Summer Malaise and Holy Spirit Nudges

There are times in any church when the pastor must be away.  At my church, the pastor always asks lay leaders if they want to preach.  If no one can do it, then he looks for a supply pastor.  We take this approach for several reasons, among them, the money that we save.  But it's also good for us as a congregation to remember that the pastor is not the only one with those particular gifts.

As Lutherans, we declare the priesthood of all believers, but we don't always practice it.  Of course, it's difficult.  After more than 25 years of teaching, I'm comfortable speaking in public.  Most people would rather do anything than speak in front of a group of people.

On Sunday, I was the substitute for our pastor.  Often when I fulfill that role, I feel a little nudge.  Often, I get similar nudges from parishioners who ask me when I'm going to seminary.

On Sunday, all went well, but I didn't feel that nudge.  Most of the departing congregation members were kind and complimentary, but no one asked me when I was going to seminary.

I won't read too much into this, of course.  I had a tough text to preach, the one in Acts with Simon the magician who offers to pay money to be filled with the spirit.  That's not the toughest passage in Acts, of course.  I took the approaches you would expect:  you can't pay for God's grace and salvation, you can't control God, you can't capture God's powers for your own purposes.

I confess that of all the books in the Bible, Acts is high on my list of least-favorite, just under Leviticus and some other Old Testament texts.  I confess that I feel guilty about that fact.  As a Christian, I should treasure these stories from the early Church.  They just don't move me the way they move others.  I would be the first to speculate that the fault is mine, that some deficiency in me keeps me from fully appreciating this text.

So perhaps I can attribute Sunday's malaise to the book of Acts.  Maybe it's the general lethargy of summer.  We didn't have high attendance, which is a drawback to having congregation members lead the service.

Or maybe it's that I'm unlikely to attend seminary for a few years, thus I'm less likely to be open to Holy Spirit nudges.  I've come to believe that my current full-time job may well be the last full-time job I have, one with a good salary and full benefits, and so I don't want to leave it too hastily.  We'll stay put, hopefully move to a house that's a better investment, and see where we are in a few years.

Or at least, that's what I'm thinking today.  But I've read my Bible.  I know that the Holy Spirit often has other plans that can be irresistible.  I'll work on softening my heart and staying open to the possibilities.

God as Father: Does this Metaphor Work?

It's Father's Day, and I have parenting, metaphors, and God on the brain.  I come from a religious tradition that emphasizes God as Father more than any other metaphor I've encountered.  I've often found it irritating, even though my own experiences with fathers has been overwhelmingly positive.

I know how lucky I am to have emerged from an intact family, to have a mom and a dad who continue to love each other, and continue to love my sister and me. I grew up in the 1970's and saw plenty of wrecked families. I've always wondered how people who come out of those wrecked families, especially those with absent or abusive fathers, react to the idea of God as a Father.


Even though I have a good relationship with both of my parents, I'm not crazy about the idea of God as Parent of either gender. I think that God as Parent is an infantilizing metaphor. If God is a Dad--or so much more rarely, a Mom--then it follows that we're children, and too often, we see that as a reason for inactivity. But God needs us to be active in the world. I'd go further and say that God is counting on us. I much prefer the idea of God as partner. God can be the Senior partner; I'm cool with that.

Of course, I see the value of viewing God as a loving parent, but I'd love for us to expand our metaphors for God. I'd also love us to take our view of God, and see if it could have impact on our own lives. How might our parenting change, if we used God as the parenting model? How might we change our creative lives, if we used God as model? Maybe we'd be more forgiving, in both instances. Maybe we'd look at all that we create and call it "Good" and "Very Good," as in the first Genesis story, the one that comes before Adam and Eve and the snake.

Or maybe it's time to work a bit harder to make the God as Father metaphor fit our current lives.  Many of the fathers whom I know today are much more involved in the lives of their children than fathers of past generations were.  They change diapers, they cook meals, they're part of the car pool, they coach teams--what if we viewed God as someone who packed our lunch for us?  What if we saw God as soccer coach or the one who taught us to sail or program computers?

Most fathers I know these days seem infinitely patient and even-tempered.  Many religious traditions have not focused on that aspect of God, but have instead seen God as a fiery judge.  But what if we saw God as someone who encourages us to try again, even though we've fallen short?  What if we saw God as an older, wiser presence who tries to help us discover the best way to live our lives?

Shalom and Hesed

I've been thinking about this post on Living Lutheran.  The post wonders how our communities would be different if the book of Ruth was our central faith formation document.

Some of us might recoil at even playing with this idea.  Are we not verging on blasphemy?  Some of us might argue that we've crossed the line into blasphemy.

But I could argue that many Christian churches are rooted in books other than the 4 Gospels.  Many churches offer a much more Paul-centric theology than Christ-centric.  And some are downright Old Testament based, especially the law-as-cudgel part of the Old Testament.

I have a friend who loves going to Mepkin Abbey because she prefers the central place of the Psalms that monastic traditions often offer in their worship.  She feels that the Psalms are so much more honest than the feel-good theology that she encounters in her local church.

I find my thoughts returning to this part of the blog post about Ruth:

"An Old Testament professor of mine defined 'shalom' as that state where 'You have everything you need to live and be happy and I know it. And I have everything I need to live and be happy and you know it.' The word shalom does not (to the best of my knowledge) occur in the book of Ruth, but that sense of mutual concern for each other’s well-being seems to undergird the entire narrative.


If the Hebrew word shalom does not occur in Ruth, the word 'hesed' certainly does. Hesed signifies something like 'extravagant, faithful, merciful, kind, loving, loyalty.' It is a rich concept and an important theme in this book. It is an attribute of God but also a human attribute modeled by Ruth in her treatment of Naomi, and Boaz in his treatment of Ruth. My imaginary community of faith would be a community of hesed."

A community based on shalom and hesed is not something I've experienced often or for long periods of time.  I'm much more likely to be rooted in the soils of fretting and anxiety and needless worry.  What would my life look like if my faith formation texts had stressed the shalom and hesed aspects of God?  What would I have learned if I had lived in communities faithful and fiercely committed to these ideals?

And here's the question that's even more important to me this morning.  I'm only halfway through my life.  Could I consistently change my inner narratives?  Could I commit to shalom and hesed and reject fear and anxiety?

The Spirituality of Home Repair

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about home repair, its difficulties and what those experiences can teach us.  Along the way I began to formulate ideas about the spirituality of home repair.  I began to think about writing a book.

It could be the kind of book that would teach people about different kinds of religions along the way.  Let me daydream:

Zen and the Art of Home Repair:  Accept the fact that the tile has already broken in the place you did not want it to break.  Let go of your expectations of how the project will look at the end.

Christianity and the Art of Home Repair:  Home repair teaches us a lot about forgiveness and the need to ask for forgiveness.  Home repair teaches us about how/why the quest for the perfect paint color will ultimately leave us empty and thirsting for something else, why the work is never really finished, and how it helps to have a team of friends.

Existentialism and the Art of Home Repair:  Why do plumbing parts so rarely work with the first attempt? Why are there so many different finishes in faucets--except for the one you need? If so many other tools and pieces of equipment can be made in a cordless version, why not a cordless vacuum?  What does it mean that these projects will never last, that we will have to redo them again and again and again until we're dead.

Feminism and the Art of Home Repair:  What does it mean that we'll get better service at Home Depot if we show up in a dress than if we show up dirty in our home repair clothes?  Why, after all these decades of feminism has no company made tools that fit a smaller hand without sacrificing precision and power?


Atheism and the Art of Home Repair:  There is no God.  There is no one protecting us, as water breaks the pipes to cascade down the stairs, as we saw off parts of our body by mistake, as we touch the wrong wires together.

Clearly, I can't do as much with other world religions, like Islam and Judaism, at least not now. Of course, in some ways, this is an exercise in silliness.  I'm not going to write such a book.  I have so many possible projects to write. I will need to live to be 120, with every year a productive writing year, to write the books that I can already picture in my head. That's if I have no more ideas between now and then.


