For the past several months, a refugee family from Asia has been visiting our church. Despite the obvious cultural and language barriers, many of our members have been gracious, accommodating and often very generous in the gifts of their time and resources for this family’s many needs.

A part of our desire to minister to this family has been to answer any questions they might have about our church or, more importantly, the Christian faith we celebrate and share with one another from week to week. The husband felt he understood most things about Christianity, but there was one question that was puzzling him.

“Why,” he asked, “did a special group from the congregation during worship sit on the stage and wear different clothes?” We quickly realized he was talking about the choir, but his real question was whether or not they had some kind of elevated status or importance in the life of the congregation because of their visible, distinctive and prominent seating arrangement in the sanctuary.

It is a good question and prompts our worthy struggle to be intentional and reflective about the theology we proclaim verbally and non-verbally in our worship celebrations. It also reminds me of another recent question from a child who is newly attending our church from another congregation. She wanted to know where the graham crackers were. It seems this practice was her favorite from the other church and she wondered when we were finally going to pony up and provide them.

Questions arising from a new vantage point are always refreshing, sometimes humorous, and reveal how easy it is for us to mistakenly assume we are clearly communicating what we believe about God’s love discovered in Jesus Christ or clearly understanding the person with whom we hope to share it.

These questions also invite us to re-examine our practices and welcome us into a deeper discussion about why we value certain traditions, customs and habits over others. They prompt us to figure out what truly concerns those around us and how we can improve our ministry to them.

Yes, children will make a beeline to the doughnuts before they care about who built the ark, and many adults will focus on what we might perceive as minutia over the substantive issues of our day. But it is all a significant ministry when we seek to invite, welcome, include and assimilate new persons into our communities of faith.

I really can think of nothing more interesting or exciting.

Most of what I might post here can be found at  Ethics Daily (The Webzine for The Baptist Center for Ethics).  Here are the more recent contributions:

Can Prophets of Doom Awaken Us from Comfortable Lifestyle? 4/24/2009

Confusion Reveals Church’s Struggle on Sexual Orientation Issues 4/17/2009

This Easter, Don’t Get All Worked Up Over the Bunny 4/10/2009

Garden Imagery Finds Expression in Church Project 3/12/2009

There Is Always Enough God 3/6/2009

Confessions of an Interfaith Baptist Preacher 2/5/2009

O God of King David and Queen Elizabeth,

Of every Pharaoh and each Caesar, of all despots and dictators, of preachers, popes and presidents, of clerics, critics and colonels, of rabbis, rulers and rookies,

By your eternal Spirit, every single leader – whether great or small, good or evil, wise or incompetent, all with mixtures in between – have toiled and tarried, have succeeded or failed.

You alone are God. You alone have seen it all and know it all. You have inspired great human achievement and have wept through abject human terror. Always to rescue us, your persistent and patient love has gently carried every century and every empire.

In the confidence arising from this collective memory, we endeavor to pray for our leaders, to support them and hold them accountable not merely to their promises, but to your principles.

We pledge to defend the weak, protect the innocent and care for the needy. We seek to work for peace, to reconcile enemies and to honor fairness and justice. May we rise to a standard of mercy and fairness. May we bend to tangible and humble acts of service and sacrifice.

We hope in our leaders for nothing short of the absolute best we expect in ourselves.

With the respect we offer to honor the truth purposed to make us free, we implore your guidance to be redemptively self-critical and worldly-wise. Make us transparent with grace and resilient with courage.

In the freedom you have given each of us to be a Gandhi or a Hitler, grant us leaders who serve the common good by using their power to help the powerless and who understand their responsibility to give aid to the least of these, your children.

O God, whose name is the source and inspiration for all in life that is good, do not forsake us now. We have traveled too far, endured too much, heard too many stories, witnessed too much heartbreak, all to believe this moment is not cast with tremendous capacity to usher in a brand new day.

So, may we pray, pray, pray and work, work, work to build a better tomorrow and welcome this world you have made and love to become all you have intended it to be.

Amen.

A young stockbroker, who once belonged to a youth group I led     back in the 1980s, refers to “Facebook” as “Internet crack cocaine.” He might be right, especially in the first month of “addiction” when there is a frenzy of activity: renewing old acquaintances, looking over friends’ messages and photo albums and trying to learn how to manage all the tricks and options possible in setting up your personal account.

Not long ago, I was a non-Facebook elitist. When friends constantly encouraged me to open an account, I resisted. I felt I had neither the time nor the inclination to play in this cyber-world of triviality. But after an international summer trip, I thought it might be a good place to share many of my pictures. It wasn’t long before I, too, took my place at the feeding trough of constant informational supply, keeping myself current on the banal daily existence of my circle of friends. I had become a cyber-junkie.

For those unaware, Facebook (and a similar service called MySpace) are personal Internet billboards where individuals become their own promotional agents by creating Web pages where they can send each other messages, share personal information, photos and favorite movies and books, post notes and essays and join a host of other groups, invitations, services and causes.  There is also a feature called “status” where you can post a sentence on what you are currently doing, thinking or feeling.

While you can make your account public (meaning all members can view your page), most opt for a private account allowing a limited list of approved members (your friends) who can view all your posted information.

Still, this provides a false sense of security. Last year, parents of teenagers shuddered at the death of 14-year-old Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being jilted by a MySpace boyfriend who, in actuality, was the mother of another 14-year-old girl in the neighborhood and Megan’s rival.

Other cases of cyber-bullying have escalated into more severe challenges for school authorities and government officials. One health professional is warning young people that information they post about use of drugs or sexual license could harm future employment opportunities. Lawmakers from around the country are trying to catch up and get laws on the books to guide the tricky balance between freedom of speech and the protection of an individual’s reputation and safety.

Once, we just taught our children to look both ways before crossing the street. The busy intersections available on the Internet are proving just as dangerous. While none of us would want to go back to the horse and buggy, we also have learned the importance of safety precautions.

Just because we sit in front of personal screens in the privacy of our offices and homes is no reason to believe the whole world is not also watching. They used to say the eye was the window to the soul. In the transparent and accessible world of the Internet, it is wise to consider: You are what you post and your monitor is a two-way street to your deepest and perhaps truest self.

We live in the present and the not-yet kingdom.  In Christ and in the church (when we are at our best), we have a glimpse of what God’s will is for all the world.   We have seen it and felt it, only to notice it slipping through our fingers.  We know it has arrived but await its full appearing.  We know it is here and yet we proclaim it is also coming.

It’s a little like buying a Christmas gift for someone special.  We know the gift is in the present (pretty clever, huh?) but its full impact of joy and happiness –when it is opened and received will come later.  It has been secured, but it awaits a future revealing.

Consider, the life and ministry of Jesus.  He proclaimed and offered the wide mercy and forgiveness of God to others.  But don’t you think they still stubbed their moral big toes in later experience?  They were forgiven and still had times they would need forgiveness.  Or consider those Jesus healed as the lame walked and the blind were able to see.  They were touched by the Master, yet at a later day still became sick of body and died.  Their healing, while substantial was temporary.  It had been received but would still again need renewal and completion.

Or how about the disciples who were chosen by Jesus?  He picked Benedict Arnolds and Patriots, bringing together a community who would obviously have conflicts with one another.  But he saw in them – as he sees in us – a potential not to be realized well after their choosing.  Isn’t it revealing how none of them really came fully into themselves until after Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, torture, execution and final victory in the resurrection?

The kingdom had come.  The kingdom had yet to be revealed.  On this Christmas Eve, we welcome again the Savior who has come and who is coming again.  In this witness we learn how any threat whether:  economic disaster or moral failure, separation or sickness, personal injury or illness, heart attack or cancer advance; how not even death itself can conquer its advance.

The baby was born.  The baby will be born again.  And with this new Christmas morning, we move one day closer to the kingdom, present and yet to be.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Most of my posts are adaptions of a regular weekly email to church members and friends.   Lately, I have fallen behind posting them to this blog, but I am including the recent ones picked up by The Baptist Center for Ethics at their site:  www.EthicsDaily.com.  If you would like to be included in the weekly emails please make your request at:  info@lexcentral.com.

“Bowing to Baal in the Season of Giving” 12-11-08

“The Challenge of Conscience in an Age of Confusion” 12-01-08

“Witnessing on Election Day” 10-30-08

“Wanted: Peacemakers in the Culture Wars” 9-18-08

You might have predicted it. As more and more churches have placed their Sunday morning worship services online in video format, there is hardly an extraordinary moment in church not immortalized and watched by thousands, if not millions of viewers.

Not long ago, at least three church members sent me this clip of the young boy who was being baptized and decided to dive, instead of walk, into the pool. It gained enough notoriety to make it on America’s Funniest Videos.

Next, we witnessed the exhaustive replaying of the inflammatory rhetoric of Rev. Jeremiah Wright when he was pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Now, The Huffington Post has posted a clip of Alaskan governor and presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin while speaking to the Pentecostal Wasilla Assembly of God, a church where she grew up and was baptized.

In all of these examples, I have to admit being appalled. I’m taken aback by the blurring of the line between entertainment and reverence, politics and faith, sensationalism and spirituality.

In this most recent posting, Gov. Palin asks for and receives prayer. This was an admirable and appropriate part of the worship service. What disturbed me were the connections between faith and practice from the governor, and then by her pastor in the same service.

Referring to a $30 billion natural gas project, Gov. Palin says: Pray for that also, I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies and to get that gas line built, so pray for that.

Then, mentioning the Iraq war and her oldest son’s pending deployment, she says: [Pray] that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That is what we have to believe, that there is a plan and they are sending them out on God’s plan.

Finally, near the end, the pastor, reacting to Alaska’s rich natural resources brought up earlier by the governor, says: I believe Alaska is one of the refuge states… [how]...in the last days, and hundreds and thousands of people [from the lower 48] are going to seek refuge [here] and the church has to be ready to minister to them.

This article continues with a review of other sermons from Senior Pastor Ed Kalnins, who has “preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted into heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war ‘contending for your faith;’ and said that Jesus ‘operated from that position of war mode.’”

While I squirm at the content of these statements, my greater sense of angst resides in the way God and government become so enmeshed and undistinguished from each other. In an almost odd twist of fatalism, there seems this belief that if it is so, it must be the way God intends it. My side is God’s side and as long as I pray about it, I can rest assured God is honored and God’s will is done.

In this milkshake of theology and policy, past actions and limited self-assessments, future predictions and assumptions of doing God’s will, there is little room for critical reflection or objective questioning. It’s like taking our little bundle of ego and doing a “cannonball” right in the sacred waters of baptism. But as I said earlier, there’s already a video about that.

Despite this very transparent and superficial effort to win over former Hillary supporters and appeal to the most extreme right of the Republican platform, what makes this choice very weird for me is John’s McCain’s admitted philandering past.  I wonder if he has graduated to a healthier respect for women or is he still using them for his own self promotion?

I question if this is really the best direction to advance women’s rights –taking advantage of a path cleared, leveled and paved by Hillary Clinton for a relatively unknown and nationally untested politician whose credentials put her on the opposite side of the feminist movement of the past 40 years? Is this really an elevation based on merit or a terrible and shameful exploitation?

I’m all for equality, but like the fallout from the 1984 Mondale/Ferraro race, will this set the cause forward or backward in years to come?

Also check out this great article by Dee Dee Myers.

Now this is the way to sing the national anthem, plus I absolutely adore Shawn Johnson (she’s gotta be kin).

This year’s presidential election was going to be extraordinary, no matter which way you sliced it. For the first time in 54 years, there will not be an incumbent president or vice president on the ticket. For the first time in 22 years, there will not be a Clinton or a Bush on the ticket (unless, in the very unlikely event, John McCain might choose one for a running mate). Most amazing, this is the first time ever in the history of the United States that the two major presidential candidates are also sitting members of the U.S. Senate.

Yet, there is another equally notable milestone. On Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention and on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Senator Barack Obama will be the first African-American to receive the nomination of a major political party for president.

Our larger American context makes this a phenomenal moment in our nation’s history. It was not until the early 1960s that many blacks truly felt they had the right to vote. While the 15^th Amendment of 1870 granted voting rights to all U.S. citizens regardless of “race, color or previous condition of servitude,” it would not be until the repeal of Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement that a truly effective African-American electorate would be developed.

This distinctive history calls into question some of the criticism leveled at Sen. Obama. With such racial tensions and transitions in our collective and recent past, it was hard not hear the charge of being an “elitist” as a more cryptic smear of being “uppity.” In the same way, the suggestion of being naive carries the implication of another racial stereotype: being “a good boy,” “simple-minded” and not a “troublemaker.”

Now, with the talking points shifting to being ill-prepared and not “ready to lead,” it’s easy to hear echoes of Rush Limbaugh’s 2003 infamous criticism of Philadelphia Eagles’ Donovan McNabb of being “overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.” While Limbaugh insisted his comments were not about race, I’ve been around enough football fields, sports bars and water coolers to know the truth being proclaimed behind the words being said: The position of quarterback (leadership) is best left to the white kid.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to suggest an unqualified endorsement of anyone for president. I’m sure this same ad hominem approach could easily be leveled at Sen. John McCain based upon his age, his “anger management” reputation or his own admitted mistakes of marital failure.

It’s just not simple. We may join that great chorus of judging a man “by the content of his character and not the color of his skin,” but at least we should admit how racism is never merely skin deep. We make assumptions about character because of skin color or age or yes, even gender (another interesting historic trajectory this election could have traveled), sometimes without even consciously knowing we have done so.

Maybe it would be better if this election was not about character – at least not to the level it has been portrayed and promoted at every twist and turn. Perhaps we should make this election turn on policies and positions, what is said and what is promised and better yet, what has actually been done in the patterns of the past.

But that requires work, some research and some reading. It also requires us to get serious about another chorus, this one as true as a Sunday school testimony: “Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in his sight.”  We sang it as a dream.  Now, let’s be serious about its truth.