Sublimation

by Tom Steagald

In a recent article in the Century, Sarah Coakley speaks of “the true impossibility of prayer.” If we achieve intimacy with God at all, it is most often “here and there,” as Buechner quotes Tillich, or “now and then.” The “great gulf between us is fixed.”

Since Freud, some have suggested that the world’s great achievements in art, architecture and even business are a result of sublimation—frustrated intimacy providing fuel for creativity. Lately, I’ve been wondering if the same might be said of religious “achievements.” (Note to Methodists: I am not thinking specifically of Mr. Wesley’s disappointing love life set alongside his incessant preaching and organizing.) Are some of our religious activities born out of frustrated intimacy with God?

Some of us quit praying, quit studying and seeking because we’ve found it impossible to know God in anything like God’s fullness. Others turn their pain and frustration into keeping busy doing things for a God who remains elusive.

Sometimes it’s out of silence and emptiness, out of frustrated desire, that we pour ourselves into building church structures, beautiful campuses and agencies, significant and socially responsible legislation. The beauty we create may be an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual void we cannot escape, a deep emptiness so common and pervasive many of us no longer speak of it.

We are lonely children playing with blocks, spurned lovers with a pen and notebook, broken-hearted adults working through the pain of spiritual isolation. Unable to achieve the kind of satisfaction and contentment real intimacy with God might provide, we “sublimate” our frustrations into achievements.

Tom Steagald is a United Methodist pastor in Stanley, North Carolina.

Jesus, take the wheel?

by Sarah S. Howell

Just minutes before the crash that totaled my car, my friends and I were laughing at my uncertainty about which way to turn at an intersection. “Jesus, take the wheel!” one friend joked.

Then a man in a pickup truck blew through a stop sign and slammed into me. My car spun into someone’s front yard with the hood completely smashed and one rear taillight destroyed. Despite extensive damage, no one in my car was hurt except for a few bruises, and though an unbuckled 9-year-old in the truck lost a few teeth, it could have been much worse.

The police came, and friends with whom we had just had dinner rushed over to check on us. As we surveyed the damage, someone remarked, “God must have really big plans for you guys, because he saved you all tonight.”

At those words, I felt like a stone had dropped into my stomach. It’s not that I don’t feel grateful. One person who came to help said he’d never seen a wreck with damage like that—severe to the front and the back of the car—where the area containing the passengers had been left intact. If I had been driving a tiny bit faster, my friend in the seat next to me might be dead. Someone was watching out for us that night.

But I struggle to balance gratitude for God’s power to heal and protect with the knowledge that not everyone is healed; not every car crash ends the way ours did. In trying to wrap my mind around my friend’s assertion that I am important enough to God’s plan for him to save me and my friends, I can’t help but ask—what about people I know who have died in similar situations? What about Molly, the college student who worked with my youth group when I was in middle school and was killed in a head-on collision? Did God not have important enough plans for her?

I don’t know that I even want a definitive answer to these questions. If we are to serve the God who makes himself known in bread and wine, the God who allows some people to linger a little while on earth but welcomes those who go home before we are ready to let them go, we have to be able to accept difficult mysteries.

Sarah S. Howell is a senior at Duke University.

Blogging toward Sunday: In the I AM

by Kristin Swenson

When I read Romans 12:9-21, I think: this is the best of it, this is what marks and makes a good Christian. Love truly and even more generously than the next guy. Seek out goodness and turn your back on evil, be untiring in service to God, be hopeful and steadfast in the face of disappointment, be compassionate and humble. Universal and timeless, these instructions are the real deal. I even think: this is what people are talking about when they say that the New Testament is about love and forgiveness (by contrast with the Old's tally-keeping and vengeance). That is until I get to verse 19, where Paul says we are to extend this generosity to people who would do us harm. "Leave room for the wrath of God.” By doing good to those who would hurt you, Paul says, you "heap burning coals on their heads." Hmmm.

