Another winner from Ministry Matters.

Also a winner from Brian McLaren, whose work never fails to impress.

Check it out:

I Thank God for Pastors

I was a pastor for over twenty years, and nothing I have ever done before or since has been more difficult.

Click here to read the full article

What are you so afraid of?

This is a question we could ask of our entire culture and everyone in it. People would answer in all kinds of ways: Pain, insecurity, running out of money, etc.

In fact, I’ve noticed that people are usually more than ready to list each of the ten thousand problems that are currently plaguing their life to one degree or another. They recite this litany of sorrows, thinking that if they could only think of ten thousand solutions to go with each one of these ten thousand problems, they would finally be happy. However, I have yet to see anyone come up with such a list and happiness seems to be as elusive as ever in this world.

There was a 20^th century philosopher and theologian named Paul Tillich who explored this subject in a very famous book called The Courage to Be. He pointed out that our fears related to each of those ten thousand problems were really just echoes of one deeper, larger problem, which he called anxiety.

According to Tillich, our overall state of anxiety is not related to any of the particular crises that may or may not be taking place in our life right now, but rather to our awareness that it is possible for us to not exist. Each of us is generally aware that there was a time in history when we did not exist, therefore it is entirely possible that there may come another time in the future when we will return to that state of non-existence. The same thing is true of every other person and object in the universe, up to and including the stars and the universe itself. None of these things is essential or necessary. Each of them can either exist or not exist. The philosophical term for this state of affairs is contingency. You, me, and everyone we know are all contingent (as opposed to necessary) beings. If we ceased to exist, the universe could simply keep going without us.

This fact scares us like nothing else. Paul Tillich says that each of our smaller fears is really just a reflection of this deep, inner awareness. If this is the way things are, we think, then what’s the point of it all? Is life just empty and meaningless? This is our human anxiety, which we then project into each of our little fears and problems, thinking that we might be able to cure our overall anxiety if only we can find the solution to our next problem.

This futile problem-solving strategy becomes the source of much of our conflict in the world. In an attempt to look tough and strong in the face of adversity, we hide our anxiety and cover over our fears with the more socially acceptable shroud of anger and outrage. Think of the President of the United States on September 11:

He would have been ridiculed if he had gone on TV and simply said what each of us was feeling that day: “I’m so scared; I don’t know why this happened; this is so horrible; I don’t know what to do!” Anger is more socially acceptable than fear (because it gives the illusion of strength), so the response instead was, “We will not be deterred; we will find these people; we will bomb them; we will kill them.” And his approval ratings shot through the roof.

Anger is more socially acceptable than fear, but it has a cost: the breakdown of social relations. When everyone is covering for their fears with anger, they turn on each other. They fight with one another. Just turn on Fox News or MS-NBC and you can see it happening right there.

If you ever want to know what a person is really afraid of, just pay close attention to what makes them angry. Rage is a cover for fear, which is itself only a projection of our deep, existential anxiety over the fact that it is possible for us to not exist.

St. Paul noticed this tendency in people and he wrote about it in his letter to the Christians at Philippi, which we read from this morning. There was just such a conflict going on in that church, where two people were projecting their anxiety into anger.

Paul names two women, Euodia and Syntyche, who were fighting with each other. The text of Paul’s letter doesn’t tell us exactly what they were fighting about, but as we’ve already seen, that doesn’t really matter so much. The fact is that they were fighting.

And Paul, genius that he was, draws the line of connection between anger and anxiety when, after urging these two Christians to stop fighting and get along, he moves almost immediately to say, “Do not worry about anything.” For Paul, anger and anxiety are two very closely related concepts.

When our relationships break down into endless conflict, what we’re really dealing with is a breakdown in our faith, which is when fear starts to take over. People start acting like wounded animals who have been backed into a corner, which is when they attack.

Paul’s proposed solution, which strikes at the heart of this problem, is prayer. He advises the Philippians, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

Prayer is a very misunderstood practice in the modern world. I would even go so far as to say that it is equally misunderstood by religious people and secular people alike. Secular folks tend to disparage it as pointless superstition. “Prayer doesn’t work,” they say, “You might as well be casting magic spells. What we need is measurable, concrete solutions!” And religious folks, like us, tend to get all defensive and come back with, “It does too work!” And we get all these inspirational stories about the miraculous power of prayer that are supposed to “put those atheists in their place.”

But here’s the thing: I think both of those responses ultimately miss the point of what prayer is all about. Prayer is not about getting results. The efficacy of prayer does not depend on us getting or not getting what we pray for. Prayer changes us. Prayer changes our relationship to reality.

My favorite one-sentence definition of prayer comes from our denomination’s constitution, the Presbyterian Book of Order. The Book of Order defines prayer as “the conscious opening of the self to God” (W-5.4001). I love that definition. It reminds me of the line from the hymn: “Joyful, joyful, we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of love; hearts unfold like flowers before thee, opening to the sun above.”

