I

The 21st chapter of the Gospel of John feels tacked on. In chapter twenty, the resurrected Jesus appears twice to his disciples, appearing in their midst despite the locked door. He breathes the Holy Spirit on them. He brings doubting Thomas back. He turns their fear, weakness, and doubt into joy, boldness, and faith. And then the writer seems to bring it to a close, ‘But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’ (20:31). One might expect to be able to put the book down at this point. What a neat resolution! But, no. Just like the risen Jesus keeps turning up where he’s not expected, the story continues.

‘After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias’ (21:1). From John’s account, they spent at least two Sundays in Jerusalem, but now they are much farther north, by the Sea of Galilee. Since Jesus resolved Thomas’ doubts, they might have spent the whole week walking down from Jerusalem. The topic of conversation shifted on their journey from the mundane to the miraculous, but Peter, despite the joy and wonder of two Sundays of Easter surprises, has a shadow over his face. A charcoal fire, rekindled each morning by the cock’s crow, still burns in his memory.

Their long journey done, still troubled, the night fast approaching, Peter looks out over the Sea upon which he had made his livelihood before Jesus came. ‘I am going fishing,’ he says matter of factly (21:3). The six others with him rise to the challenge: ‘We will go with you,’ they reply (21:3).

And all night they labour. They cast the nets. Nothing. They laugh about it at first, but then silence falls on the boat. As the hours toil on, they continue trying, again and again. Casting, retrieving. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. They strip nearly naked because of the heat and the work, but nothing they do helps. As the sun rises in the East, the cock’s crow can be heard across the hundred yards of water between them and the shore. The charcoal fire of regret rekindled in his breast, Peter pauses a moment … but then labours on.

II

‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.’ ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.’ ‘I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.’ ‘I wish I had stayed in touch with friends.’ ‘I wish I had let myself be happier.’ Palliative care nurse Bonnie Ware compiled these ‘top five regrets of the dying.’ At the end of life, with the clarity that comes from hindsight, more than anything these are the regrets she heard from people in her care.

From Peter’s experience, we might modify one of these. Not, ‘I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings,’ but, ‘I wish I’d had the courage to tell the truth.’ And isn’t this a regret that we all carry around with us? Peter denied Jesus three times because he was afraid of losing his life. We deny Jesus as well, but for different reasons.

We live in a world of compromise. Too often, we slide into habits of neglect and denial. We neglect our duties to God and to one another. We deny with our lips and our lives that Christ has made us his own in Baptism and the breaking of bread. As a result, we learn to lie, to dissemble, to do what it takes just to ‘fit.’ But, when we come to the end of our lives, will we regret not having the courage to tell the truth about ourselves? Will we regret the relationships we have lost as a result?

As we watch Peter struggle with the regret burning in his chest, we too are reminded for the need to seek and know God’s forgiveness. John’s Gospel seems like it could have ended in the room with Jesus’ two appearances, but it can’t end until this one relationship is resolved, until Peter has the opportunity to tell the truth. Until then, he, and we, will continue in our troubled labour, catching nothing, because we don’t yet understand what the whole thing means.

III

Peter spent the whole night catching nothing, but Jesus catches Peter on the first throw.

Daybreak, and a man on the beach. He asks if they have had any luck in the night, then he tells them to cast the net on the other side. As they pull the net in, the little boat tips to one side. Fish fill the net, and they cannot haul it in. The disciple Jesus loved leans over to Peter and says, ‘It is the Lord’ (21:7)! Before anyone dealing with the nets can realize it, Peter is dressed and overboard, swimming towards the shore.

When the others reach the shore, there is a charcoal fire, cooking fish. Bread lies beside, and Jesus invites them to share their catch. Peter helps pull the net up. 153 fish. Not one tear in the net. ‘Come and have breakfast,’ Jesus says. Peter eats, but the firepit reminds him of the other firepit. The courtyard. Three denials. Jesus’ look of betrayal.

After breakfast, Jesus calls Peter aside, and he asks him three times, once for each denial, ‘Do you love me?’ Each time, Peter replies that he does. Each question fuels the fire in Peter’s chest, until the third time when the pain becomes unbearable. Hurt, he replies, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’

‘Feed my sheep,’ Jesus responds. ‘Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go’ (21:18). Then, Jesus says those two words again, the two words he used to start their relationship, and the two words that will restart it: ‘Follow me.’ Peter may have fished all night, but Jesus, the fisher of men, catches Peter, and brings him home.

IV

Every week, we turn up on the doorstep of this church, and the same thing happens. We get the opportunity to sit, to listen, to worship, and to reflect. Some of us will be here this morning with the feeling that we have been casting our nets all week and catching nothing. But, when we get out of bed, get dressed, and swim the 100 yards to these doors, we always find the charcoal fire. We always find Jesus waiting and asking, ‘Do you love me?’

Jesus asks this question in the context of the love he has already shown for us. The Jesus who asks about our love is the Jesus who having loved his disciples, loved them to the end. He is the one who washes our feet. He is the one who draws us up out of the waters of Baptism. He is the one who feeds us with the meat of his Body and drink of his Blood. Every week, we pull up on this shore, and Jesus greets us. ‘Are you hungry? Eat.’

And there are some days, not just Sundays, when Jesus pulls us aside. He points at the fire of regret burning in our chest and asks us to tell the truth. ‘Do you love me?’ he asks, and he keeps asking until we have heard the question and until we have really answered it. ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Do you love me?’

‘Feed my sheep.’ We may have spent the last week denying Jesus’ love for us and our love for him. We may have stood around the firepit, or the water-cooler, and denied him. But, Jesus’ love for us overwhelms those regrets, and he asks us to treat this week differently. ‘Feed my sheep,’ he says. Take the time to live like Jesus’ love for you is true. Take the time to serve your colleagues, your neighbours, the people you meet on the street. With your words and with your life, tell the truth about yourself: Jesus caught you, has caught us. And with the 153 other mismatched fish in this one big net, we are being drawn into a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. Sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, we are marked as Christ’s own for ever. At the end of our lives, may we be the people who can say, without regret, ‘I have loved Jesus, and I had the courage to tell the truth.’

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

*** Images: I: "On the Sea of Galilee, Tiberias, 1891" II: "Wheelchair," by Craig Toron III: Christ Appears on the Shore of Lake Tiberias_-_James_Tissot.jpg), by James Tissot. IV: "Diocese 1," by Ben Earwicker (Garrison Photography, Boise, ID; www.garrisonphoto.org)

25 August 2013

All Saint's, Cottenham

It was AD 79, and the sky was burning. Stones and ash flew into the air. They soared over 20 miles straight up. Every second, 1.5 million more tons of ‘molten rock and pulverized pumice’ were added, and the fall-out over the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum was devastating. Mount Vesuvius exploded, ‘releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy’ of Hiroshima. Over 16,000 people died. It was so devastating that only two extant letters recount the explosion. Despite the horror of 79, and despite the fact that Vesuvius is the ‘only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years,’ over 3 million people still live nearby. ‘It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.’ (heavily borrowed from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vesuvius, 2013-08-19).

I

Thousands of years earlier, the people of Israel trembled before another mountain. The author to the Hebrews describes it vividly: blazing fire, darkness, gloom, tempest, the sound of a trumpet, a voice that came from the mountain causing everyone’s knees to buckle, which caused them to beg it to be silent. The mountain was Sinai. It was the mountain that Moses climbed to receive the Law. He entered into God’s presence, out of the sight of the people, and stayed there for 40 days and 40 nights, being instructed, being given the Law on tablets of stone.

And the sight was terrifying. The people had no leader. The mountain looked like it would erupt at any moment, and Moses had commanded that no one should touch the mountain. For, it was holy, set apart. To refuse this command would be to refuse the God who gave it through Moses. The people were receiving the Law from God, a great gift. But they were receiving it from God, their judge. The earth shook with his judgment. ‘Indeed,’ the author to the Hebrews writes, ‘so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear”’ (12.21). For those at the foot of the mountain, nothing was stable. Nothing was sound. All they could see was the sky alight with fire. They were afraid.

II

Fear is a valuable human emotion. Now, most of us don’t like to be afraid, but fear does protect us from things that might hurt us. In fact, it’s the potential for harm that triggers fear in the first place. I personally have a hard time with edges. I can nudge myself near them slowly, but it takes a lot of willpower. The sensation makes me want to freeze in place, or take several steps back from the edge.

Fear is valuable. It protects us from things that might hurt us. And if fear is generally valuable then when the Bible talks about the fear of God, what does that mean? In short, to fear God means to treat God with the respect that God deserves. Right now, off the coast of Cape Cod in the United States, there is an infestation of great white sharks. They are there to feed on the exploding seal population. The locals have learned to treat the sharks with respect, to keep their distance, to know their limits, and to not go out dressed like seals. To fear the shark is to respect it.

Against the God who made Mt Sinai smoke, we are like ants. So small compared to someone so big. If God were against us, he could crush us at any moment. When we think about God, it is right to be afraid. Our God is a fearsome God, one who must be treated with respect.

III

To the people huddled in fear at the base of Mt Sinai, the author to the Hebrews writes, ‘You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest … but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God’ (12.18, 22a). ‘Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks…’ (12.28). God builds a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

And what a different picture this kingdom is to Mount Sinai. Those at Sinai stood under God’s judgment, but those who come to Mount Zion see something different. As Hebrews says, they come to ‘the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven’ (12.22-23). There is no anxiety here. There is joy and celebration and homecoming.

Why do they see these things? Because, Hebrews says, they also come ‘to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel’ (12.23-24). Those who gather at Mount Zion gather because God did judge the world. He did make it shake with terror that Good Friday as Jesus hung upon the cross. And Jesus’ blood, which speaks a better word than Abel’s, speaks for us. It is part of God’s new covenant with the world, a new covenant which will see the ‘spirits of the righteous made perfect’ (12.23).

IV

Looking back at the author to the Hebrews’ language in this passage, what strikes me is the joyful description of those who gather at Mount Zion. I’m tempted to see it as a description of heaven, a description of the life to come. It is, in a way. Those are all things we believe we will see at the Resurrection of the Dead. But, wait. The author says, ‘But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God’ (12.22). This is past tense. This is something available to people now.

This passage presents us with a choice. We start out at the base of Mount Sinai, trembling in fear. That fear might be the rightful fear of a just God. It might also be all kinds of other fears that plague us. But, the Scripture invites us on a journey. It says we don’t have to live outside the mountain of God’s judgement. We don’t have to live in constant dread of an explosion that would pour down fire and brimstone on us. We can come to the mountain of God’s love, where innumerable angels dance with joy. And the mountain of God’s love is the mountain upon which three crosses stand. It is the mountain out of which Jesus exploded that first Easter Sunday. It is the mountain at which we gather with joy each Sunday to climb together.

It is no mistake that every Sunday we join the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven in proclaiming, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts.’ This is our calling. This is our duty and our joy. Our God is a consuming fire, burning away all that keeps us from being the people he wants us to be. As we climb the mountain together, we are part of the spirits of the righteous being made perfect.

The Scripture gives us a choice. Will we climb Mount Zion, or will we continue in fear at the base of Mount Sinai? It is up to you. Heed the voice that calls from heaven, and give your life to Jesus Christ in faith. The party the angels are throwing is always a ‘welcome home’ party. Brothers and sisters, welcome home.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So, yes, welcome to the adventure.

The evangelicalism that I grew up in was concerned with 'relevance.' We had to make the Gospel relevant to our culture in order to fulfill the great commission. In college, this concern metamorphosed into a preoccupation with 'context.' The context determines everything, we thought, and it even gives us the incentive to frame the Gospel story in completely different ways, even in ways that our fathers and mothers in faith might be unable to recognize. See, for example, the growth of the megachurch movement, or the absence of the cross from many seeker-sensitive churches, or the equation of worship with emotional experience.

What I realized going to seminary is that evangelicals share the concern with relevance with their sworn enemies: the liberals. They both agree that the Gospel has to be translated into a new key in order to be relevant to the world. They only differ on the amount of 'translation' they are comfortable with.

The problem is that neither camp has done relevance well. When you step back from both the evangelical and liberal attempts to contextualize the Gospel and really look at them, you can see how severely dated they always already are. We in the churches are always find ourselves about 15-30 years behind the curve. That curve is being established in the classrooms of Ivy League universities and the halls of power, not in the Christian popular press.

The crux of the issue is that 'context' and 'culture' are moving targets. By the time that we can publish the book on being relevant to the culture, it has already moved on. As soon as we think we've become relevant, we find ourselves irrelevant again because that to which we calibrated ourselves has already changed.

So what are we left with? An adventure: the adventure of the post-relevant church. We have to stop allowing our churches to act like self-obsessed teenagers; instead, we need to embrace the fact that context just happens. It happens every moment of every day, and it is only in the faithful response to the context in which we actually find ourselves (not in the context imagined for us by the think-tank in Michigan) that the real adventure happens.

We can't catch up with the culture. All we can really do, as Andy Crouch says, is be culture-makers

ourselves. Our work is to create a context, to create a space in which God may be found, and to invite others into it in order that they might become relevant to it and therefore relevant to God. (This is the meaning of Baptism, is it not?) In other words, we can only be relevant by being a little strange, by keeping our own council, and by showing hospitality to people who find that the Gospel we proclaim is the scent of life and not the stench of death.

What does the post-relevant church look like? I don't know yet. I think it will probably look different everywhere that faithful men and woman struggle to fashion themselves in the image and likeness of Christ. For me, I think this will mean wearing a collar, introducing myself to strangers, and inviting our parish's neighbours into the life of Christ's Church through Baptism. It will mean talking about sin and grace and encouraging active participation in the sacramental life. It will mean forgetting about myself for a while and just allowing the church where I find myself to be the church that it is ... and the church that it will become. In other words, this is un-self-conscious Christianity, unconcerned with 'relevance,' just concerned with being alive in Christ wherever he has put us.

In this adventure of the post-relevant church, I think we will find that relevance, like context, just happens.

I grew up watching Batman, specifically reruns of Adam West’s 1970’s camp-fest. It had red phones and bad puns and lots of running in place in front of projected backdrops. Delightful. But, in 1992, everything changed: Batman: The Animated Series began its three-year run. The Animated Series was dark. It was gritty. The stories where sometimes campy, sure - it’s Batman after all - but, they had a depth to them that made them popular with people well outside their target demographic. Part of this was the voice talent of Kevin Conroy who voiced Batman and Bruce Wayne. Conroy brought something profound to the role. When asked what the key to the character was, he replied: Batman isn’t the mask. He’s the real person. Bruce Wayne is the mask that Batman hides behind. Whenever you caught a glimpse of the batsuit tucked beneath Bruce’s business suit, peaking out was the real person, not the mask. When things got interesting or strange, Batman’s true self emerged onto the stage, the hero in black.

I

In our Gospel lesson this evening, things have certainly gotten interesting and strange, but Simon has not emerged. Lots of things have been happening on the banks of the Jordan, but Simon just isn’t there. John the Baptizer, full of fire and smoke, proclaims a baptism of repentance. A leather belt holds his camel-hair chasuble in place. It is rumoured that he eats locusts and wild honey. He calls out Herod Antipas for marrying his brother’s wife. He makes enemies and baptizes the multitudes. His preaching seems to draw the whole of Judea to the Jordan River, but Simon isn’t there.

On top of that, the world is changing. John the Baptizer sees the carpenter Jesus walking to him and proclaims, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! … I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ Not only that, but John sees the Spirit descend on Jesus. He knows and proclaims that this Jesus is the one who will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit. He proclaims, ‘And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’ The world is changing. John proclaims Jesus the Messiah, the chosen one of God who will reconcile Israel and finally bring peace. It is the long-awaited hope. The world is changing, but Simon isn’t there.

Even Simon’s friends and family are there. Two of John’s disciples follow Jesus. He takes them to where he is staying, and they sit with him, chatting, talking, learning, their hearts growing heavy and light with the excitement of it all. It dawns on them as they talk, ‘We have found the Messiah.’ The River Jordan is brimming with people, the world is changing, and Simon’s friends and family get to see it. But Simon isn’t there.

II

Six years ago, I attended a large, Christian student conference. It focused on mission, and this year in particular it showcased the International Justice Mission, a group who, according to their website, ‘is a human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression.’ They get lawyers to leave their well-paid jobs to go do something spectacular, even heroic, in the world.

U2’s lead singer Bono addressed the conference. He talked about how he used to pray that God would bless his work. He would pray and pray and pray, but things wouldn’t happen. Then, he realized that he was doing it wrong. He needed to stop asking God to bless his work, and he needed to find the places that God was already blessing and go there.

But this is counter-cultural advice. We get told that the heroic thing is to find our passion, or to follow our hearts. We look deeply inside of ourselves to find meaning, to find hope. We pray that God will bless us, that God will do something to us, not realizing that we, like Simon, might just be in the wrong place. We might not be where the River Jordan is overflowing and the world is changing. We might just not be there.

We keep looking inside of ourselves hoping to find an answer. It’s almost like we’re looking through our buttons trying to find the bat-suit, something that might make us heroic, something inside that might validate our existence. But, all we find there is flesh. The real us is the mask. John the Baptizer is baptizing the multitudes in the wilderness, but we aren’t there.

III

One of the two who followed Jesus is Andrew, Simon’s brother. They heard John’s cry ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ and they start following Jesus. After a bit, Jesus catches on. He turns to them and asks, ‘What are you looking for?’ The sputter, ‘Rabbi,’ which means Teacher, ‘where are you staying?’

Jesus’ reply isn’t a treatise. It certainly isn’t theological. It is elegantly simple: ‘Come and see.’

They join Jesus for the day and at about 4:00 in the afternoon, their hearts heavy and light at the same time, something dawns on Andrew. Simon, his brother, isn’t there. How can he be missing this? He gets up and finds Simon. He tells him, out of breath, ‘We have found the Messiah.’ And instead of getting into an argument with Simon about it, he makes him come and see, just like Jesus did.

As Andrew and Simon approach the place Jesus is staying, the sun is setting. Jesus looks up and stares at Simon. There is something there in Jesus’ face, a knowing. Without introduction, Jesus says to him, ‘You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas.’

Andrew stifles a laugh. Cephas means ‘rock,’ and Simon is certainly not that. He has a tendency to prevaricate under pressure. Sometimes he even just lies. He wasn’t there at the Jordan to see the world changing, and now Jesus names Simon something he is not. Jesus gives Simon a new name.

IV

We keep looking inside ourselves to find the answer, but Jesus’ tactic is slightly different. He gives us a new name, a name that names us something we are not yet.

But first there is an invitation. ‘Come and see,’ Jesus told Andrew and his companion. Stop looking inward to find yourself. You won’t find a bat-suit there. You’re not now a hero. ‘Come and see’ is an invitation to a journey. The journey makes us stop asking God to bless the work we’re already doing, and it causes us to look ahead to the work that God will have us do, to get up off of our seats and follow Jesus into that place that God is already blessing, into that work which is bringing the Kingdom of God to earth.

There is something that is often not understood about the Christian life: our pursuit of self-actualisation is not a pursuit to uncover something already within us. It is a pursuit to uncover that which is put ahead of us. Simon, that prevaricating loser, was called ‘the Rock’ by Jesus. In the story, he goes on to be anything but a rock, culminating in those three treacherous denials on the night of Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus wasn’t pointing to something that was true about Peter. He was pointing to something that would be true if Peter set out on this journey after Jesus, if he came and saw in response to Jesus’ invitation.

There is something of the ontological about this in Christian thought. St. Paul says, ‘You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col 3:3). The self that you know now is the mask. It covers what you really are. But, what you really are is out ahead of you. You are on the way to meeting yourself. The Apostle continues, ‘When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory’ (Col 3:4).

This understanding animates much of Christian moral teaching, especially the Christian understanding of virtue. We train ourselves now into the future life of the Kingdom of God, precisely because we are on the way to becoming who we really are. We can’t rely on our feelings sometimes. We have to ‘fake it until we make it.’ But, the good news is this: Jesus gives us a new name. He points to us, knows us, and says, ‘You are mine, and because you are mine, you are the Father’s. Come and see what I have for you.’

In our Old Testament lesson today, the boy Samuel is advised to say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ What if we took that prayer for our own? What if we, in moments of quiet or moments of doubt, started repeating this short prayer? ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ We would be putting ourselves in a position to hear Jesus’ voice, to hear him calling us by a new name, to hear him saying, ‘Come and see.’ ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’

And though we sometimes poke through our shirt to see if we can find the mark of a hero underneath, the Christian story says that there is a different path. As we follow Jesus on his way, the Way of the Cross, we find it none other than the way of life and peace. We can be heroes, but only if we follow the one who saves us and loves us, only if we give up looking within and look to Jesus, who is the author and perfecter of our faith. In so doing, we will become saints. In so doing, we will become like Christ, the hero we all long to be.

*In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

• Image from Wikipedia, accessed 21 January, 2013.

I

In the ancient world, death hung like a malevolent spectre over everything.

In our reading from Isaiah, the prophet mentions death as “the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations.” At this time, life after death was considered to be something ethereal, ephemeral. Sheol was the name given to the place where the dead were, and it was a place of almost nothingness. You were conscious, but then again, you weren’t. Death was the place from which you could do nothing more. So, we hear the Psalmist say in different places in different ways, “Lord, save me. I cannot praise you from the grave!” Death was the silent shroud that blocked out the sun of life. All nations held its fear in common. Death was the common denominator.

In our reading from John’s Gospel, it is not much different. By this time, a hope of resurrection had developed, and Mary avows her belief that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. But, still, we see the depth of the malady. Mary weeps. Jesus is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” When Jesus comes to the tomb, he weeps, and John records again that he is “greatly disturbed.” And the dead man is quite literally covered in a shroud, wrapped in cloth, bound, held tight. The shroud covers all people.

And the shroud motivated and terrified people. For some, it motivated them to live their lives to the utmost, because they knew they would have nothing after death. For others, it simply terrified them, and they sought ways to dull the pain of the knowledge of death. “The shroud is cast over all peoples. The sheet is spread over all nations.”

II

We live in a world where the shroud seems to be being pulled back. Advances in medical technology mean that the average lifespan has increased significantly. HIV/AIDS is on its way to being solved, and we are all pretty sure that the cure for cancer is just around the corner. Many of us can expect to live into our eighties or beyond. When Social Security was enacted in the United States, the minimum age for receiving benefits was after the average age of death. Now, we have so many people reaching retirement that the system is overwhelmed, almost sunk.

But the idea that the shroud is being pulled back is an illusion. The mortality rate is still 100%, even if we do squeeze a few more years out of life. Everyone is going to die. The shroud of death may seem to be being pulled back, but really, it is just being ignored. We have hidden it. We have become a culture where “life” is the goal and the idea of “dying a good death” is either poo-pooed or lost entirely.

But, what does that mean? It means that we live in a world where we care more about the present moment than we care about future generations. We do things that feel good now, not things that will leave a legacy or change the world. We start treating our body with contempt, subjecting it to the abuse of alcohol or drugs or anything else that helps us forget that even as much as we are told to live in the present that the present can sometimes be a really horrible place to live.

And so we go on, content with the degradation of our bodies, content with death creeping up on us unawares. We go into that abyss without consideration, unprepared. The shroud of death still covers all nations, but we have learned to ignore it almost entirely.

III

Returning to Isaiah, we see that the shroud of death is not meant to be ignored. It is meant to be destroyed. Isaiah writes, “And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever” (25:7-8). God will swallow up death forever.

When God has done so, the life of the world to come will not be like Sheol, a place of darkness. It will be like a great banquet. Isaiah says there will be rich food and well-matured wines. The guest list includes people from every nation on earth. At the party, God will personally wipe the tears from all faces, especially the faces of his chosen people Israel, who have waited for him so long so that he might save them. Then the whole gathered throng will be glad and rejoice in God’s salvation. God will swallow up death forever.

And it is in Jesus that God has swallowed up death. We see the beginning of it in his ministry when he brings the dead back to life. “Take away the stone,” Jesus says to Lazarus’ sister Martha. Even when the smell of decay reaches his nostrils, he does not relent. “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” And the crowd does see, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man comes out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. “Unbind him, and let him go.”

But it is not until Jesus himself is taken down from the Cross and buried, laying under the shroud that is cast over all peoples, that God’s victory over death is finally seen in its fullness. For, on the third day, the lifeless form receives life again. A sharp intake of breath, the removal, folding, and putting aside of the shroud, all these are the signs that in Jesus Christ, God has swallowed up death forever and that God is, through Jesus’ ministry, preparing the table on the mountain, where the rich food will be together with the well-matured wines, to which we will all be called to sup.

IV

Today is the first Sunday after the twin celebrations of All Saints and All Souls. On All Saints, we remember those heroes of faith who have come before us. On All Souls, we remember all the faithful departed. It is a time the Church sets aside to remember those whose example we can follow and to remember those who are near to us who have passed beyond this life into the next. It gives us opportunity to think and pray and hope. And given that God will swallow up death forever on that mountain, it is a hope of resurrection, a hope of being raised on the last day to share the humanity with which Jesus ascended to his Father’s right hand. This is a day of hope, a hope that brings joy.

For, although we live in a society that tries to hide the shroud of death, we can embrace it. We know that in Jesus Christ, God has swallowed up death. The shroud will be destroyed. We don’t have to fear our deaths because we know that just as Jesus was raised on the third day, we will be raised on the last.

And since we have that hope, we don’t have to avoid talking or thinking about death. We can think about what it means to die well. We can meet death when it comes not as people without hope, not with fear and trembling, but in the sure and certain hope that Jesus Christ is the one in whom we have our life and being.

And that means that now, in the present, we can live with joy. We can embrace the life of discipleship as the saints did. We can heed God’s call to holiness. We can reach out our hands to our neighbours. We can put the work into this parish of All Saints, this place named for all those who have come before. In the great cloud of witnesses, they have not stopped cheering for you here in Rampton. They have not stopped applauding your faithfulness and encouraging you to keep running and to finish the race well. And it all comes back to God. Since God has swallowed up death forever, we can live our lives in the present, plan for the future, and trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us with him in glory. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Photo by Belén Galán.

At: St. Bene't's Church, Cambridge

Text: John 6:1-21

I

On top of the mountain, the Twelve focus on Jesus as he sits and teaches, but the growing babble of the nearing multitude slowly crowds in. At first, the disciples put the sound out of their ears, not really realizing what they're hearing. Then, slowly, it creeps in, causing annoyance first, then frustration. They are trying to listen to Jesus teach, after all. So they double-down and focus all the harder.

Until, that is, Jesus just stops talking. He looks over the heads of his disciples at the rabble. Some are bearing stretchers. Some are crying. They have been following Jesus because, as John would later write, "they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick." The crowd wanted a piece of what Jesus was offering.

But instead of performing the sign that the crowd expects, Jesus puts a question to his disciples, specifically to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" As Philip turns to see the gathering throng, counting, (what is that 5,000 people?) he misses the twinkle in Jesus' eye, the twinkle that says that Jesus already knows what he is going to do. Turning back, Philip plows ahead, a bit defensively perhaps, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." The disciples pat their purses, remembering what it was like to have wages in them. Even if they had money, there would be no place to go to buy that amount of food. Did they have anything that they could set before Jesus?

Andrew pipes up, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish." Seven little bits of food for 5,000? Andrew looks down at the boy’s offering and finishes everyone’s thought, "But what are they among so many people?"

II

"Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" Jesus asks us. We have gathered here to sit at Jesus' feet. St. Bene’t’s is down in the ground, not on top of a mountain, but the effect is the same. We have gathered, and for nearly 1,000 years, the crowds have come. And the crowds that darken our door, and the crowds we can now see throughout our world, are afflicted by so much: civil war in Syria, sickness in Africa, massacre in America, poverty and isolation here in Cambridge. "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?"

It’s here that many of our best instincts kick in. We reach for our purses but cannot find the six months wages it would take to help. We look at the scraps of gifting and talent we do have, and the networks we could ask for more help, but against the tide of evil that threatens to overtake our world, what are they among so many people?

We don't have Jesus sitting beside us in person. We haven’t been there as he has healed the sick and made the lame to dance for joy. No, all it seems we have is ourselves. And, we can very readily begin to despair. We come to believe that this feeling of despair, this deep darkness within us, is itself the problem, so we seek to medicate it. And the world around us is happy to help us self-medicate just enough to forget the injustices and cruelties that thrive around us.

G. K. Chesteron wrote of someone representing this eager world: "'Drink,' he says, 'for you know not whence you come nor why. Drink, for you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars are cruel and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for. Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and an evil peace'." What are our meagre offerings among so many people?

III

To the look of despair in his disciples' faces, Jesus says, "Make the people sit down." Taking the boy's meagre offering, Jesus holds it and gives his Father thanks and then breaks it, distributing it to the people who were seated on the great expanse of grass at the base of the hill. He then takes the fish and does the same thing, and the crowd eats until they are satisfied. "Gather up the fragments left over," Jesus says to his disciples, "so that nothing may be lost." So the disciples go to work in silence. When they are done, they have twelve baskets full of bread, one basket for every tribe of Israel, one basket for each of them. It is a Sign, as John calls them, not an ordinary miracle. This Sign says something about Jesus himself.

And the crowd understands this. Once everyone has eaten their fill, the whispers begin. Didn't Moses feed the people bread from heaven? Didn't Moses promise that one day a prophet like him would arise? John writes, "When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, 'This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world'." A hopeful, an almost ecstatic tension begins rippling through the seated multitude. The word "King" becomes audible, and Jesus realizes that they are about to force him into something for which he is not yet prepared. So, he withdraws from the crowd and from the disciples before they can put him on their shoulders and carry him to Jerusalem.

A little while later, the disciples start their return trip to Capernaum across the Sea of Galilee. The wind picks up about halfway through the journey, but then suddenly Jesus is there, walking across the water like no prophets had ever done before. "It is I; do not be afraid," he says, and the disciples find themselves immediately at safety on the other side. This Jesus who multiplies meagre offerings is something more than a prophet like Moses, something more than a political king. This Jesus who is in charge of loaves and fishes is also in charge of the wind and the waves. This Jesus is the Son of God.

IV

And it is this Jesus at whose feet we gather today. He is the one we sing songs to. He is the one honoured in our liturgy and the one extolled in our preaching. And it is this Jesus who still has the twinkle in his eye when he asks us where we will find bread for so many people. He already knows what he is going to do when he puts the question to us, and he expects us to act as Andrew did: to offer him what we have. It might only be seven loaves worth of talent, but Jesus is in charge of loaves and fishes. It might only be two fish worth of time and money, but Jesus is in charge of the wind and the waves. To show the crowd who he was, he multiplied a meagre offering on the hillside all those years ago. He continues to do so today.

So, when the despair comes that threatens to overtake us with visions of that base equality and that evil peace, let us set before Christ our meagre offerings of bread and fish and say what our father and mothers in faith have said throughout time: "Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus, come." By ourselves, we cannot hope to overcome, but Jesus is the one who multiplies our meagre offerings. Jesus is the one who will show himself faithful even here, even now.

Every week, we re-enact this faithfulness when our meagre offering is brought down the aisle to the altar. We set it before Christ and say “Come, Lord Jesus, come.” And he does. And he bids us drink, not like the world bids us drink. As Chesterton writes, "'Drink" he says 'for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this is my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know of whence you come and why. Drink, for I know of when you go and where'."

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Photo by Igor Dugonjic

"I sent the same to John Keble, a friend who is in great distress about faith and many controversies. He lived with John Keble for a month or two. John Keble said no word of controversy, but lived. And my friend's faith was restored and his place in the Anglican Church was restored." And it was in those words, "but live," that the crisis was overcome and we are now, you and I, where we are (64).

The present controversy, whatever it is, will not be overcome by political wrangling. It will be won by the life of holiness, well lived.

But one result of interacting with the material (plus the fact that I'm home alone) is that I've started taking the long way to church. There are a couple of different routes I've tried. One walks along the backs, with exquisite views of King's College Chapel and a winding approach to the city centre through some amazing brick structures. The other cuts across the cow fields via a beautiful path lined with ducks and swans. Either path gives me a few extra minutes to reconnect with the creation a bit before walking down into St. Bene't's to worship the Creator. They are beautiful, spiritual walks. They feed my soul.

The path leading away from Ridley Hall

The narrow sidewalk threatens to spill you into the street

Punts outside the Granta

The green is always only a few yards away

My path through the cow fields

The Cam, angry

Silver Street Bridge

Swans and signets. Life goes on.

Q.4 Celebrant Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers? People I will, with God’s help.

(The fifth installment in the Baptismal Covenant series)

The first two questions of the Baptismal Covenant frame the portable narrative in which everything that follows makes sense. It is true that Q.3 is the third article of the Apostles' Creed, but it breaks the narrative a bit, already making the leap from Christ's Ascension into the present, calling us to believe in the holy catholic Church, the ever-present communion of all those called by Christ living and dead, the Church's ongoing ministry of the forgiveness of sin, the future resurrection of all people, and the hope of everlasting life.

This is where the rubber hits the road, and we begin to see that the Baptized Life isn't only shaped by a narrative of what God has done in the past. We begin to see that the Baptized Life is the Life of the Spirit.

The Catechism asks how we can recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit. Its answer is succinct and helpful: "We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation" (BCP 852-53). In other words, we can recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in confession and reconciliation.

And what else but confession and reconciliation does Q. 4 of the Baptismal Covenant talk about? We are asked if we will continue in the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers. The Apostles' teaching, so ably summarized in the Apostles' Creed, revolves around the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. Every week in the Eucharist, we confess this same faith in the words of the Nicene Creed. The Holy Spirit's work in our lives is more than confessing the faith of the Apostles, but it is not less.

But confessing the faith is not enough - the demons do that and tremble. No, the Catechism rightly points out that the Spirit brings us into love and harmony with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and with all creation. Faith without the work of love is dead. The Covenant asks us not only to continue in the Apostles' teaching but also in their fellowship, a fellowship constituted by the breaking of bread and the prayers. In the fellowship of the Apostles, we come to worship God rightly and practice hospitality with ourselves and others as the reconciled and reconciling priesthood of God.

Some will say that the presence of the Holy Spirit is necessarily either prophetic or ecstatic. There are many in our churches that claim the authority of the Holy Spirit to speak prophetically, that is, to speak about justice issues in the public square. There are also many who tie the presence of the Holy Spirit directly to ecstatic experience of one sort or another. Both speaking prophetically and ecstatic spiritual experience are rightly understood as a sign of the Spirit's presence, but they are not enough in themselves. Either one becomes dangerous when they are disconnected from confession and reconciliation, the very basic evidences of the Spirit's life.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

• 1 Cor 13:1-3

What else is there left to conclude? The Life of the Baptized is the Life of the Spirit of God. When we, with God's help, live into our baptismal promises by confessing Christ as Lord and being reconciled with God, ourselves, neighbor, and the earth, we can be assured that the Spirit of God is dwelling among us.

Photo by Jeff Miller

At: All Saints, Rampton

Text: Mark 4:26-34

Have you noticed? The zombie movie seems to be making a comeback. Last year, Monique and I watched the first few episodes of The Walking Dead, an AMC show that is based on a long-running comic book of the same name. The creators thought that zombies were interesting because, if you think about it, there is no real end to a zombie story. You can’t get rid of them. You fight and you fight and you fight, and then you die. The entire show is an attempt to bring human meaning out of an ultimately hopeless situation.

I

Looking at our Gospel passage today, Mark shows Jesus telling an entirely different set of stories, a string of parables about the Kingdom of God.

Mark writes, "[Jesus] also said, 'The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, but he does not know how'."

Jesus spins a story that his audience can hear. The farmers among them know what it is like to scatter seed on the ground, to sleep and rise and sleep and rise again, and then to see the new growth that would mean food for their families for another year.

But, when it comes to the Kingdom of God, there is a problem. God has been working with the Israelites for a long time, but it still only feels to them like the seed has been planted. There is no promised restoration. The glory of God has not returned to the Temple. They are sleeping and rising, whole generations have risen and fallen to sleep, but where is the sign of the growth? Have they done something wrong?

Many would say "yes." The Pharisees say that the people have not kept the Law of God well enough, that they have not loved righteousness and walked with God. For that reason, there is no growth.

The Essenes, that strange sect out in the dessert, say that it is because the high priesthood was stolen from its rightful heirs for the sake of power and greed. For that reason, there is no growth.

But in the story, when the seed sprouts and grows, Jesus says that the planter "does not know how" it does so. The planter is shut out of the process of growing. He sows and harvests. In the middle, all he can do is wait.

II

In 2010, Chuck Klosterman wrote an article in the New York Times entitled, "My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead." Klosterman asks why zombie movies have grown in popularity, and he answers that "modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies." The thing about zombies is that they always keep coming. You might dispatch one, but there will always be another right behind. You fight and fight and fight, and then you die.

Klosterman continues, "Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It's always a numbers game. And it's more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning, or filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork, or following Twitter gossip out of obligation, or performing tedious tasks in which the only true risk is being consumed by the avalanche. The principal downside to any zombie attack is that the zombies will never stop coming; the principal downside to life is that you will never be finished with whatever it is you do."

Whereas the farmer in Jesus' story does not know how the ground gives growth, we do not know why we continue fighting the day in and day out battles of email, paperwork, and other tedious tasks. When it doesn't stop, and we find ourselves lost in the mire of emails and responsibilities, so mired down that we can't find any space to be alone with our close friends and family, much less with ourselves or with God, we have to start wondering: what does my work mean? Why do I get up in the morning? Why keep fighting?

III

The farmer who casts his seed into the ground in hope might ask similar questions. But, simply put, he continues to scatter seed in the fields because the ground continues to do its mysterious work turning those seeds into full heads of grain. He trusts the ground to grow the crop. And since this is a parable of the Kingdom of God, God grows the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God is like these seeds the farmer casts onto the ground. It starts out small, and its growth is entirely outside of human control. Citizens of the Kingdom see the Kingdom sprout and grow, but they do not know how it does so. All they know is that there comes a time when their wait is over. As Mark says, “When the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

God grows the Kingdom not just for its citizens, but for those who will become its citizens. Jesus continues with another parable. The Kingdom is like a mustard seed. Even though it is a very small seed, when planted it can become a shrub 10-15 feet tall. Jesus says God grows the Kingdom like a mustard seed grows, “so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” God grows the Kingdom, and he grows the Kingdom to provide a place for the entire world to come and rest.

And God the Farmer does all of this in the person and work of Jesus himself. Jesus is the growth from Israel’s soil that the nation had long expected. And Jesus’ ministry will soon flower into a ministry that heals the sick and binds demons all over Israel. Jesus will himself be treated like a seed, crushed, put in the ground, and then three days later, he will sprout again, raised into new life by God the Father. God grows the Kingdom, and people from all the nations of the earth will make nests in its shade.

IV

If God grows the Kingdom, then what does that say for the modern world of work? Is work for a Christian ultimately like a zombie movie in which you fight, fight, fight, and die? No. As God grows the Kingdom, God gives growth to our work as well.

In the zombie world of work, the imperative is survival. Killing zombies isn’t hard, but you have to kill them or you die. In the Christian world of work, the imperative is thriving. Tilling the ground is hard work, but once the seeds are sown there is space for rest, for sleeping and rising night and day, because we are off the hook for making the seeds grow. That is the mysterious work of the ground; that is God’s work. We sow, and when the time comes, we harvest. God gives growth to our work.

In this understanding of our day-to-day, we come to expect an abundance, not necessarily a financial abundance, but an abundance of joy as we see the work of our hands become something we could not have imagined – like a mustard seed turning into the greatest of all shrubs. We sow faithfulness when we show up every day (whether at a job or elsewhere) and fulfil our obligations. We sow kindness when we make ourselves helpful to others. We sow our skills and talents and passions, but then, and this is the good news of work for a Christian, we can let go of the results. The God who is growing the Kingdom all around us is the same God who gives growth to our work in an active partnership. We sow. He grows. We reap. Thanks be to God.

And what does this mean for us? Sow liberally. In the fields in which you are responsible, sow skill. Sow focused attention. Sow kindness. Scatter these seeds far and wide in your fields, and then say a prayer, go home at the end of the day, and rest in joy and hope. God will give the growth. And when the time comes, you will see the harvest of God’s Kingdom, sprouting up to life for you and your families. Be faithful. Stay true. Whether it is the work we do for employers, the Church, or our friends and families, God gives the growth. Sow liberally. Soon enough the harvest will come.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Photo by hummel_12

At: St. Bene't's, Cambridge

Text: Mark 3:19-35

I

The door to Mary’s house shakes as it is pounded from the outside. Mary opens the door to a familiar face: “Jesus has come home, Mary. Come quickly.” Mary snaps into motion, and calling Jesus’ brothers together, they walk out the door, as the Gospel of Mark says, “to restrain him.”

They pass a crowd of people. She overhears, “Who does he think he is? The scribes from Jerusalem will sort him out.” Mary knows the religious teachers can be dangerous. She quickens her pace.

As Mary and the boys approach, she hears her son’s voice inside the house, “But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” Through the door, she sees the faces of the scribes. One is ashen. The other is angry. The angry one grabs the other and pushes him towards the door. One mumbles to the other, “He has gone out of his mind.”

The house itself is full to over-flowing. Jesus is sitting and teaching in the middle of the room, and everyone is sitting in a circle around him. Mary and Jesus’ brothers are outside, on the periphery. But, Mary has come to get her son to the safety of her home, so she passes word through the crowd. Someone leans over and whispers in Jesus’ ear. His eyes open in surprise. He looks through the doorway at his mother and says so that everyone can hear, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those sitting around him, he says, as Mark testifies, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Mary looks at her son, shocked and probably offended. Jesus has refused to come home.

II

Here in the 21st century, we try to bring Jesus home with us all the time, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. When I was in high school, a friend taught me a song. It starts out, and you’ll have to imagine the country and western style, “I don’t care if it rains for freezes, as long as I’ve got my plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car. Comes in colours pink and pleasant, glows in the dark ‘cause it’s iridescent, take it with you when you travel far.” This is probably one example of the bad way of bringing Jesus home with us.

Another of these were the once-ubiquitous “What would Jesus Do?” bracelets. They were there to remind you to be intentional about the way you lived, a laudable goal! But the problem was, looking around, everyone came up with different answers. For the Baptists, Jesus would never drink, smoke, or dance. For the Catholics, Jesus would do all of those things. For the Christian Right, Jesus wouldn’t vote for a liberal. For the Christian Left, Jesus wouldn’t vote for a conservative. For some, Jesus was a man of tolerance and peace, a hippie before his time. For others, Jesus was a stalwart defender of the Truth with a capital T, a fundamentalist before his time.

But, for every follower of Jesus, there is a moment when we walk up to the house like Mary did, and we try to call Jesus back home, when we try to remove him from the centre and turn him into the plastic Jesus we can put in our car. As we stand on the outside, and our message is passed on to Jesus at the centre of the seated learners, Jesus looks straight at us and says, “Who are my mother and brothers?” Jesus refuses to come home with us, too.

III

Jesus refuses to go home with his mother, because he was starting a new family. Before Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes, he was on a whirlwind tour, healing illnesses and casting out demons. Just before returning home, he chose twelve disciples who would later, minus one, become the apostles we remember and revere. And then he comes home, but the crowd is not far behind him. There are so many that he can’t even eat. But instead of turning them away, he sits down in the house and begins to teach. But, his fame is spreading too quickly. Scribes come down from Jerusalem and make the accusation that Jesus’ power and influence come from an ominous source. As Mark has them say, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of demons he casts out demons.”

The seated crowd at Jesus’ feet goes silent. Seconds tick by. Jesus answers, only indirectly, saying that if a Kingdom or a Household were internally divided then they would not stand. Can Satan be divided against himself? No, he says, I am the one raiding Satan’s house, not vice versa. I am the one breaking through, the one breaking in, and my ministry of healing and exorcism is a sign of a new Kingdom, a new House, a new Family. And when you scribes say that the Kingdom of God comes by the agency of evil spirits, you are blaspheming against God himself.

One of the scribes goes ashen. The other mutters angrily. One grabs the other and starts pushing towards the door, past Mary and the boys. After a moment, someone leans over to Jesus and says, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” Jesus looks up in surprise – all this talk of Kingdoms and Houses wasn’t meant to be about his house, the place where his mother and brothers live. But, then, he realizes, no, it really was. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and the woman who bore him, his natural family, has come to collect him, to tie him up and bring him to her home. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asks. It is those who choose to sit at Jesus’ feet and hear his teaching, those who do the will of God. THOSE are Jesus’ brother and sister and mother. Jesus came to start a new family that could include, but extended far beyond, his earthly mother and brothers.

IV

St. Bene’t’s has a statue of the Virgin Mary holding her son. Throughout the history of the Church, Mary has been represented with the baby Jesus in her arms. If you look at these pictures, even though Our Lady is often the centre-piece, Jesus is obviously the object. If she looks out of the picture, she is pointing to Jesus. If her eyes are focused elsewhere, they are on Jesus. Whatever else happened that day when Jesus started a new family, the Church remembers that Mary learned a lesson – that her family was not the centre of her world, that Jesus was the centre, and that Jesus needed to stay in the centre always.

Jesus calls us to belong with him. When a parent brings a child to be baptized, they are in effect saying that they want their child to be a part of Jesus’ new family, to live a life with Jesus at the centre. Today, when baby Felix comes out from under the water, he will be reborn into this new family. In effect, his godparents will carry him into the room where Jesus sits teaching the crowd. They will sit and listen and learn with Felix in tow. Over the course of years, Felix will grow up and ask questions, and he will come to a moment in his life where he comes to call Jesus back to his house, to his party, to his understanding of the world. And Jesus will ask him, “Who is my family?” And then, as he has done for all of us, Jesus will look around at the simple, the lame, the weak, the rich and poor, the Baptists and Catholics, the conservatives and liberals, the hippies and fundamentalists, all who have put down their placards to sit at his feet, and he will say “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. Sit. Listen. Learn.”

Where are we, then? Are we standing on the outside, calling to Jesus to come home with us? Or, are we here willing to be made a part of Jesus’ family? Every week we have that choice, as we come again to the Table of our Lord. We have here an opportunity to sit down again at Jesus’ feet, to become part of his family, to learn again how to love God, ourselves, and our neighbours. May we be the people who stop trying to co-opt Jesus and his message for our own purposes. May we be the people who sit down at Jesus’ feet as part of his new family.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Virgin Mary photo by Matic Zupancic

Dashboard Jesus photo by scasha

Jesus icon photo by Dimitri Castrique

Mary and Child icon, copyright TatianaVartanova

I am afraid there is something desperately wrong with my washer/dryer. When my wife Monique and I moved to Cambridge about eight months ago, we knew we needed to buy one. We also knew that we couldn’t afford a new one. So, when some friends took us to a second-hand shop, and we saw an older washer/dryer for a reasonable price, we made sure to bring it home with us.

Being Americans, we didn’t have much experience with washer/dryer units. We learned very quickly that using the word “dryer” in relationship to our washer/dryer was ironic at best. It did not dry clothes, even if I set the dryer to run for 60 or 90 minutes. As a result, every surface in our house became a place to dry our laundry.

But, then one day, it happened. I did everything as normal but this time when I pulled my clothes out after the dry cycle, they were dry! My first suspicion was that the clothes hadn’t been washed in the first place. But no, they had. Over the course of the next week, we realized that, yes, if we selected which clothes went in, we could dry them. No problems.

Let me reiterate, I am afraid that there is something desperately wrong with my washer/dryer. It is drying my clothes.

I

Today is the Feast of Pentecost, the great day we remember the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, the day when 3,000 people were added to their number. A massive event, often taken out of context. For the context we need, we’ll have to go back forty days or so, to Maundy Thursday, the setting of today’s Gospel passage.

The Eleven sit with Jesus in the upper room. He has washed their feet, and Judas has left, presumably to buy something for the festival or to give some money to the poor. With Judas gone, Jesus begins to teach and pray, giving them a new commandment and offering them to the Father in prayer. And in the middle of this teaching and praying, he starts to talk about his departure.

Jesus says, “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me….” Peter winces. Andrew looks away. The rest are somewhere in between. Pain radiates like waves in the room. And Jesus knows it. “Sorrow has filled your hearts,” he says in response.

And then, compounding the sorrow, Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Again, the wince. Peter moves as if he is going to say something, something brash like “If you die, I’ll die with you.” But, he’s been told off already tonight, twice, so he stays still. Jesus is going away, and they are not ready. The condemnation stings. They cannot bear all the wisdom that Jesus wants to give them, and Jesus is going away, or so he says, and all he promises is an Advocate, the Spirit of truth? Well, even if that did mean something, what would it mean? How would they know the Spirit was with them? Jesus continues on, teaching and praying. But, the disciples aren’t ready for Jesus to leave.

II

As you and I have walked this liturgical journey between Easter and Pentecost, I have to admit that I am not ready for Jesus to leave, either. I am not ready for the Alleluias to disappear again. I am not ready to be without the stories of the Risen Jesus walking amidst the disciples. I am not ready for the long, demanding stretches of green Sundays that lie ahead.

We are entering “ordinary time,” as the liturgists call it, the big fly-over zone between Pentecost and the first Sunday of Advent. It is, I think, much easier to be spiritual on the high festival days, when the incense comes out and we focus on this or that important event in the history of God’s work with us in Christ. All too often, I feel like the green bits of the liturgical year are like my dryer: spinning but not producing any heat, keeping things moving just enough so the wrinkles don’t set in, holding place, nothing more.

Perhaps more than anything, I’m not ready because I have a hard time knowing what it means to live in the life of the Spirit. I’m not ready for today. I’m not ready for Eastertide to end. I, like the disciples, am not ready for Jesus to leave.

III

In the midst of the disciples’ consternation, Jesus makes a remarkable promise: He will send the Spirit. “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you.” Without his departure, he cannot go to the place where the Advocate is. Without his departure, he cannot send the Spirit. But, he promises he will.

The Spirit will guide you into all truth, Jesus says, and “will declare to you the things that are to come.” Just like the disciples were guided into truth by Jesus’ teaching, the Spirit will continue to guide them. But, and this is important, the Spirit will only speak what he hears. “He will glorify me,” Jesus says, “because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” What the Father is in all his glory, he has given to Jesus. What Jesus is in all his glory, he will give to the Spirit to give to the Apostles. The Holy Spirit isn’t just the Spirit of Jesus’ Father. The Holy Spirit is Jesus’ Spirit as well. So, when the apostles fear that they are alone, that Jesus has abandoned them, they can know this one thing: Jesus has not left them. He will send his Spirit.

IV

For those of us sitting here in the 21st century, it is quite normal to talk about someone being with us “in spirit.” That often means that we have a sense of their presence, that they live on in our memories, that they are felt by us to be there, even if they are not. We might call that “remembered presence.” But, remembered presence is not what the Church talks about when it says that Jesus is with us “in Spirit.” The Church teaches that Jesus is personally present among us. He brings himself personally and powerfully into our midst by the Holy Spirit.

But, how would we know this personal presence of Jesus? Is it a feeling that we have, or is there something we can point to and say – there is evidence of Jesus’ personal presence? The Catechism of the Episcopal Church answers this question like this: “We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.” In other words, we can know the Spirit of God is with us when things start going suddenly right.

We human beings were created to live in love and harmony with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and with the earth. When the Spirit of God comes, we confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord and from that confession flows an opportunity to live life in a way that is truly human again. But, because it is not the normal way we human beings live, it can come as a shock. It can look like something is desperately wrong. Like I worry about my dryer’s health because it has suddenly started to work, we can get worried that this kind of life, this spiritual life, means that something has gone horribly wrong.

But, no. This kind of loving and harmonious life, when it slips into our world by Jesus’ personal presence in the Holy Spirit, is the way we are meant to live. It is hard work, indeed, and we are given the vast expanse of green Sundays ahead of us, where nothing particularly interesting happens, to practice and live this life of the Spirit. We all now have an opportunity to live in love and harmony with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and the earth if we will but listen to what the Holy Spirit will teach us. Pray and listen. With whom do you live in the least love and harmony? God? Yourself? Neighbor? Earth? Pray and listen and ask. The Spirit will show you the place of need and will show you what must be done next. As you open your life to Christ in his Spirit, the green Sundays ahead will turn into a time of pruning, yes, but also of joyful growth. Because when the Holy Spirit comes, things start to go suddenly and wonderfully right.

*In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

* Photo by Miguel Saavedra

The sessions have revolved around the distinction between "Home" and "Household."

"Home" references the relationship side of the equation. "Home is where the heart is," after all. These are many of the soft skills of being together, of living as adults together, of figuring out how to love one another even when you're tired and cranky.

"Household," on the other hand, references all the business-like decisions that have to be made to keep the organization of a home running smoothly. Chores. Money. Meetings. You name it.

Not making this distinction can cause a lot of problems. It's amazing how quickly something like neglecting to take out the trash (a household issue) can turn into an emotional and hurtful fight (a home issue around communication). If we can manage the household well, it takes a lot of pressure off the home life of a couple. And if a couple develops skills in mending their relationship and keeping it passionate and engaging in the first place, all the better.

So, the list of things covered in this first go at pre-marital counseling looked something like this (though not in this order):

1. What is Marriage, Really?
2. The biblical portraits of marriage in Genesis 1-3 and Ephesians
3. An introduction to the home/household distinction
4. Home - Communication basics, drawing from Crucial Conversations
5. Household - Household basics - who's responsible for what?
6. Home - Love Languages, drawing from The Five Love Languages
7. Household - Money - a la Dave Ramsey
8. Home - Holding one another accountable, drawing from Crucial Confrontations
9. Household - Moving Forward Together as a Partnership in the Gospel, drawing from The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family

What do you think? Is there anything missing? What other skills might you cover?

*Picture by Kriss Szkurlatowski

He put them in a tilled and kept place, an oasis of peace and harmony in the midst of the chaotic world. It was a time of innocence. A time of peace. God gave them a task: keep the Garden. Expand it. Bring order and peace to the whole chaotic and terror-filled world. And, he said, don't eat of the tree in the center of the Garden, the tree that will let you know the difference between good and evil. You're not ready for that yet. You'll have time to learn that later.

But, just like all of us, Adam and Eve were curious. It didn't help that one of the creatures from outside the Garden had slithered in and was intent on bringing inside the outer chaos, of disrupting the human being's work before it could even begin. The serpent suggested that God was withholding the difference between right and wrong unfairly, that of course the humans were ready for it right now. The woman ate first. The man ate after her. And God, walking through the Garden that evening, seeing that the disorder from outside the Garden had already taken root in the ones who were to spread his order and peace to the whole chaotic world, saw that things would not work out the way he'd planned.

So, he told them what this new disorder meant: things were broken. The relationship between the man and the woman was broken. The relationship between the humans and the earth was broken. Most wretched of all, the relationship between the humans and God was broken. Sin, disorder, had crept in. Nothing could be the same.

The humans had been ashamed, noticing for the first time that they were naked. But, God would not let them stay naked. He gave them their first set of clothes, a perpetual sign that order must cover chaos, that the work of setting things right has to start with the humans themselves. And he gave them a promise that one day one of the first woman's children would stand up to the serpent. But this time, the human would win. By winning, that human being would give the world a fresh start.

Christians say we know that human's name: Jesus of Nazareth. But what happened between the promise to the first humans and the birth of Jesus is a whole ream of other stories, stories of faithfulness and rebellion, stories of order and chaos, stories of peace and war. Those stories we will have to save for later.

Picture by kay82

People I believe in God, the Father almighty,

creator of heaven and earth.

Q.2 Celebrant Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

People I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit

and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

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

The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 304

----------

(The belated fourth installment in the Baptismal Covenant series)

So far in this series, I have framed covenant in biblical terms together with the way the Prayer Book talks about covenant. The takeaway is that nothing that the Baptismal Covenant asks of its people is anything other than can be "proved" (in that old Anglican sense) from Holy Scripture. This is important. The BC formulates a path of discipleship rooted in Scripture.

The first two questions of the Covenant are the first two articles of the Apostles' Creed. As one of my undergraduate teachers used to say that the creed is a "portable narrative." It hits the highlights of the Gospel story from beginning to end. I would add that the creed, when memorized, creates a set of useful "places" to go in the mind. They are nooks and crannies in which you can put other memories, other thoughts about God, self, and other. Memorizing this is not an end in itself. It is something that creates the ability to learn and retain more than one would otherwise be able to capture and keep.

Why put the creed first in the Baptismal Covenant? Because it provides the narrative context for everything that follows. In effect, the creed stands at the head of the Baptismal Covenant as both context and legitimation. The way of life that we request of our baptizands is sufficiently weird that we have to justify in advance why this kind of life means something. Our answer: this crazy way of life means something only because of the story told in the creed.

What about people who struggle with believing the creed? There is a certain amount of "as if" here. If you don't believe the creed but still act according to the rest of the Covenant, you are acting as though you believe it. If you're okay living with that kind of ambiguity, that's up to you; however I have a hard time imagining taking the rest of the BC seriously without some kind of grounding in these basic statements of Christian belief.

The basic elements of the portable narrative revolve around the three persons of the Trinity: God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father stands at the head of the creed as almighty creator of heaven and earth, already the Father because of his everlasting relationship with the Son. The Son has a very earthly life: conceived, born, suffered, crucified, died, buried, descended to the dead, rose, ascended, coming again. The creed is clear about the continuity of Jesus' earthly life and his resurrected, ascended, and reigning life. Without this continuity, without the Jesus who died and yet reigns and is coming again, everything else that is to follow (including the third article of the creed) makes little sense.

This portable narrative stands at the head as context and legitimation for the way of life to follow, a life just weird enough to need that context and justification. The next instalment in this series will begin to look at the life of the baptized as the life of the Spirit.

It is hard to hold one's breath, but this is the first year where I have felt it. I feel the waiting all around me. The world is about to burst forth into new day . . . but not yet. This is the time of Christ's hollowness. This is the time of Christ's harrowing. This is the time of Christ's eternal sleep.

Tomorrow will be the time of Hell's hollowness, of Hell's harrowing, of Hell's eternal sleep, doomed as it is to spit forth the saints of old and to have the human race in its grip no longer. The gates of Hell are torn down. There is nothing to keep us there save our own hollowness, our own harrowing, or own eternal sleep.

Oh, that Christ would burst forth from the grave! Oh, that Christ would finish his work and not be absent from us any longer. Oh, that Christ would make himself known again, to send forth his disciples into the nations, to heal the world and bring people to his love and knowledge.

Oh, that it might be. Maranatha! Come, Holy Spirit, come! Fill our hollowness. Negate our harrowing. Wake us from our sleep.

He continued talking about a string of things I'd never heard about before: closed lists, the manana principle, and knowing when you're done for the day. Wait, what? You, a vicar, can know when you're done with work for the day?

Yep. That's the power of Mark Forster's little book, Do It Tomorrow (US version).

I picked up the book the same week and devoured it on a train ride to and from London. I implemented the ideas last week, and they have upended the way I look at and practice time management in at least four ways.

First, it has changed the way I look at a day's work. One of the book's promises is that you can know what a day's worth of work is, and that you can complete it every day. Forster says that you can only keep all the promises you've made to yourself and others if your work output is roughly equal to your work input. Basically, a day's work is the work that arrives on your desk during the day (in this case, yesterday), plus anything else you need to do to keep active projects functioning. When you've done that, you're done.

Second, the book has changed the way I look at lists. There's a distinction between open and closed lists. An open list is, well, open. You can always add things to it. If you work on perennially open lists, then all you can do is 'prioritize.' By default, a few important things will always make their way to the bottom, where they will die. A closed list, on the other hand, is one to which you add nothing. Being closed, it can be completed, which is motivating. The point of the books' recommendations are to create the possibility of making and completing a closed list every day.

Third, the book has changed the way I look at urgency. With an open list, things get done when they get done. Forster recommends that there are only really three categories of urgency: emergency, urgent, and tomorrow. Emergencies are when something comes up that forces you to drop everything else and leave the building. Urgent items require a response or an action the same day, not necessarily at this moment. But, the genius of the system is that everything else is given an urgency of tomorrow. Do It Tomorrow is the name of the book after all.

Fourth, the book has changed the way I handle email. Since a day's work is the work you receive in a day, a day's worth of email is the email you received yesterday. He suggests scanning email for urgency. If it is isn't an emergency or urgent, put it in a folder marked "Tomorrow." The next morning, move all the email to a folder marked "Today" and work through it. You should be able to deal with all your email for the day in 30 minutes to an hour. I spent less than thirty minutes this morning dealing with all my email from yesterday. I have had the rest of the day to deal with my day's work, a closed list that included drafting a piece of this blog.

Wrapping up, I highly recommend Forster's Do It Tomorrow. It's recommendations are easily implemented, and the results are profound and immediate. My Vicar friend said that after he bought the book, his staff team, seeing the difference, started using it themselves. Since then, his entire deanery has joined in.

So, go ahead. Read it and let me know what you think. Tomorrow.

If there is anything that the 39 Articles of Religion are clear about, it is the local presence of Christ's humanity in heaven. Here is the first mode of presence we need to discuss: local. To say that Christ is locally present in heaven is to say that the location of Christ's resurrected humanity is there, not here. It affirms that we cannot be in the presence of his body and blood without being present there as well, and this is where Calvin's solution comes in. By means of the Holy Spirit, we are spiritually lifted into the presence of Christ, united with his humanity by grace through faith. This seems elegant to me, but I think we should explore some other modes of presence as well.

We can talk about symbolic presence. This might be closer to Zwingli than anything. One can be present with another when the second person uses authorized symbols of the first. In the Best Picture winner The Artist, the female lead experiences this kind of presence when she puts her arms through the sleeve of the absent Artist's coat and wraps herself in an embrace. Through the coat and her interaction with it (by faith?), the Artist was symbolically present to her. It was a real presence of sorts, though not a local presence.

We can also talk about hyper-presence, when a mediated version of a person is "more real" to us than the person him- or herself. If you have ever attended a conference where the speaker was projected onto a big screen, you've experienced this kind of hyper-presence. The screen is so big, and the person on it is so close, that it is common to experience shock when you turn to look at the person behind the podium. For a moment, the local presence of the person seems less real than the hyper-mediated presence of the person on the screen. Of course, you snap out of it, but that's the way it is.

Then, there is virtual presence. When Monique and I lived in Canada, it was difficult to get home for holidays. One Christmas, Monique's mother and brother came to visit. When they stepped through the opaque sliding doors of the international gates at Toronto's Pearson Airport, a jolt shot through me. I had expected to encounter the feeling of shock that rolls through you when your brain has to combine your old memories of a person to the living, moving, breathing person walking towards you. Instead, the jolt was of perfect recognition. I had the experience of having seen them before. Not only of having seen them, but of having been with them, a sense of their presence. A few days prior we had spoken on Skype. I was recoiling from a shared experience of presence, but a virtual presence instead of a local one.

The thing about virtual presence is that the medium of the presence becomes transparent to the person being made present by it. At Skype's best, I forget that I am talking to a computer screen. I am with the people on the other side. The medium disappears to my conscious experience, even though the entirety of my experience is made up only of the medium itself. We could even say that the medium is instrumentally effecting what it symbolizes; it is an "effectual sign" of the person's presence with me. Video chat made my wife's mother and brother present in a way they could not be otherwise. Even though the medium (video chat) is all my senses are really interacting with, I am truly communing with the people on the other side.

It is no difficult thing to extend this metaphor into the realm of the Eucharistic presence. It preserves the local presence elsewhere of the person with whom I am communing. The presence is mediated by an effectual sign of that person. It even involves a faith of sorts that allows me to treat the screen "as if" it were really the person I was talking to, instead of the zeros and ones that the representation really is. In fact, it would be wrong of me (and counter-productive) to commit the cynical and ultimately Zwinglian error of over-emphasizing that I am not talking to my mother-in-law, just zeros and ones. It would also be an error on the naive and ultimately medieval Catholic side to claim that the zeros and ones somehow have become my mother-in-law in order to mediate her real, personal presence to me.

In the same way, the Eucharistic bread and wine as media of Christ's personal presence preserve his local presence at the right hand of God the Father. The presence is mediated by an effectual sign of that person. It involves faith that looks beyond the "zeros and ones" of the bread and wine to the person whose presence is being mediated. It would be wrong of me to commit the cynical, Zwinglian error of over-emphasizing that the bread and wine are just bread and wine. It would also be an error to commit the credulous and medieval error that says the bread and wine have become, substantially, the Body and Blood. They really do give me, wholly and completely, the presence of Christ, and Christ would not be present in the same way without these forms in place. To focus on the "nature" of the zeros and ones entirely misses the point.

What is elegant about the "virtual presence" metaphor made possible by internet video chat is that it preserves what all sides are seeking to preserve while making it understandable that Christ might be wholly and personally present to us in the Eucharist. Like Calvin, we are present to Christ, just as I am present to my mother-in-law over Skype. Like the Zwinglians, I don't have to say that the medium is anything other than Bread and Wine wrenched to this use by the Spirit. Like the Catholics, I can say that the Lord really is present in his personal humanity with us here and now. Once the door is open, it is open.

And, remarkably, what this allows is for us to get that shock of recognition, of real personal recognition, when Jesus finally comes walking through the opaque glass doors that shut us off from his home in Heaven.

The problem is complicated because we are centuries beyond what these forms originally meant. We have layers and layers of accreted meaning on simple acts (like the use of incense for odour control!). What should we do? Should we throw them all out? No, I say. Let's give our fathers and mothers in faith the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that they had something important to do or say with these forms, and let's open our liturgical and theological imaginations to explore the meaning that might be found there.

Take two quintessentially 'catholic' forms: ritual hand washing and kissing the altar. Priests often have their fingers washed before the beginning of the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. It seems to represent a washing away of sin and lines up with the Old Testament images of the priests washing themselves in preparation for their priestly service. But, if you haven't seen it before, it can strike you as a little odd. Why is it there?

Also, in some higher church parishes, it is customary to lean down and kiss the altar during the service. This has been seen as a kiss of homage and obedience, as Michael Hunt puts it. It may also be a kiss reverencing the place where the Holy Spirit changes the earthly elements into spiritual food and drink. Either way, it can make many of us uncomfortable.

One of the amazing things about the Eucharistic liturgy is that it retells the story of the Passion. It starts with the "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" as Jesus enters Jerusalem. It continues through recounting the events of the Last Supper. It culminates in the breaking of the bread that both represents and re-presents the broken body of Christ. The offer then of the bread and wine is a hopeful sign of Christ's resurrected and living presence among us.

If the 'narrative' of the Eucharist puts us in the story of the Passion, where might hand-washing and a kiss fit in?

It fits with the prototypical rejecters of Christ. Pilate washes his hands. Judas betrays with a kiss.

What would it mean to see these symbols as re-presenting not only the sanctity of the Passion but also the priest's (and our own) complicity in Christ's death? What if we saw every kiss as the kiss of the betrayer as well as the kiss of homage and obedience? What if we saw the hand washing as simultaneously a sign of handing Christ over to the crowd and being made clean by his sacrifice? Might that draw us into the Eucharist differently? Perhaps more faithfully? Would that be enough to salvage these catholic practices for the evangelical proclamation of the Gospel?

Your priest is Pilate and Judas. And so are you.

Photo by [Rick Jernberg]

In the 16 September update from the Episcopal News Service, a curious sentence crept in:

All three speakers spoke of how the principles of liberation theology, which is God’s good news for the poor, can speak to our various church contexts.

Granted, this is part of a press release, prepared by members of the HoB likely at the end of a long day of work. In that context, I would be surprised if I could string together a coherent set of sentences, much less something polished enough to publish with ENS.

However, given that caveat, this still strikes me as a rather odd way to put it. The sentence seems to be saying that liberation theology itself, which only began in any formal way in the 1950's, is itself God's good news for the poor! Can that be right?

Alternatively, we could read it to say that the "principles of liberation theology" are God's good news for the poor. I imagine this is a little better, because the principles of liberation theology, as the next sentence put it, are involved with "authentic biblical witness today." However, even this sounds strange, since even though liberation theology's principal theologian Gustavo Gutierrez articulated God's "preferential option for the poor," he still emphasized praxis over doctrine, which sounds rather like emphasizing practice over principles or at least raising practice to the level of principles.

Liberation theology by itself cannot be God's good news for the poor. If that were true, then the poor received no good news from God before the 1950's. The principles of liberation theology aren't either. At its best, those principles are generalities taken from Scripture. They can be great, but they cannot be God's good news for the poor because the Bible by itself is not that either.

But by grace the Bible does show us the way. It points to God's good news for the poor and that good news is not a set of principles, no matter how faithful, but a Person who lived, died, and was raised again, stripping the authorities and rulers of their oppressive power and calling a people to witness to this reign in the here and now in part by taking the side of the weak against the strong. We do ourselves a disservice when we equate this or that theological movement with God's good news for the poor, whether we do it intentionally or not. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and he is the one who fights for us, who pours himself out on the cross for all of us, especially the weak, marginal, and oppressed, and raises us up with him into newness of life.

I suspect, if asked, those three speakers on the 16th would agree substantially with these thoughts. I think we would agree that it would have been better had all three spoken of how the Person of liberation theology, who is God's good news for the poor, could speak to our various church contexts today. He can, and is, we pray, through the speakers' ministry to our bishops in Quito. May the Lord bless them all richly.

Photo by [Dimitri Castrique]

There the author quotes a woman overheard on the BBC saying this about the mandatory acts of public worship at her school:

"We are a very multi-cultural school and were we to mention Jesus it would exclude some of our students."

The Curate promises a cool appraisal and then promptly, and very un-coolly, calls the woman a "high priestess of political correctness."

While it is plain that the UK is a post-Christian nation and that it would take a radical shift in culture for it to be at ease again with its Christian orientation, I don't think the best route is fulmination. Perhaps the answer is to let Christianity become, as its Lord did, a word among the words. For too long, Christianity was THE word among words, and it alliance with political power in the UK only problematized the faith's relationship to the Commonwealth.

Perhaps it is time for the church to enter graciously into its own kenosis, not counting equality with God as something to be grasped, but taking upon itself the form of a servant in order to proclaim the true Lordship of Christ in our secular age.

The Book of Common Prayer talks about Covenant as well. The story of Abram and the firepot puts our biblical understanding of covenant in the realm of God's unilateral grace. What understanding does the Prayer Book have?

The BCP makes a distinction between the Covenant God has made and the covenant we make with God and with one another

In response to the question, "What is meant by a covenant with God?" the Catechism responds, "A covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which a body of people responds in faith" (BCP, 846).

There are two movements in this answer. The first is the relationship initiated by God. This aspect of covenant we have already seen in the story of Abram and the firepot. The second is our response in faith. The first is God's movement towards us. The second is our movement towards God. But, the Catechism does not say that the Covenant is both of these movements. No, "a covenant is a relationship initiated by God." We respond to the gracious, unilateral covenant in faith.

The Catechism distinguishes between the Old and New Covenants, but it maintains God's gracious, unilateral movement in each. Any talk of a Baptismal Covenant falls squarely under the rubric of the New Covenant, however.

Q. What is the New Covenant?

A. The New Covenant is the new relationship with God given by Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to the apostles; and through them, to all who believe in him (BCP, 850).

This gracious, unilateral movement of God towards us in Christ demands a response. The response that Christ requires is summarized in the Catechism by the Summary of the Law (You shall love the Lord your God… and You shall love your neighbor as yourself) and the New Commandment (Love one another as Christ loved us) (BCP, 851).

The New Covenant is God's gracious movement towards us (and our human response towards God) in Christ. Our response in faith is lived out in the Summary of the Law and the New Commandment. The Baptismal Covenant found in the Book of Common Prayer is nothing more than an exegesis of these two responses to the New Covenant of grace. In other words, the Baptismal Covenant gives us nothing more than can be 'proved' from Holy Scripture. Even if the Episcopal Church did not express the Baptismal Covenant in the way they do, the same ordinances are incumbent upon all Christians. Formalizing a minimum standard of discipleship in this way adds nothing to what Christ our Lord himself demanded of his followers. If anything, it helps us along the way.

The Baptismal Covenant consists of eight questions and answers. The first three comprise the Apostles' Creed. They are "Do you believe?" questions. The remaining five are about the Christian life. They are "Will you do?" questions.

Questions 1-2 outline Christianity's 'portable narrative.' This is the story that Christ followers believe about the past so that they can follow Christ in the present. Following Christ in the present is the theme of the remaining questions, each of which characterizes the baptized life by a different but interrelated aspect. The baptized life is the life of the Spirit (q. 3-4), the life of Proclamation (q. 5-6), and the life of Service (q. 7-8). In abstraction, we might say that the baptized life is the life of Spirit-empowered Witness.

In the next installment, we will discuss articles 1-2.

(image from John Goodwin, et. al.)

Abram and the Firepot

Genesis 15 contains a curious story. In Genesis 12, God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Genesis 13 sees Abram parting ways with Lot. In Genesis 14, Abram goes to war to rescue Lot and afterwards is blessed by the enigmatic prophet-king Melchizedek. Genesis 15 sees Abram receiving a vision from the Lord.

God promises Abram many things, including descendants as numerous as the stars. When Abram asks how he will know that he will possess it, the really strange stuff begins.

God asks Abram to bring a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abram cuts them in two and places them across from one another; a bloody path lies between. This was a customary way to seal a covenant between two parties. They would walk among the pieces as they made the deal, essentially saying "If I don't hold up my end, let it be to me as it is to these animals."

But God does not let Abram walk through the pieces. Abram falls into a deep sleep, and a firepot and a torch passed between the pieces. "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, 'To your descendants, I give this land …' (Gen 15:18)." It is as if God says, "You and I are in this covenant, but I take full responsibility for it, both for you and for all generations."

I've heard this called God's 'unconditional' covenant. I don't think this is quite fair. God's expectation is "Walk before me and be perfect," and the OT is full of God threatening through the prophets to remove the covenant from Israel. The covenant carries blessings and curses. It is a dreadful thing to be in covenant with God, as the name "Israel," "the one who struggles with God," attests. But, even if the covenant is not unconditional, it is at least unilateral. It is God's desire to establish covenant with humanity. There is a willing human partner, but God does not meet Abram halfway. God comes all the way to Abram and pitches his tent with the children of Israel. God graciously moves toward humanity, and this movement is unilateral, full of promise and life. It makes a people where there was no people.

If the Baptismal Covenant is meaningful in the broad sweep of the biblical narrative, then it must be meaningful in relationship to this, the establishment of the Old Covenant, as well as the living out of the New Covenant inaugurated in Jesus Christ. Next post, we will explore the way the Book of Common Prayer talks about Covenant, and the relationship of the Baptismal Covenant to the Old and New Covenants attested in Scripture.

"What do you do?"

"Uhhh…."

Notice that when people ask you what you do, they are asking about an action, not an identity statement.

We all know this awkward conversation:

"So, what do you do?"

"I'm an accountant."

"Oh, ummmm. What do accountants do?"

Claiming an identity in response to a question about activity can shut down a conversation. Conversations are like a friendly match of volleyball. Both sides take turns hitting the ball back and forth over the net. They're not trying to score points, just spending time together. In the situation above, responding with "I'm an accountant" interrupts this friendly game with a surprise spike. It leaves your conversation partner diving and scrambling to return the ball.

In the book, How to Talk to Anyone

, the author Leil Lowndes suggests a course of action for this dinner party stock question. She calls it the "Nutshell résumé."

A nutshell résumé is designed to answer the "What do you do?" question straight-on while giving your conversation partner something to latch onto. It deposits information into the conversation and gives the other person a lot of time, space, and options in returning the ball.

"I’m an accountant" could become "I help individuals survive tax day," or "I keep my company financially honest," or even, "I help people hide their money." Any of these are better for small talk than "I'm an accountant."

Turning now to the priesthood. If "I'm an accountant" can maim a conversation, then "I'm a priest" shoves it out an airlock into the cold heart of space. What are some options for nutshell résumés for priests?

Here's a list of possibilities:

• I help people find God
• I introduce people to God
• I help people thrive
• I help people find who they really are
• I help people live in tune with the earth
• I help people live in tune with the world
• I help people live in tune with God
• I introduce people to Jesus Christ
• I'm a spiritual midwife
• I lead people to the throne of God
• I help people discover the secret of the world

Each of these has its own resonances. All of them are true in their own way, and they each provide different options for expanding the conversation.

But, I finally alighted upon something else entirely: "I help people talk to God."

Priests help people talk to God. We do. It's wrongheaded to think that people have to come to us to talk to God. We're coaches. We come alongside our parishioners to equip them to be the royal priests that God has called them to be in their secular vocations.

And think of the ways that a stranger might take that answer. "Oh, how do you do that?" "Which God is that?" "What kind of people can talk to God?" "What set you on that course?" "Can you help me talk to God?" Any direction the conversation goes from there is evangelism of one sort or another. Any conversation that follows is an opportunity to invite a new acquaintance further into your life, which is hidden with Christ in God.

I can hardly wait until my next cocktail party so that I can try it out.

Are you a minister? How do you introduce yourself at parties?

Text: Acts 2:1-21

Note: This was the last sermon I preached at St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Riverdale. St. Matthew's was full of wonderful people to serve, and they taught me to love the Church in all of its shapes and sizes. Thanks be to God for them.

I have already admitted to you how big a fan I am of Star Wars. One or two Christmases ago, one of my family members bought me a giant book called, *Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy

. That’s right, a pop-up book. There is a different paper sculpture that springs into being as I turn each page. One page displays the Mos Eisley cantina, complete with an assortment of aliens, droids, and the famous cantina band; the next brings to life the Millenium Falcon*, with a look inside its famous hull. Each page brings to life a new world of hidden panels and light-up lightsabers to explore. And if you turn the page slowly, you can see the slow folding of one world and the slow unfolding of the next. If you stop, with the page straight up in the air, the two worlds hang there, one almost gone, the other almost here. And this tension, this excruciating exhilaration of being-in-between, happens each time you turn the page.

[1]

There is something of that in-between-ness in the air as the gathered crowds fill the Temple in Jerusalem that Pentecost after Jesus was crucified. Jesus’ death and the rumours of his resurrection had been the buzz of the town, but the buzz has dulled over these last 50 days. Many of the city’s visitors, having saved for years to make the long Passover trip to Jerusalem, choose to stay for the Pentecostal feast before they make their way home to the far corners of the Empire. Adding to the number of stayers, many other pilgrims stream into the city for Pentecost, the annual celebration of covenant renewal.

The Temple courts are full. There are people and priests praying, animals lowing and yelling. The commotion is constant, never ceasing. Everyone is there together worshipping God.

It’s easy to overhear what people are saying. One group is animatedly discussing those 50 day old crucifixions. Another cluster claims to have seen Jesus’ followers in these very courts, the Temple courts, blessing God. They’re here so often that it’s a little strange that they are nowhere to be found today.

The crowd continues walking, worshipping, praying.

Then they hear it. It’s loud. It sounds like a tornado has hit Jerusalem, or a giant dust storm, or a violent wind. It is so loud that the Temple courts go quiet. People strain to see where the sound might be coming from; some duck behind friends or run towards the Temple’s inner courts. When the loud rushing sound suddenly ceases, those left standing lean forward to listen.

A smaller sound meets their ears from outside the Temple courts. It sounds like a group of people crying for help! The words are all mixed up together; the crowd is still too far away to hear what’s really going on. The people closest to the Temple gates start to exit first to see what the commotion is about. The rest begin to follow. As they get closer, they hear the voices growing more distinct. They round the corner and see a group of people through the large open window of an upper room. They are standing as though praying, and as people get closer some of the crowd begin to smile and nod in understanding. One particularly vocal member of the group exclaims loudly, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? […] In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:7-11)! All were amazed and perplexed. The whole crowd begins to turn in on itself. The genuinely curious ask, “What does it mean?” The openly skeptical respond, sneering, “They are filled with new wine.”

[2]

The sneering, skeptical response is a temptation that we all face when something radically new enters our lives. This cynicism is a type of self-armouring. We use it to put distance between ourselves and the fantastic opportunity or the call to service. It’s a crossing of the arms, a shaking of the head, a turning down of the mouth. When something dramatically new enters our world, we get cynical just like the Pentecostal sneerers, and we cast about for an easy explanation (“They are filled with new wine”).

A couple of good friends of ours took Monique and me to visit the Black Creek Pioneer Village. It was winter, and a fresh snow blanketed the ground. We visited period homes and shops, each one decorated for Christmas in a different way. The doctor’s home was striking, decorated in a Scottish style. We learned about Christmas traditions and the practice of medicine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The doctor’s office was a room in the house, and our guide showed us the instruments for tooth extractions, amputations, and blood-letting.

We got into a discussion about germs. Our guide told us the story of the first man who proposed that student doctors should wash their hands after they dealt with cadavers and before they delivered babies. He was laughed out, released, and eventually locked away in a mental hospital. It took a long time before the medical profession finally woke up. In fact, the younger physicians first picked up the idea. The older generation refused to adapt. They crossed their arms, shook their heads, and sneered at the young people who thought they needed to wash up before doing surgery. With the benefit of hindsight we wonder why they would resist the growing body of evidence that germs really do have an impact on the success of surgeries. Our guide put it this way: to admit the germ theory was for this older generation of doctors to admit to their communities, to their profession, and (hardest of all) to themselves that they for their entire careers had been killing patients. Their cynicism about the new science was a shield protecting them from the horrible, horrible truth.

And so it continues with us. Often when we find ourselves being cynical and sneering, especially about the things of God, it is because we are trying to protect ourselves. As the page turns and the old world folds up and the new one is revealed, cynicism and sneering cling to the old. It refuses to repent. It refuses to do what is necessary to live in the new day.

[3]

The 12 disciples, Jesus’ mother Mary, and the other women who traveled with them are gathered in the upper room. They can walk into a new day; they can move from one page to the next, because Jesus keeps his promise.

Just a few short days before Pentecost, they had been with Jesus on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem. He made them a promise, “You are witnesses of these things,” he said. “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:48-49). Jesus put it another way, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). These were the last things Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended into heaven. The disciples followed Jesus’ instructions and went back to Jerusalem. There they were always in the Temple courts praising God. They devoted themselves to constant prayer together. They waited and watched, not with cynicism or fear, but with real hope.

Did they feel the page turning? Could they see the world they knew collapsing and a new one taking its place?

When the day of Pentecost comes, they are all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there comes a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it fills the entire house where they are sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appear among them, and a tongue rests on each of them. All of them are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gives them ability (par. from Acts 2:1-4).

When the gathered crowd streams from the Temple courts to see what is the matter, some sneer, thinking the disciples are drunk. Peter stands up among the disciples, raises his voice, and speaks. And from his place at the Father’s right hand, Jesus gives the Spirit which turns Peter from a fisherman into a witness. The witness begins here in Jerusalem, but soon it will spread to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Jesus keeps his promise.

[4]

We set aside this day each year to remember that Jesus, all those years ago, kept his promise to his disciples. And we affirm, with our fathers and mothers in faith, stretching all the way back to the apostles, that Jesus keeps his promises still. That first Pentecost is over, but the Spirit of God that proceeds from the Father and the Son is still at loose in the world. The first Pentecost is over, but each year we remember that the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost still means something to us today.

First, Pentecost means that we are caught up in the same story as the disciples were all those years ago. Just as the apostles’ found themselves at that turning of the page between the old world and the new, so do we find ourselves riding the transition between the present and the end of time. At any moment, we expect that Jesus himself might appear, riding in the clouds, to reclaim the world for himself. We can wait for that time with patience and with hope because of the Holy Spirit’s life among us, shaping us into Christ’s image, feeding us with spiritual food, reminding us not to worry because Jesus keeps his promise.

Second, Pentecost means that we can’t control God. Jesus didn’t give his disciples magic words to summon the presence of God. Yes, we invoke God’s presence in prayer, but our invocation is no guarantee of it. God is not a pet to be trained or an object to be owned. God is the free God. God is the one who loves us precisely in that freedom, which means that we cannot move or force him, but we can know, because of Jesus’ promises, that he is always on the move towards us, and that movement towards us is the Holy Spirit. While we can’t control God, we can put ourselves in God’s way. After the Ascension, the apostles prayed constantly, praising God in the upper room and in the Temple courts. We, too, are called to the life of prayer, both as individuals and as a body of believers. In living the prayerful life, we will put ourselves in the way of the God who in and as the Holy Spirit is on his way towards us even now.

Finally, Pentecost means that we are called to be witnesses. The apostles are given miraculous powers when the Spirit comes, but these powers are not for themselves to have and hold. The power is for witness. The Spirit empowers the apostles to be his witnesses, first in Jerusalem where they were, then in Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So too, this Pentecost, does the Spirit empower us to be his witnesses here on First Avenue. It is our Jerusalem, our starting point. It is here that we will learn to be a church that is alive both in and for our neighborhood. It is here that we will stand up and find ourselves speaking into people’s lives, even to people with lives much different than our own, because the Spirit is there as our translator, making sense of the Gospel even for them. It is here that we will find brothers and sisters with whom we can share our lives, committed together to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers. For in so doing, we will find ourselves solidly in the way of the God who loves us in Jesus Christ. We will find ourselves empowered by his Spirit to bear witness to God’s love even here. May it be true of us, by God’s grace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My wife Dr. Monique and I are in the midst of a two-stage international move. The first took place this week, when she and I (with the help of the great folk at Wycliffe College) moved our belongings from Toronto to Arkansas. Vilonia, AR is homebase for our summer of visiting friends and relatives before moving to Cambridge (hopefully) in late August. Monique has been awarded the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Popular Music and Culture there. She will teach courses and pursue her own research as a member of the Faculty of Music and as a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College.

It's my hope that Contra Factum will come back to life in the next couple of weeks. I want to continue posting on The Episcopal Church's Baptismal Covenant, and there are other avenues I would like to explore, like mining biblical resources for a 'theology of freedom.'

Welcome, and enjoy!

If you've seen the comments sections on Anglican blogs, you'll likely have noticed a basic trend when people talk about the Baptismal Covenant. "Liberals" think the BC is a great thing, something to be celebrated. "Conservatives" think the BC is just one more mistake made by the 1979 Prayer Book committee.

Politically, this divide makes sense. Liberals (henceforth, please imagine the scare quotes) use the BC as a way to justify their liberalizing agenda. The last line of the Covenant contains the promise to "strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being." Liberals tend to summarize the whole BC with this promise, a move used to great effect in their ethical arguments.

It's understandable why Conservatives (remember: scare quotes) then want nothing to do with it. In the North American Anglican political and polemical discourse, the BC is the wholly owned subsidiary of the Liberal cause.

In other words, the Baptismal Covenant has become, like so many other shared texts, a source of contention instead of a source of unity.

This is a problem for North American Anglicans (Canadians included) because the BC is part of each and every Baptism we perform. Because of its polemical place in our political struggles, the Covenant has lost its ability to be a shaping influence in our baptizands' lives.

But, what if we tried for a moment to remove the Baptismal Covenant from its polemical setting and let it interpret itself? What if we stood back and in an attitude of prayer performed a spiritual exegesis of that text?

I think we would find something that is not only deeply Anglican but also deeply Christian, biblical, sanctifying, and helpful. I would like to see the BC removed from our political debates and ensconced in the context of the Christian life, in the life of Christians being shaped into the image and likeness of Christ.

We could, as many do, point to the authors (they are still alive) and say we can know the BC's meaning by looking to their intentions in shaping it. But, here's the thing. The BC is part of a conciliar, liturgical document, hallowed now by decades of use. Whatever the authors' original intentions, the BC has a history now, a spiritual effect in people's lives. That effect is informed more by the spiritual world it creates for us than by the BC's polemical context. Its spiritual world is created and nurtured by the deep interconnections of language and practice that hold the Book of Common Prayer together and hold the Prayer Book together with the Bible.

Over the course of the next several weeks, I intend to undertake a spiritual exegesis of the Baptismal Covenant. I will treat the Prayer Book as 'text,' allowing its internal connections to tease out its meaning, in some ways attempting to allow 'it' to explain 'itself' insofar as that is possible. To this layer of meaning we will add the Bible's language, from which the language of much of the Prayer Book (and much of the Baptismal Covenant) is drawn. To use a post-liberal term, this spiritual exegesis is an exercise in first-order language.

I will begin next time with a brief look at the initiation of God's covenant with Abraham and end with an overview of the 'parts' of the Baptismal Covenant and the order in which I will take this spiritual exegesis.

Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10

When I was young, my uncle introduced me to quartz crystal. In our backyard, he pointed out some rocks, took us over to them, and showed us the smoky translucent crystals hidden within. He said that they had probably been spit out of a volcano some million or two years ago, something quite unbelievable in flat Houston, TX. It opened a whole new world to me, and soon I was taking my dad’s sledgehammer and breaking rocks all over our yard. Some were small; others were quite large. Of the crystals discovered, I kept a collection. Over the course of a summer, what once were just rocks suddenly became things of beauty and discovery.

[1]

Our second lesson is taken from St. Peter’s first letter. He writes to a group of people who made that same type of discovery. Peter says that their life before was one of darkness, aloneness, and the absence of God’s mercy. But now, because of their discovery, something has changed. Though they were once dwelling in darkness, they have come into God’s marvelous light. Though they were once alone, they now have a people they can call their own. Though they were once outside of God’s mercy, they now have experienced it firsthand.

And here’s where rocks enter the picture: Peter admonishes his hearers to draw near to what he calls the ‘living stone,’ a stone that was chosen by God and precious, intended to be used as the cornerstone of God’s new Temple on earth. The believers themselves will become stones in this building. But first Peter tells them a story, a story about this chosen and precious living stone.

When God put the cornerstone down, there were builders in Zion, hired by God to build his Temple. They were intimately familiar with all of God’s ways and works; God had been working with them for a long time. They knew his designs. When God found the cornerstone to start his new building, he gave it to the builders he trusted.

But instead of proving trustworthy, they did the unthinkable. They rejected this living stone, the cornerstone. It was as if they had said, “We know what the building is supposed to look like, and this doesn’t fit in with how we see it.” They set it aside and began to build on their own.

But that cornerstone, chosen and precious of God, could not be used for anything other than its purpose. They thought it would work better as part of the wall, but they couldn’t budge it, couldn’t make it fit into place. They thought they might break it and divide its pieces among them for various projects, but the stone just rang as their chisels broke against it. And when they tried to ignore the stone, they found it always in their way. They stumbled over it. They fell. They could not finish their work because the cornerstone had become a rock of stumbling. In other words, they could not finish because they would not start where God wanted them to start. The builders had rejected the cornerstone.

[2]

Tobias Fünke

It would be hard for us to blame them. We live in a society here in North America where we are constantly advised to build our lives on nothing save our desires, our passions, and our dreams. We, the builders of our lives, are told that we need no touchstones, no cornerstones. All we need is to be true to who we really are. We don’t want to build our lives on anything but ourselves.

A good example of this comes from the odd and off-color TV comedy Arrested Development. All of the characters in the show are baseless. They are wealthy and so are not constrained by anything. They can do whatever they want; they can follow any dream. One of the characters is named Tobias Fünke.

Tobias is tall and mostly bald. Gangly. Strange and a little ugly. He is a difficult character to watch because he has, well, no life. He began his professional career as a successful psychological analyst and therapist, helping people to look deep inside themselves to discover the root of their problems. But then, he looked deep inside himself. There he discovered that he was an Actor, with a capital “A.” This revelation turned his world upside down. He quit his job and started pursuing roles anywhere that he could, living off his wife’s family’s wealth as he pursued his dream. The problem? Arrested Development takes delight in showing its audience, again and again, how irredeemably bad an actor Tobias actually is. The darkly funny part of the whole thing is Tobias’ obliviousness. He thinks he has talent, and whenever he comes face-to-face with his weakness, he refuses to see it. He shuts it out. He tries to build his house around a dream instead of the solid rock of his professional training or his family or the reality of his own strengths and weaknesses.

Am I right to think that you and I are often tempted to live this way? I think so. We find ourselves refusing to build our houses around the solid things of our lives. Instead, we build them around our egos, our dreams, our passions. We learn to shield ourselves from criticism. We learn to pretend that the world is like we want it to be instead of the way it really is. Now, we might try to take reality and fit it into a wall we’re building or to break it up for other parts of our house, but we can’t. Reality sits there ready to be built upon. But as we ignore it, we find ourselves tripping over it, falling, breaking. We find ourselves building on the sand until one day everything we build comes tumbling down.

[3]

But the good news that Peter proclaims to his hearers is this: in the midst of a world in which God’s builders had started building their houses on sand, God set a stone in Zion, and this stone was Jesus Christ.

Jesus, God’s own Son, was chosen and precious in God’s sight. God set Jesus in Zion as a cornerstone. He was the one upon which God’s Kingdom would be built. He was the one that if people would only believe in him, they would never be put to shame. But, as we know, the builders rejected the cornerstone and tried to build on their own. To them, Jesus became a ‘stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’ Their rejection saw Jesus hung upon a cross.

But, God’s love for Jesus, his precious cornerstone, meant that God would not let his chosen one see decay; the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ raised him from the dead. The Living Stone still stands, and it is upon this stone that Peter calls his hearers to be built. “Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house,” he instructs, “to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Later, he adds, “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

For the people who first heard this letter read in their churches, they received a great gift. Even though they were not Jewish, even though they did not inherit the promises of God by virtue of their birth, they have received the promises through Jesus Christ. While they once dwelt in darkness, they have come into the marvelous light of God’s love. Though they were once not a people, now they are God’s people. Though they had once not received God’s mercy, now they have. They have a new start, a new beginning. They have the opportunity to let themselves be built up into God’s new Temple on earth, the Church. [They can build their lives on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, God’s chosen and precious cornerstone.]

[4]

Every week, close to the end of our service, immediately after the post-Communion prayer and before the Blessing, we say in unison a small passage from Scripture: “Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen” (BAS, 214).

“Infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” We were meant to live for so much more than what our passions or our dreams or our desires can give us. We can live our lives like Tobias Fünke, constantly grasping after a baseless dream, or we can let ourselves be built on the rock of reality, a rock that St. Peter says is no one other than Jesus Christ himself. Now this treads very close to a central mystery of our faith that is expressed beautifully in the collects for Morning Prayer: “O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standing our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom…” (BCP, 11). For Christians, the limitation of obedience (and obedience is nothing more than being conformed to the reality of Jesus Christ) is not ultimately a restriction but a freedom. Disobedience, or building on the shifting sand of our own desires or passions, is slavery. It is slavery to a limited humanity. Obedience, on the other hand, is openness to God’s “infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”

What is this infinitely more that human beings are called to? Human beings are called to stand at the boundary-line of heaven and earth, to be, as St. Peter calls us, God’s holy and royal priests, priests that offer spiritual sacrifices that God is delighted to accept. As Christ’s royal priests, we represent the world to God, offering God the things of the earth in our prayers. As Christ’s royal priests, we represent God to the world, as we read the Scripture, listen to the Word preached, and share our faith with others. In all cases, in our lives we offer spiritual sacrifices to God, sacrifices of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control.

And all of this happens right here at St. Matthew’s. Being built up into God’s spiritual house, learning to be royal priests, this is the work of the Christian life. It is the reason we gather for worship. It is the reason we join together to serve our community. It is the reason we gather in small groups to learn how to offer the world to God in prayer and offer God to the world in witness. And so I commend our small groups to you again (there’s an announcement in the back of your bulletin). These are lively training grounds for the royal priesthood, where we learn to live our lives together, being built on the cornerstone that is Jesus Christ himself.

As we live quiet and peaceable lives together, praying for all and bearing witness to Christ’s love, we are built up together into God’s new Temple on earth. In the quiet, in the peaceable, in our faithful prayer and witness, built upon the solid cornerstone of Jesus Christ, God’s power, working in us, will do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Through us, our worship, and our service, God will be glorified from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, the chosen, precious, and everliving cornerstone, for ever and ever. Amen.

Reserving the Sacrament is tricky for Anglicans because (to my knowledge) it is a Catholic practice tied to the doctrine of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation, put simply, means that in the Eucharistic prayers, God replaces the substance (the 'is-ness') of the bread and wine with the substance of Christ's Body and Blood. While the elements still look, feel, and taste exactly like bread and wine, their reality is Jesus himself: body, blood, soul, and divinity.

The Anglican Church in its historic formularies repudiated the doctrine of transubstantiation as "repugnant to the plain words of Scripture," (Article XXVIII) but it is important to note that the difference with Rome on this matter was a dispute over the means of Christ's presence, not the fact of Christ's presence. Article XXVIII goes on to say that the Body of Christ "is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper , is Faith."

Embarrassingly for contemporary Anglican practice, the Article continues, "The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped."

So, we have the catholic practice of reserving the Sacrament. An early Anglican formulary denies that this practice is part of Christ's ordinance. This is, strictly speaking, true. Christ's ordinance includes the Words of Institution and the elements of bread and wine. But, as Anglicans since at least Hooker have maintained, just because something is not explicitly ordained by Christ does not mean it is disallowed. We have to ask whether the practice is repugnant to Scripture, that is, whether it in some way denies or goes against the grain of the story of Christ as told by the Bible.

In other words, we have to ask, as George Sumner

did with the indelibility of Holy Orders, whether or not we can find an evangelical argument for this catholic practice. Is there something to which reserving the Sacrament bears witness that we find essential, good, and in accordance with the Scriptures? I think there is.

In brief, reserving the Sacrament means that what happens in space and time matters and continues to matter for our spiritual lives.

Ultimately, there is but one death in space and time that gives meaning to, shapes, illumines, and redeems space and time: the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. As bearers of a Protestant tradition, most Anglicans would say that Christ's death is once-for-all. It does not need repeating. What happened in that specific space (on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem) in that specific time (somewhere around AD 30) matters for all space and time, and it matters not merely as a spiritual event but as a spatio-temporal-spiritual event. What happened in space and time mattered and matters.

In an analagous way we can move to the consecration of the elements in the Eucharist. Some say that the Bread and Wine are just signs. They carry meaning only insofar as they are part of the worship service. Afterwards, the elements could be fed to the dogs because there is nothing special about them at all. In other words, what was once special and important in space and time falls away from that use once the context has passed. Should the materials be saved for the next celebration of the Lord's Supper, they would be prayed over again, just like the previous service had never happened.

But, those of us who reserve the Sacrament maintain by the practice that what happened in a specific place (at the altar at my church in Toronto, for instance) at a specific time (somewhere around 11:45 am on Sunday) continues to matter, even after the worship service ends. The elements, though not changed substantially, still bear the significance of consecration. That past event continues to have significance - once-for-all significance, even - in the case of these specific elements.

Whatever we think about the means by which the Sacrament is Sacrament, reserving it bears witness to an understanding that what happens in the past matters, that bread and wine once set aside are not automatically returned to secular use as soon as the service is over. Reserving the sacrament claims a historical connection with the bread and wine's consecration in space and time, which in turn claims a connection with the once for all consecration of Jesus Christ upon the cross. As St. Paul says, "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16, NRSV).

Reserving the Sacrament means that we believe that things of supra-historical (spiritual) significance can happen in and as space-and-time realities. Reserving the living signs and symbols of Body and Blood claims something about the reality, tangibility, materiality, personality, and individuality of the Cross. Because Christ's consecration on the Cross was once-for-all, we practice a once-for-all consecration of the elements that enable our sharing in Christ's consecration by the power of the Spirit in faith.

What do you think about reserving the elements of the Lord's Supper for future use? How does your church practice?

. The technical title is "Gamemaster" or "GM." The GM pulls together the story and set objectives for the players, who each play different characters. The players are free to do whatever they wish with their characters, and it's the GM's job to make sure that the story gets told and told well. An RPG ends up being an exercise in group story-telling, and, I have to say, is one of the best preparations for leading small group discussions I've ever had.

RPGs have rules that govern the physics of the imaginative world that the GM and the players create together. Dice are used to account for the randomness of the player's actions. Just because a player's character is a really good medic doesn't mean that they will always save a person's life. There are innumerable small things in life that effect the results of our actions. The dice simulate that.

Because there are so many rules, it's tempting for players to start metagaming, or playing their characters like the characters have all the knowledge that the player does. A player could, for instance, keep their character from visiting a planet the player knows from the movies is doomed to destruction. Or a player who knows the rules well could make the entire gaming session about disputing the finer points to their maximum advantage.

The common sin? They use knowledge they have of the movies or the rules to distance themselves from the story that the group is telling together.

Sermonic metagaming, a similar phenomenon, happens when preachers use specialized knowledge to distance themselves and the congregation from the story they had to that point been telling together in the liturgy.

When I was first falling in love with the Anglican tradition, I used to joke that the great thing about worship in the Episcopal Church was the most you could mess up was the sermon, and that was only 10 minutes anyway. Having been an Episcopalian now for several years, I can say from experience that sometimes those 10 minutes (or 20 or 30) can be so thoroughly metagamed so as to wreck the whole rest of the service.

I once met a bishop (in another denomination) who boasted to me about a sermon he had recently preached. He proudly told me of stripping the passage from the Pentateuch down to its JEPD sources, showing how the earliest source said something quite different than the redacted whole that his congregants had in their Bibles, and lifting up this reading as the authoritative one. This was the truth that they were to live, he told them, because this is the earliest part of the biblical revelation. He used his specialized knowledge of historical criticism to distance himself and his congregation from the liturgical story they had been telling together, a story predicated upon the biblical witness' canonical wholeness.

