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Author: Sara Palmer

  • Believing aloud: reflections on being religious in the public square

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Joseph S. Harvard, III

    First Presbyterian Church, Durham, North Carolina

    Mark Douglas, Believing Aloud: Reflections on Being Religious in the Public Square (Cascade Books: Eugene, OR, 2010).

    There is some advice often quoted among preachers which is attributed to Karl Barth. He advised young theologians to “take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”1 The theological assumptions underlying this difficult balancing act are profound. “The strange world of the Bible,” as Barth described it in his famous commentary on Romans, Der Römerbrief (1919; The Epistle to the Romans), has something to say to the contemporary events which occur in our world and vice versa. The physical “balancing act” is tricky, to say the least, not to mention the challenge of letting the Bible be “a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.”2 Mark Douglas, in his book Believing Aloud: Reflections on Being Religious in the Public Square, gives us an excellent lesson in this critical “balancing act” of what it means to listen for God’s Word in the world. The book grew out of an experience he had when he was asked to be a regular guest columnist for The Sunday Paper. The book reflects on what is involved in discussing events and issues in the light of one’s faith. Scripture encourages us “to give an account of the hope that is in us” (cf. 1 Peter 3:15). For street preachers, this is easy. You just stand on the comer with a megaphone and shout out the “good news”—usually articulated with fire and brimstone . The problem with this form of “believing aloud” is that it is more offensive than persuasive. Douglas is attempting, and in the process encouraging, a form of witness that gives expression to one’s faith in such a way that it invites others into the conversation. In a culture like ours that is “multi-everything,” to attempt to articulate your faith with integrity and in an invitational manner concerning what is happening in the world is a real challenge. (“Come, let us reason together.”) Not only does Douglas discuss the process, the assumptions behind his work, and his own faith and commitments, but he also shares with us a rich selection of his columns during the first decade of the twenty-first century. I found the columns enjoyable to read, and they provided a welcome reminder of some of the things that have gone on recently and how we processed them through the lens of faith. I found the interplay between theological reflection and practice to be insightful and engaging. The columns discuss a variety of issues such as waiting as a spiritual discipline in a culture that demands instant gratification. There is a good column on the much-debated argument over whether to wish people “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holiday.” There are also discussions of public policy issues in a world plagued by war, poverty, health care inequities, and other injustices. On a lighter note, living in a region where basketball is considered a religion for many, I am intrigued by the column which pointed out the virtues of March Madness. My generation of pastors was beginning our seminary training when Harvey Cox

    Pentecost 2013

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    wrote The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. The book made a bold claim that God was at work not only in church spaces but also in the world where, as Paul Lehmann put it, God is at work “to make and keep human life human.”3 Our mission, if we will accept it, is to join God there. There can be many varied ways to accept this challenge, but as followers of Christ, it is our responsibility to engage the world where God is already at work. Isolation or withdrawal as a permanent strategy is not an option. The “secular world” is full of pain, suffering, and injustice. It is still the world God loves enough to send Christ to reclaim it. Douglas is encouraging us to engage in listening to what God might be saying to us in what is happening in the news and how we are called upon to respond with good news. The book also contains a helpful foreword by Walter Brueggemann in which he discusses Douglas’ work in the light of the role of Reinhold Niebuhr’s legacy in addressing public life. I am intrigued that reading Believing Aloud has put me in touch with several valued teachers, especially Barth and Niebuhr. It was helpful to be reminded that faith encourages us to hold the Bible and world events together and listen for a word from the Lord. Our faith affirms, as Frederick Buechner puts it so well, “If there is a God who speaks anywhere, surely he speaks here: through waking up and working, through going away and coming back again, through people you read and books you meet, through falling asleep in the dark.”4 Believing Aloud is a helpful reminder of this reality. I recommend this book as a good read for people of faith and particularly those who are called upon to articulate their faith in the pulpit and in the public square. Douglas invites us into a conversation about how such discussions can be helpful and hopeful.

    Notes 1 “Theologians: Barth in Retirement,” Time, May 31,1963. Vol. 81, No. 22, 60. Barth believed newspapers were so important that “I also pray for the sick, the poor, journalists, authorities of the state and the church—in that order.” 2 Book of Common Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 60. 3 Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 351. 4 Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace (New York: Seabury Press, 1970), 12.

    Journal for Preachers

  • In the sanctuary of outcasts

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Agnes W. Norfleet

    Shandon Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina

    Neil White, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 309 pages.

    Davidson College assigned this book as required reading for all entering freshmen two summers ago. The title is what first caught my attention since the words, sanctuary and outcasts, are frequent expressions in a preacher’s vocabulary. This is an easy and enjoyable book which reads like a pretty good novel, and yet its setting, characters, and plot create a complex and interestingly contemporary gospel turf. In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is a memoir by Neil White, who was a good looking young adult graduate of Ole Miss where he was president of his fraternity. He married a bright and beautiful woman, had two wonderful children, and presided over a growing publishing company in New Orleans where he gained renown for printing magazines which contributed to tourism along the Gulf coast. He seemed to enjoy a full and comfortable life until he got caught kiting checks to keep his business afloat. He confessed his guilt to bank fraud and was sent to the minimum security federal prison in Carville, Louisiana, that shares property with the nation’s only leper colony. Neil’s eighteen months of interacting with a wild variety of prisoners and patients—outcasts all—helped lead him to turn in repentance and ultimately to a renewed sense of vocation. As memoir, the plot unfolds a personal story of redemption from Neil’s late adolescent arrogance and entitlement toward a profound coming unto himself, but Neil isn’t the most interesting character nor is his redemption the most engaging plotline. I found more compelling his descriptions of elderly patients who had the freedom to leave this so-called colony, but taken from their families and quarantined in Carville as young children, this was the only home many of them had known. No longer considered outcasts medically, they still bore the stigma of leprosy and chose to live in this converted prison. The prisoners who longed to be free from the confines of the old leper colony walls were forced to share this oddly renovated space with the patients, albeit in separate quarters. Amid these contrasting forms of imprisonment of Hanson’s disease patients and minimum security criminals, Neil White describes a bizarrely singular modem community, the likes of which Jesus moves around in Galilee and Samaria. The Matthew 25 commission is all there in Carville. At first, trying to deny he is actually a prisoner, Neil pretends he’s an undercover journalist with plans to report on the sad stories of the sick and his fellow prisoners. But these outcasts minister to him, heal him, and something of the kingdom of God gets under his skin, changing him. “I felt like an insider as I sat around the cafeteria table with a half-dozen leprosy patients. We told our stories. I was more than an un- j dercover journalist. I was more than an eyewitness. I was participating in a new kind j of community. Prisoners and leprosy patients might have been considered outcasts by most of the world, but we were stuck here together. I was still a bit apprehensive about touching them, but I realized they wouldn’t want me handling their finances either” (page 84).

    Journal for Preachers

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    Among the patients who had long suffered from Hanson’s disease, the most compelling relationship emerges with Ella Bounds, who engages Neil with the stuff of the gospel. The unlikely pair, young white collar criminal and elderly wheelchair bound Ella who lost her legs to the disease, create a bond and friendship. Her disease , displacement, and old age become channels of faith and grace through which he recognizes the need for repentance. The leper helps heal the prisoner. Toward the end of the book, as Neil is leaving the prison for freedom, he turns to look at Ella:

    I wanted to remember my good fortune. A prison sentence, anywhere else, might have been lost time….But most of all I wanted to remember Ella. Every detail. The way she cranked the antique wheelchair handles. The way she twisted in her chair at the dance. The way she turned her disease, the most shameful known to man, into something sacred…. At some point after I settled in Oxford, I would take Ella’s advice and find a church. Not just any church. A place like the church at Carville. Where the parishioners were broken and chipped and cracked. A place to go when I needed help. A place to ask forgiveness. A sacred place where people were not consumed with image or money. I didn’t know if a church like this existed, but if it did I would go. And I would pray. Not the kind of prayers I used to say for miracles or money or advancement. I would ask for something more simple. I would pray for recollection—pray that I would never forget… Ella in her antique wheelchair.” (pages 302-303)

    Among a preacher’s scholarly tomes, this memoir is a lightweight, easy read. However, the gathering of Hanson’s disease patients and prisoners under the sprawling live oak trees of south Louisiana continue to populate my imagination long after I put the book down. I recall conversations in the cafeteria and open air breezeways and think about how this strange place intersects with the gospel of Christ’s healing and hospitality. I ponder the flower garden laid out in half buried Coke bottles, because the local Coca-Cola distributor refused the return of bottles from a leprosarium. How a community of outcasts can refashion such an ignorant rejection into a thing of beauty. I remember Neil having to tell his young children he was going to “camp” and the toll his corrupt business decisions and imprisonment took on his family. I think about the irony of his finding healing through someone quarantined and stigmatized with a biblical illness. It’s not so much that I have mined the book for sermon illustrations, although you could do that. I’ve told only one small story from the pulpit. Rather, I found this absolutely weird cloister to offer a refreshingly strange context to imagine how the gospel of Jesus Christ enlightens patients and prisoners and people who populate our pews.

    Lent 2013

  • God is a young adult, growing younger

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    God Is a Young Adult, Growing Younger

    Heb 1:1-3

    Will Willimon

    Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

    No one has ever seen God, say the seriptures. We still want to. It’s only natural. We want to know reality, all the way down. That’s good beeause God the Hidden Gne wishes to stay obseure, arcane, ineffable. Jewish Kabbalists depicted Yahweh as a man, even going into camal detail about God’s body parts. (And this was even before the Gospel of John convinced us God had a body, mind you.) Scripture dares metaphor—God foe Rock, Mighty Warrior, Mother Hen, foe pursuing, overwrought Lover in evening in a fragrant garden, mighty wind who makes oaks to whirl, Good Shepherd, King of Kings, Bloody Lamb, Woman tearing her house apart searching for one lost coin Everyone knows not to take such poetry literally. These are metaphors, meant literally “to shine light” on foe incarnate/invisible God. But what if Freud, Marx, and Marcus Borg are wrong? What if these names, these metaphors are not solely constructed by us, not our feeble human wish projection ? What if (as Karl Barth said) some of these metaphors, maybe all of them for all we know, are given by God, gifts of God’s relentless self-disclosure, tireless self-revelation? I invite you to see God through foe metaphor that God once gave us. Emmanuel. Joshua. In all sorts of ways God spoke to us, but now God has spoken to us as a young adult (Heb. 1:1). God is a young adult just getting started,perpetually in his early thirties, launched, but not quite, forever young. I can imagine that’s a jarring, unwelcomed thought for many, particularly if you are a young woman who has had difficulty with immature men. And what about me? An aging male who feels a threat when around young adult males, a sense ٨۴ menace. If you think you have come up with a comfortable, agreeable metaphor for God that works for you—think again. We are inveterate idolaters. I’ve searched foe scriptures: Jesus says nothing to people my age. I’m offended. True, Luke begins with a couple of old people hanging out at church, Elizabeth, Zachariah, but then sends them back to foe home after their bit parts in foe beginning of foe story of Jesus, never to be heard from again. These Lukan seniors do what people my age ought to do for people under thirty—get out of foe way so they can have a good job! God, foe One who hung foe heavens and ،lung foe planets in their courses, is a young man, just barely adult, innocent, bright eyed, alert, nervous, edgy, and at foe peak of his powers. He could do with a shave and a shower. On Fentecost, the Church’s birthday, someone had too much to drink, aecording to foe scoffing mob out in foe street. Some of foe furniture got tossed about in the upper room, there was foe scent of smoke (is that burning hemp?), and everybody began to shout, shake, rattle and roll—all against house regulations. That’s what you sometimes get, I found as a college chaplain, when foe kids plan foe party. God is a young adult who may be ADD in his inability to sit still, though I don’t

