The Gifts That Don’t Come From a Store Mean a Little Bit More

Posted on
1

This year Advent arrives to a world in turmoil if not revolution.  The Occupy movement  draws increasing attention to the increasing gap between rich and poor.  Over consumption, consumerism, and commercialism are false idols. A holiday season propped up on the pitch to spend more than you can afford because it is material things that bring comfort and joy rings false in more ears by the day.

Campaigns such as The Advent Conspiracy and Christmas is Not Your Birthday (see also Mike Slaughter’s book) bring a creative and urgent call to remember that Christmas is not about consumerism, but the birth of a preacher with a world transforming message of justice, equality, and peace.  That message can’t be bought or sold at a store. And yet, the spirit of that message most definitely can be given and received!
So my question for this week of Advent is “What are some of the greatest gifts you’ve ever received that we’re not bought or sold at a store?” What were you given that someone made, cooked, said, or did that touched your heart so deeply you remember it still? Can tell its story still… can share a story of how it transformed your world or helped you transform the world around you.

Here are some of mine:

The Unopenable Box of Love.

The tag on this box says “I chose this gift just for you but you can never open it. Whenever you are feeling down or lonely, all you have to do is just pick up this box and know I am thinking of you. Just hold the box close to your heart and feel all the love that is inside just for you. I Love You, Tina.”

The K’nex Chalice:

My son made this for me for Christmas out of his K’nex when he was 12. It has hung on office walls, in churches and in prayer spaces in the house.

The Framed Maple Leaf:

This is a mounted and framed maple leaf from Massachusetts. A friend sent it to me a couple of years ago as part of a Facebook meme about making gifts for people. I treasure it.  It is simple, regal, elegant, powerful. It speaks of life and death, dying and rising again, and the natural world. It reminds me I have friends I can’t see who live far away and that love always connects us. It also humbles me and reminds me to follow through on my promises and commitments as I never sent out my gifts for that same Facebook meme.

The “Preacher Man” Drawing:

One year, like many preachers, I offered a sermon topic as a prize for a goods and services auction at church. The winning bidder was a team of people who combined their money and their topics so the sermon was on the three little pigs, God’s problem, Heaven, South Park and a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.  The bottle in the drawing is a bottle of seltzer water!  I played my guitar and (badly) sang the song The Third Little Pig by my friend Andy Webster.  One of the high schoolers (at the time) in the congregation drew this portrait of the occaission. Not only did it warm my heart, but her drawing eliminated my height problem making me appropriate height for my weight. Here’s the sermon:

Feminism and Tutoring:

Maria Mercedes Jaramillo was my college Spanish teacher, but like all good teachers she taught much more than her subject area.  She taught me feminism and from a multicultural perspective.  She taught me about human rights, and was that person for me who encouraged me to learn about and change the world beyond my own front door.  She also provided individual tutoring when I was down to my last chance to pass the theological Spanish exam at Harvard Divinity School.

Dandelion Soup:

The first job I had when I got out of college was as the director of an English as a Second Language after-school tutoring program.  An eigth grade Hmong girl brought me soup as a gift for helping her learn English.  This was the first gift I was ever given by students. It was not the last, but it became increasingly symbolic over the years.

So, again, what are some of the best gifts you’ve received that remind you Christmas (and other good things in life) doesn’t come from a store?

Spiritual Direction, Discernment, Mission and the Liberal Church

Posted on
4

I’ve just finished presenting a paper at my Unitarian Universalist ministers study group, The Greenfield Group.  Our convocation was on the topic of Faith Formation 2020. Continuing a topic we discussed last time, we did reading and heard presentations on what the liberal church needs to do to adequately prepare and form our people for the next generation, to be ready to meet the faith formation needs of the church in 2020.

My paper was titled “Out of This Stillness: Spiritual Direction, Discernment and Mission in Liberal Congregations.”  I discuss how liberal congregations might better use group and individual spiritual direction as a foundation for discerning mission and becoming more missional in the coming century.  This is the beginning of a body of work and research that I will continue and turn into a research project for my certification in spiritual direction this coming spring as well as a series of “Sunset Talks” this coming summer at our UU district church camp, SWUUSI.

