Looking Back, and of course, Forward

It has been a year -- a good and tearful, exciting and anxious year.  Last year, the week after Easter, I announced my plans to leave my pastoral position at the end of August.  The small group conversations and congregational letter set in motion a series of shifts and turns and momentous new experiences that have brought us to this vantage point for looking back. 

How has it been?  Blessed.
Has it been hard?  Of course.
Do I miss anything?  Lots.
Do I regret my decision?  Not for a second.

I had an important advantage:  I wasn't merely moving away from something; I was simultaneously moving toward something different.  Like Job, I had helpful and expert friends who were sure they understood.  "You are simply burned out.  Step aside, relax, and then move to another church."  Rest and relocation, they counseled with certitude, would fix me up in no time.

The only problem was I didn't feel broken.  Tired?  Guilty.  Burned out?  Well, I don't think so but I'm not the expert.  All I know is that all I found myself thinking about in my free time was this new direction -- and my "free time" was starting to encroach on the rest of my time.  I was eager to pursue this new passion.

Do I miss anything?  Yes, the relationships both professional and social.  I haven't moved that far away, but it's different -- as it should be.  We talk occasionally, various ones from the church; we have socialized a bit.  But those I used to see multiple times in a week I now connect with once every couple of months.  That is a hole that hasn't been filled.  For 19 years these people were my life.  I miss them.

I didn't miss undertaking a stewardship campaign, or nominating officers and ministry chairs; I didn't miss budget negotiations or the annual plea for help "undecorating" the sanctuary after Christmas.  But I was surprised at how much I missed planning an observance of advent in December, and much easier Christmas Eve was than I had expected.  I missed planning special lenten services, and Holy Week services were especially poignant in a way that Easter surprisingly was not.  Part of that might be that for 30 years I struggled -- largely unsuccessfully -- to persuade congregants to enter into the fullness of the Passion story instead of simply skipping from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection.  Easter, on the other hand, always struck me as too much pressure to generate too many fireworks for too many people for whom the breathtaking Good News of the Resurrection ought to have been splendor enough. 

And I don't miss the anticipation of the post-Easter and summer slumps.  My anticipation now is getting asparagus crowns planted and the garden tilled and divining how to get the rain water from the barrels conveniently to the furrows.  Those challenges seem, frankly, infinitely more fun.

Everywhere, Everywhere Pillars of Salt

Salt, I suppose I'll have to admit, is a little bit in my blood.  But that is to get ahead of myself. 

The Bible seems diabolically confused about this whole notion of memory.  On the one hand, much is made of the importance of not forgetting.  A whole liturgy, for example, is prescribed in the Exodus preparations to insure that subsequent generations remember not only what their ancestors had been through, but what the God of their ancestors had accomplished in setting them free from slavery.  Whole mantras are composed through which legacy is sustained -- "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor..."  One of the most heart-rending Psalms ultimately takes the shape of a paean to memory -- "How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!  Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you... (137). The Lord's Supper -- the Eucharist -- the Great Thanksgiving -- is, at its very core, observed in obedience to Jesus' instruction that we remember.  "When you do this, remember..."

Remember, remember, remember. 

But then just as often there is this opposing voice.  "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old" instructs the prophet Isaiah (43:18).  And the Apostle Paul -- "...this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal..." (Philippians 3:13).  Even Jesus -- "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62).  That last one perhaps reminiscent of what might just be the most damning image of them all -- the tragic example of Lot's wife who, departing with her family for a future of unknown shape and character, looked over her shoulder to catch one last glimpse of the past and was, for her nostalgia, summarily turned into a pillar of salt.

As I hinted at the outset of this reflection, I have more than a little sympathy of Lot's wife; prone as I am, every now and then, to moisten with a little sentimental nostalgia of my own.  Hence the suspicion of salt content in my blood.

There are, after all, important things back there in the past -- precious things; instructive things.  Why all this insistence on the future?  And what ever happened to that old "those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" piece of cautionary wisdom?

I don't finally know.  What I do know, however -- despite my tenderness toward its favorite parts -- is that "back to..." efforts inevitably create more problems than they intend to solve. Teaching church history classes the past several months, I have stumbled over too many stump speeches by one Emperor, Pope, King, reforming crusader, or another bent on re-burnishing and recreating the glories of the past, whose ultimate legacy was persecution, repression, war-mongering and small-mindedness.  Efforts to bring the past forward have always served only to set the present -- and certainly the future -- back.  Even a proud progeny, like myself, of a denominational tradition established by founders who wanted to "restore New Testament Christianity" has to admit that the admirability of their efforts was ultimately impossible to achieve. 

So when I hear preachers or politicians announce their intent to "restore America" or "bring this church back into its glory" or any other phrasing of such over-the-shoulder preoccupation/pandering, I get nervous.  Our future is not back there, no matter how good those old days were; and I don't care what any "majority" might think, there were plenty of "minorities" who didn't experience them to be all that great in the first place. 

It has often been said that the measure of a person -- or a country or an institution -- can be taken by whether it is viewed that his/her/its/their best days are behind or ahead.  People of faith might chew on that a bit.  It has always struck me as odd that we have always busied ourselves trying to replicate what God has already done instead of seeking to partner with what God is still in the process of doing.  Ultimately, though it certainly urges us to learn all we can from all that has gone before about patterns and consequences and the "mighty acts of God," biblical faith ultimately drives us forward -- to those "best days" that are still ahead; toward which God is even now "creating all things new." 

A Helmeted Brave New World

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” (Matthew 20:20-23)

I have lately been reading stories about parents, concerned about possible head traumas in their toddler children, buying these cutesy little protective foam helmets.  The kids apparently wear them most of the time -- around the house where a rabid coffee table might spring out of hiding, out for walks in the yard where a mole hole could hungrily and craterously open to engulf the unsuspecting sprout; in the grocery store cart where God only knows when a box or a can could plummet dangerously from a shelf.  They even come decorated with colors and little animal ears; all, I assume, in a subliminal effort to obscure how ridiculous they really do look. 

"Yes," such a parent might chastise me, "but the world is dangerous..."
"True," I would respond.
"...and the child is precious."
"True again."
"We simply can't take any risks."
Well, that might be further than I can go.

It's natural, I know, for parents to be concerned for their kids.  I have kids of my own.  We want them safe; we want them to be successful.  We want the best for them of whatever life might have in store.  The only problem is that we don't know what that is. 

There is mounting evidence that our almost neurotic war against germs -- witness the ubiquitous dispensers of antiseptic gel -- is preventing our bodies from developing their own (superior) defenses, leaving us more vulnerable than before.  Our herculean efforts to intercept every struggle, every insult, every challenge in the name of care and self-esteem are rendering us flaccid and incapable of standing against even the gentlest breeze; unable or at least afraid to feel what is real.  Perhaps Aldous Huxley’s hero John the Savage was on to something when he recoiled from society's efforts to encapsulate everything within a cheery, protective bubble in Brave New World: “I don’t want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness.”

 "You don't know what you asking," Jesus told the mother and her sons in the passage .  Given the ever-reliable law of unintended consequences from which we are not likely to escape, I suspect we rarely do. 

Hope, From the God of Second Chances

 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’
 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.(Jonah 3)

In the story of Jonah it is usually the whale who gets all the attention -- the "whale" or whatever aquatic varietal it was that gave the prophet respite from his travails; the text is altogether disinterested in precision.  Indeed, the story seems imminently more fascinated with the Ninevites' change of heart and Jonah's reluctance to invite it.  Nineveh, after all, was an evil place -- "wicked" to quote God's own assessment.  At an earlier point in my life, I colored in that rather ambiguous description in much the same way I imagined the prodigal son's "dissolute living."  Drunken orgies, sex, drugs and rock and roll; a kind of New Orleans Mardi Gras experience 24/7.  A Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Whitney Houston and Charlie Sheen sort of paradise. 

Older now, and having read beyond the anti-lusting, non-fornicational passages of scripture, I have discovered that what God seems to really find offensive -- evil and wicked, in point of fact -- has less to with personal indulgence and more to do with communal disinterest and disregard.  Despite tradition's rather salacious suppositions as to the nature of their "wickedness," the prophet Ezekiel clarified the particularities of Sodom and Gomorrah's offense: "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy" (16:49). 

The prophet Isaiah described true moral piety as letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke, sharing one's bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into our own house, clothing the naked and making ourselves present to our own kin (Isaiah 58:5-7).  Jesus said much of the same.  Despite our cultural fixation on what goes on in our bedrooms, Jesus identified disregard for the homeless, the hungry, the lonely, the thirsty, the naked and the imprisoned as the sure and certain pathway to Hell.  

The most likely diagnosis, then, of the sins of Nineveh is that the people there didn't care about each other.  Violence, in fact, is the only villainy named -- the ultimate act of putting one's needs ahead of a neighbor.  To borrow Isaiah's words, they didn't recognize their kinship.  Interesting, then, that community was the instrument of their repentance.  When they comprehended their iniquity, the King called his people together and organized a collective act.  It was to be a circle of remorse in which everyone -- native, livestock and immigrant -- would be treated as one.  Sack cloth, ashes, fasting from food and drink.  And witnessing their transformation -- from an "I" to a collectively responsible "we" -- God, too, repented. 

It made Jonah mad, of course.  Despite the fact that we depend upon second chances for ourselves, we routinely begrudge their extension to others.  "They" never seem to deserve them.  But given the level of partisan polarization so epidemic in our culture; given the moral, physical, international and economic violence we perpetrate against each other, the Ninevites' capacity to work together sounds almost Herculean. And if they can do it, maybe there is even hope for us.

Just When We Were Feeling Famished

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10)

Snow last Friday and rain today.  More of the latter is predicted tomorrow -- all of which is purposeful, if the prophet is to be trusted.  God sends the nourishment, he asserts, to accomplish rejuvenating and sustaining work, and will not be deterred until its done; though some tardiness seems to be at play.  I haven't heard an update in recent weeks but I surmise we are still well below our customary and seasonal watering.  Heavenly moisture is behind schedule.  The snowy-ice pack that in other years threatens Easter Sunday's crowded parking lots is this year a timid and blotchy veneer cowering in the shade.  There has been an eery and odd sort of mildness to the winter this year -- not altogether unappreciated in this more commonly frigid zone, but disconcerting nonetheless.  Is it a mere anomaly -- a gift of sorts as a respite between severities -- or an augur of new normals to come?  The answer is debated.

The prophet, however, is less interested in climate change than glimpses of the sure and greening work of God that reaches out and touches not simply earth and seed, but similarly the sower and the soul aching, in their own way, for signs of life.  Bread for the table, but the spirit no less. 

There is, I think, a kind of genius to the placement of lent each year in the waning weeks of winter -- days customarily gray and uninspired in which the ripenings of summer and the colors of autumn are all but ground out of memory by the grittiness of winter and the sheer exhaustion of getting by.  We are weary in these days, and wanting; anxious for blossoms, but schooled by frostbitten buds in years past not to get our hopes too high.  Late winter breeds a kind of numbness laced with low expectations that can even gray one's prayers. 

And then lent arrives to remind us that, whether or not we can discern it, the rain and the snow is accomplishing something vital...

...as is the Word of the Lord that is similarly soaking in, breaking open, and reliably -- assuredly -- giving rise to the very Bread of Life within and among us.

Just in the nick of time.

The Conservative Confusion of LIberals -- or Vice Versa

Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58:5-7)

I confess that I no longer understand the words.  "Liberal."  "Conservative."  They don't seem to mean much anymore.  The stuff that Isaiah is talking about, for example, sounds these days like the "liberal" agenda.  But as old as they are, as deeply embedded as they are in Judeo-Christian traditon -- making them, as it were, "traditional" -- why wouldn't they be considered "conservative"?

I understand that "fiscal conservatives" lean toward the tighter fist school when it comes to uses of money -- especially public tax money.  Having just spent time yesterday with our tax preparer I am certainly sympathetic just now to the idea of lower taxes.  That said, I am rather fond of public schools, police departments, fire departments, road crews and the like, in addition to all those "regulators" so disparaged these days.  I certainly believe we should expect the best of one another, but everyone benefits from the attention of multiple eyes helping us stay tuned to what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature."  Left to our own devices, any of -- all of us -- can be tempted.  The recent/current financial challenges of the nation and world weren't brought about because of too much regulation and supervision, but arguably too little.  And darn those mean and pesky inspectors who found deadly bacteria on all those millions of eggs a couple of years ago, making life miserable for those nice chicken farmers who were just trying to eke out a profit by cutting a few hygienic corners.  The fact is, we need accountabilities, and those who hold us to them.  Even football games have referees who occasionally throw a flag.  We may not always like their calls, but I haven't met many fans who seriously advocate their absence.

But I wander far beyond my expertise.  I am the first to admit that there is much I don't even pretend to understand about public policy.  Surely there is a balance between "liberty" and "supervision," and if there are those hyper-suspicious souls who nudge us toward the latter, I suppose we should be grateful for those more "conservative" types who speak up for the former. 

But more and more often these days the word "conservative" refers to advocates of certain moral biases, which I think is admirable.  I am a fan of moral grounding and morally guided trajectories of social interaction.  So I don't really mind the way that each of the candidates currently vying for the chance to unseat the sitting President is turning cartwheels trying to convince the voting public that he is the "true conservative." What surprises and confuses me, however, is that instead of sounding like Isaiah -- or Jesus, for that matter -- advocating vigorously on behalf of the "least of those" among us, and programs that feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and clothe the naked, and bearing persistent witness to the holy imperative to remember our intrinsic connection to one another; instead of focusing the question on how "I" might best embody and further such concerns as an expression of my calling -- priorities which I would have thought would be the true conservatism -- they sound surprisingly "liberal," flagrantly casting aside these ancient and traditional concerns in favor of trying to tell others what they can and can't do, who they can and can't love, and how they ought to take care of themselves.

I find it all more than a little confusing.  I used to be pretty good with words, but I seem to be losing my grip.  Words like these -- liberal, conservative -- just don't seem to make any sense anymore.  It's enough to make a guy surrender his sesquipedalian credentials and do something radical -- or old fashioned, depending on your bias -- like volunteering at the food pantry.  Or growing something they can give away.

Perhaps this is part of my Lenten discipline:  remembering, and getting it straight.

Breaking a Spiritual Sweat

Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.  (Joel 2:12-13)

The heart is usually the safest organ in the body politic.  We protect it as though it were the Holy Grail.  Ask me to change my clothes, rearrange the furniture or paint the walls, but please don't ask me to change me.  It has become a kind of truism that when a church recognizes the need to change it opts to revise the By-laws.  My guess is that the tendency isn't confined to churches.  "All of our problems could be solved," we convince ourselves, "if we could just hit upon the right marketing plan."   Or sign out front.  Or organizational structure.  Or fresh programmatic initiative.  This is the cosmetic surgery approach to transformation -- institutional Botox -- that views our only ills as superficial. 

I shouldn't travel too far down this cynical or condemnatory path without acknowledging that externals do have significance.  What we do matters.  But as Quaker writer and thinker emphasizes, the "outside" of us needs to be a accurate reflection of the "inside" of us, reflecting a wholeness that isn't intrinsically divorced.  It isn't enough to simply tighten up the wrinkles; we won't finally nip and tuck our way into spiritual order.  Better polling data and slicker brochures won't finally suffice.  Painting the nursery, for example, isn't nearly as important as more genuinely loving the kids who are brought there.  Posting "all are welcome" on the parking lot sign won't really matter if we don't, in fact, welcome all who come -- and "all" can turn into a rather colorful lot. 

That's why Jesus relentlessly called attention to the inside as well as the outside of human faithfulness -- how we pray in the closet, not just on the street corner; what goes on in our hearts as well as our hands; what we think as well as what we say.  Or as my favorite singer/songwriter David Wilcox once derided the misguidance of his parents, "you taught us well not to kick under the table; kick under your breath instead."  That wouldn't have flown at Jesus' table. 

And that's why the prophet Joel implored the people who were trying to get on God's good side not to tear their clothing as a sign of their repentance. It was their heart that needing tailoring, not their wardrobe.

But that, alas, is hard; and usually painful.  Couldn't we just sing cheerier songs or add some octane to the ceremonial flame and fizz? 

Not really.  Hearts, not garments; the very veins of my soul, not just my social veneer.  That, I think, is the message of which the season of Lent  -- and the ashes of this Wednesday that inaugurates it -- try to remind me; and why I begin it by taking such a deep breath.  As the garden is teaching me, growing anything I might be excited to eat requires care not just of the plant but of the typically less-than-perfect soil in which it is sown, and that usually requires breaking a sweat.