Thoughts from the Prairie Table

Guns, Freedom, and the cross of Christ

2011-12-28T10:12:00.000-06:00

I own guns. Enough of them so that I cover my whole immediate family with the national average. Since neither my wife or daughters use my guns--only one has ever even held one--it is safe to say they are "my" guns.

I once stayed at a friend's house. As he was giving me a quick tour I noticed there was a gun in every room. Living out in the country as he does, the ones by the doors seemed useful, but a bedroom loft? What gives with all the guns, I asked?

Well, my gun room is being remodeled, so I store them in unused corners. OK, I muse...really? Yeah, plus I figure anyone who comes into this house will know how to use a gun safely, so, what's the damage? I stare in utter amazment at a well-used .260 Browning. You mean, it's loaded too? Of course, what's the sense of having a gun if it's empty? There's no round in the chambers though, so make sure you cock it.

I do understand that not everyone is comfortable staying in such accomodations. And I do appreciate the multitude of friends I have who do not worry too much about whether I am liberal or not, even though I hunt and have guns. To be honest, many of my non-gun-owning friends are curious about and appreciative of guns, much as they would be if I took up stamp collecting or butterflies. Most people who don't own guns see them as potential death instruments, and most people who own guns see them as guarantors of freedom. And that is why "gun control" will always divide the USA.

Regardless of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, having a gun to protect yourself seems to work for most people. Crimes against women are the first things to decrease the minute you let women carry a gun, or even let would-be assaulters think they carry a gun. (interestingly, everyone knows that to be so statistically verifiable as to be a truism.) So whether the USA, your home or office, or even your car is being threatened you have the freedom to defend yourself, and a gun is the surest way we have of making a statement about that protection without having to actually use it. So when someone tries to control guns, it is seen by many as trying to take away freedom. And what politician, especially these days, wants to be seen as taking away your freedom? No matter how reasonable the argument, you can't take away someone's freedom just because a congresswoman got shot by someone with a gun. Freedom is dangerous on many levels, not the least of which is that some people don't want you to be free.

But I don't own guns for my sense of freedom. I own guns to kill creatures I eat. Simple as that. My guns are used for hunting, and they are locked away whenever I am not hunting or practing with them. My sense of freedom does not come from me being able to own a gun...it comes from something more profound. My freedom comes from love, specifically a love from God that dies (irony of ironies) so that I can live. The cross is the story of that love.

Because I believe in freedom, I will never try to take away someone's freedom by taking away their symbol of it...but I will always challenge people to find freedom in something other than fear, other than arrogance, other than hatred...to find freedom in love, to find freedom in God.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

What makes work "work?"

2011-12-21T09:50:00.000-06:00

As I sit here beginning to write there are four men in the church parking lot ouside my window "working." They work for a crane service and are all involved in the process of putting shingles, scaffolding, and whatnot on the roof of the church. They are working. So am I, but there are differences.

First, all four of them are getting paid (I assume) to do their work. No one pays me to write this blog...in fact, when I suggested it once, the people who were paying me to do other things asked, with no hint of irony, "Why they would do that?" I suggested that people have been known to make a living writing, but to them this is not "church development." You now know why I no longer work for them.

Secondly, they are cold...it is 29 degrees outside...69 here in the house. I can see their breath from my window.

Thirdly, here's what the four are doing right now. One guy is manouvering the crane from the cab; guy # 2 is standing there watching him from the parking lot; guy # 3 is watching guy # 2; guy # 4 is watching from the roof. When the load needs to be engaged or disengaged, guy #s 2 and 4 hook and unhook...I have yet to even see guy # 3 move. But if we asked them if they went to "work" today, I am sure even guy # 3 would say yes...even if he hasn't done anything. (It is also quite possible that guy # 3 makes more money than the other three guys because he is in "management" or maybe even owns the company.) I am typing...but what I am really doing is thinking.

I get paid, not to drive cranes, hook or unhook material to cranes, or even manage crane operations...I get paid to think. For people who posit a dichotomy between thinking and doing, this is hard to understand. Most of us understand that we get paid to "do" something. Therefore, if "doing" is the opposite of "thinking," than someone who is thinking is--by definition--"doing" nothing. So, when someone like me gets paid to think, in that mindset, I am getting paid to "do" nothing. (Because thinking is doing nothing.)

Jesus seems to have understood that thinking and doing are not opposites. Whether Jesus understood that one could get paid for thinking I will not surmise, but he did seem to grasp that if you cannot think right you probably will not do right. To paraphrase Spike Lee, in order to do the right thing you must be thinking along the right way...

This is why repentance is so important in the Christian tradition. Repentance is not changing from doing one thing to doing another--repentance is changing your thinking from one way to another way of thinking. So you "repent" not when you start "doing" something different, but when you start "thinking" that what you are doing is not God's preferred future for you, or the world, or your neighbor. And when you start thinking a diffrent way Jesus seems to assume you will start doing different things.

So "work" is not just about what you do...because guy # 3 still has not done much...but he might be thinking...and that's work too.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Money, Work and Jesus

2011-12-18T07:40:00.000-06:00

At some point your work has to take into account money. No matter how much your work is your avocation, no matter how you have arrived at what my pastor Eric Elnes calls your "sweet spot" (the place where your desires for God meet God's desires for you), most of us work for money.

Now, "money" means a couple of different things. First, for rich people, it is a thing until itself. (That is how and why they are rich, at least in terms of money.) For others, and this is the greater number I am sure, money is an intermediary goal to something else. This is why I am not rich, at least in terms of money. For me, money has no value except what it can get me. I don't want money just to have money, I want money so I can go to restaurants, or movies, or pay for my kid's college, or fix a broken furnance. This--to me--is the biggest difference between rich and not-rich people--rich like money as money, not as what kind of sense of security or self or communal improvement it might provide.

Jesus seems to have understood this distinction I am trying to make. He chides some rich people about how a widow who makes an offering of "all she had" impresses God more than someone who just gives "off-the-top." However, if you need to pay a mortgage, someone who gives you a couple thousand "extra" makes it easier to pay the mortage than someone who gives you all $4 in his wallet. But in the "It's the thought that counts" way of thinking, the all is more impressive than the some.

So why do we work? If we work for money we may have missed what God seems to call us to do in the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. From the stories we have of Jesus' adulthood, he never worked, and he certainly seems to never have been compensated for anything. So why did he work? (Doing whatever he did--healing, teaching, managing.) Because he "loved" it? There's not a lot of evidence to suggest that. Because he wanted money (or the things money could get him)? Not a lot of evidence for that either.

Why else would we work if not for the money? Why would we work if not for the satisfaction we receive from it? Perhaps we jump a few decades to after the death of Jesus. Paul, a guy who really believed Jesus had it right about our relationship with God and with our world, said we do things "for the common good." Maybe we work, not because we love money, not because we love ourselves, but because we love our world...we love our neighbor? Maybe the reason why you work has nothing to do with "you", and everything to do with "us?"

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Jesus and work, part III (Money)

2011-12-01T10:02:00.000-06:00

Most of us work because we need money. I remember a friend of mine who on quitting a job because of an idiot boss said to me, "You know, all I'll really miss is the money. Isn't that sad?" She was young, and hadn't yet started out on any quest for "vocation" (tomorrow's topic), so money was pretty much her only motivator to work. But even at the ripe old age of 23 she knew that was stupid.

If you only work for money it does not take long to NOT get out of bed in the morning. Money (and all that it buys or represents) is an insatiable goddess, and to follow her takes real dedication and shrewdness. Making money is never difficult--having work worth doing that you can get paid for? Priceless.

During a job transition someone will come into my office and say, "I want to find meaning in any new job I get." I usually nod in agreement. And the problem is??? "Well...I have bills to pay." From there we can go to work on how to best mesh our search for meaning with having enough for bills to pay.

It seems to me that is where God wants us to understand "work." Work is the way we express who we are in God's creation, and to find meaning, not just be a cog in a machine or a number on a roster. This is why "greed" has been a sin in the church for a long time. "Greed" replaces your search for who you are with money in the work equation. Greed, in other words, misdirects work away from you and into its results. So the "love" of money becomes the root of all evil, not money itself. Money is neutral, but the moment you make it a value, you slide away from working as who you are to working as being greedy.

The Occupy Wall Street movement interests me these days because you have people who are trying to right a balance somehow. They see the attainment and abuse of wealth as reason enough to sleep in a park. Jesus was a little more radical, he actually went and did a little damage to the operations of the wealth he thought was abusive, but the modern day protestors have hit on an important distinction. The seeking of wealth over and above being a part of God's creation destroys the communities we seek. (By the way, many wealthy know this, which is why they often seek shelter in communities of their own creation...it's nice to be rich.)

It is an American creed to be able to make as much money as you want...and that is fine...but it is not part of the Christian creed, and we should never forget the difference.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Jesus and work, Part II

2011-11-30T11:30:00.001-06:00

Economists these days are noticing there are two basic types of work:
1) the kind that can be done anywhere and have no regression of quality
2) the kind that requires a physical presence.
I like to think of it in terms of my friends who are electrical engineers and those who are electricians. In planning and designing electrical systems, all you need is a computer, and that computer can be anywhere, anyplace, and even anytime. But if a wire breaks, you need someone to show up right here, right now.

Work,as understood throughout most of the Bible, consisted of the "physical presence" kind. Even the high-end managerial jobs of Peter and James, or Abraham all involved their presence in the boat or on the range. Abraham had no way to remote in the feeding and pasture schedules for the upcoming week. Peter had to be on the boat to tell the guys where to fish. Consequently, with this underlying assumption about work running throughout the Bible, the Christian Church has built up a rather convoluted understanding of work, and one that for many people is simply outdated in a wireless world.

The Christian Church (most famously in Jean Calvin and his secular propagandist Max Weber--but all Christian traditions hold similar views of work) understands work as that which God gave us to take care of God's creation. That's all work is meant to do in the Bible. Anything else will just kill you. Because of this understanding of work (i.e., taking care of God's creation), it generally receives pretty positive responses throughout history. (I am willing to admit that the Adam and Eve story is a bit ambiguous about work, but the Christian tradition has long since smoothed the edges off that one!)

So, in that vein of thought, how does working at the call center for Iphone problems take care of God's creation? More to the point, especially for work done by those outside of the Christian tradition, how do we respect our God in the work we do? The usual response to such a question is to make it individual and personal. So helping a person with an Iphone problem is what God wants us to to...help people, and in this case, help them with their phone. But is that all work is about? Helping people?

Those of you who know me know I have no great love of work. In the movie "Some Come Running," Dean Martin, a gambler, says "My Dad gambled every day. He called it farming. I prefer to do mine indoors." That has always struck me as a reasonable position. Consequently, as a gambler, I have no great love of work.

But when I do work, do I work to help people? As a teacher, pastor, writer, I guess I suppose I want my students, parishioners, and readers to be helped...but is that why I write or talk or teach? No...for me, work is about trying to understand my world, to get at what God is trying to do, or how this story shows God's vision for us; or, even, how your problems can illuminate solutions to mine.

I think that is where Jesus was going with his understanding of work. Work is part of who we are, and how we discern who we are and what we do in the world. In some ways Jesus was working all the time, and in that regard, his death was not some "sacrifice" for our sins, but rather the culmination of a job well done.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Work and Jesus

2011-11-29T08:37:00.002-06:00

One of the funniest things I've ever had happen in one of my classes was when I was making an argument that Jesus, looking from a purely pragmatic standpoint, really didn't do anything. I admitted he healed some folks, talked a lot, and made sure people got fed, but as far as we know he never really did anything. Did he cook? Build? (Some people assume Jesus was a carpenter because his Dad was one, but that's just an assumption. He could have also been a priest in the temple, as he seems to be in the Gospel of John, but that's just an assumption too.) But the gospels don't say Jesus did much of what we think of as "work."

Anyhow, one of my students (from Liberia, and this is not a trivial detail), went into some kind of stupor at the suggestion that Jesus didn't do anything. He was beyond flabergasted. I've had people look at me before as if I'm from another planet, but his look at me went intergalatic. I think, he said "You are crazy." (Which is probably also the truest thing a student has ever said of me.)

As you, loyal and gentle reader realize, I was playing off the idea of what constitutes "work" in our current society. "Work" has to have some kind of end-product, especially if remuneration requires billable hours. If there is nothing to show for, how is work done? So we strive to show our work (sort of like 7th grade math class) so that people know we "did" something. Since Jesus never wanted to show his work, and there is little record of him doing so, it is quite possible that he "did" nothing. That is my point.

And of course my Liberian student grew up in a world where you never had to show your work in order to prove you did something. Therefore, he could not understand in any appreciable way what I was hinting at, although he got the point better than some of my USA educated students. If "work" is defined only by what you produce that is verifiable or empirical or observable, then work can only kill you. But if "work" is defined in another way...well, you may just survive it. I think that's the work Jesus was trying to do.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Faith is a relationship, not a belief...

2011-10-19T08:44:00.002-05:00

I love watching "Real Time with Bill Maher." I like it best when it shoots for comedy rather than serious interpretation of political and social issues, but even that can entertain me for a while...and every now and then they talk about religion.

This gets funny because usually there are no "religious experts" at the table talking, so basically when the talk turns to religion you have four people giving opinions about stuff they don't really think about...and sometimes when there is a religious expert on the show, such as the brilliant theologian and activist Cornel West, (Google him, he wrote my favorite book of American philosophy)it gets downright comical as the three others try to tell the religious expert what religion is. (Fortunately they, and West especially, are good sports!)

The problem most critics of religion, and in this case they include Christianity, and often make no distinctions amongst Christians (as if our 2000 years of internecine wars and battles have made us more alike than different), but critics of religion often replace "faith" with "thinking," and that is wrong. The opposite of "faith" is not "thinking," "science," or "reason"; the opposite of faith is lonliness or alienation. In Chrisitanity "faith" is about relationships, not about believing. You can believe anything you want and still have faith in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And this is because your relationship to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit comes from faith, not from what you "believe."

The one trick to getting Christianity is to remember that God doesn't care what you "believe." God cares about your faith--that is, the relationship God establishes with you in creation, the relationship God continues with you in the Spirit, and the relationship God continually remakes with you in Jesus Christ.

So the comics and thinkers on "Real Time" make fun of Christians for what they "believe," but Christians believe all sorts of things, not much differently than anybody else...but attacking what Christians believe does nothing to attack what makes Christianity the most powerful religion in the history of the world: a Christian's faith (relationship) with God, and God's faith (relationship) with Christians. I am not a Christian because I wanted to love and respect gay people, or I wanted to be a faithful husband, or a good father, or someone who cares for creation...I could do any of that without being a Christian--Christianity has no monopoly on morals and ethics--I am a Christian because I have faith that there is a God who loves me, who cares about me, and who wants to see me thrive...just as God desires that for you, and, ...for all of us, even someone like Bill Maher.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Boring church

2011-10-18T08:04:00.002-05:00

As a kid I never minded going to church (which was good because my mom and grandmother were both church secretaries, so it's not like it was optional), but I knew all (and I mean all) of my friends thought it was "boring." And I wandered through years of ministry, always working with youth at some point, I heard that statement a lot. Church is boring.

But look at what your general teenager thinks is boring: everything that doesn't immediately relate to them. Church, school, whatever has the potential to be boring because youth are not sure how it fits into their identity...and church suffers because it is never about the kid...church is never about any of us, young or old, church is always about God, and what God does in the world. At some level everyone should be frustrated with going to church. I don't care if you're 7 or 70, at some point if it's not boring, it's probably not about God, and therefore it's probably not church. Boredom in church simply means God's telling you again what you already know, even if you haven't acted upon that knowledge recently.

Christianity is a fairly simple religion: it's about your relationship to God (or for the more progressive amongst my readers--the great mystery), and if you don't care about that relationship it is bound to be boring to be in a place that does nothing but try to encourage that relationship. For years I thought my response to "Church is boring" was to try and make it "EXCITING!" But I was wrong...

The response to "Church is boring" is to ask why you are bored with your relationship to God? Why does hearing about God's love bore you? Why does listening to music that celebrates that love bore you? Why does hearing stories about the love of God bore you? Why does being told you are loved by God bore you?

So if you are at church and it is boring, ask why? Ask it of your pastors why they look so bored? Don't they love God anymore either? Ask it of the kids...the parents...the senior adults...In fact, go be bored by church and then ask yourself why love is not enough for you? I bet from then on you won't have time to be bored anymore.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Hip-Hop, Jesus Christ, and the Church

2011-10-17T08:35:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I went to my first ever hip-hop concert...I was the oldest guy in the room of about 600 or so...fortunately, the group Atmosphere (made up of at least two guys in the same decade as me)supplied enough energy for all of us, and I got caught up in the music. After 2 hours of solid rapping and bass bombing, interspersed with really great piano and guitar riffs, the lead singer "Slug" shouted us to us: "Thank you for tonight! Since this is a close to church as I'm ever going to get Let's do one more!" (Or something to that effect...by then my ears were fried.)

And yes, that concert was church not only for Slug, but for all of us...and it was a worthy celebration of young people searching for that beat which will become the cornerstone of their lives..."Church" is often were you find such things, and in that sense this concert was "Church." On the following Sunday morning I found myself in a small, Lutheran church next to the University of Nebraska-Omaha where I was almost the YOUNGEST person in the room...and after an hour of robust hymn singing and contemplative prayer, interspersed with a few readings from the Bible and some good thoughts about God, I had another experience of "Church."

Now the concert and the Sunday morning worship were different in many ways, but similar in one important way--both celebrated being alive, and for the people who are part of each event God gets included in that "alive-ness." But there is one big difference...

The folks who worshiped at the altar of Christianity understand that they worship God all the time, not just when they are at the altar or in the church building. Their hour is spent thanking God for all the blessings of the week, imploring God to be more active in their world, or generally learning to live on this crazy globe...so this hour is one hour to specifically celebrate the other 167 hours of the week. The folks at the Lutheran church didn't need that hour of "church" to find meaning, purpose, energy, inspiration, or love in their lives...they already had that thanks to the God they worshiped on that worning. (this is one of the reasons I detest long worship services...if you're truly Christian you're worshiping all the time anyhow, why waste a good Sunday morning??)

But I wonder about the folks at the hip-hop concert? Will they go back to something completely different as their lives as students or bank tellers or paint salesmen (a friend I went with)? How does the church of hip-hop go from week to week, year to year, cradle to grave? I have no doubt God cares and cherishes for the people at the concert as much as God cares and cherishes for the people at the Lutheran congregation I was with...

The Christian faith worships a God who not only incarnates into history, but also uses that very history to transcend time...Jesus Christ is the name of that story,and in that we are always "in church", always "at worship", always in the presence of God no matter where we are: hip-hop concerts, Sunday morning worship, and all the other venues and times of our lives.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

I live in an old world

2011-09-14T07:46:00.001-05:00

I live in an old world, and I am old school, and because I am stubborn and well-off enough, I don't often have to change my ways...

For example, I like books...so I will never get an e-reader. But what if books become obsolete? I don't know...maybe I'll start watching TV.

I gave up watching TV in January. Now, I only watch sporting events, and shows that my daughters want me to watch with them. I average about six hours a week--although if Discovery Channel puts on a marathon "Dual Surivial" I will watch them all...love me some Cody and Dave! In March my daughter and I timed how much we watched our new 52 inch screen TV, and for the whole month we used it for 8 hours. I think I am becoming a luddite.

But, as you know, I have a computer, and have had one ever since 1987. I have used so many computers over the years that when I tell my younger friends about them they think I am lying...(anyone else remember dot matrix printers?)I am not opposed to "technology" as such, but I am opposed to anything that does not encourage conversation and/or human interaction. (I don't talk about conection much, because I am not sure connection is what humans are after...interaction seems to best fit my understanding of community and individual autononmy, and how most of us desire to work out that relationship)

So technology--such as computers--works better for me because it encourages interaction with humanity, and TV--most of the time--is way too passive. Now the congregations I live amongst and teach about are much more comfotable with TV than computers...why? Do we have an active God (most of the time) or a passive God? What does God actually do in your world?

One of my favorite (and funniest) experiences teaching was when I was arguing that Jesus did "nothing" during his ministry. He sat around and talked, he ate meals, prayed, and occasionally healed somebody, but to most of us in the industrial western world he did "nothing." One of my students, an African immigrant, went ballastic. He argued for a good 10 minutes on all the stuff Jesus did. He was flabbergasted that I would sugest Jesus did nothing...after his 10 minute scolding of my mistake...one of my other students, an adminstrative pastor of a large Christian congregation, said, "well, I wouldn't hire him (Jesus). He doesn't have much experience in work." To which my African student replied..."that's the problem with American congregations--they would rather work than live with Jesus."

That's so old world...so old school.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Ten years later...

2011-09-11T02:54:00.001-05:00

Today is the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks by terrorists on the USA and its cultural icons and people...everywhere I look or people I talk to have this on their mind...and this is good...but the question then becomes "How have I changed since 9-11-2001?" What is different about me since then?

I guess, in general, I've become even more liberal than I was then. At some level all the world revolves around trust, and 9-11 proved that you can't trust some people...but I already knew that then, and I still know it...but what are you going to do? You either have to give up on trust and go about verifying everything; or, you trust, but now you realize the stakes in doing so..trust can kill you.

I mean, think of Jesus of Nazareth. One way (and not the only way, mind you) to read about his death is that he trusted people to love God more than anything. As he challenged people to trust in God, people did or did not as they were able, and Jesus lived with whatever consequences that trust brought about for him. So, if someone could trust him to heal a daughter or a disease, he allowed that; if someone could not trust him to behave, especially during a public festival, he lived with those consequences too. In the end, he trusted a Pilate or a Caiphais to do the "right" thing, and he wound up dying because of it...but what was he to do? Give up on trusting people just because he might die? He didn't seem to go down that road...he-apparently--would rather die than not trust someone, even someone who threatened to kill him and then did.

So after 9-11 I pretty much vowed to keep trusting people, even ones who want to kill me. And, I suppose, someday that will kill me. Of course, I don't live in New York City, or work in the Pentagon, or travel to the Middle East--and I can imagine their "trust" issues are much deeper than mine, and I can imagine that my views seem foolish and pollyannish to some, if not many. But I am not convinced anything other than even more trusting is going to work...our problems in life are usually never that we love, but rather that we never love enough. And those that do...are often betrayed by others' inability or refusal to love.

You see about a year ago I got a new friend. And of all the things I remember about her over the past year, I will remember most her face when she told me how her love had been betrayed. My heart literally broke for her, and I doubt I will ever forget her look of fear, confusion, frustration, and anger that such an event creates. I imagine 9-11 is like that for many people...and I hope never to forget that as well.

9-11 betrayed a sacred trust we humans have to each other, and that it was on such a massive and grand scale of destruction and death it is doubtful that the trust will ever be rebuilt in my lifetime...events like this take generations to repair...

But like my new friend, I taught my children over the past 10 years to keep trusting even if the evidence is not there to warrant such trust...and now, 10 years later, those kids are out of the house my wife and I built for them...and unlike their mom and me, they live in worlds where trust often comes at a premium price...but their God-- my God! has promised to love them, trust them forever...what more can we do when we have received such sacred trust? We trust more, I guess.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Health care and healthy living

2011-08-18T06:28:00.002-05:00

I went to an event last evening on why our health care in this country is not working. Let us be clear about what is not working...that's the problem, isn't it? Everybody has complaints about the "system" but nobody knows what the problem is. Doctors believe it is too much regulation and bureacracy (probably right), patients believe it is too much waiting around and inattention and certainly bureacracy...and the people who provide the products fear of losing money when the patents run out...

Last night's speaker believes that eliminating government from the health care equation will solve most of the problems...and as a theologian I think he is not going to be happy if he gets his way...because the problem with health care in the USA is not "government," the problem is money. There is a reason the Christian church has in its canon the line "the love of money is the root of all evil." When there are problems with health care in this country it is because people (patients, doctors, bureaucrats, etc.) love money more than health.

