Small Sips: Racism Alive and Well, UCC Article in U.S. News, No More Internet Monk?

What Racism Problem?: An article on MSN reports on some of the discrimination and hate that local Obama supporters are running into...

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Huh. You don't say.

So, for every Pollyanna anecdote about how people are much more racially tolerant nowadays and how race couldn't possibly factor into whether some people vote for a black candidate, there's a story like the above (and the rest of the disgusting stories in that article) to help keep our heads out of the sand. Whether Obama wins the election or even the nomination, at least he's helped expose, or re-expose, one of this country's enduring problems.

UCC in U.S. News: U.S. News and World Report has a very well-done article on the United Church of Christ in light of the Jeremiah Wright fiasco. The article provides a brief history and recap of more recent trends within the denomination, and mostly focuses on the conservative/liberal battles that have become increasingly heated. Eventually, the article reaches this conclusion:

Whether an unabashedly progressive church can become a growing part of the American religious landscape is still an open question. "They may become the refuge for liberals from all sorts of denominations, " says University of California-San Diego sociologist John Evans, though he sees no evidence that the UCC's liberal branding campaign has worked. In the meantime, just as leaders of evangelical churches tend to be more politically conservative than most people in their pews, so the leaders of the UCC will probably continue to be to the left of most of their flocks. And that may only contribute to the view, particularly among many younger Christians who are leaving both mainline and evangelical churches, that overly ideological leadership is one of the weaknesses of contemporary institutional Christianity.

Does a "liberal brand" have a long-term future in American denominationalism? I've reflected before that, while more "conservative" churches have left the UCC, more "liberal" churches have joined or have been planted. So while older branches are falling away, new branches are being grafted on or are budding. It'll look like a much different tree, but it'll still be standing.

The Still Speaking campaign, in part, has always been about attracting disaffected churchpeople from other places, or encouraging non-churched believers to give our church a try. I think that it'll take a lot more than a commercial and a website to do that (personal invitations and local community interaction, for starters). But that has been the goal, and there hasn't been much to dispute that. The trick, especially in light of denominational trends in general, will be less to say, "Look how 'liberal' our national office is!" and more, "We welcome you right here in this particular church, and if that's 'liberal,' then whatever!"

Yes, very articulate. My kid was up half the night.

A Monk-less Existence?: Yesterday, Michael Spencer (aka The Internet Monk) posted this on his blog:

Dear Internet Monk Readers,

Over the next few weeks, while I am on sabbatical, I will be deciding the future of this web site.

As of today, it is quite likely (though not certain) that this site will come to the end of its almost 8 year run this summer. I am not resolved to this at this point, but I am considerably persuaded that the time may have come to bring Internet Monk.com to a close.

Should that actually be the decision, this site would go inactive in early July, and a new blog would begin, with an eventual redirect of all IM traffic to the new blog.

That blog would be a much more focused exploration of Jesus-Shaped Spirituality, i.e. the intersection of Jesus studies and spiritual growth and formation. This subject is animating and working in me right now, and I can see much good fruit and practical help available if I pursue that direction.

The first thing that I need to say is that the new blog focus he's thinking about greatly intrigues and excites me. I'm greatly interested in the same subject matter, and have been for a year or two now. So I love the fact that, if he decides to take on this new venture, I'll follow him to his new space with no problem.

That said, this is potentially an end of an era. The iMonk has been around for 8 years. I've only been reading him for about 3 1/2 of those years now, but he has been a staple on my sidebar, and a great jumping-off point for my own thinking on more than one occasion.

I re-read two of his entries fairly regularly, and I commend them to you:

When Loving You is Killing Me: Thoughts on Pastoring the Small Church (and his follow-up, Four Years: Reflecting on a First (and Only) Pastorate)

The Temptation to Quit

Friday Five - Destinations

Haven't done enough to warrant a Roundup, so I'm playing along today...

Name five places that fall into the following categories:

1) Favorite Destination -- someplace you've visited once or often and would gladly go again I had an awesome time in New Orleans last year, between the work I did and The Best Cup of Coffee Ever at the Cafe du Monde. I keep waiting to hear if another trip is being organized, but nothing yet. Honorable mention goes to The Big House in Ann Arbor...anyone got some extra tickets?

