"It's the end of the Church as we know it, and I feel..."

      I had the great privilege of spending a day and a half with some of my fellow clergy folk over the weekend. We were on a retreat together that for me was very helpful and centering.  But while we were focused on spiritual practices, what I want to write about is more the recurrent themes that I heard throughout the retreat of frustration, depression, and feelings of discouragement.  I want to talk about the pervasive feelings of many (most?) pastors these days of insecurity, of being in a wilderness that seems to have no end, of not knowing the path, of feeling a bit lost in a turbulent and changing sea. As I've mentioned to my congregations both present and past on more than one occasion, the national Church is dying.  Conservative estimates are that within 10-20 years the Church as we know it (across denominations, and even across different faiths in the United States) will no longer exist.  20 churches a day closed in 2013, and that number is on the rise. The estimate was that over 10,000 churches closed in 2015.  In terms of members, 1.2 million people stopped going to church in 2015 alone.  The reasons for this are numerous, and if you are a pastor, you know that there is another article written every day about why and who and how to reverse this trend, what successful churches look like, what the dying ones are doing wrong, what has worked and failed to work.  Article after article and seminar after seminar tell us how to do it differently, what someone believes is the thing that will change this all around.  AND, the reality is, none of it is working.  What might work for one congregation seldom works for another.  We have seen attempts to slow down the decline that have bumped attendance at particular individual congregations for a while, only for a dramatic loss to follow a few years later.  Most successful churches currently center on a charismatic personality, until that person moves on, is caught in a scandal of some kind, or dies, at which point their church usually collapses.  The reality is that our congregations are all aging.  Church is not a priority for our younger families at all, if it is even on their radar.  Church has become very suspect, in large part because the ultra conservative churches are the loudest and espouse an exclusive, judgmental world view that is a real turn off for most of us. Fighting among different faith beliefs and religions doesn't help.  The bad things churches have done shout from our history books, the good we have done is often forgotten. Liberal churches don't believe in evangelizing so we allow the term "Christian" to be co-opted and we don't speak out about who we are. Progressives are afraid to ruffle feathers so we keep quiet, and often become irrelevant: country clubs rather than places that actually do the work of God.  Or we do the work (feeding, housing, advocating, caring for the poor and oppressed), but again, quietly, without fanfare, and so go unnoticed and un-noted.  But even without this, other priorities have taken our time and attention. Spirituality seems to be more individual and less rooted in community at the moment.
     About every 500 years there is a reformation of sorts: things change, dramatically, as far as the religious scene. The Protestant Reformation began exactly 500 years ago this October, so we are due for another one. The clergy I talk to see this. We recognize that God will be doing a new thing, that we can't see it yet, but there will come a time when we know what that is, and that death is just a step towards a new life that looks different; that times in the wilderness often precede very fertile growth and change. It won't be the same.  There is comfort in that, in the belief and hope that a new thing is coming.
      When I can step outside of myself and sit in meditation or delight in the beauty of the creation that God has made; when I can look at my children and hear their ideas and hopes and dreams for the future, when I can do all of that, I am more than okay with where we are heading.  I can be excited to see what is coming next, not seeing a new thing as a judgment on an old thing but as a step into something different for a different time.  I can see the mistakes we've made and make, and I can hope that the new thing coming will be more loving, more giving, more true to what I believe is the intention towards Love and connection and community. The future of faith can look radically different and I am okay with that.  I want a kinder, more understanding, gentler world where we do stand up for the hungry, for the poor, for the underprivileged.  I want a world where people understand that we are all truly connected and that therefore it is in our best interest to make sure everyone has what they need: food, shelter, community, kindness, respect. I can and do hope for a more inclusive, uplifting, empowering sisterhood and brotherhood of love, hope and practice. I am okay with anything that moves us in that direction. I know it will be different, and I look towards the beauty in that.
      But for those of us who have made this our career, I have to be honest and tell you that however faithful we are, however hopeful and trusting and convicted of resurrection we may be, that there is fear that accompanies all of this. From a practical place, finding hope and joy is more challenging. First of all, people need someone to blame and the clergy are the obvious scapegoats for the anger felt by those who are losing their communities as churches close down and can no longer afford to continue. While there are arrogant clergy, most of the good folk I know err on the side of taking on more than is their due.  We take it in, a sense of failure, a sense of not being good enough, and we take that in deeply. Depression is a very common experience among clergy these days as we work harder than ever, longer hours, lonelier hours, with less result, less return, less sense of accomplishment, community, growth. In the world outside of the church there is a huge mistrust of clergy.  To have the constant experience of meeting others, and in conversation sharing what we do for a living only to see the walls come down and the judgments descend, to experience the distancing response of those around us, is disheartening at the least.  We feel like pariahs, too often, and can end up isolated within our declining churches. Along with the depression comes anxiety as we face the questions of our own futures. I need to be able to work another 20 years at least.  I am the sole support for three children.  And not a week goes by now when I don't wonder how I will be able to get them to independence before my career is defunct, along with my ability to support them.  I have had the experience of applying for different work, only to find that the distrust of clergy makes stepping into another career as difficult as remaining in this one. Some of you may say that sounds unfaithful. But my experience is that God gives us freewill, does not micromanage our lives.  Bad things happen to good people, and yes, people are given more than they can handle on a regular basis. (Look at the folk around the world struggling with famine, lack of clean water, war, deportment, exile, and then tell me it is unfaithful to fear bad things coming.  As scripture itself tells us, "the rain falls on the just and unjust alike.")
      Fear can be a gift.  It can motivate and move us to look ahead, to start the wondering, "what if..." and to try to plan accordingly. But in a world where the future is increasingly unclear, where each day brings new uncertainties and new concerns, the future that we fear is very dim.  The "what ifs" are unreal glimpses at what is very cloudy.  We stand at the entrance to a cave.  What is beyond is anyone's guess, and the way through is not marked.
      So we wait.  And we watch.  And we listen.  And we try to hold each other up as we walk forward, reminding one another that we are beloved children of a gracious Divinity.  We search our dreams and our meditations for meaning and direction.  We study and read and attend conferences. We pray.  But we see what is coming.  It is the end of the Church as we know it.  And we feel all sorts of things in response to that: hope, joy, excitement; also fear, anxiety, depression and worry.
       Each day is a gift.  And I rest in that reality as well.  It helps to know we do not walk this alone, even as we often feel alone in our individual faith communities.  And it helps to trust that we have been called to the places we currently serve.  We are called here for now.  This time in the desert is meaningful. We will wait and look for the next summons, the next beckoning forward.  And until then we will be faithful in our work, striving to do what God would have us do, striving to serve as the people call us to serve, stepping forward on the journey even as we wait for the next turn in the road to come.

