When I graduated from Seminary, I knew a few things.

I knew that in the “real” church the ministers wore robes. 
 
I knew that the Pastor was in charge and once in a while got people to help him. 
 
I knew that more and more often the minister was a her. While I was ok with that, the people of the “true” church didn’t like it very much, even though the hers
were as good as, or better than, the hims at any pastoring job.

I further knew that while most  church people meant well they didn’t know as much as the clergy, so quite often we had to be loving, but firm. 

I knew “good “music for worship should be at least 100 years old and God intended to have it sung to an organ. In smaller churches a piano might be ok.  

I knew that main-line denominations had some problems with membership issues but that they would come around. 

I knew that doing evangelism, as some other flavors of Christians suggested, was not necessary if it was NOT your cup of tea. 
 
I knew that having a heart for Jesus was good, but mostly you had to know God in your head.

Now I know different things. 

I know that lay people of passion and purpose are the most effective ministers in the world. 

I know that worship should be a big celebration and that small groups are the best ways for fellowship and pastoral care. 

I know that evangelism that meets needs coupled with service of God and others is the most effective way in the world to share Jesus’ love. 
 
I know a recent survey of Christian churches found that 89% believed meeting their own needs and taking care of their own members was the number one purpose of the church.As one of the other 11%, I that knows that is not true. 
 
I know that the church universal and the church local are constantly only one generation away from total extinction. 

I know that the best way for each of us to meet our own needs is by caring about others and helping them meet theirs.

I know that Jesus loves me and, through me, wants to love many, many others. 
 
I know that the culture and its world view are changing faster than the price of gas.

I know that I don’t know nearly enough to lead a transformational, post-modern, emergent, missional, kingdom-endeavor for God.

I am also aware, though, that God does know enough, and hasn’t lost a wink of rest in any of my 56 years worrying about what I can not do. 
 
On the other hand, there is an ever increasing list of things I don’t know.

I don’t know why churches that do things which produce negative results, keep doing those same things over and over.

I don’t know why people fight worship or music wars.

I don’t know if the denominational church will survive.

I don’t know if it deserves to. I do know the Body of Christ will survive. It will probably take new eyes to recognize it.

I don’t know what God has in store for us in the next few years.

I do know it will be a wild adventure.

And I know I want to be a part of the parade.


 

In his work, “The Four Quarters,” T.S. Eliot writes, “We had the experience  but missed the meaning.”  In the movie OH GOD, George Burns’ character (the Almighty) says he doesn’t do many miracles anymore. The reason, he explains, is that people tend to remember the miracle and forget why, and by whom, it was done. How often do we see, really see, that all around us is composed mostly of pure glory?  Eliot is particularly on target and God – well God is never wrong. In the midst of putting one foot in front of the other, people often miss out on what is good and kind and caring in our world.  For resurrection to occur we have to first allow something to die. On occasion it means admitting that we have already died and do so miss life. Sometimes the brightest and best things about life are the very ones we miss.

Playwright Thornton Wilder told about a custom in a little European village in  the late 1800’s.  It was the practice there, on New Year’s Day to send flowers to every home where one had dined in the past 12 months.  When that day came in this particular year, an impoverished painter was so poor that he couldn’t afford flowers - so he sent paintings, mostly of flowers.  The upper crust residents who received his offerings had the paintings "displayed" in their barns and storage areas - if they were even hung at all!  One family had so many that they held a burning party for hi works one day soon after the artist left town.  A member of that family related to  Wilder how, on one Sunday afternoon, he himself had helped to incinerate 11 of the painter's major pieces. He was a promising young fellow named. . . Paul Cezanne.

Unnoticed treasures, like dead people, are everywhere. This unnoticed phenomenon all depends on us (“Those who have eyes – let them see.”) Maybe the whole point of life, what God hard wired deep in our Spiritual DNA, is to connect those who are walking around “dead” with the sacred recognition of what a treasured masterpiece life is. Resurrection requires both death and a desperate recognition of the intimate blessings of life.  Who would want to look back on their life and say, “I was surrounded by beauty but I hung it in a closet or destroyed it with a fire?”

One of the most human and poignant moments in television history is provided by Father Mulcahy in the show M*A*S*H*. When the camp is in a full-blown medical emergency the priest asks what he can do to help and is told to pray, His quick response is, "Aww, that's all I ever get to do!" In the moment he wants to do more, be more and participate more. He knows the importance of prayer, but in that moment wants to be prayer in action. Often people draw me into their lives by asking me to pray for people and situations that matter to them. I have come to accept that as a great compliment. Sometimes they give me painstaking detail as to the person and their particular need. Other times the details are left anonymous. The following is one of the prayers I use to pray a prayer that connects me with others and, most importantly, with God:

Create in us, all of us, Dear God, a clean heart. Wash our bodies and our spirits and vanquish all sickness from within us and from without. As the rain falls gently on the earth, let your healing also rain upon our parched and arid bodies and souls. Be re-born in us. Again. And again.

For those whose bodies are sick, bring your healing salve. Touch broken bones, soothe aching joints and treat them with the medications of patience and care. Where there is pain, bring comfort; where there is a need for rehabilitation, grant endurance.

For those whose minds are sick, calm disquieted thoughts; and order the chaos of disturbed visions and numbing memories. Reach out to them, Lord, for there are many “demons” possessing your children. Demons of addiction and desire. Demons slipping in through the cracks of hopelessness and despair.

For those whose hearts are sick, administer your own CPR. Many are heart-sick for an Eden we must see only with eyes of faith. Make room in each and every heart. Prepare in them room for the Babe in the Stable; the Child in the Temple; the Carpenter in the Workshop; the Teacher of the Twelve; the Lamb on the Cross; and the Lord on Your Throne.

 Some of those we mention are known to us, and loved, O God. Others of them we will never know. But they are known to You. Help us to love them as You do. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.

A  number of winters ago I had a slip on the ice which necessitated me calling an orthopedic specialist. After the examination I was more black and blue as well as confused. When he had finished twisting my body around treating me like Gumby he said, “It is my conviction that an arthroscopic procedure is contraindicated due to your unusually inflamed, ostreoarthritic “what’s-it” (or something that sounded a lot like “what’s-it”) which I find to be . . . “ At this point I had glazed over and don’t recall what he said about my “what’s-it”. I think he said it was larger, smaller, darker or lighter than normal. The next time I ran into our family physician, I told him about my experience. He just nodded and said that Dr. Rambo (not his real name but an alias I have chosen to prevent a mal-patient suit) practiced medicine as a science and not an art. 

That insightful observation got me thinking about how many folks treat life like a science and not an art. Scientists tell us that one rotten apple can spoil the rest of the peck. Many people also believe that is the case with life. I have found that, when it comes to human beings, one good apple can transform more than a peck of people already written off as“over-ripe.” To understand the nature of things, science often demands that the object under scrutiny be broken down into its smallest, individual parts. If that was true of life we could best understand humans by looking at the $35 bag of chemicals and gallons of water that make up our body. 

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” said Albert Einstein. Is your life more of an art or a science? Want to find out? Then, let’s take a little test:
        
+Does the simple, overwhelming beauty of the world ever make you gasp?
        
+Instead of only telling time, do you ever stop to discover what time is telling you?

+Have you recently pondered the night sky, looking for a doorway into your own heart, instead of Halley’s Comet?
         
+Is life so precious to you that you would gladly give it up to save the life of a loved one? (Extra Credit if you would give it up for someone you don’t know and Extra, Extra Credit if you would give it up for someone you do know, but don’t like.)
 
Give yourself 1 point for every “yes” and a day off to explore the world around you for every “no.” We need science. Science is good. Without it, we would never have put a person on the moon, a rover on Mars or been able to restore the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Without science and scientists, there would be no life-saving vaccines and no one who knows how to build bigger and better roach motels.

 If you look at a painting and can tell the chemical composition of the pigments and are able to retrace how the framers stretched the canvas, life is probably a science for you. If the painting makes you think of how the color-laden palette of the past has splashed upon the canvas of the present, life has moved beyond science. The way I see things leads me to believe the future hope for living lies in the art of the thing. 


 

The Lord is my Shepherd,  I shall not want; 
He makes me lie down in green pastures . . .
Psalm 23: 1-2a

In both popular culture and colloquial sayings we know where the grass is greener – on the other side of the fence.  In many years of ministry I have heard countless spouses relate such a belief to me.  No more green pastures – only dry desert or barren wasteland.  Teens have admitted that they feel like their lives are already used up.  Somewhere, but not here, they are saying, the grass is greener.  I disagree.  I disagree not because I don’t believe in the dry times.  Like everyone else, I have experienced my share. Even when my backyard is under 2 feet of snow there is a green pasture just waiting to be experienced.  Right under my feet. Even when I can’t feel it.  Whether I believe in it or not, it is there!

Often in relationship counseling I ask the couples,” Don’t you think it would be easier to make a new beginning with the same person?”  Some take the advice.  Others squirm for a moment and then describe a vague situation which involves a new beginning by finding green pastures across the fence, across the street, across the country - in another person’s arms.   
 
