ROCK Report: Or, what I would say to 6,000 teenagers if I had the chance

I have just come back from my first ROCK retreat, a yearly retreat for Middle-High youth held in Ocean City, MD. It was definitely something I'll always remember. The bands were better than this middle-aged person thought they would be, and the fellowship with our youth was amazing. The whole experience left me wondering what I would say in that forum, though I can't conceive of ever having that opportunity....Still, here are a few ideas, literally just off the top of my head.

1. Isn't it amazing that 6000 Youth all gathered in one place? On a CHRISTIAN retreat? Dude, REALLY? Surely there's been some misunderstanding. I'll close my eyes and y'all can leave if you want to. What? Still here? AMAZING. Didn't you get the word that you're all supposed to be apathetic and shallow? Materialistic texting addicts who can't look away from their little screens for 5 seconds...Oh, excuse me, I just got a text, one second...OK. What? I can multi-task...Well, I reckon you didn't get the memo, 'cause you don't look that way to ME. 6000 youth who are willling to spend their weekend, during the playoffs, freezing their butts off and singing songs about this Jesus guy who lived a couple THOUSAND years ago....And wanting to dance for the Lord like David danced. I swear, alert the media.

2. OK, now that you are STILL here, much to my amazement, let me tell you another amazing thing. I have heard that some of you have been learning that Jesus was a radical, a non-conformist, the kind of guy who probably would NOT win any popularity contests at school. A lover of the unloveable. A helper of the poor and downtrodden. Not necessarily "most likely to succeed." And yet, in spite of that, many of you have the gall to say "I'm with HIM. I'm a Christian. And yeah, I like football, and I watch reality TV, and I'm funny and human and play video games, and yeah, I'm a Christian." You don't have to be boring or prudish or out of touch to be Christian. After all, Jesus wasn't boring or prudish or out of touch!

3. One of the first reality shows of all time was this show on MTV called "Real World." And it started off kind of cool and then it got crazy and then it got lame. But it always started off...this is the true story of 7 strangers, picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped, and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real...the Real World. And I always thought that was funny because the viewers were all living in the Real World to start with. I mean, when I was in high school, if you wanted to see the real world, like, just ride the bus one day. Just one day. Come to my school cafeteria. Real World. The good news is, Jesus came to tug on the Real World of our life. Jesus knows how it is in our Real World...and if you feel misunderstood, and if you feel like a lone wolf, and if you feel lost and alone sometimes or awkward or ugly or just can't fit in, Jesus knows all those feelings. And Jesus can see the real you, the one you are and the one you are going to be. Jesus loves you. The real you. The you that you don't know how to show the world. God has made you in God's image. Even on a bad hair and bad complexion day, you are beautiful and beloved and gifted. Your gifts and passions are there from God, and God wants you to use them to change the world. We have a real savior for our Real World.

4. Youth are not only the church of tomorrow, you are the church of today. And Christianity is a radical, amazing, counter-cultural thing. Teenagers want to rebel, I think I read that in a magazine, somewhere, and be radical, and are almost genetically against the status quo. (My folks were from the Disco generation. Vile, vile music. Thank God we came along to set them straight) Well, listen, Jesus was the biggest rebel of them all and the biggest challenger to the status quo! He said to a world that thought there were no other options than Empire and the status quo...Blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness....Is it any wonder that his disciples were the youth of his age--young adults. Breathe some fresh ideas into your church and make it the kind of church you'd want to invite your friends to. Start a skateboard ministry or a band, or a tutoring program. Sometimes we old folk run out of ideas and energy, and y'all have those in spades. Give us your ideas and energy and if we won't listen, do it anyway, and then, we'll catch up. For example, I was at a church in this conference where they were on a mission trip to the Gulf Coast after Katrina. And one of our high schoolers decided it was silly to have to wait a whole year to come back to finish the work because there was so much more to do. She gathered her friends around her and they formed YOAM (Youth on a Mission) and they raised money and came back early. YOAM goes to the Gulf Coast twice a year now. She was 16, 17. Imagine that!

