Introducing #PeddlingPreacher Channel
I am a big fan of the desert mothers and fathers of the early church. They are not perfect but they do offer up a type of wisdom for us today that I believe worth our time. The problem is that these stories are not always accessible. Since September 27, 2022 I have been offering these stories on the Instagram/Facebook platforms, called "Peddling Preacher”
Here are the most recent postings of these little videos:
Genesis of #PeddlingPreacher
Since 2014 I have been ensnared by the stories and "sayings" of the desert mothers and fathers (ammas and abbas). For the past few years I have been in a doctoral program that is exploring a model of pastoral leadership inspired by these abbas/ammas. I think that these different stories or "sayings" are remarkable and are very practical to our spiritual formation. For the past couple of years, I have thought it might be fun to have a podcast where I just tell a "saying" and then unpack it so it could be understood. Each episode would have been less than 10 minutes. However, I don't have the skill set to create a podcast at regular intervals and I never could find a partner who would join me on a podcast.
In August 2021 I was able to purchase an ebike and I was riding it to my son's cross country meet. When I arrived to the meet, my father in law jokingly called me the "pedaling preacher". It was funny and I started to share that joke with others.
After about a year of having the ebike and riding to work and around town, I cannot recall where the idea came from that I should make videos as the "pedaling preacher" and put them online. I thought that it was a silly idea because I could not think of any content that would be worth sharing. Then the sayings came to mind and I said if I were to make videos it would just be me telling those stories. I never did anything after that.
Then one day, Rev. Lauren Christenberry (an associate on staff at Keller) said, "If you are not going to create that social media account as the pedaling preacher, I will." I thought she was joking.
Two weeks later, I came into the office and Lauren said, "I did it. You are the "peddling preacher" on Instagram. So now you have no excuses."
When I logged in the first time to the Instagram account I messed it all up and Lauren had to fix it the next day. It was after it was all fixed that I realized that the account was set up as "peddling preacher" not "pedaling preaching". This was not a big deal but I chose not to change it because I had such a hard time on day one. So the idea is that I am a “UMC preacher gearing up to peddle stories of Jesus while pedaling an E bike."
Remember that time Jesus said to hate your parents?
Do you remember that time Jesus said to hate your parents? Luke 14: 25-27 reads:
25 Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Sometimes folks don’t believe that Jesus said this in the Gospels. It seems harsh at best and a violation of the “honor your father and mother” commandment at worst. How could Jesus ask any potential disciple to hate his parents, spouse, family and self?
I am unsure that Jesus is talking about one should hate a specific person so much as Jesus is asking the disciple to hate a system. The ruling family system of Jesus’ day was one called “paterfamilias”. In this system, the oldest living male was the absolute ruler over the family. He could legally exercise autocratic authority over his household. Jesus is demanding that would be disciples hate the “father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life” that affirmed, supported and promoted the paterfamilias system.
Hating a system of abuse, control and enslavement is very much a Jesus thing.
However, notice that Jesus goes on. He says in the next verses:
28For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 31Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.
In these two little parables, Jesus suggests that the mature disciple does not just “hate” a broken system. A mature disciple considers alternative ways of being before they embark on hating the broken system. You can hate what your parents make you for dinner, but unless you are willing to offer alternatives and help cook, then hating the meal is nothing but a tantrum.
And the only thing tantrums are capable of doing are destroying. I think the United States has bore witness to when the tantrums on the extremes act out: denial of reality, conformity culture, rejection of undesired outcomes, silencing of critique and the elevation of nihilism.
Hate the unhealthy, autocratic and enslaving systems. It is easy to tear those systems down. If we want to help usher in the Kingdom of God we have to see the conversion of hearts not just the application of rules. We cannot just decree a new reality with force without also converting the hearts of others. It is insufficient to tear down a tower without considering what will be built in it’s place. It is harmful to declare war on another unless you are able to convert the other to your cause.
The United Methodist Church has a splinter church called the Global Methodist Church that is doing a fine job at tearing down the UMC. At the same time, the GMC is doing a fine job at showing others what they want to build in place of the UMC. The UMC has to get clear on the reality that many people believe the UMC is broken, unhealthy or toxic and they want to tear it all down. And until the leaders in the UMC (myself included) are able to paint a picture of a new reality for the future of the UMC, there will be more stones cast our way.
We have got to be more direct with our ability to articulate how God’s vision for the UMC is not only faithful but vibrant and healthy. We cannot continue to have the generic messages that God loves you or that you are forgiven. These are important messages, but they cannot be the only messages. We have to be able to address what the Bible says vs. what the fundamentalists of different churches say the Bible says. We have to show in word and deed how critical Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are to the world and individual lives.
We have to offer alternatives and an imagined reality.
Think Nineveh is the Bad Guy? God's Trying To Convert Jonah.
The people who know this story of Jonah understand that Jonah is called to Nineveh, that “great city”. Jonah does not want to go to that city and he runs only to end up being spit up on the shores of Nineveh. However, I think this is a misreading the story.
God is not trying to convert Nineveh.
God is trying to convert Jonah. And for us reading the story, God is trying to convert the reader.
When Jonah arrives to the city, he walks one day into it and tells the people God is going to destroy the city. Upon hearing this message the people repent. The king hears about the people repenting then the king repents and makes a city wide declaration. It is as thought the people of Nineveh had already heard about this God Jonah is talking about and the people in the city repent right away. Jonah does not have to convince people about this God at all, just one day’s worth of work and the people get the message.
The people of God in the Hebrew bible and the followers of Jesus did not even get this message that quickly.
Then after the city repents, Jonah could have gone back home as the greatest evangelist of all time. This could have been the most effective and remarkable sermon of all time by getting the entire city of Nineveh - including the King - to repent. Instead of celebrating that all of these people repent and turn toward the very God Jonah says he follows, Jonah gets mad.
The name Jonah means ‘dove’. Among the many different thoughts on what this means, one of the thoughts is that Jonah knew the Bible so well that when he prayed he “cooed” like a dove.
He knew the Bible but he did not know God. Perhaps Jonah was never really following God to begin with.
Today, many of us know the Bible. We are convinced that we know what is a sin and who the bad guys are. We are confident that we are already converted to God. We are convinced that our sin is not as bad as the other person’s sin and that our repenting is somehow more complete than the one we think is not repenting. We are convinced that we have a pure soul.
So did Jonah.
And yet, the book of Jonah ends with a question - is it right for Jonah to be angry that destruction did not come upon the very people who repented and turned their heart? It has been said that if you look up on the hill you can still see Jonah sitting there. Sulking in his distain of the other. Convinced that he knows the Bible and he knows that he is right.
So many of us in the Christian tradition are like Jonah. We think that God is using us to convert others, when in fact God is using the other (the evil and insincere sinner) to convert us. If I leave the church because there is a sinner in the church and that I only will attend the church if all the sinners repent and have as pure of a soul as me, then I might as well join Jonah on that hill.
In his Church of one pure, angry and bitter soul.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.