I have been thinking about Pompeii. About Hiroshima and Nagasaki. About those pictures we have all of us seen--and what some have seen up close--about the moment disaster struck: People caught in the middle of some activity and just... frozen. In mid-jump or whatever.

from livescience.com

I have been thinking about that because it seems to me that that is what has happened to us, in a way. Not as dramatically, localized or instantaneously--and certainly not as catastrophically, at least so far--but perhaps as arrestingly: we were going about our lives, our business, church, more or less normally, and now we are stunned, stopped, trying to climb out from under it.

The guy to the left here speaks to me like sad poetry. And even if he should escape the wrath of Vesuvius, which of course he did not, what will his life, or the life of Pompeii, be like on the other side of it? 

from Pinterest

The child to the right, mined from Pinterest, looks too "perfect," though I have not been able to find any indication that it is inauthentic. Even if it were staged or photo-shopped, the truth is beyond dispute (and what was it Picasso said? That art is a lie that helps us see the truth? I suspect the reverse is a good way to describe the gospel: the Truth that helps us see the lie of the world and its values). In any case, comes a moment that forever divides things into before and after, and we must try to cross the Rubicon of that moment and live into the new reality it signals.      

So, what will our lives be like on the other side of COVID-19? Who but God knows? But surely there will be some of what we learn and experience, even if most of if will fade.  

Those of you who are familiar with The Hunger Games, either the books or the movie, will remember that moment when Haymitch reads to Katniss the letter from Plutarch: "The war is over. We're in that sweet period where everyone agrees not to repeat the recent horrors. Of course, we're stupid, fickle human beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although, who knows? Maybe this time we will learn." 

from Pinterest.co.kr

I would like to think this time we will learn, though the track record is not great. I remember that sweet moment after the terrible horror of 9/11. I remember people being nice to each other, patient on the highways, going back to church and praying, rallying around brothers and sisters. Of course, it did not last, except for the kind of "never forget" prejudice that has spawned untold atrocities and still incites death and destruction. For Christians, forgiveness is a kind of forgetting and our desire is never to judge whole groups of people by their worst examples. THAT is part of what I wish we could learn, and remember, and keep before us...

What else would I like for us to learn? That we really do need each other. We are not islands. Either as individuals, ethnic groups, or nations. We cannot wall ourselves off from others, nor should we want to. If, on the negative side, the virus proves how interrelated and fragile (and global!) we are--where strangers can infect strangers and no barrier is effective against sickness and death (all the neighborhoods in Pompeii, rich and poor were equally destroyed)--on the positive side, the ways we cooperate prove the same thing to the positive. We prove, together, how strong we can be. Strangers can help strangers; nothing can stop the love and sharing and service once it begins to spread.

I also hope we learn again how crucial church is. Not just going to church, but faith, hope and love. Being a part of the Body of Christ, where together we learn who our neighbor is and why we love them (because Jesus loved and died for all of us; no one of us, but all of us are his favorites). 

Where we are given both the reason and the example to "make ourselves useful," as our moms used to say when we were bored. If there are many who will gladly self-quarantine and safe-harbor in order to stay away from people (and certainly we each and all need to be responsible, for ourselves and others), there are also people who are so much self-quarantined but cut-off from support or help; many who are not only safe-harboring, but dangerously isolated. It is our duty and joy to learn from Jesus, and in this wilderness determine how to come away from our willful isolation in order to make ourselves useful to our neighbors by loving them for God's sake. 

We may learn more yet about what the Church will be or look like after COVID-19. I will speak to that more tomorrow. 

Yes, we have been stopped in our tracks, as it were. But Jesus calls us to follow him to the other side where even now we can prove to be his disciples.    

Foresight

General Conference, I have it on good authority, will not happen in May. It was scheduled for May 5-15 in Minneapolis, and I was to be there, blogging away. Nope. Canceling reservations even today.

I have my doubts about Annual Conference in June. I have it on that same good authority that bishops and cabinets are making plans to ordain folk only among family members and without the gathered many attending.

I hope to goodness the Doobies don't cancel. I was going to drive back from Junaluska on Friday of Conference week, anyway, to see them: their 50th anniversary tour, just elected to RRHoF. Please don't cancel, Doobs!

(Reba did cancel, but I wasn't going to see her anyway--though I think she might really like me if she ever met me. Of course, I think the same thing about Alison Krauss. I am very like Honey Thacker, in Notting Hill, who has long known that she and Anna Scott would be the best of friends, if only they might meet. Almost identically, like Honey, I can hear Reba, or Alison, when I explain all of this to them saying, "Lucky me.")

