Having a Beer with Jesus

    OK.  Made you look!

     When I was part of a clergy group taking a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at NC Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem a number of years ago, we were told of a pastor who had been seeing a doctor for a stubborn stomach ailment.

    Eventually, the doctor suggested that the pastor try a daily glass of wine to help his stomach.  To which the pastor is reported to have said:  "I will not.  I'm a tee-total-er.  Alcohol has never touched my lips and it will never touch my lips." 

   The doctor replied, "I'm not a particularly religious man, but didn't Jesus turn water into wine at a wedding once?"

    "Yeah, but I sure would've thought more of him, if he hadn't done that!"

    I've cut my theological teeth in the South.  I've being raised in the faith in relatively small church settings, and I've served a series of rural churches as a United Methodist Pastor for a little more than two decades in the heart of the Bible Belt, and so I'm well aware that the suggestion Jesus might not be adverse to sitting down to a cold one, would be fairly unpopular in my neck of the woods.

    But before you judge too quickly, you may recall that religious leaders once chastised Jesus for eating and drinking too much, and often complained that he spent too much time in table fellowship with all sorts of un-religious folk.

    I've thought a good bit about the state of the church of late, thinking about the changing landscape of Christianity in America, about the decline of the institutional church, and the new expressions of Christianity that are being birthed and cultivated all around us.  Tales of "Emerging" Christian communities and new monastic communions are reminders that, even as old wineskins have run their course, new wineskins are being formed and shaped, making room for the growing "holy fermentation"* being birthed by the Spirit of God.

     Believe it or not, I've heard of church services that are meeting in pubs, and on a recent trip to the Washington D.C. area, I learned of a Bible Study that was meeting in a local bar.  I'm pretty sure this ain't happening in Rowan County!     

    As I've tried to prayerfully think about how best to think about what it means for me, an ordained clergy entrenched in a large church denomination, with a long established hierarchy, discipline and polity, trying to be relevant in our ever-changing world while struggling beneath the burden of clergy health and pension benefits, it has drawn me back once again to what I believe to be true about the person and work of Jesus.

    And whenever I take the time to reflect on the life he lived, I must consider the life I believe I am called to live, if indeed the spirit of Jesus lives in me. 

    John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, once struggled with leaving the ornate sanctuaries of the Church of England and the acceptable practice of formal pulpit-preaching to take the gospel message to the masses out in the fields and coal mines.  After some inner struggle he finally agreed to become more "vile" in his words, and forgo formality in favor of the mandate of  the mission of Christ.  John Wesley had left the building!

    For what it's worth, I think Jesus is exactly the kind of Messiah who wouldn't bat an eye at sipping a Sam Adams while making a friend at the bar. I think he would go to the places where people live, to the places where people laugh and cry, to the places where people ask real questions and long for honest answers, not Christian clichés.

    I think he would listen, really listen.  He would love, really love.  He wouldn't be as religious as he would be real .  In fact, that was one of the reasons he kept running afoul with the religious authorities of his day, he just wasn't religious enough!

     He would  be authentic, genuine, whole, human. He would love without condition.  He would understand.  He would forgive.  And sitting across the table from him, we would find ourselves wanting to spend more time with him.  And the more time we spent with him, the more we would want to become more like him!

    I'm still thinking about what all this means for me, and for my church.  I'm still thinking about the places I usually go and the people I normally meet, as well as the places I've steered clear of and the people I've avoided.  And the more I think about these kinds of things, the more I wonder if Jesus is pleased with me...or not.

    I close with a toast -

    May we follow Jesus today, looking for him in faces familiar and unfamiliar.  May we risk being  more real than religious, and may we love with a love that can change the world!

   Bottoms up!


Grace and Peace!

  Pastor Randy


* A term used by Dr. Elaine Heath at Annual Conference this past June.