Search

Bo Sanders: Public Theology

updating & innovating for today

Open Search

Waking Up To Easter

Easter is a waking up. How do you wake up an Easter people?

When I was a child, my father would sometimes wake us up with an Easter song. It is called ‘Up From The Grave He Arose” and it still brings a smile to my face when I think about it.

This came to my mind as we were picking songs from Easter. We did not choose this song but it is always in the back of my mind.

It became even more relevant when I started reading ‘Liturgy of the Ordinary’ and the opening chapter was about ‘waking up’.  I started working on my sermon for ‘waking up’ before Easter and found it impossible to think about one without thinking about the other.

Easter is a waking up.

It is waking up to new life, hope, second chances, and possibilities.

Every morning is invitation to an Easter people to ‘be a different way in the world’.

Here is a video about being woken up by Easter.  I hope you enjoy a little levity on a Wednesday afternoon.

I also hope that in this series you hear the invitation to wake up to a different way of being in the world as Easter people.

0

When does your morning begin?

“When does your morning begin?” is our opening question in Sacred Everyday.

Depending on work, kids, and age – that answer probably has an ‘AM’ behind it. For me, 5am seems early but 8am seems a luxury.

What if you were to adopt an ancient Jewish perspective that your day actually begins at sundown the evening before?

This is my challenge this week!

 

Today is Monday and I asked myself on Sunday (yesterday) “What do I want my Monday to look like?” and then I prepared for it as the sun set last night.

I will do the same tonight. I have a long day Tuesday so instead of ‘vegging out’ and filling up this evening, I am going to get prepared. I will lay out my clothes (not my normal practice), turn off my electronics, watch what I eat and drink, and do something to calm myself (like stretching) so that I have the best chance of sleeping.

I would like to invite you to try this practice with me. Let’s see if it makes a difference in your week.

 

If you are not ready for that, I also found a cool morning practice.  Keep a bowl of water by your bed, bathroom mirror, or beside your kitchen stove.  (You may to cover it with a cloth or pour a new one each morning).

Then first thing in the morning – before anything else (or while the water is heating for coffee and tea) – place three fingers in the water (to symbolize the trinity) and touch it to your forehead.  Remember your baptism.

 

It may also help to say part or all of the following confession:

I am born again today

I am born of water and spirit into my new life

Today is a new day

Today is a divine day

I am beloved   (of my Father/Mother)

These two practices are invitations to see your every day as sacred and full of possibility. The goal of today is not to survive. The goal of today is shine with the divine in the midst of the ordinary. You have a light within – nurture it and let it shine.

Follow the whole series here: http://vermonthillsumc.org/category/sacred-everyday/

0

Podcast: Y is for Y2K

This is not the end of the world – just the end of this way of BEING the world.

Buckle up for a wild ride.

Here is the audio for Sunday School podcast http://vermonthillsumc.org/podcast/y-is-for-y2k-2/

You can also listen on Itunes and Stitcher.  Read the preview here (link) or the PDF (Y is for Y2K (preview))

Just remember: prophets don’t tell the future so much as they tell the truth in interesting ways.

 

0

Why Do Church This Way?

Beginning this Sunday, I want to put a series of ideas in front on my congregation and brainstorm them together during Sunday School.  You can listen to the podcast audio here.

I am working on a clear way to present ‘Church 2.0’ or ‘ChurchNext’.

We will start with some history about different ways that the church has looked in different eras.

  • During the middle-ages it was primarily through sacrament.
  • 500 years ago the Protestant Reformation made it more about preaching.
  • Lately, music has become the main focus of the church and the primary way that people connect with God.

Here are the two really interesting things about that:

First, in each new era, the previous way still hangs around – it is just not as prominent.

So in the reformation, sacraments were still present but just not primary. Preaching was the main attraction.

Now in the ‘music’ era, we still have preaching and sacraments (for the most part) but in many circles they are secondary or driven by the music.

Second, I truly believe that we are about to enter a very different expression. This future of the church is going to be in:

  • participation
  • contribution
  • collaboration
  • conversation

Eventually people are going to get tired of being spectators at a weekly spectacle.  In so many other areas of life, people’s participation really matters. They get to contribute their unique insight, perspective, and experience. Then they come to church, sing the songs on the screen then sit and listen to a TEDtalk style sermon (I am being cheeky here).

If that works for people, I celebrate that and congratulate them. I mean them no harm … but for so many other people it is just not satisfying.

People are walking away from the church in record numbers – nones and dones are the fasting growing segment of religious affiliation on the most recent census data.

But there is a different way to do church that opens up the conversation to inquiry and doubt … it facilitates a thoughtful space to ask difficult questions.  That is my hope for doing church this way and for becoming a conversational community.

So why do church this way?

  • Why de-center the sermon?
  • Why utilize music to punctuate the gathering?
  • Why have sacraments once a month?
0

Easter Fools Sermon

Tomorrow is a rare day. Easter and April Fool’s fall on the same day. This happens approximately every 67 years – so it will happen once in my life time.  This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!  Here is my sermon tomorrow :
_________________

If you don’t believe in the resurrection you are a fool.

Easter fools – that is what the apostle Paul wants us to be – fools for Easter.

The whole thing kind of reminds me of a story about a Slovenian philosopher. He was a well known intellectual and an avowed atheist. His friend came to visit him at his cottage in the country and was disturbed when he arrived to see that this philosopher had a ‘lucky’ horseshoe above the doorway to the cottage.

After a while his friend couldn’t hide it anymore and finally said “I am so disappointed in you – you are a man of reason and intelligence – how can you have this superstitious charm hanging above your doorway for luck?”

The philosopher was quick to calm his friend and said “no, no, it’s ok. Of course I don’t believe in that … but I have been assured that works whether you believe in it or not.”

That seems to me to be a great approach to Easter. It works whether you believe in it or not –  Easter fools.

One of my favorite thinkers lived through WWII in Germany and he came up with this idea that I absolutely love. You don’t need to remember this unless you want to impress people at a cocktail party (or at dinner later this afternoon). It is called the Ontological Priