Monday in the muck
It's been a great week.
Monday I had the chance to spend the day with some friends who are wildlife biologists. We were searching for the rarest turtle in the United States, the little bog turtle ...
Bog turtles live in emergent wetlands in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and a few other states. They're listed as a threatened species, which means that as their habitat is "developed" into strip malls and housing developments, they are threatened with extinction. For about 18 of the last 19 years, I've had the privilege of volunteering as part of a long-term study of their status. I put on my hip waders and go out into the muck among tussock sedge, jewelweed, and poison ivy ... seeing how many we can find, seeing whether they are marked (having been captured before), taking measurements, etc. This week we found five - a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 year old. It's encouraging to see young ones, but strange that no adults were found.
I encourage everyone to choose one of God's creatures that is in trouble in your area, and then to join God in seeking to protect that creature and its habitat. Learn all you can about it. Volunteer. Advocate. It's holy work ... even if you get some poison ivy in the process. (Which I managed to do!)
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Pentecost
I've had a rare privilege ... being home for three weekends in a row, and being able to attend my home church (crcc.org) as "just a member," not preaching, etc. I'm very fortunate to be able to attend the church I helped plant back in 1982 and then helped lead for 24 years. (It's amazing the church survived having me as their leader for that long!)
Over these three weeks, I've heard two splendid sermons by Matthew Dyer, and another splendid sermon by Patsy Fratanduono. And the music, beautiful grounds, and even the good fair-trade coffee have also been a joy, not to mention the people. Having been a pastor, I know how hard it is to keep a church going, and I know how challenging it is to weather the thousand little discouragements and to handle the thousand little details required to put together a gathering week after week ... so I guess I appreciate this experience more than many people would.
Today during the eucharist, a new thought hit me. (Isn't it amazing that after well over 1100 experiences of the eucharist in my life - it still is fresh and yields new meaning?)
In Jesus' death, his blood was drained from his body. That is, crudely put, what death meant to most people in Jesus' day - especially violent death: the separation of blood and body. Today it struck me that in instituting the eucharist, Jesus was saying something like this: "My blood is about to be separated from my body, but when you take my body and blood into your body and blood, you will reunite them. I will live again in you. I will be resurrected in you." This is not to minimize Jesus' Easter-morning resurrection, but to suggest a major dimension of its meaning.
This thought also helps me understand Jesus' statement in John: "Greater things than these will you do because I go to the Father ..." Since hearing that statement as a child, I was bothered by it. If we said this, it would quickly be called blasphemy: how could we do greater works than Jesus? But since Jesus said it ... we can't push it off the table. Was Jesus eager to make it clear to his disciples that the story of the gospel was only beginning in him, and that they would continue it ... leading to unimagined possibilities in the future? (This, I suspect, is why Jesus would often say, "Your faith has healed you," rather than "My divine power has healed you," or even "God has healed you" or "I have healed you." By emphasizing their faith, he was empowering them to carry on his work.)
My little meditation this morning then led to this: In Jesus' death, his spirit left his body. That's what death is for many people - the separation of spirit and body. (I'm certainly not arguing for the old dualistic, Platonic-Cartesian ghost-in-a-machine view of humanity in saying this ... I'm just using language the way it's commonly used in colloquial speech, recalling Jesus' words, "Into your hands I commend my spirit" - which could also be understood as "Into your hands I commend my breath," or "... my life," by the way.)
In Pentecost, Jesus' Spirit is reunited with his body, with us. So today, Pentecost and eucharist came together for me in a rich way, so that when I looked around the room, I saw in a fresh way "the embodiment of Christ," the body of the risen Jesus alive and well on the earth. Maybe you'll feel as I do today, that Pentecost is a far more important holiday than we often realize ... its meaning is inherently linked to the resurrection ... and to Jesus' ongoing proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom of God. Just as Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom, and just as he sent us to proclaim and teach what he had proclaimed and taught ... we continue as the ongoing embodiment of Christ, proclaiming and living the good news of God's kingdom, by the power of the Spirit. Thanks be to God!
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on racism … part 2
Regarding the outrage expressed by white Christian leaders and politicians about Judge Sotomayor, and their allegations that she is a racist ... I decided to read the speech from which the supposedly offensive lines were taken. Since I have had spokespeople like these take my words out of context, I suspected they may have done the same to the judge. You can read the whole speech here (I recommend it strongly), but here are three key paragraphs:
(continued after the jump)
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on racism … part 1
Many in the Republican Party and some noteworthy Christian leaders have come together to call Judge Sotomayor a racist. This rhetoric compounds with other recent statements - support for torture, opposition to hate speech legislation (note: not opposition to hate speech, but to legislation restricting hate speech), ongoing denial of environmental crisis and climate change, and so on.
As Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons made clear in their important book UnChristian, this kind of talk - and the viewpoints and theology from which it springs - have created an extremely negative stereotype of the Christian faith over recent decades, especially among young people - who are leaving the church in record numbers. You would think this information would have gotten out to many of these religious leaders - and that, if for no other reason than they don't want to drive the young away from their religious communities, they would at least be more careful and sensitive. But no, they are continuing on the same course ... adding more fuel to the stereotypical fire that Christians are judgmental, insensitive, reactive, more ideological than theological, and so on.
Yes, their rhetoric (which you can read about and find links to here) reflects badly on these Christians themselves. But sadly, it also reflects badly on the rest of us Christians and on the Christian faith in general. If the rest of us are silent, unless more of us speak up to distinguish our position from theirs, nobody can blame others for assuming our silence means tacit agreement.
That's one reason why I continue to be outspoken about these matters. I take no pleasure in criticizing anyone, including my fellow Christians. But I must simply say that these voices don't speak for me, nor do they speak for thousands of people I meet in my travels. Their words and attitudes grieve me and I would be ashamed of myself if I did not speak up and publicly and respectfully differ. I hope other will do the same. More to come on this later ...
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plurality 2.0
one of my favorite bloggers is adam walker cleveland. he asked me to contribute to a series of postings on plurality 2.0. It just went up here. adam explains the series here ...
Plurality 2.0 Blog Series from Adam Walker Cleaveland on Vimeo.
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