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    think he’sever been properly diagnosed.Watchhis legs constantly bouncing nervously when everyone else in the room is satisfied to sit still. In his bounding and rocking, he has the demeanor of a twelve year old, not a person of thirty. Eager, attentive, marveling as if everything is new and awesome, as if all the facts and figures of science, the ancient plays of Shakespeare, a tree full of figs, a seed germinating and taking root, and the poetry of Isaiah were fresh and first time and for his joy alone. One of his best stories is about two boys his age who were both, though in different ways, the father’s pain in the neck. Why am I not surprised that so many of his stories end with parties, one a party with the lame, the maimed, and the blind—people with whom we wouldn’t be caught dead on a Saturday night? He walks too fast, this post-adolescent. He invites us. Heck, he invites everybody to walk with him, to join him on an adventure, a road trip to God knows where. We have trouble keeping up with his breathless pace. Along the way, he notices things we have, in our maturity and experience, stopped noticing: a poor beggar, a widow’s coin, a wild lily, a disordered child. He also calls our attention, as people his age are wont to do, to the mistakes of pompous, self-important adults, and was saddened by the injustices of people in power. He once called the ?resident a “fox.” He said in public that no one goes in the Kingdom of God but kids and that rich people are virtually impossible to be saved. But with God, well, anything’s possible. With age and increasing experience, we thought, he will be just like us. He’ll leam. He’ll change his tune. He’ll mature. Settle down. We thought wrong. Like all those who are beginning, he is obsessed with the future. With him, it’s all tomorrow. Tradition plays not as large a role in his worldview as we would have liked. God is a young adult for whom friends are everything. He invites, embraces even those whom he hardly knows. He loves to hang out with his buddies and tends to make most everyone his buddy, particularly those who are “buddy” to no one. Loves to roam, careening from one party to the next where there is too much drinking and the wine runs out and miraculously overflows, and then to move on to the next place where he is uninvited. Sometimes, at parties, random people came up to him, argued, insulted him to his face. Not once did he ever turn anyone away or smack their face as we would have God is a young adult who spent more time with a crowd, a gang, out and about, than alone God is a young adult who knows us, wants to know us better, has opinions for how we should live our lives. He wants to know us better than we want to know him Unlike lots of other young adults, he puts himself out there, gives an invitation to the big party, risks rejection. And most whom he invites reject him. © ٢٧refusal to let down our guard, get loose, and join the party must make him feel lousy, though he doesn’t show it. Even though we said “No” to him in as nice a way as we know how, and even though we gave him little encouragement, we bet he will call in the morning. Then again and again and again. We might as well relent and say “¥es.” God is a young adult—inexperienced, outspoken, rash, always in motion, having difficulty settling in, staying on the subject, moving in the same direction. He is almost nothing we expected in God. Like many his age, he has yet to develop good self-defense mechanisms. He will probably be hurt. Whatever he thinks, he says. Idealistic, innocent, wise beyond his years, always reaching out, always desiring contact, wanting to touch, to risk

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    r^ationstop. He loves to stay oat late, engage in risky behavior, launeh ont on a trip in the middle of the night, middle of a storm, np all night until dawn. God is a yonng adult in motion, all potential. Maybe that’s the reason he is tough to pin down, to dehne, to fix. He is the polite kid next door who wants to be helpful . He is the guy on the make at the bar your mother warned you about. He is the belligerent, pushy, troublemaker wanting to start an argument. Everybody enjoys hanging out with him; nobody wants to follow him. God is a young adult: intense, passionate, unbalanced, immoderate, passionate but not as we usually use that word, oddly disinterested in sex, despite what you have heard from the Methodist General Conference. He may be a thirty-something, single male, but he doesn’t act like most of them when it comes to sex, marriage, and family . We suspect that he wifi ingratiate himself to us, tempt us to do things our fathers warned us never to do, ask us for money. It makes us nervous to be alone with him. Without any encouragement, he will call us, maybe not tomorrow or the next day,

    Gods a young adult who constantly pushes the envelope, tests the bounds of propriety. He is the redneck good old boy calling out, “Hey! Watch this!” before he jumps. He is the unshaven, dark, long haired Near Eastern looking twenty something behind you in line at the airport, the one to whom you want TSA to give a particularly close look. How can a man be that threatening when he is unarmed? Why couldn’t God have matured, settled down, be middle aged, middle class, via media, middle of the road before God got close and personal? Why didn’t God come to us building on the past, moderately? Why this lurch to the left, then to the right, careening into the future, all promise, potential, and forward movement? Ever onward, vital, youthful, energy confined in a lew. Why so few opportunities for quiet reflection, meditation, and rest? When will he settle down, get a minivan, vote Republican, develop spiritual disciplines, and act like the God we expected? God is a young adult whom we did not expect. This much motion, this much passion, this relentlessness of contact, intrusive, boundariless intimacy, boundless energy. He makes friends quickly and keeps them for eternity. Like his generation, he is slow to judge. Did I mention that he has trouble staying in one place long? God is a young adult who will ask some outrageous favor, even before he knows you that well. Violator of boundaries, he touches, caresses, fondles feet, kisses other men on toe mouth, even those who betray him. Unlike many his age, he was not in toe military. But his “peace” is no peace as people my age define peace. While he never once raised his hand against anybody, something about him made us want him dead. Hear me: I did not say we are free to picture God any way we like; I say that God is free to be God as God likes. God is not a sometimes helpful projection of all our aspirations of toe God we thought we needed. God is the controversial, even offensive projection of God upon us as scruffy, unshaven, near eastern young adult in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” He wants you, comes to you, comes on to you, desires to get dangerous, cause you to be careless. In many and various ways, God has spoken to us as a young adult, getting younger.

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    THE FOELOWING E E ^E B was written ؛n response to Bishop Willimon’s sermon preached last year at the Festival of Homileties. Bishop Willimon forwarded the letter to the editors of Journalfor Preachers and noted that all he knew about the letter was that it was from a Presbyterian pastor. He thought it would be good to run the letter along with the sermon. Pastors, he said, eould see him “getting blistered by a hearer” and eould “judge for themselves” after reading the sermon. The editors of JP thought it a good idea for pastors to see even so distinguished a preaeher as Will Willimon “getting blistered.” No doubt many of us have gotten blistered for mueh less provocative sermons.

    To Festival of Homiletics Organizers: Will Willimon’ssermon seemed on the vergeofanabuseofpower. Icouldnotlook him in foe eye as foe sermon went on and as he seemed to revel in making his audience more and more uncomfortable. 1 did not clap when it was complete….By all means stretch my imagination about the imageofGod,push me to consider things…,but do not ¡« ﻇﻪme foel dirty and vulnerable. adangerouspredatorand only named as thisyoung,middle eastern,sexually frustrated mandidnotchallengeme… .He did not move beyond this to promise, h0{^, or grace. We were taken to darkness and left in darkness with Will appearing to revel in it all. Using only negative stereotypes of young men as dangerous colored men as terrorists, and a sexually frustrated Jesus waiting to fondle, coming after us as prey, was irresponsible. ft Will’s purpose was to shock, he succeeded….But he also seems to have succeeded in perhaps abusing his role as preacher. What gospel was preached here? What good news? What hope declared?…! think a terrible example was set for us….What a waste of an opportunity to preach to transform ٢٠challenge us, to feed us life giving water. There was no aspect of pastoral preaching revealed here. Someone is going to take foe message just heard home and preach it to his/her congregation, without sensitivity to foe sexually abused, without sensitivity to women, leaving the congregation in darkness, and fearing God. As Festival Organizers, 1 believe you have a responsibility to raise the standards for preaching and not lower them… ■That preacher reflects poorly on foe rest of us….God did not seem revealed through Willimon today. Willimon seemed only to reveal himself.

  • It’s about time

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    It’s about Time

    Isaiah 40:1-11

    Martin B. Copenhaver

    Wellesley Congregational Church, Wellesley, Massachusetts

    This is a season in which we are acutely aware of time. Most of us mark time more intentionally in this season. We may mark the days by opening the little windows of an Advent calendar ٠٢ mark the weeks by lighting the candles of an Advent wreath. And if we were ever to lose track of where we are in the month, there are the commercials that relentlessly remind us how many shopping days there are until Christmas. We have different perceptions of the pace of time in this season. When we are young, December seems to stretch beyond all reason, almost to the dimensions of eternity. When we are young, Advent is a marathon. When we are older, it becomes a sprint. So much to do. So little time. And our sense of the nature of time is shaped by this season. The repeated patterns and rituals associated with Advent and Christmas can make time seem cyclical. We do the same things year after year. This is what we always eat on Christmas Eve. These are the dishes we always use. This is the grace we always say. This is the story we always tell. This is the song we always sing. Each year Mom always gets everyone a new pair of pajamas. We always laugh when Dad starts cursing as he tries to put up the Christmas tree lights. Gramme always has a glass of tawny port when she gets home from Christmas Eve services. Every year the same things are said or sung, heard or done. In our family, decorating the tree is a yearly ritual that is so firmly ingrained that it has its own liturgy. There are certain things we always do and certain things we always say. Eirst, with help, I put the Christmas tree in the stand and, as I am doing so, I always complain about the stand. Then my wife, Karen, puts on the lights because she is the only one with enough patience for that task. As she finishes up that job, our children, Alanna and Todd, and I begin to unwrap the ornaments. Many of the ornaments have stories that go along with them, stories we tell every year. I pull out the ornament I made in kindergarten, ft is a Styrofoam ball with toothpicks stuck into it that is spray-painted light blue, topped offس’ا silver glitter. Most of foe toothpicks have fallen out by now and much of the glitter is gone, too, but I will invariably comment on foe beauty of this ornament. This is also one of the ornaments that has a name. We call it “Sputnik” because it looks something like that first Russian spacecraft which was launched about the time I made fois ornament. My children love Sputnik and always insist we put it in the front of foe tree where everyone can see it. Not so with foe ornament we have dubbed “Stori’ac’c.” In this ornament foe points of foe star are made of white fabric, and there is a rosy-cheeked ceramic face in foe center, ft looks like one of the points of the star is a pointy cap for this cherub. I love Starface. My children, on foe other hand, profess a deep hatred of it. Alanna tells me that it used to give her nightmares. Todd’s comment is always, “It’s just disturbing.

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    Dad.” Every yea،־ he says that. An©ther ©rnament is named “?inee©ne Minister” because, well, the face is made ©fa pinec©ne,and he is dressed like a minister. We all l©ve Pinecone Minister. He has wire-rimmed glasses and a wise, gentle l©©k. Y©u trust him. Y©u would be willing t© listen to his sermons even if they were dull because he is such an endearing pers©n. 1 am sure that y©u, never having met Ftoccone Minister, may find this hard to picture. But, believe me, were y©u to meet him y©u would love him also. The very fact that 1 use the verb “meet” to describe a Christmas ornament tells you a great deal about how we regard him in our family. Every year we affirm our love for him. There are ornaments that come complete with stories about the people who gave them to us or the year that one of us made them or how someone who is now gone once loved them ٠٢ how much we love it and why. And if I forget a part of liturgy, the story behind some ornament, someone in the family wifi ask, “Don’t you remember ?” and then fill in the story. In this way the liturgy is carefully, lovingly preserved. Every year we hang the same ornaments and tell the same stories, as if time itself were cyclical. A friend of mine likes to tell of a new family in her church whose child had only one year of experience in church school. $0 when it came time to rehearse the Christmas pageant his second year, the boy was aghast: “Do you mean to tell me that we’re going to do exactly the same story we did last year?” Yes, that’s what we do. Every year. Exactly the same. But not exactly. Time is not entirely cyclical, is it? Many things may repeat, but something is always different. There’s a new person at the table. Or someone is missing. (Doesn’t it seem like someone is always missing at Christmas?) Or someone is not able to play the role she once did. Or the players may be the same, but the relationships have changed. Or time has simply taken its toll. For, as poet Dylan Thomas once observed, “Time, like a running grave, tracks you down.” Eventually we all get tracked down by time. So it’s never the same. Not exactly. I think that is the biggest reason why we are so drawn to nostalgia in this season. Because things change. As writer Ben Hecht once put it, “Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.” la m a fan of the television program Mad Men. It is set at an advertising agency on M ^ i c Avenue, beginning in the late 1950s. The Creative Director in that agency is Don Draper, a brilliant, but troubled man who is keeping an enormous secret in his life. In the first season it is made clear that Don drinks too much. And his family life is a mess. After repeated infidelities, his marriage is on the verge of disintegrating . All the while, Don tries to focus on his work. One of his clients is the Koda،.’ Company. They’ve come up with a new slide projector where the slides are not in a straight tray, but in a wheel. It is not a big innovation, so they look to Don to come up with an advertising campaign that will make people want a new slide projector with a wheel. The clients come into the conference room: “So have you figured how to work toe wheel into it?” they ask. Don starts in, “Well technology is a glittering lure. But, uh, there is toe rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with toe product. My first job I was in-house at a fur company with this old pro copywriter, Creek, named Teddy. Teddy told me that toe most important idea in advertising is ‘new.’ It creates an itch. You just put your product in there like Calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with

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    the produet. Nostalgia—it’s delicate, but potent.” Then Don turns on the slide projeetor, and as he continues his presentation, he elieks through slides of his family in happier times. In one slide his two children are playing happily in the baek yard. In another his son has fallen asleep on his chest. In another Don is putting his ear up to his pregnant wife’s belly. In another the two are kissing on New Year’s Eve. All the while, he eontinues with his presentation. “Teddy told me that in Greek, ‘nostalgia’ literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerfirl than memory alone.” Then, referring to the slide projector, he says, “This device isn’t a spaceship; it’s a time maehine. It goes backwards, and forwards…. It takes us to a plaee where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels—around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” And the scene ends with Don silently clicking through more slides of his family from a happier time. I’ll tell you, that’s a very powerful scene, fueled by the power of nostalgia. It reminds me of the refrain of the Ion ؛Mitchell song, The Circleﺀ،ا :،

    And the seasons they go round and round, And the painted ponies go up and down. We’re captive on the carousel of time. We can’t return we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game.

