We...

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." -Galatians 3:28

"We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons... We sacrificed. We cared about our neighbors. We never beat our chests... We cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence. We didn't belittle it. It didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election." -Will McAvoy, The Newsroom

Like plenty of Americans, I spent a fair amount of last week watching the impeachment hearings in Washington D.C. I tried to remain productive while the headphones in my ears caught the testimony of lifelong public servants and their responses to questioning from elected officials trying to get to the heart of a phone call and foreign aid irregularities. I've got to tell you, I came away disappointed.

In fairness, I had numerous disappointments. But chief among them was the knowledge that everything was built for political points, 10-second talking points meant to be splashed across Facebook and Twitter to activate the bases. One side spoke to theirs, the other to theirs. And all the while, while we should have been having an honest conversation about power and truth, we were subjected to tribalism playing out on a national stage.

We're increasingly people of labels. We cultivate a set of labels by which we want others to identify us. Conservative. Liberal. Republican. Democrat. Gay. Straight. Millenial. Boomer. Man. Woman. Christian. Atheist. Alabama fan. Auburn fan. The list goes on and on.

We want people to see what we're about and deduce something about us. But we're also doing a tragic job of tossing labels onto others, and that exercise is rarely as gracious. Snowflake. Bigot. SJW. Racist. Alt-Right. Libtard. Elitist. Socialist. Alabama fan. Auburn fan. You know the names.

And we ascribe a set of assumptions to go along with these labels. If you're this, then you must inherently be that. I assume this is why, when I was young, we didn't ask people who they voted for in elections. If we knew who people voted for, we might be inclined to appreciate them less. Oh, weren't those the days.

But even more terrifyingly, we've begun to identify people by these labels rather than their uniqueness and individuality. "I could never love someone who..." I assume that none of us would prefer to be identified by stereotypes, and yet we're quite adept at doing it to others.

Black and white is a terrible way to go through life. Us and Them isn't any better. Picking a camp and filling it with people who fit into very specific and rigid expectations leaves us awfully lonely and never forces us to ask questions that might make our own lives and perspectives richer. We unfollow people who think differently than us and close our eyes to opinions different than ours. We gather our news from sources likely to support our conclusions and demonize other outlets.

More troubling, we're more likely to pull out our phones and capture an incident than step in to help. We see our neighbors as a profile picture and archetype rather than a complex human being. I'm finding myself rooted in the idea that solution isn't another Facebook comment thread war or sharing another video to convince our neighbors and family of our position. No, in fact, just stop.

We have to remember how to be WE. We have to get to know people, not just as targets of debate or echo chamber supporters, but as people. We need to know one another's stories and passions. We need to remember one another's humanity and wonder. We've got to get over the idea that cooperation and compromise are evils, that shared ground is to us what "hot lava" was to children on the playground.

In the past couple of years, there is a picture from scripture that has become increasingly important to me: the Last Supper. Jesus had spent 3 years gathering disciples, healing the sick, restoring the broken, pushing against powers that were hurting people, preaching, and more. And at the end, he gathered his 12 closest disciples around a dinner table to eat together and paint them a picture of love at its core. He took the bread and the wine and let them tell a story of sacrifice and covenant. Jesus was going to be killed so that a covenant of love could be sealed, and he sat around a dinner table, surrounded by friends, to spend his last few moments.

What's become most remarkable to me is imagining who was seated with Jesus around the table. There were teenagers and doctors. There were not-good-enoughs and there was the one who was going to betray him. But it is two, Peter and Matthew, whose presence has most transformed me. Peter, also known as Simon, was a Zealot, meaning that he was actively working to tear down Roman occupation in Israel when he was called by Jesus. Matthew was a tax collector when Jesus found him, meaning that he was actively profiting from the Roman occupation of the Jewish people. Their political ends were diametrically opposed, and yet here they were seated around a table with Jesus, breaking bread and enjoying the feast together.

Their labels may have been incompatible, but their calling and experience of God's grace weren't. Jesus didn't have litmus test questions when he met his followers. He just offered invitations. And he modeled a community where ALL were invited. People with vastly different ideologies spent 3 years together learning to live together. We'd do well to learn.

With that in mind, I have great news: you're not perfect. Some of your opinions are wrong and some of the words you choose to use hurt people. You make poor choices and selfish decisions. I've got some more great news: neither is anyone else, either. Most of us are trying our best each day to leave the world a little better place. Most of us are giving it our all and falling like failures most days. A little grace for one another would go a long way.

May we learn to live out the kind of community Jesus modeled at the Last Supper. May we learn to drop the labels and see people with the grace we'd hope to receive from them. May we extend olive branches when they feel sure to be unreturned and stop demonizing one another on the internet. We can do better. WE can do better. We've got to rediscover the wonder of We-ness. May we find success in becoming the community Jesus imagined.

forever unfinished...

Functioning Workaholic...

