Lead with your Ears

In the Epistle of James that is part of this Sunday's lectionary Eugene Peterson in "The Message" translates a small part of the first chapter as saying "Lead with your ears..."

On Monday night, August 24th there was a City Council committee meetingto consider an amendment to a so-called "panhandling" ordinance. I attended that hearing with Mari Evans.

After she spoke I asked her if I could have a copy of her remarks and I was struck about how much they seemed to go along with the words of the text from James. Below you will find the text of Mari's talk interspersed with the passage from the Epistle of James the first chapter (in italics)

Mari Evans before the City-Council committee meeting on an amendment to the so-called “panhandling” ordinance on August 24, 2009 [The amendment in question restricts panhandling to 50 feet away from intersections where there is a traffic light]

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are Rivers of light cascading down from God. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. God brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all God’s creatures.

Post this at the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue…

At a time when there is already so much misery in the world it is inconceivable that it has become necessary for citizens to come down here to protest the egregious initiatives that are being generated (apparently from the mayors office) toward the end of further devaluing those of our citizens who are already our most vulnerable. Are we trying to create a group of American untouchables that can be identified by the fact that they are without homes, the jobs, the basics that it takes for human beings to survive?

I resent the insensitive negative labeling of the poor, across the board, as “panhandlers.” These are men and women and in some cases children, down on their luck that society does not serve. Institutions run out of beds, food and other forms of help. Are we institutionalizing the personal venom, callousness and disregard for the have nots that often characterize those elected to govern all the people wisely and compassionately, but who find it impossible to look compassionately at folks who are not mirror images of themselves?

The Ordinance demeans me as much as it does the most vulnerable, for it interferes with my constitutional right to interact with whomever I choose. The mayor cannot tell me to interact with a cardboard box instead of a human being.

Further, we as citizens are reasonably sensible. This is not a “public safety” issue. “Public safety” is language used to rationalize what is self serving for the administration. Thank you.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

Anyone who sets himself up as ‘religious’ by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air.

Real religion the kind that passes muster before God…,is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

Later, De'Amon and I were talking about it and we focused on those words "Lead with your ears." It got us thinking that this is a good way to talk about our calling in the world with one another. This will stay with me for awhile.

Loaves & Fishes

There are so many stories to tell (and so little time). The Summer of Blessings has been going on for several weeks now. It started with Martha and Terri in May and now there is a group of young people who are "Roving" personages in their own right...traveling the neighborhood, listening to neighbors and sharing stories.

Yesterday, was our regular Monday gathering when Martha and Terri come tell the stories of the people they have named, blessed, and connected over the last week. But today the room fills up with young people. Some of them had just joined the parade of people going to talk with their neighbors - some were people who had been chosen as what De'Amon has begun calling "Roving Disciples."

As those young people told stories about their neighbors the room seemed to have a beautiful hush and quietness to it. I was so impressed as I heard Cameron talk about his neighbors. He talked about one household where the husband and wife have lived here for over 40 years and have been married for over 50 years. He met their daughter as well - who no longer lives at home -- but with great joy told him about who used to live at every home in their block. Kyla reported on several people that she and the three other young people with her had visited. One was an elderly neighbor who everyone thought was the owner of a local liquor store. She found out they had bad information. They also talked about a visit last week that they made to the home of a family whose teenage son had committed suicide (they knew the young man). They brought cookies over from a neighborhood baker and shared them with the grieving family.

There was great energy in the room -- the laughter and stories flowing well. Perhaps not all that different a scene from the feeding of the five thousand (4,000)! It is multiplying and there are more stories to tell. It was a good day yesterday. A holy day.

Annals of this Jubilee Summer: What's Missing?