    My father, who was a minister, always battled melancholy in this season, a melancholy that usually took the form ofnostalgia. Although I normally adored spending time with my father, to be honest, at this time of year he was not all that much fun to be with. The bright lights of this season had limited power over foe darkness of his moods. Ironically, perhaps, his writing and preaching during Advent and Christmas was always particularly brilliant, probably because he was able to speak to some of foe deep longings that we can experience in fois season. Most often, foe focus of my father’s melancholic nostalgia was on a time when his three children were younger and when his father was still alive. But I wonder, even when we were younger, did Christmas ever feel complete? Was there ever a time when his heart was not traced with longing? You see, there is always someone missing at Christmas. Things are never like they used to be. Not completely. What we long for, I think, is not merely a Christmas from our past, ٠٢ even some idealized version of it. Instead, I think what we long for is a gathering up of our past, present, and future into a harmony that is not achieved in foe days of our lives. What we desire is not merely to be with those we love, but to be united with them in a way that is not possible even when they are present. What we yearn for is not something we have fully seen, not even something we can completely imagine, because what we yearn for is God. My father was a person of great faith, but nostalgia was his temptation. In one way ٠٢ another, it is for all of us. I call nostalgia a temptation because, although our scripture enjoins us to remember with gratitude, at every turn it also points us to the

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    future. When we read Isaiah’s improbable picture of the ?eaceable Kingdom that is yet to be, where the wolf lives harmoniously with the lamb, and the lion becomes a vegan, we can only conclude that the good old days, as good as they may have been, are nothing compared to what God has in store for us. The culture at large tries to drench this season in nostalgia. There is no surprise in that. After all, as Don Draper well knew, nostalgia sells things. For us to lean toward the future in this season, with the help of the likes of Isaiah, is a truly counter cultural act. In short, Isaiah and the other prophets, and Jesus himself, declare that time is going somewhere. Time is not an endless circle, as the nature religions—so prevalent in their time—affirmed. The essence of time is not endless repetition of a cycle. We are not “captive on the carousel of time.” Rather, time is leading us somewhere. And Isaiah wants to make sure we understand that we are not being led back in time to some ideal past that is now gone. Ultimately, nostalgia can be dangerous to the life of faith because time does not lean backward toward the good old days. Time leans forward to something we have yet to experience. There is a story told through time, and we haven’t heard it all before, and we have yet to reach the full climax of that story, the climax that Isaiah’s prophesy anticipates in the coming of the Messiah and the Feaceable Kingdom he brings. $٠ God beckons us, not to the past, but to the future, God’s firture. So where are you being tugged and where do you lean in this Advent season? Are you tugged by memories and lean toward the past? If you are, that’s understandable. I think we all are in one way ٠٢ another. Nostalgia is a temptation for all of us. After all, this is a season in which we are acutely aware of the passage of time. But how about this: I^ t’s not stay there. With part of our beings, and with the help of the likes of Isaiah and Jesus himself, let’s lean forward in anticipation of what we have not yet seen and can only begin to imagine. The good old days, as good as they were or as good as we may remember them to be, are nothing compared to what God has in store for US

  • God’s credentials

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    God’s Credentials

    John 20:19-31

    Shannon Johnson Kershner Black Mountain Presbyterian Church, Black Mountain, North Carolina

    I won’t ever forget that day. It was one of those days of ministry that stays with you forever. But I was still caught off guard when Penelope’s mom posted this past Friday on Facebook that the day was Penelope’s birthday. She would have been seven years old this year. I find that hard to believe. Time has moved quickly for me, but probably not nearly as quickly for her parents. I had been trying to do what I always do on Friday afternoons — write a sermon. But then I received one of those phone calls, one of those “get to the hospital now” type of phone calls. No time to tie up loose ends. No time to go home and put on the clergy collar. No time to really think about what you might encounter. The phone rang. I picked up. My church member said, “My baby was not breathing, and they took her to the ER. Please come.” So I went. And when all was said and done, and she had been disconnected from all the machines, we all just sat there in the private family waiting room next to the ER. It was getting late in the afternoon. The room was hot and stuffy, normal weather for a Texas August. Penelope’s parents were trying their best to keep it together and to fill out all the paperwork necessary for the medical examiner. Age: four months. Sex: Female. Date of birth: April 13,2005. The rest of us — the big sister, the grandparent , a few friends, the hospital chaplain, and me — we all just sat in a state of heavy shock. Sweet, lovely, bubbly Penelope had died, and we had no answers. Nothing about her death made sense. I had just baptized her eight weeks before, having very recently become their pastor. It had been her first day in daycare while her parents got back to a normal daily routine. Everything was the way it was supposed to be. But then, suddenly, on a hot August afternoon, we all found ourselves gathered in fear and disbelief behind the closed door of the family waiting room. And even though it was stuffy, no one went to open the door. It was almost like we thought if we could keep the door shut and stay huddled in there together, then we could avoid the reality of her death for a while longer. Only we also knew that tactic of avoidance was not going to work for very long. But we were going to try it for as long as we could. And as we sat there, gathered behind the shut door in our fear and disbelief, we were all silent. No one knew what to say. There was nothing to say. No platitudes fit in that room. No “it was her time.” No “God needed another angel.” No “it must be God’s will.” Nothing. For it was not her time and God did not need her as an angel and the God in whom I trust would never will the death of a child. We all sat there in silence because there was nothing to say. Her death made no sense. We had no words. And at some point, her mom or her dad simply cried softly, “My God why? This hurts.” And I got up to stand with them, to put my hands on their shoulders, but I still had no words. What do you say? “I know”? Could I really say “I know how it hurts”? I could not say that. I had no idea what that felt like. I would leave the hospital that day to go home and to rock my 15-month-old son to sleep that night. I had no idea the pain

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    her parents were feeling. I just knew they were living my worst nightmare. But the thing is, in a way, I wanted to know. I wanted to know that kind of hurt so that I could really stand with them in that space of brokenness and sharp pain and unrelenting grief. I was their pastor. I was their sister in Christ. I was their new friend. I had put the baptismal water on baby Penelope’s head. I wanted to know. But I could not, and pretending that I could would have only caused more pain. My friend Rev. Meg Peery McLaughlin puts it this way:

    It is a conundrum, I think. For when we pour out a painful story — a testimony of truth and torment , we don’t want someone to say, “I know. I know exactly what that feels like.” Because it’s my hurt, my story. Unique. Singular. No one else can really know what it feels like. Maybe you know what it feels like to lose a spouse, but you don’t know what it feels like to lose my spouse. Maybe you know what it feels like to look for a job, but you don’t know what it means for me, for my family, for my finances, for my ego. Maybe you know about cancer because you had a mastectomy, but you don’t know my weariness and worry, you don’t know my hot flashes and headaches. You don’t know.1

    And yet, the conundrum comes because, at the same time, whenever we are in the place of such brokenness and sharp pain and unrelenting grief, we desperately want someone to know. We do want someone to put his/her arm around us and say, “I know.” For it would be too much to bear if we were the only person experiencing that kind of broken-heartedness.2 We need someone to know. We need someone to say, “I have had that same feeling. I have been in that same space of numb shock. I have locked myself behind closed doors in fear and disbelief, trying to avoid the reality of the pain. I know what it is to hurt like that.” For that hurt would give them the credentials to listen. And we would not feel so alone. I think that was some of what was going on with those disciples, including Thomas. They, in their grief and disbelief and fear, were behind locked doors as that first Easter day started to turn to dusk. The air in the upper room might have been stuffy and hot. I doubt they were talking about very much. They had no words. How do you speak of such disappointment? How do you speak of such grief and heartache? Not only had their friend been killed, there in public, in disgrace, in humiliation, but he had also been who they thought was The One. He was supposed to have been the Messiah. The Savior. God’s Son. He was supposed to have been their hope. The fulfillment of God’s promise. A herald of God’s reign. But within the span of one week, all of it had crashed down around them, and they were left in an upper room, full of grief and disbelief and fear, hiding behind locked doors in a last ditch attempt to avoid the reality that it was all over. And for whatever reason, Thomas decided to leave the room. Maybe he had needed to get some fresh air. Maybe he just could not stand to be around other people anymore and needed desperately to get some time alone so that he could weep and wail and cry out without everyone watching. So he left.

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    And then, a strange thing happened. In the middle of what felt to be that God-forsaken place, in the middle of the disciples’ brokenness and sharp pain and unrelenting grief, John’s Gospel reports that the risen Jesus came, stood among them, and wished them peace. And then, he did something for which I will be forever grateful. He showed them his wounds. He showed them his hands and his side. And we wonder why, not only why did Jesus think they needed to see his wounds — they had not asked, but why did he still have them in the first place. Biblical scholar Richard Hays writes: “Isn’t it curious that God could raise Jesus from the dead but didn’t heal the nail wounds in his hands? Was this an oversight? Surely not. The power of death is conquered, but the wounds remain … .”3 Why? Why did our risen Christ still bear the marks of his wounds? I think it was because God knew those wounds would serve as credentials for us. They would be Jesus’ “I know” for us. For by still bearing the marks of his wounds, our risen Christ showed those first disciples, reminds us, that the God in whom we trust has taken that woundedness into God’s very self. Those wounds testify to us that God literally understands, indeed knows first-hand, what it is like to be creature, to be us. The God in whom we trust literally understands what it feels like to be born into this world, to be completely and totally vulnerable and dependent on others. The God in whom we trust literally understands what it feels like to have to grow up, to take on responsibility, to be an adult with all the stress and pressure that comes with it. The God in whom we trust literally understands what it feels like to have your heart broken by betrayal or to be angry when face to face with injustice or to deeply soak up the warmth of the love of good friends. And the God in whom we trust literally knows what it feels like to hurt, to suffer, to feel abandoned, to feel completely alone, and to die. As William Temple said, “The wounds of Christ are his credentials to the suffering race of humanity.”4 They are our signs that Jesus, God with us, knows. That must be at least some of what the disciples concluded too because as soon as they saw those wounds on their risen Savior, they rejoiced, received his peace, and breathed in his Spirit, which made them ready to be his body in the world. And later, that is all Thomas wanted too. For whatever reason, he had not been with them that day, for that indescribable moment. He had missed it. But thank God Thomas was brave enough to say how that felt out loud. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” In other words, unless I see his credentials that he really is the same Jesus who was bom, who lived, who suffered, who was crucified, who was dead, and who was buried, unless I see those credentials, I will not buy the proposition that God was truly with us, one of us. Unless I can touch and see that Jesus really knows, then I will not believe that nothing can separate us from God’s love. For the pain of this world is too great, and sometimes wilderness is all that one can see. Thank God Thomas was brave enough to give it words. And then, later, John reports that Thomas finds himself standing before the Risen Christ. And in that moment, Jesus does not rebuke him. Jesus does not admonish him. Jesus does not shame him. They do not talk theology. They do not have a question and answer time. Instead, Jesus, the risen Christ, shows him the wounds. It is almost as if Jesus points to his hands and says, Thomas, I know. It is almost as if he points to his side and says, Thomas, I know.

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    And Thomas looks at his risen Lord still bearing his wounds, and then he knows5 and cannot stop himself from making a profession of faith, proclaiming, “My Lord and My God.” Thomas looks at Jesus’ wounds, the risen Christ’s credentials, and knows that there will never be a time when his pain, or the pain of another or the pain of creation will ever stand alone again. Thomas looks and knows there will never be a time when hurt or grief or powerlessness or pain or death will have the last word again. For God in Jesus knows. And therefore, as a people who follow a wounded and risen Christ, as a people who, for generation upon generation, have been breathed upon, formed, and sent to be Christ’s living body in this world, while we cannot claim to fully know the suffering or the pain of another, we are given the courage and the command to stand with another as church in that suffering or pain. We are given the courage and the command to sit behind those locked doors, in those hot and stuffy rooms, in the middle of brokenness and sharp pain and unrelenting grief, not as one with an answer or an easy platitude, but simply as one committed to being a presence, as a sister or a brother in Christ, and as a living, breathing reminder that God is present in that place too and that, despite evidence or feelings to the contrary, they are not alone and never will be. That is what happened with Penelope ’s family on the day of her memorial service. Her family had only been members for a few months and had not been able to get to know many people since they had a new baby in the house. So they did not know who, if anyone, from their new church would show up for a memorial service. But, with courage and a deep sense of commitment, that congregation showed up in full force. And as Penelope’s mom, dad, and big sister came into the sanctuary, they saw pews filled with people they did not know yet, but people who were determined to have their backs, to be church for them, and to love them through the wilderness of their grief. And as that little family filed into their pew down front, by that congregation’s willingness to be present in that tough space, those church members proclaimed, “We cannot know your hurt. But God can. And God does. God knows.” And God in Christ has the credentials, the wounds, to prove it. God knows. We are not alone, not even in our woundedness. Thanks be to God.

    Notes 1 Meg Peery McLaughlin (paper presented at the annual meeting of The Well, Austin, Texas, May 2009). 2 Ibid. 3 Richard Hays, “Fingering the Evidence” The Christian Century (April 1,1992). 4 Frances Taylor Gench, Encounters with Jesus (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2007), 138. 5 McLaughlin.

  • Wonder: stewards of God’s mysteries

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    Wonder: Stewards of God’s Mysteries

    2 Kings 6:8-23; 1 Corinthians 3:16-4:2

    William P. Brown

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    We have been wondering about wonder these two days of Colloquium 2012, and for good reason. Throughout this week, I’ve felt inspired by that famous hymn composed by Charles Wesley in 1747, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Maybe you have too: the final stanza begins, “Finish, then, thy new creation, ״and it concludes with “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” What a haunting phrase that is! I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be lost, and true to my gender, I don’t like to ask for directions. I need to know where I’m going; I can’t stand to be aimless. I need directions and destinations. Give me tasks and goals. Now I fully admit that it’s my way of maintaining control over my life (and perhaps the lives of others) and making some semblance of progress each day. To me, getting lost is akin to giving up. “Lost in wonder”; I wish wonder were something I could work toward. Just tell me how, and I’ll roll up my sleeves and get to work. But the thing with wonder is that it usually comes unbidden: wonder is the beckoning unbidden. And it always requires surrender. It is, in fact, a matter of giving up. To be lost in wonder, love, and praise is to surrender to something much bigger than I. And when it comes to the wonder of God, the glory of God, such surrender involves trust in the God who calls us forward not toward absorption into nothingness, not toward impotence and groveling, but toward flourishing and new life. “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” Wow, I wish I had originated that! But even better, it comes from the pen of Irenaeus of Lyons, that second-century church father famous for his anti-Gnostic writings. But there’s more to wonder than just getting lost. Paul calls us to be “stewards” of wonder. Paul encourages his Corinthian audience to think of him and his cohorts as “stewards of God’s mysteries” or as “stewards of God’s wonders.” Frankly, I can’t think of a more succinct way of capturing the heart of ministry. As ministers, we are to discern and proclaim, preserve and share, celebrate and embody the wonders, the mysteries of God’s love and work in the world. If Paul had listed a few of God’s mysteries, they would have no doubt included these:

    The exodus: the splitting of the waters of chaos through which a band of slaves found passage into glorious and painful freedom.

    The burning bush, in which the heat of God’s inflamed passion for a people drew a reluctant refugee into leadership.

    Mount Sinai: that pyrotechnic display on the mountain that set the stage for the giving of God’s instructions. It’s been said that it took the 10 plagues to get Israel out of Egypt and the 10 commandments to get Egypt out of Israel, for Israel to constitute itself as a beloved community.

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    Incarnation: that event in which the Creator of all becomes the creature for all. God’s eternal Logos reaching deep into our material and messy existence. In Christ, God has become flesh and, as certain Christmas cards put it, has moved into the neighborhood. God embracing not only the uniqueness of our humanity, but also the continuity of humanity with all of life, with all creation.

    And, of course, there is the Resurrection: death conquered once and for all, what Paul calls the first fruit of the new creation.

    From a burning bush to an empty tomb, the center of God’s mysteries is summed up in the church’s bold proclamation around the table, the mystery of our faith: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!” Now that is something to get lost in.

    Lost in, as some would say, the “mighty acts of God.” Or if you want a fancy Latin turn of phrase, Magnalia Dei. Whenever I type that into my word processor, the spellchecker always wants to change it to “Magnolia Dei.” Maybe that occurs only in Georgia. What about the minor acts of God, the small wonders that bless us day by day? The grace of a good night’s sleep, the unexpected smile, sprouting seeds, a word of forgiveness. They, too, are pivot points, game changers even, as we “quiver” our way through another day of ministry. They, too, help us see our world, our lives, in new and sustaining ways. They, too, are part of God’s ubiquitous glory, the glory to which the seraphim in the temple declare “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory.” There is no myth of scarcity when it comes to God’s glory, to the mighty and minor mysteries of God, and Ireneaus needs to be updated: “the glory of God is all creation fully alive.” What is the chief end of all creation? “To glorify God and enjoy God’s presence forever.” Such is the ecology of wonder, love, and praise. An ecology of wonder suggests that “the greatest wonder is not that there is a God, but that there is a world.” And I have some backing from Karl Barth on that. In his own words, “The existence of the creature alongside God is the great puzzle and miracle….That there is a world is the most unheard-of thing, the miracle of the grace of God.”1 To be sure, God could have easily chosen not to create a world, and I sometimes wonder if God would have been better off not having created a world such as ours, messy as it is. Nowhere does the Bible say that God was ever in need of a world or that God created a world to assuage an acute case of divine loneliness. So why God created a world at all is itself a mystery. It is the mystery of grace. Or call it wondrous love. To fail to see the world as God’s mystery, as a source of wonder, may well prove disastrous in the end. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is correct in attributing “our present ecological crisis” to “our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.” Or as Rachel Carson has taught us, wonder is “a virtue necessary for the long-term survival of our species,” if not the planet.2 We lose our

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    sense of wonder, we lose the world. Period. So if creation is the greatest mystery, I wonder what could qualify as the second greatest mystery? Let me venture to say it is the church, the visible, corporate body of Christ, the extension of the incarnation. You probably have heard the apocryphal story when Jesus ascended to heaven to be received by God the Father, and he was greeted by the angels and archangels of heaven, Gabriel, Michael. There they all were, giving him hugs and pats on the back, and they wanted to hear all about how things were on earth. Jesus said, “I have entrusted my mission, the mission of God’s kingdom, to my followers.” They gasped: “You mean you entrusted your entire mission to mere mortals? What if they fail?” And Jesus looked at them and said, “I have no other plan.”3 By any standard, the church is an unhealthy institution with its checkered history, with all its schisms and abuse, its corruption and complacency, betrayal, deception, grumbling, envy, exclusion. And there is so much the church needs to learn, that we need to learn, about life together, about living in beloved community. And yet it remains the body of Christ on earth. In the eyes of the world, a mystery of this magnitude is nothing but absurd or utter foolishness, as Paul would say. But that’s what God in Christ has chosen, to entrust God’s kingdom to mere mortals, to you and me. God intends the church to be the sign of the new creation. Such is our responsibility, as enormous as that is. And such is our gift, as wondrous as that is. As stewards of wonder, we are also practitioners of wonder. And practicing wonder begins with perception, with seeing the world and each other in a new way. It’s what Andrew Park, a Korean-American theologian, says about the categorical difference between “seeing” and “watching”:

    Whereas seeing implies a warm intention, yielding constructive transformation , watching involves a biased look, engendering harmful consequences. Seeing stands for visual dialogue and understanding, arousing sympathy; watching [stands] for a visual monologue, yielding an unpleasant staring, cold look….In racial or ethnic (or gender) relationships (he goes on to say) seeing other groups constructively engenders a warm society…. [The] courage to have constructive images of others constitutes the strength of seeing.4

    Or to put it simply, watching renders the other either invisible or as a target. Ralph Ellison famously said, “I am invisible simply because people refuse to see me.” Trayvon Martin would have agreed. So also Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi mother of five in California. Both were watched and killed. Being a “steward of God’s mysteries” begins with seeing each other fully, compassionately , dialogically, as “fearfully and wonderfully made” in the words of the psalmist! Or as Paul says in another letter to the Corinthians, “From now on, therefore , we regard no one from a human point of view” (2 Corinthians 5:16). And in our passage, Paul tells us that we are nothing less than a temple for God’s indwelling presence. Our lives, our very bodies and souls, are not our own. We are claimed by God, the creator of all, and not just claimed, but indwelled and filled by God’s spirit, sealed and sanctified. Now I ask, how wondrous is that? Any experience of wonder is an awakening, an opening of our eyes, to see the

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    world anew. Elisha prays for his prophetic apprentice that “God open his eyes that he may see.” And what his apprentice comes to see is the mountain filled with the assurance of God’s victory, “horses and chariots of fire all around,” but it is not the kind of victory that is expected. For it is not the battlefield that portends great slaughter, but a table filled with great feasting. How wondrous is that! To be a practitioner of wonder is to practice the art of surprise. Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and leader of the Green Belt movement in Africa, recounts in her memoir the time the police had put her home under siege. Through her kitchen window, she called out to them, “I know you’re here to do a job and that you have to arrest me, but I’m not opening this door. I know you’re cold. I will make you a nice cup of tea… but I don’t have any milk. If I give you some money, would you go and get some?” The police were dumbfounded, looking at each other. The officer consulted his colleagues, and they agreed to the offer. “One got milk from a nearby kiosk and I made tea, handing them the cups through the window. I had a cup myself, inside the house,” she says.5 On the third day, her door was bashed in, and she was arrested, jailed, and put on trial. You can read the rest in her memoir. For many around the world, Wangari Maathai was a mentor. She was a practitioner of wonder who opened the eyes of the world to injustice and environmental damage. She opened our eyes to the life abundant, a sustainable life filled with the trees of life all around. Cultivating wonder, I am convinced, requires mentoring, like Elisha and his apprentice, like Maathai and her students. And so I would invite you to pause and identify who in your life has been an eye-opener? Who has been a “steward of God’s mysteries” to you? Who has opened your eyes to see perhaps not “horses and chariots of fire all around,” but something new about God all around, about the world all around, about yourself, something new about faith in Christ that has changed the way you see and act? Those who unveiled a depth dimension about life and ministry? And may I be so bold to offer those who have instructed so many of you here on this campus:

    Shirley Guthrie, who showed us how to always be reformed and reforming by reveling in the wonder of God’s sovereignty and grace. Ben Kline, who taught us to how to wonder theologically and gracefully about God’s world and word, about the mysteries of creation and creator. Lucy Rose, who in life as well as in her untimely death bore witness to God’s wondrous and holy love and made us better preachers. Catherine Gonzalez, who has brought to life the movers and shakers of the church of past generations, reintroducing them to us as her friends and, hence, our friends. Erskine Clarke, who in his gentle manner has retold the story of the church’s struggles in the South and of our struggles in seeking a dwelling place for all. Walter Brueggemann, who has taught us how to pray and to think and act with, yes, prophetic imagination and abiding astonishment. Charlie Cousar, who has helped so many of us actually understand Paul’s complex arguments, and in a way that has enlivened and sustained

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    the passion for ministry. Chuck Campbell, who with intrepid resolve took us to places far beyond our comfort zones to preach the gospel, to preach with courage and naked vulnerability. Kathleen O’Connor, who has shared in so many ways the wild, raging beauty of the world and of God for the world, a world filled with the cries for justice, shelter, and food all around. Just to name a few.

