Spiritual Experience or Spiritual Awakening

During Advent we are looking at individual's encounters with Jesus. This week we heard the story of Nicodemus from John 3. Nicodemus was the Pharisee who came to visit Jesus in the dark. Nic gets beaten up pretty good in most commentaries for his late night visit to talk with Jesus. Most commentaries point in the direction that Nic didn't want to be spotted talking to that radical Jesus. I tend to take a more realistic view of Nicodemus. Maybe he worked days and didn't have the freedom to leave his desk at the Temple to go and have theological debates with some rural Rabbi from Galilee. Maybe, to use modern day "church growth" language he was a seeker. He had heard some of Jesus' teachings but he wanted to learn more. Maybe what Nic was looking for was some kind of Spiritual Awakening. However instead he hears from Jesus that he "must be born again" if he wants to see the Kingdom of God.

In Recovery, the AA Big Book says that a person needs to have a Spiritual Awakening in order to be able to turn their life and their will over to the care of God. After a closer read of the Big Book it seems that the author uses the terms Spiritual Experience and Spiritual Awakening interchangeably. To quote the Big Book: "The terms "spiritual experience" and "spiritual awakening" are used many times in this book which, upon careful reading, show that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms." People who are early in their recovery often think that they need a burning bush type of Spiritual Awakening, and when these type of Halleluiah - seeing Jesus' face in your iron or pancake doesn't happen, they feel disappointed.

Reality is - most Spiritual Awakenings come slowly with God speaking to us in whispers, not with shouts from a burning bush. God most often works slowly, guiding us in our spiritual life. I think this is what is going on with our buddy Nic. Nic knew Jesus was special but still wasn't sure. I think with Jesus, Nic was experiencing a Spiritual Experience but wasn't to the point where he was willing to become a follower of Jesus.

Following John 3 we encounter Nic again in John 7:50-51. Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before, and who was one of them, asked, 51'Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?' They replied, 'Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.' Here Nic is coming to the defense, in a timid kind of way of Jesus, but yet he is still unsure of how deep he should get involved.

Then finally, in John 19 we see Nic joined with Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus. This time Nic's appearance is in broad daylight, no longer in the dead of night. I am guessing that, in witnessing the trial and death of Jesus, Nic had his Spiritual Awakening.

Regardless of what we call it, experience or awakening, to get a good start on the road to recovery, or a life following Jesus, we need to have our own Spiritual Awakening, which will open up for us a life of Spiritual Experiences!

See you next Sunday

A True Thanksgiving

Last night at Recovery Worship we experienced the true sense of Thanksgiving. In all honesty, it was kind of an afterthought on my part. We normally have a small group meet for soup and a Bible study on Wednesday night, so we thought that we could cook up a turkey, mash some potatoes and enjoy a quiet evening. As word got out I heard from several people who said they would attend, so I invited Father Lew from Recovery Mass and started working on the service.

Yesterday morning I received an email from a member of First United Methodist Church of Fargo. She had a friend who "needed a meeting" and she wanted me to know if I knew of any in town. She told me her friend would be at the worship service and would like to attend a meeting either before or after the service. I forwarded her the schedule of two meetings in town and then emailed the folks on the Recovery Worship to see if it would be possible to put together an impromptu meeting following worship to help this person, within 10 minutes I received three emails telling me it could be done!

We had around fifty people show up for worship. The topic for the sermon was "Just another Thursday" and we talked about the struggles people who are in recovery have during the holiday season, the testimonies were very moving. Following the service the food was laid out and as the folks went through the line those who wanted a meeting went into the room while the rest of us fellowshipped around tables. The response to the evening was fantastic. People shared their food, their stories and their love. Several of those in attendance either did not have family in the Fargo area, or they did not attend family holiday functions because of the drinking. One man, with tears in his eyes told me that "this is the first Thanksgiving I have had with a family in a long time." We started a new tradition last night, worship services the night before holidays along with a meeting to help our friends cope with the stress of these days.

While some churches argue about sexuality and other "earthly" issues, it is nice to be part of a ministry whose concern is for their neighbors, and concern with "heavenly" issues. "Love the Lord with all your heart and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself."

Happy Thanksgiving, see you Sunday.

Pastor Ray

Reflections on Sunday

I had the opportunity to preach at Trinity Lutheran Church in Moorhead, MN yesterday. As the director of Lost and Found Ministry, it is important for me to visit them, at least once a year, to share with them the ministry of Lost and Found, and what is going on at Recovery Worship.

