Wright and Wrong

Monday Morning, May 5, 2008

This morning, as we anticipate the telling returns from the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, I will once again stick my verbal toe in the political waters.  Some will conclude that I am a card carrying Democrat and Obama supporter.  I am not. 

It’s been eight weeks since I wrote an “Open Letter to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”  It’s hard to believe what’s happened since.  It had little to do with my letter (ha!), which, I might add, is the second most read of my Monday morning essays (the first, inexplicably, is Into the Wild).  But few would disagree, the Wright issue has come to dominate the news in stunning proportion.  I suggested back on March 17 that the Reverend had his fifteen minutes of Andy Warhol fame.  Fifteen minutes?  Would that it had been so.

I submitted a copy of my essay to Dr. Wright via the church website that week.  I wondered if somehow I might get a reply.  I did not.  I’ve watched for some indication that maybe it got read.  When Wright booked an appearance with Bill Moyers, I set the DVR and watched.  Then, thanks to Internet on-demand video, I watched his performance before the National Press Club, too.  After the first, I thought maybe the prayer I referenced in my open letter might be answered.  After the second, I realized fully, it had not.

I guess you would say I prayed for a conciliatory Wright.  Instead, we got a strident Wright.  He lectured us like an Urban Sunday School class on the fundamentals of Black Liberation Theology, rehearsing the litany atrocities and the injustice of it all and then with a hand-picked collection of boisterous supporters in the cheering section drawing him out, he reaffirmed all those sound-bites looped twenty-four/seven on all those conservative talk shows and news reports, just in case some of us thought he had been misunderstood, or perhaps changed his mind.  Bob Herbert, NY Times editorialist put it this way: “He’s living a narcissist’s dream.”

So it has been well established.  The anti-Obama crowd pounced on the YouTube videos like an obsessed Prosecutor on a piece of irrefutable evidence.  You couldn’t tune in to a conservative radio talk show for five minutes without hearing Wright’s raspy voice in full shout mode calling down God’s wrath on America and summoning the chickens home to roost.  It went on for weeks.   Wright made these statements once from the pulpit as the dust was settling over the ruins at Ground Zero in 2001, but it’s been replayed thousands and thousands of times in the past eight weeks, just in case you missed it.

Preachers say the darndest things.  In the safety of their own sanctuaries, pastors enjoy a degree of freedom to toy with the outrageous.  People well know the biblical warnings about going after God’s anointed.  So it goes right on by.  People the pews love it, truth be told.

The media, on the other hand, doesn’t worry much about divine retribution over exposing outrageous pastor-talk.  Ask Falwell.  Or Robertson.  Or Oral Roberts.  Or James Dobson, for that matter.  If a comment can be construed as extreme and unacceptable, it will get headline attention.

So, I’m left to wonder what’s really driving this political Tsunami, this unrelenting, overwhelming, overpowering all-consuming wave of concern over the issue labeled “The Pastor Wright Problem”?

When Clarence Thomas stood in 1991 before the Senate subcommittee, his opponents obsessed over some inappropriate comments he made to a female subordinate, in a moment of righteous indignation, he shocked the committee and the nation by calling the entire proceeding a “high tech lynching.”  Somehow, they knew what he meant.  People who flat did not want a black justice sitting on the highest court in the land found an issue, no matter what his qualifications.  (He was confirmed, by the way.)

Peggy Noonan said it well in the Wall Street Journal.  She’s heard Rev. Wright’s rants.  She simply does not share the (sometimes feigned) outrage of much of the nation.  She said, “Hatred plays itself out, has power in the short-term but is non-sustaining in the long. America, and this is one of its glories, has a conscience to which an appeal can be made. It may take a long time, it may take centuries, but in the end we try hard to do the right thing, and everyone knows it. Hatred is a form of energy that does not fuel this machine and cannot make it run.”

On this Monday morning, as a leader, you and I sort through the noise.  We are looking for the truth.  We consider where we will align ourselves in the marketplace of ideas.  We all agree it is complicated.

I agree with Noonan - the Wright issue is the wrong issue.  People once wondered if Obama was “black enough.”  No one is asking that one anymore.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2008

Intelligence Expelled

Monday Morning, April 27, 2008

Ben Stein may well have borrowed his title from Lily Tomlin’s Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe which I saw live and in person and thought it was hilarious.  I didn’t expect her to be particularly sensitive to Christians like me, but her wit and comedic instincts were never better.  I laughed until my sides hurt.  Stein calls his opus nexus “Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed”.

We now have a whole new genre of film documentaries that seek to entertain and inform, all at the same time, in that order.  Objectivity is no real concern to us post-moderns, so don’t expect consistency; that’s not really that important.  What’s important is to use the media of film and sound to make a point.  Some call it propaganda.  Story and images are powerful, especially on the big screen.  Add a killer sound track, whiz-bang special effects, an “Ah-shucks” narrator and high definition clarity and in ninety minutes or so, you’ve got ‘em.  So film-maker Michael Moore built an empire taking down empires, and picked up a few Academy Awards along the way.  And Al Gore wins a Pulitzer Prize. 

