Worthy Worship

“I switched because the band was better” he told me describing his latest church move from one mega church to another. Worship certainly has taken central stage in Church life during my life time. It’s gonna be loud, there’s gonna be light, smoke, and movement, described the worship leader reaching out to his target audience. Using music with cymbals, smoke from sacrifices, and offerings of the temple worship with the images of the multitudes worshipping the lamb in Revelations we have our model what worship should look like. Our worship is our “sacrifice of praise” and “we trust it is found worthy” leads the worship leader.

At one time in my life I was hungry to include contemporary worship music in our small country church. So much so I installed a suitable pa system to accommodate worship band performance type music. During this experience I learned with great anxiety how worship has become theologically, culturally and generationally specific. While some people love the hymns they know by memory, others say hymns are songs about God while the Praise songs are songs written to God. While some say the worship band songs is primary performance and the congregational song is song everyone sings together in community, others say the worship band leads them into a spirit of intimacy with God while singing hymns just doesn’t connect with their spirit. While some say we need to mix everything together creating a “we” congregation, others said it is an “obligation” to sing the hymn. Then there is the person raised Methodist who loves the written liturgies she remembers read during her youth.

The tension of this experience led me to wonder if Jesus really cares about worship. Joseph brought his pigeons for sacrifice, Jesus discussed the law as a 12 year old, he fasted in the desert, he was baptized by John, he read scripture in the synagogue, he often went off by himself to pray, he sang a hymn at the last supper, but I’m not sure the word worship is used to describe Jesus devotional life. Certainly there are multitudes of examples where Jesus was critical of the religious demonstration of performance prayers, overt fasting, display offerings, and demonstrations of piety intimidating to those called sinners. When the disciples asked him how to pray he gave them an example but I don’t recall anytime Jesus modeled worship. All of this makes me wonder if worship is more our automatic response toward God for the forgiveness and new redeemed life he has allowed us to live here among his people and eternal life then it is something God asks of us. Is worship more necessary for us then for God?

Jesus did ask us to love God with all our heart soul and mind. I’m sure we express that in many ways through confession, music, art, meditation and study but somehow I suspect if worship is only an art form, a confession, or study, Jesus would have same harsh words to describe us as he did religious people of his day. What Jesus really wants of each of us is to identify with the walk of “the least of these”. This isn’t any different then what we as parents would want. We love to hear our children express their love and appreciation to us as parents but if they only sang the song to us and despised each other as brothers and sisters we certainly would despise their song as well.

Sitting with our displaced people from Burma again brings what worship is into sharp focus for us. As they sing the songs they love to sing, us English can only imagine what the message is. Our 80 year old market man walking with a cane says this really isn’t my cup of tea but I know this is of God and I’m right here to support it. In fact among our displaced persons we have many differences. At our worship planning committee Anglican, Baptist, and Seventh day Adventist as well as us Mennonites/Methodist are all represented. In our assembly Sunday mornings those from Catholic, Buddhist, and Animistic backgrounds come together as well.

We planned a Good Friday service and they told us the song “The Old Rugged Cross was their favorite song. I would have much rather sung a song that focused on the meaning of Christ’s death as opposed to a song about a wooded cross but of course I sang the song. We lit our candles and prayed our quiet prayers as we sang. Our Catholic sister crossed herself and went up to touch the cross in her tradition. In all our differences it really is not a choice not to walk together. These are the people God has given to us as a people. So whether it is a call at 5:00 am because the driver did not show to take them to work, reading to children helping with homework from school, or singing a song I don’t believe is especially a good song, it is all an expression of worship toward God. We are walking with each other. This whole experience puts flesh on our conviction that our worship is a statement of loving God which is best expressed by loving our neighbor as ourselves. I cannot say “the least of these” it sounds terribly demeaning.

Easter morning we signed our name, “we believe”, Christ is risen and lives among us! Our Buddhist friends walked forward and signed and posted their proclamation as well. What do they understand? We don’t know. Certainly we don’t understand the magnitude of what we believe as well. But we are walking together in faith with conviction that Jesus can be recognized when we love each other. Jesus is indeed worthy!!

Gotta recognize heaven when you see it.

