Jason Micheli's Blog, page 120

Welcome Letter for My New Church

As many of you know, I’m in the process of packing up my office to start a new appointment beginning July 1 when I will be installed as the senior pastor at Annandale United Methodist  Church nearby in Northern Virginia.

They asked me to write an article for the July Newsletter to introduce myself. I deferred to others to do my work for me.

Here it is:

Hi Folks,

Garry Bell told me I was supposed to submit one of those ‘Get to Know the New Guy’ pieces for the church newsletter.

“People really read those?” I asked.

“They do since I came on board,” said Chenda.

I attempted to force Peter Kwon to write it for me but, belying his friendly and obliging nature, he refused, leaving me to release my grip on him and come up with some other plan.

Here goes.

Rather than write the standard We’re thrilled to be here boilerplate (all of which is true, by the way, we are excited to be a part of this community and to follow a pastor I’ve admired since entering the ordination process as well as to join a congregation and pastors that come highly recommended to me by friends), I thought you might be curious to hear what your fellow sufferers who came before you would say about me by way of heads up.

As Lavar Burton said on Reading Rainbow, don’t take my word for it:

 

“I am 100% certain Jason will annoy you at some point during your time together. The reason I know this is because he takes seriously his commission to preach the gospel of unconditional grace. What’s amazing- grace- to some is offensive to just as many others. More frustrating still is when someone really believes they’ve been set free by the news that the check for their debt, including their debt to you, has already been paid by Jesus Christ. Such freedom makes people unafraid of making mistakes and thus hard to control.”

– Joshua Retterer

 

“I thought it was Jason Stanley we appointed to Annandale UMC?”

– Alexandria District Superintendent Jeff Mickle

 

“Let Annandale Church know that at some point soon- very soon- they will become convinced you need more discipline or training or practice, at which point they should send you back to us. We’re happy to have more practice.”

– Charlotte Rexroad

 

“Hang on to your hats. Jason Micheli is your new pastor!?  In a time when Methodism is in difficulty, many of us have taken heart by watching Jason’s leadership.  He is a fine theologian who knows how to communicate the riches of the Christian faith.  You are in for a wonderful adventure of Christian discipleship with Jason as your pastor.”

– Bishop Will Willimon

 

“Annandale? Hold up, I thought we appointed Jason Micheli to the Eastern Shore?”

– Bishop Sharma Lewis

 

“What to say about Jason Micheli? He may not know this (awkward) but I could not stand him when he started at Aldersgate. Not for his casual dress, or his sarcastic delivery. I didn’t like him because I was a preacher’s granddaughter from Oklahoma and I was pretty certain that I had all of the answers. But Jason came along and, despite my inner conflict, made me question those answers. He challenged everything I had been taught memorized about the Bible, and doubt, and what it meant to be a Christian. For the first time in my lifetime of being a “believer” I realized that I didn’t have to suspend belief in science or check my brain at the door to follow Christ. It is because of Jason, that I am finally beginning to wrap my head around the concept of Grace.”

– Gretchen Purser

 

“Call me.”

– Kendall Soulen

 

“Jason’s loud and funny and crazy.”

– Caroline Bouma, 7

 

“Imagine a less reverent David Sedaris but a more appropriate Anthony Bourdain, yet with a greater sense of urgency.”

– Ryan Bouma, her Dad

 

“Pick your poison- Jason as your new pastor is either like losing a bet or winning the lottery, If it makes you squirm, all the better, that’s called growth. It’s amazing God can use someone as unimpressive as Jason to bring you closer to himself.”

– Carla Bouma, her Mom

 

“We’re really glad that the people at Annandale will be taking up a large chunk of our dad’s time. It means more Playstation time for us.”

– Gabriel and Alexander Micheli

 

“You cannot possibly imagine what’s in store for you with Jason Micheli as your pastor. You will not always agree with Jason but you will always have paid enough attention and thought hard enough along with him to figure out – perhaps on Wednesday – about where you are certain he went wrong. Jason preaches of the kingdom without fear or favor, with the urgent abandon of a man who has stared death in the eye.”

– Brad Todd

 

“Jason is a secret Nora Ephron fan.”

– Johanna Hartelius

 

“One thing it’s fair to say about Jason: never dull. It’s challenging to have your understanding disrupted, but it broadens your perspective. In some way it’s like the best college class that opened up your mind. That said, Jason is a Generation X pastor, which means pop culture references are par for the course, and his broad-mindedness about scripture and your sin does not extend to certain genres of pop music (or to Joel Osteen).”

– JC Herz

 

“I expect that many are about to have a lot of their solid, comfortable assumptions challenged–and it’ll probably scare the whathaveyou out of some of them.  But there will be those–many, I hope–who have been waiting their whole lives to hear Jason “preach Christ, and him crucified.”

– Mike Crane

 

“Micheli neither gives nor expects easy answers to what form of life should Christianity take in our day. This makes him dangerous in the best way, and his challenge to all of us is why should we care about Christian faith at all if it only mirrors our culture and speaks no prophetic word from God. Micheli¹s life reminds us that everyday is a resurrection of sorts, calling us to confront the life to which Christ calls us. You may disagree with him, you may fume in anger or nod your head in agreement, but one thing you won¹t be able to do is ignore the call to authentic faith that Micheli invites you to explore.”

– Dr. Jeffrey Pugh

 

“It takes time to truly get to know him. Be patient! Jason leads with sarcasm, but is caring and thoughtful. He’s not a hugger…so don’t take it personally! He’s an introvert who is good at fooling you into thinking he’s an extrovert, so know that all of the interaction on Sunday morning is him really putting himself out there and exhausting him in the process. Annandale UMC is so lucky to be getting Jason, Ali, Alexander and Gabriel.!”

