$pectacle, $ponsorship and $port

I have this wonderful friend named Sarah who is volunteering at the Olympics. She’s blogging about the experience, and she’s delightful. In fact, if you click on “delightful” in the last sentence it will take you to her blog.

I honestly think it's great that she’s volunteering and having a good time, but, as I said in a comment to her, this whole business of the Olympics brings out the Grinch in me. And, let’s be honest, the modern Olympics is, to say the least, a business. It’s not a benevolent society, nor a humanitarian organization. It’s not even a “movement” as it likes to style itself, but the largest, least accountable, multinational corporation in the world. At one time it may have been about sports and athletes, but now those things are, at best, secondary. The Olympic Corporation has one central purpose; to make tons of money by providing the world’s biggest and best advertising venue (billions of ears and eyes) for corporate sponsors. Athletes, national pride, and heart-warming stories of little people surmounting the insurmountable are the ear and eye candy, but the point of it all is a gazillion bucks.

As you might expect, I am sympathetic to much of the protest that’s taking place. But even that becomes part of the spectacle eye-candy that makes the whole thing work. And I can’t help wondering how many of the participants have a Visa card in their wallet or Petro-Can gas in their tank. How many drive a GM vehicle, have a GE toaster, or will stop at McDonald’s for a Coke on the way home. -- All corporate sponsors of the 2010 Olympic Games.

Isn’t it wonderful to live in a country where you are free to protest? Of course it is, because protest is the pressure valve that keeps the whole thing from blowing up in our faces. But, in a liberal democracy like Canada, it’s more than that. It’s a symbiotic relationship, like the rhino and the tick-bird. The rhino may imagine she’s benevolent, and the tick-bird may imagine he’s courageous, but the truth is they simply have "an arrangement".

And this is where I find Jesus’ approach so interesting. He saw Herod’s palace and Solomon’s temple for what they were; boondoggles of one kind and another. But he never wasted a lot of time and energy serving or attacking either. He expressed his amazement and his displeasure, and reminded his disciples that time will dismantle all of it, “...not a stone will be left upon a stone” (Mark 13:2). And then he turned back to serve the little people who were “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34).

So, as the torch flickers and dies in a couple of weeks, let us give praise, not as the assembled throng, but as the psalmist gave praise:

...to him who alone does great wonders,

His love endures forever. Psalm 136:4

What now? What next?

Well, we’re already a third of the way through February, which is admittedly a short month, and I haven’t posted anything since early January. I guess I have the winter blahs. This happens every year, but it always takes me by surprise. Too many days of minus thirty – not so much the cold as the being stuck inside – and recovering from too much eating and partying over Christmas, always leads to this. I’m also out of work right now and, in my experience, the more I have to do, the more time I have to do it. As Job said, “My days fly by like a weaver’s shuttle.” (Cool image.) But life has its rhythms, and I can feel the rhythm changing even as I write.

When I began this “blog thing” I said I’d share my personal story as I went along. I thought I would, but I really haven’t. And why I haven’t isn’t quite clear to me. It’s personal, of course, but I don’t think I’m overly concerned about that. It involves the personal lives of others, but I’m probably not as concerned as I should be about that. The real reason, I suspect, is that I can’t believe anyone would find my life interesting. Not that I think it’s boring; it just feels like one of those stories you start to tell and then realize you really had to be there. Anyway, over the next little while I think I’ll share, a bit more intentionally, what’s happening with me. And we’ll just see how it goes.

As I said, I’m out of work right now. I’ve been a pastor for 32 years. In fact, last Sunday was my 32^nd anniversary, and I didn’t even think of it till today. Before I was a pastor I was a teacher, and before that, from the time I was 16, I always had some sort of job and/or went to school. As with most people my life has been about work and school, so it’s strange to have no job. It’s nice – I’ve needed a vacation for a while – but it’s not exactly a vacation when you don’t know when it will end or what you’ll be doing then.

And, until you’re out of work, you don’t realize how often someone asks you what you do for a living. It’s not embarrassing, or anything like that, it’s just more complicated than small talk’s supposed to be. I’m out of work is the simple truth, but to a lot of people it seems to be a cry for help. It’s amazing, in a world where so few people go to church, how many people have a brother-in-law who attends a church that’s looking for a pastor. But, I’m a pastor, leads to, What church?, and then to, I’m between churches right now, and then to the brother-in-law. It’s one of those Chinese puzzles where, whatever you do, you always end up in the same place.

The real complication I’m facing right now, however, is that I’m not ready to retire but I can’t see myself pastoring, at least in the traditional way, anymore. As I shared with some pastors a few weeks ago, I feel like a train that’s got lots of steam left, but has run out of track. I still love Jesus and the work of teaching and spiritual guidance. I love pastoral ministry. But I can’t do the church thing, at least the way most churches are doing it, anymore. I don’t think it works or can work. I don’t think it’s really worked for a hundred years, if it ever did. And I think that most of what happens in church has nothing whatever to do with Jesus, or with anything he ever intended us to do or be.