The Path of Discipleship - Discipleship as a Taste of Eternity

In the gospel of John, Jesus describes himself as “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”  (John 14:6) I have been thinking about that three-fold description, especially how Way, Truth and Life relate to one another.  Are they disparate items as we would write on a shopping list:  milk, butter and eggs?  Or are they intended as synonyms for a single idea?  In the story, Jesus’ description is spoken in response to Thomas’ question, “How can we know the way?”  In this case Way = Truth = Life.  Jesus is the Way that is Truth and is Life.  Jesus is the Life that is the True Way.  Jesus is the Truth that is the Way of Life.

                To be a disciple means to learn and to follow your teacher as a student.  To be a disciple is to seek to walk the path that Jesus walked.  To be a disciple is to seek to follow a way of living and being in the world which is witnessed in the life of Jesus.

                Most discussions of grace in Christ revolve around the cross and resurrection.  Certainly we should look at those moments as the ultimate act and example of grace.  Yet as we talk about living as disciples, we also can talk about Christ’s example as a gift of grace, Christ’s life (between his birth and his death) as what it means to be truly alive in this world.

                Following Jesus as the Way is a gift.  Although it can shift towards works-righteousness, one image I have found helpful is the gospel as the gift of a beautiful piano.  You wake up one morning and there is a perfect instrument in your living room.  It is a work of art, lovingly crafted and always in tune.  Every time you past by you feel gratitude for the one who has given you this gift.  And one day a visitor comes and also marvels at this piano and quietly asks you, “Do you play?”  It is a natural question.  Have you taken the time and established the disciplines (note the link to “disciple”) that will allow you to make beautiful music on this beautiful instrument.  The practice is part of the gift, part of the way of honoring and responding to the gift.  Do you play?

                Following Jesus as the Way is salvation.  This is not to say that discipleship is a way of earning that salvation.  This is not an if-then situation as we proclaim Jesus has already done everything necessary for salvation.  In one of our old offertory songs before Holy Communion we sang asking that God would give us “a foretaste of the feast to come.”  The communion meal became a way of experiencing the promise of eternity, if only for a moment.  Likewise, the life of discipleship offers such a foretaste.  In my first post in this series, I suggested the disciple cultivates certain virtues in our lives: awe, peace, love, gratitude, compassion and faithfulness.  As we embody these virtues we are already living with one foot in eternal life.

                Following Jesus as the Way is shalom.  The Hebrew word is offered as a greeting and often translated as “peace.”  Yet it means much more, pointing toward wholeness and completeness.  When all the disparate pieces of a jigsaw are gathered and organized in their places, the puzzle has shalom.  When a football flies from the quarterback in a perfect spiral, arcing above the players and falling into the waiting arms of the receiver, the play has shalom.  When the sun sets over Buzzards Bay and the sky is filled with yellows and oranges and those watching are moved to silent wonder, the moment has shalom.  Again in John’s gospel, when Jesus says, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10) he is talking about shalom.  Real life, abundant life is complete life.  The path of discipleship leads us step by step, growing in shalom, but more importantly, the path itself is shalom.

The Path of Discipleship - Why Discipleship Matters

As many members of my congregation know, I am fascinated by silence and encountering God in silence.  I am by nature an introvert, finding rest and recharge in solitude.  The hardest part of any Sunday morning is not the worship or the preaching, but the fellowship time that follows.  In many ways, this move toward silent practice has been a natural progression, my own response to leading small congregations in a time of decline.  As congregations see more and more open space among the pews and as the occupants of those pews become greyer, anxiety grows.  A pastor who was trained primarily to teach and preach and lead worship  is asked to deal with financial shortfalls, tasked with growing attractive youth programs as well as occasionally trimming church hedges due to a lack of able volunteers.