– Karli Eddinger, Pat Vaughn’s Friend

 

“I was getting sober right when I first met Jason. I was taught as a child that I would get what I earned and that if I did good things for God then good things would happen and if I sinned against God then punishment would come my way. Jason taught me that this is karma not grace and, hearing this, has freed me so that God can turn the ashes of my life into something (desperately scarred) but beautiful in its way.”

– Julie Pfister

 

“Don’t encourage him. He already thinks he’s great and hilarious.”

– Ali Micheli

 

I look forward to our time ahead and to sharing life together in faith. As the above testifies, I’m not perfect but, thank God, that’s not our message to proclaim; in fact, God’s grace in spite of my imperfection (and yours) is our message to proclaim. I’m excited to join you in it.

– Jason

 

 

 

 

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Why Our Dialogue on Race Needs More Gospel

During the recent Day of Service at the Virginia Annual Conference of United Methodism, some clergy and laity took part in an in-service on racial reconciliation sponsored by a commission of the larger Church. My good friend Rev. Drew Colby shared these thoughts there and for the blog. What Drew says about race specifically I think could be extended to the category ‘social justice’ more broadly, particularly in a culture such as ours that is increasingly polarized into Christian flavored political tribes.

“I am a proud associate pastor. A group at our church has been meeting for about nine months. Inspired by the protest and tragedies in Charlottesville they started meeting to discuss racial reconciliation. They’ve used resources that the General Commission on Racial Reconciliation has offered and they have learned a lot. I want to offer something else that may help continue to move the conversation forward; and that is the Gospel.

GCORR does good work charting the nature of systemic racism. Fortunately (or unfortunately as the case may be) such resources addressing the nature of systemic racism are not hard to find in our culture. Many other outlets are examining the reality of systemic racism in our culture and many do so better than the Church. If someone is looking for a thorough and thoughtful analysis of systemic racism and how it impacts all of us unawares, I’m not sure the Church is the institution to which they should turn. I don’t mean this apologetically. I mean only to suggest that this isn’t the particular gift God has given the Church to offer our culture when it comes to race and racism.

I think the GCORR’s work could have even broader impact if it helped Christians use more theological language in our conversations about race.

That is, I wish our conversations on racial reconciliation (and social justice) could more often begin with the acknowledgment that Jesus Christ has already begun and guaranteed our reconciliation. Indeed, I suspect it would change the tenor of our debate about race (in the Church, at least) if it was couched in terms of scripture’s gospel promise that reconciliation- including racial reconciliation- is already an accomplished fact to celebrate and not an aspiration to exhort. The Gospel given to us by St. Paul isn’t that the dividing walls between races should be torn down but that in the cross of Christ they have been brought down. The difference between those two tenses, between the indicative and the imperative, changes the entire tone of our discussion from exhortation to invitation. Contrary to what one of the preachers at Annual Conference said, it’s NOT our job to redeem the world but to celebrate that in Christ the world has already been redeemed and to invite people to live into this, the true story of the world.

To frame our discussion of race more theologically would help us see clearly that as the Church, we are coming at this broad and insidious societal problem from a unique Chistological perspective. We start with an eternal hope—Wesley might even say an assurance—about what it is that is possible in the Power of the Gospel. And this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ: that racism is a sin, for which demon possession is the best NT correlative, which means it is something Christ has born in his body and from which the Risen Christ is working to heal us.

When white people like me are afraid of seeming racist, I think it shows our lack of faith that our sins are forgivable. No, that our sins are forgiven.

Forgiven people are unafraid to confess our need for forgiveness and sanctification. GCORR works to deconstruct our denial or avoidance of racism. The help I think I really need, and I don’t think I’m alone, is help articulating and remembering how, as a disciple of Christ, racism is something I may confess, unafraid, trusting that Christ has broken down the dividing wall, and in his Name grace abounded and still abounds sufficient to reconcile what was divided.

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More than the Diamond Glints of Snow or the Winds that Blow: Sermon for a Boy’s Death and Resurrection

     For my last act at Aldersgate Church before moving to Annandale United Methodist Church, I buried a 14 year old boy who in a foolish, impetuous act took his own life. It was an accident in the most impulsive sense of the word. I’ve presided over far too many funerals for such acts and, at Aldersgate, far too many funerals for children. Here’s the sermon on John 11 and John 20. One of the speakers at the service read that terrible poem “Do Not Weep for Me,” forcing me to riff on it in my sermon, which I’ve added into the manuscript here.     

“I am the Resurrection and the Life,” Jesus said, as Dennis said at the beginning in the Call to Worship.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die,” Jesus says to the grief-stricken sisters, Martha and Martha, right before he asks them- almost as an afterthought- “Do you believe this?”

     The scripture text doesn’t mention the sisters’ mom and dad. Likely, because they were too numb to even come outside to see Jesus. The scripture doesn’t mention the boy’s many friends from all over though likely they too were there with casseroles and cards, grieving, wanting something to do to help, wishing they’d been there and muttering I should’ve done something.

     “I am the Resurrection and the Life…even though you’ll die yet will you live…do you believe this?” Jesus asks Martha. And Martha, her eyes salty and pink with tears and voice hoarse from rage, exhausted from grief, replies: ‘Yes, I believe.”

     But probably-

     Let’s be honest, this is the last place where we should lie or pretend. 

     Probably his sister wants to say “No.”

     No, I do not believe. No, it’s too hard to believe. No, it’s too easy to believe- it’s foolish and silly to believe given everything that’s happened. No, it’s a waste of time to believe- what good did belief do when they most needed it?

