When the Secular Meets the Sacred in a Moment of Grief

John W. Loftus of Debunking Christianity has an interesting post on what it's like, as an atheist and former evangelical preacher, to attend a Christian funeral. At this particular funeral, as is often the case, the preacher delivered an evangelistic message to his captive audience, using death as an occasion to use the threat of hell and the promise of heaven as a means by which to solicit conversion.

I highly recommend reading the post, and if you so desire, participating in the most interesting conversation which has grown up around it.

Here is my take on the situation, yanked from the comment I left on the post:

John,

For once let me simply say, I could not agree with your post more. I was a pastor long enough to do only one funeral, but I saw my role there as a pastoral, not evangelical, one. I was there to honor the memory of the deceased, and to help tend to the emotional and spiritual needs of the bereaved. For me to spend that time having a "come to Jesus" would have not only been in poor taste, it would ultimately have served my own ego rather than God.

Those who engage in evangelism so often, I'm afraid, do it for the wrong reasons. They/we (I stand too often condemned as well) do it because we are trying to prove something to ourselves and to God. They/we are trying to distance ourselves from our past, or trying to prove ourselves in the present moment. Too often they/we are working out our own issues rather than seeing a need and trying to meet that need.

Ultimately, I don't think that evangelism is in all cases inappropriate. After all, there are some people looking for direction, who may well desperately need what you are selling. But those who continually engage in evangelism should recognize that they too often come off as just that: God's salesmen, treating their own salvation as a kind of commission to be earned from the salvation of others.

Theologically I think this whole mode of evangelism stemmed from a flawed understanding of grace. Socially I think that it robs those who don't share the assumptions of the evangelist of their ability to participate in the moment. If, as in your case, the evangelism comes at a funeral, then those who do not share the assumptions of the evangelist are robbed of their moment to grieve in public, joined with the community of the bereaved by their joint love for the deceased. Instead they are cut off from that community, and are thus less able to work through their own grief. If this happens at, say, a wedding, something similar happens. They are robbed of their ability to share in the joy of this new love and commitment with the community that has gathered to witness and support the bonding of two persons.

Ministers need to balance several interests at events like weddings and funerals, in which their spiritual community joins with a broader social community for a more public event. This can be a difficult task, but I think that when they engage in such shameless acts of evangelism (that is, turning a funeral into a chance to "win souls for Christ") they ultimately fail to serve any of their interests. The evangelism both fails to convert those who might be open to conversion (no one likes to be emotionally manipulated when they are vulnerable - even if you get a "conversion", it probably won't last, since it was coerced) and fails to meet the emotional and spiritual needs of both the religious community and the broader social community which has gather to share either joy or grief.

I'm sorry for your experience, and sorry for your loss. While I have a hope that you don't share, I'm sure you know from your long experience as a Christian that even that hope grows dim when grief is fresh. Death is no respecter of religion, and religion, for all its help and comfort, does not inoculate one against grief.

Direct Pipeline to the Top?

Three times in my life, now, someone has told me that they have received a direct and special revelation from God. Three times in my life, now, has someone said that their words in some unique way represent the very nature and will of God.

The first time, I was in my final year as the Youth Minister of a church in Louisville, about to be appointed to serve as the pastor of my own church. One of my closest friends had been the pastor, but he requested a transfer to another church, to be replaced by a man with whom, I soon learned, no matter how kind he was to me and my family, I simply could not work.

In one of his first sermons before his new congregation this pastor claimed that God spoke to him in the middle of the night, telling him to say what he was about to say. He had, in other words, received a special revelation from God, which in an authoritative way represented the will of God, which he was to then communicate to his congregation.

When I told my grandfather, a retired Southern Baptist pastor turned author of devotional books, he told me to tell my boss that the next time God called him up in the middle of the night, he should call me and place God on three-way calling so that I could hear the voice too! While my grandfather's comment may have been in jest, he understood the dynamics of the situation well. When someone claims a revelation from God which no one else can test or even witness, no parameters can be placed on that revelation. When the person claiming such a revelation is in a position of authority over a congregation, the situation becomes even more dangerous. To their own authority is added, if anyone in the congregation believes them, the very authority of God.

The next time someone claimed a unique and personal revelation from God, I was - though I didn't know it at the time - about to resign after only four months as a pastor. The chair of my Pastor-Parish Relations Committee, the committee responsible for overseeing the pastor and for mediating disputes between the pastor and the congregation, called me in the middle of the week to complain about my preaching. She was a charismatic woman, who had a profound and life-altering salvation experience, which she saw as ushering her into a special relationship with God. Her complaint was not with my skill as a preacher, or with the professionalism with which I executed my duties as pastor (both of which had been problems with their previous pastors), but rather with my interpretation of scripture and the theology which I taught from the pulpit.

