The power of BLOGGING is the power of thinking in a moment, somewhere between a formal essay and an email chat.  This space gives a chance to think out loud through what comes to mind in a given week.  This New Years' week I actually find myself thinking about failure--about the ways I fail as a pastor and the ways the church fails as a church.  Blame it on the holiday.

I remember the rabbi in Mitch Albom's memoir, Have a Little Faith (Hyperion, 2011).  He was Albert Lewis.  After visiting with Rabbi Lewis over several years in answer to the rabbi asking him if he'd deliver the eulogy at his funeral someday, Mitch found himself present for the teacher's final sermon.  During that sermon, this rabbi who served his congregation for many years asked his people's forgiveness.  He asked forgiveness for all he couldn't do.  For the marriages that weren’t reconciled.  For the sick who fell through the cracks.  For questions answered poorly.  And for more.  This beloved leader, cherished by many, was asking the very people he served to forgive his failures.  

Yet when I was being taught to be a pastor in seminary, and then again during the years I served on a divinity school faculty teaching others how to be pastors, I heard a lot of talk about success.  We sought and rewarded excellence and discussed "cutting edge" ideas and techniques in ministry.  It was professional education, meant to cultivate and form successful professional ministers.  The teaching wasn't all bad.  But it lacked the cultivation of failure, or at least any really good talk about it.  There was some, but very little.   And so I was taught, and taught others, that we should succeed in ministry--and that we can succeed in ministry if we just have the right techniques.  

It doesn't stop in seminaries.  Just as an exercise, a while back I took a year and saved every piece of correspondence I received in my office promising to give me the latest techniques for success in my ministry and create a successful church in tow.  I collected a drawer full of brochures, postcards, letters, advertisements.  It was a big pile.  And not a single one of those things I saved promised to teach me how to fail well, or help my church faithfully understand that it is broken, incomplete, and only a small sliver of what it says it is called to be as Christ's church.

Yet in all my years of ministry I've known as much or more failure as I have of whatever might be counted success.  And most of the good pastors I know would say the same thing.  Even in the midst of ministry, there have been people who needed something that I either didn't understand they needed or lacked the time, resources, or courage give.  There have been times when spiritual hunger has gone unmet, psychological pain untended, challenges held back, gospel not preached, chances to encourage someone to follow Christ missed, hospital beds not visited, prayers not powerful.  There have been moments when I knew, and surely many I didn't know, when I didn't communicate God's truth in the most effective or faithful way.  Things get forgotten or are done too quickly.  Only so much gets done.  

Our churches too, as they are more broken than they are whole, with conflict that confuses some and offends other, with timidity that frustrates some and satisfies others.  Many priorities and desires collide in the same space and clamor for attention, and we often lack agreement about what it is we're really doing as a church.  We all fail, pastor and people together--even in the midst of our successes.

Yet isn't this inevitable given our high hopes, the huge promises we make, and various ideals we each have for what the church and its pastors should be?

Success and skilled ministry is good.  I'm not discounting that. But our rituals of confession, grace, and forgiveness must give us freedom to keep doing our ministry through both success and lack of success.  Our patience with each other must give us time and respect enough to think about our differences and keep our ideals in tension with what's real.  And most of all, we can accept our vulnerability and weakness as an opportunity to be more open to Christ, when we can be.  For Christ alone is our victor, our success, and our teacher.  His own ministry brought resurrection in what looked like failure.  His own ministry was more favorable to the humble than the proud.

I ask forgiveness for my failures, knowing that there will surely be more failure to come.  And I ask patience with my successes, knowing that there is always more to learn and do.  And I ask the same for the church.  This side of heaven we never will meet the ideals we hold dear, but that doesn't mean we will give up on the ideals.  We can entrust our ideals to God, accept what is and continue to dream of what we are becoming.  We can forgive, even as we continue to expect great and even miraculous things of God and each other. 

We all have Christmas memories of one sort or another.  Mine, from childhood, are rich and sweet, and centered by church.  We'd begin Christmas Eve with a light family dinner and then be off to church for an early service when I was very little or an 11:00 p.m. service when I was a little older.  There was something mysterious, and almost magical, about going to church in the dark of the night.  We'd bring the candles used in the candlelight service home, light them again and put them on the windowsill. This was to say to the world that our home welcomed Jesus, I was told.  Because my father often worked on Christmas Day, we'd open presents under the tree on Christmas Eve.  During my few Santa-believing years, we were told that Santa came to our house first because he knew this about us!  Not a bad way to think of things when you're four years old—as if God could bend to meet your family's needs.  Stockings were for Christmas morning, along with some of those Christmas cookies that sat in rows between wax paper in that great big cookie tin.  Those of us still at home would go again to church for a Christmas morning service, seeing church friends again. There was usually snow on the ground and time to play with new toys.  Then we'd have a nice dinner when my father came home from work and a visit with grandparents living nearby.  Nothing extravagant in this simple Christmas, just reliable ritual, caring family, the security and home of church, and a story that made sense of the world.