     After all, by the time Jesus bothers to show up the sisters’ brother, Lazarus, is four days dead.

     Dead.

     And he didn’t have to be. 

     His was an unnecessary death.

     When she first found him, ill, his sister had sent word to Jesus: “Lazarus, your friend whom you love is ill. Do something. Help.” But for whatever reason, Jesus ignored her prayer. He didn’t heed his sisters’ cries for help as seriously as he should have; so that, by the time Jesus shows up it’s too late and, by Martha’s estimation, it’s every bit unnecessary. It didn’t need to end the way it did: “Lord, if you had been here and done something,” Martha spits at Jesus, “he wouldn’t be dead.”

     In other words: It’s your fault Jesus. It’s your fault Lord.

     Whenever someone dies, especially when they die unnecessarily, it’s tempting to reach for an explanation, to find a reason, to search for someone to second-guess or something to blame. 

     But notice- 

     Jesus doesn’t bother about any explanations or reasons. 
     He’s not interested in second-guessing blame.
Or maybe, by not rebutting the sister’s blame, Jesus is telling us that if we’re going to blame anyone then, yeah, go ahead and blame him. 

     He can take it.

     To Jesus’ question about the Resurrection, Martha says “Yes, I believe” but I’m willing to be she felt like saying “No.”

For all you who might slip into language about how God has plan for everything, even in Death, I’m going to take a timeout for a little Sunday School scripture lesson. 

The Bible calls Death God’s Enemy with a capital E. It’s what God promises to defeat in Jesus Christ one day still. It’s why Jesus weeps and groans before his friend’s grave. 

     The Bible calls Death the Enemy for a reason, I think. 

     It’s damn hard to believe. In the face of Death. Especially an unnecessary death. An impetuous, impassioned or accidental one. 

     We don’t know the why or the how of their brother’s death. We just know it didn’t have to be. 

     “Why didn’t you do anything, Jesus?! Why didn’t you stop it?!” the sister asks and, I’m willing to bet, poked Jesus in the chest or, even, slapped him across the face.

     “I am the Resurrection and the Life…Do you believe this?” Jesus asks her, and her mouth says “Yes” but her heart?

————————-

     “Do you believe this?”

      Do you? Do you?

     All of you- you’re all Martha today.

     Some of you’d say “Yes, I believe” but really if you’re honest the answer is no.

     For others of you the answer is “No.” 

    You don’t believe. 

    You don’t believe that Jesus is the Resurrection and Life, but, God, you want the answer to be yes. 

     You don’t want Death to have the last word, especially when you were denied the opportunity to have your last words with Peter- your last time to hear him talk in his funny accents, your last time to see him jump off, flip off, a picnic table and pile drive himself into the playground dirt, your last time to see him climb a tree, reenact Titanic in the pool fountain, or give you one of his big, broad shit-eating grins. 

     And so you don’t believe, but, even more than Fox Mulder, you want to believe. 

     And still others of you want to have a Martha-like, PO’d word with Jesus: “Why didn’t you do anything, Jesus!? What’s the use of you?!”

     The yes on Martha’s lips. The no on her grief heavy heart. The righteous anger in her throat and in her eyes. We’re all somewhere in between on days like today. We’re all Martha.

————————-

     This isn’t how I wanted to leave Aldersgate. 

     In my years here, I’ve presided over way too many services like this one- for kids, especially- I know what it’s like to feel that the answer is no.

     “No, I don’t believe.”

I can’t speak for you, but I can say that Jesus of Nazareth was only one of tens of thousands crucified by Rome, all of whose names are unknown to us, and the Jewish people to which Jesus belonged did not have as a central part of their scripture a belief in life after death.

     Take those together-
I am convinced that had God not raised him from the dead we never would have heard of Jesus Christ.

     But you’re here for a funeral. You’re not here for me to convince you the answer is yes. Yes, he’s the Resurrection and the Life of us all.

     Except-

     The other reading we heard from the Gospel of John, it’s an Easter text. 

     Mary Magdalene, who’s come to the garden tomb to mourn, mistakes the Risen Jesus for the gardener because Resurrection and Life are not in any way her expectation.

     She mistakes him for the gardener.

     Gardener is the job Adam was given by God to do in Eden, which is to say, this Risen Jesus- he is what we’re meant to be. He is who we will become. What God does with him God will do with us all. 

      His Resurrection is but the first fruit, the Apostle Paul promises, of a creation-wide, cosmic garden God is sowing. When Mary realizes it’s really him, she grabs ahold of him. In her hands she clasps his scarred hands. 

     Notice- his scars are still there. In his hands and his feet and his side. He still bears his scars; that is, the life he lived hasn’t vanished; it’s been vindicated. Not erased but redeemed- recovered and reclaimed in resurrection.

     The Risen Jesus still is the Crucified Jesus; that is, he is who he was.

     That Mary mistakes him for the gardener, what Adam was meant to be; that he still bears his scars and his wounds, reveals what Christians mean by that word ‘resurrection.’

     Namely, this world and this life- it matters. 

     It matters to Almighty God.

     Any kind of thinking or religion or piety or spirituality, which suggests that this life is ancillary to the life to come has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, nothing to do with resurrection.

     Mary mistakes him for the gardener; therefore, resurrection means that God has not abandoned the garden that he planted.

     God didn’t send the ghost of Jesus back to the world to say, “Don’t worry … after you die you’ll be OK.”

     No, God resurrected Jesus.

     The resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us something about what God has planned for the world, what God has planned for us. 

