Exercising Empathy

As I was reading the news this morning, I found a lump forming in my throat and tears filling my eyes. I was reading about the funeral of El Paso shooting victim Margie Reckard. Her partner of 22 years, Antonio Basco, has no family and feared he’d be the only one at her funeral. He put out a simple invitation to the public to join him for the funeral. Hundreds of strangers from across the country came to El Paso to mourn with him. 

The article from HuffPost described the scene, “As the line swelled, Basco came back out to thank attendees personally for coming. People crowded around to hug and touch him. Basco appeared overwhelmed that strangers were now running toward him to show love and offer condolences.”

I am moved by the unbridled empathy of strangers who not only were touched by Basco’s story, but connected so deeply with his grief that they were moved to go to El Paso and companion him during this heartbreaking time. 

This kind of empathy has become exceedingly rare these days. We may still feel deep empathy when our child cries because they’re not chosen for a sports team or when our spouse is once again overlooked for a promotion. But our empathy beyond our family and friends has grown thin and the cost is healthy community. When was the last time a stranger’s pain moved you to action?

As I continue to read the news, it seems that empathy has become an outdated commodity in church and society. We create teams of “Us” and “Them” and keep adding players to each side. Each time we do that, each time we fail to recognize our shared humanity and kinship, walls are built that create boundaries of who’s in and out. And for every border built, we divide God’s family and our hearts harden to those who aren’t like us. 

It’s time to exercise our empathy, flex tendons of tenderness and strengthen our ability to enter into the pains, fears, and despair of those around us, particularly those we otherwise overlook. 

Jesus kept his sights on those pushed to society’s edges. He allowed what he saw to move him deeply and disturb him enough to do something. He healed and fed those in need. He sought justice for the oppressed and challenged those who abused power. 

And he calls you and I to do the same. 

“Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.” (Galatians 6:2-3)

SOCIAL HOLINESS, SPIRITUALITY, AND SHOOTINGS

In the midst of the noise of our day, listening is a deeply spiritual practice. Listening to another person is a spiritual act. Listening to sighs too deep for words is a spiritual act. Listening to the wind blow through the trees is a spiritual act. All this is to assist us as we listen with open hearts for the voice of God.

Saturdays are a day of spiritual listening for me. After reading scripture in the morning, I strain the ears of my heart to hear God’s whisper. Today, I heard bird calls, a child laugh, waves lapping the shore. But where was God’s voice?

This evening, as I looked at my phone to catch up on the day’s news, I heard it: God was weeping. El Paso became the latest community to experience a mass shooting, with 20 shot dead in a Walmart, many buying school supplies. As of today, there have been 248 mass shootings in the United States in 2019. 246 people have been killed, 979 wounded, thousands have experienced trauma.

Tonight, I hear God weeping.

“Thoughts and prayers” ring hollow in the face of these numbers and mock the fact that the life to which Jesus calls us is one of engaged faith. The apostle Paul said, “Faith without works is dead.” John Wesley said, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breath and depth and height of Christian perfection.”

When we bow our heads and pray for those whose lives have been irrevocably impacted by the El Paso shooting, what will we do when we rise from our pews? How will the holy practice we engaged in during worship be embodied social holiness in our daily living?

God weeps tonight. What will you do tomorrow, so that your “faith is working by love”?

We can stop the killings. We can ease the deep pain of those who weep. We can create beloved communities that draw the outcast in. We can work for better mental health access in our communities. We can let our elected officials know that it is past time that this nation passed sensible gun control laws.

We can do all this through Christ, who expects nothing less of us.

A Faith on Fire

It was a jarring thing to pull into my mother’s hometown of Springhill, Nova Scotia to see the big “Ross Refrigeration” sign in front of the Presbyterian Church. My cousin attended that church and my sisters and I have, on more than one occasion, sung in the choir. 

The congregation had shrunk so that they could no longer sustain ministry. The only option was to close their doors and sell their building. How many churches that are still open have lost the fire of faith and are now chilly communities, just one breath away from closure?

When someone walks into your sanctuary tomorrow, will they feel the fire of a passionate faith? Will they be warmly welcomed? Or will they need to guard their heart against the coldness they will experience?

Psalm 15 reminds us that we are to come before God bringing our most authentic and best selves to worship:

“Here is the answer: The one who lives with integrity, does what is right, and speaks honestly with truth from the heart.

The one who doesn’t speak evil against others or wrong their neighbor, or slander friends.”

When you step into worship, do you bring the best of you you can? Even more importantly, do you allow worship to transform you in ways that will inform how you live the rest of the week?

Our nation, world, and church are all experiencing a crisis of civility and trust that are fracturing communities with chilling consequences. Our churches—meaning all clergy and laity—need to be a blazing beacon of hope in these troubled times. We need to bring love into a world that has forgotten what love feels like and how it changes how we see one another. We need to bring hope into a world that has resigned itself to despair. We need to bring God’s generous grace into a world that defaults to judgement and division. 

