Remember when plane trips included conversations with strangers (at least if you got on alone)?  You never knew what being hurled through the sky in a tin tube might bring out in people. But then came computers, and earphones, and video screens—to leave us each in our own worlds. Privacy gained. But something lost.

I got on a plane recently, prepared for the journey. As soon as I could, I pulled out my computer and readied my earbuds, so I could focus on a sermon or something—lost in my own world. The person next to me took her computer out too, and then her credit card to buy Internet so she could get her own business done. But the third person in our row would have nothing to do with this. He wanted to talk. And so he began, first with my neighbor—all about his adventures and interests and life's work. I listened in, intrigued by how brash he seemed. After a while, my neighbor gave up on her work and gave in to the encounter. Pretty soon she was as friendly to me, too, and pulled me in. She even shared her snacks.

I learned about her fascinating work in sustainability technology. Turns out she works for a company that one of our own Pinnacle members once led. We then discovered that he is an orchestra conductor, and an active member of the very church I was heading to for a meeting. We knew several folks in common. We had a delightful conversation about sacred music, jazz masses, and more. He knew of Pinnacle, and of our sanctuary. I even own a CD he recorded! We went back and forth between three-way and two-way conversations. They were discoveries, each. And we even did a little touch of work here and there. It was delightful.

I know an elderly saint who told me once that whenever she enters a crowded place where she's going to be for a while, she prays for the people she'll be spending time with. She prays that they might be the people God would bring to her, and that she might be the person God might bring for them. In a world where we've become so lost in our screens and our business and our distractions, she seeks encounter, surprise, and blessing. I remembered her during that plane ride, and I resolved to do more of what she does. For on that trip I was reminded that the Spirit can bring us to each other in surprising and good ways, and in ways we would never predict—as long as we let Her. I hope we will.

Responding to two police shootings, the murder of five police officers in Dallas, and cumulating images of unraveling, Middlebury College poet Jay Parini wrote an opinion piece on CNN.com.  Part of it seems worth quoting:

So now we have it, that dreadful thing: Americans at war with each other on many fronts. Not surprisingly, this conflict inhabits our political rhetoric, which has become increasingly debased, even childish.

We quickly blame the other guy: the Mexican or Wall Streeter, the immigrant, Muslims, 'millionaires and billionaires.' In our confusion and malaise, we have become a deeply angry nation. As such, we reach for scapegoats, and they're easy to find. Anyone who doesn't look or sound like ourselves becomes suspicious.

All we know is that we're hurting, and we desperately want two things: someone to blame, and someone to lead us to the Promised Land.

We've indeed reached what amounts to a spiritual crisis in America, and I use that term in the broadest sense. We can't love our neighbors because we can't see or really hear them. We 'other' them easily, and divide ourselves in dozens of ways: Republicans and Democrats, blacks, browns and whites, North and South.

We have a dizzying array of sects, with churches on every street corner, but these churches often feel no connection to people in other churches or those -- perhaps the majority -- with no religious affiliation at all. The splintering goes on and on.[i]

I think Parini is right in his diagnosis, and in his naming of the crisis as spiritual as well as political.  I worry that he may be right, too, in his comment on the church.

Last week a small group of us at Pinnacle were in conversation with Dr. Allen Hilton about a new ministry he is developing.  He's calling it "House United Ministries," dedicated to bringing people into creative, Spirit-led, dialogue.  Many at Pinnacle remember Allen from when he preached in our pulpit a couple of years ago.  He preached about the Christian call to unity in the face of differing views on important things.  He asked us if the church might have a strong and unique call now to be a light in the midst of dividing darkness, to be a reconciling presence in a argumentative world, to be a place where left, right, and passions off the spectrum can talk together—even about important things.  That sermon was one of just three non-retirement sermons that have been applauded in the past few years (note that applauding sermons should never become a habit!).  The other two were about pretty much the same thing.  One of those touched on unity in the face of strong opinions on sexuality and marriage.  The other was about Jesus' call to us to love our enemies. 

The call to this kind of difficult, even arduous, love may be more urgent than ever.  To find ways of talking about things that matter, even when difficult, without hurting each other.  To ground our dialogue in a larger story of compassion, justice, and transformation in God's love that makes more sense than our individual opinions.  To learn to trust, even when we also call people to high standards, advocate for our understanding of Christian values, and confess our own shortcomings.  To have a real and lively discussion of what those Christian values are, and to make faithful decisions even while we disagree.  And to do all of this humbly, refusing stark contrasts and learning again the art of measure, qualification, and careful use of language.  That might be the call.

So enough of uninformed conclusions.  Enough of accusations.  Enough of forgetting that life can be complicated, history can be many layered, others can have perspectives we do not understand or have never imagined, and that intelligent Christian education can be a redemptive gift to the world.  Time to embrace all those ideas again.  That may be our call, in this time, in this place, to the next while.

In the 1930s, in the face of the rising extremism in Europe, a Jesus sympathizing Jewish thinker named Simone Weil wrote an essay she called, "The Power of Words."  In it, she gave words that we might take to heart even today.  They, too, seem fitting to remember, and quote again.  She wrote this:

In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. . . . Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts.  In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.[ii]

Let's let the church reveal another possibility.  Let's stop battling windmills and remember the cross.  As we do, let's respect the crosses others bear, and honor the one we claim.  And from there let's let conversation begin and resurrection be spied.  

[i] http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/opinions/dallas-police-shootings-america-anger-parini/index.html

[ii] “The Power of Words,” in Simone Weil, An Anthology, ed. Sian Miles  (New York: Weidenfeild and Nicolson, 1986): 222, 223.

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Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service [CC BY-SA 2.0]My September 27, 2015 sermon in 700 words, thinking about Pope Francis' visit to the U.S. (lots more here):

Did ya get your "pope on" this week? 

Here he comes, the leader of over 1 billion Roman Catholics at a time of extraordinary change.

Here he comes, shifting the tone and in some cases even the content of his church's social witness.

And here he comes, inviting us all to a new engagement with the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.

Whatever one thinks of specific things he says or does, one cannot deny his impact. Religious and non-religious alike seem fascinated.

Here's one thing I see in all of this: I think that religious or not, we are so thirsty in our culture for words of moral weight that are uplifting and not downgrading, that promote peace and offer hope. We're so thirsty for words that lift us into something more important than who wins and who loses and that give a reason to want more for ourselves and for each other than what the latest commercials tell us we should want. We're so thirsty for careful thought that goes deeper than the pre-processed, politically obsessed, and emotionally manipulative entertainment that so often passes these days for public conversation about things that really matter.

In the end, he uses these kinds of words to call us to a new vision of sacrifice, both for each other and for the greater good—for the health of families, for people who are excluded, for the young in all that they face—no matter their color, their citizenship, their wealth or their potential. 

And so here I make my own appeal: Isn't this vision what each one of us, deep inside, really want—even if we don't know how to talk about it or how it always works? No matter our circumstance or station, don't we want to live a noble life, to live for something greater than ourselves, and to bring our families or others we love into that kind of living?   

We owe that joy to each other, don't you think? 

We certainly owe that joy to our children. We owe them a faith that is about more than refuge. We owe them a faith that is about adventure, about a love that's worth giving their lives to.  

In one of his homilies this week, Francis said this: "Every Christian man and woman, by virtue of baptism has received a mission. Each one of us needs to respond as best we can. . . . What about you?" What about you?

Listen to the September 27 sermon here

I grew up on one of those now classic suburban neighborhoods of post-war track homes, full of kids.  It was a winding street of poplar and oak trees developed in the very early 1950s.  Young couples rushed to these houses, with many of them having babies in the same years.  We all grew up together.  I knew who lived in almost every house, and which ones had kids and at what ages.  The whole block was our playground--running through each other's yards without worry.   

When we'd play hide and seek, the space to hide was pretty large.  We'd run in every direction, with the one who was "it" having a daunting challenge ahead to find all the players.  I had my favorite places to hide, of course.  One of them was behind the bushes in the front yard of one of the houses.  I still remember the day I realized the core truth that every dedicated hide and seek player realizes at some point.  Lying in my perfect spot, the spot from which I was hardly ever found, and from which I could emerge when the coast was clear and make it to the home base without being caught.  There I was on that one day when I began thinking about the game itself.  How do I really know there's anybody out there looking for me at all?  How do I know that all the other players haven't either been caught or made it home and decided they were done and so had already left for other adventures?  What if I just stayed where I was and didn't move at all?  Would anyone ever find me?  What is this dialectic (okay, I didn't use the word "dialectic") that I was experiencing between being right in the midst of life and being totally separated from life?  Alone or known?  Forgotten or cared about?  Free or bound?  You can put it in the language of a 9 year old or a 39 year old; it's the same question.  Can we hide so well that we're never found--physically, emotionally, psychologically, politically, theologically?  How far can we really go?  

I guess that's why hide and seek is such a great game.  It is a teacher of life.  

Psalm 139 asks that hide and seek question of God:  "How far can I go to escape your Spirit?"  And the answer is there's no distance we can go.  We can try, for sure.  We can run from each other.  We can run from the church.  We can run from ourselves in some ways.  Or we can move slowly, but over time find ourselves so far away that it feels like we've hidden without wanting to--forgetting so much of what we knew.  But the neighborhood of our spirit is still known to God's Spirit--and we can be found.  This is what faith teaches.  We can be found.  And we can come home--even if home feels new.  

Hid and sought.  Free because found.  God with us in the bushes as well the familiar streets.  Just need to look up and out and beyond where we are sometimes, and know we've been in the home zone all the while.  It's harder for some of us than others, but--by God's faithfulness--it's possible for each of us.

"Olly, olly, all come free!"

Click photo to see videoThis "flash mob" of the U.S. Air Force Band at the Smithsonian is good fun. In the spirit of Advent, I thought to link to it as my BLOG this month. As great as it is to watch, it also raises a couple of ideas for me. One is a delightful picture of Advent and it's hope. The other is about the little paradoxes with which we live.

The first is just how much like the feeling of faith this is. We walk around living life like all the world around, and yet we hold inside ourselves an awareness that there's a song of beautiful praise and joy always just about to break out in the world. God is always here, ready to stop us up short, move our hearts, shape our imagination, give us a new melody to sing—even while we're just going about our business. The question is whether we'll notice or not, and what we'll hear, and how we'll let it change things. That's what this time of year should feel like, I think.

Second is maybe a bit more controversial, even though I think actually less radical than my first idea. It's the interesting questions raised by the fact that it's the Air Force band. What are we to do with that? Is that a good thing, underscoring those parts of our national values that are rooted in Christian ethics and piety? Is that a bad thing, forcing non-Christian musicians to play sacred music or overly identifying church and state? I know that I love it. I just don't know quite how to think about it. Someone from, say, a predominantly Muslim country would understandably infer from the fact that the Air Force band is playing and singing a Christian hymn proves that the American army is a Christ's army. I, for one, don't want to say that. I prefer to believe that even while we defend certain Christian values we, as a nation, are also critiqued by those same values. The church certainly does more than uphold. It also undoes, and recreates, and humbles.

And maybe that's exactly why this whole thing is so interesting. It's the very ambiguity with which we live—wanting something new and beautiful and life changing while living within all the difficulties and ambiguities of our lives. That's Advent, isn't it? Mary and Joseph slogging to Bethlehem, with hope for relief and yet within the realities of their day. Making their way. "The joy of our desiring . . ."