Free and Cheap

A couple of weeks ago my senior minister made a comment in her sermon about grace being free but not cheap. For those theology students out there, you may recall this is not a new idea and was popularized by Bonhoeffer.

It got me thinking some about the difference in free and cheap, which I open to the larger wiser community.

This is where I have been musing...

Cheap things are cheap on both sides of the relationship.  Things are cheap to make and thus become cheap to sell.  Something that is "cheaply made" is "cheaply sold" and has little value to both the producer and the consumer.  Cheap costs little for both parties.

Free things, however, cost a great deal to the provider and cost nothing to the recipient.  For instance, hospitality is free.  It costs a great deal for those who are providing the meal, the place, the entertainment, the conversation, the drink and on and on.  But it is free for those who receive this hospitality.  Make no mistake, hospitality is not cheap - but it is free.

Likewise, in the church we are called to share all things free.

But make no mistake free is not cheap.

Perhaps this is why the Church is in decline?  We have made what is free cheap and thus it costs little to everyone involved.

How can we as a Church reclaim the idea of a free that costs and discard the idea of cheap?

Shifting from stones to boomerangs

Having a 3 year old results in being invited to other children's birthday parties.  After attending many of these recently, it has become apparent that parents of young kids do not know how to engage in conversations with other parents of young children.  Here is the scene:

The kids are playing in some communal play area. Bounce houses are common.  The adults stand around the communal play area most with a beverage while some are dealing with their kid who is "shy" (Jude is usually the shy type in this setting).  Small talk consists of conversations from parents to their children to ensure they are not hurting some other kid.  Other than that, most adults do not seem to want to or know how to engage in conversation with other adults.  Going to the bathroom or getting something to eat or drink are common activities as a way to get a break from these socially silent adult groupings.  

It is painful at times.  

Estee and I are people who will ask others questions about who they are and what they do and what their interests are.  This skill set, once thought as being natural to all human adults and as common as the skill set of shoe lace tying, is now a bit of an anomaly in these settings.  

I had a 15 minute "conversation" with a guy who sold name tags for a living.  When I say conversation I really just mean I am asking questions and the man replies with short terse responses.  One would think he did not want to talk but he never got up to leave in the silent times.  He just sat their telling me about the fantastic world of name tagging in tweet-like responses to questions.  

It has been described to me that great conversation is like playing tennis.  Someone serves, another returns it, then there is a back and fort that ensues.  Only to reach a "point" then another serve is given.  However, what is happening is that it is only one person doing the serving in these birthday conversations, and my shoulder hurts.  Ultimately, these "conversations" are not fun, not memorable and energy draining.  

And we perpetuate these conversations in Church.

Each Sunday morning worship, there is a moment in which everyone is invited to stand and greet those around you. As a friendly church, we all stand and share kind words and introduce ourselves to guests in our midst. However most of the time that moment feels like we are throwing out phrases which may or may not “land” on the minds of our neighbors.  

“Hello I’m Jason, nice to meet you.” That is the end of my greeting to you. I threw the greeting our there, and it is now your job to remember it, because I threw it to you. Which explains why we feel guilty when we cannot remember the name of a person we have “known” for years; they already threw us their name, and like a stone being tossed in a lake, we cannot ask them to re-throw the stone!

Boomerang and Conversation

Instead of throwing stones as a greeting, what if we threw boomerangs? What if we threw things that came back to us later? For instance, a boomerang greeting might be, ‘Hello I’m Jason and I love the music in worship, at the end of worship I would be curious to know what you found uplifting.” 

A boomerang is thrown and will come back to you both after worship so we can develop further conversation with this person. Asking open ended questions during greeting time allows us to shift from stone to boomerang throwing. Boomerang comments allow for future relationship growth, and let’s face it boomerangs are much more interesting than stones.

Back in 2009 I had a post that explored the idea that while Jesus learned the trade of carpentry, he did not use many carpentry metaphors when talking about the kingdom of God.  

After further reflection on this idea more thoughts have been stewing in my brain.  

Not only did Jesus not use much carpentry language he also did not use much fishing language to talk about the kingdom of God.  It is interesting to me that Jesus did not use much insider language with his parables.  

Jesus used a lot of farming metaphors, wedding metaphors and even the occasional sheep metaphor.  These are the images that the followers of Jesus, the crowd that surrounded Jesus, could understand because it was their world - their images.  

I can understand how the disciples never seemed to "get it" even though they were with Jesus all the time.  

He was using language that was rooted in the life experience of the non-believer and the crowd.  He did not spend much time trying to appease or create insider language with just himself and the twelve.  

Is this not a way to consider the mission of the church?  

Too often we gather on Sunday morning expecting the same things that we who attend, understand and "get". We use insider language and even are fearful to change things because we might "upset" the most faithful members.  So we continue to do what we do in order that those who are in the church can be comforted and those who are not in the church can continue to feel like church is, at best, weird.  

What would it look like to take a model that we might find in the way of Jesus?  What if we created a church that was so concerned about connecting with those outside the church that those in the church would even be willing to "not get it" like the twelve disciples.  

Do you get or understand Jesus, or are you like the disciples and continually scratch your head wondering what the heck this Jesus guy is teaching and saying?  

What a Quaker, Jersey Shore, and Lord of the Rings have in common

The other day I heard a quote from a Quaker, last name Trueblood, that was shared in a sermon by Bishop Lowey on June 7th.  I cannot recall the quote directly but it went something like this:

The nature of the Church is fellowship, that we can agree upon.  It is the nature of that fellowship that is vital and up for discussion.

This is a great way to talk about what I have been talking about in my local setting for years now.  It is not that I am not against having church so that we can have a "church family" for whom will bring us meals when we are sick or have social time with on the weekends.  I am not against that sort of fellowship at all, I just wonder if that is the fellowship of the Church that we ought to be working toward?

I hear many people talk about their church fellowship like one might think of the Brady Bunch, the Odd Couple or even the Jersey Shore.  That is a group of people from different backgrounds coming together to try to live together.  They have their disagreements and their good times, but ultimately they are just trying to survive and navigate life's ups and downs.

Frankly, I am not that interested in a Brady/Odd/Jersey fellowship.  From my perspective, these fellowships serve a function that is very inwardly focused.  That is these fellowships are interested in what makes them feel good and what makes them happy.  I am not knocking this fellowship type at all, I just am not interested in it. I have areas in my life where I am self centered and seek to fulfill my own happiness as well, but I do not think the Church should be that place.

The Brady/Odd/Jersey fellowship seems to stand in contrast to the fellowship that I feel the Church is called to do and be.  One might think of this form of fellowship of The Lord of the Ring.  This "fellowship" had a mission and a greater purpose they all worked toward.  Some were not so great at it.  They were diverse (an elf AND a dwarf!) and they got along as best as they could.  There are some relationships there were tighter than others (Sam and Frodo seemed close but not as close as Pip and Merry).  Some died.  Some lived.  Some did not see each other for long stretches of time.  There was happy times and not happy times, but they all moved in one accord.  They had purpose and meaning greater than themselves.

And while I do not agree that the myth of redemptive violence that is found in the LotR is in line with the nature of the Church, I do believe that LotR better understands the fellowship of the Church that Trueblood was talking about.