I Don’t Feel That Funny

Posted on May 22, 2014 by smaxreisert

One of my favorite television shows is, or was, Modern Family. It makes me laugh, and that’s especially important on Wednesday evenings when I return home after a church meeting.

Last night, though, I may have come to the end of my love of Modern Family. It was “Part 2” of the big Mitch and Cam wedding– the event we’ve all been waiting for. Like most of America, I was wondering what kind of ridiculousness, along with a bit of sentimentality, would accompany the big day.

I got a little nervous last week,  during “Part 1,” when we learned that Mitch and Cam’s old friend, Sal, played by Elizabeth Banks, would be officiating at the wedding. Granted, they didn’t exactly ask her. She just stepped in, thinking that they were about to ask her. Never mind that she appeared to be about ten months pregnant.

So often these days, it feels like the officiant of television and movie weddings is a clownish figure. Perhaps we can blame The Princess Bride for that. But, when we’ve encountered Sal in the past, she’s been the hard-drinking, promiscuous, fun-loving former close buddy of Mitch and Cam, reminding them of their rowdier youth before they settled down and adopted a daughter.  So, it was bad enough that she was officiating at Mitch and Cam’s wedding.  But, then it just got worse.

Of course, Sal went into labor just as the first attempt at a wedding service was getting underway (there were about four attempts to get the job done).  And, this is where my heart just sank, because who came to the rescue?  There was the goofy but lovable, Phil Dunphy, ready to jump in to save the day, finally able to use his recently purchased “ordination,” purchased for $35.00 on the internet.

Really?  Is my vocation and my profession really just a big joke?  Do pastors really make such a good punchline?

Would we find it just as funny if there was the need for a physician, who had purchased her or his license online?

I realize that Modern Family is trying to be humorous, but I’m tired of pastors serving as the go-to punchline.  I’m frustrated that ordination is cast as no harder than clicking a button and submitting a small payment.

Some of us take ordination very seriously.  We also take marriage very seriously.  Yes, there is humor, and sometimes we are the ones being funny, whether that’s our intention or not.  But, properly trained and educated pastors are not cartoonish, nor are the rites we perform ridiculous.

Pastors help us navigate some of the most profound moments of our lives, from baptisms and naming ceremonies at the start, to weddings somewhere in the middle, to dying, death, and funerals at the end.  Sometimes, we don’t do the job well.  But, most of the time, I would hazard a guess, we do.  We help bring language and ritual, sacredness and holiness, to life’s most profound moments.

Could we get a little respect, please?

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Uneasiness at the Graveside

Posted on May 12, 2014 by smaxreisert

It happened again. I was asked to officiate at an internment for someone associated with Old South (it’s not uncommon, in this cold climate, that people who pass away in the winter months are not buried until spring, months after their funeral) and when I arrived, I discovered that I was really just the “opening act” for the local Legion graveside service. The last time this happened, I was also not told in advance.

I kept my portion short and then handed the service over. There were a couple of older men who led the service, along with an honor guard and a couple of other younger men who were there to fold the flag that was draped the casket and to hand it to the widow.

On the one hand, it is very moving to watch and listen to the older men pay tribute to a fallen brother in arms. Although I can’t remember the number of services that they told me they’ve done in recent years, I think I actually gasped when they told me. It is humbling not only to realize the number of veterans who have died in this little part of the world, but that the men who lead these services make themselves so available to honor those who have passed away, despite the fact that they are quite elderly themselves.

But, on the other hand, it is deeply troubling to me to hear the seemingly seamless blending of Christian language and military language. It feels like these two things are melded as if they were just meant to be together. It’s like the Foxification of funerals for veterans—the perfect amalgamation of Jesus and patriotism.

Yet, that’s not how I experience my faith tradition. Christianity does not hold for me such staunch, unfiltered militarism and patriotism. There are no recorded sayings, I’m quite sure, of Jesus blessing the United States, or our flag, or our military.

In fact, Jesus didn’t bless any nation, flag or military. When he had his big chance to really show everyone who he was, when he entered Jerusalem (on the first Palm Sunday), he somehow chose to enter on the back of a donkey, without a sizable army, along with a vast array of weaponry, marching with him. Presumably, being the Son of God and all, he could have done so. And could have really shown the Romans who was boss.

