Four Levels of Relationships

As Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples, he prayed that everyone who believes in him would be “brought to complete unity,” as the NIV translates it.  A better rendering of the Greek might be “so that they might be completed or perfected as one.”  However you word it, Jesus wants his followers to be united.  In fact, our faith and discipleship will be lacking until we reach that point of unity.  Of course, our unity is based on the saving work of Christ, and not upon our own feeble human efforts to try to get along with each other.  And yet, the Church is (and always has been) a collection of people who bicker, disagree, and sometimes even attack each other.  The perfect unity that Christ wants for us is far from complete.

I’ve recently read an article that describes four levels of relationship that people can have with each other.

1. REJECTION is the denial of any relationship at all.  We believe that the differences between us are so great that we have nothing to do with each other.  The barriers that separate us make it impossible for us to find anything in common with each other.

2. TOLERANCE means that we’re willing to put up with each other.  We’ll make space for others to “do their thing,” but that’s about it.  We won’t harm each other, but we won’t help each other either.  It’s the kind of relationship where you hold the other person at arm’s length and never really trust them or feel comfortable around them.

3. ACCEPTANCE is a big step toward the kind of relationship Christ wants among his disciples.  It means that we recognize one another and acknowledge each other’s value as a child of God.  We are willing to listen and learn from each other.  But it is still not the relationship that Christ truly desires; acceptance does not complete our oneness.

4. NURTURE goes beyond accepting and receiving from the other person.  In this final level of relationship, we actively seek out the other person.  A nurturing spirit drives us to cross the lines that lead others to rejection or mere tolerance, in order to share, serve, and sacrifice.  When we nurture another person, we defend them against attacks and abuse that others may direct at them, especially when the attackers are people who look and believe like us.

I invite you to reflect on the relationships in your life.  In particular, think about how you relate with others who are also followers of Christ, or who claim to be followers of Christ.  How do you relate to them?

• Do you reject them, and deny that you share a faith with them?
• Do you tolerate them, and put up with differences that trouble you?
• Do you accept them, and recognize that they are also part of God’s family and plan for the world?
  Do you nurture them, and seek to open your life to them in service and love?

Being a Faithful Member

If you are a member of Old Union Church, you took a vow to be “a faithful member of this congregation, giving of yourself in every way.”  The Presbyterian Church’s constitution explains that this vow includes “taking part in the common life and worship of a congregation.”  Are you living up to your promise?

First, are you taking part in worship at Old Union?  Like just about every other church, we’re happy if half of our members join us on Sunday morning.  Of course, other commitments and issues occasionally keep us from worship.  But where else would it be acceptable for only half the people to fulfill their promise?  Would your bank be content if only half their customers made their agreed-upon mortgage payments?  For some bizarre reason, we take our commitment to financial institutions more seriously than the ones we’ve made to the Lord of the cosmos who died for our salvation.

“Taking part in worship” means more than merely showing up physically.  It means that you come to church on Sunday prepared to get down to business.  Even before the service begins, you focus your heart and spirit upon the task ahead of you.  During worship you actively seek to be aware of the Spirit’s presence among us.  As we read and reflect upon Scripture, you open yourself to the ways that God wants to touch and change your life.  Through our hymns, prayers, and offerings, you present your entire being to the God we love.

Second, are you taking part in the life of Old Union Church?  Worship is the first and most important part of our church’s life, but it is only the starting point.  There is so much that happens, or could happen, in our church outside of the Sunday 11:00 hour.  If you are only coming to church for worship, then either someone else is carrying the responsibility for our church’s life that God has in mind for you, or our congregation is not doing everything that God wants us to do.

God’s desire for our role in his plans for our church is constantly changing.  Over time, the most faithful thing for you to do may mean stepping back from a responsibility you’ve had and making room for another person to fill that niche.  God’s will is dynamic and constantly changing.  However, when you move out of one role, it is so that you can move into a new one.  If you say that you’ve “taken your turn” doing something at the church, it means that now it’s your turn to do something else.

We live in a society that encourages us to think of ourselves as consumers.  It’s up to someone else to make things happen for us, so that we can sit back and enjoy it.  Whether it’s sports, movies, or even keeping the roads clear, we expect there to be someone to handle it…someone other than us.  The church is different.  God loves us enough that he wants each of us to take part in the wonderful things that he is doing.  If you’re not sure how God wants you to fit in, just tell him that you want to.  It won’t take long for him to show you.

Are You a Chicken or a Pig?

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful farm tended by the Brown family.  Farmer Brown was a hard-working, friendly sort of fellow with a close and loving family.  The animals of the farm loved them all, but they were especially devoted to his youngest daughter Susie.  Every morning she as she made her rounds from pen to pen to feed them, she greeted each animal with a cheery hello and a friendly pat.  No matter how cold and rainy and miserable the night had been, the animals knew that their mornings would start off bright and cheery because of her.