What I heard from the speaker last night was not how to fix "health care" but how to "finance" health care equitably (which is surely a good thing if health care is about money). But-and this is key--the Christian church has a bit of ambiguity in this area. There are tens of stories of Jesus of Nazareth providing health care, but there is no story about him getting paid for it. Whether his patients were rich or poor, not once do we have Jesus getting a check for his work...although a dinner and bed was probably thrown into the deal. If we were to draw conclusions about health care using Jesus of Nazareth as our guide we would be left with two:
1) it takes God to heal
2) it's free
Now, most health care folks would agree with #1 because they've seen that in action. The mystery of life amazes, and whether one posits a creator or not, it is amazing the even a simple paper cut heals on its own...

It's #2 (as usual) that is harder to pass...For some reason we believe health care should cost money like buying a chair or a socket wrench...My goal is to die before I have to use our health care system...and it is not because I do not "like" our health care system--but rather I wish to live as long as possible in whatever health I have. I can't eat foods I used to be able to eat, I cannot move as fast as I once did (which was never very fast anyhow), I ache more, and I need more rest. But healthy living at 50 is not the same as it was when I was 20. Health changes, just like everything else...

As a pastor I have seen lives extended and nurtured by health care, including my own children and wife, my own family and countless friends...and there is huge cost involved and I am blessed to be able to celebrate their lives...but we have another line in our scripture too: "What does it profit you to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?" Healthy living isn't always possible and for many they never had a chance...but I will say this whatever health they have, whatever living they have is as valuable as anything the health care system fixes, repairs, or palliates...healthy living isn't defined by your body in the Christian church-it's defined by your faith in God, your neighbor, and yourself...and that's why Jesus could heal for free...it was never about the money--it was always about God.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Welcome from Omaha

2011-08-16T09:04:00.001-05:00

As a species, I believe humanity is the most adaptable creature God has made, and to prove a point, I am going to adapt to Omaha, NE as my new home for the next chapter of my life. Here are some things I believe will be different from my time in Bismarck, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, and any other place I've lived over the years.

New Heights of HUMIDITY (I did not say "humility", as some things never change!) Even though Chicago and Minneapolis could be humid, Omaha seems to relish in high humidity...this may slow me doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooown aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa biiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Myb nt.

People. This will be new after 8 years in North Dakota. The greater Omaha area has almost exactly twice as any people as the entire state of North Dakota, keeping North Dakota still as the smallest city I have ever lived in. Fortunately, I like people, and now there are so many more choices....I am excited for all this new folks stuff.

Traffic. This comes with the people, but if I ever had to wait through 2 left turn lights in Bismarck I ran it...now, this is a regular occurrence in Omaha...the Camaro is sad.

Churches. My God (literally) there are a boatload of Christian churches in this town. God is very popular down here it seems. I hope this doesn't translate into a lot of work for me...working will ruin my retirement.

But God's continual looking out for me doesn't change no matter where I live. The freedom to live in Christ perdures thoughout time and space, and I trust in the Holy Spirit to get me through...as I sit in my air-conditioned car, watching all these people make left turns in front of me going to church...welcome to Omaha.

May your tables me full, and your conversations be true.

For Sale: A Christian Lifestyle

2011-08-14T06:22:00.002-05:00

The Crystal Catheral (home to Robert Schuller and the "Hour of Power" ministries) is going to be purchased soon, possibly by the Roman Catholic Church for the mere price of 52 million dollars and change. In my 20 years of ministry I haven't even come close to spending 2 million dollars for ministry, so the number is a bit off-putting for me. But I can say I am not surprised.

The Crystal Cathedral exemplies a type of ministry that no longer gets at what it means to be "Christian" in "America" anymore. Aynthing the CC and its ministries are about is part of an America that no longer exists. As Gibson Winter noted fifty(50!!!!) years ago, the suburban captivity of the Church probably cannot last. Mainly, as he noted, because the suburban American lifestyle cannot last. The Church that puts all its ministry eggs into the suburban basket is going to find itself in trouble, and the Crystal Cathedral and its problems are just the largest example of a change that has been happening over the past decade or so in suburban ministries across the country.

Prairie Table Ministries began because we knew the suburban lifestyle Christianity exemplified by the Crystal Cathedral wasn't working for us...based on programs, hierarchies of power, and a focus on self-help religion rather than incarnational Christianity was exactly the kinds of ministries we were not connecting to...so we started Prairie Table. We wanted to be about God, and have people we know journey with us...we wanted to be authentic, and not find ourselves compromised in faith in order to support a building or program...we wanted the love of God to influence how we behaved and believed, and we sought out ways to search scripture and ourselves for clues to that love...

It's precisely because of ministries like Prairie Table that the Crystal Cathedral no longer can sustain its ministries...but I read Gibson Winter 30 years ago, went to Chicago and studied under his students, and I've always believed he was right...so--unlike the folks at the Crystal Cathedral--I've had 30 years to get ready for its sale. And Prairie Table works--not because it's based on a Christian lifestyle---but because it trusts in God, and God alone.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

A Sunday Morning Comin' Down

2011-08-07T08:13:00.001-05:00

For most of my adult life Sunday mornings have been the most hectic days of the week...and I realize that is in stark contrast to many people, and certainly the people of TV and advertising for whom Sunday mornings are idyllic brunches, coffee, and a leisurely read newspaper. Not so for pastors...we're more like pro football players for whom Sunday mornings are preparations, final touches, reviews of plans before a game (worship service in pastors' cases) begins.

But I have just two Sundays left in Bismarck, and today a nice fog has rolled in...which means cooler weather which means Fall is coming which means hunting season in almost here. But this Sunday has a certain relaxedness to it even though I leave for church in a few minutes...Almost everything I own that I care about can fit into my new Camaro...I thought I would need a truck, but it turns out I don't...I don't care about enough stuff to fill a truck (and--yes--I have room in the car for my wife...geesh!!)

I cannot believe how much I've seen and learned about our God from the people up here in North Dakota...it has been a true blessing to meet people like Jay, Jean, Laura, and Laine who put me up eight years ago. People like Laurie, Tom, Erin, Beth, Monroe, Mark, Duane, Chris, Trisha, Tim, and all the others who made working so fun. People like Bruce L, Bob, Ron, and Bruce K, Jen, Josie, Amber, and Claire who kept me sane while the world spun out of control...countless parishioners and folks who made their lives available to me in hospitals, congregations, bars, restaurants, gas stations, stores, and wherever so I could see God at work in the world. All the folks like Jerry and Marla, Bob and Nancy, Steve and Max, Gary--even John, Jim, Marci, Evelyn, Ron and Darlene, Bob and Joanne, Marv and Lois, Bev, Con and Gen, the sisters and their families, Shirley and Mike, Jerry and Char, Dick and Marilyn who supported me in prayer and money over the years. Amazing to see God in action through them.

There are way too many people to name them all, and I am sure some will be forgotten, and I hope many can be remembered. Well...it's almost time for church...although we've been doing thatever since I landed in this town...thanks to everyone.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Freedom from the cross...for the world

2011-08-03T09:29:00.002-05:00

Continuing my never-ending saga of transition from Bismarck to Omaha, I had an interesting conversation with one of my movers (the folks who move our stuff). Turns out he lives in Omaha...turns out he grew up in Omaha...turns out it's too hot for him in Omaha, so he wants to move to Colorado or something to go fishing...turns out he gave me the history of Omaha in the 20 minutes we wandered around going through stuff to be moved.

Now this is not your official Omaha history. This is the history that comes from living within its circle for 35 years. History that comes with a son, history that comes from parents, history that comes from hard work, sweat, and the determination to do things right.

And this kind of history needs a cross of Christ to make sense...it's not going to be all the glitz and glamour, the wealth and stuff you hear about from the Chamber of Commerce...no--this history is built on the backs of folks taking things step-by-step with suffering and toil as your companion for most of the years.

So isn't it good to know there's a God who not only understands suffering and loss, but in the resurrection of Jesus gives the world a way to see that death is not the end of a relationship with God? From the cross we receive a freedom to live...in, with, under, and for the world (and even against it sometimes.)

My opinion of Omaha didn't change much because I assumed such stories were there...I just didn't think I'd received confirmation of those assumptions while I was still in Bismarck.

The driver saw the booze we have sitting out (it can't be packed) and must be consumed by folks in Bismarck (strange but I have lots of volunteers for that project???), and he said, I want to go to your wife's church. He knows where it is... he said, and I said he and his son could always sit with me. After all, it's almost my first time there too.

I meant the church, I said...because we've both been to the cross a few times. Yeah, he nodded, that's for sure.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

On beginning again...

2011-08-02T08:33:00.003-05:00

You would think at my age I wouldn't be starting all over again.

At least this was somewhat my choice, as Chris and I contemplated our future a couple of years ago, and realized starting over wouldn't be the worst thing...I feel badly for those my age who have to start over because their job has been downsized, or they have lost a life partner, or some other unforseen accident of life.

So it's on to meeting new people, and as leaders of communities this is easier for people like me and Chris than it is for others who find themselves plopped into the middle of a new city, a new world--and wonder who to trust or turn to?

I really wish I was better at staying in contact with people whom I've known over the years. My track record is not good for most I know. I don't know what it is...I get so caught up in living right now that I forget about my past (until I remember something for a sermon!). I am always pushing towards a future...and I guess I'm starting to realize there isn't as much future as there used to be when I was younger.

In theology we used to note the difference between those for whom the future was important to their understanding of God, and those for whom God is now became the dominant force. I am a theologian--and person as well--for whom the future has always been vitally important. Not because I didn't like today or care about today, but exactly the opposite.

Because I am having so much fun right now, because I enjoy my life a lot (even though the past eight months have not been my most fun separated from my wife), I can't wait to see what's going to happen next!! There is still so much I want to see--San Sebastian and Ireland--another Broadway play--Christmas Eve worship at St. John the Divine--I'd like to try and meet the Pope (don't ask...but suffice it to say that we probably don't agree)--I want to see my kids continue to travel these roads of life--I love hearing about my former youth group kids being parents, about former interns who are leading with the composure and skill I saw in their younger days--about students who are doing great things for God's church--all this makes me very happy.

So why not start over again? Some friends never get this, as that is not their goal in life--some are jealous that I get a reboot every seven to nine years--but most know that as my friend you are always part of my life. I remember you all, and I pray for you all, even if you haven't talked to me in decades. Because the unity we share in God is eternal--and we might not be together, but we are united in God's love-and that's why I can start over--because that love grounds me no matter where I am or who is with me--that love is all I need...well, that--and a great partner, wonderful friends, and a fast car.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Only two weeks left...

2011-08-01T09:19:00.002-05:00

Two weeks from now I will be driving the Camaro down the road to be re-united with my wife of 23 years. We have lived apart for the past eight months...and I have not enjoyed it much.

We are one of those couples that rarely spend much time apart. Her friends are my friends and vice versa...except when I am traveling (and I do a lot of that) we are together. We often have lunch together...we work out together...we sleep together...(although she usually goes to bed about 3 am, and I get up at 5 am, so that is not very impressive.) I was legitimately curious how I would handle these last eight months of us being apart. I knew I could survive, but could I survive well????

As this blog may be read by younger folks, let us just say, in the words of Sam Cooke, "there were times I thought I wouldn't last for long...," but I am still here. God sent me some excellent people over the past 8 months to help me through, and some of them I owe my very life to no doubt. Long-time friends called and checked up on me, parishioners encouraged and supported me, new friends pulled me out of new troubles, and all the way down the line to today...where in two weeks this separation will be over.

I know many people (like our service men and women) find themselves separated from their lovers as well...and unlike me, there is way less certainty that they will be re-united. I don't know how they do it. It is a testament to God's spirit that we survive the alienation, the separation, the loss, the destruction of relationships that nurture us and help us grow. I think that's what the Psalmist meant when she sang we are created a "little lower than angels." Sometimes, there's just too much pain to live in heaven.

If you have loved ones somewhere away from you...I know how heavy the heart can weigh...and if you have a loved one near...I know how free the heart can play...

Paul wrote centuries ago that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord...not even, I discovered over the past 8 months, "separation." Thank God, he was right.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

PS: Thoughts from the Prairie Table will continue on as a blog of theological discernment for me...just on the southern edge of the prairie rather than the northern edge where I am now in Bismarck. I look forward to starting over in Omaha, and seeing what God has in store for me. To finish Sam's line, "because now I know I can carry on...it's been a long time coming...but change is gonna come."

Having a party

2011-07-26T07:16:00.002-05:00

The other day as I pulled up into my usual parking area at my regular hangout, one of the newer cooks was taking a cigarette break. As I got out of my car he nodded towards it, "Nice," he said. I nodded thanks and asked him his name (after all, it seems like a good idea to be on a first name basis with the guy who will cook most of your food)? He told me, and then asked if I was the owner of his new place of employment? No, I said. "Oh," he mused,"you just like to party." I laughed and we walked in together as new friends.

I do like to party. Now, I am not of the celebrity party status, but there is nothing better than a good old fashioned party, and I believe congregations should be known as party houses as much as anything. Parties that are available to everyone and free are about the greatest witness to the love of God I know.

When did church lose its identity as a party place? Why are we so serious about stuff all the time? Why don't we relax at church, unwind, have a few beers or whatever and share in life? Why isn't that known as church? We've lost a lot of our understanding of a God who is life when we refuse to let life into our churches and congregations.

Every now and then a well-intentioned person will tell me a church has to be "run like a business." Why? Why can't a church be run like a party? Why does a church have to have a budget or balanced books or marketing schemes? Why can't a church just have some attendants, some cooks, some stewards, a few musicians and storytellers and call it a day?

Parties raise money (ask any organization that does banquets as fundraisers or any high school graduate), so I am not thinking we lose much if we shift our congregational identity to a party house from a boring house of serious folk.

Now, of course, if you are a regular participant in the life of a local congregation you already think of your place as a party house. You have dinners, potlucks, coffee and cookies after worship, all kinds of celebrations...but the people I meet--like my cook--don't think of it that way. Why not?

Why do people think of church as boring, serious, and staid when the people in it generally have fun (or try to have fun?) Other than the booze (and up here at least all parties have booze it seems...there is something interesting about that for another blog) why don't parties at your local church generate the same raves as a band at your local bar? Why isn't worshiping God as exciting as listening to music in a dark room. (We don't allow smoking indoors here anymore, so, there are no "smoke-filled blues clubs" up here.) How come when Christians celebrate the God of Christ Jesus whose death and resurrection in the power of the Spirit brings freedom and life to all who encounter it, people think we are boring? Or, at least, that we don't know how to "party?"

We have a real image problem folks...because no one ever chastised Jesus for being "too serious." In fact, they thought he partied too much...

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Near the end

2011-07-25T16:48:00.001-05:00

Within three weeks I will no longer be a permanent resident of Bismarck, ND. It is strange to reflect on the past eight years that I have been up here. In some ways it seems so long ago, but yet; in other ways, it was almost yesterday. tempus fugit.

I've met so many people up here I've since lost count...and I'm still meeting more every day. Just the other day a person I've come to know only over the past couple of months when hearing I am leaving for Omaha said, "But I just got to meet you!" A gentle man, and one I will probably remember for a long time.

I started out here living in the basement of one of my parishioners (don't feel bad, it was a really big, well decorated basement with my own big screen TV!) I got a nice house--recently sold it to a nice young couple--and now I'm living out of the Camaro for a few days. Time circles famously...

So what will I remember from these past 8 years? The wind for sure. The patience of most of the people...it's almost legendary in some cases. The laughter, and the way so many people worked positive ministry with me. God has shown me some of the best people I have EVER met up here in North Dakota...I have been blessed.

Our dog Minnie died last winter, and with Maddy graduated I am left alone up here to tidy up some loose before I rejoin Chris in Omaha. And the blog will continue...my table's just moving about 600 miles south on the prairie...

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Religious prejudice in the USA

2011-07-06T08:00:00.002-05:00

Because I am a known Christian (one of the characteristics of being a pastor), I get to experience religious "prejudice" every now and then. What I mean by "prejudice" is that people pre-judge me based on what they think they know about my religion. Some people, for example, think anyone who believes in God is an idiot. When they find out I am a Christian they therefore think I am an idiot--based solely on the fact that I believe in God, not whether they think I am an actual idiot or not. (Although I probably am an idiot, I prefer to think of myself as a "fool.")

So these people then hold me to certain beliefs I don't have because they know other Christians (sometimes only characterizations of Christians) that hold those beliefs. A classic case is "free will." I don't believe humans have free will, and if we do, we always choose wrong anyhow, so what's the sense in calling it "free?" I do not mind being lumped in with all the Christians of the world, past and present, there is as much good as bad to it, and I do believe in God's love for the world through the power of the Holy Spirit in the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. I can't choose my relatives! But I don't necessarily believe everything my relatives believe.

Sometimes the prejudice (pre-judging) works the other way too. Sometimes people believe things about me positively without looking at me. So people assume I am honest, trustworthy, patient, faithful, and all other kinds of noble stuff when I am never that...Most of the time I don't know what I am doing, and what I am doing I do because it seems fun or interesting, but I am not trying to behave my way into heaven.

One of my favorite professors years ago once said he was no more prejudiced, biased, racist, or sexist than anyone, and that we all are those things at some level. I think that's still true...so I try to keep my prejudging to a minimum, and try not to worry too much about my failures in being the "perfect" Christian in someone else's mind...I'll try to love God, and I'll look for my neighbor to be better, richer, stronger, and healthier than me...that's just the kind of Christian I am.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Independence and being Exceptional

2011-07-04T09:50:00.002-05:00

Well, it's the Fourth of July and time for my annual blog on politics--theologically considered. (This is different from what politicians do who give us theology-politically considered.)

So the United States of America is "exceptional." And I suppose from some historical perspective that is true, as there is a lot that is from the USA that is rather exceptional. But how much difference does it make for our freedom today? On the one hand, you are still guaranteed freedoms in this country you can get in few places. To gather with people for religious reasons, to write and speak publicly, and to be able to participate in government with only limited restrictions. And granted, in most cases, these freedoms exist only in ideas; although, if you look at the trajectory of the leader of this "exceptionalism" stuff, one Ms. Sarah Palin, you can see that she did not start out very high on the political tree. She grew and morphed her way to the characterization of politician that she is now, but she was never the wealthiest or the smartest person in the room...but she believes so now-- "Exceptionalism" at its best.

But most people want to say the USA is exceptional for more than just being the breeding grounds for people like Sarah Palin, and that is where things get interesting. Because in order to do that you have to argue that the USA is not like any other empire has, is, or ever will be...and that argument gets tougher and tougher to make each day. We have a horrible war in our past, slavery and segregation, dimissal of women and their rights over their bodies, rapacious greed of land and natural resources (remember the buffalo?), and the list could go on...And there is also no doubt that we have exceptional people still making lemonade from our collective lemons (look at the buffalo--if you've ever seen one alive in its native ecosystem know that 100 years nobody thought you would! Somebody did something right somewhare.) And it's precisely the exceptional people that make the USA "exceptional."

This is rather akin to what Jesus of Nazareth used to say about his Jewish faith. Even though "salvation comes from the Jews" (exceptionalism par excellence), Jesus understood that is was only individual men and women (and as it turned out mostly women) who would bear that burden. When salvation happens it doesn't come from some Jewish "center of faith", but rather from the love and grace of a Jewish man or a Jewish woman...and, since Jesus of Nazareth's resurrection, from the love and grace of a Christian man or woman.

You have heard me argue on this blog for the past three years about the importance of community--and in a world where the individual stomps on the community, I will always issue that clarion call of collective living together in God's world. However, we must remember the pendulum will swing the other way, and the tromping of individual gifts and talents for the security of the community can never be tolerated, else what was the cross of JESUS for?

It is a balance, and that is why one day out of 365 I give thanks to God for being individual and being exceptional (warts and all)--just like you are, gentle reader. Happy Independence Day!

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Fast cars and faster times

2011-06-27T10:37:00.002-05:00

One of the more unique things about aging is that time seems to speed by exponentially. I have heard 22 years olds recently exclaim to me that time seems to "fly by" when what they are considering seems to me to be just seconds ago...

St. Augustine famously noted that he knew what time was except when someone asked him to explain it, and Western philosophy has been on an eternal search it seems to somehow explain "time and eternity." My answer to this problem of time, and especially of its speeding up the older we get? I bought a fast car.

My reasoning is such...the faster I drive between two points means I save some "time." This time is therefore spent doing other things than driving between two points (and since I do a lot of driving this is quite a "time-saver.")Slow cars=less time to do other things: fast cars=just plain fun!!

Because as even these 22 year olds know, time is the ultimate chimera. It only has value if you are living the life you love or the life you were called to live by God. A five minute life in the care of God seems much more interesting to me than an 85 year old life lived amidst the confusion of this world...(I am not advocating a shorter or a longer life, but rather that every life--short AND long--should be measured by its God relationship in the world)

So time literally rolls along and takes us with it...like the mighty Missouri that is ravaging homes and banks along my town, time has few cares for those who ride it. You can use fast cars, vacuum cleaners, microwave food to save all the time you want...but it's how the saved time is used that matters to the world...and it would seem, to God. It's not the length of time of Jesus' life that matters, but rather how he used that time to show us how to be human and not try to be God that brings his time to us.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

I heard there was a secret chord...

2011-06-14T12:31:00.002-05:00

Somewhere deep in the recesses of my soul lies a "God spark." I am not sure what it is, not even sure if it's important, but over the years when it has appeared to my consciousness I have heeded its illuminations.

I don't get these crazy, "END OF THE WORLD IS COMING!" type illuminations; rather, mine are more mundane. "Oh, that is what my wife meant!" Or, "maybe this is what is bothering my daughter?" Sometimes I get a vision of a person, someone I know, and within minutes, if not hours, they are calling me...sometimes after years of non-contact.

When I take the Myers-Briggs personality test they call me "Intuitive." My doctoral advisor, also of the intuitive bent, once remarked that "Scott, no one ever accuses us of actually seeing trees in the forest." True that.

I first realized this eschatology (a deep, Pannenbergian theological joke there) back when I was a kid. When playing sports it was like the whole field or diamond was laid out on graph paper, and I knew where each person was going to be. I played defensive tackle for a awhile in Jr. High football, and I was the slowest runner on the team...but I made a lot of tackles. My coach once asked me how I ever made a tackle since I was so slow? "I know where he's going," I said. My coach benched me for being a wiseass...but it was true...since I knew where he was going, I just got there before he did and made the tackle.

As a professional theologian, and coming out a a tradition where such Spirit-driven ideas like "God spark" are received skeptically--Luther once said of a group of Spiritualists they had swallowed the Holy Spirit "feathers and all"--I never use these divine illuminations in my theological work. My ministry, yes; but theology, no.

But if you've heard the secret chord of which Leonard Cohen sings...well, I don't have to tell you how that goes do I? If you haven't heard it...well, that's why there's stories from the Bible, sermons from me, and songs from Leonard Cohen.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

A Flood of Biblical Proportions

2011-06-07T09:01:00.002-05:00

They tell me the Missouri River hasn't been like this since the Garrison Dam was finished in 1952 (or was it 1953?). There is a lot of water. Which got me to thinking about Noah...

Now more than a few of you probably know the story of Noah. He was a man whom God entrusted to save creatures from the devastation of a flood God was going to send to end humanity as we know it. There are a few variations of this story, but the result from the Jewish tradition is that God sent a rainbow after the flood was over as a way to promise God's love to the survivors...and--ostensibly--not send another flood. There aren't many rainbows around here Kermit!

The flood and all the work that goes into battling water is now approaching its third week, and people are saying that it will be like this until August. Some people are wondering if the river will ever return to what it was a month ago. People are tired, and even now a few are wondering if some lifetyle changes are in order...there are a few who haven't left the flood zone, and probably will return the minute the National Guard lets them!

