On Maintaining Effort Through the Christmas Season

As I sit in the church office preparing for the 4^th Sunday of Advent as well as Christmas Eve worship, my to do list is filled with what you might expect: finalize bulletins, lock in readers, make sure we have enough candles.

What you might not think would be on my calendar are the items that need to be done for the time after Christmas: plan January worship and sermon series, do reading and lesson planning for Bible Study on human sexuality, develop leadership goals and plans for 2019.

When I was early in ministry, I approached Christmas (and Easter) much like college students approach final exams: the closer you get, the more everything else goes on hold. As if life after exams doesn’t really matter. It will happen. You will get to it when it comes.

The problem with taking such an approach to Christmas for a pastor is that time keeps (blessedly) moving steadily along. And if you’re not careful, you can back off so much that February comes somewhere at the end of the haze of getting caught back up after Christmas.

I suspect it is not only pastors who struggle with the temptation to put off everything else till after Christmas. Have you heard (or said) any of these lines:

·         I’ll get serious about eating healthy again after Christmas.

·         We can figure out our finances after we get through Christmas.

·         I will make exercising a priority after the holidays.

·         We’ll get in a good cleaning routine after the new year.

You get the idea.

There are all good, laudable goals. The problem is, we are quite good at putting off that which we ought at least to be somewhat mindful of today. Launching full steam into marathon training and going vegetarian over the holidays might not be practical, but laying aside all attention to healthy eating and incorporating exercise into our days isn’t healthy ort helpful either.

This past Thanksgiving, as my family has done for a number of years, Chris and I ran a 5k Turkey Trot in the morning. I exercise daily, but have done less outdoor running recently, offering the excuse that the hills which abound in our new neighborhood are downright unappealing. The Turkey Trot course took us over several rolling hills—and I missed my target time by less than three minutes. I was frustrated, realizing that I’d psyched myself out. And that if I’d stopped grumbling so much about the hills around our house, I could easily have achieved my goal.

That next week, I determined to overcome my grumbling about running hills. And so I did some research. In a video online, one expert said I had to make friends with the hill.

What?

Friends, yes. With hills!

What she meant was I had to stop fighting the hill. Doing what I had been unsuccessfully trying: attempting to power over the hill when I had little experience even holding pace. Instead, she suggested not trying to maintain speed but rather maintain effort. As the hill gets steeper, run a bit slow, take steps a bit smaller, but maintain my form and effort. One of the worst things to do is try to sprint up the hill and tell yourself you’ll slow down or walk for a break after you do so. Turns out that just slows you down and kills your pace.

My first run after that instruction felt like night and day compared to how I’d been running hills. I mentally paced myself, and kept repeating “Maintain effort,” over and over in my head as I ran. I no doubt ran a bit slower on some hills, but you know what? I ran a much faster speed overall, and felt far better after the run than I’d usually felt  after a run on the same course.

This Christmas, I invite you to try to avoid sprinting through the season. Pace yourself in healthy ways so that you don’t crash after Christmas, or put off until January tasks and habits that would be better begun today. Even in the midst of the holiday season. Be gracious with yourself, but don’t procrastinate on important behaviors that help you be a good steward of your time, talents and resources.

May this Christmas and New Years season be a time of healthy habits, not putting off till tomorrow that which you can begin today, and pacing yourself in ways that feed your spirit and provide space and time to grow in your relationship with God and others!

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

My earliest memory of my own Bible is one that was gifted to me as a small child—it was covered in tiles made of a material like white shells. It was, as you can imagine, fairly fragile, and so I learned early on to be very careful with it.

Though today I no longer have that Bible (I suspect it fell prey to the expected downside of giving a fragile Bible to a child) I continue to hold the Bible with care, though now more figuratively than literally. I believe, as we attest as Christians and in particular United Methodist, that the Bible is the foundation upon which our understanding of God and God’s work in the world rests.

I also know, however, that our earnest attempts to read and understand the Bible often lead not only to disagreements with each other, but also to questions and confusion ourselves. You may have heard someone say of the Bible, that it can be an acronym: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.

Instructions, yes. Basic? I have not always found it to be so.

