Talk With the Preacher

We have a budding artist in our house. Don’t ask me what genetic mutation occurred for me and Mark to produce a child as artistically gifted as Hayden; he keeps surprising us with the stuff he produces. Although he has been pursuing his drawing habit for some time now, only recently has he been pushed out of his comfort zone (charcoal pencil and paper) into other forms of expression (collage, pastels, markers, paint!).

As his high school applications require an art portfolio with examples using a variety of media (this, in itself, is an outrageous injustice against parents of 8th graders), I asked Hayden the other day which tools he likes the best. He told me that after trying everything in the art room he’d have to say his least favorite tool is a charcoal pencil.

I confess I was surprised because I know he loves to draw. He told me, though, that charcoal gets all over everything. You can’t erase it very cleanly; it smudges all over the paper; it doesn’t allow for the clarity of expression that a paint brush with one color of acrylic paint would, for example.

On the other hand, he wavered, it’s amazing the effects you can create with just a sheet of paper and a stubby charcoal pencil.  Rather than limiting yourself to one form of expression (like a very definite red colored marker), you can practice enough to use the charcoal to produce straight lines, too, but also to add various textures and shading to a piece. And with charcoal you can even produce a wide range of colors, from a very light gray to a deep black, shimmering silver or even, with appropriate shading, a more brilliant white.

I thought of the institution of the church as I listened to Hayden explain his art to me. Existing as it does in the middle of a society bent on commandeering every ounce of power and influence for its own purposes, the church walks a fine line. We’re often tempted, I fear, to pick up the colorful brush of one specific issue-theological, social, political-and, before we know it we’ve been painted into an institution that can’t remember why it started in the first place.

Do we exist to advocate for women’s rights or fair wage practices?  Do we gather every week to sound the call for immigration reform . . . or was it racial reconciliation?

With the showing of For the Bible Tells Me So at Calvary on February 3 we continue the conversation we’ve had for years around here about how best to be a welcoming, nurturing place for everyone.  But in the art box of issues I think we all know homosexuality and the church is a brightly colored marker if there ever was one.

We must choose carefully now, as we have done and continue to do over and over on any number of issues, how it is we will illustrate this next chapter in the life of our community.  Sitting right there in our congregational art box are any number of colorfully definitive tools.  But right alongside them is the charcoal pencil of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, stubby with use and likely (if we pick it up) to get all over everything! It doesn’t always draw exact lines or choose just one color. In fact, it has a tendency to add all kinds of depth and shading to anything we create.

Love God, love each other, Jesus said.

As we listen to each other, act in faith with courage and tackle yet another issue-one in a long line of “issues” that have faced and will face the church of Jesus Christ-others will know what it is we truly value by how we color this picture.   And, as a matter of fact, it is the Gospel message that has drawn people to Calvary’s sanctuary for almost 150 years and will keep drawing all of us for years to come . . . if we stubbornly insist on faithfully proclaiming it.

And so I must say I hope we choose this tool to illustrate the next chapter in our life together because it’s so much more than one “issue.” The Gospel’s rigorous and relentless call to live like Jesus always trumps any issue you or I could ever bring to the table.

Hayden’s right. The charcoal pencil is messy. It gets all over, not just his masterpiece drawings . . . but also the desk tops where he works and the cuffs of his new white turtleneck. But I’m glad he’s reconsidering his favorite tool-after all, it’s a plain old charcoal pencil and paper that started his whole love affair with art in the first place. And, I think it’s the medium that will keep drawing him back, no matter which of his pieces end up in the National Gallery of Art (recent comment from the back seat of the van as we crossed the National Mall: “Hey Mom, let’s go into the National Gallery of Art! I have to choose the wall where one of my drawings will hang someday!”).

I hope the same is true for us: love God, love each other, Jesus said.

I think that’s enough.

A note about the art: I’ve included Hayden’s recent work, a charcoal rendering of a hand, here.  When I asked Hayden about a title he was unsure . . . I suggested something like, “Reaching for Hope.”  The response I got to that suggestion was along the lines of: “What the heck, Mom?!?!?”  Turns out he prefers, “Reaching for Allowance.”

I should have known our lives were destined to intersect again.  It was right on 9th Avenue, I think, one evening when I happened to be in New York City standing in line for a Broadway show.  Up pulled a limousine and out jumped the Rev. Al Sharpton.  I recognized him, of course (by his limousine) but I should have known it was a sign. 

It was a sign of . . . well, I’m not sure what, but I did recall that incident last Friday as I made my way down to the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 14th Street NW to Freedom Square, checked in at the table, received my ALL ACCESS pass and made my way into the tent with those who had gathered to kick off the march for justice around the Department of Justice building that morning.

In short, though I am not sure why, I received an invitation to start the rally off with a 3-minute speech to the crowd.  I certainly cannot describe the surreal feeling of standing shoulder to shoulder with Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King, Jr., III, then making my way up to the stage, looking out over all those thousands of people and glancing down at my notes then hearing my voice echo through the massive sound system. 

