Head On a Swivel

The lectionary Gospel text for this coming Lord’s Day opens the Church Year by looking toward the coming kingdom of God (Luke 21:25-36).  The term “the second coming” isn’t found in scripture, but we’ve been guilty of extracting this concept from such texts.  The primary emphasis of Advent is waiting with expectation for that hopeful return.  But this narrative from Luke’s gospel seems to suggest that signs of God’s Kingdom are already here (and have been here for a long time).

We’re told to “stand … look up … be alert.”  It’s the exact same instruction I would give to teenagers (mostly junior-high boys) when I was ministering to youth:  “Keep your head on a swivel.”  Now, when I said it I was trying to train certain young men to pay attention to life around them: hear what is said to you, respond, watch out for what’s coming your way.  As you can imagine, junior-high boys lacked a great deal of attention.   I could tell that they were trying though, when I’d hear them say to each other, “Keep your head on a swivel,” before I could get the words out of my mouth!

I’ve had to keep my head on a swivel more so than usual lately.  As I’ve struggled with an eye problem, I’ve been restricted to glasses and my vision has been impaired.  I’m told it’s temporary and repairable.  But it’s causing me to “see” around me in a whole new way (and empathize with those who have lost their sight).  I’ve noticed things that have never caught my attention before, because now I’m forced to squint and look diligently all around me. It’s actually been a means of thanksgiving to God.

What if we were all to keep our heads on a swivel by looking for signs of God’s Kingdom everyday, in the mundane and ordinary, in the sublime and electric?  Could we find God’s Kingdom?  We might be able to recognize a smile on a face that usually frowns as a sign of God’s joy.  A beautiful morning might be a sign of God’s on-going creation.  A restful sleep (too few and far between for me) might be a sign of God’s peace.  Leaning into the Spirit as we allow our minds and imaginations to embrace the smallest signs of harmony, love, Christ’s identity, and meaningful relationships might result in lightning rod conduits for the Kingdom.   And we might even train ourselves to finally see the presence of Christ in those we so often ignore.

The Fantasy of Importance

It’s an odd way to experience an epiphany. But it begins with my penchant for playing fantasy football. I’ve been part of a free fantasy football league for several years. I play it just for fun. For those not familiar with the wonder that is fantasy football, a simple definition from Wikipedia (the free on-line encyclopedia) states: “Fantasy Football is a fantasy sports game in which participants (called “owners”) each draft or acquire via auction a team of real-life NFL players and then score points based on those players’ statistical performance on the field.” Being an owner of a fantasy football team is both exhilarating and excruciating for me. Being an Atlanta Falcons and Tennessee Titans fan, I can’t simply follow those teams on game day. I must check on ALL the teams who have “my players.” Sunday being the Lord’s Day — and as a pastor, a work day — I can’t always keep track of all the NFL games. So on Monday morning — my family’s Sabbath day — I catch up and check on the scores of my team. My wife often walks in early on a Monday morning to see me sitting at the computer: “What are you doing?” she asks. “Oh just checking on my fantasy football team,” I respond. Her eyes roll and she moves on to take care of more important things. I know full well my little hobby is silly, pointless, a waste of time in most eyes. But I love it … and hate it. For “my team” can play like supermen one week (that’s the point at which I declare, “I’m going to cruise and win the whole league this year!”). And the next week I lose by fifty points or more (at which point I declaim, “Why in the world do I waste my time and energy on this mess?”).

So now that I’ve given you the background on the whole fantasy football thing (and by the way, if you are apt to question me on this little hobby, I’ll thank you to allow me a little play … we all need play), I’ll move closer to the mini-epiphany to which I alluded. I stumbled across the following article at the Sacred Sandwich: “‘Fantasy Church’ Champion Will Not Win This Season; Drafts Old Baptist Pastor By Mistake.” The article is a satirical look at church growth strategies. You can read the entire article by clicking here, and you might want to do so as it will help in understanding my thoughts. Despite the quite funny nature of the article (at least funny to me with my critiquing sense of humor), there is something quite gripping near the end of the article. After explaining how the “owner” of a “fantasy church” championship team the year previous had meant to draft the church growth guru Richard D. Warren (Rick Warren) but instead drafted Richard B. Warren, an aging small-town pastor of a small church, the “reporter” interviews the wife of the surprised but newly drafted old pastor. The wife, Vera, responds: “My husband’s congregation loves the Lord with all their hearts and truly loves their neighbors as themselves. There isn’t one corner of our small community that hasn’t been shown our church’s active witness for Christ and His Gospel and been prayed for year in and year out. That ought to help [the fantasy church owner] win another championship I would think.” When told that church growth success was based purely on numbers, Vera remarks, “Well, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

Are you ready for the realization? Here is this small church in a small town with a pastor who (for many years apparently) has shaped his parishioners to simply love God and love their neighbors, and in the eyes of the congregations that matter — and their leaders — this church is a laughingstock. In the satirical article we aren’t given a perspective from the make-believe community around the small church. But I would guess their take on the importance of that church might be different. Here is what is fully dawning on me: if I follow what Christ said was the essence of the Scripture, if my focal concerns are loving God and loving people, and I live this out consistently in my life, as the spiritual leader in my home, as the spiritual leader of my parish, as a stranger in the community-at-large, then I will never be on the best-selling Christian book list, never be asked to preach at really large conventions, never be “somebody” in the church world. Because truly living out the gospel isn’t glamorous, isn’t always fun, isn’t frankly popular in many church and denominational circles in America.

You know what . . . just as soon as that realization has sunk in, I have another: it doesn’t matter. It actually eases the tension and clarifies the purpose for loving God and loving people with everything I am and everything I have. I think such a life might just please my Lord. And if God is the only one who appreciates it, that’s enough. Stephen was stoned by the religious elite. If I can follow in that saint and martyr’s example, I think I’ll be just fine.

