Double Minded

It was a great week, or it was a horrible week.

Take your pick.

I met with the youth director of a neighboring congregation, had lunch with a bunch of other new pastors, had a great 'meet the pastor' meeting with some of my congregation members, got picked up by the Christian Century Blog network again.  I also had a fantastic dinner and conversation with parish members this Saturday evening.  A lot of good things happened.

And, I lost my billfold.

I am not sure when, and I am not sure where, but I spent the weekend trying to keep my mind on writing a sermon while making a list of every place I had been during the week.  I made phone calls and cancelled credit cards, and, alternatively, considered Jesus' words about suffering and rejection and greatness in the kingdom of God.  I looked under sofa cushions and mattresses, and I wrote paragraphs about disciples following, or not following, Jesus.

In last week's gospel, the disciples don't really understand Jesus' words about being rejected, and dying, and rising.  But they are afraid to ask.  And I attributed this silence to double-mindedness.  They didn't want to ask  Jesus because they were double-minded about following Jesus.  They wanted to follow him, but they also had their minds on greatness.

This weekend, I confess, that I wasn't single-minded either.  I was thinking of my billfold, and I was thinking of my sermon.  I was thinking of following Jesus, and I was afraid and worried and beating myself up with all kinds of words and scenarios.  It wasn't the actual process of having to cancel things and look places that was the problem.  It was the way my heart was so full of recriminations that there was barely room for good news.

The irony there is not lost on me.  Being single-minded is hard.  Maybe impossible, us being human and all.  As it turns out, I am no different than the disciples.  Jesus invites me to follow him in service, and see him in the small and the weak.  I go on looking for him in large signs and miracles.      He asks me to break the bread, and trust that it will be multiplied, in mouths I cannot see.  

I haven't found my billfold.  I'm still looking.  And following.

But Some Doubted

It's true.  I have known this passage of Scripture since I was a little girl.  I have known what it was called,  "The Great Commission", for almost as long.  I probably have those words written in the margin of a Bible somewhere.  Jesus on the mountain, Jesus giving his "last words" to his disciples, Jesus telling the eleven of them, "Go therefore into all the world and make disciples….."

How could I have not noticed those three little words for my whole life?  Were they not present in the Bible of my youth?  Could I have skimmed right over them for all these years?

"But some doubted."

Here's the scene:  It is sometime after the resurrection.  Jesus is on a mountain, one last time.  He is teaching his disciples.  They are all there (minus Judas).  Now there are only eleven.  And on the mountain, in his resurrected glory, they worship him.

But some doubted.

It seems out of place.  Jesus is just about to give a bold command.  Go into ALL THE WORLD, he will tell them, in the next verse, not just to the city nearest you, and not just to your family and friends.  All the world is a Tall Order, especially if you don't know how big the world is going to be.

But some doubted.

I wonder which ones?, I can't help thinking.  The scripture doesn't identify anyone by name, but I want to.  I want to know who was certain and who doubted.  I want to know if Peter, James and John are among the doubters, or if it was Matthew the tax collector, or Andrew or Bartholomew.  I want to know who doubted, and what it was they had doubts about.  Did they have doubts, still, about the resurrection?  Even though they have seen him, they still can't quite believe it.  Even though they are on the mountain with him, still…. how can it be true?  Maybe that is it.  Maybe it is the truth of the resurrection that they are doubting.

 I am tempted to believe that they have doubts about whether they can do what Jesus is going to tell them to do, except that he hasn't told them to do anything yet.  He hasn't sent them out yet.  He has told them to meet him here, though, so perhaps they are anticipating.  What is the next part of the journey?  Where are they going to go now?  What is Jesus going to say to them?  What is he going to ask of them?  They don't know yet, but they are worshipping…. and doubting.

I can't help thinking back to the parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  At the end of time, the King will gather the nations before him, and divide them:  sheep on the right and goats on the left.  But today, here, on the mountain, there is no division.  Jesus doesn't put the true believers on his right and the doubters on his left.  He doesn't give the great commission (Go therefore into all the world….) only to the worshipful true believers, the ones who never doubted.

Of course, there are only eleven of them now.  They are broken.  They are not whole.  And some of them are doubting.  Still, with the utmost confidence, Jesus tells them to go into all the world and make disciples.  And I can't help thinking that Jesus has a strategy here, a strategy in which the doubters will play an integral part.

