In other news, worship seemed to go pretty well last night. We had 50 folks gather, which is a good number for our small congregation. The sermon seemed to resonate and the liturgy was good. I think the most fun part was preparing the ashes with my kids prior to worship. The two little ones liked the how quickly the old palm leaves went up in flames. 

Sunday will be our first Sunday in a preaching series about stones. It should be a great series. 

I am really hoping this Lent I can get back to regular posting. I can’t promise every day, though that would be my goal. Let’s aim for four days a week and see what happens. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Rev. Robb Harrell

Ash Wednesday 2012

The Lies We Believe

In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We have been lied to, my friends. More than once, in fact. We are lied to on a daily basis, and the sad fact is that we willingly believe the lies, so much so that we build our existence around them. The lies are many and various. If we wear the right brand of clothes, people will think more highly of us. If we go to just the right college or university, or keep a high enough GPA, then the world will be our oyster. If we drink the right brand of beer or use the right body spray, then the hottest women in the world will throw themselves at us. If we simply inject a little botox around the face then we can stave off those cursed wrinkles and continue to look young. Why in the world would we allow our hair to turn grey with age when we can dump some ammonia based sludge-in-a-box on our tender scalps and have a whole new look? There is even dye designed especially for beards. I guess maybe I should do something about all this white showing up on my chin.

Lies, all lies. And at the root of the lies is the biggest lie of all: we can escape death. It is all rooted in the first lie told to humanity before all history. Let us go back to the Garden of Eden; that sacred, ethereal space created for the archetypal man and woman. God had given so great a gift to them. All of the food that grew in that great garden was fair game with the exception of one: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The story tells us that the serpent was more crafty than any of the other wild animals God had made. Because of his craftiness, he was able to plant a seed of doubt in the woman’s mind about the real consequences of eating from the tree. Eve explained that she and her husband were warned upon pain of death to avoid the tree. How does the serpent answer her? I like the way the old King James puts it: ye shall not surely die. So she eats, and brings fruit to her husband eat. At the root of the mythical fall is this notion that death does not apply to us. Just like in the garden, we continue to believe the lie of the serpent, that we shall not surely die.

I am sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you shall surely die. As I was riding in last night with Ezel and the little ones for our Fat Tuesday pancake supper we heard the Casting Crowns song on the radio, “Who Am I?” And while I am not a huge fan of contemporary music, I thought the lyrics to this one would fit the mood we are trying to invoke. The chorus says, “I am a flower quickly fading/Here today and gone tomorrow/a vapor in the wind.” It actually reminded me of one of my favorite lines from the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk that states the same sentiment in a slightly more stark manner, “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.”

Believe it or not, I do not take it as my role to depress you tonight. I do not intend to diminish our humanity. In fact, I pray to reinforce that which is really human. When we deny the temporal nature of our lives we make ourselves something we were never intended to be. We attempt to become a god for ourselves, and there is no greater delusion in this life.

This is precisely what happens in our reading from the prophet Joel tonight. The people had forgotten God, they had forgotten the covenant, they were living for themselves and they thought they could live this way forever. In Joel God reminds them that this is not true, and calls everyone to repentance with “all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning.” This call to repentance holds true for us today as well. Jesus tells us in John 10 that he has come so that we can have life, and have it more abundantly or more fully. But how can we have that life if we are so saturated in the lies of a culture that is in many ways opposed to the promises we hear in our scriptures?

The point of Lent – the point of the whole Christian life, really – is repentance. Repentance is the key to living a thoughtful existence. Repentance is really little more than self-examination that leads us to question our own motives and actions. It is life in which we ask ourselves what is of eternal consequence and what is not; what is a small matter and what is significant one. For instance, I would never say that grades or school are of no consequence. However, if this becomes for us an idol, then it takes away something that belongs to God alone. There is nothing wrong with caring to present a neat appearance or to practice good grooming and hygiene, but when we begin to value that which is temporal (the body) over that which is eternal (the soul), then again we lose perspective. When we worship at the throne of money, or material goods, or political parties, or our job title, or our earning potential, then we are erecting false gods, and are called to turn from those lies.

The point of repentance, the point of fasting and weeping and mourning is so that we can see the lies that we have believed for what they are and rend our hearts so that they might be healed by the one that Joel says is, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abiding in steadfast love.”

I quoted part of that song to you earlier, and at this point feel it is pretty important to finish the quote:

I am a flower quickly fading/Here today and gone tomorrow/A wave tossed in the ocean/Vapor in the wind/Still You hear me when I’m calling/Lord, You catch me when I’m falling/And You’ve told me who I am/I am Yours.

We are God’s. This call to repentance and self-examination isn’t a self-improvement project assigned by a Dr. Phil or a program with Oprah’s seal of approval. It is an eternal principle offered to us by one whose love is so great that –even when we believe the lies we are told- keeps calling us back. Lent, my friends, isn’t about starving ourselves to be holier, or giving up M&M’s or soda or beer or meat. God doesn’t really need us to do those things for his sake. And we surely don’t earn forgiveness for doing those things. That was taken care of on our behalf on the cross. Lent is about remembering who we are and who God is and what is really important in this life that is – in the face of all eternity – so short and precious. Amen.

Ok, I guess I am going to push the heresy meter a bit by mentioning those three guys in the same breath. Lent is upon us again, and the conversation has been ongoing about how we will observe the season of self-reflection. How will we make a change in our lives that better reflects the deeply held values that we share as a family? I have written before about fasting from food, so I won’t rehash that here. I would give up beer again, but considering how little beer or wine I drink it isn’t much of a sacrifice. I don’t really have many vices left. Or do I?

Tyler: We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

Narrator: Martha Stewart.

Tyler: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.

Truth time: I am a consumer. I like to buy crap. As a result, my home is overrun with it. There is clutter. There is stuff I haven’t so much as looked at or used I moved into the house four years ago. I’d like to blame the Harrell side of my family for this. My grandfather was a packrat extraordinaire, and my grandmother picked up the habit as well. My dad tends to hold on to stuff as well, and I have certainly picked up the habit. I wouldn’t say I was quite at Hoarding: Buried Alive level, but I could see it ending up there with under the right (or wrong?) circumstances. The honest truth is that I have so much stuff that I don’t even really know what I have.

I can hear it now: first world, white person problem, right. It is. I admit it. It is a symptom of the inequity of our world that one segment of society can have so much while there is such great suffering. And yet it is cause for concern in our own society that we can so deaden ourselves with our possessions that we lose sight of what is important. Again, Tyler Durden has it right:

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.

We are lost in a sea of excess, drowning in our desire to have more and more. It is precisely why the great Transcendentalist father Henry David Thoreau challenged the assumptions of a society that seemed even then to have lost its soul. Thoreau knew there had to be something more, something deeper, something more elemental. So he fled to a self built cabin on the shores of Walden. He would write about his decision to move:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…

Isn’t that what we all want, or shouldn’t it be what we want; to leave deeply, to fully experience life and love and the Divine and music and art and beauty. I am not merely talking about an aesthetic here. I am talking about the “marrow of life” that Thoreau sought, that very element of life. Yet Tyler reminds us that “the things we own ending up owning us.” Jesus knew this all too well.

Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. – Matthew 6:19-21

So this year for Lent it will be about simplicity. We are going to start working through our home and getting rid of stuff we simply don’t need or want anymore. All of those things that weigh us down or cause clutter to build up are gone. It is time to purge, to make room for things in our home and our souls for things of consequence.

Now let’s be clear: I have no intention of becoming a Luddite. I am not going to rid of my tv or satellite hook-up or cell phone. I have no issue with modern conveniences like the computer and the internet. Electricity, running water, and antibiotics are all really awesome things, and I am grateful for them. What I am talking about here is the stuff that has no real point, stuff that takes up room that causes that weird sense of residual background noise. That is the stuff I want gone. Lent provides a great opportunity for this. It is a chance to reflect critically on why certain things remain in my home. What is my emotional connection? What needs do certain objects seem to fulfill?

These are the things that we will tackle this Lent…

…right after I watch Fight Club one more time!

1. Naval Gazing
2. Escapism
3. Compartmentalization
4. Chasing after experience
5. A way to be elevated above others
6. Rooted solely in one’s own experience
7. A way to bypass the church
8. A replacement for corporate prayer
9. A negation of Christian doctrine
10. A new Gnosticism

I see this as being a multi-post project, and would love to hear feedback from both clergy and lay types.

Part 1: Biblical Resources.

Note: I am working from the assumption that the people using this list have no exposure to the original languages, and thus are working from English-only.

1. A solid study Bible.

I am loathe to pick out just one here because people prefer different English translations. I have used the Harper’s Collins Study Bible in NRSV since seminary, but also have a real fondness for other editions. I think the key is to find out the translation most used in your church and buy a good study bible based on that preferred version.

2. A good Bible for Devotional use.

Again, peoples’ preference here will vary. Many people have a “heart” version that they may have grown up with or that they simply like more than other versions. I still find myself using the King James quite a bit. My family purchased me a KJV/1928 Book of Common Prayer that was bound together in fine leather. It remains my favorite Bible. The point is to find a translation you like and that you will read.

3. The Oxford Companion to the Bible

A nice, single volume that one can turn to for answers about people, places, practices and the like.

4. The Text This Week

Ok, so this technically isn’t a book. It is, however, one of the most thorough sites alone and is available for free. Rather than take up space on a shelf or spend valuable resources, just use this site that links to almost anything you might ever want to know about a text. If you use it, however, send in a donation from time to time, as the site is a labor of love and a wonderful resource for the Christian community.

5. The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels, by Luke Timothy Johnson. 

This is one of my favorite books that gives an overall Christ-centered approach to the study of the New Testament writings that is often not found and even discouraged by some in the academy.

What else would you add? Remember, this is for lay people with no library budget who probably also have limited space to store the books.

First of all we decided that the Christmas season was a great time to do some home renovations. New flooring was put in most of the downstairs and some painting was done. NEVER do this around Christmas. It added a whole level of stress. We are at least pleased with the final outcome, however.

Secondly, I have actually been writing, but it hasn’t been for the blog. I re-wrote my final project proposal about a dozen times, and I am now waiting to hear back from the readers. I have technically started the process, working on the annotated bibliography and beginning to think about research methodology. I am hoping to have a decent first chapter to the readers by Easter-ish.

I am finding writing to be a rather mechanical process here lately. I want to use this blog as a place to prime the pump. This may mean beginning to open up a bit more like on my older blog. At least open up the topics…there is more to my life than just my studies and my work.

Finally, I’ve been hanging out a lot lately with my kids. Nothing compares to time well spent watching the Star Wars saga with my kids!

Ok, here’s to more frequent posting!

Advent has long been my favorite time of the church year, and remains so today. How I observe Advent, however, has changed somewhat. There was a time when I would bemoan the fact that stores decorated for Christmas too early, or that I had to hear Christmas music everywhere I went as early as November. For a period I even refused to exchange the Merry Christmas greeting until sundown on Christmas Eve, opting to confuse many a store clerk with a greeting of “Blessed Advent.” I was, by my own admission, an Advent nag. On at least two different occasions this earned me the annual “Coal Award” from the staff of my last parish. I am sure this was in part because I would scold the office manager about playing Christmas music in her office.

I noticed something last year, a turning in the way I thought about things. I didn’t complain when Home Depot broke out the fake trees and lawn decoration section in October. I didn’t complain when I heard Christmas music playing in stores before Thanksgiving. I even caught myself responding with “Merry Christmas” weeks prior to December 24^th.

The lesson learned was this: Christmas, though undoubtedly about Christ and his birth, no longer belongs to the church. We no longer control and nor do we have the final word about how it is observed or celebrated in our culture. And this, my friends, is a good thing. If Christmas is about recognizing the gift of the Incarnation, and is observed by exchanging gifts, then we need to look at Christmas as our gift to the broader culture.

The gift we have given is not so much about shopping or twinkling lights or the ritual watching of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It is a gift of perpetual hope. It is the hope that even in the midst of a life that can be rocky and turbulent that a little respite in joy can be found. It is a time of the year when we can see things like love, peace, faithfulness, joy, goodness, gentleness, patience, kindness and self-control (ok, may NOT self-control) practiced among people of all faiths and no faith at all. If these things are truly the manifestation of (or fruits of) the Spirit among us, then even in these premature celebrations we see God’s spirit move.

What we do know is that this can be stressful. Dance recitals, school and church plays, parties, family dinners, and searching for gifts can suck the joy out of the season if we allow it. Not to mention those who find themselves estranged from family and friends, or those suffering from the poor economy. Here is the real opportunity for the church to step in and offer a place devoid of the noise and bustle of the season. The real trick, as I see it, is to offer this as a gift, not make it a requirement or some sort of religious law. We can create the space for silence and reflection. We forego Christmas carols during Advent inside the church. We can light candles, say prayers, hear the words of John the Baptist telling us to “stay awake” and to “repent” as we prepare our hearts and our minds for Christ’s Advent, not just for Christmas, but for the consummation of all time.We can serve those in need.

The key is to all of this is to stop being Advent Nags. Is there anything more annoying or joy-stealing than someone running around saying you are celebrating all wrong? It is little wonder the church can be so irrelevant to the world. Stop fussing about the things you can’t control in the way that our culture celebrates the holidays and embrace the fact that at some level God’s Spirit is somehow moving in all of this. We can embrace Advent and the anticipation it brings on our homes and churches. We can celebrate some of the great feast days that fill the season like St. Nicholas, Our Lady of Guadalupe (who would be a smart addition to our Lutheran calendar), or St. Mary’s Conception. We can offer all of these things as gifts as well, but let us do so in humility. Porphyrios the Elder once said,  “If the grace of God comes, everyone and everything changes; however, in order for it to come, we must humble ourselves first.” May it be so for us this Advent.

I have to level with you, I did not really know how to
respond. It seemed to me at the time that God did not call people into
temporary positions; either you were called to ordained ministry or you weren’t.
What I do know from my own experience, however, is that about once every couple
of years or so I seem to hit a point where I feel like I am in the midst of a
vocational crisis. The funny thing about it is that every year it seems to take
a different form. I can’t really explain why, but I am certainly feeling that
sense of unrest right now.