     With all due respect-
     God’s not freaking satisfied for Peter just to be “the diamond glints of snow” or on “the winds of blow.”
A poem like that is comforting to NO ONE who loved Peter.
Peter is here in this coffin and you damn well know it, and you should- we should all- be weeping because Death is the Enemy of God.
     But the promise of the Gospel:
God is not content to leave him there.
God is determined to raise him up
So that Lisa can hold, touch, and kiss him again. 

     God plans to restore him, restore THIS world. Resurrect him and us all. The Risen Christ still bears the scars life gave him; therefore, resurrection means that God is not interested in throwing out this world and moving on to something else somewhere else. 

     God doesn’t forget anything but our sins. Otherwise, why on earth would God go to the trouble of raising Jesus’ body from the dead? God didn’t say, “It’s enough for Jesus to come home to heaven now that he’s died.”

     No.

     God raised Jesus from the dead; therefore, resurrection means this world that God made matters. Resurrection means that this world, this life— our hopes, our longings, our pain, our work, our choices, our relationships, our emotions, our bodies—

     Literally, everything, it all matters.

     Every Fort Hunt baseball game, every evening hanging out at a West Po football game or around a fire pit, every rope swim and flip into the water. 

     It all matters.

     Every ‘I love you’ and every moment spent driving around in the cart at the golf course and every popsicle. The first girlfriend and the first YouTube inspired rabbit snare.

     All of it matters. Every bit of it. All of Peter and every bit of your life with him and what you do with your life now without him. It all matters. It all matters to God.

When we gather on days like today, people often will refer to it as a “celebration of life.” I hate that language. I hate it because it doesn’t lift the luggage.

     For one, it compels us to be dishonest. 

     It temps us to lie and ignore our feelings of grief and confusion. It forces us to ignore the fact that not every part of our lives is a cause for joy, that our lives lived together aren’t always easy. 

     It forces us to pretend that if Peter were here with you he wouldn’t apologize- he would. 

     He’d say he’s sorry to cause you this pain. 

     He’d asked for your forgiveness. 

     And he’d say he wished that none of you had to be here today.

     For another, I hate that “celebration of life” language because it doesn’t go far enough in the celebration.

     We’re not celebrating a life that’s now lost, now past, alive only in our ability to remember it. No, the Christian hope is different than the ending of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. 

     We’re not celebrating a life that’s now lost, now past, alive only in our memory of it. 

     We’re celebrating a life that God has promised and is determined to recover, a life that is now present to God and will be future, will live again.

     Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener. 

     He still bears the holes in his hands. 

     Resurrection means God doesn’t scrap creation. 

     God doesn’t throw things out. 

     God doesn’t let us throw anything out.

Resurrection means that even if we forsake our life, God does not forsake us.

     Resurrection means God will reclaim everything, redeem everything, renew everything, heal everyone.

     Nothing will be lost, nothing will be forgotten, no one will be forsaken. 

     One day, by God, everything broken will be mended. 

     Every tear will be dried and every reason for all those tears will be healed and the scars that remain do so only to remind us that all of it, all of our lives, no matter their length, are gift.

Resurrection means that in the end God gets what God wants.

And what God wants is each of every creature that God has made and God has loved and God has called very good- very good, even when we couldn’t always say that about ourselves.

     “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus asks.

     I realize occasions like today draw all sorts of people from all kinds of places. 

     I can’t make assumptions about you or what you believe.

     But Christians are those people trust the ‘Yes’ even when we feel the answer’s ‘No.’

     Christians are the people who dare to live beautiful and complicated lives, lives of forgiveness and mercy and compassion and inconvenient love, lives that make no sense if the answer to Jesus’ question is not ‘Yes.’

     Christians are the people who live as though we will live on—as Jesus lives on—as the unique and unrepeatable persons we have been since the moment of our conception.

     Live on—body and soul glorified—as it was with Jesus in the Garden—the first fruits of the Resurrection—able to be touched and held, seen and heard. 

     Again.

     Christians are those who believe we are not ghosts in machines that go back to being ghosts, nor are we mere material that becomes “one” again with the rest of creation.

     Christianity is not spirituality.

     The Christian hope is particular, personal, and unapologetically material.

     We are destined for eternal embodied existence, where all the things that made us who we are as one-of-a-kind divine image bearers—laughter, courage, generosity, brilliant thoughts and selfless deeds, skin and bones—will inhabit individual bodies that have something resembling hands and feet and fingerprints and nucleic acids.

     All made alive again forever—somehow—redeemed by the humble power of God’s love.

     Christians believe that God keeps all the information of us and all the mystery about us, and that the God who created everything from nothing knows how to raise us from Death.

     That’s our hope.

     That’s what we mean by Jesus being “the Resurrection and the Life.”

Do you believe this?

Funny thing is, it doesn’t really matter whether you believe it or not, whether you have faith in it or not, because if ‘Resurrection’ is shorthand for anything it’s shorthand for God being faithful to us. 

     To Todd and Lisa, to Catherine and Sydney, to Peter…

     Each of us. Every one of us. All of us.

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Episode #156 – Jason Byassee & Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell: Faithful and Fractured

If its true that clergy suffer from certain health issues at a rate higher than the general population, the why are pastors in such poor health? And what can be done to help them step into the abundant life God desires for them?

We tackle these questions and more with the co-authors of Faithful and Fractured: Responding to the Clergy Health Crisis, Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, and Jason Byassee.

