“The person who looks for quick results in the seed planting of well-doing will be disappointed. If I want potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it will do me little good to go out and plant potatoes in my garden tonight. There are long stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence that separate planting and reaping. During the stretches of waiting, there is cultivating and weeding and nurturing and planting still other seeds.” (Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light)
The season of Lent affords us the opportunity to engage in the work of growing deeper. The words of Eugene Peterson speak of the possibility of such spiritual growth, and the work that we are to do – often in silence and separation - as we prepare for Easter. We seek to grow deeper so that we will rise higher in the days ahead.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Turn on Your Lights
In the course of my ministry, I have the occasion to drive through various parts of Baltimore several times a week. One of the things that I have come to realize is how many lights there are in the city at night. Driving through, I often look out in the distance, and can see lights several miles away. Such panoramic views of the city serve as a reminder to me of the words of Jesus to his followers in the Gospel of Matthew, “You are the light of the world…A city built on a hill cannot be hid.”
It is my sense that we can forget the words of Jesus amidst the darkness that floods so much of existence. We experience the darkness of political unrest, social disintegration, and economic uncertainty - not to mention spiritual demise. Terror and war has permeated our global conscience, and crime and violence continues to pervade many of the communities and streets of Baltimore. Vivid reminders of this darkness are the blue lights that flash on many of the city’s corners – reminding us that such violence in very real.
Darkness has a way of dimming our view of reality, and making it difficult to see the possibility – even the reality - of light. As I drive through Baltimore, I also have the occasion of traveling through the tunnels of the city several times a week. On entering the tunnels, most of what is experienced is dimness and darkness – the end of the tunnel cannot be seen, and thus there is not much evidence of light. It is at the point of approaching the end of the tunnel, when there is a glimpse of light, that I always experience a sense of hope – a sense that the darkness is about to be over.
One of the things that the Lenten season does for us is gives us the occasion to encounter our personal darkness and to seek the light that is in Christ. These encounters are what John of the Cross was alluding to when he talked about the “dark night of the soul.” David talked about these in terms of walking through the “valley of the shadow of death.”
Amidst these encounters, we have the assurance in the words of Jesus that we are “the light of the world”… and that “a city built on a hill cannot be hid.” And as "lights of the world," we are encouraged to turn on our lights.
One of the most important things that we know about light is that light always overcomes darkness. If light is placed in the proximity of darkness – light always shines through. If we to walk in the light that is Christ – this light will overcome darkness.
It is my sense that we can forget the words of Jesus amidst the darkness that floods so much of existence. We experience the darkness of political unrest, social disintegration, and economic uncertainty - not to mention spiritual demise. Terror and war has permeated our global conscience, and crime and violence continues to pervade many of the communities and streets of Baltimore. Vivid reminders of this darkness are the blue lights that flash on many of the city’s corners – reminding us that such violence in very real.
Darkness has a way of dimming our view of reality, and making it difficult to see the possibility – even the reality - of light. As I drive through Baltimore, I also have the occasion of traveling through the tunnels of the city several times a week. On entering the tunnels, most of what is experienced is dimness and darkness – the end of the tunnel cannot be seen, and thus there is not much evidence of light. It is at the point of approaching the end of the tunnel, when there is a glimpse of light, that I always experience a sense of hope – a sense that the darkness is about to be over.
One of the things that the Lenten season does for us is gives us the occasion to encounter our personal darkness and to seek the light that is in Christ. These encounters are what John of the Cross was alluding to when he talked about the “dark night of the soul.” David talked about these in terms of walking through the “valley of the shadow of death.”
Amidst these encounters, we have the assurance in the words of Jesus that we are “the light of the world”… and that “a city built on a hill cannot be hid.” And as "lights of the world," we are encouraged to turn on our lights.
One of the most important things that we know about light is that light always overcomes darkness. If light is placed in the proximity of darkness – light always shines through. If we to walk in the light that is Christ – this light will overcome darkness.
Thus, the words of the traditional hymn encourage us:
Walk in the light
Beautiful light
Shine where the dew drops of mercy shine bright
Shine all around us by day and by night
Jesus, the light of the world.