Writer/producer Ben Stein utilized this now popular modus operandi for making his film.  Just this week, he released a documentary/exposé designed to get people thinking about “Intelligent Design.”  I’ll have to admit I was skeptical at first.   I watched the old movie about the Scopes Monkey Trial, Inherit the Wind (with Spencer Tracy), and frankly, it embarrassed me.  Religious types who embrace outmoded, indefensible ideas and hold on to them as though their eternal destiny hangs in the balance have sometimes made me want to hide my own lamp under the bushel.  There are plenty of them out there carrying banners and shouting slogans.  But then, the media loves it when we present them with the opportunity to make Christians look like dolts.

It’s not surprising that the New York Times reviewer considers her colleague (Stein writes a regular column in the business section) to have gone way over the top on this one.  She excoriates the film.

I’d have to say, after viewing the film, I’m still somewhat skeptical.  I’m not so sure that the entire scientific community is engaged in a dark overt or even covert conspiracy against God.  I’m still not convinced, either, that teaching Intelligent Design as a science ought to be mandated by a secular state.  But I do have to say that the discussion was compelling.  Entertaining and enlightening, too.

The Design argument is powerful.  I’m not smart enough to know that it qualifies as “science.”  But it is convincing.  And the debate comes into focus when you boil it down to this question: is the universe the result of an endless series of random collisions of matter?  Or conversely, does the cosmos as we know it, macro and micro, require intelligence?  Which is it?  A monumental accident or a grand blueprint?

We can be grateful for authors like Francis Collins, the celebrated head of the groundbreaking Genome Project, a physician and a geneticist, who has taken a public stand as a believer in both God and Jesus Christ.  He became a Christian when he was a graduate student and an atheist.  The clincher was the day he read the account of another atheist’s conversion - Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  He argues eloquently in his book The Language of God that his Christian faith is the framework for his high level pursuit of science.  (His team was the first to map the human genome, June 2000.)  It energizes his research, and he says, and is the grid by which he understands the universe.  I’ve wondered why Ben Stein didn’t interview Dr. Collins for his film. 

But for me, the film was powerful as a response to the new cottage industry of the Richard Dawkins’ brand of atheism.  His book, The God Delusion, has been a hot best-seller.  It’s a weighty catalog of the atrocities committed throughout history in the name of religion; and left on its own just might convince you that religion has no place in this new period of enlightenment.  Dawkins’ stated purpose is to liberate the world from the burden of religious mythology.  It’s this materialistic science that Stein confronts, with charm and wit.

I’m not so sure that atheism is one of our greatest challenges.  It’s no easy thing to defend the notion that there is no God.  Agnosticism is probably a greater challenge.  More people are content to dismiss the whole question of God with “I don’t know” than “There isn’t one.” 

But even the articulate philosopher Dawkins faltered on camera.  Stein managed to find a chink in his armor.  Only a Jewish economist in a bad suit and tie and tennis shoes could get there.  “Dr. Dawkins…” Stein offers, “if somehow you missed it… and the time comes when you find yourself on the other side.  You meet God.  You realize you were wrong.  God asks, ‘Richard, you were given great gifts.  Many privileges.  What did you do with those gifts?’”  Dawkins is clearly uncomfortable.  Stein continues, “What would you say?”

This was the moment I felt good about the price of admission.

* * * * * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.  The argument for design has you, too.  It doesn’t really matter to me that this argument belongs in the realm of pure science, whatever that is.  For some, clearly, empirical science is much more than a process, it’s a world-view.  To me it’s a subset.  If you make the case that the material world is all there is, then we’ve got a disagreement.  Let’s talk.

But I doubt you are there.  I’m guessing that the mind-stretching, intricate, pervasive, design of the universe on a cosmic scale - and the cell on the microscopic scale - is as much a jaw dropper for you as it is for me.  And the sheer emptiness of a universe and more important a life without purpose is hardly an attractive option.

How much more satisfying it is to stand in wonder and praise and awe of the One who is the Mastermind of it all.  It triggers worship and praise.

This is God.

Copyright, Kenneth E Kemp, 2008

Balloons and Blue Sky

Monday Morning - April 21, 2008

We’ve hit the extremes this week - the two ends of the joy and pain spectrum.  A memorial service for a twenty-nine year old we remember as a four-year-old.  And then, for the first time, we entertained all seven, that’s right, seven grandchildren all at the same time.

It was the first gathering of the full compliment of cousins.  All present and accounted for.  The oldest is five.  Our living room resembled something of a child-care center; all manner of toys and open satchels filled with diaper paraphernalia and accoutrements for clean-up and skin care scattered here and there with the ritual opening of every door and drawer in the house and just as we were leaving for church, a crash on the kitchen tile.  Some of the china in the buffet hit the floor, and then made a quick trip into the trash bin.  Thankfully no one was hurt in the incident.  We managed to file into the worship center at a reasonable time; all together.  Somehow the fellowship means that much more with your family gathered from faraway places all in a row.  Even with broken china back home.

Maybe there’s no better reward for parenthood than to see your grandchildren who are also cousins discovering one another in laughter and play.  Some may call it chaos - we call it joy.  The people who design and fund the local parks, with big lawns and climbing trees and injury proof slides and ladders and climbing rocks are to be commended for their efforts.  “Look at me, Grandpa!”  This is a great phrase.

But then a weekend of joy also knew pain.  A faded photo of our two daughters made an appearance.  They both are now busy moms.  Then they were pre-school.  In the picture, they are sitting on the hearth of a mountain home fireplace with two boys the same age.  These are the two sons of a couple who are among our most cherished friends.  One of them, Matthew, too soon after his twenty-eighth birthday left us - just a little more than a week ago.  We thought it was a nasty virus.  Or some irascible intestinal bug.  Pneumonia is generally survivable.  But Matthew’s condition only worsened with each passing hour.  Just two days after the test results came in, acute myeloid leukemia, Matthew was gone.