I'm a big fan of dumb jokes. I'm not the king of dumb jokes. I can't reel off a ton of them (though this does give me a chance to give a shout out to my friend Phil Amerson!). Dumb jokes do make me laugh - but cheesy jokes make me grimace. One of the more common ones on church signs is the following Ch_ _ch: What's Missing? UR ("You are")

I was thinking of that question on my evening walk tonight as I was pondering several good discussions this afternoon around Broadway. The discussions were around this summer's activities -- what we are calling (at least from this morning's discussion at staff) not "the summer program" but "The Jubilee Summer." I kind of like that. It imbues the whole thing with a sense that what we are doing is filling our lives with the life of God's Spirit active and present in our community -- in the sense of the Jubilee that is all around us!

We created (and opened) some new space up at Broadway. It's right inside the main entrance. Folks who have been around Broadway will know it as the old "Thrift Shop" space. Now it will be a place where ideas and creativity are exchanged. The walls have paper on them. There are markers around the room and you are invited to stop in and post your ideas. There is an order to what we are doing in this Jubilee Summer Space. First of all - on three of the walls we are asking people to write down - the names of people they know and the gifts they have, things they care about, things they are willing to do. We were talking about a conversation that De'Amon had over two years ago with someone in the neighborhood who now worships at Broadway. One of the things that De'Amon remembered was that Lee was interested in hosting a barbecue for fathers who are his neighbors. So - that was one of the first names that went up on the board.

So, that leads to the first responsibility/calling of this Jubilee Summer -- that is to say "NAMING." It is alive in the individuals who make up our life together in this place. We put up the names of artists and cooks - people like Avis, Al, Gary, Mari, Keisha, Kyla, Deloris, Seana, Eric. But they are just the very small part of a beginning. We hope that people will stop by and write on the walls - the things they have heard and seen in the lives of others around. Also, if they see something they are interested in - they can connect someone else to it (if not themselves).

So, what comes after NAMING? The second thing I thought of, is "BLESSING." I've been reading a wonderful little book by Gary Gunderson and Larry Pray entitled "Leading Causes of Life." BLESSING is one of the central foci of the book. I like it, because once we can name where we know and see the Spirit active in the lives of others, we can go and offer a blessing. Terri and Martha who run the program can be "BLESSERS in Chief!" They can go and lay hands on people and bless them and thank them for what they are doing - for the sharing of their gifts. We aren't looking to create things here as much as we are looking to recognize the power and the presence of the Spirit of God. But blessing can also happen in other ways than laying on of hands (though that is a personal favorite of mine). But we could also print up certificates, like Keisha Maxxison did over five years ago, and took a certificate to 30 gardeners around the neighborhood and thanked them for beautifying the neighborhood. That is a form of blessing.

Finally, the next work - once we have named and blessed is what I would like to call "THE HOLY WORK OF ENCOURAGEMENT." This work -- this good and holy work - strives to find ways to surround those with gifts and passions for the working out of those gifts - with a community of fellow citizens/members who will pray for them, encourage them, and walk alongside them - in living out their dream. Many people will already have people in their lives who do this - but can't we always use more?

Okay - this is where it comes back to you, reader. What's missing? What others posts do we need to hang our hat on? What do we need to add to NAMING, BLESSING, AND THE HOLY WORK OF ENCOURAGEMENT?

Finallly, I mentioned what is being written on three of those walls in the Jubilee Summer Space - on the fourth wall is just a place for you to write down any old idea that has come to mind. You may not be able to name anyone who is actually going to do it. But it still has come to mind. Write it up there. Let others see it. Let it marinate. Something good may arise from it. But others need to see it. Share. Build. Play.

4,000

I love the feeding stories in the Gospels. One of them appears in Mark 8.1-10. I don't think I can do better than re-telling the story here: In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, "I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way--and some of them have come from a great distance." His disciples replied, "How can one feed these people with bread here int he desert?" He asked them, "How many loaves do you have?" They said, "Seven." Then he ordered the crowd to sit down the ground, and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to this disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered taht these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.

I am thinking of this story because of the discussions we have been having around Broadway about summer. Over the last 30 plus years Broadway has had a summer program that has worked with the children and youth of the neighborhood around Broadway (predominantly). Over the years that program has done great work - it has changed from time to time -- but it has given young people activities to take part in during the day - during the summer.

