An Open Letter to Franklin Graham

Dear Franklin,

As a lifelong admirer of your father,  I was interested in seeing him back in the news again after years of a well deserved sabbath. I’m referring to his recently agreeing to have full-page ads published (with a picture of a younger Billy Graham) that are designed to support Mitt Romney’s candidacy and are being paid for by unnamed friends.

While you may argue that neither of you is thereby endorsing any presidential candidate, I’m reminded of the dictum that “any difference that makes no difference is not a difference.” The ad constitutes an endorsement, pure and simple.

Having said that, I totally support your father’s right to do this, and I myself aim to be a Christ-following and compassionate conservative on issues like legalizing same sex marriage and abortion. I do question, however, how this lines up with many of your father’s previous statements, or whether, at nearly 94, he has actually changed some of his earlier positions.

In 1960 your father opposed the election of a Roman Catholic president even though that church’s support of marriage and opposition to divorce has been consistently stronger than that of most Protestant denominations. He later became much more tolerant of Catholics, a good thing in the eyes of many, and has blessed them and worked closely with them on many issues.

When it comes to Biblical marriage, of course, the Bible has sadly sometimes been used to support positions other than “one man and one woman for life,” as have statements in the Church of Latter Day Saints’s other inspired book, Doctrine and Covenants (132:61-62) which support polygamy.
Thankfully, though, most of us are now on the same page in our definition of heterosexual marriage, the kind that is relevant to well over 95% of us, just noticeably silent in dealing with the epidemic of broken homes and families all around us.

On the issue of making cause with the religious right, your father, as you know, declined to join Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in 1979,  saying: "I'm for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak with authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists cannot be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left. I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will be in the future."

On a related issue, you have been widely quoted as saying you believe Islam is “an evil religion.” I’m certainly no advocate of the Muslim faith, but that seems so unlike your father’s Christ-like spirit, which has always been warmly invitational toward people of all faiths, never hostile or adversarial.

I do note that you recently wrote a piece in which you explain why it is now OK to vote for a Mormon to be president, and I have also learned that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, under your leadership, has since removed its statement about cults from its website, as follows:

"A cult is any group which teaches doctrines or beliefs that deviate from the biblical message of the Christian faith. It is very important that we recognize cults and avoid any involvement with them. Cults often teach some Christian truth mixed with error, which may be difficult to detect... Some of these groups are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spiritists, Scientologists, and others."

At one level, this could be welcomed by many as an expression of a new found tolerance on the part of the BGEA, but one might at least expect some consistency here. Is Scientology next on your list of approved faiths for evangelical believers?

But the real bottom line here is that elections are not to be about issues of faith. According to the US Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

On the other hand, each of us do need to apply a values test. Unfortunately, this and all elections pose impossibly difficult choices for believers who are pro-life, in that support of things like obscenely bloated military budgets, drone strikes, the proliferation of assault weapons and handguns designed primarily to kill people, capital punishment, and the crying needs of millions of hungry and truly needy human beings at home and abroad are all profound life and death issues.

In short, I find myself completely agreeing with your father when he said, “(M)orality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice.”

Mennonite Attire--Not As Strange As You Think

Whistler’s mother was certainly not a Mennonite, but notice how her outward appearance is much like that of plainly attired Old Order Mennonite or Amish women.

Interestingly, the painter of this well known piece, James McNeill Whistler, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, was an outspoken atheist, but I have not been able to determine what faith, if any, his parents practiced.

My point is that there is nothing original about the plain dress of certain Mennonite groups. In other words, there were never any Amish or Mennonite committee of elders who got together to create a dress code for their respective churches. Every distinctive aspect of their plain dress is a preservation or adaptation of a dress style that was once common in their cultures of origin.

The beards, hair styles and broad rimmed hats worn by Amish men make them a living demonstration of how peasant farmers along the Rhine River Valley looked in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And what has evolved into distinctive Mennonite or Amish attire for women is also simply a version of what all European peasant women wore in earlier times.

Even the now distinctive “head covering” is not a Mennonite invention, nor was it even associated with Paul’s teaching in I Corinthians 11 in early Mennonite or Amish practice. It was simply what all ordinary women wore. Menno Simons' "Complete Works" makes no mention of the practice of women veiling their heads or of the Biblical text which supports it, though it could be argued that he didn't need to, since women wearing some kind of protective head covering was a part of standard dress for all women of all faiths--or of no faith--in the sixteenth century (see Rembrandt's paintings, for example, or that of Whistler's Mother, above, as late as the nineteenth century).

Julia Ward Howe, author of the
Battle Hymn of the Republic,
dressed like my mother, but
was far from a Mennonite.

It appears that a form of women’s headgear that began as something functional and practical for peasant and other women in the past became a standard part of western European and Mennonite culture. Later, for many Mennonites, it became a Christian symbol, an expression of Paul's teaching that women should have their heads modestly covered out of reverence to God and respect for their husbands and other men when engaged in prayer or worship, especially in public. But in general, the group’s emphasis was simply on dressing in a modest way that did not draw undue attention to themselves.

This is not to say that early Mennonites and Amish had nothing unique to say about appearance. Anabaptist men, being committed to non-violence, were not to carry the sabers that were a customary part of being dressed up when in public. Amish men were to wear coats with hooks and eyes rather than the newer and more fashionable trend of using fancy buttons. And women were not to spend money on ornate jewelry and elaborate hairdos, as taught in Scripture, but to dress as common people generally did in the day.

In short, Mennonites have traditionally stressed modesty, economy and simplicity in all things, including in their attire. And the plainer ones have stressed the additional value of their appearance being an expression of their identity. They have chosen to avoid trending with the times, to remain non-conformed to the ways of the culture around them, and to be immediately recognizable as a distinctive, God-fearing people.

You may also want to check http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2011/10/mennonites-and-amishten-myths-and.html.

Last Sermon, Part II: Praying and Doing

Here's the link to Part I of this "Last Sermon" I gave as a part of Zion Mennonite Church's 125th anniversary, a congregation where I had the privilege of serving as pastor for 20 years.

The key scripture I want to leave with you in this “last sermon” is one you all already know from memory, that’s how basic it is. It’s what we call the Lord’s Prayer, which should be our daily "pledge of allegiance" to God and to God’s rule, the prayer found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

"When you pray," he instructs his followers (and the you here is plural, like the Southern y’all), keep it focused on the main thing, on God’s business. It’s not about us, but its about “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” It's addressed to one holy, loving God who is sovereign over every man, woman and child in the whole world.

The next main thing in this text follows from the first. Triple underline this: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Note its not just, “May your will be done in my personal life, or in my family, or my church, or my country, but on the whole earth.” It’s a big prayer, about what God wants for all creation.

And God wants three main things:

First, God wants everyone to have enough. “Give all of us, every day, enough bread to live on,” on earth as it is in heaven. Could we possibly imagine in God’s heaven, some of the saints and angels suffering from eating and having too much while another group is suffering every day from not having enough? Of course not. That would be unthinkable, could never, ever be God’s will. So we, created in God’s image and given dominion over God’s earth, need to pray and do the same things God would do if he were in charge and so many of God’s children were hungry.

The second thing God wants is to have everyone on earth live in peace, to get along. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” It’s God’s will that the world be a place of healing, where we extend God’s love and forgiveness to all who wrong us and owe us, including those who owe us financially. In Bible times people got into debt because they were destitute and had to borrow in order to survive. In the Pentateuch, Jesus’ Bible, people were commanded to forgive others their debts on a regular basis, every seven years, to reboot the economic playing field and give everyone a fresh start.

Jesus took his Bible seriously and believed it taught freely forgiving debts, trespasses, and sins on earth as is true in heaven. Can you imagine God’s heaven being a place of wars and conflicts and church splits and miserable divorces and impossible burdens of debts the very poor owe to the very rich? 

Of course not. God wants everyone to experience a clean slate, to be forgiven their debts, just as ours are forgiven.

And finally, God wants everyone to make it to the finish. “Lead us not into temptations (tests or trials) that are too hard to bear, but deliver us from all evil.” So in addition to praying that all may live (have enough food), and that all may forgive, (live in peace), we pray, as God wills, that all people everywhere to be able to survive hardships, tests, hurricanes, persecutions, depressions, earthquakes, and come to a successful end. This could be paraphrased, “Lead us not into devastation, but deliver us from all evil.”

Can you imagine in God’s heavenly kingdom, where God rules, that there would be some who are provided for, protected, helped to survive and others not? Of course not. God wants everyone to make it to the very end, pass every test, overcome every obstacle.

