Further Up and Further In

…this blog is moving.

Why?

In order to use a new version of WordPress which is more spiffier.

From now on it will be here.

This old blog will stay put for archival purposes.

…is up. There are many pictures from the Fall Festival.

See them here: Red Brick Church Gallery

The air is crisp and the sky is that particularly heartbreaking blue, heartbreaking both for its beauty and its rarity.

Big day: Red Brick Church Festival. Bouncy house, with auxilliary slide, is rented and inflated. A thousand cubic feet of chili are warming downstairs in the kitchen. Tables, chairs, and balloons have been placed out in the parking lot. Everywhere, festoonery.

The neighbors begin to arrive, and poke around the food table. Kids want to get their shoes off and bounce.

It takes ten or fifteen minutes to walk down to the Projects–just to see if some kids are waiting for an invitation.

Down in the Projects there are childrens’ voices, but the echoes among the brick buildings are deceptive. Where are they?

Aha. Five kids, one girl and four boys. The girl I have met before. Her name is Destiny. (Is that a good name to give to a kid who lives in the Projects?) She tells me that they have been waiting for someone to take them up to the festival. (Why? They know where it is and wander freely and unsupervised all over the place.)

Will I take them?

A mother leans out the door and gives me a suspicious look.

Hi. I am from the Red Brick Church.

OK. You may have my children, then.

(The residual credibility of the Church in places like this is remarkable. For some reason, they decide to trust me. And so it goes: I am from the Red Brick Church; give me your kids for the day. No further questions.)

One of the boys, a round-faced guy, grabs my elbow with both his hands. “I’m walking with him,” he says, with emphasis on the last word. He says it again in a different direction.

Another boy, the same age but skinny and cornrowed, stands in front of me and stares me down.

“I could tackle you.” He is serious.

I stare back. “I doubt it.”

He stands his ground: “I’m almost as tall as you.” He is a good two feet shorter.

“No, you’re not. Want to go up to the church and have some fun?”

“OK.”

His name is Jonavan, but he prefers to be called JV, but prefers even more to be called J, and prefers most of all to be called V.

The littlest of the boys tries to take an unsportsmanslike shortcut through the park and head me off. I outrun him. Triumph!

“Man, you’re fast. How did you get to be so fast?” Someone mentions a cousin they know who is faster.

They walk with me, and yell at neighbors we pass, and talk about what cats sneak up onto what roofs. They tell me where they go to school. They keep stopping to deal with shoelaces.

And then, privileged information. They show me the best shortcut in the hood, between two houses, past a mud puddle and some garbage. These five, they initiate me into some neighborhood savior faire. They give the gift of their trust, their banter, their abrupt questions. Are you a pastor? Where’s your car? What’s for lunch?

Periodically the boy with the round face hangs on my elbow.

We walk all together in a straggly group, crunching the leaves as loud as we can.

I promise to blog and post photos soon. We had our fall festival for the neighborhood today and many beautiful things came into being.

I also have exactly 47 pictures sent to me by a Midtowner. Some of these are nearly works of art; especially the pumpkins on the pew. I will show you some of them soon.

Speaking of art, last night was the big hootenanny at the Dayton Art Institute. 800 people came. The DAI is one of the coolest places in the region, both for its collection and (I confess) even more so for its architecture.

After the necessary formalites of playing the concert, I got to see the Egyptian exhibit.

Most of the items were well over 3000 years old. Many looked as if they were made yesterday. They have a real mummy still wrapped up. What struck me was the elaborate system of ritual and art (statuary, sarcophagusses, spells) surrounding death. It appears as if the Egyptians did nothing but prepare for death. By their own standards, they did so zealously and thoroughly.

Their understanding of life was such that the main purpose was to spend it getting ready for death and beyond. It was worth any effort whatsoever to be properly prepared for death. An unprepared death (by which they meant, one without the proper prayers and rituals) was the worst tragedy they could imagine.

Questions for discussion:

1. Did they ever do any living?

2. Does an obsession with death lead to a cheapening of life?

3. Sound like anyone you know?

The beloved Bishop of Durham spoke at Seattle Pacific University and has things to say which artists must hear (especially artists who find themselves marginalized by the Church).

