Reflections on General Conference. Pt. 1: Are We Who We Think We Are?

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In his book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge lifts up a timeless evaluative tool for organizations.  This evaluative process helps us to see if we are who we say we are, or if we are something else; something we do not intend to be.

General Conference is going on in Tampa, Florida, as I write this.  This is the chief legislative body of the United Methodist Church and meets every four years to decide matters of polity, theology, and practice.  For many United Methodists, watching General Conference online can be an uplifting and sobering experience.  At moments one can be proud to be United Methodist, and at other times ashamed.

Let’s engage in this little test.  If a group of outsiders watched General Conference online, what kind of church would they say the United Methodist Church is?  I’m not sure our leadership really thinks strategically about how our actions line up with our beliefs, as Peter Senge defines them.

Senge points out that Espoused Theory is what we say we are, what our mission statement says we are, what we profess to be, and what we profess to value.  Theories in Use are what we actually do, how we model ourselves through action,  and is reflected by the actual decisions we make.

My espoused view may be that people are basically trustworthy, but I may never lend friends money and jealously guard all my stuff – obviously my theory in use (my deeper mental model) differs from my espoused theory.  We all have gaps between our espoused theories and our theories in use.  This is a consequence of vision, not hypocrisy.  The problem is not in the gap, but our failure to tell the truth about the gap.  We are not always what we say we are.

As I watch the online business sessions and worship services of General Conference, I am left to wonder if we really value what we say we value.  The talk leading up to General Conference was primarily about our decline and inability to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  I wonder whether “what we do” and “what we actually lift up” at General Conference reinforces what we say we value.

While “making disciples for the transformation of the world” may be our espoused theory, is it really our theory in use?  Is it really what we do?  Does the whole denomination embrace it?  Is the vision shared?  Or, are we a collective of differing interests and priorities?

Yesterday, I shared a list of news items from General Conference, both business and worship items, with a friend who does not go to church and who is not a Christian.  I asked him, “based on what they are doing and talking about, what do you think the United Methodist Church is all about?”

He simply said, “Your church reflects what is wrong with America.  I hear what you say the church is supposed to be about – what you call making disciples.  I would never know that based on what is going on down there.  From reading this list of stories and hearing about these worship services, you value a lot of things, but I would never guess it was making disciples of Jesus Christ.”

Sobering.

It’s not over yet.  I am hopeful for our church and for General Conference!  I am reminded what John Wesley used to say about conferencing together as the church.  You should leave more passionate about making disciples of Jesus Christ than when you arrived.

Ask a delegate how this conferencing is inspiring them to engage in what we say we value.  Are we who we think we are?

Weddings, Water and Wine

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John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Every time I read this passage I envision Cal Naughton, Jr. at the dinner table in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby as he says, “ I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I’m here to party.  I like my Jesus to party.”  As irreverent as that is, this is exactly the Jesus we see in John 2.  Attending a formal party…a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

This opening miracle, or as John calls them “signs”, in the Gospel of John seeks to help us understand the nature and character of Jesus.  But before I lift up a few of the relevant portions of this passage there is something we need to discuss – wine.   Because the bottom line is this – this story is all about wine, but not about wine as you and I think about it.

In order to truly understand John 2, we need to reclaim a Biblical understanding of wine.  Unfortunately, most of our understandings and misunderstandings about alcohol come more from our culture than the Bible.  If we refuse to open ourselves and gain a Biblical understanding of wine, we will totally miss the point in John 2.

Wine in the Bible is first and foremost a symbol of blessing, abundance, and redemption.  There are numerous verses to support this understanding.  In Genesis 14, the Priest Melchizedek gives the Abrahamic blessing to Abraham communicated with the symbols of bread and wine – in scripture, these are basic fundamental symbols of providence, abundance and blessing, along with oil.  Bread, oil and wine are symbols of God’s creative sustenance and abundant blessing.  Isaac’s blessing to Jacob and Esau, given over bread and wine.  And we see in the blessings passed along by the patriarchs, the hope that God grant you “heaven’s dew, earth’s riches – grain and new wine in abundance.”

In several passages wine is brought as a drink offering to God, the aroma of which, is pleasing to God.

