Wilderness wanderings

During Lent, I will preach mostly from a manuscript instead of from an outline, as I normally do. So I thought it would be nice to post each week's sermon on the Bridge/Port 'blog.

So . . . here is today's sermon, based on Luke 4:1-14.

****************

The minute I walked into his hospital room, Chris started waving the New Testament under my nose.

“Man, this ain’t the bible,” he said. “My girlfriend calls the bible ‘instructions for life.’ It’s a book of rules—don’t do this, don’t do that, but that’s OK. But this,” he said, waving the book in my face again, “this ain’t no bible. It’s a book of stories.”

I’d given that bible to Chris two days earlier when he asked me, as his chaplain, for something to read. It was his first personal copy of the scriptures, and the first time he’d read them for himself. And he was riled up.

“What’s wrong with a book of stories?” I asked. He didn’t answer, but stared out the window as his eyes filled up with tears.

“I opened to this page, right here,” he said, jabbing his forefinger against the fourth chapter of the Gospel According to Luke. “It says, ‘Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.’ I know that story—the devil out there trying to talk you into something you know ain’t right. I know that story. That’s my story.”

Chris’s first love in life had been crack cocaine, and by the time he’d left junior high he’d joined a West Dallas gang. Now in his mid-20’s, he’d spent the past year fighting for his life against both of those old friends. And they were always out there on the edge of his perception, tempting him to return. His old friends wanted him back.

And there was reason for him to return: Chris was dying of cancer, and he knew he wouldn’t survive. He felt like God had turned away. So why not return to those old friends, go out in a blaze of glory, instead of fading away in a hospital bed? We’d talked about that temptation nearly every time I visited him.

But in reading this passage from Luke, Chris found an answer. Jesus had been tempted in the desert just as he was tempted, daily, to turn his back on God and return to the gang and the crack and the violence of the streets. But knowing Jesus was tempted as he was tempted and suffered as he was suffering, led Chris to an entirely new understanding of who God is. For the first time in his life, Jesus became an ally instead of a judge.

II.

Sometimes I wish I had been with Jesus in the wilderness during those forty days. I imagine him in the heat of noon, with sweat glazing his body, eyes squinting against the harsh light; or at night, shivering in the desert cold beneath a full moon, surrounded by mountains, grains of sand settling in his wrinkled brow as the cool night wind blew in from the west and the Mediterranean sea.

Was he frightened of what he knew was coming? Did he talk to himself, out there in the night? Were his thoughts scattered and confused?

After all, he had just been baptized, the Holy Spirit descending on him and a voice declaring: “You are my son, the Beloved. With you, I am well pleased.”

Talk about disconcerting! His ministry hasn’t yet been inaugurated, the secret of his identity hasn’t been revealed to anyone but himself.

Did he struggle out there in the wilderness to understand the nature and shape of his messianic role?

And what happened to his body as he went ten days, twenty, thirty-five, forty, without food and water? How badly did his stomach cramp after forty days without food? I know how loud my own stomach can growl if lunch is an hour or two late. Did Jesus’ mouth turn to cotton, lips stuck together, tongue swollen and rubbed raw against the sharp shards of his teeth?

In such a condition, could he stand up by himself, let alone walk, at the end of those forty days? How much effort did it take to lift his hand and brush away the sand flies clotting at his eyes? Did he see and hear things that were not there?

And then, at the end of the forty days, when Jesus is at his weakest and most vulnerable, the temptations come: turn this stone into bread, become the ruler of the world, defy death in Jerusalem. The Spirit had declared: “You are the Son of God.” And now the devil has come to tease: “Do you really wish to be as God? I can make it happen.”

Make no mistake: These were real temptations—temptations out of which only good could come: Jesus had the power to turn stones to bread and feed the hungry; he had the power to become an earthly ruler of a benevolent kingdom full of justice and compassion that would end the brutal victimization of the weak that defined the Roman empire; he had the power to become the High Priest at the temple in Jerusalem and ask God to save him from a death in the Holy City. Jesus could have achieved any of these things and only good would have come of them.

And the expectant Jews waiting for the Messiah? They would have expected to see their king in any of these forms: a prophet concerned for social justice; a charismatic political leader with the smarts to unite the known world under one rule; or a priestly figure who would reinstate the glory of the temple and intercede for them directly before God.

Yet Jesus said no to all of these temptations, despite his power to make them happen and despite the Jewish expectation that the long-awaited Messiah would be a literal prophet, priest or king. He said no.

How did he do it? Did he struggle against his human ego that wanted those glorious things for himself? Was he tempted to take the quick route, to make a pact with the devil and achieve the glorious ends he was destined to fulfill, without following the hard road to Jerusalem and death on the cross?

Or was it easy for him to say no? To turn his mind to scripture and the things of God and participate willingly in the painful but holy destiny God had called him to complete?

I wish I had been with Jesus during those forty days so I might gather some wisdom for facing my own temptations, when I am at my weakest, to do good things—or even not-so-good things—to do them the easy way, to take the quickest route, to laugh at the folly of the cross and place my faith instead in my own strengths and the ways of human creatures.

III.

This encounter between Jesus and the devil in Luke has a sort of cut-and-dried feeling to it—like an old Western movie, where the good guys wear white hats, the bad guys wear black; and everything’s settled with a shoot-out at noon on Main Street. The good guys inevitably win.

Our own struggles with temptation tend to be more ambiguous. Our lives are lived in shades of grey, not black-and-white. Ever notice that the moral quality of people in the world can rarely be identified by the color of their hats?

True, few of us literally wander around in the desert for forty days. But life can sure feel like a wilderness, sometimes—like our enemies are lined up to get us; like we’re all alone and have nowhere to turn; like someone’s going to figure out I’m not who I pretend to be; like we’re on a giant hamster wheel, running and running and not getting anywhere.
Sometimes our desert looks like a dead-end job that’s the same, year-in and year-out; sometimes like an endless shuttle: to the doctor, to the grocery store, to the church, feeling like there’s no purpose to any of it; sometimes like a marriage gone flat or relationships that are empty of anything real.

And then there are the temptations.

Some of them are little: “No dear, your hair looks great,” or, “Well, no one will know I logged onto this website . . . I’ll just look around for a few minutes.”

Some of our temptations are a little bigger: “Just one more drink won’t hurt me,” or, “She doesn’t need to know how much my paycheck was, really—I’ll just stick these few dollars in my wallet,” or, “I can probably look at someone else’s test paper while the teacher’s back is turned,” or, “I’ll just hold my check back a week or so and let ’em know how I feel—and how much power I have.”

Then there are the big ones: “What can one kiss hurt; no one will know?” or, “The government gets too much of my paycheck anyway, and what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” or, “Just swallow the pills, or pull the knife, or hit the accelerator, and it’ll all be over.”

All of those temptations are within our power—and they’ll all make life feel good for a minute or an hour or a even a lifetime.

But they are temptations to forget our baptismal identity, to use power for personal gain, to be successful rather than faithful, to be dazzled by riches, to numb the pain, to compromise our faith, to avoid sacrifice or suffering, to forget the hope we have in Christ.

So how do we keep ourselves from being seduced by these temptations, these provocative opportunities, big and little, that come about almost every day?

I mean, Jesus was the Son of God; it was easy for him, right? But what am I supposed to do?

IV.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus handles his temptations by quoting scripture—Deuteronomy, to be specific. And certainly, that sort of trust and faith in God and reliance on God’s Word offers a model for how we can cope in the midst of temptation or conflict.

But Jesus wasn’t able to avoid his temptations simply because he was the newly-designated Son of God or because his faith was strong or because he knew the bible by heart. Resisting the devil had little to do with Jesus himself.

It was the Holy Spirit that gave Jesus the power to resist his temptations.

