Beyond Our Comfortable Christianity....

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- Jesus Christ, as quoted in

The Gospel of St. John, 13:34-35

Today in church, my esteemed Rector preached one of his best sermons, one that elevated and moved me and the others who were privileged to share in it.  Ruminating on the Beatitudes, he began by noting that, given the layout of the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes which form its core are really the first of Jesus' lessons in Scripture.  He then noted that Jesus' first Beatitude is focused on "the poor in spirit," those for whom life's burdens cause pain and/or doubt, whose suffering we have all felt/shared at some point in our journey.  He further noted that our "brokenness can lead us to see the Kingdom of Heaven" as well as to recognize the myriad blessings that we still invariably enjoy amidst our pain and that we have all been poor in spirit at one point or another in our life journeys.  And then he asked a simple question that 'set it off' for me:  

"What role do we play in creating the Kingdom of Heaven"(here on Earth)?

He went on to exhort us that "We are called to walk with each other in the Darkness" (to which I've added the capitalized 'D' to reflect the widespread and deep sense of foreboding created in so many by this amazing - and, to many, horrifying - first week of the new Administration).  He then shifted to the current furor around the new president's immigration ban and how, regardless of your view on it politically, it concerns us all and especially those of us, our neighbors whom we're called to love just as much as ourselves, who are directly affected by it.  After which he relayed a story from his participation in a Sanctuary Churches organizational meeting earlier in the week.  Suffice it to say that as he recounted Alejandra's experience as an illegal immigrant in our society, at that moment there were eyes brimming with empathetic and guilty tears as well as an awareness that our inhumanity today hearkens all the way back and relates too well to that in biblical times.  Our religious forebears, the Jews of antiquity, have also been refugees at many points in their journey and suffered greatly under various regimes, not dissimilarly to how Alejandra and her family suffer now.

And then it hit me:  If we are truly called to love our neighbors as ourselves and called to help create the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth, what do we feel compelled to do every day to live into this spiritual calling?  The question that coalesced was a simple but powerful one:

Who have I or you blessed today?

Oh sure, some of us come to church reasonably regularly and by supporting the institution can claim some credit for making a meaningful contribution to our neighbors' well-being.  We may even participate on a committee or two over the course of the years.  And we volunteer occasionally.  In sum, we're self-considered "good people."  And, indeed, what we do and what we contribute are truly good things.

But did this goodness cost us anything, really?  Did we have to sacrifice meaningfully to achieve it?

Whenever I ask myself this seriously - and others rhetorically - the answer always seems more tepid than it should be.  If I/we follow a Patron whose altruism was complete and whose example of selflessness truly legendary, shouldn't our experience of followership be a more meaningfully proactive one?  If Jesus gave his life, shouldn't we at least have to give enough to force us out of our comfort zones?  If we're really going to call and consider ourselves Christians, shouldn't we be forced to get beyond our 'Comfortable Christianity'?

When I look at my own congregation, whom I'm fortunate to serve as a Warden, I'm proud of our collective good works.  And yet, in my heart of hearts, I know that we could do so much more ... if we were able to push beyond our comfort zone, our Comfortable Christianity.

Yes, the community kitchen that we support served almost 69,000 meals to neighbors in need last year - something of which we should all be proud because our support of the church leads directly to the support of this worthy effort - but, truth be told, only a small percentage of those who volunteered during this service last year were fellow congregants.  In fact, in this blessed communal meal provision and hunger relief effort, the majority of volunteers are community members who are not members of our church.  I ask myself how many meals we might be able to serve were, say, 25% of our congregation volunteering regularly in this worthy cause ... or 50%....

