A couple years ago I was hitching a ride with a pastor to attend an interfaith event. I had just begun seminary, and he asked how my study was going. We had an interesting conversation, and then the topic of ordination came up. (I know, this sounds like last week’s post, but I promise you it’s not. This topic just seems to come up when I’m around ordained Christians in particular.) He surprised me when he said, “I don’t even know what ordination means anymore … honestly …” I was quiet for a moment, taking in the enormity of what he was saying and wanting to respect that enormity. Was he questioning his path? Was he suggesting that ordination isn’t what he thought it would be? I wasn’t sure, so I said that for me it’s a covenant–a promise of how I will show up in the world. And he said, “Well, of course that …”

A friend and I have had numerous conversations about our understanding of ordained and non-ordained ministry, what they share in common and where they might part ways. We wrestle with a desire to dissolve longstanding biases and exclusions that have kept many beautiful people from a path of sacred service. That said, should anyone who wants to be ordained be ordained? Are there qualities that suggest someone is not suited to ordination? How do we make room for people who may benefit from the process of personal growth inherent in a seminary education? None of us is perfect, and no one has all the qualifications for ministry as a result of study and even practice. We are all works in progress. At the same time, my friend and I have been on the receiving end of too many ministers who were far, far away from living into the questions of ministry. We don’t want others to experience what we did. So some broad guidelines seem necessary to ensure that people with the title of minister offer some reasonable level of spiritual expertise and maturity to those who need them.

Based on our wholly unscientific and subjective experiences, here are some unofficial—and yes, cheeky—signs you might not wanna be a minister:

• You’ve always wanted a gold star from God. Throughout the years, you’ve been overlooked, underestimated, and maybe even sidelined. Ordination is your chance to prove wrong everyone who has yet to acknowledge your God-given gifts—including you! Your raison d’etre will be pronounced by no one less than God, and you can make sure everyone knows it by using your transcendent title with each introduction.
  • Hard truth: striving for validation is the same whether we’re stuck on the title of vice president or minister. The latter might seem more noble. But the truth is that it’s merely ego dressed up in spiritual robes.
• You’re shopping for ordination. You need a religious organization that can deliver ordination with the speed and efficiency of Amazon Prime. You’re on a mission from God: you’ve got people to help and souls to save, so there’s no time to waste on personal growth, wrestling with deep spiritual truths, and contending with paradox. You can cram your homework into one month, tops. Besides, you took religion classes years ago, and you can Google any denominational beliefs you need to brush up on.
  • Hard truth: there is no short-cut to prepare for ministry. That said, there are hundreds of ways to minister right now, no waiting necessary, that don’t require ordination or a title. If we see ministry as a job opportunity that requires a specific title, we may need to expand our understanding of what ministry is. Those we minister to will thank us for the time we take.
• Black and white look good on you. More than just a fashion choice, black and white describes your preference for order, answers, and either/or thinking. You like guidance that says “do this, not that.” Or, maybe your version of black and white is that no rules are ever needed. Everything can be reduced down to its common denominator.
  • Hard truth: many seek out religion for comfort, for answers—yet the Divine Mystery calls us to explore the grey areas that make many uncomfortable. Discernment is undervalued in the West, and our society and media do not praise nuanced answers. Ministry calls us to hold in perfect tension the possible and the not yet.
• Life’s wounds still require frequent bandage changes. You know well the archetype of the wounded healer. Rather than insight and deepening compassion, though, life’s disappointments have morphed into merit badges of victim-hood. If others would just consider your feelings, your needs, your experience, you could be less suffering and more servant.
  • Hard truth: none of us gets through life unscathed. And some may even get more souvenirs of the journey than others, for no understandable reason. If we haven’t done our work, we can’t get out of our own way to truly be present to others. It doesn’t mean we won’t ever be triggered. It does mean that because of our substantial spiritual and psychological work, our spiritual maturity shows up as equanimity, humility, and empathy far more frequently than our triggers.
• The Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, and “What Color is Your Parachute” all say you’re suited to ministry. Those other career paths led nowhere and, to top it off, your coworkers were dolts. But research shows that your personality is totally suited to ministry—it says so right here. Add to that, your grandmother has always said you’d make an incredible minister. You can’t wait to ditch your job and find everlasting joy and meaning along your new sacred path endorsed by God.
  • Hard truth: Whatever difficulties we had in previous jobs—annoying coworkers, whining customers, demanding managers, mis-communicated expectations—won’t magically go away because we’re now ministers. In fact, there’s a possibility it will seem like all those problem-people have shown up on steroids because we have misunderstood the very nature of life, our work, and the calling of ministry. Again, we have to do the work to resolve the challenges in our present lives, because, frankly, that is truly the heart and soul of ministering.

 

 

 

Ephesians 4:1-6

A few months ago I had an interesting conversation with a group of Christian clergy and lay leaders. We met just a month before my ordination, so that was the starting point of our conversation. The first question went something like, “So … you’re about to be ordained by something called One Spirit? How exactly does this interfaith ordination-thing work?”

