Even the Southern Baptists....

Even more conservative Christian denominations are looking hard at the realities of climate change:

Southern Baptists fight climate change
http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20080310/ap_on_re_us/southern_baptists_environment.html

Some conservative leaders like Dobson and Colson fear that focusing on the environment will distract from more central "moral" issues like family, abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research.

God's plan for the world is redemption. No clearer is that seen than in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Jesus entered our existence and showed us the true path to salvation: obedience to God despite life's circumstances. And Jesus makes that possible through the grace given to us by his death and resurrection. Jesus died that we would have true life, not only forever but right now as well.

Jesus was a faithful Jew, so he would have believed in Genesis 1, that God created the world and created human beings to care for it and tend it--to be a good steward of creation. We're far better stewards with our wallet green than we are with our natural green, which we didn't even have to earn.

Good Christian brothers and sisters: being "green" need not "distract" from the issues that Dobson, Colson, and others raise. It's all about being holistic. Love God and love others; hate what is evil and seek good. We can't get into this business of ranking holiness: raising a family well is "more important" than being eco-friendly; legally ending abortion is "more important" than recycling. There is but one thing that brings holiness: being a child of God. That is our mark. That is our identity. It defines who we are in all areas of our lives: relationally, economically, socially, politically. We don't lean "left" or "right", we lean on the cross of Christ. America teaches us to pursue "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This must be qualified by Jesus' call to "take up your cross and follow me."

It's time we heard God's voice loud and clear: you're destroying the good earth I gave you. You are violating my Holy Word. There are basic things you can do to reverse the trend. Do it in grace and faith--just like you would stop sinning in your personal life if God revealed that sin to you. Work to reduce the number of abortions. Work to uphold the sanctity of life. Work to uphold the sanctity of marriage. And work to uphold the sanctity of Creation. Consume without being consumeristic. Pursue happiness but not at the sake of others' happiness. Be truly conservative.

Practical vacuuming

I have to add this....

Less than two hours after my previous post, Kirby Vacuum salesmen showed up at our door and we agreed to a long demonstration in exchange for a free carpet cleaning. Apparently, since we're not in "the Kirby family," our vacuuming is horribly inefficient. The Kirby Sentria promises to clean deeper and better than ever before. How practical.

Being practical

What does it mean to be “practical”? I think our first assumption is that being practical means “finding the best ways to make something work.” If you need your carpet cleaned, the practical thing to do is to vacuum it or have it shampooed. It would be impractical to get down on your hands and knees and pick up specks of dirt, one by one. That would take too long, would be an inefficient use of your time, and wouldn’t get the carpet as clean.

To take this further, you might consider buying the latest vacuum that promises to clean even deeper and faster than the previous model. In less time you can get your carpet clean like never before. At least, until the newer model comes out.

In decision-making, practicality reigns as well. “Roberts’ Rules of Order” is an efficient way to allow for debate but to move forward with consensus. It allows dissent to exist but not as a roadblock to progress (usually). Voting in the US works similarly: the person with the most votes wins the election (George W. Bush being an exception). The winners are the majority, the losers are the minority. All for the sake of progress, efficiency, and effectiveness.

This kind of “practical” thinking dominates American Evangelical churches, too. At our church, we operate our boards based on Roberts’ Rules, and usually everything is unanimous. I have heard of situations of disagreement, but in the end, the “yeas” have it, the gavel slams, and the decision is made. Period.

Does this kind of “practical” thinking create space for the prophetic voice? Does it allow for a minority voice to sway the majority? Does Christianity, founded by a man who was crucified as a common criminal (crucifixion being a practical way of controlling the population through fear), simply ask for majority rule, or does it allow space for the small minority voice to sway the majority?

For example, suppose a church board of 10 met to discuss an important decision. Of the ten, nine agreed with one course of action, and one agreed with a different course. In a church where efficiency, practicality, and consensus are the watchwords, the majority rules and everyone moves forward. But in a church that isn’t so intent on quick decisions, that wants to discern the Holy Spirit, perhaps the lone voice would sway the rest. This is horribly inefficient—Jesus had a way of being so, too—but it strikes me as profoundly countercultural and therefore worth considering. We too often assume that because things are going well and there is consensus, God must behind all of it. But perhaps we have pushed God completely out of it. Thankfully, God’s grace can resist our attempts to refuse it.

