Do This...

When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood." Luke, Ch. 22, vs. 14-20, NASB

We do this in remembrance of Him. Remembering His love for us, his devotion to us, His sacrifice for us.

I was raised in, and still attend, churches of the Restoration Movement ; Churches of Christ as a child and young adult, and a Disciples of Christ congregation today. In these churches, The Lord's Supper is the pinnacle of the worship service, the prime reason that we meet each Sunday. "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." 1 Cor., Ch. 11, v. 26, NASB.

Palm Sunday

Christ, the Heavenly King, made his entrance into Jerusalem riding a donkey.

Not on a white horse or in a chariot as befits His position, but as a peasant would.

He comes to us in the same way. Quiet, unassuming, not raising His voice for recognition.

Do we recognize Him when He comes to us today?

In His distressing disguise, do we look past the homeless, the sick, the abused, straining our eyes to see Him in the glory of men? 

He is not here dressed in fine clothes and jewelry, yet He is still here.

Do we see Him in our majestic church buildings and chapels?

Do we see Him in our church leaders?

Do we see Him in ourselves?

Sexual Abuse and Forgiveness

This is a very different kind of topic for me to write about, especially as I haven't been sexually abused, but some of the women I have loved have suffered that horror, and I know my reactions to hearing that. This will be a deeply personal post for me to write, and difficult as I feel that anger and desire for vengeance again.

First off, as I write about the forgiveness part, I want you all to know that I am not speaking to the victims of sexual abuse here, that is a subject best handled by well-trained and compassionate people. Rather, I'll be speaking about my experience as someone who loves a person that has suffered that abuse.

Rejoice!

"Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice greatly with her, all you who mourn over her." Isaiah 66:10, NIV


It's Laetare Sunday, a name which means almost nothing to most American Protestants. Laetare is the Latin word for 'rejoice'.

In the midst of the contemplation of our sins and mortality of Lent, Laetare Sunday reminds us of the words of John the Baptist, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world."

A Sunday to rejoice, in the midst of our repentance. After all, what reason would we have to repent were it not for His love bringing our redemption?

What Can I Say?

I hope you read my last post, and then clicked through to Les' blog. His story is compelling and painful, sickening and heartening.

Some of what disturbed me most were the reactions of some ostensible 'Christians' to Les in the weeks and months following that tragedy.


Dealing with someone who is grieving is difficult for the majority of people. It's even harder for all parties involved when death comes through horrific tragedy. Our compassion wants us to help, but without a modicum of grief counseling training, it's extremely difficult to know what to do. Feeling the grasp of the futility of which Qoheleth wrote, many times the only thing left to the bystander is what we can say.

We want desperately to speak words of wisdom to help guide the grieving one (and as often as not, ourselves) to a point of healing.

The thing is, wisdom doesn't heal; only Love heals.

Are you struggling with your faith?

Then I'd suggest that you read Les Ferguson's blog, Desperately Wanting to Believe Again. Specifically, I'd recommend to start off with this post, Obscenity Redux. It contains the elements of the story necessary to catch up with what happened exactly

Les, a former Church of Christ preacher, lost his wife and son to a man who had been raping his son, who came and murdered them horribly after he was arrested for the sexual abuse. The reactions towards Les from some of the congregation in the aftermath was both disgusting and infuriating.

Yet even after this horrible event, the spirit of a true Christian still shines through in Les' words as he struggles to find a semblance of the faith he once felt.


May Les, his family, and all of us be blessed and comforted by the One who makes all things new.

Generosity After Church

Everybody's heard about the squawk over the "pastor" that left the snotty note on a receipt at Applebee's, then called to get the entire staff fired after she was outed on the intertrons. There's some good discussion, lots of hate and mudslinging, and some things that should be very saddening to Christians.

First off, to the "10 percent tithers"; if you use that to justify giving only 10% at a restaurant, then just go to a fast-food joint where you don't even have to tip at all. And don't even let people in the restaurant know you claim to be Christian; the rest of us don't need or deserve the bad name you give us, and Christ certainly deserves a better example. Think I'm wrong about this perception? Here's what a Reddit user, who is in the restaurant industry, has to say about it:

Damaged Goods? You Don't Get To Define Me

The past couple of days has seen a proliferation of posts in the more progressive segment of the Christian blogging community about the way the church deals with sexuality, sin, and shame. The ones I've seen have been concerning the treatment of gays in the church and the purity standard impressed upon young people in conservative churches. The comments after these posts have been painful, amazing, angering, and saddening, yet very thought provoking. Two posts and their following comments, Torn: Chapters 7-11 and Do Christians Idolize Virginity?, at Rachel Held Evans' blog, and Sarah Bessey's post, I Am Damaged Goods, at A Deeper Story, made me do a lot of thinking of the culture of shame and the concept of damaged goods that I have experienced in the past from a former church.

It's not just gay people and young people that get the unhealthy message of shame from conservative churches; lots of divorced people have that nonsense forced upon them, too.

The Lens of Grace

We all have our own individual ways of looking at things, especially Scripture. I started changing my spiritual lens prescription a couple of years ago, during a relationship with a very sweet lady.

We had known each other since childhood, and had many mutual friends from our school days, some of whom were now living openly gay. At this point in my life, I had pretty much given up on any form of churchianity, so I didn't really care much at all about what any church had to say on any topic. She was determined to change my thinking about the Church and Christ, so we had many discussions on Scriptural topics.

One night, we were discussing a lesbian couple we know and she said to me, "You know, what they're doing isn't any different in God's eyes than what we're doing, if you look at it legalistically." That stuck with me, and as she was a dedicated church-goer, I asked her how she could reconcile her openness and acceptance with what is written in Scripture.

"I try to look at people through God's grace, instead of His judgment", she replied.

The Sacredness of Our Stories...

In her post from earlier today, Rachel Held Evans wrote a couple of passages that got me to thinking along some different lines than her post.  The first, "We have become a Church that judges one another by how we judge one another, and that makes me sad." and the second, "As any mother of a gay child or survivor of sexual abuse will tell you, when we talk about sexuality, we are talking about real people, real bodies, real families, real lives. To forget this is to subject our fellow human beings, created in the image of God, to a sort of theological objectification that robs them of their humanity and renders their stories, their experience, their backgrounds, their spirituality, their relationships, their struggles, and their joys down into something I can either “affirm” or “condemn,” something that is either “pure” or “defiled.”", came from entirely different sections, and seeing the connection between the two isn't quite as obvious when reading her post in its entirety.


Echoing Richard Beck, it's easy to see how both of those sections relate to boundary psychology of inclusion/exclusion, but what if the solution, at least for some of us, might be something very personal, something deep within our own boundary that we're trying to exclude.