WHY NOT STARBUCKS

Most Sundays now I am doing supply ministry at St. Stephen’s in East Liverpool, Ohio. It’s a leisurely forty-five minute derive along the Ohio River. Arlena and I leave in time to get to the 10:00 Eucharist. We have to pass through Beaver, PA on the way. As it usually happens, we get stopped by a red light at the intersection of Third Street and College Avenue: right in front of the local Starbucks. 

When the weather is warm, dozens of people are congregating around the outside tables drinking their lattes or espressos or whatever it is they ordered. Invariably I am tempted to stop the car, go over to the assembled congregation and tell them they should be in church and not at Starbucks. I don’t, of course. Even with my collar on they would think I had lost my mind or was some sort of crazy preacher – neither of which is true, if I must say so myself.

Yet I would not be wrong in asserting that they should not be congregating at Starbucks but, rather, at a local congregation of their choice, even one of those mega churches that serve their own Starbucks coffee which you’re allowed to bring with you to the service. What Starbucks lacks and what each and every one of us needs is a community of people who will be there with us when we need them most and they need us most, for being part of a worshipping community is being part of a support group.

That is becoming even more and more important these days when people gather together and yet are not in community or communication, at least not with the people around them. When we are stopped for that light and I look over at those gathered around the tables, half of them are on their phones not even conversing with the people sitting at the same table.

The sad part is that when they truly need a support group, people who will walk with them and hold their hands and get them through the rough times, the Starbucks crowd only have their cups of coffee and cell phones. I say this not from a clerical point of view but from a human point of view. When those rough days came along in Arlena’s and my lives, we knew where to turn. At times others turned to us even before we turned to them because they were part of our lives and still are.

The even sadder part of all this is that all too often people do not know what they are missing until it is too late, when they do not know where to turn for help or to whom. The Starbucks crowd will not be of any assistance because they don’t know them and they don’t know any of them, at least not well enough to ask for help. That is not the case when people are part of a church community.

Maybe I should stop. Start out earlier and let them know what I have found and tell them why not Starbuck but rather why one of the churches right around the corner.

TWELVE REASONS

While going through my “save” files, I found this piece written years ago by James Hewett he titled Twelve Reasons Why a Local Clergyman Stopped Attending Athletic Events. Here they are: 1) Every time I went, they asked for money; 2) The people with whom I had to sit didn’t seem very friendly; 3) The seats were too hard and not comfortable; 4) The coach never came to call on me; 5) The referee made a decision with which I could not agree; 6) I was sitting with some hypocrites – they came only to see what others were wearing; 7) Some games went into overtime, and I was late getting home; 8) The band played some numbers that I had never heard before; 9) The games are scheduled when I want to do others things; 10) My parents took me to too many games when I was growing up; 11) Since I read a book on sports, I feel that I know more than the coaches anyhow; 12) I don’t want to take my children because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to get Hewett’s point. There are a dozen reasons why people stop going to “athletic” events, whatever those events are. But they really are not reasons so much as they are excuses. And there are more. Any time we do not want to do something we probably should do, we find a reason why we cannot do it. We find an excuse that we hope reasonably excuses us.

That takes the heat off us for the moment. But sooner or later our excuses catch up to us and we have to face the issue head on: why do we not want to do what we know we really should do? Granted, both dealing with the issue at hand and resolving it will not be comfortable or even pleasing.

It’s like going on a diet we know we really need to go on. Once we stop making excuses why we can’t do so at this time and actually deal with it, going on a diet is never easy or pleasant no matter what all those ads tells us about how wonderful their menu is and how easy it is to follow. A diet is a diet and it takes work and it means we cannot eat anything and everything we want. That is not pleasant and it is not easy and is why we continue to make excuses.

The same is true for any part of our lives that needs reform. We all have a need. No exceptions because no one of us is perfect. We all have parts of our lives that need tending to and know that in tending to them it will take work, hard work, and maybe even a little sacrifice. We also know that we can come up with at least a twelve reasons why we cannot do so at this time. Reasons are a dime a dozen as they say.

The question remains, and we need to be honest, perhaps brutally honest: what part of our life is holding us back from being a better person, a healthier person, a more spiritual person and for which we are and have been making excuses for not attending to? The next question: are we going to continue to make excuses or will we finally do something?

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

Many years ago I heard a television preacher defending his lavish lifestyle – expensive cars, mansion home, extravagant vacations, expensive suits and haircuts – denying scripture’s claim that money is the root of all evil, by asserting that the lack of money is. He was right back then and he would be right today, perhaps even more so today. Money is not the root of all evil. Poverty is.

Poverty is the reason why people resort to crime, to revolt, to all sorts of evil. When you have nothing else left to lose, you strike out to get something that those in power have, that those who have have and you do not have. And you do not have even the basics of life because those in power either do not care that you do not or have obtained what they have at your expense.

Why is there so much poverty all around the world and even in this country? It’s not because those in poverty do not want to work. It is because there are no jobs for them to have and because those in power do not care to provide those jobs. Even worse, they do not seem to care that they do not care. They allow themselves to be oblivious to the needs of others so that they can accumulate more of their wants.

What is even worse is that those who make the laws exempt themselves from the burdens they pass on to their constituents. A double standard here? Of course. Ask them to defend their position and they blame those who had been in power for what has taken place. Ask them to right those wrongs and they say that they are working on it. But we all know they will do nothing. And the haves will continue to have and the have nots will continue to struggle and struggle and struggle. Until.

