(85) Transparency

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Transparency, originally shared on January 28, 2021. It was the eighty-fifth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Have you ever passed off a fault as a feature? Have you ever made a virtue out of a necessity? Today, we’re going to look at living a transparent life, and why it’s useless to do anything else.

   It’s an odd time in the pandemic. We have a vaccine, but we don’t have a vaccine, at least not enough. The governor of Florida has placed taken steps to discourage vaccine tourism, though I would think Florida would welcome tourism right now. I guess economic needs are overcome by survival needs there. We are weighing the same pros and cons of reopening, with some restrictions, some of our businesses.

   Our political leaders, the people in the arena right now, are trying to balance economic needs with survival needs, and it’s easy for the Monday morning quarterbacks to be critical. It remains to be seen how much of the state-wide allowances will be allowed in LA which very recently was the most infected urban area in the United States. I guess the best we can hope for is transparency in the making of those decisions for the greatest good for the greatest numbers of people.

   Transparency is a value that is expected of us in our culture. To be transparent means to say, “I am what you think. I have nothing to hide”.  If we say to someone, “I can see right through you.”, it means that the person being spoken to does have something to hide, but their hypocrisy is transparent to us.

   Transparency is a value in the Christian life, as well. Only we hope that people will see God when they look through us. Then again, maybe it’s more accurate to say that we are mirrors. Who we are is transparent only to a point. It’s what’s behind the transparent part that reflects the light of God to the world.

   You have probably wondered about my voice. Some have said it sounds tired, like I’ve been screaming at the big game and gargling with drain cleaner, it’s just what I have come to think of as the product of allergies. I’m doing what my ENT doctor has prescribed, and I just sent for a book on voice development. I’ve also begun to think of my voice as “gravely”. It’s not a problem. It’s a feature! Making a fault into a feature is not part of a transparent life. It’s deflection, unless one is resigned to their circumstances or has just given up.

   The same can be said of making a virtue of necessity. Should I feel virtuous that I’m not going doing something when I don’t actually have a choice. Our if I have to do something good that I don’t want to do, should I call that a virtue?  It is not being transparent when I seek to “virtue signal” when in fact I have no choice.

   King Duncan, one of my favorite preachers, once told the story of the night Michael Jordan scored 69 points in a single game. Stacey King, a rookie for the Chicago Bulls, was called off the bench near the end of the game and went in, got fouled, and scored one point. He later told reporters, ““I’ll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points.”

   Our transparency as Christians comes from our belief that it us useless live any other way. The one relationship that defines who we are is our relationship with God. Can we hide anything from God?

   We are utterly transparent before God. The good thing about this is that we don’t need to hide anything. We bring everything we are before God as an offering, or as an area in need of repentance and reform.

   Here’s the story of how King David, ancient Israel’s greatest King, an ancestor of Jesus and the model for the Messiah that many expected, was selected and anointed by God, acting through the prophet Samuel:

*1 Samuel 16:1-13

   I’ve been working on a podcast version of these videos. I’ve recorded the first 40 or so of the 84 videos we’ve done and expect to be caught up by the end of February. The audio recording software I use is called Audacity.

   I record each podcast in segments. Audacity has a button you can click on that will compress all the segments onto one screen, so that you can get the big picture.

   It also has a feature that allows you to expand the segments way out so that you can see just a few seconds of audio on the screen.

   I thought that seeing the whole thing in one page is kind of the way God sees our lives. God sees us in the context of our entire life all at the same time.

   But then, it occurred to me that God is also with us in every millisecond of our lives and sees every little thing about us.

   God sees everything about us, our most authentic selves, everyone in the whole human race. Everyone who has ever existed, exists now, and will every exist. Everyone.

   All we can do is to live authentic Christian lives, not Church lives or culturally acceptable lives or people pleasing lives, but authentic Christian lives filled, empowered and led by the Holy Spirit, God’s personal ongoing presence for good in the world, the streams of living water. Christians, as the bumper sticker says, aren’t perfect, just forgiven.

   All we can do is to live so that we will not be ashamed before God to live transparent lives, because that’s the only lives we can live before God.

   And, God loves us, and came to be with us as fully and human and fully divine. God came to suffer and to die for us in all our authenticity, all our inauthenticity, all our honesty and all our illusions, all of our sinfulness and all of our saintliness. All of it.

