Traveling in Place

The Boy Scouts' Dilemma

Now that the Boy Scouts of America has adopted a new policy of accepting openly gay youth (though not gay adults as leaders), lifetime scouts, including those who earned the coveted Eagle Scout Award, are renouncing their scout membership.  Conservative churches that have sponsored scout troops are cutting their ties.  The Southern Baptists and the Assemblies of God are predicting the eminent demise of scouting as they facilitate an exodus of young boys from the program.

But scouting has been hemorrhaging members for decades.  Since its peak in 1972, scouting membership has declined by 40%.  As the BSA searches desperately for a way to reverse this trend, it finds itself on the horns of a dilemma.  It has fallen victim to the social polarization that is tearing apart our national fabric. 

Boys Scouts are not politically, ideologically, or religiously biased.  In the time I served as a scout leader when my boys were younger, I observed that scouting brings together two different interests.  On the one hand, it’s a youth group that promotes good citizenship.  On the other hand, it teaches young men how to respect, enjoy, and survive in the outdoors. But the BSA has never sought to take controversial stands on any issue or favor one religious tradition over another.  And the awkward policy change that has resulted from the debate over sexual orientation reflects how the BSA has tried to stay out of the fray. 

In an official statement, BSA leadership stated that the new policy is “reflective of the beliefs of most of scouting’s major religious chartered organizations.”  That is, churches do not turn away young people for saying they are attracted to the same sex, especially if they are not engaged in sexual activity, so why should the Boy Scouts?  Both supporters and critics of the change point out the inconsistency of

God in the Whirlwind?

According to Scripture, God appeared to Job out of a “whirlwind” (Job 38:1) and the prophet Elijah was transported into heaven on another “whirlwind” (2 Kings 2:11).  As a boy growing up in Arkansas, I naturally assumed that those theophanic storms were tornadoes.  (Actually, tornadoes are very rare in the Middle East, though circular windstorms do wreak havoc in the desert and over crater lakes like the Sea of Galilee.)  So, is God in tornadoes?  In the wake of the EF5 monster that chewed up and spit out the entire town of Moore, Oklahoma, a lot of people are asking that very question.

Based on comments made by survivors of the Oklahoma twister, the verdict seems muddled.  Many of Moore’s residents are thanking God that they are still alive, and God’s grace is being widely invoked to explain how the number killed was held to only 24 people.  Barbara Garcion, whose miniature schnauzer was literally ripped out of her hands as she sat in her house waiting out the storm, was elated when a reporter found her pet struggling to free himself from a pile of rubble.  “I thought God answered just one prayer – let me be O.K.,” she told the reporter.  “He answered both of them.”  The day after the storm, a theatre marquis displayed the message, “God bless Moore.”  Rhett Burnett, the undersheriff of Cleveland County who is also a bi-vocational pastor, recalled that someone said to him, “I don’t understand why God does things like that.”  Burnett responded, “I don’t believe God creates this mayhem,” and went on to say, “We need to praise the Lord and trust that he is going to take care of us.” Another survivor, Tanya Wallace, who took shelter with her two young children in a closet in their home, said, “If you weren’t a religious person before, you are now.  No word can describe it but a miracle.”  I understand “it” to be the fact that the closet she and her children crouched in for shelter was still standing even though the rest of their house was destroyed. 

Sentiments like these suggest that God was protecting people from the storm, not sending it to them.  But that doesn’t mean God had nothing to do with the tornado.  In fact, the conviction by some that they survived “by the grace of God” implies they were spared the destructive power unleashed by God.  Even Rhett Burnett’s statement that “God doesn’t create this mayhem” doesn’t preclude God’s power being in the storm.  In fact, the biblical assertion that God is in the whirlwind is much more than primitive superstition.  It’s common sense if you believe that God made the world.  If you’re going to thank God for the beauty of nature, you have to credit God with its force as well.  But to say that God’s power is

Always Graduating

It’s graduation season – a time when beginnings are often misunderstood as endings.  We talk about graduating from high school or college, implying that we are celebrating the end of a certain level of education.  Yet to “graduate” means literally to “step up.”  It means moving to the next level, whether college, graduate school, military service, or employment.  Maybe this is why graduation ceremonies are called “commencements” instead of “conclusions.” 

It’s also this time of year when many churches hold confirmation ceremonies for young people who have completed some course of learning and service in preparation for assuming full responsibility as members of their churches.  These 13- to 15-year-olds stand before their congregations, publicly claim the faith taught to them by their parents and faith communities, and thereby confirm their baptisms.  Unfortunately, confirmation is too often misinterpreted as an end rather than a beginning.  The list is painfully long of those who have been raised in Christian churches, completed the confirmation process, and then dropped out for years – if not the rest of their lives – as though to be confirmed meant they had reached the end of their church obligations.  I suppose you could call confirmation a sort of graduation, but only if you correctly understand the term “graduate.”  Confirmation marks the beginning of what our Book of Worship calls “full Christian faith and discipleship.”  It isn’t an obligation but a privilege.  One of my greatest joys as a pastor is to see young people embracing their confirmations as milestones in their continuing faith journeys. 