Gossip - the Straight and Narrow

   Humans have a propensity towards gossip.  We do.  We discuss what we hear.  We discuss the news.  And we talk about other people.  I think there are a lot of reasons for this.  We like sensationalism and if nothing exciting is happening in our own lives, talking about others sometimes provides the drama we crave.  We like being important and having an important story to tell about someone else can give us a sense of importance at that moment.  We like being the ones to know something before others do and have the inside scoop.  We like having something to talk about, and talking about other people is easy.   Eleanor Rosevelt is quoted as having said, "Great minds discuss ideas.  Average minds discuss events.  Small minds discuss people." And perhaps that is true.  But it is also true that we aren't bad people because we like to gossip.  We are just human people.  And while others can get truly hurt by our gossip, we don't usually set out with the intent to hurt them.
    Sometimes our gossip is more personal and attacking.  Sometimes people tell stories about their own lives that make someone else look bad.  It took a long time but I did finally realize that those who did this, who told stories about others that raise themselves up as victims and make others look bad, are usually doing that because they are afraid the other person might tell their side first and would make them look bad.  They tell their story so they appear to be innocent, the victim.  They tell their story so the other side won't be sought.  They tell their story so others will not think that they did wrong.  The ones who don't need to gossip about what has happened are usually the ones who are actually less at fault, and often more confident about that: they believe they have nothing to fear, they have accepted and come to terms with their own parts in the situation, so they have no need to gossip or badmouth someone else.  Sometimes people tell a story about someone else as a way of convincing themselves that they are not at fault.  Same thing.  If they tell their story loud enough and long enough, maybe it will be true.  If they can paint a picture in which the other is wrong, maybe in fact the other WILL be wrong.
     I learned this the hard way.  But the truth has truly "set me free" in the sense that when someone badmouths someone else to me, I have learned to listen for the pain and insecurity of the person doing the gossiping, instead of listening to condemn or judge in any way the one being gossiped about.  Sometimes it changes my feelings towards the gossiper. But I do not allow it to change my opinion or feelings about the one being badmouthed because I choose to remember there is another side, one I have not heard.  Again, that has been incredibly freeing.

