It was a beautiful day … bright sunshine and the barest of hints that winter had done all the damage it could do. Birdie and I were sitting in the front booth of the coffee shop in the warmth of the sun with no agenda other than to keep our friendship up to date.

She looked across the table, sizing me up. “Preacher, you’re a part of a brotherhood that’s mighty peculiar.”

“Just the guys? What about my sister colleagues?”

“You’re right about needing to include them. But I was being gender specific because, for some odd reason, the sisters don’t seem to be afflicted much by this issue.”

“Gosh, I have a lot of sick folks I need to visit. Don’t you think we could talk about this some other time?”

“I do not. Those sick folks do need your pastoral care, but even they can hold for this one. Sit here and answer my question. Why is it so many pastors destroy their families and do damage in the church over their lack of sexual boundaries? Why is it they can’t keep their zippers up and their hands off the women?”

“It’s not always with women,” I cautiously reminded Birdie.

“One subject at a time!” she flashed back. “Did you read about the good Reverend who was arrested the other night soliciting a woman of the night?”

“Are you kidding me? Who hasn’t heard it? His mug shot with his coiffed hair all mussed up in the morning papers made people forget Nick Nolte.”

“You dodged my question, Rev. Why is it some preachers can be pious on Sunday but, ‘Look out!’ during the week? I know it happens … I’m just curious how it works. You’re a counselor; help me understand this.”

“Well … think about it. Most pastors are still a work in progress despite what the seminary says when they confer the degree. Did you know all about driving once you earned your driver’s license? I sure didn’t! Being a pastor is more about being and less about doing than most laypersons can imagine. Some are great at doing and lousy at being. Some can charm folks and get them to do what they want. The magic of it is, they can get them to do what they want while getting folks to enjoy it. That turns into manipulation unless they rise to their higher selves - which is uncommon in most of us.”

She didn’t respond, so I continued.

“I’m guessing their calling was in response to their need to manipulate people using charm and other self-serving skills. And what works with people in general can become a finely tuned skill with women in particular. Charm becomes a specific skill. A charmer becomes good at reading people and seeing quite clearly which women need something they think their pastor can provide. The problem is obvious in that it’s not the needs of the women they are attending to.”

“Why is it some women are so attracted to ministers?” Birdie asked with a sly twist to her smile. “Of course you realize I meant all those other ministers. You’re on the high end of most ministers I know.”

“Of course, I won’t argue with you over that.”

“Birdie, most of us work alone. We don’t have a good understanding of ourselves, and we think every time we speak we’re speaking for God. Surely there’s enough in that formula to explain a certain amount of weirdness.”

“And I won’t argue with you either.”

“Most pastors don’t know how to tend their own selves. They take care of everyone else and weekly worry about saying a good word from God, but they don’t recognize the sickness of their own souls. They work alone and don’t have a good system to deal with their own sickness. Some overeat to fend off the lion that’s devouring them. Others have well-kept secret lives they don’t want anyone to discover, and when those secrets are exposed some of them end up on the 10 o’clock news. Some are simply salving their unconscious selves, the part of them that’s largely unknown to even them, by sexually coloring outside the lines they preach about. Whenever I hear a preacher go off on a sexual tirade about the sins of the flesh I worry. Most obsessions are out in plain sight if you pay attention. Remember Nixon’s speeches about law and order? Even Ted Haggard was known to preach hard in opposition to homosexuality.”

“Hmmm … you mean to tell me they don’t know what they’re doing?”

“No! God forbid I would never suggest they’re innocent. They know exactly what they’re doing. They just don’t know why they have to do it. The reasons for why this is so danged important to the point of being an obsession leaves most of them clueless.”

Birdie sat with that for a moment. Then she turned to me and asked directly, “And what are you doing to take care of yourself to keep the lion from devouring you?”

Dang! I’m busted.

[This story was originally published in Baptists Today, February 2007]

“Pastor, I just love that ice cream parlor where there are more choices than the mind can fathom. Know what I mean?”

“Gosh, I wish you hadn’t said that … I hate the feeling of saliva running down my chin, but some things are worth it. A good ice cream cone with my favorite flavor is one of life’s little sins I can’t seem to forgo.”

I love Birdie for how she embraces all the good things in life … a wholesome hug,a hearty laugh when a good joke is told, a good piece of pie, a good slab of ribs, a cool day in the fall, the feel of the cool water of the swimming pool on a scorcher, making sure the neighbor kids know her name and feel welcome on her front porch.

Birdie is a woman who embraces life itself as a good gift from God and doesn’t waste her time worrying about whether it is deemed okay by those who don’t seem to have as much fun as she does. “Life’s a gift and too much of a good thing to not enjoy. I don’t like being around people who don’t enjoy this good gift from God called ‘living.’”

“Doesn’t the ice cream parlor have a lesson to teach us, Reverend?”

“Hmmm … that gluttony as a sin has been way overblown?”

“I’m glad you’re not my accountant … we’d be doing time in jail by now! When I walk in and see all those flavors, sometimes I order the time-tested favorites I know I love. Other times, though, I want to try out a new flavor just because it’s there. Isn’t there a lesson here for us?”

“Some flavors are better than others?”

“Rev, how did you get out of seminary? I’m talking about how the world is made up of all kinds of folks … tall ones and short ones … skinny ones and fat ones … darkskinned ones and fair-skinned ones. Pop Quiz, Preacher: Does God love them all?”

“Of course! God loves them all because that’s what God does.”

“Does God love them when they have freckles?”

“Absolutely! Maybe them more than others!”

“Does God love the left-handed ones as much as the right-handed ones?”

“God, my dear sister, is ambidextrous and loves them equally.”

“Then why do some churches refuse to accept members who are gay?”

“That’s a tough question, Birdie, but from what I read, it’s because they think homosexuality is the worst kind of sin.”

“Are you saying God doesn’t love gay persons? Are you suggesting we’ve at last named a group of persons God doesn’t love?”

“Well …”

“Well, my foot! Every church I’ve ever been a member of, no matter their theology, no matter what they thought of the end times or open or closed communion or mixed bathing not even what they thought of the pastor’s sermons, all of them — every last one of them — have had members who were either gay or lesbian. The church may have ignored that fact and not made a big deal about it. They may have had members who lived with the secret of their sexual orientation, but we all knew it and chose to not make a big deal out of it. In fact, I always thought that was the least interesting thing about them. Every one of them loved Jesus as much or more than I. Most of them were dedicated church members who simply wanted to come and worship and find a community of believers where Jesus was the focus. Are you telling me there are churches that don’t have such members?”

“I wouldn’t say that … but I can guarantee those same unwelcoming churches are filled with straights with sexual habits the church won’t even consider when it comes to ‘churching’ them. There are gluttons and gossips to beat the band. Why is it we’re so obsessed with sexual orientation? The Bible’s only got a handful — not two handfuls mind you — of passages that even mention it.

“If this was so contentious with Jesus, why didn’t he speak to it?” Birdie pondered. “Seems he said quite a lot about the piety of religious leaders who pick on the powerless and parade around like peacocks. In fact, I think they killed him for it. He said something powerful about the beam in our own eyes.”

“Standing up for those the church picks on can be risky business,” I reminded her.

“Churches need to beware of letting their homophobia turn the law of love into the law of hate.”

“Unwelcoming churches have done a serious thing by hanging out the ‘Gays Aren’t Welcome Here’ sign. Jesus didn’t give us any options as I read my Bible,” Birdie said quietly. “I can’t see where he gave us any other choice than to choose to love them. I may not understand or agree with this all-powerful thing in their lives, but I can choose to love them.”

“Amen, Sister.”

Ever seen a naked turtle? You know what I mean … a turtle stripped of its shell. I think I recall seeing this in the imagination of a cartoon when I was a kid but not in real life. Ever wonder whether it’s even possible? Is the shell as much a part of the turtle as its snapping jaws or its webbed foot or its little pointed tail? Could the turtle exist without its shell? It certainly looks like the shell is a portable house the turtle carries around for safety and protection.

Hmmm … does the church have a shell like the turtle, something the church could not survive without because the shell is as much a part of the turtle as any other body part?

Jesus spoke about wine and the wineskins sewn together to hold the wine. He pointed out that new wine needed new wineskins otherwise the wine would burst the skin and the wine would be lost. Maybe the turtle shell analogy falls apart and what we really have is more like the wineskin.

Which is it? Does the church have a shell or a skin? Does the church exist without its shell? Can the church of the future (the new wine) exist in an old wineskin?

I’m thinking about these things as we give thought to our project that’s fully underway these days concerning the renewal of the physical plant we often call, “the church.” Are our buildings and meeting rooms and sanctuary and activities building the church itself or just the shell we reside in? All these buildings we’ve built and designed over 54 years of existence … are they our shell or our skin or neither? Is the church itself something altogether different?

I like the fact that on our good days, we say the church has a geographical center at 97th and Holmes but the church exists wherever our members go representing the church and its mission to “fashion our lives after Christ’s and to embrace our world with God’s transforming love.”

Tonight, we’ll have a two-hour opportunity for our members to gather and to talk to one another and with the architects who are partnering with us in this discussion. “A Night With the Architects,” we’ve called it. In this meeting, we’ll rotate through three different rooms each with an architect from Hollis-Miller present who will share some preliminary ideas and then to allow our members to engage those initial thoughts about what values we share about our church, its future and what we think are our priorities as a church. Only then, after clarifying what’s in our thoughts about our future ministries, will we think about the building itself. The architects will join with us in thinking about who we are before they will draw up plans for the bricks and mortar of the buildings we live in.

You see, who we are is the most significant question before us. Otherwise, we’d might end up as just a naked little turtle or spilled wine.

We live in a new world. It’s not the same world we lived in a decade ago when most were just learning to use email and getting wired. It’s not the same world because we’re more polarized as a people than ever. It’s not the same world because it’s harder and harder to get a sense of “what’s happening & what does it mean?” without it coming in the form of left and right. Now, it’s TMI 24/7 and we’re inundated with so-called “news” from all quarters and the vast majority of it should be labeled opinion rather than given the same respect as news.

Last Saturday I was in the Panera’s near my home and one of the members of my coffee church made an off-handed comment to me suggesting we are indeed a Christian nation and I responded I didn’t think we were. “People become Christians, not nations,” I said along with recognizing we are a pluralistic nation comprised of likely every religion practiced anywhere (California helps make this point). He responded with, “Well, don’t you at least think the Muslims are our enemies?” and I replied I didn’t think so. Radical Muslims are no more the final word on Islam than the Ku Klux Klan is the final word on Christianity. We don’t tolerate either one too well I noted. Again, being a Baptist minister and not sharing his viewpoint startled him and it seemed to out of line from what he hears in his own church.

Some of the email forwards I receive from you should also be considered rightly as opinion as typically those opinions are so tilted to the left or the right, the sense of “what’s happening & what does it mean?” tilts too. In our church, having one of everything, we have jangling around in us opinions that are adopted from the polarized opinions of those who have little right to call themselves journalists working in the business of delivering news. Some of you watch FOX News and others watch MSNBC. I suspect somewhere in the middle exists an approximation of what’s happening and what it all means.

Back to the question:  Is America a Christian nation or not?

In the last week or two, we’ve had a renewed national conversation on President Obama’s claim we’re not a Christian nation. There’s nothing original about his claim - it’s been a long-standing debate and he’s merely voicing his view on the subject. But the fact he identified himself so clearly on the topic is something new as most politicians treat ardent patriotism with empty symbols worn on their suit coats signifying they are true patriots no matter how they vote or what compromises they’ve made in the name of political survival.

