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Enough With 1968, Already

It both pains and amuses me that we talk constantly about ministering to the younger generation but continue to use sermon illustrations that always and forever reach back to the past, to a time before they were born, and assume that they should give a holy crap.

It is not a shared, ancient past — it is a very specific moment in the past with which the preacher him or herself identifies and locates all sense of personal relevance. The implication being, you should all find this relevant, too.

Boomer ministers, I’m calling you out on this one. Even I, a middle-aged minister, was a tiny child when MLK was assassinated. There have been other outrages since then, other moments of national shock, other opportunities for coming of age as a person of conscience. I urge you to consider those and to collect stories from other sources beyond your own personal experience so that we don’t get yet another liberal religious sermon that presumes the JFK/MLK moments are a bonding experience for us all.

I wasn’t even born when President Kennedy was killed. In 1968 I was pre-verbal and in diapers.

The dead horse has been beaten to a second death. Please stop trying to locate all meaning around your generation’s most traumatic moments. The implication of this insistence on returning again and again to 1968 is that history has provided no equally powerful moments for this nation’s soul, and for the individual soul.  Deep people can be made in many kinds of moments — let’s hear about some different ones for a change.

The fact that this trope has become an outright joke among the 20-30 clergy crowd I  “hang out with” (via digital ministry) is one warning sign that the pathos of that moment of spiritual awakening has been used up, used out, and is now a sign of dry bones.

“Good God,” wrote a 27-year old to me recently. “Don’t they have anything else to freaking write or preach about?”

Good question. And one that the Church needs to answer if it is going to minister in an inclusive way to the next generation.

 

[I don’t feel like dealing with the onslaught of defenses, abuse and accusations tht I am unfairly generalizing that will no doubt be heaped upon my head for this, so comment away, but I won’t read them. – PB]

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I Love a Good Snappy Christian Retort

Sometimes people’s meanness is hilarious. They take themselves and their insults so seriously, trying to land the blow just right. My heavens. Look, I’m not proud of it, but let me just say I learned the “art” of harsh criticism from some experts in my formative years. Amateurs amuse me. What I can never tell them is how grateful I am that they apparently haven’t been exposed to enough truly vicious criticism in their lives to have perfected the skill themselves. Thank the merciful God for that.

So that’s why I hooted with appreciative laughter when one of the founders of the lovely SALT Project shared her response to a nasty comment left by someone who saw a cute short film that SALT produced. The short video is an animated bit set to the song “Have a Little Talk With Jesus” recorded by Loretta Lynn. There’s that lyric in the song, “set a little prayer wheel turning,” and the animation shows various negative words being fed into little paper cut-out cog wheels and being spit out the other side as beautiful flowers and hearts.  The idea is that talking with Jesus will transform pain, suffering, hatred, etc. into love, flowers and beauty. The last word to be fed into the cogs is “death,” which gets transformed into flowers. Okay, I though it was a bit corny, but also charming.

So this person saw this sweet little film on YouTube and commented, “This is terrible! If Jesus could see this he’d be rolling in his grave” (It looks like the comment has been deleted).

Which just sent me, because how do you call something like that terrible?  Really? With war and violence and genocide in the world, you’re gonna tell me that an animated video about prayer is TERRIBLE and that it will OFFEND JESUS HIMSELF? I was already cracking up, and then I read SALT’s response and just about fell off my chair. They said, “Jesus isn’t IN his grave!”

That’s when I spit Irish Breakfast tea all over my keyboard and laughed and applauded until the dog and the cat both came running. Indeed, SALT.  It’s not often that we get to use good theology as a two-snaps-up rejoinder and I have to send you a major PeaceBang high five for that.

There’s always gonna be haters, Negativos, buzz stompers, and the kind of sourpusses my friend Amy calls “cross.” They’re too uncreative to even offer constructive or interesting critiques. Best ignored, while we roll on. Keep that prayer wheel turnin’.

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Friday Cat Blogging

She used to blog ABOUT me. But we’re more egalitarian now: I get to blog for myself.

She called me and the dog into the guest room for Family Prayer. She said we’re going to pray for Toby the Barn Cat who hasn’t been around since Sunday.

I don’t like Toby. I thought his name was Clancy anyway.

I don’t like other cats. The dog and I looked at each other. For once I felt as dumb as he actually is. What is this prayer thing, we asked her. Telepathically. Or in the dog’s case, telepathetically.

She said, just think about Toby and feel love for him. That will be fine.

What a ridiculous request. I don’t feel love for Clancy! But I love my Human Lady so I put a picture of Clancy in my mind and said, get your grey butt back to the barn, these humans are all in a state of anxiety about you.

I don’t know what Dumb-Dumb was doing.  He’s seen Clancy, he knows him. He likes to chase him. I’m sure he was thinking about food anyway.

Family prayer is not really something to ask your dog and cat to do. You should have heard her try to explain GOD to us one time. That was entertaining.

Truth and Beauty, Ermengarde