In Psalms and Proverbs, the signs of bread, oil, and wine overflowing are signs of blessing and peace from God, “God will give wine to gladden the heart, oil to shine the face, and bread to sustain the heart.”  During the feast of the Passover, and the Last Supper, there are four cups of wine, representing the four redemptions promised by God to the Hebrews – (The Cup of Sanctification, The Cup of Judgment, The Cup of Redemption, and The Cup of Restoration).

I could go on and on and on, but what I want you to hear is this – wine is a symbol of redemption, abundance, blessing, sustenance and redemption.  If you don’t get this, you won’t get John 2.

As a pastor, I do want to be careful here.  None of this has anything to do with the warnings the Bible gives regarding the abuse of wine – as with anything in God’s creation – the basic symbols of God’s creative sustenance; bread and wine can both lead to sin – too much bread is gluttony, too much wine is drunkenness.  There is a time and place for a discussion or two on the abuses bread and wine, but not today.

The point today is if we can get out from behind our culturally formed sensibilities regarding wine, we are able to see this story and hear its message.  Because after all this talk about wine, let me surprise you.  This story is not as much about wine as it is about who Jesus is.

This is the first sign or miracle in the Gospel of John.  This sign defines him, his ministry, his purpose.

Weddings have meaning in the Bible far beyond the joining of a man and a woman.  The wedding has eschatological overtones – we are called upon to pay special attention because a wedding points to fulfillment, fullness of God’s design and plan, and the culmination of all things.

The celebration of the wedding is confronted with a problem – the wine has run out.  Jesus’ mother comes to him and says to Jesus, “They have no wine.”

Jesus’ response to his mother is hard for us, but let me explain.  “Woman” was not an uncommon greeting for a stranger.  It is neither rude nor harsh.  But it is odd for one to address their mother this way.  Why does Jesus speak to her like this?  Jesus at this moment plays down his family relationship with his mother.  What concern is that to you and me is not rude, but rather disengagement.  Professor Gail O’Day points out, “In this one exchange, Jesus establishes his freedom from any and all human control – not even Jesus’ mother has a claim on him.  He is governed by only one thing – God’s timing and direction.”

And here we see a fascinating image.  Very descriptive, six stone jars for the ritual of purification, each holding 20-30 gallons.  The cleansing of hands, arms, and face before eating is tied to wholeness, blessing, and spirituality.  You receive the blessing of food and life once you are ritually/spiritually clean, so you bless God and you wash – then you eat and drink.

When Jesus turns the water from these jars of purification into wine – the biblical image of abundance, redemption and blessing, we see something amazing.  The sign and symbol of wine will also become the symbol of Christ’s blood – wine, blood, redemption, blessing, abundance, ritual cleansing….

Jesus is the new wine, his blood will purify us.  This gift is not a rejection of their faith, but rather the fulfillment of it.

The last thing I will point out is not only the superabundance of gifts given through Jesus (think about the feeding of the 5,000 and how much food is left over).  But the vast amount of wine is only surpassed by its vintage – it is the BEST wine.  We are not talking $4.99 Trader Joe’s here.

The sacramental nature cannot be missed.  Wine in John 2.  Bread in John 6.  The symbols of life, redemption and sustenance.  The symbols of God’s blessing.  The symbols of life.  They symbols of Jesus.

This miracle is about more than good wine and parties.  It points to the one who comes to embody the blessing of God.  Jesus is the new wine.  Jesus is the bread of life.  Jesus is the redemption of the world.

Crying Out From a Dark Place

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Psalm 137
1By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. 2 On the willows there we hung up our harps. 3 For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4 How could we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! 6 Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!” 8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! 9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

“You are forgiven” I wrote, “but when you die, you are going to hell.” I wrote the words matter of factly and without great emotion. These words were not written to a stranger or a criminal. They were written to my father as he lay in the CCU recovering from a massive heart attack in 1989.

I am not proud of those words now, but when I wrote them I was struggling to move from Hate to Hope. I was struggling to move from the desire for vengeance toward’s God’s call to love. My father walked out on my family when I was 14. He had an affair and decided he wanted something else in life. Needless to say, I hated him for that.

