What are your thoughts on God?

For the next little bit, I'll be responding to questions my friend, M. asked me a week or so ago.

Well, M. Jump right to it. What are my thoughts on God? Well. To start, I would say that I have no idea who God is. For all the thinking and writing and researching and reading and praying and experiencing I've done (which is a lot and not all that much at the same time), I would have to say that I have no idea who God is.

But this doesn't mean that I don't have any thoughts on God. I do have some of those. Lot's really. Here are two.

(+) I think God is far beyond anything we can assign God to be. God isn't just not a male nor a female, but has the ability to be both and beyond gender at the same time. The same applies for all other ways that we label and chain God.

(+) I believe in a God of second chances and third chances and 9th chances and 47th chances. And, as Kierkegaard would say, This awakens my deepest sense of wonder and joy and is a great source of relief.

But, for some reason, I can't seem to find the words to express exactly what I think (mainly because that changes fairly regularly). So, here are some quotes that I find particularly meaningful in the way I think about God:

"For thirty years I sought God. But when I looked carefully I found that in reality God was the seeker and I the sought." - Abu-Yazid al-Bistami

"I had a thousand questions to ask God; but when I met him they all fled and didn't seem to matter." -Christopher Morley

"There is a sign of God on every leaf that nobody else sees in the garden." -Thomas Merton

"Sometimes--there's God--so quickly!" -Tennessee Williams

"I am often closer to God doing the dirty dishes than when listening to Bach or Mozart." -Henry Miller

"It is safe to assume that we've created God in our own image when God hates all the people we hate."--Anne Lamott

Of course, none of these are adequate. But, then, who could sum up God beyond all things in a phrase or a sentence? At the end of the day, I know nothing for sure, except that it's by God's grace that I can say that...

old friends, hard questions

My friend, M., recently emailed me. She and I went to Elon together and, during my sophomore year, we would share a meal fairly regularly. I'd lost touch with her recently. We'd each moved to opposite corners of the States, and started school and, you know, life. But today I got a note from her. She included that she is working on a project for school and had a list of questions she wanted my response to--questions about God, the church, and being gay and Christian.

It's interesting because for as much as we talk about these things at school somehow we never get to the meat. We talk about what other people think. What tradition holds to be the case or which theologians carry a high Christology, but we never seem to get here. To the question asked in genuine curiousity: so, what do you think?

So, for the next days, I'll be answering her questions here with the caveat that I'm really just thinking out loud and reserve the right to change my mind. Jesus did.

another day, another sermon.

In preaching class, we've been in our small groups preaching to one another on assigned texts. My text focused on a moment when the Jesus we see isn't the Jesus we're used to seeing found in Mark 7 Here is the sermon:

There is no denying it, this is a hard text. If we were reading through Mark, we would have just come off a few chapters of fun miracles--the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus walking on water, and so on. We've witnessed Jesus' ability to care for people in really pragmatic ways (I mean, he fed people--lots of fish and bread) and his desire to strengthen their faith.

We’re used to this Jesus—the Jesus who helps, heals, cares for. Last week’s sermons told focused on other stories of Jesus’ helping hands. We heard about demons being cast out and bodies being healed and children being brought back to life.. Sometimes, those who were healed didn’t even ask for it. The John 9 text we lived in for the first weeks of the semester saw that to be the case—the blind man was brought to Jesus, and he was healed. With out asking.

But here, in these words, we stumble on another Jesus. One that, if we are honest with the text, is a hard Jesus to deal with. The Jesus we know wouldn't turn people away. But here, in Mark 7, we see Jesus tell this syro-phoenician woman—a gentile--that He won't heal her daughter because she isn't a Jew.

The story has Jesus roaming around the northern coastal plain, near Tyre in what is modern-day Lebanon. Trying not to be noticed, he ducks into a house, yet, it seems, word is already spreading about his arrival. A woman, whose daughter has an unclean spirit falls at his feet.

This is the familiar part, the scenario that we see played out again and again in Mark. Jesus is walking, doesn’t want to be noticed, tries to keep a low profile, but those who need help find Jesus anyway.

But, we find out, this isn’t just any woman.

The text points out that this is a Gentile woman, of the syrophoenician race. This certainly wasn’t a surprise to Jesus. He knew where he was, and what kind of people lived there. Tyre was near the border of the land of Israel. It was no secret that Gentiles lived over its northern border, nor that Jews of that time were living in a Gentile world.

This woman who shouldn’t be even talking to Jesus because she isn’t a Jew, much less asking for anything because she is a woman, approaches Jesus and asks him multiple times to heal her daughter. In the Matthean version of the story, there is a little more interaction here. She pleads with Jesus, and he denies her twice. In the Markan scene, we are told that “she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter.”

In either case, the response Jesus gives is surprising to say the least. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

I think it is probably safe to assume we aren't talking about our family pet here. This isn't a compliment. In fact, I'd say its mean.

Imagine--Jesus being mean? Not very Christ-like, eh?

Still, she doesn't give up. She responds: Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's tables.

And with this response, Jesus seems to do an amazing thing—he changes his mind. He tells the woman “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” She goes home, and finds that it is true. Her daughter has been healed.

This one woman’s faith in the crumbs healed her daughter.

What’s interesting about Jesus’ last words to this woman is that they don’t match the model. We’ve heard Jesus time and again through the gospels say ‘your faith has made you well.” But here, he is hardly as explicit.

Instead, he cites her response as the thing that saved her daughter, not her faith explicitly. Yet, it seems to me, it was her faith that inspired her to go after the crumbs.

That is where the gospel is in this story—in the crumbs, crumbs that have the ability to change people’s minds—even Jesus’.

But, here’s the thing about food—people like to hoard it, even the crumbs. Sometimes I hear these hoarders referred to as “half-way Christians”—folks who are so concerned about what THEIR gospel says to THEIR community, that when it’s time to share it with the world beyond, they fall short. Sometimes we call them, seminarians.

You know the people I'm talking about. They claim to believe in Christ, then push people away from Him.

Or they say they care about God's creation: "I recycle!" the say. But recycling only happens when it is convenient. You want to shout that Christianity isn't convenient--you don't get to choose it just when it happens to fit.

Better yet, they are the people who watch the church clock. "What do you mean we have to sing all six verses?," they wonder aloud. "We are supposed to be out of here at noon! We have to beat the Baptists to lunch..." or “I have a blackboard post to finish writing.”

Or those who mourn for the homeless population's reality, but when begged for a dollar, refuse to give it. "They'll just buy drugs or alcohol," the half-way Christian argues.

What about the people who sing of God's love for everyone, but really can't stand that black kid who came to church today wearing a baseball hat and low riding pants?

Or the ones whose words of love begin to go sour as attempts for inclusion merely bring an exclusion of another sort?

Or they squabble about the details--about who God loves more or who sins less or who got it first or who hasn't ever gotten it.

These are the people who hoard the crumbs, who desperately hold on to the way things are instead of looking to the way things might be.

And here’s the worst part is: I'm one of them. And, I suspect, at one point or another, you’ve had a moment of being one too.

But hear the good news of this story: Jesus. Changed. His. Mind. Jesus changed his mind. And we can too.

We can fling our arms wider to those who are desperate for crumbs of hope, peace, belonging, faith, love, all of those identifiers of the Christian faith. We can call people to us, look them in their eyes and see Christ whether or not we are the same color or the same gender or the same sexual orientation. In changing his mind, Jesus threw out the old, rigid traditions that separated people from one another and from God. He changed his mind, and healed her anyway.

Sometimes, however, we aren’t the ones with the minds to change. Sometimes, we are the ones frantic for the crumbs, for little bits of sustenance for the journey. Can you think of times that you were desperate for crumbs? I can.

The cold of Copenhagen was unrelenting. I had been there for 3 months, since January, and was beginning to think that winter would never end. I was an ocean away from home, my birthday was quickly approaching, and I had never felt so alone in my life. My time was consumed with study and reading and sleeping—hardly an adventure.

I was riding my bicycle home from school late one night when I passed the cathedral—the Church of Our Lady. I had been in it before. It’s a huge church, one that glows with white marble and the clean lines of Scandinavian design.

