The Fool's Easter

This year has featured two unusual alignments between the Christian calendar and the secular calendar. The first was the coming together of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday on February 14 (click here for a reflection). The second is the coming together of April Fool’s Day and Easter Sunday on April 1. This will, no doubt, be great fodder for critics of faith in general and Christianity in particular. “April Fool’s, this stuff isn’t for real!” Of course, the Christian can easily retort to the atheist, “April’s Fool’s, this stuff is for real!” These sorts of jokes and jabs aside, what insight can be gleaned by bringing together a whimsical, secular, holiday, with the most important feast day of the Christian year? Let’s first touch base on the meaning of each observance on its own merits.

April Fool’s Day is an annual invitation to joke, prank, and pull one over on someone. Unusual newspaper articles, frightening friends with shocking, but old-fashioned fake news, and so on, often characterize the largely innocent quality of this holiday. Of course, it’s not really a holiday. No one gets April Fool’s Day off. Wait! I just received notice that as of 2018 April Fool’s Day will be a federal holiday in the United States and Canada. Yeah. Long weekend! Party time. Celebration. Oh wait…April Fools! This observance, while seemingly silly and light-hearted, has not gone without its controversies. Critics of April’s Fools, and specifically of the sometime elaborate hoaxes that individuals or organizations put on, decry the waste of resources and the confusion that ensues from such pranks.

Easter Sunday is the most important day of the Christian calendar. It is sometimes also referred to as Resurrection Sunday. Both names are proper, the first by long custom (ancient connotations aside) and the second being the event the holiday celebrates. Easter Sunday is a national holiday in many countries with a Christian cultural heritage. For many, Easter is more about family and candy that it is about the resurrection of a 1^st century Jewish Messiah. For the Christian, Easter is the high point of the Christian story and speaks of Christ’s victory over the difficulties and mysterious of sin and death. Christ’s resurrection validates His status as the long expected one and validates His teachings as worthy of reception. Christ is the example of what will take place to all who put their trust in Him. 

What happens when you put these together? You get the dangerous invitation to Easter as merely a sentimental occasion with pretty flowers, fine hats, and in a few places, fuller churches. Pretty flowers, fine hats, and fuller church are all fine and well. But, if Christians merely gather to smile and nod at a story they believe to be some sweet sentimental yarn of a nice man overcoming bad things so that we can be non-dangerously nice to each other, then we will have missed the message of Easter (for more on that click here) and settled for foolishness. The joke will be on us. We will have pranked ourselves. Because Easter rolls away the stone and shows us that the worst of misguided humanity, in its doing the worst, to a singular shinning life, does not have the last word. This is not foolishness. This is astonishing and for over twenty centuries has turned the wisdom of the worldly wise into spiritual tomfoolery. Don’t be fooled. Christ is Risen! 

A Serving Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a serving community here. Service. Servanthood. Often people have a general sense that this is the sort of thing churches are doing or should be doing. The Church today has a mixed reputation on the street. Some bring only negative stereotypes, but others have a sense that even if churches are filled with old odd people or they believe in strange things, they do some good things. In fact, this is true! To some extent, every local church should be a center for community service.

However, the Church serves in Jesus name. The church serves as part of its faith commitment. The church serves and individual Christians serve, because of the Great Commandment of our Lord, “Love God, Love Neighbor” (Matthew 22:34-40). Churches and Christians can fall into two ditches along the serving highway. First, if we are not careful, we can give the impression that we are only helping people or doing good things in order to get people “saved” or to up attendance numbers at our Sunday services. Serving must be done in the spirit of Jesus which is a spirit that serves first and foremost for the sake of the person or the sake of the community’s betterment. No one enjoys being anyone’s project. If you are going to help, help because it’s what we should be doing as Christians and help because it’s the right thing to do.

Second, if we are not careful, we can give the impression that we are simply nice people who like to do nice things for others. In fact, we serve others in Christ’s name. In fact, what motivates our compassion and sustains us along the weary road of fighting poverty, reducing violence, empowering women, and a thousand other good causes, is our faith. There is an art to serving others in Christ’s name in a way that avoids the first ditch and the second. We don’t need to knock people over the head with our faith, but neither do we need to apologize for it by barely acknowledging why we do what we do. It takes trial and error, wisdom and grace, to avoid the first ditch of giving the impression that serving is only a means to an end and the second ditch of giving the impression that we are generic nice people doing nice generic things.

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about? 

A Welcoming Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a welcoming community here. Welcome. Hospitality. These are words that should be synonymous with the word church. Sadly, for many people, this has not been their experience. Of course, for many others, it has. Most church people would agree that a church should be a welcoming community. What exactly do we mean by welcoming? Friendly, kind, and gracious? Yes. These traits are reflective of the fruits of the Holy Spirit that are the marks of growth in the Christian life as found in Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness and self-control.” These traits should be reflective not only of individuals in a congregation, but of the parish family overall. Of course, people are in different places spiritually and a welcoming congregation accepts this and (wait for it) welcomes it.

