This past week I made a startling and unsettling discovery about myself. I discovered that I am a fundamentalist. Not all the time as it turns out, but some of the time; and I must say, I don't like it. I discovered that I have fundamentalist leanings while reading the newest book from Margaret Wheatley entitled Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time. Margaret Wheatley writes, teaches, and speaks about radically new practices and ideas for organizations seeking to adapt to the chaotic times in which we find ourselves. In her book, Wheatley includes the following quotation from Buddhist teacher Pema Chdrn: The whole globe is shook up, so what are you going to do when things fall apart? You're either going to become more fundamentalist and try to hold things together, or you're going to forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as you go along.

I say I like change, I profess to be excited about the new opportunities and possibilities that present themselves every day - opportunities and possibilities that are driven by new technology, globalization, and new patterns of living. But the fact of the matter is it scares me. It scares me because I don't always know how to respond to this fast changing world - I don't always know how to move forward as a pastor, as a husband, as a father, as a citizen. I like thinking about what is possible, but when I have to decide, when I have to make a choice that that closes off other choices, I often balk. It is at such times that I become the fundamentalist that Chdrn speaks of. I focus, not so much on the opportunities and possibilities, but more and more on on old ambitions and goals. In such times, I can become a fundamentalist about outcomes. Now, human beings are, by necessity, focused on outcomes. In the early days of hunting and gathering, it was never about the hunt - it was only about the kill. Don't kill, don't eat. Don't eat, starve to death. Our survival depended on outcomes. That is one of the things that makes us unique as humans - we can imagine a future and work toward it.

And yet, more and more as we move into this strange post-modern time, a hyper-dependence on outcomes is slowly killing us. We crave outcomes with our children, in our work, in our schools, in the church. We scan spreadsheets for "metrics" and "measurables" hoping to assure ourselves that we are on the right path. Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to quantify our work, with caring about outcomes. When I place my well-being in the hands of a surgeon, I deeply care about outcomes. The surgeon cares about the outcome as well. And yet, even in the medical field, I think we can place too high a value on outcomes. Some of the best medical care I have ever received was not in the outcome, but in the process - in the caring interaction that I had with another human being who, while having incredible knowledge and skill about my body, expressed a profound caring for me as a person. The healing that I experienced was as much contained in the compassion as it was in the medical skill - probably more so. And in the end, life defies all attempts to prolong it, for in the end, we are all going to die. The death rate is one per person, and there are no exceptions. I know of a Presbyterian church in Sun City, Arizona where there are no members under the age of 55. Their slogan is "We help people live well, so they can die well." Their vitality as a congregation comes, not from outcomes (which essentially is "we're all going to die!), but on living life as an experiment.

Our obsession with outcomes can also skew our educational culture. While I am glad that the government is paying more attention to education these days, I am not sure that the No Child Left Behind Act is all that helpful. It, like so much else, is predicated on outcomes, on test scores. And yet, the very best teachers I have had in my life were so great, not because they boosted my test scores, but because they not only helped me to become a better learner, but because they instilled in me a lifelong love of learning. No test can ever measure that!

We struggle with the same dilemma in the church. We all want a healthy thriving church, but how do we know if we are? Sometimes we look for those measurables - is the budget in balance, how big is our Sunday School, is our membership going up? For others of us, we experience the church as thriving if we are maintain certain styles and traditions. But is thriving as the people of God contained in any of these? They may be important (I care how the budget is, I do pay attention to attendance and membership numbers, it matters to me that we repair and maintain the pipe organ), but when these goals and ambitions become our focus in a time when "the whole globe is shook up" we can, more often than not, give in to fundamentalist tendencies. I feel it in myself all the time.

I imagine this same dynamic was experienced by Ezekiel when the Spirit of God plunked him down into the valley of the dry bones. Talk about measurables! God calls these bones - and notice, these bones aren't just dry, they're very dry!; these bones aren't just dead, they're hopeless! - God calls these very dry bones the whole house of Israel. And what is the state of the union - dry, desolate, dead. All you have to do is count the bones. What a metaphor for how we can feel about the things we care about as we live into the 21^st Century. Ideas, institutions, traditions that we care about, that we are invested in, feel dry and brittle and, if not dead, then certainly on life-support. God shows these bones to Ezekiel and asks him the ultimate question of outcome: "Mortal, can these bones live?" Now scripture does not tell us what Ezekiel really thinks, but we can guess: "Can these bones live? Yeah, right! God, you may have pulled off that crossing the Red Sea thing in the past, but this is different. There is nothing to work with here - it is over. The outcome is already decided." You see, Ezekiel had become a fundamentalist - he was convinced he knew how the world worked, and in that sense he was invested in an outcome - in his case, it wasn't an outcome that he hoped to manipulate into existence, but an outcome that he was sure of - the bones were dry - very dry! - and they were dead. Ezekiel's whole globe was shook up and he was intent on holding things together - which in this case meant holding his expectations, his assumptions about how the world works, together. Nothing could be done, so the question is silly.

