Ferguson on our Doorsteps for the Holidays...

I have a Black son, that's the scary part about all of this.  Because in looking at Mike Brown or Trayvon Martin or Tamir Rice, all I can see is Zachary Palmer, my son.  And, I know I live in a world where other's don't care about my child.  But, I care about my child.  And so I worry...I worry about the world in which my child must live.  I worry about what he will endure.  How many times will he be called a Nigger? What happens if teachers or police see him as threat?  How will he rebound when he discovers that others will see his race as a problem?  How will I provide support, counsel, and understanding to him and the people he will come to love?  These are the questions that keep me up at night, and are making it hard for me to sleep.

I know I'm not the only one up at night (and early in the wee hours of the morning) thinking through the nagging question, "what if my child was Rekia Boyd or Dianna Showman?"  Millions of Black Parents are asking these kinds of questions, in the middle of trying to fix turkeys and make Christmas lists.  It's enough to make you forgo the Holidays, and turn into one of those people who stockpiles guns, water, and canned food.  

And, what's worse, is that any of us, any Black person in this country, could be killed by anyone at anytime for anyone reason by any other race, and there would never be any justice.  Now, some will say, "Oh, Sean, you are exaggerating."  But, in my mind, it certainly feels like I have no right to life...as I watch child after child, man after man, woman after woman be shot, while their killers participate in kangaroo trials with absurd verdicts.  And, it seems like no level of our response (or of our responsibility) provides for us a measure of humanity.  What I'm saying is that me nor my child can't pull our pants up high enough or speak in perfect American diction (enough) to shield us from both bullets and the lack of access to justice.  Black people KNOW this, and white people know this too...so why the charade about responsibility and let's just follow the law...obey the process.

History doesn't show African-Americans getting the change, justice, equity they need without a good extended fight.  And that fight isn't always pretty or legal or dignified in the eyes of others (or in step with America's jurisprudence).  And why should Black people fight without force, violence, or a dash of anger/rage?  No one else is.  When cops, supported by local and national government, and a legal system that is interested in property (and not people), throw tear gas into crowds of American citizens, shoot unarmed Black people (and say they would do it again), or fail to indict the real perpetrators of crime, why should we not use whatever necessary to address the problem?  Why should Black people walk down the street clad in our Sunday's Best with signs in our hands in a single file line singing, "we shall overcome?"  Why should we be "once upon a time when we were colored?" Why should we look like we are walking out of a 1960s church rally, when American institutions are almost prepared to use drones on African American citizens...in America?  Black people have never won anything when we've operated in support of those who govern, waiting on systems of politics to support us or work for us.

No matter who we've voted for en masse, no matter A "Black" President, no matter our commitment to participation in the Military, no matter our commitment to community and social organizations, we still get the crumbs from an abundant table (and told to wait our turn).  Nothing has seemed to work...and everybody knows this.

However, too many Americans would rather the peace of a pragmatic inequity and inequality, than the brilliant beauty of justice, restoration, and access.   And, I for one, am tired of being told that it is okay for Black people to be poor.  I am tired of being told that we should blame ourselves for the prison industrial complex. I am tired of being told that this President who was voted on by FAR TOO many trusting African Americans, is indeed, NOT the president of Black America.  I am tired of educational inequity, employment disparity, cultural misappropriation, and wealth and income gaps!  I am tired of all of this...and then you want us to sit idly by as folk shoot Black kids down on the pavement of Main Street America.

A major problem is that people like Darren Wilson, George Zimmerman, and Robert McCulloch don't value my children in the same way they see themselves or their families.  That's a real problem!  But its not just them, white people in general can't fathom loving Black people collectively, for real.  It is that problem that produces the kind of injustices and inequities that we see creating nightmare scenarios for far too many Black people.  My good friend who passed a few years ago, always said, "White people like and love us individually, but they despise us collectively."  I'd like to hope that his statement isn't true, as I know this movement is broad in complexion. But, if there was love, more of my white brothers and sisters would be outraged by what they see too.  I'm just not so sure they are.

But while I have your attention, and since we are in the season that commemorates Jesus' birth, let me head over to a book that might illumine what I'm thinking in terms of a radical departure from what we have here.  I'm pushing right past Jesus' birth to go straight to Jesus on a cross.  It's at John 19: 26-27 that I bring your attention.  Jesus is about to die...and he looks out at his mom, and over at a disciple.  He proclaims something both strange and wonderful: "Ya'll be family!"  It's in this moment that we see the first Foster Care experience.  It is Jesus, near death, that radically changes his own family to help us understand how we should live in the world.  Two unlikely people, both witnessing and grieving Jesus' death are proclaimed by God to be family.  I don't know why Jesus did it, but I just believe that if we who love Christ, could just look across the street, down the block, over in the other county...and proclaim (and live into) that we are all family (even as we follow Christ), we might be witnesses to fewer Black children's deaths.  I'm not trying to go all Hallmark channel on you...what I'm trying to say is that my brothers and sisters...the radical thing is to imagine yourself as me, or as your own child, or my son as your own son.  And, then, imagine the world that you would want that child to inhabit.

If it is this...well, I guess, you probably stopped reading a while ago.  If its something dramatically different...then you might need to have sympathy for people who destroy property in an effort to radically change a world that sees them (and me) as the enemy of the state...even though we'd all like to go out and buy Christmas presents, rather than wrestling internally and with our families about how the ills of Ferguson could show up on our doorsteps.

On Church Sabbatical Until Further Notice: A Musing About Sunday Morning Obligation

My really "churchy" classmates from seminary tease me all the time about my current state of affairs with the church.  Snootily they say with a condescending and smug tone, "Sean, where are you worshipping?"  The tone implies that I'm somehow in a backslidden state suffering with an addiction in the worst corner of the world.  It also implies that I somehow, don't understand my role/calling as a minister of the Gospel.

Both of these assessments would be dead wrong!  And, I imagine I'm not the only church-boy-gone-rogue, who has had a set of friends who make you feel guilty for things that they don't understand.  It's a good thing that I have lots of friends...and some who really get me.

Where do I start...I don't know.  I could start with what it's like to be in church leadership before and after seminary, before and after moving to no less than three new cities.  I could start with my time as a minister serving on a pastoral search committee, and directing choirs and youth art programs...as programs came to a screeching halt because of ministerial transition.  Or, I could tell you about serving in a church that changed pastor's and direction while I was on an internship and decided that they couldn't keep me on staff.  Or, I could tell you about the church that gave a pastor one week to vacate the premises because of a good "church fight," as I prepared the choir for Sunday worship.  Or, I could share with you how I once served a church that used the impoverished to exploit grant opportunities.  Or, I could tell you about the church where I sat like an ornament in a pew, hoping to do something other than sing back-up.  I'm not saying that these church environments shouldn't exist.  Sure, they each had something special about them (none of which I've named).  But, as an unpaid bi-vocational minister, hoping to see and hear God when I attended church, I just became...well...tired.

I was tired of the unchecked dysfunctional behavior of senior leadership.  I was tired of ego.  I was tired of leading things that didn't also rejuvenate my spirit.  I was tired of mean-spirited directors.  I was tired of foregoing weekend plans to be at one more service with "pastor."  I was tired of trying to lead a congregation into worship, who really just wanted "worship-tainment." I was tired of really bad sermons that lacked either intellectual integrity, cultural significance, or a serious sense of Godliness.  I was tired of driving to and fro to preach for what amounted to "gas money", after (leaving my professional work) studying on end to prepare sermons.  I was tired of working in ministries that required my tithe, but I never saw the tithe work in its building of youth, college students, or young adults.  I was tired of participating in ministries where people weren't committed to community beyond the numbers of people they could get into their pews.  I was tired of going to church and getting "nothin" out of it.  I am tired just thinking about it!

