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| The results of a cookie project. |
The collared shirt and the whole alb and stole getup typically gives it away, but I am a pastor. This unique aspect of my identity often finds me in...interesting social situations. Once I was wearing my collar when I was mistaken for a stock boy at a local grocery store and asked where the cigars were. I can be identified as an easy mark for a professional panhandler and it’s been presumed that I’d like to spend a social evening out with my wife hearing about the best new “Christian” fiction on the market.
Just last week this situation played itself out again. I was at a conference of campus ministry professionals when a woman approached me. After I introduced myself and told her that I lived in Boulder she told me that her children lived in Denver. Being courteous and on the off chance that I happened to know her children, I asked what their names were. The woman’s answer was...interesting. She said, “Oh, you wouldn’t know them.”
I pushed a bit. I said, “Well, what are their names? I get down to Denver every now and then.”
But she pushed back saying, “I’m fairly certain that you do not know my children.”
I was confounded. We had just met. She knew my name, where I lived, and that I was a campus pastor. That’s it. Despite the fact that I live in close proximity to her children, she was also certain that we would never have come in contact with each other.
For a couple of days I puzzled over this encounter. What was it about me that made her so sure I would never connect with her children? Finally, I worked up the nerve and I asked. Her response was that her children would never go to church, would never be interested in connecting with a pastor, even a campus pastor as cool and hipster as I am. (Okay. So, she may not have actually say that last part.)
I continue to be intrigued with this conversation and idea. The reality is that I do spend a lot of time with people who are a part of or attracted to the church and to faith. But I also spend a lot of time with people who aren’t Lutheran or Christian even. I have friends and acquaintances who are Jewish or Muslim or even ones who check the “none” box in response to the spiritual identity question.
And yet for this woman, and for a growing number of students on campus, the title I bear as an identified leader of the church, of a historic organized religion, not only identifies me but sets me within (circumscribes me as Paul might say) the bounds of a particular community and draws up walls between myself and the rest of the world. At this same conference we wrestled with data that revealed the reality that a growing number of young people are checking the "none box."
I suspect there are a couple of reasons behind this dynamic. One, I don’t think that we, as the church, have done a particularly good job at proclaiming the symbols and language of the faith handed down to us across the generations in ways that speak outside the walls of our particular communities. Two, the body of Christ in the world is made up of humans, each a sinner and saint. So, many with good reason want to distance themselves from the faith because of real experiences where the church has stood between them and the life God promises.
One of the most exciting and successful things we do on campus is the cookie project. On the first and last day of class each semester we set up a table on the edge of campus at the College Avenue underpass. As students make their way to class we give away cookies to hundreds of students. The cookies are free. You can have as many as you’d like. There is only one tiny catch. We ask that if you take a cookie, you answer a question.
We place a big piece of paper on the table and invite students to write their answers to our question on it. We ask very opened ended questions. At the end of the spring term, we asked “What is your quest?” At Advent we asked, “What are you hoping for?” The answers are always funny and heart-felt and fascinating.
But when students pick up a cookie or two and I ask them if they’d like to answer our question, they almost all take an immediate step back. Their defenses go up. With a quizzical look, they prepare themselves for the types of questions they normally receive from religious leaders who bring their soapboxes onto campus. Honestly, I think most of them expect me to ask, verbatim, Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? In that step back, in that moment, they anticipate a question that will raise a wall between us. They expect condemnation, perhaps followed by an invitation to join me on my side of the wall I’ve just raised.
In that anticipatory moment the same dynamic that assures a mother I would never connect with her children is revealed. And it’s frustrating and sad that the symbols, the rituals, and customs that proclaim such good news to me and to so many within the church can separate and divide us.
The good news for the church is that God is not bound by the things that bind us, even our words and rituals and symbols that point to God. The good news for the children of that campus pastor and for the endless line of students who stream past our table, some taking cookies while others avoid eye contact at all cost, is that you don’t have to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ to experience the life and love and wholeness that God is bringing.
You see there is this really intriguing line snuck right into the beginning of our gospel. Before Jesus commissions seventy of his followers to go cast out demons and heal the sick, the writer of Luke tells us that Jesus sent them ahead of himself in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. Where he intended to go. Jesus is sending the disciples out ahead of and beyond himself. In this reading the life Christ is bringing goes on out to places where Jesus has not yet been. The ones whom the disciples encounter do not yet share the company of Jesus, and still, they are healed. They experience the life God is bringing.
The same thread is woven in the story of Naaman. Naaman, an outsider, an enemy even, comes to see a prophet, to see Elisha, to get the politics out of the way and seek wholeness and healing and life. Naaman walks all the way up to the gates of the house, all the way up the literal walls that divide God’s people from the rest of the world. And for whatever reason, he is not allowed to enter. He’s not allowed to come into the gates of the kingdom. And yet, Naaman is healed. The life of God is not held back. It’s so pervasive that it makes its way to the places beyond the gates, to the places beyond even the presence of Jesus, himself, and it comes to us.
It comes to us in the waters of the Jordan and of Boulder Creek and in a shared loaf and cup, but the life also comes in us as God sends us to the places beyond, to the places where he himself intends to go. Freed from shirts and shoes and the politics of kingdoms we're sent in order that God might come to us in us. We are not sent to get as many people as possible inside the boundaries of our ministries and churches. Instead God is calling us to go out and be God’s life-giving and healing presence in the world.
This is, of course, an incredibly tall task. I haven’t cast out too many demons or healed that many sickness, unless bandaids on skinned knees at church camps count. But Jesus provides a simple and challenging way of doing God's work with our hands. (Look, theologically sound church branding.)
The mission of the disciples whom Jesus sends is centered around just a few things. We get a whole list of the things they’re not supposed to take or do. In the positive, they’re instructed to take just themselves. When they get where they’re going, they are to enter inside the walls of someone else’s home and remain there. Jesus encourages them, gathered with those to whom they have been sent, to eat and to drink.
Strip everything away. Sit down. Be with those to whom you have been sent. Eat and drink. As God comes to us in each other and in a cup and a loaf of bread the walls are torn down, life comes, wholeness comes, and even demons are cast out.
This rhythm of good news is shaping what we’re doing on campus this fall. Campus ministry is a ministry of belonging and we recognize that lots of things stand in the way of doing that ministry. We’ve got some big changes coming. In the past our ministry has been centered in worship, but our focus this year will be on a simple midweek community meal. We’re going to try and strip away everything, take off our shoes (which won’t be that difficult for college students), become vulnerable and sit down and eat with each other, with new students, and whoever comes through our doors. We will do so trusting and hoping and expecting that Christ will be there with us as well.
Because that’s that other implication of this intriguing phrase “Jesus sent them to the places where he himself intended to go.” It means that we’ve been sent out ahead of Jesus, but it also means that Jesus is coming. Regardless of how far afield we end up, regardless of our successes or failures, Jesus is coming to the places where we have been sent. So let us take off our shoes and gather around a table together. Let us eat and drink. May the one who has sent us out of the waters and into the world come and bring us life, again. Amen.
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| A student taking a "step back." |
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