Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

Ervin was with me when I got a call yesterday. He told me he had taken several last week and told them to call back if they wanted to speak with me. The call went pretty much as I expected. Someone was upset by what they had been hearing in the community about the church, and they wanted to straighten me out on what the Bible says. Well, I’ve actually read the Bible. I got the Bible Award at my Christian High School for the highest grades in Bible class in the school’s 25-year history. I took several Bible courses in college. I have a degree from seminary. I’ve read the Bible through multiple times in three languages, translated several books from Greek, worked through many passages in Hebrew, and read at least a dozen commentaries all the way through. I take the Bible seriously. When I was asked by a parishioner a few years back about homosexuality, I gave a very cursory response along with the promise to do a deep dive and get back on it. That took a few weeks, but it was im...

Over the course of some 37 years of church and denominational ministry, I have repeatedly encountered people who have a rather magical perspective on sin. Well, you may understand that better if I were to use the term superstitious. They believe that sin is some kind of nebulously defined legal code that God has only revealed in part, only to a few, or otherwise developed with no guiding principle. Understanding sin is something like a crap shoot at a gambling table, where one tosses a marker only to discover after that fact what the results will be. It’s kind of like giving someone flowers one thinks are pretty, not knowing how the gift will be interpreted, as specific flowers and specific colors may have different meanings within different cultural circles. A chrysanthemum may be seen as a beautiful flower or a symbol of death. How then, can I figure out what meaning it has to God? Just so we are clear, none of my seminary classes focused on how to define what is and is not s...

Gathering Words: We gather today for several reasons. We come to bid farewell to a loved one who has passed from this life into the next. We gather to support one another in this phase of our shared grief at Dora’s passing. We gather to gain encouragement for ourselves as we face our own mortality, experiencing the death of one we have loved and who has loved us. We gather to join our hearts with one another and seek to better understand the imponderables of life with all its uncertainties. Grief is a strange beast. It attacks each of us differently. Each episode of grief is different, as there is always so much to process and we cannot do that all at once. We have each lost someone different in Dora’s passing. She was mother. She was wife. She was friend. She was grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin, neighbor, coworker, volunteer, nurse, advocate, organizer, choir member, bowling companion, and missionary. We will all miss different aspects of who Dora was according to our i...

We have some popular misconceptions about prayer. They come from a host of places other than the Bible and Jesus’ teaching. Yes, prayer on some level includes pleading with God. Prayer is not asking God to perform our will. At least, that is not effective prayer, nor what Jesus teaches us in regard to petitioning God. If all prayer is for us is rubbing a magic lamp to gain access to our three incontrovertible wishes, we have missed the boat. That is the essential purpose behind magic and the fertility cult practices from the backdrop surrounding Ancient Israel. Yes, we are to make our desires known in prayer, but then we are to back off from them as Jesus portrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” The gospel reading in the lectionary for next Sunday is another case in point. The disciples come up to Jesus, saying, “Please say ‘Yes’!” Jesus does not fall for than any more than the wise parent of a preeschooler does. Once they have presented...

A female colleague was recently told by a leader of her congregation that he felt more comfortable with a male pastor. Unfortunately, that is not a highly unusual comment. I have heard something akin to it several times myself. We hear such comments, but we don’t really stop to consider what is behind them. It got me to thinking. Why would someone comment to anyone that they feel more comfortable with a male pastor? I came up with a lot of questions, but very few answers. Is it because men are more prone to be sexual abusers than women? Is it because men are more likely to view power and authority as weapons by which to control others? Is it because men are more likely to be seen in society as authority figures? Is it because our culture tells us that women should not be leaders? Is it because we tend to view the position of pastor as one of authority rather than the service of a shepherd? Is it because we are still reeling from a history in which...

Trust is easily broken. It is not easily mended. On one level we know that all too well. On another level, we ignore how that same principle causes mayhem on an organizational and social scale. If we find it hard to trust, we also find it hard to get along, to work together, to create something beyond ourselves, to jointly become the body of Christ according to the charge laid upon us. We live in a society that has weaponized distrust. Perhaps, I should state that we are one of many such societies. After all, distrust has often been weaponized throughout history. I remember having a conversation with a highway patrol officer in Brazil about what was then a new slate of traffic safety legislation that had just passed into law. It was built upon European and North American traffic standards, laying out a host of sweeping reforms for driving safety, including seat-belt usage, limiting vehicle occupancy to the number of properly installed seat belts, DUI regulation, and so many th...

I've read the entire Bible in three languages & in various versions beginning in 6th Grade. (I lost count of how many times after the first 8 systematic readings.) I've studied, translated, and taught it for decades. I've read commentaries, taught Sunday school, preached, listened to sermons, gone to conferences, graduated from seminary, and gone back for further study. The Bible does not jive with conservative ideologies. Yahweh's economics place people over profits. Yahweh's welcome is for outsiders. Jesus was killed by those clinging to the status quo of power structures, heritage, and culture. Jesus tells us to love one another, then goes beyond that, saying #LoveYourEnemies. The Bible is not about propping up power structures, upholding cultural traditions, or clinging to the old ways. It consistently calls us to embrace new categories of people we have yet to see as loved by God. It consistently demands that poverty be seen as an evil for wh...