The notion that the God of the Old Testament is a God of Wrath and the God of the New is Love is a tired cliché, misplaced and misleading (not to mention theologically problematic for Christians whose faith dictates that both tell of the One God). The Old Testament contains mercy abounding, forgiveness all out of proportion and love without limits. The New Testament tells of justice that requires accountability, hope that evil won't go unpunished and stern admonition to take the harder road. Both testaments counsel balance born of wisdom. They advise an honest, earnest quest to do what is right in the eyes of God tempered by the humility of knowing that we're not going to get it perfect. Both know how crucial accountability is to true justice and that we all need mercy like water in the desert.

I hear in those hard, final words of Paul's, echoes of the psalmists' prayers that God do something! about the people who prosper undeservedly, who cheat, hurt and terrorize. The psalmists don't say that they took matters into their own hands and made their victimizers into victims. While they wish that God would wreak a little vengeance, they don't presume to be the executors of such justice.

We can hope for justice because God Is. We can extend gracious hospitality to the stranger, compassion to the suffering and friendship no matter what because the God who declared, "I Am" partners with ordinary human beings to do extraordinary things. Moses was full of doubt, but God said I Am. The grammar of this God is action in the present tense, be-ing, then and evermore. Humans have the privilege and responsibility to act and be in concert with God.

Jesus, the incarnation of "I Am," told his disciples that he would have to suffer and die. And they would too. "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." I don't think that he was talking only about physical martyrdom, but rather about acting and be-ing, day in and day out, in the One who Is. This, Jesus says, is life, and the whole world's profit doesn't hold a candle to it.

Kristin Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Purity balls

by Bromleigh McCleneghan

In a recent issue of Time magazine, feature writer Nancy Gibbs profiled the cultural phenomenon of purity balls—events to which conservative Christian fathers take their daughters for dinner, dancing and promise-making. The daughters promise to remain sexually abstinent until marriage, but the weight of the evening’s rituals rests on the fathers, who vow not only to live with integrity in regard to their own sexuality, but also to protect their daughters’ purity, until the day when their husbands take over the role of protector.

I am deeply troubled by the way in which purity balls and the understanding of sexuality from which they arise, seek to limit young women’s growing into agents in their unfolding romantic, sexual, and personal selves. They place responsibility and authority for young women’s development with fathers and hypothetical future spouses, instead of with young women themselves.

Traditional baptismal vows take another route. They generally recognize that parents have a privilege and duty to raise their children—regardless of sex—to be faithful and independent adults. Girls supported in this way are not seen just as potential sexual victims, but as whole people of God. This is a better path to helping young women contend with popular culture.

It troubles me that purity balls locate the connection between fathers and their daughters in the girls' emerging sexuality. What about books, baseball, theater, movies or any number of other common interests that might be safer, less loaded ground for a meaningful connection?

Purity balls treat desire as something to fear. But desire – particularly that joyful adolescent desire that may spring from something as mundane as hand-holding – can be a critical sign and experience of the abundant life which Christ desires for us. Rather than blaming our bodies for leading us astray, we might teach our children to trust and listen to their bodies, as the vehicle through which God chose to come close to us. We are, after all, embodied creatures of a God who became incarnate.

Parents – and the church – should certainly be speaking to adolescents about their newfound feelings of desire and their emerging identities as sexual beings. The question remains deceptively simple: what should we say?

Bromleigh McCleneghan is pastor of Riverside United Methodist Church in Riverside, Illinois.

Neighborhood ethics

by Richard A. Kauffman

Saturday night was a bad night for my wife and me. The parents next door were out of town, and for the second night in a week their teenage boys threw a beer party on the deck. The loud noise and vulgar conversation kept me awake until dawn.

I stewed over what to do: Confront the boys directly? Call the cops? Live with the situation for the moment and speak with the parents when they returned?

Often in these frustrating situations, I wonder if Matthew 18 might be of use. Jesus says, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

To be sure, a neighborhood is not a congregation. But there is wisdom in these directions for dealing with conflict that perhaps can be applied to social situations outside the church. From this teaching one might derive what ethicists refer to as “middle axioms,” principles taken from scripture that can apply even in situations with individuals who don’t necessarily share the same values. In order for a middle axiom to work, the teaching has to have salience for someone who might reject its source.

Here are some basic principles about dealing with conflict based on Matthew 18: Deal with the conflict as directly and as immediately as possible; don’t magnify it more than necessary. Only bring others in as needed to help resolve the situation. Make reconciliation the ultimate goal, rather than punishment or pay back.

