Forgive me Oprah, I Have Sinned

Yesterday, as the whole world knows, was Oprah’s last show after 25 years. After all the hype, she effectively stood on stage by herself and urged all her audience and millions of viewers to essentially find their passion and make a difference in their world.

For years, folks have laughed and cried with her while identifying with her personal struggles and many triumphs. She is one of the richest people in America, and without a doubt, one of the most influential. She has used this influence to help elect a President, help people discover the joys of good reading, and provided hope and comfort to millions suffering from all kinds of afflictions and addictions. It is probably fair to say that Oprah and her therapeutic spirituality have a greater audience then any religious leader in our culture. She is loved and respected by Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and millions of seekers.

I acknowledge this openly, although I have a confession to go with this. My first year at the Cathedral, I made an offhanded and denigrating remark about Oprah. One good lady here took me to task afterward for speaking despairingly about a woman who had helped millions of individuals and especially millions of women find their voice. As I reflected on her comments, I had to admit I had taken a cheap shot.

Not that Oprah is perfect by any means. In fact, it is her imperfections that are part of the power of her influence. How many over-weight folks have watched her many programs on losing weight and exercise, only to be comforted later by her weight gain – “see, she can hope, try and even fail, just like the rest of us.” My personal gripe with her was a series of remarks she make about the impossibility of people remaining in long-term marriages these days. She explained that life-long marriage was an idea created by folks living in a world where the average age was 25. Good point, but what she omitted, and is omitted by everyone who speaks popularly on this topic, is that most first time marriages, the vast majority, remain long-term commitments.

More importantly, I had to reflect in all this about “where” I was coming from that morning in the pulpit. I concluded that I had unconsciously betrayed one of the foremost biases of Episcopal clergy. I was, of course, being elitist. It was precisely her popularity that bothered me. Not that I begrudge an African-American woman getting a piece of the American pie. It was that she had gotten a large piece of the popular American pie. Forgive me Oprah, I had sinned.

One of the reasons that Episcopalians are becoming such a rapidly extinct species is precise what I showed that day. We are, generally speaking, deeply out of touch with common people and their needs, hopes and aspirations. Oprah is not. Oprah got constant feedback on this and it is called “ratings.” Ours is slower, but it is called “attendance.” As the ratings war goes, we are losing.

Many think we are losing because we use the wrong music style. Others, such as our own Presiding Bishop, think we have grown old and do not reproduce in significant numbers. Dissenters think we have all plunged down the slippery slope of liberalism and moral relativism. I think it is deeper.

Jesus came to the earth, lived among ordinary people, and preached the Kingdom (or reign) of God using illustrations taken from everyday life. Most Episcopal leaders that I know live in the realm of esoteric ideas, cast out theological concepts that are too complicated, and offer preaching and teaching that has almost no “take home application” at all. If you believe us, what would you do? I once heard a prominent Episcopal leader say that “application in a sermon is trivial.” Guess we can tell you what to think, but do not ask us to tell you how to live.

We might all take a lesson from Oprah. Want to help our people and at least keep the folks we have?  Then, come down from heaven and live on the earth with the rest of the folks. Jesus did.

Clergy and Marriage

One of my pet peeves in life is the fact that more and more Episcopalians, even clergy, are taking a Roman Catholic view of the sacraments rather than an Anglican one. I saw this as candidates before the Standing Committee in Dallas would explain their view of the Eucharist. I wonder if this is not part of the current debate about so-called “open communion.” If one believes that the Eucharist will benefit a person no matter what their own personal spiritual situation, then by all means go into the local market and give it to everyone.

Another area is that of marriage, and this is most illustrated regarding married clergy. I find that most Episcopalians that I know view married clergy from a Roman perspective. What I mean is that Episcopalians see our clergy as Roman priests who are allowed to have a live in companion. This is ok as long as we spend 50 to 60 hours a week attending to parishioners and their needs. Yes, Episcopal leaders will often acknowledge how hard being a Priest is on one’s family, and there is the problem.

Let me be absolutely clear about this. My being married and my marriage to Sharon is central to my vocation as a priest. If I am to be the shepherd that I am supposed to be for the people of the congregation, this flows out of my vocation as a husband (and a father.) Being married is not something that I am allowed to do in addition to being a priest.

If I have any regrets about being ordained, the main one has to do with my relationship with my sons. I wish that when I was younger that I had given them more quality time. I was off overworking in parishes and I justified this by saying that I was trying to be a good parish priest. In the Anglican view, as I give myself to my family, I am giving myself to my vocation. It was a wise older priest who taught me this hard lesson.

