As I was walking from an airplane to baggage claim over the weekend, I heard an announcement that a Protestant Worship Service was about to begin in one of the five interfaith chapels in the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport. Who goes to a religious service in an airport?  I almost said this out loud.

I can think of many reasons why people would not do this:

• We wait in line for baggage checks and security checks.  Who has time to stop by the chapel?
• If there’s pre-flight time, most people seem to spend it charging their phones or buying a snack.
• You don’t need a chapel to pray or take a Xanax if you suffer from several aviophobia.

I imagined airport chaplains as faithful volunteers who have a lot of sitcom-worthy stories to tell, assuming that people who seek out the airport chapel services are particularly interesting/strange/easy to mock.

I can imagine makeshift prayer services on an actual airplane in the event of a disaster or a health emergency.  But if had a deep prayer concern at the airport, I would probably not go in search of an airport chaplain.

I did a little research while waiting for my plane trip home.

• Most major airports have designated chapel areas.  Noted exceptions include Las Vegas and LAX.
• I wondered if airport employees use these chapels. Over 60,000 employees serve Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, for example, and maybe they appreciate a quiet place to breathe and pray.  (Note:  Disney World depends on about 70,000 employees and they do not have a chapel – although there is a  “designated meditation area” in Epcot’s Morocco Museum.)
• Maybe travelers use these chapels going to and from difficult destinations like funerals.  I remember that – after airline disasters – trauma specialists often gather in airport chapels to give information to distraught families.

But honestly, I imagined airport chapels as underused spaces staffed by lonely volunteers.  So I asked somebody.

There was a young woman at the Gate 27 desk in DFW and I asked her about the chapel in the airport.  “This might seem like a strange question,” I said, “But do you know anything about the airport chapel?  Does anyone ever use it?”

She looked at me like I was daft.  But then she said, “Of course I know about it. It’s especially full on Sundays when people are working or traveling.  I was just at services this morning.”

Adventures in ignorace.  My ignorance.

It’s true that I tend to look askance at something if it’s not familiar to me – as if my own personal experiences are normative for everyone.  If I can’t imagine why anyone would visit an airport chapel, then everyone must have a hard time imagining it, right?

When we otherize people for doing/being something unfamiliar to us, it only shows our own ignorance.  If I’m surprised that people would use an airport chapel, maybe I just don’t know enough about airport chapels.  Or travelers.  Or airport employees.

If why we find ourselves shocked when people vote for a real estate tycoon who has never before run for public office maybe we need to talk to a different set of voters.  If we are stunned that people would gather in Charlottesville with torches chanting, “Russia is our friend” – maybe we need to get out more. Maybe we need to talk with people who don’t think like we think.

Cruelty should always shock us, I believe.  We should never allow injustice to become so normal that it no longer stuns us.

But the everyday lives of regular people vary broadly and I – for one -am ignorant about people who are not like me.  For the record, perfectly wonderful people practice their faith differently than I do and some of them seek out airport chapels while traveling through or working in airports.

One of the great things about what’s going on in our country right now, is that we realize our own ignorance about our neighbors.  Some of them have different experiences and different perspectives from our own.  Maybe we need to make some new connections and try to understand.

Image of one of the Interfaith Chapels in Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta.

it involved mothering.  In fact, the only times I’ve ever begged God for anything, it involved mothering:

• Please don’t let my mother die.
• Please let my mother die.
• Please save my kids.

We remember moms this weekend.  But I am also remembering that the God I believe in loves me like a mother.  This changes everything for those of us who have mixed feelings about Mothers’ Day.

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.  Isaiah 66:13a

Many of us who are or have been or pray we will one day be mothers are reminded this weekend that sometimes we are beggars.

Image is Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) by James Whistler (1871).

• Criminals?
• Lazy People?
• Black or Brown People?
• Drug Addicts?
• Unlucky People?
• Cursed People?

On the drive home last night, I heard back to back to back stories about poor people.   They ranged from 1) a single mother with a voucher for Section 8 Housing who – nevertheless – could not find a landlord who would rent to her, to 2) a new book called Generation Wealth (which is “more about wanting than having” money) to 3) the story of Susan Burton who established a program for poor, formerly incarcerated women in Los Angeles.

That last story kept me from wanting to sink into despair, but more about that in a moment.

First I heard a woman in Dallas explain why she didn’t want poor neighbors:

“In this neighborhood, most of us are stay-at-home moms with young kids. The lifestyle that goes with Section 8 is usually working, single moms or people who are struggling to keep their heads above water. I feel so bad saying that. It’s just not people who are the same class as us.”

Then I heard author Lauren Greenfield say that:

“Materialism is the new spirituality.”

Congratulations, all you prosperity ministry preachers and political shamers and blamers:  you have successfully convinced us that people are poor due to their own lack of discipline/lack of ambition/lack of blessing.  You have convinced us that money (or the appearance of money) = class and dignity.

It’s a lie.

Rich and poor people alike sometimes make terrible choices, but the rich enjoy multiple safety nets that make their mistakes less devastating. People of color – even those with financial resources – pay more heavily for their mistakes than white people.  Exhibit A: white kids who get caught drinking under age who do not get shot leaving a party.

Jesus said many things about the poor and I tend to agree with Liz Theoharis who says that Jesus comment that “the poor you will always have with you” is not about the inevitability of poverty; it’s actually a mandate to end the systems that make people poor.

Thriving 21st Century spiritual communities are not merely about “flinging a coin to a beggar” in the words of Dr. King.  “True compassion comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” Even if you don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, you have to agree that Jesus was all about compassion.

And therefore, we are called to be compassionate ourselves.  What makes neighbors like Nicole Humphrey of Dallas say that “voucher holders won’t fit in“?  What makes a kid aspire – most of all – to be “rich and famous” one day? How do we fight the notion that being poor = being bad/less worthy?

About the time I was wondering if there was hope for humanity on that ride home last night, I heard Susan Burton tell her story.  She was a poor woman who shared what she had to give other women the break that no one gave to her.  You can listen here (at about minute 21 on Marketplace, 5-10-17).

Being “good” is not about being rich or poor.  It’s about seeing people as God’s children.  It’s about feeling compassion in the likeness of Christ. It’s about living for something bigger than ourselves.  The Church is called to teach these lessons, especially in a world that worships money and condemns those without it.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us*

Yes the world is a hot mess.  But sometimes we simply need to notice the beautiful things around us.  This is what I see today:

• My neighbor who’s been too sick to leave the house in a while was seen in her front yard today with a cane, smiling.
• The male goldfinches are electric yellow again.
• Our backyard looks like Ireland because of all the rain.  (And for a while a duck family was living back there in our temporary pond.)
• Spence is back from dog camp loving life.
• The irises are about to bloom.

What do you see?  Extra points if what you see once looked like dust.

*lyrics by Gungor.

Who doesn’t love them? Secret tunnels – whether we are talking about priest holes or underground passageways – bring out our inner-mystery lover.  The earliest Christians used tunnels to escape from the Romans within cave systems in Antioch.

But tunnels can also conceal nefarious business.

While finishing up a great weekend with God’s people in Colorado, I learned that tunnels run underneath Longmont.  This is so cool, except I was also told that they were used by the KKK to transport people in the 1920s.

I’ve also been reading about the secret tunnels in George Washington’s Philadelphia house which concealed the comings and goings of his slaves.   “Just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall”  slaves went in and out of his home unseen by Washington’s colleagues.  And in Jefferson news, restoration efforts at Monticello have revealed a once-secret passageway between Mr. Jefferson’s bedroom and the bedroom of Sally Hemings.

Real history includes both the noble and the shameful.  We like to share stories that make us and our people heroic and honorable, but the truth is that each of us also has an inglorious past.

And our churches each have an inglorious past as well.  I don’t know a single congregation of Good Christian People who have made all the right choices when it comes to following Jesus.  We have chosen to serve ourselves instead of serving the poor or weak.  We have excluded people in cruel ways.  And we have secretly (or not so secretly) included KKK members, Nazis, predators, abusers, and bullies in our numbers without holding them accountable.  We have a history of avoiding “unpleasantness” for the sake of keeping peace, even though that “peace” has corroded our souls.

One role of the 21st Century Church is to uncover secrets that continue to enslave us and bring the light that comes with telling the truth about ourselves. Another role is to provide safe haven for those who are terrified for their lives. As our world continues to be confused about serving the most vulnerable around us, the Church will have a bigger role in modeling what compassion looks like.

Secret tunnels are interesting, but what makes them holy versus what makes them horrible is the direction in which they lead.  Do they lead towards freedom and light  (i.e. the underground railroad?) or do they lead towards death (transporting slaves towards further misery?)

Do our own secrets bring life (surprise party!) or death (shame?)

Image of a cave opening in Antakya, Turkey  (ancient Antioch) which allowed early Christians to escape if their worship space was raided in the first century.

God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat.  The Bible is an equal opportunity offender in terms of politics.  But I’m in search of any Christian who can give me a Biblical case for:

• removing health care for financially insecure human beings
• deporting people who fear for their lives in their countries of origin
• opposing abortion while also opposing support for the care of young families
• failing to welcome the stranger, especially from poor countries.
• breaking treaties with sovereign nations, including Native American nations
• assuming that all people of color are dangerous.

