Not Head Vs. Heart

I've been reading and praying and thinking about the book of James all this month, calling James's letter "Practical Christianity", both in my head and aloud.  "James is practical Christianity," I've been telling my congregation, week after week, with his advice about taming our tongues, putting faith into action, taking care how we treat one another, how we treat others.

However, when I think of this week's subject, healing prayer, the word "practical" does not immediately spring to mind.  Is it "practical" to pray for healing?  Or is it more practical to make an appointment with your doctor?  What does it mean to include this last segment in James' letter in a series about practical Christianity?

When I was growing up, we did not pray for healing, at least not overtly.  There were no special services for healing in my church.  There were no special liturgies for healing in our prayer book.  Somewhere along the line I heard rumors that the Pentecostals did, indeed, pray for healing, but we didn't.

And then, somewhere along the line, that changed.  At first, the change was just in the books for pastors.  There was an option to do a "Service of the Word for Healing," if you wanted to.  Who wanted to?  As it turned out, some people wanted to pray for healing, maybe not exactly the way the Pentecostals did, but somehow.  And now, with our more recent hymnal and prayer book, the service for healing is right there, where everyone can see it.

What changed?  Is it practical?

I was talking about this with a friend one day last week, thinking about my own faith tradition, and how much our faith has become a product of the Enlightenment.  We have fully embraced scientific methods and reading the Bible historically.  I had the opinion that perhaps faith had become too much about thinking the right things.  Perhaps a service of healing brings the heart and feeling back into faith.

Head Vs. Heart.

It seemed right to me.  Faith can't stay in your head.  It has to get down to your heart.  In fact, someone said to me once, after a healing service that, "If was the first time he had felt anything in church in a long time."  That seemed to seal the deal.


But it was not more than a few minutes later that I realized that I was wrong.  First of all, I don't think that we want to "turn off our brains" in the 21st Century.  And I don't think that it is the presence of feeling that makes healing prayer services so compelling.

Maybe it's this:  services of healing proclaim the truth that God does not just care about our souls, but about our whole lives, including our bodies.  God cares about our whole lives, and right now, not just later  God cares, and we also care for one another, body and soul and strength and mind.

Faith is not a head trip.  Faith is not a heart trip either.  Faith is a whole-life trip, a whole-body trip.

In my last congregation, we offered prayers for healing once a month, at the close of the service.  One of the pastors always went to the doors, to greet the people who were leaving.  And one of us always stayed back, with words and anointing oil, to pray for people who came forward.  And so often there was a long line, people who wanted me to pray for them, or for someone else they knew.  There was one woman who always came up and prayed for our congregation.

We take our whole lives, and we offer them to God, and we pray for God to heal them and use them, somehow.  And we pray for healing for our politics, and our families, for our inner lives, and our communities.  There is not one part of us that we leave outside of God's influence.

God and Country

When I lived in Japan as a missionary many years ago, I heard a lot of stories.  I heard stories of Japanese Christians, and how they came to faith.  Some of the stories were from the time immediately after Japan lost World War II.  It was a time when the Japanese people did a lot of soul-searching.

I heard one story about man who had been in the military during World War II.  I no longer remember his position, but I still remember the American pastor pointing to the pew where this man always sat, every single Sunday.  He threw away his Shinto "god-shelf" when he became a Christian.  He no longer venerated his ancestors as you were bound to do, as a good Japanese man.  He was all in.

What had finally convinced him of the truth of the Christian faith?

It was the story of the creation of the world.  The Shinto religion only had a creation story for the creation of Japan.  But the Christian faith -- their creation story told of the creation of the whole world.  Therefore, the Christian God must be the greater God.  The Christian God is the God of the whole world, not just one country.

The Christian faith is a tiny minority in Japan.  All of the churches where I worshipped were small, just fifty or sixty people making a congregation.  Yet there was a witness of the good news in Japan, good news of great joy to all the people:  not just one country.

After three years of living and working in Japan, I returned to the United States.  I remembered this man's story, although I'm not sure exactly why.  Perhaps it was so odd to me.  I am used to testimonies that focus on the grace of God in Jesus.  I'm used to hearing stories that focus on personal redemption.  And all of that might have been there.  But the final piece of the puzzle for this man -- was that the Christian God created the whole world.  A god bigger than his country -- that was a god he would follow.  A God who created the whole world was a god worth believing in, a god worth following.

