Irie on VBS and the journey of faith

http://iriesgeneralinterest.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/vacation-bible-school-a-beginning-not-an-ending/

Will Campbell: The Dead Prophet's Power to Make Us Stand

Today I stumbled upon a quirky little tale in 2 Kings about the burial of the prophet Elisha.  The story goes that the prophet died and was buried on grounds subject to hostile bands of marauding Moabites.  Apparently, another man was later being buried there when one of these Moabite bands made their attack.  The dead man was hastily thrown into Elisha's grave and as soon as his body touched Elisha's bones "he came to life and stood on his feet" (2 Kings 13:21).  Like I said, it's a quirky tale.  My Bible offers an explanatory note with a commentary which says, "Stories of this sort are often told about saints and wonder-workers."

I might have dismissed the Elisha story as just another legend from long ago, except for the fact that on Saturday America buried one of its own great prophets, Will Campbell.  Will was one of the few white clergy who played an active part in the major civil rights events of the 1960s.  He was the only white person present when Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Council was founded, and he escorted the black students into Central High School when the Little Rock school system was desegregated in 1957.  Though Will's contribution was overshadowed by more prominent figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. James Lawson, those on or close to the inside knew the importance of Will Campbell.  As journalist David Halberstam once said, Will was a "walking nerve center" within the movement.

 

Later, Will became buttressed his image as "a bootleg preacher" by drinking moonshine with and serving as a kind of chaplain to country and westerns stars like Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and other assortments of rednecks, outlaws and hippies.  He ruffled some liberal feathers when he reached out to minister to members of the KKK, even visiting Dr. King's assassin, James Earl Ray, in jail.  Will once said, "Mr. Jesus died for the bigots as well."  It was that kind of simple, plain-spoken talk that earned Will his reputation for preaching (and living) the double-edged truth of the Gospel, which he once defined as the message that says, "We're all bastards, but God loves us anyways."

 

There have been a number of times in which I have been struggling in life or in ministry and have picked up one of Will's books to find courage.  Just inside the cover of my copy of Brother to a Dragonfly I have a date marked: October 2004.  I was reading Dragonfly while considering both a call to ministry and also whether or not to ask my wife - a black woman - to marry me.  Race and religion were ongoing and sometimes conflicting themes in my life, and I found reading Will's story helped me to make sense of my own.  The thought that Jesus might have died for the bigots who did not approve of my soon-to-be fiance was especially challenging.  But I knew Will would have said there was no "might have" to it; Jesus did die for them and for everybody else also.

 

One image from Will's life that has stuck with me all these years is that of his diploma.  Will graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1952.  Southern boys with Ivy League educations were no doubt rare, but Will placed his own inimitable value on his education, taping his certificate of ordination over the diploma on the wall.  His point was clear: It is God who calls and equips us to preach the Gospel, and at the end of the day it will be God alone to whom we will have to give an account for how we have answered.  Whenever I have been faced with a decision in ministry that might cost something - whether it be dollars, members, standing in the community, or all of the above - I have thought of Will's diploma and its been a source of - if not inspiration - always provocation, challenging me to make the right choice rather than the safe one. 

 

When I read that story about Elisha's grave today I thought of Will.  Will has been buried, but whether alive or dead the prophet still has power.  And though others may run in the face of maurading forces, anyone who falls into the pages of one of Will's books will find the courage to rise up and stand on his feet.

 

Of course, such statements would likely make Will uneasy.  He eshewed followers.  In 1990 Rolling Stone did an article on Will where he rejected the label "guru".  "I don't want any disciples.  I'm trying to be a disciple," he told them.  But even his refusal to be lionized showed why he was indeed a lion of a man.

 

Once Will got a call from a priest in New Jersey who wanted to come down South and join Will in ministry because he felt called to "do something important" with his life.

“Where are you now?" Will asked.

“I'm at a pay phone in Newark," the priest told him.

"Is it one of those glass booths?"

“Yes, it is," said the priest.

"Are there any people out there, or are the streets deserted?"

"There are lots of people."

“Well, son,” said Campbell, "that's your ministry. Go to it."

Stories of this sort are often told about saints and wonder-workers; and they will no doubt go on giving life long after Will's bones have been buried.