One morning, however, Susie did not come to the barn to feed the animals.  Her older brother Joe, who came to feed them instead, was friendly and kind.  But everyone missed Susie and wondered where she was.  Eventually the dog scampered down from the house with the news.  “Susie is very ill,” he reported.  “Mrs. Brown took her to the hospital in the middle of the night and is still there with her.  The whole family is very worried.”  The mood in the barnyard shifted in an instant as curiosity became concern.  Even though it was a bright sunny day, a heavy dark cloud of apprehension hung over them all.

The next morning, when Joe came once again to feed the animals, everyone saw the distress in his eyes.  It was apparent that he hadn’t slept all night.  A few minutes later, the dog arrived with more sad news.  “Susie is has gotten worse.  The doctors say that she will not get better without a special kind of medicine, but Farmer Brown does not have enough money to pay for it.”  As the news sunk in, the cow suddenly spoke up.  “I have an idea!” she exclaimed.  “Let’s put on a fund-raising dinner to pay for Susie’s medicine so she can get better!”

The barnyard suddenly filled with excitement as all the animals discussed the cow’s idea.  They were eager to be able to help the little girl that the loved so much.  After much discussion, the chicken got everyone’s attention.  “All the humans love a big meal at the start of the day, just like we love the food that Susie brings us in the morning.  I propose that we have a ham and egg breakfast.  I will happily supply the eggs.  Who will provide the ham?”

All eyes turned to the pig, who slowly and thoughtfully stood up in his pen and looked at the chicken.  “If you give eggs for the dinner,” he said, “you can go on as you always have,” he said.  “But my help means that I have to commit my very life.  But because I love Susie, I will do it.”  The barnyard fell silent as everyone realized the sacrifice the pig was willing to make.

Are you a chicken or a pig?  When you express your devotion and love to God, are you able to go on with life as usual?  Or does your commitment to him change everything about who you are?

The Meaning of Blessing

One of my pet peeves is the way many Christians use the word “blessing.”  It’s common to hear someone say "I've been blessed," "It was such a blessing" and so on.  It’s become a religious way of saying "I was lucky," or "Boy, I'm glad that I have that.”

To receive a blessing is to have someone bestow favor upon you.  The Old Testament patriarchs like Isaac and Jacob bestowed blessings upon their children before they died.  The blessing may include material possessions like land or cattle.  But more importantly, the blessing was a bestowal of goodness upon the person.  They were endowed with something special that would affect their character and identity.  Being "blessed" doesn't mean simply receiving something good, or even having things work out well for you.  It's even more than acknowledging that God is the one who is responsible for something good in your life.  Being blessed means that you are different person.  You have been changed in a powerful and positive way.  In Matthew 5, Jesus began his famous “Sermon on the Mount” with the beatitudes: a series of descriptions of how we are blessed in various circumstances.  The beatitudes are not about wonderful things coming your way.  They are about how the things that come your way will change you in amazing ways that draw you closer to our Lord.

A lesser-known passage that helps us understand what it means to be blessed is Psalm 67:

“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us,

that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.”

The psalmist seeks God’s blessing for himself and his community, but he does so for a very specific purpose.  It’s not about himself and how he will benefit from God’s blessing.  He wants to be blessed so that everyone will come to know God, and that God’s plan will prevail over the world.

To sum all this up, being blessed means that God transforms us in order for others to blessed and transformed themselves.  We may be tempted to cling to God’s blessings and keep them for ourselves, rather than recognizing that the way they change us can be a way for others to be changed as well.  If we hold onto the blessing for ourselves, we block God’s pipeline of grace and joy for the world.

It’s for us as individuals, but it’s also true for us as a church.  The Lord has blessed Old Union in many fantastic ways.  But the blessings are not meant for us alone.  First, they are not simply heavenly goodies that we can enjoy like trick-or-treaters on November 1.  The blessings that God has bestowed upon our congregation are meant to change who we are.  Pray over this question: “How has God transformed Old Union through the blessings he has given to it?”  Second, our church has not been blessed for its own sake.  We have been blessed so that those around us, especially those in our community, can discover God’s blessing for them through us.  Pray over this second question: “How can Old Union’s blessings bring others closer to God?”

Pittsburgh and the Presbyterian Church

It’s fitting that the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly will be meeting in Pittsburgh, beginning on Saturday.  It’s fitting, not just because Pittsburgh, per capita, has more Presbyterians than any other city, and not just because it will be the first time that the national decision-making body will meet in the ‘Burgh since 1959.  In many ways, the character and composition of Pittsburgh and the PC(USA) are similar.  Here are three.

First, Pittsburgh is more like a compact collection of towns than a single city.  Because of the rivers and the hilly terrain, and because of immigration and settlement patterns, the city is made up of many neighborhoods, each with a very distinct personality.  Shadyside and East Liberty may be right beside each other, but they are about as different as night and day.  A few years ago my stepdaughter lived in Bloomfield, which is nice.  But if she lived about a half block in one direction, she would have been in Garfield.  And that would have kept us up at night.

