You Never Sausage A Messy Church!

Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany

 

Bismarck’s quote from the 19th century is even more true today than it was in his day.

Whether it’s Washington County’s commissioners wrestling with capital improvements, delegates in Annapolis wrangling over tuition rates for state universities, or Congress arguing over debt ceilings and entitlement programs and the budget, governing is a messy affair.

That’s no less true for church governance than in the larger society. Session elders regularly have to deal with the messy bits tangentially-related (or sometimes unrelated) to the ministry of the church. Gatherings of the entire presbytery can be both uplifting and a grinding burden as we revisit the same issues over and over and over with no progress let alone resolution. Many Presbyterians have no idea what General Assembly is, when it meets, or what goes on there. (Hint: it’s the bi-annual national convening of representatives from every presbytery.)

Now, stay with me, as this might seem dry and boring at first and you might be tempted to roll your eyes and think, “Oh, jeez, not this stuff”, but we’re going somewhere good here I promise.

The constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is composed of two parts: the Book of Confessions, which is composed of the great and significant credal statements throughout the history of the Church, and the Book of Order, which provides the organizational and operational framework of our denomination.

Neither is static, cast in stone. The Book of Confessions has seen additions as recently as 1983, with the “Brief Statement of Faith” that resulted from the reunification of the northern and southern Presbyterian denominations. The Book of Order is so regularly amended, added-to, revised, tweaked and otherwise tinkered with over the past 28 years as to make it like Bismarck’s sausages.

Last year the General Assembly sent to the presbyteries a few items to vote on to “fix” the Book of Order, the second part of our denomination’s constitution, which provides the organizational and operational structure of our denomination. The Book of Order is so regularly amended, added-to, revised, tweaked and otherwise tinkered with over the past 28 years as to make it like Bismarck’s sausages. In trying to fix what’s broken we just break it more.

One such example is the so-called “Fidelity and Chastity amendment”, an addition to the Book of Order in 1997 which very specifically addresses sexuality and ordination standards. It’s bad government, in part because it’s largely ignored by those churches who want to ordain people who are gay or lesbian, and in part because it’s not enforced by churches that do want to uphold the standard. But more importantly, it is so poorly worded that my congregation is technically in violation of it because we have art in our worship space—graphics in our PowerPoint and images in our stained glass windows. So one of those “fixes” we as a denomination had to vote on was whether or not to remove this section from the Book of Order.

It is things like this that gave impetus to Presbyterian polity wonks to seek to completely revamp the Form of Government section of the Book of Order. After 28 years it’s a bit of a mess. In my opinion the problem has been that the changes to the Book of Order have focused on micromanaging doctrine, fixated on the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. But, in my opinion, once again in a good-hearted effort to fix what’s broken, we’ve just replaced one broken thing with another.

One of the clearest examples we have of Jesus’ own position on such things as polity and governance is from the 12th chapter of Matthew’s gospel. As happened so many times, the religious leaders protest that Jesus and his disciples are violating laws governing the Sabbath and Jesus responds, “…it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath”.

Whether it is the Book of Order or Robert’s Rules of Order or the old Presbyterian saw about “doing things decently and in order”, the highest standard is not whether we are following the rules, doing the proscribed steps, adhering to the letter of the law. The highest standard is to always, always, ALWAYS measure our thoughts, our decisions, our actions by the following questions:

How does this advance the Kingdom, the living embodiment of the Good News of Jesus in the world through us, right here, right now?
Do we believe this is pleasing to God?

Act on the answers to those questions, and we will never go wrong.

“…And We’re All Still Here.”

The title of this post is taken from a story I was told by a fellow seminary student from Baltimore back in 1996. It had been the usual mid-Atlantic 3-H Summer: hazy, hot, humid. Several days of 90+°(F, not C) and 90+% humidity had finally broken in typical fashion, with a late afternoon line of thunderstorms that formed over the Poconos and came roaring across central New Jersey with a vengeance. A group of Summer Language students who were from the West Coast who had never seen anything like this before were standing in the Quad, staring at the post-storm sky—a miasma of golds, reds, slate greys and greens. Dr. Gillespie, the president of the seminary, came out of the Admin building at that moment, and came over to the group of students. He, too, started at the sky, and then said, “Huh. Just as I always thought: the Rapture happened…” he looked down at the students and with a twinkle in his eyes deadpanned, “…and we’re all still here.”

As I write this, Harold Camping’s absolute, unequivocal prediction of May 21, 2011, as Judgment Day has come and gone…and we’re all still here.

It would be easy to mock him and his followers, as many have already done long before this day proved Camping wrong (again). Heck, I’ve been sorely tempted myself to crack jokes at their expense. As I rode the tractor around the back lawn Saturday, I thought to myself “If Camping is right, I’m going to be p.o.-ed that I spent my last moments in this life mowing the freaking grass!” But the people who spent their life savings, spent years traveling to tell others, who decorated their cars with messages about Judgment Day deserve neither derision, nor pity. We have more in common with them than any of us would want to admit.

In their book Lucifer’s Hammer, authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle describe something they dub “Hammer Fever”: as a comet (nicknamed “the Hammer”) threatens to hit the Earth and wipe out civilization, some people not only embrace the idea but look forward to it. Network news reporter Harv Randall reflects that people do so because they hate their jobs, their marriages, their lives, they want out of their mortgages, their responsibilities, and they see “the Hammer”, the comet, as a way out.

It comes down to one word: hopelessness. Camping, and others with an eschatological obsession, look at the world and all they can see is insurmountable problems…how the greedy triumph and the powerless are exploited, how the good suffer and the evil seem to prosper, an explosive population growth and global climate change, and “wars and rumors of wars”, nation against nation, famines and earthquakes, increasing wickedness and love grows cold, abominations and desolations… And they are overwhelmed.

What is needed in the aftermath of the Judgment Day That Wasn’t is for all of us to not only find but promote those places of hope in our lives and in the world around us with the same commitment and passion Campings followers had for promoting The End.

“Illegal” is inaccurate

In the state of Maryland, where I live, a bill just passed the state legislature allowing that children of families who are not legal residents of the U.S. may pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities…providing that the family has paid state and federal taxes for the past three years and the student is a graduate of a state public high school. It seems reasonable to most sane people, but a few on the political Right who get their BVDs in a twist over “illegal immigration” are mounting a petition drive to put on the next election ballot a referendum to repeal the law. This before the law has even been signed by Governor O’Malley.

After writing to two of the locals who are spearheading this issue, and getting a thoughtful if ill-conceived reply from one, here is the letter I wrote to the editor of the local daily newspaper:

We need some clarification in this recent dust-up over the question of allowing students who do not have permanent residency visas to pay in-state tuition at Maryland colleges and universities. We need to get away from emotions and self-righteous posturing, and get down to principles.

Principle #1: it is delusional to think the in-state tuition bill somehow will reward or encourage illegal immigration. There’s not a single person in any nation in the world saying as a result of this law, “Hey, let’s sneak into the United States, settle in Maryland, and after 10-15 years of struggle our kids can go to Hagerstown Community College without having to pay international student rates. Wow, we will have so exploited the system!”

Principle #2: let’s drop the term “illegal immigrants” as it is inaccurate. When people use the term “illegal immigrants” far too often the image in their mind is of Mexican and other Central American people scurrying across the U.S. border in the dark of night in order to “steal jobs and benefits from hard-working Americans.” While that image has some basis in that nearly 3/4 of all so-called illegal immigrants are from Mexico and Central America, the fact is only slightly more than half of these immigrants gain entry to the United States by crossing the border illegally. According to the Pew Research Center, quite probably nearly half of our “illegal immigrants” enter the U.S. legally: on a tourist or business visa. They overstay the visa’s limitation while working to gain their residency visa which allows them to become permanent residents, and allow them to work on becoming U.S. citizens.

These are not people the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (I.C.E.) would, or do, deport. These are people who are working hard, complying with the requests the federal government makes of them. They are filing the proper paperwork, they are paying the myriad fees and penalties the government demands, they are doing everything asked of them but they are stuck in an immigration system that is beyond broken, beyond hopeless.

Despite this, these people who come to our country continue to strive to overcome. They are issued Employee Identification Numbers by the federal government, through which they obtain employment because they have a specialized skill-set that cannot easily be duplicated. They pay local, state, and federal taxes, including paying into Social Security (from which they will never derive a penny). They are an integral part of the fabric of our community, and still some of us want to treat them like second-class humans.

We want to deny them the benefits of the system they have paid into with their taxes, benefits others are able to enjoy.

