While Along the Way

New Place with the Same Face

2011-05-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

After some deliberating I decided to move my blog to here: Life of an Urban Monk. A big reason why I decided to do this was because Wordpress does more than Blogger. I'm able to organize and integrate more aspects of a personal webpage than I was previously able to do. Another reason was that I wanted a name change. I've become more and more a part of a monastic tradition and I want both my academic and personal writing to reflect that.

Anyways, I have moved to a new space but I was able to import everything ever written from this page over. Although it is at a new place it will still have the same place. It's still a bit messy and I hope you won't mind it until I can sort things out.

A Meditation on the Third Station of the Cross

2011-04-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

The Divine Coup D'état

Luke’s account of Jesus before the Sanhedrin (22:66-71) is short and to the point. In Matthew there is a bit of theater to it; false witnesses are brought before the assembly and the high priest rips his clothes asunder before charging Jesus with blasphemy. In Luke’s narrative, however, the whole council of elders is singularly concerned with THE question that has simmered to the surface time and time again, “Are you the Christ or not?”. After a night of being betrayed, abandoned, beaten and verbally abused he answers unequivocally, “Yes, I am”. Their response: “Well, we've heard enough.” This brief exchange, apparently, was enough for the Council to bring Jesus to the Roman authorities and see him executed. The charge levied against him? Sedition.

You see the people of Israel were a conquered people, waiting for God to send His Messiah to liberate them from Roman oppression. The people of God just finished celebrating the Passover meal where they not only remembered when God rescued their ancestors from Egyptian slavery but also looked forward to the day when God would return again to His people. They were waiting for a King from David’s line to raise an army and establish the sovereignty of Israel once again.

I think the Sanhedrin knew what was at stake in this meeting. If Jesus really was who he said he was it meant they would have to let the dreams of their Kingdom die. For how could a Messiah King who would admonish one of his disciples for coming to His defense violently lead an army? How could a Messiah both willfully embrace the cross and fulfill their expectations of a divinely ordained coup d'état? In the face of such disappointment they reasoned Jesus simply was not, could not, be who he said he was and that too made him dangerous because Rome had no tolerance for revolution. Simply put, Jesus had to die. He was brought to Pilate as the “King of the Jews”. A King he certainly was as his own words from earlier in the chapter reverberate throughout this scene: “You are those who have stayed with me win my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom…” (22:28-29). The Sanhedrin was given a choice to either accept Jesus on his own terms as the Christ or to see him crucified.

This third station of the cross reminds us of a hard truth. The Via Dolorosa is a call to allow our own kingdoms to crumble like sandcastles as the high tide comes in. It is a coup d'état as we embrace our own crosses but it is also the path to Resurrection and the inheritance of an everlasting Kingdom where swords will be bent into plough shares, lions will lay with lambs and a new creation will be forged from both heaven and earth.

This post is a contribution to a series on the Stations of the Cross at Orthodaxis.

A Palm Sunday Hymn

2011-04-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

Ride on, Ride on in Majesty by, Henry H. Millman

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!

Hark! all the tribes Hosanna cry;

O Savior meek, pursue Thy road

With palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!

In lowly pomp ride on to die!

O Christ! Thy triumph now begin

Over captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!

The wingèd squadrons of the sky

Look down with sad and wondering eyes

To see the approaching sacrifice.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!

Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;

The Father, on His sapphire throne,

Expects His own anointed Son.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!

In lowly pomp ride on to die;

Bow Thy meek head to mortal pain,

Then take, O God, Thy power, and reign.

Stations of the cross

2011-04-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

This was cross-posted from Orthodaxis, a collaborative blog project between a group of people who believe that theological exploration is not anathema to faith but rather their relationship is dialectical. We wish to be a part of such a dialog.

In preparation for Holy Week and Easter, we are having a call for blogs to follow the Stations of the Cross.
The Stations of the Cross are a meditative journey tracing the last hours of Jesus through his trial and execution.
If you are interested in writing with us, please send me an email as soon as possible (mchl_shepherd@yahoo.com) and I will send you which station you will be responsible for.
Submissions should be around 300-500 words and draw from your unique background, experience, and perspective. Feel free to include research, poetry, or prayer so that we can have a wide array of things to read. Also include a short bio paragraph so that we can know who you are.
The deadline for submission is Sunday, April 17.
Email an attachment of your writing to mchl_shepherd@yahoo.com and we’ll post them up for all to read.
Any questions, feel free to write, email, call, or ask.

Non-violence, eschatology and the God who hasn't shown up

2011-03-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

An expert in the Law approached Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus responded, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?". The laywer answered, "You shall love your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and you shall love your neighbor as yourself". Jesus responded, "You have answered correctly, do this and you will live."

Wanting to Justify himself the laywer responded, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied with this simple parable:

There was a man who embarked on a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. This was a treacherous road and unwittingly this man was on his way into a trap set by another man who has a mind only for violence. Now, by chance a couple of priests were coming from the opposite direction. They have seemed to escape the ravaging that was to come for this man and were too concerned with their own schedules to slow down and warn the man of the dangers just up the path. As this man continued down the road, turned a corner and within seconds was confronted by this thug. The man took only a few steps before he knew his back was against the wall. Without resisting, he let the bandit take the few posessions and pieces of silver he had with him. Thinking for a second he was going to be set free he was stripped of his clothes, thrown to the ground and began to be assaulted. While he was being beaten within an inch of his life a Samaratin happened to walked by, took notice and began to plea for this man's life. "Stop, you do not need to resort to violence, this isn't what you were meant to be!!" He tried to reason with him, to create a dialog while keeping a safe distance, but this bandit only had a taste for destruction. Resigned, the Samaratin began to encourage the helpless man, "Do not respond to their evil in kind but overcome evil with good." Once these ruthless thugs had their fill they left the scene, leaving the traveller naked in his own tears and blood. The Samaratin then came out from his safe place, bandaged him up and took him to a nearby inn so he could recover, leaving enough money to pay for however long he needed to stay."
"Now, tell me" Jesus said to the laywer, "Who was this man's neighbor?"

Not exactly the story we learned in Sunday school, is it? The story told in Luke chapter 10 goes along the lines of how different people had responded to the man after he had been beaten nearly to death and honestly, this has never set entirely right with me. Sure, Jesus' point was that the call to love our God and our neighbors trumps any sort of religious preoccupation or inhibitions we may have that prevents for coming to the aid of the stranger. I get it, my problem is that "coming to the aid of..." in Jesus real story looks like attending to the afflicted after the damage has been done.

The Pope spoke today in St. Peter's square urging for a dialog to happen in Libya to suspend the use of arms. But what if Ghadifi and his forces aren't interested in a dialog? What if they only have a mind for destruction, as they seem to do? What kind of dialog could be had? What, then, if/when countless innocents get massacared because their tyrant has an insatiable blood lust? Are we only to show our love after the dust settles?

Now, I would have to state here that I am within the camp of non-violence. My non-violence isn't some sort of Kantian sense of duty where we ought to be non-violent on the grounds that Jesus said to not resist an evil person and turn the other cheek. Those instructions were given within a sermon (Mt. 5-7) that was couched with an expectation that God was coming to judge the world and make everything right very very soon (cf. 4:17, 7:24-27). Why does that matter? Because not resisting an evil person only makes sense if God is coming soon to dethrone the mighty and vindicate the oppressed. Well the Storm did not come and we have been waiting for it for over 2000 years. The eschatological expectations of the first century church were disappointed and God did not show up. He still hasn't, well perhaps not in the way the apocalyptic imagination of St. John depicted it would be. Perhaps it someday will happen like that but I'm not holding my breath.

My perspective of non-violence is that it is a fruit of a virtuous culture that is concerned for the other. Non-violence can only really exist within a culture where an ultimate concern is placed on God and our neighbors. Our task as peacemakers is to cultivate such a culture until God finally shows up. Where do we start, though, in a place like Libya where everything is in chaos? Where do we start when we are witnessing an innocent man getting beaten nearly to death? Do we really stand from our place of safety and plead for dialog?

Is it possible that there are some situations where our calling to our neighbor trumps our religious preoccupation with being "non-violent"? Because the answer to Jesus' question in this altered parable is, "No one".

Relocating our Humanity

2011-03-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to stay out of the conversation about Rob Bell, it is part of the reason why I gave up facebook for lent, but it just keeps coming up in conversations I have and news feeds on "Religion" that I receive. I have read quite a few articles in the last couple of weeks and have revisted some questions that have been more or less shelved for a later time. Here are some of my favorites, so far:

The best Reformed argument in support of the Doctrine of Hell that I has been put out can be found here. I'm not typically Reformed in my theology and so this was both an academically and spiritually challenging read for me. He has read Bell's book and this is a long response to it. Without having read Bell's book yet I cannot speak as to whether he represents Bell fairly or not, I hope so.

A friend of mine, Ted Troxell, wrote this article. His style, prose and touch of cynicism not only captured my attention but has teased my imagination for a while now. There are some presuppositions about the nature of "justice" challenged in this article that ought to be challenged.

Finally this article by David Lose raised some important questions about the nature of the gospel and how we ought to present it. Is this conversation about Heaven and Hell the gospel at gunpoint?

All that said, I'm still not going to weigh in on whether Hell is an ontological reality or not. Those of you that know me know my thoughts, questions and struggles on this. Those of you that don't, well, this is a conversation that we should have over coffee; not a quick blog or status update.

I'm actually writing because I've had this aching question in my mind that I just need to ask someone, anyone. Is this conversation about Heaven, Hell and Heretics missing the point of the gospel an being a Christian? David Lose quotes John 3:16 in his article, "...whoever believes in him will not die, but have eternal life." What if "eternal life" didn't necessarily mean "heaven" and death didn't mean "hell"? What if that is not the conversation Jesus was having with Nicodemus? In the seventeeth chapter of this same gospel Jesus lifts his eyes to the heavens and says:

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." John 17:1-3

Eternal life, according to Jesus, is a restored relationship with the Father and I think it is fair to conjecture that "death" is that broken relationship. When we make the conversation about heaven and hell we wholly skip the relational status between us and God. If we don't skip it then we certainly treat it as a stepping stone. In much of the conversations I have read and been a part of we have largely forgetten that this stepping stone is the ball game. Nothing else matters, even heaven and hell. In many ways this treatment of the relationship is like going through the motions of a marriage just so you can get laid.

Let me put it another way, I am not a Christian so that I will escape the eternal fire and darkness of Hell and dance with the Father on the streets that are golden. I am a Christian because I wholly believe that it is through the process of imitating Christ that we are able to relocate our humanity and be a part of God's continuing redemption of His beloved creation. I do not wait eagerly for Judgement so that others can see that I was right all along. I eagerly wait for Judgement because of the resurrection and new creation that was promised to us with the down payment of Christ's death, burial and resurrection.

Lent: Why Bother?

2011-03-04T19:32:00.001-08:00

Too much noise.

Every place I have to be there is so much noise; it all adds up. Some noise is beautiful. Like all the sights and sounds of a Mardi Gras parade as it passes by. Or the sounds of friends gathered around a night time fire drinking and unwinding from another week. Or the sound of my wife's laugh whe she's really laughing hard. This noise makes me come alive and its not the noise I'm talking about. I'm talking about being in a small, crowded room where the voices of everyone gets louder and LOUDER while just trying to be heard. It's like a big tin pot that is dropped on a hard tile floor right next to you. The clang reverberates inside your head as much as it does the room and all of a sudden you completely forget the direction you were supposed to be going towards. This noise is disorientating. I am disorientated by this kind of noise that has been drowning out the beautiful noise in my life for too long now and, of course, not all noise is audible.

Thanks to "the media" and Girls Gone Wild, Mardi Gras in New Orleans has gained an infamous reputation. In a couple of corners of this city unmentionable debauchery does happen, it's probably happening right as I'm writing this actually, but for the rest of the nintey eight percent of the city this is a season of parades, barbaques and getting to know a stranger. It is a break from routine where we step out of our manufactured, little boxes and experience something new. We stop rushing from one place to another. We be present in the present for a change. This existentialism doesn't last for too long, however. Literally at 12:01am Ash Wednesday the parades stop, the cops roll through one end of the Quarter to the other to get everyone off the streets. At 12:01am Ash Wednesday Mardi Gras will end and many will find their way to mass, take the Eucharist and receive the blessing of ash on their forehead. Lent will begin.

An uber-Reformed person I know posted on his facebook page that he was giving up Catholic superstition for Lent last year. He didn't mean anything serious by it, I found it extremely funny, but underneath the vaneer of sarcasm and wit there's a much more serious question there. What is the point of giving something up for Lent? I remember in high school only the super spiritual christians really observed Lent. I remember because they were always pretty quick to let everyone know they gave up coke whenever someone had one at lunch. I would say I was giving up something (caffein has always been my pet sacrifice) and then when no one was looking I would break that "commitment". Not very virtuous of me, I know. For the life of me I just couldn't understand the point of this practice beyond the vanity that I saw. For most of my life I believed that since Christ suffered I should suffer too, at least for this part of the year. There is some truth to this (though I don't think it's really relevant to Lent in particular but rather for the whole of Christian life) but after a couple years of seriously practicing Lent it has become much more than a Catholic superstition or something to do because Christ died for me. It has become a time of focus and meditation on not only the passion of Christ but also His resurrection; the only bit of hope this cynic has for the future of humanity and this world. It's a break from this existentialism and daily routine. It is a glorious reimagining of what Jesus could have possibly meant when he taught his disicples to pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". It is tuning out the noise and hearing the beauty, a reorientation.

There are innumerable points at which we have to detach ourselves, to change our orientation, to redirect our desire and refresh and purify our energy, to keep on looking in the right direction: to attend upon the grace that comes through faith.

-Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals pg. 25

So this year I am "giving up" a couple of things for Lent. First is Facebook. Here's a great article on the long reason to why. The short reason is, there is too much damn noise. Honestly, I don't care about whether Rob Bell is or isn't a universalist. I don't care about the next crazy thing that comes out of Charlie Sheen's mouth. Though I care about my friends on facebook very much (I personally know more than 90% of them) I don't really care about what they ate for lunch. If you're honest you don't care about what I ate for lunch, or where, either. Checking my facebook has become compuslive thing that I do on my phone or when I get "bored" on my computer. I check to see who has "liked" my latest witty status update. I check to see if someone responded to some words I posted on someone's thread about Rob Bell or Charlie Sheen or whoever is in the spotlight this week. Honestly, those words are wasted...and I'm so desperate for words. I have some writing to do for school as well as important conversations that ought to be had with my wife, my closest friends and family. However, by the time I've scrolled down the news feed on facebook and written a handful of clever one-liners about today's topic that keeps us talking for the sake of talking I am spent. I am so tired. The moments of silence I have with God are my most tired and desparate where all I can say or think is "Oh God...". I am desparate for words and quality time. I believe I have allowed facebook to rob me of both for a while now. I don't know if I will even keep my facebook after this. I probably will but my hope is that facebook will once again be a genuine avenue to connect with people rather than a compulsion to satisfy.

The second thing I am giving up is alcohol. I really don't drink a whole lot but it is consistent enough in my routine that if it were gone my routine would be broken in one sense or another. When we drove out to New Orleans I was given an audio book my Brian McLaren titled Finding Our Way Again. In it he has a section on fasting and the main premise was that the purpose of fasting was to break our routine and be aware of God's activity around us. I'm using this to break my routine and become aware by listening to all the activity around me while hoping God is in the midst.

"Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life ... One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies." -Deitrich Bonhoeffer

For the next few days I will enjoy a drink or two and be on facebook. As Ash Wednesday rolls around, however, I will not be on facebook or drinking alcohol until Resurrection Sunday. I won't be giving up all technology so please email me (drkaristai@gmail.com) or call if want to talk. I want to have more personal conversations rather than letting the voyeurism of Facebook be an adequate substitute for a real relationship.

My hope in all of this is the noise will get quiet and I will be able to hear the beauty once again.

The art of peacemaking in a culture of violence

2011-01-08T22:39:00.000-08:00

Did you Hear the News Today?

I've been deeply saddened when reading the news today about the victims of theshooting in Arizona; including a federal judge, a 9 year old boy and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. I'm sure in the coming days there will be many words written and said in order to try to make sense of what happened. Many notable politicians have already gave speeches condemning this senseless act. In many ways today's tragedy doesn't make sense, but was it senseless? Although it is much easier and more comfortable to believe this was a random action of a madman I'm not convinced that's the case. I am convinced today's shooting is indictative of something systemic, of a culture of violence, and we desperately need honest to God non-violent peacemakers to show us another way to be before Rome burns to the ground. Some of my friends might not think that to be an altogether terrible thing, but I do. I don't believe God relishes in the collapse of any civilization because the process of reaching total self destruction is nothing less than heartbreaking, what we saw today in Arizona is but a glimspe of that.

Before I go into this it should be noted that my intended audience is primarily a Christian one. I am speaking Christian to Christian for the non-violent culture I will be writing about is only possible within a community willing to take the life of Jesus seriously and responding by following suit. I am also fully aware of the great acts of violence many have done in the name of Jesus. I believe there is a serious difference between their actions and the actual words of Jesus than many other Christians have put into practice. The former is not a suitable indictment on the latter.

Violence...

First thing's first, we need to recognize what violence is for there is no sense is talking about non-violence if we don't understand what we're up against. I'm going to avoid any strict definition of violence because I am convinced that when ethical discussion (or any philosophical discussion for that matter) is reduced to definitions we spiral into a hopeless relativism. Remember Clinton's famous "Well, it depends on what 'it' is" line? The real discussion abides in what violence looks like. What is the character of Violence? In a word, violence is the antithesis of God's initial act of creation and continuing re-creation through the physical ressurection of Jesus.

I follow pretty close to Jurgen Moltmann's treatment of the Sermon on the Mount, though some may see some similarities with Yoder, as he begins with The Beginning (From The Way of Jesus Christ, pages 127-130). From Genesis 2 through chapter 6 we begin this Great Drama with an introduction to the nature of humanity's sin. It begins with Yahweh presenting the Garden to Adam with an explicit direction to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and feel with a promise that if he does he will surely die (2:15-17). After Adam and Eve chose to eat they were cast out of Eden with their immortality stripped from them (3:19). Humanity's relationship with God had been fractured but in Cain and Able's story there appears that some semblence of a relationship still existed. For Yahweh had warned Cain that sin desired mastery over him and he must rule it instead (4:7). Cain ended up killing his brother Able and once again sin begets death. Yahweh exiles Cain but not before leaving him marked because of Cain's reasoning that surely other will want to kill him (4:14). Yoder comments on this story:

"That is the primeval definition of violence. . .there are people out there whose response to Cain's deed is mimetic. They will quasi-automatically, as by reflex, want to do to him what he had done to Abel. . .it will seem self-evident to them that this is what he has asked for by what he did" (The War of the Lamb, pg 28)

Two points in this story: The culture outside of Eden is systemically violent otherwise Cain would have no reason to fear Able's fate and nor would God mark Cain as a promise that Cain's slayer would be punished 7-fold (4:15). God's mark was intended to deter anyone who would wish to kill him from doing so. It is apparent that humanity did not follow God's warning. By chapter six God had decided to annihilate humanity and begin anew with Noah:

"I have determined to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence through them".

So, here we can see that violence is the destroyer of life, a corruption of God's creating act. For Moltmann, a violent act is merely one part of the corruption. The other is the "vicious circle of violence and counter-violence". This is just as true today as it was so very long ago. Remember the abortion doctor in kansas who was shot to death at his Church last year? This too was a product of a culture of violence and counter-violence. It is for this reason that retaliation and vengeance will never put an act of violence to right.

Since violence emerges out of a culture it is then not solely an action but a vice, an orientation towards the destruction of life. This orientation comes in degrees where death is its ultimate fruit and I think today's shootings are very telling of that. Political disagreements and heated debates no longer exist in our country. We now call them "battles" and even "wars". We no longer separate the opinion of someone from their being, which results in hating the person as we hate their political position. They're no longer people we disagree with but they are our enemies. This is a scary evolution in our political rhetoric and it is violent. We need not look very far to see evidence of this on both sides of the aisle. An example that is particularily relevant to this shooting is the quick emergence of Palin's electoral map with rifle sights on the congress woman that was shot today. Some have used it with thinly veiled implications of Palin's direct culpability. She's no more culpable than the rest of us. How could she have known this would happened to this Democrat congress woman? No, her propaganda (rhetoric in image form) is also indicitave of our violent culture. It's also obvious that if she is willing to put crosshairs to all these people she has little regard for them as people. Again, I'm sure if we looked back to the elections in 2008 we would see similar stuff from the Dems. The sharp differences between these two parties have gotten more and rhetorically violent where an assassination attempt seems almost inevitable. By all appearances this seems to be a viscious cycle of a violent culture. What we need is a non-violent counter-culture.

Non-Violence...

It would seem then that if violence were a vice it would follow that non-violence is a virtue. I don't think so, rather I think non-violence is a product of an agapeistic orientation. The virtue in question then is the practice of the New Testament teaching of Agape love. Again, I think it's most appropriate to paint a picture of Agape than give a strict definition and I have come across no better definition than the one I found in Gene Outka's book Agape: An Ethical Analysis by H.R. Niebuhr:

Love is rejoicing over the existence of the beloved one; it is the desire that he be rather than not be; it is the longing for his presence when he is absent; it is happiness in the thought of him; it is profound satisfaction over everything that makes him great and glorious.

Love is gratitude: it is thankfulness for the existence of the beloved; it is happy acceptance of everything that he gives without the jealous feeling that the self ought to be able to do as much; it is a gratitude that does not seek equality; it is wonder over the other's gift of himself in companionship.

Love is reverence: it keeps its distance even as it draws near; it does not seek to absorb to other in the self or want to be absorbed by it; it rejoices in the otherness of the other; it desires the beloved to be what he is and does not seek to refashion him in a replica of the self or to make him a means to the self's advancement. As reverence love is and seeks knowledge of the other, not by way of curiosity nor for the sake of gaining power but in rejoicing and in wonder. In all such love there is an element of that "holy fear" which is not a form of flight but rather deep respect for the otherness of the beloved and the profound unwillingness to violate his integrity.

Love is loyalty; it is the willingness to let the self be destroyed rather than the other cease to be; it is the commitment of the self by self-abiding will to make the other great.

The hateful political rhetoric and action in our current milieu could not abide if we were orientated around this understanding of Love. This Love gives life and does everything it can to see it flourish. Non-violence would come out of this culture and that's what Jesus had intended for the Christian community in his Sermon on the Mount as well as Paul's words in Romans 12.

The question first and foremost is can the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount be fulfilled? Some think not. Richard Niebuhr believes these are ideals only Jesus could live up to but they are impractical for us mere humans. There are various others who hold similar points of view but I think they don't seriously contend with Jesus' words at the end of the sermon, "Whoever hears these words of mine (ie. this sermon he just gave) and puts them into practice will be like the wise man who built his house on the rock..." (7:24). Surely the Sermon is contingent upon the context of the eschatological vision Matthew places it in but I think there is also solid enough grounds within the text to suggest that even though the Lord's return has yet to come our commission is to see God's will done on earth as it is in heaven. This includes being a culture of non-violence as is found in Matthew 5:38-48. This is the "turn the other cheek" passage and it's often read as a renunciation of violence...but simple denouncements aren't enough, are they? The politicians that have publically decried today's shooting enough? I don't think so. No, as Moltmann rightly puts it, what we find in the SoM is the sovereignty over violence:

Non-resistence to evil shows up the absurdity of evil. Evil's strength is violence. Evil's weakness is its wrongness. Counter-violence supplies evil with its supposed justification, and often enough stabalizes it. It is only the non-violent reaction which robs evil of every legitimation. . .The rule of violence is built up on anxiety or terror. Where the rulers are unable to rouse their anxiety or terror, their violence loses its effect. This is the weakness of violence, and this is where the non-violent conquest of an act of violence starts."

Non-violence shows the absurdity of Evil and renders it impotent for it's only resource is more violence. Surely we see this in the death of Jesus for he suffered violence on top of violence. At any time during his ministry he could have said the word and a host of willing warriors would have followed him into violently overthrowing their Roman oppressors. Even while he hung on the cross he could have called down an army from heaven and established his Kingdom with the sword. If he had done that the power of Roman crucifixion would have seemed a formal adversary, for Jesus needed to be rescued. He chose to endure. He chose to suffer violence and ultimately die. The impotence of Evil is revealed in its fullest in Christ's resurrection. This is why Paul mockingly wrote in 1 Cor. 15, "Where, O' Death is your victory? Where O' Death is your sting?". Christ's death and resurrection not only teaches us the absurdity of violence but also shows us a non-violent way of being.

Paul taught the same thing in Romans 12. After mounting such a theological treatise about all of humanity's culpability, the death of Jesus and the meaning of His resurrection we come to the often quotes "Therefore, in view of God's mercies, offer your minds and bodies as living sacrifices..." (12:1-2). In this chapter Paul gives some practical instructions for their community starting with "Love without hypocricy" (vs. 9) and a couple of verses later:

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (12:18-21)

This love that Christ modeled for us and what was painted earlier is the same call Cain heard from God. We all have the capacity for violence, but we must rule it and thus be free of it. It is only through conforming to The Way of Christ that we can also master violence...and we must. If we become an agapeistic people we will be a non-violent culture that can influence the violent culture around us in the same way a light on a lampstand lights up the whole house (Matthew 5:15-16).

Peacemaking...

Peacemakers are thus agents of non-violence. Peacemakers are those who would rather see violence overcome than participate in it. They are people who would sacrifice for the other for the other's sake. They are people who loves until it costs them something. They are the ones who show the rest of us the absurdity of evil and today's shooting is but a reminder that the world needs honest to God peacemakers to counter these awful tragedies.

Just as death is most extreme degree of violence, martyrdom is the most extreme of non-violence. Although I believe we ought to be as willing as Christ was, the call for non-violence is not only a call to our own crosses but to each and every step in getting there.

So, what does peacmaking and non-violence look like in our political milieu? Here are a couple of suggested starting points...

De-escalate our rhetoric and use our words that affirm each other's humanity. Choose not to pay someone in kind with words of sarcasm and humiliation.
Get out of the mainstream media and read your local newspapers. Seriously, it helps. In the six months I have lived in New Orleans I stopped going to FN, CNN, MSNBC etc. for news and followed what was in our local paper. If I wanted more National news then I would go to somewhere like Reuters. I have limited my exposure to all the of polarizing language the MSM stations use (and YES, Fox News is Mainstream in spite of their best attempts to market themselves as not being so. You can't be the #1 viewed News channel in the country without being Mainstream) and thus have had a much better time thinking through things in a less polarized light.
Get to really know a person that is a part of a political hot button. For example, take the time and effort to get to know someone who is gay and hear their story. Or find a group that works with immigrants and learn their stories. Write to a soldier out in Iraq. Do whatever you have to do to make these abstract political issues personal, put a face and a name to them.
Separate issues of disagreement with the other from their being and remove words like "hate", "enemies" and "war" from these discussions entirely.
Subject your own opinions and convictions to the same critical scruitny you do to those you disagree with AND admit when they may have a point.
In the same vein, we ought not support a politician without some criticism. They are all just as human as we are and we ought to see them as such. Some of my Republican friends are quick to notice this with those of us who supported Obama in '08 but can they see it in themselves with Palin?
Be quick to apologize and give forgiveness when lines are crossed in discussion.

If we Christians don't cultivate this kind of counter-culture who else will?

I'm reminded of a story this morning

2010-12-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine used this story as a sermon illustration once a long time ago and for some reason I was reminded of it this morning. So I thought I'd share.

At Cambridge University there would, from time to time, be reading contests where a group of men would get together, put some money in the pot and compete by everybody reading the same poem in their own fashion. At this competition the poem was Psalm 23. It was in an auditorium-like class room with a hundred men listening to each other recite this immortal Psalm. Some readings were quite theatrical. Some were quiet. Some were absolutely captivating and others were down right dreadful. By the time everyone was done someone noticed that the janitor was standing in the back listening in on their even. He wasn't of great stature and looked quite ordinary, the very definition of meek. The man who spotted him called him forward to read the Psalm. He resisted at first on the grounds that he didn't pay to enter the competition but the crowd insisted that he have a go anyway. So he walked up to the podium, opened up the Bible and read...

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.

By the end the whole room was dead silent for everyone had been so profoundly moved by this man's reading. After a few moments the man who originally spotted him at the door took the money, brought it to him and said, "We all may know the Psalm but you know the Shepherd."

Happy Sunday everybody.

Puzzle Pieces in my Mind

2010-11-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

I went on a retreat this weekend and I wanted share some quotes and passages I encountered that is ruminating in my mind and soul...

"I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely make sense for those looking in from the outside." - Willie in The Shack

Seventh Rule of St. Benedict: On Humility (Follow the link for the longer version.

Live in the Presence of God
For this must always come before your own desires.
Obey, through love of the obedient Christ.
When there are difficulties, be silent and wait for the Lord.
Be open with the one who guides you.
Be content with everything and everyone.
Prefer others to yourself.
Be unobtrusive.
Love to be silent.
Laugh only at yourself.
Be simply yourself.
Let your creaturely dependence pierce your very bones.

"So, no longer having confidence in yourself, you will show forth, without knowing it, the secret happiness of a son or daughter running free to our Father". - St. Benedict

Romans 1:1-6

Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God - the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to faith and obedience for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 58

These words are a bunch of puzzle pieces in my mind that I'm sure I will work the picture out later.

(one of the) Great Taboos of Americana

2010-11-11T16:17:00.000-08:00

First, I want to say that I'm trying to approach this with a great deal of sensitivity as bluntness always makes questioning taboos our of culture (both within the church and in the state) a bit of a mess. Like most taboos, when called into question, they more often generate an emotional reaction than a rational response. So if you're going to write a comment (or write me a message) please resist such a reaction and I will do the same. Okay, done with the disclaimer.

I've had a fair amount of dissonance today as I do whenever a patriotic holiday comes around but next to the 4th of July I'm most unsettled with Veteran's Day and it primarily has to do with the fact that I'm a Christ follower. Let me get this out of the way first. Yes, I think one can be a Christian and a soldier at the same time. For the long reason read this blog. For the short reason I will say that I believe that a necessary element for the Gospel to be what it is, it has to be able to do its powerfully transforming work wherever it wants to. Meaning, the Gospel meets us all right where we are at and leads us into Resurrection. Furthermore, if you read the long reason, there are several examples in the NT where John or Jesus could have called the soldiers they encountered to quit the military in response to the gospel they gave them but they didn't. There is certainly ambiguity in the texts to suggest that it's possible to follow Christ and be in the military. So just to get it out there, I don't think being in the military is necessarily immoral (though I imagine it would be near impossible to be moral when in combat but that is a discussion for another day). What I'm calling into question today is what exactly should I, as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, be thankful for?

The answer I see all over facebook status updates is along the lines of "Be thankful for our soldiers who have served and fought for our freedom" and herein lies the rub for me on a couple of points.

1. It is Christ who has set me free. My existence is entirely contingent on the Sovereign God and it is He who keeps me safe and has made me free. My freedom was bought by the blood of the resurrected Son of God, not the blood of solders. It is this basic confession that clashes so much with giving thanks to any other force or power for granting me freedom.

2. What "freedom" is really being protected by our soldiers? The blunt answer that is used to trump any sort of doubt cast onto the function of the soldier is "Well, if it weren't for our soldiers we would all be speaking German". Okay, point granted. Soldiers are essential for national sovereignty and security from foreign oppressors. Does autonomy from foreign oppressors necessarily mean we are free? Lack of foreign tyranny only gives way to what Hauerwas calls "the tyranny of our own designs". He continues:

"We are kept detached, strangers to one another as we go about fulfilling our needs and asserting our rights. The individual is given a status that makes incomprehensible the Christian notion salvation as a political, social phenomenon in the family of God. . .the church becomes one more consumer-oriented organization, existing to encourage individual fulfillment rather than being a crucible to engender individual conversion into the Body." -Resident Aliens pg. 32-33

On these grounds I think the liberal and conservative betrays itself. Week in and week out our conversations bemoan the unredeemed nature of the world. If they want to sound introspective they go after how consumerist Church has become. Our sermons call us to die to our selfishness and individuality to find new life in Christ and the community He's created. Yet once or twice a year we thank those who enlist to secure the same culture that we spend the rest of the year saying is corrupt and in desperate need of saving? That doesn't make sense to me and I think at best, the function of the soldier is to preserve the American Way of Life. Which is fundamentally different from freedom and this kind of spills into my last question/point.

3. Speaking to just Christians now, if God is sovereign and we've "given our hearts to Jesus" wouldn't attempts to preserve a certain kind of security for our own autonomy be rebellion? We thank those for preserving this culture of Me and My Stuff and thus we become our own tyrants. For those who have sworn allegiance to the Kingdom of the Cross and empty tomb, how is this not a coup d'etat?

Bernard Shaw once argued that Hell is where we must do everything we want to do. Are we creating our own hell and thanking those who did the hard work to get us here?

a word of Glory

2010-10-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

Across the street from the Starbucks I work at there is a massive brick church, although you would have to look to find it. It's surrounded by the business of a grocery store, bank, a couple of restaurants, Starbucks and it's on a main artery for traffic. So there's lots of business and noise while this church remains there ignored. What's most interesting to me is when the bells go off at noon no one really notices. Now they're not old school church bells but rather they're hidden speakers projecting little chimes old school church bells would play...you know what I mean?

Yesterday when I was taking my half after a pretty hectic morning rush I was sitting outside reading my book all of a sudden I begin to quietly sing to myself The Doxology.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

It's not a usual song for me to be singing or humming to myself and I soon realized I was because that's the chime the church bells were playing. The thing is, I don't remember formally learning this song. It was a normal part of different liturgies in various churches I've worshipped at in my life and I don't ever remember being told to flip to page 83 in the hymnal on the back of the pew so that we could follow along with the choir. It was learned deductively, a necessary byproduct of worshipping with a community for a long period of time. It's like a heart song that we all learned over time within a particular community who has already committed the song to memory. To put it another way, this song is a part of the basic grammar of the worshipping community and I find myself singing this heart song while trying to find rest from a chaotic morning at my Starbucks. It's possible there were others outside singing along as I was but to one who isn't from the Church this basic melody would sound like nothing more than a pleasant jingle telling it is now noon.

In times where my mind turns to idle thought questions about calling have been resurfacing. I'm reading all of this material, discovering my convictions within a conviction driven community and trying to articulate it all in a way that's hopefully academic enough for school. For what purpose am I doing all of this work? What am I working towards? Immediately it's for my MTh and then hopefully I'll move on to some sort of PhD program. The lingering question is the "why?". I'm torn in so many directions and my introspection is a search for a deeper sense of calling. I believe "God's will" for my life is for me to become more like Him by imitating Christ and this begins with loving Him, my neighbors, my enemies and myself. Obviously this leaves the journey rather open. I could end up being a plumber and still be living in "God's will". Of course, that wouldn't be the best use of my talents and gifting and I would probably hurt myself pretty bad along the way of becoming a master plumber. Discovering my calling is a process of self-discovery and discovery of the world around me. This whole move to New Orleans is a part of that discovery.

However there are so many more questions that I have then answers, a reality I'm coming to accept and embrace. The trouble with my personality type is that I can get lost in my own head all to easily. It can get noisy and chaotic with questions of doubt and fear of what is uncertain. I can get turned upside down pretty quickly with all of the directions I want to go in. Where are those bells playing that simple song when I need them?

Finally I've come around to my purpose in writing this evening. Yesterday when listening to these bells I was reminded of two very distinct images. First, was a quote from a post my friend JJ wrote over a year ago about an article he wrote for CIY.

The root word used to get the word vocation is the same word from which we get voice. Maybe finding your vocation is not about finding your call, but all about finding your voice.

You can read the rest of his post but I agree, finding our voice in this world where so many people are both talking and saying nothing at the exact same time. Finding our voice includes risk...and screwing up a lot.

The second is John 10:1-5:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber!But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. They won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice.”

Those of us who learn The Doxology by consistently worshipping in a community that knew it by heart could not help but hear the simple words of this song while the sound from the church bells invaded the space of an afternoon filled with the noise and chaos the rest of life tends to bring.

I think part of discovering one's calling is finding one's voice. It's a process of self discovery and learning what it means to be a person in this world who is called. Another part is learning to recognize His voice in the Song by communing with those who have been committing the words to heart for longer than myself as well as teaching those who have just begun.

Cognitive Dissonance

2010-10-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

I've been wrestling with a bit of dissonance this week between the rhetoric of the Kingdom and being reminded of the cruel and unusual reality of suffering in this world when following what's going on down in Haiti right now.

I've never been to Haiti and all I really know about the conditions there is from stories my friends have told who've spent time there and from different books I've read. If my impressions are accurate then the troubles and misfortune of this great city I now live in would only scratch the surface of the daily lives of these people. Earlier this year the whole world was reminded of their existence when their half of an island was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake that caused the death of between 93,000 (most conservative estimate) and 230,000 (most liberal estimate) people. Some stories that I've heard from friends in our community that went out there almost immediately after to establish safe supply routes between the Dominican Republic and Haiti have kept me up at night. Now, in the places where this earthquake did the most damage, there is a cholera epidemic that's claimed a couple hundred lives and infected around 3500 more.

Cholera...really? I mean...really? One article I read told that there hasn't been a case of cholera in this area for a 100 years! Now, in one of the poorest, most devastated points in the world there is an outbreak of a disease with a known cure that's killing people. No doubt because this nation lacks the basic infrastructure and sanitary requirements that would keep a case from turning into an epidemic. The fate of these people are literally subject to the forces of nature, the goodness of man and the will of the gods.

Is all of humanity this frail? Are we all subject to these same finicky forces? Does the suffering of Haiti lay bare the startling reality of our own mortality? One day we are here and the next we're not. Is faith merely the delusion of this pervasive nihilism or is there real hope.

Ah-ha! This is where my dissonance is festering. What kind of hope is there against such forces that seem not at all hindered by the fact that we wear our crosses, go to church and pray a lot? Yes, yes I get that we live in a now/not yet reality where God's people is playing a key role in ushering in the eschaton that Jesus' life, death, burial and resurrection inaugurated...I get it. Furthermore, the instruction we see time and time again with the New Testament is "Don't worry about these present troubles because the Lord is going to return soon to set things right". Okay...but it's been 2000 years and humanity has since learned the meaning of words like "Bubonic Plague", "Crusade", "Holocaust", "Genocide", "Mutually Assured Destruction". It's been quite a while waiting for the Lord to make things right and what I'm struggling with is, what about the now part of the "now/not yet" schema? Paradise, whatever that looks like, sounds like a pretty sweet existence but what power does the cross and empty tomb really have in the now? From the 9th ward to the slums of Mumbai to Darfur to Haiti what does the Resurrection actually do for these people now other than provide them some sort of hope that the next life will be better? What does the cross do for their present condition?

