Wilson, Russell and the lessons of hype and prognostication

Each and every year I swear I am not going to get sucked into national signing day. It occurs every February 6. So, usually, I hold out until February 1, and then I gradually creep into it. I am like a small kid who is afraid of the closet and what might lurk within. I slowly peek into the door, opening it wider, and wider until I see the full contents and it is no longer scary. On February 1 the door of interest is cracked. By February 6 I have thrown the door wide open. Now this is an affliction that targets men (primarily) from the South. As a child of NOLA and Baton Rouge, following recruiting is like a recurring arthritis. And by February 6 I am in a full blown episode. I start trolling the internet late at night (like I did late Monday night) to find videos that programs like LSU show to young men they are recruiting into the program. If you have 7 minutes this is my favorite one from this year - it is really well produced and an unbelievably smart sales pitch. But that is not the point of this blog. That video above, in spite of its quality, is not why I write today. In fact, I write to be critical of it in some ways. I write today to share this tweet with you, a tweet from Darren Rovell, one of the smartest writers I follow or know. Darren writes and tweets about the business side of sports, the dark and cloudy stuff we rarely see. I follow him because to understand most of the men in our churches (and many of the women) I need to have a grasp of the landscape of sport. Here is the tweet:

Russell Wilson, 2 star recruit, not ranked in state twitter.com/Sports_On_Tap/…(H/T @sports_on_tap)
— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) February 7, 2013

What do you notice about it? My friends from ACC territory and from N.C. State know exactly who this is. But he is Russell Wilson, who is currently the starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. He is Russell Wilson, who was only two minutes short of starting in the Super Bowl. He is Russell Wilson, who was, at the age of 23 or so, on the pregame coverage of the Super Bowl because of the strength of his intellect, his skills of analysis, and his undeniable success at the hardest position, in the hardest game, in the toughest league in the country. And here is the thing about the tweet. It is from when Russell was at the Collegiate school, a prep school in Richmond where I used to coach 7th grade football in the 1990's. The two stars above his name mean the experts expected him to do nothing in college. The two stars mean that the experts thought he had no professional potential. And yet they were wrong. Totally wrong. How often do we let an initial ranking, hype, or prediction color our assumptions about outcomes? Do we give up when we think the world has given our faith two stars? When our prayers seems to have earned a failing grade? When it seems that faith is two small, don't believe the hype.

Power and vulnerability...a lens for incarnation?

Below I have linked a video. It is worth 20 minutes of your time.

Here is the thing, how good are we at being vulnerable?

What if the secret to happiness was related to our capacity to be vulnerable?

What if the location of theological, divine, and spiritual joy were to be found in our ability to make ourselves vulnerable to God?

Do we believe we are worthy of love and belonging? Do we believe that God loves us, and allows us to belong, even when we fail? How do we define shame?

How do we define vulnerability? Is vulnerability powerful? I think I will think about this for days......

 May we have, as she says in the video, the courage to be imperfect.

 May we, in gracious love, embrace vulnerability.

 May we say "I love you first..." May we say it first to God. Then to ourselves. Then to others.

 In case you are wondering about where the pastor sees a connection between the principles she is suggesting and the faith we profess, we just might find it here: is there anything more vulnerable than incarnation? Is there any greater act of love than incarnation?

 Our confessions say incarnation is God's most powerful act. So if incarnation is powerful, then perhaps there is powerful wisdom and love in vulnerability.... Is vulnerability powerful?

 Note: as this is a church-related blog and I am church-person and I am typically unsure as to who actually sees this or not...I feel a need (with a sly sense of vulnerability) to let you know that this link is PG-13ish.

PatorOnPoint on ChurchNext.tv

I recently did a 50 minute interview with Chris Yaw, an Episcopal clergyman.  He operates a site called ChurchNext.  You can learn all about him and their work at http://churchnext.tv .  Very good site.  Very good interviews.  Very interesting people.

Anyway, for what it is worth, here is the interview.  It is a lot about my new call to White Memorial Presbyterian Church (though it has been nearly 18 months now.  I wonder when it is no longer new???)



May grace abound.

Links You Should Read

Two stories that rise out of our church for this week...

One is a story about Tom Gupton, a dear soul who was a good friend.  This is a lovely article about one of Raleigh's early medical pioneers...

Dr. Tom Gupton


And this piece about Wheels4Hope and my friend John Bush. 

John Bush and Wheels4Hope

As Lent approaches, maybe a good question might be this one for all of us:  how are we using our gifts to help the lives of others?

Are we healing?

Are we sharing?

Are we trying to make a difference in our community, one life at a time?

How is Jesus calling us, all of us, to love our neighbors in new and innovative ways?

Links to Start a New Year and Resolutions

Some links that have caught my eye in past days.  Some very local and heartwarming, some about violence and how people of consciousness and faith might respond.

Let's start with the heartwarming ones, a reminder that there are great things, acts of love, and good families in our midst.

My friends, WMPC members, the Batchelors.  A story about fathers, sons, and scouting. 
Raleigh Family Boasts 7 Eagle Scouts

One of the most touching moments of the past month for me, personally, happened right after Christmas.  We usually ask our kids, "what was the most special day of the last week, what was your favorite part of the movie, etc.?"  We asked, "what was the best part of Christmas?"  Seeing their grandparents.  Going to the movie to see The Hobbit.  Getting a new doll.  And then one of the children, the most often tender-hearted one, said, "One of my favorites was giving that guy our car."  It may have been prideful, but I said, "Amen."  He remembered giving our car to Wheels 4 Hope as part of their 31 cars in 31 days in December.  Our car went to a single dad.  Somehow that feels right after it was a car that carted our children all over the state and nation.  White Memorial Members - we are still looking for a member of our church to donate a car for a Step-Up graduate in conjunction with Step-Up Sunday on January 20.  What a great way to begin a new year!  Give a car and change a life.  Check out their website and ask how you might help:
http://www.wheels4hope.org/

Several of you have asked me as to whether or not the Presbyterian Church has ever made a statement about assault weapons and our culture's preoccupation with violence and our appalling murder rates.  Here is a link to a recent statement and to a larger statment by the denomination in 2010.
In the Aftermath of Two Mass Shootings This Week

Several of you have asked me about who I turned to after the shootings in Newtown, who did I listen to?  In my opinion Alec Evans, an old and trusted friend, is the moral conscious on the issue of gun-violence.  Alec is Pastor at Second Presbyterian in Richmond (http://2presrichmond.org/), but before he was in Richmond he was in Blacksburg where in 2007 he worked with the Blacksburg Police and notified families following the mass murders at Virginia Tech.  He is a leader in the field of police chaplaincy, gun safety, and public policy.  He knows the terror of mass shootings because he walked through the fire.   Here is a link to his sermon.  I have listened to it several times, and I find a glorious strength in it.  I look forward to listening to him on the issue in the future and to supporting the causes he has championed in the past.  Go to this website, and scroll down to "A Moment of Truth" and give this 26 minutes of your time.  It is worth it.  Thank you, Alec.  Thank you, friend.  Indeed, may it be so!
http://2presrichmond.org/sermon-podcasts

And, if you are still reading, here is something from our church newsletter this week, something I wrote about resolutions:

Resolutions by definition require resolve.  Resolve implies commitment, strategy, and focus.  Resolve implies continuing attempts to fix a problem or get ahead of a vexation.  Breaking the word down into its parts re-confirms the definition.  “Re,” as in another attempt means to try again.  “Solve” means solution.   Resolve means to try fix a problem or to confront a challenge again.  Resolutions around new year are attempts to address the complaints that follow us year to year.

                Personally speaking, I always make New Year’s resolutions.  I continue to try and solve the frustrations of the past.  I think we all should, actually.   Why should we continue to be subject to unsatisfying things?  Why wouldn’t we want to be free of vexations and disappointments?

                Trouble is that often times we name the problem that we would like to resolve but fail to address the problem with the resolution itself.   I fail most often when I don’t go right ahead and make the resolution part of my daily routine or discipline.  What happens if we resolve to pray daily in the new year but fail to buy or check-out a book of prayers to guide our prayers for the new year?  Or fail to put prayer into our daily calendars or weekly plans?  The result would be that we wouldn’t pray and this resolution like many others would go unfulfilled.  The resolution is two steps, really:  the first is resolving in the first place; the second is actually crafting a plan and committing the time to seeing it done.

                What resolutions are we going to make as a church this year?  Well the specifics remain to be seen, but the early returns are promising.  In the immediate weeks we’ll be highlighting the final phase of our 2013 budget effort – “A Future With Hope.”  The weeks following will see a commitment to conversations around our strategic planning processes.  And soon we’ll aim our focus upon Easter itself and the great celebration of our Christian year.

                In all ways our commitment as we begin 2013 remains strong: to proclaim God’s word, to care for one another, to serve neighbors in need, and to give place and space for the formation of disciples at  White Memorial Presbyterian Church.  Happy new year friends!  May we resolve to share in the year to come and proclaim the glories of God’s mercy, hospitality, and love!

Glorisously, or Really, Again, Really?

Note:  the following is the sermon I preached on Sunday.  It is also available on the WMPC Website in video or written format.

The link to the video is here:  http://www.whitememorial.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=168214&programId=140090

Sermons change names over time

 

This sermon was first called: “Meditation for Music Sunday.”

 

Then, this title became “Gloriously” because we are singing glorious music in church today and the Isaiah text says that God acts gloriously.  “Gloriously,” which is much more inspiriting, is printed in your bulletins.

 

But that was all before Wednesday, the day when we learned of the death of a child of our church, only in his mid-twenties.  We fulfilled our Baptismal promise to him and to his family as we celebrated his memory, and testified to the strength of the resurrection.  That was Wednesday. 

 

And then Friday came.

 

Kindergarteners.[1] 

 

I have a child in kindergarten. 

 

So small, trusting, and innocent. 

 

A friend of mine who teaches at the law school in Chapel Hill wrote me that she did not envy me trying to make sense of what we saw in Connecticut on Friday.  But that it is true of all of us.  This is hard to take much sense from….

 

So if I could retitle this sermon this morning, it might be – “really, again, really?”  Really we have to bury one in this community too young to have to bury?  Again we have to hear the story of another killer who wages a personal war on the innocent?

 

Today, the third Sunday of Advent is joy Sunday, so these remarks were supposed to be about joy for its own sake:  joy, glorious joy!  Joy which gloriously allows and inspires the people of God to let joy, joy, joy, joy, joy get down into their hearts (just like the children’s song echoes).

 

But then last week happened. 

 

Then we heard a chaplain in Connecticut talk about how there are families there who have had joy ripped away from them.  How do we share joyfulness and talk about Christmas in the face of such terror, where nothing seems unsafe?

 

Because it is hard to feel very safe anywhere when the safest place in the world, kindergarten is no longer a haven.  As a father of children their very ages, I don’t want to imagine a day in our nation when the curriculum for our little ones includes survival skills training.  The lessons in kindergarten are about milk and cookies, about letters and numbers, about stories and sharing.  Terror and death are supposed to be kept far, far away.   

 

Today I lend my voice to the rising chorus of voices, many of us religious leaders, who are calling us, each of us, to look deeply at our own lives, our own community standards, and our own national practices and ask “what is wrong?”  I lend my voice to those who declare it is time we examined our relationship to the myth of redemptive violence, and I decry acts of violence against those who are weakest among us. 

 

Each time I baptize a child, I say in the words of one of my mentors, “we are called to build a city and make a society which is safe for all of God’s children” – and so I have to wonder if that is what we are doing?  Are we building a safe world for the kids?

 

I am not in a position to offer solutions today, and I do not want to demagogue when the grief is still so very raw, but I will say this:  whatever it is that we are (or are not) doing isn’t working.

 

A society that cannot keep its children safe is one that has no hope for a future.

 

Even more so, it is impossible to imagine much joy in the world, it is hard to imagine much glorious rejoicing in any society until the children are safe and they are whole and healthy.

 

So, today’s sermon was supposed to be about joy, joy for its own sake.  But as soon as the headlines broke, and the governor of Connecticut said what we all knew, that his people had been visited by evil, this sermon and this worship became a vigil for the presence of God in all goodness and a moment to proclaim joy in the face of evil itself.  I realized this yesterday as I was leading a Witness to the Resurrection service, a memorial service, and we were singing the great hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress is Our God.  The third stanza caught my soul off guard, and I began to weep as we sang:

 

“And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.”

 

We have no choice as a people of hope and joy, but to proclaim God’s truth and gifts even in the face of unimaginable evil.  No matter how great the evil confronting us, we must press on because if we don’t then evil wins.

 

And no matter how dark the darkness gets we are the people who proclaim the light that overcomes all darkness.  It is a light of hope.  It is one of peace.  It is one of joy.  Yes joy.