Isn’t it interesting that Luke frames this scene between Jesus and the devil by telling us that Jesus went into the wilderness “full of the Holy Spirit” and that when he returned to Galilee, he remained “filled with the power of the Spirit”?

Spirit is with him at the beginning of his desert ordeal, and Spirit is with him at the end. Jesus was never alone in the wilderness; the Holy Spirit stayed with him.

The presence of the Spirit doesn’t mean there won’t be temptations. But the presence of the Holy Spirit does means Jesus won’t face his ordeal alone. In the midst of temptation, he’ll have access to the power of God flowing through him by the presence of the Spirit. God doesn’t keep us from experiencing trials, but God does stand with us in the midst of those troubles, giving us the power and faith we need to come through them whole.

V.

So who is this Holy Spirit, this third person of the Trinity, whose presence brings so much power to Jesus in the wilderness?

The church universal has called the Spirit “the Lord and the giver of new life.” St. Augustine called the Spirit the link between God the Father and Jesus the Son—the bond of love and unity that ties Jesus to his abba. Isn’t it nice to think the Spirit binds us also in love and unity with the Creator God and Jesus the Christ?

We Presbyterians have historically been a little cold toward the Holy Spirit, leaving its presence to what we perceive as the excesses and exuberance of the Holy Rollers and the Pentecostals. Sometimes it’s just hard for us to get our old, cold Scottish bones moving.

But the Holy Spirit isn’t just about—or even necessarily about—emotional displays or fervent prayers or speaking in tongues. There are many ways of describing and experiencing the Holy Spirit.

German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg calls the Holy Spirit “the life-giving principle to which all creatures owe life, movement and activity.”

The New Confession of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of China calls the Holy Spirit “the friend of the weak and the fighter against the oppressors and their oppressive, evil structures.”

According to the Heidelberg Catechism, the Holy Spirit “comforts me and will abide with me forever;” another church confession says the Holy Spirit “builds the image of Christ in us.”

Jurgen Moltmann says the presence of the Holy Spirit “is a new delight in living in the joy of God.”
The Holy Spirit is the presence and work of the living God in our lives, in the church, and in the world—our personal, subjective experience of the abstract idea of God.

The Spirit is with us in the form of Scripture, in the form of our tradition expressed through worship, in the real spiritual presence of Christ in the sacraments, and in our experiences of grace and empowerment that blow through our lives.

The Holy Spirit is the comforter and friend that blew into the hospital room on that afternoon when my friend Chris read the Gospel of Luke for the first time, recognizing his own story in the words of scripture—and realizing Jesus is his friend and not his condemnation.

The Spirit is with us in many ways, and it gives us the power to resist our temptations and live the way God is calling us to live.

The presence of the Spirit in our lives does not mean we won’t face trials or temptations; but it does mean that God will be with us in the midst of those troubles, providing strength, being a companion, and creating new possibilities for fresh and abundant life.

We are not alone as we wander through the wilderness in our lives. The Holy Spirit is with us as we enter our deserts, and the Spirit will be with us when we return.

To that God who is Three in One, always present and always creating new possibilities in our lives, be honor and glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Rich and poor

The United States has "failed miserably" in sharing its wealth with other people in the world, former President Jimmy Carter said at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum this week in Minnesota.

Even worse, despite a growing chasm between rich and poor, Carter suggested Americans have no desire to be more benevolent and more caring toward others. [See also this Wise County Messenger editorial about recent economic growth being built on credit-card debt.]

Wise County--with its rapid growth, expensive new housing, and high proportion of people living at or below the poverty level--might need to think and think hard about Carter's words.

We live and work and worship in a county where the chasm between the have's and the have-not's is increasingly visible. How can we promote justice in our congregation and in our communities, where so many young people are hungry and so many older people are barely scraping by and so many working folk have never finished high school?

Do we want to encourage high-end growth without addressing our low-end heritage?

"Jesus' death is not buying off God"

So says a North Texas pastor after viewing Mel Gibson's controversial film about the final hours of Jesus' life.

