What is Truth?

As mentioned previously, this certain bishop said that the great thing about the postmodern era is that people "realize there are multiple realities." He then proceeded to talk about "living into the questions" and ambiguity as a Christian value in itself. However, this idea that every truth must be balanced by an equal and opposite "truth" in order to find God's truth is logically silly, and indicative of a worldview shaped more by Foucault than Jesus.

I believe it was the former who taught the last couple of generations that any claim to an absolute truth is actually an attempt by the powerful to solidify their control over those with little or no influence. In other words, power is knowledge, instead of the other way around. Therefore in a purely pomo worldview, to claim an absolute truth is to assume the role of an oppressor.

Jesus, however, said that the truth would make us free. He said that he is the truth. I think it must be both relational and propositional. And I think the truth can only be and do what the truth is and does if it is those things over and against other "truths." That is, lies. In other words, can we have a truth if nothing is a lie?

Frankly, I live my life among men and women who know their sexuality only as a curse, not a blessing, and their close relationships as power struggles and sources of pain instead of wholeness. Why? Because we believe all kinds of lies about God, ourselves and the world. If there is not an overriding truth that will reveal others "truths" to be the lies they really are, nobody's going to be healed.

Is there a word from God that is definitive? That can be trusted? That will enable us to cling to him when all of the lies scream at us so much louder than the truth?

I'm betting that there is, in the apostolic tradition. The faith once delivered to the saints. That the original communities' experience with Jesus can really be normative for us. How can we translate it faithfully instead of merely copying customs and mindlessly repeating ancient creeds? How can we own it and live it? I hope to find out.

But I'm not afraid. I don't have to try to "live the questions." The questions come out of the life I live anyway. It's the answers, and ultimately the Answer who is Christ that I am working to live into.

Heresy is Bad For You

I'm not sure what this week did for my cynicism. The jury's out, I suppose. I got to hear the (figure)head of the denomination talk about "ambiguity" as a Christian value in and of itself. How did he support this as being an integral part of the faith?

He actually prooftexted the Chalcedonian Definition.

Yeah, that's what I said. The document was approved at the 451 Council of Chalcedon to frame and somewhat settle the Christian Communities' conception of Jesus the God-Man, specifically that Jesus Christ is both human and divine.

His point? That the great thing about pomo (look, I'm trendy) society is that people "realize there are multiple realities," and that we live in a "both/and world." This is apparently a classical Christian value, since the Church used both/and language back in the day while trying to figure out a metaphysical question.

The problem being of course that in the case of the C.D., we have an affirmation of faith that is paradoxical, not the mixing of paradoxes in an attempt to create an affirmation of faith. The Community's faith is that Jesus is both divine and human, so they had to tailor their theological and philosophical formulations so they could have paradox but not contradiction. This is not the same as gathering up contradictory worldviews and insisting that God's truth is a paradoxical amalgam of all voices just because the people talking got sprinkled when they were infants.

According to many of the fine minds of the Episcopal Church, Christian values and teaching are to be determined by adopting and affirming all of the contradictory worldviews and opinions of everybody who ever was baptized. So long as they don't try to keep someone else's worldview out of the mix.

This is instead of converting people to an altogether different worldview (based on scripture or tradition) that proclaims all the lies they've ever believed to be just that -- lies. There is, however, one over-riding principle that stands over and against other truths and serves as a corrective: "love." Not agape, not that which can think critically and choose the best things for people and choose to be a servant even when all natural affection and caring has bled away in the face of human brokenness and evil,

This "love" affirms everyone's opinion, and insists that you must never keep someone else from the pursuit of what they think will be happiness by speaking a contradictory or corrective word.

I don't think God is doing a new thing. He's doing the same thing he's always done.

more later...

Klein on Recriminations

It is more profitable to do something with the past than to be depressed about our inability to do a great deal about it. All our lives we shall be redeeming the past.

