A Prayer for Our Children and Youth as a School Year Begins

Four years ago I prepared the following prayer for the beginning of a new school and program year. On request, we are including it this week.

A Prayer for Our Children and Youth as a School Year Begins

Font of wisdom and source of insight, noisy buses once more accompany our morning coffee and around the neighborhood heavily loaded cars pull from the driveways. Anxious parents watch. Some from the windows. Some from the roadside. All with emotion (even those who work to hide it). A new school year has begun, so we pray for our children and youth.

May they not lose themselves as they make new friends. May their strong foundations help them to weather all storms that would harm them. May their goodness attract and multiply goodness.

May all that they learn fill them with wonder. Scripture calls us to love you with all our minds. May our children and youth love to learn and live to learn and love.

May the differences they encounter deepen their appreciation for all that is and help them to discover even more fully who they are. Many influences will attempt to divide them. May our children and youth weave the diversity of all that is into a multi-color, many-fabric tapestry that points to all that can be.

May they be kept safe from the misguided, small-minded, and cruel-hearted. May they be open to the timid, true, and noble. May they find and form community.

Bless those privileged to serve as their teachers. May parents support them and administrators clear the way for them. May the prayers of all inspire them, encourage them, and remind them of their sacred task.

Bless us as we walk alongside our children and youth. May we be open to the lessons they have to teach us and to our opportunities to learn with them. May our lifelong love of learning inspire their curiosity and invite their questions.

Font of wisdom and source of insight, a new school year has begun so we pray for our children and youth. May all that they learn deepen their reverence for, devotion to, and relationship with all that is, especially you.  Amen.

Grace and Peace Friends,

LP

Experiencing more than what we expect...

Noted Presbyterian preacher and pastor Morgan Roberts tells a story about a time in 2007 when violinist Joshua Bell performed a number of concerts in Washington, D.C. During his visit, the Washington Post employed him for an interesting experiment. Bell dressed as a "down on his luck" musician, leaned against a subway wall, and for forty-five minutes offered an impromptu underground concert consisting of six glorious but demanding selections. Bell played them on his $3.5 million Stradivarius. A hidden camera recorded the audience's response to this master musician whose concerts can cost $100 per ticket. Of the more than one thousand people who walked by, twenty-seven dropped some pocket change into Bell's box, but walked on without stopping to enjoy the music. Only seven actually stopped long enough to listen.

We often see, hear, and discover only what we expect to see, hear, and discover. Many years ago I served as pastor of a congregation also served by a housekeeper. She usually executed her job in the background and was careful to draw no attention to herself. She had grown up poor, married early, had limited financial means, and had very earthy speech and demeanor. Beneath that surface, however, a gem glistened. She was an avid reader of historical novels, able to converse with the best educated Anglophile. She enjoyed classical music and could identify not only the composers of the pieces on my sound system but also something about the writing of that piece. She also had an amazing ability to call squirrels. She'd walk to the back doors of the church, make a clucking sound, and soon be distributing peanuts to the squirrels sitting expectantly at her feet. I called her Mary Lou of Assisi. Most did not know that or anything else about her. They only knew her as our housekeeper and that did not trouble her at all.

Not all people are equally enjoyable, but unpleasant people usually wear their disagreeableness close to the surface and allow us to discover it quickly. Many blessings are disguised and reveal themselves only when we step beyond our expectations or assumptions.

I once attended a conference in which nearly every "big name" in the field was present. There was a beautiful park near the conference center and during our breaks I took a walk there. A well-known figure frequented the park on breaks as often as I did. He was a "big name" and I assumed that he did not notice me. He took the first step, introduced himself (as if I didn't know his name), and we shared an impromptu lunch purchased from a street vendor. It turned out that both of us were pondering potential vocational changes and consulting some of the same sources for guidance. It would be a stretch to say that we became friends, but we established a relationship. Even more, as we chatted a third presence seemed to join us. Blessings are often disguised and reveal themselves only when we step beyond our expectations or assumptions.

Somewhere around us an unexpected blessing awaits discovery. The first step to receiving it may be setting aside our assumptions and expectations. "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it" (Psalm 24:1). Goodness constantly spills over somewhere, whether we notice or not.

Grace and Peace,

LP         

Not all worship is equal

                                   Though private prayer be a brave designe,

                        Yet publick hath more promise, more love:

                        And love's a weight to hearts, to eies a signe.

                        We all are but cold suitours; let us move

                        Where it is warmest. Leave thy six and seven;

                        Pray with the most: for where most pray, is heaven.

Those lines come from George Herbert's "The Church-porch." Quoting a seventeenth century poet reinforces my status as a dinosaur, but some words endure through time (even though some spellings do not). Herbert reminds us that although private prayer has its place and purpose, it wanes in comparison with worshipping with and in a congregation. When I was a child I spent hours throwing a baseball at a target, retrieving it, and throwing it again, and still more hours playing catch with my dad or friends. That never rivaled actually playing a game of baseball. Worship works the same way. Private devotions help to prepare us, but, in the words of our denominational constitution, "The life of the Christian flows from the worship of the church, where identity as a believer is confirmed and where one is commissioned to a life of discipleship and personal response to God" (W-5,1001).

Yet, not all worship is equal. What allows worship to inform, form, reform, and, by the grace of God, transform us as Christians?

Worship that informs, forms, reforms, and, by the grace of God, transforms us is unmistakably God-centered. It is primarily about God, not us. The first question in the (Shorter and Larger) Westminster Catechism reminds us that our primary purpose in life is to glorify and enjoy God. We always have important matters on our hearts and minds when we gather to worship, but without God we would have no hearts and minds. God deserves our praise, adoration, recognition, and petitions. Several years ago Marva Dawn published a thought-provoking book on worship entitled A Royal Waste of Time that reminded us that feeling close to God, being moved by the music, and experiencing God's love and presence are to be desired, but secondary to offering praise, prayer, and ourselves to God. Whether we lift our eyes toward a screen or turn them to a hymnal, when our hearts, minds, souls, and spirits are not focused on God, worship does not serve its primary purpose.

Worship that informs, forms, reforms, and, by the grace of God, transforms us is authentic. First, it is characterized by excellence. When we share time with people we love, we may not always have on our Sunday-best (Those over thirty may need to Google that term.), but we always offer our best. That does not mean that incorrect notes, grammatical mistakes, or liturgists who lose their places insult God. It means that we prepare well and intend to offer God the best we can do, not left-overs or spur of the moment sputterings. Second, it reflects the unique spiritual gifts and needs of the community gathered. All traditions can influence our worship, but when we pretend to be someone we're not we offer God something false. Third, it comes from a distinct and unique people but is offered to the God of all. We pray for the abused and the abuser. We seek wholeness for our enemies and ourselves. We gather not to claim God as our own, but to be claimed by the one true God of all. In the year of my birth - back in the days of the Apatosaurus, not the Brontosaurus - J. B. Phillips published a book entitled Your God Is Too Small. It remains worth reading as it calls for an adult faith in a God whom no culture, nation, or people can put in a box.

Worship that informs, forms, reforms, and, by the grace of God, transforms us comforts and convicts us. The grieving, abused, frightened, and broken cannot glorify and enjoy God without being pointed to and receiving God's tenderness, steadfastness, and graciousness. Those who hunger and thirst need bread that satisfies and living water. Yet, the God who meets us in worship also sends us out to serve the world. When we come only for what we need, we may have an experience but will not be renewed. The Spirit is our guide, not merely our therapist, and Jesus is our friend but we call him Lord.

I dare to think that we regularly offer God-centered, authentic, comforting, and convicting worship to God. We've done that all summer, while many have taken vacations, watched soccer and baseball games, read the paper, and taken naps. We plan to do that again this weekend.

                        We all are but cold suitours; let us move

                        Where it is warmest. Leave thy six and seven;

                        Pray with the most: for where most pray, is heaven.

See you Sunday!

            Grace and Peace,

            LP

The value of investigations from varying perspectives

During the pursuit of my undergraduate degree in history (in a public university), my professor for two courses on the Protestant Reformation History was a Roman Catholic priest. His perspective broadened my understanding of the events that gave rise to the faith tradition in which I was formed and that sparked renewal in his tradition. When I pursued my Ph.D., I studied the Gospels with an agnostic, who had just published a seminal literary study of the Gospel of Mark. Debating and discussing passages with this gifted exegete forced me to challenge my assumptions and to ground arguments about a text within that text. I also honed my knowledge of Koine (biblical) Greek under the guidance of a devout Jew. Our conversations underscored the fact that every translation is also an interpretation and convinced me to attempt to examine every text from more than one point of view. Those encounters with people outside my faith tradition improved my scholarship and had a positive impact on my spiritual and intellectual development.

Those experiences provide the context for my surprise over the angst that some people seem to have when they learn that Reza Aslan, the author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, is a Muslim. As Aslan has made the rounds of talk shows and so-called news programs, some of the interviewers have openly questioned why a Muslim would have interest in Jesus.

Before continuing, let me note that I have not read this work. I have already worked through Geza Vermes's Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (1973), Luke Timothy Johnson's The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (1996), Bruce Chilton's Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (2000), Robert Funk's A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision (2002), Amy-Jill Levine's The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2006), and Marcus Borg's Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (2006). [Two of those authors, by the way, are not Christian.] I remain curious about the historical Jesus, but for the present my intellectual curiosity leads me in other directions. I have sufficient information to keep my baptismal vow to obey Jesus' word and show his love and my ordination vow to trust and follow him.

Although Aslan's book is not on my nightstand, it astounds me that some find it surprising that a person who studies and teaches world religions would have interest in Jesus. Muslims consider Jesus a prophet. More importantly, Jesus is one of the most important names in world religions. His life and teachings continue to affect the world and his impact extends far beyond those who claim to believe in him. In addition, while books about him rarely make an author rich and famous, there is a substantial market for them.  

Some of the comments about Zealot convey a sense of fear. Even if Aslan has said something insulting or scandalous, why fear his book? Jesus has survived the scandalous and insulting remarks Christians have made about him. He'll survive Zealot as well. In The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann argues that faith characterized by fear typically lacks confidence that "God, Christ, doctrine, and morality ... are sufficiently powerful to maintain themselves." What God has done, does, and will do in Jesus have stood, stands, and will stand on their own. Jesus and Christianity have nothing to fear from critical examination and exploration. Whether or not we agree with each other, honest attempts to communicate can help us to understand and accept the covenant God extends to all humanity. If Aslan's book falls short of that, it will fade on its own. If Zealot helps Muslims and Christians (and others) to understand and accept each other, thanks be to God. Time will tell. Until then, may our hope and confidence in God keep our fear at bay. God, Jesus, and the Spirit can take care of themselves. They call us to follow them, not to protect them.

            Grace and Peace,

            LP