ENOUGH with the sidebars.

I am just thinking: for a long time I have heard what might be called ecclesiologial "futurists" talk about the eventual demise of the large, gathered congregation in favor of small groups, dinner churches--the kind of  house churches that were the locus of early Christianity, and the vehicle for many reform movements, not least the churches inspired by John Wesley. I have wondered whether, if they are right and have real foresight, the demise might result from gradual decline, attrition and such (we have in fact seem many church closures in the last decades), or if there would be a tipping point, something that triggered the move in more or less momentary fashion.

I am wondering if this is it? Or this starts it and another crisis finishes it?

Groups of 10? Sounds like a small group.

No more than 50? What's a megachurch to do?

But, if Christians gather around a table as God instructed the Hebrew slaves--a family, or if a family is too small, join with another family--and we read the stories and pray and have a Love Feast (a lay Eucharist), and maybe once a quarter gather in slightly larger numbers for Eucharist or a Baptism, people might decide they really like the feel and spiritual intimacy, without the buildings, bills, maintenance and upkeep, without the financial drain of staff and salaries and such. I may soon be a member of an endangered species--maybe I already am and don't quite know it. It may well be that the gospel of Jesus Christ works better away from the spotlights and megawatt smiles, and at the dinner table, the living room, where people can speak the truth in love, support and hold one another accountable, and focus on faithfulness, not on the many distractions that come with "church" as we have known it.   

St. Patrick's, Bonhoeffer, Joni Mitchell and COVID-19

In years past, this was the day of green beer and silliness. Bars and restaurants in Ireland, and in Irish Catholic neighborhoods in America, especially, used to be crammed with revelers; but an eerie silence has overtaken the revelry. Typically (think: Mardi Gras, Cinco de Mayo), the celebration was not limited to Irish Catholics (not everyone at Mardi Gras observes Lent; more than Mexicans celebrate Cinco de Mayo). Whereas festival used to be the order of this day, the Pubs in Ireland are dark and silent. The bars and restaurants in America, too.

Legend says that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland—though the facts are more rather sober: the ice of those climes would have prevented their being snakes in Ireland. No matter.

Just saying, these are odd times: today, no parties or green beer, and for COVID-19’s sake, practice social distancing: do not get near enough to anyone pinch them, even if they are not wearing green.

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I am awaiting an email from Bishop Leeland even as I write, but it will not surprise me if he suspends public worship for several more weeks. I hate that more than I can say, though I realize it is the right thing to do. But it has brought to my heart, poignantly, this word from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a gift of grace from the Kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken from us at any day—that the time separating us from the most powerful loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let those who now have had the privilege living a Christian life together with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of their hearts. Let them thank God on their knees and realize: it is grace, nothing but grace, that we are still permitted to live in the community of Christians today.

--Life Together, p. 30

Or, as Joni Mitchell put it, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

I suspect that what grieves us so right now is that we do know how precious it is to be and worship and “live” together with our brothers and sisters at HLUMC. One of my hopes for this hiatus: that each of us will realize we miss even those people who, we can get together, get on our nerves; now, with all this social distancing, we will discover that we find we love them, too, will rejoice to see even them when we can. And hopefully. Soon, and very soon. But it will not be yet.

When we do get together—our first Sunday back—I am committed to a lawn party, a cook out, cakes, etc. Maybe even some green beer.

Okay, maybe not that on the church lawn. But later, at a reopened pub!

Getting Ready for Minneapolis!

REALLY LIVELY BIBLE STUDY TODAY!! On the future of the UMC! I was advocating for the Centrist Progressive position, and a Traditionalist took exception.

Actually, no. I was taking the Traditionalist position, and a Centrist Progressive took exception. Just ate some pavement while I was taking a walk.

Actually, no. I was trying to take no position and EVERYONE took exception.

Actually, no. A chicken, a possum and Tom walked into a bar; the chicken and the possum used the door (thanks to Sean). Actually: A nose piercing gone horribly wrong.