I say the greener pastures, like everything else in life, lie right at our feet, as constant as our heartbeat, as near as a song, as close as a prayer.  We can learn much from others, travel is good and checking out other ideas is essential to our own development.  But greener pastures are right where we live and love and lament.  Often hope is not found with new pastures, new partners or new communities of faith.  Faith asks us to nurture new shoots of green from what appears to be old, maybe even dead. Remember the new shoot that came forth from the old (to most eyes finished) stump of Jesse?  His name is Jesus.


 

Today, Lord, I walk a path that is new to me.  This day is fresh and unblemished and unknown.  To You, it is a day laid out for me even before the earth was formed. Thank You for walking it with me, for leading when I need it, walking beside me when I need to know I  have a friend, and for following – ready to catch me when I want to try it on my own. Allow me to see possibilities and not problems; potential and not pettiness; and in all things to feel Your power at work through me.  Oh God who never, ever walks away, walk again with me today. Amen.

When I was young it was easy to tell who was who and what was what.  Or at least it was easy for my group of friends and me.  It probably wasn’t  any easier then as far as the overall world was concerned, but it certainly was for a 9 year old.  When I watched Roy Rogers on TV or in the theatre, even if I wasn’t familiar with him I would have known that he was a good guy because he wore a white hat.  Bad guys wore black.  When someone bad came into the picture the lighting changed and so did the music. It was so easy.  But that’s not the way it is today.  People change sides, sometimes hopping back and forth with alarming frequency.  You can’t tell what someone is about by looking at their clothes – or their skin pigment – or their address.  We are often totally baffled when nice people do horrendous things.  And, for that matter, most people don’t even wear hats.

Come to find out, the world is a strange mixture of both good and bad.  Sometimes the bad guys wear suits and go to nice offices, and give to charity, and belong to a church.  Once in a while bad guys aren’t even guys. Even more amazing is the mixture of good and bad within me.  Some days I change hats a hundred times.  Why is it that I look at the actions of others and not their intentions, but I want to be judged by my intentions and not my actions?

As I write this, Summer is in full blossom.  Every
season provides its  unique  time for reflection and
re-focusing.  In a world replete with a multiplicity of foci, prayer invites us to focus first, and foremost, on
the Lord God.  Repent, reflect, re-focus, reform. Any free moment in a hectic day gives the chance to sit at Jesus’ feet, listening for God’s still, small, voice saying, “I am.” Strange, isn’t it, that the best way to keep moving forward sometimes requires not moving at all?  Listening reminds us that you can best know people by Who made them, Who values them and Who loves them.  Come to think of it, that makes us all sisters and brothers . . . . 

“That’s all there is and there ain’t no more,” goes the saying.  The last gasp of fireworks, the final dip in the lake before the orange ember sun itself finally dips into the water.  “That’s all there is.”  I am six years old and we are driving away from Grandpa’s funeral. I  keep looking at the door to the church through the car’s back window.

I’m a little older now, maybe 9, and my Dad is playing basketball with me and the world is so right.  He hasn’t yelled all day, hasn’t spewed frustration and together we shoot at the orange rim – occasionally hearing the ball rip”through the tattered net.  Then, suddenly, the veil drops and something has made him angry.  Maybe me, I think. But what could it have been?  What did I do?  Later – much, much later I realize it is in him.  One of his old demons.  He has held the anger in for the better part of a whole day. Now it’s back and my day is over.  Is that all there is?

A birthday comes.  My birthday. And as it unfolds, intending to pass before my very eyes, so do so many goals and dreams.  Let’s say it is one of those decade making birthdays.  All different.  All the same. Is that all there is?

I imagine God, from the highest heaven to the deepest point on the new green earth – looking out over the mist filled morning of the sixth day.  The Creator of a hundred million galaxies looks down at this blue/green earth ball.  What does God say?  “Is that all there is?”  “Well, I guess it’s enough for one week.”?  No! God looks out and says, “It’s good.”   “It is enough.”  Enough for God – enough for me.

Looking through the years, without rose-colored glasses or the gloom of self-induced pity, it has always been more than enough.  Much more.  Much, much more.

Usually not all I wanted.  Always more than I could have imagined. Children who live and breathe with the genes and dreams of their ancestors.  Who lavish love on you and who sometimes lash out because – well because in close proximity to those you love the most, you tend to let your hair down the farthest ... 

A wife who, beyond all reasoning, is more than you could have hoped.  Through thick and thin.  Lots of both.  Whose outer beauty takes your breath away.  Whose inner beauty not only gives it back, but makes you want to keep breathing ...

It is the first day of the weekend – early – and I am sitting about 6,500 miles from where I sat just one Saturday ago.  Last week mission work in Brazil. This week northern Michigan church camp. The sky is gray as far, and I suspect farther, than the eye can see. The day holds a van trip of 450 miles with a load of 7 tired Middle Schoolers, on their way home.

“Is that all there is?”  A look out over the gray water under the gray sky reveals waves moving effortlessly from right to left.  A single bird wings slowly out of the gray, past the treetops and out of sight.  A few of last night’s raindrops hang stubbornly on the deck, refracting the dim light from within the cabin – since there is none outside.

The day is new and has never been touched by my, or any, hands.  I step on to the deck and look out at the world.  What will I say?  “Is that all there is?”  “Well, I guess it’s enough for one week.”?  To the single chipmunk who is moving in the moist earth below me I say out loud, “It is good!”  It’s enough. 

Enough for God – enough for me.

Waiting is hard work – it goes against the grain of the rough-hewn oak-like wood of humanity. It, waiting that is, is patient work and patience is not a part of the human spirit – at least not by nature . . . It is fight or flight; sometimes both (fighting over your shoulder while you are running for the hills) but NEVER neither. Waiting also requires effort. It is work. There is a requirement for making whatever peace one can with ponderous and therefore unanswerable questions like:
    When? 
    Why? 
    For how long? Is that all there is? 
    How can I be sure?

Like the Bible story I believe the Guest of Honor is coming– can I wait for him? Especially when, if he is on any schedule at all, it certainly isn’t mine. I will try to wait for him. Take the light and extra batteries. Stand by the side of the road. Search the horizon. Shine the light. Will the batteries last? So many pass by refusing to wait for the guest, preferring instead their own party of pity or passing fancy. Tempting. 

The weather says it is a quickly passing Spring  being overtaken by Summer in a compelling fashion. But my soul’s season is Advent. I hate Advent. I despise Paul’s already-not-yet. My only comfort is that he didn’t seem to like it much either.

Advent in the church year is the season of waiting for the Christ Child. Waiting for a baby to be born is the hardest thing in the world. The second hardest is . . . waiting for anything else. Watching and waiting. Yearning for that which is hard to see and listening for that which is so very soft it can be passed off for a gentle breeze or still, small voice. Was that the sigh of a baby? Did I hear it? Did you? Would I even know it if I did hear it? Waiting is: still; deep questioning. I prefer: moving; shallow; answers.

 The very creation itself seems to be like trees in winter poised and waiting.  Stick-bare, leafless tress of my current life leaning forward on tip-roots, all of us expecting something beyond what we can see. Perhaps beyond what we have the right to expect. Impatiently. Mangered limbs, quickening sounds like great puffy cheeks drawing in cold air past giant oak teethe. Whistling. The time is coming upon us -  but oh, so, slowly. Can I live in the moment? Time is the companion of the waiting, but a slow moving, unspeaking one.

 Down in the valley the creature, me, looks up at the mountain expecting a Creator Call. Somewhere in the process I give up and start my trek toward the summit. Can’t wait. As promised, though God begins journeying down to the valley – to me. In the mist of the pathway we pass. Unseen by me, God moves surely to my valley and I miss contact by inches. I am headed up to where God must be and God is moving down to where I should  be - waiting. I don’t want that to ever happen again. I need to wait, holding on to God coming – on God’s time. 

            
This past week I attended the memorial mass of one of the most saintly people I have ever met -- Gen Campbell.  For all of my juvenile life we lived next door to the Campbells.  My family lived on the corner of Harrie and Phelps and barely a car width west of us was the Campbell abode.  When I moved away from Newberry and talk of family came up I used to say I was from a medium sized family.  And then when I got to telling that I am the oldest of six, I was always interrupted by someone commenting that they thought six children was a big family.  (Now that I have three of my own I agree, three is a big family -- six is humungous!) The reason I didn’t think much of our six is that the Campbell clan numbered somewhere in the teens when it came to counting children.  I used to know the exact number of kids, but now every time I do a count I come up with a different number.  I am certain enough, though, to say there were more than twelve and less (I think) than twenty.
           
At one time on our block there were over thirty kids. 
Every backyard was community property and every sand box fair game.  As I remember, no one really had any gardens or flowers as they were too busy watering and weeding kids.  My parents always believed their job was to grow kids and not a lawn, so our backyard had permanent base paths and goalie boxes etched into what was left of a yard. Only the lilac bush seemed to survive the daily onslaught of boys being boys and girls being girls
and parents too worn out to try their hands at tomatoes or carrots or roses.  But I digress . . .
       
Mrs. Campbell always had more than enough to do to keep her family on track. Her oldest child is the same age as my Dad and her youngest the same age as my next-to-youngest bother. Quite a span! 
Mr. Campbell died when I was about ten, after years of ill health and while Gen missed him a lot she made it her mission to see that her children never wanted for her attention or praise  -  or discipline. 
Like a moth to the flame, her house always seemed to attract kids.  As if her house wasn’t full enough,
many of us made it part of our school route to pass through the Campbell house just about breakfast time.  And everyone who walked through was fed. 
I would wager that on many mornings they toasted two complete loaves of bread.  Some summer afternoons when we were there at snack time and the bushel of apples was gone, we all lined up
with tablespoons in our hands.  One by one, we would march by the gallon peanut butter pail and stick in our spoons.  It was a nutritious snack that
not only fed the whole neighborhood, but kept us quiet while we tried to get the peanut butter off the roof of our mouths and the spoons out from between our lips.
     
I remember stumbling out of bed in the mornings in time to see Mrs. Campbell toddling back from morning mass.  She was a teacher, mother, disciplinarian, philosopher, and, as I said before, a saint. I have spent much of my life in schools of one sort or another trying to figure things out.  I am supposedly trained as an anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, public speaker, and as a pastor.  I’m just a smidge away from a doctorate that I might actually finish before I die.  But if someone asked me to name the most influential people in my life, none of them would be theologians.  They are all people who showed, not told, me what it meant to be a human being, a Christian, a parent, and a
neighbor.  And right at the top of the list would be Gen.

I remember much about her--her work for Community Action, the sting of her paddle, the love she had for the Lord.  But the picture that will last in my mind far beyond today is that of a servant. Once when there was a death in my family, the first one at our door was Gen Campbell.  She came dressed not for a church-type visit, but to work.  She said, “I can’t afford flowers and I didn’t know what food to prepare, but I want to give you what I can.”  And that woman of God , mother of many, and surrogate to many more, came into the house, while we were at the funeral and brush-scrubbed our hard wood floors on her hands and knees.  Her own house probably needed it much more.  Her knees didn’t make it
easy to just bend over, much less to clean the wood.  But she scrubbed until the floor shone.

In that instance cleanliness was not next to godliness; her attention to the cleanliness of our floors WAS godliness.  She didn’t as much scrub the dirt out, as she scrubbed love in.  As a minister all these years later I can’t help but believe that what I am called to do is serve others.  I see it in the life of Jesus.  And I experienced it in the lives of people like Gen Campbell. When I talked with her son Mark, who is my age, he said,  “If my mother isn’t in heaven then there isn’t one.”  I agree.  And I would add, “It couldn’t be heaven for me if Genevieve Campbell wasn’t there.”
          
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says,“In my Father’s house are many rooms and I am going there to prepare a place for you.”  I believe Gen is finding her room to be just fine.  I also believe she signed up to help Christ prepare rooms for the rest of us.  I suspect mine will have a floor that is squeaky clean and polished with love!

I have a Pastor friend who is firmly devoted to what some of us call, "The Prosperity Gospel." His belief is that God wants everyone to be wealthy. But Jesus wasn't wealthy, was he? Didn't he say, "The poor will be with you always."? Or, "Blessed are the poor in spirit . . ."? That got me thinking about praying for wealth. What would such a prayer REALLY look like? Here is one possibility:

Give us such wealth,  O God, so as to  make us
really wealthy.
So wealthy that we might have more than enough - 
FORGIVENESS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE DONE US WRONG;
MINUTES AND HOURS FOR THOSE “INTERRUPTIONS” YOU SEND OUR WAY; and SMILES AND LAUGHTER FOR THE DELIGHTFUL JOYS THAT  SURROUND US.

Give us such wealth, O God, so as to  make us really wealthy.
So wealthy that we might spend ourselves extravagantly - 
TO ENTERTAIN THOSE ANGELS WHO VISIT US
UNAWARE;
TO SHARE  WITH OTHERS THE PIECES OF HEAVEN THAT RAIN DOWN GENTLY UPON THE EARTH; and
THE READINESS TO DANCE WHENEVER YOUR HEAVENLY  ORCHESTRA PLAYS.

Give us such wealth, O God, so as to make us really wealthy.
So wealthy that we might have an abundance of those things that really matter - 
FAITH TO STAND IN THE FACE OF TEMPTATION AND ADVERSITY;
HOPE TO REACH OUT TO THOSE STANDING ON UNSTEADY GROUND; and
LOVE TO LET GO OF THAT WHICH DOES NOT SATISFY, SO THAT WE MIGHT  GRASP THAT WHICH IS ETERNAL.

This we pray in the name of Jesus, Who, to attain great wealth, willingly became poor. Amen.