Now Children...

Ever heard the expression: "Give someone enough rope and they'll probably hang themselves?"
47 Republican Senators really should have given that some thought.
As it turns out, some of the same people who have been frothing at the mouth to try to catch President Obama in some sort of impropriety or over-reach of his authority, have sort of stumbled into precisely the sort of thing they were really hoping Barak would step in himself.  Check out the Logan Act, which was passed in 1799, yes that's right, a mere 10 years after the Constitution was ratified, when the US of A was just a wee baby nation state.  It essentially states that private individuals should in no way be able to negotiate with nation states on behalf of other nations without specific authorization of the nation they are negotiating with.  It is named the Logan Act because one Dr. George Logan, of Pennsylvania took it upon himself to get all involved with negotiations with France at a sort of touchy moment.  Needless to say, President Adams and some others took exception and thus: a law against meddling in the foreign affairs of your government, no matter how good your intentions.
Fast forward to 1936 and a Supreme Court decision in the case of the United States V. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation, where a private company was brought up on charges of violating a trade embargo against South American Countries in the Chaco War.  The embargo was imposed by President Franklin Roosevelt under the authority of an actual act of Congress.  C-W Exports said that the Congress couldn't give the President such authority and that such an embargo was a bunch of malarkey and so nanny-nanny-boo-boo, we should be able to make a buck on a foreign war (sounds sort of like Haliburton).
The Supreme Court disagreed, in fact, they went as far as to say that the interests of the nation vis-a-vis foreign policy were of such primary importance that you can basically assume that the President has authority to do such stuff, EVEN WITHOUT CONGRESS.  Here is the quote from Justice Sutherland's majority opinion:

It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations–a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress, but which, of course, like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.

Okee dokee, if I can find that in about ten minutes on Wikipedia, how is it that 47 US Senators, I'm guess a fair number of whom have law degrees, and all of whom have super well paid legal counsel, think they can just toss it out the window and have no one notice that they may have just committed treason?
The two dudes from Tennessee, who refused to add their signatures, are probably feeling like the smartest guys in the room.
Look folks, I don't care if you like Barack Obama, I don't care if you think he's doing a good job, he is our elected leader, and he is nothing if not careful.  Seriously, the guy could and, and probably should have brought the hammer down on all this obstructionist and frankly seditious behavior a long time ago, but he didn't.  Probably because he has a bit of a sense of history and legacy and doesn't want the first black President to go down as a bully or a thug, and so he has taken the high road for the most part. If you would like a comparison, look at how Vlad Putin deals with people who disagree with him, say what you want, dude gets thing DONE, but I wouldn't vote for him.
In fact, the more of this stuff that happens, the more O looks like a grown up trying to deal with a room full of petulant children.  In it all he has seemed to me, more and more dignified.  He may, in fact, have ceded some of his power and passed on some opportunities to do more by taking advantage of his detractor's impetuous behavior, but he usually comes out in the end looking rather vindicated.
Now that his time as our leader is drawing to a close, I am a bit torn, on the one hand I want him to push a bit more to get things done, but on the other hand I also want him to keep to the high road and not leave in a flurry of flying crap.  Maybe that "turn the other cheek," thing really can work, even in the twisted world of politics,  We will see.

Social Studies

I want to give props to my 9th grade Social Studies teacher Mr. Eric Schott.  Not only was he a cool guy who could quote the Pixies and played the Dead Kennedys in class, he also was the first teacher I ever had who was able to present the rather stilted and biased curriculum of the American Educational system as though there was more than one side to the story.  He taught Comparative World Cultures and a class called Current Affairs (this was before Clinton so that didn't sound quite so sordid).  It was 1988, the Soviet Union was on the ropes, the Berlin wall actually came down, within a year and David Hasselhoff became known as a singer loved by Germans everywhere.  O the times they were a changin'.
Up until that point, I had been presented with a historical and political narrative, wherein, western culture, particularly American Christianity was the apex of human society, and everyone else were either benighted savages or sinister communists bent on killing the very idea of God and in the process also crushing the human soul.
At this particular moment in history the USA and the USSR were still sort of locked in the 50 year detente of the cold war and fingers were on buttons.  That was about to change, but everyone was pretty much skeptical that something with such high stakes and that had been so intractable for so long could just, all of the sudden, not be a thing anymore.  We had a bad guy.  We had, what they refer to in literature as a foil, a Moriarty to our Holmes, a Lex Luther to our Superman, you get the idea.  As it turns out, our enemy wasn't quite as together as we thought and it turns out that he was the one with feet of clay or a glass jaw or whatever metaphor you like for a fatal flaw.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the nightmare of nuclear annihilation was pretty big news, and we talked a bit about that, but what I want to give Mr. Schott big ups for was the fact that he also taught us about Islam.  Granted, we got the 1980s version, which was that there were basically two kinds of Muslim: Sunni and Shia (or Shiite, which was an endless source of vulgar humor for 14 year olds).  At that point, the Sunni were the good guys and the Shia were the bad guys.  We were supporting Saddam Hussein in his heroic battle against Ayatollah Khomeni, and we were big fans and suppliers to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan because those scrappy little dudes were taking on the mighty Red Army, and actually winning.  One of those "heroic" commie fighters was a young Saudi named Osama Bin Laden (not that that meant anything yet).
Mr. Schott was rather careful not to let us buy that story though.  He presented the history of the two groups within Islam and pointed out that actually the Shia were a rather drastic minority, historically persecuted by the Sunni, and that Iran, big bad Iran (which under no circumstances should ever be pronounced Eye-Ran), the ancient Persian Empire Iran, which was in no means to be trifled with Iran, was very much defined by their desire to be left well enough alone.
They are surrounded by Sunnis who don't like them, their theocracy is very much threatened by western values, and everyone, everywhere is always trying to tell them what to do.  You have to understand that, to a 9th grader, this is radical stuff, because you understand how that feels.  I became very sympathetic to Iran, not in the "gee I would like to go there" sort of way, but at least in the way I felt bad for some of the poor kids who were always getting picked on for not having the "right" jeans or sneakers.  I also understood the feeling sort of first hand, because I was sort of growing into a bit of a misfit identity myself.  The news just presented Iran as a threat, as an international bad actor, as a human rights catastrophe.  I know, all of that is true, they really are a bit of a spaz, but you need to understand why before you go rounding up the bully mob.
I really don't want Iran to get a nuke anymore than Bibi Netanyahu, for the same reason I wish Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold didn't manage to get guns.  But I'm pretty sure as long as we keep treating them like pariahs, they're only going to want to hate us more.
Here is something they share with the Russians, which I don't think Americans or Westerners really ever understand: the capacity to suffer.  I learned a lot about the Russians from reading Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn.  I know that our posture towards them during the Cold War, was probably the single biggest reason why the thing went on as long as it did.  As long as the Kruschevs of the world could convince the long suffering Russians that the USA was more abhorrent than the privations visited on them by Communism, the stoic Russian people would just suck it up and take it.  They're really amazing like that.
Iran has a similar character.  They have been alone so long they have lost many of the social skills and diplomatic instincts that we hear so much about in the Biblical narratives about Persian rulers like Cyrus and Xerxes, who at one point were hailed as actual messiahs by the Jews who had been exiled into Babylon (Iraq).  In a very real sense, the United States is sort of like a high school freshman on the scene of global politics (a big strong freshman, but way awkward).
We stumble our way through some sort of relationship (if you can even call it that) with these ancient cultures, with ethnic and religious grudge matches that go back to a time when the only great Empires on this continent were called Lenape, Aztec and Mayan.
The problem that we have is that we don't care to understand these ancient stories, we simply judge by who does what we want them to do, and who is more or less friendly to our interests.  Got oil?  You can be our friend.  Willing to sign our treaties and not break them (and not get too mad when we do)?  You're reasonable people.  Angry about poverty and economic injustice?  Sorry, we don't like angry people.  Threatened by lax moral standards and being surrounded by all sorts of licentious imagery and behavior?  Well then you must be a fundamentalist extremist, we can't even talk to you.
We are so very ignorant about the cultures and attitudes of people who are different from us, and the world is going global faster than we would care to admit. It's becoming too dangerous to continue to blunder about in our freshman fugue.  We need to learn, and we need to engage, and we need to stop letting ignorance and fear run us.

T-Minus 30 Days

Thirty days until I'm wheels up for Spain.  These will be thirty very busy days, because it's Lent, and because I'm not just popping off for a vacation.  I've got all sorts of little odds and ends to get prepared so that things will run smoothly in my absence: little prayers to write, Calls to Worship and hymn selections for six Sundays.  I've got preachers lined up, I've got the support of my congregation, I'm going to make sure that as many of the details are in place as I can... and then I'm going to go.
And I'm going to have to deal with the reality that life will go right on without me.
I have been through the phase where I worried about everything that could go wrong, but now I'm in the phase where I wonder: if I'm really that expendable.  Lots of "forward thinkers" in the church-y world are saying that salaried clergy are becoming an anachronism, that the church of the future needs to be more open to different gifts and less rigid.  "Churches are shrinking," they say, "the Pastor's salary is often the biggest line item in the budget," they say, "maybe we should be trying to help the poor instead of supporting one person's career as a professional church-person."
Sometimes it reminds me of a scene in American Beauty where Kevin Spacey's character is asked to justify his job, to explain what he does so that he won't be fired.  The result is... well... wonderful, but not the sort of thing I'm going to link to here, you know because of the whole NSFW aspect of the interweb, but if you're resourceful, you can find it on youtube.
The funny thing is that this sort of sentiment comes from pundits (yes the church has those too), and it neglects to consider the fact that institutional maintenance, while tedious, is necessary.  And it neglects to consider that the majority of the people in normal churches are not really theologians, which is okay, the world probably has enough theologians as it is, but that the church does need at least a few, you know for highly esoteric functions like trying to root our current practice with a two thousand year old tradition that needs us to stay alive, and like trying to formulate a vision for the rather eclectic collection of human beings that make up our congregation that involves more than just doing the same thing over and over again.
I think at some point, most pastors have this fear of being found out, not for some deep, dark and sordid secret, but for simply being unnecessary.  These church pundits are not helping.  Want to know if your pastor has this fear? Watch them, are they over-functioning (this means do they have their hand in everything)?  Are they obsessive about making sure everything is just so?  Do they "need to know" about every little sniffle and outpatient procedure?  Do they seem like they're sort of constantly on the edge of burning out?
Now ask yourself, do you want them that way?
Be honest, you probably do.  Because you know how much they get paid, and you wonder if they're worth it.  And if they're busy, and if they're "on top of things," and if the institution of the church runs like a well oiled machine and if complaints are sort of down to a dull roar, and if their sermons are inspiring and not too long, and if they have neat ideas about how to "get people involved," well then they're doing their job, and you're getting your money's worth.
Church, I know it sounds harsh when you say it like this.  I'm sorry, it is harsh, but it's something we all need to hear, clergy and congregations alike.  I phrase it like this, not as an accusation against the people in churches, because you're probably even now getting defensive and saying, "that's not how we are at all!"  I know, that's not how you mean it, but it is how it sounds when your pastor hears your grumbling through the filter of, their own insecurities, their own doubts about their call and their abilities.
I know this because it is a fear I have had to wrestle with in deciding to take a 40 day trip to Spain.
Can I just up and leave?
Do I want to let them see how well they'll get along without me?
Can I admit that I am really that expendable?
I want to be absolutely clear on this to non-GSPC readers, this congregation, especially the Session has been absolutely supportive of my little adventure.  I didn't have to assuage their fears, they said, "Go for it," from the very beginning.  I have had to deal with my own uncertainty about the magnitude of the absence.  I have had to fight off the demons of over-function and control issues.
Surprisingly (though perhaps only to me) the congregation has been quick to see the value of this journey.  They see how this is going to help me be a healthier in the long run, and I suppose they know that a healthy pastor is better than one on the verge of burnout.  One who has a vision and engages the journey is better than one who is constantly battling their own insecurity.  I think it's helping me already.
Somebody actually told me, "this seems like exactly the sort of thing a Pastor needs to do from time to time."  They said it in a context of sort of amazement at the distance, and peculiarity of simply leaving everything for over a month.  Moments like that, where an awareness of what the church is really about: being on a journey together and appreciating that there different parts and different inspirations and different calls, goes a long way to making more sense out of all the static.
That is the astounding truth and beauty of the church: we can be grumblers and complainers for sure, but every once in a while we see the light, and we are the light.

Farewell, You Old Codger

A while back I preached this sermon, detailing my experience of learning how to preach from Fred Craddock.  Today, I learned that Fred has joined the church triumphant.  I spent all of about five days with Fred, if you had asked him about me, he would not have known me from Adam, but he affected me.  He gave me the courage to get out from behind my protective shield when I preach, both literally from behind the pulpit, and figuratively in the sense that he cut me loose from trying to emulate someone else.
Craddock is one of the most gifted preachers you will ever hear.  He could do the same sort of thing that we hear Jesus doing in his teaching: come up beside you, tell you a good story, get you feeling the right feelings and thinking the right thoughts and then kind of level you with a truth that you really didn't expect.  Fred was also, when I spent my time with him, a grumpy old man, and I mean that in the kindest possible sense.  He was a curmudgeon, an old fashioned southern gentleman who warned us against ever saying that someone had "issues," because his granddaughter (who is most likely about my age) was rather fond of just saying "issues," whenever someone was acting odd.
For my part, even as star struck as I was, I knew that I was never going to give up on one of my favorite little Gen-Xish phrases.  I rather enjoy defining someone with an odd personality or quirky behavior or random phobia as having issues.
Fred had issues, with our use of the word issues, or maybe he just had issues with a world that seemed like it was changing a little too quickly, and he really liked the way things used to be.  I don't know, but I do know he gave us young whippersnappers some really good advice.
He told us that there never was, and there never will be a preacher who was good enough for us to imitate, including himself.  Which was shocking because we were in the middle of spending the better part of a week learning about how he prepared and delivered his famous sermons.  I won't claim that this advice really sunk in right away.  My own issues at the time were delusions of grandeur and learning how to preach like Fred Craddock, of being a sort of preaching celebrity like him, of being able to turn the tide of a church that was in decline by simply being an amazing preacher.
I needed to learn that that idea was just wrong.  I needed to realize that that idea was going to kill me inside.  I needed to learn that that idea was going to keep me from actually being a good preacher.  And I think I could really only learn that from one of the best preachers in the world, because I have issues.
My week with Fred made me a better preacher, or at least a different preacher.  I made the manuscript just a step in the process of preparation, the written word now stayed at home and a rough outline went with me to the pulpit, and then I left it there, and I went out into the great wide open and preached naked (not literally, I have always been fully clothed).  I told stories, sometimes stories about myself, and about painful or funny or instructive things that happened to me.  I stopped leaning so much on other people's stories and the dry theories of theologians, I started talking about my own living relationship with the Word, not all at once mind you, but steadily that is what it became.
I credit the old curmudgeon with giving me the nudge out of the nest that I needed.  Even if maybe I'm not the preacher he thinks I should be, I'm pretty sure I'm the preacher I need to be, and he gave me permission to go that way, whether he knew it or not.  It was his authority as a teacher that set me free.
I am thankful for the gift of that time and that gift.  I know that I was part of one of the last groups that he gave that gift, his health was in decline, and he just couldn't get around like he used to.  Our paths crossed at the right moment, and I know that was no accident.  So when I saw the news today, I was rather grieved.  I only spent a week with him, but he has been with me ever since, every time I step out from behind that pulpit, I take that step in honor of Fred.
So Craddock, do me one last favor, tell Jesus I said, "Hey."

Poem for a Snowy Day during Lent

Security is the cry
Oppression is the price
"We have to protect our own!"
Means we have to kill someone.

Like water from a poison stream
It looks so necessary,
Until it makes you sick.
Nightshade, deep and powerful
Deadly.

Defend, interdict, prevent!
Hold on to what you have!
Seek to save your life...
The Cross is folly.

Woody said, "Let's have Christ our President."
But the carpenter isn't running for office.
He doesn't want your crown
Because of the thorns;
And he's already got a better one.

Violence, Power,
Power, Violence,
An endless and tedious refrain

To quote Leonard,
"When they said, 'Repent!'
I wonder what they meant."
Can we really turn away the "way things always have been?"
Can we really turn towards Grace?

Can we forgive before our anger turns to hate?
Can we be better, even if nothing else changes?
Can we give a gift, when we know it will be misused?
Can we really give anything?
Or is it all just a usurious loan?

I Just... I Mean I Can't...

Church signs can make me cringe sometimes.  You might think that I would be cool with people cleverly sloganizing Christian themes, but I think, and maybe this is getting worse as time goes on, I'm not.
I saw the following phrase on a church sign this morning on my way to drop my daughter off at school: "Body Piercing Saved My Life."  I had a physiological response to it, want to know what it was?  Picture your grandparents getting "frisky."
I'm trying to track down exactly what it is about these signs that makes me sort of clench up.  I think I have a pretty good sense of humor.  I don't really mind at all when people tell a good joke, even when that joke involves the peculiarities of church or faith.  I have seen church signs on the internet that were actually good, but I wonder how far they had to travel to find them. Most of the church signs and Christian bumper stickers I see out there range from blah to blech.
I have come to prefer church signs that just do boring old sign work: tell us something about something.  It's not that I don't believe you can really get a good zinger up on the old board sometimes, there is anecdotal evidence that you can, it's just that I think humor is so very subjective and it can go wrong so easily.  One of my homiletics professors cautioned us against being too clever with our sermon titles because there is a danger of being "pornographic," because it profanes. trivializes and mocks something that is supposed to be sacred (as pornography does with sexuality).
For instance, the clever little gag about body piercing, referencing Jesus crucifixion.  First off, emphasizing the rather brutal notion that the brutality of Christ's death is somehow the vehicle of salvation rather than the very fact of his life, and moreover the reality of his resurrection is sort of dire and grim soteriology to be sure.  But even if you're not going there exactly, there is also the fact that crucifixion is decidedly one of the least funny things that have ever happened on the face of the earth.  There are some things that just shouldn't be joked about, some things so brutal and evil that humor cannot break through.  Gallows humor has to walk right up to the edge of morbidity and brutality and sort of laugh into the void, but sometimes one loses their balance.
There's an old joke: "Jesus walks into a hotel, hands the concierge three nails and says, 'can you put me up for the night?'"   Hah, sort of, not actually very funny, but also not particularly offensive, because everything about it shouts, "this is a stupid joke."  It's funny because it's stupid, and a little vulgar, but somehow the vulgarity is toned down by the non-pretentious context of a vaudeville/burlesque presentation.
Church signs on the other hand tend to shout: "Take us seriously!"  The humor in this context is tinged with the seriousness of people being "saved."  The gravitas of faith and spirituality can make for some good jokes to be sure, but good religious humor has to have a very special tone.  You can poke fun at the human part of church, you can laugh about cantankerous old "saints," you can poke fun at the silly way we sometimes handle Scripture, you can get a good laugh at misapprehensions, i.e. Monty Python's The Life of Brian, "Blessed are the cheesemakers."
In fact, Python's send up of first century Judea, is rather hilarious, it just oozes sacrilege, but they're standing off to the side as critics and scoffers, not trying to be funny from within the walls of a church.  And maybe that's what makes the difference for me at least.  The pathos fails.  I'm looking at those signs and thinking, "what are they thinking?"  I'm wondering if they get the fact that their cleverness and their sense of humor is just off.  I'm wondering, if I, as an insider to this Christianity thing, am a little skeeved by the clumsy attempt at being funny, what do outsiders think?  Is this presenting the Gospel? or is this making a mockery of it?
Would I be offended, for instance, if Monty Python made some sort of body piercing joke in one of their skits about Jesus?  Probably not, I would expect that sort of morbid humor from them.
Maybe there's a key to this back in the idea of pornography.  No one who has experienced an actual, healthy sexual relationship would find anything about pornography to be realistic, but someone who has not experienced a healthy relationship might get all sorts of bad ideas.  If you don't know what "real" people look like without their clothes on, and you expect your actual girlfriend to look like a Playboy model, without understanding about airbrushing and such, you're going to have some problems with intimacy, and you may really hurt some feelings.
Art is full of nudity, but it's not pornography, mostly because artists are portraying the beauty of the natural world rather than trying to make something that is salacious.  You might notice in old paintings that naked bodies come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes, as in the work of Goya for instance, the bodies are rather less than perfect.
Humor is a form of art, it points out our imperfections, and it helps us also see beauty.  Pornography mostly fails to be art because it points us to a false sort of intimacy/beauty, it presents sex as sordid and silly rather than as intimate and loving.
Trying to present the reality of a relationship with God and what it means to really follow Christ in a few dozen characters on a sign board is an absolutely impossible task.  Perhaps lampooning the brutality of crucifixion is not the best way for people to be drawn towards the nuances of various perspectives of atonement, perhaps threats about damnation, no matter how hidden behind sarcasm are not the best way to call disciples to your community.
I'm still not sure I have a handle on all this, but for now, I'm going to keep our signs pretty simple.

Sizing Up the Competition

Over the weekend we hosted a Waldensian Pastor (what exactly Waldensians are is a really interesting historical tangent, but not one I'm going to deal with here) from Northern Italy.  He is in this country on a sort of study sabbatical, and a large part of his study is to discuss all things cultural and ecclesiastical with the pastors and churches he visits in America.  Many of our discussions were about how things are different in Italy, attitudes towards food, cars, guns, church, the healthcare system.  I am generally of the opinion that the closest thing we American religious types have to a time machine is our ability to learn from the Church in Europe.  We can look backward to the history on the one hand, but we can also look forward as well, to see what the reality of church in an increasingly secular society will be like.
There are many differences in the context that my Waldensian brother faces as he works his way through this thing called ministry.  He is part of a protestant minority in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation.  In Italy, pretty much all protestants have to stick together, because even now, the Romans run the show.  As an American Protestant, I can sort of allow myself to be neutral or perhaps even sympathetic to the Roman Catholic system, they're not holding any power over me, and have not for a very long time.  In this country, Catholics pretty much have no choice but to get in the trenches with the people they once called heretics and try to figure out what exactly being a Christian in the 21st century is supposed to be about.  From my perspective I don't really feel like I'm in conflict with other denominations, truth be told, I think I personally feel a little more kinship with Roman Catholics (especially with their neat new Pope), than I do with some of the more Red State type Christians.
But I'm a Presbyterian of the postmodern world, I admit that my bias is towards inclusiveness and universalism.  I've probably internalized a lot more C.S. Lewis and Karl Barth theology than is really recommended if you want to hold on to your in-crowd mentality.  I'm not so much concerned with whether people agree with every little nook and cranny of reformed theology, I would generally just like people to take Jesus seriously and try to actually love one another, you know rather than hating, fearing and killing each other.  I think that's a pretty good plan, heaven, hell and whatever else you want to roll about to the side, I'm really convinced that Jesus is the guy I want to follow.
When I think about the "competition" I generally don't think about other churches or even other religions, increasingly these days, I think about sports.  I know, you thought I was going to say atheism or consumerism or maybe even Islam, but nope, sports.  My Waldensian friend and I got into a conversation about football, and yes, we were actually talking about different sorts of football, but the similarities were really quite eerie.  He said that, in his experience, football (talking about soccer), had taken away much of the territory once occupied by religion.  People might go to church, but they actually worshiped at the local pitch (soccer field), Liturgical colors had been replaced by team colors, feelings of belonging ran high when you were in the presence of people who cheered for the same club, feasts and celebrations now followed big wins instead of holy days,  Each team had songs that it's fans would sing, spontaneously, from the heart, with feeling.  There are passionate discussions about the merits of players, coaches and playing style, passionate discussions, that no one finds arcane or obtuse or pointless.  Who is better Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo?  People would invest in that argument, sometimes to the point of violence.  Yes, friends and neighbors perhaps sport is now the true religion of many, complete with some of the darker elements.
I couldn't help but identify, and also admit complicity in this shift.  I can discuss sports every bit as comfortably and enthusiastically as I can discuss theology, and most days I'll tell you which one I would prefer.  I can also spend hours watching ESPN, listening to everything from technical analysis to sentimental stories.  I feel an attachment to certain teams in each sport, I want them to do well, and I can be induced to despise my rivals (I'm pretty sure Jerry Jones is actually demonic, so there's a strong crossover there).  I'm not likely to get physically violent over sports, but then again, I wouldn't actually get violent over a theological disagreement either.  I am beginning to wonder how far this goes.  Some observations that are true on both sides of the pond.

1. We educated our kids in sports with dedication.  People regularly skip church for kid's sporting events or practices.  Do they ever skip a game to come to church?
2. We prioritize sporting events over any sort of religious participation.
3. We deify our athletes, even going so far as to call them "idols" and "icons" and "immortal" and we are deeply offended when they fail to live up to our standards.
4. If you asked people to donate to church the same amount they would pay for season tickets, many would get downright angry.
5. During the NFL season at least, and this was observed to be true of the other football by my Italian counterpart, the relative mood of a whole week can be altered for better or worse by what happens to your favorite team.  Does that ever happen with what happens in Church?

I know what you're going to say, a lot of this is the church's fault.  Maybe we should do a better job articulating and advertising and maybe even entertaining.  After all, if we're not a place where people are transformed, maybe it's because we're doing something wrong.

Except, people are changed by church, some dramatically, some gradually, but transformation is a thing that happens in almost all churches on some level.  The only thing is, it cannot be forced, or planned, or made into a commodity.  I am hesitant to say there is anything that we can do to facilitate the action of God's Spirit, because that can lead to some truly bad and dangerous theology, what perhaps we need to do more clearly and more consistently is bear witness to the what is happening to us as we walk.  Why do we come to church?  

I have heard people of all sorts tell others why they root for a sports team (and yes, because I have done it for my whole life is a valid response).  People are able to articulate how they came to be a Steelers fan when they grew up in Colorado.  They are able to explain whatever evil sorcery was involved in becoming a Cowboys fan living in New Jersey (I'm talking to you Chris Christie).  They can comfortably opine about why their relationship with a sports team makes a difference in their life.

We're less forthcoming about our relationship with God though aren't we?

Or is it that we really don't know?

I have a hard time believing, in this age of choices and lack of social pressure, that anyone goes to church without at least knowing some reason for it.

When I consider all this, I'm not just pointing the finger at others, I'm stating a mea culpa, as well.  I'm not above cancelling or re-scheduling a church meeting for a playoff game, or at least really wanting to, I'm certainly not above watching Sportscenter while I'm also reading my morning devotional.  I'm just choosing to take notice.