Tonight I went to the Westbank to have dinner with Amanda while she was on her half. We were sitting outside eating our taco bell, minding our own business and this guy sits in the table next to us and says, "So, this is New Orleans, huh? It's kinda nice here". We ended up talking with him and his friend until Amanda's break was over and I stayed for about another hour sitting with them shooting the breeze. The guy that struck up the conversation, his name is Bruddy and I already forgot his friend's name. They're both in their late 50's, retired Air Force officers contracted out to a Navy base out here to work on some planes. They're from Panama City, FL and we spent most of the evening talking about how much we like riding motorcycles until about the end of our conversation. Bruddy's friend had already taken off and he asked me how I'm dealing with the culture shock coming from Southern California and all. I told him that I'm just now really getting adjusted here since I had to go to Europe for my master's in theology program. That little bit changed the direction of the conversation entirely. He told me all about how his parents shoved religion down his throat, an uber-fundy flavor of the Nazarene church. He said as soon as he stopped believing in Santa Clause he stopped believing in God and saw no real reason in the example his parents set to believe. He led a rough life of various addictions but his drug of choice was Heroin while in the Air Force. Four years ago he had been trying AA for about a year before he nearly killed himself with an overdose of Heroin. When he recovered he truly began the 12 steps by believing in a higher power. That was four years ago this Christmas and he says everyday he checks in and talks to his sponsor who is a Lutheran minister. He says he's spiritual but not pious. He says only through the power of God is he enabled to NOT shoot up but he's also deeply skeptical of what the rest Christianity is about because of some scar tissue from the damage his parents did to him. He's on a journey, one day at a time and he's been sober for almost 4 years.

If that isn't resurrection, I don't know what is...and therein lies the rub.

Human Faces of God: a review

2010-10-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

The conversation of biblical inerrancy is not a new one and it's been a while since I've engaged with it on any sort of level. Mostly because those conversations have ended with some sort of response from the inerrantist that the autographs were wholly without error. Since we don't have the autographs the argument is moot and I have since then shelved this discussion and moved on to other topics of interest. Thom Stark picks up this subject, blows off the dust that's accumulated and reinvigorates the discussion in his book The Human Faces of God. He takes on one of the most systematic statements on biblical inerrancy the Evangelical movement in America has put out and meticulously shows how untenable (and dangerous) their argument for biblical inerrancy is by exposing the statement's sometimes circular logic, arguing from the Bible and the Church Fathers against the statement's claims that inerrancy is a doctrine affirmed by both the Bible and the mainstream of Church History. But he does so much more along the way. Thom Stark makes the modern reader confront some of the most challenging texts in the Bible (e.g. genocides in the OT and the disappointed eschatology of the NT) by confronting them himself with the conviction that we could never get further from God if we relentlessly pursue the truth (pg. 161). The reader is engaged once again with a collection of texts that are not only conversant with one another but at times in complete contention with each other.

There were several points of highlight for me but Thom was really at his finest in two sections. The first was chapter 6 titled "Blessing the Nations: Yahweh's Genocides and Their Justifications". Thom takes genocide in the Old Testament head on. He quickly and effectively dismantles the lesser tenable justifications for Yahweh commanding genocide (Eradicating a Cancerous Society, Divine Punishment, The slaughtered children were better off dead and a few others) and then extensively examines Christopher Wright's attempt to historicize the genocides for the purpose of getting us to accept these genocides as morally permissible. I greatly appreciated Stark's response to Wright as it has resonated my own thoughts on the dangers of simply historicizing these atrocities for several years now in the face of heavy criticism:

The ability to understand the fact that these activities were not necessarily considered immoral in an ancient culture does not excuse us from the responsibility of making moral judgements about them. -Page 126

Stark's mounts the argument that if we seriously study these texts along side other contemporary conquest narratives we will find it is more than obvious the author(s) of these narratives created a myth of national origins that employs an imperialist ideology couched in the will of God. In his words, these accounts are products of an ancient culture that accepted genocide as morally permissible rather than a product of divine revelation (pg. 150). This creates big problems for the inerrantist to the point that one would have to ignore Stark altogether if they want to leave their doctrine in tact. However, for those that have actually struggled with the morality of these narratives (or at least struggled with conclusions Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins posit) Stark provides a refreshing perspective that is well researched and makes sense.

The second highlight for me was also my most serious point of contention. In chapter 8 titled "Jesus was Wrong" Stark makes a compelling argument about Jesus' (and the rest of the NT) disappointed eschatology. Stark meticulously and methodically exegetes the Olivet Discourse in the synoptic gospels and in the process seriously takes N.T. Wright's interpretation to task. An important move he makes is that he sidesteps the dead end Quest for the Historical Jesus by establishing that he is going to deal with Jesus as presented in the synoptics. However, this move is the foundation for my contention because if Jesus' words as present in the gospels is our starting point then we need to take all of His words into account. In this chapter Stark carefully shows that Jesus predicted that the second coming would happen very very soon after the destruction of the temple in these discourses and concludes that Jesus was wrong about that. My contention is this wasn't all Jesus said. Stark doesn't deal with Matthew 25 as far as I can tell and I think it's rather important as the general theme of the eschatological discourse shifted to delaying the parousia for an indefinite period of time. There are two other passages that suggest this sort of delay: Matthew 28 and Acts 1. The final line in Matthew 28 is "and lo' I am with you from now until the end of the ages" suggests a certain longevity to the commission that a judgement that's right around the corner doesn't afford. Acts 1:8 suggests the same sense of delay with the "to the ends of the earth" bit. Finally, what about the realized eschatology in the gospel of John14 and 16? All of these were Jesus' words and there is a tension created almost to the point of paradox. Yes, Jesus didn't come back within His generation and according to some passages Jesus was wrong. There are others though where Jesus delays his return for an undetermined amount of time. Was Jesus wrong, then? Thom will make a compelling argument in the affirmative. I still say, "I don't know". If I am right about Jesus' contending words does this take away from Stark's argument? Not at all, in fact I think the tension between Jesus' sayings enforces the argument. Even the portraits of Jesus the gospels paint isn't monolithic and the doctrine of inerrancy is anathema to really understanding these varying perspectives.

There are some other minor questions of interpretation I have but in the end the center of his argument still holds.

The last two chapters Stark deals with some ways to come to know a Bible that contains a community of voices that wrestle with the same basic problems we do. He shows that there is revelatory value in awful texts that condone human sacrifice and genocide by allowing the possibility that:

God may not have breathed out the text, but God still may breathe into it, giving it a life and a purpose its human authors did not themselves intend. - Pg. 219

How can one possibly find any redemptive value in morally abhorrent texts or texts that certainly indicate that the NT expectations of the end of the world were wrong? Buy the book and read what he does with the human faces of God found all throughout the Bible.

Glee on Faith and Doubt

2010-10-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

If you need some context to this post I suggest you watch last night's episode of Glee. This week's musical theme was an exploration of faith and spirituality. There were three main stories that surrounded each musical number. First was Kurt, his atheism and a tragic experience with his father. Second was a set of experiences Finn had with prayer after seeing the face of Jesus in a grilled cheese he made. Third was the cheer coach Sue Sylvester's struggle with having faith in light of having prayers for her handicapped sister go seemingly unanswered.

Very few themes of a story are as powerful as religious experience, faith, disappointment and doubt. Sounds like the makings of a real powerful story doesn't it? This episode had all of those things and the writers did very little with it in the end ultimately because of their lack of imagination. Here's what I mean...

Lets start with Kurt. He's a gay teenager that's out of the closet in Ohio, an area of this nation that isn't typically tolerant towards gays. Well, that's the stereotype anyways and I have no idea how true that is. We learn in this episode that he's an atheist. So he's a gay atheist in glee club trying to get through high school in the midwest. This character is setup to be growing up on the fringe of what is assumed to be "normal" society. This character has disappointed me the most in this whole show because there has been no real exploration of what life is like for a demographic that he no doubt represents. Instead of giving any real depth to this character he just rattles off sound bytes. Here are some examples on this show:

Kurt is reacting to the group doing spiritually oriented songs and he says (a little paraphrased), "If I want to sing songs about Jesus I would go to church...though Christians don't like me very much...or women...or science". I'm sorry, what? This is a veiled stab at "Christians" by the writers who are content on putting all of us together in one big group and label us "bigots". It's cheap and all too cliche. As lacking in nuance as Kurt's little diatribe was it just wasn't believable because of his relationship with Mercedes (and on the peripheral Quinn too). One of the closest characters to Kurt is Mercedes, a person who loves him just how he is who is also a devout Christian. Kurt's rant just simply isn't believable because he does not take into any account his relationship with Mercedes. In the end his categorical statements about Christians not liking him very much or, as he rants later on, mocks him and condemns him to hell because this alleged God made him gay needs to become altered a little bit. The question Kurt asks is profound, "Who would choose this kind of life?" Who, indeed? This is one of the most foundational questions between people who are gay and those who insist they chose this orientation. It's a gut wrenching conversation and these writers used it as a punch line. That's so not cool.

Also disappointing was Kurts unexplored atheism. He makes his disbelief in the existence of God known to the group. He's told that there's no proof their isn't a God. He responds that there's no proof there is a God and rips off an argument from Richard Dawkins about how disbelief is just as reasonable as belief. That's not even interesting atheism. It's pop-Atheism. I hardly expect Kurt, a kid in high school, to have his atheism as developed as Ivan in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov but this conversation is deep and wide. The writers decided to play in the shallow end of the kiddie pool.

Sue Silvester's disbelief, on the other hand, was one of the only redeeming moments of the show. She launched right into the pervasive doubt caused by unanswered prayers for her handicapped sister. That's unsettling and causes all of us to stir a little bit as we are reminded of our own prayers that have gone unanswered. Her interaction with her sister later on was the perfect foil for this story as we saw in Sue's face the agony and tension she was experiencing over her deep disappointment in God. That was quality.

Another storyline that they dropped the ball with was Finn's religious experience. It started off both hilarious and profound with this "Grilled Cheesus" and his prayer (again paraphrased), "Okay, so I don't know how this works or whether you're some sort of genie or not...". This character is kind of an idiot but so much is communicated through him. How often is prayer treated like some magical way of getting God to give us stuff? How often is prayer as selfish as Finn's? Only when Finn felt like his prayers were being answered did he feel like he had some direct relationship with God. I thought this whole storyline with Cheesus would have been brilliant satire if it all wasn't just building up to an REM song. It's a good song but that was the climax of Finn's whole religious experience...I was disappointed.

Coming back to Kurt, and so I can end my critique on a positive, the writers somehow found their way to what this story was about in the first place. It took the near death of his dad to teach him that some things are sacred, some rituals need to be abided by or as his father said, "our lives just go right by each other...and we don't share very much".

Why am I writing about this? It's just a TV Show after all...but it isn't. Glee is pop culture and these are serious topics of conversation that deserve so much more than the quick punch line or lead in to whatever song they're about to sing. In spite of all my disappointment of how shallow and misdirected this episode was the question that's rattling around in my mind is this: Do our churches and the Christian subculture in America deal with these topics any better?

I'm not so sure...

What are your rituals?

2010-09-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

rit·u·al [rich-oo-uhl]
–noun
1. any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.
2. a prescribed code of behavior regulating social conduct, as that exemplified by the raising of one's hat or the shaking of hands in greeting.
3. Psychiatry . a specific act, as hand washing, performed repetitively to a pathological degree, occurring as a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive neurosis.

Since coming back from Europe I've been in kind of a heavy fog or daze. My life has changed in so many ways and directions, some days it's difficult to focus on anything let alone the mountain of writing three very different papers on the kind of academic level I've now been acquainted with. I don't have a job yet and so I've been wandering around the corridors of my inner sanctum while keeping up with chores and applying for anything that sounds like I would be good at. Even while writing these past few sentences I have checked my email (twice), commented on someone's facebook status and started downloading this season's premier of Dexter so I can watch it while Amanda is at work tonight. I'm just saying that my mind has been so saturated with experiences, change and information that it's near impossible for me to have a linear train of thought. So be warned when reading this post. That is of course assuming someone is reading this blog.

Anyways, I had a clarifying moment earlier this afternoon and I have been fixed on it ever since. I applied for a Shift lead position at good ol' Starbucks last week and I was dropping by the location to leave my resume and hopefully meet the hiring manager and I saw this sign on the door and I was stopped right in my tracks (note: I didn't take this picture but found it elsewhere online).

Yeah, Yeah, I know it's just capitalist propaganda that says, "Hey I know you've had to make serious budget cuts this last year but don't stop spending $4 a day here for your morning coffee" but the reason why propaganda like this works because it taps in to an aspect about our human condition that has gone malnourished in this age of mobility, change, existentialism, post-modernist and post-foundationalism. Quite literally the foundations of which modern society has rested on has been ripped beneath it (with some good reason, some not so good) and we have watched this massive cathedral fall. Our cultures and societies have rejected the word "ritual" as it leaves us with a bad taste in our mouths but the truth is ritual, habit, rhythm or however else you want to package it is absolutely essential in our times of clarity. It's in our times when our sense of purpose, direction and calling couldn't be any more obvious that ritual needs to be developed to keep us grounded when everything turns to fog.

I was stopped in my tracks because this nifty sound byte connected a few key experiences I've had over the past couple of months. When we were driving across Texas to get to our new home I read a book called A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story and it was like finally taking a breath of fresh air after exiting a room filled with fumes of cynicism, pride and bitterness. In many ways this book taught me both the sinfulness and saintliness of Church's history and how often these two characters were revealed at the same time. Reflecting on my own journey I was finally able to relate to the Body "After Jesus". One of the sections that I've come back to in my mind every now and then is what the author titled "Hallowing Time". She wrote that while at a conference she was speaking at the pastor of the host church began the conference by passing out calendars to each and every person in attendance. They were liturgical calendars. Which means rather than the year being organized by January through December it was organized by the different seasons: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and Ordinary Time. What the liturgical calendar does is it re-tells the story of Christ throughout the whole year. The Christian year starts with Advent, climaxes with Easter and settles in Ordinary time until Advent comes again. The point was that if we re-orient our YEARS around this story rather than fiscal years or patriotic holidays the kingdom of heaven is revealed more on earth. Why? Because our stories become more and more conformed to the Story. There's a quote here that the author pulled from Dorothy Bass that sums up what this re-orientation would mean (on page 53):

In a single turning, the Christian year carries the content of Christian faith into present time, inviting us to experience the here-and-now in relation to a story that began before creation and continues into a future that is already dawning. The Christian practice of living through the year cuts against the grain of despair, as the paschal mystery at its heart touches all our stories. . . Time is for sharing the gifts of God's love and strength as we go about daily work. - Dorothy Bass Receiving the Day

An indicative part of how we order our time is ritual, intentional or otherwise. In many ways, our rituals tell our stories and our ordered time is where our stories come alive...or die. For new rituals to exist space in our already ordered time needs to be created and hallowed for it.

Some questions rolling around in my mind: How is my time ordered? What are my rituals? At what points does my story reflect the Story? Where do I still need to conform? What needs to be re-ordered and even sacrificed for this conformation to happen?

Next, I was reminded of my experience in Prague. I was there for three weeks of intensive modules. During the week we had 5-6 hours of lectures to get through and another 3-4 hours in the library studying for the papers we have to write. So anywhere between 8 and 10 hours was dedicated to absorbing as much information as possible. No wonder I'm still in a daze. This wasn't just factual bits of history, or critical thinking or passages in the Bible but complex theological and philosophical paradigms that affect all of us on some of the most fundamental levels. Add on to this basic curriculum the diversity of my classmates. We had people from Palestine, the UK, Russia, Lithuania, S. Korea, Canada and some others. There were so many cultures and traditions present in the room, on what grounds could we stand united? What became our foundation was in our daily rituals. From 7:30am to 9am we would have time for breakfast. At 9am sharp we met for chapel (yes, everyday). It wasn't anything fancy. We just sang some hymns, prayed with each other/for each other and then did the day's scripture reading. Every wednesday, though, we shared the Peace and the Eucharist wine and bread. Then we had an hour of lectures. Then tea time. Then another hour. Then lunch and the rest of day was occupied by lectures, library time and dinner. It was in our shared cups of coffee, meals and the Eucharist that people from all over the world was able to be a community where our differences were transformed into the beauty of diversity. For me, without those rituals I don't think I would have been able to relate to a single person.

Some rituals enable believers participate in and be united through the Mystery of Christ. Some literally disable us, leaving our communities fragments...merely parts that will never add up to the whole.

Finally, the whole life rhythm of Communitas brings me back to reality every single day. Our weeks are ordered mostly around meals. Monday and Friday we call Organic Nights where we all spend the evenings with our families. Tuesday and Saturdays are open for whatever but we usually spend those evening together too. Saturday nights we've developed a ritual of "stooping" where we drink a little bit of alcohol, have some cigars and talk about whatever comes to mind. Some nights its just a couple of us, others we have a crowd of sinners and saints communing with one another with a finger of Jack and a good Dominican. Wednesday nights is Spiritual Formation. Since Amanda and I haven't fully immersed into the community just yet (we're taking some time to settle before becoming fully immersed) Wednesday nights are just another Organic Night for us. Thursday is what we call "Matthew's Table". It's a fun evening of food and wine where we invite our friends and those in our social networks over for a meal and good conversation. It's usually loud with a lot of laughter, some serious talks too. Sunday mornings we gather to worship to our own liturgy we call BELLS: Blessing, Eating, Listening, Learning and Sending (I'll explain that another time). It is this weekly ritual that keeps me aware of what day it is in my half aware stupor. By sheer momentum we've gotten through some weeks and others we've just blasted through it.

Our rituals remind us of our story, mission, direction and purpose as we continue to exist in the genre of wonder and surprise. As we continue to risk and hope, to dare to be agents of re-creation by orientating our time that tells and re-tells that old old story. Our rituals exist to reveal the kingdom of heaven on earth as our Lord taught us to pray and pursue...

Of course, the end of that statement is "we hope".

Let us Learn to Forget

2010-09-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

9 years ago I was in my first semester of my senior year in high school. i remember the towers going down and how everything was all too surreal. though i mourned for those who lost and wondered why these people saw us as enemies, i don't ever remember being sad or angry. i remember thinking that the world will never be the same. i've been reflecting on this over the past week as i've kept up with the "ground zero mosque" controversy and watched from a great distance the drama with Terry Jones and a question that keeps coming back has been, "What exactly should we remember?". Or maybe closer to the point, "What is the virtue of remembering?" When I think of "remembrance" I can't help but think of Jesus' words as he instituted what we now call the Eucharist, "Do this in remembrance of me". For a Jew at the passover meal (which Jesus instituted the Eucharist at) remembering meant recalling how God saved His people from the bondage of Egypt and looking forward to the Hope of the promised Messiah and Kingdom that was to come. Only when they recalled their past and reminded themselves of their future could they adequately address their current condition of their relationship with YHWH. This meal was completely transformed by the Resurrection and Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11 that when we break the bread and drink the cup we are proclaiming the Lord's death until the Lord returns. In the moments when we partake in the Eucharist (formal or otherwise) we are looking back to the empty tomb and looking ahead to the creation is anew. For those moments our eschatological hopes become a reality. The virtue of "remembering" is that we actively participate with the in breaking of God into this world of chaos...