From the book –

“Although anecdotal observations about poor clergy health abound, concrete data from multiple sources supporting this claim hasn’t been made accessible–until now. Duke’s Clergy Health Initiative (CHI), a major, decade-long research project, provides a true picture of the clergy health crisis over time and demonstrates that improving the health of pastors is possible. Bringing together the best in social science and medical research, this book quantifies the poor health of clergy with theological engagement. Although the study focused on United Methodist ministers, the authors interpret CHI’s groundbreaking data for a broad ecumenical readership. In addition to physical health, the book examines mental health and spiritual well-being, and suggests that increasing positive mental health may prevent future physical and mental health problems for clergy. Concrete suggestions tailored to clergy are woven throughout the book.”

You can find the book here.

Help us reach more people: 
Give us 4 Stars and a good review there in the iTunes store. 

It’ll make it more likely more strangers and pilgrims will happen upon our meager podcast. ‘Like’ our Facebook Page too. You can find it here.

Help support the show! This ain’t free or easy but it’s cheap to pitch in.

Click here to become a patron of the podcasts

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Episode #155 – Robert Hudson: The Monk’s Record Player

Is the trouble with Christian engagement with public issues today because social media makes it impossible for us ever to be truly alone? This and more in the latest episode.

It’s almost a podcasting rule at this point. The interviews assigned to us by publicists and publishers (I’m looking at you, Chester Johnson) are the ones I force myself to do, expecting little, and, sure enough, they turn out to be the ones I’m most grateful to have done.

Robert Hudson is a damn good writer and a damn good interview. He’s edited about half the religious books you’ve ever read, and, a Bob Dylan scholar, he’s written a book of his own: The Monk’s Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966. In case, you don’t know Thomas Merton was a Trappist Monk and author of Seven Story Mountain who, despite being a hermit, had quite a worldly record collection. Dylan, meanwhile, employed his own Christian-ish kaleidoscopic poetic imagery that found its way into Merton’s own writing and poetry.

Listen to the interview yourself, he’s infectious for his delight about Merton and Dylan and the faith both of them share(d).

Help us reach more people: 
Give us 4 Stars and a good review there in the iTunes store. 

It’ll make it more likely more strangers and pilgrims will happen upon our meager podcast. ‘Like’ our Facebook Page too. You can find it here.

Help support the show! This ain’t free or easy but it’s cheap to pitch in.

Click here to become a patron of the podcasts

If you’re getting this by email and the show doesn’t pop up, you can listen at www.crackersandgrapejuice.com

 

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Live Podcast with Kendall Soulen

A little over a week from today, the podcast posse from Crackers and Grape Juice will be hosting a live event at Bull Island Brewing Company in Hampton, Virginia. This is our 3rd annual kick-off to the Virginia Annual Conference.

Professor of Theology at Candler Seminary, Kendall Soulen, will be our special guest. This year’s theme is “What We Talk About When We Talk About God.” 

The event is free, but you can register ahead of time here. Or, just tell us you’re coming on our Facebook Page.

The first 50 to attend will get a free Crackers and Grape Juice pint glass.
DATE AND TIME

Thurs, June 14, 2018

6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT

LOCATION

Bull Island Brewing Company

758 Settlers Landing Road

Hampton, VA 23669

 

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Shut Up and Dance: A Wedding Sermon

Marissa is a dancer in NYC. Trevor, whom I’ve known since he was 10, just graduated from West Point a week ago. I got to do their wedding. They chose Ephesians 5.21-33 for their passage. Challenge accepted.

Here it is:

     My wife is a tax attorney and, talking with her this morning about your wedding ceremony, she informed me that it’s now officially too late for you two to sign a prenuptial agreement. Whether that says more about her work or how I’m a lot of work I can’t say, but what I can say is that I sure hope you know what you’re getting yourselves into. 

     Trust. Intimacy. Fidelity and Forgiveness. Forever! Are you crazy?!

These are outrageous promises to make to any sinner, most especially to the one you’ll see floss for the next several decades. 

     Speaking of unwise decisions, Marissa you should’ve consulted Trevor’s mom, Elaine. Not only am I her boss, I’m her friend. She knows me better than anyone here, and she would’ve warned you never to let me see, in advance, the vows you and Trevor have written for each other. 

     Now that I’ve seen them, I’ve got one last pre-marital question for the two of you: if love is a feeling, how in the world can you promise to love someone forever? 

     Of all the things in our lives, our feelings are the part of us we have the least control over. You can’t promise to feel a certain feeling every day for the rest of your life. Certainly not to someone whose laundry you’re going to have to step over for the rest of your life. 

     Let’s not allow the bouquets and bubbles blind us to the inexorable facts known by all the unhappily married- and even, maybe especially, all the happily married- folk here today. 

     “It is hard,” as Robert Capon says in Bed and Board, “for one man and one woman to live together under one roof for as long as God desires. It is hard to raise a family, hard to manage the day-to-day of bed and board, without doing damage to the people we love.”

It’s hard, so hard that sometimes scrubbing the toilet will seem heroic. 

There’s a reason we Christians talk so much about God in Christ becoming one with our flesh. It’s because we know it’s no easy trick.

We Christians, who happen to be husbands and wives, know how hard it is for the two of us to become one flesh. 

     Which is why, I think, the other vows you pledge today, the dusty ones written by Christians from less romantic times, these vows care not one wit about how you two feel today. The marriage rite cares not at all why you two want to get married; it only wants to know what you propose to do about each other henceforth. Indeed, these old vows lead you to anticipate sickness and poverty and all the heartache that can make that last line of the vow (“…until we are parted by death…”) sound like good news not bad. 

     Everyone here today is gathered here because of how you feel right now about each other and because of how we feel about you. Feelings of love– that’s why we’re all here. 

     The Church- not so much. 

     I’ve known Trevor since he was 10. I love him too. And I’m thrilled for how he feels about Marissa. As Connor said in the car on the way to the rehearsal last night, Trevor has had his whole life planned out since he was a boy and Marissa is the puzzle piece that fit perfectly into that plan. As someone who loves Trevor and now loves Marissa because she is loved by Trevor and loves him, I’m thrilled for how you two feel about each other. 

But as a preacher of the Gospel and a steward of these vows-

it’s my job to remind you that God cares not at all about how you feel for the other.

Because feelings alone cannot lift the luggage when it comes to the sort of love with which Christ loved us. 

     The Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians- a text you two chose, I might add- writes that husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved us, which sounds innocuous enough, sentimental even, ready-made for an occasion like today. 

     But for husbands and wives this gets hairier when you remember how Paul has elsewhere described the manner in which Christ loved us. And, for husbands and wives, this gets to sounding offensive when you consider exactly what that ‘us’ says about us. 

     What I mean is- 

     Christ loved, not the lovely and inherently lovable with a few faults and a couple of quirks, the ungodly. 

     While we were yet his enemies, not his friends, Christ loved us unto death. 

     After all that pap about love being patient and kind, Paul tells the Corinthians that Christ took up residence among those whom he loved not counting their trespasses against him against them. 

     To say husbands and wives should love each other just as Jesus loved us is a heads up that what we wed you into today is the way of the cross. 

     That’s why before you face each other today and make any promises to each other, you faced the altar and remembered your baptism, when you were drowned, kicking and screaming, in Christ’s death. 

     Marriage is a daily dying. 

     It would be a cruel commissioning indeed were it not done in the faith that the way of the cross can make both of you Easter new. The reason the self you bring to your marriage today will not be the selves you possess when you depart one another by death is because marriage is a daily dying to self. 

Or rather, marriage is a means by which God crucifies your other selves you bring to your marriage today. 

The ones you haven’t yet shown the other. 

The ones you require the other to reveal about you. 

The ones, once they’re revealed, you won’t want to admit are really there. 

     When we agree that husbands and wives should love one another just as Christ loved us, we’re owning up to the hard and bitter truth that marriage will provide ample opportunity to disclose the hard and bitter truth about ourselves. 

     Marissa, you will at times be ungodly to him. Trevor, you will sometimes be her enemy not her friend. You will both trespass against each other. 

     You see, you’re not promising not to trespass against each other. That’s not a promise you can make. You’re not promising not to trespass against each other.

You’re promising to put away your calculators, to scrap your score-keeping ledgers, and not count your trespasses against one another. 

     I realize this sounds thornier than what you likely expected when you chose this passage, but someone who graduated near the top of his West Point class should’ve been suspicious about a text that begins with a problematic line like “Wives submit to your husbands.” 

     A verse you didn’t want read today but, since we’re safely in the zipper of the Bible Belt and because I know Rob Hopper will pester me about that verse at your reception, I figure I might as well point out how when it comes to that verse, just like the rest of this passage, there’s more to it than meets the eye. 

     Paul gets a bad rap when it comes to women, but this excised verse from Ephesians should be read in submission to Paul’s Letter to the Romans, his master thesis, for which he empowered a woman named Phoebe, likely a man’s wife, as its primary preacher and interpreter. 

Thus, the Paul who writes here in Ephesians that wives should submit to their husbands is a Paul who could just as easily have written elsewhere that husbands should submit to their wives. 

     Because- 

     Notice, Paul doesn’t say men and women are unequal. 
     He says husbands and wives are unequal. 

     It’s a difference, as Robert Capon notes, not of worth but role. It’s a functional difference not a natural one. 

     Inequality sounds bad to us. And most of the time it is bad. 

     But not, Marissa can tell you, not in a dance. 

     The inequality Paul has in mind is a functional inequality because marriage is NOT like a West Point parade march. 

     Marriage is more like a dance where one leads and the other follows, an inequality of role not merit. And, as time goes on and the music of your life together changes, the roles will shift and the other will take the lead and the other will follow. 

    Marriage is not a march where you’re both doing the same thing, shoulder-to-shoulder, or one behind the other. 

    Marriage is a dance. 

    It’s close up, often aggravatingly so. 

     Marriage is a dance. It’s face-to-face. 

     It’s a tango of loving and being loved. Of initiating and responding. Of repenting and forgiving. Of showing patience and showing gratitude for patience. It’s a movement of actions to which your feelings are often incidental. Marriage is a dance where the work is learning when to lead and when to respond.Marriage is a dance. It’s exhausting and hard and beautiful and fun and it takes practice. 

    Marriage is a dance where 2 equals take on different, unequal but fluid roles in order that both may contribute to the perfection of the whole. 

     And the whole, the reason we’re here today, is the Mystery of Christ. The dance you two do with your lives lived together- it’s meant to be a live performance, a spontaneous street theater parable of how God in Christ loves us all. 

     And don’t worry, that’s not the high stakes burden it sounds. It’s not like America’s Got Talent or Dancing with the Stars. There are no losers. No one is voting you to go home because by your baptism in to Christ’s death for our sins, all of them- even the sins you’ll sin against each other, you’re already home free. 

     The Christ who compares his Kingdom to a wedding party also compares his Kingdom to a stupid sheep who can’t help but get itself lost. Nonetheless, with Jesus, what will get lost has already been found. 

     In other words, you two are free to dance knowing that every misstep is already forgiven. 

    As far as the judging of your dance goes, Christ has already said all of that’s finished with, with perfect scores for everyone. The music of his party already kicked on in a garden near a cross on a hill, and the needle will never reach the end of the record. 

     It’s a hard and difficult dance to do but there are no stakes, no penalties to messing it up. 

     As the prodigal’s elder brother can tell you, the only way you fail at this dance is by being a begrudging wallflower and refusing to join in the Bridegroom’s party. So as the prodigal’s Father says to the elder son, it’s time for me to shut up and for you to dance.

     

      

   

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(Her)Men*You*tics: Neighbor

Do good fences make good neighbors? What’s the limit to the scope of our moral obligation to another? How do Christians model the command to the stranger when the State does not?

On (Her)Men*You*tics, we’re working our way through the alphabet, one stained glass word at a time. We’re in the N’s and, like Mr. Rogers and the lawyer who wanted to justify himself, we’re asking about the meaning of Neighbor.

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Sneak Peak at Book Cover

I’m a contributor to the Apocalyptic section of Eerdman’s book Preaching Romans: Four Perspectives coming out next winter and edited by Scot McKnight. Here’s a look at the working cover and the list of contributors.

 

 

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Wedding Sermon: Expectations are the Enemies of Love

Mike, my brother-in-law, I’ve known since he was 9, grabbing my huevos in the pool, cackling, and swimming away. LP was a 6th grader when I came to Aldersgate, and 13 years later I count her one of my best friends. It’s nice to write a wedding sermon where I don’t need to prove to anyone I really do know the bride and groom but where I can instead just get to it.

Texts: Ruth 1 and 2 Corinthians 5.16-21

     Last Saturday marked the Festival of Pentecost, or, as my people call it, Shavuot, the celebration where Jews recall the giving of the Torah to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai. 

     You goyim might not know it, but Jews don’t read from the Book of Exodus on Shavuot. For Pentecost, Jews don’t actually read from the passages where God gives Israel the Law- probably because it’s not a very pleasant, flattering story. 

     No sooner does Yahweh command Israel to worship no others gods but God than Israel starts to melt down their gold teeth and grandma’s silverware and pour them into cow-shaped molds, an impious infraction for which the recently-paroled Moses orders the Levites to draw their swords and kill approximately 3,000 of the idolaters. 

     The Exodus story doesn’t exactly have any of the trimmings for a jolly holiday story so, perhaps not surprisingly, on Shavuot a week ago Jews read instead from the Book of Ruth. 

     Every 50 days after the Passover, at Pentecost, Jews read from the Book of Ruth in order to remember that their inclusion into God’s People, as for all of us, comes by way of adoption not accomplishment. “Once we were no people,” we pray with bread and wine, “but now we are your People.” 

     Your people only by your doing, we leave implied. 

     Whereas God elects the Israelites out of Egypt more or less against their wishes, Ruth actually chooses to be a part of Israel by declaring “Where you go, I will go…your People will be my People.” 

     If marriage vows, as Robert Capon insists, are when bride and groom give each other an overdose of self-confidence, then perhaps this assertion from Ruth is the perfect wedding declaration. 

     But then again, at this point in her life, Ruth’s situation doesn’t look much more promising than Israel’s in Exodus, whom, prior to their betrothal to Yahweh, were in bondage to Pharaoh, so maybe Ruth’s lines about going wherever the other goes aren’t so much born out of naiveté as they are desperation. 

     In other words, it’s not that Ruth has high hopes for where their relationship will take them; it’s that she doesn’t really have any other hope. The other to whom she speaks her vow is her last card to play.

     For those of you who, like the government agents in Raiders of the Lost Ark, don’t remember your Sunday School, Naomi and her husband Elimelech are Jews who had fled the Promised Land because of famine, winding up in a pagan place called Moab where they made a home and started a family. They had sons who took wives, including a Moabite pagan woman named Ruth. 

     All was the stuff of the Colin Firth romantic movies that Mike is loathe to watch with Laura Paige until famine struck Moab too. 

     First, Naomi was left a widow. 

     Then she was left childless. 

     The Book of Ruth opens with Naomi determining to die back in the Promised Land with no one but this pagan daughter-in-law, herself a widow, dead-set on making the trip with her. 

     Long story short, they make it to Israel. Naomi plays matchmaker. Ruth takes their future into her hands (double entendres are everywhere here in the Hebrew) and marries a rich guy named Boaz and they become the great, great, great….grandparents… of Jesus. 

     So, nicely done you two. 

     The love song you’ve chosen for your wedding concludes with the conception of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God, Maker of the Universe— way to set expectations ridiculously high! And here, all this time, I thought Taylor was the Mertins with the Messiah complex! 

     I mean, most couples settle for “Love is patient and kind…” Not you and Mike! Apparently, you two are aiming for Messiah-making love. Talk about gongs and clanging symbols. 

     For God’s sake, don’t tell your kids you chose this passage for your wedding. We chose a passage that ends with the couple giving birth to Jesus who was without sin and perfect in every way is a hell of a burden to lay on a kid. 

    Except, no. 

    Actually, when Ruth pledges these vows, she has no expectations at all. 

     Or rather, she has every reason to expect the worst. Both of them- they’re penniless. They’re both widows in a world so cruel to single women that Jesus will outlaw divorce altogether. And Ruth is a pagan about to journey to the Promised Land where she has every reason to assume the Chosen People will choose to send her packing. 

     So Ruth’s vows are vowed from the vantage of low expectations. 

     And from those low expectations comes a love that begets the Love which remakes the cosmos. On the assumption that we are all incredibly unique and yet all shockingly identical, I want to offer that there’s a lesson here to be gleaned. It’s this one: 

     When it comes to relationships, pessimism is a Christian virtue. 

     All of us are creatures marked by expectations. Constantly, we carry with us images of how things are supposed to be, where life is supposed to go, what I’m supposed to do. And our expectations are never higher- and, therefore, more fraught- than when we are in love. 

