When Church is Supposed to Be Church."

Often I have sat there as someone poured out their hearts. "I can't go to church--the church won't accept me." He was gay. "I can't go to church--our son has been such an embarrassment I can't face anybody." The boy had struggled with drugs for years. "You couldn't catch me in church--the preacher and nobody else ever came around when my husband was so sick and finally died. I felt so alone." The young man said, "God, I've done awful things--I could never be forgiven . Church--hah!" "No, I couldn't  come," she said. "I don't have any money. The kids and I have no decent clothes--we wouldn't be comfortable there." Unfortunately she was right.

There are all sorts of reasons people stay away from church. Sometimes a church somewhere broke their hearts. Some times it is a petty reason that should never keep anyone away from anywhere. 

But after six church and eight interims--I still stay. Sometimes friends say: "Are you nuts?"  Maybe I am. 

Sure we've put up barriers and roadblocks through the years. Deacons standing at the back door shaking their heads when blacks came up the steps. Muslims wondering if those people that sneered at them at the mall were Christians. A Mama whose boy died of AIDS remembered some preacher saying he would burn I'm hell. 

But let's not get too gloomy. I remember a Habitat house we build for a family in Memphis. As the Mama was given the keys to there new home she said, "I've wanted me a house all my life. And when I thought I had just about enough for the down payment--something took the money. But after all these years--Today's the day!" I remember a women who had so very little taking her widow's mites and handing them to me for a semester's tuition. After every storm that had taken so much away--down the highway would come men and some women in trucks with hammers and nails. Their church sent them. And it mattered. The Churches in that town that banded together and brought a refugee family there and saved their lives. Sure--we have our barriers and roadblocks to the altar of every church. But don't forget that stream of those--and there are many--who have heard the " Whoever gives a cup of cold water in my name..." and follow through.

We have to keep pulling down the roadblocks and letting everybody know they can come in and they matter. Someone rightly said, "if any" is the most inclusive word in the gospel.

It all came back to me in a strange way. I was visiting Oxford in England when we walked into the Chapel at New College. In the narthex standing before us was this life-sized statue. It looked like a man--or a woman--wrapped in strips of cloth from head to foot. I told my wife, "Why, it's Lazarus." We moved on in to that beautiful chapel but I could not forget the wrapped Lazarus standing in the vestibule. 

Days later I was still thinking about our encounter in the New College chapel. I am told this was one of Jacob Epstein's last major works. How fitting to place this work in the entrance of that chapel. Lazarus stands there and looking closely I was not sure this was a man or a women. But his/her face was turned toward the doors of the chapel. 

Isn't this the task of the church--there at its entrance--to say to every Lazarus you can be unbound. The grave clothes of so much can slowly be unraveled. Jesus said: "Unbind him and let him go" and slowly the dead or sleeping Lazarus awakes and begins to walk. 

What a vision--to say to everyone--at the entrance of every church--like Lazarus you too can  be unbound ands released from all the trappings that have held you back. Slowly the gauze is unwound. Slowly and the dead Lazarus stirs and walks. 

And the promise of the vestibule is that all of all the cripples and hurts and culture that have bound us be stripped away and we can be set free. How far afield we have come to think the bindings of the so muchness is just who we are. That the dressings that binds are  just life itself. 

But if come Sunday those who come: little children...burdened parents...all the old man and women with watery eyes on walkers...and those who lean close to just try to hear what is going on. And what on Sundays all heard this word they never heard before And all their constrictions--and ours--could fall away and life could be different forever.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

President Trump and John McCain--Sometimes You Can't Be Silent

photo by Gilbert Mercier / flickr

Did you find it as strange as I did that President Trump stood before a cadre of tanks and bashed not once, but again and again one of the great heroes of the Twentieth century. John McCain. Maybe he thinks if he says : “I love my veterans” enough that many out there will believe him. Maybe he is just trying to convince himself.

