Constructive Faith

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;”
-from “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I have a confession to make. I love sappy Christmas movies. You know the ones… a parent is dead, a mortgage can’t be paid, a child is long lost… and then miracle! All is made right, by an angel, by some vague Christmas magic, by Saint Nick and always by God. The widower finds new love, money falls from the sky, lessons are learned, bells ring, candles flicker, and as the final credits roll, I wipe a tear or two… or ten, from my eyes. My television is tuned to Hallmark or Lifetime or ABC Family almost every night during the weeks before Christmas.

Now, most folks wouldn’t think of me as a sentimental guy. I come across as a little bookish, a little too grounded in my Y-chromosome to ever watch sappy Christmas movies. But I love them. They are to me what this season is all about. I’m a big fan of the “hopey-changey” thing. Advent is that season when we remember “Emmanuel,” the God-that-is-with-us. And that God, the God of the Incarnation, walks with us and feels with us and flames out glory and hope and miracle throughout the year. As Hopkins wrote over a century ago, the world is indeed charged with the grandeur of God. (more…)

Every church is unique, a blend of gifts, traditions and challenges. Any efforts to re-vitalize a declining congregation must be adapted to the local context. This all goes without saying, and so it is rarely said. There are, however, some lessons to be learned from churches that have seen success, and those who have struggled. Below are some reflections based on my own experiences in healthy, re-vitalizing and declining congregations. They are not hard and fast… we are all learning and exploring, trying to find our way to the church of the next age.

1. Forget the tips and tricks. No multimedia screen, praise band or charismatic pastor is going to turn your church around. If your objective is to add members purely to keep the church alive in its present form, to fill committee slots and increase pledge units, you’re doomed. To transform your church you must transform yourself, must transform your faith. Remember, the church is not the building or the history. It is a living thing, the Body of Christ breathed into existence by the Spirit two-thousand years ago and existing in countless forms, serving a Living God. And being alive means change. Which leads to… (more…)

The names of other gods got worked into the Hebrew religion. How’s that for the most boring sermon lead in ever? The names of other gods got worked into the Hebrew religion, for example the Canaanite word El, which we find not only in titles like Elohim and El Shaddai, in place names like Bethel and Israel, but also in people’s names like Daniel and Michael, names that in the original Hebrew spoke of the person’s relationship to God. But the oldest name for God seems to be Yahweh, a name connected with Israel’s time in Egypt, connected with the Midianites. You see, that wicked revolutionary Moses lead his small rag-tag band of slaves out of Egypt, and in the process Moses came to know the name of the God of Abraham, of the Patriarchs. In Hebrew it is something like the letters YHWH, and we have interpreted this ancient unspeakable name, this name without vowels, as Yahweh, and we dare speak it, we sophisticated modern folks who don’t believe that names have magic.

This ancient name, Yahweh, has been interpreted into modern languages. We refer to God as “I AM,” or maybe as “I AM WHO I AM.” This is a statement of being. But while I was in divinity school, some scholars suggested that in ancient times it could just as easily have been read “I AM BECOMING.” Because of complexities of tense and case in ancient Hebrew that are far beyond my understanding, these scholars argue that the verb is progressive. God is not static, God is becoming. And when I first heard this I thought “well all right then… this is a theology I can deal with, this is a God I can love.” Not the static scary god concept we stole from the Greek philosophers and tried to shove down on Yahweh, nope, this was a living God. “I AM BECOMING.” Well God, so am I, through your grace, so am I. (more…)

Note: Dad died on January 25th, 2010. It was the first funeral sermon I ever delivered.

Protestant Theologian Karl Barth once wrote about the difficulty of the preacher’s task. According to Barth, before the preacher sat the Scripture, the Word of God, mystery beyond all understanding. And just past the Scripture sat the body of Christ, the congregation, mystery beyond all understanding. I wonder what Barth might have made of the funeral sermon, where the mystery of the Word and the mystery of the congregation contemplates the mystery of eternal life.

For it is eternal life that we are here to contemplate. The Christian pilgrim has completed his earthly journey and has gone home, to the source of his life, to the source of all life. And it is worth reviewing that life as we consider our own journeys.

Dad’s early life was not easy. While he was still a child his father, a Norfolk police officer, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The entire family was uprooted and moved to New Mexico. There was grueling poverty, many nights Dad had only a piece of fried fat back and a single potato to eat. It was all to no avail, for his father would never recover. After Dad’s father died the family moved back east… times were still tough, and there were more moves. As soon as he was able to he escaped, enlisting in the Army. He had been promised he would not be sent to Korea, so of course, that is exactly where they sent him. During one firefight he was shot through both legs while his buddy, standing next to him, was killed. Dad was young and angry and refused the Purple Heart. He was patched up and returned to combat, surviving the war and returning to Tidewater. (more…)

Let me begin with a confession of sorts. Like many of our lectionary texts, this readings starts rather abruptly. I have taken the liberty of adding some of the context to verse 30. It actually reads “they went on from there,” but few of us would have remembered where “there” was, though we might have guessed about the “they.” I point this out because details are important, context is important, and I will be starting from a seemingly small detail.

