On this page, you'll find
three
things right now.
First is a daily
Web Devotion. These are short
devotional pieces I'll be writing Monday through Friday each
week. We'll keep the last five days up at a time, so if
you miss a day, you will always be able to see the last
several devotions and re-enter the conversation. Over time, I we will engage
voices within Scripture and within the Christian community
from the past and present--theologians, saints, mystics, and
holy fools. See below for a
description of the book we're currently walking through. I invite you to read these just as one more
conversation partner in your own reflection about faith, life,
and the Reign of God that grasps us in Jesus. I invite your
own contributions to that dialogue, too--you can e-mail me at
pscbond@gmail.com.
The second thing you'll find
on this page is the current
Pastor's Letter for
the bi-monthly Hope and New Life Shared Ministry Newsletter;
currently up is the letter from the April/May 2008 newsletter. This will give you a little bit of
a sense of who we are, what is going on in our life and
ministry together, and where we see God leading us into the
future and out into the world.
NEW to the Pastor's Corner is
the full text of Pastor Steve's
sermon from this past Thursday, May 1, for the Joint
Lutheran-Episcopal Ascension Day service held at Christ
Episcopal Church in Indiana.
Thanks for visiting--blessings
to you, and the peace of Christ be with you!
--Pastor Steve
Current Series:
Starting Dec. 31, 2007--The Book of Acts
How did the Spirit of God work in the first Christian community?
How did they sense what God was calling them to do and how they
could be a witness to the risen Jesus? Where does the
faith and life of those first disciples--sometimes successful,
sometimes fearful, always beloved--meet with our living as
church, especially as we are sometimes successful, sometimes
fearful, and always beloved, too? With the beginning of 2008,
we're going to be working through the book of Acts to let the
power of that story--and the power of the Spirit who brought
about that story--do its work on us, too.
Web Devotion--Wednesday,
May 7, 2008
Our devotions continue this week with more from Act 9 as the
Christian community-at-large wrestles with the faith of Saul,
the former arch-enemy of the followers of Jesus....
When he had come to Jerusalem, [Saul] attempted to join
the disciples; and they were all afraid of him, for they did not
believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, brought
him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he
had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he
had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. [Acts 9:26-27]
We've met Barnabas before, but only briefly. He was
mentioned back at the end of Acts 4, when many were selling
their possessions and sharing the proceeds with those in need in
the community. Barnabas was a face of commitment and
compassion, and he is the same again here. The difference
now is that Barnabas is not just acting for the collective
well-being of the whole church, but advocating for a single face
in that collective. That says something powerful about
Barnabas and maybe lifts him up as an example for us--he is not
merely swayed by arguments for "the greater good." Maybe
the skeptic could have suggested that theory if we only had Acts
4--we could imagine that it's easier to sell your possessions
and give them away for a large faceless crowd of many people.
Or at least, it's easier when you're convinced you are helping
many, and if those many convince you that the needs of the many
outweigh the needs of the few. It's easier to justify that
kind of self-sacrifice.
But Barnabas does more here in these verses--he becomes an
advocate of support for a single person, Saul. And his
support is not without controversy--but then again, advocacy
never is. Let's unpack some of the difference here for a
moment between what Barnabas had done (with great generosity,
mind you) back in Acts 4, and what he does here in Acts 9.
Back in Acts 4, Barnabas' donation was bold to be sure, and you
might even say risky, but not controversial. He sold his
field and gave the money to the disciple-community--obviously a
great act of faith and trust in the community to provide for
him, too, and also not to waste the money. But no one
could find this act scandalous--everyone is grateful to a
generous philanthropist. That's the sort of act that gets
you a plaque on a wall or a commemorative brick in a walkway or
at least a little newspaper clipping to record your good deed.
You could almost say that's what the mention in Acts 4
is--Luke's journalistic summary of a kind deed by one disciple
for the whole community.