   King David, anointed by God, who saw his heart and sees ours, is credited with writing most if not all of the Book of Psalms, in the 138^th, beginning at the 13^th verse, we find:

*Psalm 139:13-18

(84) Going Viral

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Going Viral, originally shared on January 25, 2021. It was the eighty-fourth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Bad news travels fast. So do viruses. How can we make the Good News go viral?

   Our regional celebration, virtual of course, of the international Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in the LA area was broadcast yesterday afternoon. It was hosted virtually by the Saint Andrew Russian Greek Catholic Church in El Segundo, and most of those with leadership roles read from their homes. My wife, Rev. Sally Welch, a UCC/Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) clergyperson in active retirement and our son had leadership roles in that service.

   Last year, we went to a physically present week of prayer service at the Church of the Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church in Beverly Hills in the afternoon. That morning, I had lead worship and preached at Solheim Lutheran Home in Eagle Rock. I checked my phone after the service and found the shocking news. Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna and seven other people had died in a helicopter crash that morning.

   People at the week of prayer service were just getting the news when we got there and you could feel the shock and grief of the City of Los Angeles and well beyond starting to descend. It was January 26^th, and we will mark the anniversary tomorrow.

   The story spread quickly. It went viral.

   We will tell the story of a man who lived and exemplary life. We will grieve and mourn the lost possibilities of that life. We will rightly tell the story of where we were when we first heard the bad, bad news.

   Two thousand years ago, a promising young rabbi with extraordinary gifts was killed not by accident, but by as the result of a conspiracy among the best of us. He was tortured and executed by people who believed that they were acting for the common good, and maybe a little bit for their own good as well. But, as it turned out, that young rabbi didn’t lose his life. And, it wasn’t taken away from him. He gave it, as the final sacrifice. His blood drained out to restore the relationship with God for which humanity was created, to take our well-deserved punishment unto himself, to bridge the gap between God and humanity for a living faith with the one true living God. He was God, fully God, and he was a human being, fully human being.

   We tell that story, the story of the violent death of a promising young man as the good Good news. He gave his life out of love for the world, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life starting now and continuing in the world to come. He was fully human, and he was fully God.

   Jesus told this parable about how the Good News of God’s already and not yet reign goes viral with this story:

*Matthew 13:1-9

   In Jesus day, in an agrarian economy, everyone had or had seen seed being sown. It wasn’t planted the way it was today. It was thrown onto the ground from a bag at the sowers hip outward, in a sweeping motion. It was cast, broadly, or broadcast, like this episode.

   What would happen to the seed, it would depend on the media on which it fell, open ground where they got eaten by birds, rocky ground, thorns, or good soil.

   What would happen to the seed that grew in good soil? It would yield more grain, some of which could be eaten, some sold, and some used to grow more grain.

   How much grain would depend on how much seed was saved for planting.

   Maybe you’ve heard the story of the invention of chess? It’s been told in many varieties in many cultures. The story goes that when the inventor brought the game of chess before a great king, the king offered to give the inventor anything he wanted.

   The inventor laid out the chess board and placed a grain of wheat on the first square. “All I want is this grain, plus two grains on the second square, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and so on. Doubling with every square.” That’s all you want?, said the king. And he ordered it done.

   As the king’s servants started loading the grain it soon spilled over the board and then the throne room and then the palace. Until the king said enough. Today, it’s estimated that the number of grains, doubled 64 times, needed to fulfill the king’s promise would be 2,000 times the world’s entire production in a year.

   That’s how thing go viral. Like the world-wide coronavirus pandemic. The curves for coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths have all been going down in LA County. They are all still way up there, but the numbers have been going down. Our main concern now is getting the vaccine and being sure there will be enough of it for the second shot.

   Do you remember the Pantene shampoo commercial where a woman’s face appears on the screen and she says, “I told someone”, then there are two of her on the screen and the faces say, “And I told someone”, then there are four faces on screen and they say “And I told someone, until the whole screen is filled with little pictures of the same face? That’s viral.

   And that’s how we bring the gospel message to the world.

   This isn’t just mathematics. As we all know, not everyone comes to a living faith in God just because we share our. But nobody comes to a living faith in God if we don’t

   People have to open their hearts, not just be open to it that’s too passive; but open their hearts as a fertile place to receive the seed of faith that God gives.

   Here’s how Jesus explains the meaning of the parable of the sower a few verses later in Matthew 13:

*Matthew 13:18-23

   Here it’s the “Why?” questions that matters, not the “How?”.

   The answer to the “Why?” questions is the mighty works of God, the presence and person of the Holy Spirit.