We should have known it was coming. Before he was elected President remember his horrifying statement about Senator McCain. Smearing his good name he said, “He wasn’t captured. He surrendered.” And this was followed by the words that few could believe: “I like soldiers that were not captured.” John McCain was held captive for over years and tortured unmercifully. When he had a chance to be released from that Vietnam prison he refused until all his comrades were released. 

As Senator McCain was dying Trump said mean and cruel things about this great man. And yet seven months after his death our President has the audacity to talk about how McCain was last in grade points at West Point. Not true. Not smart, he said. Until the President was pushed against the wall did he only allowed the flags over the White House and other places to be lowered after Senator McCain’s death. He claimed credits for the planning of McCain’s funeral and lamented he did not even get a thank you note from the family.

This man who dodged the draft under the pathetic malady of a bone spur tries to erase his own cowardice by belittling someone who served courageously. Maybe he thinks if he hugs the American flag long enough and yells: “I love my veterans” we will forget his own lack of patriotism. 

I keep remembering what the great Martin Niemoller said, again and again when he stood against Hitler. And we must not forget he was a Pastor during those terrible days.

“First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out 

because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speaks out

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left 

to speak for me.”

Why the silence Senators? 

Why the silence Congressmen?

Why the silence of all the evangelicals?

Why the silence of so many in this country?

Years ago someone asked Dick Gregory why he marched and spoke again racism and injustice and our country and around the world. He had received many death threats and many people despised him. He answered that question of ‘why” like this. , “When my grandchild watches on TV what was happening during those days she will say: “Grandpa what did you do when all that was going on?” “And this is why I did what I did.”

(I took this picture in the cemetery in Luxembourg, Germany where over 5,073 American soldiers are buried. General Patton is buried there.)

—Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Jesus Bore his Cross--A Lenten Word

When I was Pastor I would break away from all my responsibilities for two weeks of study. I went to Princeton Seminary. Those two weeks were always a transfusion and I always came back renewed. And every year while there I would wander up Mercer Street and make my way behind the Trinity Church. Back of that church was a powerful statue of Jesus shouldering his cross. As you can see from the photograph he looks back and his outstretched hand beckons all  to come. I was always moved by that silver statue. 

I don't know why I was drawn like a magnet to this statue but it's power always pulled me in. It reminded me of a little shy nine-year old boy who walked down the church aisle one night and tremblingly said, "Yes." Little did I know then or now what that word entailed. But that night I picked up my own cross and began to follow.

Like so many others it was always a sometime experience. For like our Lord I stumbled under the weight of that "yes-ness." Scared of just about everything. Poor, poor self-image, confused about life, depressed about things I could never name. Dreaming of better days far away from it all. 

But doors closed and dreams seemed so far away--if at all. And I would put down that cross that I had yes to a hundred times. And doors would open. Strangely I could never get too far from that yes. And so reluctantly I would once again pick up my cross and try to follow as best I could. It has been that way all these tangled years. Yes-No-Yes-No-No-Yes. And here in old age surrounded by memories and dreams --I am still drawn to that figure behind that New Jersey church.

One of my favorite quotes is: "He keeps going like a bullet-torn battle flag and nobody captured his colors and nobody silenced his drums." I love those words because I wish they were true in my own life. But I know better. But this I remember.  Once upon a time he bore the cross--and stretched out his hand to me. Nobody, but nobody captured his colors or silenced his drums.

So here I sit remembering. And how despite the ups and downs of so much--I cannot forget that Jesus bearing his cross and stretching out his hand.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Ever Been Stuck in the Desert?

photo by Johann Nilsson / flickr

"The desert is not remote in southern tropics,
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert in the heart of your brother."
--T.S. Eliot

Lent begins. And it began in the wilderness. Not in a church. But out there where the wind blew and sand got in your eyes. And nobody, but nobody was around except a few scorpions and sand fleas and silence. And its was there that the Lord Jesus hammered out where he might go and what he might do. Maybe more than that it was a time of enormous temptation. Like us he stood at cross-road and cross-road in that solitary place. It must have been tempting to listen to the Tempter. Do this…Do that. It doesn’t matter. Nobody, but nobody will ever know. And you will be successful. Which then and now in the world’s view is just about the greatest thing that could ever happen to you. 

And when the wilderness settles on us yet again—it is so tempting just to listen to all those jarring voices out there. Like Jesus long ago we have to struggle as he struggled. He learned something out there he never forgot. Maybe he remembered the teaching he learned at Synagogue. From one of the Isaiah scrolls:  “I will give you the treasures of the darkness, and hoards in secret places that you may know that is I, the Lord, the God of Israel.”

Leslie Weatherhead, a great English preacher of another day knew the truth of those words. He lived in England during those terrible days when his country and city was bombed night after night. His little girl so frightened she was scarred forever. He, himself faced again and again his own personal darkness. This is what he wrote:

I can only write down this simple testimony. “Like all men, I love and prefer the sunny uplands of experience when health, happiness, and success abound; but I have learned more about God, life, and myself in the darkness of fear and failure that I ever learned in the sunshine. There are such things as the treasures of darkness. The darkness, thank God, passes, but what one learns in the darkness, one possess forever.”

So maybe this Lent if you stand in your bleak wilderness. Loss of loved ones. Loss of health. Loss of friends. Loss of faith. Looking out on the madness of our time—we all need to remember what happened to our Lord. Destitute and famished,  Matthew says that at the end of that terrible forty days: “suddenly angels came and waited on him.”

Reckon in our time some angel just might come in the strangest form, and help us in time of need?

“In the deserts of the heart

      Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

                Teach the free man how to praise.”

—W.H. Auden

(This angel hangs over our kitchen sink. A gift in a hard time.)

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Gays, the Methodists and the Rest of Us

photo by William Murphy / flickr

Like most of you I have read with interest the Methodist decision not to allow gay folk to be first class members of their denomination. Their Book of Discipline still states: “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in the United Methodist Church.” The vote was very close—but the old rules still stand. What this means is that self-self-avowed practicing homosexuals cannot be full members of that church. So much for “open hearts…open minds.”

This decision is not new. My own denomination deals with with homosexuality with a vast silence. Which means that gay folk do not feel welcomed in many churches across the country. This is not easy problem to deal with. We have to begin where people are and so many people have not understood that these folk are just like the rest of us. I look at the crucifix on my desk and see those outstretched nail-scarred hands. They are for everybody. The church should begin to unpack what this all means when it comes to gays. And we need to help people understand the hard demands of the whole gospel. Gays are only part of the list of those we still have trouble with. 

Back in the early nineties when AIDS was rampant and many gay men and many others were dying of this dread disease—I received an invitation. Would I participate in a Healing service at the Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Memphis? I would be part of five or six clergy participating in the service. 

As the service began I looked out at a sea of mostly men who were ravaged by this disease. There must have been a hundred sick folks there. Maybe more. And beside them sat loved ones—Mothers and Fathers and and partners and brothers and sisters. They had come hoping for healing or love or understanding or maybe just courage. 

At a certain point in the service we ministers stood before the altar as people who wanted special prayers would come forward. Some were very sick and could hardly stand. They came with someone who loved them. They whispered their prayer-needs. “I am dying and I am afraid.” “I don’t know if I am infected but it is all I think about.” “The Bible says that we gays are an abomination—is this true?” Family members came. “My son is so sick and I just can’t stand it. I need help.”  A father came saying: “I don’t understand this gay thing—my son has AIDS and I don’t know what to say or do.” Another young man came saying: I have lost eight friends in the last year and I may be next.” “Drugs have just about killed me,” an old man said. Another said: “My preacher said what I am is wrong and I am going to hell…is this true—it scares me.” 

On and on they came. It was a hard evening. We preachers laid hands on those that came and whispered prayers for every need. That night changed my life. Suddenly I realized what we were doing that night was at the heart of the gospel message. Jesus said, “Come ye that are weary and heavy laden and I  will give you rest.” This invitation is not selective—even though through the years we have tried to pare down those words for so many of our prejudices. The divorced. Blacks. Those struggling with alcohol or drugs. People different from us. Immigrants. Men and women with moral problems. Prisoners. And, of course, gays. 

We have a long way to go—but to say to any person or group  that you are not welcomed here just wrong.  And we have said it a lot through the years. Somewhere one preacher told the story for serving communion one Sunday, As people filed down the aisle and knelt before the altar a young woman came. From her dress and makeup you could tell she was a woman of the streets. Kneeling she looked up and whispered—"Maybe I shouldn’t be here.” And the preacher held out the tiny piece of bread and said: “Oh yes—you belong here.” And kneeling there she sobbed and sobbed.

As we begin our Lenten journey I think of all those out there that feel disenfranchised from the church. My God, what kind of people are we? What kind of church have we twisted his words into? “Rend your hearts…and not your garments” says the old Ash Wednesday invitation. So with this issue of welcoming all is just part of a whole lot of things we have on the churches’ table—led us rend our hearts until we are all closer to the one who stretched out his arms for all.

I keep remembering what the old writer Dostoevsky said: “What keeps me going  is that I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that in the world’s finale something so great will come to pass that it’s going to suffice for all our hearts, for the comforting of all our sorrows, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity. And I want to be there when suddenly everyone understands what it has all been for.”

"What we think is ugly about sin is only the mask it puts on! 

If the mask were ripped off, we could see what God thinks is ugly."

    --Paul E. Scherer

photo by dewet / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Ash Wednesday-We Bear the Mark

photo by Lawrence OP /flickr

We stand in the long line. It is deadly quiet. Up ahead a Priest in white touches a forehead with ashes. One be one we come. The old, some on walkers, a smattering of teenagers. A couple holding hands. A man with palsy. Lots of grey-heads. But not all. Some young or middle-age. But it doesn't matter. Here in this line we are all equal. The beginning of Lent. Ash Wednesday. Hoping one and all we might just do this season different from the others. "Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world please, please stop in this line."

                            --Roger Lovette

So the old journey begins. When we first started an Ash Wednesday service in the Baptist church where I served, one woman came by puzzled: "Is this a cult?" she asked. I shook my head and she reluctantly let me sign her forehead with the smudge of a cross.  Walking away she was not quite sure what this was all about.

Maybe she was right. Perhaps this act is part of a cult. A cult of all those who are reminded once again that "we are dust and to dust we shall return." A cult of those who kneel and are marked with the sign of the cross. Reminded at this beginning yet another Lenten season that last year's smudge did not stay there long. And despite our yearning for some wholeness we still do not have. Some hope that as we trudge along this forty day walk we'll be better for the walking. Better than all our failures of last year. Hoping maybe, just maybe the pain of too many years will somehow not be erased but we will be released from our wondering about our future and that of the woman beside me I love so much. The old Bob Dylan song, "We shall be released" comes back to me. Dear God make it so.

And so, on Ash Wednesday just remembering once again as if for the first time we need that reminding smudge. We need to be told all over again that we really do need to rend our heart and not our garments. Rend our hearts? My old dictionary says rending means: To tear apart, to split or divide. It also means: to rip to sever--even to chop. Maybe all this means to get rid of all the old brokenness and all the smudges that I carry in my heart. 

I push up from kneeling and turn to go to my seat. I move past that stained glass window of one of the fourteen stations. Jesus falls underneath the weight of the cross. Wearing my smudge I hope when I fall like he fell years ago that I will remember that this is not the end of the walk. He will get up and carry that heavy cross up, up the hill. On this Ash Wednesday I remember He is one with us and we will be carried as he was carried on his own eagle's wings for whatever we still have to do. 

Maybe the woman was right. This is a cult of weird people who bear a mark and know deep in our hearts that it matters. That it matters terribly.     

                        

                                                      "Whenever we try to face life 

                                                              with nothing                                   

        but the strength that is ours, 

          show us, O God, how poor it is. 

           Then share with us thine own, 

              down the ways of thy steady purpose. 