As United Methodists, who stand in the guidance of John Wesley, we have a tool to help us wade through the rich complexity of the Bible. Decades ago, scholars coined a tool called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. While not a structure explicitly explained by John Wesley, the Quadrilateral accurately describes how John Wesley approached the Bible and questions of theology and how we are called to live in the world. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral asserts there are four tools we are to use to discern God’s will and truth: Scripture, Reason, Tradition and Experience.

The four are not equally balanced. Indeed, Scripture is our primary tool for understanding God. As Christians, when we say “scripture,” we mean the Bible. Old and New Testament. When we have a question about God, or about understanding what is happening in our lives and world, it is to the Bible we should first turn. As I mentioned above, however, the Bible is not always as clear as we might like. There are passages which are troubling, challenging, and even downright in conflict with other parts of the Bible. Indeed, our first step when we are seeking to interpret the Bible is the Bible itself—to see what other passages have to say.

I think of it this way—scripture is like our eyes, the primary way we see the world. Scripture is the primary way we see God. But sometimes our eyes do not allow us to see clearly enough—maybe we can’t see things far away, maybe we can’t see things close up. So we need help focusing better. When that happens to me, the first thing I do is pause what I am doing and try to focus more intently with my eyes. That is how we are to use the Bible. When one portion is difficult to gain clarity on, we sit with scripture to seek that clarity.

But sometimes with our eyes, or with scripture, that is not enough. We need more clarity. With our eyesight, we can turn to corrective lenses. These help us focus more clearly. Reason, tradition and experience are like corrective lenses to help us focus more clearly.

But what are these three corrective lenses?

REASON: Scripture commands us to love the Lord with our heart, soul, mind and strength. God gave us common sense as well as scientific study and our reasoning to help us gain clarity in the world. When Joshua 10 describes a day of battle in which the sun stood still, our modern understanding of the earth orbiting around the sun challenges the ancients’ belief that the sun revolves around the earth but still allows us to understand in this passage the description of a day which seemed it would never end.

TRADITION: When we talk about tradition as a tool to help gain clarity here, we are not talking about casual traditions, like our tradition of doing potlucks! We are talking about the formal teachings of the Church, the body of Christ, over the years. Tradition is where our idea of the Trinity comes from—though an understanding of God which Christians from early on saw woven throughout the Bible, the word Trinity appears no where in the Bible. It is a theological teaching which the Church discerned to encapsulate the nature of God as God is revealed in scripture.

EXPERIENCE: Our experiences of God’s activity in the world, through God’s prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace, also help clarify our understanding of God through scripture. I am reminded of the ways that God has made a way where their seemed to be no way, and so as I reflect on a challenge or new opportunity, my reading of scripture is shaped by these experiences. It is important here that we are reminded that we are called to not only reading scripture and reflect theologically on our won—we are called to do so in community. Indeed, some of my own reflections have been powerfully shaped not by my experiences but by the experiences of others.

As we continue to grow together in our understanding of God, our study of scripture, and our ability to reflect more fully on God’s truth and will, I invite you to consider the ways your faith is shaped by Scripture, Reason, Tradition and Experience. And I invite you to use these four tools in intentional ways to approach both questions of complexity and tension in our world, as well as in ways to help reinforce your daily scripture reading. May we each grow in our understanding of God and together, may our understanding on God shape our lives and actions so that we can be part of the coming of God’s kingdom even today.

God's Story

Years ago, as a gift for some occasion I have now forgotten, my father gave me a series of four photos he took of a stone sculpture located outside the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. The four photos are framed together and progressively zoom in on the sculpture—a rendering of the prodigal son being welcomed home and embraced by his father. 

This sculpture bore particular meaning for my father—a United Methodist pastor’s kid who became a pastor himself, then became father to two United Methodist clergy. My father wasn’t the oldest, responsible son—no, he readily identified with the prodigal son. My father was the pastor’s kid who ran from church as he cruised through his teenaged years in Frederick County, Maryland where there wasn’t much for a teenage boy to do besides get in trouble on some back county road. He entered what is now Frostburg University because that year it had topped Playboy’s party school list. Dad was a walking illustration of the story of the prodigal son. 

Dad’s story led him home, back to God. It started when a couple guys invited him to a Bible Study in college, and continued, he admitted, when he and his best friend realized the college girls liked guys who played guitar, especially praise songs. His journey was shaped by a profound call not only back to church, but also to ordained ministry. 

Like many prodigal stories, my father’s didn’t end with one return home. Dad would have several periods of wandering—literally and figuratively. His understanding of God as primarily a God of grace, love and forgiveness was a thread that carried him through both joyful highs and deep, dark lows. 

You see, Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) is not first and foremost about the son (neither the younger, prodigal son, nor the older, responsible—and bitter—son). This is a story (as are ALL of Jesus’ parables) about God and God’s kingdom. About the awesome, unmerited, extravagant love of our God. Our Father. 

This sculpture by Heinz Warneke powerfully captures the Father as the center of the parable—it is the Father who is the core of the sculpture. The son practically fades into the Father’s embrace. 

When I look at the photos—mounted together in a frame which will soon grace the walls of my office here at Calvary—I understand that my father wanted to convey to me not his own story, but God’s story. God’s love.  

It is as if my father, who went to be with his heavenly Father several years ago, wanted me to hear his words each time I see the photos, “Never forget God loves you like this, so unending, so limitless,” and “Tell people this. Just this. All of this.” 

May all the new season you are entering, including this new season I am entering with the congregation at Calvary UMC, be an opportunity to be continually reminded of God’s extravagant love for us, and may we be committed and energized to share our testimony of God’s love, grace and forgiveness with others. 

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Liminal Phases

Years ago, I suspect in college, I learned about what experts call liminal phases, but what peoples throughout the ages have simply understood as necessary transitions or rites of passage.

Wikipedia defines the related term “liminality” as,

“the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rites, when participants no longer hold their preritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite's liminal stage, participants ‘stand at the threshold’ between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the rite establishes.”

Every appointment transition I have entered (changing from one church to another) has felt like a liminal phase for me. An in-between place. There are rituals for a pastor as they leave a church, and practices as they enter a new church, but the time in-between is empty. That is somewhat intentional—a Sabbath time between what are quite intense periods for a pastor—but it is also disorienting.

I am less than a week away from beginning my new appointment as pastor at Calvary UMC in Waldorf, MD. As our bishop asked transitioning pastors, I took the last two Sundays off from my previous appointment. But I have been aware through these past ten months, after leaving my appointment before that at Arden UMC as my family moved to follow my husband’s newjob, that I was living in a prolonged liminal phase.

And boy did I feel that.

As United Methodist clergy we serve, in the phrase we are apt to use, “at the pleasure of the bishop,” which for us captures the uncertainty of the appointment process and the knowledge that the bishop could move us at any time. In reality, however, the vast majority of us serve regular appointment year cycles (with transitions July 1) and have some expectation of how long we might be at our church. Still, the transitions can be disorienting, and re-aligning.

You see, liminal phases are not just about disorientation and ambiguity for their own sakes. Life can bring enough of that. It seems to be that liminal phases are about becoming. About noticing things about ourselves, the world, others and God in ways that are difficult when we are settled into expected patterns and places. And living into newness.

This is one reason I have such fondness for camp and retreat centers (and I suspect one reason I was drawn to my husband, whose life work is to order and operate such spaces). We do our best and deepest growth when our moorings are loose.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like ambiguity or disorientation. These past ten months have been challenging as I’ve had the opportunity (and yes, even been forced) to look at my life, ministry and the world around me in new ways. And like many liminal phases, I suspect the fruits of that growth may not be apparent to me until I settle into this next season.

But I give thanks for God’s faithfulness in this (and all) liminal phases. For patience, though often hard-fought, when I wanted to rush through it. For strength when it bore down on me. For support from others as I’ve processed this phase. For love and care of congregations on both ends of it and indeed, inside of it.

We all walk through liminal phases. The in-between times. Job transitions, life changes, grief and health challenges are just some of the experiences which can bring us to these spaces.

I give thanks that we worship a God who knows these spaces well, and who is able to use them to guide, strengthen and renew us.