But, he didn’t. Instead, in that moment and in so many others, Jesus spoke—literally and figuratively— of peace and of a staunch, nonviolent resistance to oppression (see the real meaning of “turn the other cheek” at  http://www.cpt.org/files/BN%20-%20Jesus’%20Third%20Way.pdf ).  Jesus was no doormat, but he also wasn’t a big cheerleader for massive armies or weaponry.

I am moved by those serve, and have served, in the military and who give of themselves so freely, and especially those who have actually given their lives for this country. They deserve honor and respect.

But, I draw the line—or at least wish to draw the line—when it comes to the military getting involved in showing honor for the deceased by adopting so much Christian imagery and vocabulary.

Even if we were to believe that the United States is somehow uniquely blessed by God to serve some kind of honorable purpose above all other nations, I am unsettled by the lack of reflection that our reliance on vast and powerful military weapons actually demonstrates more of our human folly and limitations than it does our connection to the God of the Bible, or a risen Savior, spoken of in the New Testament.

While I am deeply moved by the service of the men who offer themselves to lead graveside services, and especially those who clearly must exert an effort to get their own frail bodies moving and going each day, but I just wish that we could have a more respectful separation between the values of the military and the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Because they are profoundly different. Profoundly and significantly different.

We would all be better served by a recognition that, while we may recognize that we live in a world that relies on weapons to maintain peace and/or to bring “peace,” such a system is certainly not what Jesus envisioned or hoped for. Even a cursory reading of the New Testament tells us this. It’s not damning to recognize the gulf that exists between what Jesus preached, and how we actually live. In fact, I suspect that we might be a lot further along in the quest for a more peaceful planet, if we found the courage to be more honest about that gulf and what propels its continued vast existence.

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Lessons from the College Tour

Posted on May 3, 2014 by smaxreisert

I recently returned from an almost weeklong college visiting tour with my seventeen-year-old daughter, who is currently a high school junior. Our tour took us from our home in Maine to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York.

If this blog were about liberal arts colleges in the northeast and the journey of touring and attending information sessions, I would have to break up my observations into several blog entries. We had an exhausting, but utterly fascinating, trip.

But, this blog is about religion and faith and the attempt to discover some “hope in the wilderness,” where Christianity seems to be slipping away. It seems to have slipped away on many liberal arts campuses in the northeast. Where college chapels exist in some kind of building form on campus, these chapels seem mostly like vestigial organs, casually pointed to during the admissions tour like some kind of artifact to be viewed but not touched, and sometimes not mentioned at all. Although most of them still offer some form of religious services (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.), they appear to be more useful in non-religious ways, probably to justify keeping them heated through long winters.

Initially, this didn’t cause concern for me during our touring. In my own experience, many years ago, I found that attending to my spiritual life on campus was not meaningful to me. Fortunately, I found a group of students that attended a local church, where I found a caring community, with a much, much wider range of ages, etc.

So, it’s not worrisome on the surface, that college campuses don’t seem to have much in the way of religious life going on. And, truth be told, I suspect it is not what my daughter will be looking for anyway. She attends church, mostly without complaint, about two to three Sundays each month, but I know that the church experience does not speak to her like it spoke to me—at least not at this point in her life.

But, I am increasingly concerned with religious familiarity and literacy among younger people. My husband, who teaches at the college level, often comments that most of his students have no knowledge of even the very basics of major religions. When so few young people have any attachment to the practice of religion, even tangentially through friends and parents, waves of ignorance follow. Since religion is not only a powerful experience for so many of the world’s people and has been a major influence in the very structure of government and society in the United States, religious illiteracy is a real problem.

In his column in last Sunday’s New York Times, Nick Kristof noted—as he has in the past—that religious illiteracy runs deep in the U.S.—even among those who claim to practice a religion, especially Christianity.

College chapels, then, should be one of those places that actively strives to engage young people in learning not only about religions in an intellectual way—although that would be a good start, as in encouraging a world religions course in distribution requirements—but also to help young people understand and appreciate religious practice. This is not about proselytizing, but about sharing important aspects of how many of the world’s peoples live, where religion is lived out and practiced. Without such knowledge, an appreciation of culture and society—including the culture and society of many communities right here in the United States—is stunted.

Religious practice is not just for the unenlightened. For many people, religious practice is what offers meaning and purpose; it provides a foundation for how one understands the world and one’s place—and the place of others—in it. To be ignorant of this—or worse, to actively consider it not worthy of study or learning—is—and I don’t think this is hyperbole—dangerous.