Until, as that famous line in the movie Network has it, they shout “I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore!” That is when marches and revolutions and uprising start to take place. Marches and protests are only the tip of the iceberg. People in poverty, people who feel left out, stay calm only for a while until they finally “won’t take it anymore.” Then look out! It won’t be a pretty sight.

But why do we as a society allow poverty to even exist when we have all the resources to eliminate it? Why do people and leaders all around the world who have more than enough not do all we and they can do to help those who do not even have enough to meet their daily needs? Why do we have to wait until uprisings take place before we start to do something to right the wrongs, the injustices being done?

To say that there are no easy answers is simply to make excuses for not doing anything. Those in power are the reason why those who are in need are in need. But unless those in power hear the voices of those of us who care about taking care of the needs of the needy, they will continue to make excuses for doing little or nothing, and ignore the problem.

The question is: what can I do? What will I do? Or will I continue to sit on my hands, bemoan the issue and wait until the uprising because it will come? 

A LESSON IN HUMILITY

It is, I suspect, a truth of history that each succeeding generation considers itself superior to all the previous ones. If asked, each new generation would assert it is the best, the brightest, the wisest. If that is not enough self-praise, find any laudatory adjective, make it superlative, and that is who we are. And, the truth is each generation would be correct.

Learning from the past certainly is not always a waste of time even given how prone we are to repeat the mistakes of generations past. History, unfortunately, repeats itself, and not just once or twice. Yet, and thankfully, as foolish as we often are, we do learn. We do become wiser and brighter and better precisely because we have learned something from our past, from our ancestors.

On occasion we may be fortuitously placed in a situation where we are given pause and reason to reconsider the notion of superiority. Perhaps, as we look around and listen, we might conclude there have been generations that were brighter and wiser than we are today, at least in some areas of knowledge and expertise. Perhaps. If this were so, would it be a blow to our ego? Would it be a lesson in humility? I think so. In fact I know so, and from experience.

Years ago Arlena and I spent two weeks in Italy. We found ourselves immersed in a history over 2500 years old. We walked through buildings almost 2000 years old. When I asked a retired engineer who was on the tour with us, a man who helped build interstate highways, why we cannot make cement today like the cement the Romans used in erecting the Coliseum, he said that we could, but we have to use reinforcing bars. Oh!

Think about it. They built that edifice in seven years and it’s still standing despite the ravages of time, pollution and looters. We take two years to build modern coliseums and then tear them down thirty years later because they are falling apart at the seams – bad cement, I suppose.

We walked through ancient cathedrals whose massive domes are held up by only God knows how. Our brightest structural engineers are still trying to figure out how they did it in those darker ages. Even our best and most sophisticated computers can’t figure it out! We walked streets over a thousand years old. Our modern streets fall apart in decades. Our tour guides inundated us with facts. It quickly because a case of information overload yet, all the while there was a continual sense of “Wow! Maybe we’re not as wise and as bright as we think we are.”

It is easy for any generation to become arrogant. Each, no doubt has, as history will surely attest. The same is true for us as individuals, as we could attest if our pride would allow. All we need do is delve into our ancestry and see for ourselves. The past, no matter where we encounter it, will always bring us up short if we are willing to look, listen and learn. If we are not, if we think we are the best and the brightest, if we refuse to humbly acknowledge that parts of the past may be better than the best of the present, well, it is our loss, and a sad loss at that.

WHY WE ARE SO RESTLESS

So many of can’t seem to sit still. We have to be on the move. We’re looking for something but can’t seem to put our finger on just exactly what it is that we are looking for. Then, even if we think we have found it, we soon discover that that really wasn’t what we had in mind. The reason for that is that we really didn’t know what we had in mind. We simply thought that there was something missing in our lives and we had to go and search for it until we found it.

There seems to be an eternal restlessness in us. It’s as if we are searching for that biblical Garden of Eden where we will have all that we think we need or desire and then will be at peace with the world and, most importantly, with ourselves. And so we are restless. St. Augustine says that our hearts are restless until they rest in God, meaning, on the one hand, resting in eternity with God.

However, it is what is on the other hand that we seem to miss in our search for what it is that we think we are missing in this life, in the here and now. We are to be at rest, if you will, in this life and not just in the life to come, to be at rest with our God now and not until we are with God eternally. So how do we find this rest? How do we find peace of mind and heart now?

Barbara Brown Taylor in her wonderful book An Altar in the World finds, I think, an answer to our restlessness. She writes:  “All we lack is a willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.” We already have all we need because we do not need much. We want much but we do not need much. And it is this desire to fill our wants that causes so much restlessness in our daily lives.

We know that, of course. Deep down inside the depths of our heart and soul we know we have all we need. So why is it that we can’t convince our heads of what is in our hearts? Why can’t we understand that where we are right now is where we should be right now? For as long as we think we should be somewhere else, wherever that somewhere else is and whatever it consists in, we will be restless.

That does not mean that we like where we are at the moment. There are many moments in our lives that last longer than a moment, times when we are in pain, when we are suffering from whatever. What it does mean is that we have to live in those moments, deal with what life has brought us, so that we can move on. We have to “consent to be where we are” now so that we can move on to where we need to be tomorrow.

One day at a time: that is how God asks us to live this life. We will deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes. As for today, we have all we need in order to get through this day. That is God’s promise to us. No need to be restless. Be at peace.