I have passed the paper around a bit outside the Greenfield Group and posted it to the UU Growth Lab on Facebook. I have been asked for it by more and more people so I am posting it here as a pdf file:

Out of This Stillness: Spiritual Direction, Discernment and Mission in Liberal Congregations

The Problem of Private Theology

Posted on
1

I’ve been pondering an idea from process theologian Monica A. Coleman. In the preface to her book Making a Way Out of No Way: a womanist theology, she writes:

“Theology, while personal cannot be private. It must be something that can apply to someone other than the theologian. It should be something you would recommend to others. It should be something you would be willing to preach.”

Liberal theology is very personal. In fact, in my denomination we insist that there is officially no official theology. We are non credal and non dogmatic. We insist on this to the point of extremes. We watch folks like Rob Bell and Philip Gulley preach universalism in best sellers but don’t want to say anything officially that makes it look like we endorse the idea. We have seven principles that are not a creed, but are printed on more items that “WWJD? ” ever was. One of our most popular adult religious education programs is called Building Your Own Theology.” So, I repeat and emphasize that we like personalized theology.

This emphasis on the personal however pushes into the realm of privatizing theology. We have personalized theology so much, that there are no common stories upon which to ground theological reflection. The use of religious language has become suspect. Terms such as covenant, spirit, or even the word faith itself spur so much debate about definitions that nothing beyond the meta work is ever done.

A personal theology is self differentiated. It stands on its own two legs, knows its theological positions and is able understand other theological positions in relation to itself. A personal theology enjoys other personal theologies and sees them as friends and neighbors, in a open source web of interconnected ways of grace.

A privatized theology sees all other theologies as suspect competitors in the marketplace of religious ideas. The other theologies must be exposed as inferior products, defeated as substandard ideas, or conquered by forces of volume if necessary.

Privatized theology leads to narrow, reactive, paradoxically rigid communities. Personal theology loves to learn, expand, develop, consider. A personal theology may or may not change based upon encounter with other theologies, but a privatized theology can not change. To change a private theology is too painful, and it seems betrayal of identity or even personhood to do so.

Are religious liberals willing to give up our private theologies in the quest for finding the commonalities we hold in our personal theologies? If we are we might find that our personal theologies have much in common with larger theological conversations taking place in the community around us.

To be sure, fundamentalisms of any kind are privatized theologies. If our congregations are to thrive, we need to avoid the fundamentalists that becoming a community of people with privatized theologies produce. The relevant religious community of the coming century will be a place where personal theology meets personal theology and engages the needs of the world.

Tell Newt What Jesus Would Do, Bernie Sanders.

Posted on
3

There’s a photo of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) accompanied by a quote from a statement he made last week in the Senate budget hearings that is presently starting to go a bit viral around Facebook.  Here it is.

Senator Sanders basically gives a statement about balancing the federal budget, but insists that it not be balanced on the backs of the poor and the most vulnerable in our society.

Sen. Sanders’ statement is pure Gospel. It’s a world transforming message, if only others in Congress would hear it and heed it.  It is, in fact, as best as we can tell, what Jesus would do.

That’s an interesting little saying, What Would Jesus Do? It’s usually thrown around by overly pious and overly moralistic folk who want people to stop and think about matters of personal piety, especially matters related to sexuality.  Like many people, I associated the phrase with the rise of the fundamentalist religious right.  It conjures up for me those rubber wrist bracelets or string bracelets with beads stenciled with WWJD?  Mostly used to remind students and young adults to practice abstinence or not cheat on their homework assignments. The phrase has a much more progressive and world transforming history.

This week’s episode of On Being with Krista Tippet has some fascinating insight into this phrase.  Her interview is with Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, the religion editor of the Huffington Post and the grandson of Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch.