I knew the folks in the crowd were wondering why I was up there. 

(Me, too.)

Nevertheless, after delivering my impassioned three minutes of ardent demands for justice I turned to climb off the stairs, surveying the crowd of really famous people congregating at the bottom of the stage stairs.  Breathing deeply with relief I mentally marked off the first 3 of my fifteen minutes of fame and smiled as Al Sharpton approached me.  I shook his offered hand and heard him say, “Well, well.  That was some speech!” 

I smiled what I thought was a conspiratorial smile, which I thought communicated something like: “Well, you know, just another speech about justice to thousands of people, Al.”  Flashing before my eyes was a future of marching for justice next to Al (or at the very least comparing notes on hairstyles).  We shook hands and all was well, then I heard him say as he turned to leave: “Thanks for being here . . . Emily.”

By the time I could respond Al was already off courting yet another of the many reporters clamoring around him.  My “Well, actually, it’s Amy, not Emily . . .” got carried away on the roar of the crowd.

Don’t you know Al disappeared before we could exchange cell numbers? 

Riding in the car yesterday my eldest (age 13) began an impassioned case for a family visit to his grandparents’ next spring.  I’d like to go, too, I explained, but traveling to Hawaii is expensive and if we do it we should do it for more than a few days.  There are no chunks of time we all have free in the Spring, I said.

“What about Spring Break?,” he asked.

Well, I explained, Spring Break always falls during Holy Week, and since Holy Week is the biggest work week of the year in church circles, well, I couldn’t possibly get away.

“Why don’t you ask your boss if you can go?,” he asked.  Then, puzzled, he continued: “Wait a minute.  Who is your boss anyway?”

And this, my friends, was how a great parental teaching moment was born. 

I explained to Hayden that, being Baptists, we govern ourselves.  In other words, the entire congregation is my boss, in a way.

Long pause.

“Are you saying that I’m your boss?,” he asked.

“Well, yes, I guess so,” I answered.

Long pause.

“Well, in that case, I’ll need you to stop the car and get me a Coke.”

I used to spend a lot of time gardening. You have to spend a lot of time, when you live in New Orleans, because if you don’t tame the yard well, the yard will try to tame you. Here in the Northeast, the change of season helps a little with the task of keeping things in line; just when the weeds seem to be overwhelming the first freeze slows everything down.

But I love to garden, and I’ll never forget a particularly tenacious plant that grew in the flowerbed along the side of our house in New Orleans. You couldn’t pull it out with your bare hands-its roots were too embedded. I fully admit to liberally using chemicals to try to get rid of it, but all that did was kill the plants I wanted to keep alive. Turns out that all I could do was head out Saturday morning and cut it back, then head out the next weekend to cut it back again. I finally gave in to the realization that no matter what I did, that plant would grow and grow and grow in my flower bed . . . and sometimes other places, too. Very often seeds would somehow migrate from the flower bed and I’d notice shoots of this plant even pushing up through the cracks in the concrete driveway.

Maddening!

I remembered that plant this week when I heard a lecture delivered by Joerg Rieger, professor of Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Divinity, Southern Methodist University. Rieger was lecturing on his new book, Christ and Empire. I love Systematics and rarely get to sit in a lecture and listen, so I listened ready to relish every word.

After about the first 20 minutes, though, I was starting to get a little worried.

Rieger’s thesis is that Christian faith is shaped by power and politics; that we cannot study God without studying the Empire in which faith in God is lived out. Over and over throughout history, Rieger showed us, power and political regimes have co-opted Christian faith. It happened with Constantine, in the Middle Ages, too, through the Reformation and various periods of Colonialism and, he said, it is still happening today–politics in America is a perfect example of that.  To ignore the influence of the Empire, Rieger said, would be folly for those of us trying to understand and develop faith in God. Why? Well, because the Empire will sneak its way into our understanding of faith somehow. Better to ask the questions, examine the power structures and go into this quest of faith with our eyes wide open, he said.

I agreed with everything Rieger was saying, but, frankly, the more concisely he made his case the more depressing it all became. My job (and even some days I would say “my calling”) is to live out the timeless message of the Gospel in the admittedly flawed but still redemptive (I thought) community of the church in the world. If it’s true, though, what Rieger says about Empire co-opting Christian faith, I wondered what message this has for the church?

Are we running like hamsters on a wheel, around and around and around and going nowhere?

Or, worse, are our efforts promoting and building something that is not true faith in Christ at all?

I raised my hand a little timidly because I am not a systematic theologian (before that moment I’d thought I sometimes was a practical theologian) and asked my question: if Christian faith is constantly co-opted by the power of the Empire, why are we wasting our time?

Rieger, whose unkempt bush of gray hair and rumpled professor look clearly indicated this was a man who spent a lot of time in academia, looked up and smiled. His eyes twinkled, in fact, as he became increasingly animated. “That’s the wondrous hope of God’s work in this world!,” he exclaimed.  “The Empire tries its best to co-opt the Gospel, to smooth it out, cut it back, stomp it down. The thing is . . . Jesus keeps coming up through the cracks.”