                It was sitting in silent prayer that taught me not to take on the anxiety of others.  It was what the mystics called mental prayer that reestablished my connection with the solidity of God’s grace.  I rediscovered that God loved me and I could love God simply by doing nothing but being.  My identity was not found in establishing a mega-church or pretending to be Pastor Happy McSmiley, who loves everybody and whom everybody loves.  My identity is grounded on the platform of God’s grace and the greatest gift I can give to any congregation, in growth or decline, is to show others that they are already standing on the solidity of that grace.  This also means that the greatest gift that congregations can give is to introduce people to Jesus, the one who walks on water and invites everybody to step out of the boat and join him.  People can find yard sales and spaghetti suppers anywhere, but the church is the place where we can encounter Jesus in Word, in sacrament and in community.

                And this is why discipleship matters, not because it makes God happy (remember, God is already infinitely happy with you), but because it reminds us of where we are and who we are in God; because it helps us share God’s love, hope and joy with the world around us. 

                Another influence in my understanding of discipleship in the past few years has been sitting in meditation with a local, Zen Buddhist sangha.  I know that in sharing this, some purists will bristle, wondering about my loyalty to the Christian faith.  What would Herr Luther say?  I don’t agree with everything that Buddhism proclaims, but the understanding of the relationship to faith and life is helpful.  In the Buddhist tradition as I have experienced it, life itself is practice.  We are always growing.  We grow as we practice and we practice to grow.  There is no goal to attain.  There are no boxes to check off.  The purpose of life is to practice and it is when we practice that we are truly alive.

                As I have come to understand it, the life that Jesus lived, the span between the birth and the death that the Apostles’ Creed glosses over, is also a gift of God’s grace.  His life, walking with his students, sharing bread, healing the sick, loving the rejected, is a model for what it means to be truly alive.  When Jesus, in the gospel of John says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly, “ (John 10:10) he was not talking about some future heaven.  He was talking about our lives here and now as a reflection of that heaven.  When we are walking the path of Christ, when we are practicing our faith, both in private acts of devotion and public acts of mercy and love, eternal life begins now.

                As the church redefines itself in new era, our viability will not be found in getting our worship just so.  It will be found in walking the path of Christ together, practicing together, and living now in eternal life together.

The Path of Discipleship - A Different Way

By way of introduction, I am a Lutheran pastor writing in a time of change, where the structures that once held the church fast are no longer secure.  Fewer people feel called to worship and fewer people feel guilty about not attending.  I have had a number of conversations with parents of my children’s friends who have no real frame of reference for what a pastor does, what a church is and what worship is for. 

                More importantly, I have talked with many, good, church-going folks who are ill-equipped to talk about the nature of Christian life beyond Sunday morning.  This is not to say that these people are not carrying out acts of discipleship outside of Sunday morning, but that they often do not see acts of kindness, acts of service and acts of love as a reflection of Christian life.  It is hard to talk about the path when you don’t know that you are walking on it. 

                I am writing about discipleship as a Lutheran for Lutherans but I suspect that my ideas and experiences may be found in many “mainline” traditions of Christianity.  As a Lutheran, I am compelled to start with grace.  Too often, discipleship is stamped with a seal of works-righteousness, doing things to earn forgiveness or, in some circles, doing things to make God happy (or avoid making God sad).  So let me start by saying that God is already immensely happy with you and deeply in love with you.  The next time you walk into the sanctuary and look at the cross, or the next time you put on a piece of cross-shaped jewelry, remember that this is ultimately a sign of God’s love for you in Christ.  The cross and resurrection have already happened which mean that God is already in love with you.  The mistakes we have made; the sins for which we cannot forgive ourselves, amount to throwing a snowball at the sun.

                This is the platform of grace on which the life of discipleship happens.  When you recognize that this platform is solid, it changes the nature of being a disciple.  It is not about making God happy or sad, angry or loving, it is instead about changing who we are in relationship to God.  It is about finding a deeper union with God by paying attention: to God, to our neighbor, to God’s universe.