I remember an incident in the Diocese of Texas that deeply troubled me. One young clergy family was faced with a major medical crisis with their son. This demanded them spending many hours at the hospital and in therapy helping. After a while, the Vestry asked the Bishop to remove the clergy. “After all,” they argued, “We brought him here to minister to us and not his family!” It never occurred to them that God had brought that particular family to them for their opportunity to offer ministry. When the Bishop heard this, he shook his head and said, “They just don’t get it.” They never did either and eventually forcing him to resign.

Having said this let me ask how clergy are to model the Christian vocation of marriage if we do not get this ourselves? One of the critical issues in our success driven meritocracy is that men and women are consistently asked to sacrifice their marriages and family at the altar of success. Christians should be a counter-culture to this and it could start with our attitude toward our clergy.

Good Friday and Earth Day

Today is both Good Friday and Earth Day. While my religious sentiments leave me believing that it would have been better to postpone Earth Day a week, secular folks would no doubt point out that it is not Earth Day that is a movable festival. And it does seem appropriate in some ways that the two are connected.

Some of us would like to point out that we are doing to the Earth what others once did to the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth, namely, we are crucifying it. Dean Morton, the former Dean of St. John the Divine, who shocked a whole generation of pious Christians by placing a female figure on a Crucifix, suggested once that his next feat would be to place a wolf on one. I do not know if he ever made good on this threat. Provocative as this may sound, he had a point.

The same passions that once led a jerrying mob and their paranoid leaders to put Jesus on a cross stand behind the catastrophic destruction of nature that is happening in our modern world, and this is selfishness. We cannot collectively save the rain forests, or the whales, or the water we drink, or the air we breathe because it would inconvenience many and cause others to lose money. We are frequently warned by sane and reasonable people that we should think of what radical environmental action would do to our Gross National Product. Like Pilot, we know what the right decision and just action must be, but for expediency, we surrender our planet over to mindless destruction. In this sense, the connection of the two days seems theological justifiable, but this is far enough down that road.

Unlike the events of Good Friday, the current crucifixion of the environment has a limited comparison. For example, there is no resurrection for the environment from our willfulness, neither does its death redeem anyone. Originally, the celebration of Earth Day was a naturalist or, as some would deridingly say, tree-hugger event. But of late, many mainline clergy have taken up the cause. Having been an Episcopal Priest for nearly 40 years, I am tempted to dismiss this as one more faddish attempt of upper-class religious types to find some purpose or cause relevant to our world. God knows they have long ago abandoned the idea that the original crucifixion has relevance. They now join Professor Bork in believing Jesus’ death (if it really happened) was a tragic accident that had no atonement significance except in the minds of his early deluded followers. On this point, however, I confess my jadedness. I have lived too long with my numerous high-church Universalists colleagues to take much of any of their new theological innovations too seriously.

I say let Good Friday, and Passover for that matter, stand alone. I would suggest to those who do care passionately about our Earth that the two religious events help us to understand why the polar ice cap is melting, polar bears are dying off, and plastic bottles are gathering in cataclysmic numbers in the oceans. The point is this, human beings are flawed and we are weak. Even when it is in our own best interests, we are too flawed to act. We are, in the truest biblical sense, sinners in need of redemption, and we are not able to save ourselves. Neither should we naively look to science to save us either.

The only answer, as classical Judaism and Christianity offer, is conversion. We do not need awareness and urging to take some simple steps to reduce our global footprint and practice being green. We need a moral revival and a corporate and communal change of heart. Christians can start by shouting that this is not our world and that the Earth does not belong to us. It is God’s, and we are but stewards whose vocation is to pass off a healthier and better world to our children’s children. To fail in our vocation corporately (my buying a hybrid is not enough) as stewards of this planet is open rebellion to God and God’s inevitable judgment will, and is, falling upon us. We need to see that our rebellion and selfishness causes the Earth to suffer even to the point of death. In other words, good intentions will not do what we need. The path to conversion begins in this area, as in all areas, on the road of repentance.

We need the passion story and we need it first or we will never be able to summon the communal will and the moral courage to alter the path that is leading us to immense suffering, pain and death, not just for the planet, but for us. You may not agree with me that this is God’s world, but I think you can agree with me that Earth does not “belong” to us, we belong to her, “this island earth our home.”

The Acts of Love Campaign

As I have coached Congregational leaders about stewardship, a frequent question is; what about time and talents? I always give them a few pieces of advice:

1. Separated it from the financial appeal. This only diffuses the focus on financial stewardship. Financial support for congregations is difficult enough without diffusing the energy around three different things at one time.