As I rode by, I noticed the church doors were open. So, I stopped, locked my bike and timidly walked in. All around the church were candles and silence. Every ten minutes or so, a prayer or psalm was sung to mark the passing of time. After a long quiet, a priest emerged from the front with bread and wine, and those there moved toward the front.

Danes, like most Europeans, are not very religious. They seem to have gotten it out of there system, but the small gathered community here seemed to pay no attention to the cultural mores of the day. They gathered in a semi-circle around the altar in the front of the church. Desperate for my own crumbs, I joined them.

The liturgy began. In Danish. But amazingly, I knew everything that was happening. These words spoken for millennia united us in Christ that night. The bread began to make its way around. To my right, a woman said offered it to me in Danish. I took it and offered it to the man to my left, in English. The cup was passed in the same way. We fed each other, sustained each other. And, if I’m honest, they gave me the crumbs, literally and figuratively, that I’d been craving all along.

You see, we’re all searching for crumbs from the table and we all hold bread for others. Christ challenges us to change our minds—to open them to those who we’ve shunned away from the table, and for us to acknowledge when we’re desperate to be fed ourselves. Think of how the crumbs sustain us, then imagine how the feast will feed us all. Thanks be to God.

the return of the dog dooner, and john 9

So, it's been a long while since I updated the Dog Dooner Cafe. A lot has happened, in the past four months. Namely, Mom died. I'm not sure where November, December and January went, but I'm glad they're over.

I'm taking Intro. to Preaching with Tom Long and Gail O'Day this semester. One of our first assignments had us doing exegetical work with John 9 (the story of the blind man being made to see). All 144 of us then preached a brief, 5 minute long sermon on the text.

Here is mine:

The classroom was cold, which was a good thing. It kept my fellow Con Ed students and I awake during the two-hour afternoon sessions that had somehow been scheduled during prime nap time. I was in a group of chaplains. Half of us were stationed at a private hospital on the north side, and the other half, my half, had been placed at Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital.

At the start of our assignments, we jumped through all sorts of hoops—security checks and vaccinations. When our first day at the site finally arrived, we were given tours of the facility and an ID badge, then told to get to it.

“That’s it?” I remember asking. “You aren’t going to tell us what to do?” My supervisor responded with a pat on the back and those familiar words of encouragement “you’ll figure it out—you’ll learn better this way. Trust me..”

Two months later, I was frustrated. I kept visiting sick kids and their families, but still didn’t feel like I had a clue as to what was happening or what I was doing. This was confirmed by the overwhelming sense that parents were placing their hearts into my hands, and I could think of was “You know I’m 22 and barely passing Hebrew, right?”

At this particular group meeting, I was lamenting our lack of concrete direction. I came back to the same phrase: “I..I just don’t know what I’m doing.” Once I had finished my diatribe, with that statement, my supervisor was quiet for a minute. Then, looking me dead in the eyes, she spoke. “Jon, you keep telling me what you don’t know. Tell me, what do you know?”

I had to think about that. “Well, I know how to make people laugh,” I said. “And I know how to cry. And how to hug. And how to listen.” And soon, my initial denial of ability turned into a deep realization of the talents and abilities that I, indeed did have. Simple things. Sure, I couldn’t solve the world’s problems, but I could play Candy Land with the 4 year old who spent his days alone because his parents have to work.

The man who was born blind had a similar experience. He, being blind from his birth, happened to be in the right place at the right time. Jesus, making his way through Samaria, happened across this man. His disciples, seeing this man, asked Jesus why this man was unable to see, suggesting that it was sin which had blinded him. Jesus refuted their assumption, then proceeded to heal the man.

When word spread of the miraculous healing to the religious authorities of the day, they began to investigate the healing. After confronting the man who was born blind, the Pharisees sought out the man’s parents. His parents, nervous about the consequences of becoming involved with such a tense situation, point the religious leaders back to their son. “He’s of age,” they explained. “Ask him.”

The Pharisees approach the man once again, this time exhorting him to praise God, then exclaiming, “we know this man (Jesus) is a sinner.”

Here is the where things, at least for me, get interesting. The man has a few options. He could agree with the Pharisees and be in good standing with the religious authorities. He could deny that Jesus had anything to do with his healing. He could remain silent altogether.