    These, along with many others, have opened our eyes to the mysteries of God. And you and I have been called to be trustworthy stewards of those mysteries passed on to us for the sake of the world, for the sake of the church. And when I think back to my mentors and colleagues in ministry, the eye-openers of my faith, I am filled with hope, once again, and the courage to face a new day, every day, in life and in ministry. The philosopher Jerome Miller shares what he thinks is the most paradigmatic experience of wonder that we all have had in some form, and we had it as children, that of discovering a secret door. Wondering what might be lurking on the other side, the child can do one of three things: she can be gripped with fear and run away or she can stand frozen in awe. Or the child can tentatively reach up and turn the latch to open the door and pass through the threshold, filled with fear but also fascination. It takes an act of courage and trust to live into wonder.6 If opening a secret door is the deciding point of wonder, then as people of faith, as the church, you and I know who stands on the other side of that door. It is the one who says,“Behold! I stand at the door and knock; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Rev 3:20). How is it that we are to get lost and yet thrive in wonder, love, and praise? How is it that the church can be the sign of the new creation in Christ? How is it that we, of all people, have been called to be stewards of God’s mysteries? I really don’t know. It’s a wonder. All I can say is, turn the latch, open the door, and come to the table.

    Notes 1 Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York, Harper & Row, 1959), 54. 2 Robert Fuller, “A Life Shaped by Wonder: Rachel C a r s o n i n Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 108. 3 From Joanna Adams in at least two of her delivered sermons. 4 Andrew Park, “A Theology of Transmutation, ״in A Dream Unfinished, ed. by Eleazar Fernandez and Fernando Segovia (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 158, 159, 160. Thanks to Marcia Riggs for this quotation. 5 Wangari Maathai, Unbowed: A Memoir (New York: Anchor Books 2007), 212. 6 Jerome A. Miller, In the Throe o f Wonder: Intimations o f the Sacred in a Post-Modern World (New York: SUNY Press, 1992), 34-35.

  • Praying in a minor key

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    Praying in a Minor Key

    Isaiah 64:1-9

    Andrew Foster Connors Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, Maryland

    Advent is a strange time of year, at least in my own Presbyterian tradition. We start the celebration just after Thanksgiving with texts like this one – gloom and doom. The coming judgment. Apocalyptic visions. This puts the church out of step with what’s going on around us. The rest of our friends are already having a holly, jolly Christmas, humming along to the syrupy sound of department store carols. The rest of our neighbors are feeling good, and when people feel good, the cash registers start ringing, and sales executives start singing to the sounds of cha-ching. Fresh out of stewardship season, you would think that the Church would lcaru a valuable lesson about its own survival: you do not attract more people or their money by telling them how bankrupt the world has become. Several years ago a public radio station put this obvious market truth into practice. The station mandated that classical music written in a minor key would no longer be added to its playlist. Apparently research had shown that the minor key does not make people feel happy, which translates into fewer listeners. The more cheery the music, the more plentiful the happy listeners. Some churches have seen the light. They are skipping Advent altogether. Skipping over troubling texts about the coming judgment of our God, skipping over texts about how messed up our world has become, ridding themselves of anything that might interfere with the holiday cheer. It’s hard to feel that Silent Night serenity while singing “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” in the minor key. Isaiah 64 is probably not on the reading list of these churches. And maybe it shouldn’t be on ours, either. What is the point of messing up this season of hope with a prayer of distress? “We sinned. We transgressed. Wc have ah become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are tike filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Where is the good news in that? Not only have we failed, not only are we totally unable to do right, but God doesn’t seem to be interested in saving us anymore. “Because you hid yourself we transgressed.” “¥ou have hidden your face from us.” “You have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” God is silent, and we are out of hope, completely out of

    Is that really the message that the church ought to be speaking this time of year? It’s not as though there is a lack of bad news in our world. We’ve seen the carnage that human beings will do to each other—first graders cut down by one of our human kind. We’ve seen the same kind of gun violence right here—14 children under the age of 18 murdered just last year in Baltimore. Twelve the year before that. Fourteen the year before that. We do not need to be reminded that there are some things that are difficult for us to prevent, impossible for us to mend. In the suffering caused by disease and death, we do not need to be told that sometimes we have a hard time 10eating God’s whereabouts. In another year of violence, we do not need to be lectured on the hiddenness of God.

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    The ehurch is supposed to be promising that good news is eoming into the world. The ehurch is supposed to be declaring that peace is coming to the nations. The church is supposed to be shouting the message of hope. Where are the promises of the child that will lead them, the wolf and the lamb lying down together, the heavens and nature that will sing? With all the expectations of good news promised to our world, why are we speaking this message of gloom and doom? Isaiah’s contemporaries might have been wondering the same thing. Israel was celebrating its own version of redemption. The exile was over. The Hebrew people were returning from the places where they had been scattered by their foreign oppressors . Once again they looked toward the hope of Jerusalem—the city on a hill. Their restoration had only just begun. This is the time for celebration, Isaiah. This is the time for joy. This is foe time to announce that our despair has ended. This is foe time to skip over foe troubling texts about the coming judgment of God, skip over foe texts about how messed up our world has become. This is foe time to rid ourselves of anything that might interfere with foe good will that’s going around. But Isaiah isn’t ready to put on a happy face. He’s heard this kind of happy theology before—a celebration of economies that fills foe pockets of a few and leaves everyone else exhausted and in debt. He’s seen this kind of optimism before. He’s living in a city that once believed that its most favored nation status was intractable. He’s lived among leaders who never had the courage to face the consequences of their natfon’s sin. Isaiah knows what it means to live in a nation that does not want to face an honest s^’-exaufination about drug wars that leave too many people dead, about segregation and poverty still tied to race, about a culture of violence that celebrates our destruction, about a gun and jail economy cloaked in the sheets of foe Second Amendment and public safety. Isaiah knows what it means to live in a place where minor keys are not welcome on foe public airwaves. He’s weary of this kind of optimism that promises salvation in places where salvation cannot be found. I think an increasing number of us are weary of it, too. Weary of the same empty promises that one more purchase is going to fill up our loneliness. Weaty of the same old lies than one more war is going to make everything more secure. Weary of the same old false hopes that one more candidate, one more election, is going to fix what’s broken wifo foe world. Weary of the same old falsehood that one more jail is going to help our community. Weaty of all foe promises that salvation will be found in places where salvation can never be found. As unpopular as Isaiah’s message is this time of year, maybe there are a fow who appreciate hearing foe truth for a change: the world is messed up. We have failed our children. And if we trust only in ourselves, then we are completely out of hope. ?erhaps Isaiah knows that sometimes it takes reaching that kind of honest human ending to discover God’s beginning. Maybe you have to hit the wall before you learn to trust a God who is coming to heal all of our brokenness. Maybe you have to run out of hope before you come to kno’v what hope really is. When you face foe darkness before you, only then are you able to see the joy of the light. Because in Advent we are not simply getting ready for Jesus’ birthday. We are not getting ready for our annual ritual of trying to be a little nicer to foe in-laws. We are not simply getting ready for foe routines of feeling a little more charitable, a little more generous, a little more pleasant. We are longing for foe days when God’s earthly kingdom will come, when there will be no more shootings inside schools ٢٠on our

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    own streets, when eaneer will no longer leave an empty ehair at the Christmas feast, when the mountains and hills will break forth into song, when no one will hurt or destroy, and the people will live in joy! And that joyous day eannot eome with another trip to the mall. That peaee eannot eome with another military eampaign in the East. That safety is not going to come by building more jails while our sehools are falling apart. It’s not going to come if we purchase all fee metal detectors in fee world and put police officers in every school. That hope cannot come by putting on a happy face and singing happy songs. That day will only come by the hand o fa God who does awesome deeds that we do not expect, who “came down” in the past and moved mountains for God’s people. We’ve seen those mountains moved before. Five years ago, I heard more people than I can count saying, “This nation wifi never elect a black man president.” After fee first election, more people said, “This nation will never allow a black man to be re-elected President.” We forgot about the Lord who moves mountains for the people. I’ve read in history books about a governor, whose name I tend to forget, who once said, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” But someone else had a monument built to him down in Washington, and 1 didn’t have to look up his name to remember whose dreams came closer to reality. A people once thought that women would never have fee right to vote, that slavery would never end, that nations would always been ruled by Kings and Queens, and they all forgot about a God who tears open fee heavens and comes down to move mountains for the children of God. They forgot about fee Christmas angels who all said the same thing to Mary and Joseph and Zechariah and the shepherds, “Do not fear because God is coming.” They forgot about a child who was born to teach us that if we want to know where God lives, we might spend some time wife fee children. They forgot about God being willing to be broken on fee cross to transform our brokenness into joy. They forgot about a God who defeated death to teach us not to fear. They forgot about a God who is coming to our world. In fee middle of a season of false optimism, fee church is singing in the minor key and saying to fee world that buying more stuff won’t fill up the empty places, and we aren yt afraid to say it; selling more guns won’t fix bodies already broken, and we are not afraid to speak it; building more jails won’t fix our city’s abandonment of our children, and we’re not afraid to act on it; singing more happy songs won’t ،ill the void in our hearts and we have the courage to admit it. We are putting our hope in a God who has moved mountains in the past, who entered fee world in fee midst of Herod’s killing of the children to assure us that though we might sometimes foel like clay, squashed and squeezed by this world, fee potter is still at work! The Prince of Peace is still at work! The King of Kings is still at work! The Lord of Lord is still at work! Isaiah begins his season of waiting for God’s grace-filled intrusion wife a fervent prayer: “Dear God, we are in fee deep muddy. We have messed up this world in a terrible way. GuMives are not what we hoped they would be. Gur relationships are not what we hoped they would be. Our faith is not what we hoped it would be. We are out of hope and we know it. But we’re tired of living in this kind of brokenness. And you are the only one who can mend it. You are the only one who can give us our future”

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    You won’t find that prayer in the shopping eatalogues. You won’t find it in a Congressional press release ٢٠a campaign’s promises. You might not even find it in the church sometimes when we forget that our future is not in our budgets ٢٠in our programs or in our Sunday morning pomp. Praying this prayer sounds odd, especially this time of year. But ifyou can’t bear to participate in all foe self-deceit another year—ifyour heart longsfor healing for wounds that run deeper than we can fix—،/ you refuse to letgo ofthe audacious vision of the wolf and lamb lying down together, of no more children gunned down on our streets ٢٠anywhere else, foe rich and foe poor filled with what they need, then Isaiah’s prayer might just be your prayer, too.

  • Unnaming evil

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    Page 19

    Unnaming Evil

    Genesis 4:1-9; Romans 12:9-21

    Kristy R. Färber Grace c©¥enant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, North Carolina

    This is the final sermon in a six-week sermon and (¡׳ass series called “All This We Believe,” put together to kick off the fall program year in 2012. More than 150 church members tookafifteen-minutefaith survey thatwe usedas the basis ofthe class and series, looking at the various beliefs surrounding matters offaith and theology. The survey revealed ways in ((’¡¡¡cl( our members have cast¡) ׳different beliefs about topics such as leave!¡ and hell, prayer, judgment, miracles, and biblical authority, yet //’ ك؛ﺀcome together in worship and service in the name ofJesus Christ.

