Neither Conservative Nor Liberal

Yesterday, Dr. Lee Camp presented a sermon at the Otter Creek Church of Christ (where I'm a member). Here is a portion of that sermon. I transcribed it, so if there are any typos or bad punctuation, that's my fault.

Here's a link to the audio of the whole sermon.

"[W]e need to be a church, it seems to me, that is neither right nor left. Neither conservative nor liberal.
"We do not need to be a conservative church because we know that the status quo of the world does not need to be conserved. For the status quo and conventional wisdom often opposes the will of God. We cannot be a conservative church for there will be, even this hour, even today, there will be somewhere in the world, lots of places in the world in which a mother grieves the death of a starving child or one more child that dies of diarrhea because they didn't have clean water. We cannot be a conservative church that seeks to preserve that status quo. We cannot be a conservative church because today in Nashville there will be another young girl who sells herself to some more empty and broken man, himself. We cannot be a conservative church because there are still young men and young women who are sent off to wage war. We cannot be a conservative church because bullets still tear through inner-city homes. We have nothing at stake in conserving any of that. We cannot find our identity in being a conservative church because we don't want to preserve the margin, the gap between rich and poor. We don't want the continued marginalization of women. We don't want an idolatrous trust in swords and tanks and weapons of mass destruction. We do not wish to be conservative as such. Only until the Kingdom of God has come, in its fullness, can we ever be conservative as such.
"And yet. We cannot be a liberal church. We cannot be a liberal church that plays these games because we know that the way, THE truth, THE life has already come in the midst of human history. We know that THE way, THE truth and THE life has granted us all things needed unto life and godliness. We cannot be a liberal church because we have something better than tolerance: we have hospitality. The world doesn't need more tolerance; the world needs more hospitality. The world needs more people who will sit down at the table with people who have no one to sit down at the table with, and eat meals with them, to break bread with them, to drink wine with them, to share with them the goodness and the wisdom of God. We cannot be a liberal church because secularism will not save the world. Rather than humanizing the world in all of its arrogant conceit, secularism has simply taught us to demonize the other. Secularism has taught us how to slaughter the unborn and to slaughter men, women and children with an industrialized efficiency never dreamed of in the history of the world.
"We cannot be a conservative church because the Kingdom of God has not come. We cannot be a liberal church because we've been given the Way, the Truth and the Life in Jesus of Nazareth. We've been given this incredible calling to be the Body of Christ."

Amen.

Wish I had it on video

This morning I was driving on 440 East. Traffic was moving significantly more slowly than usual because of the rain. Understandable. Up ahead I saw that there were a few cars off the sides of the road - maybe a fender bender. Traffic slows for rubber necking, of course. Then. I saw a car - maybe two or three cars in front of me swerve off the left side of the road. Huh. Then the driver got out before the car stopped moving. Huh. He proceeded to run with the car as it swerved back into traffic - probably going 6-8 mph at this point. Evidently, we were going down a slight hill because the car picked up speed, but Mr. Driver did not. There was an unmanned car careening down the road at about 10-15 mph. Obviously, we all stopped to watch for a number of reasons. Eventually, the car swerved off to the right and struck a road sign. Mr. Driver catches up with the (now wrecked) car and calmly pulls out his cell phone. Perhaps I should've stopped to see if I could help, but I didn't. There were probably a half-dozen other cars already stopped right there anyways - not sure why.

Weird start to the day.

P.S. I tried to fit this into a 140-character twitter post. Wasn't happening.

Music

I love playing guitar. Not like I love baseball or love going to the pub. It is a romantic love - like being in love. On my way home from work, I daydream about playing - I can't wait to get there. When I'm finally there - just me and my inanimate friend making music together - I feel less lonely - like the angels are gathering to watch another creation. Love and music (and probably other things I haven't experienced) are like that - there's something entirely "otherly" about them that is a beneficial addiction. I really can't get enough.

At work...

This just happened:
Coworker sits across a cubic-hall from me.

Coworker: "Hey [boss], I got an extra sausage biscuit. Do you want it?"

Boss: "No thanks."

Coworker (to the whole department): "Hey! Does anyone want a sausage biscuit?"

[Pause]

Me: "Sure, I'll take it!"

Coworker (mumbled to boss): "You sure?"

Boss: "Yeah."

Then I get the biscuit.

Does that seem weird or am I just paranoid?

