Timothy Merrill

The 12 Million Dollar Poodle

Leona Helmsley, hotel maven, famous for spending time in prison and for her love of the "little people," has died and left 12 mil to her poodle, Fifi.

Actually, I only read the headlines, and don't know if the pooch was a poodle or a Pomeranian, and don't know if it's name was Fifi, or Fido.

I do know this will is going to rack up a ton of billable time in some estate lawyers' offices, because there's no way Fifi's going to get a dime.

But why am I talking about Fifi when I really wanted to talk some more about Mother Teresa. Lol! How do I get from a coodled canine to a struggling saint?

It's just that when you see lavish and excessive wealth--the rich who appear not to give rip about using their wealth to actually make the lives of others easier, you go back to someone who, through her poverty made others rich--to borrow a line from St. Paul. And yes, that's a line referring to Jesus Christ himself, but Mother Teresa it seems to me, comes as close to bearing the marks, the suffering, the image of Christ, indeed the imago dei of any person of the modern and post-modern era.

I am fascinated by the revelations of her faith crisis, of the doubts, of the dark years of the soul. And I am blogging here, and haven't studied this much--I think I might study a bit and write my next BACK PAGE column in Homiletics on this topic, but off the top, here's what I'm wondering.

RE: the difference between the doubt of the kind Mother Teresa had, and others whom we might call unbelievers.

See, I don't think for a moment that you can put her in the categories of unbelievers, or non-believers. So doubt is a special category.

An UNBELIEVER is a person who has been presented with the fundamental outlines of faith, and elects to dismiss those claims. Does not or cannot believe them.

A NON-BELIEVER is a person who has not really been given an opportunity to make a faith decision one way or another.

A DIS-BELIEVER is similar to the unbeliever, but is not just a passive rejector of the claims of faith, but becomes engaged in actively disputing them.

But the DOUBTER is someone who's fully engaged in the relationship but frets about whether he or she is truly loved and accept. The doubter worries that he or she is the one who loves more than the other person. A doubter like Thomas is someone who has lived and walked with Jesus, who knows full well who Jesus is, but in grief, sorrow, and the exigencies of life cannot bear to deal with any sense of loss. The love, the connection is too great, too powerful. So, the heavens close up, and the more you want to hear the voice of your lover, the more distant that voice seems to become ...

Well, I better stop. I think this is a topic worth doing some work on.

Another category perhaps with sub-categories is the BELIEVER. Who is this person? Why is this person not afflicted with doubts? A DOUBTER is a person whose faith is being tested. Can you be a person of strong faith without having experienced the fury of the fire in the furnance of doubt, but finding there, as did the Hebrew children in Babylon, the presence of God in the fire?

Icons Apart

This week ten years ago—can it be that long?—Mother Teresa died and the world mourned the passing of an iconic figure who more than any one individual of our day personified sacrificial, selfless commitment to others.

Then, horribly, just as the world was re-considering the importance of selfless service, another icon died and the world's gaze turned away from Teresa to Diana, from a servant to a princess—they were in so many ways icons apart. And the world forgot about Mother Teresa.

Now they're both in the news again. First, because we know that the Calcutta saint lived a life of faith in spite of a plague of doubts that beset her for much of her life. Yet she persisted.

Second, because a huge memorial is planned for one of these icons, and it isn't Mother Teresa, and Camilla isn't going to attend, and so on.

Diana struggled with her princess role. We all know that. We also know she had a genuine interest in the unfortunate and she embraced in her post-Charles life a numerous of worthy causes.

It's just an interesting dichotomy that these two icons float up in our consciousness at the same time like revolving billboards, each suggesting a set of values light years apart.

If we treat this event homiletically this Sunday, we don't need to get into Diana bashing, and we don't need to unduly lavish praise upon someone who will doubtless become a Catholic saint.

We need only to remember that we often come to a bend in the road, where the path diverges. We're often asked to make choices, and sometimes it comes down to the Pauper or the Princess? To Yes or No? To Self or Selfless? To Me or God?

Mother Teresa's abiding legacy, now that we know more about her faith, may be not her faith at all, but that in the presence of doubt, she was always able to give a “Yes” to God and persevere to the end.

