Author: J. Barrett Lee

(Reblog) How seminaries and the ordination process leave theologically “liberal” Christians behind

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

This article makes a good and true point, although the empathetic part of me suspects that evangelical candidates for ordination face a similar fear of rejection by their committees.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that mainline Protestant denominations are neither conservative/evangelical nor liberal/progressive in their theological orientation (much to the chagrin of conspiracy theorists on both sides), but are trying to hold both perspectives together under the umbrella of their true agenda: maintaining the survival of the institution.

Theologically, this means trying to occupy the Barthian-Niebuhrian middle ground that dissatisfies evangelicals and liberals alike.  Evangelicals fear that the denomination is pandering to political correctness at the expense of gospel truth.  Liberals fear that the denomination’s appeasement of cantankerous reactionaries is blunting the edge of prophetic witness.

My experience of the process left me with the sense that my committee and examiners just wanted to know that I was able to articulate that middle-ground perspective using the language of our denomination’s polity and historical confessions.

I think the main thrust of this article is true, but it could equally apply to our sisters and brothers on the evangelical end of the spectrum.

Reblogged from Crystal St. Marie Lewis:

“Many denominations require candidates to obtain a graduate degree involving work in the areas of theology and philosophy. In those graduate programs, professors spend countless hours training students to think outside the theological box, only for their ordination committees to demand that they put God (and their capacity for exploration) back inside the box. Seminaries are often free and open spaces where people are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about sacred matters. Yet, students endure rejection after the academic stage of their ordination processes–ironically for drawing unapproved conclusions.”

Click here to read the full article

Saturday Fun and Humanity

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Touching Bill Murray story on how comedians say goodbye forever.

Reblogged from Old Love:

We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

Click here to read the full article

(Reblog) A Travesty of American Governance

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

ImageThis comes from the Office of Public Witness, part of the denomination I serve: the Presbyterian Church (USA).  I found this article on Facebook when it was shared by Bruce Reyes-Chow, former Moderator of our General Assembly.

From the article by J. Herbert Nelson:

“Our mission is not to make the poor become rich; nor is it to demonize the rich. Our mission is to ensure that the playing field is leveled. Every human being deserves to have enough.”

Click here to read the full article

Human Dignity in the Service Sector

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Last year, Pastor Alois Bell of Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries in St. Louis, MO famously stiffed her server at Applebee’s of her tip.  This event made headlines as Chelsea, the server in question, was later fired for publicizing the event with a photo of the receipt:

Image

The icing on the proverbial cake was the arrogant note Pastor Bell scrawled on the paper before signing it with her name and title: “I give God 10% why do you get 18”.

Why?  I tell you why.  First of all, because it’s company policy for parties that large.  If you don’t like it, don’t eat there.  Second, and far more important, is because your server is a fellow human being, made in the image of God, worthy of respect and dignity for that fact alone. 

The role of server is one that Jesus blessed and took upon himself when he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.  Jesus, of all people, had the right to lord his status over others, but he didn’t.  He came to give and serve.  After voluntarily completing this act of degrading service, he commanded his followers to do the same, saying, “Just as I have loved you, so you also must love one another.”  Who are we to then treat our servers as anything less than the very presence of Christ in our midst?  Jesus also said, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Finally, professional clergy who act in this way absolutely ruin our collective witness to the power of the gospel.  Like it or not, people see us as representatives of the tradition we follow.  If we want to encourage others to love and follow Jesus, we must demonstrate that same love in our words and deeds.

Pastors, priests, ministers, and other clergy, hear me loud and clear: The way we conduct ourselves in public and the tips we leave our servers preach more than a thousand sermons ever could.  And don’t stop with your dollars either.  Make an effort to remember their names, especially if you are a frequent customer.  These people are treated like machines all day long, imagine the effect it will have on them when you make an effort to build community, nurture relationships, and love like Jesus!

As an act of collective repentance for what Alois Bell did in the name of pastors, I would like to share the following photo from a recent visit to Applebee’s in Rome, NY, where many of the staff members, including Alison, Lester, Matt, Amanda, Heather, Michelle, Natalie, Liz, Destiny, and Tristan, have become precious friends to our family, even though we only see each other in this one context.

Many thanks to our beloved server, Alison, for posting this photo and helping us redeem the world a little from the stain of hypocrisy left by Pastor Bell.

310144_621673100698_1206880434_n

Alison posted the photo to Facebook with this comment:

J. Barrett Lee I put it up finally!!!!!! Thank you for being an amazing customer and more importantly an amazing person and friend! To everyone else: I didn’t know Barrett before I worked at Applebee’s. He came in one night (a particularly rough one) with his daughter and sat in my section. He treated me like a person( a concept that we have talked about many times since) an they made my night 1000 x better. They have now become friends of mine and I love seeing them. It doesn’t hurt that Barrett and his wife Sarah produce amazingly beautiful children

Anyway, my point is that servers are people too, along with the cashier who rang up your groceries wrong or who couldn’t let you use your coupon. Everyone has a story and sometimes they just need someone to listen to it! Spread the love!!!!!!

(Reblog) Tales of a Male ‘Preacher’s Wife’

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

As a man who began his career as a “preacher’s wife” in a small, rural congregation in upstate NY, I can so related to this article.  While my wife and I were in seminary and engaged to be married, but before I realized I was called to pastoral ministry, I went to the seminary library to look up books on being a clergy spouse.  I found those books on the shelf, right between “Sexual Abuse” and “Burnout”, and they were all geared toward clergy wives.  There was NOTHING about being the husband of a pastor.  And, as far as I could tell, my job was just to be Donna Reed.

The low point came when one person learned that I was starting a street chaplaincy program in inner-city Utica.  That person’s comment: “Oh!  I thought you were just a house husband!“

Yup… nope.

Reblogged from Sojourners

By Christian Piatt

I get my share of “preacher’s wife” jokes, to which I have a handful of rote responses. No, I don’t knit or make casseroles. No, I don’t play in the bell choir. Generally, the jokes are pretty gentle, but they all point to the reality that few of us will actually talk about: We see the traditional roles of women as less important than those of their male counterparts. And so, to see a man who works from home most of the time and takes the kids to school while his wife has the “high power” job brings everything from the man’s masculinity to his ambition into question.

Click here to read the full article

Prayer and Action

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image
Image by Fabian Bolliger. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

“Prayer is our nearest approach to absolute action; it means the closest association of which any soul is at any time capable with the living and everywhere present God who is the true initiator of all that we really do.  Progress in it is really a surrender of the conditioned creature to that unconditioned yet richly personal Reality, who is the only source, teacher, and object of prayer.  Its whole wonder and mystery abide in this: that here, our tiny souls are being invited and incited to communion with God, the Eternal Spirit of the Universe.”

–Evelyn Underhill, Man and the Supernatural, p.196

(Reblog) Cornel West: ‘They say I’m un-American’

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image
Image by Esther. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Reblogged from The Guardian (UK):

Dr. West on President Obama:

“He talked about Martin Luther King over and over again as he ran. King died fighting not just against poverty but against carpet-bombing in Vietnam; the war crimes under Nixon and Kissinger. You can’t just invoke Martin Luther King like that and not follow through on his priorities in some way. I knew he would have rightwing opposition, but he hasn’t tried. When he came in, he brought in Wall Street-friendly people – Tim Geithner, Larry Summers – and made it clear he had no intention of bailing out homeowners, supporting trade unions. And he hasn’t said a mumbling word about the institutions that have destroyed two generations of young black and brown youth, the new Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex. It’s not about race. It is about commitment to justice. He should be able to say that in the last few years, with the shift from 300,000 inmates to 2.5 million today, there have been unjust polices and I intend to do all I can. Maybe he couldn’t do that much. But at least tell the truth. I would rather have a white president fundamentally dedicated to eradicating poverty and enhancing the plight of working people than a black president tied to Wall Street and drones.”

Click here to read the full article

(Reblog) South Korean Christians Increasingly Disillusioned with Church

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
Image
Myungsung Presbyterian Church (Seoul, South Korea) is the largest Presbyterian Church in the world. Image by Kang Byeong Kee. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Reblogged from KoreaBANG:

The Center for the Study of Ministry and Society recently published a report based on extensive interviews with Congregants, finding that while the reasons vary widely, the primary issue was disappointment with the behavior of the pastor and the congregation. ‘I didn’t like the way the congregation just did the same thing over and over again, getting swept up in emotion and sobbing out loud,’ said one thirty-year-old office-worker. Another respondent said, ‘it was hard to endure the sermons filled with allegories that didn’t make any sense in our lives.’ Other interview subjects criticised the naked pursuit of material benefits within the church. ‘If you talk about how it is better for the church to make more money, to have a bigger building and fancy facilities, then what is the difference between a church and a business?’

