Humility. Epiphany. What?

Last year at this time I was in final prep mode counting down to the beginning of the first sabbatical of my vocation in ministry. Those days just before moved as methodically as the ball descending on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. One of the last things I did was attend staff meeting in January. During the devotion, Pam asked us to pull a piece of paper from a bowl and keep it with us during the year. EPIPHANY!

I’ve kept that star on my desk and carried it in my backpack when on the road. It has been a reminder. I’m not sure how I’ve done with it, though, humbled I was this year with the gift of sabbatical time, with the well wishes, with the gift of a painting and guitar by campers this summer, and by those that did my work while I rested, read, and wrote. I’m humbled by my privilege and aware how few are gifted sabbatical or even time off. It is one of the things we don’t do well in our culture – time away from work, phones, social media, the 24hr news cycle, our silo echo chambers, the drive to win whatever the cost rather than create.

Humility (def): freedom from pride or arrogance.(1)

We live in an age of “humble brag.” Live your best life some say. What do you do when “my best life” encroaches on another’s ability to live their best life? I was taught to take pride in my work, but not to call too much attention to any one accomplishment or deed. Let your life, your actions, and others speak of your work and your accomplishments. Being a “braggart” was not a title to strive for or wish for. It was almost dishonorable and certainly uncouth. Yet, it seems this is the context as second decade of the 21st century ends: a braggart, economic disparity and insult driven polemic of a culture that thinks of itself as “self governed.” Here is a piece in “The Atlantic” by Lee Drutman, America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared (Jan 2, 20202), for some context for that last observation. Are there good things happening? Of course. Nicholas Kristof recounts them in his New York Times column, This Has Been the Best Year Ever (Dec 28, 2019)

Did I mention I work with children and youth? The Regional Youth Council is a group of high school youth and adults I have the honor of serving. They are from different congregations within our denomination here in Oklahoma. Last fall they were was asked, “What should the Church/church be doing?”(2) Their answers heavily require togetherness, covenant, and community. Here are the words they listed as “doing”: outreach, comfort, safe-space, listening, enjoyable, excellence, spirit, guide, nurture, faith journey, ritual, nonjudgemental, sacrament.

My notes during the discussion about these words became these thought bubbles What should the church be doing?

Adapt and Evolve to how people are now.
Inviting preaching that is light hearted, but not afraid to talk about the bad things or hard topics.
Short attention spans: quality not quantity.
Listening to make community better.
Feed people, cloth people, outreach that meets people where they are (food and spirit).
Nurture christians is all parts of their faith journey: people who need routine and people who need challenge. How do our rituals, comfort, and sacraments nurture and challenge?
Safe-space for the hard conversations. If you can’t talk about it at church anymore, then where and with whom? Youth in particular and everyone in general to be “spoken to not spoken at.”
Welcome. Not judged by how I look.

Those thought bubbles briefly expounded upon.

We are the Church when we nurture, listen, provide safe-space for hard conversation or stories, comfort, celebrate the Spirit of God and our rituals point to God instead of ourselves or our idols. We are the Church when we follow Jesus and his way of living. His way of meeting people. We are the Church when our outreach provides in tragedy or for life’s necessities. And our outreach also changes the systems that make charitable outreach necessary.

O, for a world where everyone
respects each other’s ways,
where love is lived and all is done
with justice and with praise.(3)

O, for a world where . . .
O, for a world when . . .

We are the Church/church. The kindom (empire) of God is already present, and not quite yet here. The empire of God is visible every now and then. “It is a kingdom of conscience or nothing.” Balian of Ibelin recognized late in the film, “The Kingdom of Heaven.” Luke Skywalker noted, “And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanity.” in The Last Jedi. Or, pick any of the authentic parables of Jesus to glimpse or grapple with the empire (kingdom) of God. It seems like a jigsaw puzzle. Some are trying to work from the inside out. Others have recognized the need to go back to finding the border pieces that give the puzzle a shape and a guide from which to work.

In each age, people that practice a religion or not must grapple with their kingdom building. For Christians/christians, we must ask, “How will I incarnate a kinship, an empire of God in 2020; or not.” Or, to borrow again from the film “Kingdom of Heaven.” The voice of Hospitaller who is part of the crusade to save Jerusalem:

By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of god. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What God desires is here (pointing to the heart) and here (pointing to the head), and what you decide to do every day will make you a good man[person]…or not.
Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott, Director. 20th Century Fox, 2005. I added (parenthesis) for context as well as [person] to apply the thought to all humanity.

Humility. Epiphany. What?

Notes
1. “Humility.” The Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Inc., https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humility. Accessed 31 December 2019.
2. “Church”, capitalized, is a traditional way of noting the universal Church or Christendom as a whole while “church” indicates a local congregation or denomination within the family tree of Christianity.
3. Miriam Therese Winter, “O for a World.” Chalice Hymnal, 683. Words 1990. © Medical Mission Sisters, 1990.