When I came to Broadway in 1986 the program at that time was primarily recreation: basketball for the boys and cheerleading for the girls. Over the next few years we changed it to art, drama, recreation, history, violin, music, math, poetry -- we started every day with devotions and we ended every day with devotions. We built each week around a different spiritual principle. It was a great program. Over the years following it changed again - it continued to be a program, mainly built around education and activity.

What I have struggled with over the years is this dilemma - throughout the tenure of the program -- things for the people (young and old) of our neighborhood have gotten worse. Graduation rates have continued to decline. Violence remains as does unemployment and underemployment. Broadway -- along with the community has done many wonderful things with this program - but I wonder whether we can do better.

There are around 16,000 people who live in the Mapleton-Fall Creek neighborhood -- and probably a little more than 1/4th live in the southeast quadrant where Broadway is located. Our program has worked, at its height, with about 250 young people. We, like many congregations in low-income neighborhoods, have not examined what we have done in ways that tell us whether we are accomplishing what we believe and hope that we are accomplishing. And, in fact, the reports that we see with our own eyes, and those that we read in the local news would lead us to believe that, in fact, we are not having the impact that we thought we were having. That does not mean that we have been doing something bad. In fact, I would argue, that what we are doing is very good.

The challenge I want to offer is to ask whether we can do better. We can only do better, it seems to me, if we have serious conversations about what it would mean to see that every young person grows up in this community with the opportunity to come into the full flower of their possibility.

We have two remarkable women who will be leading us in our summer activities this year. I have avoided the use of the word "program" because I want to try and think of this differently. I said to Teri Coleman and Martha Wright who are heading this effort -- "I don't want you to think about how we can touch 50, 100 or 250 young people and their families. I want you to think about how we can be involved and invested in the lives of 4,000 people of this neighborhood." I think I saw their eyes bug out of their heads! But they hunkered down and we have begun talking about it.

How can we do something during the summer that doesn't involve people in a program that "we" (the church) runs? But instead finds a way for us to invest in all who are our neighbors and watch for the abundance that there is to be collected afterwards. Sometimes the conversation comes up "how do we involve parents in what we are doing?" That's the wrong question, it seems to me. The better question is how we can get involved in what parents are doing and what parents care about. In the first way it's clear that the church is in the drivers seat. The other thing that happens under option number 1 is that folks end up saying "parents don't care -- they didn't get involved in what we are doing." Under option number 2 we are trusting the power and the presence of the Spirit of God in the lives of people around us and thus we say - "we want to be a part of all the cool things that are going on in your life, because we know that God is making an abundance out of that and we will be poorer for it if we aren't involved."

But how do we do that? That's where it comes to you dear reader. Can you give us your ideas and suggestions? How can we pay close attention to what the Spirit of God is doing in our midst and how do we join ourselves to it? Invest in it?

I've told Martha and Teri -- let's not think of what we are doing as a program - let's think of it like a festival, a party, or a wedding banquet. How about calling it "the Soul Liberation Festival - or just The Jubilee." Instead of inviting people to be involved with us -- let's get involved with others. If there are cooks around - how about a Saturday afternoon barbecue contest on an empty lot? If there are artists - where and how could we invest in them? What about the entrepreneurs? What about those doing hair? What about those who are engineers and math whizs? What would it look like for us to get involved and get engaged? Throw your ideas in. Ask others what ideas they have - and ask them to post them here so we can see. We need your help!