I’d be hard pressed to name a more loving, affirming, caring mom and dad.  Nick and Colleen ached as they stood by the bedside in the intensive care unit as a first rate medical team battled, as did Matthew, for his life.  In the tears and the holding, a peace surrounded them like a shield, as did a legion of friends who knew them as we did.  They chose a mountain community to raise their boys; in the clear air under the shadow of Tahquitz Peak and found a collection of fellow believers there who built a church that over the years has been a lighthouse on the mountain.  All of them gathered in the waiting room, hoping, praying, reminiscing, story-telling, a gloomy cloud hanging overhead until a burst of laughter at one of Matthew’s pranks that came to mind.  And then the news.

“Matthew’s gone home.”  It was Friday afternoon.

The mountain church was not built for the crowd that gathered to remember and to stand with the Sandens in their grief.  Someone prepared a slide show - reminiscences of mountain lakes and hikes and families gathered in living rooms and dressed for special occasions and a song that captured the mixture of grief and hope and thanks.  Sniffles filled the room.  And the pastor who had known Matthew and his brother Mike for just about his entire life walked us through the Scriptures that Nick and Colleen cling to as a lifeline.  We grabbed hold, too.

I don’t know why the release of balloons has such power to trigger emotion.  But that’s what did it for me.  The whole crowd gathered in the parking lot a mile high in the tall pine trees and the deep blue sky and the grand collection of cousins, many now adults along with the children all held balloons as Pastor Tim explained the meaning of this little symbolic exercise.  Brother Michael was the first to let his go.  I heard him say as he looked skyward, “I love you, Matt” and up went his balloons.  That’s when the tears rolled down my face.  The others followed and released all twenty-nine of them.

* * * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.  And as parents, maybe the reason we look at our children the way we do is because there are no guarantees.  Each one is a promise.  And each one is a risk, too.

Steven Curtis Chapman puts it this way in his incredible song, “With Hope” -

This is not at all how

We thought it was supposed to be

We had so many plans for you

We had so many dreams

And now you’ve gone away…

And as I contemplate those seven little lives in the living room, up and down the stairs, each with their own personality, the high energy, the wide open eyes and the daily discovery and the curiosity about a wide wonderful world I also know is filled “with dangers, toils and snares.”  And risks.  Risks the Sandens now know all too well.

So we learn to pray.  We hold on to each other.  We celebrate the accomplishments and milestones with enthusiasm.

And then we learn to let go - as Michael released his love for his older brother on up to the heavens.

And the tears spring from the pain.  And then bring healing, too.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2008

David Wilson Learns to Sing

Tuesday Morning, April 15, 2008

Somewhere I got the idea that watching The News legitimizes the watching of television.  Thanks to the new fangled Digital Video Recorder, which we’ve had for years now, we watch what we want, when we want.  Someone might say that we’ve been deprived because we don’t watch commercials anymore.  I guess if the whole country was like us, commercial television would go out of business.

At this stage in my life - with the benefit of DVR technology - news programming, educational programming, history and the arts would be our selection.  So-called reality shows annoy me, probably because I’m past the stage where I’ll ever have that kind of chiseled, tanned body that would prompt me to remove my shirt for the cameras.   Because we don’t record them, we don’t know the name brand characters for the sit-coms or the season-long story lines of contemporary dramas, either. 

But The News is hardly a better place these days.  The long, drawn out contest between the two “historic” Democratic Party candidates for President has descended into the mire of personality and character attacks; the very strategy that just a short time ago all parties gave a solemn oath to avoid.   But here we are; making headlines that smack of Elitism, Sexism, Racism, Plagiarism, Favoritism and just plain old run of the mill Schism.

I’m thankful to live in a culture of Free Speech.  The alternative is no improvement.  But in the process, we must endure those who exercise the Freedom - and those who exploit it.  In that context, there is a cultural phenomena that has me tuned in these days - it’s the issue of race in America.  When Jeremiah Wright appeared on YouTube on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, it opened the floodgates to a whole new level of conversation.  Not all of it comfortable.

David A. Wilson, born in 1980, grew up in the forgotten streets of Newark, New Jersey.  Crime and police raids and helicopters flying overhead were a way of life.  But he had support.  He learned to learn.  He was a reader.  Curious.  Somehow, he managed to avoid the habits that may well have caused him to become a street thug, like many of his peers.  He looks back now and remembers the friends who were gunned down in the streets and carted off to prison where they will probably spend the rest of their lives.  Someone gave David college dreams, and the belief that he could make it.

It was there, at college, he began to pursue the study of his roots.  He learned that he was just two generations from slavery.  More investigation led him to the plantation in North Carolina where his relatives worked in the tobacco fields of a family named Wilson. More investigation put him on the telephone with a descendent of that family - a fifty-something year old man named David B. Wilson.  Two David Wilsons.  Both descendents.  On either side of the Master/Slave divide.  David A. Wilson - college student, black.  David B. Wilson - grandfather, restaurant owner, white.

As the story unfolds, David A. sets out to meet David B.  It’s a journey from the mean streets of Newark to the tobacco fields of North Carolina.  From New Millenia enlightenment to pre-Civil War slavery.