Jesus keeps coming up through the cracks.

No matter what the Empire of this day happens to be, the message of the Gospel will keep sticking its head up . . . through violence and suppression, through evil and even through structures that oppress and violate–even structures that claim to represent Jesus himself. Always speaking for those who have no voice, always challenging the smooth and powerful work of the Empire, Jesus keeps coming back, over and over again, in the most unlikely places to remind us that the living message of the Gospel can never be stomped out, contained, repackaged or destroyed. No matter what force of Empire we live with today, we can look back over thousands of years of humanity trying to contain God and then keep believing: the hope of the Gospel will bubble up and sprout anew over and over again: Jesus will keep coming up through the cracks. 

And that Jesus would keep coming back, even though we try in every possible way to contain and co-opt, sometimes even extinguish his message, well, this is where the church’s hope is found . . . right there, in the cracks.

New camera . . . cute kids.  I had to share.

The reason is: it’s too depressing.  I told myself to expect we’d be in by Christmas.  While the schedule says we’re still on track for that, I am not too sure.  Nevertheless, the place is starting to take shape–the new front doors are in, some of the tile is up in the bathrooms and all the “guts”–electric, plumbing, etc., are in. 

It could be that we sang it Sunday.

But, confession: holy as I am, I usually am not humming the tunes to Sunday’s hymns on Wednesday.

Turns out, humming “For All the Saints” today was just because it was meant to be the soundtrack of the day.

I first suspected this when I learned that a friend who has been a member of Calvary since the 1930s (!) had been rushed to the hospital.  When I finally found her in the ICU I knew this was goodbye . . . it’s already been too many times that I have seen the tubes and heard the artificial sounds of manufactured life. 

I knew. 

The feeling that evoked was a deep squeezing in my gut, a formal awareness that time, once again, has marched on by, and that I was saying goodbye to one of the saints, in every sense of the word.

I held her hand for awhile and recalled some of our history together . . . which, given the fact that it has only been 5 years, pales in comparison to many of her relationships with other members of the church.  She is the one who told me story after story about the history of this church, the source I would consult every time I had a question about history-since she had lived through most of it.  She was unfailingly faithful, always encouraging . . . this church was her life.  Would that I could be 94 and still visiting the church website first thing Monday morning to read the sermon (and not shy about commenting, either!).

No, I think, as usual, it’s no coincidence I’ve been humming For All the Saints today.  Because if we should sing it for anyone, we should certainly sing it for Laura, and maybe, just maybe, she’ll hear the strains ushering her right in as she steps into glory:

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Laura, I hope you know: I will miss you.   Save me a spot.

Alleluia.

Alleluia.

Amen.

It was Paul who talked about this human life as “seeing through a glass darkly.” That metaphor has always been a powerful one for me, but lately I’ve been cursing the darkness a lot more than lighting a candle, if you know what I mean. 

It’s common at Calvary to deal with the homeless population–as it is for any downtown church–but lately we’ve been struggling with a situation in which the person in need has become part of our community. He’s not a nameless “homeless person” but rather someone many of us would call a friend.  Lately the struggle of mental illness and social exclusion has buried its claws deep into the psyche of our friend and those of us in the leadership of this community have had to make some very difficult decisions about boundary-setting.

And this is when the glass gets really dark.

Where is the line between grace and accountability? I’m squinting through the darkness but I can’t make it out.

How, in the name of God, has the mental health system so spectacularly failed someone in such need? There’s an answer to that somewhere, but for the life of me I cannot even see a vague outline.

And, no matter how hard I look, there does not seem to be an obvious quick-fix course of action in this situation. People I love and respect feel differently about how best to react and I feel the pinch of being the leader: no matter what I do someone will object. I’ve looked and looked and looked but I can’t seem to see an obvious answer.

And, I’m wondering this, too: with such tangible side-effects of sending young men to war-in this case many years ago, but the question remains-why on earth do we continue to wreak havoc on the mental health of our community by sending folks off to war? Are we ready to face the far-off effects of what we’re doing today? Someone must have thought of this when we decided to go to war . . . again . . . but no matter how many times I rub my eyes I can’t make out any evidence of that.

And I hate to say it but I confess I am wondering: where, may I ask, is the transforming power of the Gospel in a situation like this? There is no easy answer; there are not simple solutions. I get up in the pulpit and preach every single Sunday about the power of the Gospel to change us and change our world . . . but sometimes the glass is so dark I can’t see the transformation happening. As a matter of fact, I can’t even see what’s right in front of me.

This day begins with a heavy heart and vision that is so obviously limited. And so I have, yet again, another opportunity to practice what I preach . . . in fact, what I just preached yesterday . . . to look as carefully as I can and when the glass is too, too dark, and, failing any sort of clarity, to hold on to the assurance that light is on its way.