And, it happened slowly over time that I noticed that things were not right.  I'd spend time in the company of my peers, over dinner or lunch, and realize that God was meandering in our conversation, in a way that wasn't apparent in the "hi's and bye's" of my polite corporate worship life.  I'd watch a sermon from a church far away, and realize that I had just learned something from that message that I hadn't heard in months from the church where I was worshiping.  I'd be at another church visiting and feel the presence of God washing over me as the choir/praise team sang with such conviction.  I would read something, or something would happen in the world, and I would realize that I and the church I was attending were having two different conversations.  They were talking about corporate worship, favor, tithes, and offering, and I was talking about social/political change, community healing/restoration, personal worship, and trying to see God in all things.  I wasn't the only one struggling with this.  One afternoon while at a service, my wife looked at me, and said, "is this working for you...cause it's not working for me."

And as ministers we didn't want to see what we were seeing...that we weren't a good fit for the place where we were.  We hadn't outgrown it per se, it just wasn't a good fit.  So we decided to take a sabbatical, and visit other churches, and travel, and go on retreats with friends, and worship in other spaces, and question, and read, and think, and laugh...and have a baby too.  We decided to do something that is typical of our generation, but atypical of church folk in general.  We decided to take a break so that we could really move beyond the perfunctory motion of local church life, with its never ending obligation.  

It's not that we don't want to be in our church, its that we want more from our church...well, any church where we are obligated both by calling and by commitment to serve the local body.  We want to leave service, meetings, and bible studies filled with inspiration for the world we face, rather than poking hole's in faulty theology because of our theological education.   We want to adore and be adored by people as Christ would have us, rather than go months on end before meaningful experiences with sisters and brothers in the body of Christ.  We want to be honest, vulnerable, and safe, instead of enduring church fight after church fight...cuss out after cuss out.  We want to be in a space that values culture, history, knowledge, and legacy, while also seeking to appreciate the beauty of diversity and nuance.  We need a church that helps us make sense of a world filled with examples of Ferguson, Rekia Boyd, and Trayvon...I need that kind of church to help keep my righteous mind in tact.  Anything less isn't worth the time and energy I'm going to devote: unfortunately, I've learned that the hard way.

I imagine that many in my generation and below struggle with a sustained commitment to the local church body...trying to move beyond church hurt, toxic sermons, uninspired worship experiences, and cultish group ritual.  I offer this simple advice before taking your own church sabbatical.  Listen to God's voice above the voice of those around you.  Give yourself grace to grow.  And, remember that in Moses' living, in Paul's living, and in Jesus' living that they sometimes had to leave the general body to be able to minister effectively.   This is important because some church folk will make you feel like if you don't come to the church Tea or Fish Fry that you aren't really saved.  That's not true...and those people have forgotten one very important thing.  A relationship with God isn't indicative of the parts that they see.  It isn't indicative of their gauge of how good of a Christian they think that you are...or that I am.

Your relationship...my relationship with God is about what I do in the world, and how I point towards Him in my daily interactions.  My relationship with God is about standing with those in grief, praying over any entrusted to my support, loving the loveable and the not-so-loveable, inspiring others when they spend time with me, giving to others when they need me, and serving the world in a way that indicates Jesus' work in my own life.  

So yes, I'm on church sabbatical because I want to be more than an inauthentic pew sitter.  Yes, I'm on church sabbatical because I want as much from the church as it wants from me.  Yes, I'm on church sabbatical, and while on sabbatical, I'll still proclaim God...I'll still preach and sing...I'll still worship and serve.  Yes, I'm on church sabbatical so that I can heal, grow, and meander in the areas that I'm told are grey.  And one day hopefully soon, I'll be back in a consistent sunday morning worship experience...but until then I'll be in "revival."  In fact, I'm headed to revival tonight!