A God who created the whole world.  A God who loves the whole world.  Not just one country.  That is the God we confess when we come to church every Sunday.  That is the God we claim to follow.  So as much as I love my country, as much as I love this place I call home, I have to believe that God has wider concerns.  God loves the people fleeing violence in Central America, the displaced children in Syria, people who are starving, no matter their country.  God wants them to be fed.  God wants them to know God's love and grace.

In the Scriptures there are stories of a promised land and a chosen people:  Abraham and Isaac, and the nation of Israel.  But the chosen people were always set within a larger story:  the story of a God who created, and loves, the whole world.   Not just me, but you.  Not just American children, but children from Syria, children from Guatemala, children who are hungry, children who are afraid.  Wherever they are.

Tonight I am thinking about that Japanese man, the one who threw away his god-shelf and went all-in, who never thought that being Japanese and being Christian were the same thing.  Maybe it was easy, in a country where there were only a few Christians.  But even here in the United States, where there are many more Christians, I think we need to make a distinction.  I need to make a distinction.  I need to throw away my god-shelf and go all in.

I believe in a God who is bigger than my country.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Long ago, I was a missionary.  I lived for a time in a country where only a small minority of the people were Christian, where I could not assume that most people understand the shorthand expressions that I used to talk about my faith.  If I thought about the water and the new life that came from it, I couldn't assume that people would make the connection with baptism.  The words "justification" and "redemption" did not roll off the tongue; Bible stories like The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan didn't make people nod in recognition.

I was a missionary in Japan.  To say the word "missionary" makes me cringe, a little.  I wonder what most people think of when they hear the word.  Do they think about missionaries who brought not only the Christian faith but also colonial ways and intolerant views?  Do they think of people who were actually more interested in claiming the country for their own purposes than they were about teaching about the love of Jesus?  Do they think about all of the stereotypes of superiority, lack of curiosity, and meanness?

Here's what it meant to me to be a missionary:

It meant being curious.  When I arrived in Japan I knew almost no words of Japanese.  I had tried to take an evening class in the spring before I left.  But I could not get any Japanese words of grammar to stick in my head.  It was too strange to me, a language I could not get my brain around.  I remember walking around a lack with a friend who had grown up in Japan.  She patiently tried to teach me sentences.  Every word fell back out of my head.  So when I arrived in Japan, I had everything to learn.  I needed to learn to take the trains and the subways, to take off my shoes when I went inside, to eat with chopsticks and to bow at the right time.  I needed to learn some Japanese.  I needed to find things at the grocery store.
I needed to be curious and to listen.

It meant being humble.  There was so much to learn, and there were so many opportunities to make mistakes.  Not just mistakes in speaking Japanese, but mistakes in understanding, mistakes in living.  To live in another culture is to be learning all the time.

It meant being an outsider.  In Japan, I always stuck out.  I never fit in.  No matter how much I tried, I would always be, in some sense, a stranger.  I could learn to wear the kimono and I could learn to speak Japanese well, but in so many ways, I would never fit in.  There is something lonely about that.  And it was tempting, at those times, to retreat into the missionary community, where understanding came somewhat easier, and where I felt I belonged.  But to do that would have been unfaithful.

It meant thinking outside the box.  I found that the missionaries I knew, whether pastors or lay missionaries, were some of the most creative people I knew.  They were interested in how theology and their own culture and the culture of the place they lived intersected.  They wondered about where the boundaries were:  what were the things that needed to stay constant and where did message of the gospel need to be creatively re-imagined so that the people could hear it?  What does "I am the bread of life" mean to people for whom bread is not a staple? What does the word "God" mean in a language where god is called "kami" -- and there are thousands of them?

It meant being transformed.  I know that I went to Japan thinking that I would transform lives.  I went bearing that hope.  But there were very few baptisms when I was there.  Instead, I came to believe that the Holy Spirit was planting seeds, and who knew what would happen?  Instead, the Holy Spirit was transforming me.  I was different kind of Christian when I left Japan than when I had arrived.

I remember one Sunday afternoon after returning home, that I sobbed with some kind of pain.  I'm not even sure all of what it was.  But I think that while I lived in Japan, I had a sense that I knew what my life was for.  I knew that every single thing I did had a purpose, even though I didn't know how God was using it.

I remember being sure, so sure, when I returned to the United States, that everyone was supposed to be a missionary, right where they were.

But I'll tell you what:  I wasn't sure exactly how anyone, including me, was supposed to do it.  People weren't going to come up to me on the street and ask me "what are you doing here?", like they did in Japan.  It was so obvious that I was a stranger.  Now, it was not.