Three North Texas clergymen--one Baptist, one Presbyterian, one Jewish--watched the film together and comment on it in today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

It sounds like a lively conversation. I'll let you read it and draw your own conclusions--but here's a taste from the Rev. Steve Jester, pastor of St. Philip Presbyterian Church in Hurst:

"In the history of the church, there are four or five schools of thought on what the crucifixion means. Gibson's movie focuses strictly on vicarious atonement -- that Jesus suffers in our place because of human sin. That is one of several understandings of the meaning of Jesus' death, and I know for many Christians that would be a meaningful approach to the cross. But it isn't the primary one for me."

Comfort food

has a big pull on us sometimes. For me, it's ice cream when I'm stressed, but if I'm homesick, sad, or ill, only my mother's chicken-and-noodles will do.

How about you? What brings you comfort?

"Comfort" is important to Presbyterians; one of our creeds--documents that reflect how we understand (and misunderstand) God--begins with the question: "What is your only comfort, in life and in death?"

The answer? "That I belong--body and soul, in life and in death--not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ . . ." (from the first question of The Heidelberg Catechism, the whole of which was finished in the year 1562).

Reflecting on the source of our comfort in life and death seems appropriate today as the church enters the season of Lent. Today is Ash Wednesday: "Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return."

Lent is a time of reflection, repentance, and preparation that precedes Easter. For forty days (like the forty days of Noah's flood, the forty years the Hebrew people wandered in the wilderness, and the forty days Jesus was tempted in the wilderness), Christians search their souls to identify the treasures God has planted in them, confess how they have not lived up to God's expectations, and voluntarily deny themselves some little pleasure to feel the gnawing desire that often drives what we do.

Simply put, we prepare for Easter during Lent by acknowledging our need for repentance and for the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel--the ultimate comfort food!

To help our efforts, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has prepared a daily devotional for Lent based on the Heidelberg Catechism. (You'll need to download Adobe Acrobat for free to read this--there's a link on the page.)

Take a look.

And consider this post to Bridge/Port your formal invitation to observe a holy Lent. Prepare yourself to renew your life in the mystery of Christ's life, death, and resurrection and to celebrate that renewal at Easter.

Clean shave, Western boots and gimme caps?

That's how folks might dress for worship if a local congregation adopted the tactics of the "emerging churches" profiled in today's New York Times.

The article [which I found via Tien Mao] describes the pastor of such a church as he led worship:

"Mr. Musick, 37, wore a faded T-shirt and blue jeans and had mussed hair and a soul patch beneath his lower lip. Instead of his weekly sermon, he directed the congregants to make their way among three makeshift altars, each with a stack of cards carrying a prayer and a list of topics to think about. 'You're going to be put in a position where you have to think about your relationship with God,' Mr. Musick said."

These emerging churches reach back into history to find rituals and liturgies that bring meaning and stability to the unstable lives of Gen Xers. They use local music, non-rational and participatory liturgies, and other means to help twenty- and thirtysomething folks experience God and community in powerful ways.

Reading the article got me to wondering: What would change if First Presbyterian started worshipping in ways that mirror the people, cultures, styles, and values of those in Wise County who don't already have an attachment or commitment to church?

Any thoughts? Drop me note and let me know.

Paul calls us "children of the light"

. . . but if that's what we are, how do we learn to live that way?

The answer begins in childhood, and interest in the spirituality of children is growing in the church as a whole and in the broader culture.

In a compelling charge to the church, Christian educator Carol Wehrheim calls Presbyterians to strengthen the ways in which they nurture the spiritual life of children.

To help out, the spring issue of Hungryhearts newsletter offers a series of practices appropriate for both family life and for the youngest members of our churches.

Hungryhearts is published by our denomination's Office of Spiritual Formation. Check out their website for a wealth of helpful material.

A new twist on Twister . . .

. . . from Johnny Baker in London.

The biblical book of Psalms has been called "the prayer book of the bible," and these poetic expressions of faith encompass nearly every sort of human emotion possible--with the possible exception of one.