We pray “Thy kingdom Come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. That’s pretty heavy stuff. I’m sure God doesn’t expect us to start building mansions here with streets of gold! Could heaven be what we have started working on here? What would that look like?

One thing for sure, it’s got to include everyone. Last evening I saw 300 kids of all ages on the first soccer practice for this spring. There were a dozen students from Goshen collage out there mixing it up with the kids. The coach was Asian, the head coach at the collage. I learned he came here from Laos as a refugee after the war, sponsored by the church and has been here ever since. The little 3 year old Afro-American who kept running around getting in the way was his adopted son. Soon his European looking mom rescued her son from the 7 year olds as she attempted to let him know he is not yet 5. The Love keeps getting passed around. This has gotta to be a vision of heaven.

We went to church at Waterford Mennonite Church with my wife’s brother and his wife. In a quiet way this church cultivates gifts, inspires faith, walks with people through difficulties of all sorts, shares the cost of Christian education, blesses people in missions of all kinds. This Sunday they started a fund raiser for one man needing a heart transplant, prayed for several people in the retirement community who could not be here, in Sunday school a teacher shared her concern for a child in her classroom whose mother was dying of cancer, a wide mix of ages mingled in the vestibule including 4 generations of the family we stayed with during the break between the 1^st and 2^nd service. This has gotta be a vision of heaven.

Life hasn’t been easy in the Goshen-Elkhart during this financial down turn. We talked about substantial personal losses but one sensed no anger or resentment. We talked about leadership transitions at church with no anxiety, oh yes she does happen to chair the search committee we learned as they had many times before. As we walked the campus young people on campus were met with interest and appreciation in a natural authentic type of way. Accepting loss without resentment, radiating contentment with oneself, supporting others without reserve, these people we stayed with have contributed to and helped shape this spiritual community for several generations from the pew. Indeed, we gotta recognize heaven when we see it.

Working the day job selling quilts she spends a lot of time outsourcing the skilled needle work among many Amish women craftsmen. I sensed a strong respect for the Amish community and I asked about this. Yes I do, she responeded, or course there’s bad apples in every bunch like everyone else. Being an outsider I am seen as a safe person to talk to. I enjoy them especially when they are unpredictable. One outspoken lady said, “Here I am caring for mother, I have garden work to do and we have church this weekend….how am I going to clean my house? They will just have to take me as I am.” Indeed this was unthinkable. Two sisters came and cleaned her house for her. Some would call them Amish, I think of them as children of God. Yes, we gotta recognize heaven when we see it.

All this after spending just one week here in Goshen, tomorrow we head home to our own experience overcoming the barriers established by culture, language, faith differences, economic and educational differences, bridging the generations, supporting each other in our various physical and mental deficiencies creating the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. Some may look for signs and wonders, but recognizing the kingdom of heaven is a celebration of the ordinary, we just need to recognize it. After reading the beatitudes, I think Jesus would agree.

Learning from our immigrants

“I’ve never been where God was not” remarks our young man of 30 from displaced from Burma as a child. It was his way of saying that he feels that God has taken care of him all these years. As the third son he was required by his people to resist the Burmese as a child soldier. At 15 he was arrested and bound by his enemy for two weeks before he escaped in the jungle. I can’t imagine what his eyes had witnessed during those 10 years of resistance before he left his family to come to our country. His wife and daughter stayed behind because her parents still live. When her parents die hopefully she will be able to come and join him here in the states.

It is really hard for us to relate to this story. We can not imagine such a high loyalty to one’s parents. We can not imagine such a high loyalty to one’s people. We can not imagine the almost fatalistic acceptance of whatever happens, whether we live or whether we die, God will take care of us. But this is the story we see lived out among our Karen speaking people every week.

It’s not that they are not concerned about the future. When our first family came and started to earn some money they started to buy rice. When I discovered what they were doing they had accumulated 22 forty pound bags of rice stored in their basement and closets upstairs. Totally amazed I explained that the stores will always have more rice. Rice will attract mice and storing this amount of rice may be too much weight for the floor to support and maybe the rice will spoil in the damp basement. They heard me and did not buy any more rice until they had consumed all that rice. But stored rice was always their way of seeing a future ahead. When they saw their bags of rice they felt safe.

On the other hand when really tragic news was shared of death, floods, fires, their response seemed to us that they accepted this news with little emotion. These stories seem to be normal for them. I’m not sure what living in grief is among our Karen people. We held a memorial service for a young man’s sister. She lived here, moved to Chicago but her fiancé’ lived in Australia. For several years they tired to get permission for him to come to this country but permission is hard to get. His sister got depressed and took her own life. The grieving brother made a video to be shared, planned the memorial service, gave testimony of their life together as a family and sang songs together. I believe the healing for the family came primarily in the shared experience. It was important for them to tell their story of their sister and for us to acknowledge their loss. So while we witness little emotion, I believe what we learn from them that it is in walking together through grief that we find healing.

Loss of work is routine among our immigrant population. It is not unexpected that someone will stop me in aisle after church telling me that they have no work. For me this creates untold stress especially if they are family providers. But resources are shared, food is received wherever one happens to be without invitation and survival is not questioned. While I imagine the worst most of our immigrants feel like something will work out somehow. One young father with a good job questioned whether he would need to work every day since he has more then he needs for survival. I could not believe what I was hearing so I wondered what he was meant. He told me they always worked for their “daily bread”. This is what is necessary.

Accessing blame and taking personal responsibility for problems is clearly not an important value of our Karen people. Whatever happens is what happens and casting judgment is not necessary. Sometimes it is almost humorous. A window is broken in one of the apartments in the middle of the winter. No one reports the problem but I discover the cardboard and duct taped window one Sunday morning picking up people. Of course I want to know what happened and who did it but no one knew. Of course everyone knows but no one will say is the better way of putting it. When guys get together and drink beer I want to know who buys the beer and of course no one ever knows. When one person of 3 Karen workers was blamed by the English landscaping crew for throwing a stone with his weed wacker accidentally breaking a window it was most disturbing to all three, so much so that all 3 slept in the next morning. I got a call from the boss at 7:30 wondering where his guys are at; he needs them to do the job promised for that day. Since no one answered the phone I ran into town and pounded on the door. I tried to explain that the boss is not angry, windows can be fixed, but we need to keep working. At the end of the day I called again and everyone had a good day. To be blamed is such a serious problem no Karen person will ever do it.

Politeness and respect toward each other is really a high value among our Karen people. I tend to be an aggressive kind of guy I think. I generally want what I want and if I can I usually go for it. When I feel frustrated or disappointed I can be emotional. In all the books about Karen people, authors say anger and emotion is not accepted well among the Karen. I tell myself this all the time but sometimes I could not contain myself and I show anger. Numerous times I have asked them to forgive me for my anger especially related to the war I wage against alcohol use. They have assured me that they know I love and care for them and accept my anger as warranted. Apparently they talk about me often and joke that they don’t need to follow Jesus, if they follow Jonathan that is enough. That’s pretty funny especially because what they have witnessed of me is pretty raw. I tell them I wish I could model the kindness and spirit of community bonding that I see in them. I do really like these guys and want them to prosper in this country.

As they share resources they also share in the care of children. Children are given freedom to roam wherever. It is assumed that whoever is in their whereabouts will care for their children. Children are loved above all. To have children is the greatest of blessings. It is assumed children will be born immediately after marriage. For us English who have prayed for children for years the presence of children is an enormous blessing, even as it is overwhelming. One cannot describe the blessing it is to connect the generations with the joy of children. I believe a 55 and older community is not God’s idea of a church community any more then a peer group of people of common culture. This whole experience of hosting our immigrate population has given us English an opportunity to exercise our conviction that indeed “there is a wideness in God’s mercy”.

Praying and singing together in Church is a high priority among our Karen people. It is a great inspiration for us English that people love to come to church and participate. One person said in church he doesn’t know where home is. To be rooted is our natural impulse as English who have lived with in the same square mile for 10 generations. To sign a 15 or 20 year mortgage is not unusual because we assume permanence. Our Karen people have run from their homes and villages seeking safety in refugee camps for years before scattering all over the world in Australia, Canada, US, and some in other countries. Everyone has relatives in several states, Canada, and Australia. It is tempting to keep roaming but this too is really hard. It is our prayer that in our church community with our foundation in Christ and secure covenant relationships among his body everyone including the English will find our home.

Embracing community

You can buy bikes from a least 7 people around this area but only from one real bike shop boasted the shop keeper I dropped in to visit in this small town Amish community in Indiana. I was curious, “What makes for a “real” bike shop”, I asked. “Anyone can sell you a bike but who is going to fix the problems he told me. I’ve been to school, set up shop here, and work this business for a living. These guys around here buy some bikes and claim they are in business just don’t know what they are doing. People buy bikes from them and then bring them to me to set them up”.

I heard his frustration. I also remembered starting up in the photography business 31 years ago. I never had worked for a photographer or taken a photography course. Neither did I have an approved place to do business. In fact I operated a business 3 years before I had the courage to approach the zoning board to get approval for a sign. I suspect there was no one more unprepared to be in business then I. Yet we learned as we went and the business sustained our family.

Most jobs require credentials, doctors, teachers, airplane pilots, lawyers, engineers, even barbers need certification. We trust the people we entrust our lives to have studied and we pay them for their service. Since I taught school for 6 years I too had gone to school to attain certification. But I have to admit I come from an independent farming culture which takes great pride in being able to do things on their own. Building the house I live in with my grandpa’s help, starting a photography business is part of this mentality that says it is not necessary to go to school, just do it and learn as you go.

We have plenty of models to emulate. My friend tells me of his grandpa who finished 8 grades of school as most young men in the church, yet he worked as engineer for New Holland machine company which exists today primarily because of his invention of the baler 70 years ago. His grandfather still holds the record of 52 patents to his name. He says with great pride that when his grandfather designed a product no one needed to check his work. Everyone knew it would work.

But this same self reliant confidence can become our problem. My grandfather believed he could doctor himself better then going to a doctor. With his combination of vitamin E, minerals, and reading the Prevention Magazine, he kept his weak heart going till he was 81. With two sons on two farms each co-signed with him he passed ownership over without a will or need for an attorney. Was he successful? I think he was. What concerns me is that this same spirit of independence and self reliance can create a spirit of distrust, judgementalism, prejudicial suspicion toward others which reverberates into all areas of life. Attitudes that we can do things on our own and we don’t need outside council or support creates distrust of government, church leaders, school teachers, authorities in general. We can absorb these attitudes unconsciously to our detriment. This is the spirit I have inherited and most likely will wrestle with all my life.

Eight times I stood in front of the zoning board to get approvals for different projects I wanted to build. Sometimes I got approval and sometimes I needed to go back to the drawing board. How I agonized each time wondering if my projects could be completed or not. My attitudes each time were one or exasperation and impatience, however eventually approvals were granted. Each time when the projects were completed I have to admit the requirements I was required to comply with improved the final results far beyond my original plan. It makes people roll their eyes when I say that I actually like government. To accept in humility the council of authority is not an easy attitude for persons like me to accept.

Maybe learning to walk in line is the primary lesson of school. Living in community with others in harmony, completing assignments to the approval of a teacher, meeting deadlines is hard for the independent minded person to accept. Another friend likes to joke that he could not let school get in the way of his education. It is easy for the successful independent person without exposure to higher education to criticize and be suspicious of those who respect education. “All I need is the Bible and the Holy Spirit” is the sentiment which makes it hard to build bridges of trust across a widely diverse global denomination. These attitudes are common in my rural experience growing up. Another friend and I attended a church meeting led by a husband and wife team both with PhD degrees from Ivy League schools. During a break in the meetings my friend turned to me and said “I am surprised, I think they actually love the Lord”. Respect for scholarship and those different from us is hard for the independent self reliant person to accept.

This self reliant independent spirit doesn’t need to break down community. This past summer we sat at tables at Church Convention. At our table of 8, one person was new to faith, one person worked as a laborer, several teacher and business types and one pastor had his Phd but no one knew. In Church we are all equal. It was natural to look to the pastor for some authoritative word but he restrained himself. When we recognize our need for each other as a body it is natural to respect scholarship, those in authority, the laborer, the business person, even the bike salesman or photographer who has not gone to school. We just need to sit together as my Amish friend says. My life’s experience punctuates just how much we do need each other in community especially in Church. These were my thoughts as I pedaled back home on the back roads of Indiana.

