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Detroit Tiger pitcher, Armando Galarraga, had every right to call for Jim Joyce’s head on a platter.  Joyce, the first plate umpire, blew the call on what would have been the final out of a perfect game.

After the game, Galarraga expressed his respect for Joyce as a first-rate umpire and let him off the hook with a simple and poignant, “Nobody’s perfect.”  Kind words from a man who had just pitched a perfect game ruined by an imperfect call.
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Consider, young pastor, the word “reformation.”  We inherited one.   For 500 years, it’s been the ground beneath our feet.  Assumed perspectives that shape the pastoral landscape.  But the theological-pastoral ground beneath our feet isn’t a brass dance floor built on reinforced concrete anchored in unmovable moorings   It’s more like, well,  the ground beneath our feet: a set of plates that shift in response to subterranean forces.  Like the bones of a newborn’s skull, subject to, admitting of, allowing for reformation as needed.
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Been studying the sibling relationships in Genesis lately–Cain & Abel, Issac & Ishmael, Jacob & Esau, Jospeph & his brothers, all of ‘em wracked with rivalry.  And the women in Genesis are no better, like Sarah & Hagar, Rachel & Leah.  In fact, the twelve tribes were born in a riot of jealousy among and between Jacobs wives. The Bible is trying to tell us something here.  Envy, rivalry between brothers-sisters-peers is running riot in the human condition.  And God seems to inflame it with his willingness to prefer, to favor, to choose.
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Some in my faith community can get a little testy when Charles Darwin’s name comes up.  So when Carl Safina, my friend the atheist and ocean conservationist, told me that Jesus and Darwin were his two heroes, I decided it was time to read Darwin’s Origin of Species for myself. After all, I’ve often challenged those who have any prickly opinions about Christianity to temper said opinions by reading the gospels.  Much can be learned by going to the source documents.
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Doesn’t work the righteousness of God.  Said James, the brother of Jesus.  The brother of Jesus: a man who grew up with Jesus as his brother.  Imagine growing up with Jesus as your brother.   Would it be easy?  Your mother hid secrets in her heart about her firstborn son, your elder brother. He stays behind in the temple because he believes it to be his father’s house and sends the family into a worried frenzy.  In Mark’s gospel the brothers of Jesus seek to do an intervention, thinking he’d gone mad.  In John’s gospel one of the brothers of Jesus sarcastically urges him to go to Jerusalem where all the would-be prophets make a name for themselves.   So perhaps by personal experience James understood that the anger of man doesn’t work the righteousness of God.   Do we?
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A strange thing happened to me in the theater last night once the trailers were finished and the feature film, Inglorious Basterds, began.  I felt a wave of love wash over me.  I felt connected to everyone in the theater as though I knew and loved and was loved by everyone there.  Like Christmas morning, opening the stockings with the family.  It was intense.  I felt like grinning from ear to ear.  I had no idea where this came from or what it was for.  It seemed simultaneously odd and the most normal thing in the world to feel.  Why don’t we always feel this way toward each other, toward other human beings, simply because we are fellow beings, fellow human beings?
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My tribe on the Christian landscape, Vineyard, came to be through poetry.  A group of burned out believers gathered in a living room week after week to sing love songs to Jesus.  One of the early songs of those early days was titled, “More Love, More Power.”  It was  prophetic, because what the world needs now, and what the church has too little of, is love sweet love.
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Emotional intelligence matters when it comes to spreading the gospel.  Jesus had it.  When he saw the crowds he felt compassion for them because they were harassed and downtrodden, like sheep without a shepherd.  He had the emotional intelligence to look past all the things that might have annoyed or angered him about the crowds, and saw them instead in a sympathetic, yes, empathetic, light. The culture war approach to Christianity, so prevalent in the church today, ruins our emotional intelligence and understandably makes the crowds fearful of the church–no wonder they are staying away in droves.  No wonder the growingest sector of religious affiliation is “nones” and I don’t mean “nuns.”
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You may have noticed I’ve taken a bit of a blogging break.  Vacation, then back to the post vacation catch up, finishing up a new manuscript, Mystically Wired.   Other things to do, in other words.  But I write these things fast.  So being busy isn’t the reason for the pause in the action.  I needed a pause.  Maybe you needed a pause from me.  At any rate, somethbing’s settled at least for a while.  I’ve sworn off commentary, even mention of the E-word:  Evan_el_cal, my tribe, my starting point on the Christian landscape. My brother-in-law Bill helped me to see it was time.  So I had to give it a rest, like when you reboot your modem–let it rest for 30 seconds, let the juice run out of the thing,  then re-start.
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Thanks I needed that break.  Vacation did me a world of good as well as a mission trip to Costa Rica with our youth group.  Costa Rica, where the average income is $250 per month.  A week there convinced me of something: I’m greedy.

The greedy are nailed throughout the Bible as sinners of a serious variety.  The prophets denounce the greedy.   Paul has more than a warning or two.  The greedy are among those who shouldn’t presume on entrance to the kingdom. Jesus didn’t make it easy for the greedy to follow without leaving much of their stuff behind.
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