Funny to me

Last night I was hanging out with some friends. One young lady was telling a guy (who happens to be African-American) about a restaurant she recently visited: "Yeah, it's called Cuisine of India."

I said, "Actually, it's call Queen of India, she just translated it into ebonics for you."

That was really funny to me... and nobody else.

Surrounded

I just thought of a metaphor. I know metaphors are really overused these days, but every once in a while they're useful. I'm not sure this one fits in that category or not, but I wanted to jot it down anyways.

Being a Christian in this world is like being on second base. (By "this world", I don't mean 21st century America - I mean on Earth, post-Easter, pre-second-coming.) Follow me on this one. On second base, you are surrounded by the opponent. You're in peril, but you're "safe". You can't get too comfortable because you haven't reached your goal - you're waiting for something to happen so you can go home.

Yes, kinda cheesy, but anything that involves baseball and Christianity grabs my eye.

This weekend

Such a contrast!
I wish I had written some of this stuff down before I slept, but I'll do my best to remember what I can.
I attended three churches this weekend with my "band" (Vocal Union) and the opinions expressed here are completely my own and should no way be construed to be shared by other band-members. So there's your caveat.

We started the weekend at a very welcoming Baptist Church in Erin, Tennessee. They were friendly, they fed us and had a very nice building. The room we changed clothes in was about 134 degrees, but we weren't in there very long. As we started the concert, I was surprised by how responsive the crowd was. They were very energetic - even clapping in the middle of some songs when they were particularly moved. There were many "Amen!"s and "Yes Lord!"s. There was one physically handicapped gentleman in the front row who was particularly vocal - I was told he drove from North Carolina (about 6 hours) to get there! And he lead the chorus of enthusiasm. There's no way to say this without sounding racist, but it was a white congregation - and that made it a bit more surprising. Regardless of race, we love singing for these kinds of folks: those who give lots of good feedback. We sang about 8 or 9 songs and then took a scheduled break for the preacher to get up in front a take a "love offering." (See the note at the end of this post if you want to know what that means.)
He eventually got to the love offering, but Pavlov took over first: the preacher was standing in front of a crowd, so naturally he preached; and apparently, homosexuality was on his mind. He spoke for about 10 minutes or so, bringing out some old rally-cries I hadn't heard in a while: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" or "There's no such thing as a gay Christian!" and also some new ones I hadn't heard before: "I'm so homophobic, I won't even buy homogenized milk!" These were said with great pride and conviction - and were met with a response I had experienced only minutes before to messages like "No matter what we believe, what we think or think we know, the world will never see, unless Jesus' love we show." I still don't know what prompted this particular topic, but he was loud and proud.
I was extremely uncomfortable because the vibe of the message was one of hate; rallying the troops for battle against the gays. Regardless of your stance on gay-marriage or homosexuality in the church, etc, this sermon was the opposite of a Christian message because of the hate it conveyed and encouraged. Apparently he had made people uncomfortable before because he addressed this: "When you speak truth, people get uncomfortable!" That's true, but the converse isn't: (if people are uncomfortable, you're speaking truth). I guess I'm homophobic-phobic.

The next morning we worshiped with the "Church in Paris" (in Paris, TN). The color of their words, actions (and skin) was completely different from what we experienced the night before. The message we heard was one of faith, community, acceptance, encouragement and love. There was a collection taken for some medical bills that a family had recently incurred - $240 - put in a envelope and given to the wife of a man who had developed cancer. The worship was wonderful (with a really bad sound system), the generosity was astounding (with only a few people - who live in an economically disadvantaged town), the love was overwhelming. I kept thinking "I want some more of that!" - and I'd have to think that a non-Christian visitor would think similarly. I can't imagine anyone thinking that at the first church.

This is not intended to be a post about homosexuality or gay-marriage, but rather a church's response to the issue. Regardless of your opinion, please approach the issue with love and respect. The only people Jesus got mad at were those who were using his Father's name or place of worship incorrectly. He tried to correct those who were living immoral lives, but to do this he chose to use love and conversation instead of rhyming propaganda. Seriously, wwjd.


Note at the end: Okay, a lot of times, we'll sing for a church in exchange for an "honorarium" - which is a set amount of money to cover the cost of gas, food, and also so we can save up for the (all too frequent) bus-repair needs and also paying for the recording that we do. As the singers, we also get paid a little for our time after those other things are taken care of. When a church can't afford to do that, we'll sometimes work out what's called a "love-offering" concert - where there's just a collection taken up for our expenses.