March 25, 2018 - Palm Sunday - For Where Two or More are Gathered in My Name...

Palm Sunday. I did not attend Creator worship due to strong symptoms of an allergic reaction that I go through every Spring around this time.

I still was a participant in an on-line presentation led by theologian / philosopher Peter Rollins yesterday called Salvation from Salvation. This was the last Sunday session in his series Atheism for Lent. He considers this Lent discipline to be a decentering practice regarding what we may believe about God. He also describes this as part of his "liturgical technology".

Let me break those statements down a bit.

For those who believe God is beyond our ability to understand through our individual faith journeys at particular times, Rollins offers Atheism for Lent. For three years now the group has challenged my concepts of God and lead to new spiritual understandings. This becomes a chance for the freedom to doubt - normally not an essential part of my spiritual routine. This is my discipline for Lent and is definitely a difference from giving up chocolate.

The question of whether this presentation was worship or a lecture is a legitimate one. Let's tackle possible concerns. Physically I was alone yet I interacted with the lecturer, receiving responses to typed questions. There was no ritual but there were liturgical rituals discussed. There was no doctrine that all of us would have agreed on and even a belief in God was not shared while what I felt what I understand as Dietrich Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity to be.

Missing Palm Sunday specifically turns my reflections to group behavior, group think and faith. The traditional reading of Palm Sunday is that as Jesus rode the donkey into Jerusalem, the crowds were shouting “Hosanna!” to acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah, as shown in their address “Son of David.” Theirs was a cry for salvation and a recognition that Jesus is able to save.

Last Sunday the joy of Palm Sunday and the sorrow of Holy Week was mixed in the response Jesus gave to Peter and Andrew about the Greeks who wished to see him. This gave new significance to me of the crowd of Palm Sunday. I was once taught that obviously a different crowd was gathered a few days later - the crowd who called for Barabbas to be released rather than Jesus. That does not appear to me to be obvious any more. What resonates with me this year is how fickle people can be when our expectations are not met in life and how our groups influence our thoughts, behavior and faith.

On this Palm Sunday I remember past Palm Sundays. I didn't see what the worship attendance was this year but if it follows Creator's trend there were, perhaps, a few less gathered. There are obviously many factors and reasons that have been well discussed over the years as to why church attendance overall is on a downward trend in America currently.

This, however, may be another blessing from the God of surprise and unexpected reversals. We imagine some "ideal" Christianity and sometimes, like N.T. Wright whose book we finished, the model we look to is first century Christians. If that is true, shouldn't we also accept the status of Christians that that time? Read 1 Corinthians 4:13 "when we are slandered, we answer gently. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world." That Christians would be a misunderstood minority in society rather than in control of it seems natural.

We are drawn to and love the triumphant Jesus to whom every knee shall bow and confess that Jesus is Lord. Jesus on the cross, alone, identity unacknowledged, part of the refuse of the world also draws our hearts and compels us to empathize. We vacillate between these two opposite perspectives that we find in the Bible and neither can be ignored. Yet the power of the second contains what is truly unique about the Christian experience.

Celebrating Palm Sunday outside of attending worship changed this heart radically today. Rather than go in peace - which closes every worship - perhaps go in pieces seems the more appropriate blessing to end this particular post.

March 12, 2017 - Second Sunday in Lent: Part 2 Pastor Michelle's Sermon - You do not know where it comes from or where it goes

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?"

Pastor Michelle's drew her for inspiration for today's sermon from a pastor friend's recent Facebook post that she shared with us, “The time is surely coming when we must all become mystics, or we will all become atheists...”

She then commented "I think what my friend is getting at here is the fact that everywhere we look it seems there are persons and forces working against God’s loving, life-giving purpose for the world. In the face of so many overwhelming problems, you and I aren’t going to be able to hold onto our faith for long, unless we cultivate a deep, abiding spiritual connection with God….

I confess I am truly Nicodemus in the dark when it comes to knowledge of God. More often I search for and attempt to see signs that appear to me to proceed from God rather than the world. When I pondered the Facebook post today my mind jumped to a different phase - "The time may be coming when we become mystics and atheists...”

Why do those words engage me more than what appears to be a black and white choice? For the past two seasons of Lent I have committed to hearing lectures, reading challenging philosophical writing, contemplating religious pieces, and engaging with postings in a Facebook group led by Peter Rollins called Atheism for Lent. For years before that I read about, and was intrigued by, many mystic experiences of God.

First, let me say the my concept of atheism now is not antithetical by definition to being either a Christian or a mystic. I do not think of atheists as necessarily "contributing to forces working against God’s loving, life-giving purpose". Nor do I subscribe to the assumption that belief in the supernatural is a prerequisite to being a Christian. A Christian atheist is a neither a paradox nor an untenable position, even though I can't claim to be one.

Atheism for Lent is hard and, at times, spiritually raveling. Particularly in Lent, to fully embrace crucifixion, the death of meaning and the Jesus; plea "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  - I find this, rather than giving up food or another exercise of will, has become a profound Lenten discipline.

What initially drew me to this group and this exploration? One inspiration came several years ago, when it was published, when I read what Mother Teresa once wrote about herself:

"I call, I cling, I want ... and there is no One to answer ... no One on Whom I can cling ... no, No One. Alone ... Where is my Faith ... even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness ... My God ... how painful is this unknown pain ... I have no Faith ... I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd in my heart ... and make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me and I am afraid to uncover them ... because of the blasphemy ... If there be God ... please forgive me ... When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me ... and yet the reality of darkness, coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul."

I recognize this unsatisfied longing and love for God that, at times, exists in me. For some, these words were scandalous and some judged these words as an admission that Mother Teresa was secretly an agnostic, if not an atheist. I thought her honesty about this lack of certainty and "faith" made her decisions more holy, given her life and sacrifice. They echo in my soul and I respond to them like I do Jesus' plea on the cross.

My wife has asks if I accept atheism only for Lent. A fair question and my answer is always no I do not become an atheist. This no also fills me with a bit of fear and regret that I rarely express, since no is closer to the truth but that answer is, in the end, not completely truthful either.

My fear is captured in Mother Teresa's quote. I am scared of the unanswered questions and the possibility of blasphemy. To admit I still struggle with the emptiness and agony she describes is difficult to accept. My regret comes from a lack of courage or understanding to do much more than temporarily take on that emptiness and agony for a brief moment only to retreat in the next from being bold in dealing with that dark, cold and empty reality. However, what I experience seems to be rooted much more in spiritual timing and grace, more than will.

These questions about how I understand God have moved me from potential worship of false Gods and idols in my life. The questions have served as a reminder that God is beyond description and still I must describe God working within me. They have finally been questions about the true nature of existence and have helped me map the contours of the my faith regarding how best to live in this world.

“I am what I am,” is the answer the burning bush on Mount Sinai gives when Moses asks it what it is.
Ernst Bloch, however, maintains that this is a mistranslation of the original Hebrew Ejher Asche Ejher which actually means “I will become what I will become.” In Bloch's reading, the unfolding of the holy spirit is something which is yet to come, the expression of an unfinished process.  This is why certainty and faith may not provide an immutable understanding of God in my life.

There is a parable that made me ponder how to be a disciplined atheist. 

John Wisdom’s Parable of the Invisible Gardener

Two people return from a journey through the jungle and come upon a clearing.
In the clearing, flowers are growing among the weeds.

One says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.”
The other replies, “There is no gardener.”

They pitch their tents and keep watch.
No gardener is ever seen.

So the believer says, “But perhaps the gardener is invisible.”

They set up a barbed-wire fence.
They electrify it.
They patrol the clearing with bloodhounds.

Still no gardener is detected—
no shocks, no cries, no movement, no scent.

So the believer shifts again:
“The gardener is invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shock, and has no scent.”

At this point the skeptic asks:

What remains of your original assertion?
In what way does this invisible, intangible, undetectable gardener differ from no gardener at all?

Why Wisdom tells the story

Wisdom isn’t trying to “disprove God.”
He’s asking something more unsettling:

• At what point does a belief stop saying anything?

• When every possible challenge is met not with evidence but with redefinition, what is left of the claim?

• Is the disagreement really about facts—or about how language works?

For Wisdom, religious belief often functions less like a hypothesis and more like a picture we live inside, something that shapes meaning, not something easily tested.

That’s why this parable keeps showing up in Rollins’ work, it presses directly on the question of faith that survives the loss of certainty, and whether God-talk is about explanation… or about orientation.

The questions contained here give the reasons why I know I remain Nicodemus in the dark when it comes to my knowledge of God.