Just Wondering- On Memorials

Why the total disconnect of the past ten days- between visual media (especially national cable T.V.), which have been covering Michael Jackson's death ad nauseum and the local radio stations, where he and the Jackson Five have been totally absent in the same time frame.

What the Jackson family was thinking and feeling- especially Michael's children- when Stevie Wonder, whose music I love, said that God needed Michael more than we did. For me, this confirms that musicians should focus on their art and refrain from theologizing. I think this is also true of church musicians who sometimes can end up opinion- sharing and distancing the congregation instead of leading worship and bringing together.

When people are in grief, we can say some interesting and also weird things. One marked change over the last 25 years, I believe, has been the number of close friends, especially family, who are speaking at memorials and funerals in our churches. This is sometimes good in that the service can be more individualized, and a little less formalized.

On the other hand, you don't want these same folks, who are also in grief, to feel pressured or to be too anxious about breaking down in the middle of their talk. Normally, a person can determine if they will be able to speak or not. However, in grief we can't always know or say what we'll be up to doing.

Then there's the time factor. As officiating pastor, I offer to read comments written by a family member. I remember wanting to say a few words at my brother's memorial a few years back, but I just couldn't put it into words of a short duration, so I refrained. Then, a few years later at my Dad's memorial, I managed to share a few memories just fine.

On not grabbing

While the appeal to greater control is very attractive and a cultural idol of sorts, the wisdom of letting go, though it's counter-cultural, is neglected. This sets people up for greater, not less, disappointment and loss.

If we let go we would be freer--freer of the illusion of control, the lie that life's about getting first and then, second, clutching what's ours. Ethicist Waldo Beach long taught that biblical freedom has two sides: freedom and deliverance from bondage and freedom for responding to God and neighbor.

Where are you stuck, and don't even know it? From what do you need to be freed? How will you surrender and let God love and heal you, even the parts you've always gripped so tightly? What do you need in order to be free for God and the people with whom you work and live?

In what ways will you "choose life" and open a closed fist today?

July 6 John Huss Festival*

The Moravian Church, our spiritual mothers and fathers, celebrates July 6 as a watershed event in their heritage and history.

John Wesley's spiritual director and mentor, Peter Bohler, was a Moravian pastor. On a ship destined for Wesley's new mission field of Georgia, Wesley wrote of the faith of the Moravians on board as they sang Psalms through the most dangerous and threatening of seas. Wesley, terrified, was not singing, but looked on in amazement.

And then it was at a Moravian meeting that Wesley heard the words of Luther's Preface to Romans, and as he did, his heart was strangely warmed with the knowledge and newly found assurance that Jesus had died for him, forgiven him, and freed him from the law of sin and death.

In speaking of her sons Charles' and John's new experience of assurance and God's love in Jesus, Susanna stated that it wasn't about having faith, it was more about the "uniting of head and heart," and an encounter for which they had been searching for some time.

Is your faith something that others are drawn to, attracted to, or repulsed by? Or, do others at least find your faith the least bit interesting? Somehow whatever John Wesley witnessed on a ship made him both seeker of and searched by the One whose name is Love.

*On July 6, 1415, John Hus was martyred at the Council of Constance.