5. With God, nothing is impossible. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. God has a plan for your life, and you can't necessarily see the end of the road from where you're standing. I get that. But I also know we are not alone on the road. And if we aren't sure what the future holds, we believe we know who holds the future. Jesus Christ, God's beloved Son. God So loved the "real world", God so loved you, the real you, the one you try to cover up with makeup and hair and masks...that God sent the Son, so that we might know just how much we are loved and know what we were made for. (I'm often not sure where my keys are, and I've plumb forgot the quadratic formula and lots and lots of stuff I've been tested on in my life), but I realized early on that if I was going to make it in this insane world, it would not be as a lone wolf. It would not be through pretending to be something I'm not. And I realized that Jesus really did love me, even me, with my zit cream, and awkwardness, and Jesus really did have a real idea in mind for my life. And I didn't know what that idea would be, but I was willing to put myself, my faith, my life, in the hands of the One who thought up that idea. When I realized I couldn't be perfect, and I couldn't please everybody, and then I realized there was a God who came to free me from all my mistakes, to love me and let me have a new start every time I screwed up, that's when I decided to throw my hat in with Jesus, the Rebel, the Non-conformist, the Saviour of the world.

6. God does mighty things with crazy kids like you, crazy kids who come to Ocean City for their weekend to sing crazy Jesus songs and freeze on the boardwalk and eat their weight in Gummy Worms from Candy Kitchen. God works up mighty things from folks who thought they were screw ups and dorks and geeks and jocks. God said to Jeremiah, "Don't say you are too young for this work. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations." Youth, don't say you are too young to take your faith seriously. Don't say you are too young to change the world for the better. Before God formed you in the womb, God knew you, and God appointed you to do some work for the Kingdom. God sends you to be the body of Christ in this world. Don't keep waiting for someone else to do it. God sent you. Don't keep waiting for someone else to speak up. God sent you. Don't tolerate bullying and racism and hate. God sent you. If 6,000 youth can come together for this weekend, and hold each other's hand and begin to see that there are ties between us that make us ONE...beyond our clicks and our groups and all the labels everybody wants to put on us...just imagine what 6,000 youth can do out THERE, in that world, in those schools and in those homes and churches. What if those youth were willing to dance like David danced, but then they were willing to love like Jesus loved and speak the truth to power like the prophets and then what if they went and made their churches into churches that took risks for the Gospel, and fed the hungry and housed the homeless and worked to end malaria in Africa? What if they were willing to put aside all the other labels they claimed or the ones that were put on them and said, wanna know what I am? Before all the other stuff in the "about me" part of my FB profile, I am a beloved child of God. I'm with Jesus. I'm a Christian. I'm not yet what I should be, but I am on my way, I am becoming. Great God a'mighty! Alert the media! Put it on Facebook and Youtube. And then, watch God use them to change the world.

Reading Poems

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum." Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.

There is something so beautiful about a well-crafted sentence, an apt metaphor, or a collection of ink on a page that describes something so perfectly it takes you there. One of the best things about seminary was being required to read great books and then trying to write great papers. In the new paradigm of the "post-graduate" world, there is little time to read like that. I read the Bible a whole lot, of course, and scan resources for sermon preparation, but it is hard to find that hour to put on fuzzy socks and make tea and get lost in a book; if I can find the hour, there's no guarantee of another one, and by that time, I've forgotten the characters' names, who they are married to, and how we got to whatever page I've marked. It's not pretty.

I was unaware of what I was missing, the way a person doesn't know they need a haircut until it's been way too long, and then one day all of a sudden gasps at her reflection saying, "Is that my HAIR?" When one of my doctor-uncles had major heart surgery earlier this fall, he memorized long stretches of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to test his cognitive abilities after surgery. (I come by my geekiness honestly, ya'll). We recited together lines I had learned as an English major long ago: "In the room, the women come and go, talking of Michaelangelo...." and "I am old, I am old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled...." He lay in the bed with his books split open, to read when he was too wakeful to nap and too weak to walk around. This was the uncle who always admonished me as a child for reading too much fiction. He'd inquire about what I was reading, and warned me if I kept up with Dickens, and Hemingway, Morrison and Angelou, I would run the risk of being an English major, and then, God only knows what would happen. So I found it strange that he would be delving into poetry. He said, "I have been so busy with my medical practice that I don't have time to read books anymore--but I can read poetry."