What to say about all this? How about something like the God that creates the river is the same God that redeems the people whose homes are washing away? How about that we live in a world where our relationship with God is not dependent upon the good and bad that happens (or even that we may or may not do), but rather is dependent upon the love we share with God, ourselves, and with each other? Jesus Christ is not a judge of good and evil--he is beyond good and evil--he is a judge of love, of character, or compassion, a judge of hope, a judge of peace, a judge of sharing...

Natural "disasters" are never about good and evil, right and wrong, or other such moral and ethical dichotomies--they are about love...which is why we help sandbag, move furniture and pictures to higher ground, and sell our trailers to friends in need at 25 cents on the dollar...there is the love even in a flood of biblical proportions.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

If Love wins, now what? A Final Thought

2011-05-30T07:32:00.002-05:00

For someone like me knowing (and knowing is more than just an intellectual assent) that God's love wins in the end provides the only reason to do the stuff God invites me to do in the world.

I mean, if it were up to me I would spend all my time driving around in fast cars, hanging out with friends examining the trivia of life, and constantly be in search of the next good time. I wouldn't help friends who are threatened by natural disasters, much less strangers...I wouldn't care that children in this world go hungry...I wouldn't be bothered that people who make money want to see people who don't put into jails and slavery...but God's love wins...

And that changes everything. For one, it means that I don't have to fear the future as much, and for me that means I can spend time taking care of this planet. (I believe one of the reason we abuse the planet is because we fear the future, and so we want to get all we can out of this planet while we can). I joined a conservation organization (the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation) when I realized God loves this planet too...

Because God's love wins out in the end I don't have to fear strangers, and I can trust my friends...because even should a stranger or a friend abuse that trust, God's love still makes the betrayal into something of value. So I can make some sandbags for folks I don't know...I can donate money to places of need...I can offer my home to those who need a bed...and should my body, should my money, should my home be taken advantage of--well, there is always God's love to carry me onto the next day.

It is true that I drive a fast car (a really fast one these days)...it is also true that I hang out with friends and examine the trivia of life...and my beautiful wife and I are always in search of a good time...but they are encompassed in the eternal reach of God's outstretched arms of love though Jesus the Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit...because to say God's love wins is to say God wins...the one in whom we live not only for ourselves but for each other.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

If Love Wins, now what? Part III

2011-05-23T10:25:00.002-05:00

God's love wins through the power of the Spirit in the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ...now what? With worries about our future, and especially our future with the Divine power that moves in and through the universe, taken care of in a promise to be loved forever...now what? In a world where love peeks through, even amidst the darkest of personal or corporate tragedy, and where human capacity for love stretches to the ends of the earth...now what? Now that we have seen this love in action even through death on a cross...now what?

How about something like this?

Early in my ministry I was walking through the tunnels that connected the various buildings and parking ramps of the University of Minnesota hospital system. It was 1994, and my world was going well. I had a wonderful wife and two lovely, growing children, and I was really getting into the routine of being a parish pastor. I had friends that I could celebrate and share with, and as the song went a "future so bright I had to wear shades." And then I saw him...

Walking towards me down this tunnel was a very skinny man in a hospital gown flapping along with him. Even from a distance I could see he was very unkept, and his hair was sticking out all over the place. He was tugging a portable oxygen container behind him with the tubes connected to his nose, and his pace was very slow, almost as if he didn't want to move at all. Oh, and he was smoking.

When you are in a tunnel that is 10 feet wide and 8 feet tall you do not want to see somebody who has an open oxygen container smoking a cigarette. Something about an explosion in a confined space just seemed to not be the way I want to meet my maker. And it would put an end to my great life. So I stopped to talk to him.

I introduced myself as a pastor going to visit one of the patients, and asked him how he was doing? He introduced himself as Alan, and said "not good." Tell me about I said. Oh, and the smoke itches my nose.

"Sorry," he muttered in a weak voice, and stubbed it out on the greenish tile floor.

Why aren't you good Alan?

"Well, I have AIDS. They say I am going to die soon." At this point I felt bad for making him put out his cigarette, but now I found myself in a conversation with the first person I ever met who has this disease(or at least that I knew of, as not everybody was forthcoming with that information in those days). Over the next ten minutes or so he proceeeded to relate to me how everyone in his life had abandoned him over the past few years, family, friends, even his lover was gone, although he had died of AIDS just a couple of months prior.

Now it is common for me to pray with someone at the end of our time together, and often times I will hold their hand. But as I was thinking about offering to pray I had a thought? What if I get AIDS? Now, I didn't know much about the disease at the time except that if you got it, you were going to die, and looking at Alan it did not seem like the most dignified way to go. And--I didn't want to die. But standing there looking at this agonized human, completely alone, I remembered God loves me. And I remembered in the cross branded on my heart that even when I die God loves me, just like God loves everybody, just like God loves Alan. So, I reached out, grabbed his hand, and asked if I could pray?

He joined me at the Amen, and left his hand in mine. He stared me down before letting go. "Thank you," he said, "I've forgotten what it's like to be touched." He reached into the pocket of his gown for another cigarette and his lighter. As I was walking away I could smell him light it...and I was completely fine with that.

Good thing God's love wins, yes?

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

There's a lot to be said for being me--or, in your case, you

2011-05-18T09:18:00.002-05:00

I read quite a few theology blogs over the course of a week. Most are from people such as me, your regular, everyday run-of-the-mill Church or religious leader who wants a place to write. We blog about important stuff, and sometimes I read pretty impressive thoughts and ideas. I hear the strains of the gospel amidst everything from the mundane to the sublime. And I read the stuff too by the well-known folks...and here is where it gets interesting.

According to "Blogger" about 47 people read "Thoughts from the Prairie Table" every week. I once had a post that 63 people read, but I'm not sure why that was one you all chose...(It is entitled "Kitchen Drama.") Since I figure I must know most of you, I use this as a way to be "me." That is, I don't say much that I wouldn't say to your face, or say what I want to be preached or taught by me. Every now and then a new person reads a blog (my favorite was a guy from New Zealand), but almost always I know him or her as well.

This colors my writing in these blogs because, short of swearing (which is the biggest difference between my speaking and my writing), I figure if you tolerate me in person, you'll probably tolerate me in print. Now, my writing may be obscure, difficult, and bad, but through the "comments" I can try to clarify a question or two...some posts are irredeemable (and we'll just not talk about those). But we're all pretty much friends here, and because you 47 are spread out over 40 years, you're all friends of mine...which is enough to make you friends with each other, even if you don't know anyone else but me. Right?

But when I read these more famous folks, well, their readers are legion, and there is no indication that there is a friendship between the author and the reader. So, there is a lot more contentious debate, vitriol, support, encouragement, and all the other stuff that strangers argue about on-line, and in the 3D world we all live in together.

Reading people's comments as stranger-to-stranger is difficult for me because I don't want to argue, but some people are just not correct...but how do you tell a stranger you cannot agree? It's only as friends that our conversations amidst our differences can make a difference. It's only when I'm me and you're you that our conversations hold forth the promised peace and righteousness of God for us all. Two strangers tossing platitudes back-and-forth on the internet is not life-changing for anyone.

Nietzsche--and you're really an long-time friend if you remember that Nietzsche is my favorite philosopher--once wrote that "it is not courage to have convictions--but to stand an attack upon your convictions!" Most of what I read on the internet shows a lot of courage (maybe, maybe not, as the anonyminity piece might be a huge variable to the Nietzsche quote), but for all the "courage" I would like to read more friends...

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

If Love wins, now what? Part II

2011-05-16T10:26:00.002-05:00

(During the upcoming month I will also be blogging for Darkwoodbrew a "renegade exploration of the Christian faith." You can find other great blogs and worship experiences at Darkwoodbrew.org. Please click over there to check it out.)

This week we look at how God's love wins for us. One big question we have to answer is the question of time and eternity. Time is like 2011, or tomorrow, or even a decade. Eternity is--well--forever. Usually we think of time as part of eternity, but it is not all of time (which is eternity.) Got it? Good.

One of the most memorable SNL skits is when Simon and Garfunkel have to spend eternity in an elevator listening to the Muzak versions of their songs. This is hell for them. In fact, most of the time we consider an eternity of what we hate/fear the most as our defintion of "hell." Hell in this sense is whatever we fear or hate to the point that if we had to do it forever and ever and ever would be the absolutely worst thing to imagine. So, if your biggest fear, as for many of the folks who wrote the Bible, is to be apart from God--then, "hell" is time forever apart from God.

And Jesus, at least according to Paul in the book of Philippians, doesn't want it this way. Listen to what Jesus does in the famous "Christ Hymn" of Philippians 2:
First, "he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited," that is, Jesus did not want to take advantage of his being God, so he "emptied himself." He gave up being God for being "born in human likeness...and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross." So, Jesus, although he is God (and presumably immortal), he takes on dying. Now listen to what happens.

God, instead of getting angry with Jesus for going on and dying (and therefore NOT being a very good god--what's the point of being God if you're going to die?), but God "exalted him" (raised him up) and gave him the name "above every name." God's love, we argue, raises Jesus from the dead, and brings Jesus back to God. God's love is God's "Yes" to the negation that is the death on the cross suffered by Jesus. As we "confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" we too have death answered for us. Death has no power over Jesus, and in our confession no power over us, so that even though we die we live forever in eternity with God and Jesus as our Lord. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, and our confession of it, we die in time, but we live forever in eternity. (Other Bible writers say we are to "believe" in Jesus...so choose the one--confess or believe--that you undertand best.)

Now, because of what Jesus did, and God's response to it, you and I don't have to worry about eternity (we live forever, even when we die.) We are free. What you do on earth has nothing to do with what Jesus did for eternity. Some people worry about this, because they think that what we do here on earth doesn't matter. They are wrong. What we do on earth here is part of eternity, so, be careful how you act on earth because it might be how you act forever. But it might not...

Because now that you can do whatever you want in time because eternity is taken care of, what are you going to do? Are you going to act in rapacious, self-centered, greedy ways? Or, are you going to live in hope, peace, and cooperation? Now that you don't have to worry about eternity, how are you going to live today? Or, as Paul says at the end of the Christ hymn, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, because God is at work in you." Paul understands it's scary to be living these days, but he also understands that Jesus got eternity handled, and for Paul that means God's love wins, and we had absolutely nothing to do with it--yet, in our confession and believing Jesus is Lord that eternal love is our gift. Amazing, but true,

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

If Love wins, now what?

2011-05-09T12:42:00.003-05:00

(During the upcoming month I will also be blogging for Darkwoodbrew a "renegade exploration of the Christian faith." You can find other great blogs and worship experiences at Darkwoodbrew.org. Please click over there to check it out.)

This series by the folks at Countryside Community Church, Omaha, NE, and part of their Darkwoodbrew exploration of Christian faith, comes about because one Rob Bell, a serious and important Christian leader (Google him), has got himself into some hot water for suggesting that God's love is the most important thing in the world. And although most Christian do not doubt this--he seems to suggest that maybe, if love wins, no one will go to hell. A few Christians (alright, probably most) do not believe that. So Pastor Bell finds himself in the midst of a maelstorm of discontent for daring to believe "love wins."

What I want to do over the next four weeks is develop an extended argument that takes seriously the title of this series "If love wins, now what?" I propose to break out my thoughts this way.
May 9: look at the word "if" and what that says about God and humanity
May 16: look at God's love, and why it wins
May 23: look at what we are freed to do because God's love wins
May 30: Why love is not what wins, but God who is love is the ultimate
If we can accomplish a bit each week, I hope we can begin to see how important God's love is, and what we do as people who "live and move and have our being" in that love of God. I don't know how renegade it will be, but I hope it proves fruitful for your faith journey.

I think it is imperative to realize what we are talking about with this word "love." Here is a key verse from the Bible:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."
1 John 4.7-8

For the writer of this verse, this love is proven in Jesus as God's only son sent into the world so we might live. But here is a thing I find interesting about these verses.

God is love, but "love" is not God. In other words, we worship God not love. What amuses me at weddings sometimes is how the couple thinks the ceremony is about "love." Their relationship may be loving, they may even be in love with each other, but the point of the marriage, the relationship between the couple--is not "love," but rather God. They are together because they are part of God's world and God's understanding of how life is meant to be shared and lived with others, and it is God--not love--that creates the relationship.

So "if" love wins, it is only because God wins. And this is what makes hell such a problematic belief--the doctrine of hell basically asserts there is something more powerful than God. That is, something is stronger than God's desire to love, and when God's love encounters that force (usually rendered as some form of human recalcitrance), God's love loses. For the writer of 1 John and for myself, there is nothing more powerful than God's desire to love, and not even human stubbornness can overcome this desire. (If human stubbornness could defeat God's desire, that would make humanity more powerful than God, and therefore, why would we need God? People who believe in hell basically are disobeying the first commandment to put God above all things. They place the human will to disobey above God's desire to love.)

If you believe God is all-powerful, and you believe God is love, well, you are left with the conclusion that "love (that is God's love) wins." I know that people will say that God is love, but that God chooses--because of free will--to let people go to hell. That might be true, but that makes God a god of "free-will," and that's not what John said God is about. God is about love, not free-will. Free will is just another way to put human capacity in front of God's desire to love. Therefore, once again, it would not be God's love that wins, but rather the human capacity to choose (free will) that wins.

If God's love wins then we are under God's love, and we have to surrender much, including our ideas about hell, our own free will, and there is even more--but I won't make you any more depressed--because remember this: God made humanity just a little under angels, and there is nothing better in the whole universe than to be in the love of God, because, as John mentioned, that puts you in the love of neighbors, and that means, no matter how bad it gets...you're never alone.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

On the Death of a terrorist...

2011-05-02T16:42:00.001-05:00

They tell me the greatest terrorist is dead, and I am relieved. I must admit, even as the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I never thought about him much. I don't even think about terrorism much...although every now and then in an airport I am reminded of its presence in our world...but even if terrorism never occurs to me, I am relieved that this chapter of USA history is over, and now the healing has begun.

People often ask me how I can be relieved at the death (in all probablity more like murder) of someone? Well, it depends on how you think about that death...if you think about it in terms of a person, a human struggling to control life even to the point of killing people...well, even his death carries ramifications. But what about the protection of those who will not die because he is no longer facilitating death? What about the lives saved because a terrorist can no longer kill? What about the places no longer under terrorism--at least from this source? Should we not rejoice that more won't die because of this one who was an instrument of death?

Coming on the heels of Good Friday, where the death of our "terrorist" of the day was crucified, there were no doubt people who rejoiced because Jesus of Nazareth would no longer be able to spread his poison to the people. Death is death, whether an itinerant Jewish prophet or a radical political terrorist. But Easter is easter...

And the itinerant Jewish prophet did not stay dead--not because he was so special--but because God didn't want him dead--God wanted him alive, and resurrected him from death to the right hand of God to be alive forever. And it is at his name that life is for all of us...and as for the dead terrorist, I am not sure he knows more now than he did a few days ago...but I am sure that those of us who are still around are to keep living...otherwise, what's the point of being alive?

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Doubt and Christian faith

2011-04-26T08:55:00.002-05:00

A young man rushed up to me the other night during my dinner and asked to see me outside. Putting down my fork, I looked at my friends who all nodded assent. (I would love to say this is uncommon in my life, but it happens quite a bit...and my friends are very accommodating.) So as I gathered with him under the portico of the diner's door, he looked at me and said "I am going to die."

Now, such a statement is true for all of us (sorry to break the bad news!)He seemed to think, however, that his was a lot more imminent than mine. (I have a deal with God--until the Minnesota Vikings win a Super Bowl I cannot die. It is my deal for immortality.)I asked how he knew his death was coming on so soon? "I don't think I believe Jesus rose from the dead!" When you don't "think" that you "believe" you are in some serious linguistic trouble. So you doubt your relationship with God, I asked?

Oh no, he said, I am just not sure Jesus rose...hey, does this mean I don't believe in God now too? (I love this stuff.)

How are the two beliefs related? I mean, do you only believe in God because Jesus rose from the dead?

I...I...I...don't know, he replied back. I guess not, when I think about it. (Which goes to show we should always think about the things we think about. It makes us sound smarter at least.)

Exactly. Most people's belief in God--I guess- doesn't really hinge upon Jesus' resurrection, even if there are a whole bunch of preachers and folks who want us to believe that. So it seems to me that the resurrection of Jesus has to be about something other than your belief in God. Do you believe in the resurrection because you don't want to die?

By now the young man was sitting on the bench with the evening's drizzle falling on his sweater. Yeah...that's why I thought I believed it.

But, now you realize you're going to die anyway? I paused a bit. Good thing you still believe in God.

He looked up at me, and those creases of doubt were morphing into a smile of comprehension. (This is a teacher's greatest moment--hands down.)Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, he said to no one in particular. So the resurrection keeps my life going with God?

Yeah, I sighed. Pretty nice of God, huh?

He stared out into the parking lot for a few seconds. Why would God do that, he mused, as he contemplated the Easter rain?

Careful, I said, keep asking questions like that, and pretty soon you'll be a Christian. How about we go back to dinner?

As he led me into the restaurant I went back to my friends. Who was that, Bruce asked? I don't know, I said, I can't remember his name.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

When I Survey that wondrous cross

2011-04-20T14:49:00.001-05:00

My college roommate once remarked that he couldn't think of Jesus on the cross without coming to tears at such incredible suffering. The fate of Jesus, suffocating on the cross as he did, is indeed a gruesome way to die. And if you add to that death its importance in the relationship drama between God and humanity...well, you have a passion that is almost too much to bear.

A few years ago when Mel Gibson came out with his movie "The Passion of Christ" we saw in graphic detail what Jesus may have experienced. From the earliest recorders of Jesus story we have some words (traditionally seven phrases) that Jesus uttered from the cross. All of them were some version of prayer or hope that the world would be a better place. 2000 years after his death I wonder how much better it is?

Do we love God more now than then?
Are we respectful and nicer to our neighbors and strangers than they were then?
Do we care about our parents and friends more than they did then?
Is now a more tolerant and loving time than it was then?
Are we more patient with people now than they were then?
Would we still put Jesus up on the cross if we got the chance?

The cross, like our baptism, is a daily reminder of the struggle life is. It has never been easy to live, never been a carefree happy time like the TV commercials seem to make life out to be...We have needed a cross eternally, and at least since Jesus' death, we have one...and here is the interesting thing about that cross. It is now empty...just like the tomb where his dead body lay. Maybe, just maybe, we too have an empty cross and tomb in our future?

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

The Holiest of Weeks

2011-04-19T08:34:00.007-05:00

When you're a mission developer, as opposed to a residential pastor in an established congregation, religious holidays are often weeks of less work, not more. This makes sense in one way, because as a mission developer I spend most of my time with people who are not Christian, or at least people not encumbered with Christian religious traditions, so any religious "holy-day" is for them--at best--a secular holiday.

As a mission developer no one asks me what kind of palms we have on Palm Sunday, what the worship "plan" is for Good Friday, or even who is going to be the volunteer to get their feet washed this year on Maundy Thursday. Rather, people are just going about their week, and they know they have some kind of family obligation on Sunday, but they hope it won't take too long because "I have so much to do before Monday." So for many of the people I deal with, Easter is a time to be with family for awhile before the regular pace of life creeps back in. The kids, of course, will find this a time of chocolate at grandma's house...but other than...not much to this holy week stuff.

Now, back when I was a residential pastor in an established congregation, this holy week stuff was crazy fun. Worship on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Big celebrations on Easter Sunday were being rehearsed and fine-tuned. We had special Bible studies, fasts from food, and times of prayer and spiritual direction. It seems like we saved up all our religiosity for the entire year to be spent on this one week. (One Monday after Easter, I actually admitted myself into a ministry mental health clinic...after I spent 24 hours immobilized from stress.)

The stress of Holy Week is way less as a mission developer, but I wonder...
if there is something to the idea that love is our mandate
if there is something to washing the feet of another in a world of shoes
if there is something in the purple that stands for the royalty of Christ
if there is something in the barrenness of an altar that is now a tomb
if there is something in the old, rugged cross
if we miss out on hearing "Father, forgive them, they don't have a clue."
if bury ourselves if we forget the darkness of Friday is God's promise to live
if we never hear of a God whose love is so deep, so wide, so free...
What might we have lost?

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

A Day of Beauty

2011-04-11T20:49:00.000-05:00

Today was the first nice day of 2011 up here on the prairie. We had lots of sunshine and the temp almost reached 70 degrees. It is the kind of day that begs to have you come out and play. And the people of Bismarck responded. Even the prairie dogs my daughter and I kicked up at Double Ditch seemed grateful that the long December was over.

But a day this beautiful has one drawback: like pro athletes and pretty girls-it never hears the truth. Days like today bask in their warmth and sunshine, the soft breeze whispered sweet nothings all day, and everybody just sort of let it ride. Why not? There aren't that many days like this-why remind us it's still early April? Why be a downer on a beautiful day? Enjoy it and let the good days roll.

So we do. We ignore the forecast for snow on Friday. The inevitable hail that is just around the corner. Even the really hot and humid days of August can be brushed aside by such a beautiful day like today. Beauty can do that-distract you from the ordinariness of everything.

I know that is why I like beautiful things and beautiful people. I remember Dostoyevsky had the Father of the Karamozov brothers remark that he tried to find the beautiful in every woman he meets. I have always taken that to try and find the beautiful- a metaphor for God's creative power- in everything and everyone I encounter. There is no such thing as an ugly flower, an ugly tree, or an ugly woman in my world. It's all beautiful...which makes a day like today seem like a little bit of heaven.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Teams vs. Stars

2011-03-28T09:55:00.002-05:00

If you are like me, and have only a casual interest in college basketball until the time for the NCAA Basketball Tournament (March Madness), it is quite fun to pick which teams will win versus which stars will shine. Let me explain my theory: There are two types of successful college basketball teams (this only applies to college hoops), and each do pretty well in the tourney. The first kind of team is dominated by top-flight talent, usually very young, and usually destined for the NBA pro game. A great player, say Dwayne Wade or Carmelo Anthony and even a Jonny Flynn (all right, maybe a stretch, but he's a beloved Timberwolf!), can take a mediocre program and make it great. The other kind of team plays together for a few years, has a coach who trusts players, and most of the folks won't ever play in the NBA. For years Duke University epitomized this type of team, but now there are a lot of good, young coaches and players playing for teams like Butler and Virginia Commonwealth University who can compete in one game showdowns.

As I looked at the games, and scanned headlines about the teams, I did pretty well this year, all things considered. I have UConn because they have the superstar, a kid named Kemba Walker. I went with North Carolina rather than Kentucky--I backed the wrong superstar...should have taken UK's. I had the other Richmond, VA team (literally Richmond), but I'm counting it as a win that VCU (also in Richmond) made it. I mean, who thought the city of Richmond, VA would have the most teams in the final 16? I almost picked Butler, but I underestimated their coach...I will not make that mistake again. Good coaching means way more in college basketball than in almost any other sport. Anyhow...it's pretty easy to predict who's going to win in college basketball: you just take great stars and even greater teams. For the record, great stars tend to be champions...look for UConn to win it all.

Which brings me to the Bible, and specifically Moses. According to the Bible the most famous Jewish leader ever died, and no one knows where he is buried..."to this day." Moses was a great star, he won the championship of his day--defeating Pharoah and his army, with a lot of help from Yahweh and other friends. But in the end the Bible is always about the team. Whether Jewish or Christian, as important as individuals may be, what they do for the rest of us is more important than anything they do for themselves. I mean, Jesus the Christ, perhaps the most famous human who ever lived, did little for himself other than die...but look what that did for us? His resurrection made us all brothers and sisters, it made us...a team.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

A Hallelujah

2011-03-21T09:36:00.003-05:00

It seems like I have been praying for the safe return of soldiers forever. I think from the minute I was ordained in 1991 our country went to war, and we have been in a state of battle pretty much ever since...I have no problems praying for soldiers and for peace...but I wish it would end...

Every now and then I pray for some young person who has ended their life by their own hand. Always a sad time to see families and friends of suicide victims who not only mourn their loss, but mourn their failure to help or be part of a better solution...even if there never was a choice in the ending...a broken heart doesn't always see clearly.