Yes, people disagree about politics.  But can someone please explain to me how anyone who claims to follow Jesus can call for and celebrate political actions that target the poor, the sick, the powerless, the minority, the refugee, the terrified, or the desperate?  Anyone?

PS America is not a white nation.

Image source.

We hear the same burning questions as Church Leaders over and over again: 

• How can we bring young people back into the church?
• How can we make people dress up for Sunday worship?
• What’s the best way to get young people to tithe?

These questions make me tired.

What if we asked these instead:

• How can we bring broken people into the church?
• How can we shift our culture to care less about what people are wearing and more about how people are connecting with God and each other?
• What inspires the people in our community and how can we equip them to do what feeds their souls?
• How can we make it easier for people to contribute their money and time?

Tip of the hat to Laurie Brubaker Davis whose DMin project “Listening to the Moment: Where Young Adults are Finding Church” is where I got the idea for this post.  She is a good person to connect with about young adults and church. She asks good questions.

The best questions these days start with why?

• Why do we offer Sunday School at 9:30 am?
• Why do we still do a paper newsletter?
• Why do we exist as a church?

Honest answers happen only in safe congregations (because it’s important to allow people to respond with “I have no idea.“)

Here are some of my favorite questions to ask church people:

• Why are you part of this church?
• What stirs your soul?
• Who was the first person to tell you about Jesus?
• If you could write 95 Proposals for today’s Church (we could even call them “theses”) what would they be about?

And here are questions for pastor search committees.  And here are questions for college students.  Don’t make assumptions.  Ask clarifying questions.  And listen well for the answers.

First, a plug:  The White Privilege Conference is an important gathering of educators, religious workers, law enforcement professionals, social workers, and students. Today is the last day of the 18th annual conference and next year’s event will be in Grand Rapids, Michigan April 4-7, 2018.  Mark your calendars.

Secondly, the  workshop on Dismantling White Savior Mentality got me thinking about the times I have seen myself as the perfect person to save the day.  But being White Savior Barbie is a terrible idea.  (Same with White Savior Ken.)

It also got me thinking about the importance of moving from the individualism that’s become our God (“This mission trip will look great on my college application.”) to community engagement as servant leadership. (“How can I connect with people to serve, even if I don’t get any credit for it?“)  In theological terms, community building makes earth as it is in heaven.

This is what we are supposed to be about if we are serious about Jesus.

I believe that my tribe of Christianity has learned a lot through our 200+ years of ministry.  We still have  – as a predominantly White denomination – some White Savior issues.  But we are better at recognizing that the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution.  In other words, we have built relationships with partners all over the world and we trust those partners who tell us what they need.

How can we dismantle a White Savior Mentality?

• Reconsider who is the expert: The local people on the ground or the not-so-local people who want – probably with the best of intentions – to swoop in and save the day?
• Trust the locals.  Trust is bolstered when we are not benefitting personally.
• Build relationships.  Imagine what it’s like for group after group after group to come into a community, take photos of themselves with “the needy” and then leave, never to connect with that community again.  Authentic, ongoing relationships are essential.
• Ensure that leadership looks like the demographic of people being served.  This also goes for local schools and non-profits.  (Note:  the majority of non-profits serving People of Color in the United States have staffs and boards that are overwhelmingly White.)
• Share our privilege.
• Consider a policy of “White Followship.” Listen more.  Talk less.

I remember long ago when a group from a church I served went to Haiti to do good things.  They were working on the second floor of a building in Port Au Prince and – as local children gathered below in the street to wave  – the white church folks decided to throw candy down to those children who clamored for the treats below.  If this image doesn’t make you queasy, consider checking your own White Savior issues.

Christianity is a communal way of life.  Even though we live in a world that promotes individualism, Jesus calls us to something different.  Ministry is not about us.  Mission is not about us.  Service is not about us.  It’s all about making the world a little closer to what God created the world to be.

Image from the White Savior Barbie Instagram account.  Yes, she has an Instragram account.

Pastors rarely get to be The Broken One. Here are some socially acceptable times when clergy might get to be Broken:

• Pastor’s parent/spouse/child dies.
• Pastor acknowledges addiction (but only when he/she is headed into a treatment facility.)
• Pastor’s house burns down/floods – assuming parishioners’ homes were not also destroyed.  If Pastor’s house was merely one of several homes lost in a disaster, the Pastor still has to be The Strong One.
• Pastor has cancer or some other life-threatening disease.
• (Possibly okay) Pastor is going through a separation or divorce.

One of the nourishing things about clergy support groups is that we clergy can be vulnerable without fear of breaking boundaries or confusing roles. My group is called the Preaching Roundtable and we just finished our 18th gathering.

