Thanksgiving

When I think of Thanksgiving I think of Grandma's house. My Grandma was a better cook than your Grandma. Her Oyster Dressing was better than your Grandma's Oyster Dressing, that is if your Grandma even had the guts to try making Oyster Dressing. Everything was awesome. Grandma and my memories of Thanksgiving are why I rate Thanksgiving right behind Christmas as my favorite holiday of the year.

One especially memorable Thanksgiving (you will see why in a minute) took place during those years when I was too old not to be useful but still too young to be trusted with anything of value or importance. Grandma was making dinner and it was almost ready. The family who had gathered that day were milling around in the family room (where the TV was) which was only steps from the dining room. My job, handed down by Grandma herself, was to announce that Thanksgiving was ready and it was time to go to the table. After much anticipation the time arrived. Grandma gave me the nod and off I went.

"Thanksgiving is ready. Come sit down", I announced to the gathered family in a fashion that I remember was much like the guy who announces the President when he/she enters the Senate for the State of the Union. Unlike the guy who does the announcing, nobody seemed to either hear me or care. Everybody sat there unfazed by this very important news. Thanksgiving was ready. Perhaps they didn't totally understand what that meant. The Oyster Dressing was ready. The Turkey was ready. Even that Cranberry Sauce still in its canned molding was ready. Nobody moved.

I tried again. "Thankgiving is ready. Come sit down." It was like I was wasn't there. "Thanksgiving is ready. Come sit down", I tried again. And again. And again. Finally I walked over to the bar that opened into the kitchen and shot Grandma one of those "its not working - HELP" looks. "Its ready", she said loud enough to be heard from the kitchen but not nearly loud as I had been proclaiming. You can guess what happened.

When everyone was gathered at the table, but before they sat down I sensed my moment to actually complete the task set before me. "Everyone sit down", I once again proclaimed in my be-heard voice. Once again nobody sat down. "Everybody sit down", I said for maybe the fourth time. Nothing. It was at this point that I remembered something I saw on TV.

When people on TV wanted to be heard and do so with dramatic emphasis they would spell out the important word. "I L-O-V-E love you" & "Get out! O-U-T out!" and the like. Turns out you need to be able to spell in order to garner the desired effect. Turns out I didn't know how to spell sit. I gave it my best shot. Turned out to be the trick to getting attention.

"Everybody sit down. S-H-I-T down. Sit down." The word "sit" has no "H" in between the "S" and the "I". I had everybody's attention now. Yet nobody was sitting; mostly they were staring. Then came the yelling. I am not sure I did an adequate job defending my ignorant outburst but to my credit I have always been a turibble speller.

Now that I am older, I look back on those times with a fair amount of perspective. As a kid Thanksgiving equaled the meal. Thanksgiving was about eating, something that could happen with or without other people. Thanksgiving was about Oyster Dressing, Turkey, Cranberry Sauce. People were like those goofy paper hats they put on the ends of the Turkey legs; they might have added something but not in any real way. Maybe that is why I remember proclaiming "Thanksgiving is ready" and nobody getting up to run to the table. Thanksgiving was about what was happening in the family room: family gathered, laughing and joking around, telling stories, and watching TV together. The real "feast" had nothing to do with Turkey and Oyster Dressing.

I am away from my family again this Thanksgiving. My brother in Oklahoma and my parents in California. I long for a table for all of us to gather around. My wife's parents and grandparents will join Kate and I in Columbus on Thursday. Around that table with Kate, with Steve and Barbara, with Grandfather and Othenia, I imagine a table big enough for the WHOLE family and am immensely thankful for the one I will soon share with them. Thanksgiving Day carves out a space to recognize that despite the distance, we remain in the family room laughing and having a good time purposefully ignoring the call to a table we are unable to share.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sermon: Sympathy for a Pharisee - Luke 18:9-14

Note: This sermon was delivered on October 24th. It is a taken from Luke 19:9-14

My education has not done a good job over the years showing Black Hat we like to see the Pharisees wearing when we read the Gospels wasn’t always earned. The fact that the Pharisees were something of reformers, seeking to move the focus of personal religious life away from the temple and into the every-day life of the home – in effect being some of the first “Priesthood of all Believers” fans[1] - alluded me in college. So much so that when I was asked to help design the dorm t-shirt I proposed the witty “4 out of 5 Pharisees agree Warren Hall stinks.” Aren’t I clever?

If what I say is true, if the Pharisees as a whole weren’t crazy about the Temple, then what can we make of the Pharisee in out story? He is labeled a Pharisee but isn’t acting like one. As someone who often gets labeled “Christian” and isn’t always found acting like one, I have sympathy for our lone Pharisee, and through this story find cause to locate those inconsistent places in my own life where I might seek to bolster my own self-esteem by crushing and stepping on others.

Many of you know that I don’t like to write my sermons in my office. Too sterile, and all those books remind me that I am forgetting something but they don’t make it easy to figure out what it is I am forgetting, so I do most of my sermon reading and writing at places like Panera and Coffee Shops like Stauf’s. Safe bet that if it is the 3^rd Thursday of the month around 2 pm you will find me, my laptop, a stack of copies, and a plastic cup of soda I have refilled more times than the Panera people might appreciate, sitting by the front window of the Grandview Panera working away.

I was doing some research on a Saturday at the Upper Arlington (UA) Panera Bread, and from the moment I walked in there it was the State of Nature, the Lord of the Flies. Here I am trying to study the Bible, listen for the Spirit, and the UA Panera is kill or be killed. People are getting yelled at for cutting in line, numerous if not countless people are stealing soda and coffee, moochers are trucking in their outside food and laptops are bogarting the free wireless internet connection as their users nurse a cup of the most inexpensive thing on the menu and pilfer the free samples. And here I am feeling like an island of civic responsibility, eating and drinking the things I paid for, and thinking “at least I am not like those line cutting, soda stealing, internet mooching, sample hoarders.” Now, where have I heard something like that before?

Where my sympathy finds its end with regard for our Pharisee is precisely the same place that I recognize my own inconsistency. I too, am like those soda stealers. I too, am like those sample moochers. I too, am like that Tax Collector; I have nothing to boast. I am proud, and I am righteous; arriving at those conclusions on the backs of others. History tells me that I am not alone.

The prayer that the Pharisee lifts up to God, no matter if it is uttered in the Temple or in the home, is nothing unique to the times. Prayers of the day drip with the language we hear in this parable. One well known example praises God for the decision the supplicant to be in the library studying the word of God and not like those shopkeepers opening their stores and hocking their wears. Out in the rabble the shop-keeps undertook lesser pursuits. One should be thankful for God’s ordering their life to desire study over making money and the like. The issue at hand is as real today as it was back then. It is the thing that keeps the Pharisee from going home with God’s justification.

There is nothing wrong with living a Pharisee life. There is nothing wrong with living like the Older Brother of the Prodigal Son. There is nothing wrong with ordering your days around God and seeking to follow God as best as we are able. There is nothing wrong with that; the church wouldn’t exist if it were not for people who sought to live their lives pleasing to God. Live your life, but avoid the word “this” like the Pharisee uses it. Avoid the comparisons, avoid contrasting; stay away from believing yourself to justified because you are not like them. There is already so much of that in the world.

How many of us turned on the TV, the radio, or the computer to find story after story of young men and boys taking their own lives? How many of us heard stories of bullies kidding, joking, exposing these young men and boys to humiliation because they were or were thought to be gay? In perhaps one of the most depressing, anger inducing, crushing news cycles, report after report came in from all over the nation telling us that this was not a local incident; it was a national disease. What this Parable has to teach us, what this parable reveals is that those who seek to bully, those who seek to lift themselves up on the backs of others find themselves in relationships with these so-called “lessers” – the Tax Collectors, the “different” middle-schooler, the closeted college student. These relationships are essential for their own understanding of self. The bully needs a victim. The Pharisee needs a Tax Collector. And as Christians seeking to follow in the example of Jesus, we too often look for the Tax Collector in our own midst; someone to be thankful we are nothing like. Forgive us, O God.

Justification ends this parable as told by Luke. The Tax Collector beats his chest before the Temple and walks home with it. The Pharisee finds justification elusive, and we are reminded that our rightness before God is not found in the purity of humanity but in the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Understanding that no matter how you are, or what you are, or who you are, none of those compares to whom which we belong; we lean into the grace of a God who places us in right relationship to the world around us. Right relationship with the Creator and Sustainer of Life, right relationship with our fellow brothers and sisters, right relationship with the creation, and right relationship with ourselves; this is the justification of a loving God who provides for us the only thing we have in which we can boast: the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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[1] Johnson, E. Elizabeth, “Luke 18:9-14 Exegetical Perspective”, Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4, WJK, Louisville, 2010

Continuing Education

Forgive me for my hiatus. I have been away on what we call Con Ed.

Continuing Education, aka. Con Ed, is one of the wonderful things about being a pastor. We get to go off to conferences big and small and hear new ideas and be reminded of old ones. My 2010 Contuning Ed year has divided up into small, medium, and large conferences/festivals/gatherings/etc.; ranging from a small gathering in Penfield, Pennsylvania to a medium festival and reunion in Louisville, Kentucky, to a massive Festival of Homelitics (aka. preaching) in Nashville, TN. But now I am done. Out of money and out of time. Now is the time for reflection.

Here are some things that I learned & some things that I have be reminded in 2010's Con Ed...
- Every profession has its celebrities pastors included. Mention Tom Long, Craig Barnes, Anna Carter Florence, or Barbara Brown Taylor to a group of pastors and they exhibit the same behavior as folks talking about their favorite athlete, musician, or actor.

- Lectures are where the money is at. Anything featuring the words "break out", "home group", "cohort", or the like is going to be disappointing. If you want to get a question answered, say that you enjoyed their sermon/book, or try to network, you are better off finding the presenter at a bar or during the refreshment time.

- Stay away from anything called a "christian comedian."

- Con Ed is always better when you are with some friends. I take most of my Con Ed collaboratively with fellow pastors and Louisville Seminary alumni. The experience is ALWAYS better. You have someone to eat a meal with, someone to share an expensive hotel room with, and most importantly, have someone to hear your snarky comments about terrible "break out" groups.

- Understand that jealousy is par for the course. The finest preachers in the world think of things, write sermons, string together stories, and do it all with a presentation style that you will make you burn with envy.

- It sounds counter-intutive but stay away from Q&A sessions. They are 100% dominated by folks with axes to grind, those wishing to show off, or well-meaning folks who tell stories with implied questions. Actual Q&A happens at the aforementioned bar or refreshment time.

- Beware of the post-Con Ed sermon. A week spent with your mind on super-stimulated overdrive will no doubt feed whatever it is that you were excited about on Monday through Thursday into Sunday's sermon no matter if it fits or not. I am very guilty of this.

- If you return year after year to the same events, you will see the same people year after year. This is a blessing, or at least can be. Knowing this, it is a good idea not to say such things as "let's work together on this", or "I will come down and visit you", or "let me send that to you." Better keep it relational, or at the least, network in such a way that they will remember you if/when you call.

I love Con Ed. I feel blessed to be in a profession where it is not only expected but often mandatory that a PCUSA pastor engages in it. You don't have to twist my arm.