...but that's not the language we use when talking about 9/11 (or even Pearl Harbor) is it? No, the rhetoric is "We Will Not Forget". I don't want to minimize the pain that this day causes for those who have lost loved ones. They will never forget but I think that's a bit different than the national slogan that now comes around every 11th of September and the days preceding it. My question is, then, what is the virtue of not forgetting? This rhetoric turns the hopeful force behind remembering into a negative. For so many that we see in and outside of our churches it has meant that we will not forget our anger. We will not let go of the pain that we felt that day. Ultimately, we will not forgive. This hardness and refusal to get past the pain and the anger is getting in the way of our ability to properly mourn and forgive. This is ultimately what is at the core of this whole craziness with Terry Jones. He wanted to burn 200 Qurans to stand up to terrorism. Really? Then he'll give in if and only if the "ground zero mosque" is moved. I think we can see in his actions the core of his convictions. He will never forget and this one time minister of the gospel is filled with hate for the Muslim. Any Muslim, it doesn't matter, because they attacked us without provocation. I don't mean to imply that forgiveness is easy and it's just something you do once and it's all over with. I'm just trying to make a personal observation that the difference between remembering and not forgetting is looking to the future of hope before analyzing the present.

Today I walked pretty much the entire city of Vienna with my good friend Katie. At one point we stopped at St. Stephen's Cathedral...they sure don't make churches like they used to. The mindset in the medieval church was that the Church was the dwelling place of God and so these amazing structures needed to reflect the utter transcendence and majesty of God. They came pretty close to it. It was such an amazing cathedral where I can only imagine the sheer rapture and ecstasy one must have when encountering the divine during mass. Now, though, this ancient cathedral is but a remnant of Christendom, a fallen empire. The Church is scattered into the diaspora...exiled. The people are hardly aware of God's presence and when walking around you can just feel the hopelessness in the atmosphere after 2 world wars, rule of communism and a couple of wars since then. The Eschatological reality of the coming Kingdom of God is just like the small candle I lit: containing but only a little wax and a burned wick. That is until you walk towards the alter of the Cathedral where out of the way on the left you find a giant picture of Jesus sharing the peace high above the tourists. The symbolism is all but ignored by the tourists as they edge their way towards the fantastic gold portrait of Jesus with his saints, I noticed. Jesus looking upon us all in the cathedral from a day that has long since past sharing with us His peace. Our Eschatological hope in a post-foundational world is renewed when we remember what He's done and what be done through Him: A New Creation. A new creation where lions with lay with lambs, where sword will be bent into plough shares and where the wounds in his hands and side remain, although healed.

9 years is a long time of not forgetting. Let us properly mourn with those whose loss is so very real. Let grieve over the injustice done. Let us share our stories of where we were and what we thought and how he felt. Let us remember our own iniquity and God crucified. Let us remember the empty tomb and look forward to the in breaking rule of God by manifesting it in our hearts and communities through forgiveness, hospitality and peacemaking. Let us live in the present as we will in our promised future.

Kyrie Eleison

2010-09-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today I went into the city so I can have a day to myself for reading, reflecting and...writing. I had an interesting experience getting to the coffee shop my professor (Parush) recommended to me. First, to get from the University to the subway I have to take a bus. The system it pretty easy and the most direct line to take is the 161. Well it was early when I embarked on my contemplative journey and in my typical groggy state I stepped onto the 116. It didn't take me too long before I realized my error. Normally I would just get off at the next stop and backtrack to my original stop to then get on the proper line. I decided though to see where this line would take me. Thankfully it dropped me off right in the same place I needed to go but it was definitely the scenic route. The bus drove through some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen and I regret that I did not bring my camera. The buildings in the villages that we went through were ancient and even though you can tell there was real vibrance there the scars of communism remain. You can tell especially in the "updated" architecture...everything is uniform and grey. Since I don't have the ability to talk with anybody silence has become my mother tongue and so I sat and watched everything I could.

I got to the subway station and there are three subway lines: green, yellow and red. I have only been on the green line to get to the city's center but my instructions told me to go on the red line and get off on the fourth stop. So I did. When I emerged from the depths of what were once bomb shelters that were built during the height of the Cold War I was in a part of the city I have never been. There were some corner markets and a restaurant here and there but I could tell I was now where the citizens did life. I followed my directions carefully, hoping to arrive at a Cafe where Charlie Chaplin used to frequent and to my dismay the site had been taken over by a starbucks. Well, I came this far and I needed wifi so I stayed at this starbucks that's in a building older than the country I'm from.

I did some homework, wrote some emails, caught up on some news and did A LOT of people watching. Here, finally, I arrive to the whole point of this blog. The most interesting observation I could make about today's adventures is that the poor people here are really no different than the ones we've got at home. They have the same transient look. I don't know what they're saying but by their posture I can tell they they're asking me for some change. They smell the same and order the same coffee that's refillable for 50 cents. There were some poor people in the more touristy areas but in order to get money from anybody they needed to do a little song and dance. The poor from all appearances are the same here as they are in Portland, Orange County and what I've seen in NOLA.

This is interesting to me because of the political context of Prague. Here I am in the middle of an ex-communist turned socialist republic and the poor are no better or worse off than what i've seen in America. It kind of leads me to wonder why. I mean...if I am to believe any of the "patriotic" rhetoric coming from the Tea Party movement telling all of us Capitalism and Democracy are so vastly superior to the socialism that we are so close to spiraling into because of the Liberals, shouldn't the poor who exist in such a superior economic and political system be better off? More succinctly, shouldn't the poor have a better quality of life in our superior capitalist system then those in a socialist country? There are certainly problems with such an question. How do you quantify "better quality of life"? What role does the individual and community play in all of this? Isn't our dollar worth so much more than theirs? Also, the European Union isn't in happy shape either...some may suggest that it's on the verge of collapse.

I think all of these questions that would attempt to rebut my initial observation, though, is only addressing the problem in degrees. In the end both of these contexts are societies where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The only thing that really varies is the disparity between the two and this is where my conclusion begins. All this world can really offer is a choice between lesser evils and our political debates are really just about which of the two evils are "better". The same was true in the backwoods of the Roman Empire in the 1st Century. The people had the choice between a religious system where a particular people believed that YHWH once brought them into salvation and will do so again, the religious system of Ceasar and a third way was a sort of anarchy where the individual could be left to their own devices. Then came an itinerant Rabbi from Nazareth and you know what his first sermon was? It was this:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” - Luke 4:16-19

The Spirit of the Lord was upon Him because He was anointed to preach the gospel to the poor. This good news would set them free from their captivity. This is the purpose/platform/mission/whatever you want to call it for the Realm which His death, burial and resurrection established. The prerogative He set for those who wished to follow Him into life of this Realm is clear in the prayer He taught us to pray "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven". We are here to realize this Realm on this earth as we believe it to be in heaven by serving the poor. Not on the basis of individual acts of charity or some socialized responsibility of our governments but rather it's an ethos, a way of life, of a particular people called and formed by Him.

This ethos is meant to clash with every system, structure or government constituted by humanity. It is meant to be the prophetic voice calling every nation, empire or united republic into total submission to the rule of the One whom all authority has been given.

I think this is why the Tea Partiers hit an especially raw button for me. So many of them are passionate, confessed followers of Christ. They are our deacons, elders, pastors and regular church members. They are the ones working in our nurseries and planning the monthly potlucks. They are some of the most active members of our congregations and yet they wholly buy into the heretical teachings of Glenn Beck and his anti-social gospel and anti-social sense of justice. Our mandate to further establish this Realm by means of surrendering any sense of "rights", giving up ourselves and serving the poor is fundamentally different than what these heretics would preach about individual acts of charity. They call this heretical message "Common Sense", say the most hateful things of their neighbor and perceived enemies and then come to church on sunday to partake in the communion ritual without even the faintest tinge upon their conscience that asks, "What about the poor in all of this?".

Those on the left are NO better. When accepting his nobel peace prize Obama heavily relied on the rhetoric of Reinhold Neibuhr, an american theologian who essentially capitulated the American Dream into the Gospel. The call to come and die is also fundamentally different, and opposed to, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Obama single handedly accepted a world renowned prize for peace while defending two wars that he's commander and chief of. Throughout History it is the poor who has been sent off to war and America is no different. What about the poor in all of this?

Every nation, kingdom, empire and territory from Sodom and Gomorrah to the USSR has fallen because of their neglect of the poor. Do we really think America is immune to this historical reality? If so, we are delusional.

Encompassing all of this political mess is a Christian people in America who have pledged their allegiances to flags and political parities. We subjugated our divinely anointed mandate to a particular system of government not too much unlike when the Hebrew people rejecting the rule of God in asking for their own King or when Gomer left her Hosea for other lovers at a cheap price. We have subjugated our calling to the point where it is virtually forgotten. The Church in America is and has been in decline for a long time now and it's quickly approaching the shattered existence that is so evident here in central europe. The conservatives will blame the Liberals, gays and feminists and the liberals with blame the conservative's xenophobic, homophobic, chauvinist narrow minds but by now I would hope that the answer is a bit clearer.

The American Church has transformed the building of this Realm that can and will eliminate these degrees of social evil to a civil religion that no longer offers any sort of challenge these rivaling systems of government that only perpetuates the disparity between rich and poor.

The Church, in large part, has lost her way but Hope is not nearly lost because, like Hosea, God will restore His Beloved. We need to rediscover our calling and ethos absent of any individualistic or socialist paradigms. When we read about freedom in our ancient-sacred texts we need to purge our minds of any and all Western notions that freedom means autonomy. We need to understand freedom to mean the kind of life lived when we relinquish any sort of "rights" we think we have to the Lord we already confess to. We need to show the world that there is another Way that does not involve the choosing the better of two evils and instead offer transformation towards the grande finale where God will bring heaven to earth and forge a new creation.

We need to remember the poor (in one way or another we are all poor) and live sacrificially for the sake of our neighbor and perceived enemies. It starts with you. It starts with me. It starts with us.

Ready...set...go.

Canticle and Blessing from this Morning's Office

2010-09-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

These are some words from this morning's Office that blessed me. I hope they bless you as well.

Canticle

Christ as a light
Illumine and guide me.
Christ as a shield
O’ershadow me.
Christ over me,
Christ beside me.
On my left and my right,
This day be within and
Without me.
Lowly and meek yet
All-powerful,
Be in the heart.
Of each to whom I speak,
In the mouth of each,
Who speaks unto me.
Lowly and meek yet
All -powerful.
Christ as a light,
Christ as a shield.
Christ beside me,
On my left and my right.

Blessing

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
Wherever He may send you,
May he guide you through the wilderness,
Protect your through the storm.
May He brign you home rejoicing
At the wonders He has shown you,
May He bring you home rejoicing
Once again into our doors.

This canticle and blessing is from a Celtic Christian movement going on the UK, starting at the Northumbrian Community in Northeast England.

The need for silence

2010-08-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

After spending the day at a hole in the wall coffee shop studying I am now in the “guest lounge” of the university waiting for my skype date with amanda in a couple of minutes. This lounge is an area not bigger than a large living room with come comfy chairs scattered and all disarrayed. In these remnants of the ones who were in here before me I can’t help wondering what kind of conversations were had. How was the nature of God and it’s relation to a plurality of different contexts talked about? I must have been some of the most excellent noise. Noise, I think, is a neutral thing. There can certainly be bad noise where we have constant things going on in order to keep us from visiting the Silence that’s been patiently waiting for us. There can also be good noise that erupts out of the inspiration that Silence gives. The rub lies in discerning what kind of noise we’re in, I think.

Truthfully, my life has been especially noisy over the last month and a half. And it’s been a bit of both good and bad noise. Life has been so overwhelming that even when I sit all alone in a quiet, dark room the ringing in my ears makes me deaf to other wonderful things that might be heard in the Silence. The first thing I noticed while out here in IBTS is how incredibly quiet it is. This university is 15 minutes removed from the city in what’s called Saarka Valley and it’s in the middle of the forest. There is real silence here. So much so that I can hear every tick and tock coming from the clock on the wall in this guest room. It’s been silent long enough for the ringing in my ears to stop and so I let this Silence address the emotional turmoil I have inside from the leaving our friends and family, from getting settled into a new community and then flying halfway around the world where I am a fish out of water who can’t read or speak Czech.

There is great ministry that is done in Silence. There is great inspiration that comes from Silence. And there is great patience of Silence as we navigate our way through the noise back to it.

Here is a poem that a friend of mine posted on his blog a few days ago about silence. I found it particularly powerful.

The world will impinge into your need

for silence, into your prayers. In the hardest seconds

of your life, your neighbors will be drunk,

booming hip-hop through the thin inconvenient walls.

At the lighting of your candles, in the moment

you need to focus – the apex of your flame,

the voice of the Holy Spirit, someone

will be vacuuming, talking, ringing up change,

a bin wagon bleeping as it reverses, builders

swearing into the distance you put by pulling into

yourself. It sounds like they are calling your name.

~ John Siddique, Recital, Salt Publising, Cambridge, England, UK, 2009

From the Riot of Ephesus to Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

I've been following the controversy surrounding the construction of the mosque at ground zero in New York for a little while now. There is so much back and forth about this from all different angles. It's been quite an impressive game of political football to watch as different offices are coming up for election soon but in light of my friend Joey's comment on facebook, everything else is just missing the point.

"I try to picture Jesus protesting the building of mosques, but can only see him washing his Muslim neighbors' feet"

There were a number of "Amens" but there were also a fair amount of people pushing back on the very idea that Jesus would ever do such a thing. Of course as counter to our national milieu as Joey's comment was, it wasn't anything new. A while ago Greg Boyd posted this up on his blog and told the story behind it. I know it has deeply inspired both of us us in our thinking towards those who would wish our destruction.

This picture created quite a controversy in evangelical circles, about as much as this new mosque that's being built in ground zero. Honestly, I'm not surprised that there has been this much protest but I am surprised over how far Christians have come from their own story.

When keeping up with the news on this mosque i can't help but be reminded of the Riot at Ephesus in Acts 19. You can read it for yourself but the basic story in this chapter is Paul came to Ephesus and planted a church. There's is a lot of spiritual background with Ephesus and their perceived relationship with Artemis (or the roman goddess Dionysus). The temple of Artemis resided in the center of the city. Artemis was the goddess of prosperity, rebirth and providence. To hijack some christian language for a moment...every good and perfect gift came from Artemis. The people of Ephesus believed they had a unique covenant relationship with Artemis where if they worshipped her in a way that was pleasing to her they would flourish under the providence and care of Artemis. Given the similarities to the covenant YHWH made through Jesus, it's not much of a surprise that the church Paul founded spread like wildfire. It spread SO much that it had a direct impact on the economy of Ephesus, to the point where a man named Demetrius lost a lot of money because he was no longer selling Artemis paraphernalia. Here's what he had to say to his fellow silversmiths:

"You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. 26 And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. 27 There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty."

Couching his grievance in religion a riot was incited. They grabbed some of Paul's companions to the town square with some lethal intentions. Eventually the mob was calmed by some very rational words by the town clerk and the Christians were left alone.

Here's why this story is so striking to me in regards to the ground zero mosque (or anything political for that matter)...all the Christians did was be the church in Ephesus. They didn't grab their signs and protest around the Artemis' temple, impolitely informing them of their eternal destruction if they didn't pray the sinners prayer and get baptized. They didn't use their growing political force coercively to make sure everyone else lived by their ethic. They simply welcomed the stranger in to their house churches, fed them and talked about this man named Jesus from nazareth. They lived side by side with these people "neither robbing their temples or blaspheming their goddess" (vs 37) and loved them in the same sacrificial manner Jesus did and taught. It was through this Way that enough people stopped worshipping Artemis to directly impact their culture's economy.

Do we love our Muslim neighbors and enemies so sacrificially? Can the same be said of us that we have neither robbed their mosques or blasphemed their Allah? Are we impacting the culture by transcending tolerance and begin practicing hospitality? In Matthew 11 Jesus looks onto the crowd of the infirmed, possessed and sick before giving the powerful sound byte "come to me who are weary and i will give you rest. . .". I like how the Message paraphrases this quote from Jesus.

"Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace."

Let us walk with Him. Let us work with Him and see how He captivates the sinner. Let our grace be unforced, inviting and restful. In a word, let our Grace be shalom.

Update on Life so Far

2010-08-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

Well...we're still standing. I don't know how else to describe our current condition in light of everything we have gone through. We've left what was home to us for the better half of a decade, our jobs, our closest friends, mentors and family to go on a wonderful adventure into a future that we are creating for ourselves. We've had some ups, downs and everywhere in between.

I'll start with the ups. We absolutely LOVE New Orleans. The heat is kind of intense but we've gotten used to the feeling you have right after getting out of the shower. Our place is amazing. It's quiet and secluded. We are right in the middle of the Garden District (it's so named because of all the plant life that has grown everywhere) and it happens to be one of the safest neighborhoods in the city. We are two blocks from the street car that goes down St. Charles Ave. We've been too busy/tired to ride it down to the Quarter but we will soon enough :). Our landlords are fun. They're and older couple (mid 50's) who are just enjoying the high life. Our neighbors are pretty nice too. In the duplex next to us there are two girls who just started working for TeachAmerica. We've only met one and she has a class of students ranging from 5th to 9th grade who can only read at a 3rd grade level. Across the street I met a guy named Scott and he does construction. It's nice to live in a neighborhood again where people actually say 'Hi" or "Good Morning" when you run into them. These definitely are not bedroom communities.

We've had a good time trying to get to know our neighborhood and meet anybody that we can. Last night we met a couple of our friends at a late night coffee shop two blocks from us called "Neutral Ground" and, for me, that was the first time I have felt like we were really living in New Orleans. We got some tea and four or five of us sat outside listening to the band while we just talked about whatever comes to mind. That time was a much needed oasis of rest in the middle of all of the craziness. The name of the coffee shop has an interesting background too. One, you have "ground" as a sort of play on words with coffee but the neutral grounds are a bigger version of what we would call medians in the middle of the streets here. They all have grass on them as well as a number of trees and for the community it's where people come out to hang out. It's the neutral ground between people's homes where people grab a couple lawn chairs, some drinks and shoot the breeze. It's a place of community and relaxation. This coffee shop reflected all of those things for us last night. I expect that we will frequent the "Neutral Ground" during our time here.

The community that we're coming into has been amazing. We got to the city Friday evening and we wouldn't be able to get out stuff until the next day so without a word they prepared a bed for us in one of their houses and told us we could stay however long we need while we're getting set up. Saturday they all came out to help unload the trailer that had our stuff and in one trip we got it all. Everything was in our new place within 3 hours. We've been around to share a few meals with everybody. Anything that we have needed someone has been there to help. It's been great. Community makes this moving thing infinitely easier. Last Sunday we worshipped with them and it was one of the most spiritually intense moments I've had in a very long time. The presence of God was evident in that room. We're both very excited to get to know them deeper as we become more a part of their mission.

Downs:It's been a long time since we were both this emotionally raw, probably since our wedding. With the house in the kind of chaos that it is in we both get overwhelmed pretty easily and that doesn't make good for relating to one another. Yesterday a good number of things went wrong for amanda and she just hit the wall. It was hard watching her so worked up and not being able to do anything about it. So I left to find a coffee shop and she went grocery shopping with Cindy. When we got back the tension in the room was largely gone...sometime you just need to get out of the situation for a while before you can breath deep again. A particular piece of news was like a punch in the stomach for both of us. A few months ago amanda interviewed for a job our here doing basically what she did at Panera and she was hired. We kept in contact making sure things are still on track and that amanda can start next week. Well, she got an email yesterday telling her that the guy who hired her has been fired and they have no open positions right now. How lame is that? Our one little bit of security was swept out from underneath us with a 2 lined email. We're positive that we will find employment but it's still upsetting. So things are kind of falling down around us in the midst of all of our excitement. The biggest struggle is to not take the stress out on each other and we've gotten better at that. To sum it up, we're just very tired. We've been going 100% for a solid 3 and a half weeks and our energy/patience is starting to crack a little bit. But, God is good and He will meet our needs...of this we're sure of.

In between:The waters are still a bit murky as the dirt continues to settle. We have no routine yet and there is SO much to learn about this city. We're finding it difficult to take time to rest and let our minds come to a calm. We've only been here a few days but it feels like we've been in this for a lot longer. We're making the best out of trying situations and are taking in as much of this city as we can. There is so much work to be done here still and I hope we can find a place where we can be effective in this City's restoration.

Our future: Well, in 10 days I leave for Prague for school. I will be gone for three weeks of intensive modules. I think I will be excited when I get there. Everything is set so now we just wait. Amanda starts school at the end of this month. She signed up for her classes yesterday and is starting to get in gear for that. Some of her classes sound awesome, I hope they are. Aside from starting school and looking for jobs we are looking forward to seeing more of the city and understanding this strange culture. We're hopeful for our future. It's going to be quite an adventure, I think.

Well that's about it from us. I hope you are well and I look forward to the next time we get to connect!

Your political amnesia drives me nuts!!

2010-08-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

We're in Austin, TX and I'm catching catching up on news in California and i think a lot of my friends on facebook need to retake a government course to re acquainted with the terms "separation of powers" and "checks and balances". it means if a group of people thinks that the (narrow) majority's rule is unjust they are constitutionally entitled to challenge it via the Executive Branch (this is exactly what happened when GW squashed the legalizing of gay marriage in oregon a number of years ago by the way) or the Legislative Branch (which is exactly how the Anti-gay rights group challenged the decision of the Judicial Branch with Prop. 8). If your side has a "right" to challenge allegedly "activist" judges with legislation there is NO reason why we aren't entitled to do the same.

Essentially, the people's vote was never intended on being the end all to political issues in this country. Our government was set up to represent the WHOLE will of the people, not just the majority, and the framers of our institutional government provided these checks and balances so that the whole might possibly have a chance. If there is anything for you to learn in this whole process is that might may not actually make right and right may not necessarily be mighty. If you're a christian i beg of you to please watch how you conduct yourselves on the internet. Your words are a part of your character, nature and testimony. If you must disagree with whatever is going on politically please do the Body a favor and find a way for your words to disagree in the fullness of GRACE and TRUTH.

Thanks.

Ready, Set, Go!

2010-07-31T08:05:00.000-07:00

The day is finally here. A conversation that began almost three years ago has led us to these final hours before setting out on such a great adventure. Are we ready? I think so...as ready as we'll ever be. There is no turning back anyways. To do so would be such a betrayal towards ourselves and those that have helped us get to this point. So we hold our noses, take a breath and jump in feet first.

Here's our itinerary
Arrive to Yuma, Az tonight and leave Wednesday morning.
From Yuma we're going to El Paso, TX to stay with her sister Wednesday night.
Thursday we'll drive until we get to our hotel in Austin, TX.
Friday morning we leave for our final stretch to New Orleans!

This road trip is very much needed for me and we're excited to see different parts of the country before arriving to our new home.

Not much else to say so I'm just going to sign out for now. May the peace of the Lord be with you.

On the Corner of St. College and Chapman: Sunrise in California

2010-07-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

I decided to revive a little series of vignettes that I created a while back in previous blogs and writings called "On the Corner of St. College and Chapman" as that is where this ~~quaint~~ little starbucks that has been so many things to me over the past six years is located.

Sunrise in California

Last night all my friend Wesley and I could do was stand in awe of the sunset. No words were spoke, we just stood in silence while witnessing the changes in the sky as the sun was falling from it. The colors contrasted perfectly and we could see all the colors in the sky clearly, a rarity in southern california. It was amazing. It was like seeing it all for the very first time. I did not know that was possible.

We're down to one vehicle now and Amanda needed to be at work at 6am so she dropped me off here at 5:30. I haven't been here this early in the morning since I was cramming for finals or finishing a paper in college. This store faces east head on, providing a perfect view to see the sun return to the earth bringing all of the warmth, hope and promise that each new day should bring. Good thing I grabbed my sunglasses. It is no less inspiring than the night before.

Me and Michael are getting coffee this morning. It's our weekly ritual of discussing our interactions with God and the world, an hour long oasis where we can just come and be without the weight of our responsibilities crashing in on us. I think if any one has a friend like the one I have in Michael they would be utterly foolish to not soak in every moment they can with that friend. You never know where God will lead you next and everyone needs a person to share that with. Apart from my wife, Michael is that person and in these two relationships I am reminded how I am blessed in abundance.

Honestly, I'm tired of being asked how I am feeling. It's kind of the default question from people now and I get tired of repeating myself. Mostly because the answer is "I don't know". The best way to describe it is a longing that I can't put proper words to. Then this song comes on my Itunes and it will be my prayer for the day...

I Need Words by, David Crowder
I need words
As wide as sky
I need language wide as
This longing inside
And I need a voice
Bigger than mine
And I need a song to sing you
That I've yet to find

I need you, oh
I need you
To be here now
To here me now

Just two more sunrises....

It is in dying we are born to eternal life

2010-07-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Every Friday for the past couple of months I've been invited to participate with a group of people through Facebook to fast for peace every Friday from 7am to 7pm. I've been far from pious on staying strict with exact times but I've made it a point to give up lunch to spend it in prayer, meditation and study of what peace would look like. Today I'm exhausted, emotionally raw and this prayer by St. Francis of Assisi hit me just right during my time of devotion. Lord, help me transform these words into a way of life...

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

Oh Divine Master,

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Moving to Mars

2010-07-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

There's a scene in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur Dent is lying in the dark trying very hard to feel anything in regards to the fact that Earth has just been blown up. He couldn't at first because earth was just too big to have any sort of sentimental attachment to it. What ended up being his breaking point was realizing that his favorite pub (correct me if I'm wrong on that. It's been a while since I've read through the series) was gone. The environment that encompassed his whole life was too abstract for him to feel any sort of sentimental loss towards. The loss of the smaller details of his life, the seemingly arbitrary routines that carried Arthur from one moment to the next is what ended up carrying the world's significance for him only he didn't know it until he was lying in a spaceship and heading to some other distant planet.

I've been reminded of that scene a lot lately. Next friday will be my last night of living in southern california and I really don't know the difference between moving across the country to New Orleans and moving to Mars. It's incredibly surreal to me, utterly intangible. I just hope that the small detail of my life which makes the weight of the world fall in on me isn't traffic on the 91. :)

* * *

Parable of the Mexican fisherman and the wealthy business man

So one day at around noon a wealthy business man met a mexican fisherman who's bringing in his catch for the day. The fisherman invites the businessman to his home for lunch and relaxing on his porch. After lunch the wealthy businessman turns and asks his new friend, "So what do you do?".

The fisherman responds, "You're looking at it. In the morning I go out and catch what I need for the day and then spend the rest of the day relaxing".

"Huh, why don't you spend the whole day catching fish?", asks the business man.

"Why would I want to do that?" responds the fisherman.

"Easy, if you catch more than what you need you can sell the rest and gain a profit" answers the businessman.

Fisherman asks, "What good would that do me?"

The wealthy businessman explains, "Well after producing enough capital you could buy your own boat and then eventually your own fleet."

"Why would I need my own fleet of boats?" asks the fisherman.

The businessman answers, "So that you can make even more money and in time you could retire and be able to spend your days relaxing."

"But how is that different than what I'm already doing?" asks the mexican fisherman.

I'm asking myself all too familiar questions about my future. Amanda has a more explicit purpose in this move. She's going to school at Tulane and I couldn't be more proud of her. Our purpose is to come and be a part of this intentional community who call themselves "Communitas" and work out if our calling includes the kind of missional living they practice. My purpose, though, is unclear and I've been wrestling with this opaqueness for a few months now. It's difficult to stop the floodgates of questions concerning calling, mission, personhood and career while at the same time trying to break free from the Americana ideal of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". It's so pervasive in our culture and I no longer wish to be satisfied with playing in the mud when the promise of paradise is set before me, as C.S. Lewis put it.

Whatever I ever I end up doing I hope it will be genuine, deep and simple.

Learning to tame my inner cynic

2010-06-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

There's always a sense of reservation within me when I approach the pulpit. Who am I, really, that I would stand before a group of men, women and children and teach them the gospel through narrative, epistle or apocalyptic imagination? But I accept that I have been led to the pulpit much more than I approach it.

Today, however, I am led weary of a week long struggle with my own cynicism. I have gone through the whole spectrum of emotions: anger, sadness, self-righteous indignation and hope. Why? Because I am teaching on a very difficult text in Matthew chapter 23, the Eight Woes to the Pharisees. If there was ever good fodder for a half hour long church bashing session this passage would certainly qualify. Jesus has finally launched a head on confrontation with the the Religious leaders of his day. He accuses them of holding the keys to the Kingdom and not allowing anybody in. He accuses them for having to swear by the gold of the temple because their words don't have the integrity to stand alone. He says they're great at tithing from everything they have and yet they neglect the weightier matters that come with being a part of the People of God: mercy, faithfulness and justice. That's right Glenn Beck and all of his followers, Jesus has explicitly said that the amongst the most important priorities for the People of God, JUSTICE is one of them. If you're going to suggest that Glenn was only talking about Social Justice let me ask you this, is there such a thing as anti-social Justice? If you're honest with yourself you would have to conclude that Justice is inherently social. I'm already digressing...

In this passage there is a whole list of indictments of the Pharisees whom Jesus calls not only foolish but also blind guides. It's difficult for a person like me (I know I am not alone) to not see all that the Church is guilty for. Part of me wants to say, "Well someone needs to call them out and expose the hypocrisy and foolishness that is epidemic within The Body". What then? No, I'm convinced that I am led to this place to share the good news. This mudslinging is neither good nor news. There in lies the rub, for me. How am I to proceed?

I do not think it is by any coincidence that Matthew placed Jesus teaching on the Greatest Commandment in the chapter before these Eight Woes. A lawyer confronted Jesus and asked, "What is the greatest commandment?". Jesus' response was straightforward, "Love your God with all your heart, your mind and your soul. The second is like it, 'Love your neighbor as yourself'".

We've all heard this before, almost ad nauseum. We've even broken it down to a bumper sticker "Love God, Love people". The problem in our culture is we use love for EVERYTHING and there is no separation of different kind of love as there is in the Greek language. Another problem with our culture is how we define words. We look them up in the dictionary and there's usually a strict connotation and a denotation that wraps up the definition quite nicely. Although this was commonplace in the 1st century, very few people paint pictures with a word anymore. Agape paints a most magnificent picture that I think H. Richard Neibuhr captures in this quote.

Love is rejoicing over the existence of the beloved one; it is the desire that he be rather than not be; it is the longing for his presence when he is absent; it is happiness in the thought of him; it is profound satisfaction over everything that makes him great and glorious. Love is gratitude: it is thankfulness for the existence of the beloved; it is happy acceptance of everything that he gives without the jealous feeling that the self ought to be able to do as much; it is a gratitude that does not seek equality; it is wonder over the other's gift of himself in companionship. Love is reverence: it keeps its distance even as it draws near; it does not seek to absorb to other in the self or want to be absorbed by it; it rejoices in the otherness of the other; it desires the beloved to be what he is and does not seek to refashion him in a replica of the self or to make him a means to the self's advancement. As reverence love is and seeks knowledge of the other, not by way of curiosity nor for the sake of gaining power but in rejoicing and in wonder. In all such love there is an element of that "holy fear" which is not a form of flight but rather deep respect for the otherness of the beloved and the profound unwillingness to violate his integrity. Love is loyalty; it is the willingness to let the self be destroyed rather than the other cease to be; it is the commitment of the self by self-abiding will to make the other great.

Love is Cynicism's only worthy adversary.

But what about all this stuff within the Church that is unjust, merciless and adulterous? I think only when I've come to a place where my heart, mind and soul look exactly like this picture can I be in a proper place to call out the Church for all of her misdeeds. My commission, as I'm being led to the pulpit this morning, is to give the good news and call anyone who would hear to a life of mercy, faithfulness and justice. All of this by the grace of God.

Where, O Death is your Victory? Where O Death is your Sting?

2010-04-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

Good morning. Today we have come to worship, to celebrate and to remember the resurrection of our Lord crucified. I don’t know about you but I’ve heard quite a few Easter morning services and they’ve all been pretty much the same. Jesus lived a perfect life of love and sacrifice. Sacrifice to the point of giving up his life for our individual sins so that a relationship with God is once again possible. Those who accept Jesus as savior will one day enjoy a perfect relationship with God in some far off place we call “heaven”. Those that don’t, sorry, but you’re going to burn. The preacher tends to stretch that out for a good 30 minutes but that’s basically the jist of the Easter morning message. To cheapen the meaning of Christ’s Resurrection to a heaven or hell dichotomy is not only completely missing the point but it’s playing in the shallow end of the pool. This morning I ask you to go deeper with me.

Most mornings I usually stick with a single text and we pick it a part as much as we can in 20 minutes but today I’m going to be doing something quite different. I’m going to work through the over arching narrative of the Bible using one of the most ancient statements of Faith of the Church, the Apostle’s Creed, as a framework to better understand our Gospel story. I will talk about God the creator taking this space known as “heaven and earth” as his Holy Throne. I will talk about humanity made in His image created with the explicit design of being in an intimate relationship with Him. I will talk about Sin and the separation of heaven and earth. I will talk about God’s tireless effort to rescue his Beloved and the rest of creation from the bondage of Evil. I will talk about Jesus and the nature of his ministry. I will talk about his death, burial and Resurrection. I will talk about the Hope of Resurrection and the continued ministry of Jesus through the Church as we live in this now/not yet reality of the Kingdom of God. I will conclude with the promise of a new creation when heaven comes to earth and our Lord reigns over all of creation. Let me begin with a reading of the Creed…

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

and born of the virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

and on the third day He rose again.

He ascended into heaven

and sits at the right hand of the Father.

He will come to judge both the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth . . .

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. . .” (Genesis 1:1). This is how the Bible begins and our story as well. God created everything within this space that we call reality. He created the sky above and the ocean below. He called out light from darkness. He created order out of chaos. He also created the first humans in his image and commissioned them to rule the earth. On the 7^th day God rested. Most literally the Hebrew says that God “dwelled” and what’s more, this language is Throne language. This was said of every King who ascended to his throne. So, on the seventh day God dwelled in this heaven and earth, took it as His Throne and gave the first humans the honor of co-ruling with Him.

From the start much is said about this God and His intended reality. This God prefers order of chaos. This God wants an intimate relationship with His creation. Idealized as the Garden of Eden, heaven and earth were one in the beginning.

The story continues with God presenting the first humans with a choice to participate in this relationship by trusting that knowledge of good and evil will be revealed by Him in time or to eat of the fruit and gain this knowledge independent of their relationship with God. This also says something of God. Rather than create human robots that would do only what they were commanded God offered them a choice. God’s love for the ones made in his image is so intense that he gave them the ability to not love Him in return. Desiring an authentic relationship he would not hold humanity captive but gave them freedom to choose.

Personified by a talking serpent, the first humans were seduced to do evil. Convinced that equality with God was something to be grasped they ate the fruit from the knowledge of Good and Evil. This is the tragic moment of the story; Sin had entered the world and done its damage. The first humans were forever changed and heaven and earth were torn in two.

This is not the end of the story, however. Since the humans were expelled from the Garden God has tirelessly been in the process of rescuing what he created and his beloved. After an undefined amount of time God and Abraham form a trusting relationship and God made a certain covenant with Him. He promised that through Abraham’s descendents that he will form a people that will be His and He will be theirs. He also promised “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12.1). Before Moses and the law and kings and prophets God makes his intention clear. Through His people the rest of the earth will be blessed. His people were to join Him in His mission to rescue and reconcile all things to Him. There is much more that needs to be discussed in the Hebrew Bible but the basic story is that of the journey of this people going back and forth between rebellion of and repentance to God. It is a story of God pursuing the hearts of His people, attempting to woo them over to a mutually faithful and loving relationship that exists for the sole purpose of restoring Heaven and Earth.

Eventually, in their stubbornness and rebellion the People of God were conquered and Exiled from their land of Promise. Their temple was destroyed and in the prophetic imagination of Ezekiel, the Glory of the Lord had departed from His Beloved. In the lowest, darkest point for the People of God hope is given. Whispers of a Messiah are softly spoken as promises of Restoration are made.

For another 400 years the People of God wait in hopeful expectation for their God, whom they have betrayed time and time again, to fulfill His promise. They wait for God to free them from the imperial oppression they have suffered from for over 4 centuries.

Then, finally, a prophet who’s diet consists of grasshoppers and honey and dressed in camel skin cries out from the wilderness, “Repent and be baptized for the Kingdom of God is very very near”. At long last God was on his way to rescue His people from their oppressors. Rescue is Coming.

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

and born of the virgin Mary. . .

Though it is an interesting discussion to have let us not get distracted now with “how on earth did a virgin conceive a child?” and lets focus on the point of this story. Jesus was the Son of the Living God, sent to usher in a Kingdom of the likes no one has ever seen. God in human form has come to live among His people. In his letter to the Philippian churches Paul quotes an early Christian Hymn in the second chapter. He wrote:

“Who, being in very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

Unlike the first humans who were convinced equality with God was something to be grasped, Jesus chose to literally empty himself of the glory of God and became a living breathing human being who in St. John’s words “walked in the fullness of grace and truth”. Although he was empty of the glory of God he was still full of the love of God.

His ministry was marked by afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. Those who were found in his company were the ragamuffins, misfits and rejects of society. He ate with tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners. He met a woman caught in the act of adultery not with self-righteous indignation or judgment but with unqualified love and forgiveness. He confronted the Religious with teachings about what it means to love their enemies. Just as he gave up His own position of status he called the leaders of his day to do the same and give up their Religion for an authentic Relationship with the living God. He would call them to be a part of the Rescue operation that has now begun but they were unwilling and rejected the one whom God had sent. Jesus’ words and deeds shook their Religion to its very foundation and the very people whom God had come to rescue set out to kill him.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead…

The next bit of that early Hymn goes like this:

And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death--even death on a cross!

As if Jesus hadn’t humbled himself already this hymn teaches that he humbled himself further by remaining steadfastly obedient to the Heart of God even to the point of dying on a cross. The gospel of Mark simply states it as “they led him out to crucify him”. For anybody in the Roman world this line would evoke a whole host of images. The condemned would be tortured and beaten. He would then have to carry the cross beam of his cross that’s tied to his arms through town completely naked so that all would see his shame. He would then get to the place where he would die. The soldiers would lay him down on the vertical beam, attach the cross beam and proceed to nail him to the cross. They would take 7-9 nails and hammer them through his wrists and his feet. Down by his feet would be a little piece of wood to hold the feet into place as the nails would surely rip through the muscle and tissue as they hoisted the cross up. Now the cross, typically, was only about 6 to 6 and a half feet tall so the condemned would only be mere inches from setting his feet down on solid ground, from freedom. It wouldn’t be the torture, beating or nails that would eventually kill the condemned. As he would hang there he would be in such a position where his lungs would slowly fill with fluid until he would suffocate. They led Jesus out to crucify him.