To learn about the psalms--and to figure out which common human response to life they don't seem to include--drop in on Johnny's "Psalm Twister" page at small ritual.

Science can explain

the parting of the Red Sea. Aren't you relieved? [I mean that as a joke!]

Researchers at the St. Petersburg Institute of Oceanology, writing in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, say a shallow reef on the north side of the Red Sea could have been exposed by wind long enough for 600,000 people to walk across on dry ground.

In the biblical book of Exodus, the parting of the sea--which allowed the Hebrew people to escape the wrath of the Egyptian army--is attributed to God and Moses.

As the army approached, the passage reads, Moses stretched out his hand and God "caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided."

Researchers have a complicated formula that accounts for wind speed, water depth, the passage of time, and the speed of the passing Hebrews to demonstrate that the parting of the Red Sea could be factually true, says The Week magazine.

This type of reductionism--boiling biblical truth down to an issue of physics or weather patterns--disappoints me.

The point isn't whether or not the Red Sea could have parted long enough for the Hebrews to pass through. What's important about this story is what it says about the character of God and what it means to be God's people.

I stand with biblical scholar Barbara Green, who told Discovery.com that history and science are important but insufficient tools for studying the bible.

"The Bible needs to be read with many lenses," she said, "among which are history and science. But there are many others as well.

"The error is to assume that all that is at stake is facticity — how many miles, how much speed. It is ludicrous on its own."

Which Jesus

do you know best?

New books take a look at American concepts of Jesus and discover:

". . . Jesus the distant symbol, and Jesus the gentle friend. There's Jesus the pacifist and caregiver, and Jesus the gruff, muscular warrior. There's black Jesus, and white Jesus. Homely and handsome, capitalist and socialist, stern and hippie. Hardworking social reformer, mystical comforter — all among the extraordinary range of identities Jesus has assumed in American history and culture — in art, music, literature and more — over the past four centuries."

Blessings and woes: Looking through Luke's eyes

The gospel reading this Sunday is Luke's story about the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6.17-26). [Matthew calls it "the Sermon on the Mount."]

It's a passage traditionally called "the Beatitudes." In it, Jesus speaks words of blessing and words of woe to certain groups of people. (You know the drill: "Blessed are the poor, the hungry," etc.)

I won't be in worship Sunday, but Diane Oswald will be preaching on this passage. Sometimes visualizing a bible story can help us understand it. So as you prepare for worship, try to imagine being there with the multitude and listening to Jesus preach.

The Internet offers a lot of images that can help us "look through the eyes" of people who have imagined the scene prior to us. To get you started, here's an African vision of the Sermon on the Plain and a Mexican image of Jesus teaching.

Water, stone, light

I'm having surgery tomorrow.

This isn't a personal (or confessional) blog, but I wanted to reflect a bit on what I was thinking and doing today. It pertains, I think, to safe crossings and to anchoring places--the focus of the Bridge/Port weblog.

To put things simply: the prospect of surgery is frightening. The anxiety hasn't been overwhelming or even omnipresent; I am simply aware that I will be placing my living, breathing body into the hands of other people in the morning, trusting that they will heal rather than destroy. I will be unconscious for nearly two hours, and when I awake the bone of some other person will be grafted into my spine.

All weekend, as I prepared to miss work in order to recover, I felt pulled toward Tadoa Ando's astounding building that houses the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. So this afternoon I went there.

I don't know what I expected; I did nothing extranordinary in that quiet and soothing space. I chose small gifts for my son (a finger puppet, temporary tattoos, stickers). I spoke by mobile phone to friends and former parishioners who are praying for me. I called my insurance agent and purchased additional whole life coverage. I mentally rehearsed the "if things go sour" memo I would write for the counseling center I direct.

But mostly I soaked in the simple comfort composed of water, stone, and light. I wandered through the galleries, spending some time peering into Julie Bozzi's wonderful landscapes and meditating on Martin Puryear's "Ladder for Booker T. Washington."

And by the time I left, my soul was rested, restored even. The smooth concrete, rippling water, and hushed overcast light reminded me of the winter pond I used to walk around as a child. I felt in touch with the elements of God's creation. Through Bozzi's vision, I had given thanks for color, for seasons, for endless horizons. And it was all enough.

We are creatures who are bodies, and our bodies respond to the rest of creation. Water, stone, and light prepared my body and my soul for the traumatic healing I will undergo in the morning. Anchored me in the creative splendor of the creating God. May the crossing be safe.

Are we part of the "free agent church"?

First, let me say that I am not advocating this idea. Yet.

Right now, I'm just wondering aloud, imagining the possibilities.

Second, since there's no Kinko's or Office Depot or wi-fi connection in Wise County, it might be hard for folks here to understand what "free-agent infrastructure" is all about. But trust me: it works, and it's important.

That said, take a look at the vision of the 21st-century church being imagined by Dave Rogers at Connect and Empower. He calls it a "free agent church."

The idea is that local congregations would become "infrastructure"--sources of support, sort of like interstate highways are infrastructure for commerce, making it possible for fruit growers in California to sell to retirees in Maine--for teams of Christians united for a particular ministry.

These teams might not be related to the local congregation at all. They might be comprised of individuals from different denominations (or no denomination). They might not worship together or study together--but they would do ministry together.

As a part of the "free agent church," our congregation might make two empty rooms available to a team of Baptists, Methodists, and Mormons who want to create a "lending library" of hospital supplies (walkers, portable toilets, hospital bed) for needy people.

Or we might house an after-school tutoring program that wants to teach Spanish and Mexican culture to Hispanic and Anglo students.

Or we might convert the old parlor into a machine shop for a team of Christians who want to teach new immigrants to weld, woodwork, and fix cars as a way of strengthening their earning potential.

None of these activities would be "programs" of First Presbyterian Church. But they certainly wouldn't be able to exist without our support.

We'd be like first-century merchants and homeowners who provided the apostle Paul with a place to live, food to eat, and a spot to ply his trade--all while he told the story of Jesus and God's love affair with humanity.

What would happen if we encouraged free agent Christianity in Bridgeport?

Imagine the possibilities. Let me know what you dream up.

Healthy communities

I've often wondered why more churches aren't involved in health ministries, given the emphasis Jesus placed on healing people physically, spiritually, and mentally.

The good news: lots and lots of Presbyterian churches are involved in concrete ways of promoting better health in their congregations and in their communities. Make sure you flip through the photo album of healing ministries in action.

Suffering and The Passion

Martin Marty, church historian and cultural critic, announced today that he won't be commenting on Mel Gibson's film The Passion.

The film is getting much media hype right now, especially in relation to its realistic portrayal of the violence and suffering Jesus encountered.

It's that aspect of the film that has moved Marty to write. After arguing that he isn't qualified to critique films, Marty goes on to make a humanistic and theological point anyway:

". . . pain is pain, suffering is suffering, torture is torture, and horrible pain-suffering-torture is horrible, and I don't think there are grades and degrees of these. Today, all over the world, people are suffering physically as much as the crucified Jesus. The point now is not to accept grace because we saw gore. The issue is not, were his the worst wounds and pains ever, but, as the gospels show, the issue was, and is, who was suffering and to what end. Christians believe that Jesus was and is the Christ, the Anointed, and they are to find meaning in his sacrificial love and death, not to crawl in close to be sure they get the best sight of the worst physical suffering."

Amen.

A perspective on India

A member of our congregation, Kay Pugsley, is in Codacal, Kerala--a city in the the southwestern state of the nation of India--as a part of our presbytery's partnership with the Church of South India.

On Monday, Kay begins an assessment of the church-sponsored Codacal Hospital. The hospital, located in a rural area, hopes to begin a nurse training program. (In fact, Grace Presbytery will take a special offering on Feb. 28 to purchase an ambulance for the hospital. Our congregation will take its own offering for the ambulance on Feb. 22.)