Mother Thomasa Lived With Doubt

This is for free. It’s now August 27, but this is for your sermon for March 30, 2008. That’s when the John 20 text comes up re the conversation Jesus had with Thomas. Doubting Thomas, as history has so ungraciously referred to him.

Now we learn that a revered figure known for her faith, piety and good works, lived with doubt throughout much of her ministry. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was so afflicted with doubt that she thought of herself as a hypocrite, often wondering “Where is my faith?”

Mother Thomasa we might call her. Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, is the postutalor or advocate who’s making the case for her sainthood. He discovered some of her letters dating back to the beginning of her Calcutta ministry up to the years before her death in 1997. Now he’s publishing an edition of her letters called Mother Teresa: Come be My Light, which, he says, reveals the full extent of her long “dark night of the soul.”

She writes: “I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul…I want God with all the power of my soul — and yet between us there is terrible separation.” Later she writes: “I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”

Here’s what’s bothering me: If Thomas, who lived and walked with Jesus the Christ himself had doubts, and if Mother Thomasa who's just about the holiest person to walk this earth since Mary the Mother of God struggled with doubt—what does that say about me, someone who doesn’t really have that problem?

St. Anselm of Bec, later Canterbury, famously said: "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo, quia, nisi credidero, non intelligam." ("Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand.")

I believe and I think I understand. That bothers me. And come to think of it, all those scholastic theologians like Anselm and those who followed him weren’t particularly known for their theological uncertainty. It was the medieval mystics who were more conscious, it seems to me, of the mystery, the uncertainty, the fog of the divine presence, or the Cloud of Unknowning as one put it.

Bertrand Russell, an self-avowed agnostic said that “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

So, come the Second Sunday of Easter, we need to cut Thomas some slack. Without Thomas and without Thomasa we might think that we know more than we do. Looking at these two, you’ve got to think that the closer we get to the glory, the more we’re blinded by it, and utterly humbled by it as well.

What's Your Hot Theological Topic?

I was musing the other day ... what an interesting word: musing. I was musing. Musing.

Okay. I was musing about some of the theological issues of the day, and then wondered what would happen if I googled "Hot Theological Issues." So I did.

And here are some of the "hot theological" topics we're wrestling with today, according to the blogosphere and cyberlogs out there: Of course, there are the usual suspects--homosexuality, abortion and birth control. But others are fussing about the "functional equality" of the members of the Trinity, others about heaven, others about stem-cell research, and so on.

One person thinks that wondering what's hot and what's not is like asking whether Adam had a belly button.

I wonder what makes these topics THEOLOGICAL issues. There are a lot of smart people out there who are talking about all of these things--except perhaps heaven and trinitarian issues--who don't invoke a theological rubric whatsoever.

So, if we're going to call stem-cell research a THEOLOGICAL issue, we believe that understanding the nature of God will help us, guide us, lead us to a judicious approach to this technology.

We invoke theology when we think our study of God brings light to the ethical context we're facing.

Unfortunately, too many throw up the word "theological" as a smoke screen. How exactly does our knowledge of God inform our understanding of abortion, homosexuality, birth control and so on? Do you have--whatever position you take--a CLEAR UNDERSTANDING of how your concept of God is directly linked to how and why you have taken the position you have?

If you don't, I'm not calling for you to abandon your position. Just don't call it a theological one.

And that's where pastors play such a large role, i.e. if we ourselves have ever done the theological "musing" about this that's necessary to facilitate an informed discussion. We have a role in helping people understand how their image and understanding God as revealed through the written WORD has the potential to inform their behavior and ethical constructs. Theology is thus wedded to praxis as it should be. If it's not, theology, once the Queen of the Sciences, is reduced to nothing more than a "philosophy," and an empty one at that.

Another thing: Like politics, all theology is local. Our hot theological topics are not the hot theological topics somewhere else, say like Darfur, Rwanda, the Sudan, Hebron, et al. So if we find theological exploration a helpful enterprise, usually it's only because we think it will help us--not them. Anyway ...

Back to musing ... BTW, was any of the above comprehensible? I'm just cogitating with my fingers on this keyboard ...

Now, when Jesus was a kid, would he have won the city-wide Nazareth spelling bee?