Pastors also metagame in their sermons when they talk every week about something they are trying to build in their congregations. "Community" and "authenticity" are popular tropes. The problem is not that these are bad things in themselves. The problem is that ministers often run roughshod over their sermon texts in order to get to them. And, ironically, I don't think we build community or authenticity very well by talking about them. Analysis paralysis seems to set in too quickly. Instead we build them by getting together and telling and living the story week-to-week. A metagamed sermon distracts from the desired goal; it doesn't seem to further it.

Now, I have to say that there are certain places in the church's life where metagaming is important and necessary. The announcements are a time set aside for just that. Adult education is another one of those places, and I would worry if a minister didn't have classes from time to time on historical criticism or the benefits of building a community of authentic believers. But, please consider keeping those things out of the pulpit. They distract and disrupt. They disable the community's participation in the weekly liturgical story. In other words, they draw attention to the preacher or to the congregation when the sermon should be drawing attention to the story of God's gracious and merciful self-giving in Jesus Christ.

Let's stop the sermonic metagaming and get into the story. It's an adventure we shouldn't want to miss.

Do you have any stories of sermonic metagaming? Please share below!

So, yes, welcome to the adventure.

The evangelicalism that I grew up in was concerned with 'relevance.' We had to make the Gospel relevant to our culture in order to fulfill the great commission. In college, this concern metamorphosed into a preoccupation with 'context.' The context determines everything, we thought, and it even gives us the incentive to frame the Gospel story in completely different ways, even in ways that our fathers and mothers in faith might be unable to recognize. See, for example, the growth of the megachurch movement, or the absence of the cross from many seeker-sensitive churches, or the equation of worship with emotional experience.

What I realized going to seminary is that evangelicals share the concern with relevance with their sworn enemies: the liberals. They both agree that the Gospel has to be translated into a new key in order to be relevant to the world. They only differ on the amount of 'translation' they are comfortable with.

The problem is that neither camp has done relevance well. When you step back from both the evangelical and liberal attempts to contextualize the Gospel and really look at them, you can see how severely dated they always already are. We in the churches are always find ourselves about 15-30 years behind the curve. That curve is being established in the classrooms of Ivy League universities and the halls of power, not in the Christian popular press.

The crux of the issue is that 'context' and 'culture' are moving targets. By the time that we can publish the book on being relevant to the culture, it has already moved on. As soon as we think we've become relevant, we find ourselves irrelevant again because that to which we calibrated ourselves has already changed.

So what are we left with? An adventure: the adventure of the post-relevant church. We have to stop allowing our churches to act like self-obsessed teenagers; instead, we need to embrace the fact that context just happens. It happens every moment of every day, and it is only in the faithful response to the context in which we actually find ourselves (not in the context imagined for us by the think-tank in Michigan) that the real adventure happens.

We can't catch up with the culture. All we can really do, as Andy Crouch says, is be culture-makers

ourselves. Our work is to create a context, to create a space in which God may be found, and to invite others into it in order that they might become relevant to it and therefore relevant to God. (This is the meaning of Baptism, is it not?) In other words, we can only be relevant by being a little strange, by keeping our own council, and by showing hospitality to people who find that the Gospel we proclaim is the scent of life and not the stench of death.

What does the post-relevant church look like? I don't know yet. I think it will probably look different everywhere that faithful men and woman struggle to fashion themselves in the image and likeness of Christ. For me, I think this will mean wearing a collar, introducing myself to strangers, and inviting our parish's neighbours into the life of Christ's Church through Baptism. It will mean talking about sin and grace and encouraging active participation in the sacramental life. It will mean forgetting about myself for a while and just allowing the church where I find myself to be the church that it is ... and the church that it will become. In other words, this is un-self-conscious Christianity, unconcerned with 'relevance,' just concerned with being alive in Christ wherever he has put us.

In this adventure of the post-relevant church, I think we will find that relevance, like context, just happens.

[Introduction] I have a confession to make: I hate my alarm clock. Now, there are some specific features that I enjoy. With one button, I can change the timezone. With another, I can easily set the alarm. It has both an up and down arrow, so if I want to set my alarm earlier than the previous day, I don’t have to scroll through 23 numbers to get back to the hour before. The best feature of all? It shines the current time on the ceiling. It’s invisible during the day but at night when my wife and I are laying without glasses in the bed, it’s just bright and big enough to be readable. That’s what I love about my alarm clock.

What do I hate about it, then? It wakes me up. I like sleeping. My dreams are sometimes the most peaceful part of the day. My alarm clock very rudely steps into that refreshing and relaxing state and yells at the top of its lungs, “Get up!” as it beep, beep, beep, beeps. That’s what I hate about my alarm clock.

[Page 1] Quite unlike my alarm clock which is always on time, in our Gospel passage today Jesus is late. Early on, he gets the news that his dear friend Lazarus is ill. Lazarus’ two sisters Mary and Martha had sent the word. They wanted him to come. They knew that if Jesus was there, he could make everything better and restore Lazarus to health. Instead, Jesus does one of the most frightening and confusing things in the Bible: he delays. “Accordingly,” we hear in the passage, “though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” Even though Jesus loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, he does not rush to their aid. He delays. Why?

We could hear the passage and think Jesus was weak or afraid. Given the way Jesus breaks down weeping (weeping so hard that the people point at him and gawk) it could be that Jesus is just too weak to face the pain of his dear friend’s sickness. Or, maybe he is afraid. Lazarus’ town Bethany is just a little over three kilometers from Jerusalem, and the disciples object, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Maybe Jesus delays because he needs to build up the courage to face a possible death. He was human after all.

Alternatively, maybe Jesus wasn’t weak and afraid. Maybe he was callous and capricious. Jesus seems to know that something is up here. He says to the disciples, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (v. 4). A little later, we hear in the story, “Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe’” (vv. 14-15). All of a sudden, Lazarus seems like a tool that Jesus uses to glorify himself. This seems to imply that Jesus is glad Lazarus dies because this way the disciples will believe. What does this make Lazarus then, some kind of collateral damage? Is his death nothing more than a means to an end, a necessary evil in the fulfillment of God’s good plan? Jesus is divine after all. He could see the whole picture. Maybe he is callous towards his friend’s pain and death, using it to his own ends.

Whether Jesus is weak and afraid or callous and capricious, either way, he does the most frightening thing imaginable. Even though he has the power to heal in his hands, even the power to heal from a distance (!), he delays. He does not go to Bethany. He lets Lazarus die.

[Page 2] Since early times, Christians in desperation and despair have prayed, “Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus, come.” But all too often in our experience, Jesus does not come. For some reason, he delays. It is a terrifying experience to know that Jesus could step in and fix it (whatever “it” is) but doesn’t. What kind of Lord is it who allows his creation to continue suffering, continue spiraling out of control, continue giving into hate? What kind of Lord is it that stands at a distance while the world he created suffers from its sickness and dies?

We don’t know most days. So in response to Jesus’ delay, we doubt, hurry, and scramble. We doubt the goodness of a Lord who stands at a distance. We scramble to fix the problem ourselves, rushing to resuscitate the world before it passes away. We start to believe that if Jesus really is absent, then maybe we can find some other person to take his place. Maybe we can find another Christ to stand in for Jesus of Nazareth and fix the world.

Throughout human history, we’ve done this over and over again. In the mid-20th Century, in the face of a severe post-war economic depression, the German people rallied around a Christ of their own. They put their hope in him. Jesus was not coming, it seemed, so they thought they could retake their former power by force. The Christian cries of “Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus, come” were twisted into the militaristic cries of the Third Reich. These people trusted other people with complete power in hopes that they could resuscitate the world, but they instead set out on a path that resulted in the slaughter of millions.

Jesus’ delay has effects in the history of nations, but it also has profoundly personal effects. When you and I sit alone in our houses, our cheeks wet from tears caused by Jesus’ seeming abandonment, we know what it must have been like to have been those two sisters who called to Jesus in their distress and were not answered, those sisters who mourned the death of a brother that their Lord could have saved but instead for some reason chose to delay.

[Page 3] What those sisters do not know, as they summon and wait for the Jesus who delays, is that Jesus’ love will raise Lazarus from the dead. They know that Jesus loves Lazarus. When they send word to him, the message reads “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (John 11:3). But they cannot comprehend the height, width, and depth of Jesus’ love. In their minds, love means rushing to aid. In their hearts, they believe that when they cry “Maranatha!” that the Lord Jesus is supposed to come quickly. But Jesus’ love, they will find, is something entirely different.

Jesus’ love is confident. When Jesus hears the news about Lazarus’ illness, he turns immediately to his disciples and tells them that Lazarus’ illness does not lead to death (11:4). Instead, God’s glory will be shown through it. A little later, when Lazarus’ illness has swallowed him up in death, Jesus says to his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him” (11:11). Jesus is confident that his love for Lazarus will win in a fight against that non-love, that anti-love that is death.

But, Jesus’ love is also compassionate. He does not accept Lazarus’ death with the stoic determination of a movie military commander who sacrifices the lives of his unit for the completion of a higher objective. Even though Jesus’ love is confident in how things will turn out; Jesus’ love also breaks his heart. When Jesus comes to Bethany, first Martha approaches him and then Mary. He receives them both and begins to teach them what it is that what he is about to do will mean. But when Mary kneels at Jesus’ feet and through choked tears says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (11:32), Jesus’ heart breaks. His spirit is greatly disturbed. His face contorts with pain. He cries out, “Where have you laid him” (11:34)? When he starts walking towards the tomb of the man he loved, he breaks down and begins to weep (11:35). He arrives at the tomb ‘greatly disturbed’ (11:38).

Confident yet broken-hearted, Jesus chokes through his own tears, saying, “Take away the stone” (11:39). When Martha questions him, he turns his swollen eyes to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God” (11:40)? And Jesus prays to the Father, thanking him, allowing the people around to see that there is a relationship of trust between them, one that will empower him to do what’s next. And Jesus now, with eyes puffy and snot drying in his beard, confidently raises his voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

And that is precisely what Lazarus did.

[Page 4] When my alarm clock goes off precisely on time every morning, my brain starts to work. It tries to incorporate the beep, beep, beep, beeps into the fabric of whatever dream that I am dreaming. My brain tries to tame the alarm into something that is a part of my dream world; it tries to make it something that I can ignore.

But, I can’t. Eventually the sheer otherness of the alarm shatters my dreams and brings me startling awake. It’s 5:00 am. It’s time to go running. I am left with a choice. Do I ignore my alarm and retreat to the safety of my dreams? Or do I embrace the real world and walk into the day?

I don’t know if Lazarus had the choice when he heard Jesus calling from the door of his tomb, but we do. When Jesus calls us (“Christian, come out!”), we can get up and start walking in the light, or we can choose to remain children of the darkness, those people who prefer to believe the world’s destructive illusion instead of its illumined reality.

But, one thing is for sure. The life we are living before we hear Jesus’ voice calling, that life is the entombed life, the life of death, the life of the dream world. Jesus’ voice, when it calls us to new life, is painful. It disrupts our slumbering selves. It for the first time snaps our eyes open in shock, in disorientation, in sheer incomprehension.

But if the voice that calls us is the same voice that called Lazarus from the tomb, then we can know that it is the voice of love. It is not the voice that we expected, because we expected God’s love to be the thing that rushes to fix us, that rushes to heal us, that rushes to meet our needs. But, instead, when we hear the voice, we hear it as a voice that has delayed. It did not come when we expected it, as part of our dreams, but as something that intrudes upon and sometimes shatters them. Even though it seems to us like the voice is delayed, it has come precisely at the right time, precisely when God would have us get up and walk out of our tombs into the light of a brand new day.

Jesus’ love called Lazarus from the dead. Jesus’ love calls us into newness of life. Jesus’ love is the reason we gather here this morning. Jesus’ love is what we will soon receive, memorialized, in our hands and in our mouths. Jesus’ love that led him to a cross, that led him through death to a resurrection, that love is the love that is God Himself, God Almighty, God the one and only. He is the One that we adore, that we worship, that we love. Even when he delays, we cannot put another in His place because He alone is the one who loves us enough to call us by name and rouse us from our sleep. He alone is the one that we worship, here in this place and now and forever, world without end. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Spiritual malpractice.

Doctor's are often accused (and sued) for malpractice. We who acquire the professional degree for ministers, the Masters of Divinity, should also be on the look out for our own malpractice. Wikipedia's definition goes like this:

Malpractice is a type of negligence in which the misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance of a professional, under a duty to act, fails to follow generally accepted professional standards, and that breach of duty is the proximate cause of injury to a plaintiff who suffers damages.

Misfeasance is doing the right thing wrongly; malfeasance is doing the wrong thing; and nonfeasance is the failure to do the right thing. There are many areas in which clergy practice can veer into malpractice. Consider the minister who preaches nothing but sin and never quite gets to grace. (Both liberals and conservative do this far too often.) That's an example of both misfeasance (doing the right act wrongly by never moving from cross to resurrection) and nonfeasance (not doing the right thing of preaching resurrection). Or consider the minister who doesn't provide for the education of the congregation (nonfeasance) or the minister who abuses authority by absolutizing his or her own power (misfeasance). The examples abound.

Talking about spiritual malpractice under all three headings is important because there is very real and damaging spiritual malpractice propagated against parishioners that has nothing to do with sex or money (common examples of malfeasance). It is also important because it gives us a way to name someone's negative experience of the church as an anomaly. Using this language allows us to say that spiritual malpractice, while certainly common, is neither the norm nor the ideal of the Church's life.

The other thing that using this language does for us is remind us that ministers are professionals. We have duties and obligations placed upon us by our profession, just like doctors, lawyers, and business people do. The clerical vocation may be more than a professional one, but it is not less.

In other words, clergy need to be at the very least good functionaries.* We need to know our duties and to do them well. Again, we are more than mere functionaries, but we are not less. If we do not take our mundane responsibilities seriously, how can we be expected to treat our spiritual ones? To avoid spiritual malpractice, we have to start with the mundane, to learn to keep our promises, and to treat people with the respect and care they deserve.

*I have a feeling that both 'high-church' and 'low-church' ministers would react negatively to the language of 'functionaries' for the same reason: clericalism. Whether you believe that the priest is an ontological superhero ('these hands were made for chalices not for calluses') or that the minister has a 'spiritual' vocation that frees him or her from administrative responsibility, the case is the same. Ministers tend to think of themselves more highly than they ought.

Sermon Text: John 4:5-42

Photo by Willam Mittelsteadt

[Introduction] I've heard my whole life that I should get 8-10 glasses of water per day, that drinking water was good for me, that it would make me healthy and strong. I learned this week some of the reasons why water is important for life. It does things I never thought about. It lubricates our lungs. Without water, we couldn't convert oxygen into carbon dioxide. It also helps our digestion. It keeps things, ummm, moving from the mouth on down. But, most interesting to me at the moment because of my family's history, water helps the kidneys get rid of the toxic material that builds up in our bodies. The kidneys collect it, and without water, those toxic things sometimes dry up and harden into kidney stones. Water helps our body remove the poison we carry in our bodies. Water is important to life.

[Page 1] In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus needs water. He sits at a famous well in the Jewish no-man’s land of Samaria. The noon sun beats down on him. He is tired out by his journey, sitting alone while the disciples rush into the neighboring city of Sychar to get food for themselves and for their weak Rabbi. He is so thirsty that when a woman appears carrying her jug to draw water alone in the noonday sun, the first thing he says is, "Give me a drink."

The woman recognizes the oddity of the situation. Here is a Jewish man sitting by the well. Jews don’t normally go through Samaria. On top of that, she’s a woman. Why would a man address her like that? She boldly asks Jesus, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?"

Jesus nods with respect. Not many women would talk back in this way. But, instead of repeating his command, he engages her in conversation, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink', you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." Now this gets her attention. The woman came to the well to get water, after all. In the dry places around Sychar, she and her people had to draw water from deep in the ground to survive. It was hard work. There was no 'living water' which is what they called streams, brooks, and rivers. There was no living water from which they could easily draw. There was only the day-in and day-out return to the well.

The Samaritan woman is intrigued, so she sets her water-jug down and asks him where to get this living water. But Jesus sees deeper than the woman’s thirst and answers the question that he finds buried there: "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." Jesus put his finger on something: the woman was not only physically thirsty; she was spiritually thirsty as well. She knew the hard life. She knew what it was like to be used and abandoned. She knew what it was like to be ostracized by her community. (Only outcasts gather water alone.) The thirst she felt in her mouth and throat every day only masked the deeper thirst. Like someone weak from a long journey baking under the noonday sun, her whole being yearned for something else, something greater, something that would satisfy.

[Page 2] We, too, suffer from that deep and hidden thirst. It hides just below the surface and expresses itself as a desire for other things. We feel bored and feel the need for entertainment. We feel like our lives lack meaning and feel the need for worthwhile causes. We feel guilty for all the things we can’t fix and feel the need for self-recrimination and self-flagellation. These are all normal feelings to have, all normal antidotes to try. We think that with the correct habits, the proper administration of alcohol, glossy entertainment, and distracting games, we might have found the solution as we return again to the wells of our choice. We think we might have found a way to satisfy our thirst.

But, I think that just like the Samaritan woman, we have to acknowledge that the true nature of our thirst is hidden until Jesus comes to meet us at our well, at the place we repeatedly go to satisfy ourselves. Jesus asks us for a drink there, and we engage him in conversation. He points out that there is something higher and better than the small, shallow well to which we keep returning. And in that conversation, our eyes are opened to that deeper thirst.

I think we’ve all had experiences that resonate with this. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I work at the church, and it is not uncommon for me to pilfer a couple of cookies in the afternoon. That leaves me feeling great. I’m not hungry; I could go for hours, I think. That is, until I walk into Nell’s office for our small group and smell the cooking food: pasta or Indian food or chicken. Assaulted by the smell of real food, my stomach rumbles, my skin flushes, and my knees go weak. My body had been hungry all along. The cookies were a thin veil placed over my body’s need for real nutrition. When confronted with the real thing, the cookies seem like a mirage. They were attractive but ultimately did not satisfy.

And when Jesus comes to meet us, he uncovers that deep thirst under our perceived needs, that deep hunger in us, just like he did for the Samaritan woman. He uncovers a thirst we did not know, a deep, hidden thirst for God.

[Page 3] "Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’" (John 4:13-14).

In our readings today, there were two instances of being thirsty and being led to living water. First, in Exodus, the children of Israel, thirsting in the desert, come to Moses and ask him to give them water. "Give us water to drink," they say (Ex 17:2). In response, Moses appeals to the LORD. The LORD sends Moses to a rock at Horeb and says, "I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink" (Exodus 17:6). When pierced with Moses’ holy staff, the rock gives living, running water in the desert and satisfies Israel’s thirst.

Second, with the Samaritan woman, Jesus repeats the pattern. "Give me a drink," he says to the woman. When she appeals to the Lord about how to get this water, he tells her that he, the Messiah, will give Living Water in the desert to whoever asks. This water, unlike the flowing water that came from Moses’ rock, unlike the water that could be drawn from Jacob’s well, this water will be the water of eternal life. Not only will it satisfy the thirst of the woman, it will cause a deeper well than Jacob’s to spring up within her. Jesus himself will satisfy her thirst.

Both these patterns of thirsting and living water are taken up later in John’s Gospel. We find it in John 19 where Jesus is dying on the cross. When he realizes that his journey is now complete, he says out loud, to fulfill the Scripture, "I am thirsty." It is noonday, just like it was at the Samaritan well, but there is no one to engage him in conversation, no opportunity to say the words "Living Water" or "Eternal Life." Instead, knowing that all has been accomplished, he bows his head, says "It is finished," and gives up his spirit.

The leaders didn’t want to leave the bodies up on the crosses, so they sent the Roman soldiers to break the legs of the crucified ones. When they found Jesus already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, the Scripture says, one of the soldiers took his holy spear and pierced Jesus, God’s Holy Rock, in the side, and at once blood and living water poured out. Having taken on our thirst, having taken on our death, the living water that will well up in us to eternal life is poured out from his side. Jesus’ own life is the Living Water, and he has come to satisfy our thirst.

[Page 4] There are many images of water in the Bible. Noah and his family survive it in the ark. The people of Israel cross out of slavery and into the Promised Land through it. And all the images of water in the Bible coalesce around the central act of Christian Baptism, a mystery that we celebrated a few weeks ago for little Jasiah. Baptism doesn’t save us. God saves us, as Chris preached last week, through water and the Spirit. Whether faith comes first or faith comes later, it remains the case that those who find Christ’s living water welling up within them are either those who have been baptized or those who are being driven inexorably by Christ’s Spirit towards baptism. Coming under the water is the outward sign of the inward and spiritual reality of God’s saving grace. Baptism either completes what faith starts or starts what faith completes. Either way, it is the direction we move if we want to know this living water, quenching our thirst, welling up within us to eternal life.

This means a few things for us. First, if we drink from the Living Water, if we find ourselves washed in it, we will find our deepest thirst quenched. If we come to the water of life, we will suddenly be free from the need to seek out other ways to satisfy our deepest longings. We will no longer have to find cheap entertainment or petty diversions or harmful habits to distract us. We will have welling up within us the source of eternal life and from that source we will draw for the rest of this life and for the life to come.

Second, this baptismal life means something else as well: we are commissioned and sent to be labourers in the harvest. Jesus says, "But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour'" (John 4:35-38). The Samaritan woman ran into the city and told everyone what Jesus had done for her. We are commissioned to do the same.

So, I challenge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of Jesus Christ, to examine yourselves in this Holy Lent. If there are any among you who find yourselves drawn to Christ, be baptized. Be cleansed by the water that flows from Jesus’ side and take your place as God’s adopted son or daughter. If you are already baptized and yet find all this talk of living water new and strange, consider a renewal of your baptismal vows and enter again into the life of grace. If you know the living water and find it welling up within you, get confirmed; let the Bishop put his hands on you to commission you to the life of love and service.

If you find this morning God is moving you towards baptism, renewal, or confirmation, please let us know in some way. You can come talk to me or Fr. Ajit; you can reach out to a friend; or you can indicate your interest on the ‘Welcome to St. Matthew’s’ cards in the pews in front of you. Fill them out and drop them in the offering plate when it comes by.

But, whatever the case, don’t hold back. Jesus Christ himself, the Living Water, poured himself out for us, for you. He loves you and wants to lead you into newness of life. He wants to feed you with his own bread and wine. Come to the river of Living Water that ever flows from him.

In name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I think every clergyperson who owns a collar should give 'collared evangelism' a shot. Here's my story.

The church I work at is small. We average about 50 people on a Sunday. We also have no parking. We could probably squeeze twelve cars into our lot if we tried really hard, and there's no room for expansion in our historic neighborhood.

That means we're stuck. If the church is going to thrive, then we have to become a parish church again; that is, we need to have the majority of our congregants walking to church. The problem? We live in a largely dechurched and unchurched neighborhood. Very few people will come on their own.

The solution? Some good old-fashioned evangelism. We have to be in our neighborhood inviting people into relationship with us, with our church, and with God.

But, another problem emerges. When was the last time you introduced yourself to a stranger in a local restaurant? I mean not just saying hello but starting a conversation and exchanging names and business cards? It's been a while, hasn't it? Generally, this is hard because people don't trust strangers. Specifically, this is had because I'm more introverted than extroverted. Because of generalized distrust and my own uneasiness, it's just hard to talk to strangers.

Over the last several months, "collared evangelism" has developed in my imagination. The church where I work rents space to a daycare. There are children and parents about, and I need some way to be marked out as 'belonging' in the church, so I always wear my collar. I noticed that as I wore my collar on public transit to and from the church that strange things started to happen. People approached me. Lots of people started stopping me to get directions. One woman told me about the break-up of her first marriage. The collar did make some people uncomfortable, but it attracted others, not all of whom had church backgrounds.

For some reason or another, in 21st century Toronto, the collar makes me a safe person to talk to. The collar is a uniform. It marks me off as a 'public' person.

So, I'm scared of strangers and those strangers are scared of being talked to by strangers. But, I have to overcome those fears for the sake of the Gospel in our parish's neighborhood. A simple solution presented itself to me: Be a public person. Wear a uniform. In my case, wear a collar.

A plan for collared evangelism developed. I already have a business card with the church's information and service times on it. I decided I would go into neighborhood businesses like coffee houses and restaurants and take advantage of three moments: when I walked in, when someone joined me in line, and when someone sat next to me.

When I walk in, I smile and greet the people behind the counter (if they aren't swamped). Several of the staff at the local coffeehouse already know me by name.

When someone joins me in line or sits down next to me, I say something introductory about the weather or their laptop or whatever. Then I say, "Hi, I'm Jason. I'm a priest at St. Matthew's on First Avenue just up the way." They usually introduce themselves, and we enjoy a few minutes of small talk. When the conversation starts to die (sometimes it takes 30 minutes!), I say, "I'm in the habit of giving out my card. Would you like one?" Everyone has said yes.

I made it into a game and started keeping track of the number of cards I give out. I'm up to 14, and I've invited 2 of those people to church. That's 14 cards in only 5 visits to local establishments.

Now, most priests I know who are older than me hate wearing their collars in public. They either think it's a holdover from established-church days or that it's just plain pretentious. They assume that the culture around them is holding a list of grievances that they are waiting to take out on clergy. Or, they think that they have to hide the church for a while until they can get people into a relationship with Jesus. Then, and only then, will the church make sense.

But, there's another priest in the Diocese of Toronto who through a mutual friend heard about my experiment. He is new to his cure and has been trying to get to know people around his neighborhood. But, as he would start conversations with people in restaurants or other local places, he would run into the strangers-are-scared-of-strangers phenomena. People wouldn't engage him.

Then, he started wearing his collar . . . and everything changed. In a matter of weeks, he had two complete strangers start attending his mid-week Bible study.

Crazy and kinda counter-intuitive, eh?

So, those of you clergy who have collars and feel the call to do some evangelism in your neighborhood, I invite you to join me in this 'collared evangelism' experiment. I'll be collecting stories and anecdotes in the new Collared Evangelism Facebook group. Please come join us and share your stories, both good and bad!

• by the VitalSmarts team. Here's a new video that really brings the appeal of the book home.

It's been said that when someone is ordained, they receive an indelible character; that is, their soul is somehow changed to allow or enable the execution of their ministry. In other words, it is said, ordination effects an ontological change in the person receiving ordination. There is what they were, and now their very being has been changed.

Right off the bat, I find this idea a little dodgy. Are we really saying that ordinands are superheroes? Is it like the Roman Catholic billboard that puts the white silhouette of the clerical collar against a black background with the words, "Yes, you do get to fight evil. No you don't get to wear a cape"? While George Sumner's book Being Salt

has helped me understand better how we might mean indelible character when translated into an evangelical key, I'm still uncomfortable with the idea.

But there is a problem: anecdotal evidence mounts.

When I was ordained a deacon, something happened. It was like something settled on me and stuck there. I felt it. I felt it that day and felt a resulting confidence in my ministry. The call was settled and received; I felt a new freedom to be a minister of the Gospel.

But then, when I was ordained a priest, something else odd happened. I work at St. Matthew's Riverdale in Toronto, which shares its facilities with a daycare. The children paid me no mind the six months I worked there before. But, the first time I saw them after being ordained, several of them stopped what they were doing and ran to me. There was an awe, a wonder, on their faces. Needless to say, it was an unnerving encounter!

And I'm not the only one to have these types of experiences. They are whispered about and wondered over everywhere I talk to clergy.

What does it mean? How could we explain it theologically? I'm not sure, and I think we might have gotten ourselves into trouble by trying too hard to do so. I'm no superhero, but I know that I am now different than I was. I am coming to believe that my fathers and mothers in faith wrestled with the same experience in their own ordinations. I might not like their formulations, but I am grateful that they tried to bring their experience to speech. Even though I might use different words, I don't think I could bring these experiences to expression without their help. Thanks be to God for the wisdom of the ages.

Are you a clergyperson? What was/is your experience?

Given our theological training, I think it would be wrong to call us "Evangelical Catholics," even though we are "evangelical" in the classical sense of the word: we're Protestants. But, we resemble in our worship, practice, and ethos Liberal Catholicism more than we do American Evangelicalism. Our Yale-school teachers are sometimes called "Post-liberals." Does that make us Post-Liberal Catholics? If so, what are the contours of Post-Liberal Catholicism? How does it interact with the Reformation? Who are its guiding lights? Where might it take us in the future?

The label of Post-Liberal Catholic just seems to fit me and others I know. Where do you fall?

Think about it, she said. Self-obsessed teenagers, shoulders slouched, spend all of their time worrying about what others think of them. Every little thing builds into the story they tell. "So and so doesn't like me." "She said that little thing about enzymes in science class just to make fun of me." You remember that time in your life.

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Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer, all books I've become convinced are must-reads for clergy.

Crucial Confrontations stands out because it teaches skills for 'speaking the truth in love' to those who violate agreed upon expectations - something very important for those of us who lead volunteer-based organizations. Crucial Conversations teaches 'tools for talking when stakes are high,' a relevant skill. Influencer delves into the six sources of influence, an idea that Change Anything applies to personal success.

Change Anything argues that we all fall into the 'willpower trap' which convinces us that if we fail to make a change, then it is all the fault of our faulty wills. No, Patterson, et. al., argue, there are at least six sources of influence that condition our behavior, only one of which is our own personal motivation. If we only have one of the six on our side, then we're outnumbered and should not expect to see positive change happen. If, however, we can demystify the six sources and develop change plans that address them, then we will be much more likely to achieve the change we want.

The six sources comprise of three sources of motivation (personal, social, structural) and three sources of ability (personal, social, structural). Our "wills" are personal motivation. But, they're only one of the six. If we really want to change something, we have to engage the other five. Not too long ago, I decided that I needed to cut back on coffee consumption. One simple change completely removed my will from the equation: I washed and stored my automatic coffee maker. Suddenly, it was easy to consume a reasonable amount of coffee per day. That's an example of the structural ability source of influence at work. Without easy access to large amounts of coffee, my intake dropped without having to fight temptation one bit. Amazing!

Change Anything, due out April 11, 2011, is important for pastors because it gives us a vocabulary to help people change, which is the point of our work. We are called to be stewards of ours and others' sanctification. This little resource goes a long way towards helping us see the insidious ways that the world uses to keep us in its grasp. It also gives us resources to rapidly and effectively change our own behaviors. Whether we need to do more evangelism or keep better track of the church's books, Change Anything will be a good place to start to develop a change plan to make us more effective ministers of the Gospel of Christ. I recommend it, and the other books from VitalSmarts, with no reservations.

I'd love to have a conversation about the theological implications of a book like this - if you're interested, join me in the comments.

Sermon Text: Matthew 5:38-48

[Introduction] When I was growing up, Gary Larson created the comic strip The Far Side. In the strip, God was a recurring character. Larson often depicted God as a big man with blue-tinted skin, a white unibrow, and bushy white beard. One of Larson’s particularly popular depictions of God is called “God at his computer.” In the picture, God is sitting at his desk, idly watching his computer screen. On the screen, a man is walking obliviously down the side-walk. I say “obliviously” because there is a falling piano inches above his head! But, God looks on undisturbed, his finger hovering over a big white button on his keyboard marked, simply, “Smite.”

God sitting at his computer, bored, waiting for someone to slip up so he can hit the smite button – that’s a way a lot of people think about God. Some theologians have said that everything we say about God is just us casting our own images against the sky and calling that self-reflection “God.” In this case, I think they’re right. God, bored at his computer, smiting people as a form of amusement – that probably says more about us than it does about God. Our Gospel passage today illumines just that

[Page 1] Jesus sits atop a mountain in Galilee teaching his disciples, having just escaped the crowd. He had been among the people healing, teaching in synagogues, and driving out demons. But in our passage, he has withdrawn, coming up out of the crowd, and the disciples gather around him. He teaches what later will be called the Sermon on the Mount. The disciples are the primary audience. The crowd gathers below

As the disciples sit and the crowd strains to hear, Jesus repeats the Scripture to them: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’.” Again, later, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’.” That last bit about hating the enemy wasn’t in the Jewish Scriptures, but it was apparently something the disciples and the crowd had already heard. Jesus and his audience live in a world where it is natural, even expected, to hate your enemy

And Jesus’ audience has many enemies. The crowd shifts uncomfortably as a group of Roman soldiers passes nearby. It’s better to keep your eyes down than earn the wrath of those non-Jews, the “Gentiles,” who oppress them and laugh in derision at Israel’s faith in the one, true God. Perhaps worse than the soldiers at the edge of the crowd are the Jewish people who aren’t there, their own people who sell themselves out to the Romans as tax collectors. The collectors are seen as the worst of the worst, preying on their own for the benefit of the enemy. It is no wonder that both before and after Jesus’ ministry, great numbers of Jewish people rose up in revolt against Rome and felt justified doing so. Their very way of life was under attack. Hating your enemy – returning an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, striking when struck, protecting one’s assets from those who would steal them by hook or by crook – this was the only way to survive. In other words, protect yourself; look out for what’s yours; and hate the one who wants to take it from you. For Jesus’ disciples and the crowd below, this is the way the world works. Watch out for yourself; hate your enemy. Enemy-hatred is the name of the game.

[Page 2] In the 21st century, in an age of democratic government and religious tolerance, it is easy to think that this human dynamic has changed. If we acknowledge having enemies, they are often far away, speakers of other languages, followers of violent forms of religion. But, we too are like the people in Jesus’ day. We too have enemies that make us want to watch out only for ourselves and lash out against any threat, like a snake coiled tightly around its eggs.

We keep enemies in our personal relationships. We refuse to deal with conflicts as they arise, and the inconvenience quickly turns to annoyance which festers into disgust and bleeds hate. We make foes of those who should be our friends. We tell nasty stories about them to ourselves and to anyone who will listen. Or, we bottle the stories up and let them ferment until we cannot hold them any longer, and we explode.

It’s been said that the average inmate serving time in American prisons for crimes like theft, drugs, etc. has six convictions. Most are not there because they were hungry and stole something to survive. Most are the product of brutal streets full of the enemy-hatred that we think of when we first think of an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But, whereas the average inmate has six convictions, there is a special class of inmate that on average has only one. They are the murderers. Most often, they commit crimes of passion driven by anger, oftentimes anger that has festered against a loved one for years. It festers until one day they snap, and they kill. This statistic alone shows Jesus to be very wise: he said in our reading last week that to hate your neighbour was to commit murder. They are not so far apart after all.