But before I get there, I want to stir up some memories. How many of you remember felt-board Jesus? Of course, there was also a felt-board Pharaoh and Moses, a felt-board Paul. The felt-board was a common Sunday School teaching tool of an earlier age… today its Powerpoint Jesus, DVD Jesus! And how many of you remember the paintings of Jesus that hung on the Sunday School walls? If you were raised in the Roman church the images might have been of the Sacred Heart, scary in its own way. For many Protestants you had either creepy Jesus or wimpy Jesus. Creepy Jesus had long flowing hair that looked like it belonged in a shampoo commercial, and blue eyes, eyes that followed you no matter where you went in the room. Then there was wimpy Jesus, sitting on a hillside surrounded by children and lambs. This Jesus didn’t confront Empire, overturn the human-made systems of oppression. This Jesus clearly ran a daycare and petting zoo! No wonder generations of boys fled from the church at the first opportunity, continue to flee from the church! I have no idea when these tropes worked their way into Christian culture… maybe it was when we went from being the subversive outsiders to being the establishment, though that seems too easy of an answer. But there it is… Jesus with the children… just like in today’s reading. (more…)

A Sermon delivered on the 11th of July, 2010

I hope you are comfortable, for this morning I plan to preach for 22,369.36 miles, give or take a few hundred miles. For this morning I have been asked to preach about environmental bumper stickers. You’ve seen them around, and if you haven’t there are a few on the cover of your order of service. They are completely familiar to me, for I spent three years in Cambridge, home of Harvard and M.I.T., and a place where our on-going destruction of the planet is the greatest of concerns. Of course, Cambridge is the home of many bumper stickers, half of which make no sense outside of the academic world. Bumper stickers like “Heisenberg Slept Here… Maybe.” One of my favorites, suitable for our mathematicians, says “Don’t drink and derive.”

In all seriousness though, one cannot preach on the subject of our relationship to the rest of God’s creation without noting its immensity. The distance I cited is in fact the distance the earth will travel in its orbit during the length of the average sermon. Never mind that our Solar System is moving within the Milky Way, or that the Milky Way is itself hurtling out into the cosmos from the source, from the moment and place of creation we can only guess at, but that we call the Big Bang. At the other end of the scale we have the beauty and fragility and sheer mind-blowing mystery of life itself, the evolution of new traits, the development of species. And smaller still we have the atomic, Newtonian Quantum mysteries of the atom and the sub-atomic, and it is mind-blowing too. (more…)

Some of you will already know that I am a disabled Army veteran. Others will know that I was a top manager with a Manhattan multimedia firm. I am a man of action, I like to get things organized and done. In fact, I can be so task oriented, so set on checking off every single box on my task list, that I can bulldoze others. I like to call it being directive, though others have called it being bossy.

Of course, this isn’t how the Kingdom of God works. With congregational polity we have the outward appearance of a democracy, debating and voting with the majority getting its way. But that is just the outward appearance. In reality, we engage in the spiritual practice of discernment. Much like democracy, this involves discussion and sometimes even a vote. But we believe the Holy Spirit, that Christ himself, is present when we prayerfully meet, when we prayerfully decide.

This is why ministers are advised to do nothing when they first arrive at a new congregation. We need to get to know our new congregants, to carve out space for the Spirit, to discern the way forward. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should do literally nothing… there are worship services to lead, visitations to make… but we are encouraged to make no major changes, to implement no major programs. (more…)

Okay, I have tattoos and earrings. And one of my two undergraduate majors was art, I’m a painter. So I guess this makes me a pretty funky guy. But even by my standards English comedian Eddie Izzard is strange. Yet I find him to be very funny. I especially enjoy his description of the Italians. Izzard, in one of his stand-up routines, takes on that brief ugly moment in Italian history, the rise of Mussolini and the Fascists. He wonders about this anomaly, claiming that his experience of Italians is not really like that. As Izzard describes the Italians, they are all on scooters, no helmet, hair flowing, all cool, suave… ciao, bella!! He says it’s true, it’s just like the film “Roman Holiday.” Sadly, most of you will not have seen that film… Gregory Peck at his most dashing… Audrey Hepburn embodying elegance and charm…