In the same way, our denomination is becoming more like a collection of neighborhoods than a unified church.  It’s not enough to say that you’re a Presbyterian to have a sense of kindred spirit with each other.  We reserve judgment until we know which “neighborhood” you’re from.  Where do you stand on ordination issues?  What’s your perspective on the authority of Scripture?  Are you more concerned about social justice or morality?  In my opinion, recent changes in our denomination have made it easier for us to identify with our neighborhoods.  The new Form of Government allows each presbytery and session to establish its own manual of operations.  So things that are “normal” in one part of the church are unheard-of somewhere else.  Just like, in Pittsburgh, Homewood is completely different from Fox Chapel.  Second, our standards of ordination are now determined more fully by the local ordaining body (session or presbytery) than by national standards.  The potential now exists that someone who is an elder or minister in one Presbyterian “neighborhood” won’t be recognized as such in another one.

Second, the adage “You can’t get there from here” applies to the roads of Pittsburgh.  There’s no neat checkerboard of streets and avenues, like you’ll find in cities built on pancake-flat terrain.  The roads in Pittsburgh follow meandering streams, skirt steep slopes, and accommodate every other geographic challenge that they find.  To make matters worse, the locals have their own names for these highways, which you’ll never find on a map or a road-sign.  If you want to travel from downtown to Monroeville, “everyone knows” that you take the Parkway East.  Everyone, that is, except for the highway signage people, who call it I-376 East.  You won’t find the Tenth Street Bridge between the Ninth Street and the Sixteenth Street Bridges; that’s where the Veteran’s Bridge is (also known as I-579).  Confused?  Don’t worry; you will be.

Once again, Pittsburgh and the PC(USA) have a lot in common.  Sure, we have a labyrinth of confusing bureaucracy, just like any other large organization.  It can be infuriating, as groups seem to work at cross-purposes, oblivious of what others are doing.  But the issue runs more deeply than that.  Some of us have such deeply entrenched convictions that “you can’t get there from here,” if you don’t have the same beliefs.  We’ve lost the ability to see eye-to-eye with each other.  Roads that should connect us only seem to drive us further apart.

But there’s a third way that Pittsburgh and the Presbyterian Church are similar.  For all of their differences, Pittsburghers share a common identity.  We’re proud of who we are, and there are many things that rally us together.  We commiserate over the potholes that spring up faster than PennDOT and the city can fill them.  We’ve all enjoyed summer days at Kennywood Park.  And of course, there are the Steelers.  It doesn’t matter if you come from Manchester or Regent Square or Mount Lebanon; chances are there’s at least one Terrible Towel in your house.  Any differences that we have with each other pale in comparison to the way we all feel about “The Mistake on the Lake” (i.e. Cleveland) or Baltimore, the city of purple pigeons.  If you’re from Pittsburgh and don’t have at least a little bit of Black and Gold in your blood, you’re a rare exception.

I’ll leave it for you to decide: is this something that we Presbyterians have as well?  Do we have a common identity, a common devotion, that trumps anything that disconnects us from each other?  We say that we do: that the saving grace of Jesus Christ and our devotion to our Lord is the guiding principle of our lives and of our church.  But is that how we live?  Is that how our commissioners and delegates will deliberate next week?  Will they interact with the love and respect of brothers and sisters in Christ?  Will they recognize and appreciate each other’s desire to further the kingdom of God?  For all of our sakes, I hope so.

Tax Collectors and Zealots

The Presbyterian General Assembly will meet in Pittsburgh during the first week of July.  This will be the first time since 1959 that elders and ministers from across the country will come to our area to make decisions that steer the course of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  If this year’s meeting of “GA” is like most, some of the issues and decisions will spark controversy and strong disagreement.  In fact, decisions from past GA meetings have led some congregations to leave the denomination because in good conscience they could not remain in fellowship with others with whom they disagree so strongly.  Others are seeking ways to reorganize the denomination so congregations can associate with other “like-minded” people, in order to limit their contact with people who believe differently from them.  It’s natural for us to want to be with people who think like us, and to limit or cut off contact with those who don’t.

Matthew’s description of Jesus’ twelve apostles (10:2-4) paints a different picture.  This small band of men who worked and studied closely together included at least two men who normally wouldn’t want anything to do with each other: Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot.  As a tax collector, Matthew worked to support the rule of the Roman Empire over Israel by taking money from his neighbors and giving it to Rome.  As a Zealot, Simon actively resisted Roman rule.  Zealots were the “insurgents” of the time, and eventually started an all-out revolt against Rome.  In Jesus’ time, it would be hard to find two Jews that would disagree more with each other than Matthew and Simon.  People like Simon wouldn’t even consider Matthew to be real Jew because of the way that he helped their nation’s enemy.  He had abandoned their country and had desecrated their faith.