We haven't yet heard from Kay about her experiences, but the bishop did call to say the delegation had arrived safely! Please keep her (and the entire commission) in your prayers.

Meanwhile, for an insider's view on rural India take a look at Suhit Anantula's weblog World is Green . It chronicles the views and activities that inform Deesha Ventures, an organization working for sustainable economic development in areas like those around Codacal.

eReligion: Teens find God, not sex, online

More teens search for God than for pornography on the Internet.

Surprised? That's the finding of University of North Carolina researchers conducting a four-year study of adolescents and faith.

Rather than a place of temptation, report analysts with the National Study of Youth and Religion, the Internet has become a vital resource for religious teens. And far more adolescents use the Internet for homework than for religion or pornography.

"Among U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who have access to the Internet," researchers report, "three times more report using the Internet for religious purposes than for pornography . . . .

"Indeed, the sizeable percentages of teens who identify themselves as religious and who use the Internet for visiting religious websites indicates that the web has
become a significant place of religious connection for a sizable portion of
religious U.S. teens."

Limiting our claims: Politics and religion

Issues of faith have become increasingly important on the geopolitical stage since the events of September 11, 2001.

We've seen the "religion card" played several times in the current quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. At least one politician has invoked God to support the US invasion of Iraq.

This mixing of religion and politics requires people of faith to thoughtfully and responsibly think through what they can claim in the name of God. And some politicans are claiming far too much--discounting the ways in which we distort and warp the world for our own purposes.

By naming the freedom we seek to establish in Iraq as a gift of God, President Bush, one pastor wrote this week, "'unwraps' God's gift in public view, exposing the ways human activity can distort or extend the good of which a free society is capable."

A politician who claims that something has its origin in God "opens himself [or herself, I would add] to evaluation by that standard"--and humans rarely look good against such a measuring stick, says Unitarian pastor Brent A. Smith in "Sightings," an online publication of the Martin Marty Center, the institute for the advanced study of religion at the University of Chicago.

"Unfortunately," Smith concludes, "as the legacy of past U.S. administrations attests, regardless of political stripe, we, as a country, consistently fall short of democracy's needs. . . .

"At this time in history, our democracy and leadership must model an understanding of public morality that is more than 'the ends justify the means.' Until then we cannot boast that we are the highest or even best political manifestation of freedom, let alone that we are on God's side."

I would suggest that Smith's argument demonstrates a reason why Presbyterian worship includes confession--as individuals and as a congregation--each Sunday.

It's not the humans are "bad" or "utterly depraved" (to use John Calvin's memorable phrase), but that we are stuck in webs of sin from which we cannot escape without God's help. We are too apt to confuse what we do and want with what God does and wants.

Remembering that keeps us humble, and it roots our faith in the power and freedom of God rather than the power of our own misused freedoms.

[Also check out an earlier article by Baptist pastor James Evans, who writes: "giving lip service to God does not advance faith, it cheapens it. It takes the language of faith and reduces it down to mere political rhetoric. Language that has the power to heal and mend should never be treated so callously."]

Living worshipfully

I'm not much of a fan of The Purpose Driven Church [especially the "10 steps to a better relationship with God" stuff], and the conservative bent of Christianity Today generally drives me nuts.

But Tobin Perry, a writer for the "purpose driven" movement, does a good job of describing ways we can integrate worship into daily life.

Paul told us to "pray always" . . . using Perry's article as a measuring stick, how well do you do at living a worshipful life?

Abiding presence . . . being in communion with God

At lunch today, we talked about John 6:52-59, in which Jesus says, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in that person. . . . whoever eats me will also draw life from me."

These words raise a lot of questions--questions about what "life" is, what it means to "live in Jesus," and what it means to "eat and drink" the flesh and blood of Jesus.

There's good evidence that this passage in John isn't about the Lord's Supper (also called "communion" or "the Eucharist"), but it nonethless uses communion imagery as a metaphor for what it means to live a Christian life. And that necessarily raises some questions about the meaning of the Lord's Supper.