Many of the small, “highly selective,” liberal arts colleges in the northeast—at least all of those we visited—proudly declare that they are training the very best leaders of the future. Yet, those leaders are lacking important knowledge of how many people in this world live, and what motivates them—in good and bad ways. What kind of “global” leader can one be without knowing some of the basics of why many of the world’s peoples do what they do and why?

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Has Music Become a Problem?

Posted on April 20, 2014 by smaxreisert

In the week or two before Easter, Old South receives at least a few phone calls or emails that ask about whether or not our bell choir will be “performing” on Easter Sunday. No one ever calls and asks about whether or not there will be a sermon . . .

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that there’s a sizable percentage of those attending worship on Easter who are there only because of the bell choir and to a lesser extent, the regular choir. The rest of the service they simply endure.

I realize that those familiar with Protestant worship probably assume that there will be a sermon, so I shouldn’t take it too hard that no one asks about it. But, I have a growing feeling that many who come to worship on Easter would prefer that I just step aside, and keep the speaking to a minimum.

Like Christmas Eve. When I arrived at Old South in the fall of 2005, I learned fairly quickly that it was a “long standing tradition” that Christmas Eve mostly belonged to the music program and that both the choir and the bell choir were expected to “perform” five or six musical pieces EACH. Certainly preaching on Christmas Eve was “not traditional” at Old South, so really needs to be avoided. Most years I’m told that the music program will run for an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. It’s clear that it’s my fault if the service runs longer than the average attention span of the Christmas Eve worshipper.

Long ago, I gave in to Christmas Eve. Over the years, the music director and I have been able to work together to reduce, slightly, the emphasis on music for that service. The service is usually a lovely service.

Easter, though, is starting to become a problem for me. This year, the choir has two pieces and the bell choir has two pieces. I’ve eliminated the “Faith Story” (the part of the service focused on children) and I know that if the sermon strays much beyond twelve minutes that I’ll begin to see fidgeting, glazed eyes, and a few will actually look annoyed.

The music, though, will get applause. The applause, in fact, has become a problem itself. It used to be that applause during worship was frowned upon, but then a few years ago, there was one particular woman who started applauding in the summer, when we had “special music,” a solo, duo, or small group. That seemed fine. But, then, the applause bled into the fall. And, soon, there was applause after the anthem for almost every worship service.

When there are multiple musical pieces, though, the applause is a problem. Last Sunday, when we started the service with “Palm Sunday,” but transitioned to “Passion Sunday” in the middle, it was especially jarring—to me at least—to have a round of applause after the bell choir’s postlude, “Go to Dark Gethsemane.” By the end of the service, with its difficult story (John’s version of the first Good Friday), I was exhausted and emotional. Apparently, I was alone.

Music is important to me, too, and I’ll admit that there are worship experiences that are on my “top ten” list that would not be there but for the music. A significant problem arises, however, when worship becomes simply “performance” or something along the lines of a music club.

Somehow, it seems that we’ve—at least in this part of the world—lost sight of the notion that part of the worship experience ought to focus on exposure to the scriptures—to hear the stories and to have a trained person share insightful information about scripture and how scripture ought to inform our individual and collective lives. To the extent that scripture is significant in these days it is in order to back up views already held. Rarely does scripture get under the skin, so rarely does scripture offer a path to something new.

I’m not sure why this is, and I know that this is not just about Old South. Other clergy share similar stories with me.

In this holy season, though, I am especially aware that there are not only profoundly important stories to be shared and heard, but these stories require context and additional information, beyond what is contained on the page. Yet, as I’ve tried to tackle the difficulties and complexities of the Gospel of John and the days leading to the crucifixion, I get little sense that the information I shared is considered vital, critical to lives of faith.

This is frustrating, to be sure, and sad. As we become more aware of the lack of younger people in our midst, I wonder about our capacity to spread the word, and to share why church is important to us. If it’s just about music, we are not terribly unique. Church needs to be about something more. The risen Christ, anyone?

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Speaking of Preaching, Or Not

Posted on April 12, 2014 by smaxreisert

In this holy season of Lent, when we should be focused on a prayerful and thoughtful approach to our faith, when we should have the courage to examine our faithfulness, I find myself in a difficult place. For the first time in a very long time, Lent is feeling very heavy and dark.

A few clergy colleagues and I share leadership of a Wednesday Bible Study, the “Bible Bunch.” This group includes other United Church of Christ churches, as well as a United Methodist Church. For this year’s Lenten theme my colleagues and I devised our own program: “Why We Do What We Do and What It Means To Us.” Individual sessions included preaching, singing, stewardship, mission, etc.

I led the first session, on preaching. We had about twelve to fifteen people in attendance—most, if not all, life-long church-goers. My first question—not intended as a trick question—asked those gathered around the table to share a story about a memorable sermon. The sermon didn’t have to involve one of the preachers at the table. I asked about a sermon that made them think differently about an issue, or about their faith, or about a Bible story—a sermon that spoke to them in a special way.

Silence. A long, uncomfortable silence.

When someone finally spoke up, when the silence just got to be too difficult to bear, the person shared a comment about the general preaching of one of the preachers at the table. Her sermons, her style of preaching, was “good,” maybe even “very good.” Others chimed in along the same lines. They generally liked the preaching of the clergy at the table, and the preaching styles of some of our predecessors.

But none of them could speak in any particular way about any particular sermon. Nothing.

By way of contrast, the following week’s topic was singing and they had plenty to say about that. I thought about those early settlers to New England, who didn’t allow any singing during worship services except for the singing of psalms. They knew that singing was dangerously distracting . . . .

I’ve been an ordained minister for almost twenty years, and active in the leadership of church for almost twenty-five years. It’s not easy to think that one’s vocation having so little impact.

And, more than that, I find in that uncomfortable silence a big clue into our shrinking congregations. If those who attend church regularly cannot talk in a meaningful way about anything other than music, how can we possibly think that others will want to join us? If people who attend worship over the course of most of their lives cannot come up with even one little nugget of a sermon that offered something meaningful, is it a mystery that so many have left or are not inclined to give church a try?

It’s not that I think my preaching is completely without value. I do receive thoughtful comments and feedback on occasion. These suggest that there are people in the congregation who are listening and paying attention. And, there were a few comments offered during this particular Bible Bunch where participants reflected on times when they talked about a sermon, with a friend or family member, after the worship experience.

The problem is that they cannot remember specific content in any meaningful way. Those moments of feeling connected to a sermon are fleeting. In essence, sermons are not experienced as transformative. There is nothing akin to a moment of “being saved.”

There is, perhaps, no more profound challenge for good church people in our cluster of churches in Central Maine and in churches like ours: to learn to speak personally of faith, what it means and why it matters, and to say something meaningful about why someone should give up brunch or sports practice or even household chores and to come to church instead.

We can’t “transform” the behavior of others if we haven’t experienced our own transformation.

Posted in Maine Cautionary Tales, My Life as Pastor | Leave a comment

Career Day

Posted on March 29, 2014 by smaxreisert

Recently, Waterville Junior High held “Career Day.” As co-chair of the PTO, I was asked to help get some parents to speak on various careers. I was even given a list—Health Care, Veterinary services, Finance, Human Resources, Arts & Communications, Agriculture/Natural Resources.

I wasn’t surprised that they weren’t looking for people in the “religion” field, and I was relieved when they didn’t feel that they needed to invite me to participate anyway. About a decade ago and for several years in a row, there was an area “Career Day” that was organized by the local AAUW. This Career Day was focused on 8th grade girls. A former parishioner was one of the organizers and she always insisted that I be a participant.

The first year I served on a career panel, I was pleased to be there. But, as I began to talk about my career, I realized very soon that I was in deep trouble. There was almost nothing that I could say that offered any kind of connection to the girls in that room (and to some extent, the other panelists as well—a state trooper and an executive director of an area nonprofit). None of them went to church. They didn’t seem to know what the Bible was, even if they had heard the word before. How about weddings and funerals? If they had attended one of these, it was probably not in a church.

Every year after that, I attended Career Day with a great deal of trepidation and doom. One year, I basically found myself describing my career so that it sounded an awful like I was a social worker. That, the girls understood—at least somewhat.

And, now I don’t feel like I would be doing the responsible thing by sharing my career with 8th graders. What if, by some miracle, I was able to spark some interest and inspired an 8th grader to think about a career as a minister? Will such a career exist when they are old enough to embark on that career?