The beauty of a poem is, you can read it while you are doing other things. You can take in the utter essence of something all at once in a poem, and have it unwind in your subconscious all day long. Someone said that a poem is not the story of an event; it is the event itself. I think it is life served straight up, with nothing watered down. To read a poem is to be vulnerable, and to risk being devastated in the course of being uplifted. In that way, to read a great poem is like reading scripture, the Word that so often devastates us before it becomes Good News, indeed the best news there is.

Inspired by Prufrock and Uncle Don, I began to revisit poetry I had not read in years and I signed up to receive via email, a poem a day from http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/. I receive in my inbox these little jewels first thing in the morning and they are the first thing I grope for in the morning after the alarm clock. I gulp them down like vitamins. If they are really good, I send them to friends, especially friends who share my love for the right set of words. I discovered poetry is versatile--there are poems in the shape of rap and rock and poems about terrorism and poems about how it feels to lock the door for the last time at the house your grandparents lived in. There are poems about friends stolen from us and poems about stealing cold plums from the icebox. There are poems about ice cream and icebergs and icy glances of relationships gone wrong. So much in such a little package.

Words carry power and can reflect the world as it is, and the right words can even help make a new world. Words can hurt to the quick and words can heal the deepest wounds. And a great poem tells the truth. Preachers too, must be truthtellers and poets. They must be authentically "themselves" and yet remember they bring a Word that is also bigger, wider and deeper than the cups they must pour it into. Is it any wonder that when Mary speaks of what God has done for her, she turns from mere words to poetry?

My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

She was, after all, singing about God's Incarnation in Jesus the Christ, the One who would be the Light of the world. He came into the world where hope and fear meet, and he came into it "full of grace and truth" (John 1), the Eternal Word made flesh, a sort of poetry-in-motion. So much in such a little package.

Wade in the Water (Matthew 3:13-17)

A SERMON I PREACHED AT THE PARISH-- 1/9/11

I have always loved the song “Wade in the Water.” I loved the alliteration of the title and the sound of the song....it always hit me in the chest. It sounded different from all those clean, bright, major key songs in the hymnal. It stopped me in my tracks because it sounded scary, sinister….and the one who was up to something is….not the bad guy, but God. God’s gonna trouble the water. Like a hurricane. And here I thought God was supposed to lead me by still waters and restoreth my soul. What's all this business about troubling the water? I mean if God’s gonna trouble the water, I don’t want to be anywhere near it, thanks. I want to be in landlocked Kansas, if God’s gonna trouble the water!

And then I got a little older and I discovered this song is a spiritual, a song that slaves composed and sang about ways for their brothers and sisters to seek their freedom. I learned wading in the water was a way to avoid the scent of bloodhounds. It was a good thing to wade in the water. I learned crossing rivers like the Ohio meant literal freedom for runaway slaves. I learned the verses of the song were in code, so that a people who could not communicate openly about escape could pass along the way to freedom right under their captors' noses with the verses about Moses’ children dressed in red or the white dress of the Israelite.

God’s troubling the water was meant to push God’s people over into God’s promised land. God’s stirring up of the water was to send the remnant over into the land God wanted them to live in. It reminded me of the Jordan River, that place God acted to lead the people into the promised land, that place where just two weeks ago, we found God telling Joshua to get the people ready for their river crossing. Is it any wonder then that it is to the Jordan that Jesus came to wade in the water to be baptized by John?

Baptism is something we think we know. Cute and adorable. Baptism, meek and mild. After all, we baptize babies in the UM Church, and babies are cute and adorable. Even this account of Jesus’ baptism seems pretty. Like a Christmas card. It's the Spirit descending like a dove. A painting on a ceramic plate.

BUT. . this baptism is not sweet or cute or adorable. It’s actually kinda scary. First we have John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness. The Gospel of Mark even calls him, Not John the Baptist, but John the Baptizer. I like that even better. Baptist is a passive label, like Democrat or Republican or even Presbyterian. "Baptizer" is a revolutionary at work. Like if you get too close, he might just baptize you, zap you with some transforming energy ray and change you into a new person entirely. And baptism was a big deal, to the people getting baptized and to the powers that be that attached themselves to Herod or to Rome. There were a fair number of these prophet types around hoping that what they did would cause God to act to save God’s people from Roman oppression, to make good on all those promises about a Messiah. They were always hanging out in the wilderness because that’s where God has a way of showing up. And the river Jordan was the border to the promised land. Baptism is political. Scary. Potentially threatening. Pledging allegiance to something else other than Rome, other than Empire. Pledging allegiance to the kingdom of God. A place where slavery to anything other than God was not allowed. A place where justice rolled down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. (God’s gonna trouble the water).

