I'm 49. I just turned 80!

I turned 80 last week.  

There is nothing wrong with turning 80,  unless your  49!  I started writing this article the week after my surgery Aug 27. The day before surgery I ran 8 miles. The doc said, running was fine as long as I didn’t sprint.  So I ran, and the thing was I felt fine. Nothing seemed wrong; all systems appeared to be working as well as ever. Was I really going to have open heart surgery without one symptom? Was I really going to trust the surgeon to opening me up, stop my heart, and makes repairs? Was this faith, or was I crazy? You begin to wonder, perhaps the doc needed some cash for his new boat? Could I really trust the process?  For me, it came down to the question, “Was this a God thing?”  Was God really working to intervening and save me from impending doom? Was this a God thing?

After surgery, I awoke to a reduced reality, a toddler-like helplessness. I needed help to sit up. I needed someone to help feed me. I needed help with ice chips, and for something as simple as taking a drink.  Just the day before, all was well, and now I was totally dependent. It reminded me Jesus’ words to Peter, “when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” (John 21:18)

Is this what it feels like to grow old? If so, old people are tough! Growing old isn’t for wimps! On my hospital unit, the patients were all 15 to 20 years my senior, and they were getting around.  It took me a few days to get up to walk down the hall.   My first stroll I was passed by an elderly man with a walker.  My competitive edge kicked in. The older man passed me with an eat-my-dust look in his eye.  

Each phase of recovery challenged my vanity. Once I was released from the hospital I had to sit in the backseat of the car. Airbags are a hazard for healing sternums. We don’t have a fancy enough cars to make it look like I am someone important there in the back being chauffeured.  So like a little child, I’m sitting in the back.  The bank teller looked at me like I needed a sucker.   

I wonder, is this what it is like to grow old? To not be able to go where you want to go, when you want to go? To be dependent on others when once you were independent and self-sufficient? Perhaps, I was learning some needed empathy?

Where did I see God in all of this? 

God has been with me in this whole process. Through this trial he has shown me how he cares for people through people. I was overwhelmed by the love of the church as we were showered with cards and prayers. I could see God in the love showed by my family. I could see God in the people bringing meals to our house and the people who offered me rides or were willing to sit with me.   I saw God in the prayers that went out for the poor man who was all alone in the room next to mine and those that told Cara they were praying for the man.  I saw God in the Caring Bridge support. And I saw God through the redeeming work of hospital staff and the staff here at church. The church teamed together to do what was necessary.  In this process, this church carried on with the mission.  Where was God? In the love my friends and family showed. 

I am a blessed man.  Thank you for letting God work through you.

Why Postmodern?

Recently I was asked this question concerning my blog. I thought it one of the most insightful inquiries I have received. 

            “What does it mean to you and what aspects in particular lead you to say postmodern

               describes  you?” 

The short answer is this:  The questions of postmodernity could not be answered by the meta-narratives (large over arching stories) of modernity.  

When I affirm postmodernity, I do not mean that modernity and its gains are now obsolete; rather, it may be fairer to argue that postmodernity stands on the shoulders of modernity, incorporating what it can but discarding what is irrelevant. However, like a river that has changed its course, former bridges may no longer be useful.  

What I identify most with in postmodernity as a Christian is the faith development. Modernity has been characterized by a dualistic world view. In postmodernity this two world thinking is merged to one world. Therein, the Bible is heard as the stories of the God who created this world, who so loves this world, who is in the business of redeeming it including all of creation (see Romans 8). Therefore, over and against a dualism about a world gone south for which God creates an escape plan,  Jesus calls us to pray the kingdom down on earth as is in heaven. Indeed, Jesus’ proclamations of the kingdom really do have something to teach us about life here and now and forevermore.  

There is a word that characterizes the postmodern shift - ‘and’. Postmodernity makes room for affirming ‘both/and’ realities, not merely an ‘either/or.‘  This means there can be a love for both God and science, orthodoxy and fresh expressions, the celebration of ancient and the modern, rock music and classical (rap, country, pop, etc.).  

Postmoderns reject overarching meta-narratives. There is an appreciation that there is more than one story to be told, more than one perspective. Postmoderns enjoy the questions as much as the answers.  We want Q& R (questions and response) time rather than Q & A.   

Although there are many challenges with being the church in a postmodern age, the solution is not to try to convert the world back to modernity before they can become followers of Jesus.  Jesus once said, “no one puts new wine in old wine skins” (Matthew 9:17) 

Faith must be discovered in our time and place. 

a Holy Lent

Growing up, I had friends and friends of our family who were Roman Catholic. As a kid it seemed like church mattered to them. They wore uniforms to school. They wouldn't eat meat on Fridays. They always went to church each week, often on Saturday evening before our families went out to dinner.  As a child these practices made it seemed to me that their faith really mattered. My family just went to church (occasionally).

It’s not that I necessarily wanted to do those things, but their religion seemed more important than ours. One Lent I asked my parents, “why don’t we have to wear school uniforms or eat fish on Fridays? Why don’t we go to mass on Saturday night before dinner?” Their answer? “We were free eat whatever we wanted” which translated, ‘whatever mom served us for dinner.’