2. Never offer an area of ministry that is not available or is screened by an uncooperative gatekeeper. When people fill out a sheet that contains the various ministries of the congregation, and they indicate an area of interest, that area needs to be available. For example, a smaller congregation list for time and talents lay reader. However, the church already has seven lay readers, and adding more lay readers will only mean less opportunity to read. This de-motivates the leader of the lay readers from adding the person.

3. Always follow up. This is closely related to the above. A common complaint from many people is that they volunteered for something and no one followed up. When a person experiences this, they are less likely to volunteer in the future.

In recent years, I've been challenged by the need to get people to sign up for areas of ministry. Like many of you, I have put announcements in the bulletin and in the newsletter with little or no response. Part of this can be explained by the high demand on people's volunteer time. Recently, I gained some new insights into the difficulty of recruiting people for ministry, especially younger people.

First, I was reminded that for those under 50 years of age, membership in an organization is not a destination. In the book titles “Bowling Alone” the sociologist author contends that many more people are participating in activities but refusing to join organizations.

Second, the younger people are, the more they want to make a difference, a hands on difference.

The combination of these two insights led me to create for the Cathedral The Acts of Love Campaign. Here are the steps I followed in creating and executing this campaign:

1. I ask all my leaders to develop a one sentence description of what a person does in their area of ministry. (It was amazing to see that some leaders were not able to do this.)We prioritized the list to one page. This allowed for 15 to 20 items.

2. We balanced these between internal ministries (benefiting current members) and external ministries (reaching those outside the congregation.)

3. We communicated the purpose of the acts of love campaign based on the theology of tithing; giving 10% of one's time and talents.

4. To the left of each item listed, we had one box that indicated an interest in a new area of ministry, and a second box that indicated continuing in an area of ministry.

5. I set a goal of having 25 to 50 new commitments. We created a thermometer of new commitments and continuing commitments to place in the entrance to our parish hall.

6. We mailed the sheet to everyone in the congregation along with a reminder sheet that they could keep for their own benefit.

7. We followed this for one month reminding people to make their commitments, providing additional sheets to those who needed them, and placing sheets at the front and side entrance to the Cathedral.

8. We had a staff member follow-up all new commitments by communicating to the leader of that area of ministry the contact information on those who had indicated an interest.

9. We followed up with leaders to be sure that they had contacted the person and invited them to participate.

The next time I do this campaign, I intend to incorporate short testimonies from volunteers in various areas into our Sunday liturgy. I also plan to track these commitments, particularly the new commitments, to see which areas of ministry are of most interest, and which are not. I hope by doing this to find out something about our people’s passions. As of today we have had 114 new commitments and 116 continuing commitments. Amazing!

Speaking as an Independent

What the Media and the Tea Party Get Wrong

I can speak with some authority on this topic even though many people do not like clergy giving commentary on politics. My authority comes from the fact that I have been a part of choosing the past several presidents and determining the make-up of congress. How can I make this bold claim, because I am an independent voter, you know, one of about 20% of the population that carries the swing vote in our country.

For example, I could have told Democrats why John Kerry would lose the election against George Bush when many of both parties thought the odds were on his side. I would like to point out that nobody asked me, but the bottom line would have been “show me that you can have a better plan than Mr. Bush in how to handle Iraq and Afghanistan and you have me vote.” He did not, and they did not, so I voted to stay the course even though I was not happy with the course.

Since the last election, the Tea Party folks who have a vested interest in convincing us that they are the way of the future, and the media, who should do a better job of asking “us” have tended to come to the wrong conclusions. Here is their message. In the last election, the voters have reacted to the spent thrift polices of the Democrats, panicked over the health care reform, and have converted to fiscal conservatives who now want, more than anything else, less government, less taxes and a balanced budget. This is why we will have to vote the rascals out in the next election, and prove again that many in the media simply do not get it. Further, I will predict that if Republicans in general make this their cause in the next election, President Obama is assured of a second term.

If they had asked, here is what I (and lots of independents) would have wanted them to know.

1. We are disappointed with the Democrats. They had a majority in both Houses and the Presidency and yet were unable to give clear direction for the future and to bring about the kind of creative change that the President promised. Do the words “immigration” and “Afghanistan” have meaning here?

2. The President spent one year working to reform health care. What we got was some good, and a typical governmental action that is completely incomprehensible to an ordinary citizen. Does the phrase Tax Code clarify what I mean? Hence. I wanted a course correction.

