How Many Elephants??!!!...

I was listening to NPR this morning while completing mind-numbing early morning ablutions.  The question addressed was how much a hurricane weighs.  That led me to a number of follow-up questions.  Do female hurricanes have more problems with water retention weight than male hurricanes?  Do they weigh more if they have more muscle (so a category 4 is more toned than a category 2)?  Is there a healthy weight for a hurricane--one beyond which insurance rates go up or they have to buy more than one spot on the weather map?

But, seriously, this guy researched the weight of hurricanes--and here's the skinny.  Weight numbers are so large that the researcher decided to help listeners understand better by putting weight in elephant numbers.  (Weighing as much as an elephant...yeah, I can relate to that.)  One small, white, fluffy cloud--one--weighs as much as 100 elephants (that's 4000 pounds times 100).   One storm cloud which spends a good deal of time and energy "up-taking" moisture (kinda like eating chocolate or french fries)...the moisture this storm cloud takes up is 500 elephants PER SECOND (oh my), and the storm itself weighs 15 million elephants.  Hurricane Rita--100 million elephants.

We spend so much time every day in fear...worried about this and that...mostly things we can do nothing about.  I was struck this morning as I looked in the mirror and brushed my teeth with a comparatively microscopic amount of elephant moisture...this great God who holds up a cloud that weighs 100 elephants knows my name.

What do I have to worry about?

Risking our Lives for our Faith...

It's been a difficult week.  My frustration levels on some days grow like kudzu...even in one day they can overwhelm.  And most of the frustration revolves around money...money...money.... Money seems to wrap itself in a thick, sticky, impenetrable coat of fear, with a candy coating of anxiety just for good measure.  (And you thought M & M actually stood for something else!)

I know things aren't great.  10% unemployment is nothing to sneeze at.  But doesn't that also mean that 90% of us are employed?  Every church I know is panicked about budget.  Even those whose budgets are running ahead are not gratefully giving thanks, they are worrying that it won't hold.  Our collection of churches which constitute Salem Presbytery face the same issues.

So what can we cut...oh here's a good one--campus ministry.  In the midst of angst and depression about losing members...some half of our members in the last 20 years, we consider cutting campus ministry.  Is that really where we want to go?  Shouldn't we be raising those budgets?  Do we want to help our young adults stay connected with their faith journey?  Or do we mistakenly assume that we can ignore them in middle school because they are too hard and prickly to deal with, ignore them in high school because culture tells us they don't want to be involved with us, and then ignore them as they create their adult identities in college because we can't afford it?  


Mission.  Hispanic ministry really doesn't pay off.  They don't support the budget.  Never mind that Salem Presbytery's is the second fastest growing ministry in the country and a model for programs all over the country.  Never mind that we are called to minister to people and not profit from them.  Never mind that God has placed this ministry and the resources to serve in our midst.  Is our call to ministry or to fear, anxiety, and a bottom line?

New church development?  Not a chance.  We know that is not going to balance the budget and our last one didn't work, and we can't afford to risk anything right now.

Luke 17:33 challenges this stance we have taken, this choice we have made:
Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.


Things are difficult.  We are certainly not used to living in this kind of economic climate...this kind of fearful environment.  We are used to living the American dream of bigger, better, and more.  And as I see us frantically clutching anything to save our own lives, I see us also dying.  The harder we try, the worse it gets.  And so, I wonder...what if we lived as God asked.

So, here's where a wise man from Arkansas would say I'm moving from talking to meddling, but this vision is so under my skin that I need to say it.  If we were a tithing people, the PC(USA) could support mission to the poor and the weak and have money left over.  If we let go of our fear and let go of our money, God could do with us more than we can ever imagine.  The giving units just in my church, if they tithed on the median salary in this county (which most of us are well above), would be giving 3/4 of a million dollars a year to God's work through the church...triple what we pledge now.

People everywhere would give up everything to "suffer" as we here in the US are "suffering."  At our worst, we are better off than most of the world.  If I had a magic wand, which, of course, I don't...or if I could be elected dictator of the world, which, of course I'm not...or if I had any control at all, I would change things...

But, God is in charge, and God doesn't coerce like I might.  God asks--laying before us this vision...this vision of a church doing as God asks so we can do as God asks.  Are we willing to let go of what we consider "life?"  I would argue that, fundamentally, in our culture, life = money...are we willing to risk that life to let God work?

What kind of witness would that be to the world?  A tithing people would communicate a different message. We are not afraid.  We depend on God for our life, not our money or our things or our individualism.  We eagerly await and support the Kingdom in whatever form God brings.  We embrace our call to sacrifice--and God does not call us to sacrifice everything, but 10%...one dime out of 10, not very much, really.  Is that really even sacrifice?

It may not be much, but the way we think about life and money, it is risky.  It does require moving beyond fear and clutching and assuming if we don't hold tight, we won't live.  The question God continues to ask is are we willing to risk our lives for our faith.  The promise God makes is that risking death brings life.

I want the PC(USA) to be the institution that leaves behind all conventional wisdom about church.  I want people to look at us and see God at work.  I want to be part of a people who risk their lives for their faith and I want to see God at work in the trust we exhibit.

We don't need a marketing campaign to get "members."  We need to be the people of God--risking our lives for our faith.

Anyone want to take a risk?

BBQ and Sacrifice...

The Facebook post from my seminary-student daughter read: "'There is a fine line between sacrifice and bbq,' that is what I am learning in seminary."  Laugh here...but think about it some more.

Danger lurks in sacrifice as bbq...and great joy.  So on the one hand, the concept of sacrifice in the Old Testament was to be taken seriously...no fooling around.  If the sacrifice turned into an occasion for beer and brats, not a good thing.  The making holy, sanctification, of God's people was a gift not to be trifled with.

On the other hand, priests were allowed to eat the meat offered in sacrifice.  It was part of the support of the priestly class.  There were rules, but bbq was allowed.

So here's the interesting deal.  God's work to redeem us and the signs of that work are overwhelmingly significant.  Baptism is a powerful sign of God's love offered to us before we can even begin to respond.  Communion sustains us with the knowledge that God continues to work in and through us.  Scripture enables us to hear the voice of God.  Christian community gifts us with the experience of grace and forgiveness and the challenge to practice grace and forgiveness with others.  None of that is to be taken lightly.

On the other hand (again), God works in and through very ordinary people and elements to accomplish God's purposes.  The water of baptism is just plain water, communion is just plain bread and wine/juice...no magic.  God is so....well...God...that there is no way for us to know/see/relate to GOD.  But God loves us so much that God makes Godself known through the simple, the plain, the human.

So, there is a fine line between sacrifice and bbq...Thank GOD!

Seeing me...seeing thee...

Returned to classes yesterday saying goodbye to Saturdays for the next twelve weeks and hello to friends and community that is missed as the garage gets cleaned.  Luke 14:l5-24 was the peg on which the convocation speaker hung his remarks--the story of the dinner party.  A man invites many to dinner and sends his servant to tell them "all is ready."  They begin to beg off...work, family, life...all interfere with coming to the table.  So the servant is sent into the streets for misfits, homeless, wretched...all those who normally do not get invited to dinner.

Making the point in several different ways, the speaker challenged both our excuse-making and our outcast-inviting.  All are welcome in the Kingdom.  Do we respond or make excuses?  Do we bring the weakest and neediest in with us.

It was food for thought and food for nourishment because attached to the challenge was the invitation to communion...a dinner party at the Lord's table.  Elements were prepared, prayers prayed, and no one seemed to make excuses to avoid the table (OK...except me...does a wheat allergy get you in trouble not coming to the dinner? :))

BUT...the point was this.  As the row in front of me stood to go to the dinner...to be spiritually and physically fed with God's love and provision...the speaker's 8 year old remained seated.  She was not allowed by her faith tradition to participate in the meal.

I respect that there are differences interpreting these religious practices, and I know the arguments because I was a child of that religion who sat in the pew excluded from the feast for a good while.  The question kept hammering at my heart though...I hope she didn't listen too closely to her daddy's sermon.  She might have expected an invitation to the dinner...

And I wondered as I wondered about this later...what in my own practice do I not see?  It seems so clear that the child should be fed.  It's easy to "see thee."  I am looking more carefully to "see me" as the invited and as the inviting.

God, open our eyes...

Fall Cleaning...

Some people do spring cleaning.  I do fall.  Partly it is my job as we get ready to start graded Sunday school after a summer of intergenerational fun.  Partly it is necessary after being gone a lot in the summer and having loads of stuff "dumped" into my office for want of a better place.

I do it at home, too.  There is something cathartic about pulling dead plants out of the garden and detritus out of the garage.  The joke in my family is not to stand around too much or they will be out with the garbage....can't say that I'm not sometimes tempted.

I heard a radio segment yesterday about "people" who are given false information and then presented with a correction.  The overwhelming response is to "harden" their belief in the mistake rather than admit to being wrong.  Sigh...

When we believe in a God who has faced the worst possible consequence of wrongness--death--and prevailed, what are we afraid of?  My fall home and church cleaning is about half-way done. My fall faith-cleaning is going to start with not being afraid to throw out useless beliefs and open the way for light and air and Spirit to move and work in me.

Hurricane...

North Carolina is having a hurricane.  Last I saw, it was a level 4...perhaps to hit at level 3 if we were lucky.  The coast was battered most of the night and heavy wind and rain still makes its presence known.

My husband and I drank coffee on the back porch under a still, cloudless, blue sky.  The air was cool and the dogs spastic as usual.  Who would have thought a hurricane was even possible.

I am reminded this morning that the person sitting next to me on Sunday morning or standing in the check-out line at the grocery may be drinking coffee under blue skies or may be in the midst of gale force winds.  It's interesting that we can be so close and still so far away.

In the name of Christ...

To quote Anne Rice, renouncing the label "Christian" while saying she remains "committed to Christ."
In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay.  I refuse to be anti-feminist.  I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control.  I refuse to be anti-Democrat...My conversion from a pessimistic atheist...to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me.  But following Christ does not mean following his followers."


If anyone would like to quote me:
In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay.
I refuse to be anti-feminist.
I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control.
I refuse to be anti-Democrat (or Republican)
Believing in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me
     (and to the world, whether they know it yet or not.)
Following Christ means reclaiming the label "Christian"...
     not leaving the church to those who misunderstand who Jesus is and what following him means.