Traveling in Place

Faith and Time

Nothing magical happens at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  Problems don’t go away.  Peace doesn’t suddenly break out.  New wars do not suddenly begin.  The economy doesn’t suddenly swing up or down.  Still, many people who are awake at the turn of the New Year can’t help but feel that something about their lives is different.  Perhaps such close attention to the clock makes us more acutely aware of the march of time and puts our lives in a different light.  The relentless swing of the pendulum reminds that life is always bigger than any of us.  It does not stop or slow down to help us in our difficulties.  Nor does it give us more time to languish in our successes.

For some, this is hope.  It means there is always a new day; a new year; at least the chance to begin again.  For others, this same reality brings despair by signifying how unimportant our lives are in the bigger scheme of the universe.  For still others, there is a third perspective, a faith perspective, on the passage of time: it is relentless, but it has no power of its own, because it is the creation of God.  Time itself is impersonal, but it exists only within the greater existence of a personal God.  Time has no magical quality about it, but God acts in miraculous ways within the time of history.  The sheer passage of time has no inherent purpose, but within time, God is working out the divine plan.  Finally, time is not eternal.  It has a beginning and an end.  These two points are determined and fashioned by God.

What does that mean for us at the close of one calendar year and the beginning of another?  It means that we may look back to see how God has been at work in our lives, both to give thanks for God’s grace and care, and to better discern what God has been up to in our lives and in the world.  In the same moment that we are looking back, we may also look ahead, knowing that the future is unwritten and ready to be lived.  God has already laid plans for each of us and awaits our response to let them be fulfilled.

The year itself is nothing more than the ticking of the clock.  2010 was not a “good year” for me – it was a year filled with good things that reflected God’s grace.  In the same way, it isn’t 2011 that gives me hope but what rather what God will do in the midst of it.

Copyright 2010 by J. Mark Lawson

Remembering Christians In Peril

On Christmas Eve, Christians all around the world, including many who do not regularly attend church, gathered in crowded sanctuaries to light candles, sing carols, and greet the birthday of the Savior.  I know that for many people, Christmas Eve services have become the moment of peace in the midst of an otherwise hectic season.  Once, a mother of five told me that the lighting of the Christ candle at midnight meant she could finally breathe and say to herself with great relief, “it’s over.”  There’s nothing more I can do but just relax.

Many Christians around the world, however, are longing for more than the peace that ends the busy season, inner peace, or the peace of simplicity.  They pray for the end of violence and the ability to practice their faith in safety.  This Christmas, my heart aches for Christians in Baghdad, Iraq, who have become a prime target for terrorists such as Al Qaeda.  On October 31, an attack on Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad left 70 people dead, 53 of them Christians.  Since that time, violence has escalated against Christians in Baghdad and Mosul, leading Christians to flee their homeland in search of safe haven in places like Syria and Jordan.

Go Duck!

There’s nothing terribly spiritual or theological about this topic, but I feel the need to say something about it, especially since in a recent post I expressed my strong hope, echoing Christian leaders from across the spectrum, that the Senate would approve the New START treaty with Russia.

They did indeed.  All the political nonsense was pretty much squashed as 71 Democrats and Republicans supplied more than the required 2/3 vote to ratify New START.  But, as everyone who’s paying any attention knows by now, this burst of bi-partisanship was just one example among many in the so-called “lame duck” session of Congress.  The duck found his webbed feet, or wings, or whatever makes him not lame anymore.  Some historians are calling this the most productive lame-duck session ever.

The Messy Business of Christmas

Christmas has always been an uneasy time for Christians.  In the last thirty years or so, Christians of many different stripes have donned buttons and bumper stickers proclaiming, “Jesus is the Reason for the Season,” as though the commercialism and glitter of our modern celebrations represent a terrible aberration from the historical observance of the season.  In fact, there never was a time when Christmas was purely and only about the birth of Jesus.

The Christian church paid little attention to the birth of Christ until the fourth century, when arguments about the nature of Christ threatened to tear the church apart. Was Jesus really human, or did he only appear in the flesh?  Was he really God, or was he a prophet of God gifted with an unparalleled consciousness of God?  If he was both God and human, then how is this so?  Was he partly human and partly divine?  Was he born as Son of God, or did he become the Son of God at some later point, perhaps at his baptism, or at his resurrection?

Give Peace a Chance - Please!

 Add New START to the list of major policy initiatives about which there is broad consensus among Christian leaders across the theological spectrum.  The National Conference of Catholic bishops, a host of mainline Protestant denominations, and the National Evangelical Association are all urging the Senate to pass the nuclear arms reduction treaty signed by U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev last April.

This should be no surprise to anybody.  Whether you come at these global issues out of hope for world peace or a commitment to the sanctity of life, passage of this treaty is a no-brainer. New START uses the same language adopted in the original START signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev and renews the earlier treaty’s course of reducing the number of nuclear weapons while ensuring the U.S. and Russia’s ability to inspect each other’s arsenals.  Failure to pass the treaty puts in jeopardy global efforts at nuclear non-proliferation and increases the risk that these weapons, still enough to destroy the earth several times over, will wind up in the hands of terrorists who have no moral commitment to preventing mutual assured destruction.

That’s why the treaty not only enjoys the support of religious leaders on moral grounds, but also of secretaries of state, defense secretaries, and foreign policy advisors from past administrations of both political parties. It’s not just a good idea.  It’s critical to us and to the rest of the world.

The Virtue of Singing Together

I groaned back on the first day of November when one of the local radio stations began playing all Christmas music all the time.  Another of the preset stations in my car went to the same format on November 15, and a third followed suit on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  Only in the last week have I been willing to listen to any holiday music.  Now it’s all I listen to.  The tree is up and decorated, and we’ve already given one major Christmas music program at church and are preparing for another.  It’s time to enjoy Christmas music.

But I’m still not thrilled with 24-7 Christmas music on the radio.  The problem is not dissimilar to the difficulty with 24-7 cable news channels on television.  There’s not enough news to fill all that time, so a lot of non-news and news analysis fills in the gaps.  There’s not enough truly good Christmas music to fill up all that time on the radio, either.  So stations play every track on every Christmas album ever recorded by any pop star, and a lot of it is just – well, schlock.  Sometimes I listen to pop-star recordings of Christmas carols and get the impression that the singers are bored – that they came into the studio one day to cut this album only because their agents convinced them it would be a good idea.

Let It Snow

I’m not making this up: snow started falling here on Saturday night and did not stop until early this morning (Wednesday).  After a few hours, it started up again.  About 38 inches have piled up so far. Weather forecasters say that, before the storm is over tomorrow morning, it will accumulate around four feet of snow.

Tonight will be the third in a row when church activities have been cancelled or postponed.  Our nursery school has been closed all week. The church office is quiet except for the whir of the central heating.  I can think clearly.  I don’t feel rushed.  And the view outside my window, onto a patch of old growth forest that our church has preserved in the middle of this sprawling subdivision, is mesmerizing. 

Most of our snow is generated by the warm waters of Lake Ontario, the deepest of the Great Lakes.  Because Ontario is too deep ever to freeze, cold fronts passing over it pick up lots of moisture that create heavy bands of snow over land. This latest snow has all been “lake-effect.”  A particularly wide and persistent band parked over our area and did not budge for over 80 hours.

An Ecumenical Community

Last Friday, I participated in an ecumenical service that is an annual event in our community.  The local clergy association teams with the local family-owned funeral home to co-sponsor a service of remembrance that ministers to the grieving as the holiday season begins. The funeral director sends invitations to every family that has lost a loved one in the previous year.  Participating pastors invite their congregations. We sing hymns of faith, share scripture, and light candles in memory of those who have died. We acknowledge together how difficult the holidays become when we are coping with loss.

The longer I remain in this community, the more I treasure this and other ecumenical worship services.  What is most moving to me is not just the quality of the liturgy. And it’s more than my friendship with other pastors (though I do treasure those relationships). As we led worship together on Friday night, I realized how privileged I am to live in a time when the spirit of ecumenism is valued by both clergy and laity, and to live in a place where ecumenism blossoms out of the soil of rooted ministry.

The Need for Government

It looks like time is running out for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has become a fugitive from the law in multiple countries.  If he gets his way, however, he will do more than any single individual to shape the news for the foreseeable future.  His latest information dump of private communications among diplomats has provided a treasure trove of intrigue that leads to endless speculation and debate about how much we need to know.  Assange has already leaked classified documents about the war in Afghanistan and promises that more is coming.  This despite widespread concern that his leaks could damage fragile background diplomacy and endanger lives.

Assange is a classical anarchist.  He believes that all government is inherently constrictive, and everything that is hidden must be brought to light. A project like WikiLeaks was bound to grow in the soil that is the Internet, which is at once a great democratizer and inherently anarchic.  On the one hand, it puts vast information at the fingertips of anyone who can get on-line. On the other hand, it defies any regulation, any standard for judging what is true or false, and any attempt to establish a code of decency.  Information is king.  Making information available is priority one, consequences be damned.