A Spirit of Adoption by Rev. Matt Gough on November 20, 2011 from Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church on Vimeo.

http://svpc.us/pdfs/sermons/2011_1120_MGough.pdf

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Let's face it, we’re imperiaholics. We hate our imperialistic history…but man do we love what it has done for us. For example, we hate outsourcing our labor to foreign countries but we love our cheap goods.Many are in kind of a denial or they're blaming. 

With this whole Occupy Wall Street movement, if you are pointing a finger and not also pointing a finger at yourself too, then you’ve lost all credibility. If you’re breaking windows and not your entitlement then you’re just a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum and you should get a time-out.

There is a lot of social media about this occupy movement and there are so many opinions that I don’t know why I bother chiming in. Yet I think we all agree that there is a problem and egregious greed and corruption should be called out even if we don’t agree on what to do about it. So here are my 3 truths:

Truth #1. This isn’t a new struggle. This is at the heart of history and every struggle that has been recorded in history. The Bible is full of righteous anger over greed and not taking care of the poor, widowed and orphaned. Ideological rebels have overthrown oligarchies only to allow greed and corruption to mark their own regimes. You can blame the shot callers but you can’t convince me that your replacements are going to do much better. If you’re fighting over money then it will always be about money. Mammom isn’t going anywhere. Same corruption, different name.

Truth #2.  Nobody dragged us into this. This is a corporate movement. By corporate I mean all of us. We all love saving money, keeping that extra dollar, but we haven’t made much of a stink about how that dollar is actually saved. Businesses say that they have no ethical responsibility over how their suppliers and contractors get them what they need and that’s a lie. At the very least, it is a lie to say there is no moral responsibility.  However, it’s also a lie to say we the consumer have no moral responsibility to know how the things we buy affect others. The coffee, the chocolate, the pesticide ridden grapes all come to me at great expense and suffering of others. This computer I type on and the smartphone I use all contain the mineral Coltan. I bear some moral responsibility for how my purchase of that Coltan has caused such oppression in the Congo, that coffee and chocolate spur child enslavement, and those pesticides bring cancer to farm laborers. No excuse lifts that responsibility. I didn’t say no to my purchases and I could have. For me, that’s equal to standing there, face to face with a child being enslaved and saying, “Keep working, boy. You may not understand but my ability to access Facebook whenever I want is worth your sweat and tears.”

And it’s not just those heinous things we don’t say no to but the very things we are mad about today. Our demand for cheap goods have sent businesses overseas so they can be made cheaper. Our refusal to demand a connection to farmers, and producers have allowed us to be a nation of consumers and not producers. Our demand for things we really do not need and refusal to reuse and share or buy used bring overconsumption of goods, environmental atrocities, and the commoditization of labor, and when I say labor I mean people. People become commodities and that’s just not good.

If we have all allowed our bottom line to be our dominant value, then why do we get mad when corporations are simply doing the same?

Truth #3 Our choices got us into this and only our choices will get us out. Austerity and simplicity have to be the new norm. Interdependence not independence. Sustainability. These are no easy changes and most will be forced into them, as we run out of resources, rather than embracing them. I’m interested in a movement coming together to occupy public spaces to meet and talk about how we can embrace new ways of living.  How we can make and grow and provide for each other locally thereby shrinking the very monster we’ve created.  

Detox is going to be hard. The pushers are going to push back. But the best way to get rid of the pushers is not to fight them; it’s to fight our own addiction.

Things you can do:

1.       Stop buying. You don’t really need it. No you don’t. Stop it.

2.       If you really do need it ask how it got there. Who made it? How can you get it local? Can you get it used? If you can’t get it local find out who makes it in a way that is fair and just. Yes, it will cost more but if you’re doing #1 then you’ll have more for those things you really do need.

 http://www.inspiredgiftgiving.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/world-fair-trade...

3.       Do it together. Heck I’ve got a big yard with lots of room to grow stuff and I would LOVE to share in a communal vegetable garden. We can’t do this individually; it needs to be done together.

4.       Apply Grace. I’ve written some pretty hard truths and the only thing let allows me to face these truths about what I’ve said and about myself is to know that I’m not going to hell for it. Forgiveness and unconditional love is a way of life so you do what you can, one step at a time. Be patient.  Love God and love each other. Let that be our dominant value.

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My favorite show on television is NBC's Community because of its clever no rules writing and because of the character development. My favorite character is Abed who is insanely smart and 100% logical.  In the most popular personality test, which you can't avoid taking if you are in full-time ministry, there is a spectrum of feeling and thinking. If you place more in the thinking side then you are given the label T, and if you score more in the feeling side you are given the label F. I am a distinct T. I am not extremely on the T side but T, nonetheless. This does not mean that, like Abed, I have no emotions or even have a problem with being "in touch" with my emotions. In fact, my wife will tell you that I can be very touched by the sappiest of shows and nothing gets me worked up like preaching Grace.  It simply means that I lead with logic. In most cases, my decisions and actions are governed by logic and not emotions. So if I feel like doing something, I often check that it is reasonable and logical, not always, but most of the time. 

I'm a minority in the ministry field. Seems that everyone who works in ministry is an F and that's understandable. Feelings can dominate and a lot of our work is navigating emotions, responding to them, and allowing people to express them.  I married an F. My oldest son is, so far, a feeler. There is never any doubt in my mind what emotion that lil’ guy is experiencing.  I love F's, but I don't always understand them, and they don't always understand me. I take things at face value, so feeling that I should be feeling something because you are...doesn't work so well. My wife and I communicate pretty well, and I logically know things, and do things, that she likes. However, I still miss things and cues, get in trouble or just allow the unmerciful walls of logic to be too rigid.

One isn't better than the other, even though I like to be a brat and assert that T is the logical evolutionary next step to F.  They both have advantages and disadvantages. I like buildings with exteriors and interior stylings designed by an F but unless a T logically constructed the structure and systems that hold up the building I wouldn't want to go in it. I love abstract art, mostly because it's not so easy to analyze and make sense of. I have to view such art with my emotions, and I like that.

A feeler may keep things, hoard even, because the items bring certain emotions. They have all their year books and stuffed animals from years back. I threw most of that stuff out. However, I have a garage full of bolts and nuts and odd parts because I logically think that they may have a use someday. 

Of any of the traits, I do believe the one that changes most and moves towards the center as we grow healthier, it is this one. Leading all with feelings or only with logic is simply neglecting important tools we have been given. They say Jesus would have been right in the middle of the spectrum. Informed and led by a perfect balance of logic and feelings.

While I do not believe love is an emotion, love certainly brings forth a lot of emotions within us. The love God showed in Christ is often foolish to the wise (logical). And frankly, as much as we try to systemize theology, the Gospel does not seem very logical. The older brother to the prodigal son certainly struggled to see the Father's logic. Love was the rule. And while I believe it is both perfectly logical and perfectly emotional for God, we do not perceive it as so with our limited capacity.

This post has been inspired by the Parenting with Love and Logic class that I am taking with Christine at our church Sunnyvale Presbyterian. It's a great class that helps us balance our parenting with both love and logic. Empathy is important, but so is holding firmly and consistently to certain logical principles. I probably like it because we really are being taught to rely on logic more than emotion in our decision making. However, it asserts that we always lead with empathy. I love it for how it gives us tools that are clearly working as we parent. It helps me love my illogical toddler, respects his emotions, and gives him tools to make wise choices.  I recommend it highly and it'll be offered again in the Fall.

I can be like Abed, and as strange as Abed. Things are going on in my mind as I analyze and make obscure connections that leave people thinking that I am out to lunch. So if you see me and I don't clue in to the emotion of the moment, don't be afraid to say to me, "Stop being so Abed!"  It should be enough to kick start my F side.

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Released translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls has revealed that we didn't have the whole text of the account of Peter's calling. I got my hands on it and here it is...seems like things haven't changed much:

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I recently listened to a fun podcast called Judge John Hodgman where the actor (the Microsoft guy in the Apple commercials) settles disputes between real people in a comedic way. In this particular case, a man and wife were in disagreement about Christmas decorations. The wife wanted to decorate at the beginning of Advent, while the husband wanted to wait until Christmas Eve. The husband, a Catholic by conversion, wanted to follow the liturgical practice of keeping Advent a dark and penitential time. Judge John Hodgman was ignorant to this practice, as are most people. However, for the bulk of Christian history Advent has been a time to reflect more on the darkness in the world and our need for a Savior. If you look at most of the lectionary texts for Advent then you will find that the New Testament texts are about the end of the world and/or the second coming of Christ. Traditionally, people did not put up lights or decorations until the end of Advent. in the same way that we don't say hallelujah during Lent until Easter morning, Christians would not celebrate the light of Christmas until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Christmas decorations would then stay up through the Christmas season and often through Epiphany.

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Today I couldn't stop staring at my son. He's a person. I know it kind of sounds like one of those caricatures of a drug induced person staring at their hand saying, "whoa my hand, dude" but I was just in awe. It's a parent thing but it was a slight act of morning worship, not of my son, but of God and the gifts of the miracle of life, individuality, family, DNA, and a whole mess of other things. What was even more amazing was trying to imagine what future things I would be observing this boy do. Things like, using the potty (that will be a glorious day), first day of Kindergarten, first game/meet/play/whatever, prom, marriage, kids?, and who knows, bail hearing..let's hope not but I'd be there! Blows my mind.

I can get so caught up in parenting and anxiety and thinking about parenting roles that I manage forget that this is a distinct relationship with a unique individual. It's a joy to love him, even when he tells his daddy to go away, and know that I'll love him for who he is no matter what. 

I guess all I'm trying to say is that I love being a Dad.

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Now if they can just build this into a pair of Bluetooth glasses I'd never have to call someone guy or dude again. 

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If you are like me then you bristle at evangelism that sells Jesus and Christianity as the fix for all your problems and that faith and Jesus will make everything bad go away. This produces inauthentic Christians who are too nervous that being honest about continued struggles will have others thinking that they don't believe enough.

I bristle because this does not jive with things that Jesus actually said. In fact, he often said the opposite. What do people think taking up your cross and dying involves? Jesus challenges us and many many people walked away from him because his teaching was too difficult. The disciples themselves, after three years of following didn't believe enough to non-violent stand up for Jesus at his crucifixion. Discipleship is hard and the promise isn't that it is easy but that Jesus is with us always along the way.

In the radio documentary,  "This American Life" there is a conversation about how evangelism often degrades to "Bait and Switch" schemes. I recommend a listen. You can listen online and for a short time you can download it.

Here's the link.

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I am working on a new blog post. I know I've been a slacker. In all this time I worked on updating the computer situation at home. Part of the reason my blogging fell off was the fact that the old laptop hand-me-down I was using died. And our desktop needed work. 
So we bought a new laptop. I came very close to going over to Apple but the only MacBook we could afford did not have a media card reader (no macbooks do..shame) or a firewire port. Kind of a bummer since we would use it for photos and video.
I used to build my own computers so I went to work researching whether updating the Sony Vaio P4 was worth putting a modest investment in to keep a few more years. I found that I could update the P4 with another gig of memory, a better video card, a eSata-PCI card, a blu-ray dvd player, and a 1 TB external esata HD. Did a total reformat and reload and it's working fast and the first blu-ray is coming from netflix this week. It plays regular DVD's and we'll see if I did everything right to handle the blu-ray (the desktop is hooked up to our HDTV).
I was able to do all that and buy a 16" Vista Ultimate Pentium dual core (2.0 ghz)laptop with 4 Gigs memory (can take 4 more) and 320 GB HD, eSata port, DVD burner with lightscribe, MS Office, and wireless N (already have an N router) all for the same price as a 13" basic MacBook.
I know Apple can be more user friendly and is a good computer for all those who didn't understand a word of what I just wrote and don't really want to have to, but for us tech geeks there is no justification for spending so much money to get so much less. 
My only gripe, Final Cut Express has no PC version. But one piece of software is not reason enough.

My next project may involve Ubuntu. I'll keep you posted.

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Alan Greenspan, champion of the free market said, "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms." link

In other words, he has learned that even with total freedom, humanity will succumb to sin.

Let me explain. The free market is based on the idea that the market is such that if we just let it run unfettered it will be strong and healthy. The problem with this is that the market is not a machine. It is something driven by humans.

A line of Christian theology, articulated well by John Calvin, says that humans were given complete free will but chose sin. Even though humans are created in the very image of God we are corrupted, or totally depraved, because of sin. So even with perfect freedom we will not choose good or God. Therefore, God needed to intervene and that is where Jesus comes in.
The free market philosophy, if applied to theology, would say that we don't need intervention and that if everyone pursued their own self-interest then we would level out and reach a spiritual equilibrium.
What we have found out is that the free market, if completely free, would not reach an equilibrium. It would not because the level of greed and corruption among the drivers of the market, you and I and the CEO's, is unlimited.

I will not say that regulation is the perfect solution. The problem there is that regulators are depraved too. However, when we come up with laws and a system of checks and balances then we are able recognize and challenge our tendencies toward corruption.

Think of it as the street you live on. What if every law was suddenly taken away and you and your neighbors were told to work out your own rules and laws. You might all start out agreeing on some basic principles. But pretty soon a neighbor might realize that paying for trash removal is a waste when no one could stop him from just throwing the trash in the street, or even in your yard. Or even worse, you might return home to find your locks changed and a neighbor claiming your house. You then depend on other neighbors to enforce right of property but then it becomes a case of who has a bigger gun, etc., etc.,  So everyone gets together to come up with laws and a way to enforce those laws, and everyone contributes to an outside party to enforce them. That is regulation.

So as I see it. We need to be regulated. We need laws and we need checks and balances. Left to ourselves and our own self-interests we will always crash and burn.

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My 5 year old nephew, JD, does not like dirt. He is the one who, at age one, stuck his hand in his cake, looked at the mess it made on his hand, and began to cry. Recently, he got in our car and remarked, "Your car is dirty." JD came to Grandparent/Grandchild camp with my Mom last summer. He remarked that there was a lot of dirt at camp and then asked the counselors if they were going to do something about that. Camp is dirty. It's part of the allure that everything is not paved over and controlled. However, not everyone likes that. Nor does everyone like that the physical and visible dirt is just a reminder of the dirtiness of living in community.

I hear from summer staff that living in such a close Christian community for the summer impacted them the most. However, few would say it was easy. We ask our staff to live in close community with a limited amount of time and space to get a break from the group. They live, eat, work, play and worship together 6 days a week and usually spend their day off together. It is quite intense.

Compare that kind of community to what church community is increasingly becoming. From my observations, church community is more and more becoming a community that is contact with one another less and less. For many, that 1-2 hours on Sunday is the only contact with the Body of which they are members. It's becoming harder than ever to gather everyone together and even more difficult to convince them to want to be together. We are a long ways away from the Acts 2 church.

"People are too busy." seems to be the constant lament we offer when purveying our lack of togetherness. However, this is an easy excuse. I think we don't get together more because being together is difficult. Anyone who has ever had a roommate or lived in a house with house-mates can tell you this. I tell engaged couples that they need to take a long road trip together. There is nothing like being stuck in a car with someone for miles upon miles to discern whether there is true compatibility. Being busy is simply an avoidance mechanism. We avoid community like we avoid a mud puddle in the path ahead of us. Community is dirty.

We long for community and once in it we try to escape it, or at the very least, complain about it's shortcomings. We lament that we do not have it one minute but avoid and turn it down the next. One time I was looking for a place to live and on the church bulletin board there was a notice for a room in an intentional Christian community. I shuddered reading it as it described the expectations and responsibilities of living in the community. I wasn't sure what I was shuddering at then but as I think back it simply felt exposed. We go out from our homes everyday and present to the community the person we would like others to see. The limited community we experience is controlled community. When we live in community we begin to lose that control. The dirt is harder to hide. We allow the community to see us through and through.

The summer staff saw each other through and through. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Their once private struggles became known. The community reflected back to each person what they saw. In community we are confronted with our true selves and our projections and illusions are exposed for the smoke and mirrors that they are.

In Christian community it is ideal that even in the midst of being confronted with our own muck we are also washed with the unconditional love and irresistible grace of God. I am humbled when summer staff report experiencing this kind of love and acceptance from one another. That means God was truly present in this community. They lived close enough to see the dirt and yet they sought to allow God to love them, through one another, in the muck.

I don't know how long it could last. Seven weeks is a good chunk of time but it is not a true test. People have sought to live in Christian communities since the Acts community and many of them failed. The rule of Saint Benedict and other such rules for Christian community were probably not written as an ideal but as a response to the difficulties that were faced in living so closely with one another. Community is dirty and the strict rule response seems to be one which seeks to be on guard for the dirt and to constantly and vigorously be cleaning.  The other option, one I saw here at camp, is to not be afraid of the dirt.