 

And wherever there is joy, evil cannot be present.  This point is made by C. S. Lewis in his book The Screwtape Letters – in the book Lewis reminds us that the devil, the personification of evil itself, has many tools at its disposal:  envy, shame, spite, malice, anger.  But the devil can’t use joy, evil cannot employ it…joy is one of the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit, which means that joy belongs to God!

 

I do not know what evil dwells in the hearts and minds of men who do violent things.  I only know that I think their lives must be devoid of joy.  It is hard to be evil when one is joyful.  It is hard to hurt someone else when there is joy in the heart.

 

Joy is a spiritual antidote to scorn and shame, to despair and lament, to the very things that fuel evil’s fire.

 

My friend, we know joy comes from God, and as God’s children we are called to pay witness to it.  We are called to know, who and whose we are as children of God, as creatures made for joy, wherever and whenever we experience beauty.  To let joy come and go without acknowledging that it is a divine gift is a mistake too great to make.

 

In 2007, following the terror at Virginia Tech, the editors at the magazine the Christian Century offered these profound words– “In the story of Jesus Christ …the two mysteries of good and evil converge in the deepest way.  Jesus Christ is the One who engages evil at its worst and can be trusted in any event, no matter how terrible.”

 

 “For in the story of Jesus,” they wrote, “we find a story about how God’s son engaged evil and found a way through to where we can find our own story.”

 

So we must stand by the prophet Isaiah, whose own people knew something of terror and shame and evil – a people exiled and suffering – we must stand by Isaiah and gloriously proclaim:

 

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

⁴And you will say on that day:
Give thanks to the Lord,
call on his name;
make known his deeds among the nations;
proclaim that his name is exalted.

⁵ Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously;
let this be known^* in all the earth.

 

So we must give ear to the apostle Paul who though imprisoned, could write the great hymn of joy of the New Testament in Philippians 4.  We must listen to him, lean in close, and drink in the words of praise:

 

Rejoice^* in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ^*5Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

⁹Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

 

In the promise of Christmas we have a cause for joy.  No it is not a joy that will bring back those lost in Connecticut, nor will it bring back our innocence (whatever is left of it).  It will not allow our illusion that our smallest children live outside the bounds of adult things like pistols and rifles, or adult problems like mental illness.  No it won’t do that.  But the joy we proclaim today can give the tears we cry a purpose and it can remind our hearts that we are NOT built for fear or evil, but we ARE built for faith and joy.

 

A longing for joy in the wake of evil will allow our hearts to hear the choir in a few moments as they sing in the next anthem,

 

Ageless the holy promise, God’s word will come to pass,

Fleeting is human nature, like withered, fading grass.

Ageless the holy promise, God’s word will come to pass.

And with a shepherd’s arms, God gathers and sustains us

Close to God’s heart so vast.

 

On the front of your bulletin is a remnant image – a stump with one branch going out.  Our Christian story is one that says from this remnant hope the world can be changed.  So we hold onto joy today, even if it is a remnant.  Yes, we hold on, even if a remnant is all that remains.

 

And what of those who feel no joy today, whose loss is too deep?  Well, then those of us one step removed from the most intense pain, we must keep joy.  We who possess the remnant must preserve it for them.  We must hold onto joy for them until they can find it and be held by it again.

 

Joy is a miracle.  And we need a miracle.  And I am ready for a glorious miracle.  I am gloriously ready for the miracle of joy.  I really, really am.  So again we are called to seek the manger and behold God’s miraculous joy there.

 

Joy that the Savior comes to give to people.

 

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

Amen.

 

 

 

---

[1] I have since learned the children affected were 1^st graders. 

Pray and listen....

I had prepared a string of Christmassy blogs for the next 10 days or so...

But I have just heard from many sources of death in Connecticut.  If there is a working definition of a hell-on-earth scene, surely something like this must be it.

I'll confess it is terrible, and as the father of three it at elementary school it gives me a chill and a tear in the eye that I will not easily shake.

So, I had prepared a string of Christmassy blogs for the next 10 days or so...

In light of what has been a tough week at our church already, and what is a terrible day for our nation, I ask all members of our church, White Memorial Presbyterian, to pray today. 

Pray and turn to grace, listening for a voice of guidance as to how and what we might do as a people of faith to confront these tragedies which keep befalling our children and our people.  Pray and listen, friends. 

Pray and listen....