What happens when people have too much money? We find ways to spend it either indulging our fantasies or pathologies, or we use it to make more money. Both ways, the money becomes so important to us and our self-understanding that we find ourselves bound (in bondage) to the money – to what it represents for us. The only way I can think of to avoid this conundrum, if we have too much, is to invest it in other people – people who need money and who also are motivated to use it to better themselves and their world.

Fundamental and competing philosophies are at play about how we get along with others. One philosophy says that if each person would keep the area in front of his/her own house clean, then all the world would be clean. If every person would ensure that s/he made enough income and limited expenses so that no one would do without, then the world would be a much more secure and safe place.

It is for each person to decide how we will view our relationship with money. There is a great deal at stake and we must choose wisely.

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

Most of the anxiety I feel about money is not related to my immediate survival. Worries about surviving due to finances are certainly more present than they have often been in my life, but the concerns that haunt the wee hours of sleepless mornings, though they seem to tag onto money, the truth is they live elsewhere. Money is the currency for determining success and shame, value and blame. It is the measure of our value as persons and the degree to which we have repaid our parents and all those others who have invested in our lives – or wasted their investments.

Yet Jesus told people time and again that these relationships to money are unhealthy. They are destructive both for those with much and for those in need. Money has been, and remains, an idol that keeps taking the place of the true value of life. “Consider the flowers and the birds, how God clothes and beautifies them. Are we not far more valuable to God?” (Matt. 6: 28-9, loosely translated)

Money is a powerful tool with a deep shadow side. In relationship with money, we can measure our faith journey. We need money to survive. The more we feel the need for money, the stronger its draw on our lives, the more dangerous it is for us and the more precarious is our path.

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

Many churches these days are struggling financially. In fact, it’s hard to find a church that isn’t worried about its finances. But the problem isn’t money. That’s a symptom of the problem. Yes, it’s good to work on ways of increasing funding and perhaps lowering expenditures, but money isn’t the problem.

Pastor Judson Edwards, in his book The Leadership Labyrinth, says that churches need to respond to their pains and problems by taking risks and having adventures. In other words, many of our problems as churches are rooted in, or at least exacerbated by, our reluctance to live our dreams and our passions. The greatest risk is usually not to take the risk, failure to live our lives according to our deepest truth. The best chance we have to live well is to live boldly.

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

It’s the intersection of mystery and practicality. I’m inspired by a belief that most of life is mystery and mystical – and that I am called by and focused toward cooperating with forces I only begin to touch. I’m also feeling that my efforts just to accomplish something tangible begin to feel either overwhelming or interminably heavy and difficult to carry.

It’s the intersection of familiar and new. I know how I’ve always done things and thought about life. Much of that has work very well for me and I am not going to abandon. I’m also aware of the vitality there is in thinking in new categories and flying with the wind to other lands, other unknown grounds, and yielding fruit.” (Raimundo Panikkar, “Letter to a  Young Monk.” Living Prayer, 1986)

Intersections are opportunities as well as hazards. We do, at times, have to yield the right of way. We also have to make choices about seizing the initiative and following a particular direction. I’m reminded of the wisdom that it is on Life’s Detours (a book by Dr. Wayne Oats) that much of the richness, joy, challenge, and meaning of life is found.

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

I believe we are at a point in the life of human beings that we must choose what we see going on. It could go either way. I choose to believe we are near a tipping point – a significant time of re-orientation and the dawning of a new paradigm of mutual respect and a deepening sense of community. Perhaps my belief will be the tipping point. Perhaps your will be. And even if they’re not, I have reached a tipping point in my life and place my faith in our oneness.

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

When I was eleven years old, my family moved to a town in northern Virginia. That Christmas, they put on their first Living Nativity pageant – essentially a re-enactment of the Christmas story in an outdoor setting using live animals, live actors, and with a choir singing and a narrator reading the story. I sang in the angelic choir that year. Nearly twenty years later, I joined the staff of that same church and began to participate in the Living Nativity pageant, this time directing the choir.

Three years ago, the church I serve as pastor in Kansas City celebrated our first Christmas in our very own building. And we presented the first Crossroads Living Nativity pageant. Last year, it was just too cold, but this year, we’re back at it – with live animals, live actors, and a choir. And I’m getting to be the narrator, telling the story. It doesn’t matter at all that we combine the Matthew and Luke birth narratives or that we add in John’s prologue. The smells and sounds of the animals, the excitement of the children, and the joyful spirit in the air shouts Christmas!

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

Ordination is a great honor. In response to a person’s sense of calling to pastoral ministry, the church acknowledges evidence of that calling and affirms the presence of spiritual gifts for that ministry. The congregation that ordained me blessed me by their affirmation. They also committed themselves to a measure of responsibility for my ministry over the years. I believe they would be pleased with the results and impact of my ministry. I also suspect they would complain about the scope and direction of my theological development.

 Ministers are bound, in many ways, to the church. Much of seminary education prepares people to lead congregations, teach the faith tradition, and in effect to defend the church. That doesn’t leave much room for being a prophetic voice. It doesn’t leave much incentive for questioning how faithful the church is being to the vision of Christ. The result of thirty years of ministry for me is this clear realization: whatever lasting word I have for the church will be with my prophetic voice – the questions, the critique, and the challenge to be radically inclusive and loving. Other than that, I don’t really have anything of worth to say.

 I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

I do wonder, however, if we are missing the boat even just a little bit in our thanksgiving. In many ways, what has enriched my life most profoundly are the challenging experiences and difficult people for whom I have very little enthusiasm to give thanks. The experiences of betrayal I’ve known have pushed me to grow and become the person I am. The people whom I have felt just the opposite of affection have shown me most clearly whom I am and what I have to offer. The experiences of poverty teach me where my true abundance lies.

So, on this Thanksgiving, in addition to those wonderful people, communities, and experiences that warm my heart with the season’s light, I give thanks for the losses, the betrayals, and the failures of my life. I give thanks for the irritating and even untenable people whose paths I have crossed. They are truly gifts of God to me.  Happy Thanksgiving to you!

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

The heart of Christian faith is really that we follow Jesus – more than worship him, that we follow him along the way he lived and the way he died. To live and die along this way is to be awake to our presence in God and God’s presence in us – a partnership. It is to let this mutual presence guide our actions and choices, and to let make the most of this partnership in the process of doing what we do. This is the heart of Christian faith – that the heart that was in Christ also beat in each of us.

 I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price

Eternal God,

Thank you for this day of life and for meaningful work into which to pour ourselves.

Thank you, on behalf of each one here, for the privilege of representing the people of Kansas City as well as the people of its neighborhoods, families, and institutions of faith.

Remind us, in the contentious world of government and politics, that the face of our rival is the mirror of our own lives — that we need each other:  rich and poor; black, white, Hispanic, and Asian; male and female; Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Atheist

That together – in this meeting hall, in this city, and across this land, together we represent you, O God. It is only by your Spirit we are animated and in partnership with you that our lives and our work have meaning.

And so, I ask your blessing and a clear sense of your presence with this Council, its leaders, and its work today through your Spirit.

Amen.

I invite your comments and your questions.

–Jack Price