I’ve been trying to plan worship emphases and sermon outlines into at least the first half of 2012.  If that sounds ambitious to you, you should have spoken up sooner.  I’m finding out just how difficult it is to plan this far in advance.  It is a daunting task, I think, to try to plan and organize when it seems that life is changing everyday.

How shall I preach to a church when I don’t know what they will be going through in 6 months?  Will we have experienced more than our share of deaths in our family of faith?  Will someone get a serious cancer diagnosis?  Will someone be cured?

For now, I’ll allow those questions to unfurl themselves.  Not that there’s much I can do about them anyway — except be ready to respond if/when they arrive.

My contemplative activity (read: break from planning) is to walk along the beach (did I mention that I’m retreating at Nags Head?) and take pictures of whatever catches my eye.

Yesterday I had lunch with a most delightful seagull.  He waited until I finished at least half of my sandwich before indicating that he’d like a bite.

And last night the sunset was marvelous.  I just had to share.

I am reminded of Dr. Galindo’s words today as I am up to my eyeballs in budget planning for 2012.  Over the next two weeks, the finance committee will gather to pore over request forms from committees throughout the church.  We will pray over these requests, and then we begin the difficult task of putting together a budget for the church’s consideration.

Why is this such an arduous task?  Because a church budget isn’t just about dollars and cents.  As I stated, we are writing a theological document about what we value and where we feel God is calling us as a church.  It is all about providing resources for us to accomplish our God-given purpose.  We must constantly ask ourselves, how can we be most responsible with our finances so that we can be most generous toward God in missions and ministry?

I have often tried to use the term Ministry Plan instead of Budget—though I haven’t been able to use it consistently out of habit, let alone encourage its use among the church.  The term Budget will likely continue to be used out of convention, but Ministry Plan more accurately describes what the document we are writing is all about.  It is a plan which provides the resources to fulfill the ministry that God has given to our church.

Now back to excel…

Exodus 17:1-7, Matthew 21:23-32
(Readings for Year A, 15^th Sunday after Pentecost)

I’ve often heard folks—good, churchgoing folks—say, “I know we’re not supposed to question God, but…”  And then they unload a perplexing theological question or a life situation for which they have been unable to find a rationale.  I’m not certain of the origin of this idea of not questioning God.  It’s certainly not biblical.

When one surveys the state of the world today, it’s hard not to question God.  Consider recent natural disasters—earthquake, hurricane, wild fires—and that was just one week in North Carolina!  What’s more, look at what we’re doing to ourselves: violence, terrorism, war, greed, oppression of women and children, persecution of minorities, harassment of immigrants, trafficking of young girls, poverty, starvation, genocide.  Is the Lord among us or not?

That’s exactly the question asked in the first Old Testament lection for this Sunday.   It seems to me that our Jewish friends have a robust tradition of openly questioning God and God’s (in)action, yet followers of Christ often struggle to bring themselves to do so.

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote a play some years ago called The Trial of God.  The play is based loosely on Wiesel’s experience as a teenager at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz.  In that concentration camp, God was put on trial by three Jewish rabbis.  On the holy day of Rosh Hashanah, from a place of deep anguish and sorrow, the prisoners of Auschwitz called God to judgment and condemnation for creating a world where such evil and suffering exists—and then not intervening to stop it.  “The trial lasted several nights. Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered, conclusions were drawn, and the verdict was unanimous—the Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, was found guilty of crimes against creation and humankind.”[1]

And then, after what Wiesel describes as “infinity of silence,” one rabbi looked toward the heavens and said, “It’s time for evening prayers,” and the members of the court began to recite the Maariv, evening prayer.

Wiesel’s point here is profound—for people of faith, it is possible to question God, but not to live without God.  We know that if we are honest, we can (and must) question God.  But we also know that questioning God is not a rejection of God.  Questioning God rests in the presumption that God is here—present with us and listening to us—and that God is strong enough to take our questioning.  And so, when at our wit’s end, we grab God by the collar…and hold on.  As the main character in Wiesel’s play declares, “I lived as a Jew, and it is as a Jew that I shall die—and it is as a Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protest to God!”