Actually, no. Here is the real talk: Since my prostate cancer surgery last July 8, I have gained 25 lbs. I used to walk 4+ miles every day, and over 5 many days. Since July I have
walked a total of about 3 miles...so no wonder I have gained the weight. But, I feel awful. And so, I have been saying for a number of weeks now: got to get back to walking. This week, for some reason, it happened. Today was my third consecutive day doing three plus miles, and I was within 100 yards of my door when I stepped on the edge of the sidewalk, rolled my ankle, and ate some concrete. Could have been a LOT worse. I did not break my nose or cheek. I do not bruise but will have a black eye, I suspect. I am sore. But, God willing, I will lace them on again tomorrow and head back out.

Which is why I think this does help me with Minneapolis. I think there will be days when we are face down on the concrete. I hope not, but I suspect it will be the case.

Further, today, lying prone on the sidewalk bleeding, two cars drove past slowly, perhaps thinking to stop, but not stopping. Later, as I ambled the last 100 yards to home, a jogger come the other way saw me, bleeding, and kind of sped-up to get past me. I have new insight to Luke 10: it may have been the blood.

In Minneapolis we MUST tend to each other. We have to see the hurt and help. Do No Harm means also not letting the wounds go untended.

In the next few blogs I am going to share some materials I have been teaching here on why I am a Centrist/Progressive. And why BIBLICALLY I find myself in that position. Which is to say: I think part of the impasse of the last however many comes to a stalemate of authority. The Traditionalists have discounted Reason and Experience in favor of a monolithic reading of the text (I use that term carefully and theologically; as in stone tablets, as in the letter of the law; as if the Law is one thing). The Progressives have abandoned Scripture and Tradition (as anachronistic, misogynist, oppressive). What we have not been able to do is find biblical grounds to counter a monolithic reading and provide a LIVING word that retains authority in what has been described as the Quadralateral.

I think the case for a Centrist to Progressive position is thoroughly biblical and I will share that line of thinking in the next few entries.

If you would like to see the whole piece now, email me at tsteagald@yahoo.com and I will send it to you electronically.

Now, another dram of bourbon as I change my bandages.

No Argument Zone

I am officially declaring this blog a no argument zone.

My goal is to share my best thoughts, deepest prayers, purest love for Christ and his people, for the Church and its mission--in service of my determination to be the best pastor to the folk under my charge (and whoever might happen by here).

I will not debate, will delete argumentative comments.

I will share as I can my reading of Scripture, but in a spirit of humility and love: working out my own salvation with fear and trembling; working to count others as better than myself; doing nothing from selfish conceit...

I take a cue from Jack Lemon, whose priest character in Mass Appeal: "I have baptized you, counseled you, married and buried you; but I have never really cared enough to risk losing you" (his defrocked associate had chided him: "there has to be something more important than what your congregation think of you").

I too believe that "we must be allowed the freedom to shape this thing that has shaped us," and indeed I believe Scripture not only grants that freedom but in fact demands it. When the truth is not spoken, people are kept silent, inactive.

As Richard Hayes said, "Scriptural imagination is the faculty that enables us to see the world through the lenses of the Bible’s images and stories—and to be transformed by what we see. To exercise scriptural imagination does not mean living in a fantasy world where we ignore the daily realities around us; rather, it is to have our eyes opened to recognize that the story Scripture tells is the true story of the world. To look at the world through scriptural lenses is to have our vision corrected so that our illusions are stripped away and we see the world as it really is: created by a loving God but fallen into disobedience and alienation. Through the lenses of Scripture, we also see this real world redeemed and transformed by Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. With our vision thus corrected, we can join Paul in discerning “that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Additionally, scriptural imagination enables us to inhabit the story that Scripture tells. We read the Bible not just to find devotional tidbits, “illustrations” of something we already knew on other grounds, or general principles to shape our lives. Instead, we read it to learn the unfolding story in which we too are characters, and to understand the role we are called to play in it." (Duke Divinity Magazine, Spring, 2013)

Those who are in Charlotte are invited to come to our church on February 5, 2020, at 9:45 or 6:45, for a presentation as to the biblical/theological background to the impending "divorce" in our denomination.

On Sunday, February 9, after church we will have a congregational meeting to discuss he administrative side of the question. Again, you are welcome to attend (lunch will be served but you have to make a reservation).

Ramping Up, Blessing the Parting: hope in the midst of a bad divorce.

Friends--

It has been a while since I posted. I will soon be posting furiously (I  mean that in terms of urgency and frequency; I hope I do not mean it in terms of anger and frustration) as I anticipate, once again, attending the General Conference of the UMC in Minneapolis this coming May. I will not be there for the whole event, but plan to head-up on Mother's Day, May 10, and stay to the bitter end on May 15.

