Thursday, January 31, 2008

Sky Fishing

In a novel by the penetrating Christian author and Pulitzer Prize Runner-up, Frederick Buechner, a character is flying a kite. When asked what he was doing, he responded that he was fishing in the sky. The person pressed the issue by asking what he was fishing for. And the reply was that he supposed he was fishing for God.

Keeping relationship with the living Creator of the Universe can be an inconsistent enterprise at best. You go out some days and the effort is exciting as the wind pulls the lines taut and takes us for a thrilling ride. Other days, you stand in the still field, your kite grounded by the constant press of gravity. You can run as fast as you can, feet pounding the turf, trying hard to generate lift by your own steam. And the kite mimics signs of flight from the effort. But the moment you stop, flutters uselessly to the ground. And still other days, the pouring rain keeps you from going outside at all.

And my guess is that if we’re really honest about it, there are probably more windless and rainy days than days soaring in the sun that we long for. Days like today when the innocence of a quiet town is shattered by the swings of a brutal crime. Days when the pillar of a community or church suddenly falls to the ground, never to rise again. Days when children, who have no business dying, die anyway. And we’re left, holding our kite, wondering and waiting for something to lift us up; trying as hard as we can to make it fly or waiting for a breath of wind to remind that there actually were days of wind.

In both Greek and Hebrew (the original languages of the Bible), the word for spirit (pneuma and ru-ach) is literally defined “wind.” And it occurs to me that the truer faith is not one that has God or the Bible or life or pain or politics figured out (all of them impossibilities), but the one that stands patiently and faithfully in the field, waiting through the uncertainty and doubt for the wind, certain of only one thing: that one day, the wind will blow.

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” ~Romans 8:26

Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Climb

"When the preacher climbs up into his pulpit, switches on the lectern light and spreads out his note cards like a poker hand, maybe even the vacationing sophomore who is there only because somebody dragged him there pricks up his ears for a second or two along with the rest of them because they believe that the man who is standing up there in a black gown with the smear of styptic pencil on his chin has something they do not have or at least not in the same way he has it because he is a professional. He professes and stands for in public what they with varying degrees of conviction or the lack of it subscribe to mainly in private. He has been to a seminary and studied all that one studies in a seminary. He has a degree to show for it, and beyond the degree he has his ordination and the extraordinary title of reverend, which no matter how well they know him on the golf course or the cocktail-party circuit sets him apart as one to be revered not because of anything he knows or anything he is in himself but because, as an ambassador is revered for the government he represents, he is to be revered for representing Christ."
~ Frederick Buechner "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale"

I will be traveling on an airplane twice in the next month. That means I will be faced with the unavoidable dilemma that accompanies any such travel: the question about what I do for a living.

It's a mystifying experience. It seems my very countenance has this transformative effect on my fellow travelers, for the moment I share my profession, their demeanor, their posture, their very vocabulary becomes much tidier.

Of course, this isn't reserved to the airplane but also to family dinners, where all those loving eyes turn to "the professional" to give us a "real" prayer.

While my ego sits-up and wags its tail when such attention is lavished on me, honestly it can be a bit bewildering. Of course I'm happy to pray. I love talking to God. But I feel far more compelled, both in seat 13A and my place at the dinner table to say, "No, you don't understand, I'm really just like you. I am a believer on the same quest after God, some days headed in the right direction, some days too tired to move."

But being the medicine man does not afford such liberties. Your headdress and garb set you apart. Not your skin and bones. Not your searching mind or longing heart or little faith. The black fabric and slips of paper behind glass on the wall. They set you aside as "different."

Don't get me wrong: it is a tremendous and deeply humbling honor to be called to this occupation. It is the hardest job one could ever love. But it seems that such an "ambassadorship" can afford the minister certain privileges that he is certain is more due to the quiet yet faithful members who wait anxiously for a Word from God. But the greater worry is that the occupation, the black cloth and the slips of paper, afford freely available permission to "leave it to the professional" (because in our over-worked society, we do not have time but to leave it them).

"A professional Christian." Paul says, "Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me... " (Eph. 3:7-8). He too was seminary trained and yet gives all credit, not to his grade-point average but to the gift of God's grace. A gift that is made available to all.

My itchiness about being asked "what do you do for a living?" or to pray at family meals is never about having to say the right words on the spot but that others would miss the opportunity to meet with God too; to practice what is more often "subscribed to in private" and left to the ones society calls "professionals." A title most ministers I know would never ascribe to themselves.

And yet, Sunday after Sunday, I take the three steps that places me within view of everyone, I open a Book with trembling fingers that everyone there owns, and attempt to speak the truth of a God who is bigger than any human language nor can be contained by a slip of paper behind glass. The pulpit at the Columbia Seminary chapel holds a placard which quotes the gospel of John, "Sir, we would see Jesus", an injunction to the preacher of the sheer magnitude of what most congregations want in no longer than 15 minutes.

The only thing left is to do what every other baptized believer can do: trust in the grace of God to use the gifts placed inside to open a window to true reality, not because of being a professional, but because God's grace is sufficient.