Along the way, David A. finds aunts and uncles and cousins living near the old Wilson Plantation.  It’s a ninety-seven year old woman, the oldest living member of Ebenzer Baptist Church named Daisy, who has some life-changing advice for David.  She takes him to church.  Back home on the couch in the sparse living room, she asks him, “Do you sing?”

“Uh, no… I don’t,” he says with a shy smile, not really understanding the point of the question.

“You’re a WILSON,” Daisy says.  “You gotta sing. You shoulda heard your Grand-daddy.  Oh, he could sing, that big voice, ‘there’s a storm passing through, it’s nearly gone, hallelu..’ he’d sing it big.  Really big.  My my.  He could sing.”

David smiled at the story.  “You can’t sing because you won’t,” she said and then she laughed out loud.  He told her about his plans to meet the descendents of the family who owned their ancestors as slaves.

“Do you think they owe us something?” he asked the old woman.

“Owe us?” Daisy responded, stunned.  “Why no, they don’t owe us anything.  You just get that out of your head right now.”  And then she thought for a minute after the rebuke that could only come from a sweet woman approaching her hundredth year.

“Here’s what you gotta do,” she said with the conviction of a prophetess.  “You spend your life helpin’ our people stay off drugs and outa jail and live their lives with joy and purpose.”  And then she laughed some more.  And hugged him.

So David continued his journey.  To the tobacco fields. To find a surprising friendship with David B.  He found the slave quarters, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church founded by his great-grandfather after the Civil War.  He went on to Ghana and walked through the Gate of No Return at the port in Senegal.  And in the journey, the young man from the streets of Newark learned to sing.

The powerful documentary, “Meeting David Wilson” (MSNBC) ends with David A. in a classroom of young students back in Newark, teaching them the song of freedom and hope and reconciliation.

And in the laughter, you heard the voice of a ninety-seven year old woman.  David found his voice.

It’s Tuesday morning.  You are a leader.  Do you sing?

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp, 2008 

Excellence and Worship

April 7, 2008

When the orchestra assembled and the strings tuned up in preparation, the scene had a familiar look and feel.  It took me back to the days in the big city when in the great concert hall, the instruments and voices filled the room with magical sounds and harmonies.  Moods created by crescendos and pianissimos and swells and minor keys resolving into majors and instrumentalists who lose themselves in the blend of a grand cooperative effort all under the baton of a single maestro who appears to know every part, every tempo, every pause and momentary silence, every anticipation all the way up to the grand finish that prompts everyone in the room to jump to their feet in wild applause and approval and gratitude, well I have those memories.  They haven’t gone away.

So in another great room, this one more a contemporary arena than ornate classical auditorium built for acoustics, the big stage was set for the strings up front, violins on the left, cellos and stand-up basses on the right, woodwinds along the back (no brass, no blaring horns to dominate this group).  The performers wore black, as a means of diminishing their individual role, as though the music they produce far outweighs the attention they might otherwise attract by their personal appearance.  Then on risers that stretched the full distance left to right behind the orchestra were the voices; soprano, alto, tenor and bass at the ready; each on their own with a passable voice, perhaps not quite solo quality, but with permission to let it go and a neighbor on either side seeing the same green light.  Their vocals add the human element to the big sound, blending with string and bow and the percussions with timpani and snare give us listeners a preview of what it will be like when on That Day the heavens open up and the angels join in and the whole earth is filled with His glory.

Even the big screen in high definition and 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound falls short of these rare moments.  They are too rare.  Maybe it’s the absence of the arts in our schools.  Budget cuts eliminate the orchestra as the first to go.  Maybe it’s the proliferation of technological toys.  The iPod is a lot easier to play than the oboe.  Maybe it’s the trend toward plugged-in, amplified instruments or sound tracks made with synthesizers instead of humans.  I don’t know.  But I hope the orchestra doesn’t fade away into oblivion; live orchestra.  Someone needs to put it on the endangered species list.

I scanned the platform (thanks to some good friends, we had front and center seats in the fourth row) from left to right and thought about the discipline of each musician and wondered if they felt the same. (That this venue is on the endangered list.) I wondered about the parent(s) who instilled in them a love of music; a parent who surrounded the child with a balance of strict discipline and warm approval - the kind of balance that keeps those practice sessions going day after day.  I wondered if maybe that instrument they played with such intensity and focus had become the kind of friend who brought a blend of comfort and joy and insight and companionship that rivals therapy and intimacy and regular, beneath-the-surface conversation.  I wondered, too, what might have been if I had kept up those practice sessions of my own.

Among the grand collection of musicians, there were four friends on the stage.  First chair cello.  Last chair violin.  (That’s right - last chair.)  A flutist.  The pianist.  Each with a  story.  The cellist is a mom and a fine artist whose CD is marked as most often played on my iPod.  The last chair violinist played in our church when I was a twenty-something pastor too many years ago.  After the concert, we found out why he seemed somewhat pale and weary.  He’s scheduled for open heart surgery next week.  Still, he played.  Last chair.  The flutist is a special friend to Carolyn, a Stephen Minister, with a great heart.  She called it the most challenging score she’d ever attempted.  Wouldn’t you know, she said, they placed me right next to the piano at center stage and when I played my one and only solo lick, the pianist, who was also the arranger and producer of the whole event heard it, looked for just a moment away from the keyboard over to me and my heart sank, thinking maybe I missed it, until the flash of momentary eye contact was accomapnied by a knowing, approving, smile.

