Thoughts of Revelation (part 1)

My Wednesday night Bible Study on Revelation has drawn a crowd, as Revelation often does.  My views on Revelation and issues related to the book are different than those normally expressed in popular religion.  I think some folks might have wondered if I was bordering on heresy, but all of them have at least come around to thinking that even if they read Revelation differently, my take is a credible alternative.  Some of them have been deeply relieved to have the book recovered for them from the realm of fear mongering and theological extremism.  Several folks have expressed a desire for me to put something online about Revelation.  So here it is.

The first thing to know about Revelation, and the first thing that easily gets lost, is that Revelation is a book of Jesus Christ.  Revelation opens with the phrase, "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him..."  The phrase "revelation of Jesus Christ" is in the genetive case in Greek, which means it can be understood to mean, "the revelation about/concerning Jesus Christ," or "the revelation that belongs to Jesus Christ/Jesus Christ's revelation."

I believe that John means the phrase to be understood in both respects.  That is, Jesus is both the subject of Revelation and the means by which the revelation comes to us.  Isn't this so in all Christian revelation?  Everything we need to know is Jesus.  Jesus is the subject of God's revelation.  If we see Jesus, we have seen all we need to see.  

At the same time, Jesus is the means by which we see.  We see everything right when we see it in the light of Jesus.  Jesus is the eternal Word of God, self-expression of the unseen God.

Here's why this is important: So many times, folks read Revelation as about something besides Jesus, whether it be the rapture, unrest in the Middle East, the European Union, the Devil, the Anti-Christ, judgment and destruction, the afterlife, coming persecutions, reasons to mistrust the United Nations, and a host of other things.  I grew up hearing all about all kinds of things in Revelation.  As a child, I had pastors who focused on Revelation as a timetable of the end.  I watched all the prophecy shows and read Hal Lindsey when I was ten years old.  Revelation may or may not have something to do with some of these concerns.   My feeling is that almost all of these issues are absent in Revelation and that focus on these issues is a distraction from encountering Jesus in the book.

Whatever we think of eschatology (theology of end-things), Revelation must be read first and foremost as Jesus's book.  Jesus is the subject.  Jesus is the means by which everything is revealed.  Jesus is every bit as central to Revelation as he is to the Gospels.  If we read Revelation appropriately, we will read it in the same manner and for the same reason that we read the Gospels--to know Jesus.  If we read it trying to know anything but Jesus, we will read it wrong.  If the Jesus we find in Revelation is any different than the Jesus we find in the Gospels, then we most certainly have read it wrong.

Paul said that he wanted to know nothing but Christ and him crucified.  The Gospels tell of many people seeking Jesus--"We would see Jesus."  When you read Revelation, look for nothing but him.  See him, encounter him.  That's the best way for the book to begin to make sense.  It's the best way for it to be redemptive, constructive, and beautiful.

Pastoral Prayer on Luke 4 (Jesus' Inaugural Sermon)

Holy God:

Once again, your Spirit has drawn your people into your house.  You’ve gathered us so that we can be your family together.  You’ve gathered us so that we can hear from your Word.  You’ve gathered us so that we can be changed and transformed into your likeness as we glorify you and make your name great in the earth.

We gather, most of all, because you have shown us your face in the face of Jesus.  You have given us a glimpse of your glory.  So help us to see you as we worship him.  And help us to live for you as we go forth to do what he told us to do and to live as he showed us to live.

There is much we struggle to understand.  He said that he came to set the captives free, and yet the jails are still full and getting more full all the time.  He said that he came to give liberty to the oppressed, and yet the world is full of people who are under the thumb of others.  Each of us knows something about some kind of oppression, even if it comes from the inside.  He came to give sight to the blind, and yet the healing he brought to a few so long ago seems almost insignificant in comparison to the suffering so many feel in their bodies.  Jesus did so much to renew the world, to make the world different.  What happened?