 

 

 

Unplugging for Sabbath: Interview with David Miller

Great interview with former Lubbock mayor and dear friend David Miller about our need for #sabbath.  David talks about how he unplugged from the craziness of the world with a 2 week trip into the jungle and the vision that came out of it . . .

http://kttz.org/post/faith-matters-david-miller

Last night I was privileged to share in a Passover Seder with dear friends. We read from the Reformed Haggadah where God chastised the angels for their shouts of joy at the Egyptians' drowning. Sometimes freedom comes at the end of so great a nightmare and at so great a cost that the shouting of anything - including the shout of victory - rings falsely. Only silence is true. May we never forget.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/nyregion/rabbi-herschel-schacter-

The Faith of Teenagers: Nice or Life-changing?

In preparation for our search for a new minister of youth, I have been reading Kenda Creasy Dean's book Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.  In the book, Dean analyses data gathered in the national Study of Youth and Religion — the broad-reaching 2003-2005 study of spirituality among American youth. The good news in Dean's analysis is that youth are generally a lot less hostile to religion than we adults suspect. The bad news is that they are also a lot less passionate about their own personal faith than we would hope for. Even more sobering, Dean says the problem with teenage faith (or lack thereof) is really the problem of church faith (or lack thereof). To borrow an old line from a famous anti-drug commercial, our teenagers are "learning it by watching [us]".

 

Dean labels the primary religion of American teenagers as a faith in the god of something she calls Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). Dean says the fundamental beliefs of MTD are: 1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth. 2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. 3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. 4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem. 5. Good people go to heaven when they die. With the exception of the implications of number four, MTD seem to be generally positive religious tenets. But for Dean — and for me — that generality is a problem. There is no mention of the particularity of the God who comes to us in the story of Abraham, Israel, and ultimately the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  

 

When I read about MTD, I think of H. Richard Niebuhr's critique of the faith of 20^th century social liberalism:  "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."  Though my own theologically liberal side wants to substitute the word "wrath" with the word "passion," I agree that Niebuhr's general sentiment is true and I think it shares the same power failure as that of MTD. In the end, what we get is a god who is vague, distant, none-too-demanding, and, ultimately, none-too-important. As Dean writes, "If this is the god we offer young people, there may be little in Christianity to which they object, but there is even less to which they will be devoted." The Bible calls this a luke-warm faith.

 

 

In one-on-one interviews with young people in the study, Dean said youth described God as being above all things "nice" and wanting us to be nice also. This is of course all very well and nice, but it doesn't quite lift the luggage. Having a "nice" God who wants us to be nice also is a far cry from the God whose passion runs so deep for us that He came to die for us and calls for us to die to ourselves as well. Dean says we sell our youth short when we assume ministry with youth is all about making things "fun." She says our aim ought to be higher. She closes the book with a quote from nineteenth-century Daniel Burnham:

 

Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir humanity's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work . . . . Remember that our sons and daughters are going to do things that will stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon, beauty. Think big.

 

 

Reading this book has not only been good for my purposes on the search committee but also for my purposes as a father. It has helped me to understand how desperately I want my own children not only to believe in God generally, but to have an abundant and life-giving relationship with Him.

 

Yesterday I had a father and his daughter in my office discussing a faith decision the young daughter is in the process of making. At the close of the meeting the father, daughter, and I held hands in a circle and I prayed. As I prayed, the thought of this father and his daughter overwhelmed me and tears suddenly began running down my cheeks and onto the table between us. It occurred to me that the prayer I was praying for this man's daughter is the same prayer my soul is praying for my own daughter and two sons — that they might come to know God — not a mushy, vague, "nice" God— but rather that they might know the God who is so wildly in love with them that He, too, shed tears for them in Gethsemane and blood for them on Calvary. He is the God who died for us; and He is the God who is worth our living and dying for also.

 

 

And my question as a father and pastor is this: Are our kids seeing that kind of passionate life and death in me?                                                                

What Pastors Do

2013 has arrived and this column has me thinking of what I shall do with the new year.

 

I am prompted by a question that was asked of me not long ago by my five-year-old daughter Gabrielle. "What do pastors do all day?" Perhaps, dear reader, you have wondered the same.