    Fred Craddock writes about his experience in New York City when he was asked to preach at the famous Riverside Church.1 Riverside’s pastor, William Sloane Coffin , was going to be out of town and invited Craddock not only to preach, but also to stay in his apartment for the weekend. Craddock agreed, glad to help his friend. The Sunday morning he was in New York, Craddock woke up early and headed to the kitchen for something to eat. There he noticed a note taped to the refrigerator. It read, “There is nothing in here, Fred. Go to the church and there is breakfast there for you.” Fred opened the fridge up anyway, saw that there was nothing, and headed off to toe church, thinking, “Well, this’ll be good. I’ll eat with toe staff, find oto where I am to sit, stand, who does what and when. I’ll get toe complete orientation.” He grabbed his robe and headed out toe door. As he approached toe church, he saw a line around toe building, turning toe comer from one street to another, what looked like hundreds of men from toe street standing outside toe church. Craddock got in line and waited until it was his turn to get a scoop of egg, a sausage patty, a biscuit, and a cup of coffee, and then took a seat across from a man who looked like he had seen better days. In a conversation with toe man, Craddock learned he used to be a stockbroker but got to drinking so much that he lost everything—his job, his house, and his marriage. Having recently achieved 6 months of sobriety, toe man had set out to get to know his grandkids, but he fell into drinking again and found himself back on toe streets of New York City. After sharing his story, toe man asked Craddoek, “Where are you from?” “Georgia.” “And what do you do?” “I’m a preacher.” He laughed and said, “It gets all of us, doesn’t it?” Craddock writes, “When he said that to me, I wanted to get up and take a knife to hit on toe glass to get everybody’s attention, stand up on toe table and say, ‘Listen you losers. In a few minutes, I’ll be in one ofthe great pulpits of America, and you’ll be back on toe street. I’m not like you.’ But I didn’t, because it would not have been true.” How many times have we thought something similar? Someone who has been hurt by toe church finds out that we regularly attend worship. We immediately jump to distance ourselves from whatever negative experience this person had, explaining

    Pentecost 2013

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    that our welcoming church shares little ؛ ١١common with the Christianity that has so wounded that person. For some of us, when family members come to visit, we constantly roll our eyes and hope that our friends see the hard work we’ve done to overcome our roots and create our own identity. We tty to distance ourselves from all sorts of things, desiring to dehne ourselves by the qualities we hold up to be the best in our lives, whether they are socio-economic standing, political beliefs, ways we parent, or maybe our education. We want to be known for what we deem is the best version of ourselves. As we wrapped up آنjoint education class discussing different aspects of faith in our church, the topic of evil was something we only had the opportunity to talk about for a few minutes. When the class was over, people commented on how evil is something that we as a church and as individuals don’t spend much time on—that, for the most part, evil is something “out there”—something we associate with the faces of those we find threatening. It seems as though we tty our best to distance ourselves from evil by naming those who most fully personify evil, giving it a face that looks nothing like us: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Fol Pot, ©sama Bin Laden, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jerry Sandusky. Once we identify these “evil” people, we see pretty clearly that evil is something other, something far removed from who we are and what we experience every day. About 15 years ago, Andrew Delbanco wrote a book called The Death ofSatan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense ofEvil. We do not have a language to talk about evil. He claims that we have “no language to connect our inner lives with the horrors that we read about every day—mass murders, school shootings, racial violence, civil wars.”* Delbanco believes that our society has worked through a process o f“unnaming evil,” one that began centuries ago but has sped up in the past fifty years. We worty that too much talk of evil will drive people away from the church. We believe that our thinking has become so much more sophisticated than that of our earlier ancestors, and we blame most atrocities in this world on ignorance rather than evil. Sure, we are entertained by the battle of good versus evil in the movies. Since 2002, fifty superhero movies have been made:^ Iron Man, Elektra, Spiderman, the X-Men, the Incredibles, Thor, the Hulk, and Catwoman. These movies are in higher demand now than they have been at other points in history. It appears that evil is something we have outsourced to the world of entertainment. This past Halloween, a fourth grade boy I know was trying to decide who to dress up like. He asked his parents, “Who is the guy that wears red and has antlers, a tail, and a pitchfork? Maybe I could be that guy.” The boy was describing the image of the cartoon devil. Maybe it is not such a bad thing that the images of the devil running around with a red pitchfork are becoming obsolete. But as evil slips out of our focus, it hasn’t disappeared from the world around us. Peter Gomes, in an article about evil and scripture, states, “In the Bible, evil is real it is not an illusion or a state of mind or a moral inconvenience.”* We can read about evil in more than 500 places in scripture. From the creation stories to the exile, in the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament letters, in the Psalter and in the Gospels, evil is not something scripture shies awayfrom. What we often fail to recognize. Gomes suggests, is that ignorance is not the only

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    reason good people do bad things and that knowledge itself eannot prevent us from evil.Cain knewthathe should not be enviousofhis brother nor should he murder him. He knew what was right, yet he did wrong. Joseph’s brothers knew that it was wrong to sell their younger brother into slavery, but they acted on their passion rather than their sense of right and wrong, ?aul, in Romans 7 ,writes that he does not understand his own actions for he does not do what he wants but does the very thing he hates. C.S. Lewis published a novel in 1942 called The Screwtape Letters. The book is a series of letters written from Screwtape, a Senior Demon, to Wormwood, his nephew and a Junior Tempter. Wormwood’s assignment is to guide his human away from God and toward evil. G v x e ^ o u ^ o rm w o o d tries to turn his average human into an evil sociopath, but Screwtape advises the Junior Tempter that his objective is not to get his human to commit anything ^ctacularly evil, but that “the safest path to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”^ C.S. Lewis captured the essence of evil as a kind of slow, confusing force that has great power, a force that somehow turns German shop keepers and accountants into ss guards ؛a force that convinces millions of Americans that Separate can be E g a l ؛a force that moves a group of Cambodian peasants to political activists and then to a military force and finally into torturers. 1 am not advocating that we become obsessed with evil. I have known people who spend all too much time trying to find evil in every person and every room that they walk into. They run foe risk of seeing only darkness, of missing out on joy by being overcome with evil. While some ofus do not take evil seriously enough, many others take evil too seriously. If we deny evil, we may constantly be surprised by the actions of others and potentially even our own. If we think about evil too much, we make evil the thing we worship—we make evil the focus of our attention, and we will live in constant fear. Our New Testament reading gives us instructions on how to live in a life of faith and, in just twelve verses, ?aul gives almost thirty pieces of advice. Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Love one another in mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. The list goes on, and out of all these teachings, only one of them is negative—hate what is evil. Sure,the primary ways we seethe chureh^dre^ng evil maybe to either discount its power or to obsess over foe lurking danger it imposes. In foe twelfth chapter of Romans, ?aul proposes another way. The text provides a beautiful image of what living a holy life might look like, and we have a lot of loving to do. Paul tells us to hold tightly to what is good, to try as best as we are able not to respond to evil with evil, but to outdo evil with something that is stronger, with a love that is more pure and caring and peaceful and honest, as long as we possibly can. I believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. thought along the same lines as ?aul’s words to the Romans. Dr. King took evil as seriously as any of our spiritual and social leaders of foe twentieth century. He wanted his listeners and foe American people to understand how evil is more present in our community than we often recognize. He believed that evil existed in the homes ofpeople who did nothing to bring about equal rights andjustice. He taught that evil and passivity have a symbiotic relationship —one can’t thrive without foe other. He preached that foe more we ignore evil, foe greater damage it can do. He believed that we needed to be aware ofthe roots of evil,

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    to look out for the places where it creeps into the daily lives of ordinary people. We can clearly see evil in concentration camps and bombings and genocide and white supremacist rallies. We see evil on a schoolyard where an older child beats up on a smaller child. We see evil when people in authority abuse their power by abusing others. Stopping this kind of evil is vitally important to the wellbeing of all people, but it is also important to recognize that evil doesn’t begin in these places that make toe news. These places are where we see toe final results. Evil is often conceived in much quieter places, by people who, at one point, might never have dreamed that they could ^rticipate in such atrocities. Robert Lifton, an American psychiatrist, spent years studying the Holocaust, specifically the psychology of doctors at Auschwitz and their role in upervising the deaths ofinnocent peopled He felt a burden to understand toe ^ ^ tra to rs , especially those who had originally chosen to work in a field dedicated to helping others. Lifton interviewed 28 physicians during toe late 1970’s. After finishing his research, one Auschwitz survivor asked him, “Were they beasts when they did what they did? Or were they human beings?” Lifton’s answer was, “They were and arc men…. Most of the doctors werc very ordinary. Neither brilliant nor stupid, neither inherently evil nor particularly ethically sensitive, they werc by no means the demonic figures—lusting to kill—people have often thought them to be.” These werc doctors who, after many small steps, somehow began to believe that their rcle in killing was done in toe name of healing a larger society. They went from obeying orders to seeing their role as something positive for society. After finishing his research and his years spent studying these horrific events, Lifton writes this:

    It was in those sitting rooms [talking to these doctors], that I did a great part of the research. Trying to truly understand required me to view these medical pert^trators, whatever their relationship to evil, as human beings and nothing else. That meant requiring of myself a form of empathy for Nazi doctors: Ihad to imagine myway into their situation,not toexonerate but to seek knowledge of human susceptibility to evil.

    The evil that we need to be aware of is not toe kind that happens overnight. On a faith survey that we used in our church, there was a question about evil, and one of the optional answers was, “evil is tricky, hard to identify.” I promise, there werc no right and wrong answers on that quiz, but toe more time I spend with the subject, toe more that specific answer appeals to me. While Dr. King spoke about the seriousness of evil, he worked hard not to be overcome by evil. He did not shy away from talking about it, praying against it, or peaching about it. He toted evil; toerc ص؛ doubt about that. But at the same time he believed that evil could be overcome by good. He believed “that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” He believed that, even when what is right seems absent or defeated in the moment, good wifi always be stronger than toe most powerful evil. Raul’s words provide this measure of encouragement as well. There is incredible

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    good in this world, and we are a part of it. We must never stop rejoieing in the “fact that we are created in the image of God, and we share in the full dignity ofcreation.”^ All the evil in the world—none of it can overpower the goodness in the God who created us and cares for us. As we think about evil in this world, may we recognize it enough to hate and resist it with our words and our actions. And may we find the strength with the help of the faithfol in our lives to overcome evil by letting the love of God dwell so deeply within us that we cannot help but cling to all that is good.

    Notes

    1 Fred B. Craddock, The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock, (Louisville. Kentuek> :׳Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 152-153. 2 Gregory Jones, “Evil and Good Friday,” The Christian Century, (April 12,2000). 3 http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-20120827-top-superhero-movies-pictures ,0,7443940.photogallery 4 Peter Gomes, The Good Book, “The Bible and Evil,” (New Vork, N¥: Harper Collins Publishing, 19%),246. 5 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York, NY: Touchstone Publishing, 1996), 54. 6 Robert Jay Lil’tou. ‘!Te ; /;٠٧Doctors, (B،؛sie Books, 2000), introduction. 7 Gomes, 248.

  • The ecology of resurrection

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    Page 20

    The Ecology of Resurrection

    Genesis 2:4b-8; John 20:1-18

    William P. Brown

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    A few words of introduction before the Gospel text is read. First, John makes clear that the resurrection takes place in a garden, and the garden is more than a backdrop. Second, John’s belief in the power of the spoken word is unmistakable. Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples spans nearly five whole chapters, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that “worthy is the lamb.” This is also clear toward the end of chapter 20 when Thomas has come to believe in the resurrected Jesus once he has seen and touched Jesus’ wounds. Jesus responds with the searching question: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We, my friends, have not seen. None of us can lay claim to having been present at the empty tomb. But we have heard, and we continue to hear, the ancient story passed down to us, and because of that, Jesus says, we are more blessed than the eye-witnesses! I think this also explains why Jesus does not let Mary “hold on to” him once she recognizes him. Instead, Jesus tells Mary to tell his disciples. That is, to begin to tell the story, the story of Easter, the story that draws us all into the great cloud of witnesses from then till now. But the paradox is that the story is full of seeing . Each character in the story sees something different. And so I invite you to ask yourselves what you see as you hear the story. The first cry that pierced that early Easter morning at the garden tomb was not “Christ is risen!” but “Jesus is stolen!” Mary had every reason to believe that what she saw bore the signs of a bona fide body-snatching. And what did she see? Exhibit A: a missing stone, a gaping entrance. And for what purpose except to steal Jesus’ body? So she runs to tell Simon Peter and that anonymous “other disciple,” and they both run to the tomb, jostling to see who crosses the threshold first. And what did they see? The first to enter, the “other disciple,” sees linen wrappings lying in the tomb. Exhibit B: And when the winded Simon Peter gets there, he sees another detail, the head cloth neatly rolled up, separated from the wrappings. Exhibit C: So far everyone has seen something different, an added detail here, another there, completing the picture of a possible crime scene … or the miracle of miracles. Mary sees something more. Once the disciples have left, it is her turn to peer into the tomb, and she sees two angels in white, another detail overlooked by the two disciples, but a detail of far greater significance. “Why are you weeping?” they ask. She clings to her own reconstruction of events: a crime has been committed, and she wants to get to the bottom of it, to retrieve the body to ensure that Jesus, her executed Lord and teacher, is at least given a decent burial. But before they respond, as they do in the other gospels, Jesus himself suddenly appears. But what she sees is a gardener. A case of mistaken identity? I’m not so sure. More likely a case of double entendre. Jesus, the gardener. My guess is that John, through the eyes of Mary, transported us back to the primordial past of the first garden, planted and cultivated

