Judgment Free Zone

It's January, and everybody is going to the gym on the weekends. Since December, I have seen the number of people at my gym on Saturday mornings easily double. My gym is Planet Fitness, and they have a couple of slogans prominently posted that always catch my eye:

 This sign greets me every time I check in. Pic is mine.

Apparently they use the British spelling of judgment.

What a powerful message. Pic is also mine.

Every time I see these signs, I think, "I wish the Church could be a judgment-free zone!" Of course, a lot of people say that church really is that way, and certainly the church should be a place in which all people are welcomed and not judged. The UMC, in fact, has a slogan to that effect:

This JPEG courtesy of some of our friends over in West Ohio. :o)

The problem with our slogan isn't with the slogan. It's that we don't actually live up to it. We judge each other, we judge our pastors, we judge visitors... and we're not afraid to voice those judgments to those being judged. And it isn't just a "laity problem." One time in Ashland, a retired pastor's wife criticized a current UMC pastor for the service running 15 minutes long. The service included a baptism.

What would it take for the Church to become a "judgment free zone"? Is that too tall an order for the people of God? Are we going to resign ourselves and chalk it up to sin nature, or are we going to decide that this is one sin it's time to stop committing? The church has a credibility problem, and part of the issue is that folks see us as hypocritical and judgmental. The truth hurts, but it's important to hear the truth. When teens and young adults perceive us that way, we know we have a problem. While some may feel that hypocrisy is the fall-back excuse for leaving church, it's true that we say one thing and do another. We say we welcome everyone as they are, and then we judge who they are from the moment they step in the door.

I don't think that dropping judgmental habits is too tall an order, but it entails a lot of work and a complete change in the culture of a local church. Becoming a judgment free zone requires a lot of tolerance of difference between ourselves and others. This can be difficult when we want to view church as a second home and family. In churches where I am in New England, folks prize a family-like atmosphere in church, in which everybody knows everybody. When we're at home, with family, we can relax. We think we know what to expect. But when we welcome folks who are different from us, we don't know what to expect. We become nervous and uncomfortable. Somewhere deep inside, a part of us wishes that people who are different would just go away so we can be comfortable again (even if we're ashamed to admit it).

The thing is, being a Christian isn't about being comfortable. We're not called to be nice or called to keep up appearances. We're called to be God's people, sent in mission to the world (John 20:21). Early Christians distinguished themselves from the surrounding Roman culture by extending hospitality to widows, orphans (including baby girls abandoned by parents who wanted boys), slaves, and people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Dr. Christine Pohl calls us to revive the ancient art of hospitality as mission in her book Making Room. I think this is a great place to start, because almost every church has coffee hour. Even small tweaks to coffee hour routines can make any local church a more open, welcoming place. Maybe we can't be as radical as the Early Church right away, but it's a step in the right direction. And maybe one day, when we've really made the Church a judgment free zone, we can put up a sign like the one Planet Fitness has.

Have you ever felt unwelcome or judged in church? What would you change about that experience?

Have you ever caught yourself judging someone in church, at work, or on the street? How can you respond differently next time?

A New Year's Resolution: Don't Be a Jerk

Last week, I shared with you a call to examine your life and think about how you are representing Jesus in your own life- are you doing things God's way or your way? I thought I would expand on that point this week by sharing an example from everyday life. This one comes from blogger Professor Richard Beck of Abilene Christian University who writes over at the Sojourners Blog. In his latest post, He observes how Christians' behavior in our daily life doesn't always line up with the Gospel:

One can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being... Many churches are jerk factories. Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the collective behavior of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Never has a more well-dressed, entitled, dismissive, haughty or cheap collection of Christians been seen on the face of the earth.

I exaggerate of course. But I hope you see my point. Rather than pouring our efforts into two hours of worship, bible study and Christian fellowship on Sunday why don't we just take a moment and a few extra bucks to act like a decent human being when we go to lunch afterwards? Just think about it. What if the entire restaurant industry actually began to look forward to working Sunday lunch? If they said amongst themselves, "I love the church crowd. They are kind, patient and very generous. It's my favorite part of the week waiting on Christians." How might such a change affect the way the world sees us? Think about it. Just being a decent human being for one hour each Sunday and the world sees us in a whole new way.

But it's not going to happen. Because behavior at lunch isn't considered to be "working on your relationship with God." Behavior at lunch isn't spiritual. Going to church, well, that is working on your relationship with God. But, as we all know, any jerk can sit in a pew. But you can't be a jerk if you take the time to treat your waitress as if she were your friend, daughter or mother.

Ouch. That hurts to read. But as a former waitress, I resonate with Beck's words in a very real way. In the summer of 2008, I worked as a waitress at Hoggy's, a BBQ restaurant in Dublin, OH. (By the way, I highly recommend their BBQ and all their sides. I loved Hoggy's food and still do. If you're in the Columbus area, it's worth a try!) And I actually worked the Sunday lunch crowd on a regular basis. I would listen to the podcast of Marsh Chapel while I did chores until church was out, and then the customers started coming. The Sunday lunch crowd is indeed stingy. Getting stiffed by so many people in one shift really hurt my pocketbook. By the time I reached the end of the summer, I had $25 to my name.

Beck makes an excellent point. Every time we are mean, sarcastic, selfish, or stingy in public, we ruin our own Christian witness. This includes cutting people off on the road (especially if you have one of those Jesus fish on your bumper!), cutting in line at the grocery store or coffee shop, and being rude to a customer service representative on the phone.

Photo credit: http://praisejc.wordpress.com/2011/02/

When we profess a "love thy neighbor" faith but behave just like everybody else, we show others that we don't take our faith- or the Bible- seriously. Christ calls us to be mindful of our words and actions so that we don't just practice our faith on Sunday morning, we practice it through the rest of the week.

Oh, and a word about tipping: many companies in the service profession don't pay their workers minimum wage. Restaurants, hair salons, taxi companies, and spas are legally allowed to pay less, because they expect that the customers will tip enough to cover the rest. When we as consumers don't hold up our end of the bargain, that becomes a justice issue. It's not fair for our sisters and brothers in service professions to be paid less just because of the industry in which we work. My hairdresser, Claudia, is a genius. She works at Supercuts, where the haircuts are $16 and $18. Obviously, her tips aren't going to be big: 15% of $16 is only $2.40. She mentioned to me that she lives in government subsidized housing in Boston's urban core. Of course she has to live in subsidized housing- she doesn't make much! Claudia told me on Monday that the customer before me had required a lot of time and effort, and he left without giving her any tip at all. How terrible! As a former waitress, I know how that feels, so I always make sure to tip Claudia 18%. She always does an amazing job on my hair, but more importantly, she is God's child who deserves a living wage.

If we are concerned with what concerns Jesus, we will be concerned about low-wage workers. We will be concerned about whether our actions are communicating God's love to everyone- even those in the service professions. Our prayer lives and our behavior outside of church should align. As you have been out and about recently, have you noticed the way you treat others? Are you as aware of how you behave as you are of your prayer life? Do you think your witness stands  up to the "jerk test"?

Let Jesus Occupy Your Heart

This Christmastide, now that Christ is here, I've transitioned from thinking about how to make room for the Christ child in my heart to thinking about what it is to have Jesus in my heart. My first thought was that if Jesus is in my heart, that is, occupying a space (the same space I created during Advent when I made room for him), does that not mean that Jesus is occupying my heart? It's a cute phrase, and it can be used in the sense that internet memes re-use the same material in creative ways for humor. But what if I was serious about using the word "occupy?" What if I wanted to use it in the same sense that the Occupy Together movement uses it? What would that really mean?

Well, when the Occupy Together movement began using the word "occupy," they meant "march aggressively into another's territory by military force for the purposes of occupation." In reality, what those in the camps were doing was more like "be present in; be inside of," "to inhabit," and "to engage... wholly" (definitions found here). By engaging the culture and one another, and by covenanting to live together and be present with one another, the participants of the movement took ordinary actions and made them political.

Likewise, allowing Christ to occupy my heart is also a political action. Now, when I use the word "political," I don't mean modern American partisanship. I'm using it in the classical sense of the word. Bryan P. Stone explains it well in his book, Evangelism After Christendom:

“To speak of the church as a polis or to talk about the politics of evangelism may sound strange at first. Most of us are familiar with the word politics in the context of the public life of a nation, where it refers to options such as Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. As with that usage, politics here refers to the processes, rules, and skills that help us as a people to understand, order and form our involvements and relations. It likewise has everything to do with power, conflict, change, and authority. Politics originally referred to the shape and organization of the polis and thus to the particular grammar of a people’s common story and life together. As [John Howard] Yoder says, “Anything is political which deals with how people live together in organized ways: how decisions are made and how they are implemented; how work is organized and how its products shared; who controls space, land, freedom of movement; how people are ranked; how offenses are handled”... The church then is not called merely to be political but to be a new and unprecedented politics; not merely in public but as a new and alternative public; not merely in society but as a new and distinct society, a new and extraordinary social existence where enemies are loved, sins are forgiven, the poor are valued, and violence is rejected." (pp. 178-179, emphasis mine)

Stone is suggesting that the politic of the Christian community is an alternative politic to the one employed in our modern American society. Rather than retributive justice, we value restorative justice. Rather than hate and retaliate against our enemies, we love and forgive them. In the Christian politic, the poor are cared for, not forgotten, and swords are beaten into plowshares. When we take the Christian politic seriously and strive to live it, we are bringing about the Kingdom of God on Earth.