                I will also suggest that the path of discipleship is more about addition than avoidance, more about growing in virtue than avoiding this or that vice.   Some might consider this an invitation to lawlessness or hypocrisy.  Isn’t the common criticism of the church that too many Christians worship on Sunday and act like jerks the rest of the week?  My suggestion is that this kind of two-faced living is again a reflection of a poor education in the meaning of the Christian life.  In Lutheran theology, it is also a reflection of the idea of being saint and sinner at the same time.  We are saints because we are standing on the solid platform of grace, not be because we walk on it perfectly.

                In this series of articles, my thesis will be that an intentional focus on virtue can help us break our fascination with vice.  I grew up with donuts.  In fact, donuts were one of the incentives that brought me to church every Sunday.  Every time I drive near a donut shop, even as a middle-aged man, there is a child that sets off an alarm in my head reminding me of the joy of a good donut.  But when one becomes a middle-aged man, the doctors frown at donut consumption with threats of diabetes and other dire consequences.

The solution to my donut-issue was not to avoid donuts.  That effort just made the child shout louder and jab harder at my psyche.  The solution (and I admit is not a final solution) has been much more about eating more fruits and vegetables than eating fewer donuts.  It is not that donuts are unattractive, but they are less interesting with a belly full of broccoli. 

There are many ways one can talk about virtue and many ways to break it down.  As I prepared to start writing I found myself grouping various scriptural virtues that seem to relate.  My discussion of discipleship will use the following groups of virtues:

1.        Wonder/Awe/Wisdom

2.       Love/Forgiveness

3.       Contentment/Peace/Humility/Self-Control

4.       Gratitude/Generosity/Joy

5.       Compassion/Justice

6.       Loyalty/Faithfulness

I will discuss how these are related as well as some of the practices that are associated with each virtue (and there is some overlap.  For instance, good worship could be seen as connecting to all of these virtues).  My hope is that, rather than being a to-do list of holiness, these articles can offer suggestions for ways to grow becauseI believe this path of discipleship is more about growth than perfection.  We will stumble.  We will fail ourselves.  We will have days when we could have been better.  Yet we stumble on that platform of solid grace, sustained in our inconsistency by the constant love of a constant God.

The Reformation - 500 Years Later

The following article appeared in the Cape Cod Times, "Matters of Faith" column on the weekend of October 29, 2017.

I was asked to write this column in celebration of the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation because I am a Lutheran pastor and the beginning of the Reformation movement is measured by the actions of Martin Luther.  According to the traditional story, on October 31, 1517, the Augustinian friar posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.  He was hoping to begin a debate on the question of the sale and abuse of indulgences, a means which the Roman Catholic Church offered the faithful to reduce the amount of one’s punishment for sin.  In Luther’s time, the sale of indulgences was being used to fund the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

                Luther believed that, based on scripture, the grace of God could not be bought, sold or earned and that, by sparking a discussion, the Roman Catholic Church would reform from the inside.  Instead, his actions led to his excommunication from the Roman church and the beginnings of myriad Protestant traditions.  If you are part of a Christian church that is something other than Roman Catholic or some form of Eastern Orthodox, you can likely trace your religious heritage back to Martin Luther.

                For Lutherans, it is tempting to turn this 500^th anniversary into a time for hero worship and nostalgia.  Thousands of Lutheran congregations around the world will belt out “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” (the Reformation theme song) in many different forms.  Thousands of study groups will open dusty copies of Luther’s Small Catechism (the Reformation handbook) with their repetitive query, “What does this mean?”  In the United States, congregations that were once much larger will listen to the praises of grey-haired choirs and think about how it used to be.

                This is the challenge of a tradition begun in protest.  A great deal of energy went into the reforming movement.  A great deal of conflict shaped it and grew out of it.  Many of the different Christian denominations we see today stem from divisions (sometimes angry divisions) that spread from that original 1517 moment.  The 100^th anniversary of the Reformation in 1617 was a year shy of the beginning of the Thirty Years War, a war which began as a conflict between Catholic and Protestant states and led to the death of millions throughout Europe. 

                Eventually the dust settled and congregations founded in protest wanted something more than the insecurity of reform.  We wanted comfort.  We wanted certainty.  We wanted the church to be formed and finished; a constant; a snapshot that preserved ages past.   We wanted organ music and four-part hymnody, the good old songs we used to sing.  The church became more about culture, heritage and local practice than transformative ideas, more about being comforted than being stirred.

In so doing we seem to have lost the connection to some of the fundamental ideas of the Reformation.  We have lost the sense of the priesthood of all believers and have given authority and ministry back to the professional clergy.  We have lost the sense of humility that comes from a “both/and” understanding of faith described as simul justus es peccator, justified and sinner at the same time.  We have lost the sense of radical grace, that the loving grace of God has set us free to serve all neighbors lovingly.  As Luther wrote in his treatise The Freedom of a Christian in 1520, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.  A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”  

                 The Reformation impulse, which might push churches of Protestant heritage to a broader understanding of faith and a wider sense of neighbor, has become yet another means for separation, enclaves of faith often segregated by race, class, generation or heritage.  We have a much easier defining ourselves by who we are not than who we are.  It is not unusual to find Lutherans who know little of their tradition other than being “not Catholic and not Baptist.”  We have become yet another means for people to define who belongs and who doesn’t, who is inside and who is outside, the good and the bad.

                In short, the work of reform is unfinished.  We need to go back to the ideas that began the movement and not rely on the traditions that developed around it.  For many Lutherans (again, speaking from my own tradition), we need to rediscover that our faith is sparked by ideas of a gracious God rather than coffee consumption and Scandinavian sweaters.  It is also important to keep in mind that not everything about the Reformation is good.  The Reformation grew out of a culture that was sexist, anti-Semitic and assumed that social classes, including peasant and slave, were ordained by God.  We need to reexamine the basic ideas of grace, faith and service to the neighbor, and think about them in light of what we have learned about our universe, our society, our minds and our bodies in the past five centuries. 

Every anniversary is an opportunity for renewal.  It is my hope this 500^th anniversary will be a moment to rediscover and share the love of a gracious God and our calling to share that love through acts of kindness, compassion, justice and peace.  

Reflections on the Fourth of July

This post was written for the July 1, Matters of Faith column in the Cape Cod Times:

I am the pastor at Christ Lutheran Church in Falmouth and was invited to write a column on the meaning of the Fourth of July from a faith-based perspective.   As the deadline approached I found myself experiencing some trepidation, looking for reasons to step away from writing.  I have encountered clergy for whom writing this article would be a fairly simple task, who would write about America as President Reagan’s “City on a hill,” the New Jerusalem founded on Christian values.  If only we could get back to the vision of the nation’s Founders then all would be well.

                But I write as a Lutheran pastor who, due to the history of my tradition, is wary of the unquestioning overlap of faith and patriotism.  In the 1500s, Martin Luther wrote some very important theological works that have shaped Protestant traditions to this day.  He also wrote some terrible, offensive and tragic works of anti-Judaism which have plagued the Lutheran church to this day, works that were used by the Nazi government and supported by some of the German churches to legitimize what started as legal discrimination of Jews and ended in the Holocaust.  In 1994, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly rejected Luther’s anti-Semitic writings and the attitudes that are found in them.  Yet their use continues to be an example of how national pride and religious belief can be a dangerous mix.

                Faith and patriotism need not be mutually exclusive but do need to be held in some tension.  As a citizen and person of faith, I can genuinely say, “God bless America.”  But sometimes my Christian faith, which includes an instruction from Jesus saying, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) and values the care of the widow, the orphan, the alien and the poor (Zechariah 7:10), may lead me to question the actions and attitudes of the government.  Sometimes people of faith need to be the prophetic voice challenging the government, as they were in the civil rights era.  Sometimes people of faith need to work alongside the government, as happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Sometimes people of faith work as leaders within the government, allowing their beliefs to shape their decisions but, hopefully, governing in ways that do not exclude or deny the beliefs of others. 