"Freedom of the Pulpit" is a long-valued Methodist tradition. Simply put a pastor is not employed by the individual congregation which he or she serves, but rather by the United Methodist Conference in which they serve. They are then appointed to a particular congregation, and charged with using their gifts to meet the needs which they and the Conference to which they are accountable identify for that congregation. While the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee (or, in churches with more than one staff member, the Staff-Parish Relations Committee) has a role in evaluating the pastor's performance and in communicating local concerns to the pastor, the pastor has near-absolute freedom to teach and preach as she or he sees fit, under the supervision of the Conference Board of Ordained Minister, the District Committee on Ministry, and the District Superintendent, and not the local congregation.

Placing the pastor's freedom to teach and preach beyond the supervision of the local congregation allows the pastor to, in some way, preach and teach prophetically, telling the congregation things which they may not want to hear. Because of this, not all congregations value the pastor's "Freedom of the Pulpit," because it means that the theology taught in their church may not be a theology which they agree with.

A friend of mine, now retired, was a pastor in the American South during segregation. Feeling called by God to speak out on behalf of the Civil Rights movement, he preached racial equality in every church that he served - by no means a popular or even safe decision. After one sermon he overheard two men in a heated discussion in the back of the church. One of the men was berating my friend, calling down curses on him for such sins as race-mixing and stirring up trouble. The other man, my friend recalls, calmly said,

"I don't like what he has to say anymore than you do. But, if he can't tell us what he really thinks, we've got nothing."

My congregation, and particularly the woman who chaired the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee, didn't see it that way. Faced with a pastor who had the nerve to tell them that their vision of God was a destructive one, counter to the Gospel, the "good news," something simply had to be done. So she called me at home to give me a laundry list of complaints from the congregation, and to set me straight about some things. I was dead wrong, she asserted, in some of the things I was saying from the pulpit. How did she know this? God told her.

When someone claims a unique revelation from God, a revelation which can be neither witnessed nor tested from the outside, there can be no discussion with that person. God agrees with them, so it doesn't matter what you say or why you say it. To disagree with them is to disagree with God.

Earlier this week someone contacted me about an essay which I had written. The conversation at first seemed constructive, but as it dragged on it became stranger and stranger. This person claimed to have had conversations with God, in which God revealed things to them. In short, the content of that revelation, while private and totally inaccessible to others, trumped all religions traditions and reasoned theological statements. This conversation brought to mind my two previous encounters with claims of direct revelation, and forced me to consider a problem.

It is easy to dismiss such modern claims of special revelation, especially (as in the first two examples) you know the person making the claim. You see their basic humanness, their fundamental character flaws. Sure, they're not bad people; you've seen far worse. But neither are they such saints that they could claim, by virtue of any merit they possess, some special insight into the nature of God. They've been wrong before, and they'll be wrong again, so it is easy to assert that when they make such reckless and dangerous claims, that they are obviously wrong.

And yet, when they make claims of some special revelation, they are following a pattern set before them by our own religious tradition. After all, they are not the first people to claim some revelation from God which provides special insight into the very nature or will of God. The Bible is full of such claims of special revelation. Such is the nature of prophetic literature.

A prophet is simply someone who receives a message from God, and then shares it with a community of faith. What, then, separates the prophets of old from the modern would-be prophets mentioned above? My friends at Debunking Christianity would probably say "nothing." They might applaud me for seeing such a troubling connection between an easily discredited modern phenomenon and the ancient claims which lie at the heart of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, and then lament that I lack the courage to, in face of this, abandon my faith in a pre-modern superstition.

What, after all, is the difference between my former pastor claiming to have heard the inaudible voice of God, and this conversation between Jeremiah and God, recorded in Jeremiah 1:4-10 (JPS), in which Jeremiah is called to go and speak for God:

The word of the LORD came to me:

Before I created you in the womb, I selected you;
Before you were born, I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet concerning the
nations.

I replied:
Ah, Lord God!
I don't know how to speak,
For I am still a boy.
And the LORD said to me:
Do not say, "I am still a boy,"
But go wherever I send you
And speak whatever I command you.
Have no fear of them,
For I am with you to deliver you
-declares the LORD.

The LORD put out His hand and touched my mouth,
and the LORD said to me: Herewith I put My words into your mouth.