Some of you know that I can be … a tiny bit irreverent. I wanted to explain interfaith ordination as an intensely sacred and profound ritual—kinda like the Hogwarts sorting hat in Harry Potter. I did not.

We moved on to talking about my desire to bridge the divide between the “spiritual but not religious” and church communities. Someone asked if I would consider myself a Christian. I explained that I’ve always been fond of a quote from Maya Angelou where she says, “I’m grateful to be a practicing Christian. I’m always amazed when people say, ‘I’m a Christian.’ I think, already? It’s a process. Y’know, you keep trying. And blowing it and trying and blowing it.” So I said, I think of myself as Christian-ing. It’s a work in process. Blank stare. After a few minutes, one of the clergy leaders said, “I realize you’re anti-dogma, anti-church, anti-institution … so I want to know, are you MAD at the church?”

And I realized: there’s something about this interfaith thing that isn’t sitting well with a few people here. It’s like they think I’m cheating on Christianity.

I can’t say this kind of exchange is common but at the same time, it’s not exactly rare. I’m not Christian enough for some traditionalists, and I’m too Christian for some spiritual but not religious. For some progressives, I’m a little too contemplative. For some contemplatives, I’m a little too interfaith. And I just want to admit here—in front of God and everybody—that I plead guilty to all that and more.

This unity thing … this unity of all believers is an admirable goal. But we gotta move beyond tolerating others to focus on honoring the Divine Mystery that connects us.

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he’s pleading for unity among the early Christian communities. In the opening line, I would say he’s kinda guilt-tripping them, where he says that he’s currently locked up. The deal is, he’s been imprisoned for preaching that gentiles—non-Jews, outsiders, former pagans—could follow “the way” of Jesus. The two groups, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians were … a tad at odds with each other.

The Jewish Christians wanted Gentiles to convert first to Judaism and keep the laws and “tradition” that rooted Jesus and his message. The Gentile Christians, though, wanted to follow the Jesus who pointed to a new understanding of the law and tradition. So this letter, this encyclical, is like an old-school direct mail piece to the Gentile Christians in Ephesus. Paul’s opening reference—that he’s in chains for the Master—that’s his way of saying, hey, remember that I’m kinda in this spot because I advocated for you guys … so you might wanna hear me out.

And he reminds them: look, you are part of one larger community—you are more than the divisions you’re focusing on. You believe in the same God—regardless how you came to this belief. He says the way forward is with humility and discipline, to be able to note the differences while mending fences. And even more, we have to go toward God as one, both inwardly and outwardly.

Because … If we truly believe that we are all weirdly, inexplicably connected … there is no them. There is only US. One interconnected, wildly messy and complicated US. That’s not to pave over all our differences, our individuality. We are called to hold both our interconnectedness and our individuality in a both-and relationship. We have to choose to embrace paradox. That means we have work to do. We have spiritual work to do.

Two years ago I was taking a class on prejudice—how to be aware of it, not how to get more of it. Reverend Mark Fowler was our professor; he’s deputy CEO of Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York City. In preparation for the course, we were asked to take any five of the online Harvard Implicit Association tests. The tests deal with our implicit bias around categories such as weight, disability, race, gender, skin tone, gay/straight, women and family and men and careers, religion, Arab/Muslim, Asian. And there are two new ones since back then: presidential bias, and racial white/black associations with weapons and harmless objects. I have flyers in the back that list the website if you want to check these out.

Here’s how the test works: After you answer a few simple questions about your preferences around the topic you’ve selected, you view a variety of images and words and quickly associate them into particular groups. For example, you may be shown a group of “positive words” like lovely, happy, smiling—and whenever these show up on screen, you need to click a key with your right hand. And there may be words they’ve assigned to a “negative group,” words like disgust, sneering, awful—every time those show up on screen, you click a key with your left hand. You take this part as quickly as you can while still striving to be accurate.

Back to our class on prejudice. Rev Mark asked us to email him the results of the five tests so that he could get a sense of us. The first thing he calls our attention to is that of the 70 people in our class, only 10 of us chose to take the implicit bias tests related to religion. He was like, really? You people are studying religion and only a handful of y’all wanted to find out how ya might view religions? Lesson #1.

At one point he opens it up for us to share our impressions of the tests and any surprises we may have had. Well… you should have heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth of us bleeding heart liberals (I self-identify here) saying how the test is totally inaccurate, and there’s no way we have even the slightest leaning toward sexism or racism or any other -ism. We backed that up with stories around how we make a point of holding the door for a person of color, or how we make sure we have a diverse group of people in meetings to discuss key issues.

The point is, the test is intended to reflect IMPLICIT bias. This is the stuff that we’re not completely conscious of that influences our behaviors. So humbling. So painfully insightful.

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung talked about the metaphorical shadow. The personal shadow is where we tuck away, out of sight, all that stuff we say we aren’t, what we don’t wanna be, the qualities we refuse to be. The shadow is the dark side of our personality—anything we consider evil, inferior, unacceptable.

If I’m convinced I could never behave like so-and-so … Yeah, I might have some shadow around that. If I say, there is no way I have issues around Muslims. Or, that point of view is the stupidist thing I’ve ever heard. Do you hear my self-righteousness, my utter disdain? Is it possible that in that moment I have lost true insight and wandered over into self-justification? Hello, shadow. (Oh, and if I’m pretty sure I have nothing in my shadow … well … that could suggest it’s a lot larger than the average one, ha.) The thing is, the human shadow—when we name it and work with it—is a great teacher to help us show up as the kind of people we actually want to be in the world, not just the people we think we are.

Jung also talked about the collective shadow. Nations, organizations, communities, religions —these collective bodies all have shadows, too. And again: It’s only when we refuse to acknowledge the shadow … that’s when it has great power and becomes dangerous. It’s like pushing a beach ball under water … eventually that sucker is gonna pop up. And the deeper we push it down, the stronger it’s gonna pop.

There are leading social psychologists who SUGGEST that the rise of nationalism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance we are seeing around the world—that this is the collective shadow popping up. This may or may not be true. One of the most difficult things to do when we’re in the midst of a cultural shift of this size is to accurately diagnose it. That said, I hear a number of leaders saying things like, “This is NOT who we are. We are not a nation that separates families.”  Or, “We are not a country that condones violence.” And I think, well …  it would be more honest to say, this is not who we want to be. But to say that’s not who we are? It may sound like semantics, but I’m not sure it’s just words. Because this is not the first time our nation has had a policy of separating families. And we, WE —this intricately and mysteriously connected vine of humanity—WE are separating families today. As painful as that is to say, we cannot heal a collective problem if we do not own it, collectively.

So what is our path forward?

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, there is something known as the Shambhala teachings. The Shambhala teachings are based on the understanding that there is an innate human wisdom we can connect to—to help solve the world’s problems. This wisdom does not belong to any one tradition or region of the world or particular people. It is a universal tradition of human warriorship that has existed throughout the ages. The teachings say that in the midst of societal crisis, Shambhala warriors rise to lead their people through chaos. Shambhala warriors are not warriors in the sense of fighting and aggression. Shambhala warriors are those who are brave AND simultaneously kind. And what’s interesting is that the Shambhala definition of bravery is not being afraid—of yourself. We have to be able to see what we don’t want to see about ourselves. We have to be clear-sighted. It’s Jesus’s teaching that we remove the log from our own eye before removing the speck from someone else’s. We have to do our own work.

The way forward is embracing paradox—being brave and kind. It’s embracing both-and answers—as well as no answers, sitting in mystery. As post-modern, intellectually inclined folk, we tend to prefer answers over mystery. We have a preference for action over contemplation. Head- over heart-centered spirituality. I’m not saying we have no place for mystery, no heart-centered spirituality. I’m suggesting that we could do better at balancing them.

And the way forward also calls us to reclaim some spiritual values that we may have placed on a shelf at some point, for any number of reasons. Humility, forgiveness, equanimity, discernment. I have yet to find a spiritual tradition that doesn’t have these values, and more, at their core. If we are going to show up as brave and kind warriors in the midst of chaos, we need to consider training for these qualities. It’s not enough to be kind and brave on behalf of the outsiders, the poor, the oppressed. We do have to do that, of course—and do everything possible to equal the playing field. And … we have to see the divine mystery inside of the oppressors. The people who tick us off. The bullies, the liars, the people who abuse power. That’s not as easy. That requires spiritual practice.

We need to train ourselves to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. We live in a culture that values speed, constant action, and “being productive.” In fact, there’s a Buddhist teacher who says that the West’s form of laziness is “being busy.” In other words, it’s our go-to distraction to keep us from doing our own work. Spiritual practice builds spiritual muscle. I personally don’t care whether it’s an “official spiritual practice” or something that is spiritual for you, which may be different than what is spiritual for me. I do want us to ask ourselves some tough, honest questions:

• What activity will both nourish my spirit WHILE making me more patient, generous, compassionate, and brave over time? What is mine to do?
• Can I engage in this activity regularly rather than in fits and starts? In other words, can I practice?
• As a result of this practice, do I get occasional “aha” moments that can be insightful and maybe even uncomfortably revealing? Does it contribute to my growth, not just comfort me?

We are living in a time when we need the rise of more and more Shambhala warriors. And wishing doesn’t make that come true. We have work to do. We have work to do on a spiritual level to find our way through the world.

This unity thing is not easy. But I don’t think any one of us showed up here, in this place, today because we were looking for easy answers. We come together as a community seeking transformation—for ourselves and for the world. And we hold to this deeper truth that everything we are and think and do is permeated with Oneness. May it be so.

[Sermon delivered to Umstead Park United Church of Christ on Aug. 5, 2018; also created the the worship service itself]