2) Unfavorite Destination -- someplace you wish you had never been (and why) My junior high school. I pretty much hated every minute that I spent in that place. My hometown has been tearing down a couple of the old elementary schools, and I hope that place is next. I'll set up a lawn chair, pop a beer, and gleefully watch every second of it.

3) Fantasy Destination -- someplace to visit if cost and/or time did not matter I've never been to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. My more exotic choice would be Sweden or Greece.

4) Fictional Destination -- someplace from a book or movie or other art or media form you would love to visit, although it exists only in imagination Well, I gotta go with Eternia on this one. Gotta go meet He-Man and Teela and Man-At-Arms and visit Castle Grayskull. Grayskull would be the centerpiece of my trip, really. I hope they'd let me have a tour, what with it being enchanted and mysterious and not well-lit and all.

5) Funny Destination -- the funniest place name you've ever visited or want to visit I've been to Hell, Michigan. There's nothing there but a novelty souvenir shop with things like baseball bats (bat out of Hell) and t-shirts that say, "I've been to Hell and back." It was quite silly.

Back on the Wagon

When I graduated high school, I weighed 150 pounds. It was pretty much all metabolism, as I didn't necessarily eat the healthiest. Portions weren't huge, so maybe that helped.

By the time I graduated college, I weighed 185 pounds. There were many late-night runs to Burger King. There were also many meals obtained from the pasta bar, because 1) it was really freaking good, and 2) the stuff on the line usually looked so unappetizing to the point of making me angry. My tuition was paying for this nasty crap?

Uh...anyway.

After a while in college, I realized how unhealthy my diet had become, so I tried to take steps to rectify it. Walking around campus to classes and other activities was a plus, but I knew that I needed to do more. I tried working in more salads, and I began exercising during my senior year: first semester at the new fitness center twice a week, second semester in my on-campus house with standard push-ups and sit-ups. I still didn't cut out Burger King, and still gravitated toward the pasta bar a lot. To my shame, I think that part of the problem was that I'd rationalize that, since I'd worked out that day, I could then have fattening food. At best, of course, these things would just cancel each other out.

The summer between college and seminary, I was a camp counselor. The combination of the summer sun and walking all day caused me to lose 10 pounds. By the time I got to Eden, I weighed a nice lean 175.

Then I blew up in seminary. More late night runs (and regular meals!) to fast food...I actually would guess that during my first two years of seminary I probably ate McDonald's 3-5 times a week. Admittedly, some of this was "emotional eating:" it took me a while to adapt to my new digs. This was complemented by a lot of sedentary time reading books and writing papers. I had a couple false-start attempts to establish an exercise routine, but these petered out within a week or two.

Entering my final year of seminary, I weighed almost 210 pounds. I hated how I looked and how I felt. I had another couple false-start exercise attempts my first semester with plenty of fast food.

My final semester, I decided to get serious. I flat out cut myself off from fast food, I cut way back on soda and alcohol, and I went to the gym 3-4 times a week.

Guess what started to happen.

I saw myself backing down toward 200, then toward 190. In fact, I decided to make it my goal to weigh 190 by the time I graduated. After a while, it was nothing to spend 30-45 minutes doing cardio. After a month or two, the sight--even the thought--of a McDonald's cheeseburger made me nauseated. I easily met my goal by the time I was handed my diploma. I had lost 20 pounds by not half-assing it any more.

To cut down on the story, I started to stray after a while. A new ministry position and a move upset my routine. I tried taking regular walks around the cemetery and we even bought an elliptical machine, but I couldn't get anything established. Still, it had become apparent that 190 had become my new "plateau weight."

A little over 2 years ago, Coffeewife and I embarked on the South Beach Diet. Between the diet and finally making good use of the elliptical machine, I got myself back down to 175. But through various compromises since then, I gained it all back.

The reason that I'm writing all this out is because in recent months I've started to creep back up toward 200, and just the thought of it makes me angry at myself. So over the past week I've been climbing back on the exercise machine, and have cut out crap food. The best part about it, I think, has been that I feel the same determination that I felt back during that final semester of seminary. I'm taking this in 5-pound increments: first 190, then 185, and if I'm ambitious enough, all the way back down to 175. But I'm not getting ahead of myself.