   The answer to the “How” questions can only come because the same Holy Spirit has opened our sinful hearts to receive the gifts of God.  

   We invite someone to come and see the real thing. And they tell somebody. And they tell somebody. That’s how the message of the Gospel goes viral.

   Some people say, “I don’t talk about my faith. I live it”. And, that’s good. We need people to live what they believe. And, that might work. People might sometimes connect the dots between what you do and Jesus Christ by themselves.

   But it’s unlikely that you are showing your faith, you’re only showing people that you think you’re a good person. But that’s not enough because, (A.) no one’s good but God. And (B.) no one’s good enough to earn heaven. Only a relationship can do that. Only faith can do that. Only the faith that produces good works can do that. Don’t let the cart get in front of the horse. Putting the cart in front of the horse gets nothing done. People only come to faith when they see your why before they see your what.

   At some point, we have to connect the dots. We have to name the name of God in order for people to come to a living faith in God, and not a standard of good works by which they feel only the burden of never being sure they have been good enough.

   How do we make our message of redemption viral?

      First, we can’t change human nature. We can only appeal to a better one.

      Second, we can only pronounce a work of healing when people pronounce a word of their own dis-ease.

      Third, we have to name the name of Jesus and invite people to know Him. Someone you know, a friend or a relative, might be ready to respond right now.

   One of my favorite stories is a classic stewardship story from Garden Grove, in Orange County.

   Rev. Robert Schuller was raising money for the construction of The Chrystal Cathedral. The building was reportedly going to cost $16,000,000.00, a huge some of money then, and a staggeringly large amount then, especially for church construction.

   One morning, the pastor of a Lutheran church in Garden Grove opened his paper and read that a member of his congregation had given $1,000,000.00 to the Crystal Cathedral Building Fund.

   He called the member and asked if he could meet him for lunch.

   After some small talk, the pastor asked, “You know, you’ve been very generous to our church, and I’m very grateful and appreciative of your generosity, but I saw in the paper this morning that you gave a million dollars to Rev. Schuller’s church, and you’ve never given anywhere near that amount to your own church, and I wondered “Why?”

   The man looked a little surprised and said, “Because he asked me.”

   It often works the same way with sharing our faith.

   There are likely people that you know right now who just need to be asked, who want a story to tell, and who would respond to your invitation and to your story. They just need to be asked.

   They need your invitation to come to their epiphany. We’re still in the Epiphany Season in the Church, a season that we celebrate the manifestation of God.

   Encourage someone you know to get out of God’s way and give their heart, their inner self, to God. Get out of the way and receive the manifestation of God, the Epiphany, in a transformed life, a gift from God.

   That is how the Good News of Jesus Christ goes viral.

(83) A New Administration

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for A New Administration, originally shared on January 21, 2021. It was the eighty-third video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Our nation has a new administration today. What does that tell us about evangelism?

   Yesterday, we witnessed a peaceful transition of power. It was a day filled with tension and drama.

   Some watched in surprise as their world changed unexpectedly.

   Others saw everything they had hoped for unfold.

   For some, the world they knew had fallen away and changed forever.

   For others, it was a confirmation of their long-held longings and a restoration of hope.

   And all of that. All of that is demonstrated in a scene from the beginning of Jesus ministry, described at the beginning of the gospel of Mark, in Galilee.

*Mark 1:14-20

   Some watched four sons, two pairs of brothers, walk away from their jobs and their families, families who would never be the same.

   Others, Simon Peter and Andrew, and James and John, the two pairs of brothers, saw something in Jesus that was everything they had hoped for.

   For some, the messiah promised for a thousand years, including 300 years of prophetic silence, might have come to their neighborhood ready to act, but he sure didn’t look like the military leader they expected.

   Others saw the messiah, now present and presenting a new possibility for the future. God’s reign. Finally.

   The Kingdom of God was at hand, right there looking at them, and they were suddenly under a new administration.

   John the Baptist, the one who prepared the way, had been arrested by Herod Antipas, an act of violence just before the arrival of a new administration. Herod Antipas was a regional client ruler governing Galilee, working for the Romans, a region of northern Israel that included Nazareth, a region widely regarded as the wrong side of the tracks. Herod Antipas was subject to the Romans own political king, King Herod who ruled the nation of Israel from its capital, Jerusalem.

   Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news”.

   That’s a pretty succinct message, but it contained everything that Jesus was about.