Confirmation often takes places on Pentecost Sunday, when we recall how the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’ disciples and equipped them to share the gospel with the world.  You might say this event was graduation for the disciples.  They were motivated by the Spirit to act on all they had learned from Jesus.  They “stepped up” into their rolls as his apostles.

The story of Pentecost in the book of Acts speaks powerfully to the relationship between ends and beginnings.  Once the Spirit had given the disciples the ability to speak in the native languages of all who were gathered in Jerusalem, Peter preached a sermon in which he claimed that the words of the prophet Joel had been fulfilled.  Specifically, Peter quoted Joel 2:28-32, which speaks of “the last days,” when God’s Spirit will be poured out on all flesh – men and women, young and old, slave and free – “before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.”  Joel was describing the “end-times,” yet Peter said this vision had come true in the birth of Christ’s church.  Most likely, he really did believe that the time was short for Christ’s return and the fulfillment of God’s reign.  He had no idea that what began on that day of Pentecost would still be unfolding 2,000 years later.  The end, in other words, was a new beginning. 

That’s how it always is with God, “whose mercies never come to an end [for] they are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23); who “makes all things new” (Revelation 21:5), and in whom we become new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).  The church is not a place for final endings, because God is always doing something new.  Even our funerals are expressions of hope that those whom we have lost continue on in God’s embrace. 

Life, especially the Christian life, is not a journey toward a static destination beyond which there is nothing more to accomplish.  Every end is a new beginning. We always graduate to what’s next. 

Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson

The Meaning of Christ's Ascension

According to Acts 1:3, Jesus spent 40 days with his disciples following the resurrection.  He “presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs” and “spoke to them about the kingdom of God.”  Then, he led them out to Bethany, the village just over the crest of the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem, where “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”  This is the only record of what the church has historically called “the Ascension of Christ” (traditionally celebrated 40 days after Easter, or May 9 this year).  Two millennia ago in Judea, the ascension would have made perfect sense.  Everybody knew that heaven was “up there” on the other side of the sky.  So when Jesus had finished his ministry on earth, where else would he go but up?

Not that everyone alive then believed in a three-tiered universe with a flat earth in the middle.  Close observers of the natural world suspected that the earth was round, but they also believed that the universe was a series of concentric spheres, with earth at the core and heaven in the outermost sphere beyond the sky.  From that perspective, Jesus going “up” to heaven would be a relative idea, but it would still make sense.

In the 16^th century, Nicholas Copernicus was able to prove with his telescope that the earth was rotating around the sun, and that the expanse between here and there was empty space.  Copernicus’ theory of a heliocentric universe was condemned as heresy by the church, for if it were true, then it would no longer be possible to locate heaven.   There would be no up or down, no above or below, either absolutely or as a matter of perspective. 

Today, even Copernicus sounds quaint.  We take for granted that the earth is not in the center of the universe, but unlike that revolutionary astrologist, we also know that the sun is not in the center of the universe, either.  In fact, so far as we know, the universe has no center.  It is a vast ever-expanding space of undefined proportions. 

So what does it mean that Jesus “ascended into heaven”?  Did he actually shoot up like a rocket just for dramatic effect?  And by the way, where is heaven, anyway?

The Choice to Live

The spring colors are peaking in my neighborhood.  The fruit trees and forsythia are in full bloom. The buds on the maple trees have burst into translucent light green leaves. And untreated yards (like mine) are sprinkled with wild violets and dandelions. All this color is accompanied by the mating calls of several varieties of birds.  As always, spring reminds us that life goes on. We pass through our winters of discontent, but they always give way to new seasons of vitality.

But the coming of spring is not all about pastels and birdsongs.  The burst of life brings restlessness. All last week, a robin kept crashing into the windows of my office at church, challenging the territorial rival he kept seeing in the glass.  For hours every day, this restless creature, probably looking for a good place to nest, flew directly into the windowpane and then fell helplessly to the ground.  No matter how many times it banged its head, it refused to be deterred.  I thought sure the bird would fall unconscious or even dead.  But its determination proved equal to the stubbornness of its nemesis in the window. 

What we romantically identify as the return of life is often the aggressiveness of several species of animals who are in heat, hungry, or competing for space.  

What is true for the rest of the animal kingdom is also true of us.  The line between restlessness and contentment is very thin.  But we who reflect the image of God are