Babylon was not home for the exiles of Judah. They had been captured and carted away to a foreign land. Their temple was destroyed, and now they are lost and in despair. The Babylonians destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. All of the elite, the teachers, business leaders, land owners, artists, all of the prominent people have been taken to Babylon. Only the poorest were left behind to remain in the land and intermarry with Canaanites. They were taken from their homes and land. They were separated from their families. Their homes and their Temple were destroyed. Their families killed. Their children murdered.

Here by the rivers of Babylon, we see the children of Judah expressing pain as they remember Zion. Their captors mock them and sarcastically call for them to sing a song of Zion – “where is your joy?” But the Psalmist asks, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?” We don’t belong here in Babylon. We are refugees. We are slaves. How can we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?

Verses 7-9 are very difficult for us. The words shock us, but if we think about it they express the same feelings many of us have had when we have been through suffering at the hands of others. The Babylonians killed families including children. Children represent the future of their people. Verse 9 represents the pain of the people crying out, “They deserve the same thing they did to us!” I can completely understand this. I’ve been there myself. We’ve all been there.

The Psalms of lament speak to us about putting our suffering and struggle to speech TO God. I really believe that one of the main reasons many of us cannot move on from hate to healing and hope is because we refuse to let go of the pain. It becomes a crutch for us. We won’t let it out. Many of us won’t even give it expression.

I am not proud of what I wrote to my father 1989, although I could come up with 100 reasons why he deserved it. And if I shared those reasons with you, many of you would say to me: I would have done the same thing. My father never asked for forgiveness and never even acted like he did anything wrong. He just lived his life the way he wanted never thinking about the consequences.

I ultimately learned that it was not about HIM for me to be made whole. All through my teenage and college years I was sitting on the banks of the rivers of Babylon trying to sing a song in a foreign land. I was miserable and filled with resentment. Giving those feelings “words” during my freshman year of college was the beginning of liberation for me. I am not lifting up the way I did it, what I am lifting up is the need for expression of our deepest pain and anger.

In order for the pain of our lives to be healed by God, we must give it expression. Cry it out to God – no matter how it may offend our sensibilities. I think this is the beginning of healing. This is how we move from hate to hope and healing.

What do you need to cry out? What is in you that needs to be brought to God in prayer?

Break the Silence…Lament!

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Read Psalm 74

We are told all the time that all our problems are solvable.  The wars are solvable – we need either more or less troops.  Our illnesses are solvable – we just need the correct diagnosis and the right medicine.  Our poverty is solvable – “those” people just need to work.  The problem with this assumption is we all know it is not true.  Life is more complex and intricate than we often assume.

One of the powerful messages we are reclaiming during the Lenten season at Wesley is that the Hebrews did not feel that masking the emotional pain of life was appropriate.  They brought their pain to God and cried out in God’s presence.  They were not afraid to speak these prayers of darkness to God.  They believed that this was the only way faith worked – you bring the good to God and you bring the bad to God.  You bring all things to God.

The lament of Psalm 74 is a communal cry and prayer of the Israelites as the Babylonians destroyed the temple in 576 BC.  You can hear their cry as the elements and carvings of the temple are destroyed.  You can feel the pain as they desecrate the holy space.

Professor Walter Brueggemann gives us some wonderful insights regarding the Psalms, especially the lament Psalms.  This “outline” of lament may help us to reclaim our cry. (Spirituality of the Psalms)

First, Brueggeman says that a lament is a cry of expression that always addresses the Lord God. What is said to God may be scandalous and offend some of our sensibilities; but the ones who lament are completely committed, and they believe whatever must be said must be said directly to God who partners with us. We have permission to speak freely, but that speech is always directed to God – honestly and openly.  We bring all we are TO God.  A lament is not a cursing of God, but it is an honest prayer and expression TO God.

Second, the Rev. Dr. Claus Westermann, the great 20th century Old Testament scholar, pointed out the distinctive pattern of the lament.  There is an inherited way it is done.  There is order to it.  This order of the prayer was/is recognized by the Israelites.  The lament has two components:

  • The Plea which is a complaint that God should correct a skewed situation.
  • The Praise where the one praying always moves from a sense of urgency and desperation to joy, gratitude, and well-being.

