Chris Yaw

Every day I greet the morning the same way billions of other people do – with hope and a prayer. Through the rising mists of my pre-dawn consciousness I offer a vague invitation to the Almighty to take me, take the day, come inside and be present.

And then I get up and go about my business.

As a professional Christian (someone who gets paid to do this), the day has started well before I have. There are hospital patients to hunt down, volunteers to corner, sermons to bootleg, couples to talk down off ledges, sages to memorialize and screaming babies to baptize – do you want to hear more?

The invitation that started my day has become more ritual than real world - piety not verity – I have opened the door for the Guest then promptly left Him all alone in the living room.

Yes, it’s the Martha/Mary syndrome that we will hear all about in this Sunday’s Gospel. We know the story, Martha invites Jesus in, then gets so caught up in the work of hospitality (ever wonder if her last name was Stewart?) that she turns into a whiny tattletale – complaining to Jesus that her sister won’t help… wah, wah, wah. Jesus stays cool and points out it’s not her, but her sister who’s spending the time most productively. Zing.

It’s a lesson that speaks volumes to Christians of all times who have fallen victim to doing so much for God that we forget about God.

In this A.D.D. age, when our skills of attentiveness, concentration and discipline are more challenged than ever, we do well to ask ourselves what we really meant when we invited Him in in the first place? If we’re going to welcome our Guest, ought we not pay proper attention? What keeps us from doing so? How might we brush aside the distractions and be more attentive to the Holy Presence that’s right next to us?

Reading:
Wild at Heart – John Elredge
Mountain Reign – Joe Lacy
The 4-Hour Workweek – Timothy Ferriss

I have a friend who gives really over the top Christmas presents to people she barely knows. As the holiday season approaches she spends hours poring over catalogs and roaming the aisles of some pretty high-end stores. She buys ties and games and dresses and belts and electronics – you name it. She carefully considers everyone on her list and does her best to buy the most thoughtful, appropriate, and generous gifts she can. When she gets home, she painstakingly wraps them in the most attractive (and expensive) papers and tissues and ribbons she can find – no store-bought wrapping for her. Then she puts on the nametags. Some presents go to her kids, others go to friends and co-workers, and there’s always a fair number that sit carefully wrapped up and ready for pick up by the mailman, the newspaper guy and snowplow man. While acknowledging the overtones of self-interest that influence every aspect of our gift giving, I figured my friend was simply trying to impress people when I asked her why these great gifts were going to near-strangers. I’ll never forget her immediate and sincere response: she was trying to love her neighbor as herself.

Giving great gifts to those we love happens all the time. Giving great gifts to those we hardly know is rare. What impressed me about my friend was the sheer practicality of it all – how she brought this Good Samaritan lesson down to earth. ‘Loving your neighbor as yourself’ has always been one of those grandiose, BHAG goals that perhaps goes without deep reflection because of its octopi complexity. But my friend’s Christmas giving made me think. How might I bring this most important of all Christian commandments down to size?

I walked into my backyard to turn on the sprinkler and thought about ways I could water my neighbor’s parched lawn. I went to the supermarket where I walked up and down the aisles thinking about my neighbors, downtown, who don’t have enough to eat. I passed the basket at church thinking about all of the people who look to my church for strength to get through their lives.

One of the most stark expositions of this commandment is offered by St. Paul who opines in Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” How might we take the spotlight off of ourselves and shine it on others? What one practical thing can I do today to be a neighbor?

Reading
The Prophets (Vol. I and II) – Abraham Heschel
Blood and Thunder – Hampton Sides
Wild at Heart – John Eldredge

Bolstered by our baptisms – strengthened by the Sacraments - sent forth in faith! To the far off and the far flung! Off to every place where he himself intends to go -for there is no place where He isn’t!
He’s in our car drive, our food drive and our hard drive

Look at the fields! So ripe for harvest! There they are, peeking out through the unstable soils of these lost and disorienting times –
Did anybody really think a Russian spy might live next door?
That a high-ranking general would give the benefit of the doubt to Rolling Stone?
Or that Larry King would ever retire?

So there they are! Thrusting forth gentle shoots seeking truth and stability and a peace which passeth all understanding. Bearing a countenance of innocence - of the just-born, beaming with new inquiry reaching for the heavens – stretching and searching for nourishment, fulfillment and the answers to life’s most pressing questions.

“Off to the fields!” is the command, as we pair up, two by two – forming a community just like God’s - community personified, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We cast off worries about where we will stay, what we will wear, what we will eat, and how we will ever be able to do such a thing – for the One who sends us knows what we need well before we do. Consider the lilies.

Then, surprise, surprise, success!
We are welcomed beyond our wildest dreams!
And when evil, doubt, and distress are sent packing our churches fill up, we break ground for another addition, and build a steeple that touches the sky. Then we are reminded that this is not our reward. For the One who sent us does not pay us with property or cash, always subject to foreclosures and Great Recessions. But we are paid back by something we already have.

The message is clear: rejoice. Cast off the worries, refuse to glory in anything more than the Promises, and keep our eyes peeled on those endless waves of golden grain.

Reading
Explosive Preaching - Ron Boyd-MacMillan
Healing Light - Agnes Sanford
The Slate Roof Bible -Joseph Jenkins

Deciding to get more serious with spiritual life? Looking for some good habits to bring you closer to The Light? Wanting to draw closer to Jesus? Thanks to an old pal from Seminary days, Scotsman Ron Boyd MacMillan, who offers a form of these to preachers, but they're helpful to all of us who are looking to jump start our spiritual lives.

1) Make up your own 'daily liturgy.' No matter what your Christian heritage, you have a certain way of organizing your daily quiet time, why not begin your renewal by mixing it up a bit? Sure it'll contain the usual bits, Confession, Praise, Reading, Praying etc., but set it out in your own words - perhaps including poetry, fine art contemplation and meditation on sacred music. Write it down, give it a go, adjust as necessary.

2) Write down a 'verse of the week' and meditate on it for seven days. Choose a text that has made a particular impression on you. Use a notebook or PDA to jot it down and return to it frequently throughout the week ruminating on why it has particular resonance with you at the moment.

3) Find suffering people to teach you the faith. When Jesus said 'the poor will always be with you' he very well could have been saying that the mark of Christ-followers is that they will recognize the value of 'the least of these' in becoming better Christians. Henri Nouwen had L'Arche, Mother Teresa had her homes for the dying. I regularly visit a homeless shelter. Don't do this to feel good about yourself for volunteering - you'll miss the point - but learn how they rejoice in their sufferings, how they gain Christ in the midst of pain. Encounter the suffering and you will get to know how the Christian faith works.

4) Read a great book each week. Find a reading list of great books and work your way through it. Sure, start with the Christian classics, but include the great books of the world. Also, at the very least carve out an hour a week to do this. Intentionally say you are going to get through the book in that time period and you will be amazed at how much you can remember even if you have to skim parts of it.

5) Take time to write. Even if it's 20 minutes a week. Even if it's just a paragraph. But choose a subject - an encounter with the book you just read, Scripture, a neighbor, your significant other and ask yourself these questions: How did the Lord speak through ________? What might God be trying to who me through it? You will be amazed at what fruit this can yield.

6) Find a phylactery. Maybe it's a rosary, maybe it's a pocket cross - one rabbi keeps a piece of paper in each pocket, one that says 'I'm a desperately wicked sinner' and the other that says 'I'm a beloved child of God.' Yes, the body often forgets God which is why a tangible memento can be so valuable. What would yours be? What might it say?

7) Build yourself a cell. Sure the contemporary 'man cave' may not be an update of the monk's cell, but the idea's the same; to find a retreat from the pressures around us. With the fast pace we're all pretty much forced to keep, we can lose sight of the fact that we serve a 3 mile per hour God (that's the pace of an average walker - remember, Jesus walked). Your cell can be a hut in the garden or a corner in a room, but make it a time of nothing but silence. You'll only share your cell with one other - the Lord. Use this time to listen, not for the earthquake, the fire, or the wind - but the stillness of God's presence. Out of this kind of practice unparalleled inspirations appear.

For many of us summertime is the best time of year: vacations, free time, catching up on reading, home maintenance, videos, sports, gardening and friendships. We finally get a break from our increasingly complicated, busy and changing world. It’s time to recharge our batteries (re-creation). And I would suggest we also take some time to look at some ways we can remain steady and even flourish in our increasingly chaotic society – that we might learn anew how to grow in our Christian faith and make significant progress in Christ’s work of reconciling all things to Him.

First, let’s take some time this summer to consider, or reconsider, our relationships with technology and new media – the Internet, Facebook, blogs, Twitter and wireless communications. As we all know human knowledge is increasing exponentially. Our brains and our waking hours are not. How do we keep up with it all? How do we manage this information in ways that feed, inform and nourish us rather than confusing, frightening and frustrating us? Information technologies help us do that. They help us search, retrieve, collect and manage this new information like nothing else. While critics bemoan these innovations as brain-altering and attention-span-shortening, this is not the case. As Harvard’s Stephen Pinker argues, “Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.”

Second, let’s take some time to look at how we’re honing the skills we need to keep steady – like self-discipline, self-control, and concentration. While distraction is nothing new, we have more things by which to be distracted and those same skills we learned in grade school - of organization, prioritizing and boundary-setting - are becoming more and more valuable. Temptation is taking on new forms. The solution is not to demonize technology, but to put it in its place. Only check email at certain times of the day. Turn off Twitter when you work, put the cell phone away at dinner. It is much less productive to criticize iPads and Google Voice than it is to hone our skills of critical thinking, deep reflection and intellectual rigor.

Third, let’s do some thinking about ‘change’ - life’s only constant. We rarely like change because it means we take on something new and trade in the old. And many of us liked the old. So with change there is loss, grief and often, conflict. It is both bittersweet and inevitable. But change also means possibility. When we welcome change we open ourselves to new things that may fulfill us in ways we never dreamed of. The Scriptures describe God as a 'consuming fire' which paints a picture of morphing movement, drama, and uniqueness. So change means acknowledging and grieving the loss, then handling the conflict, before finally assessing the new landscape and deciding how best to fit in, chart a new course, and open ourselves to newness.

Finally, let’s take this summer to reaffirm the greatest asset Christians bring to a changing landscape, perhaps best put by St. Matthew when he quotes Jesus’ final words, “And remember I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 29:19) We do not sail through uncharted waters alone. Someone has gone before us and remains with us. In the midst of the swirling chaos that surrounds, we have peace and Presence. It is a Presence that has a plan, and is working in amazing ways to bring it to fruition. So relax, we go through this storm griping a steady hand. And we ask ourselves how we might more deeply cling to the peace of Christ, the conviction that Jesus is at work in and around us, and more intentionally focus on how He is asking us to be His hands and feet in a broken world, in deep need of healing.

Reading:
Can Our Church Live? – Alice Mann
Explosive Preaching – Ronald Boyd-MacMillan
Healing Light – Agnes Sanford

When you look in the mirror do you absolutely love what you see? Are you satisfied with every aspect of who you are? Have you finally reached perfection?

Of course not.

We all spend the majority of our time and resources trying to improve ourselves. Many of us want to live healthier, get smarter, look better, make more money, and push ourselves into newness - discovering and fulfilling our deepest beings.

One of the things that compels us is our dissatisfaction with what we see in the mirror. It can drive us to do devastating things (as illustrated in the above photo, courtesy of a bulimia foundation). The theological pothole this can create is it can alter our understanding of God’s love. Since we are not satisfied with who we are, we can think that God isn’t either. We forget that God loves us just as we are, not as we should be.

We see this in Sunday’s Gospel when Jesus is having dinner at a Pharisee’s house and a ‘sinner’ comes to the door. She is obviously enamored with Jesus. She washes his feet with tears, dries them with her hair, and anoints him with perfume. Jesus’ host objects. He doesn’t understand what’s motivated her – that it’s the miraculous revelation that God loves her just as she is. Despite her sins and shortcomings God is willing to forgive and accept her for who she is.

The Pharisee, who is the one I most resemble, is stuck in the erroneous thinking that God somehow favors him because he does religious things – dressing, talking, socializing, praying and behaving in certain ways. We do well to remember a former Archbishop of Canterbury’s wise words, ‘It is a great mistake to believe that God is chiefly interested in religion.’

What God is chiefly interested in is love. In loving you, me and all of creation relentlessly, completely, and unceasingly. God is chiefly interested in healing, restoring and reconciling. This is what Jesus did and who Jesus is. Faced with this reality, what would we do if Jesus suddenly appeared before us? And what do we do knowing that Christ is present - especially in the needy and marginalized around us?

Reading
Can Your Church Live? – Alice Mann
Miracles of Kathryn Kuhlman – Harold Castroph
In Memoriam: A Guide to Modern Funeral and Memorial Services – Edward Searl

It’s been said that the person who belongs to a small church lives in a much larger world. Seeing the same people week after week leads to friendships, many times with folk whom we wouldn’t ordinarily get to know – indeed, whom we might initially have so little in common with that we would’ve never met anyplace other than at church. This diversity can be rewarding. It can open our minds and make us deeper, more thoughtful and less rigid human beings.

Small congregations force us to get along with one another. They compel us to understand where other people are coming from and civilly settle our differences, which can be of immense value in the larger world.

Small congregations keep us accountable. You can’t miss too many Sundays before someone calls or drops by just to make sure everything’s OK. We think twice about skipping Sunday services – not just because we miss out on worship, but because of the people who will be disappointed if we’re not there.

Large churches get this - as attested by their emphasis on small groups. In fact, the biggest trend in the mega-church world is multi-site congregations – the establishment of much smaller satellite campuses that promote intimacy and closer relationships.

The Episcopal Church is a small church haven. 80% of our congregations host 150 people or less on Sunday mornings. The vast majority of Episcopalians are converts (70%), and a great many of us came from much larger churches. Many of us joined because of the size. We realize we are created for relationships. We were made for deep, intimate and sacred relationship, not just with the Lord, but with each other. Christianity isn’t just about me and Jesus. It’s about me and Jesus and you.

This is not to say that small churches are meant to stay small. The Great Commission teaches otherwise, plus we were created to grow in all sorts of ways. Some churches grow and stay together, others plant new congregations so that size remains manageable. The key is to understand our community, whatever the present size may be, as a gift from God to draw us all closer to the Lord. In what ways do we take advantage of our size to build the kinds of relationships, with Jesus and others, that might draw us closer to Him?

Reading
Can Your Church Live? - Alice Mann
Blood and Thunder - Hampton Sides
The Heart of Christianity - Marcus Borg

Easter and Pentecost are gone and while we may have earned a well-deserved summer vacation, Mother Church is saying, ‘Not so fast…’ Hey, the temperatures are warmer (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) and we’re downright tempted to do what the mice do when the cat’s away (leave at 3:15), but that’s just not going to happen yet - we’ve got Trinity Sunday this weekend.

For the uninitiated, Trinity Sunday may seem like the Church’s annual exercise in futility – it’s when preachers mount pulpits and take their best stab at explaining the unexplainable: who is God? The best two thousand years of Christendom have been able to do is come up with an idea we call ‘The Trinity’ – one God in three roles or offices or persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What this means is that Sunday’s feast is the only day of the year when we ponder a teaching of the Church rather than a teaching of Jesus (the word Trinity is actually not found in the Bible).

And while taking a stab at answering an unanswerable question certainly seems pointless, I think this is actually one of the more important feasts of the year. After all, if we never attempted to climb unclimbable mountains, build impossible buildings or swim impassable rivers we would not be all that we were created to be. This is the most adventuresome day of the year for Christians as we ponder the “Is-ness” of God – the very being of God.

Like our Jewish ancestors, we realize this can be dangerous. We resist making images of God (statues and the like) because we don’t want to violate the second commandment. So we go for metaphor, ‘God is like…’ which can be helpful (God is like a chord made up of three individual notes...). However, we soon realize that whatever proofs, formulas or explanations we can drum up fall short. If God exists outside of Creation then how can we attempt to understand Him (or Her) by using only those things available within Creation? What’s more, for any ‘proof’ to be valid necessitates the neutrality of the observer, which is simply not possible.

One thing we often learn from this exercise is the utter complexity of God. We look at the evidence that surrounds us – the natural world of ocean rhythms, interstellar order, and the incredible intricacies that make up the simple beauties found in budding plants and the eyes of a newborn. And while Trinity Sunday may remind us of our inability to understand God, it also reminds us that we are able to know God. Just think about how many things you and I know but don’t understand (I know my car works but will never understand how). We also remember what scientists tell us – that most discoveries are preceded by hypotheses; a belief in what’s happening before it is actually proven. Don’t we sell ourselves short (and display no small amount of hubris) when we conclude that we can’t believe in God because we don’t understand God?

So this Trinity Sunday, when we contemplate the adventure of going deeper into the unknown of God, we know that it involves doing nothing more than taking the hand that is reaching for us. It is the One that beckons us to forgive that wrong, reach out to that needy neighbor, and take a stand against injustice. In doing this we are saying what we believe. May we be granted faith so to do, in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Reading
The Great Emergence – Phyllis Tickle
The Slate Roof Bile – Joseph Jenkins
Governance and Ministry – Dan Hotchkiss

In the Bible there are many names for the Holy Spirit and his (or her?) ministry to the world. This Sunday our translation will render this third member of the Trinity as 'Advocate.' Other Biblical references include Holy Ghost, Spirit of God, Spirit of Truth and a favorite which is Paraclete (loosely: 'one who comes alongside'). What I like about this translation (which is really no translation at all) is the underlying assumption, 'Well we don't really know exactly what it means in Greek so we'll transliterate it into English and let you figure it out...'

This Pentecost Sunday the most helpful understanding of the Holy Spirit's work and ministry in my life is 'Comforter.' The Gospel text assigned to us, John 14:8-27, has the disciple Philip sitting in for you and me as he asks, 'Lord, show us the Father!' And a somewhat frustrated Jesus (I'm sure) chiming in to say, 'Have I been with you all this time (insert your name here), and you still do not know me?' We, like Phillip, are often in places where we simply cannot recognize God. We live in an age where anxiety disorder diagnoses are through the roof, worries about a dwindling middle class are well founded, a slushy and unpredictable economy keeps us awake at night, and a worrisome national security landscape haunts us (did someone really plant a car bomb in Times Square?).

Yet in the middle of it all, Jesus calls us to go out into the world to continue His work - not just healing, restoring and reconciling, but smiling at the busboy who brings us water, letting the jibe from that passive aggressive co-worker go unanswered, and taking a moment to stare deeply into the eyes of our beloveds to say, 'Ya know, I really love you.'

But in order to do this, we need to find a place to put all that crappy worrying.

And this is where the Holy Spirit - the Comforter comes in.

When my 9 month old is in his activity saucer near my desk (that's him in action, above), furiously rattling rattles, pushing buttons and ringing bells every once in a while he'll suddenly stop and look over at me - as if to say - 'Are we cool?' I look over at him and smile (like, who cannot smile at a smiling baby?) and let him know, 'Ya, we're cool.' And off he goes again, in a tornado of fury. If I don't look at him he'll speak up to grab my attention and when I leave the room there's usually a wail. He wants to know I'm nearby and everything's cool.

Pentecost is like that. Jesus tells us, relax, keep up the good work. The Comforter is here and never leaves.

Everything's cool.

Reading
Governance and Ministry - Dan Hotchkiss
Giving it Up - Maggi Dawn
The Fidelity of Betrayal - Peter Rollins

For churches with fundamentalist convictions this is an interesting testimony of church growth and offers useful tips for 'transitioning' your church from small and declining to big and growing. However, for the rest of us it offers much less.

