A Taste of the Kingdom Meal

Two or three times a month, I go to the nearby Baptist church.  I walk into the basement, nodding politely to the stressed-out-looking Korean ladies who bustle in and out, heels clacking, eternally late for their mid-day services.   In a small office in the basement is a delightful little octogenarian, a fiercely gracious former airline stewardess.  I talk with her for a bit, and then receive my instructions for the day.

I'm a delivery boy for Meals on Wheels.  I bring a day's worth of food to a half-dozen elderly shut-ins and the indigent disabled who are struggling to live on their own.   I do it because it's my duty as a disciple, and because I love doing it.  Honestly, I can't tell where the duty starts and the love leaves off.  

Serving those in need is a vital, vital thing.  It feeds and sustains me spiritually.

But it's not evangelism.

Some folks recoil at that word, associating it with judgmental shouty bible thumpers, weepy televangelists and predatory prosperity preachers.   "What right do I have to tell people what to believe," we say, tolerantly.  "I'm not willing to stand in judgement over another's beliefs."

We say this, and do nothing.  Though the meal we have is delightful, we don't invite others to the table.  And the light of grace in the world grows dim.  All the while, the darkness has no such compunction.  It spreads eagerly, whispering and gibbering and pouring itself into soul after soul.

I was driving back from my last dropoff of the day last week.  I'd delivered to house where an abandoned van sits in the driveway, where a gently confused woman about my age comes to the door and takes the food from my hands.  I smile, and wish her a good day.  She offers thanks, but her voice trembles with the uncertainty that comes from not speaking to others often.

As I drove away, I suddenly felt what it would be if we human beings all approached our world as Jesus would have us approach it.   What it would be if the vulnerable did not have to fear.

I mean, really.  I felt it.

It was not quite a theophany, mind you.  Just a sudden absence of darkness, as if the world were suddenly emptied of hatred.  A sudden absence of weight, as if there was no cause for anxiety.  In every car, in every home, I felt what it would mean if the compassion that is the greatest gift of the Spirit lived in every one of us.

It was as if, for a moment, I caught a glimpse of the Reign.   Those souls who are isolated and alone?  They wouldn't be.  Our stress, our anger, our discord, and our hatred?  Gone.   There'd be no reason for it.  It was as if I was in a world without war or poverty or fear, without the snarling, grasping pursuit of power.  

That blessed reverie lingered for a moment, and then I was back in traffic.

But it left a taste in my mind, a taste of the Kingdom meal.  This is what it could be like, if we made a point of inviting people to grace, and replacing fear.  This is what it would feel like, if we really did both live and speak Good News.

And Good things are worth sharing.

The Gift of Tongues

As a part-time pastor, I'm the member of the family with daytime flexibility.  That means laundry and kid-shuttling and gardening and cleaning.  It also means study and writing.   But it also means I can take time to work with the local Meals on Wheels, which provides nutrition to the homebound elderly.  Pastor though I may be, I'm not "in leadership" here.  This is just a dirt-under-your-fingernails opportunity to simply be a servant.

I take my marching orders from a dear old saint who has coordinated the program for years, first from a warehouse near a hospital, and now from the basement of the nearby Baptist church.

My job, as I've chosen to accept it? I'm the delivery guy.  My route fluxes and varies from month to month, as folks seek the service or move...or pass on.

This week marked my second delivery to an elderly Korean woman, who spends her days sitting alone in the walk-out basement of a townhouse.  She's frail, semi-mobile, and knows very little English.  When I arrived, she was perched in a chair by an open sliding glass door.

As I approached, she was still and expressionless, her long-view gaze taking me in as another passer by.

I came nearer, and she looked up, still solemn.

"Ahn-yang-hasaeyo," I chirruped in greeting, smiling broadly, using the words for greeting given me by a Korean-American friend.  I stretched out that last "OH" as I'd heard it spoken hundreds of times in the hallways at my old church, and as I hear it spoken into cellphones in Annandale's sprawling Korea Mall.