In Matthew 8:1-4, there is a brief healing story.  “When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; 2and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” 3He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.””

In his book Psalmist’s Cry: Scripts for Embracing Lament, Walter Brueggemann shows how this healing story models for us the way that lament works as a powerful means to address the emotional pain in our lives and not just mask the symptoms.

First, the leper comes to Jesus and admits his status and despair – his “plea”.  He doesn’t pretend to be anything other than one of the most wounded. He doesn’t come to Jesus on his terms, pretending to have control over his life.  He kneels before Christ and says “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  I am unclean, I am broken, I am weary and I am downtrodden – but you can make me clean.

Second, we notice the trust this healed man places in Jesus.  What if Jesus wouldn’t heal him?  But is more than that, there is an ongoing trust.  He trusted Jesus with not only his initial healing but also with whatever was to come after – to go to the priests and present offerings (and keep the healing quiet).

We have seen this trust in all the lament Psalms we’ve read so far this Lenten season.  There is a definitive plea and always a move to praise…even in the midst of fear and pain.

The lament points out that there are no easy and quick solutions to many things in life.  Not every problem is “solvable”.  But that does not mean we lose our voice.  The Psalms of lament say to us, “you can go to God in darkness and despair and speak to God, and in that plea we can place our trust in God.”

The Last Hope in the Midst of Darkness

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(Read Psalm 44)

The last hope in the midst of darkness is a faithful God.

Where is God? Why is he silent when it seems his children need him so desperately? What does God’s silence mean?  During Lent, we are recapturing the language of lament at Wesley.  It has been quite a struggle for us all.

Psalm 44 is the first communal lament in the book of Psalms.  Some scholars say it is the liturgical prayer of lament led by King Hezekiah of Judah after Sennacherib, the King of the Assyrians, had defeated the Northern Kingdom of Israel and began to lay siege to Jerusalem.  One of the fascinating and yet disturbing lines in Psalm 44 is in verse 17 when the writer declares, “All this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten you, or been false to your covenant.  Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way, yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackels, and covered us with deep darkness.”  I know when I was growing up I was taught that if you had a strong faith and were obedient to God, you would be blessed and would experience less difficulty.  That was what I was taught…that is not what I have experienced.

In verse 22, the people cry out, “this is all happening because of you.”  Rather than be spared because they are people of faith, it seems to imply that they are facing the darkness because they are people of faith.

And then, in verse 23, the people cry out…just as many of us have cried out.  “Wake up, God!  Why do you sleep?  Do not cast us off forever!”

The prayer of lament is actually a prayer of bold faith because in the midst of great suffering, we turn to God to lay it all on the line. We speak freely out of our pain and struggle knowing that the last hope in the midst of darkness is a faithful God.

Sound like a paradox?  It is.  I have been taught my whole life that people of faith only sing songs of victory…even in the midst of darkness.  Yet the scripture points to the voice of lament as a legitimate form of expression and prayer to God in the midst of struggle.  The Bible is filled with this language of lament.  If you are like me, you have experienced elements of life that appear to be at odds to this theology of victory that we are told we must always proclaim.  We believe God is present in our human experience, but it does not always seem God acting on our behalf.  Our cries of agony seem to go unattended.  I have been in situations before where I wondered if God is asleep.

In this life God never fully discloses all the answers to our questions.  The Bible itself doesn’t provide all the answers we long for in the midst of suffering.  But what the Bible does give us is permission to cry out to God.

The last hope in the midst of darkness is a faithful God.

Making Disciples by Keeping Our Heads Down

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Wesley before Easter 10:45 worship 2010

That old cartoon image of the ostrich with his/her head in the sand whenever danger is around is always used as an image of someone who just doesn’t get it.  When your head is in the sand, you are unaware of the challenges and dangers around you – you are oblivious as the world passes by.

In a lot of blogs and articles about making disciples, there seems to be a lot of discussion about what disciple making actually is and how disciple making actually occurs and where disciple making takes place and who it is that actually makes good disciples.  Then there are those that don’t like the term “make” disciples.  They want to form them or mold them or spontaneously combust them or magically cultivate them like a ch-ch-ch-chia pet.

There are also a lot of voices out there discussing how older Christians over 50 don’t know what it takes to make young disciples under 40.  There are those who insist “traditional” worship can’t reach new, younger disciples.  There are those who say the church isn’t “missional” enough, or “emergent” enough, or (insert-latest-catch-phrase-word-here) enough.

I read the blogs and the articles and the critiques all over the internet regarding making disciples and the United Methodist Church and Call to Action, and to be honest, most of them actually create in me the desire to stick my head in the sand. When did making disciples become nuclear particle physics??

Author Robin Sharma recently posted,  “The amateur adores complexity, the professional cherishes simplicity.”  So is my head in the sand, or am I keeping my head down?  They mean two completely different things.

Reading blogs and articles online, one would think that only new, emergent, contemporary churches are growing and successful.  I will admit, I am bothered by this assumption many people have in the United Methodist Church.  I don’t have anything against new churches.  Many are growing at amazing rates making many new disciples.  I am concerned about what we are modeling to our clergy and churches.  Are we communicating that we are ‘incapable’ of making disciples unless we throw out tradition?

Many traditional churches are growing and making disciples effectively.  For example, the vast majority of new members joining Wesley United Methodist Church at Frederica on St. Simons Island where I serve (a traditional church) are under 40 years old.  While we are a traditional church, we are not “conventional” to use Thomas Merton’s term.  We strive to be authentic, relevant, creative and relational.  I wish I could tell you we were trying to be “different”, but we’re not.  In essence, we just do what we do.  We are not trying to over think it or over analyze it.  Can we do better?  Sure!  But we learn more through trial and error, which is a more dynamic yet simple way to learn than policy statements, strategic models, and prescriptions.  Statements and prescriptions are merely secondary reinforcing mechanisms.  They merely reinforce culture that already exists.  If a church isn’t making disciples, you can have all the mission statements and strategies you want, they won’t really change anything.  People have to model making disciples – it happens person to person, in real time…in real life.  Sorry, but that’s the only way it works.

What we do at Wesley isn’t flashy, but it’s working.  Of the 70 new members who joined in 2011, almost 60% were under 45, and most were under 40.  We are learning from our mistakes.  We are loving one another.  We are caring for one another.  We are growing in our knowledge of Christ.  We are growing in our service of others.  We are meeting in nurturing groups.  We are inviting others to participate.  That’s it.  That’s the list.

I’m going to keep my head down.  If you want to say its in the sand, that’s okay.  I don’t mind…really.  I just hope we will all keep in mind that if we are truly concerned about the transformation of the world then let us recapture the beauty of simplicity.

Sowing in Tears – Lenten Lament

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by sculptor Tony Quickle

Psalm 126

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

The men’s group of one of my previous churches felt the calling to help troubled young men in our community.  I remember one of the men, George, sharing with me his sadness about one of the boys he tried to help, David.  David was without a father and running with the wrong crowd.  He had been arrested a few times.  The men’s group and George particularly felt they should reach out to him, scholarship him for the sports he wanted to do, give him work, and try to be a good influence.  They outfitted him with new clothes and George set the boy up a job at his car dealership.  The boy never showed. Every time George tried to help David, David would turn away and end up in even more trouble.

George couldn’t really understand all of this.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to work, right?  I mean, if you help someone and invest in them, and you give them all the opportuntities to turn their life around, aren’t they are supposed to turn out okay?  How can someone who is being giving the opportunity to have a better life, have people willing to help him, how can he just throw all that away?  You would think that George would have been mad, but instead he was sad – almost to tears for the inability he felt that he couldn’t turn David around.

The psalmist wrote, “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.”

The Psalms.  They are songs.  They are acts of praise.  They are moments of worship.  They are prayers.  But they offer us something much richer and deeper and more troubling.  They can also be cries of pain and frustration to God.  Unfortunately for many of us Christians, we only like to think of the Psalms as uplifting praise.  These Psalms, which are beautiful and wonderful can be important for us during seasons of well-being.  A former professor of mine, Walter Brueggemann, calls these types of psalms “psalms of orientation”.  They articulate the joy, delight, goodness, coherence, and reliability of God, God’s creation, and God’s governing law.

But Bruggemann goes on to point out that life is not always joy, delight, goodness, and coherence.  Life for us is not always “oriented” correctly.  Human life also consists of anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering, and death. And when we face those seasons, different emotions rise up – rage, resentment, self-pity, and hatred. There are psalms that match these feelings as well, but we don’t always life them up in our society or our churches.  Bruggemann calls these complaint or lament psalms “psalms of disorientation”. They are poems, songs and prayers that match our feelings of “unsettledness”. They are cries out to God from the depth of our pain and despair. They seek resolution.  They ask questions.  They cry out in frustration and pain.

May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.

Sowing in tears.  You and I know sowing in tears.  My friend George knew sowing in tears.  When you invest, plant the seed in a life or a situation and the torrents of rain wash it away.  The psalms of lament call us not to deny the reality that we sow in tears but to cry out to God when we do!  The hope is that we will ultimately reap with joy, but for a time we sow in tears.  Why would we deny this voice?  Do we think God will be disappointed in us?

Crying out to God in prayer is not an act of NO FAITH, rather it is an extreme and deep act OF FAITH.  How?  Because as people of faith we believe God hears our joys and our sorrows.  As people of faith, we speak these laments TO God!  God longs for us to come to him in prayer – in the good and in the bad.

It’s time to stop denying the prayers of lament.  You may need to cry out to God.  My friend George needed to.  He needed to hear the cry from Psalm 126 that those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy.

The Passions: Vainglory and Pride

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Proverbs 11:2 – When pride comes, then comes disgrace; but wisdom is with the humble.

Proverbs 16:18 – Pride goes before destruction; a haughty spirit before a fall.

Almost 2,500 years ago, the famous Greek storyteller Aesop told the following parable:

Two roosters were fiercely fighting for the mastery of the farmyard.  One at last put the other to flight.  The vanquished rooster skulked away and hid himself in a quiet corner, while the conqueror, flying up to a high wall, flapped his wings and crowed exultingly with all his might.  An Eagle sailing through the air pounced upon him and carried him off in his talons.  The vanquished rooster immediately came out of his corner, and ruled henceforth with undisputed mastery.  The moral of the story? Pride goes before destruction

Love has space to grow within us only as each of us learns to recognize and root out the passions within us.  The ancient Christian monastics in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries believed the eight passions to be eight terrible temptations.  They were obsessive emotions, attitudes, and desires that the earliest Christians believed blind us in our dealings with God, each other, and ourselves.  Roberta Bondi in her book, To Love as God Loves, says the passions are deadly because they pervert perfectly good and useful impulses which take away our freedom to love.

Today, we take a look at the last two Passions outlined by Evagrius of Pontus in the 4th century AD: Vainglory and Pride.

First, let’s take a look at Vainglory:  Vainglory is defined as “liking praise or recognition, or needing to be liked so much that our actions are determined by our need.”  People who suffer from Vainglory seek admiration from others instead of love of God and their fellow human beings.  This admiration becomes the goal of their lives.  You can probably see why Vainglory can blind us or get in the way of love, but why is it so deadly?  Vainglory leads us to believe that whatever your skills, it is essentially yourself you are selling to others.

Bondi points out that vainglory is a special passion for ministers and priests and teachers, and anyone else whose self-identity is bound up in the idea of service. It is deceptively easy to confuse being liked with having done a good job.  I meet ministers all the time whose really believe their effectiveness is directly related to whether or not people in their church actually like them. This is one derivation of vainglory.  Vainglory is at the root of a lot of burn-out as the desire for approval replaces everything – goals of your work, love of family, etc.; certainly an enormous amount of self-deception, and hence blindness, stem from vainglory.

Pride is the last of Evagrius’s eight passions. I always thought of pride as the overvaluing of myself.  I remember when my first District Superintendent introduced me to my first Bishop (Richard Looney) for the first time in my first one-on-one meeting with him, the DS said, “This is John Stephens.  He is a very talented young man and he is very proud of his humility.”  They both laughed and I laughed, then I thought – I don’t think that was a compliment.

The early monastics believed pride to be the inverse of humility. Rather than an overvaluing of self, pride manifests itself as a devaluing of others as we compare ourselves to those around us. In modern terms, it makes up an important part of envy. Its essential quality is not found in having too high an opinion of oneself so much as too low an opinion of everyone else.  Self-righteousness is one of its more obnoxious characteristics, as its sufferer looks around to make sure the people around her or him are as good as they ought to be.

One last fable today from Aesop:

There was a peacock who was very proud of his long and colorful feathers. One day he saw a crane and approaching and said, “Look, what splendid tail I have got. All the color of the rainbow are there. And your feathers, how dull and drab they are!”  Saying so the peacock spread his bright tail into a fan and began to dance. The crane saw it all and smiled. He knew that the peacock was trying to impress him in vain  Then the crane spread his large grey wings and began to fly off saying, “well Mr. Peacock follow me if you can in the skies”   The peacock remained earth bound and couldn’t fly. The crane rose high into the sky and was gone beyond the horizon in no time.

The Moral of the Story: Vainglory and Pride Blossom Bright But They Never Bear

The Passions: Depression and Acedia

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I knew a young man several years ago in a church I served who wanted to go find himself.  His parents asked me to meet with him before he moved out to Colorado on this “finding self” mission.  After a little more than a year, he came back and we had lunch.  I asked him what he found out in Colorado.  He replied, “Only what I took with me.  But I do see myself differently now.”

I remember in the in 1993 and 1994 struggling with my call to ministry.  In the middle of seminary I just kind of lost my passion about wanting to be a minister.  It was probably coupled with working in real churches – which made me ask myself, “Do I want to pastor these people the rest of my life?”  I lost passion in my work and I floundered a bit listlessly.  A great mentor of mine said to me right before I was thinking about quitting the ministry and going to law school, “Don’t quit until you get to where God is calling you.  God called you to preach and pastor, but right now you are going through school – you are in between.  You see yourself where you are right now – student, associate, “in between” – you’ve got to get through so you can see yourself as pastor and preacher before you decide that’s not you.”

How do you see yourself?

This series is about the Passions, those terrible temptations or sins that blind us and hinder love.  Jesus, Paul and the ancient Christian teachers taught that love has space to grow within us only as each of us learns to see clearly the obsessive emotions, attitudes, desires and selfish ways of acting.  They believed once we could see them in ourselves then our work was to root out these passions.  Why do we have to identify and root out the passions?  They pervert our vision and take away our desire to love.  They blind us from seeing ourselves as we should.

Today we look very briefly at two passions: Depression, or sadness, and Acedia, or boredom.

Depression is one of the most debilitating passions of all. When we are depressed we cannot or choose not to see ourselves as beloved children of God, regardless of what we do or do not do. Our way of seeing ourselves, our lives, and our accomplishments, not to mention our way of seeing all around us, is distorted by our depression. Usually we even know our vision is distorted, but we cannot find the energy to fight against it.  Depression drains our energy, but it primarily distorts the ways we see the world and they way we see ourselves.  This is why depression is such a terrible passion.  This passion is far more sinister and deadly because it corrupts us within, isolates us – others might not even know we battle it.

Acedia is the second passion we’ll discuss today.  Pope Gregory in the 9th century combined Depression and Acedia into sloth but sloth suggests laziness, which is different from Depression or Acedia.

Acedia is a restless boredom that makes our ordinary tasks seem too dull to bear. Evagrius says it makes “the day [seem] fifty hours long.” Nothing seems right; life has lost its savor and it all seems somebody else’s fault, so that the only alternative is to leave everything and go off somewhere else.

Roberta Bondi lifts up the ancient teachings that acedia has two sources:

First, acedia often comes from one degree or another of exhaustion from too little sleep or not enough leisure. Nothing can sap an interest in life like chronic tiredness.

Second, acedia comes when we try to find meaning in life from things that do not give ultimate meaning: work, marriage, friendships, hobbies, material possessions. Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.”  Poemen’s advice is, “Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy the heart” (Apoth., Poemen 80, p. 178).

How do you see yourself?  Do the passions of depression or acedia blind you?

The Passions: Anger

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Ephesians 4:25-27
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.

Proverbs 22:24-25
Make no friends with those given to anger, and do not associate with hotheads, or you may learn their ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

“Don’t make me angry.  You won’t like me when I’m angry.”  That’s not only true for Dr. Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.  It is actually true for me as well.  And for some of you I imagine.

I have been angry.  I have been uncontrollably angry.  Some of you who have been around me in critical/stressful situations or have played golf with me may be surprised.  I’ve had quite a few people say to me, “You don’t ever get angry.”  Actually I do, but I have had to learn, like many others before me, that anger unleashed and acted upon can have destructive consequences.  I would love to be the heroic figure of my own sermon and tell how wonderfully I overcame anger on a mountaintop experience, but the truth is the way I have had to learn to control my anger is the hard way – unfortunately a few damaged relationships in my past and my contributions to their failings is what led me to really strive to get a handle on anger.  I’m not there yet, like you, I am a work in progress.

There have been many instances where my anger and lack of rational control led to a family actually leaving a church I used to serve.  Like anyone else I tried to justify my anger, “I was in the right, and if you were in my shoes you would understand” but in the end all those are just excuses on my own lack of self control and my own limitation of love.

My anger toward my father for over 15 years led to a broken and fractured relationship that was never restored.  I can justify my anger ever day of my life, but I can’t get those years back.  They are gone.

I have failed miserably in the area of anger and only because of that, have I had to learn a deeper level of self-control with the passion of anger.

I have no doubt that many of you have been in similar positions.  Whether a family member, friend, co-worker or boss, you’ve been angry and probably acted on that anger saying and doing things that damaged your relationships with these people.  I do realize that some of us battle anger more than others do.  I know other people who get violently angry about not making the green light at the intersection.  When the ancient monk Evagrius wrote to the desert fathers and mothers, one of his lessons was about a monk who would get so angry because when he was driving cattle they wouldn’t walk in a straight line.  Anger is nothing new.

Evagrius of Pontus in the 4th century called anger “the fiercest passion,” and there is probably more in the monastic literature about the destructive nature of anger than all the rest of the passions put together.  Why?  Because, in the opinion of the early church fathers, anger is more potentially destructive of love than any other passion. We have seen that in our own lives.  None of the other eight passions can destroy relationships as quickly as unbridled anger.

There is also more danger of self-deception in anger, Evagrius said, as we tell ourselves that our anger is justified because we are correcting others for their own good. But as Abba Poemen, another desert father once said, “Instructing one’s neighbor is for the [person] who is whole and without passions; for what is the use of building the house of another, while destroying one’s own?”

In our modern culture, we are given to support the concept or belief that anger is somehow good for us and the expression of anger is actually healthy for us.  But many studies indicate that expressing anger does not make it go away.  According to Dr. Robert Allan, a noted clinical psychologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, for most people and in most circumstances, directly expressed anger will only make a bad situation worse.  He argues that much of the popular psychology of expressing anger and letting it out does more harm than good because it alienates loved ones.   He writes, “Often anger runs in families, passed down from father to son, and mother to daughter. There are several proven strategies and tools that help people break this destructive cycle and get control of their anger.”  Dr. Allan, has studied anger for nearly three decades, and helps anger-prone people to discover the reasons for their anger. Reasons for anger are often tied to fundamental needs, some of which we are only dimly aware, such as respect and territory. By dealing with these needs directly, one will be better able to manage anger.

Interesting how Dr. Allan’s take is more about the cultivation of relationships and how that leads to health.  Evagrius also said in the 4th century that “even if expressing anger did remove it, if the relationship with the object of our anger has been broken or damaged by our expression, we have defeated our Christian goal of love.”

Scripture backs up this position of not allowing anger to be expressed in a few significant passages.  James 1:19-20 “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”  And in Proverbs 12:16, “Fools show their anger at once, but the prudent ignore an insult.”

The goal of the Christian life is to love God, others, and ourselves.  How is anger blinding you to that love and how is it destroying love?