For example, during the sacrament of communion, do the bread and wine become the "real body and blood of Christ" as the Catholic tradition holds? Or is the sacrament simply a "remembrance" of the Last Supper, as the Anabaptist tradition has believed?

Presbyterians have always held that both of these views are inadequate. Instead, we insist that the sacrament of communion is about the "real, spiritual presence" of Christ abiding with us. The bread and wine remain bread and wine--but the sacrament does more than jog our memory about Jesus.

The language in the gospel of John about Jesus "abiding with" God, and Christians "abiding in" Jesus, says a lot about how Presbyterians view communion. This sacrament is the act through which we nourish ourselves on--and abide in the presence of--Jesus as lord and master of our lives. It is, as Martha said at lunch today, "the way we enforce [that is, 'strengthen'] our belief."

A back issue of Presbyterians Today has an article about the Lord's Supper. But "abiding presence" sums it up, and that's the heart of the passage we discussed at lunch. The life we gain through Jesus is a life of constant communion with the presence of God, both in our bodies now and after our bodies have died.

Salvation: universal, exclusive, or limited?

At our weekly prayer lunch last month, Howard, Martha and Laura raised some questions about salvation--to wit, are people who haven't heard of Jesus doomed to eternity in hell?

As we talked, we also explored some other questions: Will only a few Christians really be "saved"? Can God save people who aren't Christian and have chosen to practice another faith? Will God save everyone?

In our conversation, I talked about Christian certainty that God wills salvation for everyone. And I was skeptical about whether the living can know for certain how God will act or whom God will save. Letting God be sovereign--a key element of Presbyterian faith--means God might act in ways that surprise us.

Brian McLaren, a leader in the "emerging church" movement, has some interesting reflections on the same sorts of questions [under the broader question of, "Are you a universalist?"] at the website A New Kind of Christian. Interestingly, he rejects the "scale" of beliefs about salvation that I talked about at lunch [exclusivist--pluralist--universalist] as being an answer to the wrong question.

"As I read the gospels," Brian says, "the focus of Jesus' message was not on getting your soul into heaven after death, but rather it focused on the kingdom of God, which is about God's will being done on earth as in heaven in history, in this life."

What's your style?

For prayer, that is.

Lots of us grew up believing that rote, spoken prayers are the only way to communicate with God.

But MethodX, the Upper Room's website for young adults, includes some fantastic resources about different methods of prayer.

"Communication is a two-way street," the site says, "involving listening as well as speaking. When it comes to communicating with God, though, we're often tempted to toss a few random thoughts toward the ceiling and hope that some of them get through.

"Fortunately, there are many ways to pray -- some quite ancient and some relatively contemporary. Try several to find those that help you best speak and listen to God."

Take a look and see what prayer method(s) are right for you at this point in your life with God.

The holy or the broken hallelujah

Ever since reading Eugenia Campbell's partita on praise last week, I've had the lyrics to "Hallelujah" running through my head--not the chorus from Handel's Messiah, but a Jewish-Buddhist ballad expressing the heart of what it means to be human.

The late Jeff Buckley recorded a version so sweet and spiritual it'll break your heart (in fact, it was featured in an episode of The West Wing many moons ago for just that purpose). But the song was written by the irascible Leonard Cohen, whose own version is dark and sinister and fully of whiskey and cigarette smoke. (You can sample it here; just keep scrolling down the page.)

The line that won't leave me alone is this: "There's a blaze of light / In every word / It doesn't matter which you heard / The holy or the broken Hallelujah."

Saints or sinners, holy or broken [and Martin Luther said we are both at once], our words of praise blaze through the universe, burning away all that is not Truth. That's why human praise of God is important--expressed through our voices, our thoughts, our bodies, and our prayers.

Can I get a "hallelujah"?

(You can read Cohen's lyrics here and Buckley's there.)

(***Bonus points for those who can identify the 'blog that takes its name from this song . . . .)