I suppose that all of this is to tell you two things: 1) it can be done, and 2) I want to do it. It seems to me that this has become all the more important with a new baby around, because dealing with him has involved plenty of sitting around and plenty of quickie, unhealthy meals.

So far I'm back down to 194 from 198 after a week and a half of this renewed ambition. I've already noticed steady improvement in how much I can push myself on the elliptical machine. Eating well has come fairly easily as well: we just don't buy a lot of the crappy stuff.

I hope that I can stick with this. So far, it's working.

No One Comes Near

In my haiku post from the other day, I included what may or may not have been an eyebrow-raiser for some folks:

Father McKenzie
Sermons for non-attendees
Yes, no one comes near

I thought that I might offer an explanation for this one, lest it be mis-interpreted. I don't know how or if anyone will mis-interpret it, actually. But I wanted to give an explanation anyway.

First, maybe you got the allusion to The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby:"

Father McKenzie, writing the words
of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near

Now, at a glance, the above haiku coupled with the lyric may seem to indicate one of two things. First, it's a complaint that no one showed up to hear my sermon. Second, it's a complaint that people showed up but no one paid attention. It's actually a little more complicated than either of those things, and I don't want to give the impression that I wrote this poem to complain about my church.

When pastors write sermons, they sometimes have specific people in mind when they develop particular points. They may question how something will sound: a reference to death, for instance, to a recent widow. Or they may write particular lines in the hopes that particular people will hear them. This may sound a little passive-aggressive, and it probably is. Nevertheless, it's this later point that I mean.

Take my Pentecost sermon. The original title for it was "'Church is Boring,'" which is what confirmands have indicated to me in word or body language. When Pentecost rolled around this year, a day to celebrate the Spirit's work in the church and in believers, this phrase came back to me up against a story of an experience that had to have been anything but boring for those who were there (suspend your thoughts about factuality for the moment...I'm trying to make a larger point).

Then I began thinking about moments in the church's history that were anything but boring: the Reformation, the Boston Tea Party, the Confessing Church, and so on. These events where people of faith took action that was so much more than viewing the Bible as another textbook or putting up with those slow plodding hymns would indicate that a church where the Spirit is truly moving, felt, or responded to is anything but boring, and I wanted to say something about that in the hopes that people who feel dragged to this boring building every week could hear it and understand that there's more to faith than what you assume, and it can be much more exciting.

Well, most of those people stayed home this Sunday. They didn't hear this message. No one came near. The sermon still worked as a call out of complacency for the rest of us, but when originally conceived it was to throw a bone to the people who don't see the church as a very worthwhile place.

No one came near. Not the people I wanted to really hear it.

Maybe other preachers can relate to this. I don't know. But I wanted to flesh that out, anyway.

P.S. I have one member who was born in England, and for the past two Sundays she has had friends visiting from across the pond. I couldn't help but wonder how they heard my Boston Tea Party comment. But Coffeewife told me not to worry about it. So I haven't.

Haikus

Diaper change again
That's the seventh one today
Stop sniffing that, cat

Trying to slim down
Eating well and working out
Three pounds lost so far

Six days' work this week
Wedding, and then baptism
There could be worse things

Father McKenzie
Sermons for non-attendees
Yes, no one comes near

"A Different Kind of 'Exciting'" - A Sermon for Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

Throughout junior high and high school, I went on a lot of mission trips through my church’s youth group. These were week-long work trips to inner city Philadelphia or Cincinnati, or more “outer reaches” type places in Illinois and Massachusetts.

The place in Massachusetts is called Heifer Project – if you’ve never heard of Heifer Project International, this is an organization that raises various animals to send to Third World areas to help their economy or their food supply. So essentially, Heifer Project is a farm, so we basically did farm work for the week when we went there.

I’ve been to Heifer Project twice. The first time I was a newly minted confirmand, and took the trip with some fellow confirmands (it was my first mission trip ever, actually). The second time I was a junior in high school – and my mom signed up as one of the chaperones. Actually, she’d become the youth group coordinator by this point, so there was no escaping being on that trip with her.