                As a person of faith and a religious leader, I am thankful to live in the United States, a country that allows for a variety of beliefs.  I am thankful to those who risked their lives and gave their lives not so that we would be a Christian nation, but that we might be a nation where Christians can be authentically Christian and Jews can be authentically Jewish and Muslims can be authentically Muslim and atheists can be authentically atheist.  I am thankful to the Founders of the nation who could not imagine the diversity of race, thought and creed (and, let’s face it, probably wouldn’t want to imagine that diversity) which their experiment in governing would generate.

                Unfortunately, it seems that we are working very hard to shield ourselves from encountering difference.   Both left and right are following newsfeeds and cable news channels that tell us what we already want to hear.  We are sitting in the safety of unchallenged opinions.  Even within the government, both sides of aisle have gone from disagreement with respect to avoiding eye contact. 

So I would like to suggest that one of the most patriotic things that you can do around this upcoming Fourth of July celebration is to talk to someone who is different from you.  Talk to someone from a different country and find out how her American life has been.  Talk to someone of a different color, or sexual orientation, or of a different generation than you and learn his story. Talk to someone with a different faith (or no faith at all), not with the goal of converting her but with the hope of growing in understanding.  Talk to someone from a different political party without trying to prove them wrong but trying to see his perspective.  I find that I grow in self-awareness not by encountering people just like me but in experiencing and being challenged by difference.

And again I suggest that this is a patriotic action, because we live in an America where beliefs and traditions can coexist; where our historic failures have been the result of seeking to control, dismiss or remove those who are different from the “acceptable” norm; where our greatest moments have been shaped by embracing the gifts and challenges of diversity.  America is great when American hearts and minds are open.  May your Independence Day celebrations be joyful and may God bless America.

A Matter of Respect

This article appeared in the Cape Cod Times on Saturday, October 22, 2016

A couple of weeks ago, when I was asked to write this column, I figured that it was appearing close enough to the election that it would interesting to reflect on what is happening there from the perspective of faith.   I gave my assurance that I would write something faith-based and not become political or endorse a particular candidate.  Then things began to go off the rails: an embarrassing and troubling (to say the least) video; a debate that included one candidate threatening the other with criminal prosecution; another round of leaked emails; gobs of pundits all trying to explain why the sins of the other candidate are so much worse than the sins of their own.

                I would love to ignore the campaign race and give another fun column about sea glass or snakes in the church basement or the joy of silence (though the joy of silence might be especially apt at this time).  Instead, I feel called to write a column about the meaning of respect, a virtue that we as a nation seem to have lost and that communities of faith might help foster.

                I believe that the call to respect begins in the creation story of Genesis 1 where human beings are formed in the image of God.   This symbolic idea has had many interpretations over the years.  For some it has meant that we look like God and God looks like us, which has led to some shameful theologies of gender and race, especially when people are certain that God looks like an old, white guy.  For others, this has to do with divine planning, that human beings are made according to the image or blueprint of the divine mind, though this leaves male nipples as an open question.   

Personally, I have found a story later in Genesis to be helpful.  In Genesis 33, when the feuding brothers Jacob and Esau are reunited, Jacob says to Esau, “For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me with such favor.”   When someone loves us; when someone accepts us; when someone respects us, we see the face of God.  Although not completely analogous, this as an idea similar to the Hindi greeting , ”Namaste” which is sometimes rendered, “The divine in me bows to the divine in you.”

The baseline of respect is found in seeing the image of God in each person.  This baseline is irrespective of gender or race, faith or lack thereof, political affiliation or history.  I am a white, male, liberal, Christian pastor in a relatively liberal denomination.  I think that climate change is real.  I think that the earth is billions of years old.  I believe that the Genesis story I referenced is a very helpful but symbolic story.  I also think that biblical literalism is a dead end, offering short term benefits but a long term loss to faith.  Some of you reading this now think that I am great.  Some of you reading this now think that I am a heretic.  Some of you think that I am irrelevant (but you have probably already skipped this column for another section of the paper.)

                It is not necessary that you agree with me or I agree with you.  We can still respect and value one another.  We can still hold that baseline level of respect acknowledging one another in our common humanity.  Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or Green or conscientious objector to the whole process, you still breathe like I do.  You still get hungry like me.  You are aging like me.  You probably have some mornings when you wish you could stay in bed.  You get the occasional headache and upset stomach.  You have probably lost your keys or some other important object that you were just holding five minutes ago.  You probably have had the experience of forgetting someone’s name and were embarrassed because it felt so disrespectful to the person in question as well as exposing your own mental fallibility.

                We share so much in common, the everyday experiences that are the fodder of great comedians.  Why must we work so hard to ignore it?  When we lose that baseline of respect, we begin to treat others as less than human; fools to be tricked; pawns to be manipulated; playthings to be grabbed; commodities to be exploited; enemies to be destroyed.

                So look at the people with whom you disagree; who make you absolutely livid.  Take a deep breath and recognize that these are people with hopes and dreams and fears, just like you.  They are people who want to feel safe and at peace, just like you.  They are people who want to be accepted and respected, just like you.  The conclusions of how we get there may be different, but the impulses are often the same.   May you find the face of God in the faces of those with whom you disagree and may they find the face of God in you.

For My Dad

Yesterday (9/20/2016) my Mom called to tell me that my Dad had died.  He went for a walk on a California morning by himself and never came home.  Somewhere along the way he collapsed on the trail.  This morning, in the midst of trying to figure out logistics and next moves, I wanted to write something about my Dad, David Evans.

                My Dad taught me a lot about paying attention to little things.  He was an entomologist and Biology professor.  I remember for a time the floor space at his lab at Kalamazoo College was taken up by a children’s swimming pool filled with sand, home to a colony of velvet ants (wingless wasps).  We used to go searching for them on the sand flats outside of Kalamazoo.  It was all about watching and paying attention to things that most of the time we walked by without noticing.

                My Dad taught me that our brains are a gift.  It is all right to learn things for the sake of learning them.  It is all right to question and look at things from a different perspective.  This is probably the reason that as a pastor I have little or no patience for literalism, nor for versions of Christianity that can’t deal with scientific inquiry.  For the church folk who might read this, using our brains is just good stewardship.

                My Dad taught me that gentleness is simply better.  On his sabbatical year in Sierra Leone, he used to take naps during the heat of the afternoon.  One day the neighborhood children were playing outside his house.  “Go away or I will bop you, “ my Dad shouted out the window.  This was a common threat in the village.  The children continued to play so he went into the kitchen and grabbed a wooden spoon.  He went out to the front porch and said again, “Go away or I will bop you.”  According to my Dad, the children looked at him, half-awake and brandishing a mixing spoon, and began to laugh saying, “Bop me first, Dr. Evans.  Bop me first,” at which point they all laughed together.   

                My Dad taught me that humor is important and the pursuit of good humor is a fine way to spend some time.  He was the one who took me to see The Three Amigos at the theater and to this day I cannot hear the words “infamous” or “plethora” in the same way.  He was the one who introduced me to Monty Python, Black Adder, and the Two Ronnies.  He was the professor who was invited to dedicate the new condom machine at the dorms.  His sense of humor embraced the silly and the sardonic. 

                I am grateful to my Dad for all that he taught me.  I am saddened by his loss but grateful that he did not have to experience a long decline, which I think he would have hated.  Whatever comes next, I hope that I can honor him by passing the gifts of curiosity, gentleness and humor to my children and the people around me.