Toxins

Our eyes filled with tears.

I'd like to say that it was because we'd gotten emotional over a movement in the Spirit, but that would not be accurate.

It was the fumes.

I don't remember the exact cause, but somehow the church was filled with gas from the sewer. It wasn't just a bad smell; the stinging toxins caused us all to react physically. We were quite certain that if someone had caused a spark the whole thing would have exploded.

Turning on the exhaust fans didn't help. Opening all the doors and windows didn't help. Stepping out of the building and breathing deeply ---- that helped.

Of course, this problem didn't exist at all on Saturday evening. I guess that's OK as we wouldn't have been able to pay the emergency fees to get someone out on the weekend to fix it anyway.

So we scoped out our options, gathered some old folding chairs, took them to the nearby park, and set them up under the shade of a tree. We found some batteries for a boom box and pulled out some CDs to play. We posted a kid a the front door and had him point the gathering parishioners to our new location.

Someone had thrown one of those big orange traffic barrels (the kind with the flashing light on it that road crews use in construction zones) into the park. It's flasher was not longer working so I set my Bible on it and used it as the day's pulpit.

Since we were just rolling with the punches, those who came planning to be indoors just rolled with things, too. Expectations for the day went down as everyone fumbled around a little bit, but in the end things turned out OK. We even had a couple of people who were in the park stop by to see what we were doing.

We called in the pros the first of the week and got the problem solved.

Since that time I've become a little more sensitive to toxic fumes inside the church.

Interpersonal conflicts, programming debates, inflated egos, people not meeting each others' expectations, theological disagreements ---- the list goes on. These fumes can build up overnight in a church and have us all on the verge of tears.

And it seems like one spark will cause the whole thing to explode.

When this happens it's critical that we get some fresh Air. Open the windows and doors. Turn on the fans. And when that's not enough, we need to get someplace --- physically, spiritually, emotionally --- where our expectations of each other can be relaxed and where we can let the Spirit breathe.

For it's in those places where we can let our flashpoints dim and replace them with steady light from the Word.

Once we're breathing again we need to be humble enough to ask for help from others. Hoping the fumes will just dissipate on their own will just keep us in the same crisis.

And though not all the sources of toxins in a church can be repaired with one service call, we know through the cross that the price has been paid and that restoration is already on its way.

Breathe on me breath of God.

Picked

High school football was the topic of discussion. Many schools in the inner city don't field teams. Some of the ones that do have limited resources, both in finance and skill, to do things as well as their suburban counterparts.

The school many of our kids attend does have a team. So with several of our boys quite eager to play pick-up games each weekend in the park, I asked why they didn't join their school's team.

They all laughed.

"Pastor, the kids on our school's team are, you know, it's like in gym when you're making teams and they look like the ones that don't ever get picked."

I must confess that when I look over our little inner-city congregation it sometimes seems like I could accurately describe us that way, too.

Many of our folks have spent their whole lives not getting picked for the team.

Any team.

So it's easy when I see the abundant skill and financial resources of the Willow Creeks and Saddlebacks of the world, much less the glitz and allure of the secular world's ways, to get depressed over how we can hardly suit up and therefore should plan for defeat.

But then I remember Gideon. And David. And Moses, Peter, James and John. Rahab. Ruth. The list goes on.

Who would have picked them, at least at the beginning of the story?

And I see the strength and courage and passion of our folks who dare to dream of the Kingdom. They're painfully aware of their resource restrictions but are just crazy enough to think they will impact this world for His glory.

It's true that the world might never pick us. On my better days I'm OK with that. I'll just keep on trying to keep us all in training and ready to run onto the field each time He calls our names.

Here am I, send me.

Bill

The gas & electric bill came late in the day on Thursday. It was the first power bill we received since the expansion of our building so we were anticipating a big jump in how much we would owe. We had, in fact, budgeted for a ten-fold increase.

Even with that preparation I was still more than a little surprised. The bill was 40X (yes, forty times) the previous month's bill. In fact, this power bill was higher than our typical monthly offering receipts.

Dilemma.

This bill was too big for any specific prayer I knew. "Well, what are You going to do about THIS?" was about all I could offer.

I then started looking for His answer in all the typical places.

I called folks who had supervisory capacity over the ministry. They agreed it was a problem and told me to solve it.

The next day I called the power company to find out payment options. Their option was to pay it or have the gas and electric turned off.

I then did the math to see how much I could make at a part time job. That's when I realized that even if I worked full time as a cashier at Target I would not make half as much as the power company wanted each month.

What to do?