Walter C. Klein

"God has not commanded me to love a bloodless abstraction"

The observant Christian discovers anew every day of his life that holiness is compatible with the continuance of irritating personal traits. The devoted human personality remains embedded in nature. If I want God's love through my brother -- and for my own good I ought to be delighted that I am not likely to get it any other way -- I must take it with my brother's moldy jokes, his asinine opinions, his halitosis, and his maddening mannerisms. God has not commanded me to love a bloodless abstraction. Constructive love cannot flourish between me and a human being stripped of the features and ways that repel me and remade to my liking. In loving the work of my own hands, I should merely be loving myself, and in this there is no gain. God is the author of all idiosyncrasies, whether they exist in me or in my neighbor, and in each of them He has wonderfully and inimitably blended the elements of our nature. Simply because the makings of a man are assembled in my brother as they have never been assembled before and will never be assembled again, he has a peculiar grace to communicate to me. I shall never obtain that grace unless I love him, not as I should like him to be, but as God has willed him to be.

From Walter C. Klein, Clothed with Salvation, 1953

Resurrection Begins the Story

From (N.T.) Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham:

"Easter is about the beginning of God's new world. John's Gospel stresses that Easter Day is the first day of the new week: not so much the end of the old story as the launch of the new one. The gospel resurrection stories end, not with "well, that's all right then", nor with "Jesus is risen, therefore we will rise too", but with "God's new world has begun, therefore we've got a job to do, and God's Spirit to help us do it". That job is to plant the flags of resurrection - new life, new communities, new churches, new faith, new hope, new practical love - in amongst the tired slogans of idolatrous modernity and destructive postmodernity."

Sadly, the link is dead now.

Holy Saturday

Christ in the Tomb

A Prayer for Holy Saturday

O faithful, come, let us behold our Life laid in a tomb to give life to those who dwell in tombs. Come, let us behold him in his sleep and cry out to him with the voice of the prophets: 'You are like a lion. Who shall arouse you, O King? Rise by your own power, O you who have given yourself up for us, O Lover of mankind.'

Click here for a short meditation on Holy Saturday, by Simon Jenkins of Ship of Fools.

Maundy Thursday 2004

I've been gifted to preach at the footwashing tomorrow, so I wrote this dramatic monologue in lieu of a traditional sermon. +Dallas was even kind enough to lend his crozier for a prop!

(You can listen to the audio version here)

Maundy Thursday, 2004

It is good to be with you. My name is Simon Peter. I lead the community here in Rome. We tell a lot of stories this time of year, to remember the death and new life of our King. We tell stories to learn who we are.

When we celebrate the Passover meal, we remember that we were created by God’s saving act. We who were slaves became a nation when Yahweh moved his mighty arm and delivered us from the hand of Pharaoh hundreds of years ago. We became his special people all over again thirty years ago when our Master Jesus became the Passover for us and by his resurrecton saved us from the darkness of sin. Many of you who were not of Israel became his because of this. We have been created by his saving act.

But tonight I want to tell you a story a little less grand, but no less important to who we are. It was our last Passover with Jesus on the night he was betrayed – by all of us. We gathered in an upper room to share the meal. Our feet had gotten dusty, and needed to be washed before we gathered at table. We were talking, cutting up and just enjoying being together. It had been a dark week, and we needed to celebrate. But then we suddenly quieted; we could have heard a feather hit the ground. Not many things can silence a room of rambunctious fishermen. I looked about to see what had happened. Jesus had taken off his robe and put on a towel. He filled a basin and began to wash our feet. We were completely speechless, and I was incensed. We had gathered to celebrate our identity as the free people of God, and he was doing what would have been disgraceful even for a slave!

He came to me, and I asked him just what he thought he was doing. “You don’t understand now,” he said, “but later, you will.” I refused him: “You’re never going to wash my feet!” He was patient and adamant as always. “If I don’t do this, you can’t be my disciple.”

I was shattered. I had spent three years of my life with this man, given up everything to follow him. But... if refusing this meant refusing him, clearly I had missed something. But I loved him, so I did the smartest thing I think I ever do: I obeyed, even though I didn’t understand.

As the rough hands of the carpenter cradled the rougher feet of this fisherman, I was struck by the tenderness of the act. Feet are very basic things, right? They’re just there. But as his fingers moved between my toes to wash, I was devastated by the intimacy. I began to understand. On that night in a little room in Jerusalem, just before all hell would break loose, this is what it meant to love us to the end. He was dedicated to me and to each of us. There were no lengths to which he would not go to love us, heal us, and set us free. This lowly service showed me the very heart of God.

He told us that this would be the pattern for our lives. This is a symbol of how he bears us up in all of our sins, failings and idiosyncrasies.

We remember this tonight. We confess our needs and submit to his washing—submit to his tenderness. We will leave and remember that our brothers and sisters have dusty feet also. We will wash them.

So in this story, learn who you are.

Let the Lord be with you in the weak places, in the dirt. Then go, take up your basin and towel, and be who you are.

In the name of Christ. Amen.

Technorati Tags: Lent, liturgy, early church, Maundy Thursday, sermons

On the Eucharistic Life

In the Middle East, the sharing of a meal is deeply significant act that creates and maintains communal life. As Dr. Power reminds us from time to time, in that culture, sharing a meal with someone makes them family, and this act carries all of the blessings and responsibilities of that kind of relationship. It is in that culture that the Passover meal became the Eucharist.

One of the oldest Eucharistic blessings includes this prayer: “As this broken bread was once scattered on the mountains, and after it had been brought together became one, so may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for yours is the glory, and the power, through Jesus Christ, forever” (Didache 9:4).

In the Eucharist, we rehearse the redemptive act whereby God created a people for himself. We join in that action to receive the blessings and accept the responsibilities of being that people. Taking the bread and wine is a deeply political act, proclaiming for everyone, “Who I am is not determined by my culture or job or the dictates of society. I am in Christ, and my identity is determined by His words and the life of the Community, which is his Body.”

The Eucharistic celebration is a renewal of Jesus’ commitment to us, collectively, as his Body, the people he has redeemed for himself. It is a renewal of our commitment to him and one another in being that. We are the scattered grain that has become the one loaf of bread, offered to God at the altar to be the Body of Christ. “We behold what we are; may we become what we see.”

To what extent do we really take responsibility for our brothers and sisters with whom we celebrate the Eucharist? What does it look like when we really commit to a deep, familial sharing with people who may have no more in common with us than the decision to attend a particular parish? What can be done to create that kind of “community culture” when we often attend churches full of people who have no such concept?

I don't have many answers yet, just more questions. But I'm working on it. Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags: Jesus, church history, eucharist, early church, discipleship

On the Parable of the Sower

Jesus seemed to have a confidence in his preaching that I probably shouldn’t emulate: “if you don’t understand what I’m talking about, it’s because you’re predetermined to be unspiritual.” Riiight. I’ll try it one day and let you know how well it goes over.

Jesus has a lot of work to do in teaching us to see our world and ourselves as God does, and he uses stories to get the point across. He often presented to people very commonplace dilemmas, but with unexpected twists. He leads us to ask, “who am I in this story?”

When his disciples asked about the stories, Jesus told them that they reveal “the secret of the Kingdom of God,” what the rule of Yahweh looks like when ordinary men and women enter into it. Jesus identified himself by word and deed as the Jewish messiah, so was developing quite a following of folks who expected the immanent reign of God. We have to understand, however, that in this culture, entering the reign of God was something one did with a big knife: Isaiah called Messiah a mighty warrior, and there was plenty of war to be made. Israel was under foreign domination, and the Pharisees were always struggling to maintain the integrity of Jewishness in a sea of Gentile idolatry.

But Jesus doesn’t tell them of battle and destruction at this moment. He tells them about a farmer, haphazardly throwing away seed. Not meticulously planting each one, apparently even plowing. He just throws it out everywhere and waits to see what happens. The kingdom is coming, but not through the immediate vindication of Israel, but by the transformation of lives. The poor hear good news, broken hearts are bound and prisoners are released from darkness. A Roman centurion’s servant is healed, a little girl is raised from the dead, and demons vacate the oppressed spirit of Mary Magdalene.

This is what grows up all around us when the Word finds good ground. As we journey deeper into the Lenten season, deeply aware of our own mortality and fragility, we ask, how do we receive the word? Do we live our lives in a listening way, putting down roots when the Word comes down to us? Do we lose ourselves in the addictions of media and materialism, allowing the Evil One to steal away what we’ve been given? Does our desire for comfort choke our growth into vulnerability before the Lord and obedience to his call?

Dust we are, and to dust we will return. We come before the Lord of the universe with ashes on our foreheads, dirty hands that cradle too many regrets to name, and fearful hearts that harbor deep brokenness. But that’s alright. He, in Himself, is enough for us. We come to his table to receive the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, trusting that he will impart his wholeness to us. Nothing else will satisfy. Nothing else will heal us. We wait, together, in the stillness, in the dark, for his word of compassion and healing. This altar is set up in the darkest parts of us, where shame, guilt, and our continual inability to “get it together” remain the core values of who we are. Lord Jesus, meet us here.

His word will heal us and set us free. This will not be a matter of immediate, whiz-bang “name it and claim it” prosperity gospel rubbish, but a process that will flow out of his commitment to us, and ours to him. We have re-order our lives so to be “good ground” to receive the love that he throws around like great bags of seed.

The Powers and the Death of John

Text: Mark 6:13-29.

Mark’s narrative gets strange here. He tells us the big thing God’s anointed is doing next, but then he remembers there’s a background story to share with us, and a pretty disturbing one at that.

John the Baptizer died for a very stupid reason. Herod had been afraid of him, and rightfully so. John had come on the scene preaching repentance with quite a following, while Herod was a minor ruler serving an oppressive power but had lofty pretensions to being called the King of the Jews. He feared John as a man of God, so he knew that silencing this popular prophet would bring God’s wrath, as well as kill the last of his credibility with his people. Even when John attacked his “family values,” that fox kept a respectful distance.

But then Herod had a birthday party, and probably quite drunk and not a little lusty, asked his niece to dance for his assembled guests. She must have been quite a diva, because afterwards he blustered a promise to reward her with whatever she wished, up to the half of his kingdom. Still feeling the humiliation of the Baptizer’s rebuke, her mother Herodias knew just the thing: John’s head. So Herod’s moral weakness and pride picked up where his resolve had failed. He had John executed.

John was the greatest and last prophet of Israel, Jesus said. He announced the arrival of Israel’s Messiah, and began the work of ushering them into the Reign of Yahweh, warning that “the powers that be” were coming to an end and that people who responded to Yahweh and those who kept serving the powers would be separated like wheat and chaff, and once the chaff started burning, wasn’t nothing gonna put the fire. The forces of greed, lust, domination and oppression, were about to be dethroned.

And yet.

We see Herod and his family and friends, people controlled by the “principalities and powers,” wallowing in their own excess and dispatching John on a drunken whim.

There is no Hollywood ending to wrap it all up very neatly. Perhaps John recovers while in hiding, and makes Herod pay, or Jesus and the crew show up and break down his palace to rubble. But that doesn’t happen.

His disciples took the body and laid it in a tomb. How melancholy.

What is God’s response to this? Let’s recall what reminded Mark to tell the story.

“They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.”

Jesus disarms the powers not by fighting puppets like Herod, but by undermining them. The principalities and powers, and those that serve them, can control with lies. They cannot make free by the truth. They can hurt. They cannot heal. They can inspire hatred or lust, but love is beyond them. Jesus and his disciples, however, could do these things.

So how will we live under the rule of Yahweh when we’re surrounded by fear and the domination of “the powers that be”? We will listen for and speak to one another the prophetic words that there is nothing in life, death, heaven, hell, sickness, poverty, or any fear that can separate us from the love of God that has been demonstrated to us in Jesus Christ. Nothing at all. We will approach the altar of God as free people and receive Jesus again into ourselves, and trust in his love and dedication to us, the promise that our life is in Christ.