May your church be on fire with the Holy Spirit tomorrow. And may you leave worship forever changed. May Love guide your every step, every action, every word. 

LGBTQ+ LIVES, GOD'S GRACE, AND THE UMC

When I was a campus minister, a student came to my office extremely troubled by an experience she recently had with a para-church campus ministry organization.

“I realized there was something missing in my life. I saw these students living with meaning and purpose. They were a part of this religious organization. I wanted what they had. They welcomed me with open arms and invited me to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That excited me! And so I began my journey to Christ and it felt so good! Then they discovered I was a lesbian and told me I was sinful and couldn’t have a real relationship with Jesus. If it’s a personal relationship, how could they decide if my connection to Christ was right or not?”

That student’s question has long stuck with me—if, indeed, each of us is invited to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, can we dictate to one another what that relationship must look like? Isn’t the point of a personal relationship that Christ meets us where we are—which is unlike where anyone is—to offer us the fullness of life in God?

We United Methodists are a people grounded in Grace: Grace, Grace and more Grace—Prevenient, Justifying, and Sanctifying Grace! This is what sets us apart from so many other denominations: there is a Love that will not let us go, that is always seeking us, going before us, inviting us to a relationship with God that heals, forgives, frees, and restores the image of God in us. John Wesley used the metaphor of a house to describe grace, breaking it down to a three part act: Prevenient Grace meets us on the porch, inviting us to take a journey with/towards God. This Grace is always available to us, just waiting for us to say, “Yes.”

What comes next is Justifying Grace. Justifying grace is the doorway, where we experience forgiveness as we turn towards the new life God offers us. It sets us on a path to salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

To enter the house is to experience Sanctifying Grace. Here we live and move in God’s generous and expansive grace as the image of God is restored in us and we increase in the knowledge and love of God and neighbor.

I love John Wesley. I am a bit (?!) of a MethoGeek. But I have found the house metaphor to be limiting. Recently, I was at a retreat center in Cody, Wyoming. The retreat center was the former home of an Episcopal priest/artist. Her artwork is throughout the retreat center. There, high on a shelf in our meeting room, was a perfect metaphor for grace—it is a picture of two dancing figures. While they are depicted as angels, I see in them humanity and God. Prevenient grace is God extending a hand, inviting us to reach for it; justifying grace is God teaching us the steps for this life of faith—the old steps that led us astray are replaced by the rhythm of God’s love that teaches us a new way to move in the world; sanctifying grace is allowing ourselves to lose ourselves so completely to the Divine Dance that we experience a oneness with God—we are made anew as the image of God is restored in us.

While United Methodist theology and spirituality are grounded in Grace, there are some who have sought to limit the reality and presence of grace in the lives of LGBTQ+ United Methodists. In fact, there are those in the church who refuse to believe—in spite of the spiritual gifts present—that LGBTQ+ people have truly experienced God’s grace and the new life that comes from submitting to God’s Law of Love. Because it is not their experience, because it doesn’t look the same as their (straight) life, there is a damning assumption that LGBTQ+ people are beyond the grasp of God and are instead mired in sin.

When will we understand that our human categories are far too small for the fulness of God? There is nothing holy or faithful when we segregate or sever from the Body of Christ those whom God has sanctified or impose sanctions on sacraments and rituals against those whose lives we may not understand. When we do that, we mar the image of God that exists in the lives of God’s beloved children and we do harm.

I love United Methodism and while I mourn that the denomination that helped me experience God’s Grace may be dying, I will do all I can to help those around me—no matter who they are, no matter race, ethnicity, ability, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age—fall into God’s waiting arms, so they can learn the unique dance steps God seeks to teach them, so that they may lose themselves in life in God, and thereby find themselves coming into the beautiful creation God intended for them.

I AM ABOUT TO DO A NEW THING

Last week, annual conference ended in Billings, Montana. It was fun to watch my Facebook feed fill up with pictures of national parks, as people took time to explore more of our conference on their journeys home (and yes, there were a number of pics of Chugwater milkshakes!).

On the Monday following conference, the Rainwaters, Robin and I took at day of Sabbath together and went to Yellowstone National Park. The oldest of our National  Parks, it is filled with geothermal areas, due to the Supervolcano that created the area. Seismic activity continues throughout the region, sometimes changing the landscape dramatically in an instant. Other changes, as land recovers from fire, for example, happen more gradually.

I watched a mudpot roil, belching out gases as if it was a turbulent sea. Nearby, an entire forest was felled when an earthquake caused magma to heat the ground so high that it killed the roots of trees and plants, and everything died.

Yet, even in the midst of death, there were signs of new life: there, a beautiful wildflower. Over here, new grass danced in the wind.

I couldn’t help but think of the current crisis in the church and how we would love to turn away from the conflict. Because it seems to be a very human thing to run from change and do all we can to maintain the status quo, even if it is not life-giving. Change frightens us.