To Vick, i.e. To Squander, to Waste

His name may become synonymous with "to squander, or to waste." EX: "After repeating DUI offenses, it's clear that he's vicked his life to the point of no return." Or, "She inherited a trust fund, only to vick it on drugs and shoes." So if you're looking for an example of the prodigal son who has not yet returned to his father, as it were, here it is. File it. Bank it.

Michael Vick has a fan club and an official web site, www.mikevick.com. But when I tried to get on, the traffic was so heavy I couldn't get in. I've been reading sports bloggers who think Vick's career is over, over, over. His career looks like a soufflee without the ouff. He's done.

That's what bloggers are saying.

I don't agree. It's true that he's a guy who was given 60 million dollars in salary and endorsements a few years ago, and has squandered it all. And it will be a couple of years before he can possibly play in the NFL again--at least. Likely, his fanny will be sitting on a prison cot for a while.

But Michael Vick can find redemption. Can't we all? Someday, he could be the comeback player of the year. That mght be five years from now. But it's amazing, a) how quickly we forget about these things--it becomes old news, and b) how easily we, the public, are willing to forgive.

If he pays his dues, serves his time, serves out his suspension, and if he expresses remorse and follows it with clear evidence of a CHANGED LIFE, he can find redemption.

I hope someone points that out to him, and I hope that someone has a Bible in his or her hand, that's open to Acts 16:31 or some other appropriate text.

Would You Like Clap or No Clap with Your Worship Today?

It’s been in the papers all summers: amusement park accidents. In one incident in June, a girl’s feet were severed when a cable snapped. On a roller coaster in Arkansas, riders were stranded in mid-air hanging up side down during a power failure. Something similar happened in California where riders were suspended for four hours 70 feet up.

That’s why some analysts in the industry are questioning whether they want to go “wild or mild.” Are families really going to want to bring their kids to rides that make them puke all over themselves when rocketing to 3Gs before coasting home?

We bring this up in Homiletics this Sunday, because while worship and thrill rides aren’t exactly the same, people in churches across the country are asking a similar question: “Do we want our worship wild or mild”

The writer puts it this way: “We offer guitar or organ. You can sit, stand or kneel. We have clap or no-clap. / Ever stop to compare how similar people sound describing worship preferences and Starbuck’s orders? ‘I want a Venti, extra hot, blended, two-pump vanilla latte with one Splenda.’ Or, ‘I want an acoustic guitar driven, female vocal led, traditional-contemporary blend with one prayer—and make that inclusive language please.’”

Homiletics turns to the Hebrew pericope for some insight on the nature of true worship and points to two movements in the text. You’ll want to read it.

No Worries

My laptop crashed—or seemed to the other day. And even though I had done a complete backup that morning, it ruined my day.

And it ruined my night. I went to bed at 10:30 p.m. and got up an hour later, not able to sleep. I didn’t go to bed until 2:30 a.m. and probably didn’t fall to sleep for another 30 minutes after that.

Worrying. You know how it is.

And I thought about all the years I’ve been preaching about worry and worrying. Telling people not to worry. I think I understood better then what people go through when they worry.

I really haven’t done that much worrying in my life. It’s really not me. But then, I haven’t had a lot of things to worry about. I’ve had pretty much a “no worries”/hakuna matata kind of life. I’ve my health, the kids—all of them—have made pretty good choices and don’t give me much reason to worry.

But here I was worrying. About a computer that wouldn’t work.

And while I am fretting about that, families of the Utah miners are struggling with a mix of grief, sorrow and hope awaiting word about their loved ones. Parents are losing their teenagers behind the wheel because they’ve been drinking or someone else has. And the litany, as you know, could go on.

I think we need a new theology of worry. Would someone please work on this?

Paul says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication make your requests known to God.” Yet even prayer can be nothing but an expression of—worry. The harder you’re prayin’ the more you’re worrin’.

Paul seems to suggest that a/pathy is the ideal. But he’s no stranger to the Greek philosophical schools. He’s been weaned on but not from Plato and the Stoics. How much does that influence him here?

What we need is a sermon that says, “Okay, we’re going to worry. So here are some ideas about how our faith can get us through these difficult periods.”

My laptop? The power cord was faulty.

No big deal.

No worries.