But he doesn’t do any of those. Instead, he responds from his own personal experience. I can hear him begin to speak, slow and low, nervous and unsure about the new beauty he is able to see all around him. “Whether he is a sinner or not, I Don’t know.” A safe beginning, but he doesn’t stop there—he doesn’t let his reality end with what he doesn’t know. Instead, he exclaims: “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

Then, as the Pharisees ask more questions and begin to make declarations about God and Jesus and Moses, the man who was born blind but can now see calls them all to task: “You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We now that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” Instead of being intimidated, he turns the question to them: What do you really know?

It seems to me that we often find ourselves in the midst of situations that are beyond our understanding. When asked what life is about, many of us answer: I don’t know. What is the Trinity? I don’t know. What is the difference between a claim statement, a focus statement, a function statement, and a summary? I don’t know.

The mystery of Christ is that we simply can’t know. I can’t tell you how the incarnation has influenced and continues to influence our lives. I simply don’t know. The beauty of the incarnation, miracles, teachings and resurrections is in their mystery. But there are things I know. I know that somehow, we meet him. That somehow, he impacts our lives and carries us along when we stumble and fall. And, that somehow, however unbelievable it might be, he can make the blind see. We might not know it all, but what we do know changes our lives.

So, it seems, it is our turn to answer. What is it that we know? I bet the answer will change our lives.

My Friend Abby on Calling

For ConEd, we visit each other's churches and are expected to lead a worship service. My friend, Abby, did one on calling. After reading some passages on specific calls, she gave this homily:

Who are these people? The short answer is well, people. A strange mix of people actually. The first of these is a child, called by a god he did not know. Even though he was in the temple, this was voice that was unfamiliar. And it was a voice calling him to the priesthood, and it was not an easy call. It meant that he would denounce the family of the man who raised him. It meant that he would anoint Saul as king, and later condemn Saul when he visited the witch of Endor. But when God called, Samuel’s answer was, “Speak. I am listening.”

Then Mary, not much more than a child herself according to tradition, who sits in the presence of a divine messenger, utterly confused. Everything she knows says that what Gabriel speaks is not possible. And although she does protest, the angel answers her only once, before she replies, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be according to your word.” It was her answer to God’s call that allowed God to become human—human not as a divinely formed being like Adam, or something sprung forth fully born like the Greek gods, but human, born of a woman with the same pain and anguish as every child since creation.

And finally, three of the disciples. Peter, outspoken, devout, faithful, denying Peter was the one who fell down before Jesus, caught up in his own unworthiness. It can’t be me, Lord. It can’t be. I am full of sin. It seeps out my pores and haunts me in my dreams. It can’t be me. But it was, and when our Lord said to him again, “Come, you will fish for people,” Peter came, trusting that following this Savior would be enough.

We come here today as people who have answered a call, most likely with fear and hesitancy. Can we trust this man from Nazareth? Can we trust his words to be enough? Are we ready for this life of service?

No. I will say assuredly to everyone here, no, we are not ready. But we answered the call, hoping, trusting that it will be enough.

And so we come, answering the call to lift up holy hands in acts of worship and service to our exalted savior and his church.

I invite you now: Come to this center table and place your handprint within the cross. Your handprint will surely touch others and they must overlap if we are to all fit. That’s fine; no, that’s good. For we are not alone in this journey, but have been given friendships and colleagues and fellow travelers along this road to which Christ calls us. And when we are done, our hands will have formed the cross, an image of the Savior. Remember, it is this cross that must form us. Come, each of you.

choosing life, pt. 3

read pt. 1 and pt. 2.

"I feel like we should offer a prayer of thanksgiving," I told my friend James. We were standing beside the drive-thru ordering speaker of the Wendy's that was attached to the gas station.

"Do it!" he said. I hesitated, but decided that it would be the right thing, so I gathered the Candler crew, and we held hands. Soon, the parking lot came together in a circle. Next thing we knew, a bus full of supporters unloaded and our single circle had turned into a double ring. A woman (who turned out to be Davis' sister) asked "Who's gonna lead the prayer?" James shoved me toward the middle, "Jon will."