It is always an interesting experience for me. This is the first time in almost a year that I have worn my Alb, I even had to Google "Christ the King Sunday" so I would wear the proper colored stole. In many ways, preaching at Trinity was a flash back for me. For seven years I served eight congregations in rural North Dakota. Each congregation was wonderful, but each had its own, distinct, personality.

The difference between the 8am and 9am service at Trinity in Moorhead reminded me of the days that I would preach in Sutton and Hannaford, ND. Sutton would always be the first service. I would arrive at church about a half an hour prior to the service. One or two folks would show up about fifteen minutes before the service, and then, just a few minutes before the service began, everyone (normally about 15 people) would arrive and take their places in the church, of course in their assigned pews.

It was near impossible to get the folks at Sutton to smile, laugh, clap (impossible to clap) during worship. Regardless of how many jokes, intended or otherwise I had in my service, they would not laugh. And of course, only at Sutton did I ever have anyone sneak up to me during the sermon hymn to question something I had said in a sermon. The amazing thing about this story is, the people of Sutton, following the service would head for the basement for coffee and conversation. The men would sit on one side of the basement to discuss farming, hunting, and sports, and the women would sit on the other side and discuss quilting, cooking, and complain about the men. They would laugh, smile, and joke with each other, a truly wonderful group of people. However, in church, they were the model, staid, Norwegian, congregation.

Following Sutton I would make the drive to Hannaford, thinking all the way, that my sermon bombed. Then in Hannaford the people would be talking and laughing and visiting while communion was being prepared and Sunday school was being let out. In Hannaford, the congregation would laugh when I said "Good morning" and would not stop until the service was over. They clapped for the special music, regardless of the quality of the music, the clapped during the children's sermon, and they laughed at my jokes, regardless if the jokes were funny or not. They were generally happy to be there.

The eight o'clock service at Trinity was much like the Sutton congregation. In the middle of my sermon I wanted to shout out, "Why are you people here? What made you get up this morning, put on your suits and Sunday dresses, and come to church this morning?" The expression on the faces at 8 am was not unlike those faces you see in a dentist's office waiting room on people waiting for a root canal.

The nine o'clock service at Trinity was much like the service in Hannaford. People were smiling, they clapped for the youth choir (however why they don't clap for the other music is beyond me) and they laughed. I got the sense that they were really happy to be in worship.

Now there are a lot of reasons for this difference, mostly generationally, but I will save that for another blog. I enjoyed worship at Trinity, but I was really glad to be back with my folks at Recovery Worship at two o'clock to share with them memories of a friend who died last week. I am really glad to be the pastor at Recovery Worship. I wish I knew of a way to bottle up their enthusiasm for worship and sell it to the "cathedral congregations" in Fargo/Moorhead.

See you next Sunday.

Women Under the Law of Moses

During the course of religious debate we hear people quote scripture, Luther, Calvin, and occasionally Wesley. Now I have read my share of Luther, especially when he talks about beer. I find Calvin hard to read, much less colorful than Martin, so I have to have a really good reason to read him, and Wesley, well he wrote good hymns.

I try to quote scripture sparingly, not because God's Word is irrelevant, it isn't. It is generally because I don't want to sound like all the other folks trying to fit scripture into their world view, or, trying to fit their world view into scripture. If and when I do turn to scripture during religious debates I like to focus on the New Testament. The Old Testament, especially the books of the law, well, (sit down you fundies) just is not relevant to our world today.

Today at Recovery Worship we heard from the 8^th Chapter of John, the story of the woman caught in adultery. The "teachers of the law and the Pharisees" quizzed Jesus on what they should do with her, based on the Law of Moses. Well, for a moment, let us look at the verse from Deuteronomy they were talking about; "If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel." Pretty severe punishment if you ask me. We discussed that it was strange that they only brought the woman to Jesus; we all wondered where the man disappeared to. Someone suggested that perhaps the man was one of the Pharisees, an interesting hypothesis. However, can we say this law pertains to us today? I hope not, if so we would run out of stones. But even more striking than this law are the laws that follow in Deuteronomy.