And this John the Baptizer, everybody knows, wore a hairy coat and ate locusts and wild honey. But do you know why? Because he was eccentric? Trying out for Fear Factor? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think part of the reason is, Elijah did it. And Elijah was supposed to reappear just before God sent the Messiah to save the people. So, John’s walking around in an Elijah costume, eating Elijah food, and people would've gotten the message. Including the powers that be. That’s why they kept such a close eye on John and what he was doing. So, it’s not a pristine little font and a lovable little baby. It’s a band of people by the river that symbolizes God’s power to act, following a fellow dressed for God’s liberating battle, calling them to repent, turn, commit, make a decision. Calling them to Wade in the Water. And getting baptized was the way you showed that you had made that commitment. And into this context comes Jesus of Nazareth, no longer a baby in swaddling clothes but a grown-up. The One qualified to baptize, the Messiah himself, coming to be baptized. And God’s gonna trouble the water.

God’s Spirit descends on him, God crashes the party, God is on the loose, God is at work, God is with us. God has intruded into this event to pronounce who Jesus is that God is pleased with him. Pleased that he’s baptized, pleased that he has begun the path to public ministry, pleased that he has made this public commitment, pleased that he has begun his journey of healing and suffering, his journey to the cross. God’s plan for salvation, and freedom, and healing was in motion down by the riverside. Jesus was gonna wade in this water and then be led up out of the water by the Spirit straight into the wilderness of temptation. I so want that to say that Satan dragged Jesus kicking and screaming into temptation. But God's Spirit led God into the wilderness. The wilderness is a place God knows very well. See, God’s gonna trouble the water. And Satan and temptation and all the powers of death and hell will not be able to prevail against this water-washed and Spirit-born Son of God.

We also get baptized, as a way to mark the start of our Christian journey. Some get baptized by immersion, others get baptized by sprinkling. In the Methodist church, we baptize babies a lot, because we see baptism as something that God does for us, a sign of God’s love for us, a love that comes before our ability to respond. Babies, you see are notoriously unable to do a lot. They do three things, just about, and those things are not singularly impressive. Eat, sleep and require diaper changes. And yet, our Church says, you are that beloved child, beloved by God just the way you are, before you could impress anybody, before you could talk or walk or join a committee. Beloved and called and bought with a price.

So, if you were baptized as a baby, it means that you have no memory of the event itself, so when we say "remember your baptism and be thankful" your first response might be "I can't." But let me assure you, God remembers it. And the Church remembers it. People came up and called you who you were, a child of God. And they identified the grace already at work in you, a grace that would lead you to grow in the faith and make that faith commitment for yourself when you were older. And those few drops of water on your head were just as radical and revolutionary as being baptized in an ocean. It is part of the way our God works that when we see a new Christian being born, a new baby in the family of God, we here the angels shouting “Roll Jordan, Roll!” It may be a quiet event with 'nary a locust in sight, a few drops of water and a little baby's head, but when the water touches skin, we hear it: "Roll, Jordan, roll!"

We remember that it is our baptisms that tell us who we are, before nationality and race, before party and politics. And we baptized are called to say to all those forces of evil so at work in the world that God is still on the loose. God’s gonna trouble the water.

We can say to those victims of senseless gun violence, our God knows what it is like to be an innocent victim. God is still on the throne of this weary world., and has a church that grieves with those that mourn and stands with those that suffer. A church that rolls up its sleeves to clear away the brush of brokenness and the debris of despair. Wade in the water, children. God’s gonna trouble the water.

It reminds me of John 5--where the angel of the Lord would stir up the water at the spring, and people with ailments and hurts and sickness would lay there. And if they could be the first one in when God "troubled" the water, they would get well. John 5:1 "Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk."