Now, my congregation is reading a book about the church, and culture, right here in the United States.  The author makes no bones about the fact that we are called to be missionaries.   Fewer and fewer people know the language and the symbols and the images of faith.  People speak a different language.  That is not a bad thing.  But it means that the church needs to be curious, and bilingual, humble and creative.  It means that the church needs to be transformed.

That might be the hardest thing of all.

How I Learned Japanese

I have been thinking a lot lately about my time as a missionary in Japan long ago.  I am not sure exactly why.   My memories of that time are hazy, but lately one of my missionary friends has been posting pictures of those days.  So that might be the reason.  Or it might be that as a Minnesotan living and pastoring in Texas, I feel some sort of culture shock again.  I am remembering what it was like to be a missionary.  What was it like being a missionary?  How is it like or not like being a pastor in a new place?

My actual job description was to teach English to Junior and Senior High School boys.  So even if they spoke Japanese to me, I always spoke in English to them.  A fair amount of the adults I knew also could speak some English.   In some ways we used English as a strategy to preach the gospel.  During the evenings we would host English Bible studies with groups of interested people.

We did learn a little bit of Japanese before we began our work.  We learned some basic sentence structure and key words.  But (I'm not proud to admit this) it was easy to avoid using Japanese in many cases.  Many people were eager to practice their English with us.  I was shy and self-conscious about making mistakes.

Except that if I didn't learn Japanese, I couldn't talk to the children.

Not my students, the little ones at the yochien (pre-school) that was connected to the church.  As far as I knew, none of those children were Christian, but their parents thought Christian pre-school was a good idea.

I wanted to talk to the children.  

So I learned Japanese.

I wanted to know the things that only the children could tell me:  about their lives, whether they had a dog, what was the picture they were drawing.  I wanted to know what they were learning in pre-school, who they were mad it, who they loved best.  I wanted to know what was their favorite color, if they had a dog, whether they were afraid of the dark.

You know, all the important things.

So I learned Japanese.

It wasn't like my English Bible Studies.  There wasn't an agenda.  I just wanted to know them, to talk with them, to learn about their lives.  I was curious.

I don't think I have ever known how to be a pastor without the children.  It's not that I don't think it can be done:  after all, there are plenty of good chaplains in nursing homes.  But in the same way that I learned Japanese from the children, I have learned how to be a pastor from children as well.

I have learned to be curious.  I have learned to listen.  I have learned to laugh.

I still have a few gifts I received from the children.  Hand-made things.  It's been a long time, so I no longer remember their names.   I don't even remember their stories.  I'm sad about that.  But I remember sitting down with them at the low Japanese tables, eating sweets and chattering together.  

I wouldn't have learned Japanese without them.

And for some reason or another, I can't be a pastor, or a missionary, without them either.

From My Missionary Days

This week's gospel reading has to do with being salt and light, and for some reason, it makes me think back to my days as a missionary in Japan.  I suppose when I considered what in God's name I was doing over in Japan being a missionary, I more often thought of it that way:  I may not be making great big visible waves (I thought), but I was being salt and light by being God's person in Japan.

But when I start thinking back to those days so long ago, I also remember a particular passage of scripture.  It was the scripture verse that I used for one of the only two sermons I preached in Japan.  It was a scripture verse from Ephesians 2, about how Jesus has broken down the walls that separate us, and made us into one people.

Of course, the author of the letter to the Ephesians is referencing two particular groups:  Jews and Gentiles.  They were divided by culture and religion.  The Gentiles were regarded as far away from God.  There was a 'dividing wall of hostility' between them.  But, not any more.  Jesus reconciled them to one another on the cross.

Think about that.  Jesus reconciled them not just to himself, but to one another.

So, I'm thinking about dividing walls of hostility right now.  And not just that great big long expensive one that the President wants to build on the southern border.  And actually, not even primarily that one.  I am thinking about all of the other dividing walls of hostility that there are, even though Jesus says that through his cross, they don't exist.

I recently saw a message on social media about how terrible it is to care more about refugees than it is about homeless veterans.  And I thought:  who told us we had to choose?  Someone is erecting a dividing wall of hostility, and to what end?  There is the wall between the women who marched and the women who did not think it was necessary to march.  There are walls between immigrant and native, documented and undocumented, and Christian and Christian.

I was not born yesterday.  There are real differences between us.  There are things that each of us are right about, and wrong about.  But you know what?  There are also fake differences between us.  We really are all in the same boat.  We all bleed, we all fall down, we're all going to die.  We are also all beloved by God, for some strange reason.

Another person wrote on a social media post that he is not going to care about refugees because, "their lives are not more important than mine."  All right.  But their lives are not LESS important than mine, either.

