Friday, 9 July

It was a polity wonk’s heaven in the GA plenary on Friday afternoon.

Some of you will remember that at our October 2009 presbytery meeting, we sent a request to the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly asking for an interpretation of G-13.0103r, the provision of the Book of Order concerning the power of the General Assembly to interpret the church’s Constitution in a binding and authoritative manner. We asked that the General Assembly reflect on the nature and limits of the Assembly’s responsibility for authoritative interpretation.

The General Assembly’s Advisory Committee on the Constitution received our request, and in response drafted a statement that I believe will be very helpful to the church in the future. It’s an authoritative interpretation on authoritative interpretations, if you can believe that.

• It clarifies that an “AI” is a statement that interprets the Constitution in a manner binding on the whole church;
• It affirms that the General Assembly interprets the Constitution in two ways: by action of the General Assembly when it meets in plenary session, and through a judicial decision rendered by the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission.
• It offers some guidelines to both the GA plenary and the GA PJC to consider as it drafts AIs in the future.

There was a challenge to the “authoritative interpretation on authoritative interpretations,” however. It came from persons who have been unhappy with recent decisions of the GA PJC that have been in some tension with interpretations of ordination standards by the General Assembly plenary. They proposed to add to the statement a requirement that a Constitutional interpretation rendered as part of a GA PJC decision cannot differ from a statement adopted by the General Assembly plenary. They argued that, since the plenary of the GA represents the whole church, it is a more authoritative body than the GA PJC and should therefore have the final word.

At first blush, this would seem an obvious position. But beneath the surface is a serious constitutional problem.

The Book of Order language makes clear that the General Assembly has two “voices” through which it interprets the Constitution. The GA plenary interprets the Constitution in general terms. The GA PJC interprets the Constitution in light of the specific fact pattern of a particular judicial case. But whether it does so through the plenary or the PJC, it is the same General Assembly that does the interpreting. There is no distinction between the voice of the Assembly speaking through plenary or PJC. To suggest, as the challenge did, that one “voice” speaks more loudly or with greater authority than the other is to unbalance our Constitutional system.

In the end, the Assembly retained the statement proposed by the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, and that statement is now an official part of the Constitutional lore of the church. I’ll report the statement to you at the October meeting of the presbytery as a reply to our request, but if you’d like to see the full text, it’s available on www.pc-biz.org, under Committee 5, item 05-21.

Friday, 9 July

Another interesting day.

We began with a motion to reconsider an action taken late Thursday evening on marriage and civil unions. As I noted in a previous post, the Assembly answered with a study paper a number of proposals to amend the definition of marriage and to give pastoral guidance concerning what ministers are to do in response to requests for same-sex marriages. The motion to reconsider was an effort to reopen that debate and answer each of the items individually. The motion to reconsider failed, however, and the matter of marriage is now closed for this Assembly.

The Mideast Peacemaking Committee reported on the conversations between our Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) and the Caterpillar corporation. At issue is Caterpillar’s manufacture of heavy-duty construction equipment used by the Israeli Defense Force to raze houses of Palestinians and build Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Caterpillar’s refusal to change its practice of selling its equipment for use in these ways. The Assembly voted to “denounce Caterpillar’s continued profit-making from non-peaceful uses of its products” (418 for the motion, 210 against, and 9 abstaining). The Assembly then declined to divest itself of its slightly more than $10 million in stock and bonds invested in Caterpillar, Inc.

Several of the speakers to the two actions argued that denouncement is a way of articulating our church’s criticism of Caterpillar’s practices while at the same time not breaking relationship with Caterpillar. The hope is to “keep the door open” for additional conversations that might ultimately lead to change in the company’s corporate practice. The sense of the discussion seemed to be that divestment would terminate the conversation and eliminate the possibility of participating in constructive change.

The Assembly also took up the report of the Mid-East Study Commission. The report as it entered the Assembly was widely regarded as bearing a pro-Palestinian bias. The Assembly committee amended the language considerably, broadening the testimony from both Palestinian and Israeli experience, re-emphasizing Israel’s right to security within its own borders. The amended version was approved, by a vote of 558 for the motion, 119 against, and 7 abstaining.

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Just a personal note: today is the 31st anniversary of my ordination to the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. Our presbytery delegation gathered for a breakfast this morning, and they presented me with a beautiful olive wood celtic cross. Along with it was a card that, among other sentiments, expressed both love and appreciation for my service as your Executive Presbyter and Stated Clerk.

I will treasure them both, but even more, I treasure the opportunity to serve the Presbytery of St. Augustine. As I talk with my colleagues in other presbyteries, I am often struck at the tensions and divisions they face. We have every bit the diversity of other presbyteries, but almost none of the rancor that seems to characterize their internal relationships. I am deeply grateful for that, and it makes serving in your midst a pleasure.

Report of Committee 7

The second major issue that the 219th GA faced was the report of Committee 7, the Form of Government Revision, which came to the floor after supper on Wednesday. As many of you know, I've been part of the Form of Government Task Force, formed in 2006 and renewed in 2008, that has drafted the proposal to the 2010 Assembly. That task force has created two new documents, the Foundations of Presbyterian Polity and a new, shorter Form of Government. Since I was instrumental in the process of writing both, I can't claim a disinterested perspective on this.

I thought the debate was lively, although not as lively as things are likely to become on other issues. The main discussion came when a motion to receive the report of the Task Force was offered as a substitute motion to the committee's recommendation to adopt and send it to the presbyteries. Motions to receive a document or report are assembly-speak for "kill this before it multiplies," so I did not regard this substitute as a helpful action.

In dealing with substitute motions, a deliberative body essentially lays them alongside each other, asks for amendments to "perfect" the original (or "main") motion and the substitute, and then votes whether the substitute will become the main motion. Committee 7 had already amended the document in more than 30 places (most of them very wise and helpful), but there were several more (in my opinion, less helpful) amendments proposed as part of the "perfecting" process. None of these latter proposals were adopted, so that, in the end, the Assembly had a choice to adopt the proposed Form (the main motion) or dispense with it (the substitute). The vote was was quite clearly in favor of the main motion.

As a final step, then, the Assembly had to vote to adopt the proposed Foundations and Form and send them to the presbyteries for affirmative or negative vote. There was additional pro and con debate on the motion, but in the end the Assembly voted 464 in favor of adopting and sending the proposal, 204 against, and with 5 abstentions. From my perspective, the vote represents a clear affirmation of our work and a call for chage in the style of our polity.

Our presbytery will discuss this proposal at our winter stated meeting in February, 2011. We will also try to have some informational gatherings about it and other items arising from the Assembly during the fall, so watch for the announcements More later.

Theological Issues and Institutions

Well, we're off. After three days of being spread out into eighteen committee meetings, the General Assembly is gathered again under a single roof and faced in the same direction.

Moderator Cindy Bolbach began the meeting with a test of the voting machine system. There had been problems on Saturday night and in the intervening days, GA staff conducted tests to be sure that the system would be reliable. So far, so good.

The Assembly's first significant debate came with the report of Committee 16 on Theological Issues and Institutions. The committee had two proposals that will have continuing importance for the church. One was a proposal to continue the process of preparing a new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism, to replace the current one in our Book of Confessions. Since the translation is not yet finalized, there was no document to send to the presbyteries, and so the Assembly concurred in the request to continue the discussion for another two years before voting on whether to send the new translation to the presbyteries.

The other was the Assembly decision to go ahead with presbytery votes on whether to include the Belhar Confession in our Book of Confessions. Belhar was written in South Africa in 1972 in the Reformed Church there, and has continued to be one of the most important theological statements on the sinfulness of racism. If included in the Book of Confessions, it would be the only statement representing the southern hemisphere. The vote to send the Belhar Confession to the presbyteries was not close, and the document will be before our presbytery for vote in the coming year.

Adopting a change in the Book of Confessions is a more demanding process than amending the Book of Order. It requires the approval of a general assembly (in this case, already accomplished), then the approval of two-thirds of the presbyteries, and finally the approval of a second general assembly (in this case, the 220th GA in 2012). More from the Assembly floor later.

Sunday, 4 July 2010, Minneapolis, MN.

Worship on Sunday at the General Assembly is always a stupendous event. Three thousand Presbyterians in one great hall, all singing "Every Time I Feel The Spirit" is not to be missed. Liturgy is wonderful, preaching is challenging, spectacle is in the air. I wouldn't miss it.

Today was no exception. Worship opened with a call to worship that had us face in the four cardinal directions of the compass, and welcome the Spirit of God. Following that was a liturgical dance procession that re-enacted Genesis 1 and God's creation of the world. Chills ran down my spine when above my head there fluttered a bright red and yellow streamer, held aloft on a long flexible pole and whisked above the congregation. I was sure I felt the breath of the Creator, blowing across the face of chaos, bringing order and possibility in my soul.