The same holds true with respect to a recently founded effort, called the "Caring Community," in which we do good works for neighbors in need who are mostly also fellow parish members.  And, despite a growing and impressive list of kindnesses extended - be they meals cooked and brought to shut-ins or rides given to and from doctors' appointments or any other number of legitimately good deeds, what our Jewish friends call mitzvahs - we are always struggling to find more people to participate and thereby to alleviate the increasing burden on the small, core group of leaders who've built this burgeoning and beautiful legacy.  I can't help but ask myself the same question: what if we were able to get 25% of our parish to volunteer regularly, how many more people could we serve?  Or 50%....

In sum, we're a good church, a positive, caring community, but we're also largely focused on what goes on inside the church and far less aware of and committed to taking the love we share in the church out into the broader community and society in a more meaningfully impactful way.  We are afflicted by Comfortable Christianity.

And this affliction is quite costly, though in a less obvious way: its primary toll is in a sort of dual opportunity cost.  The first opportunity cost is that we have engaged fewer people than we could, so we do less good than we can.  This in no way diminishes the appreciable good that we do, but it does represent a huge opportunity missed to do even more of God's work right here and now.

And the second opportunity cost is even less obvious but equally meaningful: because we miss opportunities to serve, we miss opportunities to be enriched by our own experience of helping to create the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.  We miss literally tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of chances every year to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And if you've ever done a good deed - especially for someone who can never 'repay' you - you know that the reward of giving - that feeling of having loved generously - is likely even more beneficial to you, the giver, than your kindness is to the receiver.  The cost of Comfortable Christianity, it seems to me, is hundreds of thousands of opportunities to bless and be blessed every year.

(If you're wondering about my math, here it is:  Our parish has over 600 members.  If each of them were to do a mitzvah each day, this would mean that we'd perform 219,000 good deeds in a year.  While I'm sure a meaningful portion of our fellows are doing just this, many are not, thus my belief that we're missing a huge opportunity.  And lest you be drawn to suggest that we may not know all the good that our members do - a suggestion that's both positive in intent and accurate/agreed - we can intuit from how very hard it is to find Caring Community volunteers that whatever their current level of contribution, there's a good bit more that could be given, in alignment with the Gospel imperative.  And now that we've had this little sidebar, imagine if each of us did two mitzvahs a day, one in the morning and one in the evening: how much more meaningfully could we invoke the Kingdom of God here on Earth?)

Please be clear that I'm not criticizing: I truly do appreciate what we individually and collectively do ... but I'm also clear that it pales by comparison to what we could do were we more aware and committed to overcoming our Comfortable Christianity.

For example, what if we were able to summon 50 volunteers to our annual Habitat volunteering effort rather than the typical 5 to 10?  (Or what if we sponsored two such annual service opportunities?)  Or if we were able to get twenty regular volunteers for our Caring Community rather than the core handful or so (and the especially committed founder and leader who still does even more than the rest of the small team combined!?!)?  What if....

As I ponder this sense of sub-optimal spirituality, I invite your suggestions.  As a committed leader in my church, I will endeavor to address these underaddressed opportunities in the years ahead, so any creative input as to how I can help motivate my fellow parishioners to give even more generously of themselves would be greatly appreciated.  After all, as a Warden, I'm bound to help lead us to achieve one of our stated strategic goals: to be(come) a 'Cathedral in the Community.'  Ultimately, we wish to be known by how many and how meaningfully we bless our neighbors.  Now all we have to do is to mobilize more impactfully to get there, including by being able to answer that simple question more powerfully affirmatively every day:

Who have I/we blessed today?

Are we a positive contributor to our broader community?  Absolutely.  But, were we to be more proactive in loving our neighbors as ourselves could we do even/so much more?  Absolutely, too.  And therein lies the challenge: whether we can overcome our Comfortable Christianity to become "Crazy Christians" as our Presiding Bishop calls those who bless proactively and indiscriminately.  Or, to borrow the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks' term, whether we can rise above being Comfortable Christians and truly become Followers of Jesus....