Maybe an adaptation of Jesus’ counsel for this setting would be to talk to the neighbor boys directly after the first offense; if it happens again, bring the parents in on it; and if, perchance, there were a third offense, then call the police.

The fact is that while I stewed about the party next door, I actually did nothing. What would you have done?

Blogging toward Sunday: Who you are

Exodus 1:8-2:10, Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20

by Kristin Swenson

About 150 years ago, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed, "There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming." The biblical texts for this Sunday all have something to do with being and becoming, with living as you are, in who and how you are, whatever the circumstances, and in so doing, contributing to something far greater than yourself.

In the Exodus text, women take center stage simply by being themselves, by acting with integrity and by meeting the challenges of the moment with wisdom and compassion. Times have changed for the worse: after living in the golden glow of Joseph's successes in Egypt, "a new king arose over Egypt who didn't know Joseph" (Exo. 1:8). The Hebrews' increasing numbers have become a threat, so the Egyptian king not only oppresses them with ever greater work, but also requires that the midwives kill infant babies. These midwives are named in the story, an unusual specification. Shiphrah and Puah may or may not themselves have been Hebrew—the text is ambiguous. Whatever the case, they are midwives first. They help bring babies into the world, and apparently they aren't about to let anyone, even a king, tell them that they should do otherwise: that bringers of life should deliver death. The narrator explains that the midwives "feared God," something that other biblical writers attribute to wisdom (see, e.g., Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 15:33).

Among the babies they simply refuse to kill is the one who will save the Hebrew people. Through him an unprecedented relationship between people and God will be mediated. How could the baby's sister and the pharaoh's daughter, even the mother who sent her infant down the river and saw him returned to her breast, know these things? They couldn't. But each of them did what was right for and in that moment. Each acted according to her ability and her heart, no matter the pressure to conform or the danger of contradicting the mighty and powerful. Because of them, Moses survived.

In Romans, Paul asserts that people are different from one another, and this is both good and necessary. When my dad worked downtown, he often took the bus to work. Several adults with Downs syndrome were also on their way to work. The work they did was menial, uninteresting and dead-end by our estimation, but he said that every morning they were cheerful, proud and delighted to participate as employees in the community. Paul instructs members of the congregation to be like this: to cheerfully and humbly accept the particular task or role for which they're suited, knowing that the congregational body is healthy only when each member serves according to his or her disposition and gifts. Rather than blindly adopting expectations for a certain way of being or doing, Paul counsels personal discernment by a radical openness to God’s intentions. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern. . ." (Rom. 12:2).

The eastern sages talk about "beginner's mind" as an ideal state of being. At this moment, the learner is without enough experience and success to harden a sense of what she can and cannot do, what is and isn't normal. The beginner assumes and predicts nothing. He is open, unselfconsciously available to novelty and every possibility. Peter is like this in the gospel text. The other disciples answer Jesus' question “Who am I?” according to what they have heard. By contrast, Peter speaks from the heart: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

You can (must!) be who you are. God will take care of the rest. Who knows what extraordinary role your ordinary self will play?

Kristin Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The Magi take Manhattan

or Clergy accountability groups

by Scott M. Kershner

Shortly after 7:15 a.m. every Tuesday morning, the Magi emerge from the subway at Union Square in Manhattan, grab an egg sandwich and coffee to go and gather around a conference table.

No we haven’t adopted Persian code names and we don’t ride tricycles in parades. Cultish as it may sound, the Magi is a group of Lutheran pastors serving small churches in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. We meet once a week in person and stay connected daily by email, sending out our goals for the day and week—as well as various rants, raves, bad jokes and pleas for intercessory prayer.

Each meeting begins and ends with standard collects we have chosen. Then we rate our well being on a scale of one to three and offer highs and lows for the week. Finally each person speaks for ten minutes or so on any topic he or she chooses. By 9:00 a.m., we’ve said our goodbyes and scattered to our respective boroughs and parishes, linked until our next meeting by the arterial email.

Quarterly, we review our goals for the previous months and set goals for the months ahead. We also have written guidelines—a covenant, of sorts—that we read aloud at each quarterly meeting. Our tenets include things like “be coachable,” “speak the truth, quickly” and “clean up conflicts with group members immediately and completely.”