Thanks to the mentor I miss these days (he died a year ago last summer), I know this pianist.  He’s the dean of the music department over at the university and when he played at the two memorial services (my mentor’s wife’s service first, and then my mentor’s), I knew he was exceptional.  But on this night, in the great room, surrounded by a full orchestra and a mass choir and his partner, a world class violinist who mastered the full range of his classical instrument, I understood that this friend who played “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us” with such grace and passion at Dorothy’s funeral, was more than an accompanist.  He’s a full on concert pianist.

Before the concert began, we chatted briefly on the platform.  “This one’s for Ted and Dorothy,” we agreed.  “Cut loose, Duane,” I said.  We high fived.

Afterward, I saw Duane again just long enough to suggest, “Ted and Dorothy gave you and your friends a Standing O.”  Along with the rest of us.

* * * * * * *

On this Monday morning, as a leader, thank God along with me for the musicians who, by their commitment to excellence, bring us to Heaven’s gate.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp, 2008

Read More about Duane

Interstate 69

Monday Morning, March 31, 2008

The north-south Indiana super-highway is familiar to us now.  It connects Indianapolis to Forth Wayne right through America’s heartland.  One farm after another, barns and silos, wheat and cornfields and dairy cattle line the highway.  All along the straight, interminable road are big ponds and unpaved roads among the full oak trees and hedgerows and under a big blue sky it’s hard to imagine anything more beautiful.

When I took our middle child, our daughter, on a college tour her senior year in high school, we took our first drive up Interstate 69, passing what became a familiar Billboard identifying the home town of favorite son James Dean. Back in the 1950s, for a brief and shining moment, he maintained his place as heartthrob of the decade.  From a small farm town in rural Indiana he escaped boredom at a New York acting school.  The rave reviews over his performance won him a Hollywood contract and his one major performance on the big screen, Rebel Without A Cause.  In his shiny new Porsche Spyder, Dean found the one country road in California that reminded him of rural Indiana, and on September 30, 1955 on highway 41 in Cholame at a very high speed, Dean collided head on with another car.  A nation of teenagers mourned.

Maybe that billboard is the reason this dad worried all four years about the safety of the daughter who was determined to study two thousand miles away from home.  That separation is hard.  The headlines are a daily dose of tragedy.  Parents whose children grow up and wander far away wonder - will she be safe?

Taylor University has a solid global reputation.  It’s a sophisticated school with high academic standards and a first rate learning environment.  It ranks with the best of the Christian colleges across the nation.  Surprisingly, Upland’s sprawling campus is surrounded by cornfields.  It was our daughter’s choice.

I remember hearing about students traveling to the Fort Wayne Campus.  Vanloads of them would frequently assist with special events.  Late one night, on the return trip home, such a van traveled down Interstate 69 after a banquet in Fort Wayne and a pizza stop.  They headed home on the final stretch of the familiar trip.  Without warning, the driver of an eighteen wheel tractor trailer fell asleep on the opposite side of the long straight road through the farmland.  The rig jumped the center divider and smashed headlong into the small van filled with students.

The possibility of such a telephone call late at night is every college student’s parent’s worst nightmare.  When Colleen Cerek picked up the phone and the caller identified himself as a county coroner, her knees gave way.  “Your daughter Whitney was among the dead,” he said.  Whitney’s sister Carly helped her mother to her feet.  They held each other and through the sobs, Carly said, “We’ve got to call dad.”

Newell, a forty-five year old Youth Pastor at the Gaylord Evangelical Free Church in Michigan, was on a mission trip.

The same night, Laura Van Ryn’s parents, Don and Suzie also got a call.  “Laura is the only survivor,” they were told.  Immediately, they left home with sister Lisa for the long drive to an Indiana hospital where the young blonde student lay in a deep coma, broken and bruised and on life support.

For the next five weeks, Don, Collen and Lisa stayed on a twenty-four hour vigil; praying, singing, reading, blogging, welcoming visitors and fellow students and a boy-friend, Aryn Linenger.  In the meantime, there were memorial services for the other five victims of the crash.  On campus.  And in the home towns.  Grief swelled up.  But hope, too.  These families share a firm faith foundation.  And hope filled that hospital room where a mom and dad, a sister and a boyfriend surrounded a swollen, broken twenty-year-old co-ed with love and care.

As she mended, in the long weeks following the trauma, little hints struck the support team.  Odd things.  Like the teeth.  The belly-button ring.  The eye color.  Each by now was so attached to the person in the bed as Laura that these little signs meant little.

Until Lisa, the articulate sister who wrote a nightly blog for a caring world to read, rolled the patient down the hallway in a wheelchair and called her by name, “Laura…”  The girl corrected Lisa.  “Whitney,” she said.  Lisa’s suspicions firmed up into fears.  She stopped, knelt before the girl in the chair, looked her straight in the eyes and asked, “What are your parents’ names?” 

“Newell and Colleen,” was the straightforward, unemotional reply.  Lisa’s stomach tightened.  She thought about her mom and dad, Don and Suzie.  It was a terrible moment of truth.  This was not her sister.  That meant her real sister, Lisa, was dead and buried.