3. There is an almost a 10% unemployment rate in our country. I know many affected by this. Jobs and the economy are my primary concern. I lost confidence in believing those in power in Washington (read Democrats) were doing anything constructive about unemployment.

4. I am concerned about a growing deficit for my children and grandchildren. I believe this deficit is the price for fighting two wars without raising taxes to pay for them. I am willing to pay the price for good government and things to improve our collective life. I do not want to pay for an endless war in Afghanistan especially by funding a corrupt bunch of politicians stealing the money mean to improve the welfare of their country.

5. I do not think government is too big or too costly. I do believe that being big it wastes money and this should be under constant review. Along with this, I am offended by so called “ear marks” except when they benefit North Texas. (Hey, I did not say independents are always reasonable.)

If I am right, and I am, at least about most independents. Those who promote the idea that the Tea Party, balanced budgets at any cost, and the reversal of the Health Care Bill are our top priorities (along with stopping President Obama from serving a second term) are wrong. They have interpreted what we meant as a “course correction” for a revolution. They are listening only to the strident voices. If this leads to shutting down the government, pursuing a balanced budget to the determent of our economy and employment, and counting our votes as the wave of a Tea Party future, they will receive a shellacking in the next election. They, Republicans and Democrats both, should have asked. The media should be asking now.

Happy Holidays, Bah, Humbug!

During the recent Holiday Season, our brothers and sisters in Christ down the road from the Cathedral at First Baptist in Dallas stirred up some controversy over greetings during Christmas. You may have heard about it. Upset that more and more businesses were using the more politically correct “Happy Holidays” as opposed to the more traditional “Merry Christmas,” the pastor at First Baptist decided to take action. The Church produced on the website a list of the “Bah Humbug Businesses” that used the generic Happy Holiday greeting. They also listed businesses that used the clearer Christian Merry Christmas. They left it up to their members to decide who to patronize, godless materialists, or, well, you get the point.

This action generated the kind of heated discussion that one could predict with all sorts of people chiming in on whether it was appropriate to take such an action. The argument from First Baptist’s perspective seemed to be one of witness, “Jesus is the reason for the season,” and of evangelism, there may be some out there who don’t know that Jesus is the reason for the season.
What I found interesting was in a completely different direction.

My grandmother was a Baptist and my earliest exposure to the Christianity was in a Baptist Church thanks to her. Back in those days, as my Grandmother carefully explained to me, Baptists didn’t celebrate December 25th as a special day, neither did they go around bubbling “Merry Christmas.” A little knowledge of History goes a long way in expressing why this was so.

Baptist historically believed, as did most Calvinist, that the tradition of celebrating Christmas on December 25th was a Catholic late innovation that is not justifiable on the basis of Scripture. It should go without saying that nowhere in the Bible is December 25th mentioned as the date of Jesus’ birth. In the reforms generated out of Geneva in the 17th Century, Protestants tried to reform the Church basing all teaching and corporate life “solo scriptura” on the scriptures alone as the authority.

The Calvinist folks in the Church of England were called “Puritans” because they wished to purify the Church from such papal and medieval trappings. Puritans attempted to change the Church from within, but when Anglicans decided to retain certain traditions which seemed godly if not directly provable by scripture, many puritans became disenchanted. In the 1640s, they lead a revolt, indeed a civil war, that led to the execution of the English King. He was replaced by Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of England. The puritan revolt was also a strongly democratic revolt, but Oliver soon imposed a dictatorial rule over England. It can be argued that England as an Empire with its world dominating navy began under his rule. Under his rule, the Puritan clergy and perspective was given free reign. And one of their first acts was to eliminate and forbid the practice of Christmas. No government officer or official could go around with Merry Christmas on his lips unless he be boiled in his own pudding and have a holly sprig stuck in his heart. Christmas did survive, but mainly among the peasants and poorest of the nation. The civil celebration of Christmas, indeed the very use of the term “Christmas” was eliminated from public life.

They did have a point. The word Christmas, after all, comes from the two words “Christ’s Mass.” Well, with Cromwell’s death, and the brooding negativity and joylessness of Puritans having dominated all life, the English Parliament restored both King and English Church along with all of its elaborate celebrations including Christmas.