The doubters have questions.  The doubters are honest about it.  The doubters admit that they don't know everything, that they don't understand everything.

In evangelism, these may not be liabilities.  These may be strengths.  At least, that's what I am starting to think.

This and the promise:  "I am with you always, even to the end of the age."  All the way to the end of the doubts, Jesus promises to be with us.  The eleven.  The worshippers and the doubters.

I Can't Help Thinking...

I didn't preach last weekend, which is sort of unusual for me.  I have come to identify the 2nd Sunday of Easter as "Associate Pastor Sunday", and Thomas and his story have gotten really really familiar to me.  I have defended Thomas from allegations of doubting, and pointed out that if all of the other disciples got to see and touch Jesus for themselves, why should it be a big deal for Thomas to get to see and touch Jesus too?  I have pointed out that Thomas was not with the other disciples on Easter Evening 1, but that he had returned to them on Easter 2.  I have noticed how the disciples cowered in that locked room, and how ultimately, those locked doors could not keep Jesus out.

I didn't preach last weekend, but I was listening, and I was studying anyway.  I got together with my Bag Lunch Bible study to read and reflect on this gospel reading.  As we were reading, I heard Thomas' voice, saying, "I will not believe.  Unless I see his hands, unless I can see those marks, unless I can touch them, I will not believe."

And I thought I could hear the whole world in Thomas' words.

There is a lot more skepticism in the world than there used to be.  There are more doubters than their used to be.  I know a fair amount of young people who say they are agnostics or atheists.  Or they are skeptical of organized religion, if not the existence of God.  Sometimes, it's hard to blame them.  Look around at the world for awhile.  Look around at the church, too.  I know a lot of good people in the church, but I know there has been a lot of hurt too.

So I heard Thomas' words, and I imagined that the world is looking at us, bearers of Jesus' name, carriers of his mission.  I imagined that the world is looking for marks, for some sort of sign.  Not nail-holes, but some signs of love, that we are willing to do something, bear something, suffer something, for the sake of love:  something real, something they can see and touch.

Sunday afternoon I was at a meeting at my church.  It was a rainy afternoon and there were about 130 people in our fellowship hall, from about a dozen different churches.  There could have been more, but people had many other commitments.  Some were actually setting up for homeless families to stay in our church.  But the meeting at my church was unusual for a couple of reasons.   People were telling stories of their lives, hard stories of juggling jobs and trying to make ends meet, stories of foreclosures with no recourse, stories of people living in fear of being deported.  There were representatives of both Latino and Anglo churches in the room, and they were leading together, and we were listening to each other, stories that could transform us, if we let them.

"Unless I see the marks, I will not believe."

Who can blame him?  Who can blame them?

And where are my marks?  That is what I am asking myself, while I am listening to stories, and praying that I will let them transform me.

Every Sunday is Easter

It has been a long time since I have gotten to preach regularly on Easter Sunday.  For the first four years of my ministry in rural South Dakota, I preached every Sunday.  But since coming to my current call, Easter has usually been the senior pastor's gig.  I have had mixed feelings about that.  I have felt wistful at never getting the experience of preaching to the large crowds at the first light of Easter morning every year; and I have felt (occasionally) a sort of relief that I didn't have the pressure of meeting my own extremely high expectations of an acceptable Easter sermon.

So, this year, the new senior pastor told me that I would be preaching on Easter.  Excitement gave way to apprehension as Sunday drew nearer.  I wrote and re-wrote, and thought and re-thought.  I considered the large crowds.  I am not proud to admit it, but I was having a mini-breakdown about my sermon, and how excellent I thought it ought to be.

I was doing a little pep talk with myself about it, trying not to think about the large crowds, and rationalizing, even.  "it's just like every other Sunday, really," I told myself.  Someone overheard, (perhaps even the senior pastor) and said:

"Every Sunday is Easter."

I've heard that before  Every Sunday is Easter, a little celebration of the resurrection.  Yep.  That's why we don't count the Sundays in Lent as being "of Lent".  That's why the early Christians designated Sunday as their day or worship in the first place.  All right.

But that's not what we meant.  At least, it's not what I meant, the more I thought about it.

Apart from the large crowds, what is it that makes the Easter sermon seem so daunting for some of us?  Is it what we imagine is the more diverse crowd, perhaps containing more skeptics than usual?  Is it that we might feel the need to prove the resurrection, somehow?  Is it the sense that, just as the choir has been practicing and building up for this day, we also need to save 'our best stuff' for this occasion?

"Every Sunday is Easter."

There might not be large crowds every Sunday; in fact yesterday's diminished crowds have already proved that at my congregation.  There might not be large crowds, but I'll wager that every Sunday you will have skeptics in your congregation.  Every Sunday you will have people who don't want to be there, are wondering why in God's name they are there, and are daring you to say something that will make them think, or feel, or change.

Every Sunday is Easter, and there will be skeptics every Sunday, some of them daring you, and some of them praying that you say something that will make a difference.  Every Sunday is Easter, and it is never possible to prove the resurrection, but it is always a good idea to testify to the difference that the resurrection makes in your life.  Does it?  That is the question to wrestle with, every day, every sermon, and in every part of our ministry.

Every Sunday is Easter, and you can't prove the resurrection, and there will always be skeptics, and sometimes the skeptic will be you.

And sometimes, the music is enough to get you through.

Not just on Easter.  Every Sunday.

Not Exactly An Easter Sermon

We pull out all the stops on Easter.  So do you, I'll bet.  We have the flowers, and the music, and the crowds.  This year we had an incredible liturgical dancer who carried the paschal candle throughout the sanctuary.  The Easter sermon was clear and dramatic and inspiring.

We pull out all the stops on Easter Sunday.  Let me be clear.  I'm not against this.  Not at all.

But may I say?  I have often noticed that the Easter gospel itself is slightly less clear, a little more fuzzy,  more ambiguous.  Take Mark, for example.  The tomb is empty.  "He is not here.  He has risen."  But Jesus does not appear.  And the women run away, and don't say anything to anyone.  Or Luke's story.  Again, Jesus does not appear.  The angels tell the story, and the women believe it this time (that's a relief, anyway), but the disciples think the women are stark raving mad.

No trumpets.  No singing.  Just an empty tomb, a message, and some questions.

This Sunday, the crowds are somewhat diminished, and the questions continue.  But at least Jesus appears, walks through the locked doors and the haze and the ambiguity to say to the frightened disciples, "Peace be with you."

Seeing Jesus isn't exactly a relief, not exactly.  It raises as many questions as it answers.  It complicates things.  For one thing, Jesus expects them to go out.  "As the Father has sent me, so I send you," he says.  And they must be thinking, "wait... as the Father sent you....but what happened to you?"

So you have to wonder exactly what Jesus meant when he said, "peace be with you."  I'm pretty sure that he didn't mean, "have a nice day."  I'm not even sure that he was talking about World Peace, although I'm pretty sure that Jesus would be for World Peace.  No, this has to be a strange sort of peace,  a sort-of "peace with questions."  It's the peace of the empty tomb, the peace of nail-scarred hands, the peace of "Surely God was in this place, and I did not know it."

We don't resemble Jesus, not much anyway.  I don't know how it is that he expects us to go out in his name, bearing his peace, bearing his life, crucified and risen.  I think he's stark raving crazy sometimes.

So Sunday I'll go to church, like Thomas, and I'll be muttering a little under my breath, looking for Jesus to show up, with his wounded hands, breathing on me, and raising me to life, despite myself.  I'll be looking around for signs of mercy, and the love that is stronger than death.  I'll be listening for some strong singing and some soft prayers and some Alleluias.

I'll taste the wine and the bread, and look into the faces of people who know me too well.  And I'll try again to tell my hope.

Christ is risen.  Yes.

Desperate Faith

Is there any other kind?

I'm thinking about those two stories we will hear on Sunday, the one about the little girl and her desperate father, and the one about the woman who is desperate enough to go out in public (she should not be out in public) and actually reach out and try to touch Jesus.

On the one hand, I can imagine the desperate father wondering what Jesus is doing, stopping on the way to come and heal his daughter.  Doesn't he know that this is a matter of life and death?

On the other hand, we know a little bit about the woman's backstory, how she has been suffering from this flow of blood for twelve years, and how she has spent all of her money going to doctors who didn't help her (but took her money, anyway).  If we know a little more, we know that her particular illness makes her unclean, and she should not even be out in public.  Can you imagine twelve years of isolation?  If I were her, I'd be desperate too.

She's breaking the rules, but what choice does she have?  She has no options, no other choices.  She is at the end of her rope.  Jesus is her last chance.