But in what can only be called a moment of sublime grace, out of care and love for the fragile, recovering young woman, just five weeks into her return to health and strength, Lisa smiled and said, “That’s right Whitney.  Newell and Colleen.”

And Lisa continued, pushing the chair down the hospital hallway towards the sunlight outside, tears flowing.

* * * * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.  If you are a parent, and your children have taken flight and left the nest, then your heart breaks with the story of mistaken identity that has so captured the nation’s attention.

As did ours.  The unexpected journey of the Cereks and the Van Ryns is particularly poignant to us because our daughter, Candace, is a graduate of their college in Upland, Indiana.  Both Whitney and Laura look so familiar to us.  We don’t know them personally, but they are so reminiscent of the girls who became our daughter’s close friends and roommates and classmates during those formative years.  They came to her wedding.  We laughed and played; and when this sort of tragedy strikes, we all feel it.

So Carolyn and I tuned in to the Matt Lauer interviews.  The Christian witness was riveting.  Lauer seemed powerfully moved, too.

And somehow, someway, God works in the vortex of calamity to remind folks of all sorts of what is real.  And what is true.

Copyright, Kenneth E Kemp 2008

An Observer Becomes A Player

March 24, 2008

We work hard to keep it comfortable.  We like predictable.  We design our lives to minimize the surprises.  Eliminate the conflict.  Avoid the accidents. 

But hard as we try, the unpredictable happens.  We are blindsided by the unplanned.  And often, it’s those intrusions on our highly detailed calendars that make all the difference.

Good Friday service always takes me by surprise.  I attend because I need it.  I know he was a “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”  I know “he bore our sins in his body on the tree.”  I know about the agony in the garden.  The trial that was more a political circus than a pursuit of justice.  Thanks to the most recent movie version, I’m keenly aware of the savage cruelty and the barbaric brutality of the scene.  But the familiarity with the story line needs to be re-awakened this time of year.

The celebration of Easter Sunday doesn’t ring true without the dark night of the crucifixion as a backdrop.

I need to enter into those moments of darkness and pain to catch a glimpse of the awful price that was paid for the sins of the world - and my role in it. 

Joseph of Arimathea no more expected the events of the week than any of the other disciples.  He was wealthy.  We know he was a close friend of Nicodemus.  The two were council members.  He socialized with the Sanhedrin.  He was accustomed to spending his weekends in the company of the most influential people in Jerusalem.  I wonder if he was the first to hear Nicodemus as he processed that late night encounter with Jesus when he was told - “You must be born again.”  Joseph and Nicodemus may well have engaged in a secret conversation well into the night pondering the question - who is this Jesus of Nazareth?

So it was from a distance that this wealthy, influential man watched events unfold that final week.  It would change his life forever.  Perhaps he stood in the crowd with Nicodemus, listening to the calls for crucifixion; watching his friend Pilate do the political dance, annoyed and confused about what to do with such a case as this.  Something knotted up in his stomach as he watched the ruthless, vicious attacks and heard the angry shouting, the mockery, the contempt.  As he made eye contact with Nicodemus, his long time friend and peer, what message was communicated?  Disgust? Outrage?  Sadness?  Despair?

So it was no surprise that Joseph of Arimathea would be the one to make a behind-the-scenes visit to Pilate.  “Let me take care of the body,” he said.  And Pilate nodded.

The disciples knew.  All four Gospels include this detail.  His generous, sensitive act fulfilled Isaiah’s prophesy.

Joseph of Arimathea, encountering an unanticipated moment in history that took him by complete surprise, was forever changed. 

A life transformed.

* * * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.  You and I are fresh off the annual weekend celebration of the death and resurrections of Jesus.  We observed the programs.  We watched the performers.  We listened to the messages.  We heard the music.  We sang along.

Did we participate?  Or did we simply watch from a distance?

In our church Friday night, we were invited to come to the foot of the cross, and leave our burdens there.  Together, Carolyn and I did just that.  We held each other in the shadow of the cross. Wet-eyed and hanging on tight.  And then we shared the bread and the cup.  It was a Good Friday we will not forget.

Joseph of Arimathea watched his friend Nicodemus.  He knew he had questions.  Somehow that late night encounter with Jesus changed him.  As the hostility heated up and the violence escalated and the options narrowed, Joseph was gripped by the injustice of it all.  He couldn’t help himself.

He took action.  Took advantage of his connections.  Got an audience with Pilate.  And gently, with great passion and sadness and grief, placed this Jesus in a suitable burial place.

No longer the distant observer.  He now had a stake in the outcome.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2008

An Open Letter to Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

Monday Morning,  March 17, 2008

Dear Reverend Wright,

My guess is that by now your mail-box is filled with vitriol and “how dare you call yourself a Minister of the Gospel” and that sort of stuff.  It may well be that the diatribes unleashed since the video tapes of your sermons hit the Internet and the front pages of the newspapers and the headlines of the talk shows leave you feeling vindicated.  Reactions have served to validate the points you were trying to make in the first place.  Or so it seems.

Racism is alive and well.  Misunderstanding abounds.  We may think we have ascended to a time when ignorance has been eliminated by enlightenment and bigotry by education.  We’ve no doubt come a long way; but we still have a longer way to go, don’t we?