So during this week of farm work, we’d put up electric fences, clean the barn, feed the animals, milk goats and a cow – typical farm chores. Every day we’d be divided into subgroups to take on these different tasks, and one day my little subgroup was assigned the task of fixing up an overhang that housed lumber and other materials: cleaning it out, nailing up some tarps to keep out the rain, and so on.

My mom and I were in the same group that day, and I remember that morning very clearly. I remember it being hot and muggy. I remember my sinuses violently protesting the pollen count. I remember the bugs: flies and mosquitoes both. And I remember that it had come close to lunch time, and everyone else in my group had already headed back to get cleaned up. I’d wanted to quit for the morning as well, and come back later even though we’d only had a little more to do. I was standing on a ladder nailing up those tarps, and my mom looked up at me on the ladder and handed me another nail, and said, “Come on, let’s finish this. This is the hardest I’ve ever seen you work.”

I tell you this story about my mom for two reasons. One: it’s Mother’s Day, so it seemed appropriate. Two: it’s Pentecost, so it seemed appropriate.

The second reason probably sounds strange. What does a story about a mother’s encouragement to finish the job through sweat, discomfort, fatigue, and bugs have to do with Pentecost?

Believe it or not, it has everything to do with Pentecost. Here was a 17-year-old kid who was more interested in popping on his headphones than hammering nails. Here was someone more interested in air conditioning than the hot humid morning air. Here was someone more interested in being back with his friends than out alone finishing the work that everyone else had abandoned. Here was someone to whom music seemed more exciting, cool air seemed more exciting, laughing with his friends seemed more exciting. And the work that he was doing to help others didn’t seem so exciting. It was hard and tiring – but not exciting in the sense that he enjoyed it. It took someone else’s prodding for the task to be completed.

The story in Acts 2 of the first Pentecost can be called exciting – after all, it’s certainly not boring. Here we get the sound of a rushing wind; we get the disciples all speaking in different languages so that everyone who heard them could understand their message. People who hear and see them are amazed, confused, cynical, but nevertheless interested. This is not something that anyone – the disciples or the observers – is able to ignore.

Finally, Peter stands up in order to offer an explanation, and you can bet that he had an attentive audience by this point. He quotes the prophet Joel as he lays out what the work of God’s Spirit is about. It’s about men and women prophesying – in other words, calling people to own up to unfaithfulness. It’s about people receiving visions and dreams about what God truly wants out of God’s people – faithfulness, trust, love – and at the same time condemning people’s actions to the contrary.

These prophesies, visions and dreams couldn’t have been tremendously popular. The people at whom they’re directed probably got a little upset, to say the least. The people charged with delivering them probably didn’t want to give them because it would damage relationships; create tension and awkward moments.

The ability, the drive, the courage to do all of this through the sweat and discomfort had to come from someplace else…it had to come from Someone Else. In order for this work to be accomplished, in order for us to finish the job, we need the Holy Spirit to swoop in and light the passion within us and to say to our hearts, “Come on. Let’s finish this.”

When people talk about how exciting any particular church is or making the church more exciting, this stuff isn’t what they usually mention. When talking about an exciting church, people may talk about the upbeat music, or how many jokes the pastor told that day, or Sunday School classes that don’t weigh themselves down too much with that boring book called the Bible. There’s nothing wrong with these things – they can actually help engage different people in different ways; help them learn how to follow Jesus (except maybe the “Bible study with no Bible” thing).

But there are some other exciting things that the Holy Spirit may have in mind – a different kind of “exciting.” The Holy Spirit may have in mind some stuff that might make us sweaty or uncomfortable.

Think of some of the exciting things that church members have accomplished over the centuries.

Think about Martin Luther opposing practices of the Catholic church that he thought were oppressive or unnecessary, making him a pariah and drawing the ire of his church in the process. That’s not boring.

Think about New England Congregationalists who were responsible for the Boston Tea Party – church people sneaking onto ships in the middle of the night to chuck tea into the harbor! That’s not boring.

Think about Dietrich Bonhoeffer helping to organize opposition to the Nazi party. That’s not boring.

Think about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as he organized churches to combat racial discrimination. Think about the nights he spent in jail and the opposition he faced. That’s not boring.

