Eucharist and the Coming Food Crisis

After many years of slowly growing our current food/agricultural crisis is beginning to hit the news. Crisis is perhaps a bit too strong right now, because the reality is that we haven’t seen anything yet.

It is important to understand what is causing this crisis. There are many factors here are some of the key ones.

1. Growing population. Lets face it there is a lot of us humans on the planet. While the percentage rate of population is beginning to slow slightly the sheer number of us means that the overall number of people being added to the population is growing faster then ever. Every single one of us has both a need and a right to food.
2. Increased consumption per person. Basically the worst thing that could happen for the environment and for humanity as a whole is if the rest of the world begins to live like us in North America and Europe. Basically the amount of hectors of land needed to produce meat is much higher then such things as grains and plants. So as more people in China and India and begin to eat more eggs and meat the effects on the food chain are huge. Equally huge is the number of people who are moving from one meal a day to two. Once again largely due to the economic growth of India and China.
3. Loss of productive land. There are several factors here. Basically most cities are situated on some of the most productive land in the world. So with the raped growth of cities has come a rapid destruction of productive farm land. At the same time vast amounts of land which has been marginal has become unproductive due to erosion, desertification and the big one – climate change. As the globe warms it is the tropical areas, where most of humanity lives, that experiences the most amount of increased evaporation and drought. The result is crop failures and less food – and a few wars to boot (ie. Darfour).
4. Lack of agricultural investment. For decades now food prices have been so low that their has been a decrease in investment in agriculture. One major sign of this has been the vast number of people globally who have left rural areas for urban ones. It also means that improvements in land, farming techniques etc. that bought about the first green revolution have been severely lacking resulting in land productivity far below what it could be. Luckily this higher prices should reverse this. Unlucky many of the things which increase productivity the most (such as fertilizers) require fossil fuels and potash, things who’s price has skyrocketed.
5. BioFuels. The reality is that many bio-fuels simply do not give enough bang for the carbon impact to make them worth while (corn based ethanol at best provides a 30% CO2 reduction – at 5% in a tank it is just not significant). The cost though are massive. Basically large amounts of productive land, food and fertilizers are directed towards their production and away from food production. Also once the food-fuel link is made the fuel hungry west’s economic power will simply overwhelm the hungry people of the non-industrialized countries. Basically so we can drive people will starve. While other froms of biofuels such as switch grass, cellulous, and algae may be significant this is not how most biofuels are produced.

So how do we respond? – First as people of faith we need to go deeper. It is at our table of faith that we can begin to find this.
One aspect of liturgy (the work of the people) is that it is in liturgy that we practice how we are to live the rest of our life. It is at the communion table that the great economy of God is modeled.

Worship towards the Eucharist as the gifts of the community are brought to the table. As the ancient songs sings, as the grains of wheat once scattered on the hills are gathered into one to become our bread. So we bring what we are and what we have been given back to God. It is blessed and then we all together participate in the feast. Each person taking what they need and not more.

So we begin to address the food crisis by recognizing that all food is in fact a gift from God. Even if we work the fields, is it not God who give the sun, who first created the seed, who brings the rains and gave us the life needed to work and gather? It is God’s, given so that all may eat and have life?

Redistribution is also key. The reality is that there is still an over abundance of food in some areas and great lack in other areas. Now for some this will mean the simple movement of food from one place to another. This though is more of a rarity. The reality is that it is our current trade structures which prevent the movement and sale of agricultural products in the less-industrialized countries to the industrialized countries. This is what has caused not only great poverty, eroding the purchasing power of these countries, but also prevented the necessary investments in agriculture in the countries where most of humanity lives in threat of hunger. In other words, yes give to the Food Grains Bank, but also write your MP/Senator and give also to those who are helping rural communities invest in themselves. It is an aspect of the Eucharist that everyone brings something to the table. That means this crisis will not be addressed simply by some giving to others. Rather we must work with people so that through their work we can all feed each other.

There is also some major work that we in the west need to do. The problem with consumption per person is largely a problem for the developed world to face. Lets face it having people go from one to two meals a day is a wonderfully good thing. Having us eat hamburgers each day and fill up our SUV’s with corn is just plane gluttony. It is the equivalent of running up to the Eucharist table and grabbing half the bread, drinking half the wine and running out the door. Instead of using ethanol, use your bike, or public transit or those feet God gave you. Instead of meat each day, reduce it to at most once a week. If you want to cook more vegetarian I suggest the Moosewood cook books (just increase the flavorings I usually double the spices).