But it also goes to show that even in today’s world, we all harbor enemies, even though we often call them friends. We nurse our hatreds with our neighbours and let them grow. Enemy-hatred, even if we do a good job masking it, is still the name of the game, and because of that it is no wonder that Larson’s cartoon of God at his computer resonates so deeply with us. We all know a few people we would like to drop pianos on. If God were like us, then God would be just like Larson depicted.

[Page 3] But, thanks be to God, God is not like us at all. On the mount, Jesus says to his disciples and the listening crowd, “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Why does Jesus want his disciples to love and pray for their enemies? Jesus continues: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” What does loving enemies have to do with being God’s children? Jesus explains: “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” In other words, quite unlike the God Larson depicts, and quite unlike the enemy-hating world in which the disciples live, God loves his enemies, and he shows his love by making the sun rise on everyone, the good and the bad, and by sending the rain on the good and the bad alike. Jesus concludes by saying, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Human perfection, Jesus seems to be saying, is nothing other than loving your enemy because God loves his enemies.

In the Gospel of Matthew, this is the first time the disciples gather around Jesus to receive a special teaching. What they won’t realize until much later is that everything that Jesus demands of them in this portion of the Sermon on the Mount is what he himself is doing. Jesus is the one who turns the other cheek when on trial before the Sanhedrin. Jesus is the one gets sued for his coat and gives his cloak as well to be divided among the Roman guards. Jesus is the one who walks the second mile with his cross to the mount of Golgotha. Jesus is the one who gives of himself until the very end of his being, to whoever asks. Jesus is setting the stage here so that his disciples can later realize that God is loving his enemies through what Jesus does in his life. St. Paul will later exclaim, “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Ro. 5:10). Jesus’ earthly life is itself the supreme act of God’s enemy-love, a love which will change everything.

[Page 4] Unlike the disciples in our passage, we have the advantage of hindsight. We can see that God’s love for his enemies culminated in Jesus’ death and resurrection. We can see that the Church has been the place where people gather to learn how to replace their enemy-hatred with love. We can see that through this enemy-love, the powers of this world have been brought low as the Church imitates Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

What does it mean to love our enemies? In the first place, it means that we have to acknowledge that we have enemies, not just enemies far away, but enemies in our homes, our workplaces, even here at St. Matthew’s. We all have enemies, people who have it out for us, or people we have it out for. Loving our enemies first means acknowledging that we have them.

Second, Jesus says to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” After acknowledging that you have enemies in your life, the next thing to do is pray for them. We might in moments of anger pray that God drop a piano on their heads, and really it’s okay to pray that from time to time. But, if we want to follow Jesus, we have to find ways beyond that vengeance-dream to actually praying for our enemies’ good. This is hard for us, perhaps impossible on our own. But remember that Jesus himself took God’s love for his enemies to its furthest extent – to the point of death. Because Jesus prayed for his enemies with his whole life and prays for his enemies now at the Father’s right hand, we have hope and power. We can pray for our enemies now, too.

Third, from a place of prayer for our enemies, we can learn to uncoil a bit, to relax, to actually be human with the people we are struggling not to hate. From this place of freedom in the enemy-loving God, we are free to turn the other cheek, to give extravagantly, to walk the second mile, to start the journey of perfection that will end with the world restored in the glory of God.

I was told this week that like the Riverdale neighborhood St. Matthew’s has a fighting spirit. We don’t give up when things get tough. We redouble our efforts. What Jesus makes clear today is that we are called to identify and fight our enemies not with violence but with prayer and reconciling service. This is a hard and high calling. Let us embrace it, not giving up but redoubling our efforts to turn our nearby enemies into reconciled neighbours. For God so loved the world that while we were still his enemies, he sent Christ to save us. In response to God’s amazing grace, as our worship continues let us pray for our enemies, come forward to receive God’s reconciling love with our hands, our mouths, and our hearts, and go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord among our neighbours yes, but also, and especially, among our enemies.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I am from a Communion Partner diocese. My home parish went through an AMiA split a couple of years before I started attending there. I have dear friends who attend that now-ACNA parish and are entering discernment for Holy Orders. The division among orthodox Anglicans has been a sticking point between us. To say the least it is painful.

Anderas' sermon is about repentance and reconciliation. A paragraph near the conclusion reads:

It may be that the splinters of this broken bridge will sink deeply into the holy water of baptism, and we Anglicans will find that God in his mercy has killed us only to make us alive. If he first devours us, the great Lion of the tribe Judah may not, after all, spit us out of his mouth. There is a sharp, double-edged sword that comes out from that mouth, a living and active Word; and the Lord will use it to strike down the nations. If he slays us now, he will bring us to life. If he brings us down to Sheol, he will raise us up from the dead. If he makes us poor, he will enrich us. If he brings us low, he will exalt us. He will raise up the poor from the dust and the needy from the ash heap and make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people.

Needless to say, I was intrigued by this thought. Was there really a Synod meeting somewhere in secret, perhaps a convocation of Communion Partner and ACNA bishops, committing themselves to find common cause again in the Gospel? When would the results of such a convocation be announced? What might that mean for me and my ecclesially-separated friends?

But, after Google searches and emails to knowledgeable colleagues, I found that, to the best of our knowledge, no convocation exists or is planned to exist. What a desperately sad realization after that initial burst of hoping for Spirit-wrought and institutionally meaningful reconciliation between our churches.

But, then again, there was that burst of hope. And that makes me wonder: is there something here? If Covenant created an imaginary synod that exploded to life in my mind, did it awaken forgotten hope in others as well? Might there be a place for such a gathering, such a convocation, such a holy assembly?

I pray there is, by God's grace.

*Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

[Introduction] Today we celebrate the final Sunday of the liturgical year: Christ the King Sunday. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. A week from today, Christians will be able to say to one another, “Happy New Year!” and mean it. We Christians have our own calendar and celebrate our own feasts as a way of expressing the world’s deepest truth: Christ really is the King. He is king not only of our lives but of the whole world.

[Page 1] Turning to our readings today, we can see that this idea that Jesus is king is not what the world thought. Our passage from Luke’s Gospel begins with the clang, clang, clang of stakes being driven into wooden beams. The text says, “When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left” (Lk 23:33). As Jesus hangs naked on the cross with a crown of thorns on his head, those who crucified him stand around. They are the leaders of Jesus’ world. On the one side, there are the religious leaders of his nation. They, the shepherds of God’s people, scoff at Jesus: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” On the other side, there are the Roman soldiers. They, too, mock the bleeding Jesus: “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Even one of the criminals hanging beside Jesus derides the broken man: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” And, even though the sign above Jesus’ head reads “This is the King of the Jews,” there is no doubt in the gathered crowds’ minds that he is no such thing. The whole world is gathered around Jesus on the cross. From the lowest criminal to the highest religious and political authorities in Jesus’ world, the whole world rejects Jesus as king.

* Read more »

Last night, we watched It's a Wonderful Life. More than a decade has passed since I last saw the film. As I prepared for the night and discussed the movie with the group, I realized that Life is a very adult movie. The week prior, we had watched The Truman Show. There are some striking parallels between the movies, but in comparison Truman is a teenage movie. Here's why.

George Bailey is trapped.

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Date: October 3, 2010Sermon Text: Luke 17:5-10 Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

[Introduction] Our Gospel lesson this morning is about faith and miracles. When I think about faith and miracles, my mind always jumps immediately to the so-called “faith healers” that can be seen on Sunday morning television. One famous faith healer, whose name we’ll change to “Rev. James,” proclaims that God has given him the gift of healing, and when he prays for someone, they often fall over unconscious, overwhelmed by the experience. They are “slain in the Spirit.” I don’t doubt the sincerity of these actions. I myself have experienced, in instances of intense personal and corporate prayer, extreme vertigo. But the whole scenario certainly raises some questions about faith for me.

And the questions are only exacerbated when a seminary friend of mine, who knows of my deep and abiding love of Star Wars, sends me doctored YouTube videos. This video he sent me took clips of Rev. James slaying people in the Spirit and combined it with the moving battle music from the Star Wars films. And, to top it off, the clever video editors put a glowing red lightsaber in Rev. James’ hands. In each of the original clips, Rev. James swings his arms at the people to slay them in the Spirit, but in the edited version, he’s knocking individuals and groups over with one swing of his lightsaber. “Rev. James,” the video proclaims, “Dark Lord of the Sith.”

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Sermon Text: Luke 14:25-33

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

[Introduction] The liturgy of our church is a scary thing. For some of us who have come to Anglicanism later in life, it is scary because it is new. The words sound funny on our tongues. We’re not sure where to pause during the Nicene Creed. We often speak out of turn. For those of you who grew up with the liturgy, it might be scary because it is so familiar. It could be that whole worship services go by without the words penetrating the haze of the busy-ness of our weeks. But for both old and new, the liturgy is a frightful thing for a quite different reason. Every week, the liturgy tricks us. It tricks us into saying words that commit us once again to the life of discipleship. It prompts us to reaffirm our baptismal vows. It calls us out of ourselves into a new kind of life. But it does all this without often asking us to count the cost.

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A CHINK IN THE CURTAINS

I was reading along, not expecting to find a startling spiritual image in a twentieth-century novel by a writer not exactly known for his praying.

But W. Somerset Maugham’s character, Larry, the aimless and likeable protagonist in The Razor’s Edge, is recounting the chats he had with a hulking uncouth Polish miner. It turns out that Kosti (a simplified Polish name for the unlikely spiritual guide) had a secret love of spiritual writers (indeed, the man only had the courage to reveal his hidden longings when drunk). He ends up being a kind of spiritual mentor to Larry.

“It was all new to me and I was confused and excited,” Larry told a friend of his conversations with Kosti. And what Larry said next was what struck me: “I was like someone who’s lain awake in a darkened room and suddenly a chink of light shoots through the curtains and he knows he only has to draw them and there the country will be spread before him in a glory of the dawn.”

I wonder what that image meant to Maugham, the author. Certainly something, sometime had felt to him like at least a glimmer or a glimpse: “A chink of light shoots through the curtains.”

And to know that to draw the curtains means seeing a “country … spread out before [us] in a glory of the dawn!” I wonder what intimations he had of the spiritual possibilities.

I know that I can go along, not expecting much, not staying much on the lookout, but then I come awake, maybe for just an instant or so, to a world just out of view, one with a spreading glory, just beyond the curtains of everyday occupations.

No wonder Paul spoke in Ephesians 3:18-19 of how he hoped those hearing him would “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

That glory seems to appear to us sometimes through a chink or in a corner or crevice. But sometimes I have the wherewithal to wonder what more lies beyond the glimmer. I might even go looking.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in you sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

Someone asked me this week what success looked like. We had a good, long conversation about it. For as long and good as it was, it was still far too short. I confess that I brought the question into my office with me as I started preparing this sermon. What does success look like? What does it mean to be successful? There are, of course, a lot of different answers to that question, all of which depend on a person’s situation and perspective. But, in today’s readings, as we celebrate and remember St. Mary the Virgin, I think we have the beginnings of a Christian answer to the question.

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Last week, the Gospel passage ended with Jesus’ command, “Go and do likewise.” In the parable of the Good Samaritan, I said that the lawyer (and we) should see ourselves, in the first instance, as the man beaten and left in the ditch to die, and I encouraged us to hold our hand open to let God rescue us. I should say, now, that only the first foot dropped last week. In the first instance, we are to recognize that we are in need of God’s rescue. The second foot is what Jesus says at the end of the parable: “Go and do likewise.” Go and rescue others from their ditches. Go bring people back to Jesus and His Church.

Our Gospel passage today falls right on the heels of Jesus’ “Go and do likewise.” St. Luke tells the story of someone who heard the “Go and do” and took it too seriously and too far. This is Martha.

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Date: July 11, 2010 Sermon Text: Luke 10:25-37

It wasn’t too long ago, when I was in high school. And I was in love. There was a girl in my church’s youth group who seemed to me, at the time, to be everything I could have ever wanted.

I remember trying to get this girl just to like me back. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing seemed to work. I talked to people. I even read a best-selling Christian book on high school dating. After months of frustration, sitting at the kitchen table, I finally blurted out to my mother: “I don’t understand. What I have done wrong? I’ve done everything right. And it’s not working out!” My mother did what good mother’s do and gave me a hug. But, the unspoken question lay there on the table: “Really, what do I have to do to make her love me?

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An excerpt:

One of the maddening things about my “Christian spirituality” classes in grad school was the constant separation students fretted over between “head” and “heart.” This may have been a legitimate problem, but the way they articulated it made it sound like the problem was somehow too much theology. Wrong! A bifurcation of “head” and “heart” is the result of faulty theology, not too much. Something we could learn by reading more Augustine.

The audio may be found here.

Full text below:

"Jesus Sends Doubters"

Matthew 28:16-20

[Open with prayer]

Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 28. Let’s start in verse 16: “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.” We need to back up and get some context. Earlier in Matthew 28, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to Jesus’ tomb. There they witnessed a violent earthquake, the descent of an angel, the fainting of the guards, and as they were going away from the tomb, they ran into Jesus himself. They took his instruction to the disciples: “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” And quickly they departed. At the beginning of the passage today the eleven remaining disciples are climbing the mountain to find Jesus.

Did some of the disciples’ faces radiate joy? Did others radiate hope? Did others mix the two, like the women in verse eight, who were “afraid yet filled with joy?” As the eleven climbed the mountain, each one knew that something was going to happen, even if that something was nothing at all.

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Graduate Student Auctions Off Virginity: In a new low for morals and capitalism, a 22 year old graduate student at Sacramento State has joined with a legal Nevada brothel to auction off her virginity. The young woman says she can verify her purity and is selling her first experience to finance her graduate education in marriage and family therapy. Holding an undergraduate degree in women's studies she believes her actions are empowering to her as a woman and that her virginity is marketable because it is a rare commodity. Several students have expressed support, especially for a cause as noble as paying for school. (CBS13.com September 11, 2008)

What happens when you downplay or ignore the ascension [or the resurrected and still embodied Jesus]? The answer is that the church expands to fill the vaccuum. If Jesus is more or less identical with the church - if, that is, talk about Jesus can be reduced to talk about his presence within his people rather than his standing over against them and addressing them from elsewhere as their Lord, then we have created a high road to the worst kind of triumphalism. This indeed is what twentieth-century English liberalism always tended toward: by compromising with rationalism and trying to maintain that talk of the ascension is really talk about Jesus being with us everywhere, the church effectively presented itself (with its structures and hierarchy, its customs and quirks) instead of presenting Jesus as its Lord and itself as the world's servant, as Paul puts it. And the other side of triumphalism is of course despair. If you put all your eggs into the church-equals-Jesus basket, what are you left with when, as Paul says in the same passage, we ourselves are found to be cracked earthenware vessels?

If the church identifies its structures, its leadership, its liturgy, its buildings, or anything else with its Lord - and that's what happens if you ignore the ascension or turn it into another way of talking about the Spirit - what do you get? You get, on the one hand, what Shakespeare called "the insolence of office" and, on the other hand, the despair of late middle age, as people realize it doesn't work. (I see this all too frequently among those who bought heavily into the soggy rationalism of the 1950s and 1960s.) Only when we grasp firmly that the church is not Jesus and Jesus is not the church - when we grasp, in other words, the truth of the ascension, that the one who is indeed present with us by the Spirit is also the Lord who is strangely absent, strangely other, strangely different from us and over against us, the one who tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him - only then are we rescued from both hollow triumphalism and shallow despair.

There is more fantastic material in the following paragraphs, but this little tidbit hit me on Saturday when I was reading it. Wright goes on to make the interesting (and necessary point) that a human being (Jesus as the divine-human person) is running the cosmos right now from heaven - that Jesus continues his human work straight into the present. You hear these things so little - how wonderful to hear them again!

At the Name of Jesus At the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, Every tongue confess Him King of glory now; ’Tis the Father’s pleasure we should call Him Lord, Who from the beginning was the mighty Word.

[Mighty and mysterious in the highest height, God from everlasting, very light of light: In the Father’s bosom with the spirit blest, Love, in love eternal, rest, in perfect rest.

At His voice creation sprang at once to sight, All the angel faces, all the hosts of light, Thrones and dominations, stars upon their way, All the heavenly orders, in their great array.]

Humbled for a season, to receive a name From the lips of sinners unto whom He came, Faithfully He bore it, spotless to the last, Brought it back victorious when from death He passed.

Bore it up triumphant with its human light, Through all ranks of creatures, to the central height, To the throne of Godhead, to the Father’s breast; Filled it with the glory of that perfect rest.

Name Him, Christians, name Him, with love strong as death But with awe and wonder, and with bated breath! He is God the Savior, He is Christ the Lord, Ever to be worshipped, trusted and adored.

In your hearts enthrone Him; there let Him subdue All that is not holy, all that is not true; Crown Him as your Captain in temptation’s hour; Let His will enfold you in its light and power.

Christians, this Lord Jesus shall return again, With His Father’s glory, with His angel train; For all wreaths of empire meet upon His brow, And our hearts confess Him King of glory now.

Several days ago, a friend replied to my 'bad, bad windows' rant. You can see his response here. I replied, and the above sentence is part of the response. The more I think about this sentence, the more I think it is both desperately hard and true.

It is hard because I work for InterVarsity's Graduate and Faculty Ministries. We're about the work of helping Christian grad students make it in the contemporary university and, on top of that, helping them to thrive as Christians and academics, as whole people, as world-changers.

It is hard because our modus operandi is sometimes for some of us driven by wanting to be taken seriously and wanting to find an apologetic that is relevant to the academic culture.

We want to be taken seriously. Who wants to be thought of as a buffoon? Who wants to think other people are thinking one is a supersititous, backwoods idiot?

And so, we want to be relevant. We want to find a bridge between the culture that we want to take us seriously, and the message we want to bring to that culture.

But, unfortunately, the sentence remains devastatingly true - at least of the thumbnail sketch of the development of continental liberalism I was taught. Schleiermacher wrote a book on Christianity to "his cultured despisers." A brilliant thinker, he bridged the gap. He developed a sophisticated, elegant, and convincing apologetic for the Gospel.

But, in so doing, he tamed the Gospel; he broke her back. The Gospel became a maidservant to the ideology to which she had been wedded. She was eventually eviscerated of her vital life and left as a shell into which people cast their images of God against the sky.

He wanted the Gospel to be taken seriously by the culture.

He was willing to fashion an apologetic to make it so.

And us evangelicals are perilously close to the same mistake, which is why I continued in my comment:

Well, those two things sound like most evangelicals, don't they? That's because we're only ever a hair's breadth away from making the same mistake as the continental liberals: wanting more desperately to speak TO our cultured despisers than ABOUT Jesus Christ.

We ministers have to be able to speak about Jesus Christ, even at the expense of looking foolish to our counterparts and colleagues. He is public truth, and his Revelation is knowledge, but if we ever put the cart before the horse, if we ever allow something else to become the subject of the sentence, then we have already capitulated, already lost the fight. One hundred years from now, "public truth" and "knowledge" will not be the terms in which we try to cast our faith, but He will always be its purpose, content, and goal. We are speaking about him to our cultured despisers. And may it always come in that order.

The most important thing I learned was that you have to expect a drop in comprehension when you start to read faster. BUT, given (what I found to be) just a little bit of practice, comprehension returns. Now, I feel like a more confident reader than I ever have before.

This really helps for someone working with graduate students!

Represented in stained glass around the place were the different branches of knowledge. One held the Arts, another Science, and yet another Agriculture. Being me, the one that caught my eye was Divinitas, "divinity."

It's a beautiful window, and I took a minute or two to ponder it. I noticed how Divinity is broken into two, Theology and Piety.

Theology had a Star of David and a lamp on a pedestal.

Piety had an open Bible and a cross.

And then the message of the windows hit me. Theology is the transcendence of Jewish religion by the light of reason (the lamp), while piety is the affectation of Christian religion based on Scripture and the cross. Divinity is thus broken into the theoretical (theology) and the practical (piety), the hard and the soft.

The window deserves some applause for holding theology and piety together. Many lectures and sermons have tried to convince me to value one more highly than the other. Some theologians demonize piety for its lack of rigor and clear headedness. Some preachers demonize theology for separating them from the presence of God's love.

And the windows bear out the divide. Only Piety focuses on Christ. The open Bible is there as well as the cross. Affectation, a feeling of dependence, a sense of being forgiven.

But not in the Theology pane. In Theology, there is the Star of David, a representative of ancient Jewish religion. It is impaled on the stand that holds the clear light of reason on top. Theology is not about Jesus or Scripture, the window proclaims. It is the pure knowledge of God that transcends the narrow and backwards superstitions of the ancient Jewish people (and, by extension, the narrow and backwards superstitions of the pious). I can't tell what sickens me more, the overt arrogance or the covert anti-semitism. Or the fact that these ideas dominated the continental liberal theological establishment that supported a Kaiser's war policies and then refused to stand up to a Fuhrer.

Or that many well-meaning, wonderful, and intelligent theologians and preachers still indulge the insipid divide between theology and piety today.

Oh, for a new starting point in theology.

Here are some of the things we saw:

1. Mt. Rainier
2. Mt. St. Helens
3. The Columbia River Gorge
4. Multnomah Falls
5. Portland
6. Washington's Pacific Coastline
7. Olympic National Park
8. The Hoh Rainforest
9. Cape Flattery (the most NW point of the lower 48)
10. Victoria, the major city on Vancouver Island, British Columbia
11. and Seattle!

The trip was great, and there are so many stories to tell. And, I'll be posting some of them here in the next few days. Actually, one of them is already written and returns to more theological topics. I hope you'll enjoy!

The first is "Christ Conquered our Suffering," on Romans 5:1-11.

The second is "God Gave Us Life," on Romans 6:1-11.

Enjoy!

Indiana Jones is old. In his first appearance in Skull, Indy stumbles to his tossed-down hat. His gait is strained and his posture stiff. With hands raised, Indy’s companion mutters, “This isn’t going to be easy.” Indy replies, “Not as easy as it used to be.”

Indy lives in a different time and place. No longer the WWII era filled with Nazis and youth, the late ‘50’s are a time of fear. Suited FBI agents tell Indy he is a suspected Communist. The Board of Directors at Yale put him on an indefinite leave of absence. The once-open halls of academia breath the stale, narrow air of paranoia. Teaching always bored the Dr. Jones who wanted to be ‘in the field.’ But this is different somehow. Yale feels like a tomb.

Indy has wasted his life. Bouncing in the back of a Soviet truck through the Amazon, Marian and Indy argue about his lost life. “I’m sure you had plenty of women after you left me,” Marian spits. “Yeah,” Indy retorts, “They all shared one problem, though. They weren’t you, sweetheart.” His years of lying in his relationships’ wreckage have taken a silent toll on Indy which he only realizes when he is told that he has a son, Mutt Williams (played admirably by Shia LeBeouf).

Indy grows. “Do what you love and don’t let anybody tell you different,” Indiana says to Mutt in a wasted Peruvian city. Mutt had dropped out of college. When Indy finds out the truth about his son, he changes: “You’re going back to school!”

“What about ‘do what you love and don’t let anybody tell you different’!?!”

“That was before I was your father!”

What if they make a new movie starring Mutt? I myself am torn. This was Indiana’s twilight, but it would make sense if it were Mutt’s dawning, and the work done in Skull would allow a sequel to be made on the fresh and interesting level of Raiders and Crusade. I like how Skull ended with Mutt nearly, but not quite, donning the hat. I hope for two different things: the first is that they make a movie to explore the development of Henry Jones III. The second is that they never reopen these pages, allowing us to do what the Indiana Jones saga has always encouraged: dream of a time not so long ago, when a fedora, a whip, and some wit could throw open legend and make us believe. That’s what this movie did, and, for all its problems, it remained an Indiana Jones film from beginning to end.

I've been thinking some about missions lately, and the idea of 'context' has come up repeatedly. Some say we need to 'contextualize the Gospel' in order to make it understandable to others. The problem is that the context or culture of any one person, much less an entire group of people, is infinitely removed from yours. There is no such thing as the "University context" or the "Nigerian context" or the "Palestinian context." There are only specific people, places, events, resemblances, and analogies. That's not to say we can't generalize, but we should always check and chuck our generalizations when they cease to describe well.

Instead of contextualizing the Gospel, let's just be mindful that context just happens. Be mindful and stop worrying so much.

I've been angling slowly towards making this point: the current use of the word "incarnational" to describe ministry or presence falls short of the Incarnation itself.

One can use the word to describe ministry if we just start with the word itself, "incarnation," as enfleshment or embodiment. Again, in this connection there are (usually) three things involved: a bearer/mediator, a receiver, and the thing being borne/mediated. The means of the mediation is generally unspecified, and, when specified, rarely allows (if we're honest with ourselves) for the mediated to be a person of any sort. This path that moves upward from "incarnation" leaves little hope that our incarnational ministries can do much good or connect with anything beyond our humanity.

On the other hand, what happens if we start this discussion by talking about the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ as witnessed in Holy Scripture and taught us by our common inheritance of faith?

I think we would find something completely different than what I used to describe by the word 'incarnational,' and in its complete difference we would find it unable to be generalized to our ministry contexts.

The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is a single and utterly unique event that took place roughly 2,000 years ago in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ maintains the three levels of presence, embodied presence, and kenotic embodied presence, but none of these three, and not all three together, go as far in describing this Mystery as they should. Scripture set us down a path that our fathers and mothers in faith followed to discover that in the Incarnation the mediation between God and humanity is no longer generally unspecified. They described this mediation as none other than the union of two natures (human and divine) in the One Person of the Mediator, Jesus Christ. In this, the hypostatic union, the eternal Son of God enters unique and irreplaceable fellowship with the human nature of Jesus Christ. This fellowship is uniquely with this human being (the son of Mary) and in this specific connection (one Person, two Natures). It is a personal union. That which is mediated to the world in Jesus Christ is none other than the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, whom T. F. Torrance calls the 'personalizing Person,' and in this mediation the Trinity itself is irrevocably connected to humanity.

If we start by thinking about what Scripture and our tradition says happened in Jesus Christ, then it becomes very difficult to use the word incarnational of anything other than the Incarnation itself for Incarnation soars high above the ideas of moral and spiritual mediation (as described by 'embodied' and 'kenotic embodied' presence) while still containing them in this unique and special hypostatic union, connection, and mediation. God becoming one of us in Jesus Christ in the hypostatic union is the content of the Incarnation that differentiates it from all other categories and therefore defines it (if we start with Jesus Christ). If we use an adjectival form that does not allow for this specific and definitive content, then we have muddied our language and threaten to undercut our souls' awe at the beauty and grandeur of the Incarnation itself.

Therefore, the reason I no longer use the word 'incarnational,' and the reason that I think you should stop using it too, is that unless we are willing to say that everyday human beings or institutions can become hypostically united with God or the Spirit, using the word 'incarnational' makes little to no sense and shows our lack of care about the language we use to point to one of the central Mysteries of our faith. I feel like much of the original intent behind using 'incarnational' has to do with 1) raising the value of the thing described, such as in incarnational ministry, and 2) connecting the thing described with the Person and Work of Christ. These are both wonderful things, but I contend that instead of doing either of them, using 'incarnational' actually devalues the Incarnation from which the modifier 'incarnational' is formed and subsequently devalues the ministry that we claim derives from it.

That is not to say that we should throw away the word 'incarnational' and find nothing to replace it. The actual work that 'incarnational' has done (as described in part i) needs to be preserved, but we should change metaphors. In the next and final part (iv), I will argue that the word 'embodied' is the word we should employ instead of 'incarnational' and that the former's use opens us to richer and deeper theological/pastoral reflection and practice than the latter.

[concluded in part iv]

So far, I've described three layers of how I've seen the modifier "incarnational" used. The first use is "presence." The second use is "embodied presence." The third is either "kenotic presence" or "kenotic embodied presence." In the second and third use there is a mediation involved, usually of an idea or ideal and usually in an unspecified way or form.

This is well and good if one starts this journey from "incarnation" as a word and then moves on to talk about ministry. Very basically, "incarnation" derives from the Latin for "in the flesh" or "enfleshment." The word incarnation, as an artifact of its etymology, really is just a fancy (and, perhaps all-important, theological-sounding) word for "embodiment." Anyone or anything can be an embodiment or incarnation, in this sense, of an ethical or moral ideal such as love, courage, and wisdom. At this point, "incarnational" ministry is just ministry that is bodily present for people in need.

One can add the Spirit into the discussion if one wants, but it doesn't change the necessarily moral (and only moral/spiritual) nature of the embodiment. In fact, one would wonder if the Spirit could retain any personal element at all "starting from the bottom" with 'incarnation.' Surely, from the bottom up, we could only legitimately talk about the Person of God as an anthropomorphism, nothing more. If that is the case, what could we possibly mean by the incarnation of Jesus Christ?

We can already see the problems that become evident when we start at the bottom with the word 'incarnation.' The problem becomes even more evident if we start from the other end with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ itself.

(continued in part iii)

Index: Part I Part II Part III Part IV (not yet published)

"Incarnational" At its least theological, when people use the word "incarnational," they mean "presence." In the Incarnation, God became one of us and dwelt with us. He was present with us in Christ. Therefore, we should be present with others in the same way. There are two things in this understanding: the person coming to be present (x) and the person with whom the first is being present (y).

At a slightly more theological level, people might mean "embodied" by "incarnational." Embodied connotes more than just "being there;" it also evokes a type of doing. Incarnational anything, understood as embodiment, conceives of three things, or, rather, keeps the two people (x and y) from above but introduces an abstract ideal that is mediated (by generally unspecified means) through one of the persons involved. You can see this second theological level of the understanding of "incarnational" in this standard phrase: "The Church should incarnate God's love to the world." In this instance, person or persons x [the Church] incarnates idea/ideal z [God's love] so that y [the world] can see it.

At its most theological, when people talk about incarnational ministry, they speak by analogy about the kenosis, or self-emptying, of Christ (cf. Phil 2). This sense is the trickiest to describe because it can move along at least two tracks.

The first track might take kenosis as something for us to do for the sake of the message we bear. This retains elements of "incarnational" as "embodied" except that in order to bear the idea/ideal to the world, we have to humble ourselves, empty ourselves, in order to let the message/Word/Gospel/Spirit shine through. It adds a definitely moral tone to the rhetoric.

The second track might see self-emptying itself as the message. This returns to "incarnational" as presence but, again, adds a moral element to it. It's not enough just to be with people, one must empty oneself of oneself, and that self-emptying is the content of the Christian faith.

As I lay this groundwork, I need to add some caveats: 1) I'm not thinking of anyone specifically as I describe the above. As I think about the shape of the way I and others have used the adjective "incarnational" over the past decade, this is what comes to mind. 2) Ergo, from none of these above statements should it be taken that I am trying to develop a typology by which we might categorize people's "incarnational" thinking. Any one person using the word probably slides around and through these 'categories' very freely. If not already, the reason for the categories will become apparent in my next post.

Next up: Why I no longer use the word "incarnational," and why you shouldn't either.

Index: Part I Part II Part III Part IV (not yet published)

As I think about the trip now, I have two nuggets to share.

1. Dr. Lawler, borrowing a phrase from Pascal, talked about the greatness and misery of the human person, namely that our greatness is our misery. We are the only living creatures we know that are fully aware that they are going to die...and they don't like it one bit. Our misery comes from our awareness of our own impending and necessary deaths and the lack of time and space that gives us to live lives of substance and meaning. Because we are these creatures of both greatness and misery, whenever we advance one aspect, like our greatness, we find ourselves more miserable than before. Lawler likes to use the example of parnaoid soccer moms. How come, in a country that is arguably the safest and healthiest country ever in the history of the world, people are more paranoid and nervous than ever? A quick answer is that as our greatness increases so does our misery. As we've made death more and more accidental, the more and more we fear it.
2. The Chattanooga Choo Choo started running from Cincinnati to Chattanooga in the 1880's. Believe it or not, it was the FIRST railway connecting the North and the South in this way.

As we were looking at the train and having dinner, we wondered how the inevitable culture clash that ended in the American Civil War might have been mitigated if it were just easier to go visit your relatives up North or down South. Without that fast and easy transportation, it's easy to see how the two could see themselves as truly separate cultures and, for the South, countries.

That's that. Let me know what you think.

In the past few decades, it has become increasingly common for churches to rely on marketing data to determine the shape of their ministry. It is widely accepted that the Church is like any other provider of a commodity – that the desires, expectations, and assumptions of its potential “customers” or “clients” must be honored. In preparing to celebrate Advent this year, I have been inspired by this model of ministry to imagine what might have happened if God had relied on market research to tailor the form of his ministry to mankind. Given the religious and philosophical assumptions in the world 2,000 years ago, I think it’s safe to assume that consumer-defined salvation would not have involved the Incarnation. At best, we might have gotten something like Good Friday, but certainly no Christmas, and maybe no Easter.

As St. Paul observed in his visit to Athens, the world of his day included many religions, many schemes and strategies to implore deities for mercy and favor. The idea of the necessity of salvation for human beings was not as implausible then as it is for us now. Israel understood the need for salvation, the need for forgiveness in light of human sin. The descendants of Abraham believed in the coming of Messiah, but most likely the idea that their God would enter human history as a human being was not widely entertained, in spite of the fact that one of God’s appellations was Immanuel: “God with us.”

The Greco-Roman world believed in something like the Logos, but the idea that the Logos would be made flesh was repugnant (which is one reason why the apostle John is so emphatic about this reality in the prologue to his gospel). The idea that the Being above all being would become a baby in need of care was metaphysically incorrect. The Greco-Roman mind could not imagine that (in the words of theologian Michael Williams): “The power that called the world into being [could take] on the weakness of creatureliness. Contrary to the universality and changelessness sought by the philosophies of Greece, John declares that meaning and truth are to be found in historical particularity, a specific historical person: Jesus of Nazareth, the Word become flesh. The scandal of the Christian faith is that God became flesh in Jesus Christ.”

