People on the street now, faces looking grim. Souls are feeling heavy and faith is growing thin.

This is from a GREAT singer/songwriter named Ray Lamontagne from a song called How Come. Hit this title and then go listen to some of his stuff. Amazing!!!

Some of you know that my church is dismantling itself. I sat for a few minutes trying to think of a better word, but there isn't one. It's like someone hit the self-destruct button and whether they hear the countdown or not, they only have a few more moments in which they can turn it off. But nobody is going to. Why?

Because people love drama!

Now for some people the issue is an important one and I don't want to belittle either side's opinion, however I think the fact that there are sides at all shows how much they've already belittled themselves. And why?

People love drama!

We love it when our gun-toting conservative relative comes to the wine and cheese tasting party with a dead bear in his truck. We love when our gay Greenpeace t-shirted vegan friend asks to come along to Deercamp. The smile on your face following these two sentences is proof. We love that there are blue states and red states. We love that there are believers and non-believers, liberals and conservatives, progressives and traditionalists, and a whole host of multiple versions of all of the above. Why?

People love drama!

You may think this isn't true, that people don't crave tension and opposition. My only rebuttal would be to ask you if you've ever watched people interact before. In Wal-mart just today I saw a kid crying because his mom wouldn't buy him something at the register, a couple arguing over which marinade to get (hickory barbecue or mesquite), a couple guys trying to compromise on what beer to drink, and about fifteen magazine articles depicting drama amongst the beautiful people. I was there for maybe ten minutes.

People love drama!

In my own life I can see how I seek out confrontation and you can to. It isn't enough to just win an argument. We have to act like the stakes are extremely high, even when they are ridiculously meaningless. This is why phrases like 'who's side are you on?' exist.

Because people love drama!

Now I want to make something terribly clear. Tragedy is not drama. Drama can never be tragedy. December's Tsunami, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the earthquake in the Middle East and Asia, the war in Iraq, starving in Africa, corruption in politics (on both sides), floods in New England, even lesser things that are devastating like unemployment and child obesity, these are tragic. But scroll on down the news page or watch some painfully dull 24 minute local news and you'll hear about drama, everything from the cheesy self-interest fluff of local scrapbooking parties to the who cares enough to find it out latest Hollywood gossip. (Vince Vaughn was seen kissing Jennifer Anniston today!) How do I know that???

People love drama!

Did you ever watch thirty seconds of a show like Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Inside Edition, or The Insider? Isn't it hard to stomach such schlock? I don't care that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are having a baby or that she's converting to Scientology and she's gonna have a medicine free silent birth! Tom Cruise is supposed to be driving cars or flying jets, or better yet wielding samurai swords, and shutting the hell up about medical advice (because that's what Dr. Phil is for), but people are asking him and people want to know what he thinks. For what reason?

Drama!

Let me rant...

Christians are overly dramatic too! (Of course you say, because they are still people!) Evangelical Christians sound more persecuted every day to hear them talk. Yet in the last five years they've chosen the President, ratified the cause for war, (nearly-and we'll see) gotten two conservative judges on the Supreme Court bench, made Republicans the majority in congress, convinced America that war medals are handed out like Burger King crowns, continued to push for more family friendly movies while making an extremely violent R-rated movie the number one movie of the year last year, and spent almost 3 trillion dollars in that time on Christian books, bumper stickers, throw pillows, and novelty items that reduce the Bible to at best 40 days of commitment and at worst a single prayer from an obscure Biblical character given a single verse of scripture. Evangelicals have created this world where they are still being crucified, even though they are Pilate. Why?

Drama!

Progressive Christians try to sound offended by the right's righteousness. Yet in the last five years have conceded their arguments on when war is justified, made their most rational spokespeople nutjobs like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, allowed cooky liberal pacifists to obscure legitimate concerns over the war, let quacks like Pat Robertson call for assassinations on a Bible show and get off with an apology, forgotten that justice doesn't mean equal, aligned themselves with secular entities with secular motivations, not challenged Evangelicals on Biblical interpretation-but have rather tried to out manuever them, and let an election be made into a religious folly of who God wanted to be President (like God decides such a small thing). Progressive Christians have made Evangelicals look righteous and right by being timid and too tolerant of people within their ranks who are neither Progressive nor Christian. Why?

D-R-A-M-A!

We love stacking the odds against ourselves. We love when we dig a hole and have to claw our way out. It's exhilerating! That's why we wait till April 14th to file taxes, the 31st to renew our license, the last minute to write our paper. Grownups, drama is why we talk at lunch about the new girl and how hungover she was when she got to work-it's why we fantasize about going out with her even though we're married. Drama is why we gossip at our Bridge game, tell stories at our golf game, and look over with curious eyes at the young man with the jeans and t-shirt on that just walked in late to the church.

People love drama!!!

Let me tell you this little story...if you like drama, you'll like this.

There was this man who thought himself righteous. He thought he had followed all the rules that one should live by and he was ready to see if these sacrifices made him ready to inherit the wisdom of God, and in doing so eternal life. He was also very rich, so when he heard of a wise teacher coming near, he loaded his entourage up and they sat out across the city to hear this wise teacher speak. When they arrived they listened to the teacher and then when he had finsihed the rich and righteous man stood and asked what he must do to inherit the wisdom of God and the gift of eternal life.

"Follow the rules of man" the teacher said.
"Which ones?" the rich man asked.
"All of them" said the teacher.
"I have," he replied "what must I still do?"
The teacher looked into the heavens and into the eyes of this rich man and said "Go and sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor, then you will have treasure in Heaven. Then, come follow me."
The rich man hung his head, for he had hoped for another answer. This he could not do. He went away, never to seek the teacher's advice again.

For those of you who haven't heard it, this is my retelling of the story in Matthew 19. Here's my point.

People love drama!
I love drama. And we get caught up in all these things that don't mean anything in the world beyond this one. It's okay that we have our tension, in fact when existing with people willing to love one another anyway tension can be quite powerful fuel. When it is a problem is when we become the things we believe at opposition with eachother. I am not finally anything but a child of God. You are not finally anything else either. We love drama, and dismantlings will happen, but at the end of this we must/need to be brothers and sisters still.

Because the second the drama becomes what people embrace, instead of eachother, God is missing and hard to find again.