Taking his boldness one step further, however, Barnabas now sees
a need and an opportunity to stand alongside of Saul. He
becomes an advocate, which means that he must speak up for Saul,
and all of a sudden, he has entered potentially contentious
territory. He is advocating for the acceptance and welcome
of a particular person, a person whose face brought with it the
baggage of previous persecution and enmity with the church.
Now that's a deeper kind of boldness--Barnabas sees what is
right to do here, and he speaks up. He comes to the
defense of Saul and tells his story, and in the process risks
that he himself might be viewed with suspicion. Barnabas
risks making enemies in the church by speaking up for Saul, and
that requires a deeper kind of courage altogether.
I wonder how Barnabas might be a model for us, in both
dimensions of his boldness. We might be called to share
liberally, and yes, even sacrificially, with others in need.
But we are also called beyond tossing money at faceless causes,
as we sometimes do for things like "hunger" or "helping the
needy." It is in some sense easy to give to those causes,
because it is non-controversial and we can feel like we have
done something "good" for the day. It is, in some ways,
too comforting to think we have written a check for a World
Hunger program somewhere and so therefore do not need to ask the
harder question about whether that money is used is ways that
actually helps pull people out of poverty and
malnutrition, or whether the root causes have been left
unaddressed. The harder work comes when we are called to
speak up and ask questions about how to ensure our money goes to
meaningful and accountable agencies, or how people are being
given more than band-aids. The harder work comes when we
are called to be advocates for real people and real faces.
The harder work comes when we are called to stand up for others
in the face of opposition or fear about stirring up trouble.
And yet Barnabas gives us a picture of someone who was willing
to entrust himself to the Spirit of God enough that he could not
only risk his personal treasure, but also his personal
reputation. And Barnabas seems to think that the Spirit of
God is just that trustworthy--maybe we can trust the Spirit,
too.
O Spirit of Life, we ask you today to give us the courage to
trust you. And then lead us, in trust, where you will, to
give what you lead us to give, and to stand by those whom you
already stand alongside.
Web Devotion--Tuesday,
May 6, 2008
We continue with the story of Saul, who is learning about the
risks his faith in Jesus will call him to make, and who may have
something to teach us, too, about those risks:
After some time had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him,
but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the
gates day and night so that they might kill him; but his
disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening
in the wall, lowering him in a basket. [Acts 9:23-25]
Reputation-wise, the very first disciples of Jesus might not
have had much to risk. As the gospels record it, they were
fishermen, tax collectors, and a former revolutionary/activist
thrown in for good measure (Simon the Zealot).
These people were not widely held in high esteem, so maybe it
wasn't so big a risk to go follow the new rabbi, Jesus, when he
called to them by the seashore or at the tax booth. For
that matter, the gospels even record more than a few occasions
when those first hand-picked disciples seemed to think that
their connection with Jesus was going to improve their
social standing, not diminish it--remember the question of James
and John about getting to sit at Jesus' right and left hands?
In any case, even though Jesus had given the original twelve
disciples the warning that they might lose their reputations by
following him, they might not have considered it to be such a
big deal. After all, many of them didn't have very far to
fall.
Saul, however, gives us a dramatic picture of just how far
someone might fall in social standing for the sake of
Jesus--Saul gets lowered down the city wall in a basket at
night! Threats to his physical safety and threats to his
reputation and character meet in these few verses--think about
how shameful and fearful an experience it would have been to run
away from those plotting to kill him. Saul knows, as the
basket is being lowered, that there will be more rumors about
him--not just that he 'switched teams' or 'betrayed his faith'
or had been 'brainwashed' by these Christians, but now also that
he had lost his nerve and ran away from trouble when it
appeared. Saul risks being called a coward and a heretic
all at once. That strips any glory from his suffering; it
keeps Saul from imagining himself as a respectable hero in the
eyes of others, and forces him to see himself as a fugitive.
Fugitives don't get respect or glory--battlefield heroes do, or
the occasional martyr--but not fugitives who escape from trouble
in the middle of the night in a basket. Saul is learning
that he has a long way to be lowered down that social ladder,
and that it is happening rather quickly.