"By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." -Genesis 2:2-3

"We have enough work, but too little time for God and life. We have enough money, but we opt for a cycle of consumption and waste. We canonize the American dream and worship it." -Matthew Sleeth, 24/6

"I think you need to be a worse youth pastor." Those were my words of encouragement to Travis Garner. Or maybe they were words of conviction. Or maybe compassion. I'm not really sure, all I know is that, at the time, I felt like they might have been the most insightful words I'd ever breathed into existence. More likely, they were the words of a spunky college student with an inflated sense of self-importance.

First, let me give some background. I was a college chaperone of a winter youth retreat for the church I'd grown up in. Travis had been my youth pastor growing up, and against all reasonable wisdom, he'd invited me to be a "responsible adult" for this weekend retreat. (At this particular stage of life, "responsible" and "adult" were terms held very loosely in any sentence involving my name.)

At some point overnight, one of our more adventurous high schoolers had attempted a physics assignment: to discover how much force his hand, when applied as a fist, required to create a hole in the drywall of the cabins. I'm not sure what the result was in Newtons, but he eclipsed it.

After the big group session that morning, Travis pulled all the high school boys aside and erupted in a tirade of epic proportions. Veins were bulging. Decibel level records were eclipsed. I think at least 1/3 of the boys were in tears. (At least that's how my memory remembers it, because I might have been one of the boys crying.)

As the gang shuffled out with the timidity of a scolded puppy, I caught Travis looking like he'd reached the breaking point. It was the kind of moment when you realize this isn't really about that. The talk hadn't really been about the hole in the wall. It was simply the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Yes, the hole needed to be replaced, but this was a man who needed a break.

So of course, once it was just the two of us, I interjected.

"I think you need to be a worse youth pastor," I offered with my infinite depth of perspective and wisdom. "You seem stressed. You can't do it all."

Now, if I heard that feedback from a college chaperone as a student pastor now, I think I'd explode. It's a testament to the patience and wisdom of Travis that my tongue wasn't ripped out at that moment.

I imagine he's forgotten that moment. I, however, have that conversation forever seared in my mind. With any luck, it'll seep into the fiber of my being and become my life motto: become a more mediocre student minister every day.

Don't get me wrong: I love teenagers. I love my work and I love the church I get to serve. It gives me so much meaning and I feel so fortunate to be able to live out my calling doing something I love. But in loving what I do, I've bought into the lie so many of us invest in: the busier and more tired we are, the more value we have. The less we rest, the more we work, the better our lives will be.

Let's test this, shall we? When someone asks you how you are, I bet your default answer is similar to mine. When I don't offer the half-hearted "OK," it's almost always "I'm tired." We pass it along as a badge of honor, and we've bought into this idea that exhaustion is the default gear in which we were made to operate.

We can respond to all of those emails as we fall asleep in bed.

We can reschedule that meeting, even if it means delaying a date night or our kid's soccer game.

We can plow ahead and work the weekends when what we need more desperately than anything is a nap. (But we can't nap, because there's no time for that silliness.)

I'm beginning to think I might be a functioning workaholic. Sure, it's all good on the surface. But there's collateral damage when we are willing to perennially say yes to work.

But that's not how we're made. We're made for rest. From the very beginning, we were structured for work and wired for rest. In the very beginning, the very first rule God gave the people was something called Sabbath. God had created for six days, and then God laid down on a La-Z-Boy and dozed. It was a "gift" we're told. (Just as an aside, I figure the duck-billed platypus is one of those things that happened while God was on break.)

And over and over again in scripture, we hear this reminder to observe the Sabbath. It wasn't just some theoretical proposition. It was held in the same 10 Commandments that include things like not killing and not stealing. We don't hold those particularly casually, but we're quick to skimp on the resting and recovering.

And God kept reminding the people continually that this wasn't just a suggestion. It's in our DNA. Based on personal experience, there was good reason. Taking a stop doesn't come natural. We always stretch our capacity. If we make more money, we spend it. If we have more time, we spend it. But what I've discovered in giving money away is what I assume happens when we give time away. It re-orients the time we do use for work. We become more focused. We become more present. We realize we were made for something more.

And then we rest. I need it. We need it. We can't keep up at this pace. We weren't made for the hamster wheel, and the good news is, believe it or not, we can step out of it at any time. Because the even better news is, we are not defined by what we do or what we produce. Our value and worth is not determined by our work.

What's true of planted fields is true of us: every so often we have to stop and recover if we want to operate at our full capacity. And life is meant for full capacity. We've got to stop telling ourselves that we can keep on going. We can't. If God can rest after forming the world, we can certainly rest after a weeks' worth of conference calls and planning meetings.

So here's my promise: I'm trying to be a worse student pastor. I'm trying to be more present and invested in the moment to moment in front of me. I'm trying to put my phone down and experience the world going on all around me. I'm trying to let emails sit unanswered over the weekend because my worth is not tied to response time. I'm trying to rest and say "No", and in the process, I'm betting that by accident, I might just become a better student pastor too.

forever unfinished...