Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Best Part is the Blessing


I was talking with my friend Phil Amerson this afternoon while he is out in San Diego. He is there attending a conference on Church Redevelopment. He's giving a speech on urban ministry and he wanted to read me some things he had put together. It's going to be one heck of a speech, I can tell. He talked about being a five year old and hearing a man call for his father, the preacher, from out in the street. Even at that young age, he said, he knew such sounds. And even though the man was using curse words in his calling out for his father, he knew that his father's presence with the man was redemptive. Phil says, "redemption is beautiful." He went on to say -- we've given up on redemption. I'm afraid he is right. I was talking with my friend Chad today and he was telling me about the district superintendent who told him and his congregation that he was being appointed there "as hospice." In other words he was telling the congregation, and this new young pastor, that they were dead. We have sold ourselves out for technique. We think that if we just did things right then everything would be okay. That's just not so. We can't fix the system. We can't even fix each other.

Tonight I was on a panel on Health Care at a community forum at another church in our city. I was glad to be there. The keynote speaker -- a physician and politician from Kentucky was brilliant. But before he spoke and before the panelists spoke - there were testimonies from five people who have struggled with the high cost of health care and the effect on their lives and their families. They were moving and each one different. They all told a little different story of what it's like to be caught in a trap that they cannot find their way out. A grandmother spoke about her "million dollar grandson." She and her husband have lost their house as they have been helping their daughter and her husband to keep the medicine coming that the child needs to stay alive...and to keep the oxygen tank rented so that it wouldn't be repossessed when they child still needed it to breath. A man read a letter from his wife, who was supposed to be there to testify, but she was too ill. The letter ended with her cry that she sometimes wished she was dead so that she would no longer be a burden on her family. After the evening was over an acquaintenance came over to speak to me. The man with her thanked me for my words. She didn't. She said, "I wish we would have taken up an offering for Mr. Cooper [one of the testifiers] -- but I felt like they were just window dressing/entertainment for the experts." She took off her glasses as her eyes and nose glowed red -- "I don't like it when we do that." I understand her frustration. It would have been the one truly helpful thing that might have happened tonight. Every thing else was so much hot air -- and self congratulation that we all recognize the problem and that something must be done. But in the meantime we simply walk away from the stories that are shared. We don't talk with each other. Pray with each other. Encourage each other. We just look uncomfortable and move to the other side of the room and try not to make eye contact.

Back to urban ministry and Chad. I said to Phil what I had said to Chad earlier in the day. "Wouldn't it be great if a district superintendent would come to each of the churches in the city, would lay her/his hands on each member of the congregation -- would offer a word of thanksgiving to the gathered church -- in thanks for staying in the city when so many across the years had fled. Thank them for the blessing they are to the denomination. Thank them for bearing witness across the years to the grace and abundance of God in the midst of a downhill slide and increasing poverty. And then anoint each person in the congregation with oil." Why is it so hard to imagine such a thing. Instead all that can be imagined is that we would offer the latest technique to solve the problem. I don't mind the techniques. Some of them are quite good. They are good. But they aren't God. And that's the problem. There are plenty who will bear witness to the efficacy of the latest techniques...but instead of holding onto both the technique and the blessing -- the trust and faith in the redemptive power of God -- we think we can only have the technique and not the blessing. Man that sucks. The best part is the blessing. It's like getting oreos with all the insides scraped out.

Let me tell you I feel uncomfortable a lot -- a whole lot. The tears of the woman at the meeting tonight are a reminder that redemption is what we have to offer. Not answers - but listening and praying with each other...Not avoiding each other because we don't have an answer. So...my goal for tomorrow is to remember the best part is the blessing -- to offer it when I don't have any answers especially.

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