   He walked along the Sea of Galilee, 7 miles wide and 13 miles long, about 20 north east of Nazareth, and saw some fishermen, Simon and his brother, Andrew. He said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately (a word Mark uses 40 times in his short 16-chapter gospel), they left their nets and followed him.

  Conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein once said, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time." Was there this urgency in Jesus’ voice? Was the spirit of God moving within the fishermen? Was it a mid-life crisis?

   I’ve read that when someone who was born blind receives their sight, one of the hardest things for them to grasp is the difference between abstractions and reality, the difference between an apple and a picture of an apple, for example.

   How did these fishermen see in Jesus the reality of the thing their people had hoped for? Not the idea, but the reality? Revealing the fullness of that reality was a task that would fill the rest of Jesus 3-year public ministry, right through his death on the cross for the sin of the world.

   He walked a little farther and saw two other brothers, also commercial fishermen, James and John, and immediately (that word again) he extended the same invitation to them, and they left everybody and everything, and they followed him.

   That’s the whole story. So, what’s its message? Don’t let Jesus find you at work? Be careful what you hope for? Anything must be better than the life of a commercial fisherman?

   Lots of people enjoy fishing as a hobby, for some peace and quiet, or for some “free” fish.

   Because, you know what they say: Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish…and you can sell them fishing equipment for the rest of their lives.

   A friend of our family joined the Coast Guard after 9-11. He was stationed in Alaska. He wanted to serve our country, guard its shores, and protect its citizens. He eventually left the Coast Guard, disillusioned, after he found that almost all his time spent picking up commercial fisherman strung out on amphetamines. Commercial fishing is a demanding job and commercial fisherman can’t afford to sleep when fish have been found.

   Commercial fishing would have given the disciples a decent and even middle-class life, though. Their product was always in demand and James and John’s father Zebedee was at least doing well enough that he could hire employees outside his family. And we know that their livelihoods weren’t lost when they followed Jesus. What did the disciples do after Jesus was crucified and died and after three days rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and they didn’t know what was going to happen next? They went back to fishing. Jesus found some of them on the beach, and had breakfast with them.

   Have you ever gone fishing? What’s the most important thing you have to learn? Be quiet, use the right bait, leave the dynamite at home? Shure, but what about before you do any of those things? If you want to catch fish, you have to go to where the fish are. If you want to catch fish, you have to go to where the fish are.

   People used to say, and in fact I’ve said it in sermons myself, that the church isn’t a museum for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners. Then, I read a different version of that saying, “The church isn’t a hospital for sinners, waiting for them to come in through the doors. The church is more like the paramedics and EMT’s, going to where the sick and broken people are and bringing them to a place where they can be made whole. If you want to catch fish, you have to go to where the fish are. If, as evangelist and ecumenist D.T. Niles said, evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread, we have to go to where our fellow beggars are.

   We met a native Alaskan artist in Alaska after doing a little exploring in an off-the-beaten-track part of a small town a few years ago. We bought some art from him and talked with him in his shop for a long time. He said that he had to work lots of jobs to cobble together a living, but that one job he did not like doing was fishing for crabs. Crabs are bottom feeders and will eat anything. A buddy of his prevailed on him to help him fish for crabs one day, though and a storm came up suddenly on the ocean. He found himself thrown out of the boat and his thick, down-filled coat became saturated and started to pull him under, down to where the crabs were, his worst fear. His friend tried throwing him a rope, but the sea was too rough, and he kept missing. He prayed and begged God to save him. Just then, a huge swell rose under him and literally threw him back into the boat. He landed on his feet. That’s a witness.

   Why did you become a Christian? Some of us can’t think of a time when we weren’t Christians. Why do you remain a Christian? How did your relationship with God support you in a time of loss or doubt? When has Jesus rescued you? When has he saved you from your worst fear, when all seemed lost, or from going down a wrong path?

   What made you think that it was Jesus working in your life? That’s your witness. We don’t need dramatic conversion stories. We just need to tell our stories, particularly with people who are going through similar things to what we did. Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread and, in Martin Luther’s last words, “We’re all beggars, that’s for sure.”

   Pastors can’t do it. Study after study shows that when a pastor shares his or her faith, people think, well, that's the pastor's job. When a pastor tries to evangelize, depending on a person’s experience or stereotypes, they’re often seen as having ulterior motives, someone just wanting more members for more money or more prestige in the community.

   The testimony of a credible witness, that is a friend or a relative, from someone who is seen as someone with nothing to gain personally, is responsible for, depending on the study, 80-85% of all those who come to a living faith in God.

   How did you first come to faith in God? It might have been through the influence of a pastor, or a church program, or a church that was the nearest Lutheran church in your neighborhood, but someone wanted to share something good with you and chances are it was the witness of a friend or of a relative.

   I’m not passing the buck here, and I know how hard it is. We all want to be liked, we want to be accepted and not looked upon as being weird or in school or at work, worse: divisive.
   I have a lapel pin that my dad wore. It was part of a popular evangelism program in the early 60’s. The lapel pin is in the shape of a fishhook. You can still get them online for less than a couple of bucks. I think that wearing them was supposed to be a conversation starter, but I don’t know that it would be very effective today. Any conversations that came up, I think, would sound like a trick, or that was something your church wanted you to do. I think that, today, they would be more effective as a message to the wearer to remember who they are, by remembering who they follow.

   I think that there are few enough of us that the world might be curious. They might be hungry for community and open to an invitation to meet Jesus at this stage in the pandemic, where we are finally seeing a decline in cases, hospitalizations and deaths in LA County but saw the second-highest number of national coronavirus deaths in a single day yesterday. And that they might be surprised to learn that there are Christians who aren’t like the ones they see on TV and other media.

   Disciples didn’t get invited to follow a teacher in Jesus day, or in any day in Israel’s history. They made the request to follow. What does that say to us about the nature of the Kingdom of God that Jesus invites disciples who are not powerful or learned, but fishermen? That Jesus is the embodiment of the kingdom, where God reigns, and that we see in his person and in his actions the way things are supposed to be, a restoration of the way God created things to be, created us to be?

   That is the kingdom. It’s Jesus. It’s the living, defining relationship with God made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross.

   And what was the message? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent; and believe in the good news.”

   What are we to do in response to the inbreaking, already but not yet Kingdom of God? Repent, turn away from that which is killing us, and believe, that is, to live in that living relationship.

   The kingdom Jesus spoke of was not a dictatorship, it was a relationship. Jesus said little about God as king, but lived a life of a servant. He spoke of God as “Abba”, a Aramaic language term spoken in love for a father by a child.

   In fact, in this regard, Jesus was something of an embarrassment to his disciples. Remember the tunic that didn’t have a seam that the soldiers gambled for at the cross. I had thought it was because a seamless garment was expensive. Apparently, that’s not the case. I read an article that year called “What Would Jesus Wear?”, or something like that. It said that the robe Jesus is described as wearing was usually worn by babies because its seamlessness made it comfortable for them and as an undergarment beneath an outer tunic as an adult. Jesus only wore the seamless undergarment. He had nothing to protect him. He was an embarrassment to his disciples.

   We are, all of us disciples of Christ. How do we live that? How do we share our faith and make disciples in a time of social isolation, during an international pandemic and a time of national crisis? How do we lift up Jesus in a time of increasing secularization? Has Jesus become, once again, something of an embarrassment to us?

   You may have heard that the Chinese character for crisis is the same as that for opportunity.

   What in our various crises might lead people to want what we have to offer?

   Part of the answer is trinitarian.

   Our witness begins with a world view: that God created everything out of nothing, that he made human beings for a living relationship with the one true living God, that a real relationship required the ability to say “no”, and that’s exactly what people did, and that that’s how evil entered and continues to enter the world. That God tried starting over, an obvious punishment of many languages, liberation from slavery, prophets, priests, kings, all to motivate people to return to that relationship. When human beings did not, he came in human flesh, and suffered and die to pay the debt of all those “no’s” and heal the separation between God and human beings through the gift of that relationship, or “faith” to all who would receive it, sealed by baptism.

   Our witness is focused on Jesus death on the cross, a poor man condemned and executed unjustly, out of God’s love for this fallen world. That love is what we embody in response to the gift of God in Jesus Christ and is seen at work in our pioneering development of almost everything good in this world including orphanages, hospitals, universities, social service agencies, adoption agencies, foster care agencies, housing for the homeless and so on.

   Our power to live and do these things, though we are sinners, comes from the Holy Spirit, God’s ongoing personal presence for good in the world, dwelling within is and thereby making us also saints.

   These are our witness to the world. God is present and at work seeking people to follow him, in our past, in our present and in our future. And Jesus, fully God and fully human being, is making this same invitation to us to follow him every day.

   How do we disciples make disciples?

