Liminality

This Christmas I was moved by the words of Frederick Buechner.  For my last blog of the year I offer to you his wisdom rather than my own ramblings.  I hope it does for you what it continues to do for me. Frederick Buechner says in his book The Faces of Jesus: On the dark bulwark of Elsinore, Shakespeare has Marcellus and Haratio reflecting on Christ in the opening scene of Hamlet: Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairly takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is the time These lines from the first scene of Hamlet in a sense say it all.  We tend to think time is just progression . . . as moment following moment, day following day, in relentless flow, the kind of time a clock or calendar measures.  But we ...

I once had a professor ask during class presentations, “What story gets repeated over and over by the collective conscious of our country?  When families or communities gather to tell stories . . . which one always gets told?” We spent several minutes tossing out ideas.  We thought maybe the American dream . . . people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps . . . is a retold narrative.  But that doesn’t really work.  Maybe the Pledge of Allegiance?  Everyone knows it but it’s not really a narrative.  Perhaps Santa Claus is a consistent narrative . . . but not even it bears the weight of our poly-cultural world.  Finally, we though Billy Graham . . . our world can stand and tell a story of how they were sinful and then set right, how they walked the aisle, how they joined the church.  But then we quickly remembered that not everyone in America is Christian and the youth today unfortunately don’t know who Billy Graham is.  So we conc...

My wife and I went looking at Christmas lights last Christmas. We saw the usual carolers, snowmen, nutcrackers, reindeers, sleighs and so forth. At one particular house, we saw two things I'll never forget. The first was a birthday cake covered in white lights. Green lettering spelled out "Happy Birthday Jesus." The theologian in me cringed for fear of the message being sent with this cake, but all in all I thought it was a cute gesture. Jesus did have a birthday, and whether it was during the winter solstice is probably irrelevant. I still hesitate, though, representing Jesus' birth so casually. What got me more than the birthday cake – what set me off as a theologian and still more as a Christian – was that standing beside the cake was a white baby Jesus lying in a manger with St. Nick overlooking him. The image was irresponsible, unbiblical and an unfortunate step backward for all the churches trying to separate the enmeshed imagery of Santa...

Human perception embraces  ideas  about reality.  People see a water bottle and then construct a reality about the essence of what the water bottle should be. The problem, however, is that people’s perception is not always correct. But it’s not necessarily our fault.  We collect our data, analyze it and perceive the best possible conclusions on life, faith, love and reality only to find we didn't have enough data.  There’s more to the story we didn't know.  And that’s where conflict arises – when we find out we don’t have enough data.  That’s probably what Mary and Joseph thought when they went to Jerusalem on a donkey.  They went on faith they’d have a place to sleep.  They went on faith they’d be taken care of.  But there wasn’t a place to stay.  They weren’t taken care of.  They had to leave town.  They fought hard to get to Bethlehem and find an Inn Keeper still awake. But the ...

One year ago this week I was called to be pastor of National Heights Baptist Church.  One year ago this week was my first sermon and service with them.  And guess what . . . I have no clue what I talked about or said.  I don’t even have it saved.   But don’t laugh too quickly!  Do you remember what you did a year ago this week?  Unless it was a traumatic experience the answer is probably like mine . . . a little hazy.  How about three years ago?  Five years ago?  What made you happy, anxious, or confident this week in those years?  What did you dream about or wish so desperately for yourself and for others?  What did you love and cherish?  How did you embrace romance or seek intimacy?  What were your hopes and fears?  For most of us, what preoccupied our minds then, are a faint fuzz in our conscious memory.  Events that shackled us to the  newsreel seem like flashes from the past.  So...

I conducted a wedding a while back for some friends.  I arrive one hour before the wedding.  The wedding party beats me by about twenty minutes and the bride is no longer speaking to her mother.  It’s a long story and I don’t think I really know all of it, but what I do know is that when I walked through the door I have one of the saddest conversations of my life.    The mother of the bride meets me and says, “May I talk to you in private?”  I take her by the hand and sit her down.  I look at her intently and ask, “What’s wrong?” “I can’t go through with this, Barrett.  I can’t be here.  I’m not upset with my daughter or at anyone else.  I’m upset with me.  Here I stand at my only daughter’s wedding and I’m with a man I met a month ago.  Her father hates me and I don’t look good in this dress.  I’m uncomfortable. I’m out of place.  I just want to go home.” And with tears in her eyes she cries, “I ...

I’ve been pastoring traditional, Baptist churches for four years.  I’ve worked in them for six.  In these years I’ve heard the cries of God’s people.  I’ve listened to their stories.  And a lot of these stories are similar – even though the geography isn’t.  It’s as if the southern United States carries with it (in traditional, white, Baptist circles) a collective consciousness.  In other words, there appears to be a single, unifying thought in which everyone nods in agreement with.  And to be honest . . . I’m bothered by it.  This unifying thought is, “We think we’re dying, and we don’t have much more to offer God.” This is the saddest picture I could imagine for a church, but it’s not the first time God’s people felt this way.  Have you ever read Isaiah?  These fifth century Judeans return home from exile . . . back to their homeland . . . back to where they used to worship . . . but it’s to a city that’s utterly destroyed....

