A Wicked Monotony: George Floyd

There is a wicked monotony to the righteous rage sparked by unjust deaths that lights up Facebook for a few days, which then subsides after a few days when we get distracted again. George Floyd, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Michael Brown... Who can remember them all? Everyone is SO upset. We trot out our justice memes and strut our credentials as crusaders for justice - and then nothing changes until another name is added to the roll call that condemns, not the police or anybody else, but all of us. 

We get the society we are. We get the institutions we ask for. It's a Democracy. "We the people..." The racism is ours, not somebody else's. The willingness to keep institutions that do unjust harm is ours. The patience with bizarre unacceptability is ours. We complain about our leaders. We get the leaders we vote for. 

Every time there is a mass shooting, we hear the droning chorus of “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims." God must laugh, weep or yawn. Do something! Such prayers are a pathetic salve to make ourselves feel better, while we wait for the next mass shooting to tickle our praying fancy once more. 

So after another race-based, unjust death, filmed for the world to witness, we launch our righteous memes, we shake our heads and shudder with like-minded friends, maybe a sermon dares to express contempt for the sin of racism. God watches, listens – and then God laughs, weeps, or yawns. Surely God, if we could get quiet enough to hear God, is saying Friends, I gave you dominion and freedom. If you're serious, which I question, then change your world. The injustice of unjust deaths, and the injustice of outraged chatter are killing me.

How innocuously we then ask What can one person do? The powerful secret of a Democracy is that one person actually does matter. So a few questions for us individuals who plead feeling overwhelmed and unable: whom do you vote for and why? Where do you hang out? What streets do you walk down? Whom do you have real relationships with? Have you phoned anybody? Have you probed deeply into yourself to detect white privilege and unnoticed bias? What vapid diversion will grab your attention in a few days as George Floyd slides out of mind? 

The answer to What can one person do? is Everything. Look at your whole life and ask questions. Keep asking questions. Converse with others, not the day after a death but three weeks later. Name injustice everywhere. Struggle to sleep at night. Keep shuddering.

I wonder about repentance. I spoke at a local synagogue’s Kristallnacht service a couple of years ago. I veered off from my notes, and found myself saying to the Jewish community, On behalf of Christendom, we are so very sorry. Tellingly, quite a few Jews embraced me in gratitude - but three Christians in the crowd told me I had zero authority to say such a meaningless thing. Isn’t it time for good white Christians, not to condemn racism out there somewhere, but to take a knee in humility before one African American, and then another, maybe whole communities or churches, and say On behalf of white Christendom, we are so very sorry. I don’t think God would laugh, or weep, or yawn. I think God would then say This. Finally. Thank you. So what’s next?

Beauty Will Save the World

   The Russian novelist Dostoevsky wrote, "Only Beauty will save the world." With so much ugliness in the world, I wonder if Jewel’s song lyric might bring us some hope: “Maybe if we are surrounded in beauty, someday we will become what we see.”

   God has strewn beauty all over the place, but we neglect it: we hurry right by and don’t notice, or we have forgotten to name it when we see it. A dandelion, a carefully arranged place setting, an old photograph, the tree in your yard, a wrinkled face, clouds, a tune, a historical moment, commitments, the face in the mirror: beauty is all around, waiting to be noticed, cherished, pointed to, shared. And all of it reveals God’s heart to us. Want to see God? “Every experience of beauty points to infinity” (Hans Urs von Balthasar).

   How good of God to stir so much beauty into the mix when God created everything! It could have been all dirt, rock, efficiency, productivity. God, like the artist, created what was unnecessary, inefficient. Why did God not only leave space for beauty, but elevate it to its status as the one thing that thrills the heart and leaves us feeling noble, giving immense dignity to the smallest creature?

   St. Thomas Aquinas’s answer? “God created the universe to make it beautiful for himself by reflecting his own beauty.” God is a great many things – but at the center of it all, God is beauty. Ours is to notice, to be awed, to be delighted.

   We’ve all heard that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but it’s a lie. It’s not a matter of taste, or private preference. When we shrink things down to a private, opinionated list of what I like or don’t like, we’re the losers. As we explore Beauty, we’ll learn to see better, to see what God sees: every person, every thing, pretty or glitzy or not, partakes in the goodness and beauty of God. We’re surrounded in it.

