Liminality

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.' (Matthew 11:28) Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year!  Only it’s not.  Not for everyone.  Not when he’s still away at war.  Not when her body is racked with illness.  Not when there’s an empty chair at the table.  Not when you still feel alone in a crowd.  Not when you’re wishing he hadn't cheated. Conventional wisdom says Christmas is the time when we express our deepest affections to the ones deserving.  But this inevitably forces us to remember the ones we don’t get to share the moment with – the ones who've passed away, moved, or broken our hearts.  And heartbreak, distance, and death (either the death of a loved one or the death of something that was once good in our lives) are reasons that keep us from experiencing peace this Christmas. And if this year this is you, I am truly sorry for your pain and loss. My tendency, during an emotional se

I've spent the last three months moving at what feels like a break-necking pace. From the demands of being a bi-vocational pastor to juggling calendars, spending four weekends attending weddings, buying my first home, moving, preaching, leading two weekend retreats, editing articles, dealing with contractors, counseling parishioners, hosting community-wide church events, preaching, teaching, reading, stressing, visioning, attending committee meetings, cleaning out gutters, making business calls, visiting family, sleeping in hotels, hosting business dinners, studying, raking leaves, buying furniture, writing sermons, holding office hours, taking my wife on dates . . . I’m tired. I tell myself it’s just this season of my life; but honestly, I find this pattern consistent throughout all my adult life. In short, I overwork myself. One reason for being tired (despite my better judgment and my awareness of the issue) is my identity gets wrapped up in what I do. I get self-wort

Pride is essentially competitive; it’s competitive by its very nature.  We are not prideful because we are rich, clever, or good-looking.  We are prideful because we think we are richer, clever-er, and better-looking.  It’s the comparison that makes us proud. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity , The disciples are comparing talents in Mark 9.  They’re debating who’s greatest in the kingdom.  They’re debating who God loves more.  And it’s competitive by nature.  C.S. Lewis calls this pride, and scripture says it is the deadliest of all sins.  Pride is to think you are better, more righteous, and more important than the person beside you.  It is to think you deserve something no one else does.  It is to look in the mirror and see more than what is actually there.   And I think this is why the disciples, when Jesus asked what they were talking about, remained silent.  They looked upon the face of Christ and admitted with shameful silence that they were debating their place in

If Jesus were pastoring in a mainline, Protestant church today and was asked the same question scribes and scholars ask in Mark 12.28-31, I think he’d omit the “. . . as you love yourself” part.   Not because its outdated or bad advice, don’t get me wrong, but because the life of pastor, the life of a minister, the life of anyone in a helping profession proves time and time again to be too demanding, too time consuming, too filled with need and pain of others to ever take time to focus on ourselves.  Jesus would know this.  He’d know Mondays are administrative days where we look at the week, schedule meetings, upload the Podcast from yesterday’s sermon, make plans to implement the new children’s curriculum, run a church staff meeting, catch up with what the parishioners are saying on Facebook, respond to the twenty-five emails, get a volunteer to fill in for Mother’s Day Out, correspond with the secretary, update the prayer concern list, order new lapel microphones for th

“[And] they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”  (Luke 2.46, NRSV)  This week hundreds of thousands of students flock back to school ready to learn, ready to read, and ready to engage their minds with the problems and queries of our day.  I hope each one is as profoundly impacted by a teacher as I was nearly 10 years ago. It was my freshman year of college.  The class was Christian Doctrine.  One day we were introduced to feminist interpretation.  It’s the notion that when reviewing scripture, church history, religious rhetoric, etc. we pay attention to the increasingly apparent patriarchal hierarchies and rhetorical dominances.   Instead of taking them for face value, we listen for the still, small voice of how the context portrays the underprivileged (i.e. women). Honestly, I thought the whole thing was stupid. And that’s when my professor asked me a question that silenced my ego in front of the whole

Have you ever thought about the difference between places and spaces?  A   place   (as I would define it) is a location with determined boundaries.  A   space   is the opposite; it is a location with undetermined boundaries. Examples may help here. Take sanctuaries.  Their boundaries are determined with brick and mortar, walls and ceilings.  They’re also laced with memories, rituals, rites of passage, storylines, and moments of sadness, joy, and celebrations.  They’re marked (by each congregant) with an energy that cannot be erased.  The Celts call this a “thin place.”  They believe that the veil between heaven and earth gets “thin” enough in some places that heaven can actually be felt on earth.  Mountaintops, vacation spots, front porch swings, bedrooms, ball fields, and breakfast nooks are more good examples of   places . Spaces , on the other hand, are void of content, memory and energy.  They’re filled with emptiness (if that’s even possible), bareness and purposele

I pray that, according the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit . . .” (Ephesians 3.16b)
 My mother teaches school.  She’s on block scheduling, so for an hour and a half each day she has planning period.  She learned a long time ago that part of her planning period must be devoted to writing letters to people in her community.  Hand written letters.  Not emails. She believes in the art of handwritten letters, and by spending her time writing to other people she strengthens her inner being. I had a professor in college, he was the epitome of ‘absent-minded professor,’ but every day he would shut and lock his office door at lunchtime, take off his shoes, and eat barefooted on the floor.  He argues he is never as close to God in any other moment in life than in that time.  The intentionality he gives in the thirty minutes on the floor strengthens his inner being. A friend of mine spends every Monday eveni

In a postmodern, post-denominational, post-Christian, post-religious, post-everything world, the church has floundered on developing a consistent message to help transform culture. The church attempted to entertain – but not many twenty-somethings woke up to hear a bad guitarist sing shallow lyrics. The church then attempted to become as large and as user friendly as airport terminals – but it ended up being a three-ring circus, overcharging for books and Starbucks coffee. The church then attempted to push against culture by lighting candles and sitting in circles – but all it did was ostracize the very people who pay to keep our lights on. This midlife identity crisis watered down the history of our faith, confused culture, and unfortunately silenced our voice of change in the local community. Yet culture continues to look outside of its “self” for critical engagement and understanding. And where does it turn? To the place that’s hosting the most critical conversations! Not th

Third century mathematician, Archimedes, coined the phrase, “Give me a lever and a place to stand and I’ll move the world.”  At the time he was talking about the power of a tool that uses force and a fulcrum to displace mass in order to create momentum and movement for a fixed object. But I think he also meant it to stand for a whole lot more. For instance, the claim that we can actually move the world is the claim we make when we devote our lives to Christ.  We emerge from the baptismal waters ready to join the cause of Christ; ready to offer grace, love, and forgiveness to a world trapped in sin, despair and regret.  It’s like a billboard shouting to the world, “I’m ready to help move you a few degrees closer to God.”  But in order to make this happen there are two key ingredients needed – a lever and a place to stand. The lever is the skill sets you acquire and the spiritual gifts God grants, and it looks different for all of us.  Some people hold the levers of love, forgiv

If there’s one thing I wish we’d all experience, it's the sacred in the midst of the mundane.   But how do we do it? Church history argues the way we turn this wish into a reality is by practicing ‘spiritual disciplines.’  But if you are anything like me, I’m sure you’re saying, “Who has the time?”  We function on a level in which we constantly feel overworked, overwhelmed, tired, anxious, stressed, or a combination of them. What we need is a built-in, always reliable moment in which we can encounter the divine without it throwing us too far off course.  And I think we have it.  It’s the spiritual discipline of eating.  By definition, any activity in which we engage repeatedly is a practice or a discipline. The amazing thing about eating is that we all do it . . . several times a day . . . week after month after decade.  So this ritual can actually represent a spiritual vehicle for experiencing the divine.  Many people take yoga classes, martial arts, etc. (both wo

My ideal for the institutional church is this:  Live, love, and grow as an inclusive community that offers everyone a seat at the table.   To live together is to accept the humanness of the “other” and to not judge them for it.  To love together means genuine community is formed with Christ-likeness at the center.  To grow together suggests there is movement, momentum, education and discipleship taking place.  All three of these actions are vital to my ideal of what Christian community looks like.  Unfortunately, though, my ideal, crafted and tested in school, is getting punctured in a world where churches are in fact fractured.  I hear stories every day of how churches fail to live and love together – stories of congregations splitting over issues that, otherwise, could be resolved.  And I argue a reason for the dissension is that the congregation no longer grows together, for growth happens when people learn to live and to love together.    So how do fractured

John 20:19-31 may be my favorite text to preach.  It touches the core of what we humans deal with day and day out – hurt.  For numerous reasons Thomas feels, as do we, that it’s not enough that God conquers death.  For numerous reasons Thomas, as well as us, becomes dogmatic about seeing God in his life.  The real truth is his faith is slipping further and further away and he isn’t ready to accept someone else’s understanding of who God is. Thomas just keeps thinking about how God has not shown up in his life. We agonize over our plight, like Thomas, we fret over our predicaments, and pray for God to show God’s self and to help relieve our pain, but sometimes it seems like we are praying to a wall – a wall that never responds.  We spend our lives searching to fill this God-shaped void.  We spend thousands of dollars, thousands of hours, and thousands of worries trying to figure out meaning for ourselves in life.  We calculate our burdens, compare them to our desires, a