Then we will go. We will carry the peace of God with us and give it away to others by our words and the tender works of our hands. The Kingdom is coming, and nothing will stop it. It is here among us now. Amen.

Discipline of Community

Provocative reading.

3. Fellowship can only be on the surface because we are all way too busy to invest real time in each other. In addition, we have no clue how to have real relationships because we have been through so many bad ones, and biblical principles for confrontation, reconciliation and restoration are rarely followed (because we don't want to offend anyone).

4. People have become immune to church initiatives geared toward making them feel welcomed into and part of the church. Sadly though, these are mostly "programs" to promote a "healthy, growing church" and focus more on the church's interests than on the interests of the people to whom they would minister.

From Why churches are REALLY dead..., Diana Baldwin

Points 3 and 4 of Ms. Baldwin's essay resonate deeply with my own experience in churches, and help me to articulate just why it is that I am so desperate to discover a communal Christian discipleship we can rightly call "apostolic" instead of the comfortable, consumer-driven church culture that pervades North American Christendom.

We put together attractive programs in our churches and water down the call to discipleship as much as we can in order to make it easily digestible. We hope people will reorder their lives just enough to make the "Sunday event" a regular, positive experience. "We got them in." This is the important part, you say. That's evangelism. Is it? One of my buddies would be quick to quote Augustine to me: "It's the walls that make a Christian, then?"

No. It's not the walls. It's a changed life. We aren't going to offer the evidence of Christ in our midst by creating glitzy worship "experiences" or clever programs designed to offer the gospel as a "yes/no" proposition as convincingly as possible.

People are not out there so we can convert them to an institution. Our institutions, our ways of doing things, exist to faciliate and challenge our life together as the Body of Christ, God's New Community. We're only going to draw people to Jesus if we lift him up in our lives by loving people in the hard ways.

So what would it look like if I were to really re-order my life so that I could learn the Way? I would use language as a tool for sharing, rather than trying to make people think I'm clever. I'd be friends with people who don't seem to "get me" all the time. I'd invite people over and cook for them more. I really think I would give up the addiction of having my own way all the time. I would talk more with people that I know will challenge me. I'd stop being too afraid to challenge them. You can do that when you love and know you're loved, after all, this idea of saying hard things.

These are just some of the things I've been thinking about, and some of it I've been living into.

On Spiritual Disciplines

I've been reading Dallas Willard and Richard Foster in preparation for a three week teaching series on "Spiritual Disciplines." I chose to teach on the topic because I've sensed for quite some time that I need to learn about this stuff.

Willard's got a pretty tough proposition he sets forth in his Spirit of the Disciplines: we don't live like Jesus (the way he called us to live) because we don't order our lives like he did. We assume that a "spiritual" life is one divorced from the "real" world around us. To the contrary, the spiritual life is one lived in the real world according to principles of God's Kingdom instead of those of the world around us.

Kingdom living means choosing deliberate solitude, intentional community, time for prayer, meditation, and fasting. It means living a life of premeditated submission to the people around us and serving them, washing feet like the Master. It's a different way -- a redemptive way -- of living life in the world, not a way of stepping out of it.

My biggest thought right now is that "gee, I've got a lot to change if I'm going to recieve the Kingdom." But I don't think that a big, unsustainable life change is the point. It's the smaller, sustainable changes that will create a place in our lives for the Master. The purpose (says Foster) is to live in continual communion and obedience with the Lord, free to love and live in joy. The Disciplines are a matter of how we get there from here.

So I'm going to do it, bit by bit. I can take twenty minutes out of the day to pray for people who matter to me. I can take thirty minutes a few times a week to sit in silence, to let empty places form without seeking to fill them with noise. I can meditate on scripture, and invite Jesus into those places. It's those little things, that way of arranging my life -- not being morally perfect -- that will bring about a life lived under the Reign of God.