If God had been looking for a way to establish a plausible, immediately recognizable religious brand in the region around the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago – a product that would meet the felt needs of the residents of Syria, Asia, Macedonia, and Italy of that period – it would certainly not have included something as humble as the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

A religious program modeled after the natural human expectations may have included something like the cross. It may have included a desire to be right with God, to be delivered from death and judgment and anxiety and strife. Even a “consumer-driven” religion might well require a Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But in God’s own redemptive plan, the Lamb of God is also the Son of Man. The cross which accomplishes our salvation is bracketed by a manger and an empty tomb, which define the shape of our redemption as something with human, earthly consequences. More than just a logical precondition for the Atonement, the Incarnation also establishes the trajectory for our new life as a truly human life. There is a theological link between confidence in the full humanity of Jesus and a recognition of the ramifications of our salvation across the full range of our own humanity, across all of the ways in which we engage God’s creation.

Much of modern culture, with its Gnostic undertones, alienates us from creation and its givenness. Theologian Colin Gunton sees the affirmation of the Incarnation as essential to our enthusiastic participation in creation and therefore in cultural life. “A world that owes its origin to a God who makes it with direct reference to one who was to become incarnate – part of that world – is a world that is a proper place for human beings to use their senses, minds and imaginations, and to expect that they will not be wholly deceived in doing so.”

Christians have the only account of human and natural origins that can give cultural life meaning. But even after 2,000 years of opportunity to reflect on the Incarnation, many contemporary Christians persist in believing in a Gnostic salvation, a salvation that has no cultural consequences. In such a dualistic understanding, our souls are saved, the essential immaterial aspect of our being is made right with God, but the actions of our bodies – what we actually do in space and time – are a matter of indifference if not futility. Salvation is an inward matter only. It affects our attitudes and some of our ideas. But insofar as our cultural activities have any Christian significance it is as mere marketing efforts – things we do to attract others to our essentially Gnostic salvation.

Believing in a gospel that has few earthly consequences is, ironically, just the sort of state our secularist neighbors would wish us to sustain. They, too, are dualists, believing that religion may be a fine thing for people, so long as they keep it private. Their secularism isn’t threatened by Christians as long as they aren’t too “Incarnational.” As long as the cultural lives of Christians aren’t significantly different from those of materialists and pagans, secularism is safe. Christians may pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but as long as they don’t actually do anything that demonstrates how such a petition should affect their political, economic, and cultural activities, the Enlightenment legacy is safe.

A hearty appreciation of the meaning of the Incarnation could deliver us from serving the interests of secularists. In his recent book Far as the Curse is Found, Michael Williams writes that in his gospel, “John does not conceive of Christ as a Gnostic heavenly Savior who comes from heaven to bring souls trapped in the world back to their home above. Rather, Jesus comes to bring his people eternal life on earth, a life that will mean the resurrection of the body at the last day.” Later in his book, Williams argues that the Incarnation is evidence that in saving his people, God does not thereby abandon his creation. “By participating in our reality, the Man from heaven affirms the goodness of creaturely life, the redeemability of creation and creaturely existence. The gospel is not the fracture of heaven and earth but the wedding of the two, embodied as they both are in the incarnation of the one who is vere Deus (‘fully divine’) and vere Homo (‘fully human’). In the incarnation God declared his intentions not only for humanity but also for all creation. The creation is as much an object of the sovereign love and redemption of God as is the soul of man.” …

I began this letter by suggesting that a religion shaped by popular opinion would not have involved the Incarnation. Similarly, religious practices shaped by raw consumer preferences are unlikely to resist disordered cultural fashions. As long as people assume that religion is a matter of cleaning up their inner lives, of changing only their hearts, they will choose forms of religion that fit the cultural conventions with which they are at home. As long as they are essentially dualists, as long as they think of religion as something detached from their humanity in all of its details, the claim that some cultural forms honor the order of God’s Creation better than others will remain implausible to them. Unless the Church bears witness to this idea, unless the Church takes cultural life seriously enough to be willing to make distinctions between healthy and unhealthy cultural forms, neither seekers nor disciples are likely to get beyond their dualism.

Let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to save his neighbor's proposition than to condemn it. If he cannot save it, let him inquire how he means it; and if he means it badly, let him correct him with charity. If that is not enough, let him seek all the suitable means to bring him to mean it well, and save himself.

For a full commentary on this quote, see here.

Religious Nuts

There were four country churches in a small Texas town: The Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church and the Catholic Church. Each church was overrun with pesky squirrels.

One day, the Presbyterian Church called a meeting to decide what to do about the squirrels. After much prayer and consideration they determined that the squirrels were predestined to be there and they shouldn't interfere with God's divine will.

In the Baptist Church the squirrels had taken up habitation in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a cover on the baptistery and drown the squirrels in it. The squirrels escaped somehow and there were twice as many there the next week.

The Methodist Church got together and decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God's creation. So, they humanely trapped the Squirrels and set them free a few miles outside of town. Three days later, the squirrels were back.

But -- The Catholic Church came up with the best and most effective solution. They baptized the squirrels and registered them as members of the church. Now they only see them on Christmas and Easter.

I dare you to get organized.

…and post a comment below!

Well, I should be more precise. I don't play the Star Wars RPG. I game master it. As GM, I'm responsible for narrating the world, describing the actions of non-player characters, making sure the game runs according to the rules. For instance, my four wonderful players' characters enter a cantina. I'm responsible to tell them what's special about the cantina, what kind of music is playing, how the tables are arranged, and what kinds of aliens are lined up at the bar. I also have to make those aliens come alive to the players. One of them has been nursing a grudge, for instance, and is looking for revenge. When the Gungan, grudge-carrying, vibro-axe wielding thug finally makes her move, I have to make sure the combat rules are taken into account. And this scene is part of a larger story, one that has its own goals, and is the conjunction of this larger story and the individual stories of the character's involved.

I love GM'ing.

I also love theology.

From many hours of practice in both RPG's and theology, I think there is this similarity worth noting: both GM'ing and theologizing are about narrating an unseen world and encouraging participation in it.

In Star Wars, the unseen world exists in the imagination and provides a context for heroic deeds and epic story-telling. In Christian faith, the unseen world exists all around us (if we have the eyes to see it) and provides a context . . . for heroic deeds and epic story-telling. There is a huge difference, though, since a 'heroic deed' is something far different in Star Wars than in Christianity. In one, the hero (Luke) overthrows the tyrant (the Emperor) through strength and honor. In the other, the hero (Jesus) overthrows the tyrant (Sin, Death, the Devil, and our twisted hearts) through weakness and shame. The similarities illumine the differences.

In the Star Wars RPG, I'm GM'ing, but I'd be bummed if the players just stared at me. I want the players to play the game, to participate in the world we're creating together. In Christian faith, I'm theologizing, sure, but I'd be really bummed if the people I'm around and with didn't have eyes to see the unseen world impinging on their own meager constructions, to really participate in the inbreaking Kingdom of God. In one, I narrate an escape from reality into an alternate, sub-reality. In the other, I want to narrate an escape to Reality, the reality as described, lived, and enacted in the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Again the similarities illumine the differences.

In conclusion, I do want to highlight one similarity as a type of analogical apology for theologizing. Without good GM'ing, the players can't 'see' the world in which they must play. They stumble blindly without guidance. Similarly, without good theology, Christians can't 'see' the world in which they are already playing the wrong game. In both, knowing the 'rules' is not enough, getting together in a gaming 'community' is not enough. Both require clear and evocative presentations of the world in which we play. Without that, both RPGs and Christian faith fall into meaninglessness. Insofar as the GM and the theologian can clearly and evocatively present the world (and are freed by their communities to do that), they will bring life and goodness. Insofar as they do not (or are not free to), they will bring darkness and illusion. Abuse does not bar use. Gamers call for good gamemasters. Christians should call for good theologians.

Abuse does not bar use.

The solution to abuse is not disuse but proper use.

In the polemics (generally between liberals and conservatives) there is an over-emphasis on either Faith or Obedience to the point where, rhetorically, it's stated, rather baldly, that one could be had without the other. Such a patently absurd statement is not what most of the polemicists actually believe, but they continue along their rhetorical path because they haven't heeded the above rules. Examples: since all those 'orthodox' talk about is faith, then we can't talk about belief, only practice, or belief subsumed into practice, OR since all those 'liberals' talk about is social justice, we should stay away from talk about justice, only faith, or practice subsumed into faith.

What both sides miss is the inherent relationship between faith and obedience, one that's typified in a relationship of unity and distinction. For the Christian, faith and obedience can be distinguished from one another, but they cannot be separated. Faith without work is dead (see James). Work without faith is meaningless.

And all this was prompted by the Psalm (119) from the Daily Office today:

98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.

99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.

100 I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts.

9 So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, "Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed."

11 But Naaman went away angry and said, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a rage.

13 Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!" 14 So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Naaman's servant really understood his master (and, I think, us). He understood that we want to really contribute to our salvation. We want to do a "great thing" (v. 13). We want it to count. We don't want to be told to go take another bath. In our case, we don't really want to be told to repent and believe the good news (Mk 1:15), but as we stand at Elisha's door, we are told to do just that. How many of us go away angry from our wounded pride with no one to bring us back? How often do we refuse to listen to the voice of God when He commands the mundane?

recently and find myself repeating Inigo Montoya's famous line:

"That word, you keep using it. I don't think it means what you think it means."

Of course, he is a Catholic which doesn't help this Protestant very much. If you want this delightful experience yourself, you can read Rohr, or maybe this guy, for yourself.

(at the suggestion of Dixon Kinser), and I have to say that I found this book extremely helpful in thinking about how communities form and how organizations can help promote community space.

Myers describes four different spaces in which we can experience significant belonging: the public, social, personal, and intimate. He argues (based on the work of Edward T. Hall) that human beings need significant connections in each of these spaces in order to be healthy. Myers contends that the "chemical compound" of healthy belonging is 8 parts public, 4 parts social, 2 parts personal, and 1 part intimate.

Here's how he defines the spaces (142-143):

Public Space Public bleonging occurs when people connect through an outside influence. Fans of a sports team experience a sense of community because they cheer for the same team. They wear official garb, buy special broadcast viewing privileges, and stay up too late or get up extra early just to see the results of the game. These relationships carry great significance in our lives.

Social Space Social belonging occurs when we share "snapshots" of what it would be like to be in personal space with us. The phrases "first impression" and "best foot forward" refer to this spatial belonging. You belong socially to your favorite bank teller, your pharmacist, and some of the people with whom you work.

Social belonging is important for two reasons. First, it provides the space for "neighbor" relationships. A neighbor is someone you know well enough to ask for (or provide) small favors. Second, it is important because it provides a safe "selection space or sorting space" for those with whom you would like to develop a "deeper" relationship. In social space we provide the information that helps others decide whether they connect with us. We get just enough information to decide to keep this person in this space or move them to another space.

Personal Space Through personal belonging, we share private (not "naked") experiences, feelings, and thoughts. We call the people we connect to in this space "close friends." They are those who know more about us than an acquaintance would, yet not so much that they feel uncomfortable.

Intimate Space In intimate belonging, we share "naked" experiences, feelings, and thoughts. We have very few relationships that are intimate. These people know the "naked truth" about us and the two of us are not "ashamed."

Having a language to describe these relationships and knowing there might be a "harmony" among them (in that 8:4:2:1 ratio) is extremely helpful in thinking through church dynamics. It helps answer the question about why, if true belonging is every congregant in a small group, the highest success rates for small group participation is somewhere around 30%. Part of the problem is that for many the 'ideal' for small group space is intimate space. But, it's difficult for human beings to handle having so many people in intimate space! Churches that have the "move in or move out" mentality to their small group ministry promote only the Public and the Intimate. No wonder that people get lost--there's hardly any social or personal space for them to connect!

Myers argues that social space is especially important and that we should all try to develop "front porches," neutral social spaces where people feel welcome but safe. Our society creates these spaces in places like Starbucks or some strip malls. They are easy places to be with new people. It's neutral ground, neither entirely public nor private. It's social space that keeps us from rushing headlong into the more personal or intimate spaces of the home.

For me, this has helped me think about GCF's small group ministry. The current "backbone" of our work is small groups and large group. Small groups meet 3x a month, and the fourth week of the month, everyone gets together for large group. Small groups are for spiritual formation and large group is for community. But, I needn't think that small groups have to be either personal or intimate to help with individual spiritual formation. Many of our grad students are adults with established significant personal and intimate relationships. If we can help them connect with other Christian scholars in social spaces, then we'll allow them the freedom and space to grow spiritually and in community with others.

I'm very grateful this book came along when it did, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking through issues of personal or communal relationship. You'll be freed and helped by the discussion!

The good news of the gospel brings with it the promise of vocation, a calling to good works that God has prepared for each one of us as we follow Christ. In finding and fulfilling this vocation, we are led to human flourishing, not only for ourselves but also for our neighbors.

If you're interested in learning more about the Following Christ conference, be sure to check out this announcement.

Which is why we are so thankful for the body of Christ! In the body, the weaknesses of one part are helped by the strengths of the others. For GCF, this means partnering with others in the body around Nashville.

St. George's Church, starting Sep 12, is hosting an Alpha Course. Alpha was developed in England, and is a safe way for people curious about Christianity to learn more. I'm happy to announce GCF's partnership with Alpha. If you're a Christian grad student who is struggling to share your faith with your questioning colleagues, invite them to an Alpha course. Send me an email (jason_ingalls@ivstaff.org) to get more information.

The quarter's bog contains the following titles. The first four are group discussion guides. Of the lot, I think Gracism intrigues me the most. I'll post book notes on the ones I end up reading.

Who Was Jesus? by Scot McKnight

Can I Trust the Bible? by Darrell L. Bock

What is Truth? by Paul Copan and Mark Linville

Is God Real? by William Lane Craig and Charles Taliaferro

Jesus without Religion: What did he say? What did he do? What's the point? by Rick James

Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus by Timothy Paul Jones

Gracism: The Art of Inclusion

by David A. Anderson

I picked up Heather Webb's, Small Group Leadership as Spiritual Direction the other day. A quick read, Webb lays a foundation of what small groups tend to look like, talks about spiritual direction as a practice, reviews the interaction of direction with postmodernism and issues like sin and disclosure in small group settings, and offers three models for small group that are "directed" instead of "led."

The three new models are the "story-centered group," the "text-centered group," and the "prayer-centered group." Her descriptions of these are brief but compelling and may be worth the price of the book.

Some salutary quotes: "On a rudimentary level, spiritual direction involves two people growing in their understanding of what it means to love God and others" (59).

"This is what spiritual direction is all about. It is pointing out God to someone who might not recognize God's voice" (58).

"Many spiritual directors dislike the term 'director' and prefer words that connote coming alongside someone, such as being a 'midwife.' The director is not leading as much as assisting in the birthing of deeper faith. The director is a friend or a wise mentor to the one in the process of rediscovering God. . . . Spiritual directors struggle with the directee, relying on God's Spirit to serve as the catalytic force for spiritual maturity" (64).

"Rather than seeing direction as a movement inward, it should be seen as the process of moving upward and outward toward God and others" (67).

"The art of spiritual direction can help create a bridge between our faith and the world in which we live [and] will have dialogue at its core. . . . The bridge metaphor means we can walk across without abandoning the starting point. . . . To be on a bridge, we must have a starting point. It is, then, essential that spiritual directors know what they believe. . . . In the face of difference, we have an opportunity to enter mystery that reminds us of our need to trust a God who is bigger than our boxes for God. We are reminded of a world larger than our own" (88-89).

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“Follow Me”

When Monique and I lived in Princeton, we went with a group of people to a big, free concert in Philadelphia. Being outdoors, it was sticky, hot, and there were people everywhere! I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a setting like this, but it’s kindof like being in laneless, rush-hour traffic. People push and push to get the best seats, or the seats in the shade, or the seats that you’re aiming to get right then just because you’re aiming to get them. With people everywhere, faces pointed in all different directions, how do you keep a group together?

The method we devised was the hand-to-shoulder line. The lead person looked ahead, spotting holes that would allow our movement, but everyone else kept their eyes (and hands) on the person in front of them. With one person cutting the trail, we could make better progress than any one of us doing it by ourselves. But you did have to hold on and stay focused! If you lost concentration, you would be easily separated from the line by the press of the crowd.

[Page One: Jesus is leaving people behind] From our passage today, there is nothing more ominous than the line from verse 51: “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” More literally, “Jesus set his face for Jerusalem.” The time is approaching for Jesus to be taken into heaven, and Jesus, knowing this, resolves in himself that nothing will stop his journey to Mt. Zion. Whereas Jesus showed patience before, now he is leaving people behind. Jesus is on his way.

The Samaritans cannot stand this. They do not welcome Jesus, because Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus will stand for no complacency here. If the Samaritans will not allow Jesus to stay one night and then depart for Jerusalem, then Jesus will not stay. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and anyone who wants a tame Rabbi is getting left behind.

The man who is walking along the road cannot stand this. He thinks that he will follow Jesus wherever he goes, but Jesus lets the man know that while the foxes and birds have places to rest, there is no rest for the Son of Man. Jesus in on his way to Jerusalem, and anyone who wants comfort is getting left behind.

Jesus pauses briefly to say to another man, “Follow me.” But, the man replies, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus retorts sharply, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and anyone who puts their family first is getting left behind.

“Still another says, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.’ Jesus replies, ‘No one who put his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God.’” Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and cannot stop or look back, and anyone who is hesitant or wants to wait or hedge their bets is getting left behind when they lose their grip on Jesus’ shoulder in the press of their lives. There are too many worries and cares in their world. The people left in Jesus’ wake must be thinking, “What could I have done to be worthy to follow this Jesus?”

[Page Two: Jesus is leaving the world behind] Last week, we talked about Jesus’ command for his disciples to take up their cross daily to follow him. Jesus, though once for all crucified, dead, buried, raised again, and ascended, still is leading disciples to Jerusalem by his Holy Spirit. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and he’s leaving the world behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will sit and stay awhile. Like the Samaritans, they don’t want a Jesus who is on his way to Jerusalem. They want a Jesus who will give them pearls of wisdom instead of pain. They want a Jesus who will show them wonderful mysteries instead of their sin. But, Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants a tame Rabbi is getting left behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will give rest for their heads. They want a Psalm 23 Jesus, a Jesus who comforts them when they are sad but never saddens them when they are comforted. But, the Son of Man has no place to rest his head. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants peace instead of a spiritual sword is getting left behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will put their family first. They want a Jesus that will teach them how to be good husbands and wives, but they don’t want a Jesus who might tell them that they’re loving their spouses or children or friends more than they’re loving God. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants a stable society is getting left behind.

The people of the world want a Jesus who will pause a moment so they can say goodbye to their old lives. They want a Jesus who sympathizes with their secret sins, but they don’t want a Jesus who wants to forgive and forget them. They just want to say goodbye to their past, but Jesus is focused on the future. Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem, and the world that wants to hedge its bets is getting left behind.

The world has too many worries and cares, too many broken relationships, too much difficulty with obedience. Left behind by Jesus, the must sometimes wonder, “How could we have made ourselves worthy to follow this Jesus?”

[Page Three: Jesus is taking his disciples with him (even though they don’t deserve it)] Looking back at our passage for today, we might find it difficult to believe that people are actually making this trip with Jesus. This ragtag group of disciples is somehow keeping up a good hand on Jesus’ shoulder as they make their way through the crowd to Jerusalem!

They make their first appearance in verse 52, sent out as messengers in front of Jesus to make a room ready for him in the Samaritan village. Not only are they coming along behind, but they’re being sent out ahead. The disciples seem to be doing just fine, until they hit a bump in the road: the Samaritans want Jesus to stay a while…since the disciples tell them he won’t, they choose not to welcome him. When Jesus walks into the village, the disciples report the indignity and ask Jesus for permission to call fire down from heaven to destroy them. Jesus stops walking only for a moment to turn and rebuke them before walking to the next village. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and the disciples who want righteous anger from their Lord are getting…left behind? No, for some reason they aren’t. For some mysterious reason, Jesus is taking his disciples with him to Jerusalem whether they deserve it or not.

For some reason, Jesus has chosen this ragtag bunch, and he’s not leaving them behind. This point is reiterated over and over again in the Gospels. Jesus is about preaching the Kingdom of God, but his disciples don’t get it. Jesus is about healing the sick, but the disciples are in it for the power. Jesus is about dying for sinners in Jerusalem, but the disciples scatter at the first sign of trouble. When they ask the question, “How can we be worthy to follow Jesus?” they can’t find a good answer. They aren’t worthy in the least, but Jesus persists in bringing them along. Pressed by the crowd, by the concerns of the world, the disciples lose their grip on Jesus shoulder, but instead of getting left behind or lost in the crowd, they find that Jesus has reached behind him to grab their hand. Jesus persists in holding on to their hand even when they persist in letting go of his. Jesus is creating obedience in them, leading them to make the hard decisions, the decisions that hurt.

[Page Four: Jesus is taking us with him] Perhaps the number one evidence of our faith is that people keep on following this Jesus. As he runs ahead, not only our world but we ourselves fall behind. The world loses touch with Jesus and creates images or replicas of him, but some, some of us, even, persist in following Jesus to Jerusalem. What is there to explain this? Only one thing, and it is not a “what,” it is a “who.” Jesus is taking us with him, even though we don’t deserve it, through his free grace.

St. John wrote that Jesus is the eternal Word of God and that the Father created the world through this Word. Human beings were created to follow the Word through his world, one hand on his shoulder on a guided tour of the richness and depth of all that God had created for us. But, there was a test, a test that we failed. At the simple allure of the serpent, Adam and Eve let go of the Word’s shoulder and fell behind and were lost.

All of us their children are also lost. The tempting voice of the serpent has been multiplied thousands of times over as he speaks in other people’s voices. We were lost. But the Word, always moving forward to Jerusalem from all eternity, moved back into our world when he took on flesh and walked among us as Jesus Christ. This time the Word resolved not to let us fall behind. In becoming a human being, he persists in holding onto our hands. In taking us with him to the cross, he has killed the world in us. In taking us with him through his resurrection, he has given us a new start and a promise that he will never let go of us. In taking us with him in his ascension, he has given us the promise of new and eternal life, as St. Paul said in Colossians: we are now hidden with Christ in God.

Jesus is, as the book of Hebrews puts it, the author of our faith. He is the pioneer who cuts the trail ahead of us. This trail leads us necessarily to suffering and a death to ourselves and to our wants in the world, but it also leads us to resurrection and the glory of new life. Hidden with Christ in God, we are now becoming what God has claimed that we are in Jesus Christ. Those things that you know you should do but are putting off are already done and completed in Christ. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus is making you the person that is hidden with Christ in God. You might be scared of asking forgiveness from a person in this room, but in Jesus, you are already the person who has experienced that pain, embarrassment, and sorrow and come through the other side. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus is making you the person that is hidden with Christ in God. You might be hurting others by what you say and do, but in Jesus Christ that part of you is already dead and a new life of love has been raised. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus is making you the person that is hidden with Christ in God. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and, thanks be to God, he is taking us with him, holding on to our hands, and making sure we don’t get lost in the crowd, even though we don’t deserve it. Amen.

Both Sundays, I preached the Gospel text from the Revised Common Lectionary. It's fun, and just a little demanding, to hear God's Word for a specific situation from a text you didn't choose. My experience the last two weeks reemphasizes to me that the whole Gospel can be found in all the Bible's parts.

Note: There was a commissioning service for Stephen Ministers this Sunday. Stephen Ministries is a lay pastoral care program. Also, the brackets indicate the sections of the sermon. I follow very closely Paul Scott Wilson's The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Guide to Biblical Preaching(I think this is a must have and highly practical guide to preaching well; I read it through again in preparing my sermons this year, and, 2 years after preaching class, I love it even more).

Luke 9:18-24

“The Christ of God”

[Introduction] From time to time, we all say things that we don’t really understand. The boy who sees a girl and says, “I’m going to marry that girl” will only proudly remember he said that if he marries her. “For better or worse ‘til death do us part,” sounds poetic until the worse comes and we realize what we really said. The quick-spoken and short, “I hope you have children just like you,” from an exasperated parent hangs like a curse over the child when, as nature seems to have it, they DO start having children just like them. We say these things, they almost slip past our lips, and then, only later, do we really realize what they mean. This is the hidden power of our cutting words, promises, and confessions.

[Page 1: The disciples had to lose their lives]“‘But what about you?” Jesus asked the disciples. ‘Who do you say that I am?’”

Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”

When the other Gospels record this event, Jesus makes a much bigger deal out of Peter’s confession, saying things like, “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven,” or, “You are Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church.” In other words, he couldn’t have come up with this on his own. Our reading from Luke today highlights the same reality in a different aspect. Luke highlights that Peter didn’t realize the full import of his confession. He didn’t realize that in proclaiming Jesus the Christ of God, he really was signing his own death sentence. For this confession, he would have to lose his life.

For Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

Verse 18 sets the stage. Jesus is praying in private and his disciples are with him. He asks them, “Who do the crowds say I am?” Up to this point, he has been healing and ministering and preaching, and it’s time for the quarterly evaluation of the congregation and the leadership.

The disciples respond quickly. “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.” The crowd, apparently, is only saying good things, or the disciples are editing. It doesn’t seem to matter to Jesus.

“But what about you?”

“The Christ of God.”

Peter is right, but he didn’t understand what his confession really means. This is why Jesus commands them to be silent. If the people who have been with Jesus day in and day out don’t understand yet, then surely the majority of the crowd will not either. Jesus tells him that the Christ MUST suffer and be rejected, killed, and raised. Not only that, those who want to follow the Christ of God have to follow the same path. The disciples MUST deny themselves and take up crosses daily to follow. In the other Gospels, it’s here that Peter rebukes Jesus, and where Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan.” Peter doesn’t want to have his glorious dreams of a Messiah torn down into this divine MUST. Peter wans a glorious Christ, but Jesus tells him that he MUST have a broken, torn, and defeated Christ. He wants a glorious place beside Christ, but Jesus tells him that he MUST lose his life in order to save it. In the end, Peter has become so focused on his life goals and expectations that he wants Jesus to conform to his expectations. But instead Jesus says to Peter that he must lose his life if he wants to save it.

[Page 2: We have to lose our lives] And the same is true for us: We have to lose our lives if we want to save them. You see, our problem is much like the disciples’. When Jesus puts the question to us about what the world is saying about him, we can say all kinds of things. “Well, Jesus, the world thinks you’re a great moral teacher, a political revolutionary, an advocate for the poor, a path to mystical enlightenment.”

“But who do you say that I am?”

By now, we expect this question and well up with pride because we know the answer: “You’re the Christ of God, only begotten Son of the Father, the Word incarnate, one Person with two Natures, God’s Revelation and the path to Reconciliation, our Salvation and our Promise of everlasting life.”

But, Jesus says to us as he said to his disciples, “I may be all those things, but my path isn’t one of glory but one of a cross. My path will lead you to participate with me in my cross. My path will cause you to lose your life in order to save it.”

The costs are steep. Hate your father and mother, Jesus says at one point. Pluck out your eye if it’s causing you to sin. Seek first the kingdom of God. Leave family and friends for the sake of the Gospel. We have to lose our lives. This is the divine MUST that we come up against as disciples. Jesus must suffer and die. We must participate in that suffering by laying down our lives as well. We must lose our lives if we want to confess him as the Christ of God.

But, like Peter, we don’t want to. We like to hold on to our Messianic dreams. We want to be successful. We want to be rich and powerful. We want to be recognized and respected (and, by the way, will break relationship with almost anyone over the smallest slight, compounding sin with sin until we get what we deserve). We will hold on to institution and power even at the expense of others. But Jesus says that we must lose our lives.

Since we want glorious lives, we seek to follow successful people, and we event twist our confession of Jesus to make him the kind of person we want to be ourselves. We want Jesus to be a great business person. We want Jesus to be a great counselor. We want Jesus to be an All-American athlete or a biker or a hip, relevant, Birkenstock-wearing yuppie. We want Jesus to lift weights at God’s Gym or cast ballots, depending on who we like at the time, either for elephants or donkeys. In the end, we have become so focused on ourselves that we don’t want to participate in Jesus’ life. We want Jesus to participate in ours. But, Jesus says, we must lose our lives if we want to save them. But, we don’t want to.

[Page 3: God saved Jesus’ life] Verse 22: “And he said, ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Thanks be to God: the end of Jesus’ life is not the end of the story. His disciples expected a Messiah to come in glory, but Jesus knew that he MUST suffer and be killed before the glory of the Resurrection. Jesus gave up his life, but God saved it on the third day. God saved Jesus’ life.

This is an important thing to consider. Jesus, fully God and fully human, walked among us for a short time. In that time, he lived in complete obedience to the Father, even to death on the cross. He lived in that divine MUST with his face pointed to a cross and walked the road from his birth to his death in humility and righteousness. When he submitted himself to this final death, he submitted himself as the Christ of God, the Messiah who everyone felt was supposed to be a hero, but instead was a servant. After he was killed, God raised him from the dead. God saved Jesus’ life.

So, when Jesus told the disciples’ that they had to lose their lives in order to save them, this was in the background. He was losing his life. The disciples were to take up their cross and follow Jesus. The life of the disciple is the life of walking with Jesus into Jerusalem at the end of his ministry, into pain, suffering, and death with a joy, a peace, and a confidence that God is in control. Jesus promises that if they would participate in his death by taking up their cross and following him in faith and obedience, then they will also be raised together with Christ in his resurrection. God saved Jesus’ life from the tomb, so also will God save their lives from shame, suffering, and death.

And from what we know, the disciples trusted God in this. They embraced Jesus’ cross and lived their lives as lost for his sake and the Gospel. It is said that some were crucified like Jesus, others were fed to lions, still others were flayed alive. But, first, because they lived their lives as lost, they experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and saw God saving thousands of people’s lives all over the world. The Scripture tells us about the communion of saints in which these apostles’ now live, and it promises for them and for us the final resurrection from the dead. It’s interesting that many tradition churches when they come to the part of the Nicene Creed that mentions the resurrection from the dead, they cross themselves. The path to resurrection is through the cross.

[Page 4: God will save our lives] Because God was faithful to raise his Son Jesus from the dead, he will raise everyone who believes. God saved Jesus’ life, and God will save our lives, too. If we make the confession that he is the “Christ of God,” we will of necessity find ourselves in pain, sorrow, and suffering, but we will endure these things for the joy set before us. St. Paul put it this way in Philippians 3: “I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead.”

We cannot earn the resurrection—there is only following Jesus along his way to the cross. First we believe that Jesus lived, died, and rose again on the third day for us and in our place. Our first step along the path is to lose our lives to God in faith.

Second, by God’s grace, we have to lose our lives in service to God and others. Faith is followed necessarily by obedience. God has saved our life already, so we need to let God worry about the results of our obedience, about the clothes on our back, about the hairs on our heads. Trust and obey, the old song says, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.

It’s appropriate at this point to mention those who are being commissioned today to the Stephen Ministry. In an intense training period, they have learned to see themselves as caregivers to people in need. They are people who seek to care but not, interestingly enough, to cure. They have been taught to live in the reality that since God saved Jesus’ life, he is the one who will save all our lives. They know they are only caregivers, and God is the cure giver. For those of you receiving the commissioning, you are today promising to bear a cross. You are promising to bear with and listen to people in their grief, in their sorrow, and in their pain. You are promising to lose yourself in service to God by serving others. I pray that God shows you his peace and joy along the path down which he has called you.

Following Jesus on the way of the cross is what we all do, whether we realize the import of our words or not, when we with Peter make the confession that Jesus is the Christ of God. It’s not a comfortable trip, but it is the trip to which God has called us and by which God will save us. Montgomery Evangelical Free Church, hear the good news of the Gospel: God raised Jesus from the dead; therefore we too will be raised if we lay down our lives in faith and obedience to the Christ of God.

Let us pray.

[The prayer included some of these thoughts] There are resentments here, some petty, some serious, that have broken relationships in your body. There are people here too caught up in themselves to realize that the glory and respect they desire is due only to Christ, who died for them that they might die to their pride. Break hearts, dear Lord, that you might mend them. Break silences, dear Lord, that you might heal wounds. Whatever is the reason for these problems, Holy Spirit, cause these people to lose their lives at this point so they may experience your reconciling power.

1) So far, I have been sketching a non-theological, analytical argument about relevance. I, being a theologian, have not been able to keep theological language completely out, but I have attempted to do so.

2) Thanks to Travis' and Tim's comments, I realize that I need to make a distinction between objective and subjective relevance. Objectively, the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are relevant to each and every individual because their lives forever have been determined by the Person and Work of Christ. Subjectively, the claims of the Gospel are relevant only to those people who have the ability (read: have been given the ability) to see themselves as addressed by it. They have made themselves (read: have been made) relevant to the Gospel (they have been changed to see themselves as addressees) and in so doing, the Gospel "has become" subjectively what it always already is, something that matters.

3) Given this, subsuming subjective into objective relevance is something we should avoid for it makes us both less aware of ourselves and less aware of the other. As the Gospel becomes more subjectively relevant to us, it matters more to us; that is, as we come to see ourselves and our lives as being encompassed by this story, then we find that the story has more importance than we thought it did, and because we have been changed to fit the story, we are more open to seeing how the story (in Tim's words) might be shown to be relevant to the people around us. But, to show the Gospel's objective relevance is the same as making space for the change in the other individual that establishes the reciprocal, subjective relevance I was referencing in my last post.

Before moving to a sketched theological account, are there any other clarifications I need to make?

Point 1: "Relevance is a two-place predicate." This means that the sentence "That song is just so relevant" is actually not a sentence at all. Relevance is an idea that links two other ideas. Something cannot be just "relevant." That something must be relevant to something else.

Point 2: "Relevance is reciprocal." In other words, relevance is a two-way street. If A is relevant to B, then by definition B is relevant to A. The person I heard this from first (Professor James Hall in his Learning Company Philosophy of Religion course) used the analogy of a street. So, for example, if there is a road from Nashville to Franklin then there is also a road from Franklin to Nashville. If you cut off Nashville from Franklin, then you have also cut off Franklin from Nashville.

Now, that is about as far as I got in the last post. But, given these two points, I think there are some interesting implications that we need to deal with in relationship to the way we as Christians think about relevance.

Implication 1: There are three ways to establish relevance. 1) You can change A to make it relevant to B. 2) You can change B to make it relevant to A. 3) Or, you can change both A and B to make them relevant to one another.

With relevance, we are dealing with ideas, not roads. We can't just 'build a road' from A to B and leave A and B unchanged. If A and B are not already relevant then something must change in them in order to make them relevant to one another.

And, given our definitions, doing any of these three things will establish relevance both directions, for if A is relevant to B, then B is relevant to A.

Implication 2: If A is unchanging, then B must change in order to establish relevance, and vice versa. And, as we've already stated, if B changes to establish relevance with A, then A is relevant to B.

Now, I was raised with the battle cry, "The Gospel must be made relevant!" Let's do a little analysis. First, this is an incomplete sentence. Let's add the second predicate: "The Gospel must be made relevant to our culture," I think is what these people meant.

Now in order to establish relevance, one of three things can happen. 1) The Gospel can change to be made relevant to the culture. 2) The culture can change to be made relevant to the Gospel. 3) Or, both can change in order to be made relevant to one another.

Can we establish relevance through any of these procedures? Can we change the Gospel? Can we change our culture? I'm going to assume the answer is "No" to both of these questions. As we've seen in previous centuries, especially in Europe, the attempt to change the Gospel to be relevant to the culture ended in the pseudo-Gospel of classical Liberalism (there goes #1). As we've seen in the last century, we can't assert enough influence over even our own nation to change it to be relevant to the Gospel (there goes #2). If we can change neither of the predicates, then we can certainly not alter both in order to establish relevance (there goes #3). For us, this means that there is no direct way to establish relevance between the Gospel and our culture. We either need to make our goal smaller, or give up.

Since, I still think relevance is a good goal to shoot for, let's try a bit smaller: "The Gospel must be relevant to our communities." I think we're starting to get there with this statement. In our communities of faith, we can begin to see how the community might be changed in order to make them relevant to the Gospel (and thus establish relevance between the Gospel and the community). Norms of common life can be established that allow a community to see themselves as part of the Gospel story, that understand the language of sin and redemption, that reach out to others in the name of Jesus Christ. When communities change themselves to become relevant to the Gospel, the Gospel becomes relevant to them and through them may become relevant to people entering the doors.

But, that's still probably not enough. Any church leader can put structures in place that should, in theory, make a community relevant to the Gospel, but that leader will only be frustrated if the liturgy is perfect but the people aren't paying attention. So, one step smaller again: "The Gospel must be made relevant to you." Or, better, "You must be made relevant to the Gospel." Relevance begins with you. When you take the time to pray, for instance, you are probably doing more for the relevance of the Gospel to the world than any kind of hemhawing with systematic theology.

What does it look like to become relevant to the Gospel? It means that when you read Scripture, the words are ever becoming more relevant to you. Because the Scripture contains the apostolic witness to the Gospel, we must continually go back there to find the place where we might change. When biblical words like 'justice,' 'righteousness,' 'holiness,' 'sacrifice,' 'sin,' 'judgment,' and 'Jesus' become living realities to you, then you know you are becoming more and more relevant to the Gospel since, interestingly enough, the Gospel is becoming more and more relevant to you.

And, since you are a being made up of the world you live in and the communities you thrive in, when you become relevant to the Gospel, the Gospel reaches through you to become relevant to your community and to your world. Only you know what it means to be relevant to the Gospel in your 9-to-5 at Bank of America. As you grow (another metaphor for relevance) in the Gospel, the Gospel will become more and more relevant to Bob, June, and Julie down the hall. We can't make the Gospel relevant to anyone, but we can make ourselves relevant to the Gospel, and in so doing, we will find the Gospel doing its work in the places we live, eat, work, and play. Relevance begins (but certainly doesn't end) with you.

P.S. for my theologian friends: this is not ultimately a theological account because 'relevance' isn't a theological word. A theological account might look slightly different, with obviously more emphasis on the living work of the Spirit in the individual, community, and the world. P.P.S. This account should continue back up through the individual to the community of faith to the world, but it's just a blog. Please don't hear me preaching an individualistic gospel of moral improvement!

The idea for the group came from reformer Martin Luther's Table Talk series, which are (I've been told) a series of books that are nothing more than notes taken on Luther's and his friends theological conversations around the table.

While we're not taking notes, GCF is having TableTalk about once a month during the summer where we get to sit, eat, drink, and imbibe some fine theology. Last month's topic was "Augustine and Pelagius Revisited: Free Will and Determinism in Christian Theology." Sound like too much? It might have been, but the atmosphere at the San Antonio Taco Company (where we're holding these) put us all at ease as we hashed out some of the basic issues in the classical debate over grace, sin, human nature, and free will. Much fun was had by all.

This Friday we're hosting our second TableTalk with the title, "What's God got to do with It?: The Incarnation through the Creeds to Chalcedon." We're going to cover the development of the idea of Jesus' humanity and divinity all the way through the fifth century of the church, spending a little bit of time on St. Athanasius' controversy with Arius and the implications of Chacledonian orthodoxy for the ways we tend to talk about Jesus today. Sound like too much? Well, if you're in town come Friday, come join us at SATCO on the porch at 4:00pm to find out. We'd love to have you join the conversation.

Sometime while I was in college, things started to shift (or, perhaps more likely, I started to notice a shift) in regards to how Christian "stuff" was sold to us. The Prayer of Jabez was the first I really noticed. Not only was the book cute and hugely popular, but all of a sudden you could get all kinds of "stuff" to go with it: calendars, bookmarks, study guides, even Bibles! You could have Prayer of Jabez wall-hangings and refrigerator magnets, journals and stationary. No longer just Christian "stuff," there was some kind of shift towards branded "stuff." (I'm still kindof miffed that I've never seen a Mere Christianity Bible, but I bet I could find one if I looked hard enough).

All of that said, this shift in Christian marketing has made me wary of Christian "stuff," especially the stuff that goes on the wall and becomes nothing more than decoration. Consider this passage from Deuteronomy (11:18-21):

18"You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

Having gotten jaded to Christian stuff because it had become merely stuff, this passage reminds me that things like hanging Scripture on the wall can have a purpose: to teach us and our children to treasure the promises and commands of God. But, woe to those who hang God's Word on the wall merely to look at it or to mark themselves Christian over against the house down the street. Instead let us use them as tools to be reminded daily of God's saving acts on our behalf so that we might prosper in obedience along the way of the cross.

One is the suggestion that what I think is "true for me." This can be used both offensively ("This is true for me and how dare you question it") and defensively ("That may be true for you, but this is true for me"). It's defensive use has the appearance of humility.

But, while it doesn't question another's experience, it also doesn't allow another's experience to touch its viewpoint at all. Relevance, I've been told by a philosopher, is a reciprocal term. That means that if A is relevant to B, then B is relevant to A. In this case, the person who dissembles with the "true for you" statement cuts off their interlocutor from the conversation by saying basically, "Your experience led you to that conclusion, but mine led me to this one. Your experience is irrelevant to what I believe!" In the end, though it seems humble, the "true for me, not for you" line is as dogmatically close-minded as the worst types of fundamentalism, except instead of a fundamentalism based on centuries of accumulation in a sacred text, this fundamentalism is based myopically on an individual's experience.

A silly illustration: Jane points at a cup and says, "That's red." Joe responds, "No, that's closer to salmon." Jane retorts, "It may be salmon to you, but it's red to me!" This may seem of no consequence in talking about a cup, but it becomes even more important when we're talking about God, society, politics, morals, and all the things that effect people every day.

There is a second type of 'relativism,' however, that I think is truly humble. Instead of saying, "This is true for me," it says "This is my best guess." Any "best guess" is going to be based in personal experience, but instead of being dogmatically closed to the experience of others, it is open and assumes that it is attempting to describe a Reality that will either validate or invalidate its claim. By being open to other's experiences, it learns to describe the reality better and better. "My best guess," at its best, is a refining process.

Back to the cup, Jane says, "That's red." Joe responds, "No, that's closer to salmon." Jane replies, "Oh, really? How can you tell the difference?" Instead of maintaining her 'right' to call the cup red, Jane enters into a larger 'reality' of color differentiation.

In this second form of 'relativism,' one holds one's ideas about the world tentatively, and allows them to be questioned both by others and the thing being observed. So, Jane allows her ascription of 'red' to the cup to be challenged and enters into something deeper than she started with. But, the cup itself will also govern the conversation. If the cup were actually green, then the whole conversation above is a farce. While in the first conversation, Jane seeks to push her will onto the cup and uphold her will over against Joe's description, in the second, she submits herself to the reality she finds in the cup through Joe's description. That is the proper ordering, and we would all (especially us believers) do well to remember that when we seek to describe the One who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ our Lord.

As far as sequels go, the newest Shrek installment was a lot of fun. The jokes were jam-packed and replete with pop-culture references. When Shrek and Donkey go to a medieval high school to find Arthur Pendragon, everything is fair game. There's a cheerleading squad in dresses and tall hats using "thee's" and "thou's." Nerds get their heads dunked in chamber pots. Lancelot is head of the jousting team, and Guenevere is the coolest girl in the school. Shrek breaks into a school gathering right after a "Just Say Nay" speech has ended. There's all of that and a lot more in the mix, especially since Arther is the one who will take the throne of Far Far Away.

But that leads me to my gripe for the movie. It feels like I can't see a movie whose moral isn't "Be yourself." Shrek's be-your-self-ness dripped all around the film, especially when Shrek is trying to convince Arthur to take the throne. It seems like the movie exists in a moral universe in which the only good is sincerity and the only evil is insincerity.

But, of course, it doesn't. Prince Charming is full of hubris and is entirely sincere about it. On the other hand, Shrek's character develops as he grows out of being-for-himself into being for his wife and children. The latter is obviously the better path for the Christian (and humanity in general), yet that real gem of selflessness is hidden under the 'moral' that creates Prince Charmings in the first place.

We're getting ready for the summer...more to come on that later. GCF is going to see Shrek the Third on Friday!

1. Tell us about your life. Are you married? Where did you grow up?

I was born and raised in the Hartford, CT area, the oldest of ten children. My father is a Pentecostal pastor, Christian school principal and music teacher, and my mother has been a teacher as well as full-time homemaker (emphasis on full-time!). My home church started a Christian school in our basement when I was starting second grade; the school added a grade level each year until I completed high school. (By that point, thankfully, we had a building!) I married my college sweetheart Carissa in 2002, before my second year of graduate school. We have two children, Bethany and Andrew, both born while I was completing my Ph. D.

1. Tell us about your education. Where, when, and in what have you done coursework?

My undergraduate work was done at Drew University in New Jersey, and of course I attended Vanderbilt for grad school. I majored in physics at Drew and achieved my doctorate in physics at Vanderbilt.

1. Tell us about your faith journey. How did you come to faith in Christ, and how has your faith been strengthened/challenged by your academic calling?

I was raised in the church, and am thankful to say that I can't remember a time when Christ was not a part of my life. I "asked Jesus into my heart" at five years old after listening to a Jimmy Swaggart tape for kids, famously telling my father that I was not going to bed that night until I had done so.

I found that my faith was challenged much more directly in undergrad than in grad school. This is partly due to the fact that we studied such virulently anti-Christian writers as Carl Sagan as part of a course on pseudoscience at Drew. It is also partly due to the fact that my graduate adviser is a religious man and encouraged me quite a bit in my faith during graduate school. While we would disagree on quite a few particulars of doctrine!, we had some basic metaphysical common ground. I would say that most of the faith-challenging features of the academic world came from sources outside Vanderbilt, in the wider scientific community, where philosophical materialism is rampant.

1. Tell us about your involvement with GCF. How has GCF encouraged you in both your faith and your calling?

GCF was a critical part of my spiritual life in graduate school. I became involved right from the start attending the Friday night meetings and attending a book study. I was greatly encouraged to find a community of serious Christian scholars who were unflinchingly committed to Christ and their education. It provided at once a place to think deeply about Christianity and a place to retreat from the pressure of grad school, especially in my first couple of years while I was taking a full courseload. It also provided a regular musical outlet, as I led the singing for those first couple of years.

1. If, based on your journey in faith and academia, you could tell the Church one thing, what would it be?

We must remember that Jesus did not come to save the smart; at the same time, we must remember that we are called to serve the Lord with all our minds.

One of the ways we raise support for the Graduate Christian Fellowship is by hosting desserts in people's homes or churches. GCF provides coffee, cheesecake, toppings, cookies, and a presentation aimed to introduce people to the work GCF is doing at Vanderbilt. Generally, hosts help put together a guest list, follow-up on the invitations we send, and offer a few words both before and after the presentation. These can be wonderful times of fellowship and are a great way to introduce others to what God is doing among graduate students and faculty at Vanderbilt University.

If you'd like to host or are curious about hosting a dessert in your home or church anywhere in the continental US, please post a comment here or email me at jasoningalls@gmail.com. We want to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world-changers developed. Let's partner together to make it happen.

Monday night: Graduate Christian Fellowship Fundraising Dessert--we raised $1200 toward next year's budget. Thank God!

Thursday morning: GCF Prayer Meeting on campus--it was our first, large prayer meeting, and we hope it will be a model for regular (bi-monthly or monthly) prayer meetings starting next semester. A student and her husband (I haven't asked their permission to publish their names) led the prayer time as a reflection on God as the source and giver of wisdom. We prayed with Scripture in hand for ourselves, for the campus, and for the world. Two pictures made it out of the event, and they're in this album on Facebook (There are also pictures of other GCF and InterVarsity events in that album).

Thursday afternoon: Office Hours at Panera Bread. I had a couple of students drop by, and we had a lot of fun.

Friday afternoon: Lecture and Lunch discussion. We took a group to hear the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson (Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire) speak at Benton Chapel on campus and then retired to Panera Bread to have lunch and discuss the talk. I might post more extensive comments on the talk in a later post, but I wanted to share some of the picturesthat I took at the lecture and then at the lunch afterward.

Saturday night: GCF Game Night! We had dinner together and then played Pit, Go Fish, I Doubt It (think B.S.), and the Great Dalmuti. We got to meet new students and were joined by some friends from NW Arkansas. The pictures are hiding here.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to slowing down a little bit this week! Thanks for supporting GCF through praying and giving!

Until, I think, one hears the 'other side' of the story as told by Popular Mechanics. I listened to their podcastthat aired around the time their book Debunking 9/11 Myths hit the market. While there are always ways to wrap rebuttals back into the tight circle of the conspiracy (see the comments on the podcast), I feel they answer some of the biggest questions that the original movie raised.

That said, one thing struck me about the whole affair. At the end of a movie that implicates people in orchestrating a conspiracy to murder thousands in order to either make money or gain grounds for launching an attack on the Middle East, the question arises naturally, "Who would do such a thing?" I think that is one of the psychological effects of conspiracy theories, that we feel better about ourselves because we believe we could never do any such thing.

As Christians, however, we must stand back. One point of the Christian doctrine of sin is that, all other things being equal, every human being is capable, in and of themselves, of committing any sin. It is only by God's free grace that the majority of people in the world are born into circumstances in which they are not able to commit vast and damaging sins (only those petty sins that destroy the lives in their immediate vicinity). The result is that, if there really was a vast American conspiracy to destroy the WTC and attack the Pentagon, if you or I were put into the same situation as the conspirators, only the grace of God would keep us from making the same decisions they did.

St. Paul, talking to the first century conspiracy theorists who were concerned about the inclusion of the Gentiles, put it something like this: For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God... (Ro 3:22-23). The Jews felt righteous because they kept the Torah better than the Gentiles. How sinful we must be to gravitate to gigantic theories that maximize others' sinfulness in order to minimize our own.

SPIRITUAL FORMATION

Our Commitment: Our desire to help graduate students integrate their lives under the Lordship of Christ begins with our commitment to Spiritual Formation. We believe that with the faithful practice of individual and corporate disciplines like prayer and Scripture study, students’ lives are transformed to continually express a growing faith, love and dependence upon God.

Our Projects:

Regular Prayer Meetings

Total Project Goal: $3,000

Fall Retreat

Total Project Goal: $3,500

Sponsor a day: $1,750

One-on-One Ministry

Total Project Goal: $9,300

• Sponsor Student Coffees*: $300

Sponsor Student Lunches: $600

Sponsor a semester: $4,650

Small Groups

Total Project Goal: $16,200

• Buy Books for a Small Group*:$500
• Sponsor a Small Group*:$1,500

Sponsor a semester of small groups:$8,100COMMUNITYOur Commitment: We want grad students to know what it is like to participate in a transformative community that has experience with their specific struggles and also spurs them along to faithful stewardship and academic excellence.

Our Projects:

Annual Kickoff Picnic

Total Project Goal: $700

Community Events

Total Project Goal: $4,000

Sponsor a community event: $500

Sponsor a semester: $2,000

Large Group

Total Project Goal: $5,000

Buy food for a large group: $150

Sponsor a large group: $650

Sponsor a semester: $2,500

EVANGELISM & SERVICE Our Commitment: Spiritual Formation happens in Communities directed towards Evangelism & Service. GCF is committed to publicly displaying the person and work of Jesus Christ both in word and deed through public forums, practical service, and intentional evangelism. We want to see our campus renewed.

Our Projects:

Neighborhood Work Projects

Total Project Goal: $2,000

Sponsor a project: $250

Sponsor a semester: $1,000

Faculty Dinner

Total Project Goal: $4,200

• Sponsor a Dinner*: $2,100
• Underwrite the project*: $4,200

Veritas Forum

Total Project Goal: $16,200

• Sponsorship*: $2,000
• Leadership Gift*: $7,500

INTEGRATION OF FAITH, LEARNING, AND PRACTICEOur Commitment: The Integration of Faith, Learning, and Practice points to the truth that Jesus is Lord of every part of human life. We seek the truth about God and His world through critical reflection, open conversation, and challenging dialogue, and in so doing pray a world-changing prayer, “Thy Kingdom come….”

Our Projects:

Food for Thought

Total Project Goal: $3,200

Sponsor a meeting: $275

Sponsor a semester: $1,600

Sponsor the year: $3,200

Social Sciences and Humanities Discussion Group

Total Project Goal: $3,000

Sponsor a meeting: $375

Sponsor a semester: $1,500

Sponsor the year: $3,000

PARTNERING IN MINISTRYProjected Budget $70,300

To-Date Committed Support $25,000

Dollars Needed$45,250To reach this goal, Graduate Christian Fellowship is seeking:

Leadership Gifts ($5,000-$25,000 yearly)

Examples:

• $24,000 yearly *($2,000/mo)
• $12,000 yearly *($1,000/mo)
• $9,000 yearly *($750/mo)

$6,000 yearly ($500/mo)

Major Gifts ($1,000-$4,999 yearly)

Examples:

***$3,000 yearly *($250/mo)

• $2,400 yearly *($200/mo)
• $1,800 yearly *($150/mo)

$1,200 yearly ($100/mo)

Sustaining Gifts (under $1,000 yearly)

Examples:

• $900 yearly* ($75/mo)
• $600 yearly* ($50/mo)
• $300 yearly* ($25/mo)Please consider partnering with us to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world-changers developed to the glory of God.

The second time through Devil was still enjoyable. I really appreciate the movie on a lot of levels, not least of which is that it stars Meryl Streep as an evil, evil lady in high heels, the editor-in-chief of Runway, the premier American fashion magazine.

As Adam and Eve were tempted and fell into sin, so is Anne Hathaway's character tempted and falls into fashion. The main difference? In the Bible, the Fall is followed by the Curse. For the world, the Fall is just a coming of age story. Part of Christianity is the idea that we lost something irretrievable when sin entered the world. For Ms. Anne, whatever was lost is worth it in comparison with the gain.

The movie itself is worth renting for a priceless scene in which Streep chastises Hathaway for believing that her choices somehow exempt her from the fashion industry. "What you don't realize is that sweater you're wearing is not blue, it's cerullion," she says, explaining that the 'blue' sweater actually started in one fashion designer's coterie before being copied by other designers and then filtering it's way down through the department stores into the bargain bin where Hathaway's character discovered it. "What you don't realize is that you didn't choose that sweater. It was chosen for you...by the people in this room."

And it is the same way with Sin with which we are always already entangled; it was chosen for us by our parents so long ago.

Thank God for Jesus Christ.

I got here a day before the conference started for some "Chapter Building" training. I've walked away with some new insights I hope to implement this coming year, including starting some regular Grad Christian Fellowship Nights with dinner, singing, frank conversation, and Scripture. I'm looking forward to the possibility!

Scott McKnight is our plenary speaker for the conference. He talked last night about how we have so individualized the Gospel that we've missed the fullness of Christ's reconciliation of ourselves with God, each other, and the world. It was a powerful reminder of God's expansive work on our behalf in his Son Jesus.

I've got to run, but I wanted to be sure to post this update before it got too hectic again (or it got added to a to-do list and not attended to). Please pray for the rest of our time and for safe travel Thursday (3/8) afternoon.

Can a divorcee get remarried? David Instone-Brewer says "yes," so long as the divorce is valid. He argues for four biblical grounds of divorce: adultery, abandonment, abuse, and neglect.

I grew up in a community in which there was only one ground for divorce: "sexual immorality," or adultery. How does Instone-Brewer get from one ground to four? The answer is relatively simple, he rigorously applies principles of biblical exegesis to the relevant passages of Scripture, and along with a few new insights into the ancient Near-East, weaves a powerful and convincing story of the four biblical grounds for divorce.

Here are some interesting tidbits. Did you know that we've found divorce certificates from the ancient Near-East? These are the divorce certificates allowed by Moses in Deuteronomy. Surprisingly, they all say (for hundreds and hundreds of years right up to ones we've found at Masada that date to after Jesus' ministry) that the divorcee has the legal right to remarry anyone she (or he) wishes. There was this problem in the ancient world that Moses solved by allowing women to have certificates of divorce. The problem was that before Moses, men could abandon their wives and still have the legal right to return years later to reclaim their wives and their children. Needless to say, this made it difficult for an abandoned woman to get remarried! Who in their right mind would marry a woman who at any point could be picked up by the absentee husband!?

Enter the certificate of divorce, which finalizes the end of the marriage and gives the woman the right to remarry anyone she wishes. According to this, divorcees could get remarried. In fact, remarriage was the point of divorce. Instone-Brewer goes on to show that this understanding of divorce is overturned neither by Jesus nor Paul.

Other interesting points:

1. Marriage was considered compulsory in first century Judaism. Even the crazy ascetic Jews who lived in the dessert married for five years or so in order to fulfill the command to "Be fruitful and multiply." Jesus, by his teaching in the Gospels, shows that marriage is no longer compulsory when one gives up marriage for the cause of the Kingdom of God.
2. Exodus 21:10-11 is a piece of case law that allows a wife to exit a marriage if her husband denies her "food, clothing, or conjugal love."
3. A Jewish rabbi named Hillel came up with a novel interpretation of the divorce passage in Deuteronomy 24:1, claiming that divorce had two grounds: sexual immorality and "Any Cause." He and his students were opposed by the rabbi Shammai and his students, who claimed that Deuteronomy 24:1 only had sexual immorality in mind.
4. Both the Hillelites and the Shammaites believed in the Exodus 21:10-11 provisions for divorce because of abuse and neglect. They just argued about how much sex a husband owed his wife in order to keep his vow!
5. In the passages in the Gospels, Jesus is being asked to comment on the fight between the students of Hillel and the students of Shammai. "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for 'Any Cause'?" Not only does Jesus side with Shammai on the interpretation of Deut. 24:1, he also argues that "Any Cause" divorces are not valid and anyone who has entered into an "Any Cause" divorce and remarried is technically committing adultery. So, it is not any divorcee who remarries that is committing adultery. It is the divorcee who has divorced without biblical grounds.

These are just some highlights, and I certainly cannot summarize the whole of his argument with its nuances and caveats here. I hope I have interested you enough to purchase the book for yourself (use the link on my website!) and give it a thorough reading. Not only does it make sense of the various passages on divorce in the Bible, it also helps us understand both God's relationship to Israel and our relationship to the Church better. I hope you'll read it soon.

I was born in 1980 in Buffalo, NY. My father was the head of the mental health division of Catholic Charities in the Buffalo area, and a professor in Psychology at D'Youville, SUNY Buffalo and St Bonaventure at various points. Now he has retired to part time private practice. My mother is a nursery school teacher. As a child I loved to play sports, and I spent almost all my time outdoors. I used bike everywhere, and I especially liked to fish. Anytime I was inside I was either playing Nintendo, sleeping or eating. I have an older sister who is married, and has a child, my nephew Sean. My younger sister, who is two years younger than me, lives in Miami Beach, Fl. I have a much younger brother, Nick, who is now only 16. I am especially close to him because I helped to raise him. On August 16th 2003, I was married to Tricia Joy Eddy. We have been married for three and a half years. She is a music teacher at Currey Ingram Academy in Brentwood, TN.

1. Tell us about your education. Where, when, and in what have you

done coursework?

In 1998, I started my undergraduate education at SUNY Buffalo in Chemical Engineering. In the middle of my sophomore year I transferred to Cornell University, where I completed my B.S. in Engineering as a Bioengineer.

I started graduate work at Vanderbilt University in 2002, and finished my Ph.D. in Biomedical engineering in December of 2006.

1. Tell us about your faith journey. How did you come to faith in

Christ, and how has your faith been strengthened/challenged by your academic calling?

I grew up in the Catholic Church, and have believed that Christ was my personal savior since I was a child. However, in the past few years, I have learned to see faith in different ways with the help of my wife Trish. I now see works as fruit of Christ's life in us, rather than personal sacrifices, and I see everyday and mundane activities as opportunities for worship.

Academia is a harsh and competitive atmosphere, which requires me to lean heavily on faith. I am bombarded by atheist messages each day working in the sciences. I know that I am being called to persevere in this environment, to show non-Christians love, and to serve as a voice for Christian morals in bioethics.

1. Tell us about your involvement with GCF. How has GCF encouraged

you in both your faith and your academic calling?

I have been involved with the Vanderbilt Graduate Christian Fellowship since fall of 2002. When I first arrived at Vanderbilt in 2001, I was unaware that the group existed, until Mark Bray recruited me. Since then, I became part of the leadership team, and have been the communications coordinator, Webmaster, and small group leader for GCF. GCF has had an incredible impact on me. The community of believers around me has been a great support during a difficult time in my graduate career. I have been enriched by serving the group, and have grown in faith because of the relationships God has blessed me with. Both my wife and I have enjoyed the many opportunities for fun and fellowship over these years!

1. If, based on your journey in faith and academia, you could tell

the Church one thing, what would it be?

I would encourage the church to lead the world to faith by showing Christ's love through serving orphans, widows and the poor. Those without faith are unlikely to be convinced to believe through arguments, but, if you involve them in service, and they get a glimpse of what Christ's love looks like, they will listen with an open heart.

The most helpful part of this book for me was his discussion of three "options" for the way that God could interact with the world. In Option 1, God and the world aren't different from one another. Every event is an expression of God, and God is in every event. This is commonly called "pantheism" and is not a Christian option.

Option 2 is commonly called "deism," the idea that God, though creator, is so far removed from the world that he set it in motion and then let it go. Based on the story of God's constant interaction with Israel and ultimately the Incarnation, this too is not a consistent option.

Bishop Wright puts forward Option 3 as the distinctively Christian option. In this view, heaven and earth aren't the same (as in Option 1) nor are they utterly separated from one another (as in Option 2). Instead, the come together by God's grace at specific places and times. At this juncture, Wright points to the 1st century belief that the Temple was the "belly-button" of the world at which heaven and earth touched. The Gospel of John takes up this theme and moves the point of contact from the Temple to Jesus, the incarnate Word.

Of course, Bishop Wright is more nuanced and interesting than this brief description, so go find yourself the book and take a while to sit with it. I would highly recommend it to anyone curious about Christianity; it's tone is welcoming and inviting to anyone who hasn't yet woken up to the reality of God's grace in Christ. In my opinion, Simply Christian should replace Lewis' Mere Christianity for its precision and skill.

1. Tell us about your life. Are you married? Where did you grow up?

I was born in Mt. Clemens, Michigan at 11:57PM on October 27, 1977 to my parents, Roger & Carolyn Jackson. My older sister by about six years, Danell, and I grew up in a small farming town in the thumb region of Michigan named Imlay City. My father was a journeyman tool-n-die maker (and worked 40-60hr weeks) and my mother was a homemaker until I was age 10. My sister graduated as salutatorian of her 1990 graduation class from Imlay City High School and was given a full-ride academic scholarship to attend Central Michigan University, well that was until CMU revoked it because my parents “made too much money.” To this day my sister has only achieved her associates degree as she has had to work full-time while going to school to get as far as she has to date. On 12/02/90, my dad had the first of two heart-attacks in a two month period of time. Our family naturally became a trauma family overnight and spent the next four years in recovery. In July 1991, our family moved out to Mesa, AZ where we lived for 14 months (in hopes that the climate would speed my dad’s recovery and it did) and where I was nearly strangled to death in gym class by gang-wannabes. In September 1992, we moved back to Mt. Clemens, Michigan and lived with my grandparents for about two months. The State of Michigan, who had promised to finish my dad’s vocational retraining, reneged and told him instead that our family was “better off with him dead than alive.” The State of Ohio on the other hand agreed to take his case on, so we moved to Findlay, Ohio, where I began attending Findlay High School (this my 3rd high school in a three month period of time). At this point, my life was empty of reliable friends and devoid of joy. Life was cold, dark, empty, and I was hanging on my last straw. But, once again God showed Himself faithful to our family and to me. [Note: I grew up in the Church and accepted Christ as Savior at age 10 and was baptized at age 16. It was at age 10 that God gave me Bill Gaither’s song, “Because He Lives”, which became one of my anchors through the years above and since.] It was by His Grace and providential care that our family was slowly healed over the next several years. He surrounded me with a community of faith from within FHS from the very day I stepped in the door, a community of faith and friendships that would sustain me to the end of high school. Throughout high school, I was active in both membership and leadership positions in Student Council, National Honor Society, and the Mock Trial team. I was an honors student, who graduated 8th in my 1996 graduation class. Desiring a strongly Christian and intellectually stimulating academic environment, I attended Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI) where I was pre-med and graduated with a B.S. in Biology with a minor in Biochemistry in 2000. From here, I moved to Nashville, TN to attend Vanderbilt University. I am currently single, but I am looking forward to what God has in store for my life as I start a new journey in life as I am now completing my Ph.D.

1. Tell us about your education. Where, when, and in what have you done coursework?

Attended Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI) where I was in the pre-med program and graduated with a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Biochemistry in 2000. I have since attended Vanderbilt University where I have been pursuing a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology.

1. Tell us about your faith journey. How did you come to faith in Christ, and how has your faith been strengthened/challenged by your academic calling?

I grew up in a Christian family and in the church and accepted Christ as Savior and Lord at age 10. At age 16, I was baptized at First Baptist Church (in Findlay, Ohio). I am currently a member of First Baptist Nashville, where I am part of the Joshua Sunday School Class and serve in the Sanctuary Choir.

My faith has been strengthened by my academic calling in biology by first had observation of the intricacies of beauty, design, and care found throughout all of nature from the very grand scape of the cosmos to the infinitesimal size of the atom). To study biology for me has been learning about my Heavenly Father and thinking his thoughts or observing His work after him.

More strikingly, however, it has been by academic calling in biology that has challenged my faith severely. First, it was my perception that I was being called into medicine that led to my three struggle and “being frozen in place” during undergrad. On one hand, I was sure that He wanted to use me in medicine as a doctor otherwise why would He have allowed the things in my family’s life to happen with regard to our personal family trauma and then dealing with and caring for my close family friends, my grandparents, and some of my mom’s aunts and uncles with cancer. On the other hand, God kept shutting doors to my exploration of medicine and ultimately I did not have the support needed to make it through medical school successfully (and hence part of the reason why I came to graduate school instead). Second, my faith is challenged by being in a scientific environment in which most people are not Christians—atheists, agnostics, non-practicing Catholics, people representing all the cultures and religions of the world. My challenge as a graduate student is to be Christian in my walk, actions, and worldview in a world that outright rejects Christ and to hold up Truth and Love as my operating standards.

1. Tell us about your involvement with GCF. How has GCF encouraged you in both your faith and your academic calling?

I have been a member of GCF since I started graduate school in the fall of 2000. (I first learned of GCF when I came for my interview and happened to meet several members on that trip.) I have since served GCF in many leadership capacities including President (2001-2003), Core Leadership Team (2003-Present), and as Treasurer (2004-Present).

For me, GCF has been the following:

• A home away from home – a caring community of faith and friends who have been part of my Nashville “family” in addition to those from my local church.
• A place where the realities and weighty issues of academic life and Christian faith can be conversed openly and without fear – a safe “harbor” and also a place where “iron sharpens iron.”
• A source of graduate student mentors, whose guidance and helpful advice have made my journey through graduate school easier than it would have been if I had to have gone down this often challenging, frustrating, lonely, and isolating path alone. And a place where I could be used as a mentor to those who have come to grad school following me.
• A support network of people who truly understand what you are going through in the world of academia and where being brothers and sisters in Christ takes real form tangibly and intangibly depending upon the need.
• A community of faith (students and staff) which continuously kept me filled with the Word and stretched me in my capacity as a Christian leader and in my reliance upon God with each and every step along the way.

1. If, based on your journey in faith and academia, you could tell the Church one thing, what would it be?

There is incredible joy and blessing to be obtained by active engagement of the scriptures (rather than simple engagement of the status quo) and by being willing to truly be a body of Christ through the good times and as we share the burdens of each others struggles.