                   Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

     --Paul E. Scherer

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Losing One's Faith Has happened to a lot of Preachers

"If you stay with us long enough...we will disappoint you."
       --Words from Pastor as new member joins

There is an old preacher story that made the rounds for a while. A man was being ordained to the ministry. The Sunday of his ordination he knelt at the front of the church as people came by one-by-one and laid hands on him. His little boy, sitting with his mother, asked : Mama, what are they doing to Daddy?” And the Mother said, “They are taking out his spine.”

Ministry in every age is fraught with danger. And there are people in every church that would take part in the removal off their Minister’s spine. It is almost a cottage industry the attacks that come to good people in every profession that are trying to do a good job. 

I have just finished a book called: Losing My Religion.The subtitle is: A Memoir of Faith and Finding. The author William C. Mills Is Rector of the Holy Virgin Orthodox Church  in Charlotte., North Carolina. After finishing college and Seminary he took his first charge in the church where he still serves. Starry-eyed and hopeful he started out to be a good minister. His was a small parish of about a hundred people. He worked hard and helped the church along. And about the sixth year—often it is five years—lightning struck. He found himself at cross-purposes with the “Known spiritual leader” of his congregation. He tried to

reconcile with this long-time members in his own green kind of a way. It didn’t work. When it came time for the budget and a raise for the Pastor this leader and his wife stood and protested the raise and listed charge after charge of the Pastor’s incompetency. His efforts at reconciliation fell flat. And this man and his wife that brought charges left the church and about twenty-five other people followed. 

In a small church this is especially a crisis. Money sagged—those left were out of sorts. Jobs need to be filled. This Minister experienced every minister’s nightmare. One day his house of cards will come tumbling down. They will hate me. Maybe run me of town. I won’t have a job any longer and I will feel like an utter failure. 

If you read this book—it really is a mirror of almost every Pastor’s journey. Some time in ministry there will come someone or a small handful of someones who’ll try to destroy your effectiveness and erode your self-worth. This happened to Rector Mills. His response? Faith slipped through his fingers. He wanted to run away. He did not know if he believed in the Jesus stuff anymore. His self-worth took a beating. His marriage and children suffered. He wanted to do anything but stay there in that half-empty church. 

The book takes the reader through his saga. Fortunately he discovered a Clergy-help Center close by, It was the beginning of his healing. He followed this with several years of counseling. Slowly his faith returned. He stayed in his church. The congregation began to come together and grow. He has learned a lot of lessons about himself and his relationships. Life began to slowly come back. Not church life simply—but real life. We Pastor-types make the mistake of thinking it’s all about church. This becomes the center of our world. Ask many Minister’s wives or husbands. Listen to the children of clergy. Many would not set foot in church—they saws up close what church did for their Mamas or Daddies.

I recommend this book to ministers and lay-people in the church. Many church leaders do not have a clue to some of the pressures their Pastors’ face. The New Testament talks about reconciliation, forgiveness and resurrection. Dr. Mills has found help and healing.

He has come to know that you cannot operate on yourself. All clergy like other professionals needs support and help emotionally. Most of the time that help must come from those outside the church. 

I recommend this book. It should help clergy who serve valiantly in the trenches day after day. This book can help all Pastors remember that the treasure always come in an earthen vessel. Consequently those of us who wear the collar know we make terrible mistakes sometimes. We must share the responsibility of the health and care of the church as well as lay people.There is help and hope for all of us broken people. Mr. Mills has reminded us that we cannot do this alone. We all need help. Many former clergy out there would have written a different story if they had the wise wisdom and help that books like this provide. 

Dr. Mills has done real service for the church. As Frederick Buechner has reminded us in The Sacred Journey when we open up our hearts it gives others permission to do the same. This makes for a healthy church and world.

Dr. William C. Mills is rector of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin Orthodox Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For further information you might visit his website: www.williamcmills.com

For years I was part of an organization whose purpose was to help troubled ministers. Hundreds of ministers and their families have received the chance to live again thanks to this organization. If you are interested in their work you might contact them. www.mtmfoundation.org

—Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com