Mega church pastor Brad Powell tells a glossy and rather simplistic rags to riches story of church growth, insisting that the growth he piloted (his church now hosts thousand of people each Sunday) is something every church can do; 'He (sic) just needs His people like you to believe in His power and to embrace His purpose and passion for your church.' Brad begins with an archtypically evangelical story of being brought to his knees at a pastor's conference and, all alone, hearing from God and having the Bible speak directly to him as he received his marching orders.

Brad tells us about his church, Temple Baptist Church in Detroit, one of the largest Baptist churches in the country in the 1950's. He mentions several times that the congregation had lost two thirds of its membership in the ten years before his arrival. He blames it on irrelevant music and worship and tells how he did the difficult work of transforming it into NorthRidge Church. What Brad leaves out is the fact that racial division played perhaps the biggest role in Temple's decline, and that the decision to leave its historic location meant moving out of a declining neighborhood into tony Plymouth, a white middle to upper class suburb where his particular brand of theology would be better received and much better funded. Thus leaving behind a declining area, and its residents, and adding to the Balkanization of the Detroit metro area.

Brad, like other mega church pastors, gives us the impression that his congregation's growth came mainly through new converts, whereas church growth statistics show that more than 90% of mega church growth comes from piquing the interest of other Christians who have either stopped going to church or who, more often, have simply switched churches - which is very common in his evangelical world. Brad rightly points out that there are a lot of Baptists in the Detroit area. His church has had obvious appeal to many of them.

Also common in evangelical circles is the overuse of anecdote and the underuse of academic and outside sources. This book has no footnotes, bibliography or even suggested reading. Like Rick Warren's 'Purpose Driven' best seller, the only go-to literature it commends is more of the author's, in this case, Brad's blog, church website and church address. I expected something with more academic rigor, but again, the tradition isn't known for commending it.

Brad hits home when he talks about church governance models, and the importance of updating them to meet current trends. This is one of the significant reasons dying churches continue to decline. 80% of America's churches are not growing, many of them because they continue to use antiquated organizational models that promote navel-gazing and inhibit change and newness. Temple's transition is a testimony to Brad's leadership and a willingness of its deacons to embrace a new kind of organizational leadership that empowers the laity and gives permission to members to get involved in ministry. NorthRidge members believe they have something vital to share and deserve kudos for allowing that conviction to drive their decision to embrace its leadership model. Would that every church would share the conviction that what they have to offer is worth this kind of sacrifice!

Brad also offers credible advice when he explains how he rooted these changes in mission - to reach the lost. He tells of how he reminded the congregation of the important paradigm that the Church is the only institution that exists primarily for those who are not its members and that doing this kind of mission requires change. He gives a helpful tip when he urges congregations to use 'testimony' of changed lives during the transition - to remind the congregation that the changes they are making are bearing fruit.

However, Brad leaves many of us (me and my more liberal churchmen and women) out of his equation when he implies that a conservative approach to theology must stand at the heart of church growth, as if the only way to grow a church is to embrace his slant on Christianity. Certainly he is aware that many liberal churches are growing and that they also have much to offer in leading others to Christ (by liberal I mean those that read Scripture more flexibly, do not claim a monopoly on salvation and believe, as the United Church of Christ advertises, that 'God is still speaking’).

What left me wanting is any mention of how NorthRidge is making a significant dent in improving Detroit. The biggest challenges this geographic area faces are racial reconciliation, unity among churches and social justice. Half of Detroit's children live at or under the poverty line. What would it look like for a church of this size and influence to partner with an inner city community organizing group and work not just at feeding the homeless (as NorthRidge certainly does, out in the suburbs) but, as Jesus did, taking on a corrupt power system that enables the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer? Mega churches emote images of comfy suburbanites sipping lattes, being entertained by upbeat music and ‘challenged’ by Dr. Phil messages. Sadly, Brad’s story left me with little evidence to the contrary. Shouldn’t growing churches like this provide the leadership and challenge to do the gritty work of reconciliation in the most racially divided region in America?

