God of peace and presence,
today the news shocked us again
as bullets flew from a gun
and vibrant lives were again lost.
The persons in that processing center
most likely weren’t too thrilled to be there.
Of course they were servants, called to the task
of representing their nation in battle,
and so they came
filling out the paperwork in preparation for a trip,
knowing that soon they would be in harms way in a foreign land.
Little did they know that harm would come to them here at home.
Little do any of us know of the demons inside that are leading men (for they are usually men)
to pull out a gun and begin firing.
These demons fester quietly in the background,
and as a result, good men and women die.
Be with those good men and women who have survived,
and comfort those who have had to say goodbye far too early.
Give them the assurance of your love and grace in the midst of their pain and tragedy.
And God, somewhere tonight, locked to a hospital bed, is a man filled with demons.
We don’t know what was going through his head, but whatever it was, it wasn’t right.
Comfort this one too, this child of yours, who somehow lost his mind along the way
and became convinced that killing was an acceptable act.
Fill him with the light of your grace that he may come to his senses and realize what he has done.
May we who judge him consider the possibility that God’s plan is to forgive,
even when we can’t and shouldn’t forget.
God this has been a painful day,
so as night comes, bring forth rest,
that all the world might be comforted and restored by your love.
Amen.
Yes, I should be working on the sermon tonight, but as often happens I have to take a break to exercise the thoughts that burst forth when my mind goes into full gear. Tonight’s revolves around a comment Kay made earlier about the lack of “trick or treaters” in the neighborhood. Several years ago our street was overloaded with kids coming through on Halloween to get their annual treats. Tonight, however, the doorbell only rang about 10 times, and there just didn’t seem to be many kids about.
As we were talking about this I made the comment that I bet a bunch of kids and families went to the local “trunk or treat” events which seemed to be happening at every other church in the area. For those who don’t know the phenomena, “trunk or treat” involves church members parking their cars in the church parking lot and handing out candy to kids from their trunks.
“I hate that,” Kay said after hearing my comment.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Well,” she offered, “it seems to me like these church events undermine the neighborhood part of Halloween.”
“Say more,” I said.
“Well I remember when these things were started,” she said. “It all began with folks suggesting that trick or treating in the neighborhoods wasn’t safe, so some churches started offering these “trunk or treat” events as a “safe alternative” to neighborhood trick or treating. But the fact was, Halloween trick or treating was pretty safe, and it brought neighborhoods together. Folks would walk the streets and neighbor would meet neighbor back when the kids roamed the streets together. The “trunk or treats” undermine these neighborhood based activities, and generally lead folks off into their own separate enclaves without getting to know those who live around them.”
Kay brings up a good point, I think. Of course, most churches in our neighborhood that go the “trunk or treat” route do so in their minds as an evangelism/outreach tool. “We’ll offer this program and people will bring their kids by,” they say, “because they know our event will be safe. Then, once they are here, we can tell them about our church and let them know that our church loves kids.” No one intentionally sets up these events to capitalize on fear, but in fact the marketing often does appeal to the fearful places in the hearts of parents. However, in my experience the folks that generally come and participate in these activities are folks that are already involved in the life of the church at some level. Thus we end up hosting a series of parties that are functionally exclusive to our communities, but which fail in the goal of outreach.
The question that we have to ask is if our attempts at creating events like these at times when neighborhoods have traditionally gathered together as neighbors undermines their ability to function as neighbors. Put another way, do our attempts to LOVE our neighbor through activities like “trunk or treat” get in the way of our calling to BE neighbor.
Being neighbor is part of our call, you know. Of course the high point of Jesus’ teaching was that we are to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves,” but that teaching assumes that we are engaged in being neighbors. The call to be a neighbor is seen in the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus asks “Who is the neighbor in this story,” knowing that it was the person who was willing to engage “on the road” rather than requiring our “neighbors” to come to us.