What does that have to do with Jesus coming into our hearts? Well, A. P Jones wrote that "to occupy is to be concerned about, to pursue with vigor" something that is important to us, and to do so is our Christian duty. If Jesus is in our heart, then should we not be concerned about the things that concern Jesus himself? Should we not pursue the things that he pursued? If my heart is to be a fitting home for the Christ child, I must pursue the Kingdom of God; I must be concerned with the poor, the downtrodden, the grieving, and with becoming a peacemaker (c.f. Matthew 5, 25; Luke 6). When I concern myself with the kinds of people who concerned Jesus, and pursue the Kingdom of God as he did, I become the kind of person Jesus wants me to be.

Allowing Jesus to occupy my heart means I have to give up my agenda. I have to stop living for my own success, comfort, and convenience. It means I will go out of my way to love those who have been forgotten, ask God's forgiveness for my sins and forgive the sins of others, and become a peacemaker in these times of strife. These are all political actions because they are shaping my Christian community and they are shaping the way I live in that community. Ultimately, these actions shape the entire world around me, as Christ's transforming power radiates out from the Christian community into the world. By letting Jesus into my heart, I am participating in a new politic- a new way of doing things- the Christian way of doing things. I'm making a statement to the world: "I'm doing things God's way!"

As the New Year fast approaches, it's time to evaluate whether we have been doing things my way or God's way. What can we do to let God's Spirit transform us into the kinds of people Jesus wants me to be? How can we let Jesus Occupy our hearts this Christmastide, now, and forever?

Peace on Earth

This Advent, I have spent a lot more time and energy being joyful than being peaceful. Each weekend, I have had parties with friends, church events, and/or caroling with my beloved fellow choristers. I learned of a dear friend's pregnancy, shared chocolate with co-workers, and celebrated the presence of family in my life. But I must confess that all of this activity has left me little time for contemplating peace on earth.

My husband gave me a Christmas gift early- a DVD of Kung Fu Panda 2- and we watched it last night with his parents. In the movie, Po is troubled by his family origin while his master, Shifu, tries to teach him to find inner peace.

Master Shifu demonstrates inner peace.
Photo credit: www.kungfupanda.wikia.com

Even though an evil peacock is trying to conquer China and chaos is all around him, Po manages to find peace anyway, with the help of his friends and mentors. Unfortunately, I am usually a lot more like Po than Shifu when it comes to peace.

I realized last night that I have not been a peaceful person recently. While I have the "peace that passes all understanding," a gift of the Holy Spirit to all Christians, I have not really been acting like it. I have been stressed, and at times, troubled. I wonder if my friends' experience of my Christmas cheer has been tainted by this stress. I wonder how they might find Christ in Christmas better if I were a more peaceful person to be with. When they listen to my life, do they hear, "Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled"? Yet how do I let the peace of Christ shine through all of the other "stuff" in my heart?

For me, I don't think the answer is a special revelation from my past like Po had. It's a decision on my part to let go of the things that stress me out, don't let my problems bother me so much, and let these things roll of my shoulders rather than dwell on them.  My own mental focus becomes what I project to others, and my witness will improve if my attitude improves.

Peace on earth is God's promise to us, and it is also something in which we participate and which we bring about in in our own lives. Part of living the Christian life is learning to focus on God's blessings, and to let our worries and negative thoughts float away like leaves on a river.  This is a lot easier to write about than it is do, but with God's help, I know I can do it.

How have you experienced God's peace in your life this holiday season?

The End of Occupy Boston... Or Is It?

I know this post is really late, but from the time I heard last Wednesday that the judge had lifted the restraining order against evicting the Occupy Boston encampment, I knew I needed to wait. Good things come to those who wait, because I can now report to you the things I witnessed at Occupy Boston last week. Since the eviction of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston has been the longest-running Occupy Together protest in the nation.

Following the lifting of the restraining order, Mayor Menino notified the OB community last Thursday morning that their deadline to leave would be midnight on Friday morning. Expecting a police raid at midnight, OB called an emergency General Assembly at 7 PM on Thursday to discuss their plan for how to defend the camp and learn more about non-violent resistance (e.g., what to do when pepper-sprayed, how not to appear to be resisting arrest, ect.). Realizing that it may be some folks' last hot meal before being carted off to jail, I decided to bake an apple pie and bring it down to Dewey Square. Get it? Occu-pie? Har.

Anyway, it's my mother's secret recipe which I made from scratch, so by the time I brought it downtown, it was about 9:30 PM. The General Assembly was still going and people were still hungry. They devoured my pie in a matter of minutes, and I prayed that my small act of mercy of giving warm pie "to the least of these" was giving pie to Christ as well. The GA decided not to pass anything, which really disappointed me, and then they started the non-violence training. The Protest Chaplains/ clergy gathered at the time decided to have their own meeting to decide what to do. Expecting violence on the part of police, they decided to stand in between the police and the OB participants and ask the police, "In the name of God, will you put down your weapon? Please will you consider not arresting these people?" They knew the police might not listen and decided to bless the police as they passed by, and they decided they would say a benediction for the whole camp after the police began arrests. As this plan was being made, a woman from Channel 5 News came to take a statement from the Protest Chaplains. They said, "We are the Protest Chaplains and we have been shepherding and encouraging all along." Now I know how to give statements to the press! Even though the chaplains had a designated area for those who were not able to be arrested that night (myself included), I decided this plan was not a good one for avoiding arrest, due to standing in the way of police, and went home to prepare for work on Friday.

 Somebody rigged up a projector and trained it on the building behind the GA meeting area. 

Photo from OB Facebook page.

When I returned home and turned on the TV coverage, I found that the police were not making arrests. Instead of linking arms at the core of the encampment, people streamed into Atlantic Avenue and had a massive dance party! Folks on the ground estimated about 2,000 people were there that night. I could hear the makeshift band in the background playing- a tuba, trombone, and bass drum. The party dissipated at 2 AM and the camp remained on Friday.

On Saturday morning, I awoke to the news on Facebook: OB had been raided at 5 AM, a few hours earlier. According to eyewitness accounts, there was a spirit of joviality, laughing, and wisecracking in the camp that morning. The policemen who had patrolled the area regularly addressed the protesters by name when arresting them, and the protesters greeted the Chief of Police on a first name basis. The Boston Globe reported that this was the most peaceful police raid on any Occupy camp. But not all was well that morning. One of the Protest Chaplains reported on FB that those who were not arrested included the homeless (re-named "houseless" by OB participants) people who had been taken in by the the tent owners. She said that they were wandering around the empty square and crying, telling her, "What am I going to do now?" An account on the OB main FB page said they were even crying as they watched the police arrest those who linked arms and sat in the center of the camp. I tried to imagine what it must be like to be taken in by new friends, and accepted despite the problems developed while living on the street, only to have my new home and new friends suddenly taken away. Devastating. Their loss and despair must be profound.

As I reflect on this movement that has given hope and voice to so many, I rejoice at the peaceful dissolution of the camp but grieve for my "houseless" neighbors who are now tentless also. It's back to the shelters for them, and the shelters can be rough places to be. Last week in church, we read that "every valley shall be exalted, and the rough places made plain." Who will make these rough places plain for the houseless among us? Especially now that Occupy Boston the encampment is gone?

But OB continues in a less permanent physical form. Certainly it still exists online, and the working groups (such as the Faith and Spirituality Group, which includes the Protest Chaplains) are still working. General Assemblies take place on the Boston Common now, or in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, an Episcopal cathedral across from the Common. Occupy Boston has not ceased to exist, and its voice for economic justice will continue to be heard locally and around the world.

And what does this have to do with God? Well, the Bible tells us clearly that when people are oppressed and treated with injustice, this angers God. Isaiah 10:1-4 says:

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans  your prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come...? To who will you flee for help...? For all this [God's] anger has not turned away.

Amos 8:4, 9-10 says,

Hear this you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land... I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.

Micah 2:1-3 is very relevant to those bankers who profit from selling mortgages on houses that have now been foreclosed:

Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance. Therefor thus says the Lord: Now, I am devising against [you] an evil from which you cannot remove your necks; and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time.

Clearly, God is concerned for the poor, those who have lost their homes, and those ensnared in the usury of mortgage and credit card debt. To watch the rich people of our country do this to the rest of us makes God angry. The Occupy Boston participants, while they did not all agree on political philosophy and social issues, stood on Atlantic Avenue and decried foreclosures, usury, greed, inequality, and oppression. Every day, they did something to tell the world, "Hey, this isn't right! We need to make things right!"

Even if protesters are not all Christians, the Occupy Together movement is doing something very Christian: it is calling our nation to repentance for the sins named in Amos, Isaiah, and Micah.. As Christians, we ought to cheer them on, and— dare I say it?— join them in protest. While the Occupy Boston encampment is gone, OB is continuing to help bring about God's Kingdom of peace and justice in the world today. And we can too. 

I hope and pray that one day, through our efforts and the efforts of our children, all people will have homes, fairness can be restored in our lending practices, and no one will have to use food stamps or go hungry. God, give us the strength and wisdom to make it so. Amen and amen.

I'm Too Busy for Advent!

Hey folks, this is a little bit late, but there is a lot going on right now with Occupy Boston. They are facing eviction and I don't have enough time to write the full account of what I am seeing when I go and what I am reading in the Boston Globe, the OB blog, and other sites. In the meantime, I think I'll post a prayer that my pastor found this week. Up until the OB excitement, this is exactly how I have been feeling. Over at Unfolding Light, Pastor Steve wrote a prayer for what he calls the Advent Blahs:

Dear God,
I just don't feel like Advent today. I don't have time to sit in the velvet darkness and contemplate some wonderful silence. I don't feel Jesus coming. I'm not in touch with any promise or vision. I have absolutely no idea what Isaiah means by “preparing a way,” and even less idea about that crazy John the Baptist jumping around in the desert with grass in his hair. I don't know what it means to “make of my heart an open manger.” I'm just not there. I'm busy, tired and distracted. I haven't set up my stupid little Advent wreath; the candles lie in their stupid little box in the closet, under a lot of stuff. You're starting to bug me. All the spiritual hype about repentance and transformation sounds to me just like the crap from Macy's about how I need to buy their stuff. I've done Christmas before. I know what to expect. I bet I'm going to be just fine in January like I am now. So I'm just going to go right on with my ordinary little life here, OK? Whatever is in my soul, I'm not handing it over. It's nothing special, anyway, nothing devout and holy. It's clenched inside, plain and undeserving, and fine with that.  I'm fine. I just want nice presents and a good dinner with the kids. That's all. So if you're going to break in on my world, it's up to you. If you're going to do some wacky Gabriel thing with me, knock yourself out. Go ahead and make flesh turn into heaven, and a plain human life divine. If you're going to come into my life, don't wait for me. Just do what you do, you know, behind our backs and unasked for and all that.  Go right ahead. Just do your thing. OK? Please? Amen.

Do you ever feel this way about Advent? That you are just too busy to stop and prepare the way for the Christ child? And you have no time for any spiritual, even reading Barb's quick devotionals on the CUMC Facebook page? I feel that way many times this Advent- especially when I scroll past Barb's posts in my FB notifications. What does it mean to prepare a way for Jesus in my heart when I am on the bus going somewhere, or doing laundry?

For me, what helps with the Advent Blahs is singing Christmas carols (or if I'm on the bus, listening to them on my iPhone YouTube app). Perhaps I have a million things to do after I have pre-treated this load of laundry or put away these groceries. Yet as I do these small, mundane tasks, the act of singing about Christ's birth helps keep me in the Advent frame of mine. OK, so perhaps singing carols is liturgically incorrect, since technically the Christ child hasn't arrived yet. But it works for me, and that's what's important.

What might you do to help you prepare the way for Jesus in your heart, even in the midst of this hectic season?

Photo credit: Martin Stockley

Advent is Waiting... For What?

Sunday marked the beginning of Advent, and I must admit that a was a little crabby about it. I didn't take Pastor Lisa's message very well. Stop and listen? Limit my stress? But I am too busy for that! Ah, yes. My attitude is precisely why I need a little Advent- right this very minute.

In case you haven't heard much about Advent yet, this blogger posted an awesome picture of a liturgical calendar and explains the part Advent plays in the liturgical year. (For more on the liturgical year, go here.) Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year and it is a season of anticipation. We are waiting for Christ to make a quiet, unassuming entrance into our lives.

For those of us who have been Christians for a long time, this can feel a bit strange. "But Jesus came into my life ____ years ago!" we object. And during this season of crazy schedules, holiday parties, and shopping for gifts, it can be hard to remember to be stop and be quiet. We become aware Christ's presence in our lives in the quiet moments and the small, unexpected changes in our routine that make us think twice. Just as Mary noticed the small, unexpected changes of pregnancy in the quiet moments of life, we are witness Jesus' birth into our world and our lives all over again.

In reality, Jesus is coming into our lives every day. The Holy Spirit is constantly beckoning to stop and notice our attitude and our surroundings. Every time we catch ourselves being grumpy toward a family member or treating a favor as a hassle, we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ. Our old selves are constantly rediscovering Jesus and his work in our lives. That is precisely the point of Advent. In what ways have you noticed God's work in your life this year? How are you anticipating Jesus' coming in these four weeks of Advent?