To the not-yet believers whose lives I am a small part of, I hope to be Jesus to them (and let them be Jesus to me!). And if it doesn’t win me notoriety, so what! It’s the gospel.

On Belonging

We live on a cul-de-sac.  Our previous home was located on a cul-de- sac, but the road was designed more like a short drive.  There were four houses on the road; all on the left or at the end, and none of the houses’ front doors faced each other.  But the designers of the street we live on now got it right.  There areseven houses surrounding a circle with just one opening for the inlet of the road.  At anytime, any of us can see each other at the front or back doors (depending on which home).  Each house faces all the other houses.

This picture reminds me of other “circle-like” settings I encounter on any given week.  Restaurants are more and more going away from straight rows and arranging their tables in semi-circle arrangements, such that all the diners can see each other without too much craning of the neck.  The era of the mall seems to be coming to the end and outdoor shopping areas are being constructed in semi-circle fashion.  Gone are the strip-mall constructions and in are the wide-open, “every shopper sees each other” arrangements.  In Discipleship Groups at my local church we sit in a semi-circle.  No rows of chairs, everyone facing the leader.  There is full disclosure in such a setting.

Though these examples could be construed to say that life is becoming more intimate with strangers (a direction the Church has unfortunately tried to go) I see a simpler, more basic need being addressed.  People desire connection.  Even if it is superficial connection.  People need to feel like they belong.  Even if it is belonging to a transient community of shoppers.  The cul-de-sac, the restaurant, the shopping center are all physically speaking to the one need that everyone shares regardless of belief systems.

This to me is a wonderful challenge to the Church.  Can we allow people to belong to our community at the level they are comfortable with?  How long will we force people to fit into a certain type of mold and “belong” only when they assent to a certain doctrine of beliefs and follow a prescribed behavioral pattern?  Can we live open lives that invite a sense of belonging?  If we can, we might see the Church actually being relevant.  I think that might please the heart of Lord.  For Jesus allowed everyone to belong.  His life was (and is) an open invitation.

A Little Cheek Turning

The David Crowder* Band does an awesome rendition of one of my favorite hymns, “Come, Thou Fount.”  This version builds and swells with a steady rock beat throughout.  The words come through crystal clear.  I’ve been listening to this song repeatedly these days and one line recently caught my imagination: “Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.”  The reason the line has elicited so much thought for me has to do with how I’ve been analyzing all that currently fetters the lives of people (myself included) in this affluent American society.  I examine my own belongings and find so much that I don’t really need.  We have lots of extra “stuff” in our attic.  From technology to a pantry full of food it seems we are fettered with so much that it’s hard to live an authentically Christian life … much less even remember what our focal concerns should be.

In the midst of all this ruminating comes the line from the hymn:  the only fetter that I should allow myself to be bound by is God’s goodness.  Instantly, the simplicity and profoundness of the Christian’s focal concerns consumes me.  We are to simply love God and love our neighbors.

When Scripture is read through this lens, many confusing dictums, stories, letters, and passages become clearer.  A day after mid-term elections while America is still engaged in military conflict on another continent, Christ’s instruction to turn the other cheek has been a cause for me to analyze my positions.  I have considered myself a Christian pacifist.  As the ethicist Stanley Hauerwas has said, I too am too violent a person to not be a pacifist.  It’s a choice of angry necessity.  And that Christ should call us to turn the other cheek when we are struck is just icing on the philosophical cake.  But what if this instruction is looked at through the focal concerns of loving God and loving people?  Might the meaning and implied practice become clearer?

All this pondering has hit reality lately as my young son (almost two years old) has been testing the boundaries of parental authority … and the boundaries of my patience.  He has the occasional habit of hitting mommy or daddy … hard, because he’s strong for his age!  In the middle of wrestling with daddy or exerting play, I can understand this.  He’s a boy after all and boys are violent; we like to hit things and tear stuff down.  But when he’s told that such an action is naughty and the heat of the moment has passed, he then deliberately chooses to hit.  It’s at this moment I hear the words of Christ: “if your brother (son) hits you, turn the other cheek.”  Surely, the plain sense of this command is not isolated.  It can’t mean that I’m to allow my son to hit me at random without consequences.  Can it?  I then remember Christ’s greatest commands (the focal concerns for Christians): love God and love others.  If I love God I will train up my child with an understanding of authority figures, consequences for actions, obedience, and … love.  If I love my son, I will shape him to embrace actions and practices that display a love of God and love of people.  Hitting people is not love.  But allowing my son to hit at random without consequences also is not love.  Love requires discipline.  And so, my son suffers the consequences of disobedience: the hand that hit is the hand that is smacked.  Then I hold my son and tell him I love him and reiterate to him that hitting somebody hurts that person, and it hurts God to see him act that way.   Then I kiss his hand and we hug.  I have certainly not turned the other cheek.  But I have put love of God and love of my son into concrete action.

So often parts of scripture are proclaimed out of context.  The very scripture I’ve been discussing is used to support pacifism and yet it holds thin when applied to the parent-child relationship.  What then about war?  It seems that Christ is suggesting that whenever the relevant factors in the “cheek hitting” are injury to myself (my church, my nation, etc.) and retaliation against the injurer, then I am not to give into the anger of retaliation and heap violence on top of violence.  The great command is not “do to others as they have done to you,” but rather “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  Seems like there is a great deal of patience, repentance, and forgiveness wrapped up in that kind of love.  And for the Christian, the turned cheek, though humiliating, is necessitated by the love of God and love of neighbor.  God’s goodness, like a fetter, must bind our hearts with this love.  How then shall we live?