Lenten Meditation

Meditation for the Saturday after Ash Wednesday
John 17:20-26, NIV

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. While the stark reality spoken at the imposition of the ashes echoes in our minds, our Master prays that we would receive his glory. Who does Jesus think he’s fooling? He of anyone should know how our best intentions too often disintegrate in the fires of our jealously, faithlessness, and obdurate wandering after false gods: Wednesday’s ashes are the remains of Palm Sunday’s jubilation. But Jesus knows that the glory of God is greater than our failures. In biblical usage, the word “glory” denotes the visible presence of Yahweh in the midst of his people. This is why John speaks so often of Jesus “glorifying” the Father by his signs: in them, Jesus revealed the true character of Yahweh.

Jesus says that he has glorified the Father, and given that glory to his disciples and those who would follow. That glory will bring unity, and through it, the world will see the Father’s love. How can we walk in this truth? Jesus glorified the Father by healing and embracing the broken and outcast. He spoke love and truth into shame and disorder. He emptied himself of pride and took the place of a servant, washing the feet of his friends as well as his betrayer. He died bearing our sin and disorder, looking to God to make it right.

If unity is a matter of glorifying the Father and the Son through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we will not achieve it by fighting to preserve or save our religious institutions. It will be a gift that comes from glorifying our Master. So let’s grab a basin and towel and get to work.

Technorati Tags: Lent, Ash Wednesday, discipleship

Civil War Adventures

It's been a pretty quiet few days. "Kmart" came to visit me the week after Christmas, but alas we both ended up getting some kind of nasty flu varient. So we put off our sight-seeing until the last bit of the weekend. We went to Corsicana and saw a towel soiled with the blood of Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah, that'll give you nightmares.

I'll be teaching at the end of February on "Understanding Christian Fundamentalism." I'm really excited about it, because exploring that stuff is of course one of my best hobbies. I intend to focus on helping folks make sense of words like "charismatic," "evangelical," and "fundamentalist" so they'll not only be able to "get" people of those persuasions (even if it's just a little bit) but also be a little less prone to use those words entirely interchangably, which is the habit of a number of folks around these parts.

See, it's all about what irritates me. :0)

The Epiphany

Epiphany. John 6:30-33, 48-51, NIV

Jesus’ disciples were people on the fringes. They felt adrift in their society, deeply feeling their powerlessness in a culture characterized by foreign oppression, political unrest, and a crushing fear of what the future held. Jesus gathered people together and promised them that through his own ministry, God’s saving power was breaking into their world here and now, and that it was bigger than all the institutional evils they could name, as well as their own pain and doubt.

Yesterday we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany, the realization that the light Jesus brings into our lives will eradicate the darkness and fear. God has moved his salvation into our dark world with the force of a blazing star. But we understand, as did the first disciples, that this work is not accomplished all at once. There remains uncertainty and crippling fear. So as they did, we ask Him, “Show us a sign. We believe you, but we need something to hold onto, something more than just words.”

“I am the bread of Life,” He says, “come down from heaven.” The love I show you, the sacrifice I make for you, will be your sign. It will be the foundation of your life, so much that you will commemorate it with the most ordinary of observances, the eating of bread and wine.

In impoverished first century Palestine, bread and wine were the basic elements of a meal. Had the incarnation occurred in Africa, he might have given us rice and water. Here, he might have told us to remember him with coffee and donuts. The point is that the ordinary things have become reminders of His love for us and His promise to heal us and set us free.

So as we acknowledge and lift up to Him our hurts and our fears, let’s give thanks for the ordinary things that are reminders of Him, those graces that empower us to keep waiting for His salvation. God’s redemptive and healing movement in our lives will take many forms: an embrace, an encouraging note, a garden, a good meal – any number of things. What is He placing into your life to empower and heal you? We thank Him for those things, and ask Him to give us more of Himself.

Our sign is in the ordinary things. Hear the words He spoke through the prophet Isaiah: “I am God now and forever. No one can snatch you from me or stand in my way” (43:13).