    But as I reflected on all of this today it occured to me that perhaps there is a more graceful way to see gossip as well.  I was reflecting on my "story" of the last 5 years.  I told very few people about what we were going through.  It was pretty public, so most people heard about it from other sources. But there were a few trusted folk that I was able to talk to directly about what had happened, what was happening at the time.  Each one of those people I begged to not gossip about it.  I told them it was my story to tell and I pleaded with them to allow me to be the one to tell it when and if I was ever ready to do that.  They all promised to hold my confidence.  And in every single case that story was passed along to at least one other person.  Each person I told talked to at least one other, despite my eliciting promises from each of confidence.  For a long time I was really hurt by that.  In a couple cases, where the story was passed not just to one or two others but to many others there is still some hurt. In a couple cases people I trusted and cared about heard the story from other sources and instead of talking to me, passed it along as gossip to others, and that too was very painful.  If they cared about me, why didn't they talk to me instead?  Or at least, why didn't they talk to me first? Why didn't they ask for my story?  Why didn't they reach out to me?
     But there has finally been enough healing that I am beginning to be able to put myself in their better shoes and still see reasons they might have chosen to share the story.  I can imagine the pain that they felt knowing someone they loved was living through hell.  I can imagine the struggle they felt in having no one to talk to about something that was shocking, devastating, a story one hears about, not a reality someone you love lives through.  In some cases, people may not have been sure if they could ask me, or if it would make things worse to ask me my story.  Maybe they were afraid they would have come across as nosy, insensitive or "abulance chasing" if they had tried to talk to me about it.  Maybe they simply didn't know how to offer support, so talking to others, passing on the information, maybe to someone who would be better able to respond, may have felt safer, and more caring.  Maybe it felt like it was all they knew how to do.
     Whatever the reasons, I find I have moved into a place of offering more grace around this.  At the time the gossip was heaping coals on an already burning body.  It was painful.  But as I said I have moved into a place of understanding and forgiveness around this.  I can have compassion, as I grow in comprehension, for those choices that others made.
    Still, what I have learned from this is that we really do need to be careful about what we say about other people.  Gossip hurts.  It may be human.  It may be understandable.  But it hurts.  We need to strive for a better way.  When we fail, we need to find grace for ourselves and one another.  That grace can give us the strength and courage to try again, to learn, to grow, and hopefully to do better.

Yesterday's Sermon - Who Are We?

2 Timothy 4:6-18
Luke 18:9-14

In the passage we heard today from Timothy, we hear the struggles and pain of a person abandoned by friends, by peers, by everyone.  We hear the suffering of a person who is alone, trying desperately to connect and get what he needs in the midst of the pain he is feeling.  He is alone, at the mercy of those who would and did attack him and imprison him.  He is also human.  And as a human, he feels the sting, the hurt, the deep pain of their betrayal and abandonment.  But even in the midst of that, even in the midst of that, he returns again and again to a deeper understanding of who he is.  And that deeper understanding is that he is a child of God, a God who loves him, who will stand by him, who will justify him, who will not abandon or betray him.  That is what he returns to each time.  Who is he?  A child of God.  Who are we?  Children of God.

The Luke passage is, in a way, a set up for all of us.  Do we find ourselves feeling like the tax collector or like the Pharisee?  If we are the Pharisee, we are condemned by Jesus for judging the tax collectors and others.  If we see ourselves like the tax collector and others, then we have put ourselves once again in the position of the judge – this time condemning the Pharisee.  No, the only way to understand this parable is to see ourselves once again by different definitions.  We cannot be defined by human definitions.  Perhaps in some ways we are both tax collector and Pharisee, and several commentaries I read emphasized this – that we must recognize that we are both people who strive to be good, and people who fail to be completely good at all times.  We are both people who at times recognize our failure and at other times people who are grateful that we haven’t fallen as far as others – and in that gratitude become people who judge and do the opposite of what Jesus calls us to do.  But, again, I think the greater truth, the truth of both of these passages is slightly different.  We are not “tax collector.”  We are not “Pharisee”.  We are not judge and judged.  Who we are, at our deepest level is, once again, that which is sometimes hardest to feel and find.  We are children of God.