My prayers are for the aging, especially those who experience their world at pace so fast and so out-of-control that they wonder in fear at things they were able in former times to conquer and survive...how disconcerting it can be to sit and watch a lifetime of effort and achievement be mutated and changed without so much as a nod to its provenance and history...

At times I pray for those in relationships that cannot bear the fruit of dreams held tightly against a heaving chest...how can a man or a woman or a family or a congregation measure up to the dreams of youngsters clutching teddy bears and awaiting the dawn? Who can compete against not only the perfect, but the icon of a world in which we do not live?

I always pray for death...not that it comes...but that we see it for what it is: a rest stop on a journey given by God to each of us to live, and live forever in Jesus Christ...that death--the death of a life well lived to that point--is a gift itself...not because we die nobly or in the arms of God, but rather because in dying we see sorrow for what it really is...the connective hallelujah of our lives together on earth.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

"Poor" Rob Bell, Hell, and "universalism"

2011-03-14T08:54:00.003-05:00

The title of this post is beyond ironic...Rob Bell is no more in need of a defense of an idea like God's love "wins," than God needs me to help with traffic...and universalism is a made up heresy that weak-faith Christians developed years ago to make things easier on themselves...and hell? Well, I do believe in hell I guess--it's just that I am not sure anyone is there, except maybe the Caretaker.

I find Christians that have faith only because they fear hell to be a bit weak...
I find Christians who believe and construct "either/ors" in order to stay believing to be weak..
I find Christians who can't handle--even as only an intellectual construct--the idea that God might love everything God creates to be silly...

So, for me, Rob Bell can go on believing God's love wins out in the end, even if it's not perfect from our end...make another Nooma series brother!
I fully tolerate the idea and possibility that I might be wrong, and God might have a special "place" in hell for me...I am not going to stop believing in God's undying love for the stuff God makes just because I might wind up in hell...cowardice is the worst sin in my mind...
The way I understand some Chrsitians and their need to have a place like hell for those who are not believers: I think those Christians have a healthy doctrine of sin and a non-existent doctrine of creation...(which is a big problem because the Christian story starts with creation, not sin...they are in essence going against the very narrative of Christianity by believing in sin before creation.)
BUT ENOUGH!

Ponder instead this Lent the love of a God on a cross...a God whose outstretched arms embrace the very people crucifying him...stretching to embrace a world that antagonizes him...a world which "hates" him (at least according to John)...Isn't this why we believe in God? We believe because we want to measure up to the high standard of humanity to which God made us...we believe because we want to enjoy and steward a world God made of beauty, truth, and justice...we believe not so others can be ignored or degraded, but rather in our belief be strengethened, encouraged, and even believe themselves...sin is out there friends...but so is love...and which one do you want to win?

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

If the Church were Christian...

2011-03-12T07:21:00.003-06:00

I am reading a fun book by a Quaker (who grew up a Roman Catholic) called If the Church were Christian: Rediscovering the values of Jesus (Philip Gulley, HarperOne: 2010). I say "fun" because I am always interested in the movements which seek to run counter to prevailing tradition, or "orthodoxy" as he calls it. I mean, the idea that the current state of the "Church" (or states of Congregations as I might call it) does not adequately meet the needs of God's people and the world is not really new. I mean, if Jesus had written a book like this he may well have titled it "If the Temple were Jewish: Rediscovering the values of LORD."

The Church, at least as reformers like Luther and Calvin understood, is always in need of reformation. The reason is not because God goes out of style or becomes irrelevant or something like that, but because people change. And the faster change goes, the slower the "Church" seems, and therefore the more it is in need of "rediscovering" what it is supposed to be about. It is not that a leader like Pr. Gulley does not need to write such a book, but he needs to write it every day if he is to be in the reforming tradition (at least the reforming tradition that raised me where baptism was seen as a daily occurrence because "life" is a daily onslaught.)

And in a roundabout way, this book reminded me of why I can never be a Quaker. (I will, however, become a Quaker if they ever get down to only 1 left because I believe in the tradition so much, even if it is not my first understanding of God's way.) As a Christian, and in this case one who claims a Lutheran heritage, I am less interested in what Jesus valued than what God values. (In that sentence, Jesus and God can be the same subject, but notice the tense of the verb "value.") In other words, what God wants "now," is more important to me than what Jesus wanted "then."

For me, what Jesus wanted was for us to live as humanly as we were created to be by the Lord of all creation. Now, in this way, this is what God values today; however, we are in a different world than Jesus was, and how we live out our created humanity differs from his. For example, what do we do with the knowledge that Japan may well be irreparably destroyed by the recent earthquakes and tsunamis? I can think of no story or teaching of Jesus that related to a world larger than 40 square miles...what does it mean to be a created human when you know about peoples' lives you have never met or never will? Jesus never answered this question; just as he never answered questions about Buddhism, weapons of mass destruction, exhorbitant interest rates, or hedge funds. (Granted he may have hinted around those last two, as he was always talking about money and economics.)*

So for me the important question is what does God prefer these days? Jesus can guide us, model us, free us, save us, redeem us, release us, (oh...you get the picture) but it is God who sets the mission. (I am one of those theologians who believes that God redeems the world in Christ so that creation can continue on.) So I don't need the Church to be Christian at all...I would like it to be Godly, which if Jesus is the Christ and he has anything to do with it, means it will be the most human place around.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

*One of the funniest things about Jesus always talking about money and economics is that the Church is always blasted when it does that, and is then in need of "reform." Really? How do you follow the values of Jesus unless you are talking about money, justice, and economics? People have to pull their heads out of the sand on this one.

The Oscars, Charlie Sheen, and the power of images

2011-02-28T17:14:00.003-06:00

Last night was the Oscars, the ceremony where the world's most creative image-makers and storytellers decide what images were "best." I watch some movies, even saw a few of the ones up for "Best Picture," but I did not see "King's Speech" which won the award. I was happy for that choice though. The story, which it seems to me is the same story in most of the movies nominated, is a bit trite: someone overcomes obstacles to achieve success. (This is Hollywood's favorite story.) But the image of the story this year seems compelling...Colin Firth struggling to speak clearly.

This morning I was treated to excerpts of an interview with Charlie Sheen. Same story as "King's Speech," whole different image...Charlie Sheen overcomes an obstacle (addicition to drugs and alcohol), but does not struggle to speak clearly...and while many of his major premises are debatable, the conclusions of his speech are rhetorically warranted. and crystal clear. But alas, his conclusions serve not to bring people together, but to separate them...which is the exact opposite of the King's speech...speaking clearly only has value if we are raised to our human highest as a collective...and that is always worth a "best!"

Jesus has the ability to tell stories and create images which raise humanity to its divinely-made stature. He might have struggled with clarity at times, frustated at his inability to convey what needed to be told...but in the end, on the cross, he presented an enduring image of love that has bound people together across cultures for centuries. No movie could be expected to do that...although we can talk after 2000 years if one survives...and certainly no celebrity can be expected to withstand the pressures of fame without a bit of delusion somewhere...

But I struggle between two images this evening: a King who stutters and brings people together and a celebrity who speaks so clearly as to divide humanity into camps of violence and anger...I love images, I love clarity of speech, and I love the passion evoked from them...but I don't like violence and I don't like anger...not because violence and anger killed Jesus of Nazareth, but because they stop me from being the person God created me to be...maybe we all should learn to stutter before we speak?

May your table be full, and your conversations be true.

PS: I so wanted to make a "crystal(-meth) clear" joke...so I did! Sorry, Charlie.

Truth and Honesty in the Pulpit

2011-02-18T14:46:00.002-06:00

(This blog comes on the reflection of Rachel Held Evan's recent blog "Dear Pastors-Tell us the Truth" rachelheldevans.com A blog I appreciate very much.)

To tell the "truth" from the pulpit or the be "honest?" That is the question.

Because "truth" and "honesty" from the pulpit are not the same thing. When Rev. Held Evans asked what we want our pastors to be "honest" about it is not the same thing as what we want our pastors to be "truthful" about. We crave honesty, but we abhor truth. This is what made Jack Nicholson's line in "A Few Good Men" so powerful as a line, and one that has inured itself into our pop-culture lexicon...we really cannot handle the truth. He was being totally honest (which we can handle)...but truth? Not-so-much.

The reason why there are preachers in the first place is because we do not want to hear the truth. So a pastor telling the "truth" is sort of just angling for trouble, because we already know we don't want to hear it. We don't want to hear about our vulnerability, our culpability, our prejudices, our hatreds, our fears, and all the stuff that keeps us up at night, and well-drugged when awake. And people who are veterans of sermon-hearing and sermon-giving also pretty well know that God didn't make us this way... So to preach the "truth" from the pulpit is the height of narcissism...because it changes absolutely nothing.

But perhaps even Rev. Held Evans knows this because her question was what do we want from pastors in terms of "honesty?" She did not use "truth," even though that was her phrase in the blog. Why not? I suspect because she knows "truth" can never be preached (only lived), and honesty is the only sermon worth preaching or hearing about. Honesty can happen even in the most contrived story possible...think Jonah and his honesty and not wanting to do God's bidding...honesty can happen when a preacher admits that her or his sermon might not be the final word on this topic or event...honesty can happen when the preacher tells the congregation they probably don't want to hear the "truth"..."Honesty" is always possible, which is why it can be used as a synonym for "righteousness" in a way that "truth" never can.

In Christianity when we talk about "righteousness" we have some inkling of "honesty" in the back of our minds...we honestly want to follow God, we honestly want to be part of God's divine plan, we honestly wish we were better...but we are righteous precisely because our honesty knows we haven't been "true," or accepted the "truth." We need the righteousness God creates for us in Christ Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit in order for the truth to be made known--that we are not able--it seems-- of being true, telling the truth, or living truthfully...and that requires a huge amount of honesty to admit, and even more honesty to live through.

Especially if you preach for a living.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

A Day in Detroit Lakes

2011-02-16T15:18:00.002-06:00

I spent last weekend with some great leaders from northern Minnesota. Tucked up amidst some beautiful lakes and woods, the area held great promise for a day of conversation and planning for congregational vitalization.

Upon arrival I learned this group of leaders was struggling...not from a lack of effort or even from a crisis of faith--struggling because the changes that were taking place in their congregations they were not prepared to deal with, much less manage. These folks were not worried about their souls, or even the souls of their friends and fellow passengers of life, they were worried about what it means to be "church" these days.

They knew what "church" used to mean, but they are not so sure about it anymore...one gentleman, on hearing that I am part of Prairie Table Ministries, wondered if we use all that "Boom-Boom" music in our worship? He didn't like it he said, but he does realize a lot of people do. When I told him we didn't use (or rarely use) music in our worship, he was nonplussed. Bach chorales or Michael W. Smith are not the keys to the gates of heaven...you don't need music to worship God. This was something he could not process...How is it worship without music, he asked? Well, I said, we talk a lot. A lot.

The LateNite worship at Prairie Table is not a Taize-style endeavor, nor do we sing new songs or old songs or any songs much any more...We talk instead. We offer thoughts and opinions on God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and all through words rather than lyrics. One of my colleagues at seminary once asked how do we "control" that? Well, control isn't a big thing for us. But we figure if a song like "How Great Thou Art" can convey somewhat interesting theological ideas, someone who perused the internet and found something meaningful there isn't too far off track...

But "church" these days has to get out of finding new ways to do old things...we have to jettison the old things and find new things...maybe done in old ways...but why do music in worship if no one wants to sing? Why do a sermon if no one wants to listen or no one wants to preach? Since when has singing and preaching been the best ways to worship God? In my tradition we have defined "church" around a phrase "Word and Sacrament." But that phrase is code for "some professional we deem trustworthy." I'm sure the professionals appreciate the honor, but I am not sure God requires it. And if the people in Detroit Lakes, MN are representative, such an idea might just be the death of "church." They know the professionals are few and far between out there, but there must still be a way to worship God, right? Right? Right?

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Valentine's Day post-mortem

2011-02-16T14:58:00.002-06:00

Another Valentine's Day passes, and another year goes by commemorating romantic love--the most trivial kind. As one of my friends said about Valentine's Day, "I hate it...everyone is so happy. Ick." There is something to that.

Chris and I were at a restaurant wanting to order our favorite burger and beer, when we were told they had only a "special" Valentine's Day menu available that night. Burgers, apparently, are not appropriate for this day of celebration? Perhaps the fried onions would have been too much in a post-dinner kiss? Who knows?

But as we left (we went to Five Guys Burgers for dinner instead) there were a whole bunch of guys there wondering what they had gotten themselves into this evening. Their dates were pointing out all the cool bric-a-brac and memorabilia that makes that restaurant somewhat fun, but all they could see were hefty prices, and almost no chance for their usual beverage of choice...and really, who wants to do Valentine's Day sober?

But we get so caught up in a trying to make romance a subsitute for caring and concern for another that we miss the whole point of "love." One of my younger friends, whose current boyfriend is quite comfortable talking about loving her, said to me that she thinks about this love a lot. I've decided, she said, that if I wouldn't jump out in front of a bus to save him, I probably don't love him. So we aren't lovers. I nodded. I said, You're right. Lovers don't do that...but friends do.

She was concerned. A friend jumps out in front of the bus...not a lover...what you use as a defintion of lover most of us use as a definition for a friend...So if you don't want to make him your friend--OK, but then he's probably your lover. (She tapped me here.)

What is the day we use to celebrate the friends in our lives? The people who mean most to us--and some of our friends can be lovers too (there is a song brewing here!) When Jesus was leaving his disicples for the last time, he called them friends, because there is no higher honor to give to a person...would that Hallmark and all the people obsessed with Valentine's Day have the same notion. One friend is more important than a 100 lovers.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Why is God so far away?

2011-02-01T08:51:00.002-06:00

Because Christianity centers on a relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit there is always the tendency for God to seem so far away...

If we had a religion where God is supposed to be far away, directing life--as it were--through a series of commands or jump-starting some physical process...it would not bother us that God seems so far away. Alas, we have borrowed this idea that God wants a relationship with us from our Jewish ancestors, and so we sit by the rivers of Babylon, dried tongues a'hanging, while our captors goad us into song...And we worry that God seems so far away.

But then I hear about Egypt, about people rising up against established tryanny, and although I know it will make my gas prices go up, I hear the cry of God for people to live, explore, dance, share, and grow in ways that could only be explained by the hand of God. (OK, maybe Twitter too!) Even though almost all of the people involved are not of the same faith as myself, I hold that the God I worship wants them to be a free as I am...I mean, God did not create freedom just for Christians, right? I want my peers in Tunisia, Egypt...even this morning I hear Jordan-- to be able to expand life into all the realms of God's glorious creation. The status quo is always for the greedy and the lazy...and I am not interested in that.

So just when I think God is far away, CNN shows me a young Egyptian protesting against the shackles of tryanny and ignorance...so I realize God is not so far away...it is just that I wasn't looking close enough. Because, let's face it--if God can protect and guide people to freedom in a place like Egypt, it doesn't seem too improbable that God might be watching and reading right along with me. And most days? That's close enough.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

On the Prophetic Voice

2011-01-22T12:50:00.002-06:00

I have just returned from two engaging weeks with a couple of DMin cohorts where we debated questions of mission, ministry, and congregations...thanks to all the folks who make those times fun (and don't forget to turn it your papers!! LOL)

One of the more interesting questions we pursued was the question of how to speak prophetically in a world that does not want to hear it? Most people of all kinds, we imagined, do not want to hear that they are lazy, bigoted, slovenly, lacking in the essential characteristics of generosity, faithfulness, and compassion...so, as pastors and preachers, most of us don't tell. "Don't ask, Don't tell" relates to just more than gays in the military, and may be an even bigger problem in the relationship between a preacher and his or her parishioners. In fact, as one of my students suggested, for some people it would be easier to have a gay preacher than one who told them that they are greedy and don't give enough to God and God's mission through the church. So we concluded--rightly or wrongly--that preachers don't ask about people's sins and people don't tell preachers about them...and Jeremiah weeps again.

This lack of honesty, this seeming lack of prophecy about the "world as it really is" does not stem from misguided theology as much as it stems from compassionate impulses and the preacher's own indemnity to sin. As such, my advice to people who listen to preachers and preachers who seek to preach is that until you hear a prophetic word prepare to be disappointed. Disappointed that the world doesn't change, disappointed that no one seems to care, disappointed at the seemingly triviality of "it" all...but what do you expect? If the prophet's right (whomever he or she is) than something would have to change...and that something? It'd probably be us.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

Musings on our "souls"

2011-01-03T07:48:00.002-06:00

First off, let us clear up what "soul" is not:
*The soul is not part of a dualism which separates existence between the seen/unseen or some kind of mind-body separation. (I do not agree with Plato on this.)
*Secondly, the soul is not some substance infused into life (The First Vatican Council and I disagree here, God cannot "infuse" soul into an embryo. For me, the embryo has the soul from the get-go, and does not need any kind of infusion...and in general Roman Catholicism and I disagree on any "infusions" from God throughout life.)
*Soul and body never co-exist separately...as body helps define soul, and soul helps define body.
All right...now on to what "soul" seems to mean.

"Soul," in the way I understand the term is what makes you YOU. That is, when I say, "There is my wife," what I mean is that the person who is my wife is who she is, and I use the world "soul" to capture everything about her. She is female, married to me, works as a pastor, likes good food (she recently became enamored with foie gras), mother of our children, etc...and all that goes into her is what we encapsulate with the word "soul."

Notice, this includes her body, but is not limited to this. She looks different from other women, behaves differently than some, but part of who and what she is is what her body is. So I know the difference between Marissa Miller (my favorite supermodel) and my wife in part because of how they look. (I also assume they have other differences...but how would I know?)

But there is more to "soul" than body. Music, for example, goes into who my wife is, just as it does for all of us (hence "soul" music for me is a generic term that describes the music that is the soundtrack of our lives.) My wife, for example, resonates in ways to people like Carole King, Paul Simon, and Don Henley and others like Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra mean little to her.

Soul is how we know who is who in the world...and that is why it is important to me as a word, and why I use it...The best question to ask yourself each day is not "Who am I?" nor do you need to pump yourself up in the mirror chanting some mantra of success; rather, ponder and pray for your soul...it is God's gift of you to us.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

A Magnificat of our own...

2010-12-24T10:32:00.003-06:00

I like the sound of that phrase...(I heard it somewhere, but it has been a long time, and the memory fades)

The word (magnificat) is a Latin word that starts out Mary's song about her pregnancy with the Savior. She says, in English, "My soul magnifies the Lord..." We often do not think of our "souls" this way, and quite a few people don't even believe in a "soul." Well, not only do I believe that we have "souls," but that other than food, drink, and good conversation nothing else matters. The state of your soul is the most important status update...

And Mary's "magnifies" God. What?? Doesn't "magnify" mean to make something bigger, to bring it into sharper focus, to intensify whatever or whomever is being magnified? How does Mary's soul make God bigger? How does Mary's soul intensify God? Whatever could the poet possibly mean? (I need my John Ciardi now folks!) How does Mary's soul bring God into sharper focus? I am befuddled...holey moley something is going on here in this birth of Christ thing I just do not understand...

Could it be that God--the creator of all, the Progenitor of Christ--seeks completion in humanity? That is, without humanity the will of God stands unfinished? Humanity, and all it brings with it, including its "soul" accomplishes for God what is the purpose of everything (including the fish!)? This is too hard to believe...yet, there it is...a young, teenage girl, pregnant in the most mysterious of ways actually makes God clearer with her soul...(at least we now know why she is a Saint). Could we dare receive God in the same way? Could we too make God clearer with our souls? Is Mary a singular of this God-activity; or, is she our prototype?

This time of year I want to believe she is our prototype...that God blesses us all to make God clearer to the world through our souls...That is, the Son frees us all to be vulnerable, scared-yet- trusting teenagers when it comes to the gifts of God...and our souls live in that trust to magnify God. Merry Christmas!!

May your tablesbe full, and your conversations be true.

Christmas traditions

2010-12-15T16:20:00.003-06:00

When our oldest daughter had just turned one, my wife and decided to move (actually, I got a job...which I try not to do too often.) So on the day after Thanksgiving we bundled up ourselves, including the new toddler, and went and bought a live Christmas tree for our new house.

Both of us had experience with live Christmas trees, but in the last years of our lives we usually used the artificial variety...so this was our first live Christmas tree as parents, and we were excited. So we bought a tree that we thought would fit into the space we had set aside in our living room. Since the ceiling was only 7 ft,we concentrated on not getting one too tall, and as we tied the tree to the top of our truck, we were very happy at our purchase. Christmas would have a grand tree!

Of course, it was too tall, so after much trimming on the trunk and a few lower branches, we just were able to squeeze it into the room, and scrunch the angel on top, as her (0r his, you can never really tell with angels) halo nestled against the popcorn ceiling. And the tree fell over...
So, we adjusted a few screws, reset the tree in the stand...and it fell over again...and again...and again...and after 30 minutes it was pretty clear that this tree was a bit too crooked to stand by itself. On to the baling wire!

Drilling a screw into the wall, and using baling wire, we were able to rope the tree into a semi-vertical position, that once the lights and ornaments were on it gave the tree a reasonable facsimilie of a Christmas tradition...And then the branches thawed and fell open and open and open so that we had about 2 feet of space between the end of the branches and the kitchen counter...and did I mention we had a toddler? After this we put the kid to bed...

My wife came down, looked at the tree tied to the wall, branches spreading out across the entire living room floor, a couple of boxes of ornaments scattered on the floor (compliments of our daughter's budding organizational sklls), and me drinking a beer already exhausted with Christmas..."Who died, and made us the adults," she asked?

I am happy to report that 20 Christmases later we have succeeded in maintaining a Christmas tree...although we went totally artificial in 1996...but this year...No tree...the tradition is on hiatus. We have three households now, and we will be graced if we can all get together for even a few days around Christmas. (As both my wife and I work on Christmas Eve and often Christmas Day, celebrating on the actual days of Christmas is often not an option.) But the tradition of the tree has never been about the tree...it's always been a sign of us taking care of our daughters, taking care of each other, remembering who takes care of us...And we may not have a tree this year to help us with that remembering, but we are forever grateful for our love together as "adults," and for the kids who let us be their parents...and for the the God of love who just lets us be.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

The Melancholic season

2010-12-06T14:20:00.002-06:00

The sun is blindingly white off the hoarfrost of the trees, and without a cloud in the sky the blue seems to stretch to eternity...who could be sad in such a place?

Well, I could, and a few others too I imagine (those with Seasonal Affective Disorder will find little to cheer about in a winter trapped indoors), and whether it is a full-blown case of the blues, or just the general ennui that comes from living in an extreme climate (and really, even if climate change is something we just noticed, who doesn't live in extreme places anymore? Weather sucks everywhere...well, except maybe Hawaii, but then it never changes much...and who wants that?)

But what makes a place a "place," what makes a house a "home," for example...has more to do with memory and the people in your life than we imagine...So when I say I was happy in Walt Disney World, what I mean was that the place (WDW) provided me the time and space to spend with my kids at an age when they were still charming...and did not cost as much. (Little did I know at the time!)

I ran into a guy at the gym the other day who recognized me as the pastor who confirmed him eight years ago...and I remembered his "place" (I always asked the kids--who were sophomores in high school--what their favorite place was.), and his place was "Flathead Lake" in Glacier Park. He was amazed that I remembered, and I was amazed that it was still his favorite place...but then, why wouldn't it be? If you have a spot where all your friends, your family, the good things that happened to you occur...why would you forget it? You may add others to it over the years (he is still young), but it will never vanish as your "spot."

I wonder sometimes if Jesus ever asked his mom and dad about his birthplace? How did it happen again, Dad? Why were we in Bethlehem? What was mom doing with all the angels and shepherds? I mean it would seem that such a place would be forever remembered fondly...yet, of all the things he talked about, he never talked about that...so maybe it wasn't his favorite place...maybe we'll never know his favorite place...but we know our favorite place of his: here, with us, in the water, in the bread, in the wine, and in the words...Never sad no matter how painful--because we have the memory and his person in every place. And who can be sad when Jesus is around?