I am a person of privilege.  I have never been a refugee.  I have never had to flee my home.  In fact, for most of my life, I have fit in with my surroundings pretty well.  But for a few years I at least knew what it felt like to be a stranger, a foreigner whose tongue tripped over the new words she was learning, who often got lost and had to rely on the kindness of strangers, who stuck out where-ever she went.

And I tell you what:  that experience made me cling to the cross, and find my hope in the demolition of those dividing walls.  For in all of our beautiful diversity, and for all that we refuse to see it or believe it, it is still true that we are no longer strangers or sojourners, but we are children of God, with Christ himself the cornerstone.

Some Lessons Take A Long Time to Learn

Sometime this afternoon,  I got a "friend" request from someone on Facebook.  I did not recognize the name, for a variety of reasons, one of which was the name was written in Chinese script.  I saw that we had one friend in common, another missionary friend of mine from thirty years ago when I lived in Japan.  Still, I really did not recognize the name.  I couldn't pronounce the name.  I no longer read Japanese.

So, I sent this person a message, asking them this question, "Are you one of my former students from Japan?"

He sent me back a message, writing his name in English letters and saying that he was both a student at the high school, and that he also attended the church to which I was assigned.  Did I remember him?, he asked.

It was thirty years ago.

His name did sound familiar though, even after thirty years, and even though I don't have very many particularly vivid memories left.  I remember the 7th grader who taught me the Japanese word for "Thief", on the first day of school, when I picked up the pencil from his desk to use as a visual aid.  "This is a pencil", I said.  "This is a 'dorobo (thief)", he replied.   I remember a young girl who couldn't remember the difference between "Chicken" and "Kitchen" in English.  She would always sing the "Kentucky Fried Chicken" song to help in remembering.  I remember that I would have simple Bible Studies in English before church sometimes.

So, I accepted his friend request.  Then, he sent me a message back, thanking me, and telling me one thing, which was a gift.

He told me that a year after I left Japan, he was baptized, in another Lutheran church in Kumamoto, the city where I lived.  Another one of my students (I learned) is the pastor of this congregation.

I went to Japan, following the call of the Holy Spirit (so I thought).  Jesus wanted me to go and help him make disciples, so I thought.  I did not know how to do this, but I trusted Jesus, at least some of the time.

But we were not making conversions right and left while I was there.  Many people were interested in Christianity, but not so many seemed interested in actually becoming Christian.  Perhaps we were failures (so I thought).

When I found out that my former student had gotten baptized, I said, "That's wonderful!"  to which he replied, "Yes, God led me."

Thirty years ago I was a missionary in Japan.  I kept telling myself that I was planting seeds, and that God was changing lives, whether I could see it or not.

Thirty years later, I am a pastor, and I am in a new place.  I am impatient.  I want to see things happening in my new community.  I am looking around for signs of some kind or another.  A good old fashioned baptism would be just the ticket.  But I am planting seeds, and (the Holy Spirit reminds me), God is changing lives.

Thirty years later, I am a pastor, and God is reminding me again about what the church is for.  It's not for programs (although we may have them) or potlucks (although they are delicious), or just to add more people to do the work I want to get done.  The church is for changing lives, whether I can see it or not.

"Yes, God led me," he said.

God, lead me too, I will pray, tonight.

Language School

When I was learning to be a missionary in Japan, I went to language school.  Five mornings a week, we got together in small classes with only about eight students in each classroom, because the emphasis was on oral language learning and drills.  There, we met missionaries from other traditions as well as students in Japan for more secular pursuits.

Eventually we would go to our assignments, either as pastors or as English language teachers.  But for now our main responsibility was to learn the language, at least enough to get started at communication and relationships.  Our language classes did not give us the ability (for example) to understand or speak in religious terms, but we learned to ask questions and understand the answers, and we learned some basic sentence structure and vocabulary.  After six months were were launched into our prospective vocations, where we would (presumably) continue to learn Japanese at the same time we were sharing the gospel.

I think language school is a good idea.  I sort of wish I had language school right now.

I am about to leave the congregation I have served for 17 years.  This congregation is located in a part of the country where I grew up.  I know the culture here so well that perhaps I take it for granted.  I am an expert on the upper Midwest, its language and its idiosyncrasies.  I know that you can call a casserole a "hot dish" and that it is all right to invite someone to go along with you somewhere by asking the question, "Do you want to come with?"  I know that you should not park on certain streets after it snows.  I know the variations of city, suburban and rural life here.

My new church is in an area of the country I have only visited a couple of times.  They have alligators there.  And they don't have winter, really.  Different flowers bloom at different times.  I know I will have to learn to say "you all", and I suspect that "you all" is just the tip of the iceberg.

I sort of wish I had language school, a time set aside to learn the language, but not just the language.  One of the things I remember about the time of "language school" was the time spent doing other things:  the afternoon we spent at a sumo wrestling match, the time I got lost because I took the wrong train, wandering around Shibuya station one day and seeing the statue of "Hachiko", the famous dog that waited for his master every day.  I remember going to Yokohama and eating octopus, visiting parks and admiring tea sets, learning to read, but not just the language.

I am pretty sure that I never really mastered Japanese, although I did improve over the years.  I may be fooling myself as well that I have mastered "Midwestern", too.  I have lived here most of my life, and perhaps I take it too much for granted.  Now, traveling to a new place, I suspect that I will be learning a new language, one that I will not master, although I hope to improve.

I don't have time set aside for "language school" this time, but perhaps it would be wise to set some time aside for it anyway.  Perhaps it would be wise to remember that I am not just called to speak, but to listen, not just teach, but to learn, not just to find, but to get lost, and be found.  Perhaps it would be wise for me to remember, as missionaries have told me before, that I am not bringing the Word to people, I am not bringing Jesus to people, I am not bringing the Holy Spirit.  God is already there.

For the Word became flesh, and He inhabits each particular language and culture, breaking bread, eating rice, getting lost and found, with us.

The Apostles Creed, redux

After my father died, we were going through old photo albums and scrapbooks together, and I found the bulletin from my commissioning service, just before I was going to Japan to be a missionary.

As part of the service, I wrote my own "creed" and interspersed my own confessions between the community's recitation of the three articles.  I hadn't yet been to seminary, and only had a couple of College religion classes under my belt, so I don't know which of the major heresies I committed.  

Anyway, for your perusal:

All:  I believe in God, the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

Candidate:  I believe is he always before me.  He created me before my birth, giving me unfolding individuality.  He knew and nurtured my ideas and thoughts, plans and dreams.  He knows all of the impossible things I want to do in my life.  He clears the way ahead of me.  He makes the roads I travel upon; he is the creator of all of the tasks that I undertake.  I believe in God the Father Almighty.

All:  I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.  He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.  He descended into hell.  On the third day he rose again.  He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Candidate:  I believe he is always beside me.  We walk side by side in our Father's service, he, giving me strength, I, telling the story of his love.  He is the purpose behind all my plans; his story is theme behind all my life.  I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

All:  I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  Amen.

Candidate:  I believe he is always behind me.  He is the still small voice of God, who steers me along, whispering in my ears, telling me to have hope even when things look dark.  he calls me ahead daily into uncharted and unknown countries, while guarding me against too hasty retreats.  I believe in the Holy Spirit.

What I Miss

I like being a pastor.  I like visiting people, giving communion, leading worship, singing.  I like praying in a hospital room, celebrating new babies and new members, being able to be with people of all ages, from birth to death.  I love that tonight I was able to get together with two of my former confirmation students for dinner, and learn a little about the directions their lives have gone  And I get to read, and study, and think for a living.

But sometimes, I think about before I was a pastor.  I really didn't like my job.  I worked in an insurance office.  I was okay at it, but I suspected that I wasn't using some of my gifts.

But, here's the thing:  back then, I had a lot of friends who didn't go to church.  I also had my friends from church (I spent a fair amount of time at church).  I had some friends who never went to church, some friends who used to go to church, but stopped, for one reason or another.  I used to have these theological conversations with one of the women where I worked.  She called me her "Lutheran friend."

I remember going out after work with another one of my non-church-going friends.  Sometimes she would confide in me things that had happened to her when she was a child.  Sometimes we would talk about God and life and forgiveness and things like that.

Then there was the Buddhist guy I dated a couple of times.  He used to be Catholic, and he thought it was sort of cute that I was still a Christian.  Still, we had some good conversations.

I miss that.

I don't know if I ever invited my non-church-going friends to church with me.  When I think about it now, I am a little scandalized.  But I wasn't thinking about trying to get non-church-goers to be church-goers.   I was just sharing faith with people whose faith was different from my own.  And then I knew things I have almost forgotten now.  Then I knew that a lot of my non-church-going friends weren't dying to go to church, but they were dying for someone to care about them, listen to them, tell them that they mattered in the world.

I miss those conversations.

It's good to invite your friends to church with you.  I want the people in my church to do that.  But what I would really like to do is help them have the kind of conversations that I had before I became a pastor.