As an adult I have come to embrace the season of Lent in my own United Methodist tradition. Lenten disciplines have deepened my appreciation of Easter and the practice of our faith. I have embraced the discipline of eating fish on Friday during Lent, not as a legalism, but as an act that helps to remind me and set apart this special season.

Lent is about transformation. On Sunday mornings I often pray a prayer before I speak. This prayer was taught to me by a pastor, years ago when I was a teenager and I prayed it even before I became a Christian.  To me it embraces the practice of Lent and the transformation God wants to do in us. Use it for yourself if it is helpful.

God, help us to be such masters of ourselves
that we might truly become the servant of all others, 

take our lips and speak through them,
our minds and think through them,
and then take our hearts to set them on fire. 

A Way Forward?

Today I learned that I am suffering from CRIS. CRIS is short for Conflicted  Religious Identity Syndrome. I might have thought I caught it from reading Brian McLaren’s new book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? in which I learned the term and the symptoms. But the fact is I have suffered from CRIS for decades, since I became a Christian. 

According to McLaren, you can self-diagnose CRIS by answering the question: Do I compulsively need to add an adjective in front of the noun Christian?  If you find you need to qualify your Christianity, e.g.,  “I am  a/an _______ Christian.” or “I am a Christian, but....”, yep, you got it, CRIS.  (examples: conservative, liberal, Bible-believing, social gospel, ...)

A few years ago, author Anne Rice, apparently, with a severe case of CRIS, renounced Christianity. Rice concluded she would never truly belong to the “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group” known as Christians unless she becomes, “anti-gay...anti feminist...anti-artificial birth control... anti Democrat... anti secular humanism...anti science... anti life.”  So, Rice renounced Christianity qualifying it, “if being a Christian means following Christ’s followers.” 

But that’s just the thing. Being a Christian is not about following Christ’s followers, but its about following Christ. In the Bible God’s people are called to be faithful: stewards of this planet, lovers of justice and mercy, a people who turn the other cheek and even pray for their enemies. In short, the call is to love as God loves.  Jesus once said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything...”

Right now self-identified Evangelical Christians in the USA ranks statistically highest in support for the use of torture and lowest in support for foreign aid.  Among this group, the Bible is used to defend Israeli colonists in spite of their growing violations of Palestinian human rights.  And Christian radio in the United States has accused the environmental movement of being a Satanic conspiracy known as the “Green Dragon.”

This disconnect is why CRIS is more than a symptom of people who have lost their old faith, but an indicator that Christianity has indeed lost its way. In the least, the CRIS epidemic should call us to examine what is now passing for Christianity.

I just want a way forward where following Jesus looks more like Jesus. What does it mean to be faithful to the Jesus of the Gospels?  Isn’t it possible to have a faith in the creator God that is big enough not to be offended by science, where the faithful work toward justice and mercy among all peoples, where our call to be stewards of the planet is embraced and where following Jesus is about His Kingdom rather than our own national exceptionalism and manifest destiny?   

New Years

“What return can I make to the Lord for all the
good He has given to me? Ps 116:12

This year I celebrated the New Year in the town of St. Anton, Austria. The locals brought in the New Year with an assortment of fireworks.  I am not sure but I think dynamite must  have been legal.  The colorful concussions lit up the town. St Anton is a skiing village in the heart of the Alps. It was clearly a new year. And then it was quite. 

“All is quiet on New Year's Day

A world in white gets underway

I want to be with you

Be with you night and day” 

U2, New Years Day

On New Year’s Eve we often look back and remember. We remember old friends and celebrate new ones.  A new year is an opportunity, a chance to do things anew. 

Pondering... 

What will this year bring?  

What hopes do I have?  

  What path will God lay before me to follow? 

What adventures are before me?  

What return can I make? 

Christmas Season

The shepherds, on the night of Jesus’ birth, are persons of interest. The shepherds come to Bethlehem searching for something amazing. And what do they find? the Christ child, the Messiah, indeed the King of the Jews. Jesus’ birth ushers in conflicting kingdoms; the kingdom of Rome and the kingdom of heaven.  Heaven’s realm has landed in the person of Jesus the Christ. When the president of the United States steps aboard an airplane, that aircraft becomes incredibly more important.  When the incarnation of God in Jesus is born here, Earth becomes infinitely more important and so does humanity. I marvel as the Kingdom of God become incarnate here on Earth. 

Luke 2:1-14 (NRSV)

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
   and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’

Thanksgiving

The holidays are often a time of great expectations.  Hope filled or drudging, the problem with expectations is they decided in advance what might or should happen. But these is a problem with expectations. William Shakespeare wrote,  “Expectation is the root of all heartache.”  “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life, and this is a softness that ends in bitterness,” said Flannery O’Connor.  Of course the book Great Expectations, by Charles Dicken is tale about one expectation after another causing problems. This year as I go into the holiday season beginning with Thanksgiving, I am going to release my expectations.  My aim is to be present for what God may bring so that I may celebrate every moment with Him and my family. 

1 Thes 5:18

Give thanks in all circumstances..