We have agreed that each member will post to our group email by 11:00 a.m. every day, and if we don’t hear from someone, that we should give a call to find out what’s up. This ends up being the most difficult aspect of our discipline. It is easy not to post when things get busy and it is just as hard to call, but daily participation means being present for others as much as them being present for you.

The Magi is our ongoing attempt to make ordained ministry resemble a “life together.” Low morale among clergy, often issuing from feelings of isolation, is a well-documented phenomenon. I would love to hear how others are responding to these challenges.

Late great memories

by Amy Frykholm

Do you remember The Late Great Planet Earth? This book by Hal Lindsey was the bestselling book of the 1970s and swept across college campuses with a vengeance. Did you read it then? Have you read it since? American studies scholar Erin Smith is collecting memories of reading this classic popularization of dispensationalism at her Web site for her upcoming book What Would Jesus Read? If you have a story about reading The Late Great Planet Earth, good or bad, post it here or go to her Web site.

Blogging toward Sunday: Faith to fire back

by Trygve David Johnson

Matthew 15:21-28

I struggle with the story of Jesus encountering the Canaanite woman. I don’t know if it’s the lack of compassion in Jesus’ voice or the exploitation of power or the tone of condescension, but if this were the only story I knew of Jesus I’d be turned off.

What do we do with this text? With any text that we don’t know how to preach? Or a text we just don’t like? A seasoned pastor told me that she never preached on a text she didn’t understand. On one level that makes a lot of sense: it keeps one from being trite or fake in the pulpit.

But on another level, how much do I understand any of the texts I preach on? Maybe wrestling through the ones I don’t like is as important as preaching on the ones I think I understand. The hope is that even with difficult texts I’ll see something about God that I need to know and share.

When the Canaanite woman calls to Jesus, he doesn’t even acknowledge her. He doesn’t give her the time of day. But the woman is persistent. Her daughter is suffering, and this Jesus can help. So she keeps calling out. The disciples urge Jesus to make her leave. He seems to agree and says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In other words, I did not come for you, so get lost.

She kneels and says simply, “Lord, help me.”

Jesus is unmoved. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Jesus calls the woman a dog! I have a hard time even reading it out loud. If I were this woman, I’d be so disappointed that I would leave and find myself a different messiah. One who cares. But the woman fires right back at Jesus. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”

This time Jesus says, “Woman, great is your faith!” and grants her wish. Her daughter is healed.

Is the point to encourage great faith? Is it a lesson in a Rudy-esque spirit of perseverance? Is the point that Jesus has the power to heal us if we beg? This Jesus is no soft, warm, cuddly Messiah who is always there for everyone at all times. This text suggests that Jesus is not always nice, and was not always available to everyone.

Yet every time the woman addresses Jesus she calls him Lord. Three separate times. She understands who Jesus is: He is Lord. Period. Jesus does not have to fit our expectations for Jesus to be who he is. He is the Lord. Maybe that is the fundamental point.

Maybe this is why she was so persistent. She had faith in Jesus as the Lord. She allows Jesus the freedom to speak and act as the Lord. Maybe because of this she is not offended, like I am, when he calls her as a dog. Maybe she decides that before the Lord of the Universe we all are dogs, and that we are all dependent on free scraps from the table. She has the faith to fire back at Jesus. This is the kind of faith that seems to move Jesus to give a second look.

Trygve David Johnson is the chaplain of Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

The One?

by Amy Frykholm

Critics are claiming that this new campaign advertisement from John McCain directly uses antichrist imagery in reference to Barack Obama. Is this the worst misuse of religion in politics or is it a joke, all in the spirit of good campaign fun? There is almost no question in my mind that the opening images are drawn directly from The Left Behind series, but by the time Barack gets compared to Charlton Heston's Moses I am less sure what I am supposed to make of it.

Fear not the baseball

by Bromleigh McCleneghan

When I heard a Chicago DJ encourage listeners to ditch work and get out and enjoy the glory and abundance of summer, I decided to heed his advice. I jumped at the offer of free Cubs tickets.