We want to deny children who have been part of our communities for years the chance to approach something approximating parity with their classmates, friends, neighbors. They will not get to Harvard or Yale or Princeton because of this law, but maybe, just maybe, they can get an Associate’s Degree from HCC and have a chance at a reasonably decent life, despite the fact they had no say in how they were brought to this country.

We want to argue that this is a matter of not rewarding law-breakers…we who regularly break laws like the speed limit, running traffic lights, cheating on our taxes, stealing office supplies from our employers, looking the other way when our leaders in government and business pillage the public trust…”Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.”

To Mssrs. Parrott and Shank, and to those who agree with them: put down your stones.

Confession is Good for the Soul, If Not the Wallet

What’s the statute of limitations on an April Fools joke? If the Housing Office at Princeton Seminary ever finds out about this, I’ll make restitution because that’s the right thing to do. But this is as much bragging as it is confession, I have to admit.

March 31, 1997, 11:30PM. A fellow seminarian down the hall from me appears in the door to my dorm room. “I hear you know electronics.” Yeah, I took a class in undergrad, and I’ve worked with my dad’s remodeling business. A sly smile spreads across his face as he shares his idea for a great April Fools prank. I smile back. Let’s give it a shot.

We get on the elevator, pull the stop switch (which has no alarm for the sake of people moving in and out of the dorm), and proceed to open the control panel. The panel wiring uses slip-on connectors, not hard-soldered connections, so this should be a cinch. I trace the various wires, determining which ones are to the button light and which ones send the signals. It’s a four-story building, so this shouldn’t be too complicated. My co-conspirator (whose identity I will never divulge to the seminary) and I do a little figuring, and reconnect the wires so that the elevator won’t go to the floor you call for, nor to the floor above or below it.

The morning of April 1. My dorm room is near the elevator, and I had only one morning class that day, so I’m enjoying the morning reading in my room, hearing the elevator doors open, and someone exclaiming, “What the-?” It was particularly frustrating for Linda, who was trying to do laundry in the basement and every time she got into the elevator on the 3rd floor and pushed (B) it would take her up to the fourth floor. The fourth or fifth time it happens I hear a string of four-letter words as she storms off the elevator, through the door and down the fire stairs. I understood the reaction: she was, after all, Irish.

On my way back to my room after my one class, I run into an Otis Elevator repair person the seminary had called in. Worried that my co-conspirator and I endangered people, I ask what’s up. “The elevator’s broken”, he replies. “Nothing bad, the elevator just doesn’t go to the right floor.”

I put on my most innocent face as I comment how, given today was April 1, it sounds like an April Fools prank. “Nah, it’s gotta be a bad call switch in the basement” he grunts. “No one would know how to rewire an elevator to do that.”

The fact I’d pranked my fellow seminarians was great; the fact that in five minutes with an Allen wrench and a pair of needle-nosed pliers I’d done something a certified elevator repair technician charging $100/hour said no one could do just made it epic. And the fact the seminary paid $100/hour to fix the elevator made sure I couldn’t take credit for my BEST. PRANK. EVER.

My letter to Barack Obama on our shared birthday

Mr. President,

On this day when you turn 49 and I turn 46, I wish you many happy returns and want to share understanding and solidarity, because I think you and I have something more in common than just a shared birthday.

We both wrestle with “an unruly flock”; the difference is one of scale. You are responsible for 350 million people, and I for a little over 100 people. We’re both relatively new at shepherding those in our care (18 months for you, 40 months for me). So if I may be presumptuous…

We both are caught in battles with people who are grasping desperately at a past that is more myth than reality. We try to work with people who believe absolutely that they know better than anyone else what must be done and will bulldoze their own grandmothers if they get in the way. We both serve people who are coming off years of hurt and anger, sparked by a lack of trust and an unwillingness to come together. We both are experiencing (on different scales) the agitation and lashing out of a group of people who are mired in pointlessness and hopelessness.

We both serve people who have no vision for the future. They hunger for something to draw them in, something that will inspire them to do more than simply maintain what is, they want purpose and to be a part of something meaningful in and for the world.

In your campaign you spoke of a United States of America that would rise above petty politics, that would not cower in fear of the vague threat of terrorism, that would lead the world not through “shock and awe” and intimidation but a United States that would demonstrate fearlessness and power through humility and compassion.

That compelling vision has been lost in the noise of Washington politics since you took office. My sense is that you have buried your more natural style of leadership, the leadership this country needs. Be courageous, be passionate. Let loose the Barack Obama we saw on the campaign trail, who spoke with such certainty of the hope of our future. Let loose the man who in March of 2008 gave one of the most insightful and inspiring speeches since Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream”. Make “Yes we can!” more than a campaign slogan, because it is a prayer of millions of people.

Again, happy birthday, and I wish you much happiness with your family this year.

Specks, Planks and Drinking Glasses

A little over a year ago in preparation for an upcoming event about 20 people helped clean out and reorganize the kitchen at the church. The cleaning was absolutely necessary; the reorganization was meant to make things easier, like moving the dishes and glasses from over the stove to a cabinet next to the door to the Assembly Room. When we were done, we were all pretty proud of the work. Over the past year I’ve watched as glasses and dishes slowly, a few at a time moved back to the cabinet over the stove, back to where they’d been…for years, apparently.

John Kotter, in his book Leading Change, writes how organizations—not just churches—make changes that don’t stick because the people in the organization didn’t buy into the need to change. In churches, we usually think of this battle over change vs. “what was” as between the younger generation and the “grey saints”. Both younger and older generations see that the mainline traditions aren’t working to grow people in numbers or spiritual development, but the older generation wants the congregation to remain the way it was for them for decades even if it means that local church dies, while the younger generation wants to take some risks, do some possibly crazy stuff in an effort to make spiritual life meaningful (again?).

The delicious irony here is it’s not just the older members of the church who gradually took our kitchen configuration back to the old, less sensible, configuration. It was members of all ages.

The 20-somethings are great for accusing the older generations of being stubborn, of trying to take the church backwards in its development and ministries. But here we have a 21st century version of Jesus’ warning about being too concerned about the speck of dust in your friend’s eye you can’t notice the 2×4 plank in your own eye. Regardless of what generation we’re from, we have a blind spot when it comes to seeing our own tendency to go back to “the way things were”.

I understand this desire. I think we all have this unconscious habit in times of stress of going back to old habits, taking up old practices simply because they’re more familiar and therefore seem simpler, easier or more sensible.

So my practice now is going to be looking for those places in my own life where I’m undoing the good changes, and am moving the plates and glasses back to where they were.

Auto Irony

Back in the early 1990s, I followed a car through “downtown” Greenwich, Connecticut, that sported a bumper sticker that said “Oppose the military-industrial complex”. The irony was it was on the bumper of a SAAB.*

I hadn’t seen such delicious irony on a car until today. As I was turning into my neighborhood, the car in front of me waiting to cross Route 40 sported a Harley-Davidson sticker on the side window. That, in and of itself, isn’t irony—that it was on the side window of a Smart Car is just too much!

The difference is this person was not ignorant of the implications of what she or he had done. I’d like to believe that this is a person saying you can be macho and environmentally responsible at the same time.

___________________

* – SAAB stands for Svenska Aeroplan AB (“Swedish Aeroplane Ltd.), and is the largest builder of military aircraft in Europe.

Embracing Who I Am

I am becoming less and less of a politics wonk, thanks to the past eight, ten, twenty years of the sort of politics espoused by Gingrich, Limbaugh, Hannity, and their ilk. I’m talking about the self-righteous, hate-filled screeds that contain half-truths at best, and racist lies at their worst.

I used to be a conservative. I used to embrace the idea that the government is not qualified to tell us all how to live our lives, and to make us pay for the privilege of letting them do so.

Having been verbally tarred-and-feathered, and at times abused even by family members, for not being a conservative in the vein of the above-mentioned Angry White People party, I finally embraced the scarlet letter of “liberal”. Strangely enough, apparently this attack tactic and disparaging of noble terms is nothing new for the G.O.P. So I will reach back to the early 1960s and let a fellow Irishman far smarter than I do a better job of articulating who I am:

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label “Liberal?”

If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then…we are not that kind of “Liberal.”

But if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”
[John F. Kennedy, September 14, 1960]

We’re Not Post- Anything

This week our local paper ran a story on how someone put a swastika on the front door of the local synagogue. Never mind that the rabbi is a friend of mine, and I think a great deal of the members of Congregation B’nai Abraham that I have met and socialized with in the past two years. Even if I had no personal connection whatsoever I would still be angry, frustrated, saddened…and worst of all, not surprised.