Never Waste Your Pain

“Never waste your pain” was a statement from my mother a number of years ago during a very difficult experience.

Certainly few people know the pain of Gerald Sittser. Years ago on a family excursion, Gerald was returning from an Indian Reservation when the car he was driving was hit head on by a drunk driver. In this accident he lost his mother, his wife and daughter. He was left with 2 sons. He was a pastor, Bible teacher, Theological professor. He was called to give spiritual strength, direction for others. Who would give support Gerald now in this time of unbelievable grief? He wrote the book, “A Grace Disguised” telling the story of his walk with Grief. “Water from a Deep Well” is not the story of his experience but written from the context of his life it becomes really meaningful. Where does one turn when one faces the reality of such difficult loss?

I remember a local Pastor Jay Garber whose son Fred, a fireman, was rushing to the fire station in a truck to respond to a fire call. Just as Fred passed the site of his home church where the road turned a bit, the driver of the first fire truck lost control and swerved into Fred's on coming truck killing him leaving a wife and 3 children without a father. Jay, both father and grandpa, said at the time he was so aware that everyone was watching him in his grief. Could he, as Paul, demonstrate in whatever happens, walk worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ? What was strength which carried Jay and his family in his loss?

Gerald Sittser, in his book, encourages us in times like this to draw from the deep well of our Christian history, a story of sacrifice and suffering. What can we learn from the Martyrs of the early church, the Ascetics of Egypt, the monastic’s, the reformers and martyrs of Anabaptist in the Middle Ages, the early missionaries of the evangelical movements? He picks out multitudes of noble stories which inspire and encourage us to model them giving us a tradition within which to live. In that sense it is a selective history. He could have included stories where the existing church committed the grossest of atrocities but this was not his purpose. As I was reading I asked myself, can anything good come out of era such as the Christian Crusades? The point being, even in the direst of times there were those who walked with God from whom we draw inspiration.

The burden of Gerald’s passion is to give a history or a respect for traditions to contemporary Christian experience. In his experience as teacher he sees a generation living in the present, drawing inspiration and energy from the spirit of the moment which works well in the wellness of youth but vaporizes during difficult times. Without our sacred traditions we are vulnerable spiritual orphans. In his own walk with grief he found healing in all the traditions he describes.

In our American experience we pursue comfort, pleasure, and perfect health. Popular religious leaders promise a life without pain and suffering. I suspect this is possible in a media culture where faith is expressed without community. Pastors who walk with people in local congregations can become frustrated when prayers are not answered in the way they “faith believe”. “Where is the authority” cried one young pastor from the pulpit, “We are given authority, yet kids get sick!”

I of all people celebrate God’s healing power everyday of my life in the life of my wife, Rhoda. Few people would know that she has carried within her body a disease called polymyositis since the age of 12 when she could not climb into the school bus with her own strength. In remission since then until our oldest son was born when once again it flared up and she could not hold her baby. I remember holding our infant son and praying for mother. God has healed her. We are grateful for knowledgeable doctors and modern medicines which God has used in our pilgrimage but it is God who has healed her.

At the same time testimonies of God’s healing power need to be handled with great care. We live in a fallen world and live in mortal bodies. To promise God’s miracleous touch can be as fraudulent as a salesman who “promises the moon” leaving one with painful disappointment. Jesus was most critical of those who would spiritually intimidate and in turn blessed those who are poor in spirit. Indeed the cynics easily point out traditions of “faith healing” generally have poorer health records then the general populations around them. The point being that our ministry as Christians needs to be a faith beyond circumstances; where we walk together as a body with Jesus, demonstrating the grace of God no matter what happens.

No one is exempt from suffering. All of us walk a lonely valley at some point and ask where could God be in this? We walk with a displaced population from Burma in our congregation from Burma. Suffering is too routine in their experience. This past year floods destroyed 400 homes in one refugee camp including one building which held lots of rice for the community. One woman lost her cousin by drowning in that flood. Fires destroyed many homes in another. The underlining conviction is that God gives strength in suffering. Or as my Dad says, "Not everything that happens is good, but it can work together for good especially for those who love God.