See, I appoint you this day
Over nations and kingdoms:
To uproot and to pull down,
To destroy and to overthrow,
To build and to plant.

Jeremiah's prophetic authority rests on his direct revelation from God; his calling by God to represent the Word of God. But isn't it, in form, just like the revelatory claims mentioned above? Doesn't consistency demand that if the one is impossible then the other is impossible, and if the one is possible then the other is possible? Doesn't, in other words, consistency demand that if the three above claims are absurd, then the claims of Jeremiah and the other Biblical prophets must be equally absurd?

Such a treatment, however, overlooks what the Biblical prophets and these modern would-be prophets do not have in common: a spiritual community to support their revelatory claims.

For a prophetic claim to make it into a collection of works which is seen by more than one enduring religion as representing in some special way the very Word of God, it has to be accepted not only by a community of faith in its own time. It must also transcend its own time, and be accepted by generations as an authentic revelation. It must speak beyond its time and place to all times and all places.

The process of moving from a claim prophetic revelation to the Biblical canon was for these claims a very long and arduous one. According to Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos, Dora Pierce Professor of Bible and Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and author of several books, including Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice and Reformed and Feminist (long-time readers know that this is not the first time she - my former teacher - has been mentioned here) the process includes:

1. The initial revelatory claim: that is, for instance, Jeremiah's teachings in his own lifetime.

2. The acceptance of that claim by a community.

3. The later recording and compiling of the teachings represented by that initial claim, which often happens long after the death of the prophet.

4. The acceptance of the writings by a community.

5. The growing claim that, in some way, the initial teachings and the writings in which the teachings were compiled represent in some special way the very Word of God.

(These are not her exact words, but my memory of a lecture which she gave on the subject. And, as you know, memory is a tricky thing, so I apologize if I have in some way accidentally misrepresented the details of her view. Amy, is this basically what you remember?)

While it is dangerous to use science as a metaphor for religion, the process of moving from the initial claim of divine revelation to its codification in scripture is not entirely unlike the scientific peer-review process. The revelatory claim, in other words, must be backed up by the experience of others, even if that experience isn't an empirical one. The revelation isn't just a case of God speaking to one person, in isolation. Sure, it might start that way. But then the person receiving the revelation is called to go out and share it with others. As they, the people of God and intended audience of the special revelation, receive and accept the revelation as mediated through the prophet, it becomes accepted as the Word of God.

Each of the people claiming some special revelation from God are, frankly, not on par with the prophets of old. Corrupted by spiritual pride, and using their revelation as a weapon against others to accumulate power and authority for themselves, they may or may not believe that they received an authentic revelation from God; but whether they even believe that themselves, their revelatory claim has not been supported by anyone else. It has not been accepted by a community, nor is it often even presented to a community for acceptance.

I can't say whether or not there are in fact cases of special divine revelation, either today or in the past. I'll never know that, and frankly I'm perfectly comfortable not knowing. I can say that the people who make revelatory claims as a means by which to dominate religious discussion and claim that God agrees with them are not in a good position to judge the merits of their own claims. So used to seeing themselves as right, would they recognize the voice of God if God had the audacity to disagree with them?

Read This!

I just read this post by Troy; a very thoughtful encounter with homosexuality as a moral and spiritual issue, as well as a loose interaction with my The Culture War and Homosexuality: A Different Sort of Quagmire.

While we both treat homosexuality as a moral issue (for the most part) in our posts, I think, based on his treatment of homosexuality in the above-linked post, that Troy agrees with me that homosexuality is, like most issues, principally a pastoral issue. What I mean by that is that the principal question which Christians should ask concerning homosexuality has less to do with a sort of thumbs-up or thumbs-down morality, and more to do with how the church should treat the spiritual needs of homosexual persons.

This is the same concern, in fact, which we ought to bring to every issue, as best as I can tell. And, while exploring the morality of acts and issues may inform our pastoral strategy, we should be reminded as we wax poetic and abstract on moral issues that we reflect on morality not as an end in itself but rather as a means to another end, a pastoral end.

Do yourself a favor and check out Troy's post, and if you feel bold, leave a comment. He's done us a real service in thoughtfully pushing the discussion on homosexuality and its relation to the Christian life.

"Vincent, he picked up the blade and put it to his ear."

[note: This is my 100th post, which I suppose qualifies me for something, especially given the length of most of them.]