And yet, I wonder if Saul is also not discovering at the same
time how freeing it is not to be bound to life determined by
others' view of him. I wonder if Saul is not learning, at
the very same time that his reputation is taking a nose dive,
that he is held and esteemed by Jesus himself apart from his
social standing. Maybe Saul is learning, centuries before
Janis Joplin sang it, that "freedom is just another word for
nothing left to lose." That line can either sound utterly
cynical, or it can be truly hopeful. For Saul, even though
this is hardly a pleasant scene, and even though the loss of
reputation and possessions (what can you take with you in a
basket but yourself?) are quite real, I think it is
ultimately a hopeful experience. He later recalls this
basket-case moment in the list of ordeals he has been through
when he writes what we know as 2 Corinthians 11, and Saul (by
that time going by his Roman name Paul) holds up this
shameful, weak moment of losing everything as something to boast
about. He writes there, "if I must boast, I will boast of
the things that show my weaknesses" (2 Cor. 11:30-33). At
some point, Saul/Paul learned that when you have lost everything
else, you are under no illusions about who it is that is really
holding you up. At some point Saul learned that when he
was forced to let go of everything else--his possessions, his
group of friends, his respectability, and the rest--he found the
living Jesus there catching him, enfolding him, supporting him
like the basket.
For us, I wonder how hard it is for us to hear this kind of
story. We do not want to lose our hard-fought,
well-deserved good reputations. We like the idea that
being churchy people will make us seem like good citizens, and
we do not like to entertain the possibility that Jesus might
call us--even us, American Christians in the 21st century--to
lose everything as we are found by him. But let us at
least begin today by asking: how might we be dared, even
compelled, to lose something of our social standing for the sake
of the Good News? How might we be willing to let ourselves
be lowered--by talking with the people no one else will
associate with? By sticking up for those who get no other
advocates? By clarifying and nuancing the truth when
others paint caricatures in black and white? By being
willing to be seen as the church that is giving away Good News
for free rather than selling it as a ticket to heaven with slick
salesmanship? By inviting the ones deemed unworthy to
receive God's good gifts, and standing alongside them? You
and I will be challenged this day to let go of something today,
and yet are dared to discover that freedom grabs a hold of us in
that same moment.
Good Lord, we are afraid to take baby steps of faith, much
less leaps. We are afraid of stepping into baskets that
look to flimsy to carry us and all our baggage, and we are
afraid of stepping out of the boat and walking on the waves.
But if need be, give us a little push out into the scary places
of which we are afraid, and then hold us up by your Spirit.
Web Devotion--Monday,
May 5, 2008
I am posting Monday's devotion rather late, but here it is, as
we return to Saul's new-found faith in Jesus:
For several days [Saul] was with the disciples in
Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the
synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” All who heard him
were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in
Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come
here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief
priests?” Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded
the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the
Messiah. [Acts 9:19b-22]
Maybe it seems odd to us for Saul to take his message to
synagogues and to tell the people there that Jesus is the Son of
God. It rubs up against our sense of what is socially
acceptable and religiously or politically correct. Maybe
it strikes us as an unwelcome intrusion, as though Saul is
crashing parties he was not invited to and making a big mess of
things. But let's remember first that Saul is Jewish, and that
at this point in Christian history, the movement called
Christianity didn't see itself as a separate religion, outside
of Judaism, but an event within God's ancient story that
happened within Judaism. And it also seems that at this
time in Acts, the Jewish leadership did not see Christians as
belonging to a separate religion, but to a sect within
their own faith. The Jewish leadership might well have
thought that the followers of Jesus were wrong in their
belief that he was the Messiah or that he had risen from the
dead, but at this point it was still seen as an in-house
argument.
This changes the way we see what Saul is up to in these verses.
Instead of crashing a party he has no right attending, Saul is
inviting his own people to a party they didn't know had begun.
Saul goes to the synagogues because he sees the ancient promises
made to Israel coming to fulfillment in Jesus, and he wants his
fellow Jews, children of those ancient promises, to know and to
see God keeping his promises.
I suspect that Saul knew how strange and suspicious he must have
looked--he no doubt heard the whispering in the streets and the
talk in the crowded rooms where he spoke, all wondering how this
persecutor of the sect of Jesus-followers could now have become
one of them. I imagine that they must have wondered about
that in two directions: (1) had Saul really had his own picture
of the world turned on its head, so that what had been bad
(Christians) were now good? And then (2), how could the
Christian community receive a man like Saul with all his
baggage? And just what sort of a group were these
Christians, who were willing to include a guy like Saul?
Maybe Saul got so fired up about telling others about Jesus here
precisely because he knew it was so hard to believe that he
could be a part of the Jesus-movement. Maybe Saul had
playing in the back of his mind that familiar line of Groucho
Marx: "I would never want to join a club that would have someone
like me for a member." And if Saul has come to the
synagogues around Damascus to tell them they are already invited
to God's great party of the Messiah, perhaps their question is,
"Just what kind of party is this, and why would we want to come
to a party that seems so strange to us?"
It's a good question--why would someone come to the party of
Jesus who doesn't know what it's all about? Or, we could
put it differently--what impression of the party of Jesus do
other people get by looking at us and seeing that we belong to
this community of Christians? How are our lives and words
and actions today going to be living invitations?
Sometimes we hear this kind of questioning and assume we have to
put on fake smiles and falsely perfect impressions of ourselves
to "wow" people into coming to church. But that old
sales-pitch approach is just the opposite of what Saul does--he
wears his past on his sleeve, and he lets the people talk about
his own past, having been Public Enemy Number One of the
Jesus-movement and now becoming a public voice for it.
Saul gives an answer to the Groucho Marx paradox: the kind of
community that would have former persecutors like him--or
sinners like us--for members is our only hope, not because of
what it will do for our reputations, but because it is grounded
in a love that embraces even enemies and welcomes even the
party-poopers to join the celebration. That is a strange
sort of party to be invited to, but it is one worth coming
to--and worth inviting others to as well. Maybe it is even
worth risking letting others see our pasts on our sleeves in the
act of inviting...
O Christ our Lord, let us be your living invitations to
others today, with our warts and all. And let someone
else, in their imperfections and failings, also be a reminder
and invitation to us, drawing us deeper into love with you.
Web Devotion--Friday,
May 2, 2008
We end our week with more of the story of Saul's transformation
and welcome into the Christian community from Acts 9:
So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands
on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to
you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your
sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately
something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was
restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some
food, he regained his strength. [Acts 9:17-19a]
Apparently the claim of Jesus is enough. Jesus' word is
enough for Ananias to trust and go to find this man Saul, and it
is enough for Ananias to trust that Saul really is to be
welcomed into the family of Jesus' followers. Yesterday we
saw Ananias put a question back to Jesus about this character,
Saul, and his reputation for threatening Christians, almost as
if to ask, "Jesus, are you sure you want to include Saul
in the church? The same Saul who has been hunting
us down?" But when Jesus answers that indeed, Saul has
been claimed by God to belong and to serve and yes, to suffer,
within the Christian community, it is enough. Ananias
goes, trusting Jesus' authority and Jesus' right to include
unexpected persons in the community.
