Absolutely Tragic

Amidst all the recent tragedy and suffering, I didn't think the news could get any worse. But I have to say this latest story moved me to absolute nausea. As we approach the anniversary of the Columbine shooting 12 years ago, which is still keenly felt here in Colorado and the Denver area, this story hits home especially hard.

A new video game is being released. It's title... School Shooter: North American Tour 2012. That's right. As the name implies, it is a violent first-person shooter game that allows you to roam school buildings and murder your classmates. It promises to be "the best school shooter" ever, as if this is a real and normal video game genre.

Creator Jaime Lombe had even more disturbing things to say about his game. "Nobody has ever tried create a proper game about a school shooting," he told reporters. Then he told them that he was not particularly moved by the tragedy at Columbine. "The way the news victimized the victims and overplayed the evil of the shooters disgusted me more than the actual shootings themselves."

The only thing as tragic as this school shooting is glorifying the actions that took place here out of depression and anger and frustration. And even more unbelievable is that no one person can program, advertise and release a video game. It takes teams of people. And apparently none of them have the sense or compassion to say no to this ghastly idea. It's not a new idea to capitalize on tragedy.

There are hundreds of games about WWI, WWII, Vietnam and so on. What seems unique is how recent, how raw, and how evil the intent and motivation is behind this game, as well as what sort of message it sends. These days, the measure of resolve about any issue seems to be how many and how big is the Facebook group for/against something. I was unable to find any such group when I searched. There's a page with 0 likes. Is it not well known or have we become that complacent?

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes."

Luke 19:40-42

Green Day

A promising new way to use salt water as fuel has been discovered by accident. A man studying ways to cure cancer serendipitously discovered a means to pull apart the hydrogen and oxygen in salt water and ignite them. The news story...

Confession Time

We (as a denomination, the PC(USA)) are in the process of considering the addition of a new confession to our Book of Confessions. This, of course, is a difficult process and one which opens the doors to many questions... Why do we need more than twelve good solid confessions? Why do we have twelve already? Do we need confessions in language we can understand? Should we add confessions if they don't say anything new? What if they do say something new? Should we measure them against the Bible? Against the old confessions? Should we include or exclude confessions written for a specific time and place? Is there such a thing as a confession NOT written for a certain time and place? Does that matter, if it still teaches?

Many of these questions and more have been asked recently about the new Confession of Belhar. It's certainly not "new" except in being decades newer than our last addition, as Belhar was written in 1986. It was certainly written for a specific time and place (Apartheid in South Africa), though so was every other confession, the Declaration of Independence and the book of Isaiah. It is modern language and would be the first confession in our book not to come out of a very European and very pale background. Though none of those are reasons in and of themselves to add this confession, what is most important and convicting is that it does say something new.

Rather than being measured against our world, the Church and our denomination with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, this Confession seems to be largely measured against the Confession of 1967. So let's start there. Someone at our Presbytery meeting said that we don't need Belhar because '67 already says racism and discrimination are evil and sinful. So who needs more? We do. Belhar goes farther. Belhar says that mere separation is sinful and not the full body of Christ. You see, in our denomination (and many others in America), we aren't practicing outright discrimination and racism. We don't have laws or rules or regulations saying that if you're of a certain skin color or ethnic background you cannot join us for worship, we just do it because it's comfortable. The studies say over 90% of our PC(USA) churches are more than 90% one race. So we have white churches, black churches and Latino churches and Asian churches... but hardly any "mixed" churches. Our sin isn't racism, it's separation.

Another colleague quoted II Corinthians. When Paul was asked for his brothers and sisters in Corinth for a letter of recommendation, he responded... "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone." My colleague said that we are the letter and therefore we don't need a new confession. However, if we truly were that letter, we wouldn't look like the church these studies see. 11am on Sunday morning wouldn't be the most segregated hour in America. We do need to be that letter. And I believe the Confession of Belhar points us there.

I would encourage you to go and check it out here. If you've never read the other confessions, give them a whack too. If you find them hard to read or confusing, don't worry, everyone does. The Denver Presbytery voted in favor last night, but it was close. It has to pass in 2/3rds of our Presbyteries before it can be voted on at General Assembly this year. If you'd like to talk more about it, drop me a line.

Why we go off the deep end

The following excerpts are from an article by David McRaney on the concept of deindivduation, or the concept of doing anonymously in a group what you would ordinarily not even consider. After recent events in the news, it seemed like a good time to discuss how we think about riotous behavior and how closely related it is to problems here at home…

The Misconception: People who riot and loot are scum who were just looking for an excuse to steal and be violent.

The Truth: You are prone to losing your individuality and becoming absorbed into a hivemind under the right conditions.

In San Francisco, in 2010, a man stepped onto the ledge of his apartment window and contemplated dropping from the building. A crowd gathered below and soon started yelling for him to jump. They even tweeted about it. He died on impact fifteen minutes later…

…Police and firefighters are well aware of this tendency for crowds to gather and taunt, and this is why they tape off potential suicide scenes and get the crowd out of shouting distance. The risk of a spontaneous cheering section goading a person into killing themselves is high when people in a group feel anonymous and are annoyed or angry. It only takes one person to get the crowd going. Those are the three ingredients – anonymity, group size and arousal. If you lose your sense of self, feel the power of a crowd and then get slammed by a powerful cue from the environment – your individuality may evaporate…

…Halloween is a fantastic playground for cultural norms to clash and crack. Costumes and candy, parents and children, the revelry and irreverence directed toward evil and death and hauntings – it is a day to pull back from standards, the rules of proper and normal behavior, and experiment with surrogate selves…

…Still, it’s always fun to role-play and hit reset, and Halloween is one of the few widely accepted times you get to do this in front of everyone you know. In many ways, it is a holiday celebrating anonymity through experimentation with individuality.

It was this muted sense of self which, in the late 1970s, led a group of psychologists to turn Halloween into a controlled study of the human mind.

Arthur Beaman, Edward Diener and Soren Svanum travelled to a nice neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, and picked out 27 homes which would become makeshift laboratories. The researchers wanted to see if the anonymity of Halloween costumes would affect the behavior of children as they gallivanted from secret lab to secret lab.

The researchers placed inside the entrance to each home a bowl of candy, a mirror and a festive Halloween decoration in which a scientist watched through a peephole as children arrived throughout the night…

…A woman greeted children throughout the night, and when the tykes presented their trick-or-treat bargains she told them each could have only one piece of candy. She then walked away, leaving them to sort out their tiny moral codes. Half of the time the woman at the door asked the children to say their names and where they lived before leaving them. If the children arrived with adults, they were omitted from the results. The psychologists wondered if the kids would take only one piece thinking there were no adults around to exact punishment or express disappointment in their gluttony. Would they react differently when alone or in groups? Would saying their names remind them of the people behind the masks? Once the kids were primed to remember their identity, or if they saw their reflection in the mirrors, would it remind them of who they were?

In the end, the mirror wasn’t the determining factor. What made the most difference was whether or not they had said their names and whether or not they were alone or in a group…

The results*: Children who were…
Alone and had to say their name… less than 10% disobeyed the rules (took more candy)
In a group and had to say their name… about 20% disobeyed the rules
Alone and anonymous… a little more than 20% disobeyed
In a group and anonymous… nearly 60% disobeyed

…The results suggested the power of their anonymity was magnified in the presence of others. Left unmasked, the cheating rose a bit in a group. With the masks on, it was turbocharged. The kids who felt most anonymous and the most protected by the shared anonymity of the group were also the most likely to break the rules and take more candy. With anonymity set to maximum, many kids tried to take all the candy they could.

This study is one of many which shows your identity can spring a leak in the presence of others, and the more others there are, the more you dissolve into the collective will of the group. Looting, rioting, lynchings, beating, war, chasing a monster with torches – the switch is always there, and it doesn’t take much to flip it.

Psychologists call this phenomenon deindividuation, it’s fun to say and one of the more straightforward terms in the scientific lexicon. In certain situations, you can expect to be de-individualized. Unlike conformity, in which you adopt the ideas and behaviors of others for acceptance and inclusion, deindividuation is mostly unconscious and more likely to lead to mischief. As psychologist David G. Myers said, it is “doing together what you would not do alone.”

*I compiled the chart of results based on the article. You may see the full article here.

