“Give and Take” incorporates scores of studies and personal case histories that suggest the benefits of an attitude of extreme giving at work. Many of the examples — the selfless C.E.O.’s, the consultants who mentor ceaselessly — are inspiring and humbling, even if they are a bit intimidating in their natural expansiveness. These generous professionals look at the world the way Grant does: an in-box filled with requests is not a task to be dispensed with perfunctorily (or worse, avoided); it’s an opportunity to help people, and therefore it’s an opportunity to feel good about yourself and your work. “I never get much done when I frame the 300 e-mails as ‘answering e-mails,’ ” Grant told me. “I have to look at it as, How is this task going to benefit the recipient?” Where other people see hassle, he sees bargains, a little work for a lot of gain, including his own.

Could it be that Jesus (and a who’s who of other spiritual luminaries) was right? It appears possible! Dominus is skeptical and the article does a great job of illuminating the possible issues surrounding a life of giving and serving.

A few days later, I was in the car listening to the Diane Rehm show and heard a fantastic interview with the author about the book. If you are interested, I would highly recommend both the article and the interview. I am looking forward to reading the book!

A couple of weeks ago I was facilitating a small group  comprised of some folks that are joining our church. It’s a great four-week experience where we talk about what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be in Christian community. There is an exercise that we do where we all make name tags with “Rev.” in front of our names and discuss our reactions to the title, exploring the fact that we each are ministers. There is usually a variety of responses, positive and negative.

This time, with this group one of the participants understood the word as “reverent” instead of “reverend” and proceeded to respond with an experience she had of listening to her hair dresser earlier that same day who was having a tough time and needed someone to talk to. Nancy said that she took the opportunity to “listen with reverence.” I have had that image in my heart for the past two weeks and it has transformed my understanding of the title I once shunned.

I don’t know that there is much “reverend” about me. I do, however, have the opportunity and the privilege to be “reverent” – to honor God as God appears in my life, in creation, and in the words and experience of another. So for the first time, I might just start calling myself “Rev.,” as in The Reverent Jason Fairbanks.

To the question of “What is the purpose of the church?” McLaren says,

Of many possible answers, there is one to which I am continually drawn, embarrassingly obvious and simple to understand, but also embarrassingly challenging to do: the church exists to form Christlike people, people of Christlike love.  (164)

McLaren goes on, drawing on 1 Corinthians 12, to say that, “The church, then, in Paul’s mind, must be above all a school of love” (169) or what Mark Scandrette calls a “Jesus dojo” (170).

Borg, is both more detailed and more academic in his thoughts. He talks about a “sacramental understanding of religion” which sees religion as:

1. Human creations or “imaginative human constructions”
2. Responses to experiences of the sacred in the cultures into which they came into being
3. Cultural-linguistic traditions within which the faithful live
4. Wisdom traditions deeply rooted in the past, which enshrine wisdom of “the real” and “the way”
5. Aesthetic traditions which value and create beauty
6. Communities of practice that provide practical means for living the religious life
7. Communities of transformation: transforming self to a new way, and the world through compassion (213)

In the last two characteristics, Borg identifies religion (and we could say as well the church) as communities of practice. I resonate with the idea of the church as a place to practice  am excited about the possibility of living into, of practicing these truths.

One way I waste time is on line, but there are some websites that actually can help us spend a few minutes and no money to make a big difference in someone’s life. Lifehacker highlights four websites that harness the power of the world wide web to blast people with kindness, including a website that gets “love letters” to those who need encouragement and a website that sends you assignments on how to show kindness to people in “real life.”

You can find the article here.

Of course, the far better way, the more excellent way, is love which Paul goes on to beautifully describe in 1 Corinthians 13. Paul understands love as more important than any other gift. Sometimes we make the spiritual life more complicated than God intended it.

A parishioner called me out this week on something I said. It was something that I should have thought through a little better before verbalizing. This person had the courage – and I know it took a lot of courage – to come to me and say, “You know what Jason, that really bothered me.” We were able to have a good conversation about what this person had found particularly troublesome and why I had said what I did. I left the conversation inspired by this person’s courage and the conversation we were able to have together.

Then I had the opportunity to participate in a group that is discussing Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. There were about ten of us, an eclectic group of Christians and others who would not define themselves as such. We were discussing a section called “The Gospel Question” which talks about the Gospel and Jesus’ and Paul’s understanding of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God. A discussion arose over our understanding of what part we play – we talked about personal transformation, focusing on ourselves and we talked about the need for systemic change in our world and society. There was a tension that arose between the two viewpoints. This is a loving, mature group so the tension was subtle and quickly moved beyond by engaging another subject. However, someone later – and this is so amazing, and so rare – had the courage to name the tension, how it made him feel, and encourage the group to talk about it.

One of this Sunday’s lectionary passages is from Ephesians 2 where the letter-writer is talking about the walls that divide us and how Christ demolishes them. I am so thankful for what these two experiences and people taught me – the importance of naming the walls. That is the only way we can expose them to the wall-destroying light of Christ. What an opportunity the church has in being an example to a fragmented, angry culture about how to love and live with one another.

Of course, my Evangelical friends would that this is a gross misunderstanding of what they understand as salvation. There is much
I do not understand, but evangelical soteriology is something on which I have a pretty good handle.

Everybody wants to go to heaven (Although, as the old song goes, nobody wants to die. That is a different post.). Religion’s value, in the eyes of most, is that it can tell us how to get there – or get us there.

So religion becomes a transaction-you do what I say, you believe what my faith teaches (yes, I know, dear reader, your belief system is the
“right one.” but bear with me while I talk to the “others”). You do what I say to do-and you keep doing it- what other choice do you
have? Or you believe what my faith says you have to believe. You say the right prayer with all the right words in the right order and wham, bam, thank you mam, you are one of the insiders, looking with either condemnation or a smug, self-assured pity upon those that are now on the outside. In each case, one’s spiritual growth comes to a screeching halt.

This is beginning to sound shrill, I know, but I am upset. I am upset because your spiritual growth is stunted because you are worried
about whether or not you are going to heaven. I am upset that my calling as a minister, to nurture people in their relationship to God and
my calling as a Christian pastor, to help make disciples of Jesus, is made much more difficult, even impossible, because of this commodification of heaven.

What if, for a moment, we removed heaven from the equation? For a moment, let us, in the words of John Lennon, “imagine there’s no heaven.” I always considered that song as the snarky theme of my atheist friends, but lately I am discovering its beauty and usefulness. If there is no heaven, if our 70, 80, 90 years here on earth is it, what difference would that make in your spiritual life? What would become important or not so important? How would you relationship with God be different?

Yikes! No heaven?! That is heresy! OK, well how about this(although I warn you dear reader, this may make you more angry than imaging there is no heaven) what if there is a heaven and we are all going there? Every single last one of us? What if as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all be made alive? (1 Corinthians 15:22) What if Paul knew what he was talking about when he exuberantly recited the hymn to the Cosmic Christ declaring that, “For in him (Christ) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross?” Colossians 1:19-20 (Yes dear reader, I know there are all manner of eisegetical trick shots that explain why “all” doesn’t mean “all” in these passages, but we’re imagining, remember?)

What if God in God’s unconditional love and enormous, magnificent, irresistible (just in case there are still any of you hip reformed theologians still reading) grace looks out at God’s beloved creation and says, like Oprah on her “favorite things” episodes “You’re going to heaven! You’re going to heaven! You’re going to heaven!” until, in the words of theologian William Barclay, “in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God.” (Yes, dear reader, this is a bit anthropomorphic, or Oprahpomorphic as the case may be, but we are imagining.)

Either way, if heaven is removed from our concern, maybe we could move on in our spiritual lives. Maybe we can relax and enjoy the journey. We could grow closer to the God who created us and who loves us and with whom we will spend eternity instead of trying to impress Him so He’ll let us in (and yes, that view of God is a “Him” ). Maybe, since we’re all going to be there together in the end anyway, we can start practicing for what is to come by working at getting along together, being kind to one another, listening to and learning from one another. We could work at making sure our brother is fed, that our sister isn’t sold as a sex slave. What if we stopped using heaven as a reason to blow each other up?

Than maybe religion could rediscover its beauty, its hope. Imagine.

Richard Rohr in a speech “Experiencing the Naked Now”

Thomas Merton, in a talk given in 1965, quoted in Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity, p 155

“The best criticism of the bad is to do it better…don’t waste the next 20 years being against anybody, anything, any group, any institution. Just go ahead and do it better.”

Richard Rohr said the above in a talk he gave on the emerging church. It makes so much sense. However, for someone like me, raised in the church, it is difficult to fully grasp. It will take a great deal of practice. I am used to defining my belief in opposition to something.

I remember in my evangelical, conservative religious formation, I was just anti-everything. If someone was doing something I was against it. Anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality (anti-any sexuality, really) anti-democrat, anti-Catholic, anti-any other reading of scripture but the one I had been taught, and on and on. That was just how we understood ourselves.

When my mind and heart started to change, I made the great stride of being anti-all of the above. The only thing that stayed the same was that I was still anti-any other reading of scripture but mine – my reading had just changed.

As I have been experimenting with being not against, I have really begun to enjoy it. There is a certain freedom in not having to be against anyone or anything. To just practice, to just be.