So not only does Ananias go to see Saul, but he heals him
(also on Jesus' authority--even the blindness obeys the claim
and word of Jesus!). And beyond that, without any
further interrogation or testing of faith or at least a promise
that Saul would come to church--without anything of the sort
from Saul's mouth--Ananias baptizes Saul. That should make
it very clear to us just whose word is the important one in our
baptisms. That should make it clear just whose promises
are the engine that drives our faith and our inclusion in the
community. It is all on the authority of Jesus. It
is Jesus' claim on us that permits, authorizes, enables, any and
all of us to be baptized. Sometimes we put the cart before
the horse in the wider Christian tradition by insisting that
someone has to have prayed a certain prayer before they can
become a Christian, or must speak a sentence like, "I accept
you, Jesus, as my person Lord and Savior," but none of this is
recorded for Saul--for Saul, for crying out loud, the author of
half of the New Testament! You might think you'd be extra
strict, extra discerning, extra scrutinizing before admitting a
persecutor of the church into the community, and you'd think the
same procedure would happen for someone aspiring to be the first
and best theologian the church has ever known. But there
is no such interrogation of Saul. There is no
testing to see if he is worthy of belonging in the church--the
whole point is that on his own he is utterly unworthy,
but the word and authority of Christ Jesus makes him acceptable.
There is no waiting to see how eager Saul is to get on board
with this church thing--there is only the word of Jesus that
says, "Saul belongs to me." And so it is all Ananias can
do but accept the authority of Jesus and say, "Yup, this Saul
belongs to Jesus." And so Saul is baptized. And so
Saul belongs.
It is a well-worn saying that you don't get to pick your family
or your relatives, and this is true in the new kind of family
called the church, too. Ananias clearly wouldn't have
picked Saul for the church, because he knows that to belong in
the community of Jesus is not just to be acceptable in the eyes
of God, but to be accepted by the rest of the "family."
And Saul is now accepted by Jesus--he will be transformed and
changed and will mature and suffer, too, surely, but he is
accepted even now on the authority of Jesus. So Ananias,
whether he likes it or not, at least understands that because
Saul is accepted by Jesus, he (Ananias) is called to accept and
welcome Saul, too. It is the same sort of authority system
that operates in the family--the older siblings don't get a say
in whether they get more sisters and brothers, and they don't
get to pick who they are. But when the parents say, "we
are adding to the family," the older brother or sister doesn't
have much of a choice--the parents' authority is enough.
How does this affect our picture of the church? If we fall
into the trap of picturing the church as a social club, we could
all reserve the right to evaluate who is worthy to come
into the church. If the church were really "run" or
"managed" by the pastor or the people in the pews or the council
or the bishops or the deacons, then those various voices would
get to decide who we do and do not have to get along with in the
church. But if, as Saul's story tells us, it is really and
truly Jesus himself who holds this community together and
who is our head, then all we can do is to receive the ones Jesus
has already received. All we can do is extend the welcome
Jesus has already extended. All we can do is listen for
the claim of Jesus, because it turns out the claim of Jesus is
enough.
Our Lord Jesus, help us to trust your authority today.
Free us from the pretense that we are in charge of our own lives
or your community today, and instead let us take your word of
welcome and trust that we belong to you in our baptism, and pin
it all on your authority. And let that be enough.
Web Devotion--Thursday,
May 1, 2008
Today is the day of the Ascension, and on it we're continuing
through Acts 9 and the transformation God works through Saul.
The question remains: how will the other followers of
Jesus deal with the idea of an enemy like Saul being welcomed
into the Christian community?
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The
Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I
am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street
called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of
Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen
in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him
so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord,
I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done
to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the
chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord
said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to
bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of
Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the
sake of my name.” [Acts 9:10-16]
This had to be a hard conversation for Ananias (remember,
this is a different person than the one who died along with his
wife Sapphira for holding back some of his money earlier in
Acts). How do you make sense of what is being asked of
you if you're Ananias here? It seems like down is up and
wrong is right and all the sure, certain things are being
undone. If there's one thing that Ananias knows about Saul
of Tarsus it's that he's responsible for the arrest of
Christians, displacement of Christians, and to some degree, the
violence against Christians. This Saul has been dead set
against the community of Jesus, and now Jesus appears to him in
a vision and says, he has to be welcomed in to the Christian
community? That's difficult--that's near impossible!
It's even harder for Ananias than for us because Ananias is
being asked to be the human voice and face of that welcome--it's
not just Jesus telling Ananias to get used to the idea or
the concept of unexpected people being received into the
church. It's that Ananias, if he is to be faithful to what
Jesus is calling him to do, will have to personally take the
risk of receiving this man, who is not just a stranger or
unexpected believer, but a downright enemy of the church.
