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Forgiving Fred.

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Fred Phelps has died. He was the leader of the Westboro group. They weren’t Baptist, and they weren’t a church. Not really. They were an organized group of haters. They showed up at military and high publicity funerals to protest gay people, even if the person who died was straight.

Among Jesus’ last words were “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” Let us forgive Fred and his followers.

We cannot become like Fred Phelps or his followers. If we do, they have won. To hope that he “rots in hell” or to desire to “piss on his grave” is to let his brand of hate to take over.

This is about really knowing the message of Jesus. This is about knowing that the message is about forgiveness and love. It is about showing that same forgiveness and love that is shown to us through Jesus to others

Why would people want to become Christian if the face of Christianity is Fred Phelps and his group? Why would they want to become part of the Body of Christ when it looks like it is only used to attack others?

This Body was created to heal, not hurt. Our hands are meant for feeding and clothing others, not for holding picket signs. Our fingers were not made for pointing.

Imagine if this group had used its resources to mobilize their members to go to flood areas and other natural disasters to help out. They could have used their powers for good. Imagine if they’d used their money and time to teach people how to read or how to eat healthy food

We, as members of the Body of Christ, are held to a higher standard. We must forgive him. To forgive is not to condone.

We must remember that he was not acting alone. When we talk about how bad he was, we have to remember that it wasn’t just one man who showed up with a picket sign.

We talk about how bad Hitler was, but we forget that it was thousands of his followers that did the dirty work. We talk about Osama bin Laden, but we forget he wasn’t the one who was bombing and killing. Both of them were just giving the orders and others were just carrying them out.

If we are filled with hate towards Fred Phelps, we are one of his followers as surely as they were.

The bad thing is that there are plenty of people who call themselves Christian who agree with the Westboro group’s motives, if not their methods. They think that the purpose of Christians is to tell off other people and to have them live by a certain narrow set of rules.

They don’t remember that Jesus, in John 8:7, when he came across a group that was going to stone an adulterers, said “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Jesus doesn’t condemn her, or anybody else. Neither should we. They don’t remember that Jesus paid for all sins, for everybody, across time, by his death on the cross. We aren’t sinners, none of us. That debt is paid.

We can’t condemn even those who condemn others. Even Fred Phelps and his followers. We have to love them, because they need it the most. We have to show them love. We have to show them how to love by being loving to them.

Forgive them. Be the face of love to them. We must teach them who Jesus really is by being Jesus to them. Jesus is love. Thus, we should be too.

Baking with Jesus

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When I bake banana bread, I think of Jesus. I remember him saying this in Luke 6:37-38 –

37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you; a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over—will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” (HCSB)

Only somebody who has measured out flour would talk like this. Jesus baked bread with his Mom. I think how amazing it must have been for Mary to include her son in the kitchen to help her with the cooking.

Children aren’t much help in the kitchen. They make a big mess. Kitchens are dangerous places. Hot surfaces, sharp knives, raw ingredients that shouldn’t be eaten – kitchens aren’t places for children.

And yet kitchens are great places for them. Kitchens are where they learn about the alchemy that is cooking. Kitchens are where they learn about measuring and proportions and following the order that is a recipe. Cooking teaches more than just being able to feed yourself.

Cooking teaches independence. I’m amazed at how strong I feel now that I can cook. I don’t have to rely on someone else to take care of me. I don’t have to wonder what went into my meal. When I cook, I cook from scratch.

For Jesus to know about measuring flour means that his Mom included him. For Jesus to talk about measuring flour means to me that he fully intended his message for everybody. It isn’t for the elite. It isn’t just for men. It is for the average, everyday person, just making do and just getting by.

He includes us all.

I know plenty of women who refuse to listen to the words of Jesus because they think his words aren’t for women. They’ve gone to churches and heard from the pulpit words that say that women should be silent and they have no business with the church other than cleaning it up and cooking for potlucks. They’ve heard that they are worthless and that they are sinful and it is because of the sin of Eve that we are all cursed.

And none of this is from Jesus.

Jesus loved women and loved his Mom especially. Jesus’ message of love and acceptance and forgiveness and grace is for women and men and young and old and rich and poor. Jesus’ message is for everybody. Jesus says you are good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it, God loves you.