Prayer is the process of reframing our life, with all its joys and concerns, within the larger context of God.

This kind of prayer, which I believe Paul is talking about, is more than just the occasional outcry in a moment of crisis (i.e. “Oh God, please help me!”). I believe Paul is talking about prayer as a regular discipline and a daily, repetitive practice that works its way into our worldview. Paul says to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

For Paul, it begins and ends with rejoicing. When? “Always” and “Again.”

The contemporary spiritual writer Fr. Richard Rohr says it this way: “Prayer is not one of the ten thousand things in our life; it the lens through which we see those ten thousand things.”

Prayer is not about getting results, as we modern people understand it. However, prayer does produce an effect. What is it, according to Paul?

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

The effect of a regular, disciplined prayer life is peace:

Peace in the internal, psychological sense that “guards our hearts and minds.” It allows us to face our ten thousand little problems without that overall, crushing anxiety because we know in our heart of hearts that our life, our existence, rests not upon ourselves, but on that which is infinitely greater than us. Prayer reminds us that we are indeed “leaning on the everlasting arms” and shows to us that “place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.”

Prayer also produces peace in the external, social sense. In this same passage, Paul says to the Philippians: “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.”

That word “gentleness” in Greek is Epieikesis, which literally means “seeking what is equitable by setting aside the demands of justice.” A better translation might be “forbearance”. It means rising above our “tit for tat” scorecards with each other and living from the place of grace that extends to our neighbors the free mercy that God has already bestowed upon us.

This commitment to peace, which grows out of a regular and disciplined practice of prayer, is what has the power to break the endless cycles of anger and violence. We no longer have to attack each other like cornered, wounded animals. Instead, we now have the power to become veterinarians for our neighbors’ inner beasts. We can say to them (even if their animal nature cannot understand us), “It’s okay, I’m here to help.” A regular, disciplined prayer life gives us the spiritual strength to do this well.

The monks and nuns of the Benedictine tradition have lived this truth better than anyone. Their first call is to a life of prayer. As a fringe benefit, they also happened to save civilization in western Europe for almost a thousand years during the so-called “dark ages”.

In a time of bubonic plague and civil unrest, it was the monasteries that became known as places of safety where hospitality, education, healthcare, art, and culture could be preserved. They were (and are) of great service to their communities, but “Job #1” for them was always prayer.

I wonder what effect it might have on our communities today if we Christians were to commit ourselves to the same kind of regular, disciplined prayer?

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by shipwrecks.

I even had a favorite: RMS Titanic, sunk April 15, 1912. Now, just as a point of pride: I should note that I fell in love with the Titanic years before that horrible movie came out in the 1990s. In fact, when it did come out, I was that annoying guy in the theatre who kept pointing out all the things they got wrong. And now that the movie’s popularity has faded, I can finally talk about my love for the Titanic once again without sounding like a 13 year old girl.

What continues to fascinate me about that ship is the sheer modern arrogance that went into its production (and ultimately led to its sinking): they thought they could build a ship that was unsinkable. Boy, were they wrong! If there’s only one line of the Titanic movie that I appreciated, it was the one from the scene where the main character, upon learning that the ship had struck an iceberg and was about to sink, exclaimed, “But it can’t sink!” and the ship’s designer replies, “It’s made of iron; I assure you it can!”

With the benefit of hindsight, just about everyone can see how arrogant it was to claim that anything made of 52,000 tons of steel was unsinkable. It’s almost asking for trouble. Yet, this outrageous claim was totally consistent with the spirit of the age in which the Titanic was built. Historians sometimes call that period in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries “the Gilded Age” or “the Progressive Era”. It was a time when modern people put a lot of faith in their ability to figure things out. They thought that science and technology would eventually solve every human problem. There was one point during that time when the government considered closing the patent office, because they assumed that people had already invented everything that could be invented. In the church, there were several “modern” theologians who even believed that we would one day eliminate the problem of sin in humanity through education and discipline. All of this is the same kind of arrogance that went into the construction (and subsequent destruction) of the Titanic.

This human arrogance finally did cool down during the 20^th century, but it took two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the dropping of the atomic bomb to convince us otherwise. We thought that science and technology would solve all of our problems, but then we dedicated that knowledge to destruction and violence. We went in with the intention of improving life, but ended up destroying life by the millions (when it comes to nuclear weapons, we developed the ability to destroy all life on planet Earth). To use the Titanic as a symbol: we modern humans thought that, with enough dedication and know-how, we could build the unsinkable ship, but we ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic.

