Beneath the surface
12/03/14 05:26
“I see we’re into black, now,” said a member of our congregation after worship on Sunday. It was the first Sunday of Lent. I was wearing a black robe. So the obvious answer to the question was, “Yes.” And that is what I said. I would have loved to give a more complex and nuanced answer, but sometimes the brief conversations we have after worship as we head to the fellowship hall for coffee and the parlor for adult discussion and all of the other places that members of the congregation go don’t have much space for depth or nuance.
I’ve never put a lot of time or energy into vestments. Susan made us each a simple robe for our ordinations and that is what we wore for our first ten years as pastors. Most Sundays we didn’t wear robes in our rural North Dakota congregations. We had a simple set of stoles in the four liturgical colors that we received as ordination gifts. Sometimes we would wear the stoles without our robes when serving communion or officiating at a graveside.
When we moved to Idaho and were serving a larger and mostly urban church we began to wear robes every Sunday for worship. On the occasion of our tenth anniversary of ordination our congregation presented us with new robes. They were simple choir robes in an off-white color. By then Susan had made a few stoles for special occasions, but we continued to go very simple when it came to vestments.
Over the years we have acquired a few additional vestments as hand-me-downs from retiring clergy. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of our ordinations I splurged and bought a new robe for special occasions. We have collected a few more stoles from various places as well.
The black robe served for the entire career of a colleague and when he moved to the nursing home it was still in very good shape and we are very similar in size, so it moved from his apartment to the closet in the church. I don’t wear it very often, but it seems to fit the mood of Ash Wednesday and much of Holy Week. I wore it for the 1st Sunday of Lent without making any decision about what I might be wearing on the subsequent Sundays of the season.
I’m not big on show. I think that what goes on on the inside is far more important than what robe I wear on the outside. And I know that most of the members of our congregation understand that as well.
Recently a book club to which I belong read “Pastrix,” a memoir by Nadia Bolz-Weber. It is the story of her call to the Christian ministry and the founding of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver. In the book she briefly tells the story of Rick Strandlof. He achieved notoriety in the summer of 2009 when the FBI investigated an Iraq War veteran named Rick Duncan. Duncan had been seen in TV ads endorsing political candidates and telling his story as an antiwar vet who had also been present at the Pentagon on 9/11. He had started a nonprofit fund dedicated to helping returning war veterans receive their benefits. But his name wasn’t Rick Duncan. It was Rick Strandlof. And Rick Strandlof never served in the military. He was charged under the Stolen Valor Act for claiming to have been awarded a Purple Heart for wounds he received. The Stolen Valor Act was ruled unconstitutional and Rick was released. His false identity and claims were reprehensible, but not illegal.
In the summer of 2011, Rick appeared in Denver as Rick Gold, convincing those around him that he was born in Tel Aviv and had served in the Israeli army, none of which was true.
I don’t know this man at all, only the things I have read in news reports and the brief information in Bolz-Weber’s book. But it seems that has false identities were, in part, an attempt to distance himself from a childhood of neglect, mental illness and alcohol abuse. Sometimes the real person is so filled with pain that what shows on the outside is far less than the whole story.
Most people are not con artists like Rick Strandlof. But you can’t really know the truth about them from what you see on the outside. If you were to attend Bolz-Webber’s church you might recognize Strandlof because his face was, for a short time, all over the media. But if you were to attend our congregation, you might see a retired couple, well dressed and looking like the community leaders that they are. You would never know by their appearance that their stories include the post-traumatic stress from surviving the horrors of the Vietnam War and then returning home to lose a fiance in the flood of ’72. You might not recognize that the death of a parent on Christmas Eve forever colored the celebration of Christmas. You might not know the struggles of children, now adults, who have suffered divorce and family reconfiguration and alcoholism and cancer and conversion to a religion that seems quite different from the church in which they were raised. A casual observer might only see part of the story. The story that is being projected isn’t a con. It isn’t made up. It is just not as complex or nuanced as one might get from first impression.
I think that the discipline of Lent is, in part, about going beyond the first impressions. It is a season of coming face to face with the reality of human life. And human life isn’t always pretty, or neat, or smiles and laughter.
There are plenty of television preachers who proclaim that Christianity will make you happier. Some claim it will make you more financially successful. Some talk on and on about blessings and benefits. Millionaire mega church pastors are known to provide entrainment without ever mentioning pain and suffering and broken lives. And when they do, those things are always in the past.
But we emphasize a different side of the Gospel of Jesus in our congregation. We preach Christ crucified. Yes, Jesus so human and broken and filled with anguish and dirty that his own followers can’t recognize him - and many of them abandoned him. Our faith doesn’t give us some special ticket to get out of the pain of human life. Instead it offers a companion who has been there in the midst of the pain and sorrow and sadness and who will never abandon us - no matter what.
It really doesn’t matter what color robe I wear. But there is nothing wrong with allowing some of the grief and sadness to show. It is who we are.
I’ve never put a lot of time or energy into vestments. Susan made us each a simple robe for our ordinations and that is what we wore for our first ten years as pastors. Most Sundays we didn’t wear robes in our rural North Dakota congregations. We had a simple set of stoles in the four liturgical colors that we received as ordination gifts. Sometimes we would wear the stoles without our robes when serving communion or officiating at a graveside.
When we moved to Idaho and were serving a larger and mostly urban church we began to wear robes every Sunday for worship. On the occasion of our tenth anniversary of ordination our congregation presented us with new robes. They were simple choir robes in an off-white color. By then Susan had made a few stoles for special occasions, but we continued to go very simple when it came to vestments.
Over the years we have acquired a few additional vestments as hand-me-downs from retiring clergy. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of our ordinations I splurged and bought a new robe for special occasions. We have collected a few more stoles from various places as well.
The black robe served for the entire career of a colleague and when he moved to the nursing home it was still in very good shape and we are very similar in size, so it moved from his apartment to the closet in the church. I don’t wear it very often, but it seems to fit the mood of Ash Wednesday and much of Holy Week. I wore it for the 1st Sunday of Lent without making any decision about what I might be wearing on the subsequent Sundays of the season.
I’m not big on show. I think that what goes on on the inside is far more important than what robe I wear on the outside. And I know that most of the members of our congregation understand that as well.
Recently a book club to which I belong read “Pastrix,” a memoir by Nadia Bolz-Weber. It is the story of her call to the Christian ministry and the founding of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver. In the book she briefly tells the story of Rick Strandlof. He achieved notoriety in the summer of 2009 when the FBI investigated an Iraq War veteran named Rick Duncan. Duncan had been seen in TV ads endorsing political candidates and telling his story as an antiwar vet who had also been present at the Pentagon on 9/11. He had started a nonprofit fund dedicated to helping returning war veterans receive their benefits. But his name wasn’t Rick Duncan. It was Rick Strandlof. And Rick Strandlof never served in the military. He was charged under the Stolen Valor Act for claiming to have been awarded a Purple Heart for wounds he received. The Stolen Valor Act was ruled unconstitutional and Rick was released. His false identity and claims were reprehensible, but not illegal.
In the summer of 2011, Rick appeared in Denver as Rick Gold, convincing those around him that he was born in Tel Aviv and had served in the Israeli army, none of which was true.
I don’t know this man at all, only the things I have read in news reports and the brief information in Bolz-Weber’s book. But it seems that has false identities were, in part, an attempt to distance himself from a childhood of neglect, mental illness and alcohol abuse. Sometimes the real person is so filled with pain that what shows on the outside is far less than the whole story.
Most people are not con artists like Rick Strandlof. But you can’t really know the truth about them from what you see on the outside. If you were to attend Bolz-Webber’s church you might recognize Strandlof because his face was, for a short time, all over the media. But if you were to attend our congregation, you might see a retired couple, well dressed and looking like the community leaders that they are. You would never know by their appearance that their stories include the post-traumatic stress from surviving the horrors of the Vietnam War and then returning home to lose a fiance in the flood of ’72. You might not recognize that the death of a parent on Christmas Eve forever colored the celebration of Christmas. You might not know the struggles of children, now adults, who have suffered divorce and family reconfiguration and alcoholism and cancer and conversion to a religion that seems quite different from the church in which they were raised. A casual observer might only see part of the story. The story that is being projected isn’t a con. It isn’t made up. It is just not as complex or nuanced as one might get from first impression.
I think that the discipline of Lent is, in part, about going beyond the first impressions. It is a season of coming face to face with the reality of human life. And human life isn’t always pretty, or neat, or smiles and laughter.
There are plenty of television preachers who proclaim that Christianity will make you happier. Some claim it will make you more financially successful. Some talk on and on about blessings and benefits. Millionaire mega church pastors are known to provide entrainment without ever mentioning pain and suffering and broken lives. And when they do, those things are always in the past.
But we emphasize a different side of the Gospel of Jesus in our congregation. We preach Christ crucified. Yes, Jesus so human and broken and filled with anguish and dirty that his own followers can’t recognize him - and many of them abandoned him. Our faith doesn’t give us some special ticket to get out of the pain of human life. Instead it offers a companion who has been there in the midst of the pain and sorrow and sadness and who will never abandon us - no matter what.
It really doesn’t matter what color robe I wear. But there is nothing wrong with allowing some of the grief and sadness to show. It is who we are.