Becoming Christian

James 1:17-27

Mark 7:1-23

A High-School English teacher was well known for being a fair, but hard, grader.

One day Tim received a B minus on a theme paper. In hopes of bettering his grade and in the spirit of the valentine season, he sent her an extravagant heart-shaped box of chocolates with the pre-printed inscription: "Be Mine."  The following day, he received in return a valentine from the teacher. It read: "Thank you, but it's still Be Mine-Us."

Today I want to spend some time talking about education, and in particular Christian Education.  It is something we value for our kids, we value having for the kids at church, and we  value it being offered for the adults as well.  We value Christian Education as a way of growing closer to God in our faith, as a way of learning more deeply about our faith, why we believe what we do, where God has been in history and where God continues to be in our daily lives and in the lives of the community.  We value this kind of education, but I also think that we may see challenges that arise with it.  We may have questions or concerns: will our faith become more theoretical than spiritual if we study it?  Will our faith become more intellectual than emotional if we find ourselves arguing over points in Bible study or in other classes?  Will it lose its mystery, will it corrupt our unconditional faith?

Because Jesus calls us to love God with our whole beings, including our minds, we are called to study, to learn, to engage God with all of our being, including our intellect.  Additionally, James Fowler talks about stages of spiritual growth or spiritual development, and notes the importance of Education as a part of that spiritual development, part of growing and changing and moving in our faith.  Beth Liebert, who also studied spiritual development emphasizes that no matter where you are in your faith development, no matter what stage you are in, the goal is to be as close to God as you can be at that stage.  No matter what your outlook or educational level, the goal is to find new and deeper ways to relate and understand God and to be more fully and completely present with God.  But all of it, whether you are progressing through stages of spiritual development or trying to get closer to God in your present stage – both involve conscious time spent with God in activities such as prayer, Bible study, worship and Christian Education.

But Christian Education is more than just a way to engage God with your mind, it is more than an opportunity to grow deeper in faith and deeper in our understanding of God.  Christian Education is also a service opportunity for you.  What I mean is that the presence of each one of you in Christian Education classes is not just a gift to yourself of learning, and time with God.  It is also a chance to add to the learning of others, to help them deepen in their faith commitments and understandings of God.  We learn in this place not only from our “leaders” of various classes, but from each other.  We learn and grow by sharing with each other our perspectives, our differences, our thoughts and feelings and the depth of our faith. 

In a meeting with pastor colleagues, we found ourselves talking about different CE classes that we had been part of, usually in a leadership role, and universally the story of each pastor was that we, too, had grown through the classes that we taught because of the comments, the contributions and especially the questions that arose in those classes.  One pastor in particular told the story of being pushed on the question of repentance and what that really meant.  My pastor friend gave the usual pastoral answer that repentance means a changing of direction, a turning.  But he was pressed on this by class members and one in particular who said, “Well, what about when a person tries to change, genuinely wants to change, but finds themselves slipping, as we always do, back into old habits and routines, continuing to make mistakes, continuing to err, and to hurt others?”  My friend had to think about this, and he found that while he gave one answer at the time, that he believed that what God really cared most about was intention and effort, none the less, the question stuck with him.  And he found that this pushed him to spend time, more time during the week praying on this, meditating on this and yes, studying it.  And for the other members of my friends’ class as well, they found that the question itself led them, too, to reflect, but also to pray, more on the nature of sin, of repentance, of forgiveness.  This was so much the case that the following week the class ended up dumping the topic that was supposed to be covered to instead spend the time talking about what they had discovered through prayer, thought and study during the week on the topic of confession, repentance and forgiveness. 

For me personally, the lectionary group that I had in Cleveland – a group of 12 pastors that met every week to study scripture together, was an incredible time of profound learning for me.  I also found that it was a way of truly deepening my personal relationship with God (as well as with other people of faith!).  And what I learned did not ever just come from the person leading that week, but from all of us who were there each week.  When even one of us was absent, the conversation just simply was not as rich.  I miss that so very much, but found I could not replicate it in this place where schedules are so busy and tight. And that is really a sad commentary about what we value.  Our value as pastors, as “teaching elders,” should be on learning and teaching.  When we can no longer make time for the learning part… what does that say about our call and what we believe it to be, what it should be? 

Being in a class, we also can learn from ourselves.  This is more, I think, a surprise to all of us.  I want to read something to you that I wrote about my lectionary group in May of 2013.  It is very personal, it is very dear to me, but I want to share it with you because it talks about the power of being in an educational group and its ability to help us grow, even from our own thoughts, as we are given the opportunities to reflect on our lives and God’s presence and actions within them.

Gratitude for the struggles

I am part of a wonderful and amazing lectionary group - a group of 10 pastors who meet together weekly to study scripture, pray together, eat together, sometimes sing together and sometimes play together.  We are brother and sister Christians on the journey towards a deeper understanding of Christ, of God, of the Spirit and of love.  But we are also friends - people I know I can call on and count on in crisis, people I do call on and count on in crisis. We are a "house church" in the truest sense of the word, a community offering care that is not just theoretical but practical as well.  I am so deeply grateful for every single person in this group, deeply thankful for their care, their contributions to the community, their deep and abiding friendships, the gifts they give simply through their weekly presence.  Therefore, it is with a little trepidation that I say that I hope that I am not betraying confidences by reflecting a little in this public way on our group conversation this last Tuesday, which was one of those that has stuck to me, stuck with me, and continues to push on me to think, to pray, and to grow.

Our leader for the week (we all take turns leading the Bible study) as well as the other participants had much wisdom to offer on many different topics ranging from the Spirit (and our failure as Presbyterians to often give as much space and attention to this part of the trinity as we do to the other two persons), to the passage from Paul in Romans 5:1-5.  At one point in the conversation we were particularly discussing verses 3-5, "And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

I admit I had been very quiet that morning. This is a week of anniversaries - difficult, painful anniversaries and I am not unaffected by these.  I was even, I found, a little concerned that I might be bringing the group down with my sad energy.  But I found it more than a little interesting that the group was discussing how unhelpful it is when people tell each other that they are supposed to be grateful for their sufferings.  Comments like "everything happens for a reason" and "God never gives you more than you can handle" are not helpful. They minimize the pain we suffer, they discount our experiences in the moment.  Telling people they should be grateful for their suffering because it will produce endurance which produces character which produces hope is not, cannot be helpful.  I agree with all of this.  But then somehow it was either said or implied (or I heard it wrong, which is also possible) that people can't really be grateful for the deep traumas they endure.  And there I was, sitting in pain, sitting in grief, sitting in memories of a year ago when my children lost their father to prison, and my life radically changed as I became a single parent and sole provider for my family, for my household, a leader of a congregation without a partner to support me, sitting in memories of hurtful comments aimed my way by people who were themselves hurt by what my partner at the time had done, sitting in regrets for things that should have been or could have been done differently, sitting in loss - and from that place, from that place of pain I heard myself saying, "I am grateful for the suffering that I have endured."  Huh?  Did I just say that?  "I have deepened - in my person, in my faith, in my compassion and empathy, in my ability to understand and forgive, in my commitment to see what really is and what is not, mostly in my connection to God.  I have deepened and become more the person I want to be, the person God calls me to be, because of my struggles."  Silence.

"Okay," came the response, "but would you have said that two years ago?"