If someone says otherwise they aren’t speaking for Jesus, because they don’t know Jesus. If they did, they’d know better. If they read the Word for themselves instead of having it spoon fed to them, they’d see through all the lies they have been told.

Re-visioning church – playing church vs. Being the Church

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Re-visioning. Not revising. Not changing, so much as looking at it again and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

Jesus has to be the center of it. Not a minister. Not a “worship team”. Not the building. If Jesus isn’t the cornerstone, then it isn’t church. It is a façade.

Church isn’t the building – it is the people. It is the people that Jesus came for, that Jesus died for.

So how do we re-vision church? First, read the Gospels. Read what Jesus said. Look at what he did. Then look at what is happening in your church community if you have one. How closely does it adhere to that message?

It is time to strip everything away that isn’t Jesus. Any policy, any program, any activity that isn’t in line with Jesus’ message, strip it out. This leaves more room for actual work.

In the past two thousand years we’ve put so much into the idea of “Church” that we’ve often misplaced Jesus along the way. I think we’ve started to worship the idea of Jesus more than actually follow him.

Our job is to do the work of Jesus in the world. We have to heal, to reconcile, and to love.

Any church organization that is run like a business has gotten off track. Jesus didn’t do this. Why do we make it harder than it has to be?

I think the problem is that we think it has to be harder than it is, so we’ve put more into it. The “car” that is Christianity was really streamlined. We’ve put so much stuff in it and on it that it hardly goes anymore.

It is more common these days that “Christian” is equated with intolerance than love. That alone is a sign that we’ve gotten it wrong.

Jesus tells us in John 15:1-8
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vineyard keeper. 2 Every branch in Me that does not produce fruit He removes, and He prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me. 6 If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be My disciples.

This is our template – we have to abide in Jesus if we are going to be Christians. Otherwise we are just “playing church” and not Being the Church.

Ashes to Ashes

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I was looking around for a church that did Ash Wednesday services. It is coming up. I go into work in the afternoon that day, so I need one that is early enough that it won’t affect my schedule. I can’t go to an evening service because I’m closing that day.

I looked around and there are very few options nearby. Not every church has an Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes service, so I’m already limited there. I could go to the nearby Catholic church, but I’d have to fake being Catholic. While that is easy to do from my many years of Episcopal worship, I resent that I’d have to. I resent the whole idea of exclusion in church. Jesus didn’t make any such rules.

Jesus wasn’t Catholic. Jesus wasn’t a member of any denomination. Any denomination that says they have a lock on the Word hasn’t read it right. Any denomination that says only members can participate hasn’t gotten the message that we are all members of the same Body. There aren’t any limits. We are all in.

I could go to an Episcopal service at another church. I’m not stepping foot inside the one I used to go to. But even if I did go to another parish, I feel that it would get back to the priest at my former parish. I don’t feel like giving her the satisfaction of feeling like I’ve caved in.

Then I thought I could go to a Lutheran or Methodist church, but by this point I realized something. I really just don’t like the idea church as it exists right now. I don’t like that it seems more social club than social justice. I don’t like the idea of the division of lay and ordained. I reject that whole idea as not being of Jesus.

Then I thought that I could do this myself, at home. I’ve got the palms from Palm Sunday from last year. I could burn them on Shrove Tuesday (which is also Mardi Gras). This is what is traditionally done. The very same palms that we waved to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday are kept for a year. They are dry and brittle by that point – and perfect for burning. They are burned in a fire and the ashes are sifted and mixed with a little anointing oil. It is then applied to the forehead with the words “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Easy. I can do this. I have all the ingredients.

And then I really woke up. What am I trying to do? What do I expect to gain from this?

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. It is the beginning of forty days of penance and sacrifice. It is in memory of the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert being tempted by the Devil. During all that time he gave up eating and drinking. During this time, many liturgical Christians traditionally just give up meat, at least on Fridays. Some go all the way and give up oil and eggs and a slew of other things in addition to meat, for the whole time.

Some people give up more than that. Some people will give up drinking, or chocolate, or playing video games. The idea is to give up something that you like. The idea is to then make space for something that you’ve not made space for. The idea is to make space for Jesus.

