reformation sunday

Let our bones be broken,
and re-knit anew.
Will you break our walls and teach us how to fight?
Will you break our genders and classes?

Our hates and habits are calcified:
Sedimented with the weight of race and nation.
Are you strong enough?
Are we strong enough for the breaking,
and for the reforming?

Make our pretty old churches new and ugly,
marked with the dirt of tragedy and fertility.
Mark us with ashes,
make us your own.

We are always in need of re-forming,
and we are always being re-formed.


(words are not enough... we must resort to bread...)

managing empire

I preached at Grace Baptist Church last Sunday. My friend Lisa the animator videotaped it and put it up on youtube. It's in three parts.

Here's how Lisa described them:
"It is in three parts, because of the length being too long for youtube
to allow one cut of it. Part one is the introduction complete with the
taking down of Jesus. Part duex is talking about our privaleges and
using them, as well as David's experiences with the face of God in the
hospital. Part three has a lovely song."

I was following the revised common lectionary, so the gospel reading is the first part of Luke 16, and some doom and gloom stuff from Jeremiah and Psalms.







Part III has a recording of that song I posted here a while ago.

take it easy but take it,
David

on providence

I've never been much for providence. Especially after reading Calvin this semester- it just seems to end up with too many terrible consequences, to imagine that God is controlling everything.

And then today. Today I went up to my floor, intent on starting my rounds, when the charge nurse directed me to a room. "She wanted a Bible," she said, "But she's going to surgery right away." I started to go downstairs for a Bible, but figured I had better go to the room first.

I introduced myself to the youngish woman on the bed. "Oh, are you here to pray with me?" she said. There was already a Bible in the room. As we began to pray, my beeper went off, but I put it aside for the time being. Then, together, we prayed fiery prayers, about God's presence and King-ness, God being on the throne in the operating room and showing the surgeon His power. She led, mostly.

When I finished, I wanted to offer her my best wishes for her surgery. "Well," I said, "I hope-"

She interrupted me: "What'd you say? Hope? What's hope? Hope is doubt. We don't doubt, we know. We know that God is in control, and God led you here, and God will lead me through surgery. His will be done. He predestined you to come through that door, and it's all his will."

"Okay," I said, smiling. "Take care."

Now, as you might know, this is not really my theology. But I am trained to accept patients where they are, problematic theology and all, and to not shoot holes in their precious resources.

But it was time to answer that page. I had heard at lunchtime about the stillborn infant, the deceased child whose parents wanted a blessing. Now, according to my page, they wanted a Baptist.

I was the only Baptist chaplain in the hospital at the time. So I got paged. And I went.

I've never done an infant blessing, dedication, or baptism before. I once blessed a storage locker. But they wanted a baptist. And so I showed up in their hospital room, the dad, and the cousin, and the mother, holding her beautiful tiny tiny red red child. "A____ R_____." she said.
"A____ R______. That's a beautiful name." I said.
And we gathered together and together we prayed a blessing on A____ R_____. I stumbled over my words, and after I left I thought of all kinds of things I could have added. I started to say to her, "I bless you," but I went back and said "we bless you." But together we blessed her, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God Mother of us All.

And the family was thankful. And the mom wanted a picture. And so there's a picture or two, there on the hospital's disposible cameras, of me, and of mom, and of A_____ R_____. And they didn't want anything else from me. But they had wanted a blessing, and they wanted it from a Baptist.

Now, you also know that I'm not really one with a great love of my denomination. Don't get me wrong, I love Baptists and I love Baptist theology, but I also love all kinds of thing about all kinds of denominations. I probably wouldn't be Baptist if I didn't live next to Carrie Broadwell, freshman year. If I hadn't been randomly assigned next to her room in the dorm, I wouldn't have asked her what a cool church in town was. And she wouldn't have gone with me to Peace Community Church, the Baptist church she was raised in and had left for a few years.

So, through complete happenstance, I ended up a Baptist. I love being a Baptist- I love the history, and the contemporary diversity. But when Alicia Renee's parents needed a Baptist, I was around. And they got a Baptist.

Now, I definitely don't believe in providence. Not in the predestination, God controls it all.

But I believe that God has some tricks up her sleeve. And one of the tricks I'm caught up in came to fruition today. And it was sad and beautiful and important and sacred.

Peace be with you.

david

ps- I sent this out as an email to a few folks before posting it. I got this great few lines back from another David, a pastor-type who's a fellow member of my church in chicago:
"I don't believe in providence either; what I believe in is improvisation. And our God, she is a mighty improviser. An Ella Fitzgerald, a Doc Watson, a John Coletrane, and you sound like a most eloquent axe in her hands."

april fool's communion

They scheduled me to help lead communion yesterday. Which was both Palm Sunday, and April Fool's Day. One would think that by now they would know me better than this, but it got me to thinking about similarities between this holy week and, well, April Fool's Day.

First, I remember hearing about a liturgical tradition from the first few centuries of the Christian church. Apparently, on Easter morning, the priest was required to make the whole congregation bust out laughing before the beginning of the mass. This was in celebration of Christ tricking the devil, as atonement theology went in those days. My atonement theology is markedly different, but I still think there's something hilarious about resurrection.

Second: Someone told me about the origins of April Fool's Day. Apparently, when Europe switched over to a new calendar, some folks didn't get the memo, and so celebrated New Year's Day on the first of April. I think that being on a non-Empire-endorsed calendar, and getting laughed at for it, is appropriate on such a holy week.

Finally, I thought about Maundy Thursday, coming up here. It was my job to give the invitation to communion, since I was the guy holding the cup, and I thought about what Jesus was inviting his loved ones to in that moment. Basically, much as at the beginning of a joke, or the first day of a new year, or at the beginning of any invitation, he was inviting them to mystery. I said to my church, "If you decide to come up here, I don't know what's going to happen."

I was going to leave it at that, in that doubt and mystery and slim hope. But I was reminded of Dow Edgerton's advice about preaching, in class last week, which was this: (he got it from a retired woman preacher, one of the first in Ohio and Indiana and Wisconsin) "Preach your faith, not your doubts." And so, in an effort to preach the part of my spiritual life that feels like faith and not just doubt, I said, "I don't know what's going to happen. But I know who you'll be with."

And they came.