Reading Old, Reading New

I'm sitting up this evening reading a book by Michael Eric Dyson entitled "April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr's Death and How It Changed America." I just came across the following paragraph which began with these words of Dr. King's -- "'At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and Midwest, which meant it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with the economic floor.' King wailed indignantly at the nation's unjust demand for self-reliance from black folk while forgetting how white immigrants were offered eduction, agriculture, and subsidies. 'But not only did they give them land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that they they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms.' It was not lost on King how white privilege and government support contrasted sharply to--and ultimately reinforced--black suffering.
King reinforced that the call for black self-help made hypocrites of those who ignored the aid given the very groups to whom blacks are unfavorably compared. 'Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm, and they are the very people telling the black man that he ought to lift himself up by his own bootstraps.' The calls for blacks to turn inward and pull themselves up by their own striving, rather than wrestling with the massive structural problems of economic inequality that caused their blight, struck King as plain dishonest. 'So often in America we have socialism for the rich, and rugged, free enterprise capitalism for the poor,' King said on another occasion. 'Nobody has lifted himself by their own bootstraps.' King also knew that there had been a time, and recently too, when the act of wearing boots, and thereby showing some small outward sign of equality to whites, was enough to get a black man hung."

These words of Dr. King, for me, resonate today as they did in that decade when I was still a boy and he first spoke them. As I've watched the response that we have made, as a nation, to the current economic crisis, I've been struck by how Dr. King's analysis of the socialism of the wealthy and the capitalism handed to the poor seems to at least ring a bit true. The other thing that has struck me is the urgency with which Congress has been acting -- trying to do something to fix the ailing economy. And I have wondered - where was that urgency while this emergency has been going on and on and on for decades (if not longer) among those who were poorest? Then - the responses were to volunteer in soup kitchens or to encourage "faith-based" organizations to run programs that would "meet the needs" of those who are struggling. Now when the economic crisis is hitting everyone they see the emptiness of those responses. They are looking for and fighting about what types of structural responses need to be made. Well I say God Bless 'em for finally getting religion. Now let's not forget that lesson when the "big" economy begins to improve for the people on the top of the heap. Let's keep the momentum going and urge everyone (including the "faith-based" communities) to work not just to maintain the problem, but to actually solve it (what a concept!).

I look to the past, in part, to learn from it. Though I can tend to wallow for a moment in my complaints about what has been done in the past - my main desire is to learn from it and find a way forward in the here and now. The words from Dr. King are a good reminder to me tonight. Very good.

At Which Center?

As I was talking a walk this Christmas Day evening I was listening to an interview with Dr. Cornel West. He commented on Christmas saying that "Jesus doesn't want to be the center of a holiday, Jesus wants to be the center of our lives."

It's been an interesting and full day. After Christmas Eve worship last night we got home around 1 am. I stayed up all night and the rest of the family got up at 5 am, because Kathy was scheduled to work at Methodist. After we opened presents I gave Kathy a ride to work and then Conor, Jordan and I went to bed. Up at 11 am, a little after noon we headed off to Wayde and David's to share in the Christmas Day feast at their place. Among other things David's family shared memories from this past summer's flood in their hometown of Columbus, Indiana. Jordan promptly fell asleep there, Conor helped them set up some new technology, and I went off to make a pastoral call on a member of the congregation who is dying - she's at home with hospice. Kathy got sent home from work early (too many people, too little work on Christmas Day) and we sat down to an earlier dinner than we would have enjoyed otherwise.

On my walk before dinner, in the late afternoon light, I was struck by the presence of a lot of crows. They were flying above the streets that I walked. They were sitting on the top branches of trees, on the roofs of homes, and on the roof of a nearby charter school. This was an oddity for my daily walk through this area -- and it made me wonder at what Christmas significance any of this might offer.

A couple of times today it passed through my mind what a difference a year makes. Since May when Conor's brain tumor was identified and then the summer spent with his surgery and recovery - it seems both normal and very different.

So -- what does it mean in the midst of all of these things to talk about Jesus as the center of our lives. Last night Rachel and I preached together and we talked about how the birth of Jesus marks the beginning of a new age. That new age is witnessed to in his very birth - where the Savior of the World is not born in the halls of power -- but in a stable and laid in a manger -- a feeding trough for animals (later to become the Bread of Life for the world - these Gospel writers knew their foreshadowing!). This new age where Mary sings in the Magnificat not of future possibility, but of present reality - that the hungry are filled with good things, the powerful cast down from their thrones, and the rich sent empty away. And yet, it is absolutely no easier for us to see that today than it was for shepherds, disciples, or followers to pick it up in Jesus' lifetime.