Click here to read the full article

The Great Ends of the Church: The Heartroots Revolution

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

411px-Sacred_Heart_CurrierThe famous author and Presbyterian minister Eugene Peterson tells a great story about something that happened to him when he was growing up in Montana.  Eugene used to have to deal with a bully named Garrison Johns.  Garrison used to pick on him and take cheap shots.  All along, the adults in his church kept telling Eugene to “turn the other cheek” and “pray for those who persecute you.”  When Garrison found out that Eugene was a Christian, he started calling him “Jesus-sissy.”  Finally, the day came when Eugene decided that he’d had enough.  He was walking home from school with Garrison beside him, hurling his usual barrage of jeers and jabs.  I’ll let Eugene Peterson tell the rest of the story in his own words:

Something snapped within me. Totally uncalculated. Totally out of character. For just a moment the Bible verses disappeared from my consciousness and I grabbed Garrison. To my surprise, and his, I realized that I was stronger than he. I wrestled him to the ground, sat on his chest and pinned his arms to the ground with my knees. I couldn’t believe it – he was helpless under me. At my mercy. It was too good to be true. I hit him in the face with my fists. It felt good and I hit him again – blood spurted from his nose, a lovely crimson on the snow. By this time all the other children were cheering, egging me on. “Black his eyes! Bust his teeth!” A torrent of vengeful invective poured from them, although nothing compared with what I would, later in life, read in the Psalms. I said to Garrison, “Say Uncle.” He wouldn’t say it. I hit him again. More blood. More cheering. Now the audience was bringing the best out in me. And then my Christian training reasserted itself. I said, “Say, I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” And he said it. Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert.

          (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 134-136)

This story is a great example of a Christian doing the right thing in the wrong way.  We Christians are famous for that.  Ironically, it seems like we tend to be at our worst when we try to do something really big and beautiful for God.

Take, for example, the story of the Roman emperor, Constantine I.  Constantine was the first Roman emperor to become a Christian.  He legalized Christianity and ended centuries of persecution against the Church.  That was a good thing, as far as Christians were concerned.  However, he also started the process of merging church and state into one institution, a state of affairs that would eventually lead to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials.  From Constantine’s point of view, he was establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth in the form of a Christian government.  But when that government (and its successors) started to operate, it started to look less like the kingdom of heaven and more like all the other kingdoms of the world.  In the end, the Roman Empire became just another superpower, but with the name of Jesus tacked on it.

That’s part of the problem with us humans: we assume that our ways are God’s ways, that a good end justifies bad means.  We think that, in order for right and good win to out over evil, we have to use power and violence to force our will (or God’s) on others.  But that isn’t how God works in the world.

We’re talking a lot about authority and kingship today.  First of all, we’re wrapping up our six week series on the Great Ends of the Church.  We’ve covered the first five already: the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; and the promotion of social righteousness.  This week, we’re looking at the final Great End of the Church, which is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world.  We’re going to talk about what it means to “exhibit” “the kingdom of heaven.”

Today also happens to be Ascension Sunday, the holiday when we celebrate Jesus returning to heaven to sit at the right hand of God, as it says in the book of Acts.  The meaning behind this image is the sovereignty of Christ as ruler over all creation.

So the subject of kingship is our central theme today.  You might have picked up on this theme in our first reading from the letter to the Ephesians where the author talks about Christ, who is seated “at [God’s] right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”  Obviously, this is an image of supreme authority.

Based on what people tend to experience from the corrupt powers and authorities of this world, one might imagine a person with supreme authority to wield it like an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin.  But that doesn’t seem to be the case with Jesus.  His idea of kingly authority is very different from most others’.  In our gospel reading, Jesus described his idea of what God’s kingdom, God’s ideal society might look like as it becomes established in the world.