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    by God. God the gardener, the King of both cosmos and compost, not only plants this lush garden but also transplants this groundling of a man, Adam, with the expressed purpose to “serve it and preserve it” (2:15), a preferable translation to “till it and keep it” (NRSV). God the gardener, Adam the gatherer. God, we see throughout the Bible, is no stranger to gardening, for God plants more than a pristine garden in Eden. God plants a people, and the exodus is, botanically speaking, viewed as a transplantation: “You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O LORD, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O LORD” (Exodus 15:16-17). Or as we find in a psalm:

    You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River. (Ps 80:8-11)

    Or from John: “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower” (John 15:1). And even from the lips of Paul, who credits God alone with growth: “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7). When you come to think of it, gardening is a quintessentially divine activity that no other metaphor or title can fully capture. Yes, God is Savior, deliverer, liberator, redeemer: God is all these, but such titles lack the sense of organic connection with the earth and with a people that only the title “gardener” can fill. To save is to save from, to deliver from, to liberate from, to redeem from. But in order to save, redeem, liberate, and deliver, God also works with, God works with the soil, with the fecundity of the ground, with body and flesh, to bring forth new life. God: creator, redeemer, sustainer .. . and gardener! It is no coincidence, then, that Mary Magdalene took Jesus as the gardener in John’s account of the resurrection (John 20:15). Things are never what they seem in John’s gospel. Although she does not immediately recognize the questioner as Jesus, Mary is clearly on her way toward acknowledging the person standing next to her as divine. Mary’s initial impression of Jesus is not a false one: it contains a seed of venerable truth about God’s creative power to bring forth new life. Gardeners are, after all, cultivators of life; they work with the old to raise up the new, and only God can raise a body from the soil that is our flesh. Gardeners by nature are practitioners of resurrection, of bringing forth new life from below, from out of the rich, decaying, organic soil. By recognizing Jesus as the gardener, Mary takes us back also to the creation of Adam, created out of the “dust of the ground” and animated by God’s breath. It is a striking image, so striking that even Michelangelo dared not depict it on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: of God performing CPR, or more accurately, CPS: cardio pulmonary suscitation. Imagine that on the Sistine chapel! A very tactile picture of

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    God breathing into Adanes lungs and starting his heart pumping. Catherine Keller describes this as the divine Kiss with a capital K. And what God does for Jesus in resurrecting him is, I suspect, no less tactile and intimate. By recalling the first garden in his resurrection account, John invites us to imagine the resurrection in this way: God walks in the garden in the dead of night and removes the stone and enters the burial cave. God embraces Jesus’ body, holding him tight, pressing flesh upon spirit and spirit upon flesh with the same hands that fashioned Adam from the dust of the ground. God bathes Jesus with life-giving breath that not only reanimates Jesus but transforms him body and soul. A resurrection, a new creation! A body devoid of decay and free of limitation yet bearing the marks of crucifixion. Make no mistake: Mary’s mistake is no mistake, for the author of John has her testifying to the saving, creative, animating, resurrecting presence of God even before she recognizes Jesus as the resurrected One. “How are the dead raised?” Paul asks, and then as is typical of Paul, he answers his own question. The Apostle points to the seed, which must die before it bursts forth with new life (1 Cor 15:35-36). Resurrection is organic, and the results are beyond measure. Without the seed there would be no cedar, no majestic redwood, no mustard bush. New creation bursts forth from the shell of a seed, out of the ground of dust and decay. Resurrection is not “creation out of nothing.” Resurrection is new creation out of and with the old creation. As Jesus’ own body bears witness, the body that still bears the marks of his crucifixion, resurrection is new life created from our fleshy, bony, bloody, dusty, dirty selves. No wonder, then, that Paul describes Christ’s resurrection as “the first fruits” (1 Cor 15:20, 23). There is something boldly bodily about the resurrection. “I believe in the resurrection of the body,” so declares the ancient creed. Both in this life and the next, we have our bodies—everything that makes us who we are. Even our wounds. And there’s even more. Resurrection is not limited to ourselves, and the key is found in what happens to our bodies in death. “To dust you shall return,” God tells Adam (Gen 3:19). In death, that “dust”—the basic constituent of our bodies, indeed of life itself—will become dispersed, ultimately providing the constituents for other living bodies. Such is the cycle of life and death. As the molecules of our decaying bodies become shared with future generations of life, and as our own living bodies reflect the broad evolutionary legacy of life in all its interdependence, then resurrection ultimately cannot be limited to the raising up of our bodies. Resurrection includes the whole of life in its vast eschatological sweep, all from the simple fact that we remain now and forevermore tied to God’s creation. Resurrection has all to do with God the creator, God the gardener. Resurrection is hands down the most miraculous act of cultivation, and it is also the most basic, essential act of cultivation: the emergence of new life from out of the soil that is our flesh. In the end, resurrection is God’s blue-ribbon victory garden. E. B. White speaks of his wife Katherine, an avid gardener, who every fall without fail began to plot and to plant:

    I . . . used to marvel at how unhesitatingly she would kneel in the dirt and begin grubbing about, garbed in a spotless cotton dress or a handsome tweed skirt and jacket. She simply refused to dress down to a garden: she moved in elegantly and walked among her flowers as she walked among

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    her friends—nicely dressed, perfectly poised. The only moment in the year when she actually got herself up for gardening was on the day in fall that she had selected, in advance, for the laying out of the spring bulb garden—a crucial operation, carefully charted and full of witchcraft. … Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katharine would get into a shabby old Brooks raincoat much too long for her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes, and proceed to the director’s chair—a folding canvas thing—that had been placed for her at the edge of the plot. There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather, while Henry Allen produced dozens of brown paper packages of new bulbs and a basketful of old ones, ready for the intricate interment. As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion… her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring,… sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.1

    That spring has now arrived, and resurrection is in full bloom. Jesus is risen. And so will we. And so also the world and all therein. For God so loved the world. So it is with God the gardener, who refuses to dress down to the garden of creation and yet is no stranger to dirt. God in Christ is no stranger to flesh, the soil of our existence, the soil of our souls. So what do you see in the empty tomb on that dark, misty morning?

    An open entrance, strewn linens, two angels, a gardener, a teacher, our Lord and Savior, the first fruits, the tree of life, the new creation, hope for the world?

    I say, all of the above.

    Notes 1 E.B. White, “Introduction,” in K. S. White, Onward and Upward in the Garden, ed.E.B. White (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux / Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979), xvii-xix.

  • Sharing the Gospel in a religiously diverse world

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    Sharing the Gospel in a Religiously Diverse World

    W. Eugene March Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

    More than three decades ago I had my first personal experience of official, intentional interfaith conversation. I was part of a denominational task force aimed at exploring the past and present of Christian/Jewish relations. There were about twenty of us, mostly Presbyterian Christians but with several Jews as well. We went around the room introducing ourselves, who we were and what we did, and indicating what we hoped might be the outcome of our conversations. We each had a name plate that faced out to the group so we could all learn one another’s names. When it came my time, I tried to be oh so polite, oh so careful, hoping not to offend any one with my theology and especially not the Jews who were present. In the middle of my stammering , one of the Jews —a prominent Jewish philosopher—interrupted me saying, “Gene, are you trying to say that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior? ״I hesitated and then replied, “Well, yes I am. ״To which he responded, “Then just say it! I can handle it.” That was a most instructive moment for me! I was who I was, and that was what I was to share. I didn’t need to worry about somehow offending someone of another faith. They wouldn’t have joined the conversation if they were overly sensitive about such matters. As a Christian I am a witness to what I believe God has done in Jesus Christ. That is what I have to share in interfaith dialogue. That is my “job,” my assignment . And you who are preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ have the same task! We are not to forget this. In any interfaith engagement, we are there as followers of Jesus. This said, however, there is much, much left to consider. “This may be interesting,” I hear you say, “but what does it have to do with me? I already have more to do than I can say grace over. My people aren’t concerned or interested in that kind of stuff, so why should I spend time worrying about 4interfaith engagement’?” Well, let me suggest at least three reasons why you, why we, should be thinking about this matter. In the first place there is the clear fact of our changing context. Sociologists and other students of demographic statistics have been reporting for some time that the numbers of adherents in religious traditions, Christian and non-Christian, are changing . The 2010 report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that while Protestants, a term inclusive of all the rich variety of those who so label themselves , still constitute a slim majority of the religious population in the United States (51 percent), they are steadily declining. The percentage of Roman Catholics is not declining, holding constant at around 24 percent, but that is only because Christian immigrants entering the United States are twice as likely to be Catholic than Protestant. What’s more, 16 percent of the population does not claim any religious affiliation whatsoever. That is double what it was in 2000.1 At the same time people of other faiths are becoming more visible. Within the United States, according to the Institute of American Religion, there are at present over 1,600 Hindu Temples and study centers.2 Likewise, the number of mosques in North America has increased from around 1,200 in 2000 to 2,100 in 2010. There are now more Muslims than Presbyterians in the United States. In many communities this

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    increase has been peaceful, but the potential is always present for controversy and turmoil as has been witnessed in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for the past two years.3 And “the others” are always especially vulnerable, as we all have been reminded by the August 5, 2012, senseless murder of a number of Sikhs in Wisconsin. What is the point? Clear enough I think. The world—the context—in which I grew up has changed! We all know this, but what do we do about it? Preachers have a dual responsibility. First, they need to remind themselves regularly of this altered context. New language, new images, new approaches are called for. Old messages don’t address a changed situation. People of other religions, “the others” once known to me only though books, are now my neighbors. Second, preachers have the task of continually educating their congregants. The job is never complete. In a society where individuals are encouraged to isolate themselves from others and look out primarily for their own interests, particularly in matters of religion, this is difficult. I continue to be surprised at the number of educated people who do not or will not recognize that our situation has changed. I suspect that you know this even better than I, but while we still have time, together we need to find ways to talk differently with (not at) “the others” who are now our neighbors. A second reason to reflect seriously about the issue of sharing the gospel in a religiously diverse world is that this is the world in which God has placed us. We are members of the human family, a family that includes people with hundreds, no thousands, of varying ways to talk about the Holy. And we all have to live together! Peacemaking is not an optional, take-it-or-leave-it matter for us. It is a life-or-death issue. Among a number of enemies who represent a “real and present threat,” ignoranee may well be the greatest with which we must immediately contend. Whether we like it or not, we are now world citizens. The only question is whether we will be responsible or irresponsible in the exercise of our duties. We must help our people know fact from fiction. All sorts of inaccurate and/or false perceptions are being pronounced as “unquestionable” by paranoid harbingers of hate. Key to our situation, at least in part, is providing timely, adequate, and correct information for those whom we serve. The need is critical; the extent of the ignorance is enormous. Consider the following that, while dated, still underscores the point:

    Incredible as it may seem, the results of a survey reported by the National Geographic Society (November 20, 2002) revealed that among 18-to-24year -old Americans, 87 percent could not locate Iraq on a world map, 58 percent could not find Japan, 65 percent did not know where France was, 69 percent were at a loss to locate the United Kingdom, for 29 percent the location of the Pacific Ocean was unknown, and believe it or not, 11 percent could not even find the United States on a world map.4

    And if geography is such a mystery, how much more likely is it that knowledge and understanding of the culture and religion of “the others” in our human family is also missing? As one of the characters in the espionage thriller The Bourne Betrayal puts it, “We have to stop confusing Arab with Muslim, Saudi with Syrian, Azerbaijani with Afghani, Sunni with Shia.”5 Peacemaking begins with knowledge and understanding of “the others.” For many, personal study may be necessary in order to be prepared to instruct/engage others in a serious consideration of the religion and customs of our

