Poetry

A poem written by Kathy Fuller Guisewite in reflection on the shootings in Arizona last week. I got it through Brethren newsline and want to keep it going:

Still without a full-time job,
I am roaming the house today
feeling the need to do something valuable
or at least something that is
not wasteful.
Aren’t we supposed to be productive
at all times
at all costs?
Aren’t we supposed to be
producing something,
something tangible and
monetarily significant?

And yet,there is a deeper pull today.
It pulls toward an awareness, a vague awareness
that beckons at the edges of productivity to slow down
and lean into intention.

Our world keeps crying out
for us to lay down the cravings that
satisfy only the shallow part of self
and quench the thirst of depth,
of calling beyond word or voice
to what yearns to be born.
Can you hear it?

What is it? What is struggling to find life?
What blocks that first breath
where all that was, and all that is, and all that can be
merge together in an interlocking shout of wholeness?

Why can we not put down the guns?
Why can we not put aside our divisions?
We choose these. We choose the freedoms that take life.
And the news is filled with sorrow
all the while we force ourselves to do
the daily routines,
counting down our days until
the something more or the something better arrives.

My little dog begs to
sit in my lap.
Her warmth enhances mine,
and I should like to think
that mine enhances hers.
As we sit together, I recognize
a still intuition that leads
the little birds to feed, the snow clouds to fill the skies,
and the afternoon light to hang low.
Somewhere in South Africa my daughter mourns something
unnamable.
The weeping she cannot contain.
And I wonder, how is it that we aren’t
all on our knees
weeping for what we cannot name.

There’s no unlocking the peace of tomorrow
until we stand wide-eyed to the pain of today.
This is the work we must tend.
These are the wounds we must heal.
This is the price we must pay until we return
to the first breath,
the knowing
that waits.

~Kathy Fuller Guisewite, Jan. 10, 2011.
(For more of Kathy’s poetry go to www.beautifultendings.com .)

Getting Started Again

For anyone that is still reading, I want to take this opportunity to let you know that I am getting ready to start posting again. It has been nearly a year since I have been actively engaging this effort, so its pretty much going to be like starting all over. But be watching for some posts to start coming in the next week or so. Hopefully I will be better at sticking with it this time!

I also wanted to point your attention to another blog which I have found engaging in recent weeks: Carl Desportes Bowman's "Brethren Cultural Lanscape." Lots of good discussion around insights gleened from the 2006 Brethren Member Profile Study and all things Brethren. If you are into that sort of thing, check it out at http://culturexplore.com/bmpblog/

More to come soon (I promise!)

Baptism and Dedication

This past Sunday I had the pleasure of attending worship as a vistor with my in-laws to support their family in two significant life events -- the baptism of their oldest child and the dedication of their youngest. In addition to the significance of sharing in these moments with their family and the enjoyment of being a visitor in worship for a change, I was left with some food for thought on some issues I have been wrestling with in recent years related to baptism and child dedication.

Basically, the question boils down to this: is there really a significant difference between the baptism of a child and the baptism of a pre-adolescent or adolescent teen? Here are some of my thoughts:

• For those youth who have grown up in the church and in Christian families, is not their"believers'" baptism as much or even more about the faith of their family as their personal faith? Most of the youth I have baptized have indicated among their reasons for wanting to get baptize the desires of their family. Some in fact, have done it only under compulison.

• When is the age of accountability for such a decision as wanting to follow Christ? How old does one have to be for us to be able to say they know what they are doing when they "say yes to Jesus"? One of the easiest metaphors for me to understand when thinking about believer's baptism is that of a marriage -- in the sense of making a serious life commitment. But I know that for most of those youth I have baptized and seen baptized in recent years, I would never say they were ready for marriage. So why do we accept that they are ready to make a commitment to be a Christ-follower?

• On both sides of the spectrum of infant/believers baptism, I have heard people recount how significant that event was in their lives and in their faith. And I have heard countless younger adults (and some older adults) question why they got baptized as a youth when they had no idea what they were doing and only went through with it because their Sunday School class/friends were doing it and/or mom or dad or grandma/pa wanted them to do so. So I feel conflicted in counseling with such persons, who desire a "menaingful" / chosen baptism experience after a more or less compusory youth believer's baptism.

• What is the true difference between infant dedication/believers baptism as it is currently practiced in most of the COB and infant baptism/confirmation as it is practiced in many other faith traditions? Is it simply the deferral of using water until later? In many respects the liturgies are similar and many youth baptism/membership classes follow a confirmation pattern or curriculum. Is it a difference in name only?

These are only some of my thoughts on the subject which reflect years of wrestling that were brought into focus in my family this weekend. In some respects, I honestly wonder if the question really matters in the end. But it has a deep and volatile history in our faith tradition, and it is something that I consistently need to address as a pastor working primarily with youth and young adults. So it is on my mind and I have to make decisions and take action one way or the other on it.

I'd be interested on any thoughts any of you who are reading might offer...

Homosexuality

The second sexuality sermon (on homosexuality) has now been delivered. A manuscript is available at the BWCOB website: http://www.bwcob.org/sermons/Zepp/09Oct25ResponsetoHomosexuality.doc

Several comments have already been offered under the previous post on sexuality, so do check in there to get caught up on the conversation. I will be responding to the comments offered there, but I am hoping that the continuing conversation related to how we as a church respond to homosexually oriented persons shifts to this post.

I am very interested to hear how people are responding and what continuing reflections and reactions are being generated. Hopefully we shall have some good, honest conversation...

Part of the solution

In the summer of 2002, I attended the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference in Louisville, KY. I was finishing my second year as the interim pastor of youth at the Lancaster Church of the Brethren, a newlywed preparing to enter volunteer service with my wife that fall. I confess that I went to conference somewhat disillusioned with the church and looking forward to a year away from it. That fall Amanda and I would begin a year of volunteer service, and I had hopes that that time would help to clarify the growing tension in my love/hate feelings for the church and to discern my calling, whether in the church or out. But what I experienced at conference that year nearly sealed the deal in my contemplated exit from the ministry and potentially the church, and left a sour taste in my mouth that still lingers.

Conference fielded a query that year on the propriety of licensing and ordaining homosexual persons to the ministry. I honestly do not remember whether there were other significant items of business on the agenda that year. What I do remember was the spirit that saturated that conference, a spirit that was palpable to me in not only in the contentious business sessions addressing the query, but also in worship, in the exhibit spaces, even in the hallways of the convention center and the surrounding hotels. It wasn’t pretty. It was a spirit of hatred and fear, of distrust and judgment. Instead of brothers and sisters coming together to discern the mind of Christ, I experienced two sides at war – conservatives verses progressives, BMC verses BRF, us verses them. Instead of searching to understand the scriptures together, I saw our sacred texts used as weapons – words pulled out of context and hurled back and forth with no more love than a pin pulled from a grenade.

I do not know how much of my perception was grounded in my own wrestling with the church at that stage of my life and call. But I do know that I was not alone in my perceptions. And I also know that the tension over the question of homosexuality is in no way unique to our denomination nor to the church. Dan Kimball has named homophobia as one of the 6 negative perceptions consistently cited by those who like Jesus but not the church.

In my continuing love/hate relationship with the church, I sometimes wonder which church will carry the day on this issue -- the church which led the abolition of slavery or the one that saw nothing wrong with one huan being owning another, the church that birthed some of the greatest institutions of higher learning in the western world or the church that has set itself in opposition to science for centuries.

And then I realize that this is the church. And that it's not which church "wins", but whether we as people of faith have the fortitude to stick with an imperfect institution and with imperfect sisters and brothers in the constant journey to reach for and to realize the best of our calling and the best of ourselves -- to be the change that we want to see in the church and in the world. And as much as the debate over homosexuality drives me crazy, and as much as I may be tempted (driven?) to walk away from a church that is tearing itself up over the issue, I believe that we are (or at least can be) better than what I experienced at that 2002 Conference.

And I need to be part of the solution.

Sermon 1

Well, the first sermon on sexuality is in the books. If you missed it, or want to check it out again, a manuscript is available at the BWCOB website: http://www.bwcob.org/sermons/Zepp/09Oct18HumanSexuality.doc

As I reflect on the responses I have been getting, I continued to be amazed and humbled by how many have commended me for being "courageous" enough to address the topic. I have been fond of responding that the line between courage and foolishness is thin -- perhaps its not the place to go for an extended walk!

Be that as it may, I am indeed hopeful that these sermons will not be simply 2 weeks and done, but will spark some discussions and conversations that develop depth and continue well beyond the week of delivery. So to that end, I post this sermon excerpt, followed by two questions for us to consider:

...the church has largely surrendered its ability to speak on the subject of sexuality in a meaningful way in our culture, and even in the lives of many Christians. In our overwhelming silence concerning most matters of sexuality, we have left individuals and young people pretty much on their own in expressing and understanding their sexuality. In our overwhelming negativity and judgmentalism when we do speak about sex, we have rendered the church – and by association, the Christian faith – practically irrelevant in sexual decision making for the majority of people whose feelings and life experiences do not confirm a negative attitude toward sex.

But I believe that our faith is relevant to the expression of our sexuality, and that that relevance extends well beyond a laundry list of sexual sins to be avoided. I believe that sex is a precious and beautiful part of our human nature, a gift of God woven into the very fabric of creation. Furthermore, I believe that sex is more than a private matter, and that contrary to much popular rhetoric that would suggest that what we do between the sheets is nobody’s business, sexual expression and ethics is a legitimate community affair – indeed I believe sex is everyone’s business.

So: 1) Do you think that sex/sexuality is indeed everyone's business, or would society and the church be better served by following a policy of "don't ask/don't tell" and/or "to each his/her own"?

And 2) If sex is indeed a legitimate community affair, how does the church claim or reclaim a meaningful role and voice in a context that includes media, science, civil authority, social norms and taboos, etc?

Sexuality

This weekend I will begin a two week sermon series at BWCOB on sexuality. The sermon this week (10/18) will focus on sexuality in general, and the second (10/25) will deal with how the church responds to homosexuality. It is not the first time I have preached on these topics, and I am sure it will not be the last. They stem from two basic convictions: 1) that the church (generally speaking) is/has been sorely negligent in addressing these topics in honest, helpful, and relevant ways and 2) that the church has more to say in the conversation than "thou shalt not". It is my hope that these sermons will help to engage at least our congregation at BWCOB (and maybe some beyond) in a healthy and ongoing conversation about issues of sexuality, sexual ethics, inclusion, justice, morality, biblical interpretation, and more.

I will be posting links to the sermons which will be posted online at the church website after they are delivered, with the hope that this blog will be a place where the conversation can develop and continue. While I have been slow in posting on this blog to date, the opportunity to have continuing coversations in this way is one of the primary reasons I decided to give blogging a try.

I hope you'll be a part of it...