30 Aug 08 — Vacation Notice

Friends, first let me apologize for not coming up with something to post on this Thursday. It was "overcome by events."

I will be on vacation and completely away from any internet connection for the next two weeks. As such these blogs will resume on Sep. 16.

Blessings for a happy Labor Day!

Peace,
Robin

26 Aug 08 — Some thoughs about leadership

Visit the shelves in any Christian bookstore, and you will find any number of books focusing on leadership. Likewise, visit the shelves in the business section of any secular bookstore and you will find many volumes on leadership. Strange to say, they all say much the same thing, because there are really only so many unique things which can be derived from such a fairly simple subject. The stories may help to inspire, but bottom line, the leadership Moses’ father-in-law Jethro gave Moses nearly 3,300 years ago is as good as anything written today.

Moses’ major problem was his unwillingness to delegate. Whether that was because there was genuinely no one else to entrust some of his work to, or whether it was a power play on his part, or whether he simply didn’t know that it was an option — well, we do not and can not know. Nevertheless, Jethro looked at the line of petitioners outside Moses’ tent one morning and saw the obvious: Moses was spending so much time wrestling with the petty details of life, that he couldn’t take care of the more important details. So Jethro said enough is enough and gave Moses these three leadership principles which are as solid today as they were then.

1. The leader is responsible for representing the People before God. (In a secular case, the CEO represents the company before its shareholders, government agencies, and customers.) This doesn’t mean that the People can not talk to God individually — they can — it just means that Moses (in this case) is the one who sits down with God and works out what the community should be doing as a whole. The same is true for every pastor. It is the pastor’s responsibility to represent the congregation’s people to God, and to provide the guidance which directs the overall flow of the community’s life. (Pastors may delegate some of the decision making process for the sake of consensus building, but they retain the ultimate responsibility.)

2. The leader is responsible for teaching others God’s (or the company’s or country’s) statutes and ordinances. It is not, for instance, the responsibility of the President to judge each individual criminal case, it is his/her responsibility to ensure that the judges are selected, vetted, and trained to do this important task. Likewise, it is not the role of the Pastor to do everything in the congregation, but to teach others how to do things so that together the congregation is co-created out of a multiplicity of ideas and talents. In a larger congregation, just as with a President, a Senior Pastor may only be responsible for training the teachers, and not for doing the actual teaching.

3. It is the responsibility of the leader to show an example. You can talk about feeding and caring for outcasts all you want, but embodying that talk, as say a Mother Teresa, says many volumes more than mere words can. A leader must embody what he/she is leading. If it is a church, then they must be seen as living a graced life in which the Reign of God has already broken in decisively. (If they are a corporate leader, then they must embody the morality and financial sensibility that leads to corporate success. If they are a political leader, they must themselves take the risks or make the sacrifices they wish those they are representing to make.)

Given these 3 principles, it is easy to look around and see a lot of hypocrisy, of leaders saying one thing and doing another. And you could send them 500 books to read on the subject, but the story in Exodus 18 says all that ever needs to be said on this issue of leadership.

21 Aug 08 — Visiting the KY State Fair

All of you Gallagher fans will be happy to know that the prize winning watermelon this year tipped the scales at 111 pounds — plenty of “ammunition” for the comedian’s “Sledgomatic.” On a more prosaic note, if your pumpkin weighed 368 pounds, well, that was only good enough for second place. If you wanted to get first place, you needed 623 pounds.

Hmm. That old Christmas song, “the cattle were lowing…” and of course Jesus wasn’t making a sound. Or so we sing. Walking through the cattle area was a lesson in quiet. These were happy cows. And very quiet. Of course, most of them were better groomed and pampered than most of us. You did have to walk through their dung though to get between point A to B — just to remind you of who was boss.

When we arrived, they were judging weanlings, which is to say young horses less than a yearling. You’ll be happy to know that first prize yielded $5,600 some odd for his “owners.” I use “” because his number was taped to his handler’s behind and his blue ribbon was hooked to his handler’s jeans. The truth of the matter? I think the horse was in charge…

As you can well imagine there were all kinds of displays, contests, and what have you. But the most impressive thing of all? The displays of the teenagers who had won as “best” of their various county farm associations and the Statewide winners. Looking at their lists of achievements reminded you that some of our youngest generations are still genuine achievers. I wondered how they had time for school, and yet the list of their school accomplishments was just as dazzling as anything else. And all of them seemed to be involved in their local churches in some way or another. Gives one a booster shot of hope for the future.

But what a different world it all is for this “heartland” of agriculture and their small communities than what so many of us live. It is all too easy to covet such a life and run from the challenges cities pose. But the Christian thing to do is to make wherever you are living the closest thing to a Garden of Eden as possible. And if that means bringing the country into the city, so be it.