As far as climate change there is only one things that will make the difference needed now; massive advocacy efforts towards our governments. We are talking about big changes, not small ones to make a difference. Simply if your politician doesn’t commit to a plan to move us from a carbon based economy, don’t vote for them and ask others to do the same. Your vote will do far more then changing a light bulb can (though change the light bulb as well). And if the company that you buy something from doesn’t have a green house gas reduction plan that they are implementing, then don’t buy from them.

For all us urbanites. I also highly recommend planting a garden. Those seeds scattered on the hills can easily land in some of the backyard now covered with lawns. I have also managed to grow small gardens on numerous apartment balconies. More then anything, it gives us urbanites a chance to more intimately come to understand the cycles of nature by which our food is produced. No it won’t feed the world, but it is a small way that we can be a part of the solution. And even more exciting, it give a chance to be apart of the spiritual journey of gathering the grains and vegetables scattered on the hills, gathered so that we might be one in God, with everyone having enough to eat. We are each invited to the feast. Please pass the mashed potatoes to those who are hungry.

Eagles

I was out at the petroforms the other day. For those who don’t know in the Whiteshell provincial park there is this beautiful bare rock on which there are centuries old figures and shapes made from rocks. It is a sacred place for the native folks around here. My parents were visiting and my Dad was quite interested in these since he has seen similar things in the hills by where he grew up.

There is this one petroform in the shape of an eagle. It is tucked down below one of the central areas. It has been one of my favorites. As I stood there, with my parents and my wife, we suddenly heard this squawking and the sound of feathers. Behind us flew three bald eagles. One mature one and two immature eagles. Upon seeing us they flew apart. The mature one found a tree while the two younger ones flew around us. At times their were only twenty feet away. Then they would fly behind some trees and disappear and then reappear. Each one taking its turn. Then they began to soar. First a younger one began to circle higher and higher. Then after a while the older one began as well. We watched it for almost twenty minuets, until it was just a speck and until even that speck became to small to see. When I looked back down, something in my heart was healed.

Here I was. A searching Lutheran Pastor. A tourist (or perhaps a guest) in someone else’s sacred site. With an eagle of rocks at my feat and one of feathers and spirit soaring above my head, a part of me was healed.

I have also now heard from two Buddhist Monks. One in the midst of his meetings with the Dalai lama and with Popes took the time to search for my number and phoned me up to see how I was doing and invited me to come visit. Another in the midst of his own searching took the time to hunt down my address so he could write me a letter and send me cookies as a tangible sign of people's prayers for comfort, clarity and peace.

Is God present amongst other faiths. Here is a good question “what do you see?”

A Question of Justice

“What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God” Micah

It is one of the most basic element of the Christian faith, justice. Justice is a theme which echoes from Egypt, through the prophets, Christ to the present day. Yet why has it become the aspect of our faith so often abandoned and ignored?

Now most mainline churches have good language about justice. Yep they love to preach it, but in practice . . . Lets look at the facts. When the United Church needed to cut back recently it was their justice department that got the vast majority of the cuts. And for my own Lutheran church, who was the first to go, well the person working on our justice work. What is interesting is that this has been the reoccurring pattern. Consistently it has been the justice related work that is cut first, or the staff person working in that area is pushed out. . . .

Yet what is interesting is the need. Our world is facing some of the largest crisis in its history. Environmental degradation, never ending wars, HIV/AIDS, abandoning of human rights principles by former supporters, and our growing agricultural crisis, small arms sales and that is just the beginning of the list. What is equally interesting is the yearning to address these. There are so many people who are yearning to address these challenges. Lets face it most people are not dumb. They know the brokenness of our world, but as isolated individuals it is hard to do much beyond a token response.

This is precisely where churches could come in. For not only is justice a part of the deep belief system of Christianity, churches are also a point where people can join together, and take action together to transform theses crisis of the world. Governments or businesses take little notice of an individual letter or one person's refusal to buy a product. When thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people respond they take notice. Likewise it is very hard for me, on my own, to address poverty half-way around the world. When we join together we are able to send not just assistance, but develop relationships, work beside people and share with others almost anywhere.

This is the potential of the church. It could be a place where our invitation into the passion (suffering) of Christ and the world is combined with our ability to join, organize and work together to bring healing to the world. Churches could be the place where people are invited to take concrete action in their lives and in their community. Churches can also be a place where we develop a shared voice which can walk in and speak with world leaders and bring the voice of compassion and justice to those with power. Churches could be a place, where justice is lived out and shapes a community and in the process transforms the world around them. I know so many who yearn to be a part of such a church.