It’s not exactly that I think that the future will not have any ministers, but my suspicion is that many ministers of the future will probably not see their vocation as a career. They will likely have another job that actually pays the bills, or they will have a spouse or partner who has a well-paying career that allows them to minister without much of a paycheck.

The future of the ministry is indeed in peril. Seminaries have closed, or are engaged in dramatic re-visioning of who they are and what they do. Alban Institute, a long-time leader in providing resources to mostly mainline churches and clergy, is closing its doors.

While I try to cling to hope, that churches and church leaders will experience a transformation into something new and wonderful, I can’t help but wonder about my career and vocation. I may very well need to worry less about presenting my career at a future “Career Day,” and worry more about finding one to attend.

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It’s Not News that Religion Isn’t Important

Posted on March 15, 2014 by smaxreisert

A recent NBC News and Wall Street Journal survey has found that one in five Americans say that religion does not play an important role in their lives—the highest percentage since the poll began asking participants about their focus on faith in 1997.

This is not news in Central Maine. I’ve been aware of the decline in the significance of religion for quite some time. I can even place a date on my personal epiphany that faith and religion are no longer significantly important to a great number of Americans, even those who go to church.

The date: September 11, 2001. Or, to be more accurate, it was in the days after that horrible day. At the time, I was Acting Pastor and Teacher at Winslow Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Winslow, Maine. I had been serving there as Minister of Christian Education for a couple of years. During the month of September 2001, though, I was the only minister on staff. The long-time settled pastor had retired during the summer, and the interim was not due to start until October 1. So, I was the pastor during that time when one of the most significant events in all of American history took place.

In the days following September 11, quite a few of my friends, who do not go to church, commented to me something along the lines of, “I bet church attendance is way up.” But, church attendance in the weeks following September 11, 2001 was not “way up.” In fact, it hardly went up at all.

And then there was the actual day itself. Not long after I had begun processing what was going on in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, I decided to pull together a church service for that evening. I called a few retired deacons, who I thought might be home, to ask for help in spreading the news that we were going to gather that evening at church. The first deacon I called apologized that she couldn’t help me. She had plans to meet a friend for lunch, she mentioned casually. I asked her if she had seen the news about what was happening. Oh yes, she told me. She had seen the news. But, it was clear that she hadn’t even thought about changing her plans. She didn’t think she would be at the service either. It just wasn’t going to fit into her schedule.

The service that night was fairly well attended, but attendance at Sunday services remained mostly the same as before September 11. I remember noticing this and wondering about what it meant. Now, these many years later, I have a better sense of what it did mean: the unsettling truth that religion is just not that important to people. Even people who are part of churches.

Back in 2001, I noticed that the lack of a rise in worship attendance had two components: 1) There was no real discernable uptick in the number of unfamiliar faces in worship (visitors), and 2) There was no real discernable uptick in the attendance of those who were associated with the church (the Christmas and Easter people).

That more people say that religion is not important in their lives, or less important in their lives, is not news to me. But, I do wonder about how that happened. What happened in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century that made religion increasingly insignificant?

This shift happened in an almost indiscernible way. Even my religiously unaffiliated friends who shared their assumption that national tragedy somehow equaled increased worship attendance, not only did not go to church themselves during that time, but assumed that they were somehow in some kind of “outlier” category—when, in fact, they were part of a growing population of people who didn’t feel compelled or drawn to church during a national crisis.

There are two basic questions that I would love to ask on a much bigger scale, and to have asked by those poll takers from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal (or the Pew Research Center, which has found a similar story in their research): 1) what is it exactly that happened in the late twentieth century that motivated people to feel less connected to organized religion? and 2) why do the people who regularly attend worship still do so?

I’m not so sure that I would really want to know the answers to these questions, but they are the ones that keep popping up whenever a study offers the same data that people are less connected to organized religion. After all, this isn’t news to me. I’ve known it for a long time.

I’d just like to know why—and also what it means for the people I pastor.

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Becoming a Part of Maine’s Aging Population

Posted on March 3, 2014 by smaxreisert

In just a couple of days, I will turn 50. Instead of ignoring this reality or trying to find some way of moving into it quietly, I’ve decided to do the best I can to embrace this milestone moment in my life. I’ll gather with some friends next weekend. I’ve ordered a few balloons that have an exclamation point after 50—instead of the ones that that say something like “Oh No, the Big 5-0!”