Herein also lies an important distinction, welcome does not mean full affirmation. That is, all Christian Churches, whether progressive or traditional, recognize that the Christian life involves repentance and growth. For example, a person struggling with an addiction should be welcomed graciously, but the congregation understands that God’s desire for that person is freedom from addiction. Therefore, they will support and encourage and once they have earned trust, challenge that person toward that end. The markers of what things are affirmed and what things are not in people’s lives differ depending on where a congregation is on a specific issue. However, every church will at times, if it is faithful, find itself calling out sin or saying no to certain elements in a person’s lifestyle or beliefs.

The critical element here is respect and kindness. So often people who have felt unwelcomed by the Church experienced petty judgment, mean spirited words, or hateful condemnation. All of this is to fail to be a welcoming community reflecting the teachings of Jesus Christ. A church can welcome people it does not agree with. A welcoming church can also graciously, respectfully, and appropriately be straight forward with people about its concerns. People may well still be offended, but at least the church did not add further offense by being mean spirited or cruel or rude. More broadly, a welcoming church goes out of its way to make it easy for people to find their building, get around the building, and to figure out what they are supposed to do once they are in the building. Many churches are intentionally very unwelcoming because they haven’t thought through how new comers and guests navigate their facility.

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?   

A Forgiving Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a forgiving community here. A perennial topic of interest for human beings in all stages and states of life. The power of forgiveness and unforgiveness is immediately evident to everyone. There is a mystery to life and forgiveness. Some people are terribly wronged, mistreated, and abused, and yet; live, joyfully, gracefully, and fully. Others experience similar and sometimes much less tragedy and live in perpetual resentment and bitterness. Why? You can find professing Christians who have been able to forgive and those who have not. You can find those who profess no faith who have been able to forgive and those who have not. Forgiveness is a gift of God and something that Christians are supposed to be known for, but ironically, we are often known more for our unforgiveness and pettiness.

Forgiveness is central to the life and teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, forgiveness should be central to the Christian life. A good deal of the time forgiveness is tough going, but perhaps we stumble so much, not merely because we are human (that will do it every time!), because we fail to realize two major factors. First, forgiveness often requires God’s help. I may be able (depending on the day!) to shrug off, without resentment, the driver who cuts me off on the highway. But on other days, I may not be able to. This is minor, but minor bruises add up to a black and blue heart. Without even getting to major relational cuts and slashes, we find ourselves stuck in resentment over the minors. Forgiveness is very often out of our reach. We need divine assistance. Forgiveness will often fail when we ignore the God factor. Second, forgiveness is a practice. Prayer is a practice. Singing is a practice. In other words, you can develop your ability to forgive.

Most liturgical churches include a prayer of confession and a declaration of forgiveness in their services. This is an excellent time to flex your forgiveness muscles. That is, if you have given some thought to your past week and what you need to confess. That is, if the pastor or worship leader provides some silence in which you can confess to God in your heart your failings. Often, we simply go through the liturgy by rote and give very little attention to what we are saying or doing. The sacramental churches, particularly the Roman Church, are known for encouraging confession to God through the meditation of a priest. This is an ancient rite of the Church and one that God has used to bring much healing and mercy to countless individuals over the centuries. Of course, like with the prayer in the liturgy, many also experienced it as a requirement and went through the motions with little transformation. Perhaps, practical teaching, example, and testimony on forgiveness would help churches grow in this area?

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?   

A Discipling Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a discipling community here. What is a disciple? In a general sense, a disciple is a student or apprentice. Not just a casual student, but a committed student. Someone who has devoted him or herself to a particular teacher. These sorts of student-mentor relationships have famous threads in many circles, but perhaps especially, in academic, artistic, and martial ones. The rising scholar whose mentor is a legend in their field. The renowned composer who studied with one of the greats. A martial artist who has devoted herself to her master and learning his art and passing it on to the next generation.

If you apply this understanding of disciple to Christianity, you are at once shaken and challenged. If the primary mission of the Christian Church is to make disciples, and if disciples are committed in the way that other disciples are to their teachers, then the work of the Church becomes both more challenging and exciting. We have often been pretty good at making church goers in our congregations. People who show up, sometimes regularly, and who sometimes also help out with other activities around the church. This is all fine as far as it goes. However, it doesn’t go far enough, according to the instruction of all the great spiritual teachers. Spiritual teachers aside, it falls short of THE Teacher’s example and instruction, “Go therefore, make disciples of all nations…teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:16-20).

A disciple in the Christian sense is a follower of Jesus. A disciple in the Christian sense is someone seeking to allow their faith to anchor their life and their faith to flavor and saturate every aspect of their life. This doesn’t, necessarily, translate into being at the gathered church all the time. Disciples worship regularly, usually weekly, some more, but their particular sense of Christian call and responsibility may manifest through their profession, their volunteering, or in raising their family. There are many ways of following Jesus and many variations on the path of discipleship. Despite the disparate ways of being a disciple, disciples across the spectrum share many things in common, beginning with the one Lord. Disciples aren’t perfect by any means, but they understand they are on a journey. How is your discipleship going? Is discipleship something your local church talks about and more importantly, does?