In Lent, we give up so we can take on. In Lent, we gain far more than we give up.

But the unspoken message of it is sacrifice, and in a way, that we are being punished. The unspoken message is that we aren’t worthy of God’s love unless we give up something. The unspoken message is that God has to be appeased in order for us to get anywhere, or anything.

And that isn’t the message of Jesus.

So I’m skipping Ash Wednesday. I’m skipping Lent. I’m skipping the whole idea of it, because the message of Jesus isn’t about making myself lesser than what I am in order to be considered worthy.

Jesus says I’m worthy just like I am, and that is good enough for me.

An imperfect storm

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I had a dream that Jesus was giving a talk in a high school. It wasn’t a lecture for the students or staff – the group was just using a meeting room in the school because they didn’t have a permanent place to meet.

I went wandering away from the lecture for a bit and found a student who said he was afraid of a particular area in the building. He said it was haunted.

We went to look, and we found a lot of other students and staff members transfixed, staring at this big swirling black cloud that was in a stairwell. It sure looked angry. I thought about calling Jesus to come calm it or to cast it out. Then time shifted a bit and I realized that Jesus wasn’t there.

But then I realized that I was, and because I’ve accepted Jesus into my heart, he is there, in me. This is true for all believers. I also remembered that Jesus said to his disciples in Mark 16:17-18 that nothing can harm us, not poison, not snakes. I remember also in Mark 9:28-29 Jesus teaching his disciples to cast demons out.

Somehow, the idea of angry spirits and the weather got merged. We have a lot of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in the South, especially this time of year. We have a lot of casualties and property damage from them.

And I remember the story in Mark 4:35-41 where Jesus calmed a huge storm at sea, saying “Silence! Be still!” to it. I also remember the story of Elijah and the storm, from 1 Kings 19:11 where we learned that the Lord was not in the storm. Elijah held his ground and was not afraid.

What is a storm but energy? It isn’t a fluke of nature. It isn’t just something that happens. I think there is a reason I’m seeing the idea of a storm and of demons. Bad storms certainly are very destructive and harmful. We need rain, certainly. We don’t need 30-50 MPH winds. We don’t need tornadoes.

Why not think of a storm as a demon – and cast it out? Tell it to be still?

Recovering church member.

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Christians in recovery aren’t like recovering alcoholics. We are more like food addicts. We can’t do without food. We just need a healthy relationship with it.

When you are a recovering alcoholic you have to learn to live your life without alcohol. But you can’t live without food. You have to relearn how to eat. The trick is to learn what is a healthy relationship with food and what isn’t. The trick is to set up boundaries.

In the same way as food addicts, people who have been hurt by mainstream church (by the current definition of what “church” means) are renegotiating this relationship. They can do without the top-down leadership, the politics, and the obsession with money that comes with church as it is currently defined.

When we have had an unhealthy relationship with church, we have to renegotiate the deal. We often try to stay away from church. Sometimes we go back but to a different denomination and we find we are welcomed. Sometimes we find that welcome is short lived and we discover the same bad processes and unhealthy ways of thinking that plagued our old churches. Sometimes we start to think that the whole idea of Christianity is wrong, and we stay away from anything associated with the idea.

The only problem is that the thing that drew us to church, and the thing that got us to leave is the same thing. It is Jesus in both cases. Those of us who leave church don’t do it because we don’t love Jesus. We do. We just weren’t finding him in church, or at least any modern definition of it.

As for me, I wasn’t finding him in the activities that the church sponsored. I wasn’t finding him in the book clubs that featured books that had nothing to do with how to be a better Christian. I wasn’t finding him in the margarita karaoke evenings. I wasn’t finding him in the Bunco gatherings that were held in the parish hall. And I certainly wasn’t finding him in a minister who told me to stop talking about how God was and is interacting with my life.

I left church, but I couldn’t leave Jesus. The only problem is in trying to figure out how to have one without the other. Just like with food addiction, I need Jesus in order to live. I just can’t handle all the extras that have been added on top of him.

So much was put on my plate when I’d go to church that Jesus became the side dish instead of the main course. There were so many garnishes and condiments and appetizers and desserts that I couldn’t see him at all. When I left church and left all of that, I missed him, and I got hungry for him all over again.