I think that all faith is desperation, in a way.  It's faith when you are willing to break the rules, or suspend your skepticism, or put aside your pride, because you just have to.  It's that important.  It's a matter of life and death, somehow.

When I was seventeen, I went through a period of pretty intense doubt.  This wasn't a personal crisis based on things that were happening in my family or in my life, but it was important to me.  I was reading and learning about the way the world really was, about evil and pain and suffering, and it just was hard to believe that God was in the world somewhere, because it was so screwed up.  How could there be a God? I thought it was a good idea to learn more about Jesus, so I read some of the historical Jesus books in the library, but I didn't understand everything in them (for example, what did that work "eschatological"  mean?)  The books made me more skeptical.

But for some reason, I was desperate to believe.  As much as I doubted God, I had this weird feeling that the world needed a savior (and that's exactly the way I thought about it, then.  Not that "I personally" needed a savior, but that the world needed a savior, because we had not gotten it right yet, and we were not going to get it right.  We were going to go right on killing each other.)

The same thing that caused my doubt, also fueled my desire to believe.

So, I reached out.  In some weird way, it was desperate faith.

"Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."

Is there any other kind?

I Came Home From the Confirmation Retreat to Preach on Thomas

Those two things seem to be related to one another.

Our 9th graders are preparing for their confirmation this weekend.  I was with them last night and this morning as they did some serious work, completing Spiritual Gifts Inventories, reading stories out of the Gospel of Matthew, doing some initial thinking about the Faith Statements they will be writing. 

Our evening devotions last night was called "Stations of the Resurrection."  It's based on a now-out-of-print book for teens with scriptures, prayers and reflections for different of the resurrection stories.  They move around to different stations and read the stories and think about the experiences the apostles had.

Their favorite story?  Thomas.

This morning one of the confirmands was looking for a scripture verse about doubt, or even questions.  She has faith, but she has questions, and she wanted to choose a confirmation verse that told her it was okay to have questions.  I told her questions are definitely ok, even courageous, sometimes.

Later on, we were talking about confirmation day, and the promises they will be making.  I told them that when they were baptized God chose them to be one of God's people, and that they had gifts to share with the church.  I told them that now they had the opportunity to publicly say that they wanted to be part of the people of God, part of God's mission in the world, and that they promise to "live among God's faithful people, to hear God's word, and share the Lord's supper...." (among other things.)

We talked about faith.... and doubt.  How some days when one of us is doubting, another one of us feels strong in faith, and how, when we gather, we help each other to keep going, keep following Jesus, even when we have questions. 

Tomorrow, when I preach, one thing I will say is that we come to church to hear the Word, but I don't think that's all we come to church to do.  I think we also come to church to see Jesus.  We come to church to see Jesus, if not in our own lives, in one another's lives.  We come to church because we want to know, again and again, "is it really true?"  Is forgiveness possible?  Can enemies really be reconciled?  Is Love really stronger than death?

I think that is what our confirmation students want to see, too.  They are looking at church leaders, their parents, the people they see at church, and they are not asking for perfection, but they are looking for Jesus in our lives.  Do we sing like we mean it?  Do we know mercy and do mercy?  Are we honest about our own questions, and our own failures, because we know that there is someone greater than our failures?

Tonight, I imagine those 9th graders sitting around the campfire, eating s'mores and telling stories and seeing each other's faces reflected in the glow.  I imagine that tonight they feel strong and committed to follow Jesus, even though they have questions, and even though they still (after three years) don't have any idea of all the places where Jesus might lead them.

Tonight, I believe that it is still Easter, and that Jesus is alive.  Forgiveness is possible.  Love is stronger than death.

Even if you doubt, join us tomorrow.

Especially if you doubt.

MacLeish, Kierkegaard, Camus, Jesus....

(Storytelling, part 2)
During my Senior year of high school, I took a year-long college-level literature course called "Honors English." I still remember the first day of class, because our teacher told us our assignment for the evening was to go home and read the book of Job. How often do you hear that in a public school? (Probably even less often these days).

I went home and read all 42 chapters of the book of Job in my confirmation Bible, which was the Revised Standard Version. The next day our teacher handed us each a copy of Archibald Macleish's prose-poem, J.B.

Thus began a year-long struggle with faith.