Her expressionless face lit up with a huge bright smile, and giving her a curt respectful bow while still smiling, I presented her with her meals.

"Thankyouthankyou," she said, beaming.

"Have a great day," I said, having pretty much exhausted my vocubulary.  Well, I suppose I could have counted to three, but I'm not sure it would have worked in context.

"Nehnehnehneh," she said, still smiling, clutching her meal.

That's "yesyesyesyes," I think.

The Humble Fountains

In the courtyard of the seminary, there is a fountain.

It's a simple and gracious thing, with a tall concrete bell-spire and three plashy-splashy jets that evoke the Trinity as they continually blort water heavenward from the surface of a rectangular pool of water.

 Over the many years I've spent at seminary, I've had many opportunities to sit nearby, and meditate on the movement and the noise of living water.

While circumnavigating it yesterday during a moment or two of centering, I noticed that there were not three fountains.  There were five.

Off to the sides of the spire and out of the primary focus of the fountain edifice, two humble PVC jets spewed water into the pool in opposite directions.  I'd seen them before, but I hadn't really given them a thought.

Their flow was not to make a show or a splash.  Instead, they created a circulating flow within the pool, keeping the water moving and clear.  Were it just the three primary fountains, most of the pool would soon become stagnant and stanky, as algae would form everywhere except around the fountains.

What makes the pool living water, water that is in motion and "alive," is the water that pours forth from the PVC protrusions.  They are as visually unassuming as a garden hose, and yet they are the true and hidden life of that place of contemplation.

There are lives like that, relationships we have with others that are like those humble fountains.  They are indispensable to our churches, and to our being together in grace.    We may not see them.  They do not leap and froth continually heavenwards.  They may not care whether they're seen.  And yet without them, things get unclear and stinky.

Fighting That Nasty Little Inner Pharisee

Following the successful launch of a great new service program by a member of the church, I trundled off to our local clothing closet this Saturday to grudgingly put in my monthly court-mandated community service hours. Though the lawyers for the Apple store did push for hard time. Hey, it's not my fault I thought that "open source" meant "feel free to take what you want."

Well, actually, no. I really enjoy charitable work and volunteering. It is work that clearly serves a purpose, that directly benefits those who are struggling and in need. In this case, putting clothes on their bodies. It is work utterly free of mammon's coercion, done for no other purpose than the love of it and of others. It is work that fulfills a really rather specific faith mandate to provide material care, and to be a part of the Gospel process of liberation from suffering. I'm not quite a Salvationist, like the folks over at the Salvation Army whose theology mandates volitional care for others. But I'm close. Church needs to proclaim the Gospel and transform people's lives through that gracious message. I'm down with that. But also and at the same time, it must express itself in practical care for others, in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting the prisoner. If it doesn't do both, it isn't really church. If it does, it is rich and Spirit-filled.

My struggle yesterday was that I didn't bring that gracious Spirit with me when I went. For the first four years of my ministry, my congregation was so wrapped up in Korean psychodrama that it just couldn't seem to muster any service work at all. My outlaw fraternity did more community outreach than my congregation, which ain't sayin' much. Outside of giving cash from the endowment, we did jack-diddly-nothing. Finally, this last year, I started pressing for us to regularly run a food drive, which we've sort of done. I also started encouraging the church to volunteer at the local faith-based clothing closet.

There was some initial involvement. But for the past four months, a grand total of two folks have joined me in doing it. Once it was a kid doing it because he had to. The other time it was my Jewish son, who likes volunteering, and is eager to join me whenever he can.

I'm aware I'm not reaching out enough. Talking about it with lay congregational leaders, talking about it during bible studies, preaching sermons on the necessity of service, announcing it during services, highlighting it in email newsletters, and pitching it through Facebook event invites and notifications...these aren't enough. Only going from person to person, and asking each individual directly if they're going to volunteer every single time we're going to do it seems to work. After a wise soul told me early on that this was the only way people were going to come, I followed his advice. I did that for a while. I did that for a few months.