I think this is true of many people I’m meeting. We love Jesus. We just don’t love how he’s been served to us.

Just like a food addict, we need to strip it all down to the basics and start from scratch. We need to reevaluate our relationship. We need to set up healthy boundaries. We need to figure out what we need and what makes us feel ill.

For me, one of the big things is that the group not have a permanent building. Jesus didn’t build a church with bricks, but with bodies. The church is the people, not the place. The more money that is spent on a church building, the less that is spent on helping people who need it.

Another thing is there needs to be no one minister. We are all ministers, by virtue of our baptism and our acceptance of Jesus into our lives. To have only one person sharing their story, and only one person making the decisions, is to take away the God-given power, voice, and ability that we all have.

So while I really like the gatherings that I’ve been going to, I’m still missing Jesus in them. I think we’ve all gotten so afraid of how we were treated at church that we’ve just dumped everything and been feeling it out. We are reassembling the jigsaw puzzle but without the picture on the box, and we are leaving out all the bits that we are afraid of.

While I like that the meetings are in friend’s homes and we all get to share our stories openly and honestly, I feel that we are missing something really important. We forget to invite Jesus to our circle. We don’t talk about him. We don’t have communion. Well, not openly. Tea and cookies can count, but it has to be intentional for it to count.

I think we feel that because we don’t talk about Jesus, because we don’t invite him to our circle, that we aren’t going to get hurt like we did the last time we were in a place that mentioned Jesus. And we might. We might get hurt because whenever we gather with other people, we gather with other people’s problems. I also think that we still need to try. Just like renegotiating a relationship with food, I think we need to renegotiate a relationship with Jesus. I think we need to invite him in, to help heal that brokenness and that hurt. I think if we don’t, then we will start to feel more and more empty.

Poem – Body

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The Body is strong enough for everybody,
even the misfits, the oddballs.
There is a space for everybody
in the Body of Jesus.

We are all welcomed
We are all blessed.
We are all sacred.
We are all kissed
by the tears of Jesus.

He welcomes us,
includes us,
even though we don’t feel worthy.

We are to do likewise
to the rest,
to the forgotten,
to the forsaken.

We are to include
the excluded.

We are to embrace
the unloved.

Go and do likewise.

On Gentiles and Messianic Jews

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I want to learn more about Judaism, but I don’t want to become Jewish. Well, in the way that Jesus meant, yes, I do want to be Jewish. In the way that Judaism is now, no, I don’t. I can’t give up Jesus.

It isn’t out of fear that I say that. Years ago it would have been easy to walk away from Christianity, and with it, Jesus. Years ago I thought I was Christian because I believed that Jesus was the son of God, was God in human form. I still believe that but there is so much more to it now. Now it seems like every month I get closer to understanding who Jesus is, not who he was.’

Because I see Jesus as alive and present in my life, I can’t cut him out of it. This wasn’t so ten years ago.

Part of how I’m coming to know Jesus is through his culture. If I made a friend from say, Uzbekistan, I’d try to learn more about her by learning more about where she came from. What are the foods, the dances, the songs that she grew up with? What are the values she was raised with? This will help me to understand her better. Her idioms will make more sense. Her habits won’t seem out of place to me. Sometimes, to understand “where someone is coming from” you actually have to understand where they are coming from.

Now, Jesus is Jewish. There is no way around that. He was born and lived as a Jew. So I want to learn more about Jewish culture.

I’ve been reading about Judaism but I want to experience it. It is the difference between reading a recipe versus actually cooking it. So I need to interact with people who are Jewish and participate in their customs, rituals, and holidays.

But the last thing I want to do is make them feel uncomfortable. It is super important that they understood that I’m not there to convert them, nor am I there to convert to becoming Jewish.

So I thought, how about a Messianic Jewish congregation? This seems ideal. Since I live in a major city there has to be one. I’ve found one listed online and it seems exactly what I want. These are Jews who see Jesus as the Messiah, yet retain the Jewish customs that are in harmony with Jesus’ teachings.

Now I have to admit that I’m a little amused by the term “Messianic Jew”. If you are from any background and you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, then you are Christian, by default, right? There are some people these days who are Christian and add extra adjectives to that term to separate themselves from mainstream Christians, but they are still Christian first. But I digress.

