Take up our cross

My first year of seminary I took a January class on the works of German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Other than the fact that we had to read seven of his books during the span of four weeks - yes, seven books, by a German theologian, in four weeks! - it was an amazing class.  Much of my own theological reflections, especially on the nature of the Church as the community of faith united in and by the Risen Christ, come from my readings of Bonhoeffer, especially The Cost of Discipleship.

Over the years I have continued to read things by and about Bonhoeffer.  Currently I am reading an insightful biography about him - Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Charles Marsh.  It's well written and enlightening, chronicling the life of this influential Christian thinker who wrestled with how one can be faithful to Christ while living in a country that demanded ultimate obedience from its citizens: Germany under the Nazis.

Among other things, Bonhoeffer was well-traveled.  In 1930 he came to the United States for a year of post-graduate studies and a teaching fellowship at Union Seminary in New York.  There he met, among others,  Frank Fisher, a Black fellow seminarian who introduced him to Abyssinian Baptist Church and the African American church experience. Bonhoeffer heard Adam Clayton Powell preach the Gospel of Social Justice there and he formed a life-long love for Black Gospel music.  This was a profoundly formative experience for a young Bonhoeffer.

In June 1939 he returned a second time to the United States, but realized almost immediately that it was a mistake.  He believed that he needed to be in Germany and to walk with his fellow citizens during the increasing insanity and barbarity of Hitler and the National Socialists.  However, during his few weeks here that summer, Bonhoeffer drew observations about the American Church.  Here is part of what Marsh wrote in his biography of Bonhoeffer:

"The American churches had surely produced thrifty churchmen, earnest theologians, and revivalist preachers, but they had failed as yet to reckon seriously with the'scandal of the Cross.' Some of (Bonhoeffer's) criticisms bore sharp resemblance to ones he had leveled against the German Christians. According to Bonhoeffer, the American Christian had never learned to trust God fully, or to know what it means to stand under the judgment of the Word, for he (sic) had never had to learn the lesson."  (Marsh, Charles (2014-04-29). Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (p. 283). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

In our nation, Christians in general have not had to endure suffering and persecution for our faith.  In other parts of the world, discipleship is incredibly "costly," to use Bonhoeffer's expression.  Especially in areas where the so-called Islamic State and other terrorist groups have taken control, Christians are increasingly being targeted for arrest, torture, and death.  Other than being shocked by the idea of Christians bearing the cross of Jesus, sometimes even to death, how can we possibly know how to respond?

We are still at the beginning of our journey through Lent.  During this time each year we are given the opportunity to consider the cross, to ponder sacrifice and suffering, to walk with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, to Gethsemane, to Golgotha. Other Christians have had to take that same road; some are walking that path as you read these words.  What does it mean for us to "take up our cross" and follow Jesus?

Ashes to Ashes

William Law was an 18th century English poet, mystic, writer, and Anglican priest. Among his many other writings, Law adapted the monastic model of the daily "hours of prayer" (times when monks would gather together to recite the psalms and pray) for use by people who were not called to monastic life.  He suggested six different periods of prayer each day.  His belief was that each specific period of prayer should focus on something different, and should consist of both "structured" prayer and "free" prayer.  Law's model was set up along this line:

1. Praise and Thanksgiving (use of Psalms) -- beginning of each day
2. Prayer for humility -- 9:00 a.m.
3.  Prayers for universal love (intercession) -- noon
4.  Prayers for grace of resignation to God's will -- mid-afternoon
5.  Prayers of self-examination (confession) -- sunset
6.  Meditation upon death -- bedtime

When I first read of Law's proposed subjects for prayer, I found myself nodding in agreement at each one... until I came to number 6.  "Meditation upon death," I thought.  "How morbidly British!"  But over the years, as I've continued to look at and, at times use, his model, I began to see the wisdom in such a proposal.  It is not morbid at all - at least in my experience - to meditate upon death.  I have found it to be a simple, albeit profound, reminder of my own mortality.  I will not live forever.  That reminds me to cherish life each day, to live intentionally each moment, and to not fear death.  After all, as the first sentence in the Presbyterian Church's Brief Statement of Faith reminds us (borrowing from the Heidelberg Catechism), "In life and in death we belong to God."

Today is Ash Wednesday.  Ashes are a reminder of our mortality, and of God's sustaining love and grace which always surrounds us... in life and in death both.  Today marks

the beginning of Lent, a time of invitation for us to reflect, to repent, to pray, to meditate, to do acts of compassion, to give of ourselves to others.  This invitation - this call - is always extended to us.  During Lent we simply are encouraged to remember.

Blessings and peace on your Lenten journey.

Lent and the cross

A little over two weeks ago I traveled to Union Theological Seminary in New York City to participate in the Synod of the Northeast's "Summit on Race."  During the morning session, we had the opportunity to listen to a lecture by Dr. James Cone. Cone became well known - and quite controversial - with the publication in 1969 of his first book, Black Theology and Black Power.  Although he views that book as pivotal for him, he feels that his most recent book is the most important book he has written.  He believes that he has been working on this book all of his life, and it took him 20 drafts to get it to its final form.  His book, which participants in the Summit read beforehand, is entitled The Cross and The Lynching Tree.  His contention is that Christians, especially white Christians in this country, cannot look at Jesus hanging on the cross without seeing the parallels with all of the black Americans who were hung on trees from the Civil War well into the 20th century.

Cone believes that the true power of the Christian gospel is its unambiguous call of liberation from oppression.  Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with the re-crucified black body hanging from the lynching tree, there can be no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.  Just as the German people have had to work hard to come to grips with what happened during the rise of the Nazis, just as both black and white South Africans have had to work hard to come to grips with what happened during apartheid, so our country will never be healed from the legacy of slavery and lynchings until we work hard ourselves to acknowledge this terrible heritage and to address continuing vestiges of racism in this country.  (For example, there are more black people in prison in this country today than there were slaves in 1850!)

There were nearly 5,000 African American men, women, and children who were lynched since the time of the Civil War.  Many descendants of those people still wrestle with the implications of what happened to their family members.  And it is in the cross that so many African Americans have found hope and salvation.  After all, the cross inverts the dominant value system, demonstrating that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word.  The cross is God's defeat of power, of white power, of powerless love that snatches victory out of defeat.

We are in the middle of Lent.  The cross is our focus.  So what do we see when we see the cross?  It has been too easy for us to turn the cross into an ornate carving hanging in our sanctuaries.  It has been too easy for us to turn the cross into beautiful pieces of jewelry.  But if that's all we see, we miss the message and we sell short the power - and the challenge - of the cross of Jesus.  The cross stands tall in our world, shouting to all who would hear that the powers of this world are defeated... that the powers of domination are overcome by this symbol of weakness... that the powers of oppression are shattered by this symbol of suffering... that the power of sin in our lives is vanquished by the love that calls us, claims us, and envelopes us from the cross.

So what do you see when you look at the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord?

Lenten Spiritual Disciplines

The Church traditionally has invited us to engage in three different spiritual disciplines during this ongoing season of Lent:  prayer, giving, and fasting.  My wife, Caroline, reminded me of a piece that she received years ago from a pastor, giving his perspective on fasting and feasting during Lent.  He wrote it in the form of a prayer, and I'd share it with you here for your own reflections.

In this season of Lent, there are opportunities for us to look again at who we are, to make changes in our lives, because we are reminded that you are able to resurrect us into a new life, and our part in that is to let go of the old things, the old ways, the habits that are so unlovely. We are called this season to fast from those things and we listen to your Spirit as you tell us in the language of love that we should...

fast from worry and feast on divine order, by trusting in you God;

fast from complaining, and feast on appreciation

fast on the negatives in life, and feast on the affirmations.

Help us to fast from unrelenting pressures, and feast on unceasing prayer;

to fast from hostility and feast on nonresistance,

to fast from bitterness and  feast on forgiveness.

Help us God to fast from self-concern and to feast on compassion for others,

to fast from the shadows of sorrow and to feast on the sunlight of serenity.

Remind us, God, to fast from idle gossip, and to feast instead on purposeful silence,

To fast from judging others, and feast on the Christ within them.

During this season we want to fast from the emphasis on differences,

and feast on the unity in life,

to fast from apparent darkness, and feast on the reality of light,

to fast from thoughts of illness, and feast on the healing power of you, God,

to fast from words that pollute, and feast on phrases that purify.

Help us to fast from discontent, and to feast on gratitude

During this season, and for all seasons,

we want to fast from anger and feast on optimism,

to fast from personal anxiety, and feast on eternal  truth,

to fast from discouragement and feast on hope,

to fast from all the facts in this world that depress us,

and feast on those truths that uplift us.

Dear God in this season, help us to fast from all the thoughts that tell us we are less than who we really are, and to feast on the truth of your love that calls us as your beloved children.

And in this season, as in all the seasons to come, God, we ask you to help us to fast from fear, and to feast on love.

Reflections on Fred Phelps... and Lent

You may have heard the news.  It seems that Fred Phelps may be close to death.  In case you can't quite place the significance of the person, Phelps founded the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.  This small, but extremely vocal and controversial church, is best known for their picketing of things like funerals of military persons.  Their signs condemn, in unspeakable language, gay and lesbian individuals in particular, as well as America itself in general.  They believe that the deaths of our service men and women are a sign of God's judgment on our nation because we "condone" homosexuality.  Their signs are some of the most vitriolic, hate-filled things I have ever seen, and their actions have been hurtful beyond measure - to families, to the general witness of the Church, to Christianity in this nation.  People outside of the Church look at them and think all of us Christians must be crazy, hateful people who serve a vengeful, hateful God... just as people look at groups like the Taliban and assume that all Muslims are violent extremists who want to kill anyone not like them.

To say that I have mixed feelings about the news of Phelps' impending death would be an understatement.  One of his sons, who left the "church" long ago, has said that Phelps was excommunicated from his own congregation last fall.  If that's the case, then Fred must be facing his mortality incredibly alone - isolated from the sect he founded, and alienated from many members of his own family.

I do not want to say that I hate Fred Phelps, everything he has stood for, and all his teachings and actions that have caused such incalculable pain in so many people.  However, it's Lent... and during Lent I remember that I'm called to be honest before God and myself about my sins.  And so I confess to you, my sisters and brothers, that "hate" may not be a completely inaccurate description of what I have felt.

But during Lent I also am called to remember that I not only need to ask for forgiveness for my own sins, but also to extend forgiveness to all who have wronged me and others.  It's easy to say that I forgive somebody in the abstract.  But Jesus did not love us in the abstract.  Jesus did not love his enemies in the abstract.  Jesus did not suffer in the abstract.  Jesus was not betrayed in the abstract.  Jesus did not hang on the cross and die in the abstract.  To love my enemies, and to speak words of forgiveness (whether they ask for it or not), means that I need to pray for Fred Phelps, because, as much as I detest him and everything he stands for, he is my brother in Christ.  He is a beloved child of God.  He is a sinner in need of God's love and grace... just as I am.

When I ask God to "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us," that doesn't just refer to somebody who took my parking place or who had a cartful of groceries at Wegman's in the line for "12 items or less."  It means Fred Phelps.  It meant Osama bin Laden.  It means ___ (fill in the blank for the person whom you most detest).

So, whatever he is facing at this very moment, may God have mercy on Fred Phelps and surround him with grace.  May he begin to experience even now the love that he found so hard to extend to others.  May God be with him and fill him with the healing light of Jesus.

And may God so be with us all, and with everyone.

Lent is here - again

For years I've had a love-hate relationship with Lent.  There were years I'd actually look forward to those preparatory weeks leading to Holy Week and Easter.  I'd anticipate times set aside for silent prayer and meditation as I would engage - sometimes alone, sometimes with others - in Lenten disciplines of silence and prayer.  However, there were those other years... years when I wouldn't quite dread Lent, but I clearly did not look forward to it.  I remember once even describing Lent as "the ecclesiastically sanctioned liturgical season of depression."  I know.  Harsh, wasn't it?

The challenge of Lent for me, especially during those years when God would seemingly have to drag me into the season, is that it really is a time when we're asked... invited... charged to face ourselves.  We're called to follow Jesus into the desert, where we must candidly look at ourselves without the pretenses in which we sometimes clothe ourselves.

Lent is the season of the Church year during which we are summoned to more intentionally follow Jesus.  That is hard, partly because we know that Jesus' path led to the cross.  That also is hard because, in the desert, Jesus had to face his own fears, his human frailty, his mortality.  So during Lent, as we are called to walk in "The Jesus Way" (to borrow the title of Eugene Peterson's powerful book), we are called to strip away all the superficial veneer in our lives and be brutally honest and vulnerable... with ourselves... before God.

This Wednesday will be the first time in decades that I will not stand before a worshiping congregation and invite people into the Lenten journey.  However, I still am moved - and challenged - by these words from our Book of Common Worship:

Friends in Christ, every year at the time of the Christian Passover we celebrate our redemption through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lent is a time to prepare for this celebration and to renew our life in the paschal mystery. We begin this holy season by acknowledging our need for repentance, and for the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes. This ancient sign speaks of the frailty and uncertainty of human life, and marks the penitence of this community.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of Christ, to observe a holy Lent by self-examination and penitence, by prayer and fasting, by works of love, and by reading and meditating on the Word of God.

The invitation is extended... to each of us.  Let the journey begin again.