Beautiful light
Shine where the dew drops of mercy shine bright
Shine all around us by day and by night
Jesus, the light of the world.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Changing Directions
A few weeks ago, I had the occasion to preach a sermon based on the familiar text from the book of Jonah (Jon. 3:1-10). Perhaps it was not ironic that this was one of the lectionary texts for that week. I have preached several different sermons from the Jonah text over the years, but this time it seemed to relate to the experiences of the church and society in ways that it hadn’t before. Perhaps this is because of the change that is all around us. Maybe it is because the change that we experience today is unprecedented in many ways – as tumult and turmoil seem to characterize where we are collectively, and (for many) individually. The times in which we live have been described by writer Tom Peters as being "topsy-turvy" times.
As, this week, we have entered into the Lenten season, the Jonah text has stayed with me. For some reason it has resonated with my conscience – pricked the nerve center of my being. I – like many Christians – seek to experience the 40 days of Lent as days of self-reflection, forgiveness, and repentance. Repentance denotes renewed connection and commitment in our lives - our efforts to change directions – to go on a different pathway from that which we have travelled.
These are days of repentance for our nation as well. The economic stimulus package championed by our new president seeks to redirect our economy away from economic demise, exploitation of big business and unsound lending practices - and toward stability. A few days ago, President Barack Obama shared a renewed commitment that by 2020, America would again rank as the leader in the percentage of college graduates in the world. And today, President Obama shared his intention to end America’s military involvement in Iraq by the end of 2011. Indeed, these are days of repentance - changing directions - for our nation.
One of the interesting things about the Jonah story is that embedded in it are two call stories. God calls Jonah twice. Chapter 1 of the Book of Jonah begins with God's first call for Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim judgment and to call the city to repentance. But when that first word came, Jonah did not answer as God had intended. Instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah decided to go in another direction - toward Tarshish.
To understand Jonah’s decision not to go to Nineveh and to head toward Tarshish, perhaps it helps to know something about Nineveh. In the seventh century BCE, Nineveh was the largest city, the capital of Assyria, the most powerful nation in the world. God told Jonah – this unknown prophet - to go to Nineveh, the big city, to preach judgment to the people.
And given this tremendous task that God had placed before Jonah, he decided instead to go to Tarshish. And so Jonah ran to the sea, boarded a ship and headed toward Tarshish. During a violent storm, the sailors realized that God was angry with Jonah and was causing the storm. So Jonah was thrown into the sea, where he ended up in the belly of a giant fish.
Eventually, the big fish spat Jonah out onto dry land. God saved his life, and obviously had something more for him to do.
In chapter 3 we find that God called Jonah a second time. This time, when God called, Jonah changed directions and went to Nineveh as God had commanded. He went, proclaiming God’s judgment and calling the Ninevites to repent of their sins and return to God.
One of the prevalent changes in our society today is the emergence of the GPS – the global positioning system. Many of us today have GPS systems in our car as a replacement to maps and atlases (and Map quests) which used to suffice in helping us get from one place to another. One feature of the GPS comes into play when the driver has taken a wrong turn, gets off track, and is about to get lost. A voice emerges in the vehicle and indicates that “you have made a wrong turn, and the system will now need to re-calculate your route.”
Could it be that during this Lenten season, God seeks to re-calculate our route, and beckons us to enter into a renewed relationship with the divine? Could it be that it is God’s ultimate desire that we, like Jonah, point our lives in the direction in which God seeks for us to go – to re-calculate and go where God is leading us?
As, this week, we have entered into the Lenten season, the Jonah text has stayed with me. For some reason it has resonated with my conscience – pricked the nerve center of my being. I – like many Christians – seek to experience the 40 days of Lent as days of self-reflection, forgiveness, and repentance. Repentance denotes renewed connection and commitment in our lives - our efforts to change directions – to go on a different pathway from that which we have travelled.
These are days of repentance for our nation as well. The economic stimulus package championed by our new president seeks to redirect our economy away from economic demise, exploitation of big business and unsound lending practices - and toward stability. A few days ago, President Barack Obama shared a renewed commitment that by 2020, America would again rank as the leader in the percentage of college graduates in the world. And today, President Obama shared his intention to end America’s military involvement in Iraq by the end of 2011. Indeed, these are days of repentance - changing directions - for our nation.
One of the interesting things about the Jonah story is that embedded in it are two call stories. God calls Jonah twice. Chapter 1 of the Book of Jonah begins with God's first call for Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim judgment and to call the city to repentance. But when that first word came, Jonah did not answer as God had intended. Instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah decided to go in another direction - toward Tarshish.
To understand Jonah’s decision not to go to Nineveh and to head toward Tarshish, perhaps it helps to know something about Nineveh. In the seventh century BCE, Nineveh was the largest city, the capital of Assyria, the most powerful nation in the world. God told Jonah – this unknown prophet - to go to Nineveh, the big city, to preach judgment to the people.