I don’t want to prolong this conversation, but I remember as a kid the UNICEF approach to Halloween. UNICEF would often throw a Halloween party, but only after kids and their parents had gone through their neighborhoods to not only get candy, but to also get loose change to benefit the UNICEF organization. Halloween in that model was understood as rooted in neighborhoods, and the structure of the program honored and promoted that understanding.
What would it look like for a church to give up the “trunk or treat” and instead send teams of persons and kids into the surrounding neighborhoods to promote community togetherness and understanding? What if they were to avoid the language of fear and proclaim proudly that Christ has called them to be present with their neighbors and to walk the streets together? What would a neighborhood based ministry for Halloween look like in a church context?
My one regret is that I wasn’t thinking about this earlier in the year. Thanks Kay for stirring the pot, and help me remember next year to think about what it means for a church to be a good neighbor.
What are your thoughts about the way the church sometimes undermines a community’s ability to be good neighbors?
Photo by Kimberkv via Flickr
Everyone seems to be piling on the Titans, but here is my game plan for their future. After all, what have they got to lose?
This song just spewed forth from some deep places in where God is speaking to me. Some day I will get around to recording it so you can know the tune, but here are the lyrics:
We Are One
A few years ago I had the bright idea of doing a regular podcast on United Methodist related stuff. I did around 20 or so until I ran out of steam, but my favorite was one featuring the head of the TWIT Network and former TechTV host Leo Laporte. Leo was kind enough to post the link on his site, and I ended up having over 75,000 downloads for this show. Since then the server I was using crashed and most of the MethoBlog shows are no longer available online. However, given Leo’s prominence these days I thought I would bring back that episode in an encore performance.
Hey Leo, since you are rolling in the bucks these days, don’t you think you need to start a regular show about religion? I know a Methodist preacher who might be interested.
Ed. Note: Last week I was invited to offer the invocation at the opening convocation of the Meharry Medical College, a historic institution that has trained doctors for the African American community since 1876, located in Nashville, TN. This is the prayer that I offered at that event.
Creating God, giver of life and sustainer of our souls,
our ancestors tell us that you spoke
and the universe sprang into being.
You, O God, hold the secrets of the universe in one hand,
and your love of your creation in the other,
and, you have bestowed upon us
the ability to discern your handiwork in the world around us.
As we gather this morning,
recognizing the beginning of a new year of teaching and learning,
may your workmanship be evident in all we do.
We come this morning with humility
as your servants called to the profession of healing.
You have given us the means
to better understand the workings of the human body,
and we thank you for the gifts you are bestowing upon us.
You have called us to the awesome task of caring for humankind,
and we recognize this calling as sacred and holy.
Lead us, O God, to remember that for all our gifts and skills,
there are times when we are limited in what we can do,
times when all we can do is to put others into your hands.
When those times come, as they surely will,
give us the grace to be healers with hearts,
helping others to experience wholeness
even when healing as we know it won’t come.
We assemble today for the 134th time
to celebrate another year in the pursuit of our calling.
Bless this institution,
and all those who work to train healers in this place.
Help the administration, faculty, and staff
to be the kind of professors and colleagues
through which excellence can be nurtured,
and compassion cultivated
so that ALL people–
those with means and those without,
those who are educated and those who aren’t,
those who have power in our world and those who don’t—
ALL those you have created, O God,
will know what it means to be made well.
We pray this today with expectation,
for you are making all things new,
and offer us hope for tomorrow.
Speak this year in a special way, for your servants are listening.
Amen.
Phil Dillingham is a friend in ministry, a neighbor, and the pastor of the Priest Lake Christian Fellowship here in Antioch. Priest Lake is an interesting place, birthed in the charismatic renewal of the traditional Churches of Christ here in Nashville. It’s a place that doesn’t get much publicity, and Phil is a pastor who probably doesn’t get listed on many top ten lists of influential preachers in Nashville. And yet, the more I am with Phil and hear about his congregation, the more I am convinced that they are doing a great work of God here in our community.