In other words, Jesus is calling Ananias to cease playing
church and to embark on being the church. It is
the difference between talking about love for neighbor and
stranger and enemy, and then actually loving those persons when
we are brought face to face with them. It is the
difference between believing intellectually that Jesus has
forgiven us and called us to be forgiving people, and then
taking those beliefs seriously enough to know that my guilt has
been wiped away and that I am called to speak that same word of
liberating forgiveness to others. It is the difference
between secretly nursing grudges against others and publicly
letting go of them. That is hard for us to do--much harder
than the easy tasks of rattling off a few facts about God
without thinking as we say the Creed, or putting on a fake smile
for the visitors in worship on Sunday while secretly muttering,
"We're letting the riff-raff in?", or hearing the words "Go in
peace, serve the Lord!" and promptly forgetting the call to
serve by the time we're out the door.
Ananias is called to be a person who makes God's forgiveness
real, to make God's mercy tangible, for Saul. It will not
be easy for Ananias, as it is never really easy to
forgive if we understand just how complete a wiping away of the
record is involved in forgiveness. But it will not be easy
for Saul, either--his whole world is being turned upside down,
too, and the new life he has been invited into will be a life of
the same kind of suffering, enduring love that Christ Jesus has
shown to him. The Lord knows it, too, that the life which
Saul will be entering as a follower of Jesus will not be an easy
one: "I myself will shown him how much he must suffer for
the sake of my name," says the voice. But then again, this
life of faith was never promised to us to be easy--only deeply
good in the end.
If we are to take this story seriously, and to see ourselves as
sometimes in the difficult position of Ananias, we need to
consider that it will be difficult for us to speak words of
real forgiveness to real people. We sometimes
gloss over the real messy details of our lives when we
pray the Confession and Forgiveness in worship--we put into
generic terms that we have sinned "in thought, word, and deed,"
but easily block out of mind that this specifically means the
betrayal of a spouse that happened years ago, or the angry words
spoken at a former-friend months ago, or the cold indifference
to someone met on the street just days ago, or the apathy toward
the hurt and brokenness that is always all around us--an apathy
we cover up in our day to day "busyness" that keeps us from
paying attention to things beyond my immediate circle of work
and family. These are the difficult real sins we
need to know are forgiven, and these are the sins that God
forgives in my neighbor next to me. When I am the betrayed
spouse, or the one wounded by careless angry words, or the one
left on the side of the road, or passed by and left out--in
other words, when I am sinned against, it is hard to hear
God's forgiveness on the ones who have done me wrong. It
is hard, in other words, to be Ananias, hearing God's
forgiveness spoken for Saul, and knowing that he must be the one
to speak it to Saul.
And yet, in the big picture of things, given our utterly sinful
ways, perhaps it is more honest to say that we are always
sinning against each other and are therefore always called to be
Ananiases for one another, speaking to someone else that God has
forgiven them, and calling on God to grant us the ability to
forgive as well. We are called, too, to pray fervently to
God when such forgiveness seems too much, too easy, too big a
cancellation of debt, and to ask God to help us deal with such a
wide mercy. That is hard word, but it is always harder to
be the church instead of just playing church.
And, of course, it is always deeply good in the end.
Blessed One, you make it hard to be disciples because it is
hard to hear your mercy spoken over those who have wronged us,
and it is hard to hear the litany of ways we have wronged
others. It is hard to tell the truth, and it is hard to
have the truth told about us and to us. And yet, we are
compelled to be your disciples by your love that has chosen us
and called us. So give us the grace and the strength we do
not possess to hear your forgiveness in all its breadth and
depth, and make it possible for our ears to hear it and our
mouths to speak it.
Shared Ministry Newsletter--April/May 2008
If It Walks Like A Duck...