Today my wife Sami had her company picnic, a lovely opportunity for us to show off our cute son. On the way home from the picnic, since Adam, just like his Daddy, must be surrounded by music at all times, we listened to the Vigilantes of Love's album Blister Soul. Track three on that disk is called "Skin," Bill Mallonee's Vincent van Gogh metaphor for art, life and ministry. As I listened to it for, what, the 400th or so time, I knew I had to write something on it.

I've been staring at the lyrics for just a few minutes now, trying to pick some representative sample for you. But, like a good poem, I can't just cut some part of it out and let it stand in for the rest. It all kind of hangs together. Similarly, I can't exactly tell you what it's about. It isn't really about anything. Oh, sure, I could say that it is about this or that, and build an argument for that position. But as soon as I did, something would be lost. Force an interpretation on the song and, as soon as you do, all other potential interpretations are lost. I'm not yet prepared to do that.

So, in a gluttony of good words, I'm giving you the entire lyric. Like all great songs the lyric can't be easily separated from the music. But chopping off the music is less severe than chopping off the music and half the words. So, here is the lyric for the Vigilantes of Love's "Skin," written as always by Bill Mallonee:

now i'd seen him despondent
a few times as of late
sometimes the answer love gives
is the hardest one to take
now I know he was prone to paint the voice of his own fear
so vincent, he picked up the blade and put it to his ear

just look at yourself in the mirror
all rumpled red stubbled and gaunt
you walk a dead end path in a dry corn field
and now this morose response
and your princess
she don't want to see you
no your princess she don't want to hear
so vincent, he picked up the blade and put it to his ear

now look if you're gonna come round here and say those sorts of things
you gotta take a few on the chin
talking about love and all that stuff
you better bring your thickest skin

sometimes you can't please everyone
sometimes you can't please anyone at all
sew your heart onto your sleeve
and wait for the ax to fall

now you there with the paintbox
you there with paper and pen
me I got this blunt instrument
i'm gonna play on till the end
and you come with empty hands
or you don't come at all
you deal your best hand out in the marketplace
and let the chips fall
and the package, it comes wrapped up
there is a lesson here
and vincent, he picked up the blade and put it to his ear

now look if you're gonna come round here and say those sorts of things
you gotta take a few on the chin
talkin bout sin and redemption
you better bring your thickest skin

This song really speaks to me, and I'm sorry that I can't give you the music to go with these words. A great song is singular; you can't break it into its component parts, dissect it, and understand it. You have to take in the organic whole and let it live with you for a while. Then you'll see that, if it is a really great song, it doesn't just communicate some cognitive message or some emotive experience. Rather, it hits you on a level which slips right past description, touching the you that you'd forgotten about. This song reminds me of who I am, without bothering to tell me who I ought to be.

But, as the lyric says, "there is a message here." While it is impossible for me to describe everything that the song communicates (in part because what it communicates is not limited to what I hear in it or get out of it), I can draw some simple communications out of it for you. So here are some things which I hear in this song:

The first verse sets up the image of Vincent van Gogh cutting off his ear. Bill Mallonee is obviously not just relaying a historical event, but is instead taking an image from history and using it as a metaphor. Here it is easy to see how all the time we mythologize history. If history is merely relaying events, then it doesn't really speak to us, and there is no point in studying it. History is about the past, sure, but it is also about the present and the future. It is the past speaking to the present and helping to shape the future.

The van Gogh image is immediately, in the first verse, a metaphor for art. Vincent, when he picks up the blade and puts it to his ear, is doing it as an extension of his art. His art is very much like this act of self-mutilation. In his art he takes a part of himself, cuts it off or out, and places it - in paint on canvass - before us. He says, "Here, this is part of me. Take it."

This self offering is essential to art. It is the essence of art, as best as I can tell. And, as art, it transcends any particular artistic medium.

We in the blogosphere know a little something of this. One of the things which has simultaneously attracted and repelled me about blogging is that it blurs the private/public distinction. Blogging is often a very private act. It is a raw, unpolished, personal form of communication, often written like a private journal. Yet it is placed in public. Anyone with Internet access could theoretically read it.

This blurring of the private/public distinction has created many very bad blogs. I once, for instance, read a blog which consisted entirely of what a person ate for lunch every day. Clearly that blog was not interesting to a public audience, and as art failed. It should have remained private. As a creative writing teacher once scrawled on a particularly bad poem of mine, "Why should I care about this? If you need to say this, journal about it. But don't turn it in to me."

But there are parts of us, often buried deep inside us, which if made public can actually communicate something meaningful, which communicates to others. Finding these things, and presenting them in some form, can often feel very much like taking a blade to a part of your body and slicing it off. That act is a very private act. But when it is made public, both the public and the private are better off for it.

