Presby-Musings

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed yesterday, and came across a post from an old seminary classmate.  He declared that he was angry, and that in the coming days he was going to be posting things that some people might find offensive, but he didn't care if they did.   He went on to say something like, "If you no longer want to be my friend because of what I am going to say--so be it."   Lately, lots of people seem to have adopted that attitude.  I was watching a cable news channel the other day and the host of the program had two people on his show who had differing viewpoints on the recent election.   Neither one would allow the other to speak. They shouted over each other as they tried to make their own particular point be heard, which resulted in no one being able to understand anything they were saying.   Our culture is full of people who seem to only care about their own stories, and have little interest in listening to the stories of o...

These past few days after the presidential election have been interesting to say the least. Some people are still grieving the outcome of the election, and are being forced to come to grips with the fact that roughly half of their fellow citizens deeply disagree with them on the direction our country should take.   Still others are being confronted with the grief of their fellow citizens, and are struggling to understand it.  I've spoken with some of these folks, who are flummoxed and angered by the protests that are springing up in all over the U.S.   Being in community is not easy.   Accepting others and their differences is not something most of us do all that well, if we are being honest.   Most of don't do empathy with a great deal of ease, either.  And forget about identifying with others completely.  There are so few of us who are able to do that, it's shocking.   The Church ought to be a place where these things are the rule a...

The election is over.   I figured that no matter who won yesterday, there would be people I know and care about, who would wake up today and think the Apocalypse had come.  I also knew that there would be people I know and care about, who would be rejoicing.   Today I am reaching out both to those who are rejoicing this morning, and to those who are filled with dread.   First, to those who feel as though the world has come to an end.  It hasn't.  The sun rose outside my window.  Creation still speaks of the glory of God.  Jesus is still risen.  The fact that your candidate of choice didn't win doesn't change who you are, and more importantly who you are in the eyes of God.   You have work to do to be reconciled to those with whom you disagree, but if you must mourn, don't try to suppress it.  Mourn today, and then gather your strength tomorrow to be renewed in the Spirit as you take up once again the work of embodyi...

Today is Election Day in America.  After 19 months of endless campaigning, it all comes down to today.  I heard that over 150 million people will have exercised their freedom to vote either today or in early voting.   It's been a very long, contentious and often ugly election season.  Most of us have never seen the likes of it.  The 24 Hour News Media has reveled in it the entire time--stirring the pot, keeping the sound bites coming, creating higher and higher levels of anxiety.   As a result, millions of people have become convinced that if their candidate does not win, it will be the end of the world as we know it... and they won't feel fine.   The anxiety of Christians in the midst of this campaign has been extremely troubling to me, especially now that we are nearing the end.  Christians are not the seemingly monolithic voting block in the United States they might have been in the path, and many Christians disagree on which candidate...

Nothing brings out the crazy in people like an election.  We're all witnesses to it right now as we travel together through the last days of what has been a contentious, divisive, and anxiety-inducing presidential election.  It's the worst one we've seen---since the last one.  Having said that, I've noticed that a lot more Christians do seem to be divided in this election, perhaps more than I can remember in previous ones.  I've seen exchanges between people on my Facebook feed that use language like, "How could say you are a Christian and vote for _______________?"   I think that part of the problem that we have in American Christian culture right now is that we've used the wrong set of rules and guidelines to determine who/what we perceive as right/wrong.  The Church seems to be caught up in using rules of political power, of dominance and triumphalism rather than looking to the Cross.   As a result, Christians of all stripes seem to be stru...

As I scroll through my Facebook feed each day I am always struck by the deep divides that exist between so many of my Christian friends.  I see Christians sharply divided over politics, Biblical interpretation, social justice issues and so much more.   The latest presidential debate sparked a flurry of Facebook posts within which many of my Christian friends both defended their candidate of choice, while excoriating the other. In one case, one of my friends offered an impassioned defense of support for the candidate they believed had "sinned less" than the other.    I think the problem that we are coming face to face with as Christians during this contentious election season is deep-seeded and difficult to address.  Both conservative and progressive Christians claim to be appealing to the same playbook, but are finding vastly different answers within it.   The problem is that we've come to see our Christian faith as a system of beliefs rather than ...

With the election officially underway now that the first caucus happened and the first primary is about to happen--I feel like it's completely appropriate for me to conduct my own poll.  Everyone's been talking about polls, examining polls, taking polls, interpreting polls, denying polls (if they're not winning in them), affirming polls (if they are), so why not get in on the act? Here's my poll questions for today, and we'll do this all by show of hands.  First question:  How many of you are enjoying this election season?  You are just digging this whole thing.  You are watching it like a train wreck about to happen. Raise your hand.   Okay second question: How many of you are ready for this to be over?  You've already handed in the towel, waved the white flag, given up. Raise your hand. Here's a pretty personal question, and you don't have to answer this specifically, but how many of you have already made up your mind who you would vote for? Do...

One of the worst things that you can experience as a kid is being picked last for teams on the playground. There’s not much that sucks worse than that, to be honest. I would like to say that I don’t know what that feels like. I would like to say that I was never picked last, because then I could sort of maintain this image that I have of myself---an image of a guy who was always so athletic, so popular, so good looking that he never watched all the other kids on the playground get picked for a team while he stood there in shame and self-pity staring at his shoes. A few years ago, when I was still doing youth ministry, I would play football or basketball with my students during our youth group gatherings. Prior to the games, I would name two captains and then they would divvy up the players among them. It wasn’t the best way to divide teams because the process itself usually ended up categorizing people based on friendships and athletic ability. Then I started to notice that I was ge...

I sent this letter to my congregation, but it could easily go to the whole Church... Election 2008 has finally come to an end. For those of us who have been suffering from election fatigue these past few weeks, it's a welcome relief, to tell you the truth. But now, after months and months of being made aware of all the ways Americans seem to be divided, we will begin to hear (and quite rightly) that we must come together. In president-elect Obama's victory speech last night he spoke directly to this when he quoted Abraham Lincoln, who also presided over a divided nation. "We are not enemies but friends," Lincoln said after the Civil War, "though passion may have strained...it must not break our bonds of affection." These are fine words. We can't escape the sense of history in that they were spoken by an African-American who has been elected President of the United States in Lincoln's home state, and in Chicago, the very city where Lincoln won th...