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

The Honor of Humanity!

2010-11-29T14:47:00.002-06:00

Perhaps the grossest lie ever told about Christianity is summed up in this quip:
"I'm only human."

Most people when they utter that phrase use it in a deprecatory sense, as if being human is a bad thing, or an incomplete thing, or something that isn't the best. People may believe that, but it certainly isn't Christian...I don't know what it is...but it is wrong.

God does not want us to ever apologize for our humanity. The "only" is a slap in the face to the God who created us. God doesn't create "only" humans, God creates humans who are known and loved by God, and however they are created or however their creation turns out to be it is that humanity that God made...not some version that "doesn't quite have it yet." When we denigrate our humanity and the created humanness we have we are denying that God created us in the first place...or, that God is not very good at this "creating" thing...especially when it comes to humans! (Although platypuses may want to weigh in on this argument too.)

According to Genesis and the Gospel of John, it is an HONOR to be created human, and when we accept that honor we live the lives God has made for us...when we do not accept that honor, when we say things like "I'm only human," or "God isn't finished with me yet. Be patient," we make a mockery of God's creation--namely, ourselves.

So this Christmas-time celebrate that God became HUMAN...not because it wasn't "perfect" or because God wanted us to get it right this time...but rather because God loves humanity and humans, and it is an honor to be a human...people with names like Char, Bev, Elmer, John, Sherri, Chris, Kevin, and you and all the other six billion of us..."and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." What an honor!

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

And now we have winter...

2010-11-21T23:20:00.002-06:00

The wind has turned here on the prairie, and the snow has arrived...probably for good. Of course, this kind of weather keeps us all honest...and for some the annual question of "Why do I live here?" raises its spectre again.

We are in the midst of transition up here, as my wife moves to Omaha, NE, and I begin the process of moving and packing the home to join her later next summer...It is weird knowing you are going to move...but really can't do much about it now, but have to wait awhile...and there is a A LOT of fun to still be had up here...I mean seven months can be an entire football season (although the way the Minnesota Vikings are playing these days seven months can be eternity of hell!) So I am trying to keep a positive attitude here while my thoughts and hopes every now and then stray to places a little warmer (at least I hope Omaha is warmer...it has to be, right?)

I have always taken solace in the transitions that Jesus made as my hope and future, and in the freedom to live we have received from the forgiveness of his death and resurrection...so in that freedom I will seek out my next "call." (Call is Christian lingo for "stuff God wants me to do.") So, my immediate future is filled with some prayer, my friends, and a lot a fun...WHERE that happens,and WHAT that is...well, that is yet to be decided. Keep me in your prayers. May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Hello Paul Ricouer!

2010-11-12T11:26:00.002-06:00

Every now and then somebody comes up to me and tells me they have "decided" to follow Jesus. For many people this "decision" to follow Jesus is the beginning of a faith journey...and if that is what it is, I am OK with that...but for others it is the end of a faith journey...that is, once you have "decided" to follow Jesus there is nothing else left for faith to do...and that is not good.

And here's why: if your decision to follow Jesus comes at the end of a faith journey, you are going to miss out on all the power and beauty following Jesus can bring to your life...you will turn out to be some sort of mannequin-like believer who can only parrot and enable someone else to take control of your life...in short, you sacrifice the freedom you have received in Jesus Christ to follow some preacher demi-god who thinks he or she knows how to be a Christian. Not a good trade ever...because the freedom is God's and you give it up for security and shelter rather than trusting in God.

So what makes faith fun for those who "decide" for Jesus at the beginning of a faith journey (to my reformed brothers and sisters for whom any talk of "decision" rankles; please note: freedom at some point, somewhere, seems to require assent...and that is all I mean by using "decide") is precisely why we keep the freedom we have received from God in Christ Jesus through the power of the Spirit: freedom! For freedom Christ has set us free, says St. Paul...Free to be here and now and enjoying the gifts of God's creation and our agency (think of beer, perhaps, or maybe another of God's gifts such as roses). Free to be "not-tied-down-by-our-past" (oftentimes we call this forgiveness!) Free to trust others even if we disagree and do not understand (we call this our community...and communities that trust understand that even in disagreement we can be united--think of Congress!) And finally, Free to explore, because we have no limits to our freedom (this is what we usually mean by freedom...that is, we are not shackled to time and place).

So, enjoy the freedom Christ has given you in this assent to faith...and may your tables be full and your conversations be true.

(Oh, and I call this a "Paul Ricouer"--who was one of my teacher's teachers, and who always reminds of what is important in my faith in God through the Word.)

All Saints' Retrospective

2010-11-08T10:58:00.002-06:00

Last year I had the unique opportunity to be with a 20 year old woman who asked me where the word "Christmas" came from? As I approach this upcoming Christmas season, I can only wonder what will come across my wanderings this year.

Gregg Easterbrook, author and columnist of TMQ on ESPN.com, has a section of his column called "Christmas creep." He asks his readers to note when retail stores start putting out products and advertisements for "Christmas." Usually late June, early July has a few "Christmas" decorations around. I keep putting "Christmas" in quotations because it is not Christ's-mass that is being marketed, but rather a banal, consumerified holiday season. Tinsel and ribbons at Target or Walmart in August have as much to do with Jesus' birth and God's love as Satan himself--they are in the story, but they have clearly missed the point!

Since we can no longer count on Christmas to be religious--we lost it being Christian a long time ago--I am wondering if we could keep "All Saints' Day" (November 1) as a Christian holiday? This day has the fortune of coming right after Halloween--which really hasn't ever been a "religious" holiday--so maybe there is a chance for this to not be co-opted by our atavistic consumerism? I mean, it has dead people, babies, people who are healthy, people who are not, good people, not-so-good people, and even a chance for heaven...All-in-all All Saints' Day seems to have some stuff going for it...

Of course, we would have to pay attention to Jesus--and this is where we lose people every time--we would need to see this holiday as the promise of life through death, and living with God as a way of being in this world rather than waiting until some "next" one. We would have to see that all are saints--even the ones who sin--and that sainthood is a gift from a God on a cross rather than an accomplishment of people like us who put him there...

It's been a week since All Saints' Day, and unlike Halloween, I don't have any leftover candy or decorations to take down...and that is the saddest part of the story...if not for all the saints, it is sad for me. May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

A Reformation Reminder

2010-11-01T10:03:00.003-05:00

Central to Martin Luther's (him of the Renaissance age, or "Reformation" as theologians call it)understanding of sin was the idea of it curving into ourselves. Sin is always an ever tightening circle of death that seeks always to enclose and entrap us in smaller and smaller areas of life. Sin contracts into each of us until we are left only with our own selves, and it is tough to defeat despair if you are all alone! Jesus Christ breaks those chains which constrict us, and in our new-found freedom life and all its infiinte possibilities are opened to us to live. Freedom in Christ is that ever-expanding reach that embraces the farthest corners of the universe (if there is such a thing as a "corner" in our universe...but no matter where it is God won't stop reaching outward.)

This frustrates me to no end when I visit or hear about most Christian congregations. Almost to the one, every single congregation starts and stops its ministry at its front door...and even those that encourage, chastise, maniupulate, or invite to ministry outside those doors often fail...although there are a precious few which may succeed...In other words, congregations are enclosed in sin, bound by their own front doors, and the freedom they have received in Christ goes for nothing...very sad...

Part of the reason I no longer serve congregations with their own buildings is because if we at Prairie Table are going to be bound by sin; well, we are going to be bound by something other than our front door! I know most--if not all--of my ordained colleagues would gladly give up trying to coddle and encourage people to be "little Christs" to each other so that they could actually do the priesthood of all believers to which we have been called. But since most of my colleagues have buildings, and the buildings have front doors, they spend their time trapped in the sin from which they have been freed--trust me--that gets frustrating, and I am completely sympathetic to colleagues that leave the ordained ministry to do something useful with their lives--you go! And to those who stay in the ordained ministry...you are always in my prayers...I know how tough it is no matter how high the high...

So at Prairie Table we are not too big on "doors." There are no rules of engagement, there are no admittance requirements, no thoughts about who is "in" or who is "out." We have all kinds of crazy here...Our sin is out there, encompassed by our own human frailty and failure, but redeemed by a God who never stops expanding, never stops creating, never stops making things new...thanks be to God! May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Some Personal Thoughts and Reflections on Prairie Table (or: What's a Blog For?)

2010-10-23T10:21:00.003-05:00

When people first talked about Prairie Table (it had no name then), I heard stuff like this:

"What kind of church is it going to be?"
"What kind of people are you hoping to get?"
"How far away will it be from my church?" (Usually only asked by other pastors)
"Are you going to go knocking on doors to get people?"

And I got tired...very tired, and had no interest in doing a new mission start in Bismarck.

But some people wanted to see a mission here, the ELCA was willing to give it a nice chunk of change to get started, and people seemed tolerant, if not exactly excited to have a new mission in a place where not much had changed in 20 years for the Lutheran church. So we gave it a go...but we had some rules...and this is where it got interesting.

First Rule: No attractional ministry allowed! We would do nothing on a corporate level to try and attract people to the congregation. The congregation would grow only as people encouraged and invited others into the community. No ads, no publicity, no nothing that said "Come be like us!" We would reach out to people in need, but never try to attract others to us...

Second Rule: Everything is free, and no fundraisers will be allowed. Needless to say, Prairie Table is a month-to-month adventure in trying to stay solvent, but I've been able to be paid for the past couple of years, so, something works as people donate to a way of living with God rather than a place where God does "business." And thanks to all the folks (over 100 different contributors over the years) who have believed in the people of God here at Prairie Table.

Third Rule: Unless people are talking and listening we don't really have church. Everything we do is designed to get people talking about what God may or may not be doing in the world.

As I think about it, these might not be "rules" as much as they are reminders of how God creates, redeems, and sustains us in this life. We are attracted to God, God does not attract us (as St. Augustine said so nicely, "our hearts are restless Lord until they rest in you.")...God is free, Jesus frees us, and the Spirit empowers us to live freely...and talking and listening, well as Terry said once a while ago, "everybody likes to talk," and we could all stand to listen a little more.

May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

You can't believe in Jesus as the Son of God just because you want to

2010-10-19T09:22:00.003-05:00

One of the cornerstone Bible verses from my tradition is from the Gospel of John where Jesus of Nazareth says, "...you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (8.32) And a lot of people struggle with that...for example:

A young man came to me the other day and wondered what I do (as a missionary whose "church" is primarily on-line, I often wonder what I do too, so I don't begrudge the question), and how can I help people "believe in Jesus?" Now that question can take a couple of angles: First, does a person wonder who Jesus was, what kind of stuff did he do and say, and it is a question of knowledge. So, to "know" the truth in this sense is to pick up some facts and details about the life of a guy who lived and died a couple of thousand years ago? Or, secondly, and this is where the young man was heading, is "believing" more of an existential thing, where one's life and future after death (we call that salvation in our world) are on the line? In this case there is nothing I can do but pray...nothing I can say, teach, exemplify, witness to, or even participate in will EVER make a difference for somebody to know Jesus in this way...this is completely a gift of the Holy Spirit, and to my mind anyone who argues differently believes more in the power of people than the power of God...and as a theologian I always default to God (it's sort of the job).

This is a good thing, however, as the pressure is off me and onto God to free people to "believe in Jesus." I can witness to the freedom I have in Jesus as the Christ of God, participate with others in this freedom, and even teach about it...but I cannot give it...that is for God and God only. And here's what makes this even more difficult...any person who might want it (i.e., to believe in Jesus) cannot just take it...cannot just wake up and grab it like a late-nite burrito at Taco Bell...since it is a gift from God, no matter how much you want it, you have to wait for it to be given...

I do believe God gives this belief (we call it "faith") all the time, however, we receive it ONLY when we are ready...and some may be ready at 4 or 40 or two breaths before they die...doesn't matter...because once you are free, you are free...you have received (or you "know" in this sense)--the truth. May your tables be full and your conversations be true.

In, with, under, and against

2010-10-11T14:39:00.002-05:00

Congregations are interesting pieces of social culture...on the one had they are products of the culture and community in which they reside...but a huge part of that identity is to be loyal to God (rather than the surrounding culture) so that a great many Christian congregations actually flow AGAINST the culture from which it is constituted. (In truth, many Christian congregations believe they are constituted by God, not by their surrounding culture, and for that reason they are often "called" to be against their culture.) And this is what makes congregations so interesting.

The culture's story, such as it is in the USA these days, is often in flux, and even more so one can choose one's dominant cultural story with relative ease. It might be more accurate these days to talk of "cultures" in the USA rather than one, single, dominant, cultural story that tries to encompass everything. (This is one of the unique pieces of being the USA. For years the dominant cultural story assumed it included everybody, and therefore everybody was part of the dominant culture...of course, as people such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Gloria Stenheim, and others pointed out 40 years ago, the dominant culture was rather exclusive, and did not include everybody...but now that things have gotten topsy-turvy, trying to actually include everybody leads to no one dominant cultural story, and even less cultural coinherence.)

And if there are multiple cultural stories that make up the USA, it stands to reason there are multiple Christian congregations that both arise from one cultural story, and even can be opposed to another cultural story, within the same traditions, histories, and families. Because you can have--for example--families in which various members vote Democrat and others in the family vote Republican--you can have congregations in which some would lean one way, and others would lean the opposite--and in every case it would be possible to find in each congregation people who vote against the dominant story...as I said, congregations are interesting.

No matter what cultural story dominates a congregation, the healthiest congregations I have experienced understand that God's story drives the congregation and its people. In this way, God is in, with, under, and against a congregation as they are God's bread in a hungry world. Because when someone is dying from lonliness, or suffering from depression, or addicting themselves from fear or ennui, God feeds them with the life-giving food of Christian community. Even the worst Christian community can feed somebody...and on their good days...they probably do. May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

The Social Network

2010-10-04T10:08:00.002-05:00

One of my pastor friends was chided by one of his parishioners who said to me, "He has to get off the computer and get out and meet the people." Now, this parishioner is almost 80 years old, and what he missed about the computer was--of course--that my colleague was meeting people...just not the ones at the corner cafe, but the people who use the computer. The computer, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and others, is now a social network. Who knew?

It is a different social network to be sure from the corner cafe and Starbucks that were all the rage just a few years ago, but people are meeting me all the same on Facebook. The other night as Chris and I were relaxing in front of a fire and watching the North Dakota day turn to night it was great, and you cannot put a premium on that type of intimate, face-to-face relationship. But not all my relationships have to be that way...and the Facebook ones, as public and "un-intimate"as they are, are just different...but they are still valuable, and they still have importance even if others do not think so...

I believe God is about relationships no matter how they happen or where they occur. We are created in and for relationship, and as I have written before the solitary human is no human at all...Whether you call the relationships you are in marriages, families, colleagues, small groups, churches, bowling leagues, drama troupes, facebook pages, or choirs...we are made to live and be together...

Think of the resurrection of Jesus--not as God's forgiveness of human sin--but rather as God re-making God by incorporating Jesus, now as the Christ, into the life and being of all that God is...this is what Prairie Table means by being stewards of the "mysteries of God." We will never be sure of all of who and what God is, but we take care of that mystery wherever we find it...at home, at work, at the cafe, or even at the computer...and just as deepest relationships survive multiple locales, we must remember that Jesus Christ survives them too...may your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

A Story for the Ages

2010-09-29T09:15:00.002-05:00

I run into a lot of people who know a little bit about the Bible...and in most cases they have little use for it, or for the Christian Church that purports to be about it...and I also run into a few people who know little or nothing about the Bible, and--irony of ironies--these people are often very faithful Christians...(all of which goes to show you that you don't need to know how to read in order to be a Christian...in fact, that may be a detriment!)

Christianity as a religion does not really need a Bible, but it does need a story--and the most popular Christian story is something like this: God made a perfect world, humans screwed it up, God re-made it by sending Jesus to die for humans who screw it up, and now humans should try harder not to screw it up again...at this point some Christians add "if you do a good job you can go some place nice named heaven." As a religion goes that story works, but of course, it is not from the Bible.

The story of the Bible is a whole different one than the popular Christian one (no matter how much money or energy some folks put into making it the same), and the story of the Bible is a story for the ages. Because you see the Bible, as the promise of God about the freedon given in Jesus Christ through the mutual consolations and conversations of people in the Spirit, has no quick "summary-like" statements because it always addresses the reader (hearer) where they are in life and the world. And since we are often different, the Bible speaks different things in order to keep God's promise to us...because for the Bible it's the God who promises that makes the story, not the story that makes the god...and for those of us who trust in God that makes all the difference in the world. May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

The Strange Workings of Baptism

2010-09-27T11:01:00.002-05:00

A few years ago I found myself in Phoneix, AZ in February with other theologians and pastors from across the country. We had some free time one afternoon, and I wanted to avail myself of the heated pool at the hotel...all my friends declined to join me as the air temp was only 62 degrees. My friends from places like AZ, CA, GA, and TX all thought I was nuts for even considering it...but when you're from North Dakota, you have a partly sunny day, a heated pool, and any temp above 32, you call it a beach day! So, in this huge, heated pool, complete with little islands of trees and flowers scattered throughout the pool, I swam.

But I did not swim alone...because on the other side of the pool I could see another man paddling about from island to island as I was...finally, after about thirty minutes, and countless sarcastic comments from my friends walking by...I ran into the other guy at the island in the very middle of the pool. I said hi, he said, hi...and I commented on the nice pool. Yeah, he said, I like it too. I told him where I come from this is a summer day, and I couldn't imagine why more people aren't swimming...he asked where I was from...I told him "Bismarck, North Dakota." Where are you from, I asked? He looked at me and said, "Valley City." (Valley City, North Dakota is 140 miles east of Bismarck.) And his former neighbor in Valley City was now my neighbor in Bismarck...I kid you not.

Have you ever had one of those weird encounters where you meet someone you know, or you share something in common with someone, in the least likely of places? Isn't that strange how that happens?

In Christianity we hold that we are related to all Christians through baptism, so, in some ways it isn't strange to meet a brother or a sister in Christ just about anywhere...but unless we live that relationship, trust those people we meet, or risk reaching out to the stranger, we will just pass like "two ships in the night..."Christ has connected us to way more people than we realize or than we utilize in our lives...but that water of baptism--like the warm water in the pool in AZ--brings together people in ways we often cannot imagine. May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

Question for the week: Do you have a "chance" encounter story you can share?

I think its about forgiveness...

2010-09-20T11:17:00.002-05:00

...even if you don't love me anymore. (Don Henley)

If I had to take one line about what is Christianity from a recent song, poem, novel, or writing, I would take that one from Don Henley. He has captured as well as anyone--including people like Peter, Paul, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and even me (well, you know?) what God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit has accomplished in redeeming humanity and all of creation for life.

Central to the notion of who God is is forgiveness...we often fail at love, peace, patience, etc., and forgiveness is the power that propels us through those failures so that life can be lived...Henley hit upon this (albeit in a love song), and without this desire to forgive--Christianity--and God's own self--cease to exist.

BUT, the forgiveness is not dependent upon love. And this is where Henley is brilliant, and so different, from most of us. Most of us believe we have to love somebody or something before we can forgive. Henley points out this is is not so. For example, God does not have to love us in order to forgive us, but because God forgives us we can be loved by God. So when two brothers are fighting it is not LOVE that establishes their relationship, but their forgiveness that satisfies their love.

If Henley is correct (and the Bible seems to suggest he is) if you want to have a better day you will have to forgive somebody...somebody you probably do not love. The cross of Jesus reminds us of one thing: it is the forgiveness, not the love, that makes all the difference in the world.

Question for the week: what one line of recent composition seems to best sum up the Christian faith, or God in Christ Jesus in the power of the Spirit, for you?
May your tables be full, and your conversations be true.

What's up with music in worship?

2010-09-13T09:54:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I spent some time worshiping with a community here in Omaha, NE that used a jazz quartet for its worship music leaders. It was fun, and good...and I'm wondering why I don't see more of that? In other words, why is music a) so important to worship; and b) not adequately done (specially in places where it is considered important?) Here are some worship music experiences I remember...

in 1991 hearing a young man perform "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" as the prelude to his grandmother's funeral (she was 94, and would have been in her sixties when Dylan wrote that song...I had trouble believing she was a fan.)

in 1993 joining a band for worship in Lockport, IL where the oldest member was 17, and trading guitar riffs and bass runs during the offertory music (young or newer musicians are my exception to the "adequate" rule...in their case I advocate full-bore experimentation!)

in 1995 learning a wonderful new liturgy on the organ from a gifted musician (Frank Stoldt), and being able to hear for the first time people actually enjoying praise to God

in 1999 having a congregation learn music in order to experience liturgy without words and notes having to be available to participate (this should be the goal of all worship...why is it a requirement to be able to read in order to worship in so many congregations? If you are a worship leader ask yourself this question: if someone can't read, could they get something out of this worship?)

in 2003 being exposed to another gifted leader (Craig Schweitzer) who is able to bring musical subtlety into worship (Craig is being ordained as a pastor in a few days, and I wish him godspeed)

in 2008 having the current musicians sing and play songs they like (hence our Prairie Table months of Eagles and Beatles tunes last year), and what a diference that makes in learning how to share passions...

There has been-- in my almost 20 years of ministry now-- a lot of good music, some great, some absolutely sublime...and some...well, not-so-much. To all the musicians, leaders, planners, and congregations who have made worship a key part of my life, I thank you, and pray for your continued ministry...as a famous church musician often noted soli Deo gloria!

And what are some of your memories of music and worship in your life?

From Personality to Community

2010-09-06T16:10:00.004-05:00

It's been awhile since I reached into my books for a blog topic, but I am haunted (again) by a phrase from Cornel West in his book The American Evasion of Philosophy (University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), in which describing the mind of culture in this country he wrote of this "hotel civilization" (a phrase he borrowed from Henry James,) as it "has yielded an indigenous mode of thought that subordinates...community to personality..." In other words, because we live in the USA it's more about "me" than it is about "us."

My two years of working with people through Prairie Table Ministries has shown me the numbing truth of West's perception...our way of THINKING, not just how we act or behave, is dominated by our subordination of community to our own personalities. I have had people tell me, with no sense of irony or shame, these things:
* I don't get what you do, but it doesn't bother me that you do it
* We don't agree on this issue so I guess we cannot be friends anymore
* I tried that once, but it didn't work for me so I gave it up
* You folks can do that, but I am not a joiner
Every single one of those statements presuppoes the dominance of personality (of the individual, as I take West to mean) over and above anything the community may have to offer. Now most communities, such as Prairie Table Ministries, will survive such mind-sets--however, the mind-set of the personality (individual) over-and-above community distorts what "community" is... that is, the community is seen wrongly not because the person has seen it, but rather because the person cannot put aside the "personality dominance" in order to see the community accurately.

Take, for example, the line that someone said to me about not agreeing, so we cannot be friends...that understanding completely misunderstands "community" which, by definition in the Christian faith, is a group of people who do not agree! It does not take long at a Bible study at Prairie Table to realize we do not all agree, yet, somehow, we are all in this together...and we wouldn't be together at all if we needed agreement on everything...(to be fair, at PTM we do all agree Jesus is the Christ, but I bet there are a few differing ways to explain that too!)...Your friends are not necessarily the ones who agree with you, but rather are in community with you, even if you disagree...

The sign of a friend is not that we share convictions, but rather we challenge convictions our friends have...And in this way community is built in spite of the personalities (individuals) involved. For too long we have replaced agreement in personality with the cross of Jesus as the definition of human community (that is, the Church). The cross of Jesus as the Christ of God in the power of the Holy Spirit challenges each and every one of us to live a life of obdience to a God beyond our understanding and control...and we will not agree on how to do that simply because we are all created a little bit differently...but even so...we are all in this venture we call "life" together. A summary for Prairie Table comes from something the Apostle Paul wrote 1950 years ago, "Consider us...stewards of God's mysteries..." We may never understand why we are all in this together, (it is a mystery) but to refuse community because we do not agree, or understand it , or see it, or whatever is to miss the point of why God put us (not me) here in the first place.