“What Would Jesus Do?” dates back to an 1893 novel by Kansas preacher Charles Monroe Sheldon.  The phrase became associated with the Social Gospel movement, a movement in American Christianity that emphasized the social welfare implications of the teachings of Jesus.

Walter Rauschenbusch, considered the most important theologian of the Social Gospel, in the early twentieth century insisted that, of course, there is no such thing as the Social Gospel, there is just the Gospel. The Gospel as it is promotes care for the powerless, the forgotten, the left-out and the despised.  It doesn’t need a modifier. That the Gospel should need a special name only means people have forgotten the world transforming message that is grace and inclusion, equity and justice.

Yet, it appears too many people have forgotten about grace, inclusion, equity and justice, especially Christians.  Many politicians pander to the religious right who have an overly pietistic view of both Jesus and Christianity.  When someone like Newt Gingrich says the left is trying to drive traditional religion out of existence and that Christianity is an oppressed religion he is both wrong and ignorant.  Traditional religion valued the Gospel, the world transforming message that lifted up the lowly, included everyone in the human family, and asked “What Would Jesus Do” to make sure people had enough to eat, a place to live, and someone to care for them when they were sick.  Yesterday, in a presidential primary forum, Gingrinch quipped that Occupy protesters should “get a job” but should “take a bath first”.  Had Gringrich been around in Palestine in the first century, make no mistake, he would have had the same opinion of wandering Jewish preacher and his followers and would have encouraged the Roman authorities to do away with him.  Now, he hides behind the religion that has grown up in this preacher’s name to oppress the people that preacher defended.

The religion that has become Christianity has little to do with this world transforming message. Rather what calls itself Christianity today is about supporting the rich and the powerful, hating those who are different, sowing fear and division and dismissing the cries of the poor as the whining of the lazy.  None of this is part of the world transforming message of Jesus.  It’s not what Jesus would do. If you want that, listen to Bernie Sanders, not Newt.

Jesus, Crucifixion, The Kingdom of God, The Good News, the Church, and Occupy

Posted on
2

It’s been a heavy week for the church.  The original Occupy Wall Street site has been closed down in New York City and other Occupy sites around the country have been closed as well, including the site in Dallas.  Our overnighters here in Fort Worth are being harassed by the police.  There has been police violence and the show of force by law enforcement seems way out of proportion for a movement that is dedicated to non-violent demonstrations.

Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt commented on the Occupy Dallas removal on her Twitter feed saying the Dallas Police were “respectful and peaceful” during their shutdown of the site. I have to argue that there is no such thing as a respectful and peaceful denial of the first amendment. All suppression of the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances does violence to the people.  Let’s take a look at a photo from the Dallas police action:

And let’s take a look at another photo from another famous break up of another famous protest for a redress of grievances.

If Occupy shut downs were happening in other countries, for whatever reason,  the United States would be among the first to call them the actions of an anti-democratic  totalitarian police state. So what’s this have to do with the church? In a word – everything.  Let’s start with Crucifixion.

Whatever you think of Jesus, whatever your theology and whatever your theology of the cross, let’s get something out of the way and up front – the Roman Empire didn’t execute just anyone by crucifixion. It was a punishment reserved for the poor and the other.  The Romans didn’t execute Roman citizens or rich people by crucifixion because if it was perceived the rich and powerful can suffer and die just like everyone else, well then, more people might rise against the empire. Notice that no rich, white people are ever executed in America. Notice how homeless people receive obscene jail sentences for stealing things to feed their families but the criminals responsible for the current banking and financial crisis are not in jail?  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Romans also tended to reserve crucifixion for those who were considered a threat to the empire. I personally don’t believe Jesus died for my sins or yours. It’s just not my theology.  Any God that needs some guy to be tortured to death so I can be okay with that God is not any God I want any part of, but one thing is for certain – Jesus was crucified because the Empire didn’t want him causing any more trouble or rousing any more rabble.

