The Canes and Tendrils of the Church

John 15:1-8

“I am the vine, you are the branches.”  John 15:5

The last few weeks, I have been teaching a class on parish administration for lay leaders in our congregations; many who are leading small congregations with no pastor.  This is the fifth of five courses we have done together over the last several years.  I enjoy teaching this group.  They are committed church folks, dedicated to leadership in their small churches and to the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ.  We have good conversations, wrestle with thoughtful questions and struggle together with the challenges facing their small, yet often thriving, congregations.   It has been a great class!

In this week’s class we were discussing the shared governance model that lies at the heart of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s way of doing church together. Shared governance takes work.  It can be messy.  Very messy.  We frequently don’t get it right.  Shared governance requires having a strong stomach for disagreement and difference of opinion, and a commitment to work for reconciliation and creative engagement with one another when conflict inevitably arises.  Shared governance requires listening care-fully to one another, practicing clear, transparent and respectful communication and remembering we are all beloved children of God…  especially when we disagree. 

Most important of all, shared governance in the church only works when we pay close attention to the heart of our faith -- the Gospel way of Jesus Christ – through the study of and reflection on scripture, and by listening for the guidance of the Holy Spirit through prayer and meditation.   The constitution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America puts it this way,  “All power in the Church belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, its head.  All actions of this church are to be carried out under his rule and authority.”    (Constitution, Bylaws and Continuing Resolutions of the ELCA, 3.01)  True, as sinful human beings who don’t always see things clearly, and often fall short of the glory of God, we don’t always agree what that means, or how it is given flesh and blood in our daily lives and ministries but, if we don’t start there, we are guaranteed never to get there. 

“I am the vine, you are the branches.”  Jesus tells his disciples on the night before he died. The trunk of the vine provides nurture and sustenance so that the canes (branches) can send out their renewal spurs, stabilizing tendrils and fruit producing flowers.  Grape canes need constant tending and pruning if they are to produce fruit in abundance.  It is only when the vine grower, the vine and the branches work together that the harvest is plentiful.  Jesus paints a wonderful picture of shared governance!   Jesus’ offers us a vivid metaphor for how we all need work together under his hand – whether pastor and council, or synod and congregation, or churchwide and synod – to carry out the mission of love and grace, service and witness, compassion and advocacy that Christ has entrusted to us as his branches.  

Studying parish administration could be boring.  But when we look at the constitutions, and policies and governance structures and practices of the church as the roots and tendrils and spurs and buds that connect us to the vine and help us bear the fruits of the Gospel, studying them can be like drinking fine wine.  Really.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Please pray for those involved in governance of all kinds.  They need it!  Thanks for reading.

Beyond the Fold

John 10:11-18

“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold…”   John 10:16

Not long ago, I was standing in line to get a receipt at a gas station near Oklahoma City.  I was wearing my black clerical uniform so it was obvious that I worked for the church.  The woman behind the counter, maybe in her thirties, handed me my receipt, looked me up and down, and asked, “you a priest?”   

“A pastor.”  I responded.

“I believe in God.” She said firmly.  “But I don’t go to church.”

A man behind me had one of those big twenty-four packs of water bottles impatiently perched on his shoulder.  There wasn’t much time for conversation.

“Oh…”  I mumbled.  Not one of my greatest evangelical moments.

“I don’t think you need to go to church to be Christian.”  She continued.  “I think God just wants you to have a good time.”

“Really.”  I said dubiously as the man pushed by me and dropped his water bottles on the counter.  

I pondered that almost-conversation during the two hour drive home.  I wondered why she felt compelled to share that bit of her life with me?  Confession? Affirmation?  Argument?  I’ll never know.   But Jesus’ words about “other sheep” came back to me somewhere toward the end of hour one.

Was this woman one of those “other sheep”?  I know she was.   Beloved by God, she heard God’s voice, even if she didn’t understand it the same way I do. Claimed by a God, who, I am convinced, will be with her even when the good times she seemed to be pursing failed her. I felt guilty about not doing more to “witness” to her, but, in fact, I realized she had witnessed to me.   She bore witness to the Good Shepherd who is always out there beyond the fold working in the lives of people we, who are church folk, might think are the most unlikely candidates for membership in the flock.

God is at work in the world. I am convinced of that too. Sometimes through us.  Sometimes in spite of us.  Sometimes in places where we wouldn’t dream to look.   That is, until the Spirit opens our eyes.

That’s where the Church of Jesus Christ needs to be.  On the margins.  In the cracks in human lives.  In the gaps where so many people live.  In the places where God’s sheep beyond the fold witness to the grace that belongs to all of us,  ALL of us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Keep your eyes open for God at work in the people you bump into along the way!  Thanks for reading.

Doubts?

Luke 24:36b-48

Back when I was a campus pastor, I had running discussions with more than one of my students about doubt and faith.  Their general mode of life was “question everything.”  They would sit in my office and pepper me with question after question, and then pick apart my answers in good intellectual fashion:

How do you know Jesus really rose from the dead?

How do you know there is really a God?

How do you know God is loving and compassionate and merciful and forgiving and all that when the world is such a mess?

Why is there suffering in the world?

And on and on.

These students wanted to have faith.  They really did.  And so, they wrestled and wrestled and wrestled with their questions, begging God in their prayers to take away their doubts.

The problem was, they thought that “faith” meant  “certainty.”   They thought faith meant knowing all the answers.   But faith doesn’t mean certainty.  It means trust.  It doesn’t mean knowing all the answers.  It means being willing to live in the questions.  To be open to the mysteries.  To place ourselves in God’s hands.  To hope against hope even when we cannot see clearly what’s coming next. Having faith doesn’t mean living with no doubts.  It means wrestling with those doubts and trusting that our Lord is in there wrestling with us.  Because, on this side of heaven, the doubts will inevitably come.  There will always be those days when uncertainty rules and fears grip us and anxiety drives our actions and reactions to whatever is swirling in the world around us.

Doubt is all over the place in the Resurrection stories in the Gospels.  It is there, front and center, in this week’s Gospel lesson.  Having just dismissed the women’s report of seeing Jesus alive as an “idle tale,”  (24:11) the disciples respond to the reality of the Risen Christ with doubt and disbelieving.    It took a basic human need…  hunger…  to finally break through their grief-clouded and fear-shrouded disbelief.

The Resurrection is no fairy tale; no idle story told to mollify our mortality.  It is the power and promise of God in flesh and blood for flesh and blood.  It bears witness to the truth that God’s love and life are stronger than suffering and death.

In a way, my questioning young friends were some of the most faith-filled people I’ve known.  In the midst of all their questions and doubts…  they didn’t walk away. They didn’t stop being a part of the community of faith.  They didn’t give up on God.  In their own way, they trusted that God wouldn’t give up on them either, even as they raised their questions and doubts.

I think that’s what this thing called, “faith” is all about.

Frederick Buechner, pastor, poet and author of more than thirty books (who is now in his 90s) once wrote that doubts are the “ants in the pants of faith.”   I believe that.  Doubts have a way of pushing us deeper and deeper into the infinite love that is ours through Jesus Christ.  Always pushing us until we discover again that Jesus is already there, way ahead of us, showing us the way from death to life.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading!