Perceptions from a Pewboy

I had a very interesting lunch meeting yesterday with some Western Pennsylvania pastors. Much of our conversation revolved around the merits, drawbacks, and challenges of a burgeoning phenomenon in ecclesiastical circles called the “cyber” or “internet” or “online” church. No matter which nomenclature is utilized, the reality at the heart of this phenomenon is the formation of a Christocentric cyber-community, the members of which engage in an online practice of the disciplines of worship, Bible study, prayer, and spiritual formation.

It is incumbent upon the church, I believe, to think carefully about the theological issues surrounding cyberspatial ministry, some of which are these:

1. INCARNATION: It might be said that a cyber church struggles to manifest fully the incarnational nature of the church’s gospel. The essence of our kerygma, after all, is a Word made flesh, an eternal God who became fully corporeal in the person of Jesus. Such an Incarnation reveals to us the eagerness of God to redeem our corporeality in such a way that we might experience our humanness (our “in the flesh-ness”) in an entirely new way.

The danger of the cyber church is that it is less incarnational than it is cyber-spatial. Gone in the cyber church are the nuances of the flesh, the gentleness of a touch or a held hand, and the intimacy of shared breathing (all of which are a portion of the corporeality that Jesus came to redeem).

Therefore, in a cyber church, incarnation has to be redefined, reframed, and re-imaged. While certainly not flesh-oriented in the literal sense, it might be said that cyberspace is the “new flesh” of postmodernity—a new flesh in which corpuscles are replaced by bytes, in which breathing is replaced by browsing, and in which the beat of a heart is replaced by the pulsations of a modem.

We would do well not to become cynical about the matter of redefining incarnational community. In many ways, the church has been about the business of such redefinition for years. Our homebound church members, for example, who cannot be physically present for corporate worship, must experience incarnation differently—through televised worship, through tapes or CDs, and through the brief and intermittent visits of pastors and laypersons. The fact that such homebound (or hospitalized or institutionalized) persons have been part of the church’s ministry for centuries is clear evidence of the fact that the church has a long history of helping people to redefine incarnational community. It may very well be that cyber church ministry is merely the most recent expression of that redefinition.

It is also worth noting that, according to the leadership in many internet faith communities, the members of such communities soon begin to express a strong and urgent desire to meet face to face. Although these meetings occur more frequently in coffee shops and restaurants than they do in church buildings, I cannot help but imagine the dynamism and synergy generated by the capacity to put faces on the souls with whom one has connected in cyberspace.

2. SACRAMENTAL LIFE: It might also be said that a cyber church runs the risk of diminishing the church’s sacramental identity and integrity. How, after all, can a cyber church member receive the bread and cup of the Lord’s Supper? And how can he or she draw near to the water of Baptism and give expression to the congregation’s vows of support to the newly baptized?

These questions cannot be taken lightly, especially given the centrality of the sacraments in the church’s ministry and mission. However, these sacramental issues may not prove to be insurmountable for a cyber congregation. If incarnational community can be reframed in cyberspace, perhaps the experience of Baptism and Eucharist can be reframed as well.

What might it look like, for example, for the bread and cup to be consecrated through cyberspatial blessing? Could Eucharist take on an even deeper meaning if a family or an individual had to prepare their own elements (and become their own communion stewards)? And could the water of Baptism flow even more profoundly into a human heart if it were drawn from a kitchen sink, consecrated from a cyberspatial distance, and “witnessed” by an online congregation? Or what about those coffee house face to face meetings that I referenced in the preceding paragraphs? Might those gatherings be an opportunity for a uniquely interactive and multi-sensory experience of the church’s sacramental life?

Please do not think that I am raising or answering these sacramental questions in a cavalier fashion. I am simply illuminating the possibility that an online worshiper might have something in common with the Ethiopian eunuch in the 8th chapter of Acts, who dared to say, “Look, there is water. What is to keep me from being baptized?” It may be that, like the Ethiopian eunuch, online worshipers are finding their sacramental water in new places.

The danger, of course, is that sacramental celebration in cyberspace might become far more individualistic than communal. But, then again, we are speaking of the reframed and re-imaged community of an online congregation. Could it be that, in such a context, people could actually be just as sacramentally attentive and connected as they are in a church sanctuary (albeit in an entirely different manner)?

3. MEMBERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILITY: What about the covenantal promises of membership in a cyber church and accountability to those promises? Can one support a church through prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness in the context of a cyber congregation? And where is the discipline of accountability to those promises when there is not the tangibility of other disciples sitting, singing, and living around us?

It would be arrogant and unnecessarily dismissive of me to assume the absence of accountability in a cyber church, especially given this testimony of an online worshiper that I read about an hour ago:

In the institutional church, there would be times when I would miss church because of work or sickness, and nobody asked me why I wasn’t there…Nobody ever asked me if I were growing in my prayer life or involving myself in ministry or fasting or reading the Bible…But here at cyber church, people ask me about those things every day. I can’t always see their faces, but I’ve moved deeply into their lives, and they’ve moved just as deeply into mine. (an open forum response by ‘Carolyn,’ who lives in Seattle and who joined a cyber church 13 months ago)

In light of Carolyn’s testimony, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that a cyber congregation stands a chance of incarnating a more vibrant form of accountability than can be found in some of our more traditional congregations. This possibility becomes all the more real when one considers the fact that the online conversations reported by many cyber churches are actually far more probing and personal in their content than many of the conversations that occur in church lobbies.