As odd as it may seem, we have some things in common, you and me.  I was born in Chicago and spent those formative post-high school years living in the heart of the city.  I remember well when Malcolm X met his tragic end in February 1965, and Alex Haley’s piercing autobiography captured my imagination.  I remember the turmoil downtown in the aftermath of the brutal and cold-blooded murder of Martin Luther King; the rioting in the streets and the awful feeling of despair and apocalyptic sense of the world coming to an horrific end.  Harvey Cox predicted that there would be no place for religion in the Secular City and Hugh Schonfeld exposed Jesus as a fraud in his Passover Plot. Many embraced the conclusions of those popular books.  Too many.  The Democrats asked host Richard Daley to keep the bums outside which he did.  Chicago’s police force brutally “kept the peace,” and the bloody violence is recorded on splotchy black and white film.   Later that fall, we met Ralph Abernathy just after he prevailed over Jesse Jackson to become heir apparent to Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

I do believe you were making your mark at the University of Chicago about that time.  You were steeped in the literature of liberation theology; believing that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has powerful social implications.  And you built a church on that foundation.

I hadn’t heard the phrase “white flight” until I lived in the city and outlying suburbs.  Racial animosity reached a fever pitch in those days.  Sadly, it’s always been an undeniable piece of the fabric of the Windy City.

In this world of sound-bites and slogans and labels, your moment in the national spotlight came and went like Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes.  It’s sad that a lifetime of ministry and service and pastoral care could be so diminished in a few out-of-context rants that got served up to your adversaries on a silver platter.  And the relish with which they pounced is a wonder to behold.

I can only imagine the pride you’ve taken in one of your church’s favorite sons - Barack Obama.  (I, too, have been a pastor.)  Twenty years ago, you stood there watching over an open Bible as he declared his promise and took those vows he made to God and Michelle as her parents listened in.  You where there as his pastor and observed from close range as he became a voice of hope mobilizing a colossal throng of otherwise tired and cynical and ambivalent people; and transform them into energized, hopeful players in a system that heretofore seemed too distant and too coldly indifferent.  You were there when the girls were born and when he won a high State office and then a Senate Seat and then blew the roof off the arena with a spellbinding speech at the last Democratic Convention.  You knew like few others from whence he came.  And Obama is only one of the stories of people whose lives were transformed over there on the South Side at Trinity Church.  I saw you in one scene bent over on the platform on your knees, washing the feet of your people.  If you could, you would tell the world of their stories, too.  But the world isn’t listening now.

By necessity Barack has been forced to repudiate those biting words of yours on the church video tapes in the most convincing terms he can find in the English language.  I can only imagine the depth of loss you must feel.  Certainly, there is the strident part of you that has framed a potent defense.  You’d like to give it.  But no one wants to hear it.

I understand that your people this weekend have entered into a time of fasting and prayer.  You helped them find healing and hope and purpose; forgiveness and reconciliation.  Now they feel misunderstood.  They are angry at a media and a system hungry for an opportunity to stir up old racial stereotypes and bitter animosities.  They know you.  They love you.  They want to come to your defense.  But they are confused, too.

This will be an Easter like no other in the history of Trinity Church.  We’ll all walk down that Via Dolorosa again, and remember the One who was “despised and rejected.”  The One who agonized in the garden.  The One who said, “Father, forgive them.”

I will pray for you, Pastor Wright.  Here’s my prayer: that in this dark night of the soul, when enemies surround you with hatred in their hearts and fire in their eyes, that you will embrace the love of your people.  That the transformation you have seen in so many who apart from Christ would be lost and alone would fortify your own heart.  That you would emerge with a message of reconciliation and hope; and work to serve a Gospel that breaks down the dividing walls.

You’ve found a capable successor in young Otis Moss, III. 

I understand that Obama got the title of his book from you.  There is an unmistakable audacity in genuine hope.  May the hope that can only come from God be audacious in its scope.

May your powerful voice, the decades of pastoral care, the academic and scholarly accomplishments, the network of influential people, come together now and usher us to a new level of mutual respect, understanding and determination arm in arm - to serve the Kingdom.

And the One who called us.

Sincerely,

Pastor Ken

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp, 2008

Breakfast with a theologian

Mnday Morning, March 10, 2008

I got up before sunrise to breakfast with a bona fide, card carrying, published theologian.  I needed some counsel.  I was eager ask some key questions.  I read some of his stuff. His blog site intrigued me.  If it’s true that the way we think about God is the most important thing about us, then who better to talk to than a theologian?

He taught at the seminary I call my alma mater.  Of course, he began his tenure there a few years after I graduated.  My era is considered history now.  Not quite ancient history, but history nonetheless.  Some of my favorite professors from back then have since been labeled heretics by the new batch of “scholar/theologians.”  It’s a new world.

The battle to be the Leading Evangelical Voice is as intense as it is diverse.  Some of us have only one or maybe two favorites.  We adopt their label proudly.  We claim to have come to the conclusion that they are right based on our unbiased research.  We’ve considered all the alternatives and in the tradition of Martin Luther (not King) we declare, “Here I stand!”  Stay on your chosen track long enough, and you may not even be aware that there are others out there who are deeply convinced you’ve missed the mark - by a mile.

Most of us who have thought about it have some trouble with the label “Evangelical.”  A long time ago, “Fundamentalist” was a badge of theological courage… until the Scopes Monkey Trial got the nation sneering in ridicule at Bible-believers.  Evangelical was a step up over Fundamentalist on the scale of sophistication.  And it remained in place for decades.  But now with the media caricature of “Evangelical equals Religious Right,” many jettison the “E” word for something else.  Some of the more recent tags, as I’ve encountered them, are “Reformed” (better neo-Reformed, or as some call them, neo-Fundamentalists), “Emergent,” “Postconservative,” and “Postmodern” to name a few.