May your conversations be true, and your tables be full.

Leadership: Art or Craft?

2010-08-30T11:20:00.003-05:00

Jesus of Nazareth once said, "Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." (Luke 12.51, NRSV) Those are probably the most true words he ever spoke...at least if we are looking at the empirical evidence we have from his followers over the past 2000 years...there are divisions of Christians everywhere, and very little peace. I guess when you speak as many words as he did you have to be right sometimes?

But--Christian division aside--(and this is not a big deal for me as I figure God will get it all sorted out at the end) what the verse does pose is a question of leadership. (As I teach leadership within Luther Seminary's Congregational Mission and Leadership program...check it out...Luthersem.edu...I ponder leadership questions a lot). The question is: how do you lead amidst division rather than peace? In other words, how do you lead in conflict, or as my colleagues at Church Innovations like to say: when congregations fight?

People who believe leadership is a craft, that is, leadership is something that can be learned and practiced, leading amidst conflict is an important skill-set to master. But here is the thing...conflict poses winners and losers, and leadership in a congregational setting that seeks to mete out merits and punishments based on who wins and who loses is bound to make most of the other words Jesus said (the ones I didn't quote) even more troubling to believe. If you can learn to "manage" conflict (and "manage" and all its cognates I wish could never be spoken of when it comes to Christian leadership) somehow you can minimalize loss and damage, and maximize opportunity...and this seems about as unChristian as any leadership style could emulate.

Since we probably cannot learn to lead during conflict, it has to be something innate, or an "art" as it is called aesthetically, we now run into a bit of a problem describing all the different ways people lead in conflict, and trying to find anything we can learn from their experiences...they all are so idiosynchratic and personal or even genetic perhaps that what chance does the poor pastor have if she isn't of this cloth? If leadership is art, and you are leading outside the borders of your usual canvas...uh oh...

Well this is where the words of Jesus I quoted above can be the gospel...because you see maybe we were never meant to live without conflict? Maybe in the grand scheme of what God calls us to do or who God calls us to be we are meant to struggle a lot...either in one way because people divide against us, or in the other as we divide against them? Maybe the chimera is peace?

Leadership is never about bringing peace--regardless of whether you think of it as an art or a craft--leadership is about surviving division, and about acknowledging the God of the cross that makes the survival possible.

May your conversations be true and your tables be full. Peace.

Sometimes It's tough to be Christian

2010-08-26T09:18:00.003-05:00

Did you know there is a chapel in the Pentagon building that has worship five days a week, and allows Muslims to use it as well? Do you remember that on September 11, 2001, the Pentagon, as well as the World Trade Center was bombed by terrorists? If the Pentagon is OK with Muslims worshiping in the very BUILDING that was bombed, why should folks in New York City be concerned if a mosque is built a few blocks away from "ground zero?"

I understand that the furor over this building of a mosque near where many people lost their lives uncessarily to the hate of terrorists is mostly emotional, and generated by those with political agendas...however, as a theologian I can say this with some certainly--there will never be healing for anyone in this event until a mosque (or something like it) is allowed to be part of the conversation...until we realize in our hearts--not just our heads--that people who take their religion to an extreme in order to terrorize others cannot take away our faith in God--there can never be healing...never.

Martin Luther once noted that each of us have an "inner" and an "outer" Christian faith. And what happens to our "outer" faith (the faith we have on display for ourselves and each other, like how we worship, pray, serve our neighbors, deal with tragedy, celebrate moments...) does not affect our "inner" faith (the faith given to us by God). And here is why: nobody can take away what God has given you...that is, the inner faith you have received comes from God, and no one, not even your own doubts or fears, can take that away from you...only God can...and that IS something to worry about...

So if something challenges your "outer" faith, it is simply that: a challenge...but it cannot take away from you what God has given you...so relax...your faith is in the hands of God...and even if God is a God of law and punishment (and the evidence is still not in on that completely...), until God tells you your inner faith is gone you are good. It is never easy to forgive someone...but that is precisely why it is so tough to be a Christian. Anybody can try to be good and follow the rules, but to forgive? Well, in our tradition that takes God. Specifically a God from the cross in the resurrected power of the Spirit...and if we are willing to put our God near a cross, we can probably allow a mosque near ground zero.

Summertime Wrap-up

2010-08-17T09:03:00.002-05:00

A lot has happened at Prairie Table over the past few months, and with so many people traveling and being away, it is a wonder we ever stay connected at all...Here's some of the conversations that have happened around the table, and we look forward to another year of gathering together!

...the first part of June we had our annual Western North Dakota Synod Assembly out in Dickinson, and we had some great conversations about the future of the Church in our part of the world. As good Christians, convinced of the truth of the witness of our Lutheran tradition that grace precedes everything, we discovered that our communities of faith are often the last places standing where people can gather together to have meaningful conversations...Homes, cafes, and bars can also "solve all the problems of the world," but a Christian congregation leads in actually solving the problem rather than just talking about it.

...in July we heard stories from our ecumenical partners the Presbyterians, the Moravians, others about how Church is going in their part of the world. Many congregations struggle with doing God's work rather than just "keeping the doors open," and many leaders and pastors are frustrated that people will not nor cannot change...but there is a determination on the part of many to see the Church through this malaise of modernity that is the Church in America these days, and to pray and work for a missional life in the being of God in the world.

...In August we talked with Katie Narum Miyamoto about the Church in Japan, and how different it is to be a minority as a Christian rather than a majority as we are here in the USA. We continue to appreciate people such as Katie for keeping us aware of so many of the wonderous things God's love does in places where we do not often get to go...what a blessing to see God at work.

...And now we come to today, and into the future...and we wonder what it will bring for Prairie Table? We celebrated our second anniversary this past June, and it is amazing that we have been able to keep going for even that long...Sometimes you have to wonder what God is doing--especially when I am often the one in charge!?!?!?! As always, I give thanks for the many people who gather to converse around the tables of PTM. What a joy to hear the stories, to laugh, to cry, and pray over the grace God showers us with each and every day...

...I am thinking of a tag line for my posts--sort of an homage to Garrison Keillor I suppose--but how do you like this? May your conversations be true, and your tables be full...peace.

"Big Tent Christianity" and Prairie Table

2010-08-09T10:52:00.004-05:00

(This blog is part of the "Big Tent Christianity" event to be held in Raleigh, NC next month. Please see bigtentchristianity.com for more information. ed.)

I am very supportive of the energy surrounding this event to bring about new ideas and ways of being and becoming the church. Such a desire to bring together Christians from battling each other to battling the evils of destruction and disintegration is always to be commended, and I am glad to be even a small whisper of a much larger conversation. One of the charges we are asked to blog about for this event is "What does it (big tent Christianity) look like in your context?" and I want to take that question up this week. I want to answer, in a beginning sort of way, what "big tent Christianity" looks like up here in North Dakota through the fellowship of people at Prairie Table.

Prairie Table and the "big tent" metaphor have one attribute we share, and a major one that we do not share...I will begin with our commonality. Both the "big tent" metaphor and Prairie Table agree that whatever the church is to be or become it will be moveable. That is, Church is not a permanent thing. Church has no stone walls, no buildings, no programs, no committees, no budgets, no anything that is usually associated with "church" these days. Places may have those kinds of things, and they may be ministry centers, social services agencies, ritual re-enactors, or whatnot, but they are not Church...maybe they are playing at "church," but they are not Church.

Because the metaphor of a tent is provisional, temporary, portable, and moveable, there must be an assumption of "big tent" Christianity that the Church is provisional, temporary, portable, and moveable too...and we at Prairie Table really agree with that. (See "A Table Along the Way," May 19, 2009) Prairie Table is a way of being Christian community that is provisional, temporary, portable, and moveable...and this is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because our relationships with each other and with God through Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit go with us wherever we go. Right now, we gather in Bismarck, ND...but who is to say we will be there tomorrow, or next week, or even next year? As God calls us, not only into ministry around us, but also into the great globe itself, we take the relationships we have nurtured around the table with us, and set up our "tents" or "tables" wherever we happen to be. God loves us in our provisionality, our temporariness, our portability, and our movement...but we do not. And this brings us to the curse.

We love to be "settled." We all seek one tap root some where, some place, some time...and the transitory nature of a "tent" or a "table," while exhilarating for a time, cannot last...so we seek refuge, comfort, and solace from the institutions of our lives...making "church" one of the biggest. It is interesting that the "big tent" conference draws from the revival heritage of Christianity in this country...and revivals are not designed to last, they are not designed to be permanent structures of church...and at Prairie Table we work from that same transitory nature of church. We use the "table" metaphor, not because we do not like tents, but because we focus on "how" God builds relationships with us, not "where" God builds relationships with us...And how, is around the table, the place where Jesus broke bread and his body so that we could fellowship with God...

But Prairie Table works a different angle than the "big tent" metaphor, and finally this difference makes all the difference in the world. You see, the "big tent" idea still wants to attract people inside, still wants to invite people into whatever Christianity is...that is, the metaphor still holds some kind of objectivist power image that whatever is in the tent is Christian and whatever is not in the tent is not...and Prairie Table fundementally disagrees with that idea. There is no tent big enough to hold the universe that God has made...and only if you want to use "big tent" as a substitute for heaven (and that carries a whole raft of philosophical and theological issues) could Prairie Table finally use the "big tent" metaphor...

You see, we don't invite people to the table...we bring the table out into the street...and that is a huge missional understanding of Church that goes in a far different direction than a "big tent" metaphor. We understand that God sends Jesus as the Christ and the Spirit into the world to incorporate us into the life and being of God...in our creation and finally in our redemption that comes from the cross of Jesus the Christ we are incorporated in the life and being of God-- brought to the table so to speak--wholly on the activity of God's grace coming to us, not we going to it. So that the table we set out in the street is but a shadow of the table God sets out for us in the resurrection of Jesus the Christ...we don't invite anyone to the table...we set it out so that any and everyone may eat and drink at the feast of our Lord. There is no "inside" or "outside" at the table (and since we use round tables there is no head or foot either)...everyone is at the table, everyone feasts on the grace of God...and it is God's battle with the forces of evil and destruction that we eat and drink to our salvation...not our battle that God stimulates us for with a shot of blood and a chip of body...Because God creates the world (we take that to mean universe) there is no place where God is not nor will not be...and a tent would at best be a protection from the elements, but it could never be a boundary to God's love and engagement with creation...the tables we set out have taken all the abuses and the abused the world can offer...but that is because they are God's tables, not ours. And there is no inside to which we gather, and no outside to which we exclude.

So we at Prairie Table will continue to work on bringing tables out into the world that God redeems in Christ. We will not get too concerned about the size of the tent...because you see...for us at Prairie Table, the only tent big enough would be one to cover the entire universe...and while we pray for the love and justice of the "Big Tent Christianity" conference to prevail, our belief is that we are only going to get there--one table at a time...

Polarities of Youth, part II

2010-08-03T11:14:00.002-05:00

(please see last week's post for the introduction to this thought...ed.)

Whatever the term "postmodern" means, we believe it to mean something that "young" people are. As my experiences last week with a couple of young people showed, that is not always true. These two folks, engulfed in the contemporary world as much as any two youth, both displayed thoughts of mind that were much more "modern" than they maybe knew. If I could have told the young lady that the stuff she is talking about for Christianity is stuff that Jonathan Edwards would approve (but of course he would add his usual brilliant rhetoric and intellectual rigor. Edwards was a colonial preacher famous for many things, not the the least of which is the revival movement in Christianity some 300 years ago.) So she is hardly "post-modern" in her thinking, as much as other aspects of her life (driving, talking to me, and answering the phone all within thirty seconds) are very post modern.

Same is true for the young man who would rather protect trees than sit in church...this idea goes way back to the Romanticists and Transcendentalists of this country (in fact, this young man actually claimed that he was "probably a Transcendentalist." I could only agree) some 200 years ago. The polarities these two youths exhibited have been around for a long time, and in this sense are hardly new, much less "post-modern."

So when the old guy like me brings up the thoughts that Christianity is not how people feel about,or even comprehend, God; nor, is the object of worship a one-way street of obedience... but rather, that Christianity is a complex web of relationships that weave so tightly together as to be reality itself, and which constant struggles for freedom and power push the edges of the weave to ever and greater lengths...well, let us say that is a little too far past modernity for them to wholeheartedly agree...

But here is the thing: watching the marriage of the two people, both with previous families, children, and spouses in their memories, they participated in an ever growing expansion of life and relationship encompassed only by the grace of God...and then..witnessing the birth of new relationships (we call them "in-laws"), seeing joy and celebration authentically lived...these two young people knew that life was more than anyone...18th Century preacher, 19th Century philosopher...even their own selves could have imagined. And in that, they lived what Christianity has been saying all along: in Jesus Christ, all things are created new. (And how "post modern" is that? Well, we've been saying that...for 2000 years!)

The Polarities of Youth

2010-07-29T08:59:00.002-05:00

Last weekend I was involved in a wedding, and due to an automotive mishap found myself traveling across the prairies of North Dakota with a 24 year old bridesmaid for 4 hours. As she attends a Bible college in California, we had ample opportunity to discuss theology and religion. The trip was delightful, and I met an young woman dedicated to finding meaning and truth through a version of Christianity, which while I do not share with her, she is at least attempting to make her life congruent between her beliefs and her actions.

What was interesting in our conversations was her focus on a person's relationship with God to a point where almost nothing else entered into the picture. That is, she has a view of humanity that is very liberal, very modern, and very much unlike my own. She believes in the autonomous, self-determining individual unfettered by any law outside of God's rule (this is the liberal stuff with Christian seasoning, but she would fit right into the 18th century). Because of this world-view, she loses perspective on how wide the world is we live in, and what all the relationships we have do to impact who we are and what we do. So whether she was talking about marriage, heaven, hell, or even her own experiences, everything was filtered into the autonomous indiviuality in which God reserves the final right to judge. Creation, for example, was not even part of her understanding of what God spends a lot of time doing--and this while we were driving through some of the most beautiful country in the world! Since, in this mindset, everything is reduced to human capability, the deer, birds, trees, water, and the wind itself are at best decorations for a life lived following God's law. But as created beings of God, the deer or even the wind, don't have much to do in her world.

Now at the wedding the next day I meet the boyfriend of the photographer who is a 26 year old guy who admits to me, as we are standing around waiting for pictures to be finished, that he doesn't like church much. When I ask why, it is because, he says, I am more focused on keeping nature and trees healthy than my soul. Great. Another liberal. He, of course, takes the "liberal" that is much more bandied about as if we know what we are talking about when we use the word than my new friend from the Bible college, but they are both liberal. In his case, the liberalism comes from an understanding of the interconnectedness of life, but this time at the expense of human aggrandizement...that is, we have to take our autonomous, self-determing beings, and understand how we are all part of this world...and when churches don't do that, well, he finds his time better spent with those who do...

But you see, for being a Christian like me, neither pole of these young persons' world works for me, because I understand that I am affected by my context more than I can self-determine my life. In other words, there are just some things I cannot do. Neither one of these young people believe that...and it is not a question of age...it is a question of how you believe God lives and moves in the world...if God is living and moving...well, then, of course there are things you cannot do, even good things like helping a neighbor or being nice...and if God's presence creates a certain amount of ambiguity, well, then, of course, you will do things that you could not have predicted.

No doubt when I was younger I too lived with the ardent zeal of my youthful chaperone and wedding conversationalist...but if I left them with anything it was-- I hope, not a belittlement of their beliefs, but rather an example of how to expand your horizons to all that God has made...which is, I guess, what church is for. Church reminds we are not alone, nor in charge...which--when you get to be my age--is a good thing.

Truth and Meaning

2010-07-13T10:31:00.002-05:00

A famous book sits on my shelf from a German philosopher entitled "Truth and Method." My teacher, Pat Keifert, teaches a course called "Truth and Meaning" these days...Whether method or meaning, truth still presides over the day...as the Gospel of John says it, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (8.32)

For many "truth" is a thing, a statistic, or a fact. That 2+2=4 is a "truth" for some people. For others it is a "truth" that the USA was designed by Christians of the 18th Century (and who happen, so it appears, to agree with Christians of the 21st Century--what luck!!!) However, for others "truth" is a bogey, a ghost, a pipe-dream, at best, and what we only can hope for is to have something "true" for me, and people like me...

"Truth" in the Gospel of John is nothing of the sort from the examples above. "Truth" is not a fact; nor, an hypothesis generated by wishful thinking. Nor is truth a dream or a ghost or phantasm of some kind...no, for the Gospel of John truth is a guy whom John calls "Jesus." And somehow, John argues in his story, if you know this guy you know the truth, and the truth then "makes you free." So, how to know this guy named Jesus? (This is the "meaning" part.)

You can read his story, and that is a start...but do you really know someone if you only read their story? Because I read a book about Thomas Jefferson does that mean I know Jefferson? Do I know him in the way John Adams or George Washington knew Thomas Jefferson? Not really, and so reading a story about Jesus is not knowing Jesus. In fact, in order to "know" someone in the way you know your parents or your spouse or your friends there is really only one way--you have to live with them, work with them, play with them, be with them, trust them, and hopefully they trust you. It is in the living where we perceive the knowing.

In order to "know" Jesus you have to live with him, and since he's alive (that's the purpose of the resurrection) in the Spirit we actually CAN live with him. But do we? Do we consult Jesus about anything in our lives? (Usually we call this prayer, but I often just ask him, as if he's sitting in the chair across from my desk...but I am a theologian, and I am weird.) It's not a question of asking What Would Jesus Do?, one of the most insipid slogans of all time from popular Christianity, but rather, what will you do with the advice or encouragement Jesus brings to you?

To know the truth in this sense is to know--that is "live with"--Jesus of Nazareth in your life. To invite him to your dinner, your sleeping, your parties, your griefs, your slightly sketchy business deals, or even your grossly in flagrante delicto (While the "crime is a-blazin'") situations. Truth in Christianity is not a fact, or an idea, or a morality or even an ethic: truth is living with a person, who, has the power...and the desire...to make us free. What more is there to know?

Spirit vs. Structure, part II

2010-07-09T10:38:00.002-05:00

What kind of a congregation do you have if questions of structure take a back seat to questions of identity? Yesterday, I met with Bob Sanderson, president of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, and he asked me about Prairie Table Ministries. It was a good conversation.

I reminded him first that what makes Prairie Table somewhat unique in the world of Christian congregations is that your identity as a Christian is the most important aspect of our groups. If you think of what makes a person a member of "X" congregation, most of the time questions of structure are used to delineate who is a member or not? Do they worship at a certain time and place in a certain way? Do they give money? Do they participate in the sacraments? These are all structural realities that assume an attendant faith. (That is, people who worship or give money or take sacraments actually believe in what they do--but it is the doing, not the believing, that qualifies membership.)

At Prairie Table, since we do not have membership, questions of structure do not delineate our congregations. Rather, it is the relationships you develop that provide whatever structure Prairie Table has, and therefore, those relationships become the reason why you participate in the ministries or not. For example, recently, a group of men have starting attending our "Soup and Bible" class on Wednesday afternoon. There are four of them, and as with everyone, they attend the class as time and providence permit...but just a couple of weeks ago there was just one guy there, and although he was not alone, he was the only one of this quartet there that day. As he left, he said to me, I'll have to call those guys and see what's up and why they weren't here. It is that kind of consideration of relationship that Prairie Table is looking for. People taking responsibility for their friends is all we are looking for out here...

Notice too--for those of you reading this who are pastors or leaders of congregations--the gentleman did not say "You Scott, as leader of this group, should take responsibility and call them, even though you may not know any one of their last names," but rather, he understood-even if instinctively-that these are his friends, and therefore, his responsibility. One of the most pervasive structures of Christian congregations is the "ordained" leader...and although important, at Prairie Table we believe "friends" are even moreso. And although friendship may seem an unique way to start a congregation, I am not wondering if it is the only way...as we all have a friend in Jesus.

Spirit vs. Structure

2010-07-05T10:10:00.002-05:00

Readers of this blog with good memories will recall that I have dealt with today's topic before: spirit vs. structure when it comes to God and religion. Here is how I often encounter this question.

A person who goes to the congregation I used to serve runs into me at some event or place. They ask me what I am doing now, and I tell them...depending upon how much I perceive their interest to be...a bit about what we do at Prairie Table. Then they ask if we have a building or a flyer or how we organize stuff, and I tell them we don't do any of that...they then look at me kind of funny, nod their heads, and in good grace wish me well...before they can turn away I know, without a doubt, that even were they the greatest Christian in the world, Prairie Table Ministries would not work for them. You see, for some of the people I meet, God and religion needs "structure." At Prairie Table, we focus more on "spirit." And there is a huge chasm between structure-people and spirit-people, and even though my tradition tries to balance the two out as well as any religious tradition, at PTM we fall more and the "spirit" side of the gulf...and for Christians who stand on the other side we might as well be a different religion for as well as they comprehend us...(and to be fair, "spirit" folks don't do well with "structure" religion, but that is for another blog.)

Structure is how we know about religions...the buildings, the constitutions, the regularized patters of worship, leadership development, and all the other things that go into maintaining a structure are how many view religion. And that is fine, and for me this "old-school" (I was raised as a structure person) approach has many merits. But it is not what we do at Prairie Table Ministries...for us the"new-school" is to focus on the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and how that Spirit calls and guides us into the world, and into the mission God has for us in this time and place. So, structure, such as it is around Prairie Table is pretty minimal (It is not as if we do not have structure, we have some, but it is not what we focus on...just as the usual congregation, focused on structure, still tries to follow the Spirit.)

I believe it is legitimate to follow the Spirit over structure because no one has ever been saved by a structure (although I will admit is has helped guide people to better lives), and we always need to keep that in the forefront of our faith...all Christians are people of the Spirit, no matter how diverse (and sometimes polar opposite) their structures...And it is that unity we share in Christ Jesus that propels Prairie Table Ministries...blown by the breezes of the Spirit...into the many and various structures of the world.

Independence Day, christologically considered

2010-06-28T15:49:00.002-05:00

As we roll around to another fourth of July celebration, freedom is in the air...TV commercials use our founding fathers and mothers as shills for buying beer or upgrading our automotive status...there are fireworks going off every night now (presumably testing for Sunday's all-out fete), and we find freedoms bandied about on everything from self-defeating behaviors to the right-to-bear arms. What a magical day the Fourth of July is!!

As a Christian, however, my freedom came long before Thomas Jefferson ever arrived on the scene. As someone who trusts God in the power of the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus, freedom for me happened on a day 2000 years ago or so as I was lifted from the burdens of sin to the freedom to be human. Independence day--for me and other Christians--is Easter, the day on which our freedom is confirmed in the breaking of the fear-chain of death. When you are no longer afraid of death, living in freedom is quite easy...of course, that "death" can be a big thing.

I just read that almost a 1/3 of all our medical expenses are spent on the last two months of peoples' lives, trying to keep living even though there is little chance for a "medical miracle." Now, in the cases of people who are willing to test for new treatments or drugs, perhaps there is some justification for hanging around (I mean, how can we know what the miracle drugs are if we never give them a chance to be miraculous?), but most of it just seems like a big fear of death. Most people are trapped in the idea that life is limited to what we experience here on earth, and they will do anything to keep that experience going...too bad in some cases.

But there are also folks who know death is here, and are just waiting to say goodbye. Again and again I come across people so near to death as to have Her sitting next to me, and still breath is drawn until the last of the children can say goodbye, or the trusting spouse promises to be OK. Amazingly, death in those situations is graced with love, with life, and a true independence...an independence not tied to childish beliefs in sentimental afterlifes of clouds and angels, but an independence of love, of trusting in God that even though we are no longer around to supervise life will go on...And every time someone impresses me with such strong--what word is there but "faith?"--I hear fireworks and bands and celebrations for the true independence that comes from a God who trusts and loves us. Happy Fourth of July!

So you want to defeat evil?

2010-06-21T10:07:00.002-05:00

My children grew up with Harry Potter. Born just a few years before the books came out, they were learning to read at the right moment for this phenomenon. As parents we went to the midnight book parties with tons of five year olds running around in British academic robes while the parents wore plain old bathrobes and groggily charged $24.95 to their credit cards for the newest Potter release. We even had a Harry Potter birthday party once with over thirty kids running around our house playing an americanized version of Quidditch (which is just throwing stuff around a house until you break something!) Ah, those were the days....

Of course, the Potter-mania lasted almost ten years, and by the time the final book came out in print, Chris and I waited in line to buy it, while our children were at friend's houses and working, and couldn't be bothered with such a trivial errand. But we read all the books aloud, and the kids re-read them (our youngest still reads them), but we got every word out there at one time or another. (I always read Mad-Eye Moody with a Sean Connery accent, and I thought for sure he was going to be cast in that role...oh well, you know why I don't belong in Hollywood.)

A couple of weeks ago I was reflecting on the amount of time and money we spent on Harry Potter (and as my parents now live about one hour from the new Harry Potter theme-park I am sure we are not done yet). I wondered what I got from it all? Well, I got great family memories...the hours we spent together reading and watching Harry Potter are some of my favorite times as a family...but I also received a reminder about life, and especially about evil.

I am not impressed with evil much. If there are "Voldemorts" out there in the world, they do not scare me much as I know ultimately they will fail, and I always try to be about the ultimate. But I do realize there is evil, and in my job I get to see its consequences quite often. Lies, deceit, assault, even murder have been part of my job in the last few years, as I have walked with people down the dank corridors of life...but this is where Harry Potter blesses me...because you see, Harry Potter and his story (all seven books and eight movies to date) remind us that if you want to defeat evil you had best have some friends...because friends--and the love they share--are more powerful than even the greatest evil. As another book I read a lot--the Bible-- has it, no man has a greater gift than to lay his life down for his friends...because friends are the most important gift God ever gives us.

Very Interesting

2010-06-17T11:16:00.002-05:00

I read a book by an author whom, it turns out, has very little in common with me. Usually we like to encounter people who are like us in some way...whether we meet them on the street or watch them on TV or read them in a book we want to have some kind of obvious, tangible connection. Well, this book Infidel by Aayan Hirsi Ali has no obvious connection to my life in any way.

She is a politician...I think politics is silly; she is a woman...although I like women, I am not one; she is from Somalia in Africa...I am from Minnesota in the USA; she was raised as a Muslim and is now an "atheist"...I was raised as a Christian and still am (although I must admit her atheism never sounds like a strict rejection of God, but rather of religious traditions...which a lot of Christians could claim too); she has a death threat against her...I am free from such constraint. (You want a fun Google search? Google this woman and read all the comments posted about her. Absolutely scary.)

But as different as we are, she did remind me of one thing on which we agree: if women are not free, neither is the society in which they live. This is so central to the Christian understanding of life that without it, you could not have Christianity. Any Christian tradition that does not accord full respect and freedom to women will fail...now I realize there are certain Christian traditions that do not accord to women the same freedoms they accord to men...in fact in the Christian scriptures there are even attempts to indoctrinate discrimination based on patriarchal arrogances...but they are minor and pale in number and vibrancy to the Christian scriptures that speak for the emancipation and freedom of women and men in Jesus Christ. I thank God for the women of faith who have walked in my journey with me...they have been a blessing.

So I read a book by a former Muslim politician who reminded me of a central tenent of my faith: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3.28) Thank you Ms. Hirsi Ali, although we share little in common, in some way I hope what we do share together makes for a better world.

New neighbors?

2010-06-10T15:14:00.003-05:00

We are getting our first taste of immigration up here in the North. This is not the Canadians coming down, but rather, people from across the country who are here to work. We have jobs, seemingly lots of them, although for most of them you are screened for drugs, and well...we have lots of jobs.

We ran into a guy who moved here from Georgia to work at a restaurant, and another who transferred here to work retail, and folks are too happy to have them. A friend of mine who hires for the local Sam's Club is always looking for people to work, and he is regularly short 5 people per shift.

So I read stories about how tough the job market is, how people are scrambling for anything, and I have 5 help wanted signs I can see from my window. I like this part of living here: the new people, the crowded streets--it is exciting, as the roads we have are found inadequate, and the habits and mores we have developed are found to be exclusive (and probably prejudiced too), and all in all the good old culture we have shared gets shaken up a bit.

I have been in this kind of transition before in other places like Chicago, IL or Austin, TX. Certain kinds of people dig in their heels, build huge walls and trenches, and refuse to acknowledge their changing reality. Others open up their arms and doors to folks who may not have anything in common with them, but they find the newness and energy exotic. As I watch my neighbors up and down the street deal with this change, you can tell who is who with relative ease...

They say the first century that Jesus lived in was also a time fo cultural change, as constantly expanding empires has reached the limits of their technology, and people were making do as the world got smaller and larger at the same time. Jesus, of course, did his part as well, trying to shake up the local Jewish culture and tradition...but he died for it...but he was part of it.

I don't know, and can't predict the future, but it does seem to me that a couple of things are going to be radically different in 2012 than they are even now in 2010. For one thing, this immigration is going to really heat up, as people who have stagnated over the past 10 years of economic uncertainty make the inevitable moves as time marches on...But even more so the world is not stopping...God continually grows and creates, redeems and blesses, so that life moves on whether we are ready for it or not...the internet allows me to believe I am relevant in New Zealand or wherever I am read...soon, I may have a neighbor from New Zealand...and that would be new...and not a little bit exciting.

A Demon in my view

2010-06-07T17:03:00.002-05:00

Those of you with a literary bent often recognize that the titles of my blog posts comes from pieces of literature or music. Today is no different, but that is because of a rather extraordinary experience I had the other night.

I was with a group of young people at one of Mandan's finer places where young people gather. Like most of the places it has a few pool tables,a couple of dart boards for leagues, a few poker tables, and one long bar. We were gathered at a table talking about the future and how life seems to have little meaning. (The oldest person there was 25...so nihilistic existentialism should be expected as the dominant philosophic theme...) Suddenly, without anything resembling a warning, one of the young men stands up--pushes himself away from the table and recites the poem "Alone" by Edgar Allen Poe. From memory. In its entirety. And all the guys playing pool, and the two teams of dart throwers all stopped and watched this young guy, recently moved here from Minnesota, perform this brief poem. (As I listened to him the only line I remembered from that poem is the last one about the cloud as a "demon in my view," I thought how I had not expected that as one of tonight's entertainment choices.)

As he finished and sat down, his girlfriend came over and hugged him and told him he was cute. He hung his head as she and her friends wandered over to another table. When he lifted his head, I asked him why he knew that poem. "A friend and I did it for our video production class." When was that? "My senior year." That was like what, five years ago, I said, why do you still remember it?

He looked at me as he took a swig from his bottle. "It meant something to me...it still does I guess." I smiled at him and nodded...yeah, I said, all the girlfriends in the world can't fill that need...He looked at me, and said, "you're lucky to be a pastor..." Why, I asked? "Well, you have someone who can fight the demon."

I have never thought of Jesus as much of a demon fighter, but he does keep me from being alone...and my young friend knows more about Poe, more about me, more about my God than I do. And as we sat there staring out into the crowded room, the silence we shared was answered prayer.

Early Morning Rain

2010-05-25T16:26:00.002-05:00

The one song I sing more than any other is "Early Morning Rain." It's a Gordon Lightfoot song, but I first heard it decades ago by Peter, Paul, and Mary. I have loved it ever since I was a child. I don't know if I understood the song back then, but the haunting melody, and the lyrics just tender enough to evoke reality, have stayed with me through the years...

I've played the song a thousand ways, from country to R & B, and even its original folk-rock version...I've played it in a couple of different keys as my voice has changed over the years...I've fiddled with the lyrics as the Spirit has moved me...and I still love that song.

I guess it is my favorite song, although Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" is what I always say when someone asks me that question...but I live with the early morning rain...I live with the dreams that haven't made it yet...with the people who have left, and whom I have left...but with no regrets...no sense of despair or frustration...just the calm accceptance that rain comes....

I know I didn't know much about that when I first learned the song...but forty years later...? Well, that's about the only thing I have learned...and the song is not a song of anger, but rather of a patient and enduring hope that arises from a dead guy who arose from the dead...I could write all day about this guy, about the love God promised me in his death and resurrection...but I won't...I'd best be on my way--in the early morning rain.

True artists

2010-05-25T08:41:00.002-05:00

I meet a lot of people who remember the "glory days" of their youth. Now in their mid to late twenties (I know...for those of you over thirty don't even go there...) they remember and dream how their best years passed them by. Now, mired in the routines of jobs and child-raising, stuck near the bottom of our socio-economic scale here in Bismarck, these young men and women often look at me--twenty years their senior--as if I am a visitor from a strange planet.

But as we sit and talk, and I hear their stories--how a young dad took his daughter on her first motorcycle ride (mom lives in another town, but no doubt the story will get back to her...)--how a young musician wishes people wouldn't use DJs at weddings, or I hear a story about how life was so much easier back then, and how they wished they'd have stayed in school...the past coming roaring back for them, and smiles crease the corners of their hardened lives. But they are just memories...

John Dewey once wrote a line I have always loved: "Time and memory are true artists; they remold reality nearer to the heart's desire." When these young folks I meet get to be my age, I wonder how they will look back at this time? No doubt time and memory will still create worlds vastly different from the one we are in today with busted bar stools, a jukebox blaring out Snow Patrol and Keith Urban at regular intervals as two of the guys battle for jukebox predominance. Perhaps there will be no memory at all...just a blur from those days of nothing but work and child-raising.

Regardless of how reality is molded in later years, it will reflect our truer desires...our desire to love, to be loved, to have people care about us, to care about others...and if God finds grace for us to live long, may God also grant us time and memory so our heart might rest in Thee.

Pulling Teeth

2010-05-11T12:41:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow I lose one of my wisdom teeth...(since wisdom is not a quality I carry in surplus, this is a damaging blow.) Unlike many, I am able to keep my wisdom teeth, as they all came in pretty well, and I have had both the lower left, and tomorrow the upper left tooth removed as necessary. It will come as no suprise that I am not a fan of dentists...

You see, when I was about 10 I fell on some ice, and had a few of my teeth embedded into my skull up behind my nose...I don't remember much except people running around looking for my teeth (which, of course, my dentist found when he pulled them out from my nasal cavity.) I had dental surgery quite a lot in those years, and now, toothed with false teeth, I only make occassional appearances in dental offices. I even have insurance! I still don't go. I have friends who are dentists and hygenists--I don't go. Getting me to go to the dentist is like pulling teeth...and in irony of ironies...tomorrow I get to see just how apt the metaphor is.

Going to church can be like this for some people too. They had too much of it perhaps, or maybe a traumatic experience perhaps, and now they see no need to be part of a community unless it is really, really necessary...I get that. Prairie Table is often church for those who wouldn't ever set foot in a church. Some of our groups meet in a church basement, and some meet other places... Some people just cannot get themselves to a church building...much like I can pass dentist after dentist and never be tempted to stop in...

The cool thing about God, and here the dentist analogy might have to stop, is that God is not limited to church buildings. God is, can be, and even-- in some cases- promises to be in places besides church buildings. Not any old place has sanitized dental equipment...but any old place can gather the people of God into a church.

We have friends whose churches meet in Panera bread stores, local bars for Theology on Tap, and movie theaters, coffee shops, and sporting goods stores...and people go to those places who wouldn't normally go to church in a traditional church building...And God seems to be OK with that.

So I will enter a dental office, and hope not to lose my soul...because as Jesus of Nazareth asked so poignantly years ago, "What does it profit you to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?" As far as loss goes--I hope tomorrow it's just my tooth.

On the road...again?

2010-05-03T13:28:00.002-05:00

The young man came up right to me and extended his hand. Hi, he said, I am a friend of hers...he indicated the woman I was talking to at the party. Now, I could tell by the woman's reaction that although they do indeed know each other, in her world, he was not exactly a "friend." I think "noxious toxin" would have elicited the same response for her...

Not wanting to be impolite, as the woman looked down to study her shoes, I asked why he was so chipper? I am driving to Georgia tomorrow! Really, I said, where are you going there? I don't know, he said, do you have any suggestions? (It just so happens that I do have suggestions, but gentle reader, you can see where my confusion rests--and it is not with me!)

You mean you have no destination? Right. Just traveling to travel? Yep. Too cold up here. (You can't blame anyone for that up here, as it is cold most of the time.) So, you're just going to drive to Georgia? Are you coming back? I hope not, he said!

I asked the obvious question: why Georgia? Do you have family or friends there? Nope, he sipped his beer, it's the only state that begins with a "G." (This is true, I thought to myself, it would have been a lot harder to choose "A" or "M.") At this the lady I was with raised her head...do you need any help packing, she asked?

He looked at her, studied her for a bit, tilting his head towards me, as if he was going to let me in on a secret...No, he said, I am just looking for a change, something new. I want to travel light. Now I leaned into him...

Look, I told him, the road will have lots of new things, lots of stuff to keep you busy, and in Georgia you'll get your warmer weather...but the road you're going to travel needs someone who packs light...someone who can be open to the road, someone who can travel a blue highway without prejudice or fear...and from where I'm standing...your bags are hanging way too low...

His eyebrows scrunched together as he looked at me...and then his face opened into the realization of his plan...Safe travels, I said, and he thanked me, and walked away. If there's one thing I've learned on the road over the years...the heaviest bags we travel with are not the ones with zippers and buckles...the heaviest bag we travel with beats in our chests...and no road can bear some of those burdens...even in Georgia.

Kitchen Drama

2010-04-26T08:52:00.002-05:00

My waitress welcomed me at my table with red eyes and a wry smile. She asked if I wanted anything to drink, and I asked if she had been crying. She nodded. Things weren't going well today at"the office," and she couldn't wait for her shift to be over. I know those days...

For those of us a bit more experienced than my 20 year old waitress, we know life goes poorly more often than it goes well. In fact, most of life seems like brief respites of joy or relief sandwiched around hours of boredom and holding back tears...Work, as we joke in our Christian tradition, was meant to kill us...and over the past four thousand years or so we have a lot of evidence to back up that claim...but we all "work" for some reason, and some of the reasons are actually quite noble...

But no matter where we work or how we work or why we work, we all like to work with people who can appreciate our work, even if they cannot appreciate us...and when that doesn't happen? Well, you get waitresses who come to their tables having recently been crying about their work...

So as I fumbled around for a drink order (as if I do not know what I am going to have?), I related to my young server a story about two sisters: Mary and Martha. In our story, I said, Mary always seems like the girl who gets whatever she wants, and Martha has to do all the heavy lifting of life...picking up other's messes, catching things that have fallen through the cracks, always working in the kitchen...but here's the funny thing, the stories are always about Martha, Mary never gets to say a thing...I wonder why?

As she brought me my drink a few minutes later, she smiled at me and said she knew why Mary never said anything...I think--she said--she probably left the kitchen crying...Me too, I said, and in the stories her tears are the blessings of life. Thank you.

Are you kidding me?

2010-04-19T09:52:00.003-05:00

The other day I found myself in an apartment that seemed pretty typical to me. It was leased by one person, but she had a friend and a cousin and her son who were pretty regular visitors, and there wasn't much "stuff" to take up space. It reminded me of my younger days when the furniture we owned consisted of a mattress, a 13 inch TV, and a box to put it on. (Of course, 25 years later, we have more stuff now...but I still miss the box!)

As the single moms talked in the hallway about how cute their kids are, as the guys from the upstairs apartments got ready for work, and the afternoon was humming along, I stepped into the kitchen of one apartment, and saw "the picture." This "picture" is famous in my world because we had a version of the same picture in our house when I was a kid. I remember studying that picture, running my hands over the outline of the figure in it, looking for details hidden in the crevasses of the painting. The "picture" is of Jesus, holding a lamp, opening the door of a garden gate.

So here I am, 47 years old, in a place so different from my childhood I can't even begin to illustrate it...and I am brought back to my teenage years, staring at a picture, wondering if life is even worth living...and it all floods back to me...a tear wells in my eye, a lump forms in my throat, and I am brought face-to-face with me and my God in the most unlikliest of places and circumstances. And although the picture doesn't change the reality of the situation, the leasee who lost her job, the 19 year old neighbor pregnant with her second child, the constant struggle to stay sober...all of it takes place under the watchful gaze of the coming Lord...

Because you see all along I assume when I am in places where I am stepping over beer cans, and wondering when the last time the garbage had been taken out, in places where 20 year old moms watch kids like I watch soap operas (I care, but I'm not sure why.) I can always trap myself into assuming that God forgot about this place. These folks are "lost," and God somehow doesn't ever want to see them have a dream realized, a hope come true, or even someone to tell them they are loved, with no strings attached.

In places such as that I pretty much assume the last person I'd see there was Jesus...and, of course, he's the first one I see. It shouldn't surprise me, as it's happened to me over and over and over these past 47 years...and all the stories we have about Jesus are like this too..where he's not with the popular, powerful, or rich, but with all the lonely and forgotten...but I was suprised--as usual- when the Lord shows up where I least expect him...and what changed was me, because that "picture" reminded me why I am here, in apartment buildings that seems "sketchy" even to the residents...I am here because that's where God is opening the door...and that pregnant mom, and board-shorted young man, and that young woman bleary-eyed at four in the afternoon...they are all part of Jesus...and on this day--at least--I am too.

The Death of Liberal Arts and Life

2010-04-06T08:30:00.002-05:00

Nancy Cook of Newsweek Magazine online did a nice article on the decline of liberal arts learning in the USA during this current recession. (See Jobbed: The Death of the Liberal Arts, April 5, 2010) So once again those seemingly "pie-in-the-sky" idealists are losing out to the hard core pragmatists who want to use higher education, not for education of the human life, but to get a job. As if that's what education is all about...going to work.

I've been reading about the death of humanites (in this case liberal arts) for over three decades. When I was in undergraduate school (majoring in English--a classic "liberal art"), I read a couple of dozen books on why I would never get a job in a world dominated by "supply-side" economics. I remember I told my advisor once, a great woman who specialized in 18th Century literature, that if I'd wanted a job, the last thing I would have done is go to college. College is all about avoiding work, not preparing for it.

The bigger issue for me is filtering "education" through ONLY an economic lens. Education is about sparking the human mind and soul to reaches and depths beond our imaginations. Browning's great line "to exceeds man's (sic) grasp, else what's a heaven for?" is the purpose and point of education for me. Or how about Jerome Lee's great line, "Do you ever think about the things you think about?" as a way to understand what education could be. To say that you have to learn to read or write or add in order to make money is to make a mockery of God's greatest creation: the human being. The human given a depth of passion, the human graced with a mind of nimbleness, the human bestowed with an honor and glory, "just a little lower than the angels" does not deseve to be a cog in a machine to grind us up for higher and higher percentages of productivity to the GNP.

So to all of you out there worried about jobs (and according to the article only 41% of people aged 18-29 have them, no doubt there's a lot of worry out there) remember this: to make things is not the same as having a job. To be creative is more important than to have toys that break...to love well is remembered long after the shine has faded from the coins and credit cards...

As it turns out, I bury a lot of people. And not a one of them was remembered because they made money (although they did, and some made quite a bit)...they were remembered because they were a friend, a dad, and even a colleague at work...but even--at work--they knew there was more to life than jobs...and that is why liberal arts is so important and will never go away...it is the way in which life is lived...even for those who have jobs.

Burials and Aging

2010-04-05T07:52:00.002-05:00

Statistics indicate that as a society, on a whole, we are getting older. In fact, if not for immigrant groups to this country, we would be aging even faster. I partcipated in the funeral services of a 93 year old man yesterday...93! (If I were to live as long as him, I would be only half-done with my life...a terrifying thought to say the least!) Of course, as we get older our children become more precious...else this great globe will end, and we are such poor players that strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more...(with apologies to Shakespeare.)

I wonder, for example, as I saw the kids running around the funeral home last night, as parents and elders grieved the loss of a good man, what it would have been like to not have them there? I think that would have been even sadder...to not have the future of our world running around playing hide-and-seek amidst the tears and tissues would have made for a much more depressing event...(and funerals are depressing enough, thank you.)

This leads me to believe that aging and mortality are not synonymous. That aging is life, and although things we may have been able to brush off when we were younger with age get a little more deadly, by and large, you can still have a pretty good life...even at 93 or beyond! So the burial will be interesting...

Because we hold that the grave cannot hold us forever...we have a life, a future, in the promise of a God who knows our name...and that can provide us courage. Courage for what? Well, for one thing,,,not to fear funerals and aging...because if God is good enough for us in this life,well, I figure God is good for us in the next.

Science, Religion, and Easter

2010-03-31T14:49:00.002-05:00

I have spent the better part of my theological career dealing with "science." Ever since my days at seminary working for the Chicago Center for Science and Religion to recent work on conservation issues with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, I have found science, particularly as it relates to biology and ecology, to be very helpful in understanding the Bible. A recent book by a friend, William P. Brown, entitled "The Seven Pillars of Creation" got me to thinking about science and the Bible once again. And then Easter appeared on the calendar...

Easter is where the Christian religion and science often stop dating...it is the event in which both sides call off the romance, and decide to look for more compatible partners...Easter, you see, flies in the face of science. Easter proposes that the immutable law of death can be bypassed by the power of God...in other words, Jesus got up. Now, if the Christian religion would admit that Jesus wasn't really dead, or that some other shenanigan occurred back then, well, maybe science would go out for pizza one more time...but Christians tend not to relent on this issue. He was dead. He rose, and now he's not dead. And science shakes its head...

Basically, for those who believe in the resurrection of the dead, we go it alone...science, various other religions, and people of a more empirical bent, wish us bon voyage...(and sometimes good riddance!) What makes the Christian religion even more suspect is that not only did Jesus' resurrection controvert the law of science, but in the future that law will be broken for everyone who participates in God through Christ Jesus...that often becomes too much for the scientific mind to bear...So as Christians we walk this valley of the shadow of death, not because we understand death, but because we trust God to bring life again on the other side.

I know many scientists who are Christian, but that is precisely because at this point (Easter) they relinquish their science...and I know many scientists who are not Christian because they will not relinquish science...So Easter is an important day for both scientists and religious people because it tells us where we differ, and gives us a place to start our conversations...right in front of an empty tomb with the question being: "How--exactly--did it get that way?" Happy Easter!

Health Care reform, theology and a little Latin

2010-03-22T10:23:00.001-05:00

One of the first Latin words I learned was "Salve!" (It used for "hello," or "Hail", but it means "to your health or well-being" or something like that). Later I discovered that Christians used the word to talk about what God did in the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the word we call "salvation." What I took from this lesson in linguistics is that our early Christian theologians had no trouble connecting health and well-being with eternal life and its gifts...in other words, Jesus Christ is all about good health...

So today the internet on this side of the world is all abuzz about "health care reform" as if something that has never happened before now will magically appear before our eyes...really? In the Gospel of Luke, one of the four stories about Jesus as the Son of God, all we get is health care reform. In fact, in Luke, Jesus IS health care reform...(there is one story in that gospel about a woman who "spent all she had" to try and get better, but all she got was sicker and poorer. And Jesus is the one who heals her.) Christians have been in the health care reform business for a couple of thousand years...it's nice to see the rest of you join us in this adventure...

Here's the thing about health care reform: it's not going to stop you from dying...it shouldn't stop you from living...As a Christian your goal, in the famous words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is to "come and die" in following Christ, and you can't really do that if you spend all your time going to medical facilities trying to avoid that...one of my colleagues always marveled that somehow people believe you have to get to heaven in good health...but in order to get there, you have to die...so what--exactly--is health good for?

Health care reform may cost some people some more money(but in irony of ironies no one seems to have as much of that as they want), and it may give some people access to a longer life who may not have had the opportunity. But it will never stop us from dying...and it will never stop us from loving our neighbor...and in my world-- the faster we learn those lessons about dying and loving...well, the healthier we all will be.

A Long, Cold Winter

2010-03-19T09:50:00.002-05:00

It has been a long, cold winter up here in the north...do not be deceived...this is the kind of winter that keeps my folks saying "That's why we moved to Florida!"

These kind of winters take a toll on everybody, whether we realize it or not...we may think we are doing "OK," or that we are coping and surviving, but in reality...we are just numb to anything more than the most basic of necessities or common of courtesies...we like to kid ourselves that we don't do anything rash (none of us move away, for example, as next year might be warmer), and we don't get "too crazy."

Unfortunately this past week got a little too crazy for one young couple, and he wound up brutally beating her and she died. There are so few things in this world that are certain, but certainly this is wrong on all accounts. No matter how troubled the relationship, we have to count on a husband and a wife not to kill each other. Right before I met with the family of the deceased woman for a prayer service, I met with another young couple who are getting married later this summer.

When I told them where I was headed after our meeting, both of them shook their heads in sympathy for the young woman. I looked at them for a moment, and told them I usually don't give marital advice...after 22 years of marriage all I know is to listen more than talk...but I did offer this advice...no matter how much you hate the other person, don't kill each other. They nodded, and realized that this gift of life isn't just an intricate game of playing "house" in your folks basement at the age of 10.

It is difficult enough to get out of a relationship which carries the promise of an unbreakable vow...even in the face of abuse and degradation...but there is never an excuse for violence...because if the cross of Jesus the Christ means anything it means that we should live without resorting to violence...that we still do...well, that's why I still have a job. But I would gladly retire if we could give up violence to ourselves, to each other, and even to our God.

Paying the Rent and the Missionary impulse

2010-03-08T12:37:00.002-06:00

The mission of Prairie Table is to build communities of Authenticity and Integrity as "families" devoted to the love of God in Christ Jesus. As such, 85% of our resources go into this endeavor, everything from Holy Communion with LateNite worship to taking our Youth of the Augsburg Confession (YAC) on field trips to explore religious sites. (The other 15% of our income is given in benevolence to our ELCA denomination).

Since we are building communities and not buildings, we are able to be flexible in how we "pay the rent." We are currently blessed to have a great relationship with Legacy United Methodist Church, which allows us to use its space, as available, for our ministry communities. It is a great gift of hospitality that they offer us, and they do not seem to mind that they have Lutherans in their basement! (As Lutherans, we do believe that if we ever get to heaven, we will have the basement there too. We assume the penthouse and upper level suites are reserved for those more temperate in their theological opinions.)

At some point in every Christian congregation there comes an issue with how to maintain what we have (paying the rent) versus how to follow God's missionary impulse. At PTM, we hope to never focus more on paying the rent than in following God's mission in the world. (It is true, in some cases, that paying the rent on a building with no Christian facilities may be what God wants...that does not seem to be a problem, however, here in Bismarck, ND).

To this end we discerned last week to engage a partnership with another missionary and her ministry. This one is somewhat like ours, it's a school in Japan (Luther Gakuin), and the missionary is a young woman named Katie Narum Miyamoto. We are not sure where our partnership will lead, but we are looking forward to seeing how we can continue to reach out to the world where God has so freely given life and breath. We're pretty sure God is with us in Bismarck, and we're also pretty sure God is there in Japan...the question will be how we can be part of what God is up to, regardless of where we are. But then, again, isn't that the question for all of us?

Defining the Story of Jesus

2010-03-04T22:08:00.002-06:00

We spent some time tonight at Prairie Table trying to get the six most important things about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God straight in our minds. Each of us had a few details different (after all, we only allowed ourselves six things...which six would you choose?) I know we are suppose to be a "Book of Faith" people, but it is faith, not "book" which is the operative term for us at PTM. No Book, not even the Bible, has ever saved anyone...the Word of God...yes, that, no doubt, has saved more than a few...

So we focused on the Word of God (Jesus Christ and his promises) for tonight. Many had the promise carried in a miracle or two, a parable, the Lord's Prayer, and even the story about Mary and Martha. There was lots to choose from and we did make many and various choices...But, all of us had the cross...all of us had the resurrection...what does that say?

We live by the power of the Spirit...and as such, the life of Jesus Christ makes sense when we can give a version that has power and meaning for us, corporately and individually. So, when you tell people about who Jesus is, what stories about him do you use? What things did he do that affects your faith...and finally, who your God is?

What a joy to have such people like the PTM folks, and Jesus, in my life.

Dry Bones in Western North Dakota

2010-03-01T10:43:00.002-06:00

My Bishop (Mark Narum of the Western North Dakota Synod of the ELCA www.wndsynod.org) gathered seven congregations together to work on mission here in the West. He called this gathering "Dry Bones."

Those of you who know your Bible, know that "dry bones" is a reference to the story of Ezekiel whom the Lord takes to a valley of dry, dead, dessicated human bones, and commands them to breathe. The story is a story of new life, of a God who brings life, and a God who keeps promises to people even after they are dead. For many of our congregations out here who are feeling parched and dry, this story is an apt metaphor for their relationship with God.

Of course, for this to be a promise of new life, the first life has to end, and that is tough for our congregations to do...who wants to be part of a congregation that is dying? Who wants to be part of a congregation that is dead? So there are only 7 of our of 195 congregations working this territory...most of the rest of us cannot admit our demise...

But this past week, as I gathered with leaders of these 7 congregations I asked if they had done any talking about their congregations in their communities or towns. Of those that had, the results of the conversations were, in the words of one lady, "jaw-dropping." What those congregations discovered is that most people in their community already KNEW the congregation was dead...that's why they are not part of it...In other words, the only people in a town or a community who do not know their congregation is dead are the people who are in that congregation. To those on the outside, those congregations are palpably dead. But at least these 7 congregations know this...what about the other 188?

My guess is that all the other communities and towns think those congregations are dead already. My work as a missionary here in Bismarck would indicate that...and not just Lutheran ones...I hear from a lot of people that congregations are dead...and why are they bothering to think they are alive? Now I know a lot of people in congregations can point to programs, worship services, busy calendars, and full slates of visitation...but those are ministries that are dead, just by virtue of being in dead places...(sort of like all the bodies in a cemetery are dead because the cemetery is for the dead)...

Congregations can be houses of self-delusion...that somehow we are alive because the bones in them are moving...but the story of Ezekiel's valley of dry bones is not about movement, it is about the breath and promise of God...and all the calendars and charity, all the meetings and budgets, all the sermons and songs mean nothing if there is no breath...which in Hebrew is the same word for Spirit. To me the surest sign of life in a congregation is not what it does, but how it breathes...how it lives in the life of the Spirit of Christ who frees us to breathe.

The Olympic Games, Canadian style

2010-02-23T10:24:00.002-06:00

When the Olympic games roll around every couple of years, us folks out on the prairie suddenly get all "greek." What I mean by this is that we get caught up in the events, cheering folks from all sorts of countries that weren't even countries when many of us were kids, and finding ways to hold up to the integrity of the "game", moreso than who wins or loses. (Unfortunately, the media that broadcasts the games does not hold to such a high standard, and often only shows stuff in real time that feature folks from Canada or the USA. Oh well...)

Back in the day when the Olympics were conceived, the purpose was to showcase talent and skill, and laurel wreaths were a way to recognize superior achievement...but soon (probably after the first semi-final match) the games became all about the winning...and as the Greeks eventually lost to Ceasar, you cannot win forever...That's why the integrity of the game is so important...it can survive wars, arguments, protests, disagreements, and downright hatred...whereas winning and losing comes and goes...(unless, of course, you are the Minnesota Vikings, and winning never comes around).

Out here on the prairie we live in a world where things come and go (we haven't seen warm weather in about three weeks), and where something has to mean more than a quick flash of success or fame or a drought of hope and promise...what best exemplifies the spirit of the Olympic games for us is our land, our prairies and rivers, buttes and valleys, and its constancy amidst the swirling winds of change...(We would agree with Lord Alfred North Whitehead, the famous British mathematician, who noted that everything moves...even rocks...they just move very slowly.)

It is that constancy that allows us to understand the land as a gift from God...that we are just stewards of the mysteries of life, and that somehow, winning or losing, the land, and even ourselves still have purpose and meaning...it's tough to remember that these days amidst 8 ft. snow drifts...but when Spring does come...oh what joy!

Sustaining the Unsustainable

2010-02-16T13:55:00.002-06:00

I have a friend who argues that until the world runs out of oil and gas we will never change our habits of dependence upon them. In other words, as long as there is oil and gas we will use it. (He also drives a small Suzuki car. I guess so that he can keep the oil and gas around as long as possible. In his world, a true future-oriented person would drive a Hummer with over-sized tires to the mailbox so that we could get to the next stage even faster! Conservation just keeps us addicted to oil and gas technologies and their ways of life.)

But it is pretty clear to most people that the world as it existed for the past sixty years is unsustainable in its present configuration. Whether you're woried about the planet, energy, human over-population, clean water, food supplies, or affordable education, there is a crisis at hand...or better, everything is in some stage of crisis. Take, for example, the professional basketball league, the NBA (it stands for the National Basketball Association, or, in some circles the "No Benjamins Association.") According to its executive director, the league will lose $400 million this year.

There are teams that cannot sell tickets to games for $5. (Which is $3 less than a movie ticket here in Bismarck. Basically, people are saying they would pay more money to watch Kristen Bell romp around Rome than basketball players run around Minneapolis or Indianapolis or Los Angeles, etc. This would not be a problem, except that Kristen Bell makes a lot less money than those basketball players, and she's the one who gets the people to pay!) What would a world look like without professional basketball? Since most people do not care, for a great many life would just go on in the same old, same old way.

But a lot would change in other ways. Sneaker sales, for example, would change. Hoop dreams would have to be replaced with...? With what, exactly?

There is the rub...we have nothing to replace the unsustainable life we have created for ourselves over the past sixty years...We have forgotten families and dinner tables, we have neglected the neighbor and stranger...we have ignored the widow, abandoned the orphans, and left the children to not be left behind, but not encouraged to go forward either...Since we have nothing to replace this unsustainable life we have, we just keep sustaining the unsustainable...and we will twitter and blog and facebook ourselves into a communinty of despair...

For those of you who have God, consider yourself lucky...you are like the gambler in front of the slot machine...you may not have much of a chance, but you have a chance....And for those of you who believe God has you...well, maybe we should stop all this effort at sustaining the unsustainable, and be looking for new dreams...new visions...new realities in a world connected by people, and not miles of cul-de-sacs powered by oil and gas...or as Jesus of Nazareth once said, "What will it profit you if you gain the whole world, but lose your soul?"

Greetings from chilly St. Paul

2010-01-28T00:21:00.002-06:00

You would think for someone who was raised in this frigid weather that I would be more at peace with it. I am not. I really detest taking a walk, and not enjoying any part of it because it is too cold or too windy or too icy...perhaps I am getting a bit cantakerous in my old age...

Met a guy tonight who was tested by my friend as to what I do. I answered "preacher." He said, "what kind?" and I responded "Lutheran." Then he stood up approached me straight on and said, "Good. As long as you are not one of them Catholics." As he sat back down, I asked him why he didn't care for the Catholics much. His response? "Too many hypocrites!"

Now, I am pretty sure that Roman Catholics are no more or less hypocritical than other denominations of Christians, but for this young man it seemed they had a corner on the market. But people often charge Christians, Roman Catholics and otherwise, with hypocrisy.

At Prairie Table we put a high premium on integrity, or for the younger folks, authenticity. Many of us who call Prairie Table our congregational home have been burned by Christian hypocrisy, and at times have even been hypocrites...we know of what we speak.

So as cold as this St. Paul weather is, it is not as cold as the disgust I heard in that gentleman's voice. That was cold. And at some point, if we are ever going to reach this man with a gospel of love and authenticity, we are going to have to not be hypcocrites as well. Talk about chills...imagine a world where people trust each other enough to live out their lives in honesty and truth...a world, in short, without hypocrites...

Training Missional Leaders

2010-01-18T16:23:00.002-06:00

The intern Living Water Lutheran Church shares with First Lutheran Church in Mandan comes from a seminary in Iowa. Last week, in the earthquake in Haiti, she lost a friend who died there. Like her, he was a student at the seminary, and like her, he just wanted to help people find their way with God...unfortunately, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now he is no longer with us. With Trisha (our intern) and the entire community of Wartburg Seminary, and all who do ministry in perilous places like Haiti, we grieve the passing of Ben Larson. Requiescat in pace.

Learning to be a missional leader is not easy. Unlike the seminary programs of old...well there is no "program" for mission. Mission is about following God into the world, in places like Haiti or Detroit or Charlotte and living with what is there, and sharing the grace that is there, and counteracting the negative forces there. You cannot learn stuff like that from books...I know, I've tried, and I've read many books, and as important as they are, they cannot stop a bleeding heart or a broken promise...

If you are interested in God I invite you to start ministering wherever and whenever you are...I think of the guy who started the poker league I am in, who sees getting together with friends once a month as about the most important thing a guy can do...we have a mix of young and old, some like me with kids the age of the youngest players, and we share tales of child-raising, being a guy, and living honorably in the world...and we play poker...ostensibly to give our hands something to do.

I think of the young woman who has not had too much in this world, and every day is a battle for her sanity, and to keep her son, and who through all the struggles manages to be kind and polite, and even gentle to those who come to her for help...amazing how one so wounded can be so gracious...

I think of my intern, given all the confusions and busyness that surrounds her life, and yet she finds a way to remember the passing of a friend, and the grief of his now widowed wife, another friend of hers. Ministry happens in places such as this, in times such as these, by these kinds of people whom God calls to live and love without fear, without counting the cost, without worrying about "how it looks" to the superficial people of the world.

All my students have, and do, impress me on a regular basis...not because they are always great students, but because they are great people...they love God, and they want to share that love...all the teaching and training in the world can't give you that...that kind of love comes only from God. It is a blessing to have such people in my life. Thank you.

Drunkards: musings on 1 Corinthians 6

2010-01-18T10:17:00.004-06:00

According to the Bible, drunkards aren't getting anywhere fast with God. Apparently, being an alcoholic is not on the list of acceptable behaviors with God. But, what--exactly--is a "drunkard?"

According to my pocket Oxford English dictionary, to be "drunk" is to be rendered incapable by alcohol. A "drunkard" then is someone who is rendered incapable habitually. This is why I love words. Because "drunk" is a verb, and "alcohol" is a noun, what God prohibits is the verb, the doing, not the being. In other words you can't "do" drunk, but you can be a "drunk." What the Bible suggests God doesn't like is not "who you are," but rather what you "do." In this case, drink to incapacity on a regular basis.

When we call someone an "alcoholic," we are naming their identity on the basis of the adjective (derived from the noun "alcohol"), and not their behavior. When we call someone a "drunkard," we are describing their behavior without tapping into their identity. Linguistically, a person could be an "alcoholic", but if they never drink they could never be a "drunkard." Conversely, you could be a "drunkard' even if you are not an alcoholic. (Although, this is hard ot imagine, as anyone who would keep drinking would seem to be both an alcoholic and a drunkard.)

Now, I know this is why most of us do not do philosophy or theology, however, we need to know what God is against here: God doesn't want us to hurt ourselves or our neighbors (asuming drunkards imperil us...and MADD and other groups attest to that), so this behavior is not condoned. No matter who does it--alcoholic or not. The prime motivation God seeks from humanity is to take care of each other and the world, as God takes care of us. The Bible assumes it's tough to take care of things if you are always drunk, that is, a "drunkard."

Now, lest we get too cocky because we do not drink to drunkard-status, remember Jesus says that the sin that wounds is not what we do, but what we are...namely, lusters of the heart...Because our identity betrays our idolatry, what we do is a bit of a shadow when it comes to sin...because the "sinning" has been done long before we "do" anything. And what regulates our behavior then is not whether it is sinful or not, but whether it helps or imperils our neighbors and ourselves or not. So a "drunkard" doesn't drive not because that is a sin, but because that imperils him or herself and their neighbors.

So as 2010 rolls by and we struggle with questions of who we are and what we do, resolutions we keep or ignore, we could do worst than to remember then to think of others rather than to obsess over who we are. As God's children, our questions of identity are never in doubt...but what we do????

Table Fellowship and the Failure of Sacrifice

2010-01-04T10:39:00.002-06:00

On reading a great book by S. Mark Heim, Saved From Sacrifice: a theology of the cross, (Eerdmanns, 2006) I was struck by his idea that Christians no longer use sacrifice to form community. According to Heim, Holy Communion (eucharist, the Lord's Supper, et al.) is not a reenactment of Christ's final meal, and therefore not also a version of the supper as a sacrifice. Rather, he argues, Christians no longer use sacrifice (since Christ made sacrifice useless for Christians with his resurrection), but rather seek other ways to bind themselves together rather than scapegoating a victim (the purpose of sacrifice is to bind together a community by scapegoating someone so the rest of us can feel good about ourselves and our community.)

Although he has no way of knowing this (I don't believe I have ever met him, but my memory fades on things like this...) Prairie Table gathers together around Holy Communion, but as "community" not as sacrifice. In other words, our table fellowship is in honor of our relationship we have to God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we believe God is creating that community, not only when we celebrate the eucharist, but when we gather together to sing, pray, or talk too. By virute of making and gathering community through celebrating the relationship we share with the Triune God, and not through the sacrifice of God for us, we have become one of those communities whom Heim says are "saved from sacrifice." That is, we do not need to sacrifice ourselves in order to have a relationship with God.

This is huge for many reasons, and those who see Jesus' action on the cross primarily as a sacrifice for human sin, will have huge problems with this idea. But at Prairie Table we came to this position not from theologically parsing atonement theory (what we are talking about here), but from the simple human craving and desire to connect with others and God around a meal...namely, the meal God invites to at the Lord's table. (At Prairie Table we do not have an "altar," needless to say, because we have nothing to sacrifice on it.)

Maybe in two thousand years this idea may take hold on the "regular" Christian imagination, but for now we at Prairie Table are keenly aware that we are bound together, not by the blood of God, but by the love of God, a God who loves us so much that he bleeds...and it is the loving, not the bleeding, not the sacrificing that saves us...

Money and Churches

2009-12-29T08:07:00.002-06:00

I have lost count over the years how many people say some variation of this line to me: "My church always seems to talk about money. I don't like that." This issue seems to have been around since Jesus told the "rich, young ruler" to "sell all he had," and he didn't want to, so he left. This time of year, as most congregations finally have enough money to pay bills, is a good time to review the basics of money management for congregations.

First, learn to add. According to Bob Sullivan of the "Red Tape Chronicles" (one of my favorite blogs, see redtape.msnbc.com) only one in 15 Americans knows how to add well enough to pay the check at a restaurant. Time and time gain I hear congregations imploring people to give 10% (traditionally a tithe for Christians), and offering absolutely nothing to help people know what 10% is. Hence, most congregants don't (literally "can't) give 10%, and the vicious cycle continues. If Sullivan's information is correct (and it comes from our US Dept. of Education), most congregations would improve their stewardship immensely if they did nothing else but offer math classes and financial help to people. I'm guessing some of those 14 who can't do math would actually give 10% if they knew how much that was.

Second, talk about what money "is," not what money does. Nowadays it is very popular to rail against "consumerism" in Christian churches. So I will go to a congregation that implores me to abandon consumerism, but then in asking for money shows me what money can do. How is that not consumerism? Showing me what my money does (feeding the hungry, housing the poor, contributing to "intangiable spiritual benefits") is no different than the millions of advertisements and commercials I see each day of my life. To rail against consumerism and then use consumerism's most potant weapon (advertising) is the height of hypocrisy in my book, and people should abandon congregations for that move. (Admittedly, there are many Christians congregations that are fully aware and embracing of their consumeristic tendencies, and they will advertise away...)

Talking about what money "is" gets to the heart of what Jesus seems to be doing with money in his world. It is, at best, a symbol of power, but whose power? The one who makes the money or the one who makes possible the making of money? Congregations which talk about money in a way that lifts up what God does in the world in order to make money possible seem to be getting at the heart of the matter.

Prairie Table Ministries gets by on the generous donations of many people and other congregations. We thank the ELCA and the Department of Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission for a major funding grant; Faith Lutheran Church, Bismarck, ND for money to help pay insurance, Western North Dakota Synod of the ELCA for adminstrative support, Legacy (formerly First) United Methodist Church, Bismarck, ND for space to gather, and for the countless people who offer time and energy to our community. Like most, I suppose, we don't have as much money as we want, but we seem to have all we need...didn't Jesus say that? Happy New Year, may wealth and prosperity...sorry...may God's vision be your guide.

The Incarnation

2009-12-22T10:50:00.002-06:00

I've always liked that Bethlehem means "house of bread" in Hebrew. (Learning that almost made my years of Hebrew wothwhile...and that includes passing out during a final exam once!) There's something about having the Christ child born in a town named for "bread" that is wildly comforting out here on the prairie.

And, as you know, we make a big deal about tables, and out here in the prairie there is no table more important than a kitchen table. Out here, if there is a dining room table, we bring the cookware out on it, and make it a kitchen table...we love kitchen tables that much. At the kitchen table, of course, you get all the dinner preparations. And this time of year is famous for its dinners...

And this little baby in a manger is born into a world that likes dinner. Unlike gods, we humans have to eat (and, as Homer constantly reminds us in his stories, we are "slaves to the belly.") And God, in this case, arrives into our world as the food we eat. Partaking precisely in the gracious love of a God willing to live and be as one of us, we participate in the reality of God's eternity. This comes about, as we on the prairie are fond of saying, not because we participate in eternity, but because we eat the bread; that is, the body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And this time of year we take that metaphor all the back to the beginning of our Lord and Savior's days on this planet, back to his birth in a manger (the table of cattle), back to the "house of bread," Bethlehem. Christ-mass (another meal term) celebrates a God who holds nothing back...a God who longs for human hope, human possibility to live and eat in the kingdom, not only here in history, but in eternity as well. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Caramel Apples and the Christ-Child in a Manger

2009-12-15T09:12:00.002-06:00

I love the taste of caramel apples. I cannot stand to eat them. I remember as a child losing a tooth in a caramel apple once, getting all sticky from them, sometimes dropping the caramel, even having the apple fall off the stick. About 30 years ago I swore off caramel apples...but I still like the taste.

I was reminded of this as someone gave me a caramel apple-flavored candy recently. I REALLY like that taste combination! I had a shot of "caramel apple," a home-made North Dakota concoction that tasted just like a caramel apple...you couldn't even taste the Everclear...I like the taste even then...But they are so hard to eat in their traditional caramel-dipped, apple-on-a-stick form...too bad.

I wonder if this isn't how we feel about God sometimes? We like God and everything, but God is just so hard to understand and handle, so hard to appreciate, that we don't even bother with God for most things. We like it when people take our God and make it palatable by giving us sentimental "bookstores" that pander to the taste without the effort or work to understand the "peace," "joy," "hope," or "love" that are stenciled on porcelained figurines. Just like I like the caramel apple taste, but won't eat the caramel apple, a lot of people seem to like God, but won't try to take God in all of God's power and shame on the cross...

But then along comes Christmas, and we domesticate God once again, this time trapped in a baby, bawling in a manger, with a mother asking why didn't anyone bring us a crib? Christmas loses itself in the cheap commercialization of "Reason for the Season" signs, and huge stars and Christmas trees perched high atop businesses who just want to "witness." It's just candy, just a liqueur posing as the real thing...and it has no more to do with God than the chemically-contrived tastes mimicing apples dipped in caramel have to do with the real thing.

Just before I sat done to write this I resolved to make a caramel apple this Christmas...I will even make my own caramel (it's not too hard, I've done it before...I even add some cayenne pepper to it for a little "zing.") My hope is as well that I can do the same for God...and take in all that God is, no matter how much the struggle, so that the taste remains with me forever. Merry Christmas.