4. MOTIVATION: Perhaps the most compelling danger in cyber church ministry has to do with the motive behind one’s connection to such a ministry. Do people become part of a cyber church in order to deepen their discipleship in the freshness of a new way of doing church? Or do people join a cyber church because of the way in which it lowers the bar concerning one’s investment in community?

The first motivation has potential for becoming something redemptive. The second motivation merely fosters the misguided notion that discipleship has more do with catering to one’s personal proclivities than it does with subordinating one’s life to the Lordship of Jesus.

The issue of motivation is a difficult one to regulate. How many people, after all, join a traditional congregation because they find it less demanding or more artistically pleasing than the church down the street? In that regard, it may be that the cyber church is in the same boat as every other church. It may be, in other words, that all churches (online and offline) share the common struggle of resisting the temptation to lower the bar of our obedience to the calling of Jesus and our commitment to the life of discipleship.

Do I have concerns about the continued development of online churches? Yes, I do. But, if I might be completely forthright, they are no more significant or prohibitive than the concerns I have about ALL churches. Every one of our churches, for example, is faced with the struggle of being vibrantly incarnational, reverently sacramental, and accountably communal in a world that demands authenticity at every turn. In that regard, cyber churches merely represent a new setting in which to engage in the redemptive struggle that all churches face.

The deciding factor for me is that cyberspace is a highly powerful and influential realm in contemporary culture, entered into regularly by searching souls who suddenly find themselves exposed to a wide variety of narratives. Some of those narratives are gracious, others are hateful; some are relational, others are violent; some are loving, others are pornographic. Interestingly, cyberspace makes room for all of them, much like the human community itself.

Given such a complex array of narratives, my sense is that the church cannot afford NOT to be meaningfully and redemptively present within the “walls” of cyberspace. If we were to remove the church’s voice from that vastly diverse community, we would, in effect, cyberspatially silence the narrative of Jesus and his Way, thereby withholding—or at least compartmentalizing—the Story that we believe defines and illuminates all other stories.

In addition, if we were to refuse to acknowledge cyberspace as a mission field, we would close the cyber-door on a number of online seekers who rely upon the internet as the primary resource in their personal search for truth and who will never find their way into a traditional sanctuary.

In the church’s ministry, we must never become utilitarian at the expense of our theological integrity. By the same token, we must never become so idolatrous about our polity and structure that we dismiss a new way of being church simply because it is unconventional (even though it might be theologically defendable, practically viable, and evangelically effective).

Richard Thomas, the Director of Communications for the Anglican Diocese of Oxford, recently offered these words concerning the development of “i-church,” an online Christian community initiated by the Anglican Church:

It should be no surprise to discover that there are some people, maybe more than a few, who want to be part of a Christian community, to commit themselves to one another in prayer, in learning, and in social action, without the hassle and clutter of participation in the local parish church. We could, of course, simply respond by saying that the Church is, above all things, a sacramental community where meeting together is of the essence of what we are.

But if that were the sum of our response, we would merely add to the number of people that we fail to reach, and increase the number of people that we alienate because we want them to be other than what they are.

Although Richard Thomas’ comments are helpful, I am also interested in your thoughts and reflections. Help me to think theologically about the reality of online church—a phenomenon that is already making its way into the Western Pennsylvania church.

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.’ (Luke 6:20-26)

This is a portion of Jesus’ teaching that has come to be called “the Beatitudes.” The word “beatitude” is a derivative of a Latin word that means “blessing,” or, more specifically, “extreme and abundant blessing.” The word “beatitude” became connected to this scripture because, in it, Jesus utilizes the vocabulary of blessing: “BLESSED are you who are poor…”

Of course, what makes this portion of Scripture so unsettling and even scandalous is who it is that Jesus describes as being blessed.

I suspect that the world in which Jesus lived was similar to our world in the matter of defining blessedness. Our ideas of blessedness tend to be formed and driven by a network of presuppositions emerging from what might be called our common sense. Common sense, for example, tells us that it is unpleasant to be poor. Therefore, we quickly arrive at the common sense conclusion that being blessed means a enjoying a condition of wealth and privilege.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to be hungry. Therefore, we quickly formulate the common sense idea that being blessed means having every one of our appetites satisfied the moment they demand to be satisfied.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to weep, or to be hated or reviled because of our faith. Therefore, we quickly manufacture the conviction that blessedness must mean the opposite of such unpleasant realities.

The result of such thinking, of course, is a popular definition of blessedness that I would suspect was the same in Jesus’ day as it is in ours. Blessedness equals wealth and privilege. Blessedness equals a condition that is comfortable and happy and unchallenged.

It is precisely these notions that Jesus challenges in the Beatitudes, and he does so by shattering the people’s presuppositions concerning who is truly blessed in the kingdom of God. Is it the wealthy folks who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are wealthy, but blessed are the poor.”

“What?! Wait a minute, Jesus! That goes against what we know to be the economics of blessedness!”

Is it the well-fed who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact , woe to you whose stomachs are full now, but blessed are the hungry.”

“What?! Back up, Jesus! You had us, then you lost us!”