     In love, we just expect: 

That the other will easily, intuitively understand us. 

That we won’t have to explain things to the other. 

That they won’t make too many demands. 

That she will always be up for watching Predator. 

     We’re creatures who carry expectations, never more so than when we are in love. This is why (remember this, you two) we say the meanest-ass shit to the people we love. It’s precisely because we’ve invested higher expectations in them than in anyone else in our lives. 

     That’s the risk of marriage, right?

     The more you love another, the higher your expectations for the other; thus, the more intense your frustrations and your disappointments in the other. 

     But- notice now:
     The problem is NOT in the other. 
     It’s in your expectations. 

     We see people all the time who have difficulty in their relationships, but we discount it. We think the problem is with those particular people. We think that we’ll be different in our relationship. And we miss it: the problem with people’s relationships is relationships. 

     Here’s a prediction I can make- 

     Whatever problem you have in your relationship, whenever you have a problem in your relationship, the problem in your relationship will be relationships in general. Your problem will be with expectations as such. 

     And I think that’s a good word because it’s easy to think when things get hard that you’ve just placed your expectations on the wrong person, that you’re in a relationship with the wrong person, when, really, the problem is relationships. 

     Every relationship is fraught and folly because we never fully understand another person. “Expectations,” as the philosopher Alain de Botton writes, “are the enemies of love.”

Expectations are the enemies of love because expectations overlook one central fact about people in general:
Everyone has something substantially wrong with them once they become fully known. 

     This is why, says de Botton, every marriage would be made better by both spouses frankly acknowledging to each other that they’re both in certain ways crazy. I mean, just see what happens when you eat all of Mike’s Sour Patch Kids- he’s 50% Crazy Rob. 

     Instead of high and lofty expectations, it’s better for you to expect that it’s completely normal and unavoidable that people do not understand each other very well because the witness of the New Testament, born out by the Old, is that we do not understand even ourselves very well (because we’re all more than one self). Such is sin that we’re a mystery even to ourselves. 

     As St. Paul confesses, “I do not do what I want to do, and what I do not want to do is the one thing that I do.” And so do you. And, as perfect as she seems, so does Laura Paige.

     Look-

     There will be occasions when he understands and empathizes with you 100%, times where she gets you totally and what’s going on with you, but these should not be your expectations because they are, in fact, the exceptions. 

     The pop songs get love all wrong. The real heartache of love is not in finding someone; the real heartache of love is learning to tolerate the person you love once you’ve found them, or, at least, that’s what Ali tells me.

     Take tonight’s text as your clue. 

     Naomi wishes to change her name to Mara, for Mara means ‘the Lord has dealt bitterly with me.’ The name Mara, Naomi thinks, better reflects her most recent past and what she anticipates that the future will bring. Naomi/Mara, in other words, has low expectations, yet from these low expectations comes the Love which made all things and in which all things hold together.

     A better expectation for love than the expectations the pop songs and princess weddings give us is this one: 

No one can live up to your expectations. 

     Being disappointing is a universal phenomenon. This is why the marriage rite tonight cares not at all why you two want to get married; it only wants to know what you propose to do about each other henceforth, leading you to anticipate sickness and poverty and reasons why you might consider forsaking the other. The wedding rite, in other words, is calibrating your expectations towards pessimism.

Marriage is about the two becoming one flesh goes the pious cliche, but, really, only Christ can become our flesh. Marriage, as a Christian vocation, is the process of discovering and accepting that the two are two, that the other is other, with you, yes, but not you. 

Jesus, after all, tells Nicodemus that to enter the Kingdom we must be born again. And Jesus tells the disciples, who were busy elbowing past each other, that anyone who would enter his Kingdom must become like children.

If marriage is a sign and sacrament of the mystery of Christ’s Kingdom, then it follows that married people need to become like babies.

And babies, as St. Augustine notes, take time to realize that their mother is not just an extension of themselves.

Little children take time to learn that their mother is someone else. 

     Thus, married love is not about finding your high expectations met by another with nary a conflict along the way because conflict is actually what happens when love succeeds. Conflict is what comes when love prevails, for it means you’ve done what Nicodemus couldn’t do. You’ve been born again. You’ve become like a child again; in that, you’ve gotten to know another as other. Conflict is what happens when love wins; it means you’ve gotten to see someone else across the full range of their life. It means all their different selves have been revealed just as all of yours have been made vulnerable to them. 

     It’s only when you’ve seen all that is unloveable in another, yet choose to love them anyway that you’ve loved in the way Christ loves us- Christ, who does not count our trespasses against us; Christ, who became all of our wrongdoing so that we might become his righteousness. 

     St. Paul says elsewhere that this righteousness of Christ’s is given to us through baptism; that is, in baptism we are clothed permanently in Christ’s perfect score. Despite our abundant and obvious pockmarks and imperfections, Christ’s perfection is reckoned to us as our own. 

     This is why, before he asked you to make any promises tonight, Taylor asked you to remember your baptism. 

     What makes a wedding an act of faith?
Your willingness to believe that the other is already and always will be perfect.
Made so, not by you and your love for them.
By Christ ’s own perfection.
Even though every day your life together will appear to contradict this conviction. 

     What makes a wedding beautiful is your willingness to trust that the other will do the same for you-  you trust that they will believe that you are already and always perfect even though you know they will have access to see much to the contrary. A God who reveals his power through weakness, his glory in suffering, is a God who loves to hide behind paradox. The paradox of pessimism, when it comes to love, is that a low anthropology is in fact the way God makes us to be what God in Christ has already declared us to be. 

     This way of love, which chooses to love even what it knows to be unlovely, is how God makes holy. 

     

     

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