There is another sense of being “practical.” It doesn’t ask “what works” but rather “what must I do?” This is practical in the sense of practice. Spiritual practices aren’t about efficiency and results. Rather, they are faithful, active responses to God’s grace, which will not be confined to our understandings of success, effectiveness, and growth. In other words, God’s ways may not always seem best to us, but that is no excuse to follow them.

The Gospel is counter-intuitive. We say, “Pursue life, liberty, and happiness.” Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Barbaric

I’ve just been introduced to Erwin Raphael McManus. I read The Barbarian Way with a men’s small group from our church. According to the dust jacket of the book, McManus is “lead pastor and cultural architect of Mosaic in Los Angeles, California….As founder of Awaken, Erwin collaborates with a team of dreamers and innovators who specialize in the field of developing and unleashing personal organizational creativity. As a national and international consultant, his expertise focuses on culture, change, leadership, and creativity. He partners with Bethel Theological Seminary as a futurist and distinguished professor.”

What is a “futurist?” Can anyone help me out here?

Anyway, The Barbarian Way has a similar feel as the über-masculine fare of John Eldredge and Wild At Heart, but while Eldredge focuses primarily on men, McManus’ call is for the entire church: lose your “civilized” understandings of Christ, Christianity, and faith. Be a barbarian for God by “following the path of Jesus in a passionate journey full of mystery, danger, and untamed faith” (from the dust jacket). Barbaric followers of Jesus care more about following Jesus than they do about identifying themselves as members of the religion “Christianity.” “They’re not about religion; they’re about advancing the revolution Jesus started two thousand years ago” (6). The image of barbarian hordes swarming a genteel society and turning civilization on its head is McManus’ model for how followers of Christ should live out their faith. And if you want to be a follower of Jesus, says McManus, “there is within you a raw and untamed faith waiting to be unleashed” (13). Such faith, such a calling will empower you to “fight for the heart of your King. For some, doing this will be just way too barbaric, but for others, their only option will be to choose the barbarian way” (15).

I think McManus is on the right track in terms of his critiques of Christianity—American Christianity, I assume, although he doesn’t use this term. He wants to dismantle domesticated notions of safety, common sense, and comfort and replace them with dangerous, barbaric passion, risk, revolt, and invasion—with the weapons of love and sacrifice. He sees what Constantinian Christianity—the church in power and not on the margins—can do to faith, that it waters it down, clouds it with lesser issues like national security, national defense, and patriotism (though he doesn’t mention those terms). In part, he shares camp with Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s Resident Aliens. In short, he has touched on a central point that should resound throughout the walls of American Christendom: We need to wake up and take the call of Christ seriously; stop seeking safety and comfort and pursue righteousness and active faith.

The problem I have with McManus is that he is essentially a Christian anarchist. Consider these quotes: “Two thousand years ago God started a revolt against the religion He started” (114); “Anyone who can picture Jesus as the great Advocate of tradition is doing some serious doctoring of biblical history” (114); “Like barbarians destroying civilization, they are to remove every nonessential obstacle between God and man” (115). Maybe this is why McManus is called a “futurist”: his concerns are only for the future and he only cares about the essentials of our past (I wonder how he determines what is and is not essential). His barbarian way would seem to paint a picture of a God who is constantly starting over with his creation, rather than a God who is at work redeeming creation. Jesus did not “revolt” against Judaism, he completed it. The revolution he led didn’t throw out tradition and history, it reframed them and redefined them within the context of his Incarnation. Simply put, Jesus doesn’t change history, he defines it. That is why he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

I am all for recovering the radical Gospel, but only within a church that remembers its past as well. Traditionalism stifles, but Tradition can lead reform. If McManus is seeking to lead us in “The Barbarian Way,” perhaps the raw, passionate lives of St. Athanasius, St. Francis of Assisi, and John Hus can enrich and inspire us. Learning about the martyrdom of St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp are fine examples of “barbaric” Christianity. And what about Dorothy Day? Pretty countercultural.

Help me out, please. Why don't Christians care about their great heroes of the past? Why do American Christians care more about George Washington than St. Augustine? Why must we always try to reinvent the wheel? Why do we think we need more? We have an abundance of faith, testimony, ministry, passion, mysticism, martyrdom--in short, an abundance of "barbarians"--throughout our past. Sorry, Erwin, you haven't discovered anything new.

Don't ge me wrong. I am glad for people like McManus in the Evangelical world. But as much as he'd probably bristle, he's cut from the same cloth as "domesticated" American Evangelicals. I just wish he cared enough about the whole church. They would discover they don’t have to reinvent the wheel, nor destroy civilization. Every day I thank God that he chooses to redeem my past rather than obliterate it.

Erwin, if you do know a lot about our Christian past, then use your position and influence to tell those stories! I would think they would only bolster your barbaric argument.

Joseph of Arimathea

Today the church remembers Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man (by Matthew’s account) and a secret follower of Jesus for fear of the Jewish leaders (according to John) and himself a member of the Sanhedrin though not in accord with the decision to convict Jesus (says Luke). Mark and Luke also say that Joseph was “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God” (Mark 15:43; Luke 23:51). It’s fair to say that Joseph risked a great deal by going to Pilate to request permission to take down Jesus’ body from the cross. This request is, of course, granted and Joseph puts Jesus in his own garden tomb. John’s account says that Nicodemus helped him bury Jesus and perform the ritualistic anointing of aloes and spices and wrapping the body in linens. Joseph and Nicodemus both bring some dignity to Jesus’ death. Even though he died a criminal, he is buried like a prince.

What moved Joseph to do this? Surely there was some risk in his request to Pilate. The following passages in Matthew show the Pharisees and chief priest requesting Pilate for guards at the tomb, so they know where Jesus is buried and possibly whose tomb it is. Is it too much teasing of the text to suggest that Joseph risked his status to give Christ the status he deserved? That this poor carpenter born in squalor should be buried in grandeur? Only after Christ died was Joseph willing or daring enough to put his faith out into the open. Christ’s death moved Joseph to give up his future burial place; he invited Christ to take his place in the grave. Surely this is not too much of a stretch theologically.

All four Gospel writers mention Joseph of Arimathea’s actions. This must be significant. It must mean more than just an answer to the question, “How did Jesus get from the cross to the tomb?” One reason is that his actions were a sign of his attempt to keep the Law, which stated that criminals were to be buried the same day of their execution. The Romans would’ve left the body there for scavengers to consume. There ought not be such a fate for the body of our Lord. The significance of this is that it is one more example of Jesus’ Judaism. Even in his burial, Jewish customs are enacted.

Perhaps a key to the significance of Joseph’s actions is found in the descriptive phrase, “he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.” By burying Jesus, Joseph was still moving forward. Surely he had no idea of the coming Resurrection, but he must have had notions of the promises of God. I am reminded of the story, I forget where I first heard it, of a group of Jews in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. There were some lawyers in the group, and in their misery they decided to put God on trial to see if he had abandoned them. The set up a mock court room, presented evidence for and against God, and rendered their verdict: God had indeed abandoned them. Just then, they noticed that the sun was setting. It was now Friday evening: it was time for Shabbat. The ended their trial and began their worship.

In my sheltered, comfortable world, I am daily shielded from the death, famine, decay, and injustice that most of the world experiences regularly. When I do come in contact with it, my first impulse is to hide from it, to ignore it, or to look beyond it. I have never been at a point in my life where things were so bad—from all angles—that I felt like God had abandoned me completely. Usually, when I feel like God has abandoned me, I think it’s probably because I did something to make him turn away. It doesn’t take much for me to slack off on spiritual disciplines.

What must it be like to have so much evil around you, to be acutely aware of it, to see its ugly face, to feel its claws pressing into your raw flesh? If I abandon God when I experience a minor personal setback, do I have the faith to remain with God when something really bad happens?

This is perhaps too tangential to the story of Joseph of Arimathea. The overall point, though, is that God’s promises are true. God’s promises are the bedrock of our faith, embodied in the Incarnation of Jesus and the Spirit-filled church. In all things, let us worship and live expectantly.

Lighthouses

Our rallying cry at church lately has been, "We need to be a lighthouse, not a clubhouse." The meaning of this is simple: we need to be focused on bringing people in, not excluding people who don't meet certain "church club" standards. Like many evangelical churches, our congregation is filled with mainline refugees: Catholics, Episcopals, Lutherans, and the rest. Evangelical churches often promote themselves as a place for those who are tired of "traditional" church, feel stifled by it, or find it to be utterly irrelevant to their lives. To be relevant, evangelical churches seek to create a church environment that, at its best, supercedes the other offerings of daily American consumer life (see my post "WOW!" below).

I believe in the "lighthouse" mantra. Clearly, Matthew 5: 14-16 is behind this: "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, that they may see you good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." A church that is focused on servanthood--doing good deeds--will be a lighthouse for the world. A church that hoards its light--under a bowl--is like a dog in manger.

But is it so simple, so cut-and-dried: lighthouse, not a clubhouse? I am opposed to pregnant "us-them" language, but when I read the Bible I hear, again and again, that there are God's people, and there are those who are not. While some take this and attempt make clear boundaries as to who's in and who's out, I refuse to go that far because it is not my job to judge. Thankfully, that task is firmly in the hands of Jesus. As Christians, we're called to explore what it means to be God's people. We're all on different points of that journey, and we best travel with companions.

Companionship is not limited to the living. We have two thousand years' worth of witnesses to the path of Jesus. What an unbelievable, unfathomable treasure! When you become a Christian, you join this group, which is a society that is different. "Club" is too limited a word. Ekklesia is better. To be a part of that society, there are no prerequisites, but there is initiation: baptism. You have now entered a society that teaches that life is found in self-death, that strength is found in weakness, that beauty exists because its Creator, not the taste of others. Identity is not found in self-help but in serving others in the name of Jesus. And through all this, the light of Christ shines and illumines the world.

In sum, to be a lighthouse means to gather around the light. The community of believers--including those in the past and those across the globe--are all gathered around it. It's not a club, but it is a gathering of peculiar people who find their primary identity not in the nation they live in, the color of their skin, or the amount of money in their wallet, but in the living Jesus Christ, who at once embraces and confounds us.

Wrestling with...approval

Last Sunday, I preached from Genesis 32: Jacob's wrestling at Peniel. I titled it simply, "Wrestling With God." It's a passage that has been near and dear to my heart for quite some time, so preaching from it was especially exciting. I was also worried about doing the passage justice. I felt an odd mixture of humility and confidence as I worked on it, because of all the experiences I've had in my pampered, white-middle-class life, wrestling with the changes, hurts, and questions in the context of faith in Christ is something I feel somewhat qualified to speak about. Along my studying, I discovered a wonderfully written little book called Scarred By Struggle, Transformed By Hope, by Joan Chittister, a Benedictine sister. Check it out.

Anyway, Sunday came and I preached. If immediate positive feedback and personal satisfaction are indicators, it was one of my best sermons. I even had people talk to me afterwards with tears in their eyes, telling me it really spoke to them. As a pastor, this is enormously gratifying. Perhaps--perhaps--the Holy Spirit spoke through my poor words and touched hearts. Somehow, my own blood, sweat, and tears mingled with the ink to craft something that encouraged and comforted others in the Body. That encouragement and comfort came to them out of my own scars is a retelling of the Jacob story.

But...after all, this is cynical idealism...don't you ever wonder what to make of it when the only feedback you get from parishioners is positive? Maybe I am a glutton for punishment. Maybe I don't know how good I have it at my church. Maybe at some churches pastors are scrutinized for every little phrase they utter from the pulpit. But in spite of all the accolades that Sunday, I found myself longing for someone to come up to me or call me on the phone and say, "Pastor, I really disagreed with what you had to say on Sunday." I think I understand more why Jay Phelan, President and Dean of North Park Theological Seminary and regular columnist for The Covenant Companion, enjoys it when people write strident letters of disagreement to the editor. It means people are paying attention. It means people want to dialogue and understand (sometimes!). This to me seems to be a fuller meaning of "agreeing to disagree"--a conclusion two people come to after truly understanding and appreciating each other. I may be wrong, but this seems to be the intent behind the Covenant Church's "unity in essentials--freedom in non-essentials--love in all things." Plus, I want to know if I've inadvertently preached heresy!

There is one other thing that troubles me. After all the good feedback I've gotten--"I heard you brought it on Sunday!" "You really set the bar high!" "That was awesome!"--I feel like I somehow have to find a way to follow that up with something at least as good if not better. Like a hit song or movie. Kierkegaard's words on the pastor as actor come to mind. Alas, I have become a objectified.