Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

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...

When I wrote tomorrow's sermon, I was unaware of George Floyd. I had no knowledge of his existence. I had no concept that an officer would hear him utter the words, "I can't breathe," before becoming unresponsive for 173 seconds before the officer's knee was removed from his neck. 173 seconds is longer than I normally heat my mug of tea in the microwave as I anxiously await it being ready. 173 seconds is much longer than I am willing to wait for a page on my browser to load. 173 seconds is longer than it takes me to relieve myself and wash my hands well. 173 seconds is much longer than most of us can hold our breaths. 173 seconds is easily long enough to recognize that someone whose neck I have been pinning down is in severe distress, when they have been unresponsive all the while. It is easy to gauge the impulse behind one's actions in such a context. It is easy to understand what is driving one's decisions. Pinning another with a...

I grew up under the notion that justice was somehow separate from the gospel. It belonged to the sphere of society and political order, and the gospel had nothing to do with it. The gospel as I perceived it was fixated on issues of eternity, far beyond the socio-political realities around me. There were a few mild implications on my parents’ work in regard to the dire economic issues surrounding us on all sides, but my traditions keep a pretty high wall separating questions of faith, doctrine, and theology from peering into issues of social justice, economic inequality, racism, and other forms of inequality. That was a comfortable place to live, growing up in one of the world’s nations most plagued by economic and social inequality. We weren’t in Bangladesh or the caste system of India, but we were surrounded by mansions bordered by slums with a hundred families having access to a single working faucet. Children wandered around the favelas without pants, for there was no money fo...

I miss life as we knew it. I want us to get back to that. We all feel that way. A return to normalcy just seems like what the doctor ordered. We know better. We all do. We still want what we want. It is tough having to adjust to a reality we don't really understand and never prepared to face. I want to get everyone back together at church on Sunday. It would feel like an emotional release of pent up frustration. We would gather afterwards in the fellowship hall for a shared meal. People would stick around and play table games, talk, catch up with one another, and feel really connected for the first time in a long time. Oh, we would be having the time of our lives! Literally. Two weeks later, I would likely be calling everybody back together for one or more memorial services. Then we would kick ourselves for allowing our emotional angst to guide our actions. We would burrow deeper into the guilt superimposed on the grief with which we have been struggling over the last...

"Let not your minds be troubled." — Jesus Life takes us by surprise. Those things we never expected to happen occur. Things we believed would transpire never do. We are not all that good at prognosticating. We do about as well as our old caricatures of meteorologists forecasting snow. We just can’t quite get our predictions to work out and end up grieving over life handing us what we never expected. We act like we should be able to plan effectively for the future, but all too often those plans don’t work out according to our projections. When we find someone for whom a plan came together, we heap praise upon them, even though it is very likely they got it right by accident. Then we want to use their experience as a model for success. We parade them around the country as a guru, when they simply had a case of dumb luck. At least, that is our normal experience in life. Plans fall to the wayside due to our lack of seeing all the possibilities and understanding the...

"Therefore encourage one another with these words." — 1st Thessalonians 4:18 The last few weeks have ushered a new way of life into our midst. Goals and projects that were vague considerations and concerns not yet pressing have come to the fore. Routines and habits have been discarded like dirty napkins. Toilet paper seems to be front and center on everyone’s minds, even while much of the world never adopted our North American use of toilet paper. The internet has taken on a different role in our lives. Online shopping is taking on a deeper role in our society than a month ago. We brought a couple of young men into our home in the last month. Offering them a place to stay when they had nowhere else to go shifted from one plane to another with the rapidly developing news and presence of Covid19 in the world, in our nation, and in our state. When one of these young men developed all the symptoms of Covid19, I took him to be tested. When he developed respiratory distr...

“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” – John 17:22-23 Much can be said about where the UMC is right now in the context of disagreement and conflict over homosexuality. Much is being said about where the UMC is right now. Some is true. Some is untrue. Some lacks nuance. Some is purposefully misleading. First of all, we are a people of diverse opinions and holding different stakes in the conversation. It is difficult to hear each other among our differences of opinion, experience, history, and emotional responses to words that trigger uncomfortable reactions and strongly held positions. It is common for us to downplay a position that is contrary to our own. Landlubbers once held strongly to the conviction that the earth is flat, while seafarers were ready to speak of...