At first I think it was a question of denominational
identity. I love the Lutheran church and have stayed here for numerous reasons,
but it isn’t quite as a high church as a like and I do think its emphasis on “tolerance”
means that there are times when we are tolerating things within the church that
I wish we did not. I have no major theological disagreements, though one would
say I am much more of an evangelical, catholic and orthodox Lutheran. I hate to
play the labels game, but I do so to try and plant me somewhere contextually.
Early on I thought I would leave to become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. There
is a richness and depth and beauty to their practice and theology that I really
find lacking at times in the ELCA. This hasn’t come up for me in years. I think
I just realize that there is no one certain faith group to which I can adhere
100%, so why jump for one place where I feel like an outsider to another. The
truth is I have found that there are certain doctrinal ideas that I hold that I
just leave out of my official teaching and preaching. Those of you who know me
well or in real life can figure those things out pretty easily.

I have also had those moments where I thought about blowing
off ministry altogether. I have always wanted to be a history teacher. I think
given the right school I would be really good at this. I have a love for the
subject matter. In fact, when I was in college I was originally there to become
a history teacher. I loved history so much that I decided to shoot for a PhD.
Then I wound up seminary. Long story. Teaching still holds great appeal for me,
even though I have a teacher-wife who comes home every day telling me horror
stories about her school, which really is an interesting place and one where I
probably would not do well. Anyway, this idea about teaching history stays around
because I do know that if my wife ever found an administrator position or a
tenure track faculty position somewhere, mobility ceases for me and I will need
to find something to do to make a living.

Neither of these really fit this current funk that I am
feeling. This is something different. This is almost obsessive. This has far
less to do with leaving the parish and more about how I see myself as a pastor
and practical theologian. I feel like even though I have over a decade of
higher education behind me, and can see the light at the end of the doctoral
tunnel, I still feel like my education is both incomplete and subpar. Even
though I am very busy right now with the program I am in, as well as with both
parish and home responsibilities, I find myself looking at other degree programs.
I have checked out programs in counseling psychology, adult education, social
foundations/history of education, history and religious studies. This desire
for a PhD doesn’t quite seem to want to go away. I can’t shake it.

The issue is that I cannot discern for certain if I am being
“called” to take this path or if this isn’t just my giant ego and deep desire
to have people think me an intellectual that is behind this current discontent.
I know for certain that my ego plays a partial role here. The thing is that it
almost seems illogical to go to school again after this D.Min. I am coming out
of the D.Min. program without a penny of debt. Because all of the programs I
have looked at are part time, I would have to pay out of pocket, and I am not
so sure it is a wise investment, especially considering I have a kid who starts
college next year.

Some of this is fueled by the fact that I am required to
take continuing education every year. The D.Min. was a perfect fit for that.
These other degree programs – while interesting – may not be as good a fit. The
two that seem to fit best are the counseling psych programs and the adult
education programs, but of which would apply directly to what I do in the
parish. Plus, both would qualify me to do other things should the need ever occur.

So there you have it. Just trying to process through whatever
this strange sense of restlessness is about.

When people find out that I have an interest in monastic/contemplative spirituality, I am often asked the same question, “Can you suggest a book or something about meditation/contemplative prayer/centering prayer that I can read?” I usually do, referring people to any of a number standard texts on Christian contemplation. I am sure Thomas Keating has made more than a few bucks off of my suggestions. I don’t have an issue referring people to a book. This is how my quest got started. What I have learned through the years is that a book about prayer is a poor substitute for prayer itself.

When it comes to contemplation, other than a few pointers of how to get a practice started, little else is needed than to sit. Sure, learn lectio divina.  Learn a technique like Centering Prayer or the method taught by John Main and his followers. Nothing wrong with that. But it does no good to read a book if you aren’t going to pray.

I’ve been thinking about changing my response here lately. Maybe instead of books, I need to give a handout that has a stripped down version of meditation instructions. Something that can fit on one sheet, maybe even a bookmark. “Want to know about meditation or prayer? Here, go do this every day for a week. Then call me and we can talk.”

I certainly don’t want to do anything that seems dismissive, but at the same time I find that most American Christians are all about their heads: by acquiring the right “knowledge” we can find God’s favor. We don’t need more information. We need experience. We need to open ourselves to the Divine, the lover of the soul, the one who desires us to desire him. We need to wade out into that river of the Spirit. We need to do it, not continue to read about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love books. I love to read. I have an obnoxious amount of books on spirituality and meditation and prayer. But when it all comes down, I think I could reduce my collection to just a couple of volumes. I’ll take a breviary of some sort, a copy of Benedict’s Rule, a Bible, and maybe a Merton book or two. Truth is that may be too much. Books are there simply to buttress our practice, to help guide us through things we may experience. But they are little more.