The Holy Spirit helped inspire church people to these actions – hard, uncomfortable actions; actions that strained or broke relationships. This is the kind of exciting stuff (because it’s certainly not boring) to which the Holy Spirit calls the church, prodding us, speaking to our hearts while saying, “Come on. Let’s finish this.”

The Holy Spirit gives the church the passion and drive for justice, for God’s kingdom to come into view more fully through our actions: Actions like fixing up a needy person’s home. Actions like reconciliation between enemies. Actions like confronting our own prejudices.

Exciting actions, because they certainly weren’t boring.

Actions where people saw visions and dreamed dreams and prophesied faithfulness.

Actions that would have a much longer-lasting effect than the most exciting music or the most joke-laden sermon.

Actions where the Holy Spirit poked and prodded, and keeps poking and prodding, saying, “Come on. Let’s finish this. This is the hardest I’ve ever seen you work.”

Hard work, but not boring work.

Exciting work.

Spirit-filled work.

Pop Culture Roundup

As I mentioned the other day, I started N.T. Wright's Simply Christian, and since writing that entry I haven't made it any further into the book. That other entry may make it seem like I don't like the book too much, but that wouldn't be accurate. In the first two chapters, Wright has first argued that all humanity has an internal compass of justice (basically the philosophical Argument from Morality) and that all humanity has certain spiritual tendencies as well. I never really bought into the Argument from Morality (the notion that our natural sense of right and wrong proves that God exists) because I don't think it adequately addresses environmental factors in which people are nurtured. Unless one whittles things down to a very bare argument that people tend to believe that certain things are good and other things are bad without getting into specifics about which things fall into either category, this argument doesn't always work that well. Anyway, the book is doing what I want it to do, namely getting me to argue with it.

We watched I Am Legend this week, and to be honest, I didn't really like it. This is the Will Smith movie about a scientist living alone in a post-plague New York, trying to find a cure for the virus that has turned people into animalistic cannibals (some reviews call them "zombies," which is wrong because they aren't dead...or undead...or whatever). The other important thing to know is that these infected people can't go out in the light because it burns their skin. I think that my biggest problem with the movie was the portrayal of the infected. We're supposed to think of them as very devolved, lower-brain creatures, and yet in certain scenes they seem to have a leader and one of them sics attack dogs (also infected) on Smith's character [I've since learned that in the book the creatures are more intelligent, in which case the movie can't seem to make up its mind]. Besides that, they're computer animated, which would have been easier to buy into if they weren't supposed to look so human. The mummies in The Mummy? Okay. The skeletons and fishpeople in the Pirates movies? Fine. But these are supposed to be still pretty close to human-looking, and they come off very cartoonish. The best scenes are the ones with Smith all by himself, when the movie explores his loneliness and his desperation to find a cure.

We also watched Futurama: Bender's Big Score, which is the feature-length DVD that just came out within the past year with the reunited cast. The professor is tricked into signing over the delivery service to some internet-scamming aliens. The aliens find a Bender-shaped tattoo on Fry's butt showing binary code for time-travel ability. Bender, meanwhile, is reprogrammed to do the aliens' bidding, so he goes back in time repeatedly to steal famous treasures for them. The time travel stuff is also used to re-attach Hermes' head to his body, and Fry goes back repeatedly for various reasons as well. After a while, the time-traveling stuff started to grate. The writers did manage to cram most of the regular side characters into the plot, so kudos for effort there. I read on Wikipedia that this movie was actually the first of four that will be produced, which is good, because the ending was pretty bleak.

I discovered a TV show last night on Animal Planet called Creature Comforts. It originated in Britain; this is the U.S. adaptation. The concept is that they interview people all over the country, and then match up what they say to Claymation animals. Of course, the animals give the interviews a totally different context. In one, an ant complains that her supervisor never notices her. In another, two cockroaches talk about how hard it is to live in an urban environment. It's great. You have to watch. Seriously.

Around the web, here's a game where you tranquilize runaway sheep.

"Simply Christian" and Spiritual Thirst

Last week I picked up Simply Christian by N.T. Wright for three reasons: 1) It comes highly recommended in various corners of the blogosphere, even touted as a new Mere Christianity, 2) I've never really read anything by Wright, except perhaps an article here and there in college or seminary, and 3) I wanted to argue with it.

It didn't necessarily need to be this book that I could have argued with. I've been meaning to re-read Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity, and I just as easily could have started arguing with that instead. But I chose Wright because of the first two reasons listed above, but mainly to use it to discover where I stand nowadays on this or that theological issue. So there'll probably be an occasional post here and there as I look through this book...like now.

The second chapter is entitled "The Hidden Spring," in which Wright presents a somewhat tedious allegory of a dictator who cements over all natural water supplies except the ones he pre-approves as being best for his people. Eventually, the springs break through the concrete, and chaos ensues. I just took two sentences to do what he feels the need to do in a page and a half. Anyway, here's his conclusion:

We in the Western world are the citizens of that country. The dictator is the philosophy that has shaped our world for the past two or more centuries, making most people materialists by default. And the water is what we today call "spirituality," the hidden spring that bubbles up within human hearts and human societies.

In other words, Wright argues that we've lately been experiencing a great rise in spiritual thirst that has been suppressed by things such as secularism, skepticism, materialism, and a relegation of belief to the sidelines of public life. The "official channels" such as institutional churches, have provided inadequate means to quench this thirst, and thus people have been searching outside traditional forms. Wright cites various New Age religions, among other things, as signs of this new quest undertaken by so many. But then he draws a strange conclusion:

[A]ll this fundamentalism, with militant Christians, militant Sikhs, militant Muslims, and many others bombing each other with God on their side. Surely, say the guardians of the official water system, all this is terribly unhealthy? Surely it will lead us back to superstition , to the old chaotic, polluted, and irrational water supply?

They have a point. But they must face a question in response: Does the fault not lie with those who wanted to pave over the springs with concrete in the first place? September 11, 2001, serves as a reminder of what happens when you try to organize a world on the assumption that religion and spirituality are merely private matters, and that what really matters is economics and politics instead...What should we say? That this merely shows how dangerous "religion" and "spirituality" really are? Or that we should have taken them into account all along?

Wright's main point is that if a society tries to pave over "spirituality," people will seek to quench their thirst any way that they can. People will look outside "pre-approved channels" for this water if they are dissatisfied with what is offered.

The problem is with where Wright takes this argument in the quote above, arguing that fundamentalism is one answer to this thirst. Even more absurd is the implication that if "spirituality" hadn't been suppressed the way that it has, if people had been more free to explore and question and believe, an event like 9/11 wouldn't have happened.

This almost smacks of Falwell's "if only the secularists hadn't taken over this country" explanation.

As it was originally conceived in the 19th century, fundamentalism was a certain reaction to perceived "paving over" of religious belief, but it was and is much more a movement from within religion rather than a reaction to a larger societal problem. People who subscribe to fundamentalism of various forms don't go looking elsewhere to satisfy thirst; they seek to purify the water supply they already have--perhaps even one "proper channel"--and then seek to cut off all other supplies while claiming theirs is the one truly pure source.

In other words, fundamentalism isn't one more example of a larger spiritual thirst...it ultimately seeks to be the pavement. Wright is correct that the pavement may begin as a reaction to this mindset, but fundamentalism only seeks to use their own brand of concrete. To suggest that secularism led to 9/11 is, to me, both to misunderstand the specifics surrounding that event and to misunderstand the causes and aims of fundamentalism.

This larger movement to satisfy spiritual thirst that Wright describes looks outside the usual means if it has to. Fundamentalism defines more narrowly what one may drink, and who may drink it. The latter, in my view, is a completely different movement.

"Age of Anxiety" - A Sermon for Easter 7

As a sort of epilogue, here's what I ended up preaching this morning. In order for certain things to make sense, the title that appeared in the bulletin was "That They May All Be One," and it was a communion Sunday.

1 Peter 5:6-11

The first thing we need to do is change the title. After two weeks away and some mild sleep-deprivation, I’ve been slow to come up with something to say. And since the bulletin had to be run by Thursday, I was feeling a little pressed for time.

Likewise, even though John 17 appears as the focus text this morning, we need to back up to 1 Peter 5. This is a chapter—an entire letter, really—about suffering. The writer has a lot to say about suffering, as he addresses the actual suffering that his community was going through.

When times get really hard, one understandably wonders a couple things. First, you may wonder whether you’ll eventually crack under the pressure. One may try to resist breaking down completely in frustration, anger, or depression. One may try to resist complete emotional shutdown.

You may also wonder how long any particular hardship will go on; you may wonder how long you’ll need to endure it. At times, there’s a clear limit: perhaps the end of the day, or someone coming in to relieve you somehow. At other times, there seems to be no end in sight.

Finally, you may wonder where God is in all of it. How is God helping? IS God helping? When will God help? WILL God help? These are all ways that we become anxious about hardship, about difficult moments.

After acknowledging the hardship, the writer of 1 Peter also has a lot of encouragement in the midst of it. He has a lot to say along the lines of remaining steadfast in faith. He has a lot to say about trusting God’s presence. He has a lot to say about trusting in the one who raised Christ. He has a lot to say about trusting that the community is set aside for God’s mission, and thus God has not abandoned them.

And then we come to this chapter, where he returns to the theme of hardship when he says, “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.”

There was a lot of anxiety in that age, and there’s a lot of anxiety in this age as well.

That’s our new title, by the way: “Age of Anxiety.”

There’s plenty of anxiety to go around.

We may have anxiety about the state of the world. We may feel anxiety about wars and rumors of wars, tensions between countries or entire regions. We may have anxiety about people of different religions seemingly always at odds, with extreme fringes of those religions resorting to violence.

We may have anxiety about the state of the country. We may have anxiety as the presidential election becomes increasingly divisive and heated, as it always seems to do. We may have some anxiety over a byproduct of this year’s election being the topic of race, and how much misunderstanding and anger still exists between different racial groups.

We may have anxiety about church-related things. The United Church of Christ has come under increased scrutiny over the past few weeks because of the inflammatory words of Jeremiah Wright. Some may have anxiety about how that affects other local churches such as ours and members such as ourselves (by the way, if you want to talk about that, stop by the office or buy me coffee or something…I need coffee these days).

We may have anxiety about any number of personal concerns: life transitions such as graduation, employment, finances, disease, birth, death.

There really is plenty of anxiety to go around. And what does the future hold for any of it? What can we expect tomorrow, or even an hour from now? Will we crack under the pressure? How long will this anxiety last? What is God doing in the midst of all of it?

Then here’s this verse again: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” I wonder how his original community reacted to that. How many took it to heart, and how many blew it off, saying, “Do you really know what we’re going through?”

Surely the writer didn’t mean it in some sort of dismissive way. He didn’t mean to minimize the hardship and anxiety they were feeling. He didn’t just throw it out there like a pithy piece of advice to “just pray harder” or “just believe more.” Here is a community trying to stay together, trying to maintain their trust in God and each other. The writer knew that.

Here is a community with plenty of anxiety, plenty of opportunity to crack under the pressure or abandon their faith. The writer knew that, too.

This piece of advice to entrust our anxiety to God doesn’t happen by itself – it doesn’t stand alone as something to print on flowery greeting cards at Hallmark or Berean. It comes after a long description of suffering, a long acknowledgment that yes, there are some bad things happening; some real gut-busting kinds of things that we can’t shake by trying to think good thoughts. These are things that may keep us up at night or that we carry through the day.

But we don’t need to carry them by ourselves. That’s what the writer of 1 Peter is getting at. He encourages his audience to trust God with their anxiety. He also encourages them to trust each other with them. He reminds them that their brothers and sisters in Christ are going through hard times and anxieties as well.

This community is told to share anxiety with God – to share, to commune. They’re told to share anxiety with each other – to share, to commune.

That’s how this table works. We are sharing ourselves – our joys, our sorrows, our anxieties, our dreams – with God, and with Christ our host. And we are also sharing with each other. We are sharing the good news that Christ is present and resurrected.

Here we are given these real, tangible elements. Here are things that we can chew and things we can feel in our stomachs. Here are physical things that can show us spiritual things. Here are gut-filling things to help us through gut-busting things.

Here we are told that God is with us, and that our fellow believers are with us. Here, we are told that our anxieties are meant to be shared just as we share Christ – that we may all be one.