Six months ago I vowed to honor, to love, and to do life until death with my best friend.  Looking back, I can honestly say I didn’t know all the subcategories that go unmentioned when making these vows. These subcategories include juggling class loads together, crunching out research papers, embracing job changes, working seventy hour weeks, facilitating church functions, going shopping for the sake of spending time together, anticipating each other’s needs, coordinating wedding plans, taking mini vacations, laboring through Clinical Pastoral Education, traveling for work, preparing lesson plans, and saying goodbye to old friends.  More subcategories include battling illnesses, ulcers and the strep throats.  Fighting over who makes the bed, folds the laundry, or takes out the trash.  In reality, we’ve vowed to laugh over how much I don’t know about cooking (and maybe life in general).  We’ve vowed to play countless games of Sequence and Banana-grams. ...

Once upon a time there was a park-keeper whose job was to pick up liter on the spiked pole. Surrounded by the glorious beauty of flowers and trees, with the sun sparkling through the leaves, he only had eyes for the garbage he had to collect and the damage it did. The park-keeper could only see the bad, and was blind to the beauty. I can’t think of anything worse in life than being blind to the beauty that’s right in front of us. And no story depicts this more clearly than story of the older brother in the Prodigal Son. The oldest son is still in the fields when his brother returns. He comes in at the end of the day and stumbles into the feasting and dancing! Frustrated that he can’t remember the cause of such celebration or that they would even wait on him, he grabs a servant and says, “What’s all this?” The servant replies, “Your brother – he’s come home!” Filled with rage the oldest son refuses to come inside. Yet the father sees this tantrum through the Palest...

A king wanting to celebrate his son’s wedding invites the big-wigs and big-names and puts the wedding announcement in the paper. TV shows run commercials about the cost of the dress and the size of the cake. I mean this wedding is going to be big. And why not . . . this prince is worth it! So the invitations go out . . . and they are nice invitations . . . but nobody RSVPs. Nobody cares. Nobody goes. So the king sends his servants to find out why but half of them are killed. Killed? Who would murder servants hunting down RSVPs? But I know you already know what’s going on - I mean come on Barrett, this is Matthew 21-22. Pay attention to the setting of the story. Jesus is in the temple having a private conversation with the Temple rulers. No one else is there. He’s two chapters away from being murdered, and he’s making enemies left and right. This parable must be about the religious leaders. So it makes sense. The kingdom of heaven is like a banquet that God’...

I preached from Ephesians yesterday. I learned Ephesus is a city of great size, rich with money, opportunity, and resources. Its church also has resources and opportunities for growth. But it’s small. Its direction is shaky and the people are full of anxiety. I think all churches get this way. Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading the history of my own church. What once started as a growing community full of resources, energy, and optimism has now turned into a congregation that may or may not feel up to the challenges of our day. We think we lack resources, we think we lack young energy, and we talk with a pessimistic discourse. And perhaps for good reason. Our last few years have been rocky. We’ve had ministers split the church and incredible ministry initiatives put to rest. We stare now at mounds of debt and mounds of anxiety. We aren’t as confident in our identity as we used to be and we don’t feel as up to the challenges that lie ahead. We ...

Standing ‘six cubits and a span’ theologian Ralph Klein says Goliath would be 9’9” carrying 127 pounds of armor. Goliath is big. He’s mean. And he stands on the fault lines of war calling out to Saul to send out his best warrior to fight. At that moment David, a goat herder, walks into the temple courts and demands to see the king. He stands confidently as he reels off his credentials before Saul saying, “I’ ve saved lambs from lions and I can save you from the Philistines. For it is not me that will win this fight but rather YHWH .” So Saul clothes David with his armor but to no avail. It’s too heavy. He sheds it, picks up a sling and a rock, and heads out onto the battlefield. Goliath is fit to be tied when he sees it’s a boy the Israelites have selected to fight him. So he runs after him with an armor bearer. And David takes off running too. Scripture says as Goliath charged with a sword, spear and javelin but David charges with the Lord of Hosts. What a...

The majority of my sermons are transferable. In other words, I write them generically in order to use them in different contexts and settings without changing much of the verbiage. I used to pride myself on being able to write this way, but now I’m learning that this is not always the best preaching practice. Diana Butler Bass reminds me in her book The Practicing Congregation that preachers must speak out of their own narrative, in their own time, to their own people. To do anything else is to soften or neglect the importance of the gospel for that community of grace. Tom Long’s The Witness of Preaching takes this image a step further and argues that preachers are only preachers because they are birthed out of a congregation and given the holy task of witnessing . Witnessing, Long argues, takes on two forms: seeing and speaking. A witness may go to the biblical text with eagerness and readiness to see or she/he may stumble upon something unintended. Regardless, i...