So, if you want to steal my idea, feel free. You'd likely write a different book than mine anyway.  If I live to be 120, we can compare notes.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, June 18, 2013:



First Reading: 2 Samuel 11:26--12:10, 13-15

First Reading (Semi-cont.): 1 Kings 21:1-10 [11-14] 15-21a

Psalm: Psalm 32

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 5:1-8

Second Reading: Galatians 2:15-21

Gospel: Luke 7:36--8:3


In our day, Pharisees have come to have a bad name as the rigid, judgmental Jews who didn't recognize the greatness of Jesus. It's important to realize that in many ways, they were the most devout of the Jews, not just religious officials who kept rigidly to hollow rules and restrictions, as Christians often paint them. In his book, The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson notes, "They had the best track record in Palestine. They had historically proven their sincerity and loyalty to the demands and promises of God wonderfully. They were the strongest and most determined party of resistance to the ways of the world, represented in Herod. . . . There was much to admire in the Pharisees. Every Jew owed a debt of gratitude to the Pharisees for keeping Jewish identity alive" (212).

It's important to remember that the Pharisees were rigid about rules and regulations because they thought the way to God led them to follow that route. They weren't being judgmental and exclusionary out of meanness. No, they thought the future of the faithful depended on right action. It might be worth examining our own individual behavior and the behavior of the church both as an individual group and a larger institution--where do we see ourselves? How might we be the Pharisee in the story?

Those of us who have grown up in the church or who have been attending church for many decades forget the radical nature of this story. We have this vision of Jesus that no matter where he went, people were swept away by his message and washed his feet or poured oil on his head.

This woman was an outcast, marginalized in so many ways. We don't know the nature of her sin (the fact that she was a woman in a deeply patriarchal society would have been damning enough), but we know the fact that Jesus allowed her to touch him was profoundly shocking to the Pharisee. Jesus uses this encounter to teach about love and forgiveness.

Today's Gospel also reminds us of how religious people can be so blind to the sacred as it appears in our midst. We religious people forget that the God of our Judaic-Christian scripture is most often found in communities of the poor, destitute, and outcast. We prefer to stay in our sanitary structures, to not let the poor and destitute trespass in our hearts. In doing so, we're likely to miss out on a deeper relationship with God.

People who are part of institutionalized religious structure face dangers that we often forget to understand. We lose ourselves in rules and regulations; we create a rigid hierarchy to help us determine who is holy and who is a sinner. It's so easy to forget that our central task is to love deeply and widely. Jesus comes to tell us strange parables so that we'll remember. Jesus comes to show us a way to live that will be a way of love and far-flung community. Jesus comes to give his life, to show us that the way of love is such a threat to the larger culture of empire and conquest that we can expect the same. But God incarnate in Jesus comes to show us that the risks are worth the reward.

Sprouting Seeds and Sandy Soil

We are in the process of buying a new house, and I'm intrigued by the questions that we've gotten.  Many people have asked if there will be room for a garden.

In our current house, we've had more success with container gardening, and I suspect the same will be true of our new house.  Our part of Florida used to be sea bed, and so, we try to garden in sand and coral.  We've spent years trying to mix good soil in with the sand, but in the end, it's easier to fill a pot with dirt and plant tomatoes there.

As we get to the part of the lectionary that appears periodically, and we work our way through the  agricultural metaphors, I have to wonder about their effectiveness. How many of us have seen wheat grow? For that matter, how many of us have seen anything grow?


Once upon a time, many generations ago, we were an agricultural nation. Most of us grew our own food. We'd have understood intimately the metaphors of good seed and bad, good soil and rocky soil.

Even when I was a child in the 1970's, it seemed that more people gardened. Everyone in my suburban neighborhood was growing something, even if it was just tomatoes. I remember going to church in the summer and seeing tables with the garden bounty that individual families couldn't consume. Church members were encouraged to take what they could use.