And what about this empire? Let’s take a look at it, then and now.  The New Testament writers report that Jesus spoke often of “The Kingdom of God.”  Whether this is a phrase of Jesus or a phrase of the early Jesus movement put on Jesus’ lips matters little except to extreme Biblical fundamentalists.  The important issue is the phrase itself and what it meant to the people who heard it.  The phrase in Koine Greek is βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ or  Basileia tou Theou.  The translation, according to many contemporary New Testament scholars such as Funk and Scott -  is “God’s imperial rule.”  It’s a phrase that would have had a great impact on the hearers in its original context.  The imperial rule at that time was Rome. The imperial ruler was the Roman Emperor.  When Jesus says the Kingdom of God, this implies that the Roman Emperor is NOT the be all and end all and not in control; that there is something else, something more, something even greater and of more value that has more power than Rome.  In its original context this made people twist their heads and raise an eyebrow, “What did that guy just say?”  It is somewhat analogous to saying “We are the 99%!”  The parables and sayings of Jesus ask us to imagine a more just, more equitable world, where there’s no such thing as a lesser person.  That’s some good news.

This is the Good News.  The term good news is not about getting into heaven, or being part of some holier than everyone else group God has set aside and favored so they won’t be punished in some eternal hell.  Nope, not at all.  The Greek term in the New Testament is εὐαγγέλιον or euangelion and scholars tell us it means “world transforming message.”  It was the term used of the Roman Emperor or a Roman General when they won a military victory and conquered a new land and thus subjugated a new people.  The Emperor has brought you a euangellion – the peace of Rome.  Yes, this was the Pax Romana, the roman peace. There would be no more war, because Rome will crush you and all other opposition like a bug. You will enjoy all the benefits of Rome …and all its oppression. It is like being brought the world transforming message of America and McDonald’s and Exxon and IBM.  Life’s never been better for you has it? Then there is a different euangelion, a new world transforming message.  The writers of the Christian scriptures began telling a story of a wandering preacher who claimed everyone was okay with God, that the real empire was of God, and everyone should treat each other as brothers and sisters and forgive each other.  He hung out with outcasts, tax collectors, prostitutes and other undesirables and so should you.  This was the world transforming message.  Is it any wonder most people didn’t get it? And still don’t?  Even the religion that grew up in the name of this world transforming message just became part of  new empires over time and now, today, followers of that old preacher’s world transforming message bring that good news to those left behind and left out of the empire of today.  They operate at the margins, without institutional power or authority in many cases, and ask once again, what would the imperial rule of God look like?  Perhaps it wouldn’t look anything like an empire? Perhaps it would be very democratic and very inclusive and provide  health care and education and housing and food for the people? Perhaps.  These people look like a, well, like a church.

A church isn’t a building, it’s a group of people.  I’m going to let the Rev. Carl Gregg at the Ekklesia project take this one.  Hat tip to Tripp Hudgins.

The word for ‘church’ in the Greek New Testament is ekklesia, but this term did not originate with the early followers of Jesus. Long before the life of the historical Jesus, ekklesia was a Greco-Roman political term. Warren Carter, in his book Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, notes that in its original context, ekklesia, broadly understood, “denotes the ‘duly summoned’ civic and political assembly of citizens in the Greek cities which along with a council expressed the will of the assembled people.” (335). Therefore, just as calling Jesus “lord” was a political statement that, “Caesar is not lord,” calling a gathering of Christians a “church” or “congregation”  or “ekklesia” intentionally implied that the way of Jesus was an alternative to the way of Rome.

The most intriguing manifestation of ekklesia in our time has been the Occupy movement.  It is the most empowered, duly summoned, civic and political assembly of citizens in my adult lifetime.  It’s also proclaiming a world transforming message and that’s some good news.  Amen.

Unitarian Universalism’s Inability to be Prophetic

Posted on
8

Unitarian Universalism has lost the ability to be prophetic because it has lost the ability to marry the mystical and the prophetic. Don’t believe me? Check out the latest UU World.  The essays pulled together for this issue discussing the state of Unitarian Universalism as it passes it’s 50th birthday and what’s in story for the future make me think we’re in trouble unless and until we can admit that it’s okay be spiritual and reasonable, love science and religion, and be a mystic and a prophetic witness.