Even though Matthew and Simon disagreed bitterly over a matter close to their hearts, Jesus brought them together.  Because there were only twelve people in the group, they couldn’t avoid each other.  Jesus forced them to find a way to share fellowship and to work together.  That doesn’t mean that Simon stopped being a Zealot (according to Acts 1:13, he was still a Zealot even after the resurrection), and it doesn’t mean that Matthew quit supporting Rome.  But through the powerful presence of Jesus, who had brought them together, they discovered a way to accept and respect each other…even to love each other.  I suspect that it was possible because Matthew and Simon recognized that they commitment to Jesus overshadowed any other commitments or beliefs that they had.  And I’m sure that the presence of Jesus in their lives showed them how to be reconciled to each other.

Things may come out of the GA meeting that deeply disturb you.  There may be decisions in our own congregation that annoy you.  There may be people in our church that you can’t stand because their opinions are so different from yours, or because they have done something that offends you.  At times like these, remember Matthew and Simon: brothers in the faith in spite of their strong disagreement.  If Christ was able to bring them together, he can bring us together as well.

Our Community Is the Mission Field

Anyone engaged in international mission puts a lot of effort into learning the culture of the people that they are going to work with.  As one mission trainee put it, “We need to learn the culture in order to be accepted into the culture so that we can work in the culture.”  The explosion of world-wide Christianity happened only after European and American missionaries stopped insisting that converts must live according to western cultural standards in order to be “real” Christians.  It’s easy to cringe when we think about how they made South Pacific Islanders wear heavy woolen clothing and forbade Africans from drumming and dancing.  They confused the gospel with their culture.  Once they became wise enough to realize that the gospel flourishes in every culture, they got out of the way and allowed it to do so.  Now, mission workers seek to understand the culture that they enter, instead of imposing their culture upon their hosts.

This all makes perfect sense when we’re talking about international outreach, but we Christians fail to recognize its importance when we try to share the gospel in our own communities.  When we invite people to join us in the adventure of faith, we expect them to conform to our standards.  They’re supposed to sing the songs that we sing, dress the way that we dress, and do the things that we do.  When we act this way, we’re no different from European missionaries trying to put hoop skirts on Polynesians.

“Wait a minute!” you may protest.  “The people in our communities live in the same culture that we do.  They’re the same as we are.”  Well…are you sure about that?  Do people listen to the same style of music in their cars and on their iPods that they would find in church?  Do churches have the same “feel” as other public facilities in the area?  Does church have a jargon that would be unfamiliar to a non-Christian?  Is the church clueless when it comes to things that matter to people in its town?

Unfortunately, many of us Christians don’t even know the answer to these questions because we live in a self-imposed Christian bubble.  A few years ago, when our church had an “Invite-a-Friend” Sunday, one of our members told me that he didn’t know who to invite because he didn’t know anyone who wasn’t already going to church.  This gentleman is typical of many of us.  The more involved we become in the church, the fewer ties we have to the un-churched community.  And of course, there are elements of the culture around us that we Christians find unsavory: rough language, overuse of alcohol, and questionable fashion choices.  So, we avoid people and places where we find them.  We’re just like missionaries who were appalled at grass skirts and wild dancing.

It’s time for us to view our communities as a mission field with a different culture.  The time is long gone when churches were the center of the community and the focus of its social life.   Like mission workers going to a foreign country, we need to learn about a different language and different lifestyle patterns.  Then, we can help people discover the gospel’s presence in their own way.

The other night I went to a concert at a club in an old church building.  The place was packed (on a Thursday night!) with people who PAID to get in.  The enthusiasm in the place was exhilarating.  But as I enjoyed the music and the crowd, I couldn’t help but to notice the architectural residue from the buildings past use.  This was a place where people used to gather to worship our living God.  Apparently, over time the church became irrelevant to the community it was in, and eventually sold the building and went out of existence.  What would have happened if the congregation would have studied the culture of its community and took the risk of changing its ways so that the same passion that I saw that night would have been directed to Jesus Christ?

When Did We See You?

When I tell people that I’ve been to Ghana, they often ask about the poverty that we see there.  After all, Africa is famous for being poor.  And yes, there is poverty in Ghana.  But there is also affluence.  Becky and I saw cars, homes, and clothes in Ghana that we could never hope to afford.  The prices in some of the stores we visited were way out of our range.  What struck us even more than the poverty was the contrast: well-heeled businessmen driving sleek black SUVs past people living in shacks by the ditch, and children with nothing but a ball of tape for a soccer ball playing outside a beautiful resort.  We asked ourselves, “How can such stark contrast exist in Ghana?  How can the affluent live with themselves when confronted with such desperate need?”  It baffled and bothered us.

As we talked about it, we realized that the gap between the rich and the poor is just as real in the US as it is in Ghana.  According to a 2011 study by Duke University and the Harvard Business School, the richest 20% of Americans own 84% of our nation’s wealth, while the poorest 40% own only 0.3%.  And the gap is growing: over the past 20 years, poor Americans have actually gotten poorer, while the rich have gotten richer.  Even more troubling is the study’s finding that most Americans have no idea how big the difference is between the wealthy and the poor in our country.

Becky and I saw the contrast between the rich and the poor in Ghana, while rarely noticing in the US, for two reasons.  First, we do a better job of hiding the poor from sight in our country.  The rich and middle class live in certain areas, and the poor live somewhere else.  If you don’t go to  certain neighborhoods and communities, you don’t have to see them.  And second, we’ve trained ourselves not to see them.  We’ve learned how to ignore the needy until we don’t even notice that they exist.  At the monthly deacons meeting, we struggle to identify people that we can help.  They’re in our community, but we don’t see them.  Becky and I noticed the contrast in Ghana only because we were in a different culture, where we didn’t know how to ignore what we didn’t want to see.

Politicians may engage in or accuse each other of “class warfare,” but for us Christians this is a wake-up call to do something.  In the parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25:31-46), Jesus cursed the goats because they failed to help him when he was hungry, thirsty, a stranger in need of clothes, sick and in prison.  Perplexed, they responded, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”  They did not help, because they did not see the need.  They were blind to the poor and distressed people all around them.  I’m ashamed to say that those goats sound an awful lot like me.

Thankfully, we worship a Lord who gives sight to the blind and wisdom to the foolish.  I urge you to seek the Lord’s help to open your eyes to the need that surrounds us, so that you may respond with the love and justice of Christ.

The Gospel According to Shark Tank and Moneyball

The other evening I saw part of the TV show “Shark Tank” for the first time.  Apparently, it’s a chance for inventors to pitch their products to potential investors.  As I watched, a man who wanted to sell recyclable sneakers made a pitch to investors to put $50,000 into his concept.  The first four potential investors turned him down for one simple reason: “You aren’t asking for enough money.”  As they explained to him, the $50,000 would only be enough to process a first order, leaving him with no capital for inventory and production costs to go any further.  Ironically, they refused to give him any money because he should have asked for more money.  I’m no expert on recyclable footwear and business strategies, but I was struck by the way his limited vision for his product and his company hurt him.  He failed to comprehend the magnitude of the opportunity in front of him.  By trying to be prudent and start small, he lost the opportunity entirely.

Then a couple days later, we watched the movie “Moneyball,” a baseball movie starring Brad Pitt.  In one scene, the stars watch a video clip of a baseball player whose goal when he’s at the plate is simply to get to first base.  He never tries to turn his hits into a double.  Then, on a rare occasion, he hits a long ball and decides to round the corner to get to second base.  But when he does, he trips and falls.  Frantically, he literally crawled across the dirt to get back to first base.  The opposing players double over in laughter: not because of how foolish he looked trying to get back on base, but because he had hit a home run and didn’t even know it.  Sheepishly, the batter picked himself up off the dirt and rounded the bases, to the applause and laughter of everyone in the stadium.  He had a home run, but could only think about getting to first base.

I wonder: how often is this is case for us when we come before God?  Do we think too small, by imposing limitations upon what we think God is willing to do for us?  Do we set our sights too low by being willing to settle for $50,000 or first base, when God’s plans for us are so much more?  In the process of not wanting to impose on our Lord, or going beyond what we think is reasonable, we discount our expectations.  When we do, we risk losing out on the riches of God’s grace because we haven’t asked for enough.

Let me be clear.  When I am speaking about asking from God, I’m not referring to the wealth and health and fame that purveyors of the “prosperity gospel” offer.  Focusing upon such worldly, self-centered interests blinds us to the true riches that God offers, and in fact has already supplied us through the powerful work of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps we do not ask for enough because we don’t want to impose upon God.  But is that even possible?  Remember, this is the Lord of all creation, with limitless, over-abounding glory.  The only way we could impose upon him is if granting our request would somehow diminish his own glory.  And that is impossible for God to do, for two reasons.  First, think of infinity as the mathematical metaphor for the glory of God.  Infinity minus fifty thousand is still infinity.  Infinity minus fifty bazillion is still infinity.  No matter how much God grants to us, it is no imposition upon him, because he continues to have inexhaustible glory, power, wisdom, and honor.

Perhaps we limit our requests to God for what we think is reasonable.  But do you really want God to treat you reasonably?  By reasonable standards, the only treatment any of us would deserve from God would be condemnation and annihilation because of the sinfulness and brokenness that is inherent to our human condition.  Reasonably, we cannot even ask God to grant us our next breath, our next heartbeat, our next thought.  The indescribable glory for us is that God does not treat us with reason; he treats us with grace.  He delights to overwhelm us beyond our wildest dreams.  Why?  The only explanation is simply that he wants to.  It has nothing to do with deserving it, earning it, or reasonably expecting it.  God takes pleasure in being lovingly unreasonable with us.  When we enter the adventure of faith, we abandon standard concepts of what is logical and reasonable.  We cast ourselves into the amazing, overwhelming plan of God that outstrips even our wildest dreams, that goes far beyond what we could ever imagine would be possible.