I am only two generations removed from my farming relatives. Had my grandfather not decided to go to seminary, I might still be on the farm--or more realistically, we'd be trying to decide what to do about the farm. My grandmother kept a letter that the seminary sent my grandfather as they tried to persuade him not to come to school. The seminary letter writer points out that at least on the farm my grandfather will always have food--and in the height of the Great Depression, this was no small thing. But my grandfather pressed ahead with his plans, and that's one reason why I'm not still on the farm.

I was lucky enough to be able to go back to the farms of my relatives as I was growing up. My grandmother came from farming people too, and I remember at a family reunion, we took a hay ride tour of the land, with commentary about which relative had farmed which parts of the land and what had grown there. As a teenager, I read about industrial farming and decided to become a vegetarian. But when we went to my grandfather's farming family, I got to see what a humane picture of animal husbandry could be. Everything we ate at Thanksgiving came from the farm. Everything we ate, except the desserts, had been alive just a week ago: the turkey, the pork, and the vegetable side dishes.

Most people these days have no memories like the ones that I have. And I wonder if the agricultural metaphors still work for those people when they read the Gospel. As an English major, we talked about readers having to understand both sides of the equation of the metaphor. If the reader doesn't, the comparison might be lost.

What would a modern metaphor be? Would we talk about good investments and bad investments in the stock market? Would we talk about exercise maybe? I need to think more about this.

In the meantime, I'll look for ways to enjoy the gardens that are part of my life. My spouse plants everything in the yard and sees what will happen. We have flourishing herbs and all sorts of tropical plants. My friend planted a garden in the planter boxes in the balcony outside of my office. It's a beautiful space, even if it's not the kind of garden that my grandmother would recognize.

Let's say a prayer of thanks for all the soil bewitchers in our lives. We may not be growing wheat, but at least we can still enjoy the sight of a seed sprouting out of the soil.

Saint Columba and Modern Mortgages/Monasticism

Yesterday was the feast day of Saint Columba.  It's interesting to think about this saint, both a monastic and a traveler, in this time when I'm going through so much effort to get a new house and to sink down serious roots in South Florida.

Saint Columba is one of the great early Irish Christians, whom some would give credit for spreading Christianity to Scotland. He also helped spread literacy and founded a school for missionaries. He's one of the great monastics.


He's associated with Iona, that thin place in Scotland, a place that remains an important force in Christianity to this day. I could make a good argument that some of the most exciting music and liturgy of our current time period comes to us because Iona exists. Some day, I'll make a pilgrimage there. I should start planning this soon. It would be neat to go with my church musician mom.

As I think about it, I can think of a whole slew of friends who might also like to go. What I love about monasticism is that it isn't as offputting to non-believers and the less devout. For some reason, people just get monasticism, in a way that they can't comprehend other expressions of spirituality. Perhaps it's because monasticism is such an ancient tradition. Perhaps it's because monastics have a sort of discipline, a steel-like strength at the core, that other forms of spirituality lack. Maybe it's a holdover from the Thomas Merton days--and of course, Kathleen Norris made monasticism cool to a whole new generation (including me!). All I know is that when I tell people I'm intrigued by monasticism and that I go to monasteries, people accept that--and often want to go with me. It's a different matter when I tell people that I go to church most Sundays. People want to argue about what a waste of time that is.

But for now, I will not be going on a pilgrimage any time soon.  I figure that the next several years will be tight financially, as we take on a new mortgage.  But my hope is that it will all be worth it in the end. 

I will try to remember the ancient monastics and the value of creating community in the place where one has washed up.  Saint Columba had to leave Ireland because of a dispute with another monk which led to a pitched battle, a literal one, in which many men were killed.  Instead of excommunication, Saint Columba had to serve as a missionary to Scotland.

At that time, Scotland was a fierce and scary place.  But Saint Columba sailed off with his supporters and managed to turn a punishment and exile into something positive.

I am not in a situation that's similar at all.  But buying a new house comes with its own terrors and purgatories.  I will remember Saint Columba this week, as I prepare for what's to come.