Puritans and their descendants including Southern Baptists, however, never relented of their position that Christmas was both papal and even pagan in its origins. Hence, here is the origin of my Grandmother’s position, and the position of most Baptists till about 30 years ago.
Then a historically counter-intuitive thing started to happen. Many younger Baptist clergy noticed that Christmas was still around and, even in its highly commercialized existence, it created an evangelistic opportunity. Consequently, they began holding Christmas Eve services, having living Christmas trees singing carols, and some even instituted pageants retelling the Luke account of the Birth of Jesus, yes with manger, donkeys and all. After all, as the argument went, people might be wrongheaded about Christmas, sentimental to a fault, and Christmas might be commercial to a sinful degree, but people do think about Christmas, celebrate it, so why not squeeze juice out of this lemon and make some evangelistic lemonade? Personally, I think their spiritual mothers and fathers would be stunned by this action which is, after all, a betrayal of all they once fought for. But, hey, I am not a Calvinist and it is not mine to say.

This recent development, however, brings us back to our friends down the street. My question is not whether taking on political correctness was the thing to do. My question is how far they have compromised their own tradition. Now, ironically, First Baptist has become the defenders of saying “Merry Christmas,” by which we commend one another to the celebration of Christ’s Mass on December 25th.

Of course, some of you will want to say that as an Episcopalian I am only mad because Baptists are trying to steal our franchise, and you might be right. However, I still think it worthwhile to point out the ironic contradiction in their actions. There is also something more.

I am happy having folks say Happy Holidays to one another and don’t feel it my duty as a Christian pastor to correct them when they do. There are two reasons for this. First, there are other Holy Days for other religions during this time of year, and I am not comfortable with any group of Christians believing we have the right to force our particular celebration upon non-Christians. Second, there is enough soberness, humbug and mean-spiritedness in our world today. If there is a time of the year when even atheist can join in “Happy Holidays,” and we can join with them in providing toys for needed Children and clothes to keep them warm, then I think the world a bit brighter place for it. After all, isn’t the bottom line of all this that “the light has shined in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it?” I think this attitude more in the gracious spirit of the person whose birth we Christians remember at this season of the year.

Feliz Navidad,
Dean Kevin

What Would Mary Do?

Most of you have probably seen the clever wrist band made famous by innumerable youth groups that has WWJD on them. This stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” The point, as used by youth leaders all over the country, is to get teenagers to think what Jesus would do if faced with their circumstances and situations.

While I think this is clever, I have never really warmed to the slogan. It is not that I cannot think of what Jesus would do in many situations. My problem is that I can. For example, I attend a funeral, WWJD? He would raise the dead. Or, I visit a sick person, WWJD? He would heal them. Or, I am faced with evil, WWJD? He would drive it out. Nor is my problem that I do not believe that some Christians are called upon to do such things. I do. I just do not think his behavior is normative for us as believers. (My wife does tell me that I often confuse my job description with that of the Messiah, but that is a dysfunctional issue, not one of faith.) No, my issue is that Jesus did many things that I cannot do. I think the better wrist band would be WWMD, What Would Mary Do? On this eve of the Annunciation, let me say why.

Mary is the prime example in scripture of God’s faithful servant. When the Angel announced to her that she would be in instrument of God’s grace, overwhelming as it might have been, her faithful response was, “be it to me the servant of the Lord” or as the Beatles would translate it, “let it be.” Sure, the message to Mary was startling. It may have been hard for her to fully comprehend. Yes, and maybe she was a young girl, but she was also smart enough and realistic enough to immediately understand the difficult of the call. “How can this be,” she asked because, “I am still a virgin.” She knew her circumstances. She clearly understood her situation that she was to be a pregnant, unmarried woman in a small village where everyone could talk and certainly everyone could count. She understood this would be humiliating.

And what was she to say to Joseph? “Joseph, it is ok, an angel told me in a dream that I would get pregnant by the Holy Spirit before we were married?” In the scriptural account, all that she could do was leave this up to God.

Devotional writers have often portrayed Mary as the idealized image of passive femininity who acted out perfect submission, but this is not the Mary of the biblical narrative. She was human. She was not perfect, and as the Magnificat reveals, she was not passive. But mostly, she was faithful. Mary believed what the Angel told her and she trusted by faith that God would work out all the details. We could very aptly paraphrase Paul’s words about Abraham applied to Mary, “She believed God and God reckoned it to her as righteousness.“

What then would WWMD mean to us? It would mean that faced with difficult decisions or moral choices, we need only ask what would Mary, who believed God and trusted God, do in this situation. This is something that I can imagine in all sorts of situations. It seems to me that the whole life of a disciple essentially is to believe God’s promises by faith and live as though God will work out all the details.
WWMD?

This might not be as catchy or as clever, but it does make a lot more sense to me as I struggle as a believer and disciple in the many circumstances and situations that I must face in this world. As we remember the feast day of the Annunciation, we could do a lot worse than remember to ask ourselves WWMD?