The Morning After Dying

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”  These words accompanied the imposition of ashes on my forehead last night as I attended our church’s Ash Wednesday service.  I sat with a sixth-grader to whom I am a mentor as he prepares for confirmation and I wondered what he, at his young age, thought about this reminder of human mortality.  Indeed, if he is like most people at any age, we would prefer to avoid talk of death.  So why does the church engage in this morbid ritual?  Hold that question a moment.

We are also in a season of political campaigning, with each candidate trying to prove her, or his, worth.  I can imagine how grueling a campaign can be for each candidate - never a moment’s rest.  I made the observation some years ago that all of us are engaged in a campaign of sorts.  Early on, as children, we seek our parent’s approval, wanting to please them.  Then we go to school, another arena in which we must prove ourselves worthy both to peers and teachers.  There follows a whole lifetime of proving ourselves to employers, customers, colleagues, etc.  The campaign to put our best foot forward is relentless, as if we are continually appealing to those around us, “Vote for me!  Vote for me!”  Isn’t it exhausting?  It seems as if the only relief we’ll get from this endless campaign is when we die . . .

And so, here is the blessing of Ash Wednesday and the gospel of Jesus Christ.  To be reminded of our mortality is to be set free from the campaign to prove ourselves.  The Christian message is that not only are we all mortal, but we have already died.  In baptism we have been buried, we have died to the old self, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”  In other words, since we are “already dead,” we no longer have to engage in the unending campaign to prove ourselves to anyone.  We now live by the breath of God and the mercy of Jesus Christ.  Stripped of our illusions we are made starkly aware that there is no campaigning necessary to be accepted into God’s good graces, and we no longer need to justify ourselves to anyone else.  “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”  If we look at Ash Wednesday rightly we then see that the reality of our mortality actually sets us free.  How liberating it is to be released from the endless campaign of self-justification!

For me, I admit putting this freedom into practice has been a life-long effort.  Even Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Movement is said to have frequently reminded himself while patting his head, “Remember that you are baptized!”  Again, a reminder that our old self is dead, and we now live in Christ, free of ego needs and restrictions - liberated to be our true selves, made in God’s image, unencumbered by our need to prove ourselves to anyone.  In Christ Jesus we are already justified.  We have already been “elected,” as it were.  This is freedom, indeed!

This is all a bit heady for my young mentee to grasp, but someday I hope he can live into the freedom of dying, to be raised with Christ into a new life, a new creation, released from the need to be anyone other than who God has made him to be.  May it be so for you. 

Who's Right?

Father Roland Murphy, professor of Old Testament while I was in seminary, was the one who revealed to me that scripture is always in conversation with itself.  Rather than assuming that the Bible is a unilinear book without contradictions, what we find are a variety of opinions within the many books of the Bible, often at odds with each other.  Father Murphy’s favorite example was Proverbs 26:4-5.

Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself.

Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.

There are multiple, more complex, examples throughout the Old Testament as well as New.  One that has puzzled me is found in Luke 9:40.  The disciples tell Jesus they stopped someone from casting out demons in Jesus’ name because that person was not following them.  But Jesus suggests they should leave the person alone, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Then we find Jesus apparently saying the opposite in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” and goes on to say that applies even to those who are casting out demons.  What are we to do with this contradiction?

Throughout my ministry I have tried to bite my tongue regarding judgment of other Christians.  The words of Jesus in Luke 9:40 have tempered my critique of different theological viewpoints and spiritual expressions.  Whoever is not against us is for us.  But in recent years I have been appalled by the words and actions of “Christians,” so-called, who have gained the lion’s share of media attention with what seems to me unChristian, or at least an un-Jesus-like, witness.  

Church history is filled with examples of the Church failing to follow Jesus, indeed, acting in direct opposition to the gospel.  The persecution of Jews, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and even in more modern times the surrender of the church in Germany to the politics of the Third Reich, are all sobering instances of what Jesus warns against in Matthew 7:21.  My present distress regarding the Church in America is that we are at risk for repeating the history of Germany in the last century with Christians crying out “Lord, Lord,” but espousing un-Christlike opinions and engaging in un-Christlike actions.

I caution myself in this regard.  After all, what if I am the one in the wrong?  What if gun-toting, anti-immigrant, gay-bashing, judgmental Christianity is what Jesus intended?  If so, then count me out.  This is not the Jesus who I found so compelling when I was in my young adulthood, who called me out of my self-centeredness to give my life in a vocation of service for the least, the last, and the lost.  I thought we were to be non-violent peacemakers, showing hospitality to the foreigner, and mercy for the outcast.  I thought we were to bind up the wounded, forgive the sinner, and proclaim liberty for the oppressed.  For over thirty years, was I wrong?  

Unbranded, Crucified and Risen

A well-known and growing church in my town recently changed its name.  The rationale for this change was commendable, I suppose - to more accurately identify what the church had become in order to more adequately define themselves to the public.  This “rebranding” of the church has become “a thing” that churches do for the purpose of making themselves distinctive, attractive, and appealing to the world at large.  Such brand-consciousness is one of the many ways that churches have adopted the gospel of consumerism to achieve success in the religious realm.  

For many decades the denominational brand was sufficient - we were Baptist or Catholic, Lutheran or Methodist, Presbyterian or Pentecostal, etc.  These were the brands that said all that was needed about any particular church.  No more.  In my over thirty years of ministry I witnessed the movement, particularly among Protestant churches, to diminish the importance of denominational identity in favor of a more localized, individual brand.  The reasoning went that people didn’t really care anymore about denominational affiliation, they were simply looking for a community of people (like themselves) where they felt a sense of belonging.  This shift has even given rise to the diminishment of the word “church,” itself - with names like The Cove, The Arbor, The Sanctuary, Crossroads, Good Shepherd, and the like - every local church seeking to competitively distinguish themselves from the church up the street, like restaurants vying for patrons.  And, of course, each local church seeks to develop their own logo to establish their brand.  One billboard along the highway points to this shift, advertising, “We’re church - just different!”  Whatever that means. . .

Call me cynical but I believe such innovation is missing the intent of what it means to be a people of God.  Indeed, “innovation” is the latest buzzword in church-growth strategies, which reminds me of a business seminar I attended decades ago.  The keynote speaker told us that his mantra was “Innovate or die.”  Apparently, church-growth-experts have adopted this idea in the belief that church is a business that will only succeed if we constantly reinvent ourselves, striving for the idol of relevancy in order to attract the most consumers of what we have to sell.  The church with the best entertainment, widest cafeteria of choices, or most fine-tuned vision statement, will, in this model, achieve the greatest success.

Pardon me for being a contrarian.  The church was never established to be a success in the world but to be an outpost of the kingdom of God, and necessarily, an alternative to the world’s definitions of success.  The church is built on Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, not on any growth strategy.  The church does not thrive because of rebranding but because the gospel is proclaimed - that Jesus was crucified, dead and buried, and on the third day, rose again.  The church lives not because of innovation, but because Jesus lives.  The church’s missional success is not always quantifiable in consumerist terms.  The church does not exist to be relevant to the world, but to make the world relevant to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  There are times when the gospel will be proclaimed and the hurting world will beat a path to the church, but there are times when the gospel will disturb and even repel a world bent on self-destruction.  Jesus wept over Jerusalem, lamenting, “How I have longed to gather you under my wing as a mother hen gathers her brood, but you would not!”  The gospel is attractive for some, and distressing for others.  No “brand” can capture the nuances of what it means to be an Easter people.

Branding strategies are misguided, at best.  God will always have a people in the world.  Sometimes a host.  Sometimes a remnant.  To be God’s people does not depend on our efforts to position ourselves properly in the religious market.  To be God’s people simply means to have died to ourselves in order to be raised to new life by the mercy of Jesus.  Such risen people will always provide the necessary witness that God expects, and that the world needs to see and hear.  Could it be that an empty cross is all the branding we need?