One of the advantages of living in New York is being able to get an instant smile on your face when you see the front page of the New York Post. There is always some outrageous thing in print that stares back at you at the news stand. One such morning I saw the phrase “Pastor Disaster” and, of course, I had a sigh of relief when I found out it wasn’t me. I am sure it’s every pastor’s nightmare to find him- or herself on the front page of the Post with that label. In this case it was Barack Obama’s pastor Reverend Wright’s turn. Following the rather courageous speech of Obama who tried to put Rev. Wright in perspective, Rev. Wright came before the American press and threw Obama under the bus. Rev. Wright spoke about himself over and over again, ad nauseum. Yes, he was a disaster, and it is unfortunate that Obama was associated with him.
To be fair to Rev. Wright, I am sure he is a good pastor to his people. He has done a lot for people in this church. The place has grown under his leadership. He brought Obama in to the church and married him and his wife and baptized his children. His church has helped the poor directly and he has, I am sure, been very effective. At one time or another, if you are a good pastor, you feel like a disaster, or you feel that you have made a mess of things. All of us card-carrying reverends find ourselves in this situation at least once in our career. Usually, what leads to becoming a “Pastor Disaster” is when the pastor has too much ego infused into the situation. Being a minister is not about “me” and my troubles and my needs and my desire for attention, it is usually about trying to be a caring, non-anxious presence for someone who needs help. Ministry isn’t me first, it is trying to park your ego at the door and go into situations putting others first. I am not saying that I am always successful, but I do know that a pastor can make a mess out of things very quickly, when our narcissistic self rears its ugly head.
That is precisely the pitfall that took out Rev. Wright and labeled him as “Pastor Disaster”. Of course, he has made outrageous statements on the topics of race, AIDS, associations with Farrakhan, and a few inappropriate sermons that were filled with misdirected anger. Believe it or not, that stuff, while it is nothing I agree with, does not upset me as much as a minister getting up to talk about himself at the expense of a family that belongs to his church and one of whose members, by the way, is running for president. While I have not made up my mind about for whom I am going to vote, I have to agree with Bob Herbert of the New York Times who said that for the first time in American history a black man has a serious chance of being president and his pastor really cared more about himself when he got up onto the national stage to address his audience.
Jesus puts it this way as he addresses his disciples for the last time and insists on washing their feet: “I am among you as one who serves.”
Let that be a lesson to all pastors who could be heading for disaster.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Reaching Outside Our Jurisdiction
Many years ago, when I was interning at Grace Lutheran Church in Santa Barbara, CA, I did a ministry project in which I wanted to organize an interfaith worship service to pray for peace. This was during the Vietnam War. The project threw me out of the church doors into community coalitions, action groups, and other churches. I remember being at our first meeting and talking to the various leaders in our community about this idea. They were very surprised to find a religious leader in their midst, and when I suggested a service of prayer for peace inviting the entire community of Santa Barbara (which later turned out to have 1,500 people in attendance), they were a little taken aback. One person said to me: ”Can’t we do something instead of just pray?” It became a question that has rung in my ears ever since.
If you are like me, you do not want to sit around and talk about things—you want to make them happen. So, when he said in effect that prayer, while OK, was not doing something, it caused me to pause and rethink what I really thought about the importance of prayer and even worship.
Was he saying that worship and prayer and meditation and singing hymns just added up to a waste of time? Could we be doing better things with our time? How effective are such “activities” when we could be reading the New York Times, going to the gym and getting our workout done, or just doing our bills? Lots of people find worship to be inconvenient. It even seems like a passive activity. If worship goes over an hour, one might even hear a negative comment or two.
What is worship anyway? Is it an hour of torture? Is it a place where we write out our shopping list as the sermon is being spoken? Is it a place where our mind wanders into the great and deep recesses of our imagination? Or is it a place where we gather with fellow believers to
acknowledge that we are creatures who are worshipping our creator?
I am sure in terms of time management we could get a lot done during that Sunday morning, and many people do. On the other hand, maybe we have the wrong perspective on what it all means. I recall watching a film about a group of young people going through the wilderness area of Nepal where they came across a group of Hindus praying devoutly with their prayer wheels spinning. They were surprised by such piety and even inspired as they watched such devotion taking place. One of them wanted to go back and take yoga meditation, others looked on curiously and found it as an invitation to rethink their own spirituality.
Kurt Vonnegut tells a story of visiting John Updike and his wife and waking up Sunday morning to an empty house, wondering where everybody went. A while later, the Updikes returned, from church. He was surprised, but should not have been; John Updike has been going to church his whole life. He says that it is the only place where he can sing hymns and on certain, surprising, occasions find inspiration.
Today there is a lot of talk about spirituality; almost as if it is in opposition to being religious. In fact, I remember someone saying, “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” Unfortunately, today the word spiritual has become a very fuzzy term with a variety of definitions. It can mean anything from getting a massage to traveling around the world to have an audience with the Maharishi, like the Beatles. I, a secular person who has chosen a highly spiritual path, am always challenged by spirituality. All of life can be interpreted spiritually and needs to be, so that we can discover its deep and profound meaning and enjoy the gift of life that we have been given. I always remember that quote from the Little Prince: The most important things are invisible.
To me, being spiritual requires something else. It means taking time and, in many ways, being disciplined. It is not about rushing or trying even to complete something; it is about a journey that invites you into a world within a world. To me, that is what worship, prayer, meditation are about. As the Roman Catholic priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin once said: “True action must pass through the world of holiness.” Christians gather each week to feed their souls, to strengthen their spirits, to offer creation back to God by acknowledging the spiritual presence of the Creator in their life. The people of God gather for strength and find it confirmed when they stand shoulder to shoulder with each other, when they kneel at the same table for bread and wine, when they close their eyes, sometimes filled with tears, in prayer for others.
So - amid the noisy children, the sermon that makes your mind wander from place to place sometimes, the music that may at moments be less than rousing, something beyond all this may take place. Put differently, even though our efforts to relate to our Creator are mostly frail and imperfect, something happens in spite of us—we may gain deep insight, find ourselves connected in a more powerful way to what we must be doing in this world with love, compassion, and empathy. We may discover a way to forgive ourselves for things that have burdened us for months or even years. We may be given the wisdom we need to handle the challenges and obstacles that we face that week. We may even grow to understand that we have a relationship with this mystery we call God in a far deeper way than we first imagined.
I am in the process of reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is a popular book in the area of spirituality that has gained some attention. She writes this: “ ‘[…] Experience teaches us that the world is no nursery school.’ I agree—the world isn’t a nursery school but the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why we must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.”
The experience on Sunday morning is just that—reaching outside of our jurisdiction for help.
If you are like me, you do not want to sit around and talk about things—you want to make them happen. So, when he said in effect that prayer, while OK, was not doing something, it caused me to pause and rethink what I really thought about the importance of prayer and even worship.
Was he saying that worship and prayer and meditation and singing hymns just added up to a waste of time? Could we be doing better things with our time? How effective are such “activities” when we could be reading the New York Times, going to the gym and getting our workout done, or just doing our bills? Lots of people find worship to be inconvenient. It even seems like a passive activity. If worship goes over an hour, one might even hear a negative comment or two.
What is worship anyway? Is it an hour of torture? Is it a place where we write out our shopping list as the sermon is being spoken? Is it a place where our mind wanders into the great and deep recesses of our imagination? Or is it a place where we gather with fellow believers to
acknowledge that we are creatures who are worshipping our creator?
I am sure in terms of time management we could get a lot done during that Sunday morning, and many people do. On the other hand, maybe we have the wrong perspective on what it all means. I recall watching a film about a group of young people going through the wilderness area of Nepal where they came across a group of Hindus praying devoutly with their prayer wheels spinning. They were surprised by such piety and even inspired as they watched such devotion taking place. One of them wanted to go back and take yoga meditation, others looked on curiously and found it as an invitation to rethink their own spirituality.
Kurt Vonnegut tells a story of visiting John Updike and his wife and waking up Sunday morning to an empty house, wondering where everybody went. A while later, the Updikes returned, from church. He was surprised, but should not have been; John Updike has been going to church his whole life. He says that it is the only place where he can sing hymns and on certain, surprising, occasions find inspiration.
Today there is a lot of talk about spirituality; almost as if it is in opposition to being religious. In fact, I remember someone saying, “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” Unfortunately, today the word spiritual has become a very fuzzy term with a variety of definitions. It can mean anything from getting a massage to traveling around the world to have an audience with the Maharishi, like the Beatles. I, a secular person who has chosen a highly spiritual path, am always challenged by spirituality. All of life can be interpreted spiritually and needs to be, so that we can discover its deep and profound meaning and enjoy the gift of life that we have been given. I always remember that quote from the Little Prince: The most important things are invisible.
To me, being spiritual requires something else. It means taking time and, in many ways, being disciplined. It is not about rushing or trying even to complete something; it is about a journey that invites you into a world within a world. To me, that is what worship, prayer, meditation are about. As the Roman Catholic priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin once said: “True action must pass through the world of holiness.” Christians gather each week to feed their souls, to strengthen their spirits, to offer creation back to God by acknowledging the spiritual presence of the Creator in their life. The people of God gather for strength and find it confirmed when they stand shoulder to shoulder with each other, when they kneel at the same table for bread and wine, when they close their eyes, sometimes filled with tears, in prayer for others.
So - amid the noisy children, the sermon that makes your mind wander from place to place sometimes, the music that may at moments be less than rousing, something beyond all this may take place. Put differently, even though our efforts to relate to our Creator are mostly frail and imperfect, something happens in spite of us—we may gain deep insight, find ourselves connected in a more powerful way to what we must be doing in this world with love, compassion, and empathy. We may discover a way to forgive ourselves for things that have burdened us for months or even years. We may be given the wisdom we need to handle the challenges and obstacles that we face that week. We may even grow to understand that we have a relationship with this mystery we call God in a far deeper way than we first imagined.
I am in the process of reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is a popular book in the area of spirituality that has gained some attention. She writes this: “ ‘[…] Experience teaches us that the world is no nursery school.’ I agree—the world isn’t a nursery school but the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why we must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.”
The experience on Sunday morning is just that—reaching outside of our jurisdiction for help.
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