I know and understand that all of us have had times of feeling hurt, devastated even, by betrayal or the rejection of others.  That’s part of the human condition, all of us experience disloyalty, treachery, and dismissal from people we love, we all experience these kinds of losses in our lives.  We all have, we all do.  But if we can separate our identity from what other people think, or say, or do to us…if we can live instead in the hope and joy of being God’s children, then we can face anything.  We can stand strong in the face of pain and loss, we can rest secure knowing we are loved and held no matter what.   That doesn’t mean we won’t feel the pain.  Does it still hurt to feel alone?  To feel inadequate?  To feel judged and/or to judge others?  All these things still hurt.  As we saw, the Pauline author of Timothy felt the pain, too.  We know of his deep and abiding faith.  And yet he still hurts and struggles.  That is human.  But he SURVIVES and has meaning and joy and life and love because of who he is at the deepest level – he is one who belongs to God.  For us, too, in those times of loss and pain, rejection and betrayal, we don’t have to lose our sense of self, our sense of value, the joy and meaning we find in life – because we belong to God.  And being God’s children gives us joy, gives us meaning, gives us love even when we are not getting it from other humans.
 
In the book The Life of Pi, Pi says, “Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.  Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up….Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out.  It was a hell beyond expression.  I thank God it always passed…The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart.  I would go on loving.” (p209)
God offers us that.  God offers that constantly and faithfully – connection, love, light, meaning, joy.  But the challenge for us is to take the personal time to connect with it, even when it is hard, even when there are pressures not to, even when we feel despair.

Mitch Albom described it this way, “The (Rabbi) puttered from room to room in quiet contemplation.  Having survived the Great Depression and two world wars, he was no longer thrown by headline events.  He kept the outside world at bay by keeping the inside world at hand.  He prayed.  He chatted with God.  He watched the snow out the window.  And he cherished the simple rituals of his day: the prayers, the oatmeal with cereal, the grandkids, the car trips with (his wife), the phone call to old congregants."(p 223)

I'm reminded of the joke about the man who complained that he wasn't able to reach his pastor by phone one day; when the clergy replied that it was his/her day off, the man snarled:  well, the Devil never takes a day off.  To which the wise pastor smiled and said:  true enough and if I don't take a day off I would be just like him.

And why would he be like him?  I think the slope into evil starts with a feeling that we lack love.  If we feel unloved, we stop caring enough to love in return, despite the rejection.  My kids and I have been watching Star Trek the Next Generation episodes.  And we saw an episode yesterday in which the crew encountered something that defined itself as a “skin of evil”.  It quickly became clear that this “skin of evil” defined itself this way and fed off of others’ pain because of its own hurt and feeling of being abandoned.  It self-defined as something that got joy out of others’ suffering because of its rage at having been left, rejected, abandoned.  Humans need love to live.  They need love to survive.  We know this from studies.   And when they don’t have enough of it, or when they are damaged by rejection and abandonment, that is when they can turn to evil.  But the truth is that no one is ever without it, not really.  Because God offers it constantly.  And if we can remember that we are loved, if we can turn to that love even when human love fails us (and it will because none of us is perfect – we all make mistakes and we all suffer from them and from the mistakes of others), then we do not have to sink, we do not have to give up, we do not have to become bitter or jaded or revengeful or torn apart by rage.

Paul’s faith continued with him to the end and so even at the end, his life had meaning and grace.  When we recognize, in reading stories like the one we heard about the Pharisees and tax collectors, that none of what we do or feel – for good or for bad defines us, we, too, can hold on to that meaning.  Who are we?  We are God’s children.  That is your identity.  That is what gives you value, worth, and the blessings of this day.  That is what defines who you are.  You are God's and ultimately, nothing else matters.  Amen.