   Sure, beauty also gets twisted and perverted, and there’s so much desecration. Isn’t most ugliness really beauty that’s gotten scared or fallen on hard times? And aren’t we adept at pinpointing what’s ugly when there’s actually beauty there? For instance, there is a beauty in suffering. You may know this from experience… Or the stunning array of colorful leaves in Autumn: what you’re looking at is death.

   Faith isn’t merely a belief God exists, or access to help when you’re in trouble, or your calling card to get into heaven. Faith is seeing as God sees. It’s a readiness to be astonished. It’s inefficient and unproductive, this pondering of beauty – and so it’s like prayer, a wasting of time, and yet what we crave deep in our souls. Nothing else really will satisfy.

   Paul, from a dark, dank stone prison, wrote, “Whatever is noble, whatever is beautiful, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). God has strewn beauty all over the place. The least we can do is notice. Maybe we will become what we see.

  I'm beginning a months-long project on Beauty. Through Facebook (with a special page if you’re in Charlotte) and Instagram I'll be posting stories, photos, quotes and more. I'd love for you to Email me pictures or stories. Not thinking "pretty" or even "attractive" but "beautiful," which may be surprising, subtle, humble, even dark. We have some great programs lined up, with former Mayor Harvey Gantt (Jan. 7), Jeremy Begbie of Cambridge and Duke, Ray Barfield, doctor and theologian, and Chas Fagan, sculptor and painter.

The Absolutely Beautiful Face

   The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky suggested that "Beauty will save the world." If not beauty, then what would save the world? Might? Money? Fun? Politicians? Arms? Gritting our teeth and trying harder?

   Christians say "Jesus will save the world" - which is true. Dostoevsky, again, said "There is only one face in the whole world which is absolutely beautiful: the face of Christ." Was Jesus handsome? Maybe, maybe not. Jesus must have exhibited something compelling in his persona. He must have been "attractive," in that people were attracted to him. His words intrigued. His compassionate embrace of any and everybody was alluring. People asked him questions endlessly; he usually responded with a question, which says to the other person You too are beautiful and wise, although you might not have been told this before. Busy people dropped everything and traipsed off after him, without knowing where they were going or how things would turn out.

   I love St. Augustine's pensive praise of Jesus: "He is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth, beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents' arms..." He rambled further on this, but I want us to pause and ponder how Jesus was "beautiful in the womb" and then "beautiful in his parents' arms." It's 20 days until Christmas. Don't think shopping days, but imagine Jesus in his mother's womb, with 20 days to go. The Savior of the world, there but not quite having arrived just yet. Dependent, like us. It's dark, like our world. Cramped, with painful squeezes now and then. Before long he'll undergo considerable trauma, exit the dark waters of the womb and land in his parents' arms, out in the air, on the starlit earth, in the manger.

   This wee one would save the world. There's something evangelistic about Beauty. If you see something beautiful, you're compelled to share. Snap a photo, or point; try to describe it. If only others could see this! Isn't that the way the Christian message, the glory that is God gets shared?

   Beauty is so... democratic. It's for everyone. Every person is immensely qualified to notice and appreciate it. Yet so many miss it. You have to slow down. A knack for beauty requires some cultivation. After all, an educated farmer might have a far better chance than a Ph.D. in chemistry when it comes to noticing beauty. Just as each one of us was, at some point, just like Jesus, in our mother's womb, just days from being born, so each one of us is surrounded by beauty. And each instance of beauty is one more kaleidoscopic refraction of the beauty that is the face of Jesus.

   Advent is a season of repentance. Repentance isn't groveling in guilt. It's turning toward God. It's a changed mind. Elaine Scarry says that "beautiful things have been placed here and there in the world to serve as wake-up calls." This Advent, keep an eye out for beauty. Be awakened to it. Turn toward God, who is Beauty. Share with somebody.

The Beauty of Trees

   Many of us have just erected a tree indoors. "O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree." Aren't all of them works of art? Charlie Brown's pathetic little tree "just needed a little love."

   Thomas Merton said "A tree gives glory to God by being a tree." Indeed. God made the tree. Like so many of God's most beautiful gifts, the strength is unseen, the roots reaching deep into the ground providing nourishment and stability, the rings within telling a story of years of growth, weathering storms, seasons passing. Beauty takes much time, and much is hidden.

   My book club just read The Overstory (which won Richard Powers the Pulitzer Prize!), the saga of nine quirky people who gradually find one another and protest the destruction of forests. My mind was blown, and awestruck by the wonder that trees and forests are, as Powers unpacks immense information about them while spinning his drama. Trees communicate, grieve and network. It's tree-hugger heaven: "Patricia sees it in one great glimpse: trees and humans, at war over the land and water and atmosphere. And she can hear, louder than the quaking leaves, which side will lose by winning." Frankly, as Christians, we have great cause to hug, admire, and protect trees, for our own good, and as an act of praise of the one who created them. Beauty isn't something we wantonly chop down for short-term profits; we revere and preserve beauty.

   J.R.R. Tolkien loved trees, and created (in The Lord of the Rings) treelike creatures who speak "Old Entish": "It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to." The beauty of words, the beauty of listening.

   Jesus was an apprentice in his father's woodworking shop, and spotted diminutive Zaccheus up in a sycamore tree. He prayed under a gnarled olive tree, "Not my will but yours be done." Then he was nailed to a tree. A medieval poem, "The Dream of the Rood," imagined the wood of Jesus' cross narrating its own life. "I was a sapling by the edge of the woods. One day men cut me down, staked me up, and brought the young hero, nailing him to my branches. I trembled under his weight; his sweat and blood soaked into me. Later, they threw me into a pit. But then others found me, and adorned me with gold and jewels. Now people look up to me seeking healing and hope."

   Recently a friend reminded me of a song by Nicole Nordeman, which reflects on the season "when the trees have just surrendered, forfeiting their leaves, bracing for colder winds," and how everything in creation "finally falls asleep," that "even now, in death, you open doors for life to enter." What greater gift do we have than trees to enable us to dream of life after death, and the beauty of God's unfailing provision and care?

The Most Beautiful Woman

  Mary, great with child, the most beautiful woman in history. The sentence you just read reframes something complicated, and weirdly demeaning to all of us: putting the words "woman" and "beautiful" in the same sentence. Some external measures get stuck on women's bodies; sophomoric frat guys, and some older men too, "rate" women on their "looks." It's belittling to all women, and frankly to all men, this kooky swirl of viewpoints about women and their value (or lack thereof).

   If we say Mary is the most beautiful woman ever, we've used the word "beauty" wisely and more profoundly. Mary didn't just win the Nazareth Beauty Pageant when the angel visited her. Artists paint her as very pretty (but not sexy!), with flawless skin, way too white for a middle-Eastern woman, dressed like a nun. Fine - but truly, her beauty was in her humility, her holiness, her humanity. Her beauty was that she was chosen by the angel, singled out by God.

   Last week, we contested the familiar idea that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," as if it's subjective, a matter of personal opinion. The Irish poet John O'Donohue reverses things: "If our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere." The angel's graceful eye spotted Beauty in a remote village, in a young woman who was like most young women. In fact, the Gospel would be that God doesn't choose some few super-people. God sees the beauty, the potential to carry God, to be the one used by God, in all women, and hence they are all... the most beautiful woman ever.

   We talk a lot, and glibly, and yet hopefully, about love. What is love? It's having this graceful eye. Jean Vanier wrote that " To love someone is not to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say 'You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.' We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them the light that is shining in them."

   The angel said to Mary "You are beautiful... You can trust yourself." Mary surely said that repeatedly to her young son, Jesus. And his whole life was delivering that message, with his words and actions, to everyone he encountered, and to us.

   I will spend some time during these days just pondering the beauty of Mary, while I try to cultivate my own graced eye that can spot beauty any and everywhere.

Methodist Slime, Scum, Sloths and Slugs

   I’m one who has urged us United Methodists to be generous listeners, and full of love and respect even when we disagree strongly on homosexuality or other issues. I’m one who is mortified when politicians are ugly toward one another, with vicious attacks and mean-spirited name-calling.

   So how jarring was it for me when I recently read Carlos Eire’s wonderful book, Reformations, which narrates those seemingly heroic and theologically profound moments in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations of the 16^th century. We lionize Martin Luther for his 95 theses – but they are a ferocious assault on fellow churchmen, accusing them of greed, avarice, blasphemy and madness, threatening them with eternal damnation. His restraint in 1517 was remarkable, as over the next few years he published vitriolic critiques of other theologians, including fellow Protestants, calling them stinking mushrooms, dumb dogs, idiots, toad-eaters, blockheads, the devil’s donkeys, and worse. The pope returned the favor and dubbed Luther a wild boar. Thomas Müntzer, himself a Reformer, couldn’t bear to utter Luther’s name, so spoke of him as Dr. Liar, Malicious black raven, Father pussyfoot, and Rabid Fox. John Calvin parted ways with both of them and the Catholics, slandering those who disagreed with him as vermin, slime, scum, swine and fiends.

   Nothing new in this savage barrage of words. I also recently read Philip Jenkins’s Jesus Wars and Ramsay MacMullen’s Voting About God in Early Church Councils, which remind us that the early Christian councils (Nicaea, Chalcedon, Ephesus) featured outbreaks of violence. Delegates were beaten up en route.. Papers were seized and burned. During breaks in the deliberations, thugs broke the knees of wrong-thinking voters. Heretics’ tongues were cut out, floggings and stabbings were inflicted in Christ’s name. All this in an urgent desire to say true things about the Trinity, Christ’s nature, Mary’s role, and sin and grace.

    By contrast, we United Methodists look a bit pale, mamby-pamby, timid and mild-mannered softies. All we do is sigh and bristle a little. But there’s a bigger contrast. During the Reformation, as during the decades of the great Church councils, the finest theologians held disputations and colloquys where they laid out their cases, submitting their arguments to the public for judgment. Transcripts of these debates are weighty and impressive on all sides. No vague or flabby stances, never just a few Bible verses, and never a mere echo of the cultural biases of the culture. Instead, theologians analyzed the original sources, in Hebrew and in Greek, in considerable depth, citing the Church’s most esteemed authorities through history (Origen, Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas) and even the wisest philosophers ever (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus).

     How bland, how thin, how feeble we United Methodists have been in our conversations that we concede should divide God’s church. We never talk to each other much at all, and certainly don’t devise profound, complex cases, much less subject them to critique, judgment and even correction. I've not seen a single public debate where knowledgeable people dig in and debate, subjecting themselves to scrutiny and judgment. We pretty much preach to our own choirs. I never hear any finesse, any profundity, any Greek or Hebrew, or any ecclesiastical or philosophical authorities. What might Luther, Teresa of Avila or Dietrich Bonhoeffer have to expand our horizons? How might engagement with Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida or Richard Rorty inform how we answer the world's questions? 

   I wonder what the Reformers or the Early Church theologians might call us? Rev. Lazy Bones? Dr. Superficial? Mr. Shallow Arguments? Ms. Play Nice? Eeyore pouting in the corner? Vapid deserters of Jesus’ church? Maybe slug? Or sloth? Should we take the gloves off – if not to hurl angry epithets at one another, then to engage in some serious arguments?

"I Dreamed a Dream" of the United Methodist Church

     “When the Lord restores Zion’s fortunes, we should be like dreamers” (Psalm 126:1, in Robert Alter’s translation). I’ve been dreaming a lot lately: anxiety-rooted dreams during the night (while asleep or lying awake), and more hopeful daydreams when I probably should be working. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired us to dream. And so I have this dream, conceived in a good bit of grief and fretting, and yet consummated in faith, hope and love – a dream of what my church, and I mean both my United Methodist denomination and the parish where I serve right now, might be, or dare I say it, will be. The Church really is of God, as we say and trust.

     I dream of a church where homosexuality isn’t the thing, which it isn’t anyhow. Of course, one day it won’t be the big thing – and the deep truth that it’s a temporary obsession lightens today’s burden, and reminds us all that we have so many other tasks and so much beauty apart from it. After all, it’s not as if we could come to a total embrace of the LGBTQIA+ community, or if we could manage somehow to put a stop to it, that the kingdom will have dawned. That kingdom is about what we share, the redemptive love of Christ from creation and forever, and being Christ’s Body, not what divides us.

     I dream of a church where everyone would be blessed as I have by befriending and loving people all across the theological and political spectrum. I wish everyone knew the conservative, straight people I’ve known and know, who are humble, holy and generous. I wish everyone knew the same gender couples I’ve known and know, who seek God’s will and strive for missional holiness. I wish everyone knew the very fruitful gay clergy I’ve known and know. I wish everyone knew the very fruitful straight, conservative clergy I’ve known and know. There’s no enlightened elitism in this. Knowing people deeply doesn’t settle moral questions. But it makes me, for one, humbler, gentler and wiser, and it leaves me knowing we absolutely can and must be in church together. Once in a while someone declares that they have detected which “side” I am on. In Christ’s Body, there aren’t sides, and there aren’t winners and losers.