Back to the question one more time:  Is America a Christian nation or not?

Today, in the Kansas City Star, columnist Michael Gerson speaks directly to the question with this observation, “Christian America has always been a heresy, a historical error and a blunder.” [”Shifts in Christianity Show Change, Not Decline,” 4/17/09]

He explains it’s a heresy because “no human kingdom, however admirable, can be properly identified with the Kingdom of God.” Back to my point that people not nations are capable of making a commitment to follow Christ. Jesus never set his sights on leading a political movement represented by a nation state and it’s difficult to explain how the actions of our government might represent God’s kingdom. If that were so, how do we explain the state of the poor, the overpopulation of our prisons, and the state of our health care with our millions of citizens with little access to adequate medical care - all concerns of Jesus and at the heart of his mission in the world?

Gerson claims a Christian America is a historical error. From the beginning, the founders created a federal government that was “wisely nonsectarian.” As Christians, do we want to rule (lord) over all other religions? What would that mean? Would we show favoritism to Christians but not to other religions? Would we imply the state religion would be Christian and all other religions would necessarily go underground? Four centuries of Baptist history would go to naught for this idea - if so, we would need to cease calling ourselves Baptists in my estimation.

Finally he claims a Christian America is a blunder. He should have said a major blunder. James Dunn says it often: “The cross never looked good wrapped in red, white and blue” (or something to that effect); meaning, the cross was never meant as an endorsement for any nation or government. Nor should any nation think adopting Christian as an adjective anything but a direct assault upon the primacy of God. We should be wary of any use of the word and concept of “Christian” as an adjective without considering whether we’ve crossed over and manipulated the holy by turning it into an idolatry.

My coffee buddy was surprised a Baptist minister would hold these views, but I do. Maybe it’s because I’ve been given a Baptist heritage that helps me understand it’s a matter of keeping my kingdoms in proper relationship to one another.

John Updike has long been acclaimed as one of America’s best writers over his persistent career of observing Middle America. One eulogizer just after Updike’s death two and a half months ago, marveled at his ability to chronicle middle-class America and predicted that hundreds of years from now, persons studying the perplexing 20th century will read his Rabbit books in order to get a feel for how we’ve lived in this time.

Funny how normal he seemed. He shunned New York intelligentsia and their overwrought literary parties. Instead, he holed up in a quiet life just north of Boston where he made a daily visit to the small town post office and lived a rather old-fashioned life complete with afternoon golf rounds with his buddies.

After completing a short story that The New Yorker typically printed, he would bemoan the fact he had probably written his last piece; the note accompanying his short story would claim the piece “was not really very good and would probably be his last.” Fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., often made the same claim and I’m sure every writer wonders when the well will dry up for good. Nevertheless, Updike continued writing. Three pages a day on a wide variety styles - all predictably good. Writers who study other writers marveled at his lyrical voice for storytelling. Critic James Wood (in this case, one who was unusually critical of Updike’s popularity) said a backhanded word about him:  “He is a prose writer of great beauty, but that prose confronts one with the question of whether beauty is enough, and whether beauty always conveys all that a novelist must convey.”

Updike wrote out of need, an internal need to observe and describe. “I would write ads for deodorants or labels of catsup bottles, if I had to,” he once said to The Paris Review. “The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.” Check out his article on Ted Williams’ last game for what some say is the greatest article on the sport of baseball.

He aimed his writing west toward our own country. “When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.” Perhaps he was thinking of us …

But what of his wonder at Easter and the claim that Jesus died and was resurrected on Sunday? Here’s an excerpt from 1961 and his poem, “Seven Stanzas at Easter” to shine the light for us as we prepare to greet the Risen Christ:

Make no mistake: If He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

John Updike, “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” Telephone Poles and Other Poems © New York: Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, 1961