Claiming Hope In Spite of All the Evidence

".....and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.....(Romans 5:5)"

      A question.   When was the last time you heard someone go on about the notion that the Church is dying?  I'm willing to bet that if you're involved in a church somewhere, it hasn't been that long.  It's out there, isn't it?    The truth is that I hear it all the time.   It's whispered in pews, pronounced by pundits and dwelt upon by all manner of "believers."  
      Well, I want to say that I'm weary of hearing it all.  I know.   There's truth in it, and denial isn't going to get us anywhere.  But maybe truth is broader than what is merely true.  Perhaps there are more possibilities hidden in the folds of tomorrow than we can imagine.   Maybe the landscape we are walking on isn't what we think it it is after all.   It makes me wish I could have Mary's eyes when I gaze into the tomb.      
       So it is that I'd like to call a moratorium on doomsday language in the Church.   I would like to lovingly invite those people who are fond of pronouncing the church's obituary to take a nap for a bit.   For a period of one year I would like to issue a call, a dare, a double dog dare to everyone....yes including me... to stop the woeful shaking of the head and whining about the church's decline.   Is that possible?
      I wonder.
      I throw down this gauntlet because I believe there is a large degree to which all this gloom and doom becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.   Think about it.  Who wants to knowingly get on board the Titanic?  Who would choose to become part of a community who has no passion or sense of a possible future?   Why would someone invest time, resources, heart in an enterprise whose demise has already been scheduled?   The answer's obvious, yes? 
      I do think that what is needed is a new kind of truth telling.   Not the unvarnished member counting kind of truth, but the kind of truth that reminds us of what it is to hope.   By hope I'm not talking about a hollow wish that accompanies things like, "I hope it doesn't rain,"  or  "I hope the Giants take the Series again this year."    No.   I am talking about actual hope.   The willingness to individually ad collectively seize upon an unreasonable enthusiasm for a future we cannot necessarily see.    This is the kind of hope lived out in the life of Nelson Mandela, who spent decades in prison refusing to abandon the hope of liberation for his people.    This is the kind of hope that stares death in the face and shouts, "Resurrection!"  
     I have a deep hope for the United Methodist Church, though perhaps the evidence might be hard to see right now.   But then if there were evidence, it wouldn't be hope, would it?    My hope is that this Wesleyan people will claim anew the Resurrection power that propelled our spread across the world.   My hope is that, rather than chewing each other up over absurd culture war silliness, we will claim our common cause in a Risen Christ and go forward to heal a broken world.   My abiding hope is for a radical rebirth of our sense of mission and hospitality, our commitment to "social holiness," and simple joy rooted in our communities and in our faith.    These are some of my hopes.
     Beyond the cynicism that gets flung at us daily, what are some of yours?    Perhaps we can step into them together.

SR


     

Claiming Common Ground - Galatians3:28

I am such a newby!  Still (and always I hope) learning about this new ministry, traveling around, listening and sharing.   It is a new landscape on which I am walking, and it is beautiful.    In these early days I am enjoying first hand the beauty of the diversity of our District and our Annual Conference.   It is amazing.  Breath-taking.   We are diverse in location, in culture, in race, and in ethnicity.   We are even diverse in our theology, in the way we experience God's love in Christ.  

Everywhere I look, everyone has their own "thing,"  their own experience, their own perspective and agenda.   Everyone holds a piece of God's good work in their hands.

So, someone asked me the other day, with all this diversity and difference, what is it that pulls us together?  What is it that "connects" us in this great United Methodist Connection?    Across our geography and our experience there is much that can, and sometimes does separate us.     So, what then, draws us into the folds of community together?

Paul asserts that "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

Well, I don't want to disrespect the Apostle or anything, but I'm pretty clear that in Christ I am still a male and a pretty white Euro-American one at that!    Furthermore, I am fairly certain that anyone reading this would also claim their race, ethnicity, culture, gender and sexuality as core to their identity, even as they seek faithfully to follow the Master.

Here's what comes to me as I ponder and pray about all this.

Our cultures and our ethnicity, our gender and our sexuality are all gifts from God.   They are precious gifts that we are called to unwrap together in the context of Christian community.   Because we are "in Christ," do we surrender those pieces of our lives?  No.

In Christ, however, we have claimed a new common ground.    In Christ, enriched by our diversity, we have claimed the powerful truth of Christianity.   And that is, that when we pour ourselves out for others.   Redemption happens.

When God gave God's self for us on the Cross, we were redeemed, yes?   That's our story.   But it doesn't end there.   We are called to go and do likewise, pouring ourselves out for others in love as we spread redemption across the land.    God in Christ has given us the Resurrection story to live out using the powerful gifts of culture, ethnicity, race and gender.

Our call is to claim this common ground of self-giving love in Christ while we celebrate and learn from one another.   Our call is to go out into the world and share this redemptive, self-givng love until the whole world is transformed.

So let us treasure these precious and holy gifts of culture, ethnicity, race, gender and sexuality.
Let us claim this common ground of self-giving love and pour our whole selves out for the healing of the world!

Let's step into a new day of a unity, not based on making everyone the same in some bland template of religion.   Let's step instead  into the powerful giftedness of who we are together in the self-giving love of Jesus Christ!

I look forward to the joys and challenges, the laughter and the wonder of being with you as we travel this path together!   SR

Reflecting on Christian Community

Reflecting a lot lately on Christian community.  As I have stepped away from one community and am entering something totally different, the prayers and the thoughts reverberate and push.  And so I sit down and try to articulate.

Christian Community.

If it's real, it is always incarnational.    And I believe that a journey toward "real," or authenticity is one to which we are called in this time.   You see, I think we are not merely Church.  Or at least we should not be so.    I believe that when we travel toward "real,"  toward authenticity, we truly become the Body of Christ, returned and let loose in the world to foment justice and healing;  hope and salvation.   Folks who resonate with thoughts of the Second Coming might want to consider that this reality depends literally upon our current faithfulness.

When we are authentic Christian Community, the Body of Christ rises up in power.

We refer often to ourselves as the Body of Christ, but seldom connect the dots, but there it is.   

In this Resurrection Body, there is precious little room for our own narrow desires and agendas.  This Body has purged petty quarrels and silly arguments.  It has moved beyond the tyranny of what we want.   This Body is focused upon pouring out its life for others in the same way Christ poured his life out for us. In this Body, we are concerned with the transformation of the world as we spread God's love by example,  witness, through service and through an abundant amount of joyful laughter.   

I close this tempered rant with words from Romans 12 as offered by Eugene Petersen in "The Message."

".....The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what God does for us, not by what we are and what we do for God.     In this way we are like various parts of the human body.   Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around.  The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people.  Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body.   But as a chopped of finger or cut off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we?  So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be....."