Sr. Janet K. Ruffing, in her introduction to the book (a collection of essays) Mysticism and Social Transformation, writes about the task of the prophet and how the prophetic witness has to be grounded in religious experience.

“The prophet is able to convince others only from the perspective of shared memories and norms.”

This is why liberal Christianity and people like Martin Luther King, Jr. are able to move others to action on a large scale and Unitarian Universalism is unable to find an audience for its message.  The overriding mission of Unitarian Universalism as a religion is to spread the message of religious pluralism. This is not in and of itself a bad thing, but it gives the people no shared perspective, no shared memories and no shared norms.  There is no there there upon which to call people back to. Unitarianism and Universalism have a storied tradition of spiritually grounded prophetic witness. Unitarian Universalism, not so much.  At best we are living through a time right now where some are trying to create that tradition and others are refusing to pull the spiritual and prophetic together as if they don’t need each other to live.

Ruffing writes:

“Prophetic speech is the creation of a fresh interpretation of that part of the tradition that has slipped from view and thus is failing to make an effective claim for action in the community or in the larger society.”

You can’t turn to an ideology of “you do your thing and I’ll do mine” as the basis for a platform of social and economic justice. If anything, the underlying ethos of Unitarian Universalism is a permission granting ethos that enables members of our congregations to take a laissez faire attitude towards the moral imperative of social engagement or any other moral imperative.  UU’s may vote for the better of the two corporate controlled major parties and listen to NPR instead of FOX News, but you’re much more likely to find a Methodist or a Presbyterian down at your local food bank or homeless shelter.

Unitarian Universalism began to be less “spiritual” in the early twentieth century when, as Janet Ruffing notes “Protestant scholars…espoused prophecy and rejected mysticism.” She also says that the Catholic tradition, in contrast, accepted and tamed mysticism (making it personal and individual – at least until the Liberationists in the 1960′s) and largely rejected prophesy.

Unitarian Universalism often seems to be seeking to be a social movement as much as a religious movement on issues such as GLBT rights and immigration. Social movements, however,

“often have mystical roots, and without mystical depth, it is impossible to discern between the products of one’s own inflated consciousness and the impulses of the divine spirit mediated through a prophet’s personality. Without contemplative depth, it is extremely difficult to sustain ongoing resistance, which so often entails suffering at the hands of the very community the prophet serves”(11).

Unitarian Universalism can not continue to build a religious movement solely around social justice because there are no mystical roots to Standing on the Side of Love.  If we want to have an impact with a meaningful social justice campaign, it needs to be religious.  Amnesty International can do human rights better and bigger than we can.  Other organizations can do other issues better and bigger than the UUA as well, but they are all secular organizations. Unless and until Unitarian Univeralism wants to get mystical, it relegates itself to the discount rack of religion, culture, and social justice.

It is not an impossible task to re-ground a religious movement in the mystical.  It is desperately needed.

“Late capitalist and post modern culture tends to foster a self that is rootless in relationship to community and place, closed in on itself and essentially nomadic, uncommitted to projects beyond employment and the multiple diversions that make such rootlessness provisionally tolerable” (12).

What mysticism does is call into question such an existence.  Why would we want to do that? That’s painful. That calls for fearless self examination.  We would much rather just get together with like minded people for coffee and discussion for an hour or two every Sunday.  Mysticism calls up questions of ultimate meaning and asks of the self much more than any society really wants it to be asking or answering.   You can take time out from employment and X Factor to rally for Universal Health Care or raise money for cancer research, but when you hang out at Occupy Your Town for reasons  related to ultimate questions of meaning and principles of equity and fairness, going back to X – Factor just doesn’t cut it anymore, and neither really does your job at the corporate bank, but you have to pay your bills and all of a sudden you feel a need to match your role and your soul.  Where do you do that at your local Unitarian Universalist church without having to defend the mystical experience that sent you on the quest in the first place?