Izzard’s description matches my own experience of Northern Italy. I’ve been from the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily to Milan and Venice, I love Italy! But it is Tuscany that captures me. The region is a singular example of God’s amazing creativity, it is the region that gave birth to the Renaissance, and with good reason. From the towers of San Gimignano to the ancient fresco spotted down an alley way, the region is beautiful. And the land, the lush land, the canvas of sky. But there’s more! The people of Tuscany, the people of Florence, are beautiful too. From the lowest street-sweeper to the most elegant grand dame, when they walk out the doors of their homes, they look marvelous. The woman comes out to wash the windows on her shop… “Look at me. I’m beautiful!” Even the smallest child, running out the door with the ball… “Look at me. I kick the football. I’m beautiful!” It’s true… from Audrey Hepburn on a “Roman Holiday” to the runways of Milan to the average Florentine, there is a certain grace about Italy, despite the moments of collective insanity like Fascism, like Savanarola and the Bonfire of the Vanities. (more…)

Castles of Stuff, Mountains of Things
Sermon by Pastor Gary Brinn
November 15th, 2009

Sermon Text: Luke 20:45 – 21:6

In the hearing of many people Jesus said to the disciples, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of these rich; for they have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”
When some people were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Sermon

We know the numbers. Less Americans are going to church than ever, less identify as Christians, and the children we do manage to raise in our congregations stop going to church the moment they leave the nest.
If we ask the “un-churched” what Christianity means, we might get a glimpse into the cause of our decline. Non-Christians will tell you that our faith is made up of obsessed busy-bodies with lots of rules, that the greatest purpose of this religion is to stamp out homosexuality. Other non-Christians might mention the televangelists, with their prosperity theology. This is the God who will make you rich just as soon as you give it all away, checks payable to Pastor Osteen please…
This is not to say that all Christians behave in this way. In fact, we can point to many Christians who do real good in the world, who have chosen the prophetic tradition… who feed and heal and visit and clothe and who proclaim the right and real Kingdom of God, women and men who have rejected the priestly trajectory and have chosen to follow Christ. But even in our best churches, even at our best, this is difficult and rare.
Christianity as commonly perceived and as commonly lived has mostly ignored the teachings of Jesus. For example, how much energy is spent arguing about sex? Yet Jesus rarely speaks on the subject, and when he does all he says is “the person you are sleeping with is not the person to whom you are married. Go and sin no more.”
What Jesus does speak about, again and again, obsessively, we’d rather ignore. Jesus spends his entire ministry denouncing legalism, self-righteousness and greed. Sure, Satan shows up in the gospels… sure, the end time, the eschaton, takes up some text. But again and again it is everyday human conduct that Jesus condemns. (more…)

“Crazy Art Dudes”

I was sharing a household that academic year, living with my best friend and her husband. And it was a very, very small freezer, but we rarely overlapped in our shopping, so it was okay. Then there was that day. Ruth had come back with groceries, then headed back out. I came home with groceries and found a freezer that was jam-packed. So when Ruth returned for the second time she found me on the kitchen floor with all of the frozen foods, sorting. She looked at me a moment, then I spoke in exasperation. “You had square stuff on top of round stuff,” I sighed. “How is that supposed to work?” She chuckled and said “OCD man does the freezer.”

You see, I like things neat and organized. I love things that start on time. I straighten the papers on my desk, even if they represent tasks I am avoiding. People who know me can be trapped into believing that this desire for neat categories represents the real me. They’re often surprised to find out I was an art major. And not a neat carefully controlled and drawn perspective sort of art major. A big sloppy expressive painter sort of art major.

So how do these parts of me, the controlled and intellectual, and the expressive and emotional, fit together? They fit together in my faith, in my theology, in the words of the psalmist.

“There is no speech, nor are there words … Yet their voice goes out through all the earth.”

An aesthetic theology? Or a theology of aesthetics? What is it that makes art “art”? I’d like to begin by suggesting that all of the theories about symmetry and color balance and even about content are just that, human attempts to explain the inexplicable. Neurons firing? What a bunch of hooey! Okay, well, maybe, but oh so much more. Art is art because it is a part of something larger. In the visual arts, the art points to something that is beyond. Now, lest you miss it, let me repeat. Art is art when it points to something beyond itself. It cannot “capture” the subject; all it can do is gesture towards it. I can paint a tree, but my painting won’t be a tree, it might, hopefully, evoke “tree-ness.” In the words of the post-modern theorist, we might think of an artistic object as having infinite regress. It cannot be tamed, and there is nothing neat about it. Our hearts soar or ache or leap to our throats because something about that image, that Lucien Freud grotesque or Mark Rothko smear, connects to something else, to our experiences and to this amazing beautiful terrifying creation. (more…)