And given this tremendous task that God had placed before Jonah, he decided instead to go to Tarshish. And so Jonah ran to the sea, boarded a ship and headed toward Tarshish. During a violent storm, the sailors realized that God was angry with Jonah and was causing the storm. So Jonah was thrown into the sea, where he ended up in the belly of a giant fish.
Eventually, the big fish spat Jonah out onto dry land. God saved his life, and obviously had something more for him to do.
In chapter 3 we find that God called Jonah a second time. This time, when God called, Jonah changed directions and went to Nineveh as God had commanded. He went, proclaiming God’s judgment and calling the Ninevites to repent of their sins and return to God.
One of the prevalent changes in our society today is the emergence of the GPS – the global positioning system. Many of us today have GPS systems in our car as a replacement to maps and atlases (and Map quests) which used to suffice in helping us get from one place to another. One feature of the GPS comes into play when the driver has taken a wrong turn, gets off track, and is about to get lost. A voice emerges in the vehicle and indicates that “you have made a wrong turn, and the system will now need to re-calculate your route.”
Could it be that during this Lenten season, God seeks to re-calculate our route, and beckons us to enter into a renewed relationship with the divine? Could it be that it is God’s ultimate desire that we, like Jonah, point our lives in the direction in which God seeks for us to go – to re-calculate and go where God is leading us?
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Welcome Table
(This article was published on January 21, 2009 in Leading Ideas, a publication of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, http://www.churchleadership.com/ at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC.)
In the summer of 2006, I led a study group from Wesley Theological Seminary in a doctoral course that retraced many of the steps of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. Our group reflected much of the diversity of the church and society. We prayed, sang, and shared our thoughts together as we traveled. Dr. Eileen Guenther, who teaches church music at Wesley Seminary and was part of our group, said that a spiritual, “I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table,” played in her head throughout the experience. She recalled the variety of tables that we encountered as we traveled through Alabama:
- lunch counters where all had not always been welcome,
- the dining room table in the parsonage of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed,
-the kitchen table of the same parsonage where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., searched his soul and felt God telling him to press on with his work,
-the tables at which the people at 16th Street Baptist Church served us lunch, tables placed adjacent to the site of the tragic bombing in September 1963 that killed four young girls, and
-the tables around which members of our group gathered to share stories as victims of discrimination, of their courageous work for justice, and their lament over a lack of awareness by many of what was going on at the time.
I sense that our experiences in Alabama are emblematic of the blessings and burdens facing the churches today. In the midst of growing divergence among churches in terms of theology, styles of worship, and ways that churches engage their mission in the world, it is more essential than ever that a faith built around the Lord’s Table ensures that there is a welcoming table set for a changing world.
The Church and Race Relations - Then and Now (1968-2008)
By C. Anthony Hunt
(This article was published on January 21, 2009 in Leading Ideas a publication of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, http://www.churchleadership.com/ at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC.)
In reflecting on the church and race relations over the past forty years, and whether it is possible or even desirable for us to strive toward becoming color-blind, I have been reflecting on what was occurring in American society in the late 1960s. It was a time of great racial tension in America. The Kerner Commission Report, commissioned in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, summarized the state of race relations in America by noting, “America is a nation of two societies, one black and one white, separate and unequal.” The death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, spawned a proliferation of violence in cities across the United States.
In the aftermath of King’s death, cities like Detroit, Washington, and Baltimore turned upon themselves in acts of violence and destruction. The images of large business corridors, residential communities, and places of worship being burned and looted are still vivid in many of our memories.
In light of the state of race relations in the church then and now, what might have been the hopes and dreams of those who engaged in those earlier efforts toward dialogue, cooperation, and conciliation? I suspect that many persons of all races in the churches forty years ago would have hoped and expected that the church of the early 21st Century would be a church where racism no longer exists, and perhaps that the churches would be color-blind. But we know that this is not the case.
In many ways, a pall remains over much, if not most, of today’s church with regard to how it has dealt with the race problem in America. In their 2001 book Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith developed a theory to explain why churches are racially exclusive enclaves despite Christian ideals about inclusiveness: Americans choose where and with whom to worship; race is one of the most important grounds on which they choose; so the more choice they have, the more their religious institutions will be segregated. Through sociological analysis, Emerson and Smith tested that theory and found it to be valid. Churches today are more segregated than schools, workplaces, or neighborhoods. The least segregated sector of American society is also the least governed by options: the military.