Escaping Reality

A new report from the UK is showing some interesting (perhaps alarming) statistics about young people. In studying a group of several thousand teenagers, they discovered that fully 45% were sometimes happier in their online lives than in real life. Some teens reported they only felt comfortable revealing that they were gay in anonymous chat rooms.

The study found that among those who spoke to strangers online 60% lied about their age, and 40% lied about personal relationships. And just as telling, 47% of all the teens said they behaved differently online than in real life. One teen said, "You can say anything online. You can talk to people that you don’t normally speak to and you can edit your pictures so you look better. It is as if you are a completely different person."

Psychotherapist Peter Bradley was quoted as saying: "These findings suggest that children see cyberspace as detachable from the real world and a place where they explore parts of their behaviour and personality that they possibly would not show in real life. We can’t allow cyberworlds to be happier places than our real communities, otherwise we are creating a generation of young people not functioning adequately in our society." To say nothing of the conserns in a community of faith.

But teens aren't the only ones checking out. Many adults feel more comfortable in the virtual world than in the real world, interacting with real people. Released this past week... The Confessions App. This new iPhone App allows you to plug in all your info about age and when you last confessed, allows you to make your confession and even recommends up to 7 acts of contrition. At $1.99, it's not quite an indulgence, but it has been blessed officially by the Catholic church. One has to wonder if it's better to be tempted by a shiny apple or a shiny Apple device...

It's Just a Word

“It’s just a word.” I heard that this week, not for the first time. In fact, I hear it often. There are few statements with which I could possibly disagree more. Words have power. Words represent ideas and ideas have shaped the world and changed the course of history. A story like Beowulf could not survive over a millennia, if words did not have the power to move people.

If you doubt the power of a single word, you’ve never seen an angry young black woman call a white man a “cracker” or an infuriated white country boy call an old man the n-word. The fact that I can call it the n-word and you know what I mean is proof by itself. It could even be argued that the central issue of the last election was one word for many people, though maybe a different word for some than others, hope or race or change.

In recent months, one of the f-words, repeated often enough and with enough vitriol has been responsible for many tragic young suicides. And the word homophobe has stifled at least as much dialog as has been started by those deaths. If you doubt the power of words, ask the mother of a young college boy if she believes in the power of words.

Maybe the n-word doesn’t phase you. Maybe you don’t find the f-word offensive. Maybe you would call someone a homophobe without a second’s hesitation. But I guarantee you those words mean something very deep and powerful to someone else. I believe the context in which I heard, “It’s just a word,” this week was about obscene language and its harmlessness. I’d have to disagree. A word may not offend you. It may not offend me. It may not offend anyone in earshot. But if you do not believe that words, even a single word has power, you’re utterly mistaken.

It is no accident that our creation story is that of a God who speaks the world into existence. Everything that exists was spoken into our reality by our creator. In fact, our scriptures tell us that everything that exists was made by and through Jesus, who again by no accident, the Gospel writer calls, The Word. Words have great power and convey so much more than the sound they produce or the recognition they display. They carry meaning. They carry ideas. My prayer would be that your words convey love and hope and may you know the depth and the breadth of them for all those with whom you speak.

Green Day

It's Green Day again. Today, I'd simply like to relay a fascinating link. The Breathing Earth simulation... "This real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates." In real time, you can see an aproximation of how the world changes as you look at it.

"Please remember that this is just a simulation. Although the CO2 emission, birth rate and death rate data used in Breathing Earth comes from reputable sources, data that measures things on such a massive scale can never be 100% accurate. Please note however that the CO2 emission levels shown here are much more likely to be too low than they are to be too high."

Of note: While the image of a changing earth is fascinating, I disagree with some of what this website has to say. For instance, it claims polution is mostly a problem of "The West" despite the large contributions of Russia and China and that while countries like Luxemburg and Australia have huge "per capita" pollution problems, they aren't as serious because they have smaller populations. It also claims that when developing countries are high polluters, they are simply emulating the West. However, many researchers point out that these countries have adopted these practices for economic reasons and will never make an attempt to be more green so long as they can pollute the earth more cheaply than helping it. We can all hope for and work towards cheaper solutions to protecting the earth and working together as a global community to be better stewards of creation.

The Man in the Big Red Suit

My good friend Pattie mentioned the other day how she'd like to reclaim St Nicholas as opposed to either the over-commercialized version of Santa or the aversion to all things other than Jesus. I think there's a lot to be said for that. I just read a wonderful post by Jonathan Acuff over at Stuff Christians Like that ran the gauntlet of modern Christian views on this topic. I'd like to share an excerpt because it touches on something my sister mentioned in her blog about the relationship between believing in the big guy and believing in the big guy upstairs...


One caller said something I have heard often from Christians when it comes to the man in red. She said, “We’re not telling our kids about Santa, because when they find out he’s not real, they won’t believe that God is real when we tell them about him.”

Have you ever heard that? I’m not sure if it’s a Baptist thing or a Bible Belt thing but this show was out of New York and Canada so maybe that theory is national at this point. Regardless of its popularity though, I think there are two flaws with it.

The first is that in no other aspect of imagination do we put the same constraint. For instance, for a solid year, I’m pretty sure my kids thought the Wiggles and the Doodlebops were real. They watched their shows, they sang their songs, they loved those brightly colored/oddly terrifying characters. And not once did my wife and I say, “When they find out Captain FeatherSword isn’t real, they probably won’t believe in an all powerful God later on in life.” Sure, the Wiggles are different than Santa and we imbue a lot of “belief” language around him, but we only talk about him for six weeks a year. We wiggled for a solid year and discussed the Wiggles far more than we do Santa in an average Christmas season.

Kids are imaginative, that’s what they do. If I play along with their American Girl Dolls or take my oldest daughter to a Narnia film and she really believes it, I’m not afraid that I’ve effectively prevented her from believing in God. We’d never say, “I’m not taking my son to see Lord of the Rings, because if he ever finds out Gandalf is not real, he won’t believe in God.” We might rail against Harry Potter, but even that is not because we’re afraid if they find out Harry Potter is not real our kids won’t believe in God.

The bigger issue though with the Santa problem is that I’m not sure it really ever comes to fruition. For instance, I’ve had dozens of people tell me that they have a hard time seeing God as a loving father because their own father was not loving. They feel stuck and trapped with a broken filter of their own father that they apply to God. I completely believe that happens and have heard it a lot. Do you know what I’ve never heard? I’ve never had a friend tell me:

“I want to believe in God, I do, but I can’t get beyond my Santa Claus issues. I have ‘Kris Kringle complex.’ When I found out Santa wasn’t real as a 7 year old, I swore off God that day with a kind of a Charlton Heston final scene of Planet of the Apes anger.”

No one says that. And we’re also not seeing the damage of a generation who grew up believing Santa was real only to learn he’s not. By that I mean there aren’t any books for adults designed to help you get over your Santa problems. Zondervan hasn’t published “Get the man in red out of your head.” Thomas Nelson has not published “Empty stocking, full heart.” Lifeway is not doing a ladies conference called “Deeper Still Than Santa.” There’s not an industry to support the thousands and thousands of 30 year olds struggling with Santa Claus, because there are not thousands and thousands out there who do.

Now clearly this will be the moment I hear from the 17 people on the planet who have in fact confessed to a Christian counselor that Santa Claus shotblocked God for them, but I still think we’ve blown the problem with Santa out of proportion. I think most folks will say that the Santa vs. God thing isn’t an issue, but instead that they don’t want to “lie” to their kids. I understand that point and know that some kids have said “you lied to me mom and dad,” but we also have to be careful that we don’t miss out on the word “pretend.” I’d never say to my kids, “I don’t want to create a house of lies. I need to be honest with you and confess that My Little Pony is simply a lump of hard plastic not a real pony, when I did that magic trick and took your nose, I really didn’t take it, and I always know the end of your knock knock jokes but have been living a lie by acting like I didn’t all these years. To be perfectly honest with you, ‘Knock, knock, who’s there, a tornado of spanking’ is not that funny. I fake laughed. I hate to say that, but I refuse to lie to you kids.”

I think every parent needs to be deliberate and smart about how they handle Santa and Christmas in general, but lets not throw him under the God bus. Don’t talk about him for a million other reasons, but I’m not sure the God reason is the best one.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I was wondering what to write this year for Christmas. This year I was really moved by what my little sister had to say in her blog. The following was written by her on her own blog and reposted with her permission...


I've been giving Christmas a bit of extra thought this year. Every year I hear people trying to remind everyone about the true meaning of Christmas and berating the world for its consumerism and greediness. I guess I've never really felt that at Christmas. See, in general, I think Christians are a bit too hard on themselves and the rest of society. I hear Christians with young children trying to make sense out of the best way to communicate Christmas to their kids, sometimes giving different types of presents or questioning the introduction of Santa.

The thing is, I think it's totally awesome that the population at large participates in Christmas. We frequently remind our fellow Christians of "the reason for the season" and we know that's why we celebrate, but others do too. And basically, that's an open door for us. How great an opportunity that our holiday so central to our faith is publicized and promoted. Maybe instead of lamenting the loss of the religious aspect of Christmas to the secular world, we should rejoice in the opportunity it gives us to evangelize our fellow man.

Christians express frustration that they are unable to focus their faith during the season and parents stress about raising their children to understand Christmas properly. Well, let me share...

I grew up giving and receiving gifts on Christmas day. I grew up expecting Santa Claus on Christmas eve and watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I also grew up reading an advent calendar daily during the month of December, attending a candelight service on Christmas eve, and finding at least one way to give to someone in the name of Christ each year. For anyone who wonders if you can meld the secular and religious traditions of Christmas, you can. My parents and family did, and they ended up with a minister and an ever-more faithful daughter.

I give gifts every year and not out of obligation, but a desire to give my family and friends something I carefully crafted, worked hard to find, or carefully chose. One year, I gave everyone a gift of a donation to a charity I selected specifically as something that person supported. The same feeling that went with that year is the same for more traditional gifts--a sense of thoughtfulness. Gift-giving does not have to be something you feel forced to do by the shopping industry. If it is for you, then don't do it. It's not for me.

Santa is also not the worst concept. I think the best defense I heard was on an old episode of 7th Heaven where Simon prayed for his younger sister Ruthie to have some way to believe in Santa Claus that year. He said she needs to believe in Santa, it's how she works her way up to the big stuff, like you. Include Santa or don't, but have a little faith in yourself that your child's belief in Santa will not be their downfall when you consider everything else you'll teach them.

While all of my ideas are good for me, I have come to realize in the past couple of years that maybe it's easier for me. You see, I think I finally understand that I have an above-average love of Christmas. And while it may just be coincidence, I say it's because I was born around Christmas. I really think there is something to this.

I have assumed my entire life that others love Christmas just as much as me. But the older I get, the more I realize that many people see it as simply an annual time of stress or disgust at the world, as mentioned above. But to me, it's such a time of renewal.

Winter has always been my season. For most of my life, I have preferred the cold. I love snow, I love sweaters, hats, gloves, hot chocolate. I think an extra-special thing about Christmas is that it is during a time of cold. The fact that we create such warmth and joy in the midst of all the cold and bleakness is a paradox that is quite beautiful to me.And Christmas carols--oh, how I love. I have a deep love for singing the most traditional songs. The words seem more simple and the praises more authentic. They fill me with hope, graciousness, and love. The First Noel regularly makes me teary-eyed, along with flawless renditions of O Holy Night (I refuse to sing this one personally since I do not have the voice to do it justice).

And finally, there is my Christmas "miracle". Every year, there is something, a moment, a person, an action, a statement overheard, that once again centers me in this "true meaning of Christmas".

I think more of us get it than we realize.

Foresight and Hindsight

When I was choosing a college, I was in a unique position in many ways. Most of my church and high school friends were not even considering out of city or state. In fact, many from my high school weren’t considering college at all. It was weird to be traveling to VA and DC and SC and NY to see colleges. It was even stranger, having grown up in NC to have Yankee parents who didn’t really know a thing about NC schools.
Although, like many young people, my college prerequisites had little to do with tuition, strength of reputation, campus ministry groups, class size and professors and so on. And unlike many young people, I didn’t know or care about the sports or majors offered, etc. I do recall being impressed by the dining halls at a few places and the ratio of women to men at the liberal arts schools. I was as unimpressed by the schools surrounded by cow fields as those squeezed into big city areas. I guess growing up in the burbs made me appreciate being near cities without being in the midst of one.
I knew my parents had some idea about what made for a good school. I knew they knew more than I did. And I knew that was highly colored by the price tag (rightly so). My goals were finding a school far away and preferably one that was fun and had a good shot at getting me into the FBI. I was under a vague impression that this school should “have the right feel” as I walked around campus. Until it came down to decision time, it had not even occurred to me to either take my spiritual needs into account or to pray about the decision. But somewhere in the back of my mind, being so stressed about the biggest decision I had faced yet in my young life, was the impression I should.
I had the presence of mind to call and ask for prayer from several close friends and my youth minister. Again, I think that was more God’s leading than my brilliance. I went to bed that night sure of one thing and woke up sure of something completely different. My college choice had nothing to do with my best visit, best feeling on campus, best programs or professors or even money. I made a decision based on prayer. That was good foresight. In hindsight, I never would have had the campus ministry group or internships I ended up having at churches if I’d gone to my first choice. I probably would have a different career path and an entirely different relationship path.
I feel very fortunate and very blessed that I was guided this way. I had a lot of guidance when it came to choosing a college and the merits and pitfalls, the things to look for and what to avoid and how to get in to whichever I wanted. What I didn’t get much guidance about was how to pray about it and seek God’s guidance. I didn’t get much encouragement to find a place that could be a spiritual home. Growing up Presbyterian, education, career advancement and opportunity were highly valued and encouraged, but the step by steps of discernment were not well laid out. The idea of following God’s leading for where to go to school and to what career God might call me were novel concepts until college.
I continue to believe in the importance of time and energy set aside leading our young people in discernment and self-reflection. By the grace of God, I have had experiences that have led me to my call more quickly than I could have planned on my own. I do believe that the Church, our denomination especially, pastors and educators and the most important educators of all… parents, need to provide this time and energy and space and allow young people to explore their calling. Discernment is most important in times of transition and there are few transitions as big as from high school to college and vocation.
Aside from my work in youth groups, my most rewarding experiences have been working with the program and alum from a project that is targeted at immersing young people in discernment and call. If you want to learn more about it, you can click here. My hope would be to see more programs like this and more churches involved in this and more families encouraging this. I just don’t see how we can encourage our young people to be who God calls them to be without encouraging them to spend time with God to discover what that is and supporting to the best of our abilities what they find for themselves.
As you or young person comes up on their college decisions and college searches, I hope you’ll find ways and people and programs that do just that. College is not just a destination or a step toward a career, but a transition that requires some deep discernment. And if you have the opportunity to deeply discern your path and God’s hope for you in early decisions in life, will you not be more prepared for the other decisions, maybe bigger decisions later on?

Rejoice in the Lord

The scripture:

Luke 1:46-55 (English Standard Version)

Mary’s Song of Praise: The Magnificat 46And Mary said,

"My soul magnifies the Lord,

47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

48for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

49for he who is mighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

50And his mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

51 He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

53he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

54He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

55 as he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his offspring forever."

My sermon this week:

When John told me I’d be preaching this week, I was overjoyed. Because I was going to get to preach… and because this week, I only have to preach one time. At this week’s 11:00 service, the choir is performing the Magnificat, the musical arrangement of this morning’s Gospel reading from Luke. Magnificat is simply the Latin for magnify, extol or praise, and in the Latin Vulgate, that is the first word in Mary’s song here, her soul “magnifies the Lord.” In fact, her song is not the only one in chapter 1. Zechariah sings to the Lord as well after the birth of John the Baptist. Francis Taylor-Gench, Biblical scholar and professor, says, “you can practically hum the first chapter of Luke.” And hum along we do…

The Christmas story is so familiar that we often don’t sense just how unlikely it really was or how absurd to those who were a part of it. Our feelings at Christmas are colored by fond memories, traditions, presents, decorating, copious food and merriment, topped with melancholy and loneliness for those absent and a twinge of guilt for the less fortunate and overspending… and… that copious food and merriment.

With so much celebrating, with so many festivities… happiness can be found on every corner… but Joy… can be elusive.

In our culture, joy has come to mean much the same thing as happiness. However, happiness is merely an emotion, temporary at best, however wonderful it may be. Joy… requires our participation.

Just as love does not merely mean fondness or affection, joy is not just feeling happy. If love were merely fondness or affection, then Christ’s command to love one another would be fully lived out simply by spending time with people we like the most and continuing to think highly of them and feel comfortable around them… choosing new people to spend time with as we grow weary of the old ones. It would not require us to be good to one another or kind or supportive or patient or humble or share all we have.

As Jason spoke about just last week, hope… is not merely optimism. Hope is not just feeling positive or wishing for the best. Hope takes work, it takes community, it takes… God with us.
And this is from where Mary’s joy comes as she sings her psalm of praise, magnifying, extolling, praising God for what he has done for her and for his people. Her joy is born out of a love for her God, a hope for her people and the peace her son will bring to her world. It’s a great deal about which to be joyful indeed.

Stan Toler tells a story of his good friend, a brilliant public speaker who was asked to recall his most difficult speaking assignment. “That’s easy,” he answered. “It was an address I gave to the National Conference of Undertakers. The topic they gave me was, ‘How to look sad at a cheap funeral.’” Stan went on to say that certainly this must have been a tough speech, but that it would be far more difficult to give one on “How to be miserable” to the early Church. He says, it would be impossible, for they had an uncontainable joy. In other words, the early Church couldn’t help it!

Mary, Joseph, the Wiseman, the shepherds and angels… none of them could keep from being joyful! But there’s more going on here than a gut emotional reaction. They all got up and went somewhere! Some of them sang, some of them brought presents for the new baby. Even Mary and Joseph crossed the desert and delivered their first child in a barn. From each of them, there was an intentional response.

Paul tells us, “Rejoice in the Lord always and again, I say, ‘Rejoice.’” When I was being installed at this church, Paul Neshangwe of Zimbabwe who works for our Presbytery office and has preached here before, charged me with these very words. His point was that though life and ministry may bring challenges and hard times, God calls us to rejoice. Joy takes work. He told me I would need reminding…

Here I spoke about this sign that hangs in my office. I gave a yellow square of construction paper to every member of our staff and asked them to make a specific letter. One of them went to a youth and one to a young adult as well. I put them together to make this...

You can guess which staff members made which letter.

It’s hard to remember in the midst of the day to day grind and this is my reminder. We all need things and people to remind us. Joy is not just the happy feeling we get when things go our way. It is our reaction, a decision to seek God. Joy requires our participation. Joy can be celebrating with others when things go well for them or coming through for others when you feel stretched thin… and doing so in good spirits. Joy can be as simple as having a bad day… and not taking it out on anyone else.

Joy is choosing to be thankful and relying on God when it’s too hard to do on your own. Joy is acting out confident exuberance in the face of darkness, logic and reason. Do you suppose for the young girl Mary that it was easy to receive the news that she was about to be a mother? Much less a mother out of wedlock? Do you suppose it was easy for to approach her parents, to approach Joseph with this news, knowing the consequences? Do you suppose it was easy for Joseph to get the news? It always bothered my mother that this young coupled traveled to their “home town” and had no one with whom to stay. “Didn’t they have relatives?” Perhaps not everyone in their family was quite as convinced of Mary and Joseph’s story of impregnation by Holy Spirit. The trip they took, the barn in which they delivered their baby, the early years of fleeing to Egypt and raising Jesus could not have been what either of them dreamed.

And yet… they were joyful. Not just happy… joyful. That takes work, brothers and sisters, that takes participation… an intentional response. It’s difficult for us to fathom. It’s hard for us as observers, so far removed. It takes a retelling of the story. Joy requires our participation.
Some of you may well remember the book, and the TV adaptation of The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever. It’s a favorite of mine, and a favorite of my mother’s, a life-long teacher who had had many Herdmens of her own. The story recounts the tale of a Sunday school teacher who takes on the traditional Christmas play. It has always been the stereotypical parade of young boys in their fathers’ bath robes and fake beards, girls in choir gowns and the two most responsible older children playing Mary and Joseph.

Well, of course, being her first year, this teacher botches the entire production. She infuriates all the parents, breaks every precedent and even alienates her own children. Most of this is due to including one particularly troublesome family in the play… the Herdmens. And a herd they are. They are all of the worst sort. They are a veritable clan of misfits and criminals. They have no morals, no patience and no self-restraint. They are bullies and thieves and they have no idea what the Christmas story is all about.

This teacher does her best to teach them about the story and because of their bullying, they end up with all the leading roles… to the chagrin of all the other children and parents. But of course, this eventually brings the Christmas story home for all of them. In a touching moment the night of the play, the teacher peeks into the dressing room to see Emma-Jean Herdmen, easily the wildest, toughest and most heinous of the bunch… cradling the baby Jesus doll. As she imagines what it truly would have been like to be 14 and having just given birth to a baby… a baby who would be the savior of our world, she cries quietly. For all her toughness, for all her bullying and posturing and antics… Emma-Jean comes to know joy in a way many of us can only glimpse in those rare moments. Emma-Jean participates in the story of our God with us. This unlikely girl enters the unlikely story of God’s love for all of us. In the face of all she’s experienced… abandonment, marginalization and hopelessness, she steps out of her experiences and into joy.

I don’t know what joy looks like for you. I don’t know if it’s deciding to spend more time with family and less at the mall or in long lines. I don’t know if it’s spending your money on Operation Christmas Child or your Saturday morning and afternoon in the Fellowship halls packing boxes with Hunger Task Force. Perhaps it’s raising your voice in song here in church, all through your neighborhood or in your kitchen as you teach your siblings and children and grandchildren about the Christmas story… our story. Perhaps it’s a new appreciation for all you are blessed with. I do know joy can be hard work. And I know we can get too busy to rejoice. But I encourage each of you right now to allow God to give you great joy this advent and for each of you to respond to it. Because joy requires your participation. Rejoice in the Lord always and again, I say… rejoice.

Green Day

When a little kid makes breakfast for his mom in bed and the eggs are too runny and the pancakes are made with sugar instead of flower, we say, “Well, his heart was in the right place.” And this is acceptable for children and even adults when we make errors in judgment in our attempt to do the right thing.

However, this line of thinking hinders the progress of one of the most important movements in the modern day… the Green movement or Environmentalism. Too often we pursue ideas or fund technologies that only make us feel good and don’t do anything worthwhile for this effort.
It’s especially in vogue to be environmentally friendly (popular among members of the Sierra Club, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts for decades longer). The last thing I would want is for hurting the environment to be in vogue, but more than environmentally friendly, we need people to be environmentally conscious. What’s the difference?

Months ago, I blogged about the Green Lantern who writes columns comparing various choices to be made and their environmental impact (hand washing dishes v. dish washer, bottles v. cans, etc.). There’s more to a decision than many people realize. For instance, taking the totality of a bag’s impact on the environment, plastic grocery bags tend to be better than paper. Why? Paper is heavier and more costly to ship because of the fuel expense. More fossil fuels are burned in transporting them then are used in making plastic bags. In addition, plastic bags do not cut into our forests and take up less room in landfills. It’s counter-intuitive, but an important process to think about. Of course, the best thing you can do is bring your own reusable plastic or canvas bags.

The last thing God’s good creation needs is our meager good intentions. God gave us brains, intuition and imagination. It is our responsibility to think through all the consequences and possible environmental impacts of our efforts to be green. The big national story recently has been the debacle of bio-diesel. It was so promising, very few people wanted to admit that while it had a great impact on our farmers, it was hurting the environment. The energy cost that went into it was far higher than what it yielded.

"First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small. (See: non-existent or harmful) It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going." – Al Gore

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president." – Al Gore

In his zeal to find ways to save the planet, Al Gore backed technologies that did it more harm than good. I would encourage everyone to look at the best research available when making decisions that have long term consequences for God's green earth.

Green Day

Today in the news is an exciting release by Puma. I am not endorsing Puma, but I am excited about their strides toward lowering their environmental impact. The video is really neat. Enjoy...

Green Day

This week, I'm going to redirect you to NPR. There's a man who travels the world photographing... bark. Yup, bark. His shots are beautiful. Please enjoy his work...

Green Day

And we're back! After a long hiatus, the blog is back. Last week, Wellshire hosted its yearly Blessing of the Animals. To my knowledge, we're the only church in Denver who does this inside. We had canines and felines, ophidians (snakes) and even a dwarf hampster. There are some pictures below.

This week, John went to the Dumb Friends League to bless their animals. They took wonderful pictures of this event and I highly encourage you to go visit their link: Photos at The Dumb Friends League.