War is Pooh
In early 2020 (about a month before the world shut down), I attended a prayer service put on by a bunch of local Portland faith leaders, centered around praying against war in Iran - something that seemed like an imminent possibility at the time.
I wasn't asked to assist or anything. I found out about it through the grapevine and felt like I should be there.
Because I wasn't a part of the event, and because I didn't expect news crews to cover the prayer service, I didn't think about my wardrobe.
I threw on my Winnie the Pooh zip-up hoodie and drove across town.
Each of the news crews were there - KGW, KOIN 6, KATU, KPTV - all of them.
Near the end of the service, one of the pastors went rogue and invited every pastor in the sanctuary to the stage to pray together in solidarity.
Every faith leader rose and walked to the front,
all of them dressed appropriately for the occasion.
All except the goober in the Winnie the Pooh hoodie.
I tried to hide in the back but there was no room.
Somewhere, if you Google hard enough, is a picture of me among dozens of pastors praying on a beautiful stage in a beautiful sanctuary,
wildly inappropriately dressed for the occasion.
Super embarrassing.
The war didn't happen.
Not in January 2020.
You might say that the prayers worked.
At least, you might have said that before last week.
As of last week, the war did happen.
People have died. People are still dying.
Hundreds. Possibly thousands.
Our prayers didn't stop it.
It's happening.
A lot of times when I share about what it's like to be a pastor, there's more than a few people who get uncomfortable.
Not about the work of being a pastor. That doesn't usually get much pushback.
It's the stuff that goes on in my head and heart that bothers a lot of people.
Part of being a pastor is praying for people to get better - heal from sickness, heal from their addictions, make better choices, etc.
Much of the time, those prayers appear to fail.
As one of my church people told me after losing a loved one who we'd been praying for, “God said no.”
Being a pastor is heartbreaking.
When we pray repeatedly for our whole damn lives for the violence to end,
for swords to be beaten into plowshares,
for cheeks to be turned instead of fists thrown,
and to repeatedly watch bullies and warmongers press buttons and sign documents signaling people to bomb schools and offices and apartment buildings and to take the lives of innocent people,
year after year,
decade after freaking decade,
it starts to feel pretty hopeless a lot of the time.
Do I still believe there's a good God who's working to bring peace in this world? I do.
Currently, yes I do.
But it's really, really tough a lot of the time.
The super-Christian teenage version of me from 30 years ago would tell the current me that I lack faith.
Man, that guy was so annoying.
I have developed an idea that God often doesn’t intervene directly when we could fix the problem. And that God often answers prayer by directing us to be the ones to intervene. God has provided a clear path to peace and we refuse to follow it. It’s hardly fair to blame God when it doesn’t work out.
I’ve been studying Jeremiah. The story of the fall of Jerusalem is so dang tragic because God clearly tells the people what they need to do to preserve the city and temple and stay in the land and and prosper, but the repeatedly choose to do the opposite and the results are what God told them they would be. It’s hard not to draw some parallels.