"No", I laughed.  And then, again to the surprise of myself more than anyone I added, "and yes."  Two years ago, or even two and a half years ago, there came a time when I thought I might actually crack, when I felt that maybe I was falling apart.  The world was nothing like I thought it was.  My marriage, my partner, my life, my ministry - nothing was what I thought it was.  And the things I prayed for were answered by "no" and "no" again.  Every morning I found myself just repeating the mantra, "Please, God.  Please, God!"  over and over and yet things were not getting better.  Every day brought more pain and new levels of hurt.  And yet...and yet, it was in the midst of that, in the midst of all of that, that I felt God's presence so incredibly strongly.  I felt God's arms holding me, carrying me, speaking to me of presence and love and care.  I connected with people whom I never would have connected with at such deep levels, I made friends (some for a reason, some for a season, and many for a life-time, including folk from that very group) quickly and deeply who were amazing and supportive and wonderful and who continue to shine God's light for me.  I learned who was real and true and caring (most of the people I knew and connected with, actually!) and who could not walk with me through the crisis, and I came to understand that those who could not walk with me - that too was not out of meanness, but out of their own situations and needs.  People shared with me their own sufferings at a much deeper level because they knew I would get it, and so it deepened my ministry as well.  And I developed a much, much deeper appreciation for the beauty around me in the midst of darkness.  I am much more grateful for the birds singing, the sun shining, the breeze blowing, for little gifts and kind words, open smiles and strong hugs, the presence of children in my life, play, dance, music.  I see blessings and feel blessed where I did not see them or know them or love them before.

Did I want any of this to happen?  Of course not.  In my wildest, deepest, most awful nightmares I never saw this coming and never could have imagined the pain and suffering that I would have experienced over the last two and a half years.  But it would be inaccurate to say that I am ungrateful for it.  Because God did bring gifts, God did bring life, God brought presence in a way I had never experienced before.  And while I am still a person who makes mistakes, big and little, who "sins", who hurts others,  I still see that I am becoming more fully the person God calls me to be because I have deepened through the suffering.  How could I not be grateful?

I would not say that I "boast" in my suffering.  I would not say that I "take pride" (different translation) in my problems.  But I would say that God was present through it all, that I am different because of it, that I am grateful for the struggles.  I pray the same for all of you.  I don't wish pain on you, but pain will come.  And so my prayer is that when it does, that you, too, would thrive through adversity, grow through the struggles, deepen and find gratitude in the midst of it all.

The point?  Putting ourselves in situations where learning is the goal not only teaches us through the words of others, but teaches us through our own reflections.  When we attend Christian education classes and Bible studies, we not only affect our own learning, but we add to the learning of others.  In addition, we have a greater opportunity of asking for what we need and want our Christian Education to be.  Still, very few adults in Churches do attend adult education opportunities.  And again, I find myself asking what that says about us as people of faith.

The passage that we read today from James told us, “you must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves.  Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror.  They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like….(others) don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives.  They will be blessed in whatever they do.”  Part of being Christian is growing in our faith.  We say we do that, but we are called not to just say it, but do it as well through worship, prayer and also through study.  We say that we love God with our whole hearts, souls and minds, but we are called not just to say it but to actually faithfully engage our faith with our minds as well as our hearts and souls.  What we are most in danger of forgetting when we look in the mirror is that we are beloved children of God.  That’s often what we forget.  That’s what we fail to see.  But again, study reminds us of this.  Time with God reminds us of this.  Engaging God weekly but more, daily, reminds us of this.

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?" To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a teacher, Bonnie. Be honest. What do you make?"

Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You want to know what I make? (She paused for a second, then began...)

"Well, I make students work harder than they ever thought they could. I make a C+ feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor winner.  I make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents can't make them sit for 5 without an I Pod, Game Cube or movie rental.

You want to know what I make? (She paused again and looked at each and every person at the table). I make kids wonder. I make them question. I make them apologize and mean it. I make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions.  I make them care about serving other people.  They use their God given brain, and they learn that their brain was made to love and grow in understanding of God and God’s creation. I make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe and respected. Finally, I make them understand that if they use the gifts God gave them, work hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life…

(Bonnie paused one last time and then continued.)

Then, when people try to judge me by what I make, with me knowing money isn’t everything, I can hold my head up high and pay no attention because. …. You want to know what I make?  I MAKE A DIFFERENCE.”

We do this for each other every time we attend a Christian Education class.  We teach each other, we learn together, we make a difference for our own faith, but also for the faith of others.  We have an opportunity to be part of making a difference for each other each time we meet together in a Bible study or an adult education class.