Yet, God reminds us: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.  I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43: 18-19). While God’s mercy and grace are constants, Creation keeps unfolding as we move more fully into a God-filled world. Jesus offers this to us when he said, “I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (John 10:10 MSG)

This life of faith is not static. It is not a “now we’ve got it and we are sealing it in cement.” It is a dynamic relationship between us and God, with God inviting us more and more fully into a rich way of living. John Wesley said we all are “moving on to perfection.”

If our denomination, our world, your church, your life seems to be roiling like a Yellowstone mudpot, ask yourself, Where is God in this? What change is occurring that is about to bring more life, better life than we ever dreamed of? What do you need to let go of so God can put something new in your hand?

May we be receptive to the new life God seeks to offer us, and may we willingly engage with the Holy Spirit, who will lead us—both individually and collectively--through a decaying wilderness to a land teeming with life and love. A place called Beloved Community.

Praying For Pentecost

Can you really be prepared for Pentecost?

It was 50 days after Passover and Jews from all over came to celebrate the beginning of the wheat harvest. People from different regions came to Jerusalem, when suddenly the Holy Spirit came with fire and wind, stunning them all as they began to understand one another, despite the different languages they spoke.

There were some who scoffed at all this and tried to dismiss this divine disruption by blaming it all on a drunken crowd. Unfortunately, there are always some who are skeptical when the Spirit breaks in and takes us somewhere new. They drag their heels, at best, when invited to join into the future God summons us to. At worst, they discredit, discount, and find all sorts of ways to sabotage anyone from following the leading of the Spirit. I have seen this phenomenon in more than one church, and these churches lack the life that the Spirit seeks to offer. There is a stuck-ness that begins to make vital ministry outdated and causes visitors not to return.

Oh, but when the Spirit is given free reign, look out!

The divide often caused by differences is overcome as the Spirit unites us in powerful ways. Our common life is filled with celebration and a wild abandonment as we allow the Spirit to guide us to places we never dreamed we’d go. It makes for a messiness and some chaos, but there is also a deepening sense of mission and our invitation to join in this Spirit-filled life is contagious.

When I was asked about what I wanted to have happen at General Conference 2019, I said, “I want the Holy Spirit to show up and we all be surprised.” I was extremely dismayed by the results of GC but then Robin said to me, “What if we got what you asked for? Maybe the Spirit really did show up and is continuing to lead us all in these post-GC days.”

Hmmmm….

As we prepare for the Mountain Sky Annual Conference next week, I am praying that the Holy Spirit shows up. I am praying that we will be surprised, over and over again, by the Spirit’s leading. I am praying that we will discover a deeper sense of our oneness in Christ. I am praying that we will delight in our differences and celebrate them together. I am praying that the Spirit will propel us to invite others to this joy-filled life we share together. I am praying that the path is made plain for us as we seek to be faithful followers of Jesus.

May your Pentecost celebration tomorrow be filled with surprises from the Holy Spirit!

REMEMBERING A GENTLE, PROPHETIC, SPIRITUAL GIANT

I write this somewhere between Boston and Denver, making my way by air eventually to Missoula. I am returning to the Mountain Sky Conference after celebrating the life of Bishop C. Dale White, who I served under when I was a member of the New York Annual Conference. Bishop White ordained me an elder in 1985. He also led a clergy orders retreat on Wholeness later that fall. The things he said and taught have remained with me to this day.

Bishop White impacted my life in ways he most likely never knew. In the middle of the anti-apartheid movement, White invited people from throughout the NYAC to join him in front of the South African Embassy and risk arrest, to protest the dehumanizing policies of apartheid.

I was a pastor in rural upstate NY. I remember reading his invitation and breaking out in a cold sweat—arrest?! While I recognized that the Gospel demands much of us and that it is costly to follow Jesus, his invitation asked me to cross a line I didn’t think I could. I confess this to you: I stayed up in mountains that day, not driving the several hours to NY to join him and others in protest.

I would spend the next several years reflecting on my decision and (in)action. Why was I unable to join him in that act of seeking justice? How closely was I willing to follow Jesus?

There is nothing safe about the Gospel: it requires a willingness to stand up against injustice and pay whatever price that results from such faithfulness. Our baptismal vows reaffirm this when we respond to the question, “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

Watching Bishop White, in his thoughtful, gentle way, stand up against wrongs, defend the earth, and seek peace, and do it deeply grounded spiritually, began to shape my own understanding of faithful ministry. Over time, I began to preach, teach, and lead in ways that helped the congregations I served discuss hard things, make decisions about prophetic ministries, and take risks together on behalf of the Gospel.

Who helped you live more fully into the Gospel’s demands? And who is watching you, as you live out your faith? What are they learning from you? Are you challenging others, not through your words but through your actions, to enter into discipleship in ways they never dreamed of? Are you helping those around you take stock of the world, to honestly assess the brokenness, injustice, and oppression, and to respond in ways that make for Beloved Community.

Throughout Bishop White’s memorial service, there was a constant refrain:

“What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

May it be so for each of us.