But there are limits to how far I'm willing to take pastoral suasion. If after over a year people have experienced it, and still aren't coming without arm-twisting, then the voluntary element of volunteering isn't real. If you don't serve with a free will, then it cannot possibly be what it needs to be. Yeah, I could keep noodging and hassling and guilting people into it. But I've never been interested in people faking it out of sense of obligation.

This leaves me with two troubling conundrums.

The first is having to admit to myself that I am the only person in the congregation who cares about this particular service opportunity. It's a bit vexing, because I really like it, I really enjoy it, and it's just a transparently good thing to do. It connects us with our community. It clothes the naked, which would seem like something we'd realize matters to Jesus. But I am self-evidently the only one who cares. Ah well. Egos are such irritating things, and try as I might, I can't always shut mine off. The church is, after all, finally doing other service work on site, through the calling of someone who has joined us in the last few months. So even if my efforts have proved fruitless, the Spirit is at work elsewhere in the church. I take some solace in that.

The second is not to allow my irritation to impede my own efforts. I personally need service ministry to be fed spiritually, but there is no point in doing it while ensconced in a dark cloud of pissiness or judgmentalism or smugness. And though I hate to admit it, it was getting to me this weekend. On the way to the clothing center, certain in the knowledge that it was, once again, just going to be me, I could feel that narsty little inner Pharisee embittering me. Judging others. Telling me that I, in my noble me-ness, should be Proud that I'm The Only One Who Gets It. But there is no Christ in such thinking. There are plenty of folks who live out their faith that way, governed by the demons of self and self-interest. It's a dark cloud of smug delusion.

So I resisted that pesky little demon. I challenged and centered myself. I reminded myself of the point of it all. I focused on the sorting and hanging of clothes the way you'd focus on a repeated prayer, losing myself completely in it. And the anger and bitterness and selfishness faded. And the clothes were sorted and set out for those in need.

It really is most effective.

The Shoveler

As the Washington Metro area recovers from what is the single biggest one-day dump of snowfall in quite a while, I find myself delighting in it. Not so much the sparkly winter wonderlandiness of it all, or even the opportunity for some toboggan launches off of our carport hill.

It is, instead, a great time to get to see neighbors as you heave snow around. For most of today, the snow has been too deep to drive a non-AWD/4WD vehicle through. That means people are walking, not hermetically sealed away in wheeled compartments.

As I shoveled out our drive, what passed by were not cars, but human beings. To each of them, the natural response was a shouted hallooo, followed by some moments of pleasant conversation. Suddenly, the neighborhood was full of people, people who've lived within 100 meters of us for years but with whom not a single word has been passed over all those years. For those moments, it felt less like a 'burb, and more like a community.

I learned two names while out heaving snow into big piles on the lawn. The pleasant older gentleman who lives cattycorner to us told me his name years ago...and it promptly slipped out of my sieve-like cortex. I now know it. The guy across the street who we've called "Chimpy" for years? His name actually sounds like "Chimpy."

But there was more shoveling goodness. Earlier today on Facebook, I said:

David Williams is reasonably sure that shoveling counts as a spiritual discipline. Like most forms of meditation, it involves prolonged and ritualistic repetition of one particular movement, coupled with repeated verbal invocations of the Maker.

Now, I'm sure it's a spiritual discipline. Not so much because of the silliness I suggested, but because after finishing up my walk this afternoon, I went over to the house of some unusually pleasant neighbors undergoing unusually hard times. Both are older, and he just finished a course of radiation treatment in preparation for cancer surgery. Though I'm hardly the king of cardio, the hour I spent clearing their driveway was more than worth the burn in my legs and arms and back. I talked with them. Shared time with them. And in a small way, made things better for them, I hope.

Deep snow and snowshovels are a marvelous opportunity for Jesus people.

Seminary Clearly Ruined Me

Over at her blog and on a recent web radio broadcast, my colleague Carol has been asking a puzzler of a question...is there any reason for our denomination to continue to expect to have educated clergy?