   You are probably watching this episode right now on Facebook, Zoom, or YouTube. Do you know how easy it is to forward these things to someone anywhere in the world who you know might benefit from a credible Christian voice, an invitation to faith, or simply a word of encouragement. OK, maybe not this week. They’ll hear this and might think you’re just doing this because you were told. But next week. That would be good.

   How do we become fishers of people?

   Go to where the people are both physically and in terms of their needs.

   Examine our lives and then tell our stories of need and grace, of guilt and forgiveness, of our pasts and of how God has given us our future.  Share your life with people as their servant, share your faith in God with them as a friend.

   Speak Jesus to them, the Kingdom of God, who comes to us both as our servant and as our friend, and in everything good.

   Invite them to know Him, and to come and live under a new administration.

(82) Homogeneous

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Homogeneous, originally shared on January 18, 2021. It was the eighty-second video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Being a homogeneous Church is not the opposite of being a polarized Church. They are the same. Today we’re going to talk about the path toward unity.

   Today is The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Not Martin Luther day. There’s a difference and, believe it or not, I’ve encountered people who didn’t know that. Martin Luther King exercised moral leadership. Remember that? He was a public theologian. Remember that?

   There is little of either today and we’re all on edge.

   Partly because of the pandemic, especially here in LA County, the most infected urban area in the country, where we are seeing some hope in slightly lower number of new cases and deaths, but lots of confusion with regard to who, when and where questions about the availability of the various vaccines.

   And, or course, because of our national crisis in the remain hours before the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

   It’s been said that the first to strike is the first to have run out of ideas.

   Please ponder that for a moment.

   I saw video of one of the thugs, or whatever they were, who stormed the Capitol on January 6^th, The Day of The Epiphany, screaming from the podium on the floor of the senate, “Jesus Christ! We invoke your name!”

   Let me be clear about something. That wasn’t a statement of faith. It was a statement of its opposite: superstition. Saying things in the name of Jesus, or in the name of God, or even in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit doesn’t make things happen. It’s not like in Harry Potter, where you say something in Latin and wave a stick and it happens.

   To say something, or call for something to be done, in the name of God, as in the Bible, means to say something that is in accord with God’s reality, God’s self. It means that what is about to be done is in accord with God’s will. As Pastor Rick Warren said, our prayers are not to ask God to bless what we are doing, they are to ask that we might do what God is blessing.”

   Do you think that those who violently and destructively entered our nation’s Capitol building without legitimate reason or authority from the American people, who injured those who were duly charged with protecting our nation’s legislative center, who destroyed and stole property, who searched for people to kill were acting in accord with the reality or will of God? I don’t.

   Nevertheless, I think it’s appropriate that we ask how we got to this place, and how we can get out of it.

   Almost 70 million people voted for Donald Trump. I do not believe that it is because they are all Christian White nationalists, or because they are Nazi’s or fascists, or because they are rich people who want to protect their privileged place in the world, or right-wingers looking to settle old scores.

   I do believe that many were and are exactly that, but not most. I think that most Trump supporters are people who felt they had no voice in the direction of our nation, that change had left them out, and that their values were be disregarded and disrespected. Much of Washington D.C. is built on reclaimed swamp land, hence the chants of the Trump campaign to, “drain the swamp.” Radical elements and thugs twisted and built on this discontent and took the movement over the cliff, but the mainstream discontent remains.

   People’s discontent doesn’t go away because they lose an election, not when what is at stake isn’t a piece of legislation but a worldview.

   How have the mainline, or oldline churches, like Lutherans, my denomination, responded? Many of them with the same disregard for the meaning of the 8^th commandment as the mainstream media. Did you ever listen to an entire speech of President Trump and then listen to how the mainstream media covered it? Why didn’t the Church speak out about that?

   Let me be clear about my feeling about President Trump. I think that he ran for office expecting to build his brand. When he actually won, he was in way over his head and that he was possibly the worst president in the history of the United States, but that it’s too soon to tell. Time and historians will have to make that determination.

   But I do think that he well may be the worst human being to ever have been president, that he placed himself above party and nation, and that his administration was heading toward the destruction of our democracy. I’m not sure that he was a fascist, though I think some of his followers were. I don’t think he was organized and singular in political purpose enough for that. I think he was more of a royalist. I don’t think he wanted to be a dictator; I think he wanted to be a king.

   I don’t think he was loyal to anyone but Donald Trump, and I don’t think that any of his followers, including the radicals, realized that until it was too late.