"If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, ²⁴you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

25 But if the man meets the engaged woman in the open country and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. ²⁶You shall do nothing to the young woman; the young woman has not committed an offence punishable by death, because this case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor. ²⁷Since he found her in the open country, the engaged woman may have cried for help, but there was no one to rescue her." (23-27)

Under the Law of Moses a woman is simply the property of either their father or their husband. Is this a model of law we wish to hold up in our world today? I don't think so. I honestly think people who quote the Law of Moses today would not be in favor, for the most part, of totally observing all of the Law of Moses today. If we are not ready to embrace all of the Law of Moses, I suggest we not pick and choose the portions of the law that we want to hold against others.

See you next week.

Bibliolatry

A couple of years ago, during a less than comfortable conversation with a parishioner concerning Biblical interpretation, she became very angry when I told her she was interpreting a text literally that was meant to be read metaphorically. She picked up a well worn copy of her "Good News for Modern Man" Bible, held it high in both hands and said, "I believe every word in this Bible, every word is true, I worship this Bible." Well, that about says it all doesn't it?

Eric Gritsh in his book "Toxic Spirituality" would call this "Bibliolatry." Gritsh defines Bibliolatry as "an excessive adherence to the literal interpretation of the Bible" also known as "Fundamentalism." (page 45). Fundamentalism is toxic, it destroys people who do not agree with its premise, and in time, it destroys those who believe or are fundamentalists themselves. The other problem with Bibliolatry is that the person so wrapped up into it turns their worship, and the Bible into gods, a modern day form of idolatry.

Now, if you are a fundamentalist you are probably hyperventilating by now. Well, calm down, first of all, despite what you are probably thinking, I believe the Bible is the Word of God. However, it is not inerrant as you would like to think; there are contradictions, and in a couple of cases just plan goofs.

The notion of an inspired, inerrant Bible can be traced to the first Greek Jewish converts, known as "Hellenists" and has continued down through the ages, picking up steam in the United States by the likes of Dwight L. Moody whose commentaries are still quoted today in fundamentalist congregations.

The danger is threefold: one, the Bible was never meant to be read literally because it wasn't written literally. The Bible is full of stories told as metaphor. Some stories are taken from ancient myth and formed into stories of faith, most stories have been written down generations following the events, passed down generation to generation via the oral tradition. Another danger is that people who read the Bible literally often do what my parishioner did; she "worships" the Bible. The Bible was never intended to be an object of worship, rather a tool of worship. The Bible points us to who we are to worship, not the object of our worship.

The final danger, and the danger that I believe is the one most prevalent today, when read literally, the Bible becomes a weapon. Fundamentalists use the Bible to beat down people who are different than themselves. Of course this only applies when pointing out the sins or lifestyles of others. When the text points out their sins, well then it is ok to stretch the reading just a bit.

Let's read the Bible as God's Word and through it see how God wants us to live our lives.

See you next Sunday

“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

In the Gospel this week we hear Jesus tell us that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. At the end of the text he tells the "teacher of the Law" that he in his wisdom, "is not far from the kingdom of God." Being close to the kingdom of God is comforting, not being close to the kingdom of God can be, uncomfortable.

What follows is an example of both.

I heard a story this past week that is very disturbing. Bishop Bill of the Eastern North Dakota Synod was visiting a Lutheran Church in a small town in the northeast corner of North Dakota. Like many ELCA congregations, this church is struggling with the ELCA's decision to ordain openly gay individuals, who are in a lifelong, publicly accountable relationship into the ministry. During the conversation, Bishop Bill explained that Jesus never encountered a gay person in such a relationship, "That's because Jesus killed 'em all!" came a voice from the congregation. My goodness, how much further can you be from God's kingdom than this? Regardless of where you are in this debate, the idea of Jesus killing anyone is unthinkable. Jesus tells us to "love our neighbor as ourselves." How can a person sitting in God's house get it so very, very wrong?

On the other hand, Saturday night the folks of Recovery Worship got together to celebrate our ministry. Our second annual gala was held at the Moorhead Armory. What a display of love and support. I have never had so much fun, with such a large group of people than I do when I party with people in recovery. Not a drunk among us, all sober, happy, and alive with life! A local pastor wrote in the Fargo Forum yesterday that "true Christians" don't celebrate Halloween. Well, let me tell you, we had witches, ghosts, pirates and their ladies, you name it, they were there, and that was as close to the kingdom of God as you can get!

Before the dancing started we celebrated recovery by asking how long people had been in recovery, with the loudest applause going for those with the shortest amount of time. A young mother, with one week of recovery, received a copy of the AA Big Book and the Life Recovery Bible. Smiles, tears and dancing, all from folks who have been to the edge, and now live a life of recovery!

Thanks be to God!