I am clear that this is NOT the death of Mr. Wesley's church--not substantively or obviously. But it feels like a real end, and also a new beginning.

I keep thinking about Abraham and Lot: when the land could not support both of them, their flocks and herds, and when their servants were quarreling among one another, Father Abraham said to his nephew, "You take the left, and I will go to the right. You take the right, and I will go to the left. Is not the whole land before us? We are kinsmen; we need not be fighting (or, as my friend Talbot Davis said recently, "Life is too short" (https://wesleyancovenant.org/2020/01/27/lifes-too-short/).

And so they separated, uncle and nephew, and it was painful. As it was painful when Jacob and Laban parted. And when Paul and the elders in Ephesus. As it was painful when Jesus was parted from the Father or, later, from the disciples at his Ascension. Parting is always hard.

But if you can part with a blessing... 

Years ago, almost a decade, when my wife was ready to part from me for a second and final time, we took one more stab at counseling. We had already spent a small fortune on counselors and had tried valiantly--I want to believe--to try to find a way to stay together and flourish (though, in truth, for a long time we brought out only the worst in each other), we would go to the counselor's office and repeat the same tired arguments, say the same damned things, blame the other for a crime we shared, and feel righteous in the fact that other was so recalcitrant... finally, there was no use. No way really to discuss. Only one sad decision left to be made, which was already made, in truth, but had to be said out loud.

It was awful. Terrible. Embarrassing. A blow the credibility of our purported faith in Jesus, forgiveness, reconciliation and peace-making. Our kids suffered SO much, though they were grown. Nothing good about any of it.

Since she left, she remarried--and contracted a horrible disease that will soon take her away from us.

I remained single, grieved and lonely, yet somehow feeding off the loneliness as if it were manna.

One grand-baby has been born. Another is due. We have managed a few more helpful conversations in the last few months--as if to say, I am sorry it came to that, I am sorry, period, I wish it had been different, but I am glad that on the other side of the intractable disagreements and agrievements we have found our way and place, separately, but able to cherish what we had in common...

A mutual blessing after the fact. And so redemptive.

It may have been too much to expect a blessing in the midst of the parting. But on the downside we have managed it.

That is my hope for the UMC, too. It may be too much, now, to expect the RMN, the WCA, Good News, Uniting Methodists, UMNext and whoever to bless whomever, but I believe there will come a time when we can do that, and celebrate all we have shared and the good that came from our covenant and, dare I say, "marriage," despite our differences,

I feel each "side" could arrogantly boast, "They went out from us, but they were not of us, because if they were of us they would not have gone out from us" (I John 2:19). But that helps...what did Talbot say?...No One.

Better to pray for the other, to bless the other, to emulate Father Abraham (if we truly want to be his children and heirs) and bless the parting.

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In May, I will once again go to the site of the GC and report from there as an interested, engaged, invested observer. I have no special wisdom. Just a love for Jesus, the Bible, the Church (and its self-identifying rituals, Baptism and Eucharist).

In a day or two I will post my thoughts about how to read the texts as regards these matters. I have told my congregation: I love you too much NOT to tell you the truth of where I am, what I believe, where I hope to lead us. Too many of my colleagues are like Jack Lemon in Mass Appeal: I did not love you enough to tell you the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Appeal.

So... here we go. It is a few months out, but I have today made plane reservations, hotel reservations (with a lot of help from a friend). I will be there May 10-15, and I will post many times a day.

Between now and then, a few preliminaries and other thoughts. But you ramp-up too. I offer all of this to you as a gift,

Peace of Christ, Tom

Out of my depth, but not Habakkuk's

Interesting experience today. I was one of two white folk at a funeral for a man who was shot and killed two weeks ago tonight. The other was our children’s minister, there to sing the Lord’s Prayer—which felt, sadly, pretty hollow as there had been amplified gospel through a phone and amp as we gathered. The Lord’s Prayer is beautiful, and especially a capella, as she sings it, but it did not “play” for this particular service, at least to my ear. No matter.

There were maybe 75 people there, dreaded-out, most of them, and quite a few in tee-shirts with the picture and dates of the deceased. My role was to convene the service, offer a Prayer of Comfort, invite the gatherers to speak as they would, deliver a “eulogy” and benediction.

Jumping to the “eulogy,” it was anything but. I read these verses from Habakkuk, and was glad the lectionary assigned them to me last week…

             The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.