 

I sought to answer the question for Gabrielle by taking her with me on a pastoral visit to see a friend from church, one of our more elderly, "homebound" members. This is a woman who has long been a member here at Second B, but whose failing body makes it near impossible to come most Sundays. As is often said, "The spirit is willing; but the flesh is weak."

 

As we pulled into the driveway a Lubbock Police Department officer was outside. My friend had earlier been backing her car out of the driveway and had hit a parked car on the other side of the street. "Well," I thought, "this is either incredibly bad or incredibly good timing."

 

We parked and came inside along with the police officer behind us. He was gentle and kind, but not patronizing. He issued the citation, shook each of our hands and then went along his way. Left alone, we now said what must always be said in times like these, "Atleast no one was hurt."

 

We sat down and began to talk about the difficulties of growing old. This was the first wreck my friend had ever been in that was her fault. Neither she nor I said it, but I am sure both thought it - that perhaps accident was another of the tolls of old age. She looked at Gabrielle. "Do you feel good, hon?" she asked, "I bet you do." Gabrielle nodded her head yes. I thought to myself how neither Gabrielle nor I really know what it is to feel bad.

 

Then I looked down at what I had brought with me. In a plain, brown-paper sack I carried the signs of a savior who knew what it is to feel bad - to have a spirit that is willing, but flesh that is week. Inside the bag were the elements of the Lord's Supper.

 

"O, communion," my friend said, "it has been so long since I took it. I am so glad you brought it."

 

I explained to her that in our understanding of the meal we are okay with Gabrielle taking part because she knows that it means something more than a bread and juice - but that it is a sign of Jesus' suffering. "Yes," she said, "I think that's wonderful."

 

We gathered together around a makeshift table and prayed. Then I said the words of institution, "The body of Christ broken for you; the blood of Christ poured out for you." We ate the bread and drank the juice and words from a great hymn came to my mind. I looked at my friend and began to sing,

"One sweet morning when this life is over,

I'll fly away

To a land on God's celestial shore,

I'll fly away

 

Hearing the old, familiar words tears began to well in my friend's eyes. "When you get my age, that's how you feel. You're ready to fly away. I'm ready to fly away. I'm ready to be with Jesus.

 

We sat there in the silence of that holy moment and then I looked at Gabrielle. "Gabrielle," I said, "she's ready to go and see Jesus. Do you want her to tell him anything?"

 

Gabrielle nodded. "Tell him I love him."

 

"I will honey," my friend said, "I'm sure he already knows it; but it will be good to hear it."

 

We said our goodbyes, I gave a parting prayer, and then Gabrielle and I walked out the door. On the way back to the car I paused at the garage and looked down at her. "That, Gabby, is what pastors do," I told her.

 

May our sons and daughters find us all doing what we do best in 2013.

Drive Screwtape Mad

I have been re-reading C.S. Lewis's classic The Screwtape Letters.  It's a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to his junior nephew demon Wormwood on how best to tempt Wormwood's human "patient".  Screwtape and Wormwood are basically the opposite of a guardian angels.  They are - quite literally - hell's angels.  And Screwtape is passing on the tricks of the trade.  

Lewis's insight into the spiritual life was absolutely brilliant.  In The Screwtape Letters Lewis has Screwtape reflecting on the ways Wormwood might seduce his subject into perdition through the most ordinary of events.  Sin isn't always what we humans think.  In fact, Screwtape suggests that it is actually beneficial to the forces of darkness that we humans stand guard against mortal temptation in order that our more venal sins can slip through the back door.  "Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick," Screwtape writes.  "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. . ."

In one particularly vivid seen Screwtape tells of having once had as a patient an atheist, who while studying a book suddenly began to ponder spiritual questions.  Fearing that he might be in danger of losing the patient to heaven, Screwtape acted fast through a gentle pang of hunger.  Having been diverted away from the consideration of deeper, more eternal matters, the patient never turned back again.

Falling out of relationship with God is so seldom the result of one singularly grave or heinous sin.  Really, its generally a lot more dull than that.  It's one step at a time, one glance at a time, one simple diversion from which we never come back.  

Counteract this: stop right now and center on God for a couple of minutes.  Sing an old hymn.  Pray for somebody you love.  Pray for somebody you don't.  Do this again for two minutes before the day is out.  Repeat tomorrow.  

Screwtape hates that!