Help us to see as he saw, to be empowered by the spirit as he was.  Help us to look around at a world that is still very far from the way you intended it and to never be satisfied that this is the way it has to be.  Help us to love and labor, to believe and dream, to take every moment of every day to do small and great things to finish the work our Lord began.  Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for Epiphany

Holy God:

All our lives we have been searching for you, seeking you, wanting to know who you are, what you want, what you are about.  In moments we would never share, we have even entertained deep doubts.  Many times, we’ve been confused--one person says one thing and another person says another.  One passage of scripture seems one way and another passage seems so different.  

It’s easy to feel lost.  It’s easy to give up our search.  It’s easy to let the darkness of this world encompass us.  It’s easy to get distracted by the many diversions of this world, the multitude of competing interests that keep our minds and eyes occupied and divert us from keeping our eyes on you.

Long ago, those who lived in darkness saw a great light.  The people around the Galilee saw the face of God in the face of Jesus.  Pagan astrologers from the east were rewarded in their search for you when they saw the glory of God in the face of the Christ child.

So help us, holy God, to keep looking for you.  Help us to see Jesus.  Help us to know you heart and to have your heart as we encounter him.  Help us to keep our gaze fixed on him, to let nothing distract us from following the light we have seen in him.  Help us to share the light of Christ in a world full of folks like the Magi from the east--good people who are looking for you in all kinds of ways and places and need just a little help figuring out that Jesus Christ is the one they are looking for.

Merciful God, heal the sick, comfort those in difficulty, draw the lost to yourself.  May your light shine in every dark corner of our hearts and our world.  

Amen.

Tabernacling

Author Peter Lovenheim lives in a quiet, upscale suburb of Rochester, NY, a neighborhood that was rocked by a horrific murder suicide in 2000.  The tragedy causedhim to reflect on the reality that he knew nearly none of his neighbors, and he was disturbed to think that they were as disconnected from each other as he.

He set out to connect with his community by politely asking 35 of his neighbors if he could spend the night at their homes and spend the following day with them.  He published what he learned and how his experiment changed his sense of community in his book, In the Neighborhood: the Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time. 

Many of us would never dream of invading another person’s space by asking to spend the night, unless we were visiting relatives or very close friends.  Still, Lovenheim’s book struck a chord in many people because he was addressing the deep disconnection we feel in modern life.  Many Americans have meaningful connection with family, coworkers, a few close friends, and perhaps people from church.  As a pastor, I have always been grateful for the rare privilege of hospitality I have enjoyed as people have welcomed me into their homes and allowed me to discover a deeper sense of their lives and families.

Thankfully, Millbrook still has a wonderful sense of community—deep roots and old families combined with a spirit of hospitality and welcome to newcomers.  We have many avenues for people to connect with folks beyond their closest circles—I’ve recently enjoyed a community Thanksgiving service, the Millbrook Revelers business fair, an invitation to join Kiwanis, and the community Christmas Tree Lighting on the Village Green.  These and many other events demonstrate the civic spirit that our town enjoys.  We would do well to joyfully and vigilantly do all we can to protect and cultivate these connections for the good of all.

We would do well, too, to remember during this holiday season that we serve a God who made Himself vulnerable, and like Peter Lovenheim with his neighbors, entered into our homes and hearts to know us, to help us to know him, and to create community where we had been alienated.  The Bible teaches us that when God became human in Jesus, God was making his tabernacle, his dwelling with us.  He was connecting with us one home and one heart at a time.  For that we should be grateful, because Christmas’s timeless message is that we are never alone.

[this article appeared first in the Millbrook Independent]

Flight Delays and Communitas

Several friends have followed recent posts about my travel troubles between Birmingham and Ithaca, NY.  Many of you are aware that we were stuck in Detroit when our connection was canceled.  The momentary afflictions came with lasting graces, however.

While we were at the gate in Detroit waiting to board our flight to Ithaca, we met a very nice lady who was traveling with an 8-year-old Ukranian orphan.  The girl had never been outside her country and knew no English.  The lady who was traveling with her knew almost no Ukranian.  The had just met that day and had been at the airport much longer than we.  