It’s a lot easier to be positive about turning 50 when I keep in mind my context. I live in the oldest state in the country. I’m actually still younger than the median age of the small city where the church I serve is located. In Hallowell, Maine, the median age, as calculated from the 2010 census, is 50.5. I have a whole six months to still be on the younger side of the median age. Hoorah!

Then, there’s my work environment. At Old South, I can literally count on one hand the number of people who attend worship on a regular basis who are younger than I am—not counting the people who are brought to church by their parents. While the median age of Hallowell might be 50.5, the median age of the Old South Church community is significantly older than that. And, beyond that, I continue to be the youngest UCC pastor serving a UCC church in our association of churches—and it’s about a decade that separates me from the next youngest pastor.

I’m turning 50 in a place where it’s relatively easy to turn 50.

So, while my context allows me to feel better about turning 50, I can’t help but wonder about what this really means for my work life, for the church I serve, and for the future.

Maine is the oldest state in the country, and at least by one survey, the most secular. As I’ve written about in the past, the secular nature of this part of the world makes the life of the church tremendously complicated. It is no simple or easy task to think, or believe, that we can turn the tide.

In my self-centered focus on my birthday, I also wonder about whether or not I will be able to do what I do and be compensated for it until I’m ready to retire—without moving away. I’ve been concerned about this trend for a while now, but I wasn’t quite expecting to feel like it’s an accelerating trend. But that’s how it’s beginning to feel.

This might be a good place to turn 50, but it’s not exactly a great place to be a professional clergyperson. So, as I turn 50, I will celebrate, but I suspect it won’t be too long before I find myself a little more reflective and even troubled. For today, though, I’ll take that command to not be afraid and celebrate the blessings of life, including life’s perplexing challenges.

Posted in Maine Cautionary Tales | Tagged | 1 Comment

A Lesson from High School Sports

Posted on February 22, 2014 by smaxreisert

I spent all day last Monday, at the Maine High School Class B State Swim Meet, held at the Greason Pool at Bowdoin College. My daughter is co-captain of her small girls swim team from Waterville High School.

In the arena of points and standings, the Waterville girls did not do well. Only two of them had even qualified for the preliminaries in individual events, and neither did well enough on Monday to advance to the evening finals. But, the 400 free relay team did qualify for the finals, in the consolation heat. That event is, of course, the very last event of the meet.

The team ended up finishing 13th overall in the 400 free relay. But, the Waterville girls got a big surprise at the end of the meet. They were honored with the Sportsmanship Award.

I have no idea of the actual reasoning behind this award going to the Waterville team, but I’d like to think that one of the reasons was what the Waterville girls did for one of the swimmers at the event, a girl who swims with the local YMCA (so some of the Waterville girls know her), but is the only swimmer to represent her high school.

State swim meets, as in any high school sports event, celebrate not only the athletes, but also the pride and identity of Maine high schools. In the stands, parents wear matching high school t-shirts featuring school colors. It can be a difficult place, then, for a lone swimmer—especially a swimmer who is a very good swimmer. There’s a lot of pressure, but no large cheering squad, no real communal experience of team identity.

But for that one lone swimmer on Monday evening, Waterville became her cheering squad. They yelled and screamed so much for her that a couple of them didn’t have much a voice by the end of the evening.

There’s a lesson here for struggling churches. We really need to find a way to let go of our own concerns about our own selves, and our concerns about our small numbers and our fretfulness about our “success,” or lack thereof (at least in the terms of the world). We need to find a way to let go of our concerns and fears about how or why we’ve gotten smaller than we once were.

And, we then we need to reclaim our voice as the “cheering squad” for the lost, lonely, and marginalized. There are so many people—and some of them successful people, by the standards of the world—who are lonely, lost, even marginalized. And, then there are those who really are living on the edges of society—the poor, the homeless, the severely mentally ill, for instance. These people need someone to notice them, to encourage them, to show them the love of God.

That’s our calling—to show the love of God. We should worry less about how many are showing up for worship on Sunday, and worry more about how well we share the love of God. Our calling is to show the love of God with reckless, and enthusiastic, abandon.

Posted in Sports | 1 Comment

Getting the Rules Right

Posted on February 15, 2014 by smaxreisert

In the fall of 2008, our family (myself, my husband, and our two children, then 11 and 9) set out on a Grand Tour of Europe. It was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime kind of adventure. Our trip began in September in London, where we stayed for about nine days, and then we went over to the Continent, to Belgium, Amsterdam, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and France. The Tour ended in Paris in the middle of November.