Yet when churches cut, they cut the justice work first. In their own practices, where there is the greatest opportunity to act with justice and compassion, so often they chose not to. This is not just a question of my dismissal, it is a question of a congregation which will spend over a million dollars on renovating a building, but not a few dollars on fair trade coffee. It is about churches which instead of inviting in the diversity of the world, lock their doors and keep leadership to the old boys and girls club. It is about churches which forget to preach about the children who die each day because we fail to act. It is about a future lost because we are too concerned about driving our own car to church instead of the air that others will one day breath. It is about the reality that 11:00 Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week. Where is justice?

First it is best to begin by explain a bit about the biblical notion of justice. Our understanding of justice has been quite coloured by our legal system in which justice has basically come to mean that people get what is coming to them. In the Christian scriptures justice is much more about restoration. Specifically justice is about the restoration of life and society to God’s intended fullness and wholeness. Something which is expressed by the word shalom or peace. It is also important to note that in the New Testament’s Greek there is one word which is translated both as justice and righteousness. Which means what we have separated out as personal vs. social is in the biblical view the same thing. So justice is just as much about the restoration of who we are to that original goodness of God’s intention as it is about social transformation. Likewise one cannot separate individual transformation from social transformation. If you want to be whole, you must also work to make our society and world whole.

So where do we begin? Like so many things of faith, it hard to point to a beginning point. We are already on the journey. We begin by asking where are you now. What are the needs of the people around you? Where is there a need for reconciliation and healing? Where have you or your community been given gifts to help others? Where does your passion guide you?

It also begins with perspective. It is one of the great practices of faith to look at people differently. To look at each person you come across, especially the least, the last and the lost, not as some bum, but rather as Christ. There is Christ sleeping on that bench. There is Christ going hungry, there is Christ holding her dead child with a bullet in his head. There is Christ. Then slowly we begin to see God. God in all creation, not brining forth destruction, but rather walking in our destruction urging and inviting us to healing and new life.

It begins in action. In having a cup of coffee with a person from the wrong side of what ever. It is in writing a letter, or even speaking with a person in power. It is in dancing and crying with people who suffer. It is about saying no and not buying. It is in voting and it is in giving and it is in walking and not driving. It is in us being called to be Christ to others, offering not just water and food, but a shared hand on a shared journey and standing together against the many who would rather destroy and consume.

There are so many who yearn for such healing. To be apart of that love which speak truth to power and greets the broken with healing. Many are in churches. There are so many, who work so hard to make a vision of justice the vision of the church. So often now though churches instead of enabling get in the way. They marginalize those who walk with the ones on the margins. They protect institutions over people, emphasize structures over compassion, and turn their heads and resources from what could transform. In the process what is forgotten is that salvation means healing and Jesus came “to bring good news to the poor. To proclaimed release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free” Maranatha.

Digging a Little Deeper – Theology I

The United Church of Canada did an interesting survey lately. They wanted to find out why people in their 20’s and 30’s weren’t going to church. So like any self-respecting large organization they responded with a survey. The responses they got are important. While I don’t have the survey, what I was told it said was that folks my age basically saw the church as arrogant, that it wouldn’t listen, excluded, it didn’t address relevant issues Etc. What shocked the United Church was that they found out that all churches were seen this way equally including the United Church. Now the quick church reaction is to start blaming society and their depiction of church. If we want to go deeper though we need to look at ourselves. An important place to start is how we do theology.

Theology is foundational to the church. Basically theology is how we understand God. Thus for a church almost everything else flows from this. Now what precisely theology is about and how theology has been done is something that has changed greatly over the history of Christianity. I would also argue that in modernity, with its systematic or Word of God theology, it has gone horribly wrong.

There are several ways of approaching this question. Today I will begin with a little bit of history, just so that we can get the framing of the question right. I will write more, and more constructively about the possibilities later.

The beginnings of a distinctly Christian theology began simply with Jesus’ life and teachings and the experience of his disciples that came out of their encounter with Christ. There is perhaps no more important point about how theology is to be done then what is wrapped up in this. Theology did not begin with doctrine. Jesus did not provide a treatise first, rather while walking along the Sea of Galilee he simply asked his first disciples to come and follow him. The encounter and the invitation to follow came first, in the context of which Jesus taught. Likewise one of the first great theologian writing mystics of the Christian faith, Paul, did not begin his Christian life by being convince by doctrine, no he got blinded and knocked off his horse by an encounter with Christ. The encounter came first. Paul’s theology then flowed from this encounter, not as some explication of eternal knowledge, but rather as proclamation of as well as pastoral guidance in the Gospel for specific communities.

While it was not long before early theologians began to adopt the universalizing tendencies of neo-platonic Greek philosophy. Early Christian theology retained the basic principles of proclamation of the Gospel and guidance. Many of the early theologians were engaged in apologetics, that is they were defending the faith and justifying it to their culture. Likewise much of what we have from the early theologians are in fact letters and sermons intended for the guidance of their flocks. While it was important to set limits to what the Christian faith said, at its heart early Christian theology was not about expounding a final truth (something almost unthinkable at the time), as it was about leading people into the mystery of God. It was one of the characteristics of the thought of the founders of early orthodoxy that deeper they went into their contemplation of their theology the more they encounter the unknowing of God. As Athanasius of Alexandria (one of the key founders of orthodoxy) wrote

“For the more I desire to write, and endeavored to force myself to understand the Divinity of the Word, so much the more did the knowledge thereof withdraw itself from me; and in proportion as I though that I apprehended it, in so much I perceived myself to fail in doing so. Moreover, I was also unable to express in writing even what I seemed to myself to understand; and what I wrote was unequal to the imperfect shadow of the truth which existed in my conception” (Against the Arians, Preface pg. 25, col.693B)

What is also important to note that early Christianity resisted the attempt to create one version of Christianity. One of the reasons for rejecting Gnosticism was precisely its claim that there was one version of the gospel that was only known by a select elite and even secret group. The early claims about the apostolicity of the church came long before Rome’s claim for a singular monopoly. The early claims, against Gnosticism, for the apostolicity were a argument for a faith that was publicly available to all through twelve different version and telling of the story instead of a faith which was in secrete revealed in its full truth to just one. Likewise attempts to harmonize the gospels into one consistent version was also strongly rejected with the result that Christianity still has four different and often conflicting versions of the gospels and it is still in the midst of this conflicting diversity that it is claimed God is revealed.

The desire to have one complete truth began to move from the margins of Christianity to its core with Emperor Constantine. Constantine has a serious problem. He has used his military might and political skill to unite what had become a divided Roman Empire racked by civil war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I). Military might can not rule a people alone, there needs to be a common ideology which can bind the mind and souls of people together. In the days before CNN and Fox news religions was the most powerful ideological force. Constantine chose Christianity to be that force for his empire. While I won’t question the sincerity of his own faith, it was his imperial needs and resources which brought about an important transformation.

Christianity at that time was both diverse and filled with internal debate. For it to be the imperial ideology that diversity needed to be over come. It was out of this need that Constantine used the resources of the empire to bring together the leaders of the Christian faith for the council of Niceae from which we get the Nicene creed. Now I have problems believing that the Nicene creed was a creation of the emperor. The reality was that the people Constantine gathered were people who had on countless times risked their own life and faced severe persecution for their faith. It is hard that when faced with the comforts of the empire they suddenly went, yea what ever that emperor guy says. In fact the stories of the council indicate it was a ruckus affair (my favorite story is of St. Nicolas (yep the Christmas guy) punching out one of the people he disagreed with (yea, not always so jolly)). What is also important is that the Nicene creed, while setting limits to what was to be considered orthodoxy, continued to allows a wide diversity of belief and understanding to exist within its broad confines. What was created though was the beginning of an understanding that the Christian church could name a singular truth with words. Instead of truth being in Christ and the Mystery of God, which our words proclaimed and guided people towards, what began to develop was the understanding that the words of the church were the truth. This concept was still in its infancy. It would take over a thousand years for this to develop.

So not to bore you, I will speed through a lot of history. Basically it would take the fall of Rome, the rise of the Roman pope, the Gregorian reforms and the great skims between West and East to begin to cement the understanding that the church as an institution held the truth (that was quick 700 years). Still what is important to note was that in the middle ages the main theological textbook remained (and studied by greats such as Aquinas and Luther) not a book of final official doctrine but rather Peter Lombard’s Sentences.