We discovered that the Ukranian girl was in our country with a program that provides four week stays in the US with American families.  The program helps identify which children are good candidates for adoption and which families are good candidates to adopt kids from Ukraine.  The lady (Melissa is her name) was happy to meet a pastor and to tell us about the program.

The true grace in the situation, though, was that the girl (Liza--sp?) was highly energetic and completely out of her context and had been confined to a small area for many hours.  Melissa was near meltdown.  A Cornell Ph.D. student named Evan befriended them first, and eventually he and I took turns entertaining Liza.  She wanted to climb all over everyone and everything.  She wanted us to pick her up and carry her around.  Maggie Grace couldn’t understand why her daddy was rough housing with another little girl, so every time I put Liza down, I had to pick Maggie Grace up and ride her around on my shoulders for awhile.  We all played catch, played with puzzles, played with an ipad, played on the moving sidewalk.

We reconnected with Melissa and Liza the next day.  When our flight was delayed, we nearly left the airport and rented a car together to drive from Detroit to Ithaca.  There were no flights from Detroit to Ithaca, so we all had to take a flight to nearby Elmira.  We had planned to hire a cab to get to Ithaca, but Melissa’s husband came and picked her up in a big mini-van and she insisted on giving us a ride, even though it was out of her way.  We exchanged contact info in the car and she prayed for us.

Traveling, especially by airplane, is an activity that provides lots and lots of human interaction with no meaningful connection.  We are crammed close to strangers, but we almost never actually learn the names of any of our fellow passengers.  We have to speak with airline staff, but these conversations are almost entirely perfunctory and have nothing to do with connecting as people.

Though our travel problems were in no way enjoyable, they did provide an opportunity for strangers to connect in a very real way, to provide real and meaningful help to one another, and to create a short-lived but very real community.    All of us found our challenges more easy to bear and our time more enjoyable because we connected with each and helped each other out.  The world tends to be isolated and people tend to go it alone. But the reality is that we need each other.  Being available to lend a hand is often the way that our own deliverance comes.  

Pastoral prayer for Advent (a prayer in the wake of a school shooting)

Holy God:

As we bask in the glow of the holiday season, our hearts our heavy because of an unspeakable crime committed in our nation against precious children.  We cannot comprehend the evil we have seen, and our hearts go out to those who will spend the rest of their lives bearing the emotional scars of that horrific day.

We remember that the Christ child came to a world filled with evil and violence.  He himself was barely spared from a massacre of innocent children.  The Christmas story we have heard all of our lives is fully aware of the kind of world we live in and how desperately we need a savior.

Lord, be with the people of Newtown in a special way today.  Let them know the embrace of the people of God all around the world who are praying for them today.  We thank you for brave teachers, law enforcement, and other heroes who responded, and others who are even now filling that dark place with light.  We thank you for our sister congregation next to the school, and all the congregations of Newtown, already doing what we do, battling the hatred and hurt of their world with a testimony of the love of God expressed in tangible ways to those who have been crushed by the earth's evil ways.

We, too, believe your Gospel.  We believe that you have come to us to show us that your are always with us.  We believe that your presence with us is most gloriously demonstrated when it is most desperately needed.  For we, too, know what it is to be crushed and yet comforted in affliction.  We, too, are witnesses that the coming of the Christ child truly made a difference and continues to make a difference.  In him, we saw light, and that light dispels the darkness.  It destroys the work of the evil one through the power of love.  

So while we grieve and while we are shocked, we are not dismayed.  Help us, holy God, to love more vigilantly.  

O come, O come, Emmanuel.  

Amen.

The Theology of our Polity Crisis

This week's UM Reporter presented side-by-side articles with differing yet compelling views on our polity.  Christy Thomas wrote an article arguing that recent Judicial Council decisions overturning the will of General and Jurisdictional Conferences have demonstrated that the standard United Methodist approach of shaping our life and ministry together through an orderly administrative process no longer works.  She uses strong language (as UMC-speak goes) like "revolution" and "strangulation" to describe the need for UMs to take the bull by the horns and bring radical change to our ministry outside of the legislative process.