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?   

A Worshipping Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a worshipping community here. It might be obvious to state that a Christian community is a worshipping community. That worship of the Almighty is the primary purpose of its existence. However, like with common sense, the obvious isn’t so obvious a good deal of the time. For smaller churches, Sunday worship may be the only time the community gathers. In larger churches, there may be several worship services and dozens of activities, programs, and events held throughout the week. In either situation, worship should be the anchor of all that local congregation does. Why?

That’s actually a good question and a contested one. Community centers and agencies do many of the things churches do and often more efficiently and on a grander scale. But the church is more than a community agency or a social club. At least, it’s supposed to be more than (or perhaps different than) these organizations, which certainly have their place and which God uses to accomplish much good in people’s lives. A church should be a community in which individuals can encounter God. Christianity is a communal faith. Worship in the gathered sense cannot be done by yourself. The sacramental churches have always held onto to this truth with their emphasis on the Eucharist being the central act of Christian worship. You can’t celebrate the Eucharist yourself and yet in the Eucharist God can be encountered in a special way.

The evangelical churches have also held onto this truth with their emphasis that the Bible, as much as it should be read individually, should be encountered in community through preaching and shared study. The mainline churches have also held onto this truth with their emphasis on justice, which requires us to unite across all sorts of boundaries to cooperate with the Spirit for a better world. The charismatic churches have also held onto this truth with their emphasis on God’s presence, a presence that is best experienced and interpreted alongside other believers. Yet, for all the Body of Christ’s emphasis on gathered worship as the anchor of Christian life attendance by professing Christians at weekly services is on the whole, hardly overwhelming. But never mind attendance figures, but what about the spiritual figures of those attending?

What are people doing when they show up to worship? Are they just going through the motions? Are they encountering the divine? Are they opening themselves to the Spirit? Whether the service is High Mass, Rock and Roll, Quiet and Respectable, or whatever, are worshippers allowing the service to be a vehicle for God to transform their hearts and minds? Worship is an opportunity to step out of our constant fixation on ourselves and be opened to a greater reality that will point us to the mystery of life and to concrete service to life in all its forms. One of the great truths of the Christian faith that is visible by any quick survey of human behavior, is that we are by nature worshipping creatures. We are going to worship. It’s inevitable, but what or who are we worshipping?

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?   

Valentine’s Day Ashes

This year feature’s the unusual occurrence of Valentine’s Day falling on Ash Wednesday. One church calendar features a cartoon with valentines that read, “Won’t you be my Valentine you miserable offender?” and “Roses are red. Violets are blue. Lent is beginning. No chocolate for you.” Besides a few jokes (both fun and bitter), what insight does the bringing together of this largely secular holiday (St. Valentine not withstanding) and Ash Wednesday provide? Actually, the insight is pretty sweet (get it, sweet?). Let’s first touch base on the meaning of each observance on its own merits.

Valentine’s Day is a romantic holiday. A day for candles and candies, for special date nights, thoughtful gestures and the like. It is also a day of despair for those who wish someone was in their life and a disappointments for couples who feel their relationship is not all it is supposed to be. Women may be more hopeful about Valentine’s Day, yearning for something poetic and memorable to happen. Men may dread it or see it as little more than a day that obligates them to buy roses. Romantic hope, cynicism, and sorrow are all on tap on this day annually. Some families also exchange valentines, as do some school children.

Ash Wednesday is one of the most solemn days of the entire Christian year. It marks the beginning of the season of Lent. It is a season for self-reflection, spiritual spring cleaning, repentance, fasting, and the like. It can also be a day of despair because Ash Wednesday reminds us of the difficult reality of death. Ashes are marked on the foreheads of Christians with the declaration, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Some Churches stress Ash Wednesday and attendance is strong and some do not with attendance being less. While the majority of Christian Churches observe Lent, there are a sizeable minority who do not.

So what happens when you bring together mortality and romantic love? You get life! (And Shakespeare…) Whether romantic love or not, one of the great joys of life – relationships – is also one of its greatest sorrows. Eventually, you and I will have to say good-bye to every person we care about. This can lead to despair if fixated upon. Relationships, of all kinds, with God and people, are what make life worth living. But people die, people move, children grow up, you take a new job, a break ups occurs, and eventually, some day you will join the great throng of humanity that has left this life for the mystery beyond.  

Where is the sweetness in this? A rose is sweet because its blossom is not eternal. Its bloom is precious because it is for a season. A rose should be enjoyed while it lasts. A rose should be tended to preserve its beauty and longevity. The rose will be a memory which if we have treasured, will be with us forever. Ok. You say, yes, treasure people, they won’t always be here, blah blah, etc. I get it. Do you? Are you? But there is something else. A rose is a gift. The people in our lives are gifts. They are not our possessions. We can trust that in some mysterious way our love for them will echo into eternity, but for now, they are temporary gifts. Cherish them.