Pilgrimage Ponderings

So difficult to know where to start....

There is much talk these days about the future of The United Methodist Church.  The powers that be commissioned research to be done on vital congregations that generated a Call to Action Report.  Last week, there was a Leadership Summit that encompassed United Methodists from around the globe. 

If you are United Methodist and want to know what people around the denomination are thinking about the future of our church, you might want to review the archived leadership summit and maybe even voice your opinion about the direction we are headed.

Here's the link: http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.6584973/k.8BE4/Live_Stream.htm

I am interested in your opinion as well.

I recently heard definitions of shame and guilt that have had me thinking a lot.

Karen McClintock (you can check out one of her books here: http://www.alban.org/bookdetails.aspx?id=4044) says this.

Guilt=I made a mistake that I can correct and ask forgiveness for.

Shame=I AM the mistake.

McClintock proposes that whether we know it or not, we church folks do a lot to make folks feel ashamed, as if they are unworthy of God's grace and forgiveness.

What do you think?

These statistics have been on my mind lately.

More than 25% of 18-29 year olds in the United States have no religious preference or affiliation.  Of Generation Xers, 20% have no religious preference or affiliation.

According to one study, while 75% of American teenagers claim to be Christian, fewer than half practice their faith, only half deem their faith as important, and most cannot talk coherently about their beliefs.

One researcher estimates that 6 million adults under the age of 45 have left the mainline and evangelical churches in the US in recent years.

The median age of persons in the US is 35.  The median age of United Methodists in the US is 57.

When I think of all these statistics, I think of Jesus's words, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

I just read that "sinners" refers to people who deliberately reject or flaunt the Law.  They are folks not concerned about church matters.

And they were not the folks following Jesus around.  He had to go and seek them out.  He had to get to know them, go hang out with them and go eat with them.  At their houses and where they worked.

He didn't wait for them to come to him.

Thermometer: 

Thermostat:

As people and communities seeking to follow Jesus, to go where Jesus went, to do what Jesus did, to love as Jesus loved, do we function more as thermometers or thermostats?  Are we regulators of the "temperature" or climate around us or are we just instruments for measuring it?

Thermometers can help determine if a person is sick or not.  Thermostats can change the climate so that it is more conducive to health.

Which one are we?  Which one should we be?

I am fortunate enough to live in the southern United States, which means that we seldom have "white weather" for more than a day or two at a time.  It also means that when we have the frigid temperatures we've had this past week, plus any amount of  "white weather," everything shuts down.

I didn't leave my house from the time I got home Sunday until yesterday.  The snow started out lovely and fun.  I especially enjoyed watching our dog play in it.  But once the ice settled in it was a different story.  What was once beautiful became a bit threatening, if not dangerous.  Now I wake up and look at the ice each morning, gauging whether or not it is going to melt today and just feeling tired of things being frozen.

I realize that people who live in colder climates are probably laughing right now.  And that's okay.  We get used to our own weather and I don't imagine they are laughing when things get too hot up their way in the summer time. 

I guess I've been thinking about how this week of frozen weather can be a metaphor for different seasons of our lives.  I have found that I can seldom anticipate when I am about to find myself in a stuck spot.  I just know that when I am feeling stuck, sometimes it feels like things are frozen inside.  And yet, the freezing is only part of the story.  We had several inches of snow with a layer of ice on top.  You can break off that top layer of ice, and there is still snow underneath.  And even though we can't see it, I know that under the snow, there are remarkable things going on deep underground as the world prepares, even now, for Spring.

Looking back on my life, I can see that often after a "stuck" time, periods of renewal usually follow.  It is helpful for me to remember that when I feel "frozen" I can choose to take on faith that there are important things going on deep beneath the surface.

I give thanks that all of creation speaks to the glory and grace of God.

I'm not talking about having to make exchanges in the day-after-Christmas sales rush.  I'm not talking about dealing with difficult family members or even grieving what used to be when we were children at Christmas, before death and loss and change interfered.