This is an ineradicably important book. Not only was it one of the first attempts to pull together the major topics of theology in to a systematic order it is important in how it did this. What Lombard did was simply bring together what scripture had to say along with what many of the Church Fathers had to say. Since these did not always agree, while occasionally giving his own resolution, most often he simply left the differences. What is also interesting is that this text is divided, first into books, but then subdivided under “questions”

It is also important that Thomas Aquinas, probably the first great systematic theologian wrote his work, not as a final answer to theology, but rather as an attempt to make theology easier to understand (yes I know ironic isn’t it). Then while saying the Mass during of the feast of St. Nicholas he had an experience of God which led him to tell his long time secretary that he could write no more “All that I have written seem like straw to me”. (perhaps one of his most profound theological insights – and his writings out class almost all).

With Luther, standing on the theological revival that grew out of the medieval universities, reach a new high of importance as his insight that we are justified by grace, through faith, and not by works, became the standard which both reformed and split the Western Church. What is important to note though is that Luther was not standing in the tradition of setting out the whole truth, rather his theological work was in the ancient tradition of setting the boundaries outside of which we have lost the core of the gospel. For Luther this core was the God of Love and Grace revealed at the heart of scripture. The rest of his writings, like Paul and many before, were not treatise of truth, but rather writings from a pastor seeking to guide and encourage his flock with every word he could muster both kind and brutal. As such they are wonderfully inconsistent, but deeply passionate.

Another movement was a foot at the time of Luther. Modernity had begun and with it, its turn towards the subject as knower. It is important to note that modernity is in many ways an outgrowth of the church’s own claim to knowledge. It is quite simple, when you have someone claiming that they have the truth, even if you wrap it up with armies, and spectacular architecture, instructions, liturgies (the ancient versions of ominous music and scary graphics) and claims to speak from the tradition and the apostles and Jesus himself, eventually someone is going to say to the persons in the funny hat proclaiming these things “I have read those fathers and scriptures” or “I actually took a look at those planets and moons” “I am quite sure that you are not saying the truth” And once someone has said they have the truth (even if they have a funny hat) it doesn’t take lone before someone else without the hat will start saying that they have the truth and we have the modern turn to the subject.

On one side we had those who didn’t quite turn to the subject, but instead began seeking a truth that seemed to be a part of the world and from that science arose. On the other hand we had those who thought that they themselves could know the truth. With that both modern philosophy but also in one of the great irony’s of Christian theology, something called protestant orthodoxy arose.

Instead of approaching the mystery of God, or guiding people as they walked with God, people began to claim that their understanding of God was in fact the truth. And as the reformers began fighting over who’s version of the truth was in fact THE TRUTH, the reformation began to tear itself apart and soon began adopting the practices of the Roman church which the reformation had fist sought to reform. You guessed it burnings, imprisonments war and the like – not very gospel like.

In theology a transformation happened. Folks started believing that they could know enough of the truth so that they could logically combine the elements of theology into a system whose coherence (it logical unity) would define its truth. Modern systematic theology was born. (Systematic philosophy soon followed but it largely collapsed after its height in Hegel in the 19th century). Others followed modernity’s correspondence epistemology and they began to say that their theology corresponded or was equivalent to God’s truth and The Word of God theologies flourished.

Now many of the masters of these forms of theology make no such claim. This is largely because it doesn’t take much depth of study to realize the foolishness of such claims. The popular impacts were vast though. Faith was transformed from being understood as trust in God, to instead meaning the belief in particular doctrines. Luther’s Justification by grace soon became in practice justification (salvation) by having the correct beliefs. To this day their remain churches which proclaim that if you don’t have the right beliefs you are going to hell. Similarly people also began to oddly proclaim the infallibility of the bible, which has always really been a claim of the infallibility of their particular understanding of the bible (the bible has too much depth for anyone to claim they have it right).

What is also important are the effects this has had on our clergy and our churches. Instead of training our pastors in the skills of being attentive to the presence and movement of God in people’s lives and how to guide both individuals and communities in this life of the spirit, we have taught them to know doctrines. While doctrine is important as a guide, the ability to quote an answer to any particular question is not theology, it is historical research. More importantly it has distracted our pastors and our churches from the needs and questions of people’s lives, and from developing skills in walking with them to instead spend most of their training memorizing history. I would even say that in re-orientating many people to a realm of theology that exists as a truth some how separate from the world, we crippled our ability to respond to the needs of the people and our communities right in front of us.

This perhaps can explain the strange spectacled that while our world face ecological disaster and a growing food crisis which could push hundreds of millions more in to hunger and even starvation, both of which have been fed by our consumerist culture, our churches spend massive amounts of their attention on whether to pray for God’s presence in the lives of two people who love each other.

Thank God that this is beginning to change. Contextual theology and classes in spirituality have returned again to the seminary. Still the basic structures of seminary education remain ones designed for memorization and reciting instead of practice of the art of walking with.

I also shudder to think about the confirmation classes and bible studies where the main task is still filling in pre-determined blanks, instead of walking into the questions.

Even with the signs of overcoming our modern self indulgence and once again discovering what theology is about we also stand at a point where many have been cut off from the deep tradition of theology, that is walking into the mystery of God. We have also forgotten that it is not the answers, but the questions which lead us into God.

No wonder people find the church arrogant and say that it doesn’t listen. For centuries now we have been quite assured that we have the truth and we have become very practiced at proclaiming it. It is time again to relearn the virtue of humility. Once again our challenge is to find ways of walking with people into our questions. We have to again learn that the deepening of theology leads us not to answers but encounters beyond words. Once again we have to learn how we can come to see and experience the grace and love of God which is already amongst us. We have to again learn how to truly do theology.

That will require that we come to a new/old understanding of what theology is about and how we come to know God. That though is for another day. I am amazed at anyone who read this far today – I know my own attention span on the web is rarely that long.

From Former to Searching

Many apologies to anyone who has tried to get on this lately and hasn’t been able to. After some advice that I needed to consider and with the need of finalizing some legalities I briefly restricted access to it. I will write about this later.

For now I want to write about a small change on this blog. I changed former pastor to a searching pastor. I must also admit that I really don’t know what word to use. People’s response to me over the last several days has encouraged me to reconsider whether I truly want to publish former, at least at this point. Also the reality is that calling is something deep, it is hard to just walk away even when almost every fiber of your being and many of the people who love you are wanting you to.

Don’t let anyone fool you. Each of us have a calling. Just take the time to look. What is it that when you do it, it most fully expresses who you are? What is the point where your deepest desires meet the world’s need? That would be your calling. And “your’s” isn’t quite right. Being called is not something private, it come from both God. I thought, and it was affirmed by many, that I had found that in the position I was terminated from. Mmmm . . .

For me thought whether I am called to the church is a serious question for me. The reality is that I have now been repeatedly beat up by the church. Each time those in power in the church protected my accusers and attackers. Each time those who made the accusations were protected from making them directly, each time the accusations were left vague and highly personal, each time when the accusers and accusations where invited to come into the open and be substantiated they melted away. Once the damage was done. Each time the church has protected my accusers and then told me how much they loved me. The nice thing about having a psychiatrist as a wife is that she will call things as they are. What she said to me was “You have to realized that this is an abusive relationship, and if you were one of my clients I would be working to help you see that you need to get out of this relationship.” What saddens me is that I know that I am not alone in my experience.

How many others are there lying around who have been deeply wounded, while the church protects those who wounded them? Just ask all the people in Boston about this, or anywhere else.

The proper answer is that "the church is a sinful institution like any other human institution." . . . I don’t think that this is an adequate answer any more. Much for the same reason I don’t like the answer that the church’s problems began with Constantine, it might express some truth, but its vagueness protects us from addressing the deeper issues and working to change what isn’t working. We must begin to seriously ask the question of why does the church actively hurt and destroy people while protecting the perpetrators? Why do people find the church blocking their encounter with God instead of facilitating it? Why does the church repeatedly become a place of oppression instead of liberation? Why do churches close their doors to the hurt of the world around them? Why does the church devour those called to serve it? What can we learn that which heals, builds faith, gives hopes, and realizes justice both in and outside of the church? There are no simple answers here.

This is why I am left searching. The quick answers are rarely complete. That is why there is a need for open dialogue, for probing questions, for creating a space where people can speak and freely be wrong. Instead of offering vague generalities, we need to search together. We need to gather and start digging together in the muck of what has crippled us. We need to keep at it. No nice set of strategic directions or mission statement developed over a weekend, no matter how eloquent will do. What we need are the shovels of open discourse, and deepening questions that will help us dig down to the roots of what has been choking us.

This is one reason for this bog. Please take nothing here as a final answer. I make no claims to be right, I am just searching, and I expect to be wrong. So if you see that I am wrong post a comment and let me know. It is not a monologue of perfect speech that will allow us to figure our way out of this mess, it is rather the conversation amongst friends, with all its imperfections, and misspeaking, need for apologies, but also moments of clarity and solidarity and insight that will help us not only get out of this mess, but figure out where God is calling.

As for me it is still an open question. Is it worthwhile any more to put one's life into serving the church?
As a friend of mine wrote (quite insightfully)

"those of us who've remained loyal to our institutions or denominations are putting our credibility on the line, by asking others to recognize the value of organizations that are so obviously dysfunctional, and often at cross-purposes with our Christian vocation."

Enough said, time for some searching.

Where Did It Go Wrong?

This is a question that has been following me lately. And I don’t just mean concerning my work. (I am still convinced that it was going pretty well, always in need of improvement, but pretty well). I am thinking much more about Christianity in the West.

Now the church has never been nor will it ever be perfect. It is a human institution. Yet these stories speak of an institution that has both in its history and in its current expression come to more often then not inflict pain instead of bring healing and destroy faith instead of build it up. What does it mean when, as one of my friends wrote “I am more moved by the people in and around me than I have ever been by any of the churches I have attended. In fact, when I attend a church, more often than not, I leave feeling lonely, frustrated, irritated and sometimes angry.”

Now I can tell you what the standard answer is. It is that when Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity and as it became a religion of empire much of the core of Christianity was lost. It is a good answer. Like most answers that fit into a sentence, while expressing some truth, it also covers up most of the truth and distracts us from digging into the specifics.

After being tossed out like a piece of garbage by the “Bishop” and I was walking home one phrase kept running through my head so I will share it.

“To understand the end of something you must understand its beginning and growth. For our endings are often foreshadowed in our birth and growth. Like wise if you take the time to understand a things death. You have the chance to see the foreshadowing of its resurrection”

What does it mean? Good question, if you can tell me I would appreciate it. Christianity as it has been in the west is dieing. Perhaps if we look to its beginning we might begin to see more clearly why.

Over the last couple of days, as person after person has been phoning me and e-mailing me to offer their support and encouragement, I have been also been hearing something else from many of them, tale after tale about how the church had severely hurt them or someone they knew. It breaks my heart. It is also important because it tells us that people are not leaving the church from laziness or because they have become too materialistic (more standard answers usually given by church folks) many are leaving because they have been profoundly hurt by the very things which has been called to bring healing.

So often at the heart of these tales I have heard is that these people were not treated with the dignity they deserve. Treating peope with dignity was one of the truly amazing things about Christ. Jesus went along and made friends with anyone. I am sure you know the list, Fishermen, soldiers, beggars, Roman collaborators, prostitutes, the wealthy, revolutionaries and even religious folks. What was amazing, was that all of those things which socially defined people as social things, were striped away and instead the person was encountered as they were. They were treated not only with dignity, but a piece of healing occurred. What is amazing in reading the gospel is that it wasn’t just one way. In one of the most amazing stories of the Gospels, the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7) or its retelling as the Canaanite woman (Mathew 15) Jesus is actually taught by this foreign woman. Now the commentators have tried to cover this up, but the text makes it clear. The dignity each person has is not the dignity of one deserving help, no it is instead the dignity of one in whom God dwells and in whom God is revealed.

 

It is from this that the ancient tradition of hospitality grew. Each person, each stranger, was to be welcomed and treated as if they were angles, messengers from God. More importantly each person was to be treated, especially the least of these, as if they are Christ, the very coming of God into the world. These are not just pious words; rather this is a call to one of the deep practices of faith. It is one of the mysteries of faith, that Christ is not only present in those you least expect, but revealed and comes to us through those we least expect.

How have we responded?  We chase each other away. We dismiss people as thinking they are entitled, or ignorant or more likely we ignore them. More often then should ever be we reach out not to heal, but to hurt.  And perhaps one of our greatest crimes has been that we have placed our institutions and our rules and our policies ahead of people. We ignore the pain of those whom God brings to us and in the process we ignore the revelation of God they live.

And we are surprised that the church is dieing. God has come to us, walked in our midst, asked for our care and instead we held meetings and made motions, set policies and defended tradition and truth. In the process we have felt both right and righteous. Were we not defending the truth and good order?

With great wisdom, many are now looking for God. They have learned not to look amongst the right and the righteous. Their own souls bear the marks of the lashes, dare I say even the nails that have been used to defend and proclaim the truth. God is amongst the wounded. May we all learn to see God there. 

 

 

 

True Signs of Hope

I want to tell you about a few places where I have seen hope lately. The other day a friend of mine took me out for lunch and a beer. Sign of hope one, friends who will take you out for a beer when you are having a rough time. What amazed me though was what Tony was doing. Tony is supper busy. He works a job that is far more then full time. On top of that he is the youth worker at the church I attended. On top of that he helps out with the Lutheran Urban Mission and on top of that he is on his neighborhood board, and on top of that decided to start a volleyball league for inner-city kids. A few local pastors (nope, no Lutheran ones) gave him some money for uniforms etc. So he put up some posters. And guess what 26 kids showed up. Tony is a volleyball coach and so he put them through the ropes and he coached them like he would any one else. Guess what these kids, kids that I am sure other people write off or are even afraid of, loved it. Tony told me about how they worked and played and responded to his coaching like the best of them. Well because they were. Tony – another sign of hope.