That's what God wants, and God wants us to want it so much, all of us, that we pray passionately for it every day. In the end, it will be all that matters.

Recently I was at a friend’s funeral service, a former parishioner at Zion. At his memorial one of the ministers shared the story of a child who often played Monopoly with his mom. Most of the time she was the clear winner, ended up with the most properties and cash and her son was the sad loser. Finally one day, as he became more savvy at the game, he had the satisfaction of coming out on top, with numerous hotels, a couple of railroads, the electric company, and lots of other properties and cash. But then his mother said, as usual, “Now we have to put everything back in the box.” And he said, “But I don’t want to. I want to just keep everything I’ve gained on the board.” But she said, “No, when the game is over, we have to put everything back in the box.”

I couldn’t help, as I was hearing the story, focusing on my friend’s flower-covered casket there in front of us. In a sense, that is literally where they will put all that is physically left of us when our short time here is over. There will be no U-Hauls carrying our stuff behind the hearse that takes us to cemetery. Everything will be boxed up and put away. The only thing we’ll benefit from in the next life is what we’ve given away--what we've invested in the lives of others who will be blessed forever by how we’ve shared God’s blessings with them--and through whatever legacy of influence we've left with our children and others. It's what Jesus calls “treasure in heaven.”

Daniel Berrigan once wrote these powerful words that I want to use as a closing prayer:

“Somewhere in your life, hope you might see one starved person, the look on her face when the bread finally arrives. Hope you might have baked it or bought it or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on her face, for your hands meeting hers across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot or suffer a lot, or die a little even.”

Let's all say Amen to that.

Mennonites Should Be Able to Work Things Out

Today there are twelve different Mennonite subgroups in Rockingham County alone.

When I became a part of Virginia Mennonite Conference as a part time pastor in 1965 (at Zion Mennonite), there were only four, three of these being Old Order groups at variance with each other. The main Virginia Conference body had at that time experienced only one division since its beginning 130 years earlier.

Since then an increased number of additional groups have formed, mostly through some kind of church split. Here’s the list:

1835 Virginia Conference (formed from Lancaster {PA} Conference)

    1900 Old Order Mennonite Conference (known as Showalter group)

    1953 Wenger Old Order group

    1957 Mt. Pleasant Old Order Church (Horning group)

    1972 Southeastern Mennonite Conference

    1976 Pleasant Valley Mennonite Church

    1985 Timberville Mennonite Church

    1990 Calvary Mennonite Church

    2001 Cornerstone Churches (originally Mennonite)

    2002 Mountain Valley District churches
   
    2003 Broad Street Mennonite Church

    2005 Shalom Mennonite

    2007 Lloyd Wenger Old Order group

As a committed Anabaptist/Mennonite, and as teacher of a JMU Lifelong Learning Class on "Mennonites in the Valley" for the past 15 years I find this multiplicity of divisions beyond embarrassing. We are, after all, supposed to be a church that’s all about peace and reconciliation.

In the past, our church splits were often accompanied by rancorous debates and hard feelings. But those days seem to be largely behind us as we become ever more masterful at conflict evasion and less inclined to do conflict engagement. We tend to “divorce” amicably and continue to get along just fine, remaining exceedingly nice to each other in a way that seems quite OK on the surface.

What we lose as we politely "agree to disagree" and to go our separate ways, however, are the kinds of church family connections that enhance learning and create a sense of needed accountability with each other. More homogeneous but separated groups tend not to experience the kind of healthy growth and maturity they might if they did the hard work of respectfully listening to each other and trying to work things out (see "Knit together by Differences").

My modest proposal for our Conference would be that we agree to something like the following:

In light of Jesus' and the apostle's teachings on church unity, we are committed to steadfastly maintaining our “unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace” and will seek to grow toward an ever stronger “unity of the faith” until death do us part. We will practice redemptive forms of discipline for erring individuals, but we will never again separate as whole church families from one another.

From "Why Do You Always?" to "I Like It When..."

When we are having an unpleasant exchange with a friend or family member, we often take on an adversarial, "prosecuting attorney" role, with lots of “Why do you always?” and “Why can’t you ever?” kind of language. We really want something from the other person, but rather than making a polite request, we pile on blame.

Somewhere we've adopted the strange belief that the best way to get others to behave better is to make them feel worse.

What if we could take on the role of a "defense attorney" instead, in which we act as an advocate for the other person (and for the relationship)? In that mode, we can practice simply informing the other person as to what he or she could do that could really make things better. I other words, we offer information rather than accusation.

I always try to get couples in my office to switch to that kind of language when they find themselves engaging in escalating rounds of blame and conflicts. What a difference it makes if they can join hands, look at each other and express their wishes in the form of “I like it when...” statements, such as:

“I like it when you tell me you're really glad to see me when I get home, and don’t make some complaint the first thing I hear.”

“I really like it when you take time to listen to what I have to say and show me that you've really heard me, and not get defensive right away.”

“I love it when you take time to give me a warm, spontaneous hug like you did earlier today. It makes me feel really glad I married you.”

Why not try turning all of our complaints into respectful requests, or better yet, into warm expressions of “I like it when,” a guaranteed way of giving a relationship a much needed lift.

Got Power?

Oh the utter extravagance of God’s work in those who trust him--
endless energy, boundless strength! 
                                                          Ephesians 1:19 (The Message)

In my work as pastor, I am often struck by how powerless members see themselves.

For example, those who were new to a congregation may feel they aren't given the same respect as those with deep roots in the congregation's past. On the other hand, those who have been with a church all their lives may feel their views carry less weight than the newcomers they feel everyone pays more attention to. Likewise, younger people often see older members as having greater influence, whereas older persons may feel no one listens to them anymore, that everyone is more interested in what younger members have to say.

The fact is that all of us have much more power and influence than we realize, power being defined simply as the energy and the ability to accomplish necessary and important things--to achieve commendable and worthwhile goals. And, as Jesus demonstrates, the only legitimate use of power is to empower, not to disempower, others.

Too often we associate power with dominance (power over others), rather than thinking of power that is used collaboratively with others.

There are at least three forms of power readily available to each of us:

Unhealthy, negative power (always inappropriate): Intimidation, domination, threats, pulling rank, manipulation, coercion, seduction, violence, deception, etc.

Healthy, positive power (always appropriate): Love, kindness, appeal, negotiation, persuasion, prayer, positive influence, joyfulness, perseverance, gentle persuasion, good boundaries, etc.

Normal human power (may be used appropriately or inappropriately): Position, rank, age, IQ, education, race, gender, nationality, wealth, seniority, experience, charisma, etc.

In any case, power is often largely a matter of perception. Except in the case of physical force, there can be no effective power wielder without there being a power yielder. We often give others far too much power to control or intimidate us.

And speaking of good, Christ-like power, the more we have of it the more gently and effectively we can behave. It is when we feel under-empowered and anxious that we are most likely to act desperately and inappropriately.

My prayer? More power to you, lots and lots of it.

A Long Way From Living Water

They are like a 
tree
  planted by a flowing stream,
which produces fruit every season,
   and its leaves never wither.

  Psalm 1:3

     We planted a river birch in our front yard soon after we moved here in 1988. It was recommended as an attractive tree that wouldn’t take forever to grow and would provide some great shade.

     We should have realized, though, that with a name like river birch (and the fact that this tree has only a modest root system) that it might prefer living beside a creek somewhere.

     Unfortunately, our location is about as far from a stream as one can get. Hamlet Drive is right at the elevation point just north of the city limits that marks a divide between the run off water that flows south into Blacks Run (and finally into the South Fork of the Shenandoah River at Port Republic) and the water that flows north from us that forms Linville Creek (which heads northward into the North Fork of the Shenandoah River at Timberville).

     As a result of its distance from a good water source, some of our birch’s leaves begin to turn brown and fall off when the tree becomes too stressed by summer heat and drought, requiring us to give it a good soaking every so often in a dry season.

     Naturally, as a preacher, I can hardly resist drawing parallels, like each of us thriving best when we are rooted near lots of water. The term “living water” in the Bible originally refers to running water, as by the kind of abundant stream described in the above psalm. Without an ample supply of life giving moisture, we all begin to wither.

     Interestingly, while trees often show stress by shedding some their leaves prematurely, flowers and other plants wilt and may become limp and lifeless. Well watered plants remain green and upright. With each of their cells filled with water, they are "turgid," a term one learns in plant biology.

     What a difference a good supply of living water makes.

     And not just to a tree.