You can call it denial. You can call it faith. You can call it shock. You can call it whatever you want, but the fact of the matter was that the problem was just way too big for me to do anything about that day. Since I didn't see Him doing anything in particular, I decided to get a good night's sleep and continue with the things I had scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.

When I got home from Saturday afternoon's meetings I found an envelope in the mail from an acquaintance in another city. We hadn't corresponded in a very long time and I found it odd that, since they'd never been to the church, the envelope bore its address.

Inside was a note saying they'd been thinking of our congregation this week and felt led to help in some way. The check was twice the amount of the power bill.

Wow.

The money and the hope that came with it carried us for a couple of months, at which point we discovered that the power company hadn't read our gas and electric meters; they had simply estimated what they thought we would use.

When they came out and actually read the meters they adjusted our balance accordingly.

Our bill read $0000.00 for the next four months.

I liked His solution just fine.

Show yourself strong, Lord, in my life and in the world around me.

Even

He'd listened to the message attentively enough to have a question for me afterward. That always does my heart some good.

His question?

"Do you mean that even I can get baptized?"

Yes. That was the heart of the message. God loves all of us, offers forgiveness to all of us, and invites us all to the waters of baptism in sacramental relationship with Him. Through it he could fully become a member of the church.

That was a question that my middle-class self had never really pondered.

Even I?

I come from a world where opportunity abounds. I come from a world where inclusion is expected to the point of it being my right to belong. In my world I expect to have a variety of choices of groups who all would (or should) want me to be a member.

And in my world sin seems to have limitations. We describe our sinful state with terms like "issues" or "things I struggle with" or "personal weaknesses." Our past behaviors are referred to "youthful indiscretions" or "lapses in judgment." If many people like me are enmeshed in a particular sin, ranging from racism to "fudging" on our taxes, we say something like "that's just how things are" or "that's what everyone does."

My middle class world also has the resources to cover up or deal with our oft unnamed sin. We have financial resources that pay for rehab or cut a child support check each month. We have educational and emotional and family resources that help us navigate through sin-induced crises. We have social resources with polite company that help keep skeletons safely in our closets.

But he didn't have any of these things. His sin, both by nature and actions, had been lived out publicly. They had cost him dearly. There was no glossing over them and no one to pick up the pieces. He bore the scars and carried the stigma of his sin.

Plus, his was not a world full of opportunity. It was a world where exclusion was the norm and any hopes of inclusion had been dead so long that he didn't really remember that that even existed. He never felt that any group had ever wanted him to be a member.

So to be invited, to be welcome, to be included was radical. The hope of forgiveness was true liberation.

This makes me wonder how even I could have been baptized. With my privileged birthright and social safety net, with help in the waiting for my next crisis and my (if I were willing to admit them) skeletons in my closet, could I have even begun to grasp the magnitude of this sacrament?

Even I?

If I were attentive to my own and my social class's sinfulness, might I be more able to fully engage in the radical liberation of the Christ?

That would really do my heart some good.

Lord, free me from the things that keep me captive.

Open

I kept the front door open while I was doing some work at the church. I let in some fresh air and hoped people would stop by and visit. So he felt quite comfortable when he came in to just pull up a chair and chat.

Him, "Let me ask you a question."

Me, "Sure."

H - You and your wife (Pause) you're (Pause) married?

M - Yes

H - And you have a child together, right?

M - Yep.

(Pause)

H - and he was born (Pause) AFTER you were married?

M - That's right.

(Pause)

H - Well, who else do you have a child by?

M - No one else. Just her.

(Pause)

H - Well who else does she have a child by?

M - No one.

After another long pause and a perplexed look on his face, he continued this line of questioning.

This went on for about 45 minutes with more pauses for him to think and more perplexed facial expressions with each answer given.

In the middle of one line of questions he stood up, looked at me, shook his head, and without saying anything else wandered out into the night. The way I thought was too much for him to handle and he just had to leave.

Sometimes I have to put the Bible down and walk away into my own night, too. There are things in thee text that I've reviewed and studied and wrestled with. I've had long talks with God about them but mostly I just shake my head. After a while, though, I have to recognize that God's way of thinking is just so very different from mine and, from where I sit, it's just too much for me to handle.

It wasn't long after that evening's open door conversation that he and his mom moved across town and we lost track of each other.

So it was a real surprise when I parked my van in front of my house one Saturday afternoon about eight years later that I saw him riding his bike up my street.

"Remember me?" he asked as he pulled up beside me. I knew his face immediately and his name just a minute later. I asked what was going on in his life.

"I have a kid," he said. He grinned and held up his left hand as he said, "The mom and me, we're married." A gold band on his finger shown in the sunlight.

I don't know if those two conversations, eight years apart, had that much to do with each other. But the two together give me hope: not only hope for that kid and his family but hope for me, too.

Because it makes me wonder about my desire to better know the mind of God and the conversations and studies I've had to walk away from. I hope that they might be silently working in me and showing up in my life years later in ways I might not even remember or recognize.

And maybe when I run across those passages of scripture again they won't be quite as far out of my thought stream as when they first perplexed me. Maybe stepping away let them quietly work into the fibers of my being without me even really noticing.

Maybe not.

But there is hope.

Thank you, Lord, for not ever giving up on me.

Celebrate

"Well, Happy Birthday!" I said to him and his mom. I was standing by their crowded front steps gathering information and filling in the "Date of Birth" blank on his camp form when I realized that it was his holiday.

After wishing him well I tried to move on to the next question. I was not successful.

The man who was also sitting on their steps dealing drugs called into the house to his associates. He announced that it was the boy's birthday and they all got excited. They came to the steps, greeted him boisterously, gave him big hugs, and each handed him cash.

The party spread to the stoop next door and those gather all came over for the celebration. More gave money. Another flagged down the ice cream truck and got him a treat.

After a few minutes I could see that the spontaneous party was just getting started and that there was no use in trying to finish the camp forms that night. I headed to the next campers house knowing I would have to get the other mundane information later.

I was frustrated to not have the forms done. The deadline for their submission was looming and it was hard to find his mom at home, much less lucent. Who knew if I would even be able to get this taken care of.

These are the kinds of moments that I'm reminded just how much of a Pharisee I can be. Of all the people on the steps that night, I'm the one who preaches about Joy, Hope, Love, and Peace yet was totally unprepared to celebrate his birthday. Gifts, food, and accolades seemed to pour out of nowhere from among all the others. The only thing I could focus on was the line that said, "Emergency Contact Information."

Don't get me wrong. What I was doing was important and necessary. But I thought it trumped the moment of celebrating the importance of this kid.

When I read the Gospels again, I see how Jesus got in trouble (with the Pharisees and Martha and the disciples and others) because he was ready and able to celebrate the goodness he found, even with those pesky tax collectors.

And if I were that kid, I would have seen both a group of people who were ready to drop everything to celebrate me and a person who only seemed interested in information about me. With whom would I have aligned my allegiance?

So it's not surprising, really, that 12 years later he's taken over for the men who once sat on his front steps. Oh, we still visit and he has good memories of activities at church and his week at camp. They are simply distant memories that he was able to share with the ones who he felt loved him the most.

Lord, let love be my only debt.

Drum

He gave the church his drum at the end of the service as a way of thanking us for the ministry he received that day.

He and his drum had staggered in to the church about 15 minutes before it was time to start. After visiting with me, he stumbled to the chairs and sat his drunken self down right in the middle of the room.

He played the drum during every song we sang. His rhythms were his own and had absolutely nothing to do with the songs the rest of the people were trying to sing.

During the quiet times and while I was preaching, he occasionally moaned, cried a little, and slurred a few words. These were usually accompanied by some random drumbeats.

All of this was to the complete dissatisfaction of those who had gathered that morning.

Once he presented the gift and left, a few people came to express their frustrations about what had just happened. Their concerns were legitimate and well-justified; it was a challenging hour for us all.

Then I relayed the conversation he and I had before the service.

Earlier that week he had been walking up the block by the church. A car had come around the corner. It missed him but hit and killed a girl who was on her way home from school. That day was fresh in all our minds, too.

In trying to deal with what he'd experienced he had come back to the scene that morning. He'd found the discarded toy drum along the way and had used it to keep his hands busy and accent his emotions.

As he left that corner he found himself standing in front of the church and he believed that God had put it there just for him that day.

We didn't have much we could do for him in the way of skills and resources. We couldn't fix his problems. But having a place to sit, to cry, to express himself, and to think about life itself was the ministry most needed that day.

And it's the kind of ministry I need sometimes, too.

I'm not always ready to have all my problems fixed and if people try to do so they just make things worse. I don't always need skills and resources used on me. Sometimes I just need to sit with a group of people who will let me think and make random expressions to try to process where I am.

Because life gets intense --- intensely troubling and intensely joyful. And intense times call a decompression that can only come in the presence of others and the Other.

So when you see me getting ready to beat my drum again and you know it's not in sync with what's happening around me, I beg a bit more grace than usual for a few minutes.

And I'll work at not trying to fix you when you need to bang things out now and again, too.

Then when we're done we can give those drums back to Him as we go back into the intensity life can bring.

Let the Comforter be among us, Lord.