Tuesday, May 12, 2015

2015 Festival Journal - Day Two, Part One

Festival of Homiletics, 2015 – Denver Colorado

Day Two

I neglected to mention that the first session on Monday night was held at the Denver Convention Center in the theater there.  That was because there is no church large enough to seat all the attendees of the Festival.  So, that meant that this morning after catching the shuttle into town, I had to navigate an unfamiliar city to venues I hadn’t taken the time to find the day before.

There are three churches downtown Denver that we are using for the Festival.  Central Presbyterian, Trinity United Methodist, and St. John’s Lutheran.  And the Festival runs concurrent events at each venue.  Which means the first order of the day it to decide who to go hear and who to miss.  And every year it is a struggle for me to decide whether to hear someone I know is good, or to go hear someone who might be good, but might not be.  There are some regular speakers/preachers that I don’t care for - others do, but I don’t.  So, in some cases the choosing is difficult.  I must confess there are some that I would be hard pressed to miss.  And one year, heaven forbid, two of my very favorites were scheduled at the same time in different places!  Horrors.

No such problems today.  The speaker at the Presbyterian church was one of those I don’t care for, so off I went to the UMChurch to hear Michael Curry, an African-American Episcopal Bishop from North Carolina.  I’ll let that sink in for a moment before moving on.  

I’ve heard Bishop Curry before and always appreciate his preaching.  He preached about love.  And said many of the same things I have heard or said before.  But he says them in such a way that you can’t help but be intrigued by them again.  John framed the passion story with love – A new commandment I give you on one end and Simon, son of John do you love me at the other.  He also gave a nod to the Methodists since he was on our turf.  He said “I love coming to the United Methodist Church.  It feels like coming home.  When you all left us, you took all the energy with you!”  Hmm, I wonder if he would say the same if he dropped in on some of our UM Churches today?  

Bishop Curry always manages to weave music into his preaching.  Usually turning to the spirituals his grandmother would sing to him when he was a little boy, “I was sinkin’ deep in sin,” Bishop Curry sang to us. “Far from the peaceful shore / Very deeply stained within / Sinking to rise no more. / But the master of the sea / Heard my despairing cry / And from the waters lifted me / Now safe am I.  Chorus (everybody sing!) Love lifted me / Love lifted me / When nothing else could help / Love lifted me.”

You can almost hear it now, can’t you?  But that wasn’t the only hymn he referenced.  No, again, he gave a nod to his hosts and quoted Charles Wesley.  Specifically the third verse of that great Easter Hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”: Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia! / Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia! / Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia! / Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Methodists got that one right, he proclaimed.  And I pray he is right.  Thank you Bishop Curry. 

Now he was about to give a lecture on some of the same themes and I could easily have stayed for more.  But Nadia was lecturing back at Central Presbyterian, so I headed over there.  Nadia began with a disclaimer saying she didn’t grow up in the church and therefore her vocabulary isn’t very churchy.  And she said she tried to clean it up but it felt inauthentic, and also very hard to change, so she kept it.  And some of those words, she said are very useful in the circles within which she works.  But, she hastened to add, she wasn’t advocating that all us clergy take up swearing.  Because “You aren’t very good at it!”

She always also begins by saying she doesn’t know why she gets asked to speak at places like this, she doesn’t have anything profound to say.  Except that she does.  She drops profundities more often then the swear words she claims to live by.  Like this little gem: “I preach from my scars and not my wounds.”  Wow, that was amazing.  A truth I knew but had never articulated like that.  It helps explain why some personal stories are powerful gospel illustrations and others just make you squirm.  

At the center of her lecture, she read from her forthcoming book: Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People.  The passage she chose had to do with demons.  Lots of demon talk in the bible, she noted.  And like most moderns she dismissed it as an outdated form of talking about disease and mental illness.  Those who did talk about them like they were real, she said, were like Christian Rednecks, and Demon possession was like a monster truck rally.  

While we were all laughing at this, she then proceeded to turn it around and talk about her own struggle with depression.  And that when she was in the throes of it, it seemed as though another person had come to take up residence in her life.  And this person could cause her all sorts of trouble.  She even named the person and tried to let others see her too.  So whether you call it, Nadia claimed, a demon, a disease or an addiction, we were no longer in control.  And until someone comes to cast out the demon, you are helpless and cut off.  Because what demons do, she claimed, is keep us from people who love us.  They isolate us from feeling worthy of love.  To takes (thank you Bishop Curry and Charles Wesley) Love’s redeeming work for healing to begin.  

But healing isn’t completed until you are brought back into community where others can love you too.  She then talked about her continued struggles with anger.  And one Sunday there was a church meeting between services (? Bad idea, seems to me) and someone got her so angry she didn’t think she could lead worship.  So she called on another member of her church to come pray for her to help her get over her anger.  And she chose a pregnant social worker to come and pray that she might be able to lead a peaceful liturgy of worship.  The prayer said “Nadia is in a bad way, so break her heart with our love for her and let her lead us in worship.”  

Break her heart with our love for her.  The church, she said, loved her into being the pastor they needed.  I was struck by that.  How often do I resist being loved enough to change?  And instead are forced into change by anger and spite?  Hmmm.  But the biggest profundity was this: “Faith is not an individual competition, it is a team sport.”

And it is still morning!  (End of Day two, part one!)

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