Elvis Has Been Dead Thirty Years

Elvis fans are commemorating this week the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis' disappearance on August 16, 1977.

I say "disappearance" because there seems to be so many fans who believe that he's still alive. Or at least that's what they profess. Whether they truly believe it is another thing ... like too many Christians. But no one says, "Hey, Elvis has been dead for 30 years now."

The difference between Jesus and Elvis--well I suppose there's more than one--is that Elvis is presumed never to have died. It's not like true believers think he died, but came back to life. Elvis joins that group of celebrities that have eluded death: Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, et. al.

Homiletics has done its share on the Jesus/Elvis phenomenon and we won't be doing any more. But it's there if you want to check it out and do something sermonic on it this Sunday the 19th.

Not that there isn't plenty of material out there: Elvis and Jesus web sites, The First Church of Elvis (Favorite hymn: "O Worship the King"), books about the Elvis alive, Elvis impersonators and Jesus impersonators (plenty of them, to be sure), Jesus/Elvis humorous comparisons, and so on.

Most important, both Elvis and Jesus have both been rendered in kitschy velvet wall hangings.

It's just so interesting to observe the human penchant for devotion, and to note the sources of human religious inspiration.

So don't think people--even the people in your congregation--don't aspire to devotion, to inspiration, to adoration. Don't think they don't understand worship, reverence and awe.

They do. And for them, worship is not nearly as complicated as we sometimes make it out to be.

God's War

God’s War is the title of a relatively recent book (October, 2006) about the Crusades. I’ve wanted to get my hands on a copy for some time because critics have unanimously acclaimed it for its readability (it’s a single volume of more than 1,000 pages) and its scholarship.

It’s written by Christopher Tyerman who teaches medieval history at Oxford. Tyerman’s no Dan Brown. This is not fiction. You’re not reading The Da Vinci Code here. And that makes this book all the more fascinating.

Moreover, the critics say that the book doesn’t collapse into the Western bashing of so many treatments of this subject, or the idealization of the Muslim culture as innocent victims. Instead it simply surveys the moral landscape of all competing sides and helps us understand their religious devotion as well as the enemies both sides had to contend with.

The current crisis in the middle east has revived hostile references to the crusades, but as one observer noted, until recently, Muslims haven’t really rallied behind the “crusading” banner, because after all, they won! In the end, the West couldn’t keep Jerusalem, the Crusaders left, and the crusading impulse faded and that was that.

What is interesting to us as preachers is that the way Pope Urban II used preachers to propagandize the first crusade. To raise a pilgrimage (read: army) preachers proclaimed the virtue of going on this crusade, and plenary indulgences were granted for the first time for those who did. It was the first time a pilgrim carried both a staff—and a sword. They were told they were off to liberate the holy places from the infidel. In fact, Urban II badly wanted a reunification with the eastern church, and with the Turks at the gates of Constantinople in 1096, Rome’s crucial help could be the gesture that would bring the East back into the political and sacred orb of the Holy See in Rome.

Preachers were the mouthpieces of a political machinery that launched the First Crusade, and it gives us reason to consider how the pulpit continues even this very day to be used to promote political warring ideologies as well as other socio-economic agendas. We need to preach carefully, and prayerfully, when preaching with a laptop in one hand and the Bible in the other.

Ironically, the crusading impulse waned, not because there weren’t preachers willing to talk politics, but because Christendom itself fell, the hegemony of the religious states collapsed, and with the rise of secular governments, the passion for war in the East declined.

So, I got to get this book.

What Happens When Your Bridge Collapses?

The recent collapse of a Minnesota bridge that connected the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis reminds us of the inherent danger in bridges.

You work hard bridges, you design them carefully, you build a bridge to get over it, you reach out to others and make a connection. The relationship is working, the bridge you’ve built has generated energy and life and empowerment. Everything’s great. The bridge is in place.

Bridges are good.

And then, inexplicably, the bridge collapses. The engineer’s report reveals no flaws. Yet the thing tumbles into the brink like a jumble of pick-up sticks.

You’re hurt, you’re disappointed. Life stops. The connection’s broken.

What do you do?

You clear away the rubble, you re-examine possible causes for the collapse, and then you build another one.

When a bridge fails, YOU ALWAYS BUILD ANOTHER ONE.