   So, now there are a lot of wounded, bitter, and confused Trump followers out there. The radicals will behave like any hurt and cornered creatures with few options and no clear path forward. They will be dangerous.

   But what about the rest, the mainstream followers who are our fellow citizens and, more importantly, our brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we want to be the voice of the voiceless, or only the voiceless who are currently in vogue?

   What voice is it that we want to raise?

   If we are the Democratic party at prayer, then not too much. Churches who are political and social service agencies using religious language and ritual, then not too much either.

   I believe that a church that focuses on being the Church, on changed lives, on the creedal beliefs that unite us first is a church that can demonstrate a way toward unity.

   The unity I am speaking of does not require uniformity. It does require an absence of my way or the highway approach, of my politics or you’re a Nazi or you’re a socialist approach. It requires a unity in a common relationship with the one true living God in which we can find common purpose in the midst of political and social and racial diversity.

   How do we reach people, all people, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

   The Church Growth movement was a popular approach to church development in the mid-80’s to late 90’s. It focused on people-groups, rather than on individuals, and promoted the idea that evangelism must begin by understanding the culture of the people we are trying to reach and then communicate the Gospel in culturally appropriate ways.

   One of its most promoted and controversial elements from its earliest days was a concept called the Homogeneous Unit Principle. That principle, simply put, was “Birds of a feather flock together”.

   That is, people feel most comfortable with people most like themselves. People who are uncomfortable with one another will not flock together. People who are comfortable, will.

   This principle was opposed by those who said it was too success-oriented, its compromise with culture made it nearly indistinguishable (just using different language), not inclusive, and that its pandering focus on young adults weakened more traditional multi-generational churches. All of this was, and is, true in my opinion. Yet, in practice we have embraced it wholeheartedly, just pandering to different people, and resisted all attacks to it in such a way that I think has been a contributing factor to the formation of our current divisions, both within the Church and our nation, both with regard to flattening the coronavirus curve and our national political crisis.

   And, ironically, it contains a clue to how we can move forward toward being a more united Church and nation.

   In fact, it’s found in something we already have, no…something we already are. We are the Body of Christ. We are one body, with many members.

*I Corinthians 12:12-27

   What do we have to offer? Bias confirmation of your political and social beliefs, and the conviction that our political and social beliefs are confirmed by God? “Come and be like us because we are like you.” That's the church growth homogeneous unit principle. That is, even people who proclaim that they are completely inclusive are people who have an organizing principle that excludes people who don’t share their vision, or their political or social opinions.

  How do we focus on something that transcends those things? By building on a solid foundation.

   This is not a time to support anything but our core beliefs are common beliefs as children of God. Do you know who your brothers and sisters are? They are many kinds of members, parts of the Body of Christ. They are children of God. Do you know why you didn't know that? Because you don't know who you are. You are children of God, and therefore brothers and sisters of each other. You are the Body of Christ, one body with many members.
Do you want to focus on white supremacy, on fake news, Christian nationalism, voter intimidation, election fraud? Fine, but let’s start at a point of agreement, and show each other how our faith has led us to our practice. Let’s show us how we are acting in the name of God, and why and how we got there. And, most importantly, show us in a spirit of love for one another.

   There are lots of political parties and social service agencies. There is only one Church.

   There's only one Church with a capital “C”. The Body of Christ. Let’s be the paradoxical Body of Christ: many members who are also homogeneous because Christ is the head of the Body. Let’s focus on that alone, moving forward, one in Christ.

(81) Critical Thinking

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Critical Thinking, originally shared on January 14, 2021. It was the eighty-first video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   How is your life influencing the global pandemic and the future of our nation? How are you being influenced by it? What is critical thinking, and why is it critical that we be thinking during these tumultuous times.

   We are now at a point in our pandemic where our hospitals are being overwhelmed. One local hospital is now operating at 320% of capacity. Nationally, there were 4,300 confirmed Covid-19 deaths the day before yesterday with an average of 3,300 for the week. More than 23 million people have been infected, 1-million more than just four days ago. The State of California announced yesterday that everyone 65 and older could get the vaccine; the County of Los Angeles said not so fast, where’s the vaccine?

   Nationally, the president has now been impeached by the House twice, but it is unclear whether there will be one trial in the Senate. 10,000 national guard troops were going to be sent to the Capitol to provide security for the inauguration next week, then 15,000, and now 20,000, more than were stationed after 9-11. Every state capitol has been warned to be on alert for political violence.

   How do we sort out the truth about what is going on? Do we accept the word of those in authority? Which authorities do we listen to? That is the role of critical thinking, and there have been few times in our history when it has been more important than today.

   What is Critical Thinking. Well, first of all, it’s not being disposed to think critical thoughts.

   I think that the absence of critical thinking is one of the chief reasons we are in such a mess with both the surge of the coronavirus and our current national crisis.

   You can find lots of definitions online. This is the first paragraph of the definition given by the Foundation For Critical Thinking, which sounds like a very formidable organization, indeed:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

   That definition sounds to me, like a very stiff one, easily manipulated toward one’s own ends, which is exactly not what critical thinking is supposed to do.

   I’d like to propose some elements of what I think critical thinking is for those who want to search for truth with the prior belief that truth exists and can be known.

   Critical thinking is, as I conceive it, the first mark of an educated person. Not an indoctrinated one but an educated man of woman.

   It is critical to the understanding of the Bible, God, and the work of the Church.

   I’m going to list items that I think are the chief components of critical thinking, and how these elements are central to what it means to be a Christian.

1.    Humility: the ability to know that, as Paul says, we now see through a mirror darkly; we don’t and can’t know everything

2.    Even handedness: Can you see both sides of an issue? Debate students are required to be able to argue both sides of an issue.

3.    Independence: Do you wait to see what your group says, or your go-to person on the radio or on cable has to say before you form an opinion; did you receive a liberal arts education, and do you continue to consume media on both sides of an issue

4.    Fairness: being concerned that everyone gets a fair hearing of their ideas

5.    Responsibility: Taking responsibility for one’s own education. I didn’t realize this until seminary.

6.    Character: Not being influenced by factors external to he issue. To determine this, follow the money, also follow the popularity, the acceptance, the rewards, the promotions, the tenure. Ask who benefits and why, and how might that influence what they are, or I am, saying?

7.    Fearlessness: Another lesson I learned is to be fearless because you will always come back to God even if your thinking takes you down the rabbit hole for awhile; ask is it true and don’t be afraid. Trust the Truth.

8.    Openness: to avoid bias confirmation, looking only for arguments that support what you already believe. Don’t read any source as the gospel; let it tell you something is going on, but read widely, and trust your own education and who you are to put it into its appropriate context, both in history, and with you.

9.    Closed mindedness. The purpose of an open mind is to close it again. To look around and then to say, OK, this is what I’ll take responsibility for. Otherwise, you are just being irresponsible. Sorry California.

10.  Skepticism; Don’t just doubt everything to look cool, but doubt your doubts.

11.  Integrity: Be anti-parochial: to what extent are my opinions the result of never having been exposed to other ideas, of my hometown influences or my neighborhood, my college or university or high school, my friends;  to what extent did I come to believe these things for acceptance, or to preserve my livelihood. Do I go along to get along without even realizing it, or not wanting to think about it for fear of the consequences. Always ask yourself why, why do I think that?

12.  The ability to handle Paradox; Answers are not always either or: we are saints and sinners, Jesus is human and divine; the more we give the more we have. And, it means the ability to see connections where others see conflicts.

13.  Responsibility: Grow up: James Fowlers “States of Faith” indicates that many people have a middle school faith: tell me what everyone else believes and that’s what I’ll believe. That’s just conformity. Faith is a relationship that we accept, we can’t join it or inherit it.

14.  Discernment: The most important. The ability to strip away everything and allow God to speak, whatever the voice is. Be vulnerable, and let the ideas come. Use reason as a back-up check: What does the Bible say? What is the tradition of the Church? Discernment is less prone to manipulation than self-centered methods because it seeks influences outside ourselves, influences that don’t always confirm our biases, but sometimes convict us. It means listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, the personal presence of God for good. Living Water. It’s getting out of the way to let God form us to make the right decisions and guide us to that end. If someone can talk you into believing something, someone else can talk you out of it. There must be something more. That something more is the transcendent living God. Who do you trust? It’s been said that seeing is believing, but believing is also the filter through which we see. We don’t just see things as they are, we see things as we are.

   Look to who you are, first. And look to who you are by realizing whose you are. Be formed by the living water that is the Holy Spirit.

   Critical thinking means being the fully human persons we were created to be, and finding our true and trustworthy influences revealed by the person of the Holy Spirit in a living relationship with the living God.

   Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit, in two sections of John, Chapter 14,

*John 14:15-17, 25-27