And it is at this point that God begins to move Ezekiel away from his fundamentalist orientation. God does not argue with Ezekiel - for argumentation rarely moves us away from our outcome fundamentalism - in fact, it usually only strengthens it. When others contradict the certainties that we are holding onto, it more often than not serves to convince us how important it is that we hold on. No, God does not argue. Instead God invites Ezekiel to try something new - prophesy to the bones. In many ways, this approach does not threaten Ezekiel's iron grip on his need for outcomes - as far as Ezekiel is concerned, this is the ultimate fool's errand - a single man standing in the middle of nowhere preaching about the future to a heap of old bones; but that's okay - he can humor God. If God wants to him to let go of expectations and rules, he's game because he knows what it possible. So Ezekiel stands in the valley, lifts up his skeptical head, and raises his ridiculous sounding voice - a voice that echoes in the empty stillness of this valley of the shadow of death. And a strange thing happens - not at all what Ezekiel expects. A new noise fills the valley - not the hollow voice of one crying in the wilderness, but the rattling of bones. Each bone, bleached dry and white by the unforgiving sun leaps from the ground and finds it partner - whole skeletons assembled at the word of God spoken by the prophet.

Again God commands Ezekiel to prophesy. This time, I imagine, Ezekiel was little more enthusiastic. He had no idea what might happen next - we never do when our old expectations have been foiled and we start to live with a new sense of expectancy. So Ezekiel commands the divine wind, the holy breath of God to enter these lifeless bodies. And sure enough - the breath comes and the vast multitude of God's people fills the valley - alive. And a third time, God commands Ezekiel. By this point, Ezekiel will believe anything - for he has given up the notion that he can determine the outcome and instead places himself in God's hands. "Prophecy to all who lie moldering in their graves, far from home - to them prophesy that I will make them alive and bring them back to their land." In the words of Pema Chodron, Ezekiel is now living life as an experiment, making it up as he goes along. Of course, it is not merely his own notion what he should do, but he acts beling led by God's powerful Spirit - the very Spirit that led him to the valley of dry bones in the first place.

Letting go of outcomes. There is a great liberation in doing so for us as individuals and as a church. For the outcomes that we are convinced of or that we can imagine are always limited by our experience, by our prejudices, by our fear. When we let go of outcomes, it does not mean that we no longer care about what happens - rather it means that we admit that we don't control the future. While this can be a scary thought and an even scarier process to live into, we, as the people of God, do so with the blessed assurance that we serve a God who brings hope where there is despair, and who brings life where this is death. Ezekiel wasn't following any old idea about the future - he was following the God who created heaven and earth, the God who made an everlasting covenant with Abraham and Sarah and even though they were barren and old made them the mother and father of every nation. Ezekiel followed the God who made a pathway through the Sea and swallowed the army of pharaoh that threatened to bring them back to captivity. As Ezekiel stood in that valley of dry bones and had to decide to remain a fundamentalist and embrace the death he saw or live experimentally with God, I am sure the thought about little David, too small for the King's armor, armed only with a slingshot and five smooth stones. David had faith that the giant Goliath would fall, but not of his own strength and might, but of God's. And down the giant came. Trusting that God, Ezekiel gave up his fundamentalism and made it up as he went.

As we enter this new time when our whole globe is shook up, when old ways of being church no longer hold, God invites us, like Ezekiel, to let go of outcomes - for our outcome, our future is in God's hands. And what does this mean for us as a church? It means that we will pay close attention to budgets and numbers of visitors and new members, but we won't measure ourselves by them. We will live into the future wisely, but not anxiously. As we live experimentally we will sometimes find ourselves doing things that seem ridiculous - as ridiculous as speaking to a valley of very dry bones. We won't always see the connection between our actions and an unknown future, but we will go ahead anyway because we are making it up as we go along. This means that we must listen and learn to trust one another. We will need to spend time, not only in worship when we generally look at the back of each others' heads, but in fellowship when we encounter each other face to face - in small groups, in large groups, in serious discussion and in play. Living experimentally means we will need to become comfortable with failure. In baseball we consider someone a success if they fail two-thirds of the time - the Cardinals would love if every hitter hit .333. In the church, we often feel we have to get it right 100% of the time - but that reliance on unceasing success is outcome-based and leaves little room for making it up as we go along.

Prophesy to the bones. Speak a word of life where you only perceive death. Call forth God's power. A silly, ridiculous request that ignores all rational sense of reasonable outcomes - and one that brings new directions and new possibilities and new life.