The greatest irony of all is that God has already given us more than enough.  The baseball player already had a home run, but couldn’t even see it.  We are like him when we fail to recognize the more-than-enough that God has already given us.  Christ has already hit one out of the park for us, and has already bestowed upon us an indescribable bounty of joy, peace, hope, and love.  The Christian journey is not one of receiving more and more blessing from God.  It is the journey of running the bases to discover more and more of the blessing that Christ delivered to us through his redeeming death and victorious resurrection.  The consummation of the ages is merely the time when humanity, and all creation, finally catches up with the superabundance of the cross.

So go ahead: ask for the audacious from the Lord.  You can do it because he has already provided it for you.

Gay Marriage?

We’ve done a funny thing with marriage, and that’s a major reason for our nation’s hot debate about gay marriage. The traditional, typical way that weddings are conducted in our nation is a direct violation of the First Amendment’s freedom of religion. For all of the talk about prayer in public schools and nativity scenes at courthouses, we all seem to forget that members of the clergy act as representatives of the state when we officiate at weddings. I am an agent of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania when I declare two people to be husband and wife. I have this authority, not because of any civil qualifications or appointment, but simply because the Presbyterian Church (USA) has enrolled me as a minister of word and sacrament.

 This system of having church officials invested with civil authority is what our nation’s forebears left Europe to escape. Our freedom of religion is a bulwark against people being baptized into the official state church, whether they’re believers or not. People of other Christian persuasions or other religions (particularly Judaism) were persecuted, imprisoned, and killed. That’s why the First Amendment declares, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But here we are: clergy in charge of establishing legally binding relationships that we call marriage. Meanwhile, back in Europe, where religious freedom used to be so rare and precious, the religious and legal aspects of marriage are now nicely separated. For example, in my family’s homeland of the Netherlands, marriages are always and only conducted in the town hall, under the authority of a local civil official. If you’re a Christian, you do what my parents did: have a procession from the town hall to the church, where you seek God’s blessing upon your union and dedicate yourselves to him.

 Many Christians (including me) do not think it is proper for churches to bless a same-sex couple’s union as a marriage. This is a religious view of marriage, not the legal or civil aspect that should be the topic of votes, court rulings, and Presidential comments. Let churches, not politicians, judges, and voters, debate the issue of whether or not God considers same-sex partners in the same that he views male-female couples.

 Many citizens (including me) think that sexual orientation should not be a factor that limits or denies human rights, and that same-sex couples should have the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. In other words, I and others do not have the right to impose our religious convictions upon our fellow citizens. 

This brings us to the unfortunate issue of language: marriage vs. “civil union.” Understandably, many LGBT (i.e. lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) citizens aren’t satisfied with civil unions because they seem to be second-rate in comparison to marriages. And, also understandably, many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim citizens don’t want same-sex couples to be “married,” because it cuts against their religious values.

 I suggest that do away with the term “marriage” altogether, as a civil or legal designation. Any couple that seeks to have a legally binding relationship can do so, and we can call that relationship anything we want. Those who desire to commit this relationship to God and to seek his blessing upon it are free to do so, of course. But that celebration and service is a religious ceremony that has no legal authority.

 Not only would this help our nation avoid the religiously-inspired aspects of the gay marriage debate, but it would also help churches reclaim their convictions about marriage. Like many other ministers, I’m often asked to conduct a wedding for a couple that doesn’t care that much about faith. Getting married in the church, by a minister, is the thing to do. I urge them during premarital meetings to dedicate their relationship to the Lord, and they’ll nod their heads and agree. But that’s about it; after the rings are on the fingers and the wedding cake has been eaten, they won’t be in the church again for years. If I am no longer an agent of the state, then people will only want a marriage ceremony at the church if they really want the Lord to be the third partner of their union.

Faithful and Relevant

The challenge for the church, today as always, is to be both faithful to Jesus Christ and relevant to the world. At times we lose our focus on Jesus Christ and allow other forces and interests to dominate our life. But at other times, we become so enamored with approaches, strategies, and programs which worked well in the past that we fail to recognize that they are no longer relevant.

A powerful visual metaphor for this second error is the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras. It is a modern, well-constructed bridge that effectively linked communities on opposite sides of the river. It was such a good bridge that it was one of the few in the nation to survive the horrific floods when Hurricane Mitch hit in November 1998. There’s just one problem: the river shifted its path during the flood and no longer flows under the bridge. So there it is: a well-designed, excellent structure that has become irrelevant. It no longer serves a purpose, with no road on either end of it and no river underneath it.

In the same way, the church always runs the risk of doing a great job that is no longer necessary because the currents of society have shifted underneath us. As PC(USA) World Mission director Hunter Farrell put it, we risk being “uniquely situated to do what no one’s asking us to do.”

This seems to be the case for Old Union Church. We live in a world and a community that has changed from what it was a generation, or even a decade, ago. We may be exemplary in our faithfulness to Christ and his gospel as we do so. But if we do wonderful things that no one cares about, we are irrelevant. Our faithfulness does no good for us, for others, or our Lord.

In order to be both faithful and relevant, we must work on two tasks at the same time.
FIRST: what does it mean for us to be faithful? What is our calling as a congregation? In the past several years, we’ve gone through two discernment processes to answer that question. The first was a time of strategic planning before undertaking the building project, in order to determine the purpose for our church. The result is the statement of purpose that graces our church letterhead and the banner in our lobby:
Our purpose, together, is to
a. praise the Lord,
b. grow in faith,
c. spread God’s word through the community, and
d. reach out to those in need.
The second took place during 2010, when the session sought to identify our church’s “core value:” the factors that define our congregation, that make us who we are, and that define our church’s reason for existing.
A: SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH: Old Union is a place for prayer, learning, worship, growing in faith, and making personal commitments to God.
B: OUTREACH: Old Union exists to provide care and support, both within and beyond the congregation. We value service, sharing faith, and engaging in mission.
C: RELATIONSHIPS: Old Union has a sense of family and embodies the values of a small country church. It is a place of welcome, compassion, caring, support, and forgiveness.
We believe that the statement of purpose and the core values are what God calls us to do, and whom he calls us to be. We are faithful to him when we act according to these principles.

SECOND: how can we be relevant? Do we live out our purpose and express our core values in a way that makes sense and makes a difference for the people in our church and in our community? To answer this question, we must be students of our culture and community. We cannot afford to turn our noses up to trends and innovations we don’t like, simply because they are strange and unfamiliar. If we do, then eventually we become strange and unfamiliar to those around us. The challenge is that it is natural for us to associate with people like ourselves, and to do things the way we’ve always done it. We don’t even notice that other people are doing things differently from us. So to be relevant, we need to look beyond our own sense of “what’s happening.” One helpful tool that we have is Mission Insite, a rich resource of demographic information about our community (the presbytery has paid for our subscription to this service). Go to missioninsite.com and log in with the username “olduion” and the password “jamesglover” to do some research about our community. I suspect we’ll be very surprised by some of the things we discover. Our community is probably not what we think it is, and our neighbors are probably not whom we think that they are.

Once we are able to determine what it means to be faithful and what it means to be relevant, we can use that as a litmus test for everything that we’re doing, and how we’re doing it. Is it faithful to God’s call for us? Is it relevant to our community? If not, we need to get rid of it. Our church has many beloved programs, practices, traditions, and customs. But we cannot allow them to become idols: to be so important and valuable to us that we resist losing them even if they interfere with God’s call.

Shattering idols is painful. By definition, an idol is something that we value, that is very important to us. It hurts to say goodbye to things we like. And when someone challenges us to get rid of them, we may be tempted to lash out in anger against them. Think, for example, of how people hated and attacked the Old Testament prophets when they called for them to abandon their idols. Being faithful to God’s call means we confront our pain and discomfort.

At the same time, we do not get rid of treasured traditions simply to surf the latest wave of trendiness. Doing so would be to make an idol of something else: the quest to be cutting-edge. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s better. Our question is not “what’s the latest fad to hit churches?” but “what can we do to be faithful to God’s call in our current situation?” The answer may be to continue doing some things that we’ve done for generations. But it may mean doing things differently. Everything is on the table, and must pass muster. In each case, we must ask: is this an effective way to achieve our purpose and to live out our values?

A Leaf in the Stream

During my first year as a pastor, God showed me something that has helped me understand my place in what he’s doing in the world. It’s an image that I keep going back to, and I hope it’s one that you’ll find helpful as well.

I was the pastor of two churches in Armstrong County, and it was one of those weeks that pastors sometimes have. Nothing at the churches seemed to be going right, and people were pointing fingers at each other, and at me. I felt overwhelmed by the task in front of me, and I was frustrated by the difficulties that had cropped up. To clear my head and to seek God’s direction, I went for a walk in the woods. It was the fall, and I eventually ended up beside a little stream. As I stood there, stewing in my juices, my attention was drawn to a leaf floating down the stream: bouncing off the rocks, hurling over a little waterfall, getting caught in an eddy, and eventually floating downstream.

And then it hit me. Or, to word it more accurately, I realized what God was trying to tell me. He is the stream, and I am the leaf. I am caught up in something much larger than myself. Just as the current of the stream carried the leaf along, God’s Spirit carries me along in his plan. The leaf isn’t going to get downstream faster by doing anything on its own. The stream is in control of where it’s going, and God is in control of where I’m going and what I’m doing. The leaf has no idea where it’s going, or why it’s going there. But that doesn’t matter; it doesn’t need to. The stream will take care of things.

I am caught up in something bigger than me. It doesn’t all depend upon me to make things work out. God has a plan that is unfolding and carrying me along. I may not understand it, and I may not see where it is taking me. And that’s OK. I can relax in the stream that is carrying me along, and know that God is in control of it.