Is it the happy and the laughing who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are laughing now, but blessed are those who weep.”

“OK, now you’ve gone too far!”

Is it the comfortable and the safe and the well-protected who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are well-treated now, but blessed are those who are hated and reviled for my sake.”

“Jesus, you’re turning everything upside down!”

Therein, I suppose, is the nature of the Kingdom that God inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is a Kingdom in which everything is turned upside down (or, more appropriately, right side up). The kingdom of God, to put it another way, is Jesus Christ, shaking up the world and transfiguring the way things are done and conceptualized, in such a way that the world begins to reflect more vibrantly the heart of the One who created it.

If the Beatitudes tell us anything, they tell us that it is impossible to live in the kingdom of God without being reborn into a new way of living and a new way of looking at the world. In the kingdom of the world, the poor, the hungry, and the persecuted are ignored or, at best, pitied. But in the kingdom of God, they are the blessed ones.

Please do not misunderstand the nature of Jesus’ teaching in the Beatitudes. He is not glorifying poverty or human brokenness. He understands, far better than we do, the pain and the heartbreak of these conditions. But perhaps Jesus’ point is that, in the kingdom of God, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken are blessed in a very particular sense precisely because they know how desperate and needy they are.

Many of us, after all, live in the illusion of being in control. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken understand daily their need for salvation and deliverance. Many of us live in the illusion of self-reliance, believing that we have no need for a savior. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised and the broken are often fully and eagerly prepared to receive the salvation and wholeness that the kingdom of God makes possible. Many of us have become so dull and desensitized in our places of privilege that we might not even recognize the kingdom when it is right in front of us. By contrast, a desperate, persecuted, and needy soul is often far more attentive and available to the nuances of God’s grace.

After all is said that can be said about the Beatitudes, perhaps Jesus is telling us that the poor and broken have something on us. They have the potential to be more receptive to God’s transformational power than we are, because, quite simply, God is all that they have. For many of us, God is nothing more than a weekend hobby that we accommodate whenever it fits into our busy schedule. In that sense, the poor and the broken may very well be more abundantly blessed than we are simply because they have a greater potential for living in the abundant joy and hope that always accompany a heartfelt reliance on God.

It is most certainly true that we tend to sentimentalize the Beatitudes in our contemporary churches. We tend to put them on church banners. “Isn’t that nice? Jesus is saying something sweet about poor and weeping people.” But the Beatitudes are not to be sentimentalized. Quite the contrary, in fact. We would do well to tremble a bit as we read them. They announce nothing less than the world-altering reality of the Kingdom of God. And none of the other radical teachings of Jesus (like the urgency of loving our enemies and taking up our cross) will make any sense to us unless we first embrace the foundational truth that the Beatitudes make clear—the truth that Jesus is ushering in a new world order.

I have recently become enamored of the music of Regina Spektor, a Russian-born, New York-educated singer/songwriter, whose lyrics are refreshingly evocative and whose musical style calls to mind the artistic eclecticism of Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell. Interestingly, when asked to name her primary influences, Spektor is quick to mention The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, Radiohead, Tom Waits, and Frederic Chopin. Spektor’s songs reflect the diverse musicianship represented by this list of artists.

Yesterday, while driving home from a week of holy conferencing in Grove City, Pennsylvania, I spent some time listening to “The Spectrum,” which is one of my favorite channels on satellite radio. It was during that drive home that “The Spectrum” introduced me to one of Regina Spektor’s most recent songs. Entitled “Laughing With,” the song is the most starkly theological portion of popular art that I have encountered in a long time. If you have a few minutes, give a listen to “Laughing With” here.

The song borrows its sentiment from the old adage, “there are no atheists in foxholes,” but gives to the sentiment new poetic expression—the kind of poetic expression that makes clear that some of our “foxholes” are deeply familiar and immensely personal:

No one laughs at God in a hospital.
No one laughs at God in a war.
No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor.
No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests.
No one’s laughing at God when it’s gotten real late and their kid’s not back from that party yet.

No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake.
No one’s laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they’re mistaken.
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say ‘We’ve got some bad new, sir.’
No one’s laughing at God when there’s a famine, fire or flood.

Spektor, who is Jewish by birth and who has never publicized a personal adherence to a particular creed or set of doctrines, seems to be reminding her audience that there are moments in the human pilgrimage in which one’s mortality (or the mortality of those one loves) becomes so unsettlingly and terrifyingly clear that, at least for a moment or two, cynicism about the possibility of the Divine gives way to a desperate—and perhaps even unarticulated—reverence and hope for that which is beyond us.

In my own ministry, I have found this to be true on a number of different occasions. I have been frequently surprised, for example, by self-desribed “agnostics” or “atheists” in hospital beds who have grabbed my hand tightly and called upon me to pray for them just before their open-heart surgery or in the recent aftermath of their cancer diagnosis. I have stood in funeral homes with seemingly hardened cynics whose hearts suddenly became soft enough to acknowledge the possibility that death somehow bears witness to the reality of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life.

Please don’t misunderstand my point. I am not suggesting that all moments of life-threatening crisis lead to sudden conversion. In fact, in many of those moments, I have heard people curse God for what they perceived to be God’s absence or cruelty. But Spektor is right about this much: Irrespective of one’s theological persuasion, none of the people in life-threatening crisis whom I have encountered were laughing at God in those moments. None of them were reducing God to a theological debate or a casual afterthought. In moments of tearful mortality, it seems that God has a way of becoming very serious business.

And yet, as Spektor reminds us in the rest of the song, people of faith have a proclivity for “laughing” at God in a different way—by transforming the Gospel into a self-serving formula or by making the Holy Other into little more than a means to our personal ends:

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke.
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they’re about to choke.
God can be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way.
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha

When I heard these lyrics yesterday, I found myself suddenly convicted of the myriad of moments in which I have, in essence, laughed at the holiness of God, mocking the very One who breathed life into the universe and life into my lungs.

Case in point, yesterday morning, I had the honor of being present for a Service of Ordination in which I sang hymns of praise as passionately as I could, prayed with conviction, stood with ordinands who offered themselves to the covenant of ministry, and opened my heart to the proclamation of God’s countercultural Word. In those moments of worship, I felt an intimacy with the presence of God that I wanted to preserve for ever.

Less than two hours later, as I drove home, I found myself deliberately creating in my thoughts a disparaging laundry list of all the things about the time of conferencing that did not suit my personal taste. It was a list that led me down a highly critical road against some of my brothers and sisters in Christ. In the privacy of my thoughts, I was quick to denigrate them for all that they did or didn’t do, for all that they said or didn’t say. As you might imagine, none of the criticism was constructive, since the people against whom I was offering it were not present to receive it or offer their perspective.

In less than two hours, I had moved from reverence to mockery. In less than 120 minutes, I had left behind the intimacy with the Divine that I had experienced in the ordination service and returned to the comfortable sin of unbridled negativity and disparagement of others.

I am not certain of how to describe the specifics of how such a transition happens so quickly. But, metaphorically speaking, such a journey is tantamount to the kind of unholy laughter at the Divine that Regina Spektor describes. In a sense, by moving so quickly to unbridled negativity in the aftermath of the ordination service, I was, to borrow Spektor’s poetry, crafting my own “God-themed joke,” in which my brothers and sisters were the punchline. I was reducing God into a comedic “Houdini” who appears whenever I feel like being reverent but who disappears whenever I want to be less than reverent.

So, in a strange way, Regina Spektor’s “Laughing With” brought me back to a spirit of reverence and holy awe, thereby making clear the fact that Jesus Christ is creatively at work, even in the artistry of people who may not yet be willing to acknowledge that it is Christ who inspires them.

My prayer is that, when I am tempted to trivialize or mock the Divine, my thoughts will be drawn to those moments all around me in which no one appears to be laughing. Because, after all, in the words of Regina Spektor,

No one’s laughing at God when they’ve lost all they got and they don’t know what for.
No one laughs at God on the day they realize that the last sight they’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes.
No one’s laughing at God when they’re saying their goodbyes.

Have you ever been bothered by someone’s extravagance? Allow me to make that question even more specific. Have you ever been bothered by the way in which someone’s extravagance interferes with the accomplishing of your pre-established agenda?

It is an interesting word, extravagant. It is a derivative of two Latin words: “extra” which means, literally, “outside;” and “vagari” which means “to wander.” Extravagant, then, means wandering outside, or, more specifically, wandering outside of what is normal. Traveling beyond what is expected. Doing something that takes us outside of the typical routine.

Based upon that definition, have you ever been bothered by the way in which someone’s extravagance (i.e., someone’s willingness to wander outside or beyond what is normal) interferes with the accomplishing of your pre-established agenda?

When I was a small child, my mother always allowed me to put the family’s envelope in the offering plate during Sunday morning worship. In fact, beyond allowing me to do it, she expected me to do it. I think that she saw it as an opportunity to teach her son something about the urgency of investing in the church’s ministry.

One day, when I was 5 or 6, I looked closely at the envelope as the offering plate came around. For some reason, on this particular day, the mathematics and the economics of that envelope began to make cognitive sense to me. My mind, by that point in time, had developed to such an extent that I was able to realize how large an amount of money was in that envelope. (My parents have always been faithful and generous givers to the church’s ministry.)

What do you think my initial reaction was to my recognition of my parents’ substantive offering? Do you think that it was a joyful and supportive reaction? Do you think it was “Wow, Mom and Dad, God bless you for your generosity to the church and God bless you for raising your son to understand about the centrality of generosity in the life of discipleship to Jesus Christ!”

Not quite.

Rather, my initial reaction as a five or six year old boy was something like this: “What a stupid idea to put this much money into an offering plate! Do you know how many comic books this money could buy? Do you know how many GI Joe accessories this money could provide? Do you know far this money would go in the purchasing of the Atari Pong Game?”

I essentially thought to myself that day, “Mom and Dad, I don’t like the fact that you are giving away this amount of money because I have some very clear ideas about how this amount of money could be used in the enhancement of your son’s life.”

It may have been the first time in my life that I resented what I perceived to be my parents’ extravagance. Extravagance was probably not even a word in my vocabulary at that point. But I knew that my parents willingness to put that amount of money into an offering plate every week represented an effort to go outside of what I perceived to be reasonable. And, on that morning, I resented it.

It reminds me of Judas’ reaction to Mary’s eagerness to anoint the feet of Jesus with expensive perfume—an act of extravagant adoration described in the 12th chapter of John’s Gospel (John 12:1-8). Do you remember Judas’ complaint in that moment? It was something like this: “What’s the meaning of this?! We could have sold that perfume for a lot of money, all of which might have been used to minister to the poor.”

Judas, you see, is eminently practical in his view of ministry and seems to have the best of intentions. He sees Mary’s behavior as needlessly extreme, especially given the practical needs of the poor, and he resents Mary’s extravagance. He resents it, much as I resented the extravagance of my parents’ Sunday morning offering envelope.

“Hey, Mom and Dad, this money could be used to take care of your family, what are you doing putting it into an offering plate?”

“Hey Mary, that perfume could be sold to feed the poor, what are you doing it pouring it onto the feet of Jesus?”

Jesus graciously accepted Mary’s extravagance as an act of worship, but Judas attempted to prevent it. Jesus seemed to sense Mary’s eagerness to go beyond what was normative in order to render an expression of adoration that was as dramatic as it was doxological. But Judas was not pleased with the offering because it did not align with his preconceived agenda.

The pondering of that biblical moment makes me wonder how frequently I talk myself out of extravagance in my personal discipleship. How frequently do I allow myself to become so idolatrous about the practical that I forget about the sweetness of doing something prodigious— something out of the ordinary, something practically wasteful—in my adoration of God.

From 1984 until 1990, my father was the district superintendent of the Johnstown District of the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference. During a portion of those six years, Johnstown led the entire nation in unemployment. (Some of you remember those years and how difficult they were around these parts.)

But here’s the interesting thing: During that same period of time (1984-1990) the Johnstown District frequently led the entire conference in the percentage of its mission share giving. (The mission share is an amount of money that the local church offers to the general church for is ministry around the world.)

Did you get that? In the mid 1980’s, when Johnstown led the entire nation in unemployment, the Johnstown District offered, by percentage, more money to the ministry of the church than any other district in Western PA.

I once asked my father how he explained this inconsistency. “I don’t,” he said. “because it defies logical explanation.”

“All I know,” he said, “is that not even a troubled economy can prevent God’s people from wanting to be extravagant in their generosity.”

That was the first time that I had ever heard the word extravagant in connection with the church’s ministry. And the context for that extravagance was a hurting city in Western Pennsylvania called Johnstown, where many were unemployed, but where the Holy Spirit was still inspiring an uncommon generosity.

Here’s the point, I suppose: The extravagant generosity of those who have been transformed by Jesus Christ is not at all dictated by the condition of the economy. Rather, the extravagant generosity of those who have been transformed by Jesus Christ is dictated by the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in the depths of a human soul.

These days, I find myself praying for a spirit of extravagance in my discipleship. If I may borrow the biblical metaphor, I am praying my way into the kind of discipleship that will inspire me on occasion to anoint the feet of my Savior with the sweet perfume of spontaneous and profligate generosity. Does that sound right to you?

I experienced my first memorable nightmare back in the mid-1970’s.

Here’s the weird thing: My nightmare was based on a recurring television commercial. It wasn’t a commercial with a scary animal. It wasn’t a commercial with an intimidating character like Mr. Clean or the Brawny guy or Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin. Do you know which commercial it was that led to my nightmare?

OK, here it is. Try not to laugh or you might hurt my feelings.

In my nightmare, I was being chased around my house by the Fruit of the Loom guys.

Do you remember the Fruit of the Loom guys? They were men dressed up like big pieces of fruit, all for the purpose of selling undergarments! There was a big apple. Some purple grapes. Some green grapes. They look really cute in the television commercial. But, let me tell you, they don’t look so cute when they’re chasing you around the house in the middle of a nightmare!

To this day, I still get a little bit antsy when walking through the produce section of Giant Eagle. All that fruit!

Here’s the point: There was something about fruit that captured my attention and imagination back in the 1970s.

And there is something about fruit that is capturing my attention and imagination this weekend, as I make ready for the celebration called Pentecost in the Christian calendar. This weekend, however, it is not the Fruit of the Loom that I’m contemplating. Rather, it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, referenced in the 5th chapter of Galatians—a portion of Scripture in which the Apostle Paul, in a moment of poetic creativity, invokes the image of fruit as a metaphor for the manifestation of God’s Holy Spirit in a human life:

…The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Why fruit? Why is it that Paul looks upon fruit as an appropriate metaphor for the work of God’s Holy Spirit?

I am not able to answer that question definitively, but I wonder how much of it has to do with the properties and characteristics of fruit. Most fruit is sweet to the taste and nutritious to the body. Fruit begins as something small but replete with potential, then grows and ripens until its potential is realized. Fruit is colorful and attractive. It is flavorful and fragrant. Its nectar is refreshing and its pulp is rich with nutrients.

Therefore, when Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit’s work in a human life as fruit, he calls to mind a Spirit who brings about a love that is sweet like strawberries; a joy that is flavorful like tangerines; a peace that nourishes like good apples; a kindness and generosity that are fragrant, like ripe melon; a faithfulness that grows like grapes on the vine; and a self-control that is as succulent as a juicy peach on a hot summer day.

What is the Holy Spirit like? Scripture tells us that he is something like good fruit. And in a healthy diet, fruit is irreplaceable, isn’t it?

I just read Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s new book entitled “Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality.” I have enjoyed Hagerty’s work as a religion correspondent on NPR for the last several years and was drawn to her book’s objective: to explore the bridge, if one does indeed exist, between spiritual experience and scientifically observable processes.

Not surprisingly, Hagerty’s exploration led her to Laurentian University in northeastern Ontario and to the work of that university’s well-known cognitive neuroscientist and researcher, Dr. Michael Persinger.

Persinger, who has long believed that spiritual experience is generated by cognitive processes, created an apparatus several years ago that has come to be called the “god helmet.” This helmet, in essence, is a modified snowmobile helmet, the coils of which produce a complex magnetic field over the brain’s temporal lobe. Persinger reports that over 80% of those who have worn the “god helmet” experienced a presence in the room that they described as being “god-like” or, at the very least, mystically reminiscent of someone they knew who had died.

As you might imagine, there is much controversy around Persinger’s scientific methodology. Many have suggested that Persinger’s experiments are far too manipulated and agenda-heavy to be even moderately conclusive. Nevertheless, his work in the field of neurotheology has garnered much attention from scientists and theologians alike.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty devotes the seventh chapter of “Fingerprints of God” to Persinger and his helmet. According to Hagerty, Persinger’s foundational theory is that, since the left hemisphere of the brain is associated with language and the conceptualization of the self, the stimulation of that left hemisphere leads to an elevated sense of self-awareness.

The right hemisphere of the brain, by contrast, is much more connected to feelings, sensations, and emotional affectations. Therefore, according to Persinger, the stimulation of the right portion of the brain will produce the emotionally-charged sense of being in the presence of a relational entity—a mysterious “other” whose personality is palpable and whose vitality can seem larger than life.

To oversimplify a bit, Persinger sees spiritual and mystical experiences, not as supernatural occurrences, but as the scientifically traceable and reproducible byproduct of a stimulated right temporal lobe. To borrow Hagerty’s words, spiritual experience, according to Persinger, “is a trick of the brain” and can be generated “by head injuries and brain dysfunctions…by the earth’s magnetic fields and by machines like [Persinger’s] ‘god helmet.’” (page 136 of “Fingerprints of God”)

Personally, as a Christ-follower, I find Persinger’s neurotheological work to be far more affirming than discouraging. After all, in an age in which ecclesiastical decline is the talk of the town, it is refreshing to discover that spiritual experience is still a threatening enough concept to garner the attention and the dollars of skeptical scientists, many of whom are eager to reduce such experience to matters of neuropathy.

I will not share with you Hagerty’s description of her own personal experiment with the “god helmet” (since I hope that some of you will read the book for yourself). Suffice it to say that she is still a woman of deep faith. Furthermore, she still believes that her faith is based upon something more than an over-stimulated temporal lobe.

And therein, I suppose is the point of this blog post: Science and faith need not be enemies in our intellectual discourse, precisely because one will never be able disprove or eliminate the other. I suspect that, no matter how deeply scientists like Persinger delve into neurological processes, they will always be confronted with some portion of mystical experience that eludes their analysis, resists their truncations, and refuses to fit neatly into their carefully-formed equations and formulas.

Likewise, mystics, Pentecostals, and even some charismatic United Methodists may be led to acknowledge the possibility that some (not all, or even most, but some) of their spiritual experiences and discernments may have more to do with stimulated neurology than they do with the work of the Spirit.

All of this makes me grateful for the Wesleyan heritage’s affirmation that holy Scripture, while primary and authoritative in matters of life and faith, must be read and interpreted through the lenses of tradition, experience, and reason. Such a multidimensional hermeneutic prevents us from taking “god helmets” more seriously than we should while at the same time enabling us to appreciate honest and agenda-free scientific exploration.

I have become increasingly interested in the imagery of margins as a means by which to conceptualize the human community. Where do we create margins, socially and spiritually speaking? Who occupies those margins? Where is the church in relationship to those margins? And, more fundamentally, where is Christ in relationship to those margins?

At any rate, in recent days, I have been wrestling with the creation of a song (which, quite frankly, is the best way to describe my songwriting process). I want the song to be an expression of my reflection on margins. Here are the lyrics that I have so far. I offer them as a prayer today.

“The One in the Margins”

Final Chorus:
Help me to see the Christ in the margins
Help me to know his journey’s design
Help me to be with Christ in the margins
Standing with him whose love is now mine

Allow me to set the scene:

It was April of 1971. I can place the scene that specifically because, at the time, I was busy playing with the new G.I. Joe that I had just gotten as a gift for my fifth birthday (April 2, 1971).

The television was on in the living room, but I wasn’t really paying attention to it. I was far more interested in figuring out how to get the machete to stay in G.I. Joe’s hard plastic hand—no small task, given the fact that this was pre-kung fu grip.

Suddenly, words that I had never heard before began to permeate the ambience of our comfortable living room: “Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise…” With G.I. Joe and his machete in my hands, I stared at the television screen, attempting to make sense of this unfamiliar show about spacemen and starships.

“Mom,” I said, “what show is this?” She came into the living room from the kitchen and looked at the screen. “Oh,” she said, “your brother and sister used to watch this show. I think it’s called ‘Star Track’ or something like that. But they cancelled it a couple years back, so you probably won’t be seeing reruns like this for very long.”

My mother was right about this much: The show had indeed been cancelled in 1969 after only three seasons. It had already found its way to syndication by 1971, much to the delight of a certain child in Grove City, Pennsylvania.

As a five-year-old, my fondness for all things frightening had already manifested itself as a portion of my personality, which made that evening’s episode of “Star Trek” all the more appealing to me. Entitled “Who Mourns for Adonais,” the episode begins with a rather terrifying scene in which a giant hand in space—or, more specifically, a concentrated energy field in the form of a giant hand—grips the hull of the Enterprise and holds the starship captive.

I was instantaneously transfixed. I mean, think about it: A cool space ship. Adventurous space travelers. And a giant scary hand. What more does a five-year-old imagination need?!

As the episode unfolded, there was much more that captured my attention. There was mind-boggling technology (including the “beaming down” of a landing party):

There was impressive gadgetry (including the liberal usage of the way-cool type 2 phaser):

There was a powerful and intimidating alien named Apollo who claimed to be a deity (which, of course, led Captain Kirk to theorize that aliens like Apollo had perhaps once visited ancient Greek culture, thereby initiating what we now know as Greek mythology):

There were some heavy-duty action scenes, including a moment in which Apollo blasts an impetuous Scotty with an energy beam that sends him sprawling in dramatic fashion:

And, of course, there was the ingenuity of Captain James Tiberius Kirk, which, in the end, always seems to win the day:

To say that my experience that night with “Star Trek” was love at first sight would be a gross understatement. Throughout the 1970’s I saw every episode at least five times (since reruns were televised two or three times a day). I had every model, every toy, every action figure. I would regularly convert my family’s living room into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The television would be the main screen. The stereo would be Mr. Spock’s station. The coffee table would be the helm. And my Dad’s lazy boy would be the captain’s chair. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me!

“Star Trek” figured prominently in the formation of my imagination, my sensibilities, and even my conceptualization of the human pilgrimage. The multi-racial (and even multi-planetary) crew on the bridge of the Enterprise introduced me to an environment in which people really are judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The storylines compelled my young mind to ponder everything from nuclear proliferation to overpopulation—everything from the merits of non-interference to the question of what to do with rapidly-multiplying Tribbles. Best of all, the relationships between the main characters (particularly Kirk, Spock, and McCoy) deepened my appreciation for the creative nexus of nobility, duty, wit, sarcasm, and passion.

To put it as simply as I can put it, I cannot think of my childhood without also thinking about the “Star Trek” narrative.

And now, here I am, decades later, a United Methodist pastor in 2009. And what did I do on Friday night? I went with my beautiful wife to see “Star Trek” in a local movie theater. We spent the evening with some familiar friends: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, and the Starship Enterprise.

And we loved every minute of it.

The new “Star Trek” film is a cleverly-crafted and brilliantly-filmed retooling of the “Star Trek” universe that dynamically throws open (wide open, in fact) the door to much more storytelling about the famous starship and her brave crew. As a prequel that explores the youth and young adulthood of the main characters, the film strikes an effective balance between poignancy and playfulness; between reverence for the existing narrative and willingness to explore new territory; and between science fiction and sociological probing.

If you are already a fan of the Trek, the film will feel like a much-needed cinematic homecoming. And if the appeal of Trek has eluded you in the past, the film may very well be good enough to convince you to reconsider your relationship to Starfleet.

The film made me feel like a kid again, and that means a great deal to this humble old pewboy (who’s been feeling way too adult in recent days). Over the next several days or weeks, if I accidentally refer to my iPhone as a tricorder and my vehicle as the Galileo Shuttlecraft, I hope that you will understand.

I am frequently amazed by the kind souls that offer responses to my humble little blog posts. Your responses to my last, very personal, post were, in a word, overwhelming.

Thank you for your sensitivity to my father’s struggle. Thank you for your tender hearts. Thank you for your prayers, your friendship, and your willingness to stand with me in the Alzheimer’s journey. I have wept with tears of joy more than once as I have read and re-read your gracious words.

Interestingly, Tara and I have been watching “The Alzheimer’s Project” on HBO this week. It is a multi-segment documentary designed to illuminate some of the “faces behind the disease and the forces leading us to find a cure.” If you have a chance to see this documentary at some point, I encourage you to do so. It is a heartbreaking, heartwarming, and, ultimately, hopeful production, created with great attentiveness and sensitivity, that sheds important light on the Alzheimer’s journey in which millions of families currently find themselves. It is well-worth your time.

Again, thank you for ministering to my soul, even in the “temple” of blog.

God bless you.

On a lighter note, stay tuned for my reflections on the new “Star Trek” film! I will offer them as soon as we repair the matter/anti-matter reactor and replenish our supply of dilithium crystals!!!

Sadly, many of our conversations about the church’s hymnody these days take place in sour-spirited debates about worship styles and liturgical formats. In such debates, Christian hymnody is frequently treated as little more than an expendable liturgical component, the antiquity of which has made it anachronistic in light of current liturgical developments.

Personally, I have remained a staunch pacifist in the worship wars. Having been called upon to facilitate both “contemporary” and “traditional” worship over the last fifteen years (and, believe me, I don’t know what those adjectives mean any more than you do), I have had no choice but to craft a personal ecclesiology that makes room for both the ancient and the modern (or postmodern).

Last week, however, I experienced something that brought me back to the preciousness and power of the church’s historical hymnody. Pull up a chair, because I’d like to share the experience with you.

As some of you know, my father, who is a retired United Methodist pastor in the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference, is in the midst of an Alzheimer’s journey. I describe it as a journey because that is precisely what it is. To make reference to it only as a “disease” would be to truncate what my father and my entire family have experienced over the last eight or nine years.

As I have said many times, my dad is my hero. Beyond that, he’s the man I want to be when I grow up. He taught me how to live and love, how to worship and pray, how to throw a baseball and stop the bleeding after a bad shaving experience. Most of all, through his discipleship, he taught me about the urgency of maintaining consistency between who I am in church and who I am everyplace else. To put it as simply as I can put it, my dad is the best man I know. Not being able to talk with him the way I used to is one of the most difficult and painful things that I have ever had to face.

That said, I’m still very grateful to God that Dad’s still here. Still laughing. Still loving. Still giving to us the chance to love him back, albeit in a different way and with a different kind of care.

Having experienced a recent stay in the hospital, Dad is currently undergoing a two-week time of physical rehabilitation at a nursing home. On Friday of last week, I spent the day with him there. Interestingly, in the nursing home setting, Dad goes into what I like to call “pastoral mode,” no doubt hearkening back to familiar patterns of pastoral care that are woven into the very fabric of his spiritual and vocational DNA.

Case in point, when I walked into the nursing home on Friday, I found Dad sitting beside a non-responsive and wheelchair-bound man, holding his hand and assuring him of God’s love and care. It made me wonder if Dad, in his mind’s current configuration, experiences regular glimpses of the thousands of nursing home visits that he made throughout his 42-year ministry.

Dad and I had lunch together on Friday. Then we took a long walk. Then we went back to his room for some rest and conversation. Something (or, perhaps more appropriately, someONE) inspired me to take a hymnal to the nursing home that day. I had no plans to use the hymnal. Something just felt right about bringing it with me.

The hymnal that I carried that day had a certain sentimental value to it. It was a commemorative hymnal from United Methodism’s 1980 General Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. Dad, who was a member of Western Pennsylvania’s delegation for that general conference, purchased the hymnal and had all the members of the delegation sign it. I felt like I had a significant piece of history in my hands that day.

As we sat in Dad’s room, an impulse suddenly formed within me when I saw the hymnal lying on his dresser.

“Dad,” I said, “do you want to make some music together for a little while?”

“Music?”

“Yeah. I brought a hymnal, and I thought it might do us both some good to spend some time singing the faith together. I remember how you used to love to sing the hymns in church and even at home. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Sure I do. Those were great days of singing.”

“Well then, let’s make some music together this afternoon.”

We started with a hymn (written by Fanny Crosby) that I remember hearing Dad sing hundreds of times as he showered, shaved, and got dressed in the morning:

To God be the glory great things he has done
So loved he the world that he gave us his Son
Who yielded his life an atonement for sin
And opened the lifegate that all may go in
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear his voice.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son
And give him the glory, great things he has done

I sang the hymn quietly, and Dad did an interesting thing: Because it is difficult for him to process large collections of words, he began to whistle. Sweetly and perfectly, he whistled every note of the hymn. In a sense, I provided the vocals and Dad provided the instrumentation! We chuckled at the thought of what people must have thought as they walked by the room. The Park boys were holding an impromptu father-son hymn sing, and all was right in the world.

From there, we moved to a more regal and majestic selection: “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.” (Dad stood up as he whistled that one, as though he sensed that the worship of God occasionally demands the inconvenient reverence of standing.) As I sang the third verse of that hymn, I could not help but think about Dad’s current journey:

To all, life thou givest, to both great and small
In all life thou livest, the true life of all
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree
And wither and perish but naught changeth thee

For nearly forty-five minutes, we leafed through the pages of that hymnal, singing and whistling our way through a good portion of the church’s rich hymnody. We sang hymns that are vibrantly doxological (“Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation…”); hymns that are poetically soteriological (“What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms…”); hymns that are deeply penitential and confessional (”Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me…); and hymns that give expression to the steadfastness of God’s presence in days of hardship and suffering (“Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.”)

After a long while, Dad became very sleepy, as he often does in the afternoons.

“Dad,” I said, “if you want to take a nap, go ahead and climb into bed. I won’t be offended at all. I’ll just keep singing for a while.”

“I think I might do that,” he said.

I helped him out of his shoes and into his slippers. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

As my father slept, I sang these words as tears began to stream down my cheeks:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide
the darkness deepens; Lord with me abide
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me

It was one of the most tender moments of my life—a kairotic intersection of the eternal and the everyday, as a grateful son sang and prayed a hymn of faith over the man who had taught him that faith.

The hymns became something more than liturgy to me that day. They became language. MY language. OUR language. A language that I am able to share with my father, even when spoken communication is difficult to render. It is a language to be cherished, sung, prayed, and even whistled.

The church’s hymnody has never meant more to me than it did on Friday afternoon. As I type these words, I am looking at Dad’s hymnal which is currently on my desk.

And I am whistling.