cynical idealism

Even the Southern Baptists....

2008-03-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-28T10:57:00.001-07:00

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

2007-07-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Okay, okay

2007-07-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

Perhaps my last post was a bit harsh. A bit.

I was in no way ridiculing Waltz and others who take on this consumer-based "seeker-sensitive" approach. My use of the Nazi analogy was to show how other ideologies can obscure the way of the cross. With the Nazis, we have the benefit of history. What blind spots from our civilizationwill Christian historians be studying centuries from now?

I need to add that I am, too, a consumer, and no small one either. I love to buy books, coffee, and music; I love to go to movies; I have a Netflix Queue with 453 movies in it; I have several pairs of jeans, and I have an affinity for sweaters. So I am guilty.

What I'm saying is that we deal with this consumerism crap so much in our daily lives. Why should we perpetuate in the church? The narrative of me-first is a powerful one. Only a church that knows its story--the story of Jesus and his people--and finds itself within that story is going to offer real, lasting hope. Having written this, I'm more inspired to get back into Arthur Simon's How Much Is Enough? Hungering For God in an Affluent Culture.

Surely, there are seeker-senstive churches filled with people who are formed by the narrative of Jesus, and there are churches that ostensibly teach and preach the story of Jesus from the deep wells of tradition but are bent in on themselves and their own preservation. No church is perfect. The trajectory of the church should be towards following Jesus, being willing to forsake all other ideologies in order truly to learn more about what that means. Think Jesus' discourse with the Rich Young Ruler.

In the long run, I think this can be faithful to Waltz's and others' mantra, "because people matter." People matter in light of their Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Without the church, we wouldn't know that.

WOW!

2007-07-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

I was perusing a book today given to me by our Children’s Ed coordinator entitled: First Impressions: Creating Wow Experiences in Your Church. The author is Mark L. Waltz, Pastor of Connections at Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana. Reading the title, I initially thought, “Here we go. Another book that encourages the church to offer the commodity ‘Jesus’ the same way other businesses offer their wares.” I’ve been reading books like this right now as I study ways to develop a welcoming/outreach ministry at our church. But the first chapter, entitled “Reflections of a Consumer” intrigued me. Waltz states, “The church is not called to be the catering, whim-granting marketplace of the twenty-first century” (10). Right on, I thought. But he continues on to say that since consumerism is the stew that people are swimming in, that’s where we have to begin. The church, he says, is competing with other businesses for the attention of people. We want to offer them Jesus. So we need to do it in a way that blows these other businesses out of the water. “There are winners and losers,” Waltz writes. “If your church is going to be effective, then you must beat the competition, pure and simple. You must find out who the competition is, what it is doing, and how to win its consumers to your church” (17). To offer biblical reinforcement, Waltz turns to Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:34-44). Even though the people were coming out of a consumer desire—to have their spiritual and physical needs met—Jesus lavished good gifts on them. “He didn’t seem to worries that their motives where self-serving” (16).

Doesn’t this water down the Gospel? “Is it possible,” he writes, “that the church will somehow communicate a value system of consumerism that merely reflects the self-focused interests of our culture? Perhaps, but I believe it is worth the risk” (17). Why does Waltz believe this is a risk worth taking? Why is he willing to put the church into the consumer game? “Because in time, our guests’ value will get sorted out inside a personal relationship with God. As this relationship develops, the materialistic consumerism that poses a threat to personal holiness and integrity will begin to melt away” (17).

I appreciate Waltz’s sensitivity to the problems of consumerism. I’m so glad that he acknowledges that the church and consumerism are strange bedfellows. So far, however, I’m not convinced that a “personal relationship with God” will conquer consumerism. I’m not questioning the power God; I’m questioning the power of a church whose methods are dictated by the rapaciousness of consumer culture. The issue here is not the faith and dedication of Christians who agree with Waltz’s methodology—I have little doubt he is sincere and full of Christ’s love. I admire and applaud his willingness to share the love of Christ with others. I checked out his blog, which is nobly titled, "Because people matter."

The issue is this: how can a church front-loaded with consumerism lead people into self-giving discipleship? How can such a church help people move beyond their personal relationship with Christ and into a communal, ecclesial relationship with Christ—one that attends to the whole, global church? I’d be interested to hear Waltz’s response to this. I’m not sure that fits into the scope of his book.

Let’s take another context: Nazi Germany. The driving narrative here is German Nationalism. That’s the stew people are swimming in. I realize this is a different context than our current American consumer culture, but consider my rephrasing of Waltz's statement above: “The church is not called to be the nationalistic, Aryan pep rally of mid-twentieth century Germany...Is it possible that the church will somehow communicate a value system of white supremacy and nationalism that merely reflects the ideological interests of the Third Reich? Perhaps, but I believe it is worth the risk...in time, our guests’ values will get sorted out inside a personal relationship with God. As this relationship develops, the nationalistic racism that poses a threat to personal holiness and integrity will begin to melt away.”

Does comparing Nazism with consumer culture seem too extreme? Perhaps. But is not consumerism just as destructive—though more seductive and deceptive—as Aryanism, Nazism, or the Holocaust? Both are demonic forces aimed at controlling people and distracting them from the truth of Jesus Christ. Both are aimed at dividing allegiances. Both are aimed at creating worlds without Christ as Lord of all.

I’m sure the Nuremberg rallies were real wow experiences.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer encouraged the church in Germany to see through the Nazi ideologies and see that following Jesus means following Jesus, not Jesus and a State bent on genocide, totalitarianism, imperialism, and warmongering. Predictably, Bonhoeffer was largely ignored by his brothers and sisters, and was eventually martyred by the Nazi regime.

It would seem that we as a church continue to require more reflection on what the Bible means, who Jesus Christ was and is, and what it means to be the church. How else will we be able to offer an alternative to the self-destructive, self-consuming forces of this world?

Waltz is obviously correct: consumerism is the stew we're swimming in. And if we are to be truly Incarnational people, taking cues from John 1 and moving into our neighborhoods--like the Word becoming flesh--we must meet people where they're at. But we must not confuse worship and mission. Both are formational, but their contexts are different. Worship is for God and God's people. It will be odd and confusing to people who are not Christians. Mission is the manifestation of God's people in the world. Since we are so inward-focused, we spend all our time thinking about how we can be a better welcoming community while spending little time thinking about what we choose to do on Sunday morning.

It has been said that when you seek to share your faith with individuals, you need to "earn the right to be heard." I take this to mean that you have to be involved in someone's life at a very human level--on their level. You have to start sharing Christ with them by actions before you can start sharing Christ with words. If they know how much you care, if they see Christ's light shining through you, they will be attracted. If you are walking alongside them, you can help them get over the strangeness of a Christian worship service, coach them along the way, be their spiritual mentor, sponsor them when they are baptized. Both of you will be more deeply formed by a life-giving narrative--the story of Jesus--and will be better able to withstand the competing narratives around us: consumerism, nationalism, militarism, racism, sexism, and other "isms." This to me seems to be a better way, a more prophetic way. But it's definitely not seeker-sensitive.

Grieving change, finding a place

2007-06-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

We’ve begun a series in our church called “on the move with God.” We started by looking at the life of Abraham, beginning with Genesis 12’s story of God’s call for Abram to leave Haran and move to (eventually) Canaan. Our pastor has chosen this because we are preparing to move into our new building/sanctuary, and that physical move is a visual manifestation of the cultural and social moves we are undergoing right now, both in our church and in the community of Valley Springs. The congregation needs to be brought along, encouraged, and exhorted to recognize, heed, and respond Christianly to the changes we’re facing.

In July I will share in this series, preaching three sermons based on Genesis 32 (Jacob wrestling with God), Luke 10 (The Good Samaritan), and John 20 (Mary Magdalene’s encounter with Jesus in the garden post-Resurrection). As I prepare for this, I am mindful of my own fitful bouts with resisting change in my life. There is a desire to cling to the past, because of all the chaotic things in life the past seems to be the most concrete. The past, frozen in time as it were, it is more seemingly clear-defined. It is manageable. It is easy to access. These are my perceptions, though I know that once one begins really to examine one’s past, the edges are far from sharp, the angles far from right, and the facts anything but cold and hard. Nevertheless, there is something comforting about knowing where you’ve been, even if it’s just where you think you’ve been.

My compulsion is to look back at the past so much that I avoid the present. When I was in Chicago, I spent a lot of time wishing I was back in Portland. Now that I’m in Valley Springs, I catch myself longing for Chicago (and Portland). Perhaps I am much more a purveyor of the “good ol’ days” mentality than I would care to admit.

While still in Chicago, facing the Call Process to Pastoral Ministry for the Evangelical Covenant Church, and the prospect of going literally anywhere for my first pastorate, I finally came to grips and realized I could potentially never return to my “homeland,” Portland and Oregon. Facing this reality, I discovered that I was grieving—grieving the loss of a life changed by circumstances, grieving the loss of a familiar place, mourning the knowledge that my life was inconsequential to the life of the place I’d left behind. Portland would endure and change without me. If I stayed away long enough it could become unrecognizable.

For me, attending to this grief has been difficult but in the long run very healthy. It has forced me back into the moment instead of looking back longingly at a time in my life that was probably not as rosy as I remember it. Acknowledging my grief and living in it has helped me to look forward rather than backward. It may seem a bit ridiculous, all this grief over a state, but if I am willing to go deeper, I discover that Oregon is not the real object of my grief. My life in Oregon was the set, not the play itself. The deeper longing was for familiarity, belonging, and identity. I suppose I look back at my life in Oregon as a time where, in spite of all my angst and frustration and wrestling matches with God, there were things around me that stayed relatively the same. I could count on going up to NW 23rd for a walk and a coffee. I could count on going to a McMenamin’s for a beer and a second-run movie. I could count on going for a run in Forest Park. And most importantly, I could count on spending time with friends and family who also counted all this as their place.

God’s words to Abram in Genesis 12:1 are harsh and violent: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Of course, this statement is also a promise: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (NRSV). Anyone who has spent any time with the writings of Wendell Berry knows that the theme of “place” is predominate. In our quests to understand who we are, we often look externally and supra-geographically: we look to other people to find ways of living, and/or we look to books, television, movies, and other media to aid in our self-understanding. Berry would say that our self-understanding comes by an attentiveness to one’s particularity—one’s family, neighborhood/community, work—things filled with the ordinary. In light of this, Abram’s call seems even more violent, except that in this case God wished for him to be in a place where God’s promises could flourish.

God calls us out of our self and into the body of Christ. We are all a part of the ekklesia, the “called-out community.” This is the place God would have for us—different ekklesias for different people and places, but all ekklesias as part of the Great Ekklesia, the Church Universal. There is a violence in conversion, just as Jesus’ violent death precedes resurrection. The church—the land to which God calls us (like Abram)—is the place where God’s promises flourish because the bedrock of it all is Jesus. It is to this land, this community, that we are called take root.

But this land is foreign to us. It is anything but familiar. It is less desirable because its deeper resources have yet to be discovered. How do we faithfully follow where God is leading when so much security seems stripped away, so much identity lost, so much familiarity gone? Listen to Berry’s words from “People, Land, and Community”:

“When one buys a farm and moves there to live, something different begins. Thoughts begin to be translated into acts. Truth begins to intrude with its matter-of-fact. One’s work may be defined in part by one’s visions, but it is defined in part too by problems, which the work leads to and reveals. And daily life, work, and problems gradually alter the visions. It invariably turns out, I think, that one’s first vision of one’s place was to some extent an imposition on it. But if one’s sight is clear and if one stays on and works well, one’s love gradually responds to the place as it really is, and one’s visions gradually image possibilities that are really in it. Vision, possibility, work, and life—all have changed by mutual correction. Correct discipline, given enough time, gradually removes one’s self from one’s line of sight. One works to better purpose then and makes fewer mistakes, because at last one sees where one is. Two human possibilities of the highest order thus come within reach: what one wants can become the same as what one has, and one’s knowledge can cause respect for what one knows” (in The Art of the Commonplace, pg. 187).

In the final analysis, becoming a Christian means donning a different identity, a different family, a different place, a different geography, a different hope, a different way of life. It means being clothed with Christ, being part of Christ’s Body. We are all called from our personal Harans and Portlands into the promised land: the Kingdom of God. This is the life-long Christian sojourn, our spiritual pilgrimage of conversion and sanctification. It is not self-created, controlled, or owned. It is an obedient response to the call of God. May God give us all the grace to respond, act, go, and live.

"In love" with Jesus

2007-06-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

In the back of my Bible I scrawled this spur-of-the-moment thought: “The pace required by programmatic, evangelical-driven churches promotes a hurry-up, pragmatic life and leaves little room for study, reflection, leisure, and discernment.” I think I wrote this before I read Noll’s book. I know I was thinking of my church’s worship service when I wrote this. It’s interesting that we tend to say in sermons that emotions need to be subordinated to God’s will, but our services seem so intent on creating an emotional response. Part of that is the cultural stew we swim in—an environment of entertainment and competition for attention. The is particularly true for worship music. One upbeat song we sing is “I’m in Love with Jesus”:

When I think of you, I get a smile on my face
For this love I feel is more than I can take
Cause you lifted me from where I was
And you set my feet upon the rock
Oh I can’t contain this love
Or the fire that’s in my heart
So I’ll dance, shout, let it all out
Cause I’m in love with Jesus
I’m gonna sing praise all of my days
For he has set me free
I’m gonna tell everyone in this town
That I’m in love with Jesus
I’m in love with him, he’s in love with me
And I’ll never be the same again!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the words of this song. It expresses joyous faith in God, thankfulness for redemption, and the passionate desire to tell others about this. It is a song of joyful access. Add to this song the rollicking, driving groove of a rock guitar and throbbing toms and you get this feel more acutely.

The problem with songs like this is that they make feelings about God specific. The joyous nature of the words creates no room for those not feeling the sentiments of the song. The song is more about how I feel in response to God. And the response in this song is monotone: happy!

By now I’m sure my biases are evident. I freely admit that I am traditional when it comes to much of our church music. Part of my traditional bent is preference, which is unique to persons and should not be enforced on all people. But part of it is proscriptive, I think. Look at another song of praise and adoration:

Holy God, we praise thy name;
Lord of all, we bow before thee.
All on earth thy scepter claim,
all in heav’n above adore thee.
Infinite thy vast domain,
everlasting is thy reign.

Yes, it’s a stuffy old hymn! Yes, it uses “thy” and “thee.” Yes, it was based on Ambrose’s Te Deum, written in the fourth century. But I think that it provides for a spectrum of feeling all within offering praise to God. The praise is not based on how I feel but on who God is. When you are going through the darkest valley, which is the more inclusive phrase to sing, “When I think of you I get a smile on my face,” or “Holy God, we praise thy name.” Chances are that if the situation is bad enough, both phrases may choke in the throat. But counting all things joy—including suffering—doesn’t mean having a smile on one’s face all the time. It does mean seeking to glorify God in all things, however, and I would rather glorify God with a scowl than with a false smile.

The Scandal

2007-06-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Mark Noll’s landmark book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The book is over 12 years old now, but it strikes me as deeply relevant still. Noll is a historian, but he describes the book “not [as] a thoroughly intellectual volume” but more as “a historical mediation in which sermonizing and the making of hypotheses vie with more ordinary exposition” (from the preface). His thesis in a nutshell is that despite a rigorous, colorful history of American evangelical intellectual study, the fruits of that history have yielded anti-intellectualism which is, Noll argues, an affront to the Creator God who has made all things, including the human mind, to be good. To pursue a life of the mind in a Christian context means to use God’s gift of thinking and study for the glory of God and the edification of the Body of Christ. In essence, evangelicals today need to realize their historical place and identity instead of plastering their cultural (though not perceived so) slogans across the walls of the world and decreeing that these slogans are the essential elements of the Christian faith. They are “distinctive…not essential to Christianity” (243, emphasis his).

This last point is, I think, hugely important, though I as a new pastor am still not quite sure how to translate this to people in the parish. Being a Covenant minister, I can point to the Covenant Affirmations: The centrality of the Scriptures; The necessity of new birth; The Church as a fellowship of believers; The ministry of the Holy Spirit; The reality of freedom in Christ; and the commitment to the whole mission of the Church. I can also quote the phrase: “In essentials—unity; in non-essentials—liberty; in all our beliefs—charity.”

In the last chapter, Noll discusses whether there is hope for the evangelical mind. Again, he reiterates that evangelicals need a historical self-understanding in order help cultivate the evangelical mind. Not only that, but evangelicals need a broader understanding of the world, a willingness to balance activism with study, and healthy ecumenical cross-pollination with other denominations (which seems to be happening more today).

One of my enduring frustrations with many evangelicals has been their disdain for the intellect, their blind acceptance of the Bible, and their assumption that their understandings of how one comes to know God (personal conversion, personal relationship, personal devotions, personal faith) should be standard for all Christians. There is nothing innately wrong with these understandings, but they need to be understood for what they are—specifically Evangelical (capital E). A Roman Catholic would lean more towards the importance of the Mass, being a part of the Church, and following the Church’s teachings—that is part of what makes Roman Catholicism distinctive.

When I came to the University of Portland as a cock-sure evangelical, the Catholicism there threw me. I went through several interwoven stages: all-out condemnation, curious conversation, discovery of commonalities, appreciation of differences, and flirtation with conversion. Now as a (more-or-less) evangelical in ministry, I continue to wrestle with my “Catholic upbringing,” wondering whether I am home or running away. I do grow to realize, however, that my exposure to Catholicism was rather golden—at a university rather than at a local parish. Things always look and feel better at the university (whether or not they actually are). There were plenty of nominal Catholics—the kind we evangelicals have been so quick to condemn—but there were also plenty of devout Catholics for whom faith was indubitably alive and active.

I think these two experiences of mine--going to a Catholic school as an evangelical, and reading Noll's book--are important for me because: the first made me evaluate what I believed in contrast to the environment around me; the second made me more acutely aware of my historical and cultural DNA.

It will not do, then, simply to “agree to disagree,” to “live and let live.” That is not life together. That is not seeking Christian unity. Sadly, we can use our commonality--faith in Christ--as the end rather than the beginning of the conversation. And, as Noll has argued, we elevate our distinctives without understanding them as such. What might happen when we are given the space to allow for a pluralistic expression of faith in Christ, rather than make our evangelically distinctive expression the essential and standard by which one talks about faith?