You can stream the lecture with Real Audio. You will have to wade through exactly twelve and a half minutes of blah blah before NT gets started. Give him a listen.

Click here.

Some kid told me last week that the kids from The Projects are bad.

Bad? Why bad? Worse than you?

They’re just bad, I was told. That’s all.

Listen. The kid who told me this–the kid who thinks the Project kids are bad–this good kid lives in a neighborhood that many of you…(how to say this?)…that the more sheltered among you would never visit. You would be scared if you went there. To the good kid’s house, I mean.

Now, if you have been to real Projects, on the order of Cabrini Green in Chicago, the Projects in Springfield will seem to you less threatening than merely cute. Perhaps even homey.

But Projects they are. I have been told that they are rank with crack.

They are set back from the road and down an embankment. Really they are almost in a large depression, one might say. They are two-story row houses, six of them in a row, and four or five rows in all.

I went down there because I had nine leftover invitations to the neighborhood festival next Saturday. Since we are renting an inflatable bouncy house, I want lots and lots of kids there. My own children helped me pass out the invitations along our usual streets, and they were cheerful, industrious, and beautiful about it.

They do not know that they are supposed to be scared of black men with cornrows.

So they aren’t.

But since I had never visited the Projects, and had heard that the kids were bad, I left my own kids at the Red Brick Church this time. Call it cowardice. Call it parenting.

Oddly, wondrously, some of the Project kids already knew about the festival. Others learned about the imminent bouncy house and ran in three directions to spread the news. This brought more kids outside. Three, five, eight of them. Some had huge mustaches of dried snot. They were all eager to grab invitations and pass them out. Just like my own children.

One of them called out to a young man in the parking lot, who responded with the finger and got in his car. Laughs all around.

October has been changed to Roctober. This is to help everyone, ya know, rock. So go through your calendars and add an R wherever it sez October. Then it will be Roctober and you will rock for the rest of the month.

Roctober Thoughts:

The Demerits have now miraculously raised enough bux to buy the drones portion of the uilleann pipes. My hope is to play chanter and drones by Christmas. I am aware that pipers as a species are, on the whole, deplorable. I embark on this piping adventure primarily to help these guys learn social skills.

Our gig was a blast. Good crowd, complete with spontaneous Irish dancing by Melanie. The weird part was playing Faure and Chausson all afternoon and then doing Bile Them Cabbage Down at night.

Even as I type, the
Worldview Weekend is a-happ’nin’ over at the college. I am uneasy about this event. Go ahead and check out the site, take their “worldview test”, and see what kind of creepy socialist you turn out to be.

And then see how much money you will need to pay them to get your worldview cranked back into shape.

This appears to be as much about far-right Republican politics as about the way of Jesus.

You would think the Kingdom of God is primarily a matter of defeating secular liberals and defending our white middle class way of life from outsiders…

(…see previous two posts.)

Addendum: I took the test and answered with complete honesty. I scored 35% and am thus labeled (and dismissed) as a secular humanist worldview thinker.

Post-Addendum: After which, I went back and took it again, trying to discern what answer the questioner was looking for, and always answering “strongly” for or against whatever good or bad statement was presented. (Isn’t it wonderful that a biblical worldview is comprised only of strong affirmations and denials? Don’t you hate ambiguity?) Interestingly, I not only scored very high ("strong biblical worldview thinker” or some such) but received an ACTUAL BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW EMAIL CERTIFICATE that I may print out (it is suggested to do so on “beautiful parchment paper") and display.

Read it and weep, boys and girls:

Checkitout…

Things went badly wrong because they were sure it was all theirs…

…the vineyard, the press, the plants and wall and tower…

Their sense of belonging (a good thing) escalated into a sense of ownership by right of conquest (a bad thing).

How is it possible to belong, and yet remain somehow mindful that this is not ours? Or, how is it possible to belong to a community without believing that the community belongs to us?