19 Aug 08 — Some thoughts about seeing clearly

Pardon me, but this is going to be a short one. After 12 years, I finally gave in and got a pair of new glasses. Even splurged and got sun glasses. The eyes checked out OK, they just needed a little bit stronger prescription to deal with the age. And oh boy, can I see things clearly now! But, oh, the pain. Yes, headaches. The eyes have to get used to such a big change. Like last time it is going to take some time to get used to the new eye glasses.

Jesus once said “the truth will set you free.” Seeing clearly also sets you free from misperceptions. But the pain some of us experience with a new set of glasses can teach us a lesson. Yes, the truth will set you free, and yes, it could very well hurt. I think one of the reasons so many Christians never fully develop as disciples, or drift away altogether, is because they are overwhelmed from seeing things the way they really are. They see all that truth because being born again from above is a little bit like getting a new set of glasses, especially if you’ve never had any. But not just a set of glasses to see with but eyes that see with Godly insight: welcome to God’s World and all the pain and suffering God suffers from the misdeeds against God’s People and Creation.

But in the end run it is worth it. Seeing well can help save you from accidents and from embarrassments. And so can knowing the truth. It can keep you from stepping off Jesus’ Way and can forestall a multiplicity of embarrassments. So if you need new glasses, the pain is worth it; if you need to know the truth, the pain you may experience is definitely worth it.

14 Aug 08 — Some thoughts about time off

One of the nicest things about even taking a few days off, is gaining some perspective, and regaining some energy. It is an application of the Sabbath principle to life’s worries and adventures. This last weekend we had an opportunity to take off four days together for the first time since a three day weekend to Sequoia National Park 15 months ago. I say together because we both had separate “adventures in moving” driving to Louisville, and there was last year’s General Conference, but both of those were as worry or business filled as they were pleasurable.

We went to Natural Bridges State Park. I keep wanting to call it a National Park. It is a gem of a place, originally set up by the Lexington & Eastern Railroad to fuel tourism for its trains and later deeded to the state by the successor Louisville and Nashville Railroad, a small part of today’s giant CSX. The trails to the top of the bridge are brutally ‘straight-forward.’ Up, up and away, and then down, down…with a nice interlude while you are up there. (An inexpensicve chair lift is available if you want to just enjoy the “up there” part of the trail.) As tough as any thing I hiked in California; as scenic as any place I’ve been, and only 124 miles from home. In these days of run away inflation and painful gas prices, it’s nice to know that earlier Kentuckians and Hoosiers took the time to set aside and protect some of our beautiful land for future generations, an application of the Jubilee Principle we learned about in the old Exodus and Levitical land laws.

Louisville has some good places to eat, but mostly we eat at home. Out on the road, our habit is to eat out of the ice box for two meals a day and take one at a restaurant. Driving through east Huntington, WV, we spied an old house that had been converted into a restaurant: Nanna’s. The name was intriguing, and so was the architecture, so we went back for dinner. We were not disappointed. I ordered a meatloaf plate special for $6.49. The slab of meatloaf literally took up so much of the dinner plate that they brought out the corn, green beans, and corn bread loaf on separate plates. For barely more than what it costs for fast food these days, it was an excellent, tasty meal, that I simply could not finish.

Being in Cincinnati, we had to try the chili. (As many times as I have been up that way over the years, I must confess this was a first for me.) We chose to try Skylines’. There was more shredded cheese on top of the chili they brought out than there is hair on most of your heads! The secret sauce seemed to have some cloves in it of all things, but hey, it worked. Once again the price was right. I have to say though, that the most expensive meal was also the most disappointing (at least in relative terms). We went to a German restaurant on Mainstrasse in Covington, KY. It was just good enough to remind me of how good real German cooking could be, without being good enough to sing songs of praises over it. The moral of all this? I’ve had some lousy meals in cheaper restaurants over the years, but very few such disasters. There is a lot of good food to be had at “fast food” places (if you watch the menu selections) and at one-off “Mom & Pop” restaurants in out of the way corners. One thing I have learned, is you don’t always get what you pay for, and most of the time, the cheaper food wins in the satisfaction contest. And that’s good news in tough economic times.

12 Aug 08 — Why 10 Plagues?

In the epic encounter between God and Moses versus Pharaoh and Egypt, it took 10 plagues for Pharaoh to relent. Why 10? Why for instance were 7 not sufficient? The question was raised in the Bible Discovery discussion of the first 9 plagues last Sunday. Well, since God doesn’t provide us with an answer, any answer we offer is going to be inescapably speculative. But that is theology’s job: to answer such questions.

First, the number. A lot has been made over the years for the “definitions” assigned certain numbers in Hebrew. For instance, 3 stood for completion, 6 for humanity, and 7 for perfection. There would be 10 Commandments, and 10 was the necessary minimum number of the faithful necessary to celebrate either the Passover feast or later, to start a synagogue. So, one could extrapolate an answer from the number 10 and say that 10 were required because it was the minimum number of plagues necessary to test the Israelite’s faith in God, or to disprove Pharaoh’s faith.

Jesus taught us that God always seeks to accomplish the upbuilding of the Reign of God by the most loving means possible. So, love must be involved in our answer somehow. I would suggest from God’s Perspective that the contest must have looked something like this. The Egyptians are oppressing the Hebrews, but what would it be like if the Egyptians would come to their senses and repent of their oppression? I believe in God’s Heart of Heart, that God wanted a both/and solution rather than an either/or outcome. Humanity’s hardness of heart lead to the later outcome, but I seriously doubt that is what God wanted.

The real problem for God, was that as long as mercy and forgiveness was open for the oppressive Egyptians, the Abundant-Life of the Hebrews would be diminished, and in many cases, more than diminished: it would be totally denied by an all too early death. There would be a point at which the pain that leaving that window of opportunity for repentance open would overwhelm the mercy that its being open provided. Out of great compassion and mercy, 9 times God left that window open. But in an imperfect world, there had to be a time for that window to close, and as we know from the story, God chose the tenth time. I have no doubt that if God had calculated the “pain to profit ratio” as requiring 2 more plagues to make it the twelfth or 2 less to make it the eighth, then that is the number of plagues we would learn about in Sunday School. But 10 was the right number in this case.

What is the moral of this story? In an imperfect world, there is a limit to how long God can hold the windows and doors of forgiveness and mercy open without causing too much suffering for others. The constant denial of God’s Holy Spirit reaching out to convince us to repent is that one unforgivable sin that Jesus talked about, and eventually God has to “call the question.”

And as to the children suffering so horribly in the tenth plague because of the sins of their parents? Think of all the glbti/q children of the homophobic. Do they not die a thousand deaths every time their parents rant against them while they suffer in silence? And do not many of them live lives diminished terribly by the damage they endured as they day after day suffered Pharaoh breathing threats down their neck? Yes.

07 Aug 08 — No Blog Today; on Vacation; see you next Tuesday!

05 Aug 08 — Standing up to Pharaoh

Pharaoh and Moses. Even many non-religious folk have heard this story. It is a timeless tale of one person with God’s Help standing up to injustice. And yet it is never just one person. There would be no Moses if the Hebrew midwives had done what Pharaoh commanded them. There would be no Moses if Moses’ Mother had not risked her family to keep him alive. There would be no Moses if Moses’ Mother’s daughter and Pharaoh’s daughter had not colluded to keep Moses well hidden. We all look up to a Moses; we don’t give those responsible for a Moses enough credit.

Pharaoh is the personification of evil and injustice in every generation; Moses is the personification of the lonely hero fighting (not necessarily through bloody means) for justice and equality in every generation. History is a record of these characters, and although there are many of them, there are very few at any given time. Back when I was in the Army, the most junior of Lieutenants were trained as if they would one day become the highest ranking General. In much the same way, every culture attempts to raise up at least its fair share of heroes. But few achieve that pinnacle. And the few that do, only get there because of supporting casts of thousands, many of whom will never be known but to God and their closest acquaintances.

And yet it takes just as much courage and insight to be one of those supporting characters as the main actor in these dramas. Consider the two midwives. They were told to kill all the Hebrew baby boys. They took their own lives in their hands when they defied these orders. What is so amazing is that Pharaoh “bought” their excuse, that the Hebrew women were so much more vigorous than the Egyptians that they gave birth before they could arrive on the scene. And yet, as “silly” as that may sound, it was enough to force Pharaoh to look elsewhere for a solution. God though was very happy with the results and rewarded these two midwives with households of their own: their own families of which they — contrary to the patriarchal culture of the time — where the heads.

Let’s consider one other hero: Pharaoh’s daughter. She had it made. She had everything she needed, and could get anything she wanted. She was rich beyond measure. And yet, when she saw the basket bearing Moses on the waters, she had compassion. From out of her wealth and the security it brought her, she reached out and took this child into her care and nurtured him into manhood (with Moses’ Mother’s help as the nursemaid). The birth of compassion (and the birth of philanthropy) in our faith story, comes from the enemy’s daughter reaching out and taking in a helpless outcast.

Both the midwives and Pharaoh’s daughter defied Pharaoh in a history-changing way, because it would be this child that would be Pharaoh’s downfall. The moral of the story? There is no one way to achieve justice and equality, no one way to defy wayward authorities. The midwives conducted a “work slow down” to use modern terms; Pharaoh’s daughter was “compassionate.” Today, we live these same principles by being compassionate always, and by not buying from or supporting organizations / companies that do not support equality and justice for all. And by so doing, we become that cast of supporting characters, or actors in training, from which from time to time, God chooses a Moses.