For whatever reason, now, I find myself in a liminal space reflecting as I gear up for another semester of marriage, school, ministry, recruiting, traveling, speaking, learning, preaching, and pastoring. And I’m noticing a trend – it’s difficult to live out of my “best” self. In other words, the rat race of life, scheduling, recruiting, preaching, etc. break me down, loosen my screws, and distort my perception of productivity. I think I’m managing but in reality I’m coping. I replace peace with prestige and tranquility with titles. I get absorbed in what I need to get done and overlook or dismiss the people closest to me. I get angry when something causes me to look bad and get upset with myself for getting angry. Reflecting on this anger makes me hate myself. Hating myself causes me to doubt my ability to perform which causes me to distrust God’s calling on my life which generates endless insecurities about my own belovedness. In other words, I’m constantly living ou...

The latest buzz from the postmodern, millennial group in Baptist life is that “they don’t care about the conservative resurgence.” There is also a growing feeling that says, “They don’t care about the institutional church.” Perhaps a third reality is emerging saying, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” I realize these are generalizations but I’d be surprised if you disagree with them. Fueled by a desire to ‘hang with the herd,’ these young adults refuse, reject, and rebuff denominational loyalty for fear of causing separation or marginalization. Words like “community,” “intentionality,” and “ecumenicism” are mentioned way before words like “doctrinal,” “controversy” or “resurgence.” And it appears that this is happening on both sides of the aisle. Millennials cannot bear the thought of intentionally ostracizing a group. They tip their caps in appreciation to denominational bodies like CBF or SBC but do little to strengthen, to support, or to foster solidarity w...

There’s an old story told of a father who left his dime store to his two sons in his last will and testament. After a terrible fight the brothers split the dime store, became competitors in the same town, and stopped speaking to one another for twenty years. The fight was over the misplacement of a one dollar bill. After twenty years of fighting, a well dressed man entered one of the dime stores telling a story of how twenty years ago he stole a dollar and he’d now come to repay his debt. In tears the one brother takes the man across town to his competing brother’s store asking him to tell his brother the same story. With tears in their eyes, thanks to the honesty of this well-dressed man, the two brothers reconciled. [1] This story sets in bold the dynamics that are always at work in our world. We never approach a situation, a relationship, or a conversation with full neutrality. We invariably bring with us certain images or emotional predispositions and these fact...

The ascension is our most neglected doctrine. We don’t know what to do with it. Our liberal friends dismiss it on account of skepticism and rationality. Our extremely conservative friends believe scripture tells us exactly where Jesus goes – up. But then what? Where did that lead? Where did he land? Did he land? How far is up? We've been to space, we didn’t see heaven. Or did we see heaven? We've been as far up as science can take us – is Jesus higher than that? If we try hard enough could we fly a space shuttle into heaven? If Jesus went up in time and space, doesn’t that mean he is still in time and space? Where is this up? Can we get to this up? Is Jesus still up there? You can see the difficulty we have with this unique moment in scripture. So what do we believe about the ascension? A lot of people believe it is a symbolic way of saying that Jesus became “spiritually” present everywhere. I’m sure you’ve thought this on some level. When Jesu...

The world didn’t end on May 21, 2011. Rev. Harold Camping was wrong. He thought we had to leave this world to be with God -- and that is what matters most. I disagree. Passages like John 14, Revelation 21, and Micah 6, scream out to me that the ‘here and now’ is what matters most. I admire Camping for his sense of expectancy but I’m afraid his energy is misplaced. Expectancy is not waiting on Jesus to bring you home to heaven. It’s, rather, believing in the ‘here and now,’ in the ‘ongoing creation of the world,’ in ‘heaven on earth’ (where we abide in God). I’d argue we’re already home. I believe this world matters. It matters so much that after Jesus dies, he comes back to it – physically and spiritually. This tells me there’s work to be done, lives to influence, environments to protect, messages to preach, families to love, and worlds to restore. So live with expectancy – expecting to see God, expecting the world to change, and expecting that through J...

In John 10 Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.” He’s telling us things enter our world, intersect in our lives and rob us of our joys, our loves, our loved ones. At times, these sheep are us. We are taken from our home, we’re stripped from our core, true selves. Things enter our lives seeking to destroy who we are and what we’re meant to be. We lose sheep to cancer, to pain, to struggle, to divorce, to death. We have relationships stolen from us, children who die before we do, and just like the sheep – we don’t see it coming. And Jesus knows this. That’s why he tells us to be aware. Christians must know there’s evil in the world and all sheep need a shepherd. So that’s Jesus’ role – to be our shepherd? Right? He’s whom we look to in times of strife? Sort of. Jesus does say in scripture he is the good shepherd, but he also says, “I am the gate.” N...

Churches this Sunday will give out a rose and clap for the oldest mother in the sanctuary. They will sing songs about family and pay no attention to the females who haven’t birthed a baby. They will preach children’s sermons that center on obedience and adult sermons that challenge everyone to call home. This Sunday, Christians across America will be challenged to honor their father and mother. Is it fair, though, to ask those whose parents abandoned or abuse them to honor their father and mother? What about females who accept a call from God to go to seminary despite their parents saying they are forbidden? What about the men who discover they are gay and are disbarred from the family tree? What about the young lady who never meets her dad? Or the crack baby born into a hostile environment? What about the girl whose parents give too little too late? Are these people required by God to “honor” their parents? It appears society’s answer is, “No!” In a recent edi...