It doesn’t look like an invading dictatorship or a hostile takeover by a competing corporation.  There’s no violence and coercion in this kind of kingdom.  Jesus said the coming of God’s kingdom is like “a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs.”  A little later, he said, “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

According to Jesus’ model, the kingdom of God is a growing thing.  It works slowly and subversively beneath the surface of society.  I especially love the image he uses about the kingdom being like yeast that leavens a loaf of bread.  For those who might not know about bread making, yeast is alive.  It’s a little microscopic organism that causes bread to rise once the yeast has infected the entire batch.

Did you get that?  God’s kingdom is like a microbe: the smallest kind of life-form.  It’s the exact opposite of dominating power and overwhelming violence.  The various authorities of this world depend on violence and power to preserve order and get things done, but Jesus’ kingdom of God seems to work on the exact opposite principle: smallness and weakness.  The greatest way to exercise power, according to Jesus, is by exercising service and mercy.

Jesus seems to have had some very upside-down ideas about kings and kingdoms.  I would daresay that Jesus also seemed to have some very upside-down ideas about life itself.  When Jesus first shared these radical ideas, he wasn’t just talking about a new system of government; he was talking about a new way to be human.

Jesus’ vision for the transformation of the world was a grassroots vision.  In fact, the term grassroots isn’t even sufficient to describe it because it doesn’t go deep enough.  We might have to make up a new word for this: how about heartroots?  Jesus’ vision for establishing the authority of the kingdom of heaven on earth is a heartroots vision.  It’s not imposed from the outside or above, like a bureaucratic dictatorship or an invading army: it changes the world from the inside out.  Like a mustard seed or yeast.

Few of Jesus’ followers, even among Christians today, have ever accepted his teaching about nonviolence, service, and mercy in the Heartroots Revolution.  By most accounts, these crazy, impractical should have been dismissed long ago, but they weren’t.  For some reason, they continue to chase, disturb, and haunt us to this day, slowly transforming our hearts from the inside out… just like yeast slowly leavening a batch of bread dough.

I believe that we are called to be like that yeast in Jesus’ parable.  In contrast to the violent and coercive way that power is exercised in the governments and corporations of the world, the citizens of the kingdom of God use the gentle skills of presence and persuasion.  We work our Heartroots Revolution from the inside out.

We’re kind of like mothers in that way.  They say a mother’s work is never done.  I’ve certainly been reminded of that truth this week as my own mother has been staying at my house and helping me take care of my kids while my wife is out of town at a conference.  Her help has been most appreciated.

But the real work of motherhood happens as her unconditional love and deeply held values shape the persons and perspectives of her children.  That’s how God works in the world as well.  That’s what it looks like when God’s kingdom comes “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Unlike the young Eugene Peterson, God will not pin us to the ground and punch us until we agree to follow Jesus.  God doesn’t work through violence and coercion.  Neither should we do so as citizens of the kingdom of God.  We will not establish God’s kingdom by forcing our will on others through direct violence, or the threat of violence, or behind-the-scenes manipulation.  The arrival of the kingdom of heaven on earth is not to be equated with the success of our country, our political party, our business, or our church.  God’s vision is bigger and deeper than those things.  God, like a mother who will neither forget nor forsake her children, works the Heartroots Revolution from the inside out, moving slowly and patiently across time.  We Christians show ourselves to be citizens of God’s kingdom when we work in the same way: when we show up to work or school each day, consciously carrying the Holy Spirit in our hearts and letting our words and deeds act like yeast, leavening the loaf of our community with faith, hope, and love.  That’s what God’s Heartroots Revolution looks like.

I want to send you out this week with that image in your mind.  Wherever you go, whatever you do, think of the Holy Spirit living in your heart, leading you to act like an undercover agent, infiltrating the dark systems of this world with the light of love.  Let Jesus be your model for how to do this.  To the best of your ability, say and do things the way you imagine him saying and doing things.  If you’re not sure what he would do, try picking up a Bible and reading from one of the gospels.  Maybe one of those stories about his life will spark your imagination.

May your life, like Jesus’, exhibit the kingdom of God to the world.  May others look at you and hear through your words and deeds the message that brings us together and carries us into the world each week: “I love you, God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”  Be blessed and be a blessing.