I
opened a bottle of iced tea a few weeks ago and read an
interesting bit of trivia under the bottle cap (this brand puts
strange facts on every cap for some reason):
a duck cannot walk without bobbing its head.
After the initial surprise wore off from reading this, and then
after a moment of wondering how scientists came to learn this
curious fact, I thought to myself, “This is a beautiful picture
of what it means for us to be the church!”
Now
before you decide this is the final proof that your pastor is as
daffy as a certain duck with the same name, follow me for a
moment. For us non-ducks, it’s hard not to laugh when you watch
one of those waterfowl cross the street or waddle into a pond.
It’s so peculiar, so different from the way we walk—it seems so
clumsy, so strange, even a big waste of energy for the bird to
bob its head up and down while it puts one webbed foot in front
of another. And in our minds, as we see a mother duck and her
brood waddling-and-nodding their way across the road, we quite
likely think that we are watching two distinct, separate actions
happening: the
walking,
and the
head-bobbing.
It seems silly because in our minds, these are completely
unrelated actions. But—and bear with just a little more
daffiness, if you would—put yourself in the mind of the duck for
a moment. Ducks are physically built and mentally hard-wired in
such a way that they cannot help but bob their heads while they
walk. They just can’t do one without the other, and so for a
duck,
walking
and
head-bobbing
are not two
different
things—they are part of one
single
seamless motion. In duck-logic, moving the feet means moving the
head, too, no matter how odd or peculiar that makes them look to
the rest of creation
(in all honesty, I doubt that ducks care very much about how odd
they look).
And so ducks continue to walk the only way they know, how
despite the chuckling and chortling of humans who watch them
crossing at a distance.
All
of this brings us back to a different creature altogether, the
creation of God that we call
the church.
I am increasingly of the opinion that the church—the whole
community of the baptized followers of Jesus—is meant to be
God’s waterfowl that walks strangely in the world. We are sent
to be a ducky sort of people in the world, whose way of
witnessing to God’s good news is a strange sort of walk in the
world that makes people stop and watch and wonder about us. We
will be a peculiar sort of people as we walk—up out of the
waters of baptism and into the crossings of every day life—and
our heads will bob in strange, even laughable, ways. Think of
the things we disciples of Jesus do that seem perhaps clumsy or
strange or even a big waste of energy: we gather for worship
every week when instead we could all be working harder, making
more widgets and earning more money, or distracting ourselves
with more television and sleep. We go out of our way in
worship, even if it seems a bit
clumsy
sometimes, to make sure people are not lost or left out—from
giving out the occasional page number to bringing Communion to
those who cannot come forward to the Table to creating a time
and space for children within worship. We do strange things
that seem
inefficient,
like stopping the order of worship to greet one another with the
Peace of Christ. We find people among us who give of their time
to teach our children and lead discussions with adults. We do
the seemingly inefficient work of weeping with each other when
we must weep and rejoicing with each other when it is time to
rejoice. And we do
strange
things out in our community that I can only assume look as odd
as duck-walking—we clean up trash by the side of the road with
our free time, we advocate for fair trade or take up other
important issues in our society, we sing and share snacks with
residents at Torrance hospital, we make fools of ourselves in
skits at the Relay for Life, and what do you know, we even
walk
with others in that Relay for Life, even at all hours of the
night.
To
the watching world, perhaps some of the things we do as church
seem like odd combinations—some voices in our culture say the
church ought to stick to “spiritual” things and not delve into
the public; some voices will say that the church ought to stick
to the “dignified” things and not look silly or foolish; and
still other voices will say that we should waste less time with
all the quirks and ceremonies of our worship and just get to
work on service projects. But for us, the odd ways we worship,
along the odd ways we risk looking silly to the world, and along
the odd ways we dare to live out our faith in public ways are
like walking and bobbing our heads—they are all part of one
single, seamless motion within the Reign of God. We are, after
all, the odd and holy ducks of God, for we are
people of hope and new life.
.
Christ’s
Peace,
PS (Pastor Steve)