But it seems to be a surprise to many. Ever since November 4th, you we hear how the United States has finally entered a “post-racial” era as if simply by electing a multi-cultural person as president we have suddenly and completely overcome centuries of societal racism and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream has been fulfilled.

That’s not the way human beings work, no matter how highly we think of ourselves. We like to think we live in more enlightened times, or at least in a more enlightened community…that racism and things like the KKK or white supremacists or bigots are a thing of the past merely because of a political election.

At the very least, we hope that “those” people live somewhere other than where we are. For example, recently you may have seen the news story about a woman in Niagara Falls, NY, who was forced to take a sign down advertising rooms for rent in her house to “whites only”. You, like I, may have said “Boy, I can’t believe the kind of people that live in Niagara Falls” or “I’m glad people like that don’t live around here.”

And then, the other evening I was sitting behind an older Chevy Blazer at a traffic light (profound stuff seems to be happening at traffic lights lately, eh?) and it took me a minute or so to idly put together what the the driver in front of me was proudly proclaiming for all (at least all of us behind his truck) to see.

First was the usual Calvin-peeing-on-something bumper sticker – you know the ones, where the Chevy owner has Calvin relieving himself on the Ford logo, or vice-versa. But a closer look showed it wasn’t a logo, but the word “obama”. Oh, boy, here we go, I thought.

I looked a little further, to see the pro-Confederacy sticker – the flag and some sort of “we’ll be back” slogan.
The coup d’grace was the usual bumper sticker of the overly-opinionated-and-under-informed: the “don’t blame me…” sticker. Only this one said “Don’t blame me – I voted white”.

At first I was furious that there are people like this who are so blatantly ignorant. I desperately wanted to confront him on how wrong-minded he is, to get him to see how hateful he is. I wanted to embarrass him, to make him feel guilty for his sin. But that not only would not accomplish anything, it would perhaps drive this man further into the source of his ignorance and hate.

Part of me is relieved this person is more honest about their racism than many people are. I’d rather someone be honest about their racism rather than pretending to be inclusive but secretly hating anyone who doesn’t have the “right” color skin.

Part of me wants to shrug and say, “Whaddaya expect?” but that’s just arrogance on my part, and a certain amount of cynicism. I am working on overcoming my own personal bigotry against people I perceive as somehow less sophisticated, more ignorant. And the cynic in me, the one who believes John Calvin was right when he said that all humanity who are separated from God (the Divine, the Transcendent, the Indescribable) are fallen, sinful, depraved and therefore there are always going to be people like this in the world, spreading their hate. In this case, the driver is spreading his hate to the next generation: as I passed the Blazer I saw a young boy of about five years in the Blazer with him.

I wondered if this person is redeemable – would they ever be willing to concede the wrongness of their attitude and belief? Would it be possible for them to see people as people regardless of the color of their skin or any other superficial characteristic?

I want to know why this man thinks the color of a person’s skin affects their ability to govern. I may never get the chance, but Hagerstown is not that big a city, so there’s always a chance I’ll see him again, perhaps run into him in the grocery store or the big-box hardware store. I want to ask the one question unique to human existence, that perhaps will shed light on the source of this man’s own darkness: why?

A Broken Heart Behind the Wheel

Yesterday while running a few errands, I was stopped at a traffic light and in looking around me noticed a young woman in the car behind me who looked as though she was crying. I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t want to be obvious by staring at her in the rear view mirror, so it took two more traffic lights to be sure.

Yes, she was sniffling and wiping her eyes. And then she absolutely burst into tears, great wracking sobs. I worried – she seemed in pain. Could she use some help? Was there anything I could do?

The City of Hagerstown answered the question for me as the light turned green and traffic had to move – me turning right and this apparently grief-filled lady going straight. I could only offer a quick prayer: “God be merciful to her.”

In reality, what could I do? I am some stranger in the car in front of her. Is she going to talk to me about whatever has her in such emotional pain? No. And even if she does, it’s either a superficial 15 second conversation at a car window in traffic, or perhaps an hour conversation at Higher Ground Coffee to calm her down…time perhaps well-spent for her sake but not for mine at the moment.

It’s the helper-enabler in me who wants to help everyone with their problems (and gets too deeply involved; thus, vacation before Easter). This morning, a day later, I still worry if this stranger is doing better or if she’s still in pain. This is part of the reason why, even tho’ I had a terrific acupuncture session yesterday, I still have that knot between my shoulder blades…