Because U.S. Protestants offer the largest number of churches from which people may choose, their churches remain the most segregated. The authors point out that 95 percent of churches are made up overwhelmingly of one race or ethnicity (80 percent or more of their members coming from one group). The result is that only about 5 percent of congregations in the U.S. are considered multiracial.
In seminary classes I teach, I often ask students to look around their classroom and observe the makeup of their classes in terms of race and ethnicity, as well as gender and theological diversity. Then I ask the students to imagine what a similar class may have looked like forty years ago. Clearly, the diversity in our classrooms today was not present in generations past.
But that often cannot be said of our churches. Many look remarkably similar to how they looked forty years ago despite decades of growing diversity all around them. Where do we go from here? Near the end of his life, Dr. King published a book entitled Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? The book reiterated a point he had made on several other occasions: we in the church and society are faced with a choice in our life together. We can either learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or we can die together as fools.
The church of today looks quite different from the church of forty years ago. Progress can be seen in many areas. And yet there is still much work that lies before us. We are not yet color-blind. Although segregation continues in many churches, as it does in many other sectors of society, I believe there is hope that someday the church and society might be color-blind. My hope is rooted in the possibility that we will continue to discover ways to capitalize on those experiences and encounters that will lead to an inclusive community. This is the hope that must be realized if we are to be the church, the Beloved Community, which Christ calls us to become.
(This article was published on January 21, 2009 in Leading Ideas a publication of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, http://www.churchleadership.com/ at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC.)
In reflecting on the church and race relations over the past forty years, and whether it is possible or even desirable for us to strive toward becoming color-blind, I have been reflecting on what was occurring in American society in the late 1960s. It was a time of great racial tension in America. The Kerner Commission Report, commissioned in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, summarized the state of race relations in America by noting, “America is a nation of two societies, one black and one white, separate and unequal.” The death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, spawned a proliferation of violence in cities across the United States.
In the aftermath of King’s death, cities like Detroit, Washington, and Baltimore turned upon themselves in acts of violence and destruction. The images of large business corridors, residential communities, and places of worship being burned and looted are still vivid in many of our memories.
In light of the state of race relations in the church then and now, what might have been the hopes and dreams of those who engaged in those earlier efforts toward dialogue, cooperation, and conciliation? I suspect that many persons of all races in the churches forty years ago would have hoped and expected that the church of the early 21st Century would be a church where racism no longer exists, and perhaps that the churches would be color-blind. But we know that this is not the case.
In many ways, a pall remains over much, if not most, of today’s church with regard to how it has dealt with the race problem in America. In their 2001 book Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith developed a theory to explain why churches are racially exclusive enclaves despite Christian ideals about inclusiveness: Americans choose where and with whom to worship; race is one of the most important grounds on which they choose; so the more choice they have, the more their religious institutions will be segregated. Through sociological analysis, Emerson and Smith tested that theory and found it to be valid. Churches today are more segregated than schools, workplaces, or neighborhoods. The least segregated sector of American society is also the least governed by options: the military.
Because U.S. Protestants offer the largest number of churches from which people may choose, their churches remain the most segregated. The authors point out that 95 percent of churches are made up overwhelmingly of one race or ethnicity (80 percent or more of their members coming from one group). The result is that only about 5 percent of congregations in the U.S. are considered multiracial.
In seminary classes I teach, I often ask students to look around their classroom and observe the makeup of their classes in terms of race and ethnicity, as well as gender and theological diversity. Then I ask the students to imagine what a similar class may have looked like forty years ago. Clearly, the diversity in our classrooms today was not present in generations past.
But that often cannot be said of our churches. Many look remarkably similar to how they looked forty years ago despite decades of growing diversity all around them. Where do we go from here? Near the end of his life, Dr. King published a book entitled Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? The book reiterated a point he had made on several other occasions: we in the church and society are faced with a choice in our life together. We can either learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or we can die together as fools.
The church of today looks quite different from the church of forty years ago. Progress can be seen in many areas. And yet there is still much work that lies before us. We are not yet color-blind. Although segregation continues in many churches, as it does in many other sectors of society, I believe there is hope that someday the church and society might be color-blind. My hope is rooted in the possibility that we will continue to discover ways to capitalize on those experiences and encounters that will lead to an inclusive community. This is the hope that must be realized if we are to be the church, the Beloved Community, which Christ calls us to become.
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