That’s the story of the 20^th century, but what about us? How does this modern attitude affect us, personally? Well, even though we’ve seen its folly, we have yet to fully recover from our addiction to that modern ideal of “Bigger! Better! Faster! More!” (a phrase I’ve borrowed from an album by the rock band Four Non Blondes). The modern mind, for all the good it has brought us, is rather myopic: its vision is too narrow. To the modern mind, only that which can be observed and measured is real. You can’t measure mystery, so (to the modern mind) mystery isn’t real (it’s just a question we haven’t answered yet). You can’t measure wonder, so wonder isn’t real. You can’t measure love, so love isn’t real. You can’t measure God, so God isn’t real.

Modern people keep trying to measure things like happiness, goodness, and quality of life, but they run up against a wall time and time again because there’s no universally recognized way to measure those things. In fact, there’s only one numerical unit that modern people have come up with to measure happiness, and it’s not a very good one, but that hasn’t stopped us from using it. Do you want to guess what it is? Money. People try to measure happiness with money: Bigger houses, better gadgets, faster cars, and more money – Bigger, better, faster, more! We even compete, fight, and kill one another in this so-called “pursuit of happiness.”

Modern people measure “quality of life” in terms of production and consumption. Those who perform the most useful tasks earn the most money and spend that money on things that are supposed to make them happy. Does it work?

If it did, then people like the Hiltons and the Kardashians would be the most serene and happy people on the earth, but we know for a fact that we can make whole seasons of “reality” TV shows just by pointing a camera at these people and showing the world how miserable they are… even with all their money.

On the flip side of this equation, the modern world counts people with disabilities or mental illness as having the least quality of life, simply because they don’t produce and consume resources at the same rate as others. Our twisted culture looks at those who do not participate in the monetary economy as people whose lives are without value. Some people in the past have even argued that pteople who cannot produce and consume should be killed as an act of mercy. They simply cannot comprehend the dignity of a human life that does not rely on producing and consuming.

But if that was true, then how could we explain the sheer joy we see on people’s faces at the Togetherness Group? What explanation is there for the vibrancy of worship that pastors and laypeople alike experience whenever they visit North Church?

We are a living testimony that there is something more to life than producing and consuming in this capitalist economy. Money is not the measure of happiness or a meaningful life.

The modern world, with its obsession with taking and consuming resources, has a lot in common with Adam and Eve, humanity’s earliest ancestors in the book of Genesis. According to that story, Adam and Eve were made in God’s image. God formed them from the dust and breathed the breath of life into their bodies. But they wanted more. They wanted to “be like God,” as the story says. So, what did they do? They took the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They lusted after power and control, thinking that would make them more like God. But it didn’t work, did it? The result of their grasping after power was exile from paradise and death in the wilderness.

I think their story has been the story of the entire human race: we grasp after power and control, but end up causing death. In our day, this grasping after power has taken the form of this obsession with money and all things “bigger, better, faster, and more.” We are only re-enacting in our lives the story of Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis. Our grasping after power has not led to greater happiness.

But the Gospel, the Christian story, presents us with another way of living, another way of “being like God,” as Adam and Eve tried to do. St. Paul, in this morning’s reading from his letter to the Philippians, lays out for us the story of Jesus and compares it to the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. Like Adam, Paul says that Jesus was “in the form (or image) of God”. But, unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” Another translation of this word exploited could be “grasped,” just like Adam and Eve “grasped” the fruit that they thought would make them powerful. Adam and Eve grasped in order to be like God; Jesus was like God but did not grasp.

Adam and Eve tried to become masters of their own destiny. But Jesus took “the form of a slave”. Adam and Eve filled themselves with the fruit of the tree; Jesus, according to Paul, “emptied himself.” Adam and Eve sought life and were trapped by death; Jesus embraced death and received new life. Adam and Eve exalted themselves and were cast out of paradise; Jesus humbled himself and was given “the name that is above every name.”

The Gospel of Jesus presents us with a fundamentally different way of being human in the world. The Christian life is not a life that can be measured in terms of “bigger, better, faster, more.” We do not depend on production and consumption to give our lives value. We find ourselves called by God, not to the center of the halls of power, but to edges of society. We stand in solidarity with the poor and oppressed peoples of the earth and discover their God-given dignity, which cannot be measured by human standards.

We are called to follow the same path as Jesus: the way of crucifixion to an old way of life and resurrection to a new one. When we give up our “inalienable right” to “the pursuit of happiness” (by this world’s standards), we discover that joy is a gift given freely to those who serve Christ in their brothers and sisters.

Here at North Church, we have stumbled across this Gospel truth as we live and serve with our neighbors who are disabled or have a mental illness. We have here something of the mystery of Christ that cannot be measured in terms of money or power.

I would say that this way of life is actually a lifeboat with room enough to rescue anyone who wants to get off the sinking shipwreck of modern life.

God has given us this gift, not just to grasp it and keep it for ourselves, but to share it with the rest of God’s people in the world. Our neighbors in the community and our brothers and sisters in the Church desperately need what we have here. Let’s share it with them; let’s move over and make room in the lifeboat for anyone who might need or want a seat.