On the opposite page, Bishop Woodie White defends the "power" of UM polity with a compelling personal story.  He tells of a visit with a segregationist pastor during the civil rights movement.  When he informs the pastor that he intends to worship at the all-white Methodist congregation, the pastor tells him that he will have him arrested.  Bishop White tells the pastor that the Book of Discipline defends racial equality.  The pastor argues that statements about racial equality are in the Social Principals and are not church law, and then surprises Bishop White by sharing that he would support integration if the denomination were to make it church law.

Most, if not all, United Methodists feel strongly about supporting our Book of Discipline and working through the conference structure to make changes to keep us faithful and effective in our ministry.  We generally react strongly against those who snub their noses at church law, perhaps recognizing the threat such actions pose to an orderly life together, even at the local church level.  Imagine the chaos that would ensue if a local congregation cared nothing for the order that the Discipline provides for our ministry.  And so this questioning is a sign of the deep frustration a lot of UMs are feeling right now.

Our current situation has caused me to reflect on the theology behind our polity.  Sure, our legislative process is probably more inspired by the American system of representative democracy than by any scriptural form of church governance.  Still, our polity expresses assumptions we hold about the manner in which God speaks in our collective life.

John Wesley considered "holy conferencing" a means of grace.  Though he tended to be dictatorial in his administration of the Methodist movement, he understood that God has a way of speaking to groups of people, to communities, rather than only individuals.  In "Life Together" Bonheoffer said that the voice of Christ in me is weak, but the voice of Christ in my brother [or sister] is strong.  The weak voice of Christ in me needs to hear the strong voice of Christ coming through others.  We are arrogant if we think we know the will of God better than anyone else, and we are foolish if we think we know the will of God better than everyone else.  From the time of Acts 15, Christians have gotten together hash out differences, pray and share, to discern together the will of God for their collective life and ministry.  That's the basis of our whole conference system, our entire legislative process, all the resolutions, petitions, elections, hotel bills, caucus breakfasts, boards, logos, paragraphs, insider jargon, etc., etc.,  etc.

We believe that God speaks to all of us.  We believe that when any of us think that all of us are moving the wrong direction, any of us can share our concern so that all of us can consider it and we can together move in another direction.  We believe that if we are going to work together to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ is ways beyond what any of us can do on our own, we've got to have a common community rule and practice, a mutual respect and agreed upon ordering of our life.

The challenge we are facing and the frustration we are feeling is that the Judicial Council has created a situation in which our polity, which is designed to move the denomination according to the collective wisdom of the people, has made it impossible for the will of the people to direct the ministry of the denomination.  General Conference says that the collective discernment of the people called Methodist is that we no longer can efficiently accomplish our mission if we continue to guarantee appointments of clergy.  Judicial Council says that it doesn't care what the UMC thinks--Methodist preachers have guaranteed appointments.  General Conference says the will of the people is to streamline the work of boards and agencies to focus on mission.  Judicial Council says it doesn't care what the collective will of the people might be.  Jurisdictional Conference says that a bishop is ineffective and must retire.  Judicial Council says it doesn't care what the collective wisdom of the people might be.  Those who disagreed with the decisions of these General and Judicial Councils should be as concerned as anyone else about the implications of their overturning.  How can we have collective discernment on mission when what really matters is crossing all the t's and dotting all the administrative i's?  If the Jerusalem Church of Acts 15 had a Judicial Council to deal with, Christianity would still be a Jewish sect.

Perhaps the most pressing challenge we face as United Methodists is the challenge to restore our polity to its purpose.  How can our system be restored to serve the purpose of collective discernment to create a continuous reformation of our collective life toward our mission to the world?  How can our polity be reshaped so that holy conferencing determines our decision making rather than legislative skill and legalistic wordsmithing?