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We’d rather kill things than learn about them.

© Michael Friedman, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)

I started my sermon this Sunday with a bit of a joke, as one of our texts was from Numbers 21 (God sending snakes to bite and kill the people of Israel & then later providing a bronze snake to save them). As a newcomer to living in a place where there are venomous snakes, my family has found numerous people willing to share scary stories about snake bites or snake encounters. But after service one of my congregation members, a local biologist, came up to me with the following profound statement, “So often we would rather kill things than simply to learn more about them and how to keep each other safe.”

This got me thinking about some of our most natural responses to situations that we find ourselves in that we haven’t experienced before. Where is it that we learn to fear snakes & their bites and do everything within our power to rid our surroundings of them, including trying to kill them ourselves (one of the leading causes of snakebites in humans)? Why is it that so often one of our first responses to these situations are fight or flight models, kill the snake or run away, instead of learning more about how to live together?

And I know, you’re wondering what this all has to do with the church and church leadership. But so often our own reactions to change around us is the same reactions we have to encountering a snake. For the church we’ve seen it in worship wars, as congregations fight over times for worship as congregations as they move from 2 service times to 1, music styles of traditional and contemporary, liturgical orders from traditional sources or more free flowing. So often, our reaction to these changes (or lack of change) leads to our fight of flight instincts kicking in & we try to kill off that which isn’t familiar to us.

I’ve now served in multiple locations across the United States and each of these different locations have their “evil megachurch that’s stealing all the members away” in their midst. These large churches, with their large budgets, attract members away from many mainline congregations and get a negative reputation. But when asked what they’re doing that’s taking everyone away, the answer more often than not that they’re doing worship or education (adult, youth, and children) very well, something they’re not finding in the churches they leave.

Instead of learning about the ways that this focus is succeeding, investing in the areas of our own ministries that struggle, and meeting the needs of our congregations that are causing members to leave, we instead vilify, and in many ways kill off, those who have left & are quick to judge them as evil and ourselves as that which needs to live.

Where are those places where we need to lean in & learn more about what is happening in our midst in order to address the challenges we face? What are places that we’ve missed the opportunity to learn about our neighbors by cutting them off or vilifying them instead of meeting them? How can our story of faith change if we spent more time learning and less time killing those things that are different, challenging, or hurtful for us?

A Mothering Hen in a Dangerous World

“Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
(Luke 13:33-34 NRSV)

The above images were taken in 2013 during my trip to Jerusalem at the Church of Dominus Flevit. The altar mosaic overlooks the image of the city of Jerusalem as the scripture reads, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

The role of a pastor is so often to tend to a group of people, sometimes within congregations who share a geographic bound, sometimes as chaplains who are responsible for transient membership, and sometimes serving our communities caring for people who we may only meet once in our journey. Awaiting is Jesus’ own death on the cross, awaiting is the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, awaiting in the scattering of the flock into the diaspora & the uncertainty if God’s promises of a Promised Land will ever be revealed again.

To hear Jesus weep over the city of Jerusalem is to see the deep care & compassion of a mother wishing away the dangers of the world & the destruction that is to come. And yet, we all know that isn’t possible.

We’ve all seen the “hover parents” at sporting events, school classrooms, within our churches & on community playgrounds who work to make sure that their children never have to experience the pain and disappointment of failure or injury. And for many of us, we wish we could do the same things for our own children, keeping them safe from the dangers of this world, whether they be physical dangers or dangers brought about by a world that is increasingly more and more connected though technology.

But that’s not how the world works, it’s not even how Jesus works within this passage. When we step out into this world, despite all of our mothering instincts to keep those we care for safe, they still step out into the world and are bound to be hurt by it. Despite our want to gather those we love under our wings and shield them from the dangers of the world, they’re not willing. They want to explore and see what the world holds for them, dangers and discoveries alike.

So as Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, may we be reminded of the ways in which God longs to gather us under the wings of a loving creator. But might we also acknowledge our own longings to explore the world around us. To see the ways in which our own free will can hurt, but also at times protect, those who are around us.

It’s the beautiful paradigm of the life that we live. The choice of how to respond to the grace and comfort that is offered as a part of our faith sends us out to live that faith in the lives that we live.

And as we venture out into this ever dangerous world, might we always know the loving shelter of the welcoming wings of Jesus waiting for us to come home.

Gardening a Congregation

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” -Genesis 2:15

For as long as I can remember my family has had gardens. We had flower gardens, vegetable gardens, we explored the wild gardens on family hikes & enjoyed the beauty of community gardens. The experience of having our hands in the dirt and working for what we were going to enjoy later was an experience ingrained into the patterns of life.

This past weekend we spent some time at my In-Law’s and in some of the down time that I had I went out into the flower garden and was weeding. As a part of my doing that, my mother-in-law asked me “what is it that you enjoy so much about gardening?” And it got me thinking…

“what is it that you enjoy so much about gardening?”

So much of the joy of gardening is in the process. When you talk to someone who is a perennial gardener (the plants come back year after year) there never really is an end point. Sure, you have the beautiful moments of blossom or harvest, but there’s always something else to be done, to prepare for what’s next.

Sometimes in church I wonder if we miss the process. We’re so results oriented in our measurements (how many butts in the pews, how many dollars in the offering plate, how many students in Sunday School, etc.) that I wonder if we miss the process & forget to enjoy the steps along the way.

The purpose of the church is not to have the biggest congregation & the largest budget, on the block, in the community, in the country, etc. The purpose of the church is to share the Gospel so that those who haven’t experienced the good news can know that reality for themselves. Where is it that we miss the process of being the church, when all we care about is some “next harvest” calculation that pulls us away from being present in the moment?

One of the greatest joys of gardening is being able to craft your own workmanship. There is no final right or wrong way to do gardening. Everything that you do may have positive or negative impacts on the larger goal of what you’re trying to accomplish, but everything you do is also usually reversible. Plants that are planted and don’t fit can be pulled out. Pruning that goes too far will eventually grow back. Everything is your canvas to do as you want within that space & it’s freeing.

Everything is your canvas to do as you want within that space & it’s freeing.

So often in the church we’re unwilling to try new things, because we worry that we’re going to be stuck doing that experiment for the next 45 years. If the church could learn anything from gardening I wish that we could see the beauty in the ways in which new blooms require experiments (and sometimes failures) before we get something that’s worth keeping “forever”.

How is it that we as Church can take some of those new risks? What would it take for church leadership to feel free to have their own canvas, knowing that sometimes there will be things that will need to be pulled out and new plantings made? Where is it that we need to prune back the out of control bushes (or weeds) to allow for the church to bloom more fully again?

There’s nothing more fulfilling than seeing a finished project, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the work. There’s joy in seeing a garden that has been weeded down to the dirt, there’s only the flowers you planted, or the vegetable plants that you’ve tended to. But just because you complete the work of weeding one time doesn’t mean that your work of weeding is over. Just because you’ve pruned the bushes back this year doesn’t mean that they won’t be overgrown again next year, or the year after.

Our work is one that is one worth celebrating. God is doing amazing things in our midst, and in our congregations! But just because we succeeded (and hopefully celebrated too) our accomplishments doesn’t mean that we are done with the work. Our work is always one that will need a new commitment to the new work that is around us. We cannot rest on what has been done in the past, a new project awaits us every step we take along our journey.

New Beginnings in a New Reality.

It’s incredible to imagine that 4 years ago today most of the United States began their shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. As a sports fan I remember Rudy Goebert testing positive just a day after making a joke of touching the microphones of reporters. Then within days we were into a new reality, quarantine, hand washing, a new term “social distancing”, and everything else that came with this new reality of having Covid within our midsts.

For churches this meant new realities for us as well. We learned how to stream our worship services, so that congregation members could still experience the sacred rituals even if they weren’t able to safely attend in person. We wondered about what Christian community looked like as we tried to support each other, through phone calls, delivering groceries, mailing cards, or taping hearts to our house windows. The beginning of the pandemic created a new reality for all of us, on that we imagined would probably only last a few weeks or months. Little did we know…

As I reflect back on those new realities that were cast upon us as a society in those early days and weeks, I’m struck by how many of those realities still remain in this new reality that we’re living in today.

Our churches face new realities today, some that haven’t been experienced as a church for many generations. We now face a world in which those who choose the option of attending religious services are in the vast minority (70% of the US claims Christianity, but less than 36% attend church weekly). Church pews are emptier than they have been in a long time. Church buildings are facing closures.

We continue to ask questions about what a “hybrid” church looks like. Does online membership “count” to the work of what the church is doing? Can we do ministry with people who we may have never met in person? Does the model of “consuming church” (like so many of us shifted to early in the pandemic) count for real church ministry? Or do we need to gather in order to make it more authentic?

These questions are hard. But they’re not going away. And many of the early technical answers that we provided early in the pandemic are now needing adaptive answers in our cultures and our communities.

As we face these new realities we’re challenged with new problems and we must face them with a new imagination. I pray you join me for this journey as we explore together the ways in which God is calling us to imagine a new church in this new age.