If you are confused by now, don’t feel alone.  Ever since there were twelve, we followers of Jesus have competed for the First Chair (like the First Violin in the Symphony Orchestra).  Of course, we’re not the Conductor.  But oh, that First Chair.  Now there’s a role!  You’ll find candidates from every grouping who figure that’s their place in the Kingdom.  (I prefer the concert metaphor to “Top Gun,” or “Top Lieutenant” which evoke a militaristic view of the Kingdom.  But either one works.)

We wonder at the end of time when the Great Orchestra gathers for the first celestial symphony whose hand Jesus will shake as he takes the baton for the music to begin.  Who will be honored as the grand master theological virtuoso?

So it’s dangerous territory to be a Theologian.  Tough enough to be a Pastor.  I had breakfast with one (a theologian) who is tough minded but possesses a humble heart.  He was delightful company for two hours that went by way too quickly.

It’s human nature to have heroes.  The historic church called them Saints. Just to be sure, they developed an intricate process called “canonization.”  We evangelicals take pride in knowing that we haven’t carved statues of ours and put their images in conspicuous places in the entrance hall.  But when Paul warned the Corinthians about the tension between the followers of Paul and Peter and Apollos and Jesus, his message still applies.

Christian theologians must root their conclusions in biblical truth.  The Bible trumps Systematics.  When a doctrinal System defines the Scripture rather than the other way around, you’ve got yourself a theologian vying for that First Chair.

Maybe one of the first clues that he’s off track is when a theologian/pastor begins to call for the shunning of others who challenge the integrity of his System.

My friend the theologian, along with the pastor/theologian/author who introduced us, who was also there on that sunny morning in San Diego, helped me to understand these things.

And the journey continues.

Copyright 2008 Kenneth E Kemp

The Pew Findings

Monday morning, March 3, 2008

What has emerged from the think tank at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is as comprehensive a snapshot of religion in American life as ever produced.  The nation’s talking about it.  After sifting through a mountain of data, certain conclusions surfaced.  And they are making headlines.

I got a rather curious call from a long time friend who now resides in Florida.  Dan and I remember well the days we wandered around the streets of the big city back in those gloomy years when Apocalypse loomed heavy on the horizon.  We were classmates in Bible school.  The world as we knew it seemed to be coming apart at the seams.  There were assassinations (a second Kennedy, civil rights leader, Dr. King) that sparked rioting in the streets.  The violence and looting and mayhem went on for weeks, then months.  National Guard troops, in a display of armed force, drove up and down the city boulevards and avenues in their in an effort to keep the peace.  (The police force wasn’t enough.)  In the summer of 1968, our city of Chicago hosted the Democratic Convention.  It was a dark night for American politics.  The films of bloody clashes in the streets and angry speeches inside the great hall are all part of American history; a part that many would rather forget.

For three years straight, we traveled on Greyhound busses criss-crossing the nation with a pack of guys in a men’s choir.   A drive-by we’ll never forget was in Memphis, Tennessee.  Thirty days after the shooting, our driver took us past the Lorraine Motel.  I snapped two photos - one of the balcony where Martin Luther King leaned on the railing as he chatted with young Jesse Jackson and a couple of his colleagues and the other of the small window up the hill on the opposite side of the street, a weathered clapboard house where James Earl Ray found the civil rights activist in his sights. 

But for Dan and me, there were lighter moments, too.  Fifty college age guys in a bus find ways to pass the time.  There was no shortage of creativity.  We still laugh heartily at the memories.

But this time he called just to talk church.  Our conversation sounded strangely like the the results of the Pew research, though Dan had not seen it yet.  Here we are, a couple of Boomers who spent our formative years back then living within the confines of protectionist walls built by our spiritual fore-fathers but wandering outside just long enough to have developed some serious questions of our own.  Those questions still linger to this very day.

“What the heck is going on in the church in America?” Dan asked.  It triggered a belly laugh.  “How much time do we have?” was all the response I could muster.  I told him I’ve spent the good part of four years pondering that same question.

We talked for an hour or so and covered topics like “arena church” and “rock-star pastors” and closed door governance and staff big enough to require HR departments and campuses to rival the community Performing Arts Center.  But our talk went way beyond questions about mega-church.  It had more to do with our place in it.  Where do we fit?

The folks at Pew have made several observations.  American’s “like to shop.”  There is a surprising absence of commitment to a religious community based on generational loyalties.  The ranks of the “unaffiliated” is the fastest growing group.  “Evangelical” churches out-number “mainline” denominations.  Denominationalism is on the wane.  The world of religion in America is fluid, highly competitive and filled up with people who share a short attention span.

All this said, Dan and I agreed, there’s something here we can’t let go of.  Do we have hold of it or does it have hold of us?  We’re not sure.  Either way, we can’t escape it.

I think it has something to do with “call.”

* * * * * *

On this Monday morning, as a leader, you’ve got questions, too.  You see the trends of religion in America from close range.  Where is it going?  Is there a place to live out our calling?

Let’s talk.

Thanks for the call, Dan.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2008

The Pew Report