"Living fully, loving wastefully and being all that we can be" is my definition of seeing the presence of God in human life. To live for another is to escape the natural human drive to survive and to enable us to live for others, to give ourselves away in love for another. It means placing someone beside ourselves at the center of our affections. It is to recognize that God is part of who we are and that we are part of who or what God is. God is the quality of life that I see in the picture and memory of Jesus that transcends the ages. ... That is finally why I am a committed Christian.

- Bishop John Shelby Spong 

Who are we? And what have we become?

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

1967

OK, it's been a week, a long exhausting week, and there's a fire burning in our wall.  A fervent, morally righteous movement is building.  In just a week, our new President has kept many of his promises to us ... and we are horrified.  He's begun to do all of the nasty, inhumane things that he promised us that he'd do on our behalf - and for which many of us cheered him at the time - and now we are terrified.  He's proven to us to be just the same pathological liar in office as he was on the campaign trail and we are mystified.

How did it come to this?

That answer starts with questions:  Who are we?  And what have we become?

America is the land of the free, right?  And almost all of our ancestors came here voluntarily to live a better life, right?  We are that shining beacon in the world, cast into the structure of one of our most treasured national symbols, about which our own poet Emma Lazarus wrote when she penned the transcendent sonnet that follows in part, whose words are forever etched in our hearts, right?

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

In just a week, we are no longer that country, that beacon.  Who are we?  And what have we become?

As his very first act, our new president issued an order for which his Republican cohorts in Congress have been waiting for years, a charge to dismantle the well-subscribed and now-appreciated Affordable Care Act (ACA).  It was largely a symbolic act - such an undoing actually has to be by Act of Congress - but it sent a huge message and, in my view, a dual one:

First, in this decliningly so but still largely Christian nation whose supposed Christ-followers were so instrumental to our recent electoral outcome, the message is that officially and as a matter of policy, we repudiate our Savior's example.  We as a nation will not be making healthcare more accessible and affordable to ever more of our fellow citizens.  That's right, those who pretend to be Christians have declared that throwing 20 million fellow human beings out of a healthcare system that's actually stemmed the seemingly incessant rise in our national medical costs to be a good thing.

That so many who cheered this inhumanity so vociferously proved to be unfathomably ignorant - morally righteous in their condemnation of Obamacare and too stupid to realize that it was the very same thing as the ACA to which they themselves were subscribers and that provided, in many (if not most) cases, the only healthcare coverage to which they had access - simply prompts our two questions even more urgently: Again, who are we?  And what have we become?

The second message that this Executive Order sent, followed as it was by a flurry of others that appeared to be related in an increasingly discernible way, is that it was also the beginning of a planful eradication by our current president of his predecessor's legacy.  Oh, sure, that could just be about spiteful politics, right?  Perhaps ... but, intriguingly, there's no precedent for it in all of American presidential history, so what's really driving it?

One cannot escape the specter of race, no matter how much we pretend: it's not a coincidence that the only time in our history a succeeding president has consistently endeavored to undo his predecessor's legacy is when that predecessor 'just happened to be' African-American.  That such an evisceration hurts so many millions of people reveals the depth of our continuing racial antipathy - which we pretended not to appreciate fully during election season - and reinforces the urgency of asking and addressing our two questions:  Who are we?  And what have we become?

As a final example of an unprecedented phenomenon worthy of our examination, our new president has repeatedly and wantonly lied to us about the largest and smallest of things ... and yet so many of us want to pretend that we haven't enshrined a pathological liar as our putative leader.  Crowd size at the Inauguration.  Denial of a long, public feud with our nation's intelligence agencies during the campaign (that also featured a hagiographic lionizing of one of our most dangerous adversaries, but I digress...).  That there were literally millions of illegal immigrants who voted for his opponent which is why he lost the popular vote but remains our 'minority' president.

