Credo

“I try, in church, to say the creed, even though I usually have stop after two words.  Yet I can say those two.  I believe.  After that, the list gets too particular.  I need more information and I have a lot of questions.  I can’t stand and swear to the details, have had trouble with them since I was twelve.  Nevertheless, credo.  That much won’t satisfy a church, but it’s a start.  I can say it without a shred of doubt.”   ( Josephine Humphreys in Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on the New Testament ed. by Alfred Corn, Penquin Books ©1990)

                Today I took four boxes of books to Andover-Newton for their book sale in after Christmas.  Six other boxes are packed ready to go to the Theological Book Network in Grand Rapids MI.  There are four boxes packed of those I’m taking home and not all that fall in that category are packed yet.  Going through my library accumulated over 40+ years has reminded me of the evolution of my own thought over my 65 years and the teachers and authors who have been influential on that journey. 

                One of the books that I leafed through was one that contained the above quote.  It reminded me that when the creed was said in various worship services I attended when I was young I would only say the parts I thought I believed and just remained silent for the rest.  All through my life, my faith has changed.  Sometimes I have believed certain things about God or Jesus or the Church, and other times I have not.    That may sound shocking to those who believe that clergy have their faith all figured out once and for all.  After all we are supposed to sound like we know what it is all about on Sunday mornings!   What is different about clergy is that we have been educated in the history and traditions of the faith through the centuries.  What is not different is the struggle to have faith and to know what we “believe.”  It is only our education and training that separates us from the people in the pew.

                What I have always tried to do is to teach the basics of the Christian faith without saying that you MUST believe every word of the Bible or the various creeds to be a faithful person or a person of faith.  What has been important to me in my life is faith as a journey and not a destination.  What has been discouraging is how few people in the pew take the quest for faith very seriously.   How few are willing to engage in Bible study or theological study.  It is not surprising then that as adults there are those who either dismiss the claims of faith without serious engagement or continue to have an eight- year-old’s understanding of God that does not stand up well to the difficult problems and issues of adult life.

                While I’m giving up most of my professional library, my quest to understand the depths of the Christian faith will go on.  I will buy some new books and may actually read a few that have sat around unread on my shelves for a long time.  I look forward to continuing to articulate in some way what I have come to believe even as those beliefs continue to evolve.

The Ethics of Retirement

A couple of weeks ago I went to a retirement seminar for clergy. During the course of the day an issue came up that I hadn’t thought about before. It had to do with the vows we make at ordination. Are those vows still binding in the same way if we are no longer practicing ministry?

I immediately said no because I have a more “low church” view of ordination to ministry as a functional event rather than a cosmic priestly one binding for all time. I was ordained for a function of leadership and responsibility within a congregation. When I have ceased to do exercise that role, those vows don’t continue to follow me like a divine aura was my response at the time. However the more I’ve thought about it, the more I can see the problems with my thinking. Because I’ve exercised the role of pastor for 40 years, I am different and others look at me differently. I can never be just another person in a congregation. When I speak, others will give what I say a different reception because I have been and still am, ordained, even if I am not practicing any more.

In the UCC the minister’s code of ethics says the following:

I will regard all persons with equal respect and concern and undertake to
minister impartially.
I will honor all confidences shared with me.
I will not use my position, power, or authority to exploit any person.
I will not use my position for personal financial gain, nor will I misuse the
finances of the institution that I serve.
I will not perform pastoral services within a parish or for a member of a
parish without the consent of the pastor of that parish.
I will deal honorably with the record of my predecessor and successor.
I will not, upon my termination and departure from a ministry position,
interfere with nor intrude upon the ministry of my successor.

(UCC Manual on the Ministry)

It is the last three of these that often get retired clergy into trouble. We don’t mean to be a problem but it is hard to bite our tongue in a congregation. We have trouble seeing that others in the congregation are giving more weight to our words because we are ordained! We agree to serve on a local church pastoral search committee even though we shouldn’t because we are not just another member of the church. We do so because we feel honored that people want our expertise. We agree to do a wedding, funeral, or baptism for a former member with whom we were close not realizing the havoc it creates for our successor. We may even justify it saying we were not doing it in the church building! Each time we do these things we create a barrier for our successor, or in the case of the church we have joined, interference for the person who is our pastor.

This is why we are counseled to retire in another community and to limit our relationships with former parishioners. It is why we are supposed to “unfriend” our parishioner friends on Facebook when we leave. It isn’t that we have ceased to care but that the role we are playing has changed and the goal should be to encourage congregants to let the new pastor become their pastor. That can’t happen if we are still hovering on the periphery of our former congregation.

I’m glad the issue was raised at the seminar. As I get ready to retire, its important for me to remember that I will never be “just another member” of the church I will join, and that as hard as it is, that I must release others I have cared for and continue to hold with affection to the care of another minister. But the ethics of ministry require it, even, in retirement.

How Should We Remember?

Like those in my boomer generation who can remember where we were when we heard the news that John Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot, anyone older than a young child in 2001 can remember where they were when they heard that the twin towers had been struck by terrorist in New York city. Like the death of Kennedy and King it has become the defining event for another generation.

As Sunday approaches we are inundated with remembrances of the event. Over the summer I’ve been part of the Newton clergy contingent, along with the members of the Newton city staff and other folks from the community in planning a service for this coming Sunday. At each of our meetings there was a family member who had lost a loved one in one of the planes. At the last one, this person made a plea that we not call it an anniversary. Anniversaries they said are happy occasions and this is not a happy remembrance.

I’ve thought about this remark on and off since then because it raises the question of how should we remember this terrible day? It is certainly important to remember those who died and the heroic efforts of many of the rescuers who also died It is important to remember the families who still grieve and the children who have grown up without a parent. Our hearts still ache for all that senseless and tragic death.

But I think we also have to remember our country’s response and all the deaths that have followed because we have engaged in war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So many thousands of others have died, many of them innocent civilians because of the way our nation responded. Our nation engaged in torture in the name of pursuing the enemy for which we would criticize any other nation who engaged in it. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren will pay with their taxes for this on-going conflict which seems to have no end leading to difficult choices with regards to other more life giving purposes of our taxes.

Just as when someone we love dies, a healthy response is to remember the whole of who they were, the good, the bad, the funny, so it seems to me we should remember 9-11-01, mourning our dead, celebrating the heroism that ensued, and repenting our own part in the spreading of evil and terror.

“The Boot”

I’m one day into my 30 days of “the boot” and I don’t mean that thing they put on cars when you have a backlog of unpaid parking tickets. I mean this thing on my foot that has it immobilized. I’ve had a relatively minor inflammation on my left heel since mid-April. When I finally went to the Doctor we did all the usual things, powerful-anti inflammatory drugs, physical therapy. The problem persisted. So yesterday on my return visit to the doctor I got “the boot.” Suddenly I have a new appreciation for what others have experienced who have had broken limbs or foot surgery.
I’ve been very lucky in the health department so far. My parents gave me good genes and so far I haven’t messed them up too much. I haven’t had to deal with some of the chronic conditions that others live with or contend with the frustrations of the health care system except in very minor ways. And this problem, as problems go, is pretty minor, just frustrating and will mean that certain things that were going to happen this summer, won’t.
What I have realized all ready is that this boot is a spiritual discipline of sorts. I can be pretty impulsive. I think nothing of running up and down our many stairs in the five levels of our split level house. I rarely stop to think about what I need to take with me. This boot is already causing me to think, what do I need to do while I’m here, or take with me because I don’t want to have to clomp up or down these steps again. In other words I have to be mindful, to stop and think before I move. This is a good thing and I could certainly apply it go other aspects of my life. It is forcing me to slow down and even admit that I can’t do certain things. In our fast paced world achievement oriented world this is definitely counter cultural.
So what is your summer spiritual discipline?

VBS 2011

It was the last day of our week of VBS and it has been a good one. The weather cooperated. We have had a good group of children. Mike, our Director of Christian Education outdid himself in the planning and preparation and it has paid off. He has done a great job each day with the lessons and shepherding the energy of the older group. My friend Susan and I have had the younger group which was one child larger than the older group. Today we went to the Zoo and then it was over for another year.

While I am tempted to say that this is my LAST VBS, it is certainly possible that as a member of another church in the coming years, I might readily agree to help, so I think I should not make that claim. I was so touched when I heard that Aiden asked his mother if I would come back next summer to help with VBS. I do enjoy being with them and in the course of just a few days you can see them grow in their ability to be in a group. This is especially true with the younger ones because we have 3 who will be going into Kindergarten in the fall. The first day was a bit rough but they settled into our routine.

What struck me this year for the first time is how difficult it is for them to focus on a real person and what that person is saying or teaching, but the minute the computer comes on or we are projecting a movie or some of the curriculum that comes in DVD form, they are rapt in their attention. There is something about the flickering screen that is far more attractive than a real person. While I understand some of this focus, I also find it problematic.

The faith we proclaim originated primarily out of an oral culture. The stories were passed from person to person by word of mouth. You can see it in the repetition of the stories and in the poetry of the Psalms. People paid attention to the village story teller and absorbed what they were saying. What are we losing when we lose the enfleshed interaction of communication?

I worry about our over digitized age. The teenagers are all plugged into their iPods which means then don’t have to talk to one another. I see them waiting for the bus in our neighborhood with no human interaction. They use e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter, (and probably things I don’t even know about) to communicate rather than the more risky face to face encounter. Perhaps I’m becoming as an article this week in the Globe called a Digital Dinosaur. Just the fact that I read a newspaper on paper rather than on line makes me part of a vanishing species!

I just hope that what the children remember is not just the videos we watched but the interactions on the playground and the quiet conversations over lunch and on the playground bench, and the fact the three adults spent a week just with them because we think they are important.

Retire

Retire: to withdraw, to go away or apart, to a place of abode, shelter or seclusion.

This is the definition of retire in my dictionary. It is a rather old fashioned definition as in “the ladies will retire to the drawing room.” Today, in USA culture at least, it has come to mean to stop working for living. For many it does mean to withdraw from the work that we have been doing for many years. For some it does mean to move away to a place where we have always envisioned living “in retirement” where they can be warm, or fish, or do whatever avocation they aspire to. However the definition implies an isolation that I don’t think most of us intend when we retire.

Two weeks ago I announced my retirement effective January 8, 2012. I’ve known for at least a year that it was time to retire and had been pondering when exactly to do the deed. The date is about a month before my 66th birthday the time that Social Security has determined I can take my full portion it for those born in the year 1946. So it is done. The letter went out and now everyone knows what Bruce and I have known for several months.

Like any major life transition it comes with a certain amount of ambivalence and anxiety. I’ve been a minister for a long time, 40 years to be exact. I know how to do this work. I know how my life gets shaped around it. While I look forward to not having to get up and be “at work” six days a week, I don’t know how life will shape itself without it. Like any freedom, there are costs and gains associated with it. While this will amuse most of you who read this, one of the losses for me will include not being able to pick the hymns on Sunday. I will have to sing what other people pick. I love so many of the hymns and many that don’t appear on other’s top 20 lists. Will I ever get to sing them again in community?

Through these years of ministry I’ve watched others retire and know it is something that has to be learned through trial and error. We will need to sell our house, downsize and move to where we think we want to live. These are all major decisions and will take some time to accomplish before the everydayness of retirement can actually set in.

Retirement means giving up a certain identity one has had and to forge a new one or to lift up to more prominence parts of the self that have had to take a lesser role in the self. For me I think the freedom to have time for family and friend relationships will be central as well as time to sing with a group on a regular basis.

Retiring like every life transition is bittersweet. It will mean leaving a congregation I’ve come to know and care for. It will mean letting go of relationships which have meant a lot to me so that another minister can become the central figure in the life of the congregation. It means giving up an identity that has been central through 40 years of adult life. Who will I be when I’m not “the pastor?”

Like all the other transitions of my life, I know these things will sort themselves out if I can patiently live into them and not just worry about them in the middle of the night. In the meantime, I’m still working until January 8, 2012!

Forty Years of Sermons

This spring I’ve been reading through 40 years of sermons so that I can reduce the number I have been lugging around each place I have moved. After weeks of reading I have reduced two full boxes to less than half of a box.
It has been a trip down memory lane as I have worked through the years. There are of course references to the things that were going on in our nation and the world, things that were big news at the time and probably will only warrant a footnote in most history books. There were also references to family and friends, and places we went as a family. I’ve never included a lot of references to family in sermons, and usually only in a general way, but every once in awhile I will find an incident I had not thought about in 20 years…or more.
I’ve seen how my preaching improved especially, after I had to do it every week. Prior to 1985, I preached maybe 6-10 times a year as an Assistant Minister. Like any skill, we improve with practice so when I became a solo pastor and had to preach every Sunday I became a better preacher.
Reading these sermons has also reinforced many things I have thought about sermons. One of the reasons that most of the sermons aren’t worth saving is not that they weren’t good sermons, but they were good because they were timely. They were addressing a particular church at a particular time in its history and in the history of the world. So they are time specific and don’t necessarily translate 10 years later in a different place. Every once in awhile though I found one that had a timeless quality to it that I could probably preach next Sunday and it would work. I’ve kept the best of those. I’ve also kept some for sentimental reasons because they refer to special times in my life or the lives of those I have loved.
Something I have come to know about preaching through these years is the things I value in my own sermons are not always what speak to others. On the other hand sermons that I have thought were sort of hum drum have struck a deep chord in others. Some Sunday’s someone will say how much a sermon has touched them, and I am frankly puzzled as to why. I’ve come to appreciate that what I say is only half of what goes on in preaching. The other half is in the hearer who brings special hopes or needs on Sunday. Sometimes the words just are the right ones they needed to hear even if they aren’t, to me at least, that special.
I’m glad to be done with my sermon reading but I was also glad to do it. It reminded me of people in these congregations who touched my life. I could see the change that was going on in my own life as I matured. It was comforting to know that my preaching did improve over time. It also reminded me of how many things that were big news at the time, in span of history weren’t all that big. It gave me perspective and at this stage of my life that is something to be valued.

Common Meeting

At our gathering time last night at Common Meeting, I asked people what their reflections were on the killing of Osama Ben Laden. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of the responses. While people had different perspectives, a summary of the responses was that we had very mixed emotions. There was compassion for the families who lost loved ones in the terrorist attack and for those who have lost loved ones in the subsequent conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was hope that for them some sense of healing might occur. Some indicated that as Christians it was difficult to applaud the death of anyone, even someone who had caused so much havoc and destruction. No one wanted to go celebrate in the streets. It was a somber group that shared.

Perhaps it was a function of our maturity that the news of this man’s destruction was not greeted with flags waving. At a certain point in life we begin to view the world as much more complex and know that no action ever “settles” a situation. It merely sets the stage for other actions, some good, some not. There were concerns expressed that this killing might lead to other terrorist attacks, a concern shared by our government.

When Bruce greeted me with the news on Monday morning for some reason my mind went to that old saying that says that when we live by an “eye for an eye’ and a “tooth for a tooth’ we end up in a world with everyone blind.

As Christians we are called by Jesus to be peacemakers and to refrain whenever possible from violence and killing. Yet through the centuries thoughtful, faithful people have wrestled with whether that is the final word, or whether there are times when we are called to resist evil to the point of taking other lives. I don’t have any platitudes one way or another to spout at this point. I do know that violence all too often only escalates violence. When I look at history, there have been times when it seemed like that was the only ethical response.

What I have thought since last night was how grateful I was for the sharing around that circle. There was honesty and trust in one another and in the safety of sacred space so people could speak what was on their hearts. Perhaps if there were more places that people could do that, there would be less violence everywhere in our world.

Royal Wedding II

I’m reading an excellent book called Accompany Them With Singing: The Christian Funeral by Tom Long.  In it he had a wonderful description of what ritual does by using the illustration of a wedding.  See if you don’t think it fits.

Although we often think of weddings as joyful occasions, they actually mask social circumstances fraught with uncertainty and even danger.  Two people are in a sense wrenching themselves free from their families of origin in order to form a new family.  Everyone involved—parents, siblings, bride, groom—is being asked to do the hard work of changing social roles and relationship, and the questions of the day is, How can we possibly get from here to there?  Into the breach comes the ordered process of the marriage ceremony, which allows people to walk the well-worn ritual path from one social status to another.  It is as if society said, “All right, these are perilous waters for everyone to navigate, but fear not, we have crossed the lake before.  Let’s put on an ancient play, enact a drama full of wisdom acquired thought the ages, in which families say to their children, ‘Yes, you have my permission to leave your father and mother and to join yourselves with another,’ and a man and a woman vow to stay together and care for each other, come what may.”  So in the midst of the stormy waters of changing roles and uncertain outcomes, people step into the boat of the marriage service; they enter this ritual process designated as parents, bride and groom, and they safely emerge on the other shore as in-laws, husband, and wife.

The Royal Wedding

Like many people, I got up early today to watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. While I can’t say I’ve followed their relationship through the years, there is something about the pageantry of a royal wedding that I can’t resist. In a world of tsunamis, nuclear reactor meltdowns, devastating tornados and spring floods, it is nice to see something hopeful on a beautiful spring day like we had today.

I remember watching the wedding of Prince William’s parents many years ago and had similar feelings. There is something to be said for tradition and the marriage ceremony was lovely even if the language was a bit archaic. Mostly I could live with it except for the part about pronouncing them “man and wife.” In a wedding both the man and the woman take on new roles as husband and wife and to continue that “man and wife” language reinforces a sexism that is rather appalling. I think the Anglicans need to modernize their prayer book a bit.

On the other hand I thought the Bishop of London’s homily struck just the right note about marriage and the hopes that we all have not only for the young couple married today but for all marriages. I thought his warning about the dangers of giving our human relationships more weight than they can bear was so important: “As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life.

This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive, we need mutual forgiveness, to thrive.”

The service was full of hymns which allowed the congregation to give voice to their joy. Wouldn’t it be nice if our wedding ceremonies in the US more often used hymns as part of the wedding ceremony?

My heart goes out to these two young people, and especially Prince William whose own life has been marked with so much tragedy. It is not easy bearing the unreal expectations of so many. In a sense we all bear the unreal expectations of others, but for public figures, like the British Royals, it is both a privilege and a cross to bear.