Our sin . . . for us religious people . . . is what separates us from knowing, loving, and embracing the divine.  It’s what keeps us from validating the humanity of the other.  It’s what keeps us completely and utterly lost.  It’s a spiritual disconnect.  And I think it begins with a lack of trust and a lack of gratitude.  We don’t trust our place as God’s child so we “hypocritically tolerate sin while verbally espousing spirituality.” [1] And I see this in myself too – it’s my own “lostness.”  I don’t want to live this way.  I want to confess the sin that looms over my life like a black veil.  I hate it.  I’m ready to name it and take it down.  But what I fear more than admitting it is imagining what you may think of me when you find out I have it.  So I bury it and try to be the only one that truly knows about it.  I live hypocritically. This “lostness” is hard to admit because it’s tied so closely to my desire to be good and virtuous.  I diligently try to be acceptable, li

It's clear, when looking at the scene of Jesus on the cross, that we as humans have the capacity to hurt each other, deliberately.  We have it in us to inflict pain.  What Jesus underwent at the cross was no mere accident.  He was not inadvertently run over by a horse or struck down by random lightning.  He died as the result of premeditated strategy.  Human beings, knowing precisely what they were doing, planned out every detail of this process of torture and execution as a deliberate means to an end.  Crucifixion was the strategy the Roman Empire had devised to keep occupied people under control.  The Romans had successfully extended their domination over the whole of the Mediterranean Basin, and as a way of maintaining that control, the process of crucifixion had proven exceedingly useful.  It served two purposes.  It not only eliminated troublemakers from occupied lands, but it also served as an example to any other would-be rebels who might have contemplated lifting th

It’s hard to understand the motives of Peter in Mark 8:31-38.  We place our worldview into scripture and wag our finger claiming him to be an arrogant hothead for rebuking Jesus.  We do this because we’re accustomed to hearing the things that get Peter so riled up.  We’re accustomed to hearing about Jesus having to die.  But the idea of losing a life to gain another makes no sense to Peter.  Think about his worldview.  Salvation was supposed to come to the earth as a powerful force that destroys the Roman enemies and sets the social order right.  Salvation was supposed to come in on the wings of a soldier riding a horse waving a rebellion flag.  Salvation was supposed to usurp the powers and principalities of the day, not be destroyed by them.  And Peter thought he had all this in Jesus.  I mean up to this point Jesus had done it all right.  He’d healed the sick, cared for the needy, began usurping the powers and principalities.  So why would Jesus have to die?  Why would J

The church is a by-product of Jesus becoming king . . . not the reason for it.  When we get caught up in church politics, church life, church decisions, church functions, church this, and church that, we miss the greater message of the gospel.  We forget that the church is a by-product of Jesus’ ministry . . . not the reason for it.  Jesus’ ministry is social, communal, and justice filled.  If we want to "be" the church . . . if we want to be the hands and feet of Christ, then we need to replace our understanding of church "doing" with church "being."   But how do we do this?  I think to answer this question we must turn to gospels.   It shows that Jesus came for a social revolution.    Jesus’ states, “What you do unto the least of these, you do unto me” (Matt 25).  What you do for the local community, the services you offer for the greater and common good, the love you give to the unloved, the attention you give to those who never get it,

Jesus is no longer king over Atlanta.  Y’all didn’t know this?  Oh it’s true.  Two weeks ago in the news, Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, here in Atlanta, was crowned king by Jewish leaders as well as his church body.   As a matter of fact, they held a special service last week in which they brought out a Jewish Holocaust scroll, stood Bishop Long in the middle of the stage, wrapped the scroll around his head, screamed in the microphone that he was being cocooned in the word of God protecting him from attacks coming from all sides all the while preparing himself to emerge as king.  Then they opened the scrolls and out walked Bishop Long with his arms opened and the church roaring with ovation.  He’s there king.  And it gets worse.  They proceed to bring out a throne, set it on the stage, invite Bishop Long to sit in his rightful place as a king.  They hand him the scroll only to pick him up and march him around the sanctuary!  They have their kin