight but only following your diet one day week.  It doesn’t work.

Likewise, just coming to church on Sunday morning is vital to our relationship with God, but it is not enough.  We don’t gather here merely to fulfill an obligation.  We gather here to meet God.  For many of you, I believe the reason you want to meet God here each week is so can grow closer to God, and be transformed to be more like Christ.  Yet we feel stuck on how to do that.

Many of us want to grow in our journey with Christ.  There was something that drew us to following Jesus.  Somewhere in our mind, we imagined all sorts of things changing in our life, once we set out on way of Jesus. Yet at a certain point, we found ourselves stuck.  We were no longer growing.

 It may very well be that we stare at an empty spiritual field because, like that gardener, we never bothered to plant any seeds.  To be sure, by walking into the doors of this church, you planted a seed.  One seed is not enough.  In order to have the thriving garden of a growing Christian life, one must plant seeds continually.

It’s hard work planting those seeds.  That’s why you can’t do it alone.  It’s notable that many of Jesus’ parables used ecological images.  Seeds, farming, and crops.  In describing God’s Kingdom, Jesus rarely spoke of singular static entities.  He never said the Kingdom of God was like a solitary rock. He always spoke of God’s work as growing and always in relationships and community - the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan.  Seedlings grow together with other seedlings and cross-pollinate one another..  

Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like scattered seed that grows while we sleep.  Have we scattered any seed lately?  When was the last time you made your life a fertile soil in which God’s seeds could be planted?