I was in the middle of a circle of a 100 or so folks, all holding hands waiting to pray. I should state here that speaking in large groups isn't a fear that I'm generally concerned with. But this terrified me. I had prayed before, sure, but never for someone's life. So, I started with what I knew. We were thankful.

"Holy and Loving God"--a good seminary beginning, I thought. "Holy and Loving God, we come today thankful for your creation and for your gift of life. You have inspired our highest court to choose life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

Each thank you received a response--an Amen, or thankyoujesus or hallelujah--something. "You have told us that you've set before us life and death...you beg us to choose life. Help us to choose life. Help us to choose life for ourselves and for others. Today a battle has been won, and we are happy for it. You have heard your people cry, and you have answered them. Tomorrow is a new day, God. And with it comes new struggles and new challenges. Guide us through those as well. Inspire us to choose life when the hard times hit, and when we don't want to go on."

Then others began to add their own prayers.

There we stood in a parking lot, holding hands and praying together. As the prayer ended, a voice began to shout. "I am Troy Davis! You are Troy Davis! We are Troy Davis!" It spread like wildfire among those gathered, and ended with an explosion of hugs. As we roamed hugging complete strangers, I met Mrs. Davis, Troy Davis' mother. She had been in that circle--holding our hands and praying hard too. I had unknowingly prayed for the mother of a death row inmate. I was baffled.

I can hardly imagine what she is going through. Regardless of what we think about the case, it is when we take down our walls and think about those on death row as people--people with families--that we begin to see the horrors that we are allowing to happen.

Christ's words had new meaning. "Who is my mother and my brother?" He asks. She is my mother, and this man scheduled to die is my brother. I do have a brother on death row. So do you.

Later that evening, a group of us were eating a celebratory dinner at the local Golden Buddha. As we were finishing up, my friend Todd almost shouted "What I want to know is: where are the churches in all this? They should be there alongside us."

"It seems to me," I replied "the church was in the Hess gas station across from the prison standing in front of the Wendy's praying earlier tonight."

choosing life, pt. 2

read pt. 1 here.

When I arrived at seminary, I made a conscious decision to not put on the activist t-shirt. My time at Elon had spent doing a lot of activist work. And, for some reason, I was eager to shed that defining trait, and try on another one--any other one. Activist work is exhausting. There is so much to work for, and so often, it feels like there are so few working for it.

I had been receiving calls for the past day or so from friends who knew that my college days included work against the death penalty. I wasn't able to make any of the rallies or banner painting sessions, but when I was informed of the prayer vigil to be held outside the state prison as Davis was being executed, I felt something inside me switch--I needed to be there.

I talked to my pastoral care professor that afternoon, and he gave me the go-ahead to miss class. "What kind of pastoral care prof. would I be," he asked "if I made you miss this for class?" So I ran home and started preparations.

I stopped by Kroger on the way, and bought some bread and hummus. Sometimes, in the midst of hard times, we forget simple nourishment. And, as Christ showed us, the breaking of bread together is a powerful way to connect. I made it home, and filled bottles with water, and made t-shirts reading "I have a brother on death row. So do you." I like statements like that--ones that catch you off guard and in the process remind you of the universal family, the one we are all a part of.

Soon, my friends pulled up in a Toyota mini-van. You know the kind, it looks like a moving set of parentheses. I climbed in, and we made our way through rush hour Atlanta traffic to Jackson, GA where the state chooses to execute its prisoners.

We were an unexpected bunch. Two from Indiana had driven all day to make it. Three of us were from Candler, one brought his wife (who is from Ireland!) and to top it off, we had someone who was surprisingly well connected with the campaign to save Troy Davis' life.

About twenty minutes from the prison, our surprisingly well connected friend received a call from (as it would turn out) one of Davis' lawyer. The Supreme Court had granted a stay. Davis would live, at least for the moment.

Because of our proximity to the prison, we kept going. Once we arrived, we weren't allowed on the premises, so we went to the next obvious gathering place--the Hess station and Wendy's across the street.

Here we celebrated with other folks who had made the trek out there. Davis would live! In the midst of hugs and frosties, the crowd parted and Al Sharpton walked through. He left soon, though, and we were left in a parking lot, glad to be with each other.