gossips and rumors of gossip

There's been a lot of hoop-la about Jeremiah Wright the recently retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the church where Barack Obama is a member.

It brought some recent memories for us at Fairlawn West United Church of Christ in Akron. About 10 years ago we set out to be a church that is consumed by the mission of Jesus Christ and that we would be sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with the world around us rather than focused on ourselves and keeping the church more for ourselves, our convenience and comfort rather than being servants of God. That led to some major accusations towards me, animosity by some folks within the church, and a major blow up in the life of the church with some folks leaving to go to other churches. Along the way we took the pews out of our sanctuary and put in chairs and round tables. We gave the pews to a number of churches from Missouri to Pennsylvania that were white and African-American, and pentecostal to fundamentalist.

That latter move on top of the stories floating around these parts of Akron for some years before, led to wild stories about us in other churches and just out on the "street" among folks. It sounded like we had almost become devil worshipers who had sold our mothers into slavery! What we heard is that we were no longer a church...because we got rid of the pews. That we had misappropriated upwards of $800,000. That I had been emotionally abusive of older women in the church. That we had removed our large pipe organ (which apparently grew out of the horror that we had removed the pews.) The stories were legion, and the antipathy toward us by a variety of "church folks" was deep. But we found in the 4 years since that a number of other folks who were looking for a deeply spiritual, outward reaching, not self consumed church found out about us and have become part of our life. Some even heard about us through those wild stories.

Like Rev. Wright and Trinity UCC, people heard blips and decided from that about the whole. Like Jesus said in Luke 6:

22-23"Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—skip like a lamb, if you like!—for even though they don't like it, I do . . . and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like this.

media and truth

I remember over 30 years ago hearing Marshall Rosenberg talk about not accepting the truth as coming from the "mind-numbing media." I wonder if we have expected too much from it in the recent life of the United Church of Christ. And now we feel betrayed by it with the brouhaha over Barack Obama and the former pastor of his home church (Trinity UCC in Chicago), Jeremiah Wright. I think the media is what it is. It numbs the mind into expecting it will get it right or get it the way we want it to be. Its almost if we live by the "sword" we will be attacked by the sword.

I was struck on this past Thursday which was Maundy Thursday of Holy Week the reading from the Gospel of John of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples in the lowest rung of the social ladder role of a servant, on the night of his betrayal. And then telling them there is a new Great Commandment. The 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule don't even measure up any more to this singular great one - to love one another as HE has loved us. I wonder how the UCC would be perceived if all of us who claim its identity would have spent the last few weeks washing the feet (or similar action) of other people around us?

Back on Jeremiah Wright - he is being portrayed as a inflammatory demagogue. Even aside from whatever is the reality of decades of his sermons, let along pastoral leadership, I was struck by his successor, whom he personally selected and mentored at Trinity for the past few years - Otis Moss III. I heard Moss on "All Things Considered" of National Public Radio this week. He is a very measured and thoughtful man. He spoke with a good listening of the interviewer AND he conveyed the Gospel in the midst of it. He talked about his wish that out of this whole thing people would know the living Christ and the saving grace of God. Powerful! And the wild-eyed Wright got him as his successor. hmm. Crafty as a fox he is!