Most of us clergy were trained to be pastoral caregivers and not to be pastoral care receivers.  This means that some of us are in need of pastoral support but we don’t know where to find it and we – for some reason – have not yet found a therapist, coach, mentor, and/or spiritual director, not to mention a team of cohorts.  (Get on that, my friends.)  I need Team Jan.  Your pastor needs a team as well.  And that deep vulnerability support team cannot come from our congregations.

Nevertheless, it’s important for us to show our brokenness.  I am an imperfect mess sometimes and that fact not only makes me feel real;  it is real.

I remember a friend telling me about her church’s interim pastor whom she loved because he spoke about his own disappointments and imperfections in such a way that those in the pews felt like they could do the same.  His sharing made him more approachable.  And – perhaps most importantly – he didn’t make the stories about him nor was he the hero of his stories.  He was sharing the stories in self-deprecating ways to make a theological point related to how God works in human life.

Every caregiver – whether you are clergy or not – needs space to be vulnerable from time to time.  If you have a pastor, you are doing her/him a favor by recognizing this.

I know pastors who suffer great loss (death of a loved one, family catastrophe, health crisis) and the congregation doesn’t want to hear it.  Or at least they don’t want to hear it for long.

Perhaps the congregation will allow the pastor to grieve for a week or so, but then the pastor is supposed to snap out of it.  (Yes, this can be true when people in the general population suffer great loss.  Others hope that the broken will move on  and stop talking about it.  But it’s even more true for spiritual leaders.) The pastor is often our spiritual mother or father. We don’t believe they need much in the self-care department because it’s their job to care for us.

My hope for all clergy is that each of us has a group with whom we can be vulnerable.  Because sometimes we are The Broken Ones.

Image is of a statue in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val d’Oise, France.  I thank The Roundtable for being part of Team Jan as I head to my next thing today.  And I thank God for my friend and brother Jeff Krehbiel on whose team many of us have found ourselves, especially over the past five weeks. We remember today that in life and in death, we belong to God.

I’m pretty good at discerning what God is calling other people to do but I struggle with what God is calling me to do. (I’m only sort of joking.)

As my preaching group meets this week to talk about Preaching While White, I find myself sensing a call to preach a series of sermons about race even though I never get to do this anymore as a person who preaches in a different congregation every weekend. Here’s what I’m thinking and I invite you to take/borrow/steal these ideas.  Or you can invite me to preach several Sundays in a row after June 16, 2018.

[Full disclosure:  I believe that we will continue to have issues about race until we talk about race more/all the time.  White People will continue to have an issue with White Privilege until White People spend each day thinking about what it means to be White.]

Three Sermon Ideas:

1. Let’s Talk About the Curse of Ham – Genesis 9:20-27  First of all, how many of us don’t know the story about naked drunk Noah?  And then there’s the evil  notion that Black People are cosmically cursed because of Ham.  Maybe your people never heard this in Sunday School but too many Good Christian People did hear this. And deep in their souls, they still believe it.
2. When Did You Learn About Japanese Internment?   1 Kings 10:1-13  The Queen of Sheba (a dark-skinned woman) had heard of King Solomon but she didn’t know the whole story. (And we perhaps didn’t know that the QoS was black.) Maybe you’ve heard now about Henrietta Lacks and Katherine Johnson or maybe not. But some of us are angry to learn that these women and their contributions have been hidden.  And in our school books, the ugliest true life stories of our great nation’s history have often been – wait for it – whitewashed.
3. Aunt Grace is Mistaken Romans 12:3-8 –  My family members reading this will remember Aunt Grace, a beloved Church Lady and my grandfather’s sister who passed away in 1973.   One Sunday afternoon while I was a child helping Aunt Grace “make a party” (i.e. Sunday afternoon snacks) she leaned down and whispered into my tiny ear, “Don’t ever forget, Jan, that the Edmistons are better than everyone.”  I remember feeling confused and – as soon as I could – I tattled on Aunt Grace to my father.  I told him – my Dad, the Sunday School teacher who had said more than once that ‘God loves everyone no matter what‘ –  what Aunt Grace had whispered into my ear.  And his single-line response was, “Aunt Grace is mistaken.”  The ugly truth is that many of us believe we are better than (or being white is better than, or being male is better than, or being American is better than, or being Christian is better than.)  When Paul wrote that we are connected to each other, he was also saying that we cannot be “greater” than each other in God’s economy. Compared to Jesus, all of us are broken and ridiculous.  Even Aunt Grace.

We who Preach While White have an underused opportunity to speak about race and we have to do this.  We have to do this.

We have to do this.

Image of Chelsea Handler whose Netflex series is worth a watch.  Also do yourselves a favor and invite Jessica Vasquez Torres to teach your church group.