The theme of the play J.B., like the book of Job, deals with the question of suffering. Some of the lines from the play are lifted straight from the Bible. And both the Bible and the play raised what seemed (and still seem, to be truthful) unanswerable questions about God and evil to me. A particular recurring couplet in the play troubled me:

"If God is good he is not god/if God is god he is not good/Take the even, take the odd..."

I remember coming to my teacher with my doubts. To her credit, she took me seriously and said that the Christian answer to suffering might simply be to be present with the sufferer. At the time, that did not quite make sense to me.

Throughout the year, we read Pirandello, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Camus and Hermann Hesse. Our teacher gave us a lecture on Kierkegaard to help us to understand Camus' novel The Plague. We learned about Jung and the Collective Unconscious, and studied the Holocaust in order to read Eli Wiesel's book Dawn.

In the meantime, I was searching and questioning. The things I learned in Sunday School and at church camp did not prepare me for the things I was learning. They did not give me any ammunition to fire back at the unbelief that was creeping in. Not only that, my Sunday School lessons did not prepare me for the deep conversations I had throughout the year with Jewish friends, who asked me if I thought they were going to hell, and "Jesus people" friends who asked if I was "saved."

It seems funny to think about it now, but do you know what I did?

I went to the library. I found the theology section and I took out books about Jesus. I no longer remember the titles of any of the books that I read, or tried to read. I believe that some of the books were Historical Jesus books. I learned a little about Albert Schweitzer and the Search for the Historical Jesus. I didn't understand everything I was reading (including the word 'eschatology', which I heard for the first time), but I gathered from what I read that, in the end, the Historical Jesus was notoriously difficult to pin down. Some blamed Paul for Christianity. Others contrasted the Synoptic gospels (synoptic! another new word!) with the gospel of John.

It was a whole new world, and it didn't help at all.

The thing was, I wanted to be a Christian. I wanted to believe in Jesus, even though he was notoriously difficult to pin down. Believing didn't make much sense, but not believing made even less sense.

I remembered something my English teacher had taught us about Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish Lutheran theologian and philosopher. Kierkegaard talked about "the leap of faith" -- he seemed to think that finally, in order to believe, you just had to leap over the absurdities that were strewn in your path. (Anyway, there was something comforting about acknowledging that faith didn't always make sense.)

So I did.

O Me of Little Faith

Today I had a funeral at 11:00 a.m. I had a careful checklist of details to remember so that the service would go smoothly: turn on sound and fix up microphones, set lecturn Bible to lessons, make sure that the altar is set for communion, practice sermon and make corrections, put out pall for the casket. All of a sudden at 10:40, I noticed that the organist wasn't here yet! What?! I had just corresponded with him by e-mail, and suddenly I had the thought: yeah, but how do I know that he really did got that information about today? I dialed his cell phone -- and about 2 minutes later he walked in the door.

"Don't doubt me!' he said. "I'm always here!" This is true, but I explained that it wasn't him that I was doubting; it was email; it's a great modern convenience; sometimes I don't know what I would do without it. And yet, there have been a couple of times when someone has said, "What email?"

The truth is, though: it's not just email I doubt. There's a reason that the Youth Easter Sunrise Service caused me the most anxiety of any worship service over the entire year. It's because I did not have absolute and total control over everything that happened, including whether everyone would show up at sunrise. They always did. But still, I didn't sleep well the evening before Easter. O me of little faith.

My work requires me to work in partnership with other staff and with lay leaders on a variety of projects: worship, Bible study, service projects, youth. I know incredibly gifted people who bring gifts I don't possess. I feel privileged to serve with creative people, good organizers, great cooks, compassionate visitors, insightful Bible study participants and co-leaders. And I am also plagued with doubts: what if the communion servers don't show up? What if the microphones don't get turned on? What if the the visitors don't do their calls? What if....? well, you get the picture.

Of course, every once in awhile, something crashes and burns. But more often than not, everyone, including me, rises to the occasion. And I can hear my Lord whispering in my ear, "O ye of little faith, why did you doubt?"

Truth is, trust is one of the most essential components of human community, and also one of the hardest to achieve. A few people trust too much and too indiscriminately, but most of us trust others too little. We need each other's opinions, talents, strengths; we even need each other's failures, weaknesses and hesitations. I do think that's true.

And then there is the ultimate trust: the trust that even when life crashes and burns, even when those we counted on don't show up, even when we don't show up for someone else, God raises us up, heals us and calls us again, saying, "follow me.'