But what next—what happens after we’ve had our say, after we’ve shaken our fist in God’s face, after we’ve shouted our questions and raised our protest?

Let’s look at the Gospel lection.   After his confrontation with the religious leaders, Jesus tells them a parable. A man tells one of his sons to go to work in the vineyard, but the son refuses.  Later, however, the son changes his mind and goes to the field to work. The man’s tells his other son the same thing.  But this son complies with the request, but then changes his mind and does not go into the field. “Which son did the father’s will?” asks Jesus. The answer is clear—the son who initially refuses his father’s request, but then obeys.

It seems to me that Jesus is saying that real faith begins when, after you have had your say, had your protest with God, you get up and you do God’s work in the world.

Real faith begins not when God answers all our questions to our satisfaction.  Rather, real faith begins when we hear Christ’s call and decide to get up and follow him into a world in desperate need.  Real faith begins when we learn to serve rather than be served, love instead of hate, laugh in the face of despair, and lose our lives for Christ’s sake and that of this world.

(courtesy Barnes & Noble)

The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why
by Phyllis Tickle
(Baker Publishing, 2008)

Initially, I was not very taken by this short book, no matter how gracefully it is written.  And then I read on Brian McLaren’s blog that he considered it possibly the most important book of the year.  I thought I must be missing something.  The more I entered Tickle’s understanding of the church that is emerging from today’s reformation, the more I understood that what she writes here may be truer than I had given credit for.

First, Tickle begins by articulating the notion that every five hundred years (give or take) the church goes through a sort of transformation (the Great Reformation took place roughly five hundred years ago).  She then proceeds to review the major transformations the church has undergone in the history of the Church.  The Great Schism preceded the Reformation, Gregory the Great and the monastic orders before that, and the time of the apostles before that.  Of course, Tickle finds the church of today in such a situation—The Great Emergence (or else no need for this book, I suppose).

Tickle is clear to point out that such seismological shifts are not merely religious ones.  There are many cultural, technological, political, environmental, and sociological pressures that have contributed to these shifts.  Tickle adequately articulates these elements, even though she provides them only a (necessary) cursory glance.

I am most interested with the section (chapter 6 and following) in which Tickle lays out the conventional view of current denominationalism and theological “grouping” (for lack of a better term) and the emerging center.  She lays out the quadrilateral model illustrating Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Renewalists, and Conservatives.  We don’t always fit so cleanly into such neat categories, so there tends to be an overlapping cruciform pattern in which we find ourselves.

Tickle sees faith communities gathering more toward the center and the emerging expression being one that may be much different than that from which it emerged.  In this line of thinking (131), it is not exclusively the hip downtown “emerging” churches, but rather the church universal, the one holy catholic and apostolic church, which is being blown into the center.

That seems to me to be a most intriguing idea, but one that is much too broad.  Forgive my ignorance, but I’m still not clear on who exactly are the ones gathering into the center.  The entire church universal or those who find themselves closest to the cruciform pattern and where each of the quadrilateral categories converges?

Her last chapter, The Way Ahead, seems to be short on details as well.  This seems strange to me as Tickle is neither a clergyperson nor an academic, but rather a lay leader and Eucharistic minister in the Episcopal Church.  As such, I would have expected some practical engagement with this line of thought.  Perhaps this is because the Great Emergence has not been fully realized and is difficult to forecast.  “Where exactly it [the Great Emergence narrative] will go remains to be seen, but go it will.  There is no doubt about that” (160).  I can deal with being vague and ambiguous, but that is a bit much.

Overall, this is a good book—one I’d recommend.  Her treatment of the history of the transformational shifts in Christianity is worth the price of the book in itself.  The emphasis on openness to diversity becomes crucial if she is correct in her “emerging toward the center” assertion.  That will preach!

I plan to post photographs I’ve taken, book reviews, sermon ideas, and more.  What would you like to see in this place?

Peace to you!