So this congregation looks ideal. And then I read the fine print. They say essentially they believe that Jews and Gentiles are equal, but Jews are more equal. Gentiles are welcome to worship with them, and have a role to play, but the role is to help convert more Jews to their side. But still, the Jews, by virtue of being Jews, are better.

I cannot handle that attitude. It isn’t in line with the teachings of Jesus at all.

Jesus erased all distinctions. In Jesus women and men are equal. All races are equal. There are no leaders or subordinates.

If they truly believe that there is a distinction between Jews who believe in Jesus and Gentiles who believe in Jesus, then they have missed the whole message of Jesus. It isn’t about blood, or genetics. It isn’t about history or ancestry. It isn’t about the past. It is all about the present. It is about who you are, right now, and how you have chosen to live your life. If you have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, then you are equal with every other person who has done the same.

On separation and inclusion.

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The Jewish rules of kashrut, the kosher rules, were to ensure purity and separation. They were to keep the Jews safe from being diluted or dirty. The rules reminded them they were separate and special. There were other, similar rules that ensured that they kept apart from people who were not Jewish. These rules created lines of “us and them” and demarcated what was “other”.

Jesus came to erase those lines. He says that there are no distinctions between secular and sacred, between earthly and heavenly. He says in the lingo of today that “It’s all good”.

And it is all good. God looked at the world after he made it and said it was good. God made and continues to make the world. If we believe in a good and loving God, we have to believe that God will only make good things, and that includes people.

They may not seem good to us at the time. They may in fact seem very bad and broken. But if we have accepted Jesus into our hearts and lives, we have to believe that they are in fact good at the core, because Jesus believes that.

Jesus came to say that nothing is broken and nothing is dirty. Jesus came to say that everything is safe. Jesus showed us by getting right in the middle of the world that it is safe.

Jesus touched lepers and didn’t get leprosy. By touching them, he not only healed their condition, he healed their relationship with the community. They were no longer excluded.

Jesus says that when we separate ourselves, when we play it safe, we aren’t being love made visible. He says we aren’t showing trust in God as a loving God when we exclude others.

Jesus came to join together heaven and earth, God and humans. Jesus came to heal all divisions. When we divide, when we exclude, when we limit, we are not being like Jesus. We are operating out of fear instead of love. We are saying that our decisions keep us safe. We are saying that rules keep us safe.

When we do this, we are taking our lives into our own hands instead of putting them in God’s hands.

Sign of the times.

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I was driving along a back road and saw one of those changeable signs for a church. You know, the ones with clever sayings on them. Little quips to make you smile, or to make you think, or both.

I saw one that I’ve seen before, but this time it struck me differently. It said –

“Sign broken. Message inside.”

It seemed clever when I first saw this many years ago. You can’t get the whole story from reading the headline. They want to tell you the whole story, not just a bit of it.

Now I think it is terrible.

What they are saying is that you have to come inside. What they are saying is that the only way they will share the message with you is for you to stop going where you are going, park, get out, and come in.

But wait. It isn’t just any time they will tell you. It is only certain times. When it is convenient for them. Most likely Sunday morning. Maybe Sunday evening and Wednesday evening too. Maybe. And you won’t get it all in one meeting. You’ll have to come back. A lot.

This sign is saying they will only share the message with you on their turf and on their terms.

To give up a chance to let them know that they are loved by God by insisting that they do things your way is to miss the point of the message.

There are plenty of people who will never go inside a church. There are plenty of people who used to go and will never go again. Both don’t go because of this very attitude.

Jesus came where people were. He didn’t ask them to come to him. Our calling as Christians in this world is to meet people where, and how, they are, not where we want them to be, or how we want them to be.

The message is simple, and it can be said on a sign. It doesn’t require a lot of time. It doesn’t require that someone stop and get out of their car. It doesn’t require that they come in. It doesn’t require that be a member of the church.

It can be something like this –
You are loved.
Be love in the world.

The message is more important than membership. It is essential that Christians understand that it is their responsibility to spread the message of love by being loving. To be loving is to show kindness to people where and as they are, and not to insist that they do things where and as you are.

If we as Christians are not loving in how we share the message of love, then how is anyone going to listen to it?