Lenten Reflection 3/22

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis speaks outside Mahalia Jackson Elementary School in Chicago about the planned closing of 54 public schools. Opponents say the plan will disproportionately affect minority students in the nation's third-largest school district.  (photo from NPR.org)

Chicago public schools will have a one billion dollar deficit next year.  Because many of the city's school buildings are half empty, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has proposed closing 54-60 schools to consolidate resources.  "There's no question about the economics here. Maintaining half-empty, century-old buildings doesn't make sense for cash-strapped cities and states," says Timothy Knowles, the head of the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute.

But a lot of people are not happy with this suggestion.  A number of teachers and school workers will lose jobs.  And parents fear that consolidating schools means that their children will have to travel further to get to school, sometimes through dangerous neighborhoods.  This was a very difficult stand for the mayor to take because anyone can see it would create a ton of push back.  And the push back has been strong.  NPR aired a clip of a Rev. Paul Jaques proclaiming, "If any child's life is lost, the blood of that child in on the hands of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel!"  

And I thought, "Man, I would not want to be the mayor."  Or the president.  Or a CEO.  Imagine having to make big and tough decisions that you know people are going to hate.  But then again, anyone in any kind of leadership position puts themselves in the cross hairs in one way or another.

But being called to be a disciple of Jesus is also a call into leadership.  We're called to go out and be active in sharing God's healing love.  We're not passive consumers of God's love, but active leaders in the Gospel, going out as active sharers of God's love.  We're called to take stands and stand up for them.  We're called to proclaim things like Jeremiah did - things that people might rather not hear sometimes.  We're called to do things others might avoid doing, whether that's reaching out to the poor, making ourselves last, or even following Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross.  Maybe that's why people are so often content just to show up on Sunday morning every now and then, sit in the pew for an hour and say they're Christians.  Actually going out into the world to build the Kingdom of God is a whole lot more responsibility and opens us up to all kinds of opposition and push back, just as it did for Jesus.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul says, "Make sure you stay alert to these qualities of gentle kindness and ruthless severity that exist side by side in God."  I'll admit that I really want God to be a gentle gardener in my life.  I don't want to be pruned!  I don't want to be stretched and refined and molded, necessarily.  I'd just rather do my own thing and have God be delighted with me.

God does tend me like a gentle gardener, but God also prunes me to within an inch of my life sometimes to encourage better growth in me.  I go through plenty of challenging and painful experiences that make me into a better, more mature Christian.  We used to call those experiences "AFGE's" in seminary ("oh, yeah, it's just another f..ing growth experience, we'd say.")  God knows best when its time to leave me be and when it's time to challenge, prune and grow me.  God is the one who knows best when the time is right to draw lines, make strong boundaries and take a stand.  That's much harder for you and me - and for CEO's and mayors and human leaders of every kind.  It's really hard to discern where to draw lines and boundaries in life and take stands.  But that is what leaders are called to do.

Some fundamentalist or conservative leaders draw their faith lines in very different places that I draw mine.  One mayor might draw the line in a different spot than another mayor would.  Sometimes leaders make the wrong call.  Sometimes maybe we get it right.  I take heart that God can redeem whatever we do in the long run.  We don't have the big picture and can only do our best.

But I guess today I'd say, after sitting with Paul's words this morning, that doing my best means staying very close to God.  Paul points out that we need to always remember that God is the taproot of our lives.  Whenever we are called to express leadership, it needs to be done out of the root in which we are most deeply grounded - remembering that "we aren't feeding the root; the root is feeding us."  God is the root out of which all positive, healthy and truly fruitful growth comes.  As Paul says, "Don't get cocky and strut your branch.  Be humbly mindful of the root that keeps you lithe and green."

The years of experience I have in the ministry give me increasing confidence to create boundaries and take stands as a leader.  But the more confidence I get, the more I need to remember that my confidence is not in myself, but in God.  God is the one who has given me all my life experiences and has nurtured and pruned me into who I am becoming - who I am called to be.  If I begin to believe it's my own call, it won't be long until I find myself pruned deadwood.

As I complete this practice of daily Lenten blogging for 2013, (which by the way has been a wonderful and prayerful experience for me) I think Paul's words to the Romans tomorrow are a really good place to conclude:

Everything comes from him;
Everything happens through him;
Everything ends up in him.
Always glory! Always praise!
Yes. Yes. Yes. 

Today's readings:  Jer. 29:1,4-13; Rom. 11:13-24; John 11:1-27
Saturday's readings:   Jer. 31:27-34; Rom. 11:25-36; John 11:28-44

Elsa has been praying the news and the daily readings and blogging her thoughts on each of the weekdays of Lent.  This is her last in this series.  She has been using The Message translation this year.

You're invited to come walk the walk of Holy Week at Grace Church this year.  It begins this Sunday, which is Palm Sunday.  Visit www.gracetrumbull.org for details and service times.

Signs of Spring

After days and days of rain and wind and a storm of epic proportions, yesterday and today have been some of the loveliest spring days in my memory, and I am writing this from a spot on my front step in the sun. Although the spring solstice is still a few days away, and although the weather will probably get colder again before spring actually arrives, there are definitely signs of spring all around - warm sunshine, sprouting bulbs and even peepers singing in the woods behind the rectory last night.


There are also signs of spring in my parish. We had a great vestry meeting on Tuesday. The new vestry members were on time for our first official meeting together and obviously ready to go. We had some really good conversations about what our work as leaders would be in the coming year and I felt the sprouts not only of hope, but also excitement peeking out of the dark, cold ground of over a decade of difficulties and hardships as a parish. I also felt a hint of spring last Sunday, when I finally succeeded in persuading the congregation to sit together toward the front of the church instead of being spread out like molecules in their 'regular seats.' From my vantage point at the back of the church before the procession, I saw my whole congregation together in worship for the first time. This was a joy for me, and it also certainly presents a more positive picture of who we are as a community to any newcomers that might happen to visit - we now appear to actually like each other and want to be together. I know this to be the truth beneath our isolated seating habits. Why not make it show?


And there are signs of spring within me, too. I felt great about my church leadership this week, and about my plan to begin delegating tasks and sharing our ministry. It's all well and good to singlehandedly put some steam under some new projects to get the ball rolling and the momentum of hope started, but I've known from the beginning that this church will not live or die by anything I manage to do by myself. It is what we do together that will determine our fate. So I feel a new era of our life together beginning this spring - a time in which we move into mutual discernment and leadership and discover together who God wants us to be. Perhaps after a pretty cold and gray winter I'm longing to stop worrying and to start trusting. For me, I think this spring will be the right time to let go and let God at Grace Church.