All this week I've had on my mind the gospel story of the slaughter of the innocents.  You know, when Herod gets wind that there's something going on down in Bethlehem and decides to kill every male child under two in the town, just to be on the safe side.

I've always hated that story.  And I've never liked hearing it right after Christmas when I am still full of hope that Baby Jesus can bring us peace and joy.  We cheer for Joseph, a keeper of dreams, who wakes his family to flee in the night to protect Jesus.

But what about all of the other families and children?  The perennial question arises:  How could God let that happen?  It's not something I want to think about during the Christmas season.  For some reason, though, I've been thinking about it this week.  A friend posted this link on facebook and it got me thinking some more: http://ideasfromthenorth.blogspot.com/2010/12/no-offence-intended.html.

This blogger's point is that Jesus's coming into the world was a threat to all the powers that be.  I have been thinking that whenever someone makes a stand for love and justice, the powers that be are threatened.  And that means there are consequences. 

In a fallen world, we cannot control the unforseen consequences of good and right action.  Even so, if I am to follow Jesus faithfully, I must learn to make those stands anyway.  I guess that's why Jesus talked so much about picking up crosses and making sacrifices.  And I guess that's why we need to remember the slaughter of the innocents even as we are celebrating the birth of Jesus.  The journey of faith is a journey of embracing the holy and the good, working tirelessly for peace, knowing that engaging in that work will more often than not, bring us into the midst of conflict.

How easy it would be to sink into despair thinking of all this.  And so we have this gift, this image of God trusting us enough to come into the world as a helpless infant.  How can we turn away from that trust?  How can we not say, "Thank you, God.  I will do my part."

Greetings, favored one.  The Lord is with you!

I have been wondering how many young women the angel visited with those words before Mary.  I wonder if Gabriel was charged with finding a young woman to be God's instrument or if he was sent directly to Mary.  Perhaps he visited several women, but Mary was the first one who responded with these words:

Let it be with me according to Your word.

What if God looks at each of us as a favored one, waiting for us to respond in faith as Mary did?  I wonder how the world might be different if each of us saw ourselves as precious to God.  I wonder how God might use us if we made ourselves available for things that might seem impossible to us.

The promise of Christmas is that, indeed, God is with us in the person of Jesus Christ.  The challenge of Christmas is to respond to God's call with the same faithfulness and grace as Mary.

Greetings, favored ones.  The Lord is with you!  Thanks be to God!  Merry Christmas!

I am a product of my generation.  I am a Gen-Xer, which means that I tend to be cynical about institutions.  I remember the first time I heard someone talking about how everything would be wonderful in the church if we would just go back to doing things the way the New Testament church did things without all the trappings and bureaucracy.  It made a lot of sense to me.  As a rule I am suspicious of political parties, big business and people I perceive to be in the "inner circle."

And yet....

And yet I have found myself thinking lately along these lines.  If institutions are inherently evil, then why is our society on the brink of chaos because our institutions are no longer functioning well?  To say that institutions are inherently fallible is not to say that they are unnecessary. 

We live in a world layered with complexity.  I think that institutions can either add to that complexity or help us navigate it.  I think families are important, schools are important, government is important, the church is important.  And I do worry about how we as communities and as a society can hold onto values that we name as important if the institutions around us disintegrate.

I guess what has pushed me to think about these things is the idea I have recently heard that people who work for institutions have somehow "sold out," that they will become part of the problem instead of part of the solution automatically.  I don't really understand that.  I think that whenever we make an idol of an institution we are focusing on the wrong thing.  And people who operate from a mindset that institutions are bad and destructive are focusing on the wrong thing.

I think where I am ending up is that the institution is like a vehicle that gets us where we are going.  If it is a giant gas guzzler carrying 3 people to an unknown destination, it may be an example of poor stewardship.  But if it disappears completely, then all who are left to travel alone on foot aren't going to get very far and will likely begin to focus on how to create another vehicle before they actually go anywhere.