Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

We glorify wealth, strength, and fame. We take people who already have those attributes and lift them higher as our leaders, our examples, our heroes. We like a take-no-prisoners attitude. We like the rough and tumble cowboy who dusts himself off after a fight and takes on the next challenge with little concern over who was injured moments before. Then Jesus comes along. We rush to see him at the courts of the Temple, turning over the tables of the money changers and running off those selling animals for sacrifice. Then we turn a blind eye to all Jesus had to say in regard to leadership, violence, peace, and the attitudes that God prizes. We ignore the character and attitudes he prizes among the disciples and his categorization of what he wanted of those who would lead and be at the head of the mission of spreading the reach of God’s Reign on earth. Jesus called common men to follow him as disciples charged with learning, retaining, and transmitting his teachings and embo...

A pastor with a national platform just announced that evangelicals voting for a certain candidate have "sold their souls to the devil." 1- The gospel is not partisan. 2- No political party or politician owns the gospel. 3- No two Christians believe everything alike. We are called to lives of transformation, not some static definition or litmus test of faith. 4- Politics is messy. Democracy is the art of compromise when it works at its best. Demonizing a party, a platform, or those taking a political position is an exercise in writing off people for whom Christ died. 5- As a pastor, I don't expect all my congregants to vote the way I do. I would hope that over the course of our lives we would be so transformed by Christ that we would actually change the way we vote, think, believe, and interact with others. Being faithful believers does not mean we are all on the same page. It means we are seeking to follow Christ Jesus more closely today tha...

The lie of white supremacy is that I am better, stronger, smarter, and more worthy than people of some other race. If that were true, I would never feel inferior, threatened, or intimidated by the actions and successes of those other races of humanity. Allowing for their full humanity would be no threat to my position. Michael Jordan would never feel threatened by me on the basketball court or the baseball diamond. He would have nothing to prove in measuring himself against me. We could play HORSE all day long, and he would win every time. We could play one-on-one, and I would be lucky to take control of the ball ball from him, much less get off a shot. There would be no contest it, for I would be far outclassed, outperformed, and outmaneuvered with no hope of scoring the first point. I played ping pong one time against the fourth rated ping pong player in Brazil. He gave me a lead of ten points to start the match. I got lucky. I managed to score a couple of points on a cou...

I am no school administrator. I am no epidemiologist. I am no public health expert. I am a pastor, charged with the care of my parishioners and the well-being of the community in which I serve. I have had many varied experiences in multiple countries, studied more than a handful of languages, and am used to processing new information and cultural contexts, and am trained in strategy development. Over the last few months, I have had a lot of new information to process, just like so many others struggling to make sense of shifting information about the Covid19 pandemic that has taken the world by storm. I have watched its exponential growth, read guidance from my denominational leadership, read what epidemiologists have been saying, and tried to make sound decisions regarding the welfare of the congregations under my charge. We have taken steps to find new ways to be the church in uncertain times, always following John Wesley’s principle of “Do No Harm.” I would like to share...

I’ve been the only native English speaker in the room on many occasions. I’ve been the only white face in the room. I’ve sat in the governor’s office surrounded by Latin American political and religious leaders after 9/11 who were concerned about the US using the attack to launch a new war of reprisal. I’ve been the only North American face walking through impoverished neighborhoods, slums, and favelas . I’ve been the only foreigner on the bus with people hanging out the back door. I’ve been the non-citizen in the police office giving a crime report. I know what it is like to be the minority voice, the only person of my race, the only one of my nationality, the only one of my social class, education level, hair color, and so many other things. What I don’t know is what it is like to be the minority voice as one who is considered less for that minority status. Growing up in Brazil, I lived a life of privilege. Oh, we were not wealthy or even really comfortable by standards in the ...

I grew up on the notion that the Hebrew Scriptures were the recorded history of Israel. That was meshed together with the notions in school that talked about how the victors write the story. While the Bible was held in esteem as being of a different character, it was still presented with the same flavor that it must be the positive description of Israel’s history, lauding the accomplishments of Yahweh’s people across the centuries of revelation. As time went by, however, I came to appreciate a different aspect of the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as the writings of the New Testament. They may indeed have been penned by the victors in some sense, but they were not written from the perspective in which we cast history as the lauding of our heroes of old and the mythos of their accomplishments making us greater than all comers. There is a very different aspect of the Hebrew Scriptures than what we find in that kind of historiography. While the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament do...

I’m sick and tired of all the news. On top of the pandemic we have been dealing with for the last three months, now it’s all about black men being killed by police, rioting, protesting, violence, burning, shootings, demonstrations, and videos of people inciting violence and looting. There have been a few nice stories and videos that have shown solidarity, such as the sheriff in Flint, MI and the Camden, NJ law enforcement. It feels, however, like a constant bombardment of bad news, distressing headlines, and painful stimuli. I want it to end. I want it to stop. I want the movie we are watching to reach its conclusion and just let us go home in peace. That’s what I want. That’s how I feel. I’m not the one bearing the brunt of this week after week, month after month, year after year of my life. I’m not the one who can’t just change the channel, log off Facebook, stop looking at Twitter, and go back to a life where the violence felt by people of color does not impact my life. For f...