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf writes in “Exclusion and Embrace” that old Abraham is the father of all who must belong and not belong. He left his home and wandered so that he could have a better loyalty than to his ancient tribalism.

Volf suggests that tribalism leads to exclusion and violence. If there is no higher loyalty than to the tribe (or culture, or institution, or church), then whatever threatens the tribe is the enemy, and all measures against the enemy are justifiable. All is justifiable in the name of the tribe and its boundary maintenance.

This is why the vineyard workers could do what they did. The owner’s agents threatened their growing sense of ownership. At all costs they had to be excluded…

…all of which is the opposite kind of fruit than was supposed to be produced from the vineyard. The Isaiah version of the story spells it out clearly enough: the desired fruit was justice, and instead there was injustice and cries of wretchedness.

Injustice and cries of wretchedness are precisely the fruit of tribalism. If there is no higher loyalty than to the tribe, all threats must be excluded at all costs.

Too much belonging, in the wrong sense, makes us too willing to harvest the fruit of injustice and cries of wretchedness.

Notice the way of Jesus. There is an intense belonging to his culture–weddings, history, festivals–and to his friends–hikes and boating mishaps and all sorts of adventures together–and yet he could hold them all at a distance when they would invite him to belong to them in a way that betrayed his highest loyalty:

Shall we call down fire?

We heard some guy preaching and we told him to shut up.

Get away, you dumb kids.

We belong without owning, for the sake of the fruit of justice.

Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80 or 80:7-14
Philippians 3:14-21
Matthew 21:33-43

There is a story which keeps coming back in this week’s readings.

Let me tell the stories over again, starting in Isaiah.

There was this guy, see, and he started a vineyard. Not a casual backyard hobby collection of grapevines, either, but serious imported top-of-the-line vines with unpronouncable names. He took soil samples and found just the right spot with the perfect balance of volcanic nutrients, and with an ideal climate. He installed a state-of-the-art irrigation system. He built a security system to keep the notorious grape thieves out. He installed an electric fence for the varmints. And then he hired the most promising agricultural experts to work the place. Finally, he left the whole shebang in their hands and went salmon fishing in Alaska.

And when he came back, all he could find was these nasty hard bitter little pea-size wild grapes, the kind not even birds bother to steal.

And he was just so exasperated.

He was exasperated because, by common grape-growing standards, he had done everything right, and more than right. He was so exasperated because he had every reason to expect his vineyard to be beautiful and fruitful, and it’s all ugly and useless. All his work wass for nothing.

So he jumped into the bulldozer and revved the engine in a frightening Jack Nicholson sort of way, and plowed right into the stone wall. He jammed the blade into the ground and ripped the irrigation pipes out, leaving them sticking into the air all broken and angular. He abandonned the place to weeds and varmints, and pretty soon the place had six-foot thistles and poison ivy climbing the remains of the wall.

He was that exasperated.

And then the story comes back, told by the people in the Psalm.

There was once this vine, which came by some wild improbabilty from Egypt, where vines don’t actually grow. Long story. So anyways this vine makes it all the way from Egypt and gets planted in a good land, with all the weeds pulled out first, to make for good growing.

And it grew, and it was unbelievable. It grew so big that its shadow was over the top of some mountains. It spread all the way to the sea in one direction, and the river in the other.

But then God got mad and broke the wall down, so thugs walked by and plucked whole big bunches of grapes and ran away with them. Huge ugly wild boars got in and tore up the roots with their tusks. All kinds of wild animals came stomping in, and by the time they were done there is no harvest left.

And we pretty much consider the vine to be us, and its health to be our health, so what we’re saying in this story is that things are bad, and we want some help from God. We’re hoping God will come and fix the vineyard, since it was his idea in the first place.

And then the story comes back a third time, retold by Jesus.

Yes, there was that guy, just like in Isaiah. And he built the vineyard just like you heard. But there was this plot going on. The workers looked around and saw just how good things were in the vineyard. State-of-the-art everything. Promise of a good harvest. Nice wall to keep outsiders right where they belong. So they said to themselves:

Hmmmmm. Here we are doing all the work. Here we are every day, and we like the place. Frankly we don’t see much of a use for the owner. He rules from a distance while we deal with the daily chores. You know, we are quite settled here; in a very real sense this place is ours, not the owner’s. So when we have the chance, we will arrange to put the vineyard under new management.

And so the owner sent his district grape harvest representive guy to check on the fruit. And the workers grabbed him by the lapels and pulled his hair and poked him in the eyes like the Three Stooges. They gave him a wedgie. They sent him running.

Weirdly, the next day another district grape harvest representive showed up, as though everything was normal, as though it would be bad manners to ask if the workers abused that guy yesterday. He asked about the harvest. The workers said to themselves: Let’s send a stronger message. So they did. They beat the second guy with garden tools until he was dead.

And so each visitor showed up, all polite and giving them a chance to do business properly, and each one was treated to an even more humiliating and cruel death.

Finally, the owner’s son, the obvious future boss, appeared. (There is an odd naivete in the owner’s thinking: This time they will be nice because it is my son. Really. As if. Come on, Mr. Vineyard Owner, are you really that dumb? What is wrong with you? Why are you so patient with these horrible people? Why are you so slow to get angry with them? That is what the story makes us think. Probably on purpose.)

And the workers understood: He is playing his last card. If we can kill this one, the place is ours. So they did. And they threw him right over the wall to the place of outsiders, the place of exclusion.

And the owner was so exasperated that he finally arrested all the workers and went looking all over the place for people who would actually do the work and show the fruit that should come from such a good vineyard.

Part II coming soon…

…I am forty and it is not bad at all.

Thank you, beloved students, for the remarkable redecorating job in my studio. So many balloons to stab; so little time.

My favorite people who love me most have gone and gotten me an iPod nano. Cool. I have to pick a color or flavor or whatever it is they come in. Then I have to find secret camo headphones that can be worn during boring meetings, while making serious facial expressions and vaguely muttering “Hmmm; that is consistent with our goals and objectives.”

Suggestions?

Eddie really does have a dog: Chico.

Last week, when he came to get a bowl of beans at the Red Brick Church, Eddie sat with me and repeated himself endlessly and shook my hand and mentioned Jesus and God, Jesus and God, Jesus and God. He smelled of alchohol.

I asked if I could take his picture.

No.

Yes…only if you take a picture of me and my dog Chico.

Never having seen Chico, I said that I was surprised that he has a dog. Eddie said Chico goes with him everywhere, that he has come along every time Eddie has visited us.

Never having seen Chico, I concluded that Eddie was insane.

Chico is a Rotweiler, said Eddie.

Oh. Good. Comforting.

Next week, said Eddie, smelling of alchohol, I will bring Chico and you take our picture.

Sure. Whatever.

This week Eddie showed up, smelling of alchohol, and got in the food line and made himself a glorious taco salad. Someone sat with him.

I went outside. Sometimes I just walk around and make sure none of the little kids, especially Dede, are running into traffic.

There was Chico, tied up to a metal stairway next door. Very large, very Rotweilerian, and very real.

Eddie came up the stairs. He gloated. He shook my hand, smelling of alchohol.

The only other discussion necessary was whether the picture shall be called Eddie and Chico, or Chico and Eddie. There was some disagreement on this matter.

Eddie wanted his name first as he is the brains of the outfit.

I pointed out that, as they walk down the street, Chico comes first.

Touche.

Thus, here it is: Chico and Eddie.

We have put together the beginnings of a site for the Red Brick Church. Here: Red Brick Church

So far there is not much to see except a couple fine fotoze and a cool messageboard that no one is using.

The hope is that we will have sites for Midtown, Church of God-Fellowship, The Rock, and the food pantry.

Here are a few phun phax I dug up from the county library.

The Red Brick Church was constructed in the 1890’s and dedicated in about 1897. At that time it was called Third Presbyterian.

There were, obviously, two other Presby churches in town, and the North Hill neighborhood was just getting built. Folks from the first and second churches cooperated in starting a house fellowship somewhere in the hood, which quickly grew and moved to a building on the corner of Stanton and Mason–no longer there.

It became clear that this would soon become a church in its own right, and the two existing churches threw their weight, some of their members, and presumably some money as well, into the project. Thus Third Presbyterian was born.

It is interesting to me that at its inception the Red Brick Church was a cooperative effort among various churches to bring the gospel to a neighborhood.

So it is once again.

For two or three weeks now this guy named Joe, who lives on the corner, has been asking Linda to send me over to his house. He has a garage full of stuff he is trying to get rid of: an old cheesy reed organ thing, tons of teen size clothes, computer desks, school supplies…

He wanted to give it all to the Red Brick Church. The organ, which he was especially keen on giving us, may be marginally useful. The garments will certainly go to the clothes pantry.

We have the ministry of letting people give us stuff.

I read once, somewhere, that it is silly to try always to be the giver, the provider: as if by receiving we were admitting that we were not self-sufficient and therefore our news of the Kingdom became thereby suspect. God’s people should have it together.

But what about Cornelius from the Book of Acts? He found God not in depths of wretchedness but in generosity. He was already well-known in his own community for good works, before he ever met Peter and heard the gospel. His own generosity was a path to understand God’s better generosity.

+Joe and Tina were generous yesterday. Be generous to them+

Then, walking up the road to find a crew to haul the clothes, I heard a yell from the other side of the street. Hey. You. Hi. Get over here. Come hang out on the porch.

Tanya and Heather were doing the nice weather porch thing, along with James from Dayton. I found out that our Saturday visits are (for at least some on the block) an expected and anticipated event. The most natural thing in the world is that Tanya, Heather and James should yell Hey. Further, James noticed the students picking up trash. He wanted to know what I paid them. Nothing, James. They just come and do it.

James had PR suggestions for me. Since you have this thing going, make a flyer and hand it out and everyone will know what you are doing. Shut up James, says Tanya. The whole neighborhood already knows, says Heather. They lecture him; they make sure James knows: the Red Brick Church is being, incrementally, accepted among the people on this street.

+To God be glory forever+

On a wire, stretched two hundred feet across the pond, fifty pigeons sat lined up in a row: All facing the same way, abiding by such tradition and discipline as pigeons know.

This is the pond by which I walk twice a day, but never have fifty pigeons sat in a row on the wire.

When they all landed there, they set up a little sway in the wire. Pigeons, while sitting in rows, shift their weight forward and backward by raising and lowering their tail feathers: feathers straight down to move weight forward, feathers straight back to move weight backward.

They all felt the sway, and didn’t approve. To correct things, they all did the tail feather maneuver. Like pumping your legs on a swing, it adds energy to the sway. To which they all responded, almost in unison, with more feathery compensation. Which increased the sway.

There they all sat, fifty pigeons in a row, consternated and concerned, creating their own turbulence and then over-reacting in unison, which alone kept the sway alive.

Ray was found weeping in his parked car.

Some students, who were spending their Saturday afternoon picking up trash along Stanton Street, saw him.

How are you?

Not well.

They invite him in. He sits in the sanctuary, flooded in colored light, near the back. He has been weeping and his eyes are red. Someone prays for him.

He takes communion, weeping the whole time, gazing at the cross.

I meet him after the service. He needs little invitation, and no coaxing, before he says what the matter is.

The matter is, he has been clean, free of crack cocaine since July 25. But last night he went to the bar, had a few beers, followed that up with a fight with the girlfriend, and she walked out.

Alone, buzzed, depressed, he considered a quick suicide, but instead bought a rock of crack and smoked it. A twenty-dollar rock, or just a twenty, as he says.

He smoked it all up and got another one.

The first time you smoke crack you get the most unbelievable high: they call it the full-body orgasm times one hundred.

And then you spend the rest of your life trying to get it again, but you can’t. You’re in love but it doesn’t love you back. But still you have to have it. You live for it. You die for it.

Oh, by the way, during the full-body you-know-what, while the crack was thrilling you, it was also quietly burning up the neurons in the part of your brain that feels happiness and satisaction. Surprise! Normal things, good innocent things, like playing and nature and accomplishments and friendships and food, are now insipid to you.

Crack has just made itself your one source of joy. You are now a single-minded devoted disciple of crack, dead to the world. To whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life…

Ray says that he has not been happy for a long time…

To do his twenties, Ray spent the money for the electric bill. He never did that before. He calls himself a “functional addict” which means that he still goes to work and doesn’t steal. He is proud that he has never stolen. But they say that everything you are proud never to have done, you will eventually do. You will do it all, all the low horrible things that you swear you will never do.

Ray, you will do it all.

But he is also broken. He weeps repeatedly. He prays for God to forgive him and change him.

I ask him when he last ate. Well, he was up all night and ate something at six this morning. We go downstairs to the dinner. The basement is already full. He says he is a picky eater and takes a few potato chips, of which he eats maybe two. Time for a cigarette.

We go outside and he smokes. He is way across the yard from the children and worries that he is smoking too near them. He asks my permission to speak freely, meaning, can he swear in front of me. He says bullshit and watches to see if I will condemn him.

Eddie comes by. Eddie is on the same road, but much farther gone. Eddie is deeply lined in his face, and skinny, and walks unrhythmically. He shakes hands with everyone over and over. Yeah, hey, hi, you’re a gentleman, thanks a lot, great to be here, shake my hand. He works a crowd like a politician. But this isn’t Eddie; this is Eddie’s robot, the mechanical part of him that the addiction needs to keep going. The addiction gladly kills all that is human, keeping only the smooth scheming parts, the clever negotiating parts, so that the body can get a little food and live another day and keep the addiction alive.

Ray knows this will be him.

He tells me where the crack houses are in this neighborhood, and then says this place gets bad after dark and he wants to leave now.
Gets bad? What could you meet that is worse than this?

He shakes my hand, not scheming like Eddie, but heavy and slow and sad. He walks away.

What Bible verse would you read to Ray?

What promise would you make him?

What could you do to heal his hunger for his own destruction?

+Lord have mercy+

+Christ have mercy+

“Jesus of Nazareth…went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Ezekiel 33:(1-6)7-11
Psalm 119:33-48 or 119:33-40
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 18:15-20

The readings from the Book of Common Prayer often convey to me a kind of crescendo, a sort of gradual getting louder, beginning with some faint idea from the distant Old Testament past, made more personal and immediate in the Psalm, amplified by some practical instruction in the Epistle, and finally reaching full volume in the Gospel, where we hear what Jesus has to say on the subject.

Not a bad arrangement after all: try to get the big picture and then save the last word for Jesus.

And what is our crescendo today?

We begin in weird old Ezekiel, obsessive measurer of imaginary temples and watcher of flying wheels with compound eyes. Listen, Ezekiel, says God, you’re like the lookout tower guy for your people, and if you warn them to live right and they’re too stupid to listen, then they’ll die and it will be their fault. But if you don’t warn them they’ll still die and it will be your fault. The point, Ezekiel, is: tell them to turn away from evil and they will live, which I vastly prefer to having them die.

So much for Ezekiel.

If Ezekiel says “turn form evil and live”, then the Psalm says “here is where to turn; here is where life is.”

If you get stuck on the appalling arrogance of lines like “I keep your law with all my heart” then it may be worth noting that this was probably written as a teaching-song. It was likely intended to instruct people (maybe even junior priests) in devotion to the law of God. As such, maybe it’s fair to look at such lines as hopes, aspirations, and not as a record of accomplishments.

And after all, there is some refreshing humility in here, too: “Incline my heart to your decrees and not to unjust gain” at least admits the possibility of the Psalmist’s susceptibility to dishonesty and greed.

But the main point to get from the Psalm is the way these guys really believed that their lives were somehow bound up with things God said. Every verse contains some reference to God speaking, and the good things that happen when he does. Look for a moment at the poetry: verse 37 talks of finding life in his ways; verse 40 of commandments preserving life; verse 43 even puts hope in God’s judgements. (Aren’t God’s judgements the things we’re trying to escape? What would it mean to put hope in them?)