 

After lunch with Tony I went to a coffee shop that I had been to once before. Mondragon. The last time I was there I stop off because it had the same name as a town where a friend of mine comes from in France. That time I had my head buried in our national convention docket. This time as I was walking in I had a great conversation with a man sitting on the steps. He was homeless, and sat there with his toothbrush in hand. He told me how he had come back to Winnipeg after the winter and how he love the place especially this coffee shop. He told me how great the people were. And one by one as people would come in they would greet this man by name. Something rarely seen in any church I have been in. Then inside it was equally fascinating. Mondragon is a workers co-op. In other words those people serving coffee, they owned the place together. My goodness the service was great. Better yet there was a book store at the back on about every justice issue you could think of. Talk about a fabulous resource center. The washrooms even had signs on them explaining why there weren’t the usual man and women signs. They reminded the person entering that people identify themselves in different ways, people understand themselves in different ways and if something small can be done like taking away those male and female stick people signs, well they didn’t have a committee, they simply removed them.  Then before I was going I struck up a conversation with a women reading a book on post-colonial theory. An interest of mine and I hadn’t seen the book before. It turns out she was doing her PhD in English. In that short conversation she even taught me a thing or too about early modern English.

 

So there is a sign of hope. A place where workers work together to create a just work environment where each person who works there is an owner and they cooperate. A place where the homeless man on the front step is not chased away but greeted by name while he proclaim the gospel of the place and welcomes people in. A place where brokenness of the world is given a place and knowledge about the issues and how to address it is there for people to learn. A place where not only are the homeless welcome but people working on the PhD’s as well and they are welcome to share the best of what they have learned. A place where even the bathrooms make sure that everyone feels welcome. If you want to see the kingdom of God, I found a coffee shop where it shimmers through. 

Oh and the "Signs of Hope" name, yep one more thing from the work I did. Taken and being used by the church that tossed me out.  

It Ends and it Begins

Like many new beginnings this one starts with an ending. Last Friday the Bishop walked into my office and she told me that she was letting me go.  I was told it was for financial reasons. The irony was that I and my team had just increased giving by over 12% or $130,000. There was more then enough room in the budget in many places.  In the past I had even tried repeatedly to tell her about ways that we could raise not just finances, but in the process communicate the mission of the church and invite people to be a part of it. Each time though I was shut down. Also ironically  just before the Bishop had come into my office I had been working with one of the people I supervised and she was telling me about how she was becoming passionate about the work of justice and caring for others. I was overjoyed. To add insult to injury I had just been reviewing the Bishop's presentation which she will be giving at our synod conventions which she had sent to us for feedback, it lifts up precisely what I taken the lead on developing a national homelessness initiative and our national Stewardship of Creation Initiative.  For years I have given my life to serve the church because I had faith that through it healing could come to our broken world. What I have seen over that time is a mixture of the sheer beauty of some of the loving and committed people who still dare to live in the hope of what the church could be. I have also seen so much which speaks of the churches utter corruption, its loss of vision and most sadly, it has forgotten at its very heart what God has called it to be. For the last year and a half I was invited to help one small church remember. Then I was viciously tossed away like a piece of garbage. I am left with unspeakable pain. 

I am also born to a reforming tradition. I am a person God has called and God's people have called me.  What I have seen leads me to honesty say, the church has lost its way. It has chosen again and again to destroy God's children instead of building them up. It has become for centuries now been not the liberator of the oppressed, but oh so often  the oppressor and that which distracts people from justice and their healing. Most importantly it is a church which has forgotten how to listen. 

Now I, like so many others of my generation, I am leaving the church. I am leaving not out of indifference, but because I have faith in God and because I not only believe that God is a God of justice and compassion I have walked with this God all my life. 

Now like may God has called in the past I have been called to wander. To seek God and to follow. This blog is my attempt to share the wandering with others, so that perhaps we might be able to wander together to find a place were we can again gather as a people; encounter the living God; to honestly talk of our journeys and shared God's healing love in the world.  God is around us, among us, and with in us.  Maranatha, Maranatha.