Among many other things, the Tour involved a great deal of family time—close, almost always together, family time. It didn’t take long, therefore, for a set of rules to be developed:

1. Paws off! (Keep your hands, and all other appendages, to yourself.)
2. Stay on the BUS (Butt Upon Seat)
(this was especially important when eating, in a restaurant or whatever place we were calling “home” at the time)
3. No swatting Dad on the butt
4. No turning off the lights in the bathroom when someone else is in there.
5. Don’t be an insufferable know-it-all.
6. Don’t be a mindless buffoon.
7. No snarky insolence.
8. No calling Daddy unflattering names.

During the past few days, I’ve been thinking about these rules for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’m preaching tomorrow on the Gospel passage from the Revised Common Lectionary, Matthew 5:21-37, where Jesus seems to be talking about well-known rules, and then taking them up a notch. The second, more or less related reason, is that I’m thinking about how much the Church has taken up the cause of “rules,” so much so that it’s strangled the life out of them, to the point that people have finally had enough and are leaving the Church.

In the Matthew passage, Jesus lifts up well-known rules for living, those ten commandment kind of rules, and seems to take them to a whole new place. According to Matthew, Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Is Jesus really stating that even seemingly minor infractions of the rules for living will subject one to eternal damnation? Could it really be that Jesus is encouraging us not only to get busy correcting and guiding certain actions, but also to see what we can do about reading the minds of people as well?

I’ve been thinking about the rules that we developed on our family trip through Europe, rules that in many ways are still part of our family life. The rules didn’t just come out of thin air; they were solidly grounded in our experience. For instance, we had a problem, especially with the kids, physically needling each other—poking each other, and so forth. What family doesn’t? So, Rule #1: Keep your hands to yourself.

The rules were not set up to keep the individuals in our family from having a good time. The rules were not set up to squelch all of the fun out of our trip. Instead, the rules were set up so that we could all have a reasonably good experience on our trip. The rules were set up to remind us all of a certain level of respect we needed to have for each other, and the need to preserve a certain level of dignity.

In short, it’s really all about the relationships.

I think it should be the same way for religion. The rules that appear in the Bible are not simply about how we can squelch all of the fun out of life, so that our actions and our thoughts should be always so pure just so we can please our Creator.

The rules, instead, should be considered in light of how we live together and how we interact with our Creator. It doesn’t take much thought, for instance, to see that the Ten Commandments are really about relationships—relationship with God, and relationship with each other.

It’s not simply that murder and adultery and lying are things that God doesn’t like, so don’t do them. It’s that murder and adultery and lying are not good for human relationships. The rules, then, should not be viewed in a vacuum as if rules have no context and no purpose other than just to be rules.

Rules for living are grounded in community, in relationship, and in the love and grace of God. Do I really think that Jesus wanted us to try to get inside each other’s thoughts so that we could try to figure out some way of policing thoughts as well as actions? I don’t think so.

Tomorrow’s Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus cared a great deal about community and relationships. His “taking it up a notch,” I believe, was to try to encourage his followers to think about themselves and others in context, in their relationships with each other. The standard rules for living should be something that give life, that encourage and guide good relationships, instead of something that sucks the life out of living.

But, the Christian Church, over the millennia, has been much more interested in understanding and appreciating the rules in a sort of a vacuum, that rules should be mindlessly followed, as if that’s the only way to show honor and respect for God. Finally, people have had enough and they have gone away, searching for other ways of finding worthwhile, life-giving and life-affirming, community and relationships.

The Church should, instead, be exploring new ways of fostering good relationships, and good community—especially because the Church actually has some very good things to say about such things. Our holy book is full of good guidance—life-giving and life-affirming guidance. We just need to find a way to steer clear of approaching that guidance as simply a list of rules that exists solely for the sake of having rules. And, instead, we should appreciate and promote the guidance of our Holy Book in context, as a way through which we show respect and dignity to each other, to our Creator, and to ourselves, and how we build and shape good community and good relationships.

After all, “paws off” is always good advice and it’s never a good idea to shut the bathroom light out when someone is in there, especially when the only switch is on the outside of the bathroom. Respect, dignity, good relationships, good community. The Church could go a long way in promoting such things, and helping to foster meaningful life and living.

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