Seminary education, or so Carol's brain teaser goes, might just be too expensive. It drives those who might be seeking a congregation away from smaller churches, because even otherwise healthy communities just can't pony up the cash that you need to pay back student loans. A denomination in decline...which ours certainly is...can no longer require a Masters of Divinity for those seeking ordination. We'd be better served focusing on developing lay leadership and fast-track certification programs that get folks into the pulpit more rapidly and at lower cost. I have a great deal of sympathy for this argument, and I think there is real value in having the leadership of local congregations arise organically from their community.

That argument against seminary education is a new one, and is reflective of the struggles of the progressive church. It joins up with another argument...the "seminary-ruins-you" argument that typically comes from conservatives and fundamentalists. For them, the problem with seminary is that it can be a hotbed of progressive thought within the church, bent on turning hapless young Christians into lesbian wiccan vampyres, or worse yet, Democrats. Better to stick with a nice little Bible college that doesn't teach anything you couldn't learn in VBS. Gotta keep the kids away from the siren song of ancient Greek or Hebrew or the history of the church. Too confusing.

So...should the church require a seminary education? Having had one, I would say: Abso-freakin'-lutely.

Why? Because you can't be a competent pastor without one. Sure, you can run a church just fine. If you've got any business experience, or have been part of a voluntary organization's leadership structure, you've probably developed the chops to handle the organizational requirements of a congregation. If you've got natural charisma or public speaking experience, you can wow 'em on Sunday with your golden tongued oratory.

But you're not going to be a resource for the community where it counts. You aren't going to bring anything to the table theologically. You're not going to have the tools to give new insight into their study of scripture. Your community might grow in numbers, but it won't grow in understanding. You will not be teaching.

What do I mean by this? Let me illustrate.

This last Sunday in Bible study, I was trying to show the gathered group a connection between John's Gospel and 1 John. We'd read from the lectionary, and as I tried to show the ways that 1 John shared important language and theology with John, we hit a stumbling block. All of the group came out of an evangelical background, and all had New International Versions as their translation of choice. The NIV is a decent and worthy version of the Bible, but the way it rendered the verses totally obscured a connection that was both profound and part of the intent of the author of 1 John.

In 1 John 4:15-16, we're supposed to be reminded deeply of what it means to "abide" or "live within" or "be part of Christ." That understanding is central to how the ancient church understood our Christian identity. The passage intentionally mirrors the teachings of Christ in John 15:1-8, when we are commended to be grafted onto the True Vine, and to abide in Him.

Problem is, the NIV uses two entirely different English verbs in translating the Greek verb meno. In John, the NIV uses "remain." In 1 John, it uses "live in." Technically, that's accurate enough. But it obscures a deep resonance, a vital symbolic connection that was an intentional part of 1 John. No reader of 1 John in the NIV would be struck by the similarity of language, or reminded of the words of Christ, even though that's why those words were written.

Having gone to seminary, I now reflexively look across translations. I observe differences. I look to original contexts and their intents and meanings. Every once in a while, I go back to the original language. In doing so, I bring value...and hopefully, understanding...to a community that is trying to make those connections themselves and come into a deeper understanding of both Christ and the church.

It isn't so much that the church should require seminary. It's that those who are genuinely called by God to serve the church should want it, should hunger for it, should see it as a central and vital part of their service.

That is not at all the way the nondenominational world views it. If you think you have an anointing, then by God, you should preach. On the one hand, that's true. It's the call that's important. On the other, failure to strengthen yourself in preparation for your service to the church is just lazy.

If you..meaning you personally, you as someone who God has whupped upside the head and dragged into service...take your calling to serve as a pastor seriously, it's worth the effort.

The depth of knowledge seminary gives you makes you a better resource. So long as you remember to speak in ways that can be understood outside of academe, it gives you the tools to be a more effective servant.

And one thing we can't afford is to have more ineffective servants, or more folks whose grasp of the Bible doesn't go any further than their political persuasion.