Then there was the moment when we baptized a baby. This was a first; no General Assembly has, at least in my knowledge, ever celebrated the sacrament of baptism. But the pastor of Kwanzaa Community Church in Minneapolis, Alika Galloway, baptized little Alexis Rene Sanders, while the whole Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) accepted the obligation to be the church for her. I wonder whether, in thirty or forty years, a grown-up Alexis will find her way to another General Assembly as an elder or a minister, and bring that promise to completion.

But the moment that literally brought me to tears - and does even now, as I think about it - was the minister necrology. Every Assembly does this in some form: remembers and gives thanks for the ministers of the Word and Sacrament who have died since the last GA. This year, the names were displayed in slides on great screens above the hall - the name of the minister, followed by that of his or her final presbytery of membership. I found myself looking for the names of those we've lost from our own Presbytery of St. Augustine, and as they appeared, a discovered I was saying them aloud, even as their faces materialized in my memory and their voices echoed in my ears: Pat Cadwallader. Neil Howard. Graham Hardy. Ed Montgomery.

But I wasn't the only one doing this. A row ahead of me, I saw one of my colleague executives from another presbytery saying the names of her ministers, and then over a few rows in the next section, another doing so, as well. It suddenly dawned on me that somewhere in that hall, probably there was someone saying the name of every person on the necrology, and remembering, and giving thanks. And my friend Ted Wardlaw, sitting next to me, said just then, "You know, it's almost like they're sitting above us, looking down on us from a sort of balcony."

The writer of Hebrews spoke of a "great cloud of witnesses." That's what the names on those screens were to me this morning: a great cloud of people who were not in the room, but who were very much with us. Their witness was not to what we were doing in worship, but to what God in Jesus Christ has done through their ministries and is doing and will yet do through ours. It was a powerful moment. I realized that we had an audience called the communion of the saints, and I could distinguish some of their faces.

When you worship in your own sanctuary next, think about the people who are watching you from the balconies of your memory. Remember them, and give thanks.

Paul

Sunday, 4 July 2010: Minneapolis, MN

It's been a little more than 23 hours since the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) elected its new moderator, Elder Cynthia Bolbach of National Capital Presbytery (Washington DC area). I couldn't be more delighted with the choice.

I've reached the age where GA moderators are more often my contemporaries than my seniors. That's a shift that comes with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it means I'm getting older - perhaps not the most pleasant prospect to contemplate. On the other, it means that, more and more, the people who come to this office are my friends.

Certainly this is the case with Cindy Bolbach. Just two weeks shy of four years ago, I met Cindy in a hotel in Louisville, KY. She and I and ten others had just been appointed as the Form of Government Task Force, charged by the 217th GA (2006) to create a revised Form of Government for the church. The moderator for the task force hadn't been selected. But of the people gathered around the conference table, it was clear that one - a corporate lawyer named Cindy Bolbach - had all the skills for the job: a good grasp of the church's life, a fine sense of the Book of Order, a patient way of listening to argument, a quick mind for assessing personalities, and a wonderful, wry, self-deprecating sense of humor that sparkled in the corner of her eye and hinted that she wasn't quite telling you everything she was thinking. We elected her co-moderator that day, and she holds the job even now. There has not been a single day in the last four years that I have regretted that choice.

What I saw four years ago, the General Assembly saw last evening. Cindy was one of a near-record SIX candidates for moderator (the most I can ever recall before is four), but she was alone and without real peer. Her answers to questions were kind, humble, and at the same time sharp and incisive. One commissioner asked her about her views on changing the definition of marriage from "one man and one woman" to "two people." Cindy affirmed her sense that the church was not ready to make that change. But then she said, "I wonder, who does more damage: Larry King, whose been married to seven women and divorced from them all, or [a gay man she knew] who's been with the same partner for sixty-two years?" She didn't need to say more; she'd raised and illustrated the dilemma we are facing as a church and as a society perfectly.

I hope to be able to get Cindy to be a speaker and preacher for our presbytery. I hope you'll be able to benefit first hand from her gentle wisdom and cleverness. But mostly, I hope you'll be able to see what I saw in her four years ago: the definition of what it means to be an elder in the Presbyterian Church.

More to come tomorrow.

Paul

Toward the Church as Sacred Community

Paul Hooker - 3 June 2010

I have just read a piece I think you may find interesting. “Visions of the Sacred Community” is an adaptation from a current book by four Jewish authors that studied eight congregations who are transforming themselves from functional to visionary (the author’s terms). The book is Sacred Stories: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary, by Aron, Cohen, Hoffman, and Kelman (Alban Institute, 2010). Aron et al. lay out six characteristics of the shift from functional to visionary congregations that echo what Stan Ott has done in his Twelve Dynamic Shifts for Transforming Your Church. The article is on the Alban Institute’s website; go to http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9079 and check it out.

The driving principle behind this transformation is actually an older insight by sociologist Robert Wuthnow, who argues that people who are active participants in religious communities have shifted from being “dwellers” – people content to join existing religious structures and perpetuate what has been built for them by others – to “seekers” – people who participate in congregational life because they derive from it a sense of genuine personal meaning.

One paragraph in the article struck me as worthy of particular note:

No congregation performs perfectly as a visionary congregation in all aspects. Rather, we envision the six characteristics shared by visionary congregations as continual, in which the core distinction of a congregation is that it is always in pursuit of sacredness over consumerism, holism over segmentation, participation over passivity, innovation over routine, meaning over rote interactions, and reflection over inattention.

It seems to me that the word continual – meaning functioning on a continuum – is both vital and liberating. It reminds us that transformation is a process, a journey, and that a community is found at various times in various places along the pathway of that journey. There is not better or worse, success or failure, right or wrong, but growth and development and – above all else – learning.

I find myself wanting to think theologically about what it means to be a “sacred community.” What does the “pursuit of sacredness” entail?

The first thing to say is that, if the church is a sacred community, it is so not because of what it does when it gathers for worship or study or prayer. Our sacredness is not inherent in us or in anything we do. Rather, we are sacred – “holy” – because Christ is holy, and by the power of the Spirit Christ calls the church into being and imbues it with his holiness. To “pursue the sacred” is to follow Christ, regardless of where Christ leads us. Put another way, the church lives out its Christ-endowed identity as a sacred commuity as it witnesses to and participates in Christ’s mission of transformation of lives., societies, and creation itself.

I’m convinced that the church’s recovery of itself as a sacred community is directly related to the willingness of its leadership to take with renewed seriousness their calling to teach the faith and equip the saints for ministry. The kind of teaching I’m talking about isn’t doctrinaire but dialogical; it begins with people where they are and invites them to reflect on their experience in light of the gospel. It isn’t confined to Sunday School classroom; it takes place in session meetings and hospital rooms, casual conversations over coffee in the kitchen, service projects in the community and meetings of the city council … and yes, in the pulpit and from the font and table, and in the pews. It’s not just the job of the pastor; it is the calling of every leader in the church. But it is guided and nurtured by pastoral reflection, or it quickly goes astray. This kind of teaching erases the distinction between “Christian education” and “Christian life”; indeed, it transforms the one into the other. It invites each of us to understand the narrative of our individual lives as part of the great meta-narrative of God’s engagement with the world, and to find meaning in participating in that engagement.

My sense is that it means that congregations are called to be communities committed to a common vision of God, revealed in Christ by the power of the Spirit. Such a commitment requires us delicately to navigate between the Scylla of doctrinal rigidity on the one hand and the Charybdis of “anything goes” antinomianism on the other.

My guess, though, is that the greater danger for the post-modern church is not lapsing into fundamentalism – in truth, the culture as a whole resists this sort of authoritarianism – but blessing the culture’s narcissistic individualism in which the only experience that matters is my experience and the only truth to which I am subject is my truth. This is what Robert Bellah famously called, “sheilaism,” after a young nurse he quoted in Habits of the Heart:[1]

Sheila Larson is a young nurse who has received a good deal of therapy and describes her faith as "Sheilaism." This suggests the logical possibility of more than 235 million American religions, one for each of us. "I believe in God," Sheila says. "I am not a religious fanatic. [Notice at once that in our culture any strong statement of belief seems to imply fanaticism so you have to offset that.] I can't remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheilaism. Just my own little voice." Sheila's faith has some tenets beyond belief in God, though not many. In defining what she calls "my own Sheilaism," she said: "It's just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think God would want us to take care of each other." Like many others, Sheila would be willing to endorse few more specific points.

In a lecture subsequent to the publication of Habits of the Heart, Bellah went on to suggest that “Sheilaism” points up a

radical tension between a conception of the church as a part of the common life, as there before we came, as it will be after we go, as partly constituting who we are – and not merely a flimsy, temporary structure that depends on our momentary and voluntary will for its existence at all. But the question remains, how do we, in a pluralist society, avoid the radical individualism expressed by Sheila …?

In an effort to answer that question, Bellah relies on the church’s tradition:

The point here is as communities, as churches with a strong sense of corporate identity, we enter into the public sphere and speak to our fellow citizens out of our faith, not in some triumphalist claim for special privilege, but also without renouncing the fact that we carry a tradition that is deep and that forms our lives.[2]

Our own theological tradition would suggest that the pursuit of sacredness is first a function of the Spirit, which binds us to Christ and to one another, and not our own initiative. Second, perhaps, it would remind us that the result of the Spirit’s work is the process of sanctification – growth in God’s grace – rather than the achievement of a final status of perfection or blessedness. Third, the function of the church as a “community of the sacred” is to provide the opportunity to grow in the “ordinary means of grace” –proclamation of the Word, participation in the sacraments, and a life of prayer (see, among other places, The Westminster Larger Catechism, Q.154; The Book of Confessions, 7.264).

I think it’s worth noting that, if we understand the pursuit of sacredness in this way, it is not a matter of knowledge but of practice. Knowing the right doctrine, while valuable, is only part of the picture. There is something transformative about doing that builds upon our knowing. We appropriate the gift of sacredness as we participate in the church’s work of witness through proclamation, sacramental life, and discipleship.

Paul

---

[1] Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (University of California Press, 1985).

[2] “Habits of the Heart: Implications for Religion,” 1986 lecture; see http://www.robertbellah.com/lectures_5.htm

Some Thoughts About Money in Hard Times

Some Thoughts about Money in Hard Times

I receive occasional newsletters from the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving. They are without exception wise counsel. I’d like to pass some of their recent insights along to you. In their recent newsletter, Insights on Faith and Giving, they report the following:

Tips for Prudent Financial Planning in 2010

In this still uncertain climate, the prospect of planning your 2010 budget may seem a daunting task. However, our work with religious organizations allows us to interact with congregations of all shapes and sizes from around the United States. And as the taboo subject of "money" has increasingly become a topic of major concern, many have told us that the recession has provided them with opportunities to reassess their core missions, implement necessary changes, and learn all they can about congregational finances. Below you will find a handful of the tips that have emerged out of our conversations with congregations over the past year.

• Given the economic uncertainty of 2010, pursue a cash-and-carry philosophy in your budgeting and spending. If you don't have the cash, you can't afford the expenditure.
• Spend according to your priorities! Let your core mission values shape your expenditures.
• Keep your members informed as to your financial status; fiscal transparency and administrative accountability are pivotal to the creation of a congregational culture of generosity.
• Good theology is the gateway to sound economics. Jesus put a priority on caring for the homeless, the poor, the jobless, the sick etc.
• Be a good neighbor to the hurting in your community.
• Don't beg for money; celebrate what you have and are doing.
• Dare to birth hope amidst economic sobriety by telling heart-touching stories as to the difference you are making with what you have.[1]

I think all these tips are good, but I’m particularly impressed with the second and fourth tips. Setting priorities is always an important task for church leadership, but it’s more important now in tight economic times than ever. Let your priorities guide your allocation of budget resources.

Maybe less obvious, but in my opinion more important, is allowing good theology to lead you to good economics. Put another way, our theology ought to shape our priorities, even – maybe especially – in tough times. I think the Lake Institute folk are reminding us that difficult economic times tempt us to restrict our vision of what God is doing in the world around us. They invite us to think principally of ourselves and our own self preservation. But Jesus called us to “go into the world, making disciples and teaching” (Matt 28:19-20). A theology responsive to Jesus’ call always reminds us that the church exists not to preserve itself but to follow Christ as Christ works in the world.

By the way, I would commend the Lake Institute to you, and encourage you to explore their website, philanthropy.iupui.edu/lakefamilyinstitute. You can sign up to receive their newsletter while you’re there.

[1] Source: Insights on Faith and Giving, philanthropy.iupui.edu/lakefamilyinstitute.

Up in the Air

Pat and I recently went to see Up in the Air, the new George Clooney picture playing in theaters. It’s a good movie, well worth seeing. It works on several levels, one of which is the comment it makes about the struggle between electronics vs. face-to-face interactions as the basis of relationships. Another is the rootlessness and disengagement of modern society.

The George Clooney character, Ryan Bingham, is “career transition specialist,” who flies around the country delivering termination notices to the employees of other corporations. For a substantial fee, Bingham arrives and sets up a temporary office in the company conference room and proceeds to do what the company’s executives don’t have the courage to do themselves: lay off their workers. Bingham has the patter down pat, complete with euphemistic language, sympathetic mien, and platitudinous encouragement to the newly unemployed worker to seize this catastrophic moment as an opportunity for a whole new life. As if they had a choice about this “opportunity.”

Bingham himself has no wife or children, no house, and no roots. He “lives” in a sparsely furnished 1 bedroom apartment with no food in the refrigerator. His clothing is neatly folded on bakers’ racks, ready to be stowed into the roll-on bag that he packs with mechanical precision. He logs more than 300 nights each year “on the road” in hotels, and spends part of nearly every day in the first class cabin of an airliner, “up in the air” – in more ways than one.

Bingham’s life ambition is the accumulation of 10,000,000 miles in his frequent flyer account, a feat only seven others have ever accomplished. In pursuit of his goal, he has sacrificed everything we might regard as the evidence of a life: relationships with his extended family, a wardrobe that includes leisure attire, even a place to live. He finally attains his goal as the movie draws to a conclusion. Halfway through another flight from somewhere to somewhere else, the flight attendant makes the announcement of Bingham’s ten millionth mile, and he is rewarded with a visit from the airline’s chief pilot. Their conversation is simple but strained, and finally the pilot asks Bingham, “So, where’re you from?” Bingham pauses, looks around the airliner’s cabin; behind him we see through the airliner’s windows as the plane cruises high above the clouds, the earth passing below him so fast and far away that any place is indistinguishable from any other place. “Here,” Bingham says at last, “I’m from right here.”

I’ve been mulling over that line ever since I heard it. I’m fairly sure the screenwriter intended it as something of a critique of Bingham’s – and our – rootlessness, our dissociation with anything as permanent as “the ground.” But I can’t help hearing other overtones in it.

Jesus once told someone who pledged to follow him wherever he went: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). On another occasion, when told that his family was trying to speak to him while he was preaching to a crowd, Jesus said, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Then, says the text, he looked at the crowd and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:33-35).

One can argue, I suppose, that Jesus never intended his words as a description of a lifestyle for his followers. I would agree, mostly. But that still leaves me to explain why Jesus would tell his disciples to “go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me” (Matt 19:21). Or again, why he would say that “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake or the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mother and children, and fields with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life” (Mk 10:29-30). Not exactly the surest 401K I ever heard of.

John Leith, who taught theology at Union Seminary in Virginia (where I studied, many years ago), once listed several characteristics of a Christian life lived under the influence of the Reformed tradition. The last of Leith’s characteristics was “an increasing detachment from the things of the world.” What Leith meant was that, throughout a long life lived in faithfulness to the gospel, one’s identity and sense of place in the world depends less and less upon the “things of the world” – houses and fields, bank accounts and BMWs, and yes, even relationships – and more on the Christ who beckons us from beyond them.

Jesus and John Leith seem to me to be making the same point. They seem both to be saying that discipleship in Christ is a matter of detachment from the “stuff” that clutters the closets and crowds the shelves of our consumerist existence. They seem both to be calling us away from roots sunk so deep in dirt of daily reality that we cannot soar aloft on the wings of hope and possibility. They seem to be inviting us to live “up in the air,” so to speak.

Let me be clear: in so speaking, I am not saying that Christians are not to live in the “real” world, and instead to live out some “other-worldly” piety. I am not suggesting that Christians ought to eschew relationships in favor of some desert hermitage. I am most definitely not suggesting that salvation is being “raptured” away into some alternate universe, leaving behind the grit and grime of the one in which we’re born and die for some heavenly home in the sky.

But I am suggesting that being “up in the air” is an apt metaphor for the provisionality of the life of faith, for the sense that we are always between somewhere and somewhere else, and that the “somewheres” may well be less important than the “between.” I am suggesting that, when Jesus spoke about the life of faith, he exhibited a strong preference for metaphors of transition and motion – way, path, taking up crosses and following – over metaphors of settlement and stasis.

I don’t recall anyplace in the gospels where Jesus is asked, “So, where’re you from?” But I fantasize that, had he been, he would have looked around, perhaps from the height of a cross atop a Judean hill, and said, “Here. I’m from right here.”