These are sweet memories. 

As years passed, I realized that Christmas is not so sweet for everyone.  Sadness at loss, worry over too little money for presents or for food for a table, concern over illness, homelessness, injustice and more can steal joy from many.  Seeing so many give so much to others at this time of year, even welcoming some who are alone into their homes, and yet Christmas is still a mixed experience for many, like so much of life.  Christmas brings both the sweetest and the saddest into view. 

Strangely enough, maybe this mixed quality of Christmas is part of what keeps Christmas Christian in the end.  For every time we rightfully wear our buttons or pass an email around that says we oughta "Keep Christ in Christmas," or "Remember the Reason for the Season," we're actually recognizing this truth.  For the Christ we remember at Christmas came to us from a worried and temporarily homeless mother.  He was born into political intrigue that would force his family to become refugees for a time.  And he brought angels who made people afraid.  And yet he was also born into loving arms, was recognized by strangers as the wonderful gift that he was (and is), and gave the same angels reason to sing. 

This Prince of Peace, King of Kings, Holy Child of Bethlehem, Savior of the World, Little Child of Mary, Light of the World, Branch of Jesse, Son of David, Messiah, Emmanuel, Son of God holds in his vision all human experience.  It's all with him already in the manger that night.  It's with him in his ministry to come, in the cross, and in the open arms of risen body. 

May we all experience the sweetness.  But no matter how any one of us will experience Christmas, his Spirit can touch us.  And it can open our vision too. 

Merry Christmas.

We’re on the edge of an election. I’m guessing you’ve noticed. As tempted as I am to make a case for my favorite candidates or issues, I won’t. But I do want to think about the nation for a moment. I begin with the quote from Jon Winthrop in 1630, at the beginning of the Puritan adventure in the Americas. It’s from his “city on a hill” sermon:

…Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. …

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. …

I think it’s there, the tension that runs through the consciences of American Protestants — at least those who identify with the story of America that starts with the Puritans and Pilgrims. It’s the tension at the heart of what some call “civil religion.”

I think the tension puts three ideas into conversation. First is the idea that God has chosen America like God chose Israel, to embody God’s desires for human flourishing and so to teach the world what God wants for everyone. Second is the idea that the mission we have has two addresses — in the nation itself and in the church, as God’s conscience for the nation. And third, that America fulfills its mission in two ways, one being the promotion of the common good and shared welfare and the other the protection of individual conscience (or liberty).

That’s a lot to think about, don’t you think?

And the ideas go back to 1630. This is a different place and we’re a different people than that small group of united believers stepping foot onto a new land to create a slice of heaven together.

So some questions:

Is the United States God’s “new Israel,” or is it one nation among other nations (even if powerful and wealthy)?

In light of ways the nation has both included and excluded people over the centuries, who is this “we” we speak of? And for people of faith, where lies our primary connection — to God’s borderless church or to our bordered country?

How do we tell our story well, both the triumphs and glories and the more challenging and painful episodes?

What hope do we give the nations? What commonwealth do we enjoy? What unity of purpose do we share? What freedoms are we called to preserve and what rights shall we give up for the sake of greater good?

What role should Christian faith play in politics when not all share the same faith — or faith at all?

Has America fulfilled a mission, or betrayed it?

I think of these questions not only because of the election, but after hearing word this past week of the death of one time Senator and Presidential candidate George McGovern. Whether agreeing with his politics or not, everyone who knew him seemed to agree that this was an honest, faithful, earnest man of conviction — committed to making things better, as best he knew how. After he lost the Senate in 1980 I had the delightful opportunity to study with him at his alma mater.

McGovern held graduate degrees in both theology and history. He taught on the history of American foreign policy and how it reflected American identity. It’s an insight from those lectures that I want to leave here.

With impressive scope and examples, the Senator described a simple and constant reality: America has never been just one thing. It’s always been a negotiation of competing desires and conflicting visions. It’s possessed a streak of unbridled greed and desire for power that no honest view of history can deny, and its history is spotted with less than admirable moments and less than admirable people. And yet is it also the possessor and protector of beautifully faithful visions of compassion, peace, freedom, and shared destiny — and its nurtured people who’ve embodied those values and who have created wonderful things from them.

It’s never just one impulse or the other. It is, we are, always a bit of both.

Perhaps we’ll think more clearly as Americans and as people of faith when we can see both sides, seek mercy as much as victory, desire prudence over passion, and make a way together.

Happy election!