This image of being a leaf in the stream of God’s Spirit came to me again about three years ago, when I was devastated by the news that I would have to start work all over again on my PhD dissertation. Once again, I found myself standing beside a creek, watching the leaves float downstream. But this time, some of the leaves had ended up in a patch of still water away from the current of the stream. These leaves, for some reason, had ended up in a backwater that kept them from moving along. And I realized that, for reasons unknown to me, God wanted me to remain in the place where I was for a time before moving on. He wanted me to spend another year earning my degree.

Some people may be tempted to view this image as an excuse to be lazy and passive. Like an inert leaf, we just allow God to do his thing while we sit back and do nothing. But that’s not the message I’ve received. For me, it is a source of peace and hope. When I’m tempted to get anxious about how things are going, and to fret about the things I need to do in order to move things along, the image of a leaf in the stream reminds me of the truth. I am caught up in something bigger than me. God has a plan that is carrying me along. And I can trust him to carry me to his goal.

Cross-Cultural Faith

What did Christ do when he died for us? Your answer to this question may have more to do with the country you live in than you realize.

Freedom is important to us Americans. After all, we’re the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We celebrate the freedoms that our constitution guarantees. Our nation was born in a struggle for independence, and it grew through pioneers and settlers seeking a free life. Given the choice, we would rather live a difficult life of freedom than an easy life where we have to do what someone else tells us to do. So it’s no surprise that, as American Christians, we would almost instinctively answer the question “What did Christ do?” by replying “He freed us from our sins.” And without a doubt, he did.

I’ve learned from my time in Ghana that unity and belonging is very important to them. In Ghana, your very identity comes from your family, community, and ethnic group. I suspect that the typical Ghanaian would gladly sacrifice freedom in order to maintain strong relationships. One of the hardest things for Ghanaian immigrants in the US is the sense of isolation that they feel here. This value shows up in a common Ghanaian political slogan: “One Ghana!” They are proud of the fact that, in spite of tribal, religious, and political differences, unity matters. I’ve frequently seen Ghanaians strongly debate an issue that they disagreed over. After a while, one or both of them would get uncomfortable with this point of conflict and declare, “But we are brothers and sisters!” Smiles, handshakes, and jokes would then reassure them that, despite their difference of opinion, they are still in relationship with each other. So, unlike us Americans, a Ghanaian is more likely to say, “Because Christ died for me, I belong to him.” The work of Christ has given us a family and a kingdom to belong to.

Christ’s atoning work on the cross means both that he has set us free from sin, and also that we now belong to him. Our freedom in Christ is not an absolute independence that allows us to do anything we want. It means that we now have a Lord who controls our lives and unites us with him and with his family. And the fact that we belong to Christ means that we are no longer bound or enslaved by the evil forces of our world or the sin deep in our hearts.

The point here is not that either Americans or Ghanaians are “right” or “wrong.” The truth of Christ’s amazing work is greater than what any of us can grasp. But when we learn about how others understand our faith, we can enrich our own in the process.

It's Time to Step up

You’d have to live under a rock to be unaware of the budget battles in Washington, DC. One of the results is that our government is reducing its spending on social programs. Maybe you’re upset about these funding cuts, or perhaps you think they haven’t gone far enough. Either way, they’re making a change in our nation. And if you’re a Christian, you have a responsibility to act.

The testimony of Scripture is clear: we’re supposed to care for the those in need in our society. Read, for example, Psalm 82:3, Amos 5:11-13, Luke 18:18-30, and Romans 12:13. The Bible has much more to say about our responsibility to care for the poor and oppressed than it does about some of the issues which dominate many of our discussions.

Maybe you are someone who is disturbed by the government’s funding cuts because you believe that these programs fulfill the Biblical mandate. That’s fine, but there are other ways to be faithful to Scripture. What can you do, now that these programs aren’t doing it?

Or, maybe you’re someone who welcomes these cuts because you don’t think it’s not the government’s role to take care of people. Again, that’s fine. It may not be Washington’s job to help the poor, needy, and oppressed in our society, but Scripture tells us that it’s ours. Are you stepping up to the plate?

Regardless of your politics, the Christian call is clear. There are people in need. As the people of God, it is our responsibility to do something about it. What are you going to do? Here are a few suggestions:
1. Food banks across the nation are losing government funding for their work to feed the hungry. What can you do to assist our local food pantries, or the Pittsburgh Community Food Bank?
2. Volunteer fire departments are receiving smaller grants to support their work in our communities. Have you made a contribution to your local company?
3. FEMA has less money to help victims of natural disasters. The Presbyterian Disaster Assistance program has a proven track record of helping with long-term disaster recovery. Would you like to support them?
4. Public libraries have to make do with less, even though people with low incomes rely on them for so many things. Have you made a donation?
5. LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) has less money this winter to help people stay warm. Many of them will turn to the Lighthouse, our deacons, or other Christian charities for help. Can you give them more to work with?

These are just a few examples, but I hope you get my point. There are many ways that we can each do our part to obey God and help “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46) all around us.