Gray Days

I live in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Sometime in late October and until late March the skies turn gray and for the most part remain gray.  Occasionally the sun is seen for an hour, sometimes a half-day but mostly for five and ten-minute stretches.  Those brief moments of sunlight during the winter months are cause for celebration.  So, in Pittsburgh, until the end of January, we rely on the next Steeler’s game to buoy us and keep us hopeful.  For those of you who are not Steelers fans, remember, we won “one for the thumb” in 2005.

Winter in Pittsburgh is a good metaphor for life in general.  Lots of gray with moments, sometimes a short season, of bright and joyful sunlight.  I do not mean to be dour in my outlook.  Gray is not always that bad.  Many good things happen on the gray days. It is just a bit more difficult to celebrate them as compared to when the sun is shining.  Yet, I must say that a fire in the fireplace is much better on a gray day as is a glass of dark ale.

You might have noted comments in my blog from my college roommate, Larry.  We have been able to get together from time to time and at the very least we try to talk by telephone every two or three months.  I spoke with Larry the other night and he thanked me for the Christmas family newsletter I had e-mailed him the week before.  We laughed about how these annual letters, although good updates on life, take on a Norman Rockwell-esque tone.  You know, everything is in order and life is good.  Often references to a messiness in life, illness~problems with children~divorce~addiction~etc., are just that, vague references.  As I said to Larry, it probably would not be fair to our families to write anything but Rockwell-esque letters.  Family dirty laundry needs to stay at home.

But what about our expectations of life?  We so want our lives to be like one of those Norman Rockwell paintings.  No wonder we are surprised when we are confronted with messiness and oftentimes just downright hard stuff.

So, you know my response to this hard stuff~Jesus.  As I survey the options out there for navigating life and for truth I keep coming back to Jesus.  I disagree with Hitchens and his new book god is nOT GREAT (yeah, the cover of the book does that typography emphasis-cute marketing trick).  One reviewer calls it the ultimate attack book on God.  Give me a break, what arrogance and ignorance a comment like this exposes.  People a lot smarter than Christopher Hitchens have wrestled with God before and have come out with very different conclusions.

Albeit, Jesus himself is messy.  He does not give us all of the answers or a guidebook for getting through the gray days of life (someone break this news to Joel Osteen, please).  Yet, Jesus does give us a fresh start and new way to view the life we live and life in general.  He redeems the gray moments and puts them in a new perspective for us, difficult as they often may be.

I love Jesus because he is straight with me.  He tells me what I do not want to hear about myself and offers me his unconditional love each and every moment.  I love Jesus because his only agenda is a genuine and real relationship with me.  As one of the songs we sang in church yesterday noted “He knows my name.”  He expects things of me as well.  He has charted a way of life that includes things I must do and things I must not do.  I do not believe that these are just guidelines.  There is a cost when I do that which I should not and a benefit when I do those things that I should.  However, it is not always a cost or benefit that I receive like I would a paycheck.  So, the journey with Jesus is much messier and full of angst as compared to the assumptions that those who choose not to come along, like Hitchens, have about it.

In the end, I like Rockwell paintings.  Yet, I am also awed by Pollock’s work.  The gray days of life are in reality a continuum of experiences between these two artistic expressions and in the end, they are much more than either and more than all of the best thinking we do in trying to explain them.

Happy New Year!

Tom and Larry – Fall 1974 – Freshmen Year

Safe and Sanitized

So much of church is just safe and sanitized.  You know, we go and listen to safe music, listen to safe sermons, exchange greetings with safe people who we often hardly know.  Don’t get me wrong, I am being critical of myself as much as I am of the church at large.  I like safe too.  It does not require me to extend myself, to reveal myself nor to grow in any way.

Last evening I attended a service at what is popularly being called an “emergent church.”  My younger daughter has  attended this church for the last four or so years.  It is located on the Southside of Pittsburgh in a working class neighborhood that is too quickly becoming gentrified and hip.  Yet, the 300 or so who attend are an assortment of ages, races and walks of life.  I kiddingly say to my daughter that there is more ink on people’s skin in that church than you would find in the entire 66 books of the Bible.  Needless to say, it feels like a very real place and less safe and sanitized than most churches.

Rather than a sermon the teaching comes through the dramatic interpretation of scripture.  Last night, December 23rd, it was the story of the birth of Jesus as told by several shepherds.  The worship time was also moving.  I have never sung traditional Christmas hymns with as much understanding as I did last evening.  They seemed less rote and just looking around the room I saw first hand what the birth of Christ did for us.  It brought together an assortment of people to know God first hand, yes, even personally.

It also drove home for me how God is anything but safe and sanitized.  He became like me and you, flesh and blood, and loved us in our own personal mire and muck.  Simple as this sounds, especially to those bloggers I sometimes run into that rail against Christians as dumb,  it is a wondrous act of love unparalleled in any other of the other so-called “great religions.”  Here I was, last evening, with a room full of people, many of us probably hurting from something life had hurled at us recently, but all acknowledging that within our unsanitized condition that we are loved by the God of the universe.

I love the gospel because it is God calling us not only to acknowledge who we are, a sinful and fallen lot, it equalizes all of humanity and best of all calls us into relationship with God and into relationship with each other.  It acknowledges that these relationships should be anything but safe and sanitary.  Most often they require sacrifice and courage.  Usually, it is the courage to leave our comfort zone and go out with the small light we have been given and share it with others.  This might sound simple and dumb to some but it has literally transformed lives since that baby was born in a dirty stable with strangers all around over 2,000 years ago.

Jesus, Lord at thy birth…..bring understanding, peace and joy to us, walk us out of dark places, help us love others as you have loved us and help us to humbly go to others with your light, your comfort and the hope found only in you.