I have a 15 month old boy. He is not one to shy away from dirt. He revels in it and, much to our dismay, even tries to eat it. Seeing him play and get dirty without a care reminds me of some of my fondest childhood moments of playing in the dirt, creating cities and rivers and volcanoes. I am sure there are still some Hot Wheels buried in that yard. We would get dirty but it was no big deal. It was a part of life. We would come into the house and our mother's and father's would groan but then usher us into the bath, to be cleaned.

I am not saying that the dirt we see in each other is no big deal. Our dirt can be very serious. We struggle with serious spiritual, behavioral and emotional problems that hurt us. The message of the Gospel, however, is that even though we are all very dirty we are still invited to play in and as part of God's creation. The dirt does not stop God from living in us and allowing us to experience the joy of being a beloved creature.

Our language about Christ is that he washes us clean and gives us a new life. Often, we talk as though once we kneel down to Christ as Lord that he washes us and makes us good and clean Christians. We all know that is not true. If we are honest, we see that we are still dirty. Maybe that's why Christians don't like living in community or why we create strict rules of discipline when we do, because we feel we aren't supposed to be dirty now that we are a person of faith. We fear that if people really saw us then they would question our faith, "How could we really be a believer and still struggle with fill in the blank." Some have gone the other way and have declared Christianity a sham, a community of people claiming to be clean but who really just hide their dirt and are good at making everything look pretty.

Which is it? Are we all just poor at being Christians, with a weak faith that prevents Christ from washing us to be "White as snow."? Or is it all just a sham? An answer created for our dirtiness that simply does not work and is not real.

Perhaps, there is another option. I think our summer staff gave me a glimpse of that. They were dirty. They all knew it. They couldn't avoid it. But rather than spend their time focused on the dirt they decided to focus on Christ. They focused on how Christ is the revelation of how God loves us even as we cover ourselves with stinky filthy mud. They let go of their offense off dirt, put away their shame over being dirty, and loved one another and loved the dirty kids who came to camp. They didn't do it perfectly, but that does not matter, because God's love is perfect and erases our imperfections.

As they loved one another I think they experienced something. They experienced a continual and determined cleansing. Through the love of God they were being cleaned. The clean did not come through discipline, or rules, or anything that they did. The cleansing came from being loved and through loving one another.  I would venture to say that everyone of our staff left this summer a little bit "cleaner" than when they came. Some found healing, some found trust, some found hope, others found their deep need to be connected to a loving faith community where the cleansing could continue. I hope they learned that the work of the Kingdom is not done by "white as snow" Christians but by "jars of clay" (aka sticky dirt) filled with the spirit of the living God.

You can tell the difference between churches that intentionally spend longer chunks of time together and those that don't. There seems to be a deeper level of Grace and understanding. The "dirt" doesn't phase them as much and they genuinely learn to love one another.

While I know that asking churches to move into closer communities within their wider community may be unrealistic, the more we can set aside time to live in community the better we will be able to love the way God loves us. I'm encouraged to see reformed communities springing up around the nation. In many ways it makes sense as there are more people to share the responsibilities of childcare, education, maintenance, and meals and more time to minister to their wider community. These communities, like some before them, are not springing up to escape the dirty world and live the "clean" way, but are engaging their communities, serving them and, most importantly, loving them. Presbyterian Global Fellowship is a group started by pastors who ached to see churches become more connected and more like the Christian community we are called to be.

There is an aching for the church to be more than a worship service, a Sunday school, or a community meal. An aching for community in this world which is mistaking communication with community. The number one complaint of our staff community was that some spent all their time in staff area on "Facebook" and not with a real "face-to-face" community. More an more our world is looking like C.S. Lewis' vision of "hell" in his work, "The Great Divorce." In it people are so afraid of community that they build bigger and bigger houses and move further and further apart from one another. I hope that as people respond by being consistent communities and the dirt starts to become evident that, rather than respond with fear and shame, they will respond with love and faith. Love of a God who loves his dirty creatures and faith that God does and can work and live through people who have muck and filth in their lives that only the love of God will be able to cleanse. Living in community is not a place to learn how to live clean, but it is a place to learn how to love with the love of God in a dirty world.

Links to people trying to live in faith community:

Quest Church

Mustard Seed Associates

Bartimaeus Cohousing Community

Church of the Apostles

Monkfish Abbey

The Simple Way

Church of the Sojourners

Reba Place.

Plow Creek.

Catholic Worker Movement

Open Door.

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