² O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
    and you will not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
    and you will not save?
³ Why do you make me see wrongdoing
    and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    strife and contention arise.
⁴ So the law becomes slack
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
    therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

¹² Are you not from of old,
    O Lord my God, my Holy One?
    You^[b] shall not die.
¹³ Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
    and you cannot look on wrongdoing;
why do you look on the treacherous,
    and are silent when the wicked swallow
    those more righteous than they?
I will stand at my watchpost,
    and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
    and what he^[d] will answer concerning my complaint.
² Then the Lord answered me and said:
Write the vision;
    make it plain on tablets,
    so that a runner may read it.
³ For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
    it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
    it will surely come, it will not delay.
⁴ Look at the proud!
    Their spirit is not right in them,
    but the righteous live by their faith.

 

I suggested that it was hard, these days, to live by faith, when all we see is destruction and violence, when we cry Violence, and hear nothing from heaven in return. But an act of faith, nonetheless, and especially when we don’t feel faithful, to gather ourselves together; to lean on each other; to say the sacred words and sing the holy songs; to pray the ancient prayers…

And to tell God that, like the prophet, we are watching. And waiting.
 
When I grew up, I said, I heard a lot about God watching me; but that the prophet Habakkuk gives us permission to say to God that we are watching him, waiting for him to act, listening for him to speak, to answer our complaint about violence and destruction.

Hard to have faith, and hard to have hope, too, I said. When the evil surround the righteous. When justice is prevented or perverted. When God seems to ignore the sins of some who clearly deserve judgment but is silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they.

It is hard to love, too, I said, and especially when it is so painful. When it hurts so much to lose someone…who was way too young, and so senselessly, so tragically. But the depth of pain is the best measure of your love, and you would want to pretend it doesn’t hurt.

So, perhaps today we think of another young man who was killed before his time, tragically and violently and unjustly taken away from his mother, his friends and disciples—and from many more who, while loving him, would never get to see him, again or ever.

Like Mario’s children, who will love him without seeing him or enjoying his presence.

But you will tell them the stories, I said to the assembled. Because, while I didn’t know him at all, you did. Enough to remember and share.

I knew him not at all; you knew him well; but Jesus knew him even better…

Mario was created in the image of God and Jesus died to redeem him, and made him and the rest of us promises that we expect for him even as we claim them for ourselves…

Then I read John 14, and I Thessalonians 4:13.

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I felt good about my part of it. And I told the singer afterwards that while, at the first, I could feel a bit of “Who is this old white man and why is he here? He knows nothing of our reality, has nothing to say” (which would have been entirely justified). And who is this woman singing this white shit?"—I felt that they not only listened to us both but also, eventually, received the word. They were locked onto me from the time I read Habakkuk. It was pretty profound.

Back up: several people stood to speak. One young man in particular remains fresh to my memory. He said basically (and with this vocabulary), “We got to stop this shit.” He noted that Mario was the third of their friends they have buried this year. That this is their world and they have to change it. Something like that. That it can’t go on.

I “met” the two-month old who was the fourth of his four children (three daughters and a boy). 

Throughout the service there was weeping and wailing and a person or two fell out. At the end, Mario’s mother (who works at HLUMC and is the reason I was there), lost it entirely. She had been stoic till then. People kissed the casket and stomped the ground as if running in place. Others took walks or sat down to bury their heads in their hands. There were un-embarrassed tears on the faces of many young men who, you know, have seen and experienced more than most of us can imagine.

One powerful picture and prayer from the service: A tall man, who said he knew Mario through the Northwest School of the Arts (I did not get the particulars of their connection and I did not know Mario when there, if he did)…anyway, he brought, I suppose, his young son to the service. The little boy was three, maybe four. Just a little guy in a blue dress shirt and a black bow tie—who held his dad’s leg, and kept looking up to watch him cry, while the father kept rubbing the boy’s shoulder, and head.

I wondered whether the father was crying just for Mario, or for himself, or for the fact that his son was born into a context where gun violence is expected and “normal.” I wondered if the father feared there was no escape for any of them—for any of them there. And I prayed, especially, for that little boy, and for Mario’s children—for whom there might not be.

I had been worried, early in the discussions regarding the service for this young man, whether I (or our sanctuary) would be in any kind of danger. Who knew but what the murder was drug or gang related. The CMPD assured us, no.  

Today, at Oaklawn, I felt like I was the safest person there. That the young men, especially, are the ones in terrible danger. And will remain so till God answers our complaint.  

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.