On to Romans. Here is a practical passage. We could read it as the way of living out the Psalm. These are the life-giving actions that grow from the life-giving commands of God. What’s more, they are almost all things to do to somebody, or refrain from doing to somebody. They are intended to be lived out in community. Think about it: how much of the Romans passage becomes meaningless if one is not meaningfully connected with others? Mutual affection? Contribute to needs? Hospitality? Rejoice with these, weep with those?

At this point the crescendo may just begin to make sense. For in living in community, in sharing life together, nothing is more inevitable than conflict.

So we come to the Gospel and Jesus is talking about solving conflict. And when you read it, just printed there on a piece of paper, it is the most obvious bit of common sense under the sun: Got a problem with someone? Go work it out. Go talk.

But you know already, from things that have happened in your life, probably still happening, that this is one of the hardest commands of Jesus. Almost nobody actually does this consistently.

We prefer the company (or shall we call it the fellowship?) of the like-minded, who will share and perhaps amplify our sense of outrage at the offender. How nice to be affirmed in our anger, to have our sense of injury coaxed to vigorous life. How comforting to find out that the offender has many other faults that had never even occured to us. The human heart eagerly feasts on such poisonous dishes.

Lord have mercy on us all.

Remember where we are in our crescendo of Scripture. Ezekiel: turn from evil and live. Psalm: life is in what God says. Romans: God says, live like this.

So where are we with the Gospel? How about: If you want to turn from evil and live, and find life in God, and live out his ways, here is one of the most life-giving things you could ever do: go figure out how to make peace with the offender.

Let me tell you story that is life-giving for me. A few years ago a guy asked me to lunch, in a super-tense, something-ominous-on-the-agenda kind of way. I knew what it was. We had organized seom worhsip gatherings on campus, and they were different from what he was used to, and it worried him that something dangerous was going on. So I sat waiting for him in the restaurent and I wanted to die. He was late so I just had to sit there and wait. I felt enormous waves of dread as I anticipated the conversation.

He came in and we got sandwiches, which did not taste good at the time, and he started telling me his worries. He was so upset that he was almost incoherent and he was actually yelling at me in this restaurent. But he was trying to get some genuine concerns across, and it was hard work, nasty hard work, for both of us. After a really long uncomfortable time, he came to an understanding that what we were doing was not nearly so dangerous as he had thought. He still had some concerns but he was OK with them, and with me. And he paid for my sandwich and gave me a huge hug, and he saved our friendship by just doing the really hard thing Jesus says to do.

That is the way of Jesus: to overcome evil with good. It is the hardest thing in the world, because evil is quick and efficient and fun, and also much more in line with our instincts. Evil is always the first thing we think to do when conflict breaks out. Good is slow and quiet, and doesn’t smash through the window like Batman and mow down its enemies. Good is, frankly, just a little bit boring. Good is slow and patient. Like growing tomatoes.

And what of those situations (may they be forever cursed!) where you actually go to the offender and talk and do the right thing, the difficult thing, and instead of meeting honesty and reconciliation you meet evasiveness, the facts cleverly re-arranged, a moving target of smiling denial? Or even anger and malevolence?

Inside the church, where everyone acknowledges a common leadership (so you can take one or two with you) and a common body ( so you can tell on the offender), Jesus at least gives a procedure, although I have to tell you that it doesn’t really work all that well. I don’t mean that it fails to do what Jesus intends; just that it’s messy and painful. You lose sleep and your stomach gets screwed up, and these episodes don’t all have happy endings.

Worst of all, the conflict often does not take place within one church, or for some reason it seems impossible to follow procedure; every path is a dead end, and we honestly do not know the right thing even is.

What to do? What is the way of Jesus?

Thanks be to God, if we can’t go forward we can at least go backward. We can at least go backward in our readings, and find something life-giving to do.

Persevere in prayer. Bless those who persecute you. Weep with those who weep. Do not be haughty; associate with the lowly. Do not repay evil for evil. Live at peace if you can, and if you can’t, at least don’t take revenge.

Treat him like a Gentile or a tax collector, and then think for a minute how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors.