None of them knew Sara Little, but all were playing in the fields of the Kingdom, where the gospel that enabled Sara to set her own heart was making space for them to grow and to flourish. They too will have a long road to travel, a harder one, perhaps, than Sara’s. Still we should not forget the words of the psalmist, “One generation shall laud your works to another . . . .” (Ps 145:4) Sometimes we forget that. In the case of Sara Little, I am glad we did not.
May 8, 2009
One of the many things that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that continues to nourish me is the following: “ . . . that a person in the arms of his wife should long for the hereafter is, to put it mildly, tasteless and in any case not God’s will.”10 Resting in the arms of one’s wife ought to be enough for a man, one might think, but often it is not. We want more. To change the metaphor, it ought to be enough for the church as the “Bride of Christ” to rest in the arms of her Bridegroom, but again, so often we want something more than Jesus. What we are looking for is something more spectacular, exotic, even ecstatic, perhaps even a kind of divine gnosis that will clinch every argument and explain away every mystery.
Recently I attended worship at a so-called mega-church here in Charlotte. It has advertised itself as “Not your grandparents church!” And it promised to provide an “elevated” form of Christian experience. What are we to make of such a claim? I suppose that this claim is better than “Slough of Despond” church or “The Darkside Congregation” but it seems to me that either way the claim is about my expectations for myself. To be “elevated” here is to desire something more than the presence of Christ and being content in his service.
Not too long ago I was talking to a gifted pastor here in Charlotte Presbytery. He told me that he was looking forward to offering a new Bible study for his people on Wednesday night. He had worked hard on it and felt as if he really had something good to present. But he was distressed when the vast majority of his congregants signed up for the “line-dancing” course that was being offered at the same time in the fellowship hall. He laughed when he told me this story, admitting that line-dancing may actually have been a more attractive option than what he was offering, but still I could tell he felt a bit like a jilted lover.
We live in a culture that is in love with the transcendent, a celebrity culture that looks down on the ordinary. We crave excitement. Recently my wife and I went to the movies and 7 of the 8 previews portrayed nothing but car crashes, explosions, and various iterations of the end of the world. Like a drug addict, we need bigger and bigger hits, and soon cannot even see the gifts of the ordinary, the life together that sustains life.
Simone Weil has noted that evil is often depicted as glamorous while good is portrayed as boring. On the movie screen, a car crash looks exciting. But, she points out, in real life a car crash is not exciting but painful, disturbing, and wearisome. Similarly, the boring goodness so easily dismissed in a drama, is in ordinary life a delightful thing, a gift, endlessly creative.11
We are in Christ’s arms, and while we often long to be elsewhere, he somehow holds on to us, and in ways that continue to astonish, gives us himself through the ordinary, daily, enduring, often unexciting and at times too exciting gift of life in him. It would be in the height of bad taste to want to be elsewhere.
May 13, 2009
This morning at staff meeting, Susan Griner reminded us of some salient demographic facts. Hispanics currently represent 12.5% of our population in the United States; African-Americans represent 12.1% and Asian-Americans 3.6% There are more Jews living in America than in Israel, more Cubans in Miami than in any city except Havana, more Poles in Chicago than in any city except Warsaw, more Armenians in Los Angeles than in any city in the world. By the middle of this century a majority of Americans will be non-European.
What to make of all of this? First of all, I suspect these numbers are pretty accurate. Secondly, these numbers reflect my own experience and perceptions. Thirdly, what strikes me about these numbers is not their political or even cultural significance—I see them neither as a threat nor a cause for triumphalism—but their significance for the faith. Many of these groups (e.g., Poles, Armenians, Hispanics) have deep roots in Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. African-American worship has not only provided the spiritual resources to overcome years of oppression but has also shaped how the whole church has heard the gospel in a new way.
My very little point is this: though these changes may well take Presbyterians of European descent way out of our comfort zone, and though we may well find ourselves in a distinct minority (which, by the way, is not always a bad place for Christians of whatever stripe to find themselves), there is every reason to be hopeful about a future church that will be richer in its expressions of faith, more knowledgeable of the many traditions that contribute to the faith, and more open to ways in which the faith can bear witness in the future.
Some of the traditions Susan mentioned (e.g., Armenians, African-Americans, and others) have much to teach us about what it means to be in a minority and to confess the faith gladly.
Will there be a place for the Reformed witness in all of this? I believe there will be, though it may look very different from our world today. The Reformed tradition teaches us that the church is always in need of being reformed, and this not because we constantly have better ideas on how to improve it, but because we are a church that seeks to follow Jesus Christ, and therefore are a church that is saved not by its perfection but by his grace. Whatever else salvation will look like in the future, it will be a salvation that will draw us into the lives of those whom we have not chosen but without whom Jesus will simply not be our Savior. There truly is no salvation apart from his church! And this is so not because the church is the exclusionary condition but because Christ does not save us apart from others with whom he has stuck us. We are, by his grace and often to our chagrin, connected. Whatever demographic shape the future takes, Jesus Christ will be at the center, which is why we have nothing to fear about the future of the church, though, no doubt, we will have much to learn.
March 24, 2010
Last Wednesday night I was invited to speak to a class that meets at South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church. Matt Brown is the pastor there and Kim Lee, one of our students, serves on the staff. “South Meck” is a relatively new church located in the far southern reaches of Charlotte, housed in a lovely new building in the middle of suburbia. The people were warm and welcoming and made me feel right at home. What struck me about those who were there was their passion for living the Christian life faithfully amidst all the messiness of early 21st century American suburbia, and the variety of places and traditions from which these very different voices emerged. I would venture to say that most who were gathered there were not from traditional, Presbyterian backgrounds. Some were. But most were from some other tradition or even none: Catholic, Baptist, unchurched, even hostile to the church. Yet God had, in ways more mysterious than we usually note, brought them together and made them a part of the body of Christ.
As I listened to them talk, I sensed for the first time in a long time the miracle that is the church. It is so easy to forget that miracle or overlook it, but a Wednesday night gathering of this sort brings it vividly to life. They were hungry for the gospel of Jesus Christ. They may be hesitant to express that hunger, and their hunger may well be disguised underneath other names or claims, but they are wanting to be fed and are seeking to live a life that is faithful to the gospel that has claimed them.
When I was a pastor, I used to be more amazed than I am now that folk came to church. We often complain at how paltry and small our field of labor is, or how unresponsive others are to what we think important, but the fact is that people still hear the gospel gladly. They come. They worship. They will even come to hear you preach. That may seem like a small or obvious thing, but it is not. It is a miracle.
June 9, 2010
Since my youth, I have been a baseball fan. Growing up, my team was the Brooklyn Dodgers. After they moved to California, I lost interest in them, but before they left, well, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey were my heroes, as they still are. The “boys of summer” were my team and I can still recount for you