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    neighbors, but whatever needs to be done, this educational task should no longer be left near the bottom of the to-do list. Third, not only do we need to learn about the religions and customs of others, but we need also to learn more about ourselves. Yes, we have all been educated in first-rate seminaries and universities, and yes, we have years of experience, but how many of us have actually attempted to share our faith with someone outside of the Christian “tribe”? Some years ago Diana Eck wrote:

    In the give and take of dialogue, understanding one another leads to mutual self-understanding and finally to mutual transformation. My encounter with Hindus has enabled me to understand my own faith more clearly and has required that I understand my own faith differently. It would only be honest to say that my faith as a Christian has been shaped by several religious traditions.6

    As theologians we have to grapple with the significance of this rich religious diversity in which we find ourselves. As noted at the beginning of this essay, if we are to be faithful to our calling, it is essential for us to understand ever more deeply what it is that defines us as Christians. It is not sufficient simply to mouth old lectures by a favorite professor; the context has changed. Certainly the Bible provides direction as do the creeds. But what do they mean? I know that I trust in Jesus as my Lord and Savior, but, like Eck, for me the meaning of that confession has taken on ever richer meaning the more I have talked with people of other faiths. For instance, Jews and Muslims have challenged me to explain just what I mean by the terms Trinity and Incarnation and righteousness and justice. And as I have tried and as I have heard their continuing concerns, my own understanding has been expanded, given more nuance, and made clear to me that I still have much to learn. One of my biggest “learnings” has been an expansion and clarification of something I already knew, at least in part. The first several centuries of the Christian movement were marked by a vigorous diversity! In the beginning there were numerous groups who considered themselves followers of Jesus, but no one central authority that defined an “official” theology. Accusations about “heresy” were made by some against others, but there was no established orthodoxy by which to arbitrate these charges. In fact, it was not until the fifth century C. E. that an official “canon” of the Bible became widely agreed upon. Diversity, not uniformity, marked our beginnings. Peter Lampe describes the religious situation in second-century Rome as follows:

    Early Christians in Rome formed various house churches. These groups met in private homes. There was no local center for Roman Christianity. This factionalism, similar to that of the Jews in the city, facilitated a theological pluralism. Thus, second-century Rome saw Christian groups following numerous theological directions: Marcionite, Valentinian, Carpocratian, Theodotian, Modalsitic, Montanist and Quartodecimanian teachings. There were Cerdo’s followers and house churches of (what was only later called) the “orthodox” faith. There existed a Jewish-Christian circle that still observed the Torah….Some groups exhibited a logos theology that was

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    too complicated for lesser educated Christians. Some circles believed in the millennium and others did not. Roman Christianity was multicoloured and as such often also reflected the various geographical and educational provenances of Roman Christians.7

    What’s more, this diversity among Christians was paralleled by an equally diverse number of “pagan” religions. Rome was a very multicultural, religiously diverse city. It was in this setting that early Christians, a distinct minority (as were the Jews), made their way and did so successfully. As I have reflected upon our beginnings, I have become ever more convinced that diversity is not at all a bad thing. Perhaps God never intended us all to look just alike or believe just alike. Perhaps our witness is better when it is presented – as it was in the first three centuries of our movement – in different ways by contrasting, sometimes even contradictory, voices. Certainly, when speaking with persons of other faiths, we do well to acknowledge our many internal differences even while we witness to our common allegiance to Jesus Christ. Most of the people of other faiths with whom I have spoken understand what I mean. They know of similar diversity within their own groups.8 Perhaps we can and should develop a greater appreciation for God’s love by carefully considering the multiplicity of ways God has reached out to the incredibly diverse human family of which we are a part. A second outcome from my encounter with persons of other faiths has been the recognition that for the most part, they simply do not care about our family quarrels. While my position on “transubstantiation” or “prevenient grace” might be important for some, it is not for most Jews, Muslims, or Hindus. They may be a little curious to learn how our differences developed, but they really only care about what we do. They find our response to the instruction found in the letter of James far more important than our official theology:

    What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2:1417 )

    What we do will trump what we say every time! For too long Christians have maintained that we have the best, indeed the only, true understanding of what God is doing in our world. It is hard to engage with those of other faiths who do not start where we want to start. The Muslims and Jews with whom I have talked are quite prepared to accept my self identification as Christian without asking me to explain differences I may have with other Christians. What they want to know is if I will accept their self identifications in the same way. I cannot have a serious conversation with any one if I begin with a string of exceptions concerning what I am willing to discuss and on what terms. If I approach anyone else—and especially a non-Christian—with the goal to “persuade” the other no matter what, then I need not make the effort. I should have known this just as a matter of common sense, but it has become painfully clear in several early encounters with

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    others different from me. Nonetheless, theology does matter to me and to many Christians, so what are we to do? I believe the correct approach will be to prioritize our concerns. There are numbers of theological doctrines that have provoked heated debate among Christians across the centuries: virgin birth, resurrection, spiritual gifts, grace, salvation, eternal life, and predestination to name a few. We have every right, indeed every obligation, to continue to struggle with these matters. But all of this is for our own edification. To insist that everyone join the conversation is unnecessary and is doomed from the beginning. What we need to do is to reflect carefully about those with whom we are willing to share the descriptive term “Christian.” In that consideration we need to remember that we did not call ourselves to be followers of Jesus; Jesus called us. What could a tax collector have had in common with a fisherman or one trained in Pharisaical law? How did women and men of quite varied backgrounds come together around Jesus? They were so different, yet each was a follower of Jesus. I do not say I am Christian because I have fully understood the teaching of the one I call Lord; I know that I haven’t. There are those who know more than I do about all manner of material . I know that there are others who have risked far more than I and who have been more loyal to Jesus. Nonetheless all of us from my point of view (and I hope from God’s as well) are “Christian.” What I am suggesting is that we be careful about the way we draw the bottom line. I am certain that there are many in Africa who identify themselves as Christian with whom I have serious disagreement, but I am not going to say that they are not Christian. What are the “essentials” upon which we must agree? For me, if one says that Jesus Christ is his/her Lord and Savior, I will begin a conversation with that person assuming that no matter how different we may be, we are both Christian. But, obviously, I do not approach those of other faiths with that same assumption nor do I believe that I have to bring them to my understanding before we can have a mutually beneficial interchange. None of us can impose our view on another. My duty as a disciple of Jesus is to share my understanding of what that means for me: I am a forgiven sinner whose Lord is at work in the world to establish the reign of God. How God may use my witness is not mine to know. When I went to seminary fifty-five years ago, there was one basic attitude toward those of other faiths: they were pagans we needed to convert! That was it. Gradually across the years another view emerged, a more inclusive theology, which approached people of other faiths with the assumption that while Christianity was the “best,” there could still be some “truth” in views held by others. My own personal experience has brought me to an expanded version of this position. I have met too many people —Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Bahais—who seem to have as earnest a faith as I and who live every bit as moral a life as I. I have come to believe that they, in some way different than my own, have come to a legitimate awareness of the Holy. I am not a “universalist”—only God can make such ultimate determinations — but I do believe that God’s redemptive act in Jesus Christ extends God’s love to all people, believers and nonbelievers alike. Humanity— all of us—have been forgiven, and that is good news to be shared. My approach, then, to sharing the gospel in a religiously diverse world is fourfold . First, and most important, is to become genuinely humble before the task. I

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    do not know everything about anything, and least of all about the fullness of God’s purposes. Christians for too many years approached the “unchurched” as God’s enemies in need of conversion or eradication. Jews and Muslims especially have every reason to be suspicious of us when we try to establish contact with them. In the past such “contact” too often ended in disaster for the non-Christians. Humility is now essential for us if we want to engage persons of other faiths in any kind of relationships . The burden of proof is on us. Are we going to relate as “superiors” who have something they “need,” or do we seek to join with them in learning more about their beliefs and in the process to deepen our own awareness of God’s incredible love? Second, I approach the task of witnessing to the gospel with a different understanding of the purpose of my testimony. At one time I assumed that the goal of “evangelization ” was to make all people Christian. That is the way the “Great Commission” has been understood for a very long time. Unfortunately, for some people, in lieu of having any “natives” around to convert, that meant trying to persuade Methodists to become Baptists or Presbyterians to become Catholics. Everyone needed to be a Christian just like us ! But as I have studied the foundational text on which this mission has been built, I have become convinced that we have misunderstood the matter. As in many other places, we have forgotten the original context of the text. The early Christian movement constituted a very small minority within the small Jewish minority in the Roman Empire. They were in no way equipped to try to convert all the peoples of the Empire. What Matthew 28:19-20 says, in my opinion, is that we are to go and invite people all around the world to become disciples, with us, of Jesus of Nazareth. As disciples we have the important mission of “salting” the communities in which we live with the vision and good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. We were never intended to be the whole loaf; rather we are the yeast! We cannot control the whole society, but we can and should stand as lights in the darkness ever reminding all that the reign of God has broken in with Jesus, and God’s justice and peace will one day be fully realized. “Make disciples throughout the world” is not the same as “convert everyone in the world.” Indeed, God has and is already working amidst the whole human family and not only with my company. I have come to understand far more clearly that I can’t “make” anyone a disciple. I can share with them my own convictions about Jesus as Lord and Savior, but if anything more is to happen, it is strictly the work of God. In the third place, I now consider it far more important to find venues for conversation , not confrontation, with the non-Christians with whom I live. I think we need to do this for the sake of our own spiritual growth and because shared experiences are the real hope for significant peacemaking. As Stephen Prothero has pointed out,

    What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: something is wrong with the world… .They part company, however, when it comes to stating just what has gone wrong, and they diverge sharply when they move from diagnosing the human problem to prescribing how to solve it.9

    Everyone does not agree with Christians that sin, and salvation from sin, is the primary religious issue. I need to hear this from “the others” and decide what response is appropriate. I have suggested in God’s Tapestry a number of possible venues for

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    exploring our differences, from shared meals to shared building projects, from joint political action to in-depth educational events, including the study of some of our various holy texts.10 Obviously one must begin where one’s people are, but there is no reason to shy away from “controversial” topics, at least not if everyone understands that the aim is to learn from one another rather than to try to convert one another. Finally, my own approach is now defined in large part by the metaphor of “tapestry .” In view of the rich diversity everywhere to be found in God’s creation, the best way, it seems to me, to understand who I am and what I am to do is to acknowledge and reflect closely upon this reality. If God delighted in the rich number of plants, animals, birds, and people that God created, then perhaps I should also. Rather than assume my way is the only way, perhaps it would be better to see it as one of God’s ways.11 That does not diminish its truth or value for me, but by seeing myself and my understanding of the Christian faith as one thread in a magnificent tapestry that God is creating, I find great purpose in maintaining my “thread” in all its uniqueness, even as I consider all the other materials and colors that God is using. Each thread is different and each is valuable. In conclusion, as I wrote in Gods Tapestry:

    To be able to make the contribution expected of us, we must commit ourselves to becoming better informed about our own religion and to engaging in honest, open dialogue with those of other faiths. We will have to open our eyes and recognize the new context in which we now are challenged to witness as Jesus’ disciples. The Bible requires new interpretation appropriate to the new situation. And it can’t be only with our heads. It must also involve our hearts. Our intellects will need to be informed by empathy as well as by “the facts.”12

    Notes 1 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: http://religionspewforum.org. 2 The Association of Religion Data Archives census of Hindus: www.thearda.com. 3 See: usatoday.com/news/religion/2013-02-29. 4 W. Eugene March, Wide, Wide Circle (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 66. For more recent data, go to The Association of Religion Data Archives: www.thearda.com. 5 Van Lustbader, The Bourne Betrayal (New York:Vision, 2008), 672-673. To be sure, this is not a “scholarly” study, but it offers a succinct, legitimate criticism of many in our society with regard to our knowledge of Islam. 6 Diane Eck, Encountering God (Boston: Beacon, 1993), xii. 7 Peter Lampe, Introducing Theologies o f Religions, 2004), 26. 8 See Akbar S. Ahmed, Journey into Islam: The Crisis o f Globalization (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007) for a discussion of the diversity within Islam. 9 Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), p. 11. 10 W. Eugene March, God’s Tapestry (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 96-99. 11 Paul Knitter, Theologies o f Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), 173, urges what he calls an Acceptance Model that recognizes the real differences between the religious traditions of the world and then accepts the integrity of each. 12 March, Tapestry, 109.