Yesterday morning there was a headline on Huffington Post that said "The Recession is Stealing Christmas." That's ridiculous. The recession can't steal Christmas - it can only steal the world's idea of Christmas. Christmas is the anti-recession. There is so much debate about "the war on Christmas" that those who have pitched this battle are fighting over the wrong thing. As Dr. West pointed out the issue is about having Jesus at the center of our lives. Having Jesus at the center of our lives, means a real effort and straining of our eyes to see that good news to the poor right here and now. It's why I'm very fond of the People's Inaugural I've been hearing about. As I understand it folks from the homeless shelters around Washington, DC will be picked up and given limousine rides, tuxes and ball gowns to attend the People's Inaugural Ball. I love that -- since hearing the Cinderella story I know that magical things happen at balls. And as a follower of Christ, I know he begins his ministry at a party where he turns water into wine, that he was someone who spent a lot of time eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors, and that he loved to tell parables about wedding feasts (where when the invited guests turned down the invitations -- it was opened up to all). The idea of those who have nothing and those who have more than enough - dancing together, talking around tables, sharing a meal - is to me a possibility and a sign of that good news of great joy for all people -- that the adult Jesus lives out.

So, it seems to me that having Jesus at the center of our lives would challenge us (me) to find myself at the hospital to lay a hand on a sister or brother (a stranger) who just could use a healing touch; a lunch with someone living under a bridge or at the Salvation Army or the Wheeler Rescue Mission, or one with a parent who is struggling to get by.

I keep thinking of Terri Coleman, a friend and neighbor, who walked into the community room on the Saturday of the Christmas Store and said, "I don't see any sign of recession here." I think that's what Jesus says when he looks around. But instead we live as if the real abundance were to be found wrapped under Christmas trees - rather than all around us, every single day - in the gift that we are to one another. That's what should be at the center. If only we can find our way there.

At the end of worship on Christmas Eve we light individual candles and sing "Silent Night." At the end, we asked people to hold their candle high and pause and take a moment to make a commitment to that new age begun in Jesus. I'll try to keep that at the center of my life.

Who Would Jesus Invite to Pray?

I've had some e-mail and conversations with friends over the last few days about President-Elect Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation and the inauguration. Several e-mails and conversations offered alternative choices -- all of them, religious professionals - clergy. Most of them well known and out spoken. I liked a lot of the choices suggested.

As I was out for my morning walk I got to thinking - Who would Jesus invite to pray at the inauguration? And the answer came to me after a few minutes. It probably wouldn't be a religious professional. It probably wouldn't be one of his disciples. It probably would be someone like a 10 year old homeless girl from the streets of the Bronx. Now that child would have something to pray about (don't we all). And that child probably wouldn't talk with advisers to decide what to pray. If she was really praying (as opposed to say...performing) she would probably offend more than a few folks. But one could be sure it would be real. Real prayer. Real honesty. Something real -- that sounds like something that hasn't happened on an inaugural stage for centuries.

A couple of years ago there was a big fight here in Indiana over the prayers that are offered in the State House. And while the argument was an important one - I thought that the most important thing that was being missed is that whatever name the prayers were being offered in -- it didn't appear to be having any effect. Personally, I think taking prayer away from us professionals in public places and putting it in the hands (and mouths) of what my friend Phil Amerson calls "the genuine articles" -- sounds like a good idea to me.

That reminds me that it was back in 1990 I think when Phil was invited to pray at a luncheon at Indiana Black Expo. Phil prayed, among other things, "for the Children's Museum that cares more about children on the other side of the world than for children in the shadow of its own building." (I'm really just quoting as I recall it) That prayer sure set some things off. People were awfully upset. Out of that some real conversations happened and some things changed. The executive director of the Children's Museum at that time actually came and sat down in a home in our neighborhood and had some real conversation with parents of children who lived in the shadow of his building. And he made some changes.

Prayer does change things -- or at least it can.