Is there anything better than a ballpark on a summer afternoon? Even the lousy beer (at $6.25) tastes good. As a pastor who plans multigenerational worship, I noticed how seamlessly baseball brings together people of all ages: there were children all around us; we were led to our seats by a senior; gorgeous, tanned college students sat in front of my family. An elderly couple with a baby posed for the FanFoto kid who takes pictures for the team website.

When the Cubs scored a run. I was delighted. All was right with the world.

In the second inning, however, the pitcher batted a foul ball straight back into the stands. Fans strained their necks to try and see where it had landed. Soon it became apparent that the ball had struck a child. When a young boy was strapped to a board and taken away by the paramedics, a shadow was cast over the game—even before the Cubs fell behind, even before dark clouds spread across the sky and rain began to fall.

There’s an undercurrent in our American culture that says we must protect ourselves and our children from the world. Do we need to add baseball to the list of activities too dangerous to enjoy?

What about that undercurrent in the life of Christians? As faithful people, what risks are we willing, able and called to take? Are we supposed to avoid the ballpark or the mission field or public schools or an interfaith relationship? Or do we grab our kids, arm ourselves with catcher’s mitts (and maybe helmets), and head out to the ballpark?

Bromleigh McCleneghan is pastor of Riverside United Methodist Church in Riverside, Illinois.

Blogging toward Sunday: A preacher's pep talk

by Trygve David Johnson

Romans 10: 5-15

When I am in the locker room of my study, feeling dejected, downcast, weary and defeated from the preaching effort, I read:

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Rom. 10:12-15).

Why do we keep preaching? Why don’t we just get rid of the whole thing and free up 10-20 hours of our week? Why don’t we get rid of preaching in exchange for some group sharing or more coffee time?

Paul tells us that we preach because people still need to hear about the God who is generous to all. We preach because people still need to hear there is a God worth believing in. We preach because it is the opportunity for someone to hear some good news.

This calling requires the best of our imagination, skill and love. Our task is to open up the good news of Jesus Christ through speech that is clear, dramatic and artistic. Our sermons should lead others to join in a conversation about transformation in Christ and a faith that pushes us out of the worlds in which most of us are trapped.

In 1907, P.T. Forsyth began his Lyman Beecher Lectures with these words: “It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls. . . .The Christian preacher is not the successor of the Greek orator, but of the Hebrew prophet. The orator comes with inspiration; the prophet comes with a revelation.”

Revelation is why we keep preaching. God uses the spoken word to reveal the living Word. This is an event that can’t be teased or manipulated by technique. Even a bad sermon can be used by God to reveal God. That is the hope of us who preach. Revelation is always gift—always grace. On this grace Christianity stands or falls.

Trygve David Johnson is the chaplain of Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

Prayer list

by John Blase

Recently, I sat in the church my dad has pastored for over 20 years. It's a Southern Baptist church just slightly removed from the buckle of the Bible belt. I stepped away from Southern Baptist life about six years ago, and these days I find myself with a motley Anglican crew, observing weekly communion with real wine and candles and liturgy, a world far removed my dad’s church.

One of the aspects of the liturgy is the weekly prayer list, printed in the bulletin I received as I entered the sanctuary. I listened and watched as those seated around me followed their pastor in adding a few last-minute names to the list; grey-haired southern saints took out fine tip pens and wrote down the names of those "to be remembered." You could hear the crickets in the corners as they focused on those names. A couple of tragic accidents were mentioned and heads shook with "dear Lord" and "my, my." I knew these people would take their lists home and pray those names during breakfast or before going to bed. They take this matter of prayer seriously, believing that their voices just might move the hand of the Almighty, and that Jesus would intervene and save a marriage on the rocks or heal a man broken in a motorcycle wreck or protect the men and women in harm's way.

I hoped that one of these Baptists with big hair and matching handbags or Wranglers and ropers would notice me in the crowd (the man with a ponytail) and would, without any prompting, write my name on that prayer list. Then they'd remember "John David" over fried eggs and toast and the morning paper or whisper "God bless John David" just before slipping into bed at night.

John Blase edits books and lives in Colorado with his wife, three kids and a Beagle. He posts faithfully at www.thedirtyshame.blogspot.com.