Help is at hand not least in those who have trodden the path ahead of us. Part of our difficulty here is that we moderns are so anxious to do things our own way, so concerened that if we get help from anyone else our prayer won't be "authentic" and come from our own heart, that we are instantly suspcious about using anyone else's prayers. We are like someone who doesn't feel she's properly dressed unless she has personally designed and made all her own clothes; or like someone who feels it's artificial to drive a car he hasn't built all by himself. We are hamstrung by the long legacy of the Romantic movement on the one hand, and Existentialism on the other, producing the idea that things are authentic only if they come spontaneously, unbidden, from the depths of our hearts.

Frankly, as Jesus pointed out, there's a lot that comes from the depths of our hearts which may be authentic but isn't very pretty. One good breath of fresh air from the down-to-earth world of first-century Judaism is enough to blow away the smog of the self-absorbed (and ultimately proud) quest for "authenticity" of that kind. When Jesus's followers asked him to teach them to pray, he didn't tell them to divide into focus groups and look deep within their own hearts. He didn't begin by getting them to think slowly through their life experiences to discover what types of personality each of them had, to spend time getting in touch with their buried feelings. He and they both understood the question they had asked: they wanted, and needed, a form of words which they could learn and use. That's what John the Baptist had given to his followers. Other Jewish teachers had done the same. That's what Jesus did, too, giving his disciples the prayer we began with at the start of this chapter [the Lord's Prayer], which remains at the heart of all Christian prayer.

But notice the point. There's nothing wrong with having a form of words composed by somebody else. Indeed, there's probably something wrong with not using such a form. Some Christians, some of the time, can sustain a life of prayer entirely out of their own internal resources, just as there are hardy mountaineers (I've met one) who can walk the Scottish highlands in their bare feet. But most of us need boots; not because we don't want to do the walking ourselves, but because we do.

This plea, it will be obvious, is aimed in one particular direction: at the growing number of Christians in many countries who, without realizing it, are absorbing an element of late modern culture (the Romantic-plus-Existentialist mixture I mentioned a moment ago) as though it were Christianity itself. To them I want to say: there is nothing wrong, nothing sub-Christian, nothing to do with "works-righteousness," about using words, set forms, prayers, and sequences of prayer written by other people in other centuries. Indeed, the idea that I must always find my own words, that I must generate my own devotion from scratch every morning, that unless I think of new words I must be spiritually lazy or deficient--that has the all-too-familiar sign of human pride, of "doing it my way": of, yes, works-righteousness. Good liturgy--other people's prayers, whether for corporate or individual use--can be, should be, a sign and means of grace, an occasion of humility (accepting that somone else has said, better than I can, what I deeply want to express) and gratitude. How many times have I been grateful, faced with nightfalls both metaphorical and literal, for the old Anglican prayer which runs,

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I didn't write it, but whoever did has my undying gratitude. It's just what I wanted.

Sometimes I just say, "The Prayer Book [Book of Common Prayer] saved my prayer life." For me the liturgy of the church has proven more than something I wanted; it is something I very deeply needed.

As I grow in understanding of the history of Christ's church and its celebrations, I appreciate Advent more and more. It starts the four Sundays before Christmas and is a time of preparation. Preparation for what? For Christmas, of course, but not only Christmas. At Christmas, we celebrate Christ's first Advent as a baby in a manger, but the assigned Scripture readings for Advent also remind us to prepare for Christ's second Advent as King and Judge. Advent is a penitential season, like Lent, and even uses the same deep purple as Lent in its celebrations.

Another thing that's interesting is that the first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the Christian calendar year. That's right, first Sunday of Advent is New Year's Day! (I guess that made our Advent-eve party a New Year's Eve party!) For millenia, Christians have lived on a different calendar than the rest of the world, a calendar that revolves not around equinoxes or Roman deities, but around the coming, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. By living according to this calendar, Christians have the opportunity to yearly retrace Jesus' steps as they grow as his disciples. How amazing!

That's why I was so pleased to have our Christmas party capped by a service of lessons and carols. We read from Scripture starting in Genesis, winding through the prophets, and ending with the announcement to Mary. God's story of redemption in Christ is amazing, and I am so happy to share in it with you, with the grad students and faculty at Vanderbilt, and with all who watch and wait for His return.

Merry Christmas.

Profile for Aaron Simmons

1. Tell us about your life. Are you married? Where did you grow up?

I was born in 1977 in Cleveland, Tennessee. My father was an art professor at Lee University there in Cleveland. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the back of my father’s college art classes and while he was up lecturing or working with other students on their paintings, I had my own easel in the back of the classroom where I would create artistic masterpieces. My mother is also an educator and has taught almost every level of primary, secondary, and higher education. I have two brothers (Evan and Nathan) and one sister (Merinda). All of them are now in graduate school. Evan is finishing a masters degree in music, Merinda is finishing her Ph.D. in literature and Nathan is finishing a masters in psychology. I should say that when we get together as a family for holidays, our dinner table conversation is a conglomeration of the latest research in D.H. Lawrence and Levinas, frustration with the state of contemporary music, and discussions regarding which of the James Bond video games really is the best. There was never a dull moment in my childhood, which, as anyone from a large family will agree, can be both a blessing and a curse. I have been married for a little over five years to Vanessa. She is a Criminal Intelligence Analyst and we have one other member in our family – our Siberian Husky named Tacoma. I am an avid trout fisherman and greatly enjoy spending as much time as possible engaged in outdoor activities.

1. Tell us about your education. Where, when, and in what have you done coursework?

I have a B.A. in History from Lee University, an M.A. in Humanities from Florida State University, an M.A. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University. My main areas of specialization are contemporary continental philosophy and philosophy of religion. I also do quite a bit of work in environmental philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy. Last year I was on faculty at The University of the South and now I am a lecturer at Vanderbilt University.

1. Tell us about your faith journey. How did you come to faith in Christ, and how has your faith been strengthened/challenged by your academic calling?

I am the grandson of a Church of God (Cleveland, TN) minister. With that said, I have been raised in the church. Nothing much of interest occurred in my faith life until I went to graduate school. There I met with such stringent objections I decided that the only way in which I could continue to affirm such beliefs was to thoroughly investigate the criticism of them. So, for about two years of my early graduate career, I actively read everything I could get my hands on that challenged Christian faith. In other words, I tried to become an atheist. The problem was that I continued to find the arguments and evidence against God simply inadequate. This is not to say that my faith did not undergo radical transformation, however. Perhaps the most important impact on my current understanding of Christianity is the work of Søren Kierkegaard. I have been greatly influenced by Kierkegaard’s conception of the existential component of faith as related to one’s own singular identity before God and others. Moreover, the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Marion, Vattimo, Caputo, Westphal, and especially Levinas has been crucial for helping me navigate what faith can look like on the other side of the deconstruction of metaphysics. What is so remarkable is that I have found postmodernity to not be a challenge to Christianity, but simply to be a challenge to certain ways in which Christian faith has been appropriated and interpreted. Importantly, I do not believe that the real point is that we must reconceptualize God in light of postmodernity, but that postmodernism allows us to better understand the real insights of Christianity itself – especially as expressed in God’s kenotic relation of love to the world.

1. Tell us about your involvement with GCF. How has GCF encouraged you in both your faith and your academic calling?

I have been involved with the Vanderbilt Graduate Christian Fellowship ever since my first few months here at Vanderbilt. I have found it to be an invaluable space of fellowship, support, encouragement, and community. Some of my most cherished friendships have developed out of the conversations and activities of GCF. Further, being a married graduate student, GCF provided a place where my wife and I could both become involved with others who were roughly at the same stage in life and with the same academic intentions.

1. If, based on your journey in faith and academia, you could tell the Church one thing, what would it be?

I think that I would tell the church two things. First, the truth of the Christian narrative should not be confused with the cultural and historical framework in which it is always located. This does not mean that we should somehow relate to faith outside or beyond our cultural embeddedness. Quite the opposite is the case. We should constantly recognize that there is no relation to God except through the lenses and layers of existential situatedness. What this should bring about is a much more humble relation to our own understanding of the faith and also to others both within and outside of the Christian community. Indeed, I find Christian ethics to be fundamentally about gratitude and invitation. We should express gratitude to God for the opportunity to care for others, and should continue to express invitational hospitality to others as both our neighbors and our critics. The second point follows on the first: the church must overcome its limited vision of Christian morality. As Jim Wallis rightly asks, “when did Jesus become a selective moralist?” Of particular importance to me are issues related to social justice and environmental stewardship. I believe that if we really attempt to imitate Christ, then our relationship to the widow, the orphan, and the stranger (and we must not forget the poor and the environment) must display an expansive relationality rather than the all to frequent expression of hostility and fear to those we don’t understand or that we don’t find to agree with our otherwise narrow vision of sociality.

So, if a book I’m reading or have reviewed looks interesting, be sure to use my links to get a copy from Amazon. You’ll help support my reading habit and this ministry in the process.

A very satisfied Chris, who just happened to win both games we played that night. Who also just happened to bring his own ball and bowling shoes. Doesn't he look happy?

Alan should look happy. He just bowled his very first 100 point game! Congratulations, Alan!

This is me with Chris' bowling ball. It was an amazing bowling ball. I'm surprised he let me touch it. It glowed with a holy aura of bowling-good-ness.

Looking completely disinterested (or jealous) is Roger.

This is the closest we came to a group photo, but at least it shows our other two companions, Linda and Mary. Since it was close to Halloween, we all chose character names for our bowling. Linda chose "Princess Leia" and Mary was "Pirate." I gave a dollar to Alan who was able to pinpoint which character "Max Rebo" (the name I chose) was in the Star Wars saga. Can you guess it?

The problem is that Christ founded the Church, and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship isn't one. We are a support organization, designed to support local churches in their ministry to college campuses. As such, as I go searching for partnership for this ministry, I am aimed at the local church in Nashville.

It's a long process, building databases of contacts and trying to stay up with what other IVCF staff workers are doing in the area. I want to build real partnerships of ministry, and the first step is mutual advertising. I'm constructing a "church book" that will have information on local churches for our graduate students so they can get involved in local churches. I have also prepared Graduate Christian Fellowship ads to be put in local church bulletins and fliers. The free exchange of information will go a long way toward genuine partnerships.

I'm also meeting with a lot of local pastors to get to know them and their ministries. I want to be able to approach them with things down the line that suit their needs and interests. I also want to be able to take volunteers for the ministry on campus.

There is also the remote possibility of moving our small groups into local churches so that a grad student could benefit from GFM's expertise in graduate ministry while being able to plug into a local church during the week. It's an interesting thought I'll have to consider more later.

Please pray that as we move into this new phase of partnership-development, the Lord would work to move the people and places into our orbit that would benefit the people in our care and that, above all, God would be glorified in what we do.

I'll give you some of the highlights of the exhibit. It started on the other side of a guard-rail where it was explained to us that when things get bad in a country torn by war and individuals feel forced to flee their homes, they have no rights in their own country. They might "have" rights in the abstract, but who is going to protect them? Is it the government who's trying to put down an insurgency, or is it the insurgents themselves? When innocent people get caught in the middle of warring parties, rights go out the window ("collateral damage"). If you are being chased by people bent on killing you because of your race or creed, you have to flee the country...

...Because in the next country over, they have to do something about it. According to international treaties, countries must provide refugees with food, water, shelter, and clothing. Needless to say, this is trying on any country who has hundreds of thousands of refugees at a time fleeing over their borders, so many countries (Ethiopia is a good example) close their borders.

Doctors without Borders is an interesting organization because it helps provide medical care for these displaced peoples, the innocent fodder of war. I was impressed by how well human beings can do under such adverse conditions, but I was humbled by the comparative lack they must experience. One example: the average refugee uses 5 gallons of water a day. The average American: 100.

It hit home when one of our touring group (we were led through the camp by a guide) said that she had been in a refugee camp when she was nine. We did the math and found out that she was only a year younger than Monique and I! A Kurd displaced by the first Gulf War, she had to carry those five-gallon jugs of water a mile at a time ("They were heavy," she said, "but we had to do it."), while I was disgruntled that AWANA was canceled the night of the beginning of hostilities and wanted to know why war wasn't like G.I. Joe. I was having a hard time understanding the amazing technology of war shown on ABC news while she was fighting for her life in the dessert. I sat at school while she carried water by the mile.

In these circumstances, Christians cry out from the depth of their souls, "Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus, come!" With all the evil in the world, and all the sufferers, and our lack of ability to finally fix either one, we can only cry for our Redeemer to return and set everything right again. We give thanks to God for His grace to us in Jesus Christ, and apply ourselves to walk in the path that Jesus pioneered for us, the path of self-sacrificial love for our neighbors nearby and for the little girl carrying water on the other side of the world.

Well, it's the first book on productivity I've read, and it's been an amazing few days. The book introduces a five-step method of "getting things done," one that I'm finding to be extremely helpful.

1. Collect--Put everything, I mean everything, into a physical inbox (electronic in the case of email). The whole point of the system is that you free your brain to do stuff other than remember. So get it all out of your head.
2. Process--Sit down and process everything in the the inbox by asking several questions. Is it an actionable item? If no, then throw it away, file it, or put it aside into a "Someday/Mabye" list. If the item does have an action associated with it, take a couple of seconds to decide the very next physical action required. If the action takes 2-minutes or less, do it. If it will take longer, organize it on one of your lists (step 3)
3. Organize--file non-actionable items, and put action items that will take more than two minutes onto a "Next Action" list, arranged not by topic but by context (i.e., at the computer, online, office, anywhere, home, etc.). There are more lists to be added to that make the system even better, but I won't go into them here.
4. Review--before you go about doing, you have to review. Start with your calendar. If there are items that HAVE to be done that day, do them. Next, move to the "Next Action" list.
5. Do--now, looking at your "Next Action" list, decide based on your context, time, energy, and priorities which item should be done next.

The beauty of the system is that it is "bottom-up." Since everything goes in the inbox, everything makes it in. Therefore, there's no need to worry about trying to remember something. Take two seconds to jot down a note to yourself when something crosses your mind, and drop it in the inbox. It won't be too long until you process the inbox again, and in the meantime you can concentrate on what you're working on.

The three most helpful pieces of wisdom in this book are:

1. Next actions--this is incredibly freeing, taking the time to decide what actually needs to be done next. For example, instead of putting a nebulous "Wedding Gift" on your to-do list, put it in your projects list, and add "Brainstorm gift ideas" into your next actions list. That way you know what you're going to do next, and the brainstorm will spawn another action item like, "Talk to spouse about gift ideas," etc.
2. Two-minute rule--if it takes two minutes or less, do it. Also freeing, this clears away all the clutter so you can focus on the important things. It's also amazing how many household chores take two minutes or less!
3. Inbox--putting everything in my inbox is a great feeling. I know it will be attended to, so I can forget about it and plow ahead in what I'm doing.

So, if you're looking for a way to reorganize your life, pick up Getting Things Done and work yourself through the book. You won't regret it.

I started my trip by picking up a Hyundai Sonata from Hertz at the airport. It's cheaper on my budget to rent a car than to expense the mileage for my own, so that's what I did. I wish I had taken a picture of it, because it was a neat little car with a great sound system, working A/C, a sunroof, and a self-darkening rear-view mirror. Ah, the niceties of life, or, err, Hertz.

First stop was Vilonia, AR (383 miles). There, thanks to the generosity of Rhonda Harris and First Baptist Church of Vilonia, I was able to make a presentation to 15 total people. By far the scariest audience I've had (they are, after all, my wife's friends and family), they were warm, encouraging and generous. This picture is of me handing out information before the presentation.

Next stop, Siloam Springs, AR (+200 miles). In Siloam, I stayed with old college friends, Mark and Megan Etter, ate lunch with Kyle and Katie Weaver, toured my alma mater's campus, talked with professors, ate breakfast with an old friend Patrick Carr, and reinvigorated some of the networks I had lost since graduation three years ago. I am hoping to stop back through Siloam soon to make a presentation now that I have reaquainted myself with the area, but I am happy to have garnered some support while I was in town.

Next stop, Stillwater, OK (+155 miles). I had intended to have another dessert presentation while in Stillwater but for various reasons the dessert itself fell through. Instead, I was able to have meals with a couple of families who are going to support me, and, of course, I got to hang out with my family and take my (not-so) little brother Stephen out for coffee (or hot chocolate as the case may be). It was a fun and restful time. Unfortunately, the camera didn't make it out of the bag while I was there.

Next stop, Tomball, TX (+497 miles). There, I was able to attend the church I grew up in both Sunday morning and evening, talk with a few folks about InterVarsity, and stay with two sets of Callons (Ken and Mary, and Craig and Cheryl--the Callons have been close friends of mine since the second grade). I had a similar experience in Tomball as I did in Siloam Springs--I saw a bunch of people I hadn't seen in ages and got to start some of those friendships again. In some ways it's sad that it takes the fund-development process to bring me back into their lives, but in others, I'm so happy to have reason to do so. Being back in Tomball felt like going home, and I realized just how much I missed it.

I left on a Sunday and arrived back in Nashville (+792 miles) the next Tuesday night. By the end of the road trip, I had traveled over 2020 miles in that Sonata. We had become close friends.

On Wednesday, I flew to Philadelphia (+1600 miles round trip) to be with Monique while she defended her dissertation proposal. Defending the proposal is a big deal at U.Penn. because you don't have to defend the final product, just have it signed off by your committee of three. (I guess the figure they want to nip any problems in the bud). The whole department came out to hear Monique's brief presentation and then grill her on the details. Monique handled herself amazingly and her proposal passed without any revisions! Thanks be to God!

Thank you to all of you who were praying during my trip and during Monique's defense! We appreciate it greatly. If you have any other questions about the trip, please feel free to add a comment to this blog or email me. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in hearing about InterVarsity's Graduate and Faculty Ministry who lives anywhere along my route, send me an email (jasoningalls@gmail.com) and let me know. I'm hoping to raise approx. 20-25% more of my support on this trip.

Please pray for safety in travel and God's favor in supplying our needs, and keep Monique in prayer as well--she's defending her Ph.D. dissertation proposal Sep 28!

The tentative schedule (right now): Sun, Sep. 17--Leave Nashville and arrive in Vilonia, AR Mon, Sep. 18--Dessert/Coffee Social w/ Presentation at home of Rhonda Harris Tues, Sep. 19--Travel to Siloam Springs, AR, and meet with individuals (and possibly a group in a coffee shop) Wed. Sep. 20--Travel to Stillwater, OK Thurs, Sep 21--Dessert/Coffee Social w/ Presentation at the home of Jeff Cathey (hosted by Community Free Church, Stillwater, OK) Fri, Sep 22--Meet with individuals in Stillwater and Oklahoma City Sat, Sep 23--Travel to Tomball, TX Sun, Sep 24-Tues, Sep 26--Meet with individuals in Tomball/Huntsville area Tues, Sep 26--Travel to Nashville Wed, Sep 27--Fly to Philadelphia to be with Monique for her dissertation proposal defense

UPCOMING ATTRACTIONS: I'll start posting several things on the blog after I get back from my trip. 1) A full report (w/ pictures) of the trip 2) More details on our regular ministries at Vanderbilt 3) Profiles of students and leaders in the Graduate Christian Fellowship 4) And the rest of the stuff I have been doing...news updates, book summaries, and comments.

Please keep us in mind the next few weeks.

God bless, Jason

One of the Four Commitments of InterVarsity's Graduate and Faculty Ministries is community. Our Grad Christian Fellowship social events help provide a welcoming environment for graduate students who need a time away from the grind of their studies. We hope these events help them reconnect with themselves, with each other, and with God.

Next month, we are taking a day retreat with study, worship, food, and games. Please pray that God uses this offering of ours to His glory and to the encouragement and edification of His people.

Isn't it interesting that "uncomfortable" is the word used, not "offended"? It sounds like a similar discomfort to the one I feel when I see a couple making out in a movie theater or park, or see a mother breast-feeding (without covering) in public. Making out and breast-feeding are beautiful things (in the proper contexts), but the culture in which I have been raised says that those are "private" things that shouldn't be trotted out before "public" eyes. The classic retort to the couple is "get a room," and I imagine that the same would be said for the mother. "Get a room" equals "find a private space to do that private thing." I wonder if that same "get a room" was being thought for the Jewish man praying.

If that's the case, then there is something deeper against which religious people must struggle in order to enter the genuine tolerance I discussed in my last post. The feeling that comes when people transgress "public" spaces with "private" actions goes far beyond religion and into the deepest part of our society. The questions society has to ask itself are these: "What is private? What is public? And, what overlap can we allow in the middle?"

And I will pray, no matter what society does, that Christians will always have the courage to pray in public for the world in Jesus' name, even if they get escorted off airplanes in the process.

Since Monique and I live about ten miles away from campus, I get to drive back and forth on the busy Nashville roads. Since a lot of that time is spent sitting and waiting for lights to change, I've started downloading podcasts to keep me occupied and thinking. One of these podcasts is the weekly National Public Media offering: "Speaking of Faith".

I find SOF so interesting because its host, Krista Tippett, seems to be an honestly struggling agnostic/spiritualist/secularist. Obviously educated, she embodies the ideas and culture of today's academy towards religion: that is, she genuinely believes that religion is good and helpful and able to articulate truth that science cannot. For that reason, I'll call her a "positive pluralist." That definition is over against what we might call "negative pluralists" of the previous several generations in academia, or more commonly, "atheists."

So, the title link is to an interview Tippett did this week with Eboo Patel, Muslim founder of the Chicago Interfaith Youth Core. What I found so interesting, and worthy of sharing, was that Patel embodied the definition of tolerance that I have heard American evangelicals espousing since "tolerance" became a liberal buzzword (that meant embracing all religions/ideas/lifestyles as equally true or valid). Instead, I and other evangelicals believe that tolerance really means being able to work with people who you really disagree with without losing one's disagreement.

Patel's organization is about bringing teens from different faith traditions together, getting them involved in service projects (such as tutoring or construction work), and then bringing them together to reflect on how their religious traditions effect their service. So, a Muslim might say that the Koran asks Muslims to give alms as part of their religious obligation, while a Christian would point to the example of Christ, the early church, and justification by faith (and so not by works or social standing). In so doing, the teenagers are forced to reflect on their faith in a way that they wouldn't have had the same thing been brought up in youth group.

As a Christian who does not believe that tolerance means embracing all ideas as equally true but instead believes that tolerance means being able to work with people who you really disagree with, I find the space created by Patel's organization (at least as portrayed on SOF) fascinating. Could it be that what we have argued against the liberals for so long has finally been embodied by a Muslim? Interestingly enough, Patel credits the pro-life cooperation of Evangelical Christians with Roman Catholics as an important inspiration for his work. He says at one point in the interview, "I love Evangelical Christians."

So, if you have an hour to kill, listen to the interview online or download it to your desktop or IPod. I'll be interested to hear what other evangelicals have to say on the topic.

September: Minigolf and Ice Cream October: Day Spiritual Renewal Retreat and Games November: Movie Viewing and Discussion Group December: Christmas Party

I am happy with this arrangement. In the past there were weekly large-group events, but they had shrunk considerably in the past due to graduate students' demanding schedules and other considerations. This year we are reserving large-group events for once per month, hosting 2 (possibly 3) small groups, and 2 lunch-time groups (Tuesday is Food For Thought, a discussion group. Thursday is just an opportunity for Grad Christian Fellowship (GCF) people to eat lunch together). There is plenty to choose from, and I hope that it will be a wide enough offering that people can pick what suits their needs and schedules.

Let me know if you have any other ideas for our monthly large-group gatherings!

In his introduction, Boyd writes this: "I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry.... Rather than focusing our understanding of God's kingdom on the person of Jesus -- who, incidentally, never allowed himself to get pulled into the political disputes of his day -- I believe many of us American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues" (11).

Boyd argues that for something to be Christian it must look like Jesus, and Jesus looks like someone dying for the people who crucified him. He connects Jesus' sacrificial life to Christians by quoting Ephesians 5:2: "Live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Boyd believes that Jesus' sacrifice is not simply to be adored, it is to be imitated.

Chapters 1-3 develop the idea that there has never been a Christian nation, since no nation has ever looked liked Jesus who was willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of those who killed him. All nations are one form or other of the "kingdom of the world," the power set up by God but controlled by demonic forces. The radical alternative was inaugurated by Jesus, the "kingdom of God." All nations, as forms of the kingdom of the world, practice "power-over" people and coerce people by violence to do as the kingdom of the world desires. Only the kingdom of God practices "power-under," the form of power exercised by Jesus Christ when he washed his disciples' feet and died for the people who killed him.

Chapters 4-5 illustrate from historical and contemporary examples how the kingdom of God has been coopted by the kingdom of the world and made little more than a religious version of the kingdom of the world. Boyd suggests that this is best seen in the current motto: "Taking America Back for God."

Chapters 6-8 illustrate five negative consequences of seeing America as a "Christian" nation.

1. It harms global missions because the kingdom of God has been associated by people in the rest of the globe with the specific kingdom of the world government that rules in the U.S.
2. It harms local missions because of the "pervasive misconception that the civil religion of Christianity in America is real Christianity" (111).
3. It harms our spiritual lives because we learn to rely on the "power-over" of the "Christian" U.S. instead of trusting whole-heartedly on the "power-under" power of prayer.
4. It harms our relationship with sinners because the myth that America is a Christian nation tempts many of us to see ourselves as the "moral guardians" of the country instead of the "chief of all sinners."
5. It harms the advancement of the kingdom of God in general because the myth causes us to look more towards Old Testament theocracy than to New Testament discipleship for examples to live by. In Boyd's view, only Israel has ever had the right to be called a theocracy, and it is American hubris to claim those rights for itself.

In the final chapter, Boyd wrestles with five questions concerning Christianity and violence.

Is this book worth reading? Since I am not critiquing yet, I would say "yes." I found several things in the book that I disagreed with, but I still found many more things very helpful in elucidating the difference between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God, between true Christianity and the civil religion of America, etc. Any Christian should be edified by these distinctions (which are classically Christian) and by the focus that Boyd pulls consistently back to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.

But even if Boyd is right, there are many who would not be able to accept it. Sometimes people have spent too much blood, sweat, and tears going in one direction to change their minds, even if they have figured out that the path leads to destruction. Is the book worth reading? Yes, it is. Will it be difficult for many to read? Yes, very, very likely. It calls everything into question.

I received a copy of the book at ONS (Orientation for New Staff) this year in Madison, Wisconsin. I was suspicious of the book because I struggle with Peterson's magnum opus: The Message Bible paraphrase. It has been my opinion that in The Message Peterson takes undue liberties with the Biblical text to make them fit his theological structure and methodology.

While I do not like this in relationship to the text itself, I find I rather enjoy it in reflection on the text.

A Long Obedience is an extended reflection on the Psalms of Ascent (Psalm 120-134), and Peterson uses each Psalm to reflect Christianly on topics like repentance, providence, worship, and service.

What I found disconcerting at first was just how Christian these reflections were. I was taught in exegesis courses that one must first establish what a biblical text meant for the original audience before trying to transfer that meaning to today, and that a text cannot mean today what it did not mean to its original audience. I found myself wanting to limit and sometimes exclude distinctively Christian readings of the Old Testament.

Peterson just assumes the weight of the Christian message of the divine-human Jesus sent from the Holy Trinity as the Savior of the world, and his Christian assumptions weave their way through his appreciation of the Psalms and their application to Christian lives. His prose is bracing...and refreshing. He takes for granted the amazing grace of the Father shown and enacted in the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit.

This book is a response to grace, and an infectious joy seeps through the pages, even the pages that deal with sadness and suffering. It sings joy to people in hard times and good times. It reminds everyone in every situation of life that, while the Christian life may be at times difficult (a long obedience in the same direction) it is still a life lived in response to the wonderful love given to us in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

If you're looking for some light-hearted reading, please try something like this. If, on the other hand, you're looking for heart-pumping story-telling in a Tolkien-like world, the Wheel of Time series is the place to go.

As I like to put it, Jordan manages to maintain all of Tolkien's strengths without replicating any of his weaknesses. It's hard to find any time in the first five books where it might remotely be called "slow." Jordan expertly introduces, maintains, and develops several dozen important characters and many detailed locations.

And the story is great, too.

So, if you're looking for something to read at the end of the summer, pick up Book One of the Wheel of Time series. You won't regret it.

But, we must remember, as so many fine biblical scholars and theologians have, that while the Incarnation of the Son of God is an absolutely unique event, the Trinity decided that the human nature of Jesus would come from the Virgin Mary, a very Jewish woman who begat a very Jewish man. The Incarnation, instead of destroying the OT, instead establishes and enriches it.

Listen to these proverbs and hear its resonances with Jesus, especially in the Gospel of Luke:

7 The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

14 If a king judges the poor with fairness, his throne will always be secure.

Or these proverbs wtih Jesus' injunction to turn the other cheek:

13 The poor man and the oppressor have this in common: The LORD gives sight to the eyes of both.

11 A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.

20 Do you see a man who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

23 A man's pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor.

25 Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.

26 Many seek an audience with a ruler, but it is from the LORD that man gets justice.

And, just to be reminded that turning the other cheek does not mean condoning wickedness:

27 The righteous detest the dishonest; the wicked detest the upright.

In fact, it is Jesus' example of the wise life that leads Christians in his Way. This chapter even has wise comments on the necessity of Jesus' sacrificial life and death:

19 A servant cannot be corrected by mere words; though he understands, he will not respond.

16 When the wicked thrive, so does sin, but the righteous will see their downfall.

10 Bloodthirsty men hate a man of integrity and seek to kill the upright.

But, just to be reminded of the difference...that there is something truly new in the Person and Work of Jesus, notice how Jesus' life turned this proverb on its head:

3 A man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.

How wonderful that Jesus' wisdom brought joy to the Father on our behalf; and how wonderful that Jesus squandered his wealth in his gracious pursuit of us his Church, the worst of all prostitutes.

A high-five to whoever can get them all right.

This week has been another famous acronym: NSO (New Student Outreach). A week ago (Mon, 8/21), we had a small booth at graduate student orientation. Thirteen new students signed up to be on our mailing list, and I was able to have coffee with five of those before our Welcome Picnic that happened yesterday (Sun, 8/27). We played frisbee, croquet, and ate lots and lots of Flavor-Ice. About twenty people showed up, and several of them signed up to get more information. I have already sent out emails to follow-up with those students.

I enjoyed myself this week. Getting to know students and the campus better was exciting. Please pray that God uses us to minister in this place, giving us insight into the needs of the students and the Gospel that answers all of our needs through Christ.

[Tags like "BIBLE" are going to be more commonplace here. Some will be "Bible," others "Theology," others "News" so the discerning reader can see and know what they are getting themselves into.]

Proverbs 24:11-12 11 Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. 12 If you say, "But we knew nothing about this," does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?

I though this was especially fitting for its resonances not only with evangelism but also service to the community. Make an effort, it says, to go after those who are perishing and to help those in danger. Whether it be personal salvation or the fact that both their brake lights are out, it would be good to go out of our way to be a help to those in peril.

Proverbs 24:17-18 17 Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, 18 or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him.

Lesslie Newbigin once wrote that to ever glory in the fact that a person has gone to Hell is to show that one has never understood grace. While I certainly agree with Lesslie's sentiment, the wise saying here says, "Don't gloat, or God will stop punishing them!" So, one way or the other, don't gloat when an enemy falls, especially the really bad ones. It either shows that you don't understand the grace that saved you or shows that you really don't want them punished in the first place. If we can't be happy that our enemy stumbles, what can we do? "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter..."

But this doesn't mean that we should withhold our judgement of evil:

23 These also are sayings of the wise: To show partiality in judging is not good: 24 Whoever says to the guilty, "You are innocent"— peoples will curse him and nations denounce him. 25 But it will go well with those who convict the guilty, and rich blessing will come upon them.

Don't show partiality to enemies and don't gloat over their demise. The wise know that vengeance belongs to the Lord and that God's justice is still just the other side of God's love. It is only because God is constant love that He hates that which is evil, that which is not love. When we gloat over our enemies, or withhold judgement of them as wicked, or don't run after them to help them avoid death and slaughter, we leave the path of God's loving wisdom to make another of our own.

And here's my favorite for the day, one that needs no comment:

26 An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.

No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.

My two-cents on the matter went something like this:

Acts 5:13-14: These two verses seem to contradict one another, but it looks to me like the tension here highlights the mystery and miracle of coming to believe in Christ.

“No one else dared to join them…”—left on their own, the people do not dare join the company of people who witness to the Resurrection of Christ.

“even though they were highly regarded…”—so, people, even when they consider the high reputation of the church, do not dare, of their own will, to join it. It appears to their minds to be an “impossible possibility.”

“Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.”—Isn’t that a beautiful “nevertheless”? Despite every human desire to the contrary, despite every good reason to stay away from the church, God’s “nevertheless” intervenes so that women and men “were added” to their number, not added by a choice that began with them, but added by a choice that began with God and cut through their doubt and fear. God’s “nevertheless” cuts our own hesitation to ribbons. What was impossible in v. 13 is made possible by God in v. 14. Hallelujah.

Believing in Christ is a mystery because we cannot fathom the “how” of coming to believe. It is a miracle because God is the one who adds to the church’s number with his “nevertheless.”

Immediately before in the disturbing passage about Ananias and Sapphira we are reminded that God is a jealous God who punishes evil even in the hearts of His followers; yet in v.13-14, we are reminded that God is also a merciful God who calls people to Himself despite their sinful rejection of faith and obedience. We approach the God we love then with both fear and awe; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit deserve (and demand) no less from us.

And, I might add, in beginning this trek with Graduate and Faculty Ministries at Vanderbilt University, it will be important for me to remember that while I can make it so that our community is well spoken of and admired on campus, I cannot coerce or force the "nevertheless." Until the Father moves through the Spirit to point to Christ as the Way, Truth, and Life, all I can do is bear witness and pray for God's beautiful, intervening "nevertheless."