     I dream of a church where robust disagreement is celebrated, and where theological debate is understood for the great gift from God that it really is. I envy my Jewish friends, who chuckle at the notion that there might be just one right answer to hard theological questions. It’s God and God’s mysterious ways, after all – and we learn so much when we differ, when our half-baked conclusions and jaded biases are exposed. Church, of all places, should be a safe haven for intense debate among the faithful who can vocalize their reading of God’s way in Scripture almost as well as they can listen attentively and empathetically to other viewpoints. Such friends would never belittle others, oversimplify the other’s beliefs, or sneak in false assumptions.

     I dream therefore of a church where we don’t stigmatize, mis-categorize or slander anybody in God’s church. Many conservatives I know are humble, thoughtful interpreters of Scripture and holiness, and should not be labeled and libeled as “haters” or “narrow-minded,” even though a few probably are. Many progressives I know are humble, thoughtful interpreters of Scripture and holiness, and should not be labeled and libeled as “cultural sellouts” or “morally lax,” although a few probably are.

     I dream of a church where we ponder and honor the commitments to God and church made by others. We should all be jaw-dropping awed by the marvelous truth that LGBTQIA+ United Methodists, despite years of not being condoned or having access to the blessings of the church, have stayed. That’s a grace I can’t quite comprehend. And the profound commitment of conservatives who have stayed and struggled valiantly for good is grace too – although my dream is also of a church where those who stay love, and never harm one another, where no one’s full humanity is up for debate.

     I dream of a church where no child of the church would ever even contemplate suicide or running away or hiding the truth from loved ones or the pastor because of an emerging sexual orientation. God wants a church where an adolescent, discovering same gender attraction, would not cower in terror, but be able to share openly and be embraced by the church instead of floundering in denial and then rejecting the church itself.

     I dream of a church where all are welcome, not as a slogan, sign or mat at the front door, but in living habit and embodied demeanor, when we fully grasp that if everybody isn’t welcome, nobody’s welcome, and if the blessings of God’s church aren’t for everyone, they are nothing but a charade for the few. None of us have sufficient merit, knowledge or faith to qualify for the church’s blessings. Thankfully, they are all free.

      I dream of a church that relishes the fact that God can and does call anybody into ministry. It’s God, after all, who calls. We have had, have and will have gay clergy among us – thankfully. I realize there are many who are uncomfortable with the idea of gay clergy. I’d encourage them to meet, listen to and ask questions of gay clergy, and at least open their hearts to the possibility of what God can do. As we celebrate the stellar ministries gays and straights have had among us for decades, we dream of a church where clergy are valued for their call and fruitfulness, and that we never have to say No to any person sensing a nudge from the Holy Spirit into ordained ministry simply because of their sexual orientation.

     I dream of a church where the question of who can marry isn’t settled as long as it’s male and female. Christian marriage is a mystery, a symbol of Christ and the church, two people prayerfully determined to do God’s will, and a hospitality that is eager to share love with those to whom love is a stranger. I understand that many Christians are uncomfortable with same gender marriage. I’d encourage them to meet, listen to and ask questions of same gender Christian, United Methodist couples, and at least open their hearts to the possibility of what God can do. It may just be that our debate over marriage might awaken everyone to the glorious marvel Christian marriage is intended to be and can still be.

     I dream of a church where those of us who sense it is of God for us to marry same gender couples who are committed to Christ and are responding to God’s call to marital fidelity may do so without recrimination. Clearly, saying “All are welcome” is no longer enough. The United Methodist LGBTQIA+ community and those who love them are weary and appalled by living as second class members. They seek, and we seek for them, the full blessings of God’s church. All clergy I know are offering nothing but their holy best to God, including those who don’t conduct same gender marriages due to conscience. Punishment serves no one well – except the devil, who delights in Jesus’ followers afflicting one another.

   I dream of a denomination organized around doing good and not judging others, so we are about shared mission rather than taking little-heeded stances on the political issues of the day. I dream of the day when our energies are rightly directed - toward reconciliation, poverty, injustice, race, and so many other issues and people, rather than who thinks right on just one issue or even many.

    I dream of a denomination in which, if we have to have a book like the Book of Discipline, it’s a book that is never thought of as a divinely inspired instrument of blame or exclusion, and instead opens doors and hearts, inviting its people and congregations to life and being reshaped after the mind and heart of Christ.

     Dreams are elusive, and forces conspire to tamp down and squelch holy dreams. We get cynical, or we get realistic and strategic, or we get mad. Understandably. But God promised that “in the last days,” when God’s Spirit is finally poured out on us, “your young will see visions, and your old shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). Dream with me. God is even now pouring out God’s Spirit on us.