Let these sink in for a moment.  Even though they're just a few of the many, think on 'em for a minute.  We saw the pictures that compared crowd sizes - be they to previous Inaugurations or, say, a much larger protest that occurred the very next day - so we know the truth (as other areas of our government as well as independent sources have confirmed), and yet he lies to us.  We witnessed his repeated dissing of our National Intelligence effort, and especially the CIA while he was bromancing 'Putie' during the last part of the campaign and throughout most of his status as president-elect, and yet he appears at the aforementioned agency and denies that anything of the sort ever occurred and that, in fact, he loves them.  (Yeah ... wow!?!)  Apparently it doesn't matter that we saw it with our own eyes many times: defining reality is now the political prerogative of our president (or, at least, this one).

And, lastly, even though there has never been evidence of any meaningful amount of voter fraud in modern American History, and certainly none in this most recent of national elections, we are told that there were literally millions of illegal immigrants who voted illegally and for his opponent, no less.  Hard to know where to start on this one, but let me jump on the bandwagon of demonizing our national press - and, conceptually, the international press as well - for missing what is surely one of the largest and most meaningful stories in our country's history: that millions and millions of illegal voters descended on our polling places last November ... and they missed the story completely.  Shameful, just shameful!

Or, more likely, still unfathomably shameful but for a very different reason: that the man that less than half of us who voted actually selected made the whole (f@#king[!?!?!]) thing up out of whole cloth ... and has now signed yet another Executive Order to investigate the fantasy.  Apparently, not only are we going to have to pay for the Wall in two ways - via regular spending funded by income tax revenues as well as a proposed tax on imported Mexican goods that - you guessed it! - means that Mexico pays not at all but we pay a second time - anybody unclear on the multiple bankruptcies now?!? - but we are also going to have to pay for an elaborate investigation into something that we all know never occurred just because the new president decrees it.  It's been just a week and we've become Fantasy Island.

Seriously, who are we?  And what have we become?

I can't presume to speak for us all, but I do believe an increasing number of my fellow Americans realize just how far off track we've gotten in an incredibly brief time and by our very own hand.  Accordingly, I feel compelled to appropriate our new president's campaign slogan to "Make America Great Again" and to repurpose it in the following ways:

• Make America kind again, a country that seeks to help all of its citizens to live a better life (if not really pursue the American Dream) rather than demonizing those who find themselves out of power at any given time or, for too many of our fellows, seemingly permanently
• Make American thoughtful again, so that our leaders - returning to being reality-based rather than partisan-deranged - are actually mindful of the long-term interests of the many constituencies they serve and are accordingly carefully responsive.
• Make America communal again, a place where we realize that our success is tied to our neighbors' and where we act on the truths that MLK taught us, including that we are all woven together in a single garment of destiny and that if we don't learn to live together as brothers and sisters we'll certainly perish as fools.
• Make America conversant again, a society in which we don't always agree but within which we can and do participate in a multi-faceted conversation as we listen to others and their perspectives, educate each other and seek to fashion solutions to our problems that benefit the many rather than the few.
• Make America open and embracing again, a country in which we realize that we're all immigrants, which means that we're all different yet have something to contribute, our diversity being our greatest strength, and in which every man, woman and child is our brother or sister rather than The Other.

These are just a few of the ways that we can Make America Great Again, but I'm sure that you could offer many, many more.  And now is surely the time to do so, as what we stand for is certainly becoming an ever more open question as the inhumanity and insanity of our choices begin to hit home in earnest.

Everyone individually and societies collectively make mistakes: this is a given.  The question is what are we going to do about this now, at this very - and critical, defining - moment?  In other words...

Who are we?  And what will we become?

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.  I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.  I refuse to accept the idea of the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.  I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.  I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,

Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

1964 

As We Begin the New Year....

The chief beauty about time

is that you cannot waste it in advance.

The next year, the next day, the next hour

are lying ready for you,

as perfect, as unspoiled,

as if you had never wasted or misapplied

a single moment in all your life.

You can turn over a new leaf every hour

if you choose.

- Arnold Bennett, British author

January 1st: New Year's Day.  A chance to start anew ... with an entire year in the offing.  What a wonderful gift.  Now what can we make of it?

It's funny, but with the turning of the calendar we have developed the tradition to turn the page in our lives, to initiate a new chapter in our individual and collective stories.  And yet we give ourselves permission to deviate greatly from the previous narrative of our lives ... if only for however long we are able to escape our comfort zones.  I truly do hope that 2017 will be a year of personal transformation for you, not because it should or has to be, but because you want it to be so (if you do).

And I hope that 2017 is a transformational year for us all.  Certainly here in America there will be major political changes ... but the real opportunity, in my view, is in how we choose to address the social opportunities that these political changes will offer.  Will we revert or choose to go forward into an unknown but virtually limitless future?  The choice truly is ours to make....

How do you want the 2017 chapter of your life to be different?

I can say that the differences that I seek are mostly predictable and driven in part by what I've learned in 2016.  Among them:

• To be more present with and for my loved ones - In this ever more connected world, what truly matters doesn't change: the love of family and friends and the opportunity to luxuriate in it.  Accordingly, I'm making a pledge to turn off and tune out the world - how '60s of me, right? - in order to be fully present with my loved ones.  No texting or FaceBooking or being distracted in any other way while engaged with them.  The one exception: with permission/agreement, to google something that will aid a conversation.  Otherwise, old school all the way: let's talk - or sit quietly - and enjoy each other's company - and time - together.  For we know not when we'll have this gift again....
• To get in better physical shape - One of my biggest learnings in the past year is the feeling of my own mortality.  In part this is due to losing too many loved ones in 2016 and in part it's due to being too out of shape for too long.  Yes, as you age, your body may not work as well as it once did, but it shouldn't hurt nearly as much as mine does now, a legacy of too little investment in my physical health in the past decade.  In 2017, I must change this, not by overcompensating and becoming a workout fiend, but by finding a sustainable routine that contains far more exercise, a healthier diet, sufficient and restful sleep and an appreciable investment in activities that feed my soul.  (A large part of why I'm writing this blog today is in recognition and fulfillment of this last need and goal, to feed my soul.  I have always been inspired by sharing and hope that my doing so is beneficial to others as well....)
• To invest in learning and new life experiences - No, I probably won't chuck it all and become a world traveler - still have two kids at home/in various stages of schooling - so this will have to wait ... but this doesn't mean that I can't go somewhere I've never been or see loved ones whom I miss more often.  In fact, in order to increase my odds of success, I intend to start small: I'd like to take one trip to somewhere new with our family (or, truth be told, as much of it as we can reasonably assemble at a given time) and one with my wife this year.  And I'd like to make two trips to visit with loved ones whom I don't see often enough, especially those whose age suggests that I have less time than I would like.

There are a few more (perhaps more minor but nonetheless important) goals - like reading and reflecting more, like writing more, like cooking with and for my family and friends more, etc. - that I'll pursue as well, in addition to those few in the professional realm of my life.

And yet, as much as I would like my life to be appreciably different in 2017, there are some things that I hope will not change at all, like my commitment to being a loving family member and friend, like my commitment to being a highly contributory leader in the communities of which I'm a part, like my commitment to ever more exploration and evolution along my spiritual path, etc.  These essential parts of myself I expect to be the foundation to which the new and/or evolved is added.  And I'm thankful for this stable (but ever-evolving) core.  Just like I'm thankful for all of the wonderful souls who've touched and guided me in forming this core as well....

Finally, a concluding thought on the 'new beginnings' aspect of this day, starting with a question: how is this day different than all others/any other?  Truth be told, it's not ... which means that we can make the same choice - to start fresh and see what our God-given creativity can fashion - every day.  So, here's my thought and wish for you in 2017 and beyond: that you treat today as a chance to start over, and that you do so tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and ... so that your life is a series of new beginnings, each different and yet as meaningful it can be....

And now we welcome the new year,

full of things that have never been.

- Rainier Maria Rilke