I received a free copy of Brad's book as a member of a scheme called 'Booksneeze,' that gives away books to those who will review them and post them on their blogs. We can assume that the books made available will be those needing blog publicity because they're not able to carry much weight on their own. This book, at the time of this writing was ranked around 400,000 on amazon.com, and hence, certainly qualifies.

Years ago a Christian singing duo named Avery and Marsh penned a musical parody about American Christendom called, ‘I Can Be a Christian By Myself.’ Here’s the first verse:

I can be a Christian by myself.
Leave my dusty Bible on the shelf.
I'll sing a hymn and pray a bit.
God can do the rest of it.
My heart's the church, my head's the steeple. 
Shut the door, I'm all the people.
I'll break some bread and drink some wine.
Have myself a holy time.

Of course this would be much more amusing if it didn’t hit so close to home. As someone who prides himself on his independence, and is equally proud to live in a country founded by (and loaded with) rugged individualists, my sense of discomfort is widely shared. I feel a tug of competing loyalties – to a heritage and lifestyle of individual freedom and the pull of a Savior who is constantly calling me into selfless relationships with others.

This Sunday many Christians will hear a famous reading from the Bible - a portion of Jesus’ last prayer before his crucifixion. On the eve of his betrayal, punishment and death Jesus takes a moment to pray for you and me. And what he prays is for us to take our relationships really seriously. What I find so fascinating about this prayer is not the ‘what,’ but the ‘how.’ We are not asked to unite around a football team, ethnic heritage, profit-making venture, or even a form of altruism (although those might be infinitely easier!) but we are asked to unite around Him.

Jesus goes all New Age on us - asking us to imagine Him in us, and us in Him, then us and Him together emptying ourselves for those who don’t know Him. It’s pointed, direct, and more than a bit eclectic. And who would ever have guessed it would become the foundation of the largest and most influential religion the world has ever known?

At the heart of Jesus’ final words is an imploring for us to get rid of all the distractions and focus on Him. In this time of Ascensiontide (these ten days between Ascension Day last Thursday and Pentecost next Sunday), which Karl Barth called, ‘The Significant Pause,’ how might you and I renew our focus on the valued relationships around us - our Lord, our family, our friends? How might we use this hour, this day and this season of significant pause, to revive friendships, renew significant relationships, and reach out to those to whom we are called?

Reading
Governance and Ministry – Dan Hotchkiss
Can Your Church Live? – Alice Mann
The Five Most Important Questions – Peter Drucker

Like many people, I watched with great interest as the head of the Wall Street class, Goldman Sachs, was hauled into the principal's office last week to answer for its part in The Great Recession, and more specifically, the housing market collapse that triggered it all. Goldman is being accused, in a civil suit filed by the S.E.C., of essentially misrepresenting a mortgage-based product it was pushing. Apparently it involved a heavy investor who helped construct the product - and he was betting it would fail. One commentator likened it to helping a bookie pick the horses and jockeys allowed in the race.

Whether or not Goldman violated the law - we suspect that had the company done so we would see criminal charges versus a civil suit - the spotlight is on the propriety of it all. What sorts of ethical frameworks are at work here?

Years ago Augustine of Hippo posited a simple axiom to help Christians maneuver an increasingly complicated world. He famously instructed; 'love God and do as you please.' As the reasoning goes, in loving God one will engage in the sorts of behaviors that would be pleasing to God - honesty, integrity, self-denial, charity, peace-making, etc. Last Sunday those of us who attend liturgical churches heard Jesus say, 'I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.'

What would Wall Street, or our street, look like if we approached ethical questions from this vantage point? Can I love God and make that comment, purchase, or business deal? What ethical decision am I facing today in which this advice would be good advice? Would that decision pass the sniff test?

Reading
Empire Falls - Richard Russo
Blood and Thunder: The Story of Kit Carson - Hampton Sides
Governance and Ministry - Dan Hotchkiss

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