Ministry is very much like this. You could almost call it a work of art. Done right, or almost right, it probably is. Ministry requires a degree of vulnerability, a willingness to face all of those things that most of us don't want to face, and then having face those deep dark scary fears empowering others to turn and face them as well.

I remember once preaching at a funeral, meditating on my childhood fear of death. How, well... not quite ironic, but at least appropriate that I, who had once been so afraid of death that it kept me up at night, running in circles around my bedroom scared that if I fell asleep I might not wake up, was now staring straight at death on behalf of a community of faith. Wrestling with death, trying to existentially understand our impermanent nature, and lead other people to that same constructive understanding. It was, after all, what I'd been doing my whole life. My excessive fears, my crippling anxieties, were now being put to work in my ministry.

Henri Nouwen, in his great book The Wounded Healer, writes that our wounds are the only currency we have for ministry. Whether that's true or not I don't know, but it seems to be that they are at the very least our best, our most valuable, currency for ministry. The shape us, mold us into who we are. They are what we have to offer other wounded people. And we are all wounded.

But it takes some serious vulnerability to share our wounds with others. To say how we are wounded, where we are wounded. To admit that some wounds still hurt, still bleed. To be able to expose those wounds to people who may well, like Thomas, drive their fingers into the holes to make sure they aren't some saintly mirage. That takes vulnerability, and courage. What Paul Tillich called existential or ontological courage; the courage to be. To be who you are, to be yourself. To be yourself for others, living with authentic vulnerability before them. That is ministry.

But, as Bill Mallonee reminds us, if we're going to do that we'd better "bring our thickest skin." As a pastor my skin was not so thick. I made myself vulnerable, but I couldn't accept the fruits of that vulnerability. The inevitable rejection that you get from some people. And the problem with being your authentic self for others is that when they reject you they really are rejecting you.

Some people in my church once looked straight at me and called me an agent of Satan, sent to deceive God's people. Why? Because I faced the fears they wouldn't face, and had the courage to say that the theology I grew up with wasn't working? Maybe, but that makes me sound too much like a martyr. Whatever their reasons, the problem was that I didn't bring that "thick skin." I couldn't bring it, because I'd never found it. They helped me to find it.

I'm now embracing lay ministry, seeing it not as the loss of my standing as a pastor, but rather as the gain of my standing as an authentic lay person, part of the body of Christ with a mission and purpose no less valuable than that of the clergy. I am finding my new ministry.

Elsa Tamez, as I said in this post on James, turned my attention to a couple of verses which, to me, speak to the heart of lay ministry. I won't give a full treatment of the verses here, but I will challenge those of you who are not clergy and do not desire to be clergy, to consider how these verses impact your view on your relationship with the ministry of the church:

James 5:16

Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

Notice that all in the community are called to give and receive confession. The task of hearing confessions, and the task of praying for others, is not limited to the clergy.

James 5:17

Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.

This is an even richer verse, and I cannot possibly here capture the depth of that richness. But there are a couple of things we should notice. First, while Elijah is perhaps the most revered figure in the Jewish tradition, he is, according to James, "like us." Just another human being.

On top of that, in terms of the clergy/laity divide, Elijah is (from a lay perspective) just like us. He is not a priest, or a king. But as a prophet, though he opposes both the religious and political power, he is one who speaks for God.

We are Elijah, and he is us.

My point is that the laity cannot defer to the clergy for "ministry." We are also ministers in our own way, and so these thoughts on ministry and vulnerability, ministry and art, do not just apply to seminarians and pastors and theologians. They apply to all.

Ultimately our very lives are our works of art and our ministry. They should be lived with a balance of vulnerability and thick skin. And when we interact with people, in some very real way, if we are truly present, we are almost cutting off a part of ourselves and trusting them with it.

That trust can become mutilated when, to go back to the van Gogh metaphor, the object of our vulnerable love takes a look at our wounds, our vulnerability, our severed ear, and decided that they can't handle it. The rejection stings, and it also leaves us with less to give the next time we decide to become vulnerable. Without grace, without mercy, without the forgiveness which is the antithesis of bitterness and resentment, our ear never grows back, our wound never heals.

I'm starting to heal. I'm finding a new ministry. This week I started as the chair of the Education team at my church. I am now responsible for (gulp) children's ministry, youth ministry, and all adult education programs, including Sunday School, small groups, and our Wednesday evening forum.

If I had not been through the pain of losing my vocation to pastoral ministry, I would not be able to do this vital job.

I'll let you know how it goes.