Phil and his colleague Guy Pierce (a former missionary to North India) recently came out with a small booklet they distributed to all of us at the area preacher’s prayer meeting today. The title is a play on the 16th and 17th century tracts and booklets that folks like the Wesley brothers distributed to their followers: A Short Discursive Guide to Young Pastors Attempting to Think Through Issues Related to Being And Developing New Churches of the Body of Christ. The booklet is an attempt to share what they have learned in the 17 years or so since their congregation was started, focused in particular on a theological and philosophical basis for ministry in a new, of for that matter any church.
I had some time waiting in the car today, and so I began to flip through the booklet. Frankly it gets confusing at times for they are writing in the first person and sometimes have to identify who the “I” is that is speaking in the moment. However, it was a passage in the first chapter, Toward the Ontology of the Church, that grabbed me today, and I am sharing it with you to hear your thoughts (as well as to lift up the work of a good friend).
What’s happening as we gather together as God’s people on Sunday morning? Actually, the Sunday morning part is incidental. The question is really directed at any time God’s people gather together as the body of Christ to worship Him. Here’s what I [Phil] came up with:
We are in way over our heads. There is more going on around us and in us than we can possibly know or get our minds around. Christ is here! He is here in me. He is in others. He is in us together. 1 John 4:12 says that no one has ever seen God, but if we love each other His presence is perfected in us. The perfected presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ is being experienced through very imperfect people as we love each other. And this love is from him. It is deep and wide – so deep, in fact, that we swim in it and cannot touch the bottom. Christ is the foundation of this love. He’s the ground and substance – the ontology –behind, in, and through all we do. It is Christ behind and in the Word of God that we preach. We are not just disseminating information that makes good disciples if applied well; it is Christ Himself through his Word that is coming to us. It is Christ behind, in and through our ethics as we encourage people to live a high ethical calling in Christ. It is Christ himself in us who empowers and embodies this ethic. The church that is gathered is the body of Christ, not just metaphorically. The metaphor is pointing to the reality, an unseen reality, that we need an icon for, like the icons on a computer screen. The metaphor of the body is pointing to the reality of the corporate “we” and Christ is the center of that. It is Christ in, through, and under the Sacraments we practice. It is He who meets us as we take the Lord’s Supper. It is he who meets us in baptism. A mystery far beyond our ability to comprehend or explain is taking place. We are swimming in a great sea of love as we gather together, and we cannot touch the bottom. And yet, we are floating along, to some extent effortlessly in this love. In short, a reality penetrates and pervades all that we are doing. It is an unseen spiritual reality, but it is there.
How often do those of us who lead worship fall into the mechanics of worship without considering the metaphysical realities that surround us as we gather? For that matter, how often do we think that “successful worship” (whatever that means) is dependent on our skills and gifts? Are we ever willing to think about what is happening at the spiritual level, or does metaphysics simply pale in the face of logistical concerns?
What Phil reminds me is that there is so much more happening in worship that what we see and hear. This isn’t to suggest that we can be mediocre in our worship practices and expect God to pull it off. No, this vision helps us understand that what we do every Sunday is very important, for it involves the connection between head and heart, between the physical and the spiritual, that God is made known. Yet, far too often I get caught up in the stuff of worship rather than thinking about what’s going on “behind the scenes” (so to speak).
This is where the Eastern traditions of Christian faith have something on Westernized Christianity. I have never forgotten the local Greek Orthodox priest in Atlanta tell us that their communion believed that worship happened in their place through the communion of saints with Christ looking down from heaven 24/7, whether a living congregation was assembled or not.
What difference would if make in how you approach worship if you truly began to believe that Christ at the center is engaged in stuff that is “way over our heads?” Do we really believe that worship is the place where the presence of Christ is mediated? If not, then we are we then engaged in putting on a show?