May your liminal spaces and phases, even with all their ambiguity and disorientation, be an opportunity for growth, grace and new glimpses of God’s power in your life.

Don't Look Away

I hate pain.

We all do.

Much of life is spent in a passionate journey to avoid pain.

Indeed, humans spend immense amounts of time and energy each year—indeed each day—to avoid pain and suffering, both theirs and that of those they care about. Our lives are filled with stories of the wonderfully successful ways we and others have avoided pain and discomfort—as well as the tragically destructive attempts made.

One of the simplest ways we often seek to avoid or minimize pain is to look away.

You know the drill—the nurse comes to draw blood or give a shot. She gets your arm all prepped and then you close your eyes or turn your head. Those who are able to just look straight at the spot where the pain (albeit brief and generally for a good cause) is often seem to have trained their bodies and mind to overcome what seems like a basic human reaction to pain—avoid and flee.

We are fast approaching one of the most difficult times—if we dare look—in the Christian calendar.

Holy Week.

Those days which mark the final days of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, the hours which mark his trials and crucifixion, and the dark, slow hours that fell over his followers and the world in that painful interlude between death and new life.

It has become so cliché for clergy to note all the people who rush from the “Hosannas” of Palm Sunday to the “Alleluias” of Easter that we’ve begun fighting a guerilla war of sorts in which we have quietly co-opted part of Palm Sunday worship for “Passion” Sunday focus—because you can’t really see Easter if you don’t look through the pain.

But we don’t like looking.

Looking means not only looking at Jesus’ suffering. It means also looking at our own sins and participation in those final days and hours.

We have a hard time being willing to be observers let alone acknowledge our complicity in that pain. Over the years Christians have at times preferred to scape goat those present—in space and time—in those final hours.

We sing songs about how Jesus died for our sins, but we point fingers at the bad guys with whom we foreswear any similarities.

But we can’t claim Jesus’ love for us through suffering if we look away at the suffering our own sin and brokenness created.

Throughout Lent, my congregation and I have been walking a journey through the final hours of Jesus’ life using the props, the symbols, of those experiences. We’ve reflected on those hours, that pain, through items such as the rooster which crowed to book end Peter’s denial, the coins Judas received as payment for his betrayal, and the dice with which the soldiers callously used to make sport of Jesus’ pain and suffering as he died.

The soldiers, we readily say, didn’t even bother to look away. They looked at the pain and suffering and it didn’t affect them at all. How horrible.

Indeed, perhaps our own sins involve not only looking away, but also looking and not seeing.

When the soldiers nailed Jesus to the cross, we forget that it was for our sins that he died.

Theologians through the years have explored exactly how and why that grim exchange of pain and sin and forgiveness works. They have posited theories to explain it. This work is important, but for us, it ought not distract us away.

From looking.

And seeing.

Seeing the very real pain which our sins—even those which seem so small, and even which go unseen by others—cause.

The pain our willful pride and casual self-interest breeds in our own lives, the lives of those around us, and indeed, the heart of God.

This past Sunday, we passed out nails to each person in worship and I invited them to consider what the last nail was—the most recent sin, opposition to God’s will, act of self-justification and division from others—they committed. And then to not look away.

To look and see and feel the pain.

Recognize the pain that each of us have gotten far too good at avoiding.

Because Easter is a fairy tale, a lark, when not grounded in the pain. The pain which must be seen.

This Holy Week, I invite all of us to recognize that we stand at the foot of the cross not as observers, but as participants. As those who walk around, hammer and nails in hand, ready to participate in the pain and suffering of Jesus—God’s very self—and indeed the pain of ourselves and others. But doing so by looking away just enough that it almost seems ok. Soon enough it does feel ok. A small thing.

May you be convicted this Holy Week, by the callousness and avoidance which has been infecting your life. May you pour yourself humbly before God, be willing to see yourself truly and clearly in all your pain and capacity to inflict pain, and in your openness, may God renew your very life, give you eyes to see the path to healing and wholeness. And may you glimpse and be drawn into the redemptive power of God’s love and forgiveness.

Don’t look away.

The best is yet to come.