When God troubles the water, it’s for our healing. When God troubles the water, it's for God's kingdom. It might look like our prison ministry, or this crazy cooperative parish. When God troubles the water. And when the man couldn’t get to the water, God sent the Living Water to him. “Do you want to be made well?...Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

Friend, if you wanted to stay on your little mat, you should’ve stayed out of the water. If you didn’t want to be made well….you should’ve stayed out of the water. If you wanted a life where you only answered to you….then you should’a stayed out of that water. If you wanted going to church to be optional, then you should’a stayed out of that water. If you wanted Church "meek and mild and cute and adorable" you should'a stayed out of the water. If you wanted a church with folks who look and sound just like you, you should'a stayed out of the water. If you wanted to remain chained up to the dysfunctional person you used to be, then you should’a stayed out of that water. If you really really wanted to have that affair, you should have stayed out of the water. But if you wanted an assurance that you would never be alone in your wilderness….If you wanted to find out who you really are in Christ Jesus. If you wanted to find out what you were made for…If you wanted to see what the Kingdom of God really looks and sounds and tastes like, then I’m so glad you waded in that water. I'm so glad you waded in that water.

I love that our parish sits on the side of that little lake (hence the name, Lakeside). (That's right, I figured that out. I have several advanced degrees). But Christians are not called to stay on the banks of the river. (Probably why Lakeside’s emblem is a boat, not a beach chair!). We are called to wade in the water. We are called to remember in the midst of trials and tribulations that we are baptized, that when that water hit our head, we were more than just wet. We were wedded to a story that goes back to creation. We were tied to that voice that said “Let there be light.” We were tied to that band of Israelites tromping through walls of water on either side. We would have with us a God who would lead us by still waters and through the valley of the shadow of death. Baptism does more than make you damp. It also makes you a little dangerous. Oh children, wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water.

What's in a Name?

Shakespeare wrote in "Romeo and Juliet" that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Yet, we care a great deal about our own names, and we want folks to call us by the right name, and spell and pronounce it correctly. As for me, since coming to my first appointment on July 1, I have recently acquired a new name--"Pastor Mandy."

My appointment is as Associate Pastor to a cooperative parish in Waldorf, MD that is made up of two United Methodist churches, one mostly Caucasian, one mostly African-American. In the white church tradition, many pastors would drop the title when dealing with parishioners. To call someone "John" instead of "Rev. Smith" or even "Pastor John" would not be a mark of disrespect; indeed it would be a sign of intimacy or trust. In the African-American church, however, to call a pastor by a first name alone would be a sign of disrespect, and a rejection of their authority and position. When I prepared to enter this first appointment, Pastor Tony (my amazing Senior Pastor) clued me in to this discrepancy. "I will always call you Pastor Mandy, as a reminder to me and to our parishioners of who you are." I always call him Pastor Tony or Pastor Love, for similar reasons.

At first, this was hard to get used to. I think many first-time pastors take a second to respond that first time to the word "pastor." There is a looking-over-the-shoulder impulse to see who the pastor is that has just walked in, because it cannot be me. But now, six months in, I am used to it. It makes me stand up a little straighter when people call me "pastor," not because I feel I'm better than others, but because it is a reminder of my calling. If I lose sight of why I am in the room or what our relationship is based on, when someone calls me "Pastor Mandy" I remember that it is Jesus Christ that we have in common, and that I am called to relate to people, always and everywhere, as a disciple of his. To be called "Pastor" is to feel the tug of the faithful pulling out the best of who I am and what I have to give. At the same time, it is a blessed reminder that the Church has more to lean on than just me, my gifts, or my ideas. It has the Holy Spirit, the holy Scriptures, Church tradition and the communion of the saints. We're working together on a plot of land that we don't own; we are all working in the Lord's vineyard.

I'm not saying that pastors are better Christians than laity, but I am saying that being a pastor here has made me a better follower of Jesus Christ. Whenever someone calls me "Pastor Mandy" I am reminded of why I am here and to whom I belong. I am reminded of being called out from the faithful to be in ministry to the faithful. It is the finest job in the world, and one I give thanks for every day. Pastor Mandy? Yeah, that's my name. And it's a holy and wondrous and wonderful thing.