But why?? To deal with Sin and the Power of Evil once and for all. Taking on the full weight of the world’s Sin he willfully died. This would appear to be the darkest hour in all of History where evil struck its deadly blow and thwarted God’s rescue plan that had culminated to this very moment…but it was not so. Ultimately the power of the Cross exhausts the power of Evil. Yes, Jesus was led like a lamb to the slaughter and though innocent died a condemned man’s death but that isn’t the end of our story.

On the third day He rose again. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father and sits at the right hand of the Father. He will come to judge both the living and the dead…

On the third day some of his most devout followers, who were women, came to where he was buried to dress his body with oils and spices only to have a very startling encounter. They found the door to the tomb rolled over and it completely empty. These women encountered a messenger of some sort. The gospel narratives vary a little on those details but on the message they are united, “He is not here for He is Risen!” The Crucified God has Risen! He was once dead and by power of God was physically Resurrected and this is the good news that we celebrate today. The good news isn’t that Christ died for our sins so that we won’t have to face the fires of hell but that by through His obedience the grave has been conquered. N.T. Wright wrote that “Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant. Resurrection makes no covenant with death bit over throws it.” God had no intention of making any sort of agreement with the Evil that has existed since the Garden. No His plan was to stop Evil in its tracks, to exhaust its power and begin to make heaven and earth one again. Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 15 by quoting the prophet Hosea:

Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin. . .But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The stories after the Resurrection and Jesus’ ascension are a bit of a mystery to wrap our minds around for we don’t know a whole lot about it. We do know that the properties of the physical Jesus had changed. He still bore the scars of His crucifixion but also was not confined to the physical laws of this reality like we are. He was able to appear to a group of scared disciples even though the door had been bolted shut and in the beginning of Acts there is a story of Jesus ascending to Heaven. I understand Jesus’ Ascension best within the framework of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus was asked by some of his disciples how to pray and in the middle of the prayer we says three revealing lines of how things are: “Your Kingdom come/Your will be done/On Earth as it is in Heaven”. As I have discussed a couple of times already there are two realities that God is bringing together into one again. Jesus’ prayer is a prayer that this present reality is transformed into what will be, “heaven”. Jesus’ Resurrected body is not only a glimpse of what will be but also gives Him the ability to work freely between both realities as the Kingdom of God continues to gain ground against the Evil forces that have been defeated.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints…

Guided by the Holy Spirit, the very will and presence of God, we are today a part of the Church with a capital “C”. “Catholic” isn’t referring to the Pope and the Vatican but literally means the universal Church. When we take our communion in remembrance of what God has done we take it with Christians all across the world.

As the Church we exist in a tension filled now/not yet reality where God has intervened in human to establish His reign and Kingdom and for us who are Christians we are participating in His continued redemptive work until all of creation is reconciled to Him. To use an analogy, the Church is the beach head from which God launches His invasion against the falling powers and principalities of this world. The “not yet” part is the fact that there are still strongholds where Evil seems to reign completely unchecked. Though through our relationship with Jesus we have been set free from the bondage of sin and death we have yet to experience the culmination of our salvation and the promise of our own resurrection. We are still imperfect people still “working out our salvation with fear and trembling” as Paul says in his letter to the Philippian churches.

We wait in eager anticipation for our Lord to return, set things right and finally the New Creation where Heaven and Earth will be one again.

The forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting…

The rest of our story lies in the Hope we have return of our Lord Jesus. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 considered Jesus’ resurrection the “first fruits” of what is in store for the rest of His people. He wrote:

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the first fruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

“First fruits” literally is the beginning of the Harvest. In Christ’s resurrection we have seen only the beginning. He has come to destroy all dominion, authority and power that oppose Him and will subordinate his enemies. In the end, death will finally be destroyed.

In St. John’s Revelation the author paints a very similar picture when employing every bit of his Apocalyptic imagination in chapter 21:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

You see in contemporary church culture we have done a good job muddling up Revelation with a very detailed story line where Jesus takes all of His followers up into Heaven before God essentially destroys the world and throws it in the trash can. Where if you look plainly at the text, quite the opposite is happening. Rather than the Faithful being whisked away to some far off place we tend to call “heaven” it’s quite clear that Heaven will actually come to Earth and the two will finally be one once again. The culmination of God’s mission to rescue and reconcile all things to Him will one day come to be. This is our Hope. In between Christ’s Resurrection and the restoration of Eden we work tirelessly to see our Hope become a reality. Theologian Jurgen Multmann once wrote that it’s Faith that puts us on the right path and it is this Hope that keeps us on it. This is our story, our journey, our song and we must never tire of telling our story.

To be honest we can all relate to this story. Each and every one of us was made in His image. We all considered equality with God something to be grasped and have sinned. Surely if we take a closer examination of our own lives we can find places where God’s unforced rhythm of grace has nudged us, made us aware of a greater reality than our own. For those of us who have submitted our lives to Jesus’ Lordship, we’ve experienced the healing power of the Risen Jesus in our own times in the wilderness. Though we’re far from perfect at it we have been on a journey to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. To be a “Christian” literally means to be like Christ and daily we attempt to live a life of loving sacrifice and reach out to the same kinds of people Jesus touched in his ministry. We look to a future Hope where the final strongholds of Evil will be vanquished and where heaven and earth will be made one again in a New Creation.

To those who may not be a Christian or don’t really have a community where you feel you belong, come back. Spend time with us. Worship with us. Learn with us. This is a community where you will be loved and accepted without qualification. My good friend Trevor and I are working through the Gospel of Matthew on Sunday mornings and if you want to know a bit more about this Jesus and God’s love come back and study with us. We would love to have you.

To those of you that are Christians in this room: We have been given the commission to join God in building His Kingdom, to expand His domain until all of it is His. We are sent to a messy world of broken people who have been cast adrift as unacceptable. Like scattered sheep, we are called to lead them back to their Shepherd. So to you I have only five words for you: We’ve got work to do.

May God’s grace and peace be with you as you continue to celebrate this blessed Easter Sunday and remember all that our loving savior has done, is doing and will do. Amen.

My two cents on health care

2010-03-22T22:24:00.000-07:00

I've spent the day flying across the country to come back home from a trip to New Orleans and like the addict I am I have been checking my facebook whenever I could to see what other people are up to. Since this morning the "news feed" has been littered with passive and not so passive aggressive status updates on the health care bill that passed. I've thought for a while today what I would want to say about it. God knows I've argued for it over the past year enough that I should have some little bumper sticker slogan or witty remark to summarize my thoughts on this historic moment. Well...I don't. I have two thoughts directed at two particular groups of people.

To my more conservative Christian friends and family. We have probably argued about this issue quite a bit and I remember a handful of those conversations getting quite heated. If I can boil down one of the primary arguments against this bill it's that giving the government more control means us having less freedom, essentially. No doubt you are upset with the vote, some of you may even be in a place of despair. Let me encourage you with a thought. Our freedom is found in Christ. It was not bought with the blood of soldiers but with the blood of the Slaughtered Lamb. It is not guaranteed by some constitution or system of checks and balances but in the Resurrection of Jesus. No power or principality of this earth can come close to touching the freedom you and I have.

To my more liberal Christian friends (and myself as well). The prerogative of the Church is to take care of the orphan and the widow. Do not think of this health care passage as a victory for we have just passed the buck onto Caesar. I think this health care bill will do great things for the poor of our country but the fact that we have concluded the only force able to do this is something other than the Church is telling that something has gone terribly wrong here. Let us pray for an Awakening within the Body of Christ that is both penetrating and pervasive enough that all of us are compelled to relieve this commission from the government and place the calling and responsibility back into its proper realm, ours.

Anyways, I couldn't let today pass without giving my 2 cents.

Changing seasons and a new direction

2010-02-03T08:48:00.000-08:00

Life as it has been so far...

It is truly amazing to look back a little over a year ago and remember where we've been. This time last year I was doing through one of the most intense periods of transition I have ever had. I was newly married, working full time and adjusting to life after undergraduate work. On December 13, 2008 I commenced four and a half years of being a college student. Four and a half years filled with challenging classes, interacting with my professors, all nighters and development of a community of friends that I have no doubt will be life long in one capacity or another. During this time I worked hard to build a foundation of critical thinking, theological consideration and leadership which will enable me to participate in the work of the Kingdom regardless of where I'm at. Then one day I walked 15 feet across a stage and it was done. The very next day I began a journey of a different sort. I married the woman of my dreams and we began the life long process of becoming one. Life has never been the same since.

Our life is a basic routine of work, church, community and time together. It’s been great for us. I have worked as a PC Technician at Hope.It’s full time, it pays well and I get a better opportunity to maintain the close relationships I have with some of the faculty here. I have been an interim minister at a small church in Lake Elsinore, CA. Dr. Grana asked if I would cover for him for a couple weekends and they liked me enough to ask me to stay. The church was built in 1887 by the Methodists and the non-denoms took over in 1927. Their real hay-day was in the 50’s - early 60’s with a little bit of a revival in the 80’s when the rise of the Fundamentalist/Evangelical movement really took off. It’s a congregation of about 20 people that have been there for the past 30 years with the exception of a couple small families that started coming and have stayed with us. They really want to see their community grow and be an influencing force in their community but they also want the new members to be young, fairly wealthy people who will dress in their Sunday’s best, sing their songs and do church just like they do. The greatest challenge for me has been trying to re-orient them towards the kind of ministry they are not only fully capable of but also closer to the heart of God. It’s been a great experience learning to preach and minister to a group of people entirely different from myself. I will look back on this time with much appreciation to this church for allowing me to teach them for this last year.

I've also been in grad school since last October. It’s an MTh in Theology and Ethics, fully accredited by University of Wales and taught in Nazareth…but it’s a research degree. The way its set up is that I have 5 modules to complete plus a 100 page thesis. Each module consists of about 20 books I need to read and then write a 20 page process paper. Every year that I’m in the program I will have to go to Nazareth for a week or two to sit in on some lectures and discuss what I’m working through with my professor. I will also, for three weeks, need to go to Prague for a kind of intense new student orientation. During that time will be three classes on Anabaptist theology, Bible, Church and Context, and a class on how to write the thesis. Right now I'm finishing up my first module in Systematic Theology and this next month I will begin taking an ethics module. It's been a challenging program that I have just loved.

Amanda has been more or less running in place with her job at Panera Bread. She has been quite successful while being the general manager of the store that she started as an associate in. She has liked it but ever since we have been engaged she has wanted to go back to school. Originally she applied and was accepted to a school in Boston for a Masters in Social Work. We wanted to wait between 12 and 18 months before doing any sort of move just so we can settle into our newly married life. One great adjustment at a time and year later we are now on the precipice of change once again.

Changing seasons...

Last fall Amanda and I took a mini-vacation to New Orleans to see the city. Since Katrina she has been there a number of times to participate in the rebuilding effort. The summer before we started dating she had spent three months there for an internship. I had not been to NOLA but had worked on a house for a week in Biloxi, MS. Our collective experiences had permanently changed us more than any other "mission trip" we had been on. While we were dating and beginning to have more serious conversations about the future we both agreed that eventually we wanted to end up in New Orleans for a while.

So we went to see the City four years later and it was like coming to a place like home. One evening we had dinner with my old youth pastor (Mike) that moved to New Orleans for the purpose of being a part of the rebuilding effort. He works for a para-church organization called Church Resource Ministries (CRM) and leads an Order of people who have decided to do church incarnationally, modeled after the monastic movement started by St. Patrick. They call their order Communitas and learning about them over dinner resonated deeply within our own passion for intentional community as well as our own philosophies of ministry. We left dinner with a lot on our mind.

On our last day there we checked out Tulane University because we heard they had a MSW program. After talking with one of the professors/admissions counselors for well over and hour Amanda discovered that this MSW would be a more perfect fit for what she wants to eventually do because they offer a Certificate in Disaster Relief and Mental Health Services that's fully integrated with the program. The school in Boston had a similar certificate but it was offered in addition to everything else. New Orleans gave us a lot to think about.

After processing the whole experience with one another and our closest friends over the next week we decided to contact Mike to gauge whether the connection we had sensed was mutual. We were well received. Our next step was for Amanda to apply to Tulane and wait.

A New Direction...

Well about a week or so ago Amanda received her acceptance letter and we're now gearing up to move to New Orleans. We've always planned on moving to Boston and then go to New Orleans to stay for a while and work. In Boston we had no real prospect of community or a church. Cost of living would be similar to living in Orange County (ridiculously expensive!). The only real thing we had going for us was school. Now some pieces have come together where we are welcomed into this community that is about what we're about, cost of living and school is considerably less and Amanda has been accepted into a program that will equip her to do exactly what she wants to do as a career. Its hard to look at all these pieces and NOT change direction. While we wholly believe God would have provided for us and use us in some awesome ways in Boston we find that this is a choice between something good and something great. God has left the choice to us and we're changing directions!

Our lease ends at the end of July and that's when we will be moving out and starting the next step in our lives. Life is exciting right now and every day we are reminded how incredibly blessed have been on the journey thus far...

a matter of the heart...

2010-01-24T09:15:00.000-08:00

At church I'm going through the Sermon on the Mount right now and a couple of weeks ago I finished up chapter 5. I wrote out a manuscript for it (more or less) for my own rhetorical benefit but I thought I would post it here as well.

* * * *

Last week I introduced Virtue ethics as a framework to understand the Sermon on the Mount as a way of life for a community in covenant relationship with God. I went through the Beatitudes as not only a list of Virtues but a development that leads into the next. Those who acknowledge their own spiritual powerlessness and become wholly dependent on God will naturally mourn for not only their broken nature but for wider social evil and oppression. Those who are in mourning develop an interwoven grace of the soul (meekness) which causes an unquenchable hunger and thirst for what is righteous. To be righteous is to be merciful and pure in heart. Only in this posture can one take on the task of peacemaking. This glorious task will inevitably encounter unjust persecution. The Beatitudes are a great example of the journey for those seeking to live virtuously. Those in covenant relationship is not only the Salt of the earth but also a City on a Hill. The pursuit of virtue is solely meant to be done within the context of a community on the Way. Finally, Jesus' ministry, death, burial and resurrection fulfilled the requirements of the Law on one level but this next set of teachings pull back the veil of ritual an reveal the beating heart of the Law and give us the key to our own fulfillment that surpasses of the righteousness of the Pharisees (5:20).

The point of this week's endeavor is this: Virtue is a matter of the heart.

The text I'm working through is Matthew 5.21-48. Six times Jesus prefaces his own teachings with "You have heard it said" or "It has been said" as a point of contrast. Let us begin.
Those Subject to Judgement: 5.21-26

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister2 will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin.d And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to that person; then come and offer your gift. “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny."

You shall not murder and if you get angry you are guilty of murder. I'm sorry, what? I get angry a lot. Does that make me a serial killer? An important question to ask is the nature of this
"anger". In the greek the word is orge which means wrath. Wrath is a passion wholly oriented to revenge or punishment. There's a movie made in the mid 90's called A Time to Kill. The basic premise is these two drunken white thugs abduct a beautiful innocent little black girl, tie her to a tree to beat and molest her for what seems like hours only to leave her on the side of the road for dead. She is found and survives. Her broken bones and cuts and bruises will heal but as a result of the molestation she will never be able to bear children of her own. The two men are arrested and eventually set free without an justice done and its obviously they got away because they were white. The father, Samuel L. Jackson's character, is consumed with this orge and shoots down the rapists until they lie dead on the courthouse steps. This wrath, this orge, is a passion or an impulse of anger and hatred that more often than not leads to the physical act of murder.

"Raca" is a term that roughly means to call someone ignorant or empty headed. It's a sudo cuss word in the Aramaic which one was subject to the Sanhedrin for saying. "You fool" is a different pronouncement all together. Previously in the chapter Jesus says is the salt should lose is saltiness it essentially has no value any more. Good for nothing but to be trampled upon in the street. A more literal translation of "lose its saltiness" is "to become foolish". So to call someone a "Fool" would be to consider that person as someone who has absolutely no value. Such a consideration of a person that bears God's image is subject to judgment.

When we come to God for forgiveness its often for a purpose of purification. It's a ritual that rids us free from the guilt we have. Often we come to the Lord without reconciling with one we have a grievance we have against another and consider the forgiveness we receive to be a resolution to the grievance. A similar principle is explained here. There is ample evidence in the OT where God would not accept an offering if the one had oppressed or mistreated another and did not make it right. There is a primacy placed on the reconciliation of relationships over cultic piety. His next example of settling matters quickly if someone takes another to court is a reiteration of this principle.

All of these examples are instructions on avoiding judgement. Instructions against an inward disposition of homicidal anger and general contempt for others and an adjustment of priorities from piety and "justice" to peacemaking. Virtue is a matter of the heart.

Lust: 5.27-28

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’1a 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.b 29If your right eye causes you to stumble,c gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30And if your right hand causes you to stumble,d cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

This term for Lust is synonymous with the previous anger. Surely lust, as in anger, comes in various degrees. I would even suggest that in the right context lust is a very good thing. This Lust Jesus is dealing with is a completely loss of control over a natural sexual impulse that more often than not leads to adultery. It's a fantasy that is dehumanizing to the person being fantasized about. This steps out of the bounds finding another person sexually attractive and into an adulterous affair of the heart. It has so much more to do than not sleeping with someone. Virtue is a matter of the heart.

Divorce: 5.31-32

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery."

There are a couple of ways this teaching can be understood. One, it can be taken at face value. The only justifiable grounds for divorce is sexual immorality and those who marry a divorcee is committing adultery. There have been strong arguments for this meaning in Jesus' settings. My question is, what about spousal abuse? What about other actions that can break the covenant the two parties had made? I think its plausible for other causes to be justified but finding justification would be to miss Jesus' point. Later on in chapter 19 Jesus is posed with a question about divorce and his response is that God only allowed divorce because of the hardness of our hearts. When dealing with divorce here and later on Jesus is addressing the inward hardening of the heart that has to take place before making the outward decision to break this covenant.

This is a message I wish the Church would take more seriously today. We're great at launching a campaign so that the lesbian couple that lives three doors down can't be seen as legitimately married in our "free" society and yet the divorce rate within the Church, depending on what polls you look at, is higher than those outside of the Church. We pronounce to the world that our ultimate concern is the sacredness of marriage. We're concerned about the sanctity of the institution. I'm not trying to engage in a political discussion here I'm simply saying that if this is what we're going to do then we need to internalize it with ourselves first because virtue is a matter of the heart.

Oaths: 5:33-37

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes,’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

People swear by all kinds of things to give what they say credibility. By appealing to some other authority we are essentially saying that our words on their own don't have the integrity to be relied upon. Heaven is God's throne and earth is His footstool. Here Jesus is teaching that we are not to swear by anything because it is equivocal to swearing to God. If our words cannot be relied upon then we are taking His is name is vain. Jesus calls those who follow him to be people of integrity so that their "Yes" and "No" can be relied upon. Virtue is a matter of the heart.

Lex Talionis: 5.38-42

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."

"Eye for an Eye" is the basic principle where if I cut off the hand of someone, that person has a personal right to order that my hand be cut off as well. It's a morbid analogy but it makes purpose of the principle stand out better. When we get hurt by another our natural inclination is retaliation or revenge. This principle was established to prevent people from entering into the downward spiral of vengeance and overreaction. I know this may be hard for us to accept, especially as Americans, but in this passage Jesus teaches about a new way of life. Jesus is calling us to give up the notion of individual rights for the well being of others by prohibiting retaliation. In the face of evil he calls those in covenant relationship with him to pattern our lives after him. He was betrayed and abandon by his closest friends. He was spit upon, beaten, mocked, ridiculed and hung naked on a cross for all who pass by to see his shame. He remained willingly suffered unimaginable evil but we know how this story ends. He overcame evil not by calling all the would-be insurrectionists to raise their swords. He overcame evil not by calling down the forces of heaven to smite those who would do him harm. He did not meet evil with evil. No, he overcame evil with the Resurrection. By resisting evil in a non-violent manner we are seeing God's will be done on earth in this present reality as it is in heaven as Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray later on in this sermon.

In this short passage Jesus gives four examples of active concern to overcome evil with good. First, turn the other cheek. A slap on the right cheek was an insulting act of contempt in this culture. By teaching to not retaliate Jesus is communicating that our enemies have intrinsic value even when they choose not to honor our own. Second, if anyone is suing one of us we must do whatever is in our power to make peace with them. Peacemaking and Justice go hand in hand in the Kingdom of God. Third, it was Roman law that allowed a Roman soldier to accost anyone and force them to carry their gear for exactly one mile. By being willing to "go the extra mile" Jesus is instructing his people to not hold to resentment but to serve even a Roman soldier. The implications of this is HUGE for a Roman soldier was the symbol and constant reminder for a Jew that they were governed by another force, they were not a sovereign people. At best this was a point of resentment. At worse it was the foundation of insurrection. Scholarship dates Matthew to be written between 80-85 AD, ten to fifteen years after a great insurrection that led to the destruction of their holy city. By going the extra mile and authentically serving one who is oppressing you, you are choosing the path that leads away from resentment. Away from the path that promises only annihilation. This specific teaching of Jesus would have hit a deep chord with Matthew's original audience, no doubt. Finally, give charitably. Certainly the lifestyle of earning everything you have by hard work is not a foreign one to the first century world as it is to ours today. When we give charitably we forgo the entitlement that comes with private ownership.

This passage alone addresses the heart on perhaps some of the deepest levels. Jesus is calling us to subordinate our individual rights to an active concern to overcome evil for good by denying our natural inclinations to retaliate, to be right and of resentment when being unjustly oppressed. Virtue, is a matter of the heart.

Love for Enemies: 5.43-48

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be childrend of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Here we get to the climax of this set of teachings. He's given us a few warm up rounds and now addressing the center of it all. Now, no where will you find in the Law for one to hate their enemies. This was the conclusion of a long history of rabbinic tradition. Let us consider the experience of the Hebrew people for a moment. This is a people that was conquered over and over again with only a brief spell of sovereign rule in about 500 years. Their children have been killed. Their women more than likely have been raped. Land was stolen and their Temple was dismantled twice, not counting 70 AD. "Surely God could not mean we are to love these people who have done such violence against us". "Surely our enemies are God's enemies and we are to hate God's enemies". "Surely we are to love our neighbor and hate our enemies". Now before we think about how misguided these people are let me throw out a question to mull over. How many here hate Osama Bin Laden? How about Saddam Hussein? Or Ahmadinejad? Many of you grew up during the Cold War. Who hated the Soviets? Does it scandalize anybody here to think Jesus would be just was willing to wash their feet as he was Judas?

Jesus confronts this false love head on. Check out verse 44 and 45: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of God. Where have we heard that before? If you'll recall the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called..." What? Children of God! This echo is not merely coincidence. Peacemaking can only be accomplished when we get to a place where we genuinely love our enemies and pray for them. This is the task for the children of God. The sun rises and the rain pours on the evil and good alike. God's love is indiscriminate and so ours should be too. Jesus continues to explain that to respond to love with love is natural, its commonplace. Who doesn't respond love with love? Jesus calls his followers to an uncommon love that's grounded in the very character of God.

To conclude this chapter Jesus tells his audience to be perfect. If you look right before this whole bit Jesus says in verse 20:

"For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

Jesus' instructions thus far have been illustrating to us what it means to surpass the righteousness of these people who characteristically follow the letter of the Law flawlessly. Now, "perfection" carried a connotation of wholeness or completion. Righteousness becomes perfect, it becomes whole or complete, when the heart conforms to the character of God. This is what it means to be virtuous.

Virtue, is a matter of the heart.

the noise of gravediggers

2009-10-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Ever have one of those purely existential moments where you're not entirely sure about the difference between faith in the existence of God and entirely fabricating the notion of God because of some compulsion to believe in something greater than ourselves?

That's been my morning so far and I completely blame it on Nietzsche. In my systematic theology class I'm going through the Doctrine of God and this morning I went off on a tangent and read this famous excerpt for Nietzsche's book The Gay Science:

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still travelling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves."

It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and quietened, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?"

It's a heartbreaking eulogy. The images tug at the heart as the madman calls those who are mocking him to mourn the death of something Great. Nietzsche isn't arguing that literally God once was and now is no more but making a pointed observation the presence of God is absent in the lives of self-professed believers in God. Yes they go to church, sing their songs and pray their prayers but without that Presence their churches has become sepulchres and their songs are requiems.

The question that's begged for me is, "How do you kill God?" Perhaps the answer is in its antithesis. According to John's narrative, the night Jesus is handed over to be murdered he has a final meal with his closest friends. After washing their feet he gives his only commandment in the narrative:

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” - John 13: 31-35

Perhaps so many people in this world write off the Christian faith as an archaic superstition that Science and Reason will eventually stamp out because the presence of God practiced by our love for one another is seemingly absent and the difference between the sacred and secular is only visible on our t-shirts and bumper stickers.

The Logos and Burbon St.

2009-10-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

For school I've been going through Justin Martyr's Apologies and his Dialog with Trypho with a particular emphasis on the development of Logos Christology by the Apostolic Fathers. What is the Logos? Here's a bit of discussion from the lecture notes I was given that is more or less the foundation I will be working with in the rest of this blog.

"The Logos is a universal principal The source is God Himself. To Justin, God is 'Word' (reason); but also, the Word had been in the world from the beginning. The whole Logos resided (became incarnate) in Jesus Christ; Christianity is therefore the supreme (fullest) revelation of God . . . the way to freedom and authentic life is the Truth or the Logos."

Karl Rahner, one of my favorite Catholic theologians, argued that every human being has something of this Reason and their being has to do with this reason and this truth, therefore every human has Christ, and whether they know it or not, are Christians. Those who do not know this he calls anonymous Christians. Other world religions he calls corruptions of the one true religion which is Christianity. To deny God is to deny yourself.

Last night we went to one of Amanda's favorite places to get some desert. It was on the other side of the French Quarter and to get back to the trolly stop we needed to walk back through it, we hit burbon street. Everybody should take a stroll through Burbon St. at least once in their life, though I reccommend you go during the day. Burbon St. at night (especially a friday night) is the physical manifestation of hedonism for 10 city blocks. If you wanted to take a shot for $2 they were being sold on every corner. If you wanted a lapdance just follow a stripper standing outside her club wearing a bikini. Any impulse you can satisfy it here. The Hustler adult story says on its sign, "Calm down...it's just sex". Hedonism, to deny yourself is to deny god.

Yesterday we went to the lower 9th ward to see the house amanda stayed at and look at the progress that's been made. It was encouraging to see new business opened up, cars going down the street, schools open and houses rebuilt. There has been a lot of progress made and praise God for all the hard working volunteers that have dedicated weeks, months and years out of their lives because He knows the government didn't care enough to install proper levees in the first place. After going through all the neigborhoods that are like decrept ghost towns Amanda made an insteresting comment. She observed that not long after the two towers went down it got cleaned up. If an earthquake hit Los Angeles and devastated an entire chunck on the city it would not take several years just to get the debris cleaned up. I don't know if a truer statement could be said about the travesty of the lower 9th ward. Rome doesn't identify with the poor, God does. The next block over there are immaculate brick houses that have been built with shiny cars parked out front. They were beautiful but so out of place in the midst of the devastation that was still apparent. There's still spray paint on the doors of the houses that have been left to rot. I don't want to make a conclusive judgment but on the surface it was the American Myth put on full display. The problem with manifest destiny is that there is no call or obligation to your neighbor. A capitalist society isn't concerned with the poor, not really. Rome doesn't identify with the poor, God does. To deny God is to deny yourself.

Last night on Burbon St. there was a guy standing in the middle of the road in front a 7 foot cross with a scrolling marquee that says "Jesus loves you" over and over. He also had a megaphone. While there was a cross that says Jesus loves me all that was coming out of the microphone is a condemnation of all my sin and depravity. No context, no relationship just words of judgement infront of the cross. Kind of like those in the Story saying to Jesus if he is the Son of God save Himself. It frustrated me because of his lack of relationship with any of us. John 1:14 says, "The Logos became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." Yes, we have seen His glory because the Logos became flesh and lived with us, made Himself relateable to us. This man in the middle of the street is supposed to be an ambassador of Logos. In the context of the chaos and noise there needed to be Reason and Truth brought forth from it. This man was just adding to the noise and making a martyr out of himself. To deny yourself is to deny god.

To me, Burbon St. is no different than the 9th ward. There's devastation and abandonment. There's remnant of life and yes i think just by just setting up the cross the mere symbol is telling of Hope in chaos. There's fortune standing right next to poverty. There are people, real people, doing something about the mess they see. While Kant held the Enlightened view that we live in a world of Cause and Effect and ultimately our world is hopelessly determined by these principles he also argued that in all of us there is a sense of obligation to do what we know to be what's right and what's wrong. The ability to deny ourselves from doing what we know to be wrong was proof that we have freedom in a hopelessly determined world. In essence, to deny yourself is to deny God.

lectio divina

2009-09-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks I've been going through Philippians at this church in Lake Elsinore. This letter is also referred to as the "epistle of joy" because everywhere you turn Paul is writing about his joy, the Church's joy and giving imperatives to Rejoice. So, in conclusion of our study in Philippians today I wanted to talk about Joy. It was a pretty decent 15 minute word study on how Paul uses "joy" in his letters. A sermon about being in Christ, joy in the midst of suffering, Joy's relationship with Grace and finally the joy we have in our hope of the resurrection of the saints and regeneration of His creation that's been ravaged by evil for far too long now. Maybe someday I will preach it.

In my studies this week and while preparing my sermon notes I felt, as I often do, that I was cheapening the text by talking about it. why can't I just read the text and then have us sit and appreciate what has been written rather than what's being explained? plans changed a bit for this morning. i'm still going to give a bit of context in which "joy" is used by Paul and give the wide angle lens but the main portion is going to be a lectio divina of Philippians 4:4-13 and allow room for us to experience the text this morning.

for those that may not be familiar with Lectio Divina, it's latin for "Divine (or Holy) Reading". It's a meditative process of experiencing a text that involves multiple readings, contemplation and stillness. it's not a feel good new age group therapy session but a discipline that's been a part of church tradition for over a century.

Here's the method I will use this morning:

A couple moments of silence
1st reading:
- Just read the text
2nd reading:
- Identify words or phrases that stick out, contemplate their function in the text and share.
3rd reading:
- Pray the text
A couple moments of silence, contemplation and prayer
Close in the Lord's Prayer

I'm hoping for an experience that's refreshing and inspired. I've been standing at the riverside without getting wet for too long now...

i love new books!

2009-08-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

Around every other month or so shep and i take a trip up to Pasadena for good Lebanese food and buy books at the Archives. Here's what i left with:

Situation Ethics by Fletcher - $3
The Eternal Now by Tillich - $5
The Vitality of the Old Testament Traditions by, Brueggemann and Wolff - $5
The Cloud of Unknowing - $4
Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance by Donald Miller - $6
Ethics by Bonhoeffer - $3
Fear and Trembling & The Sickness Unto Death by, Kierkegaard - $2
Can God and Caesar Coexist? by Robert Drinan - $11.25
The Prophets Vol. 1 by Heschel - $7
The Prophets: The Babylonian and Persian Periods by Klaus Koch - $7

grand total: 53.25...it was a good day :).

a working theology of church with a lower case "c"

2009-07-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

for the last seven months i've been an interim preacher at a small restoration church in lake elsinore, ca. lake elsinore is a community 10 minutes south of corona on the 15 and this church is the stereotypical white steeple in the middle of the historical district of the town. it was built in 1887 by the Methodists. after the split between the independant christian church and the disciples of christ in 1926 a congregation purchased the building from the Methodist church and formed First Christian Church of Lake Elsinore.

from there they steadily grew in competetion with the methodist, catholic, lutheran and the non-instrumental church of christ churches in the immediate area. their real hay day was in the 1980's, due in part to the rise of conservative evangelicalism, where they had around 300 consistent members attending. through a number of power struggles, splits and heretical teachers their numbers waned to about 15-20 people. this story isn't too uncommon for small churches that have been around for a hundred years (especially within the restoration movement).

my ministry is to these 15-20 people every weekend. they're all older than me by about 50 years. they sit in the same seats, sing the same songs and hear the same messages over and over again (i'm not niaeve/arrogant enough to actually think i've said anything "new"). it's the closest thing to a liturgy that they ever dare to come. honestly, the only real reason why people in that area know people meet at this church every sunday morning is because the bell rings promptly at 11am every sunday morning.

these people have high hopes for the future. they want growth and to do something meaningful in their community. they have a lot to offer too. nowhere else have a seen a community that truly lives out what it means to bare one another's burdens. when there is prayer that needs to be had, they do it immediately. when a meal needs to be made someone makes it, with desert as well. rides are given and communion is graciously received. though the quality of their music is terrible (probably the worst i have ever heard) one guy says he's never felt more comfortable to worship at a church because of his imperfect voice. one lady lost all of her family in a tragic accident about 10 years ago, stumbled her way into this church and has never left because she's had a family here ever since. in a town full of addiction, escapism, idolatry and lonliness, this congregation provides a beacon for the lost.

however, all of these amazing qualaties they have in their little community have been focused so internally for the last 10 or 15 years that they're comfortable and content with things. after asking them what they want the future of this church to be they basically answered that they want a lot of younger people to come in with the money to sustain the church. people who will dress like them, talk like them, share the same values and worship the way they do. they basically want to see a bunch of new, younger people inside this building, placing their membership with this organization and have nothing change.

that's virtually impossible and from my perspective it's one of the many reasons why their numbers have whittled down to where they're at right now. although my hopes are high, no one has shown any real sign that they truly desire to be more externally focused. they want someone, namely me, to bring in a bunch more people by putting together more programs, teach more classes and give good sermons. that just wont work and i honestly don't see anything really changing any time soon. it's got me thinking...

at what point should a church close its doors?

i mean, here is a congregation that won't make the changes in their community necessary to serve the needs of their community and has also reached a critical mass of support. without their money they wouldn't be able to afford to keep the doors open. what if they sold their property, gave the money they had to an organization like Kiva, then join a church community in their area and give the love and acceptance they have to give there? would it be the end of the world if they closed their doors and be a part the work God is doing in one of the 5 churches down the street?

i used to think it would be. i used to think that every time a church closed its doors the forces of evil were advancing and more souls were in danger of hell fire. at whatever cost, we need to keep every church open. now, i'm not so sure.

although it's something painful, i think that a fact of life is death. for anything that's alive death is to follow. also, i believe that death is necessary for resurrection. the truth is, church with a lower case "c" was not promised eternity. the Kingdom of God is eternal and the Lord of this Kingdom is sovereign. churches with a lower case "c" has a life span and will some day die. it's not necessarily a sign that some congregation has failed in their mission but a reality of a church with a lower case "c".

is it my place to communicate something like that to a great group of people who have invested so much to keep their bulding open. many of them got married in this church. they've buried their spouses as well. families have been baptised here. there's a lot of sentiment attached to this building and it would be callous of me to just say "you guys should just go across the lake and be a part of what the Lord is doing there". but is it right to essentially bleed out the community's resources and stay in the fight until the bitter end? i'm not so sure.

as an afterthought, should a church only consider closing its doors when they're out of money? or are there churches out there who should consider disbanding that have LOADS of money, a lot of people, but are more concerned with building their own little empire than pursuing the mission of the KOG (even worse, equivocating the two)?

scary questions.

from then till now

2009-07-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

it was about the end of may when my mind just stopped absorbing stuff. i definitely hit burnout with reading the theology and philosophy that i was going through. so i decided to take a sabbatical from reading anything too heavy for a couple months and it's been GREAT.

since i'm not thinking about who argued what and against whom (though i LOVE that stuff) i've had some time to reflect on my life and think about what i want to do. amanda and i are literally on the edge of the rest of our lives. God willing, we have a long life ahead of us and we are free to be ourselves, to pursue dreams and to become who we want to be.

after some thought here are some experiences i want to have, places i want to go and things i want to do...

i want to be a good husband...
i want to go to a different country every year...
i want to live in Boston for a while...
i want to spend a good amount of my life in New Orleans...
i want to have kids...
if i have kids in America I want to homeschool them...
if we're somewhere else when we have kids, i want it to be a place where it's common to know three languages...
i want to learn arabic and do work in the Middle East...
i want to get a cruiser and ride across the country...
i want to skydive...
i want to climb mt. kilimajaro...
i want to work at an orphanage somewhere in africa...
i want to get a PhD...
i want to write a book and have people like it...
i want to be a college professor...
i want to learn how to live simply and be content...
i want more stillness and silence in my life...
i want my theology to be incarnational...
i want to be influential but not famous...
I want to learn how to sail and then take a boat out for a month...

that's it for now, i guess. also during this time i've been preaching through the book of revelation at the church i'm doing some interim work at. i've been using a book called "Reversed Thunder" by Eugene Peterson. It has been an amazing devotional for me and i especially reccomend it for any preacher who may want to tackle this fantastic letter by St. John.

receiving the kingdom

2009-03-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

Luke 18.9-30

This morning I'm dealing with rich/poor dynamics within the Kingdom of God at church. My main passage is the story of the Rich Ruler in Luke. This is one of the main themes found in Luke's narrative and I chose to focus in on this passage because of Jesus' challenge to the Rich Ruler: give away all your possessions to the poor in order to inherit the kingdom of God.

the context matters quite a bit in this passage. right before this interaction some people were bringing their children to Jesus, the disciples rebuke the crowds and Jesus sternly corrected them. His lesson to the disciples was that if they do not receive the Kingdom of God like a child has no place in the KOG. Up until this week I've always had a focus on how a child trusts and stuff like that (which is quite applicable) but the commentary is by Luke Timothy Johnson and Joel Green spun it around completely on me.

first, "receiving" is hospitality language. In that time period one was typically hospitable to those of equal or higher social status, lest their own honor status be harmed. Jesus was telling the disciples that they must treat these children as equals if they are to inherit the KOG. Children, in that time, were seen as having no intrinsic value. They were high maintainence, had a high mortality rate and completely dependent on another person. They were weak in a world where one's value is based upon their self sustainability. These words turn the disciple's social taboos on their head. they are to receive the poor, marginalized and vulnerable if they ever hope to see the KOG.

among the crowd is this Rich Ruler. The character Luke portrays is one that stands diametrically opposite to the Prophet and children. His question: where do I fit in the KOG? He's looking for validation. Jesus tells him that he must observe the commandment (interesting that Jesus only makes reference to the commandments concerning interpersonal relationships). He's kept all those...he's righteous according to the Law. But he lacks one thing, according to Jesus...he must give away all his possessions for the sake of the poor. many social ethicists would take this is as a prescriptive command. the answer is a redistribution of wealth. that may be the case for some today but after looking at this passage closer i believe that redistributing the world's wealth and every christian making a voluntary vow of poverty is too easy. moreover, it misses the point of Jesus' call to the Rich Ruler. His call was to give up his high social status, his self sufficiency and his self righteousness. It was a call to for humility and vulnerability and complete dependency on the power of God rather than mammon.

That's why an aesthetic renunciation of one's possessions misses the point. It's about how we use the power we have in our relationships and this call to servant hood permeates much more than what our checking accounts look like. Poverty is directly related to power and thus is relative.

It may be the case that a parent impoverishes their child by using their power coercively to make the child act a certain way. it may be the case i impoverish my wife when i require her submission and neglect the service required of me. it may be the case where many of our churches have impoverished the homosexual community by beating them over the head with a Bible and insisting that they're abominations. It may be the case that we impoverish a homeless person when we lie to them about not having any spare change. Wherever there is power abused there is poverty. Entrance into the kingdom of God necessitates taking on the role of a servant and washing the feet of those our society deems as having little or no intrinsic value. We must receive these little children like we would our family and closest friends.

"For whoever humbles himself will be exalted and whoever exalts himself will be humbled..."

lent is here

2009-02-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

wow...i can't believe lent is here already. this is a season i'm coming to appreciate more and more each year. the big question is "what am i giving up this year?" i've struggled with this question a bit because, honestly, whenever i have given up something not a whole lot was affected in my life. It's not like i have only given up superficial things. i've given up tea and then caffeine altogether. that may sounds kinda ridiculous but as a strung out college student caffeine is a part of your daily diet.

anyways, giving something up hasn't impacted me that i feel a Lenten observance should. so this year i'm adding something. i started doing quiet times again this week...like daily devotionals. as a bib studies major taking two, sometimes three, bible classes a semester a quick 30 minute read of scripture everyday kind of fell by the wayside. Whether that's good or bad i don't really know, that's just where i have been for the last few years. now that i'm out of school (for the time being) i haven't picked up a bible in a little over two months. Last sunday was the first time I dug up my greek/english new testament and brought it to church. over the past few months i've discovered that i've really missed the Bible and that i need to be more devoted to my study now that it's no longer a part of the mountain of homework i need to get through (for now).

which brings me to why i initially set out to post a new blog today. the devotional i'm going through is called Reflecting the Glory by N.T. Wright. It's a 53 day devotional over select passages in the new testament. Although it can be read anytime throughout the year it was a particularly Lenten focus and i've really enjoyed it so far.

today's passage was 2 corinthians 3:7-11 and Wright is addressing the question "how can something so flawed and broken (the Church) honestly be the revelation of God's glory to the world?"

This is an excerpt from his comment on this passage...

Outsiders often look at the church, full of muddle and sin and shame and half-heartedness and back biting, and clergy who don't know that they're talking about and laity who go wandering off the point, and they say, 'Well, if that's all you've got to show for the wonderful message you talk about, you really are a muddled lot. How can you possibly be the body of Christ, the temple of the living God, as you say you are called to be?" The glory of Christ is not revealed in spectacular show of success, in people who get everything right all the time . . . the church reveals the glory of Christ through suffering and shame as much as through what the world counts as success.

The way this happens is, often enough, that the church is called to be where the world is in pain, at the place where the world is suffering and in a state of shame and sorrow. The church is there as the presence of the suffering Christ in the world..."

I will be meditating on this as I go about my daily routine...

revelation

2009-01-17T19:48:00.000-08:00

i'm reading a couple of interesting books right now. one of them is called Jesus and Politics: Confronting The Powers by Alan Storkey. The basic premise is a study of the political background of the gospels as well as identifying how incredibly political Jesus' message, death and resurrection was. i read this section on the nature of John the Baptist's ministry and message.

"This is where John is. He is the great civil engineer, flattening out the landscape so that Jesus, Son of God, may properly arrive . . . This goes against the grain of much Western culture, which often emphasizes our thinking about God. The inbuilt fallacy of this approach, that the derivative creature can understand the Creator, that Hamlet can understand Shakespeare, is worked out century after century . . . the cultural direction of all of this thought and living is from humanity toward God.

The Scriptures, however, show the converse movement. Rather than saying what we think God to be, we depend on God's disclosure. Rather than presuming that we know what we are, we wait for God to examine us. We depend on God's revelation to us. The God who has created us and the natural world, who has given us language, in whom we like and move and have our being-this God defines our existence and can communicate with us. The important flow is God's communication with us, what God reveals to us, not our thoughts about God or ourselves" (pg. 69).

this presents an important dynamic to the art of homiletics that isn't addressed so much in the classroom. there is such an emphasis placed on the preacher properly drawing out the meaning of the text and communicating these truths in a way that's culturally relevant to his or her congregation, and rightly so. However, the nature of revelation creates a tension with a dutiful study of the Bible where the preacher (theoretically) works hard parsing greek and hebrew, consults commentaries and lexicons, then finally crafting all this information into a message that will hopefully be relevant to Joe the Plumber. i miss preaching...a lot. when i get back into preaching on a consistent basis i will remember to deal with this tension as i craft out my own sermons.

another thought i have about this quote and chapter as a whole is its interesting that when the prophets confronted the powers there wasn't a closed cannon for the hebrew people. those of us within the christian tradition do. Obviously there are unfathomable depths to the Bible. all that's contained within this library exists because it has proved to be edifying to the Church throughout time...but a question(s) is begged for me. is God done revealing himself to us? or is the resurrected Christ so dynamic that revelation continues just as his people continue to change and his kingdom continues to reign? though firmly rooted in the same gospel message, can/does that revelation occur extra-biblically? if so...where?

gathering no moss

2009-01-07T18:05:00.000-08:00

i've been meaning to write a blog for a little while now. a lot has happened lately (probably my biggest understatement of 2009) and i thought that maybe there would be a place where inspiration and a moment of settling would intersect. instead, life has basically been like a rolling stone gaining momentum. i just got done catching up on a friend's blog and he included a quote from another blog that describe that elusive point of arrival and so felt inspired to write a little bit...

again, a lot has happened. a month ago i was going to school full time, getting ready for marriage, planning for my wedding and finishing my internship. now...i'm married, graduated and out of work. everything about my life is completely different and the adjustment has been quite a ride.

i love amanda so very much and its only grown every day. marriage is great...but on this side of it i whole-heartedly believe its not for everybody. i don't have nearly enough experience to say anything really profound about marriage yet except that both people have to REALLY want it for the marriage to work. not just want the moments where they make dinner and watch the Office together or where they cuddle with each other before they fall asleep. they have to want to resolve conflict where both sides are hurt. they have to want to make peace before going to bed with each other. They have to want to be wholly honest with the other person while at the same time provide a place that is completely safe for the other person to be wholly honest. they have to embrace the grace afforded to themselves by the power of the Resurrection before they can fully extend that grace to the other person. they have to want to love themselves in tandem with loving the other person. they have to want so much more than the wedding day with the flowers, gifts and honeymoon. they have to want the marriage.

again, marriage is great. it's wonderful and its truly an institution to be celebrated. there's a lot of joy between amanda and i. just like any other spiritual fruit, though, it takes patience and real work to cultivate it into growth and fruition.

which kinda brings me to my current thoughts on Gaza. (how's that for a transition?)

yes, i realize i'm over simplifying a very messy and tangled situation in israel and what I have to say is in no way the comprehensive solution to peace in that area. it's more of a first step...

an observation i have made about amanda and i as people is that we are passionate about justice. this plays out in some incredibly positive ways but this passion is a double edged sword. what i mean is, we have a strong impulse to get each other back when either of us feels wronged. our natural inclination is to get even with the big and little things. the three dollar word for this is retribution. the problem that i have encountered from experience is that retribution doesn't satisfy. it doesn't heal what's wounded. it simply gets even. since it gets even, grace is superfluous. there's no need for apology or forgiveness if both sides are even. the problem is, both sides still want a sincere apology for the damage done to them. they want to know the other side values their life enough to express genuine sorrow and repentance for what the other side has done. after taking three classes on the middle east and reading a bunch more books i think this is the cycle israel/palestine is in. after actually going to israel and seeing the faces of those who do everyday life in Jerusalem and listening to the story of a couple palestinian christian pastors it's more than obvious that this system of retribution is toxic.

bombing the other side because they sent over some suicide bombers and then asking for an apology doesn't work. if there is ever to be peace in this area of the world this system of retribution needs to be replaced with a system of forgiveness and grace. it's worked in South Africa and so far in Rwanda...why not here? if there is ever going to be peace in this area both sides are going to have to want it.

peace is another fruit of the spirit.

what the hell?

2008-12-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

i haven't written anything deep and serious in a while. mostly because all my deep an serious thoughts have been devoted to papers and in class dialog but a recent story in the news that i posted on my facebook has been on my mind a lot this week...

well, advent is upon on. the a special time of the year where the Church prepares for Christmas, the coming of Jesus. It's a serious time of reflection and anticipation for the moment when God emptied himself out and entered into the his created dimension in hopes of reconciliation to what was lost, healing to what has been ravaged, peace to those in turmoil, justice and finally freedom to those who have been oppressed.

Luke's birth account brings special to light to themes...

"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered . . . in that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. - Luke 2:1, 8-11

Luke was written to a marginalized community that comprised of the oppressed and the poor. This baby will be the Savior, Christ and Lord. Luke bestows these three titles that were normally reserved for the Emperor onto a jewish baby born into poverty. This dramatic power reversal is a message of good news. It's a message of freedom and justice.

My question is...how can a former evangelical pastor see a nativity scene and see a message of condemnation, oppression and judgment? in his words, "On that Nativity scene, there is this threat of internal violence if we don't submit to that master." I really can't help but feel that the Church is, in part, responsible for such a perversion. we may be in danger of being guilty of the same charges the religious leaders of the people of God were in Jesus' day.

a closing thought: last night on our way to michael and dayann's house we were listening to NPR (much to Amanda's protest) and there was an interesting segment on last night about some old school evangelical preacher (i forgot his name) that mentored T.D. Jakes and some other guys. in the middle of his segment he was reflecting back on a theological transformation he went through while observing the genocide in Rwanda. He said something to the effect of:

"I've preached a message of hell for my entire ministry. I talked about the fire, the weeping and gnashing of teeth. I was angry and I asked God about his love and justice. how he could allow these little babies with swollen bellies due to malnutrition be sent to hell? Then I heard a question in my head, 'What needs to be done?' My answer was, 'We need to go save them.' 'What do they need to be saved?' another question popped up in my head. All at once I saw divorce courts, war, poverty, oppression and what I saw was weeping and gnashing of teeth. After that i couldn't help but believe that hell is not a creation of God's..."

instead of doing what i should

2008-11-24T17:19:00.000-08:00

procrastination: to defer an action; delay

yes...traditionally thanksgiving break is that time of year where i vow to do the school work i have neglected all semester. however, it has also been tradition to do absolutely none of it in spite of said vows and engage in the most time honored practices of a burned out college student, procrastination. it's really quite wonderful during the break but it transforms the last week and a half into Dante's 4th circle of hell. today is day one of break and it's been a hard fought and losing battle against the inner procrastinator. in fact, this blog is simply a means of further procrastination.

what i need right now is motivation. so people, how do you motivate yourself to do the work you need to do to save yourself from future headache?

i will leave you with this haiku.

Procrastination by, Daniel Maynard

My Achilles heel
You wonderful two edged sword
Procrastination

poetic musings

2008-11-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

this semester i'm taking intro to lit and our final subject is poetry. i think an assignment on poetic analysis is MORE than sufficient on what we've been doing in class but i'm convinced that my teacher silently wishes she were just like just like Robin Williams' character in Dead Poets Society. Therefore, we have to write an original poem. here's what's been rolling around in my mind. Basically, the concept is a duet of sorts. the lyrics to Amazing Grace are in italics and are meant to be sung. In between each lyrical verse some free verse gets spoken. here's what i got so far...

Amazing Grace,
How see the Sound.
That Saved a wretch
Like Me
I once was lost,
But now I'm Found,
Was Blind but now,
I see

Grace,
Bono says it's a name for a girl and
a thought that changed the world.
It's blood that was shed,
It's something undeserved,
It shows no preference.
It's all inclusive.
It's a new definition of power,
It's entirely political.
It's a gift offered and
always taken for granted.
It's a new ethos,
an alternate way of life.
It's foolish to the blind
and salvation for those who see.
It's a movement, an unforced rhythm.
Can you feel it?

Twas grace that taught
my heart to fear.
And grace my fears,
relieved.
How precious did
that grace appear
the hour i first
believed

Fear and Love,
a nonsensical paradox.
We're invited to the throne room,
where angels fear to tread.
Yet be a part of a Kingdom,
where lions lay with lambs.

and that's as far as i've gone so far. i will revisit this later.

pressure

2008-11-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

i read this quote today in one of my articles for ethics and it's so appropriate for me right now.

"We are struggling because we spend much of our time trying to maintain a way of living that we are taught to call the good life, but which often leaves us breathless and frantic. Caught between the demands of work and family, or personal desire and civic responsibility, we fall into a compulsive busyness, always on our way toward a happiness that never quite arrives. We yearn for a simpler life, one that is more spiritual and caring." - jay mcdaniel

in 27 days i'll be on a beach in cancun, relaxing and drinking margaritas. the simple life...

touche

2008-11-13T12:43:00.000-08:00

i now live in santa ana and it's about 15-20 minutes south from school. i have to take the 5 north to get to school and morning commuters are pretty crazy. one of my pet peeves are when people cut me off while talking on their cell phone. A. it's illegal to talk on your cell phone in california without a headset. B. most people have a hard time walking and talking at the same time let alone driving and talking. anyways, that's the set up for my morning commuting story today...

so im driving my little 4 cylinder 96 VW golf on the 5 going about 70 minding my own business before this guy driving this huge SUV belligerently cuts me off. by huge, i mean HUGE...easily 3 feet taller than my car. i'm instantly annoyed and what's more the guy is holding something that i assumed to be a cell phone. so being FULLY annoyed i changed lanes and drove up next to him to stare him down. i get even with his car and i see what was in his hand. he was smoking a bad ass tobacco pipe. he then looked down on me from his high place, laughed at me with the pipe in his mouth and sped away leaving my little car in the dust. his license plate also said "Pebbles".

well played, sir.

the Christian, God's Will and Voting in November

2008-11-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

this entry is an email i sent in response to a very typical "all christians should vote against Obama because he doesn't value the sanctity of life and wants to destroy marriage" email i received today. to give some context, this person who emailed me i have know my whole life. i respect him so much i rarely respond to these forwards but right now i'm writing my bib perspectives paper concerning the church and the state and i felt like responding. enjoy :)

only a few times have i really spoken up and shared what's on my mind by raising some questions. however, since i'm finishing my senior paper on what it means to be the salt and the light of the world i thought this email was particularly relevant.

i get maybe a dozen emails a week criticizing Obama, homosexuals, pro-choice people and whoever else the evangelical bloc decides to zero in on. i'm really only comfortable responding to you because I know your intentions are good. unlike many others, i know you are genuinely seeking God and want what's best for your community. i have tremendous respect for that, and for you.

first, i really want to address the message before what you wrote. i don't understand this "us and them language" towards catholics. Christianity did not begin with Luther. For a thousand plus years, the God fearing Christians that walked this earth were Catholic. Though protestants and catholics fundamentally disagree on Pauline interpretation, they are still a part of the family of God. They baptize, they teach, they make disciples and they share communion with a depth of knowledge of these traditions that i'm sad to say many of my non-denominational brothers and sister know nothing about. Yes, they have their problems. It's just as frail and broken as every other church in world...but it is still a part of the Church. We will see catholics, presbyterians, lutherans, baptists and non-denoms at the Wedding Banquet. Catholics should be referred to as brothers and sisters whom we may disagree with rather than the enemy.

I agree that prayer should be an integral part into making serious decisions that have consequences. it should be a part of biblical study and it should be a part of the voting process as well. however, i raise question, from a biblical stand point, about why the right constantly states that "God's Will" is about abortion and homosexuality. These are hot topics to be sure and pretty much everyone has an opinion those two issues. Biblically, however, there is more talked about the justice for the poor (over 300 passages throughout the Bible) than sexuality, sanctity of life, marriage, divorce and family relationships combined. The fall of Ancient Israel wasn't due to sexuality or sanctity of life...it was because they neglected their God given task in taking care of the poor. This is actually what the prophets considered to be Sodomy (see Ezekiel 16:47-50). Furthermore, that task of ministry to the poor does not change with the new covenant. James 1:24 says that pure and undefiled religion to God includes aiding the orphan and the widow. Ministry to the poor, the afflicted and the outcast has always been and will always be the God's foremost concern.

And this is what I don't understand about the religious right. As soon as we have a candidate who makes the notion for making health care available to the poor he is deemed socialist, unamerican and christians are told by the evangelical bloc to not vote for him because of it. it's perfectly within the right to object to Obama's health care plans for political reasons. Like every other policy the right and left has tried to put into play...it has its issues. I just don't get the Christian who pushes to legislate "God's Will" and writes off Obama because he wants to make the country socialist. If a christian votes against his health care plan because it is against American values, that's fine. But knowing God's priority to the poor, the christian cannot and should not claim to be voting for "God's Will" but rather America's Will.

Surely God values life. He created life. He loves children. My question is, why don't we find the issue of abortion all over the pages of the Old and New Testament. There is actually a law in leviticus that declares that parents should stone their children to death at the city gates if they become rebellious. A few psalms before where the passage about God knitting him in his mother's womb there is a conversation about bashing the children of their enemies against the rocks outside the city. Also, in Roman times the practice of infanticide (their version of abortion, only much worse) was common place. If the child was born with a defect or they just couldn't support another child they would take the children out to the wilderness and leave them there to die of malnutrition and thirst. If they were lucky they would simply be torn apart by wild dogs. Why isn't this found all over the pages of the gospels and pauls letters? It was a serious, beyond horrible fact about the society they lived in. I argue that Jesus, Paul and all the other figures of the NT were convinced that if they improved the over all quality of life to the poor, then there would be less infanticide. If poor mothers of that era had the ability to afford to keep their child i whole heartedly believe infanticide wouldn't have been an option in their mind.

Same kind of thing with homosexuality. In six weeks I will have earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies. For over four years now I have studied the bible with academic and spiritual honesty and its my conclusion that some of the most vague and ambiguous passages (in their original language, not the NIV) are the ones concerning homosexuality. there are arguments on both sides from very smart and world wide respected scholars. it is not an issue clear cut, black and white as the right has made it out to be. regardless which side the christian comes down on there is an unavoidable fact about each and every one of these passages. they were written for a community created for the purpose of being an alternative society from the rest of the world, the salt and the light. if the Christian concludes that homosexuality is a sin, they also must conclude that it is an ethic exclusively for the Church and not in any way intended to be applied to the State. It is not the prerogative of the Church to legislate its counter cultural ethic for the State as a whole. The prerogative of the the Church is to love God, love their neighbor as they would them self and minister to the broken, the outcast and the marginalized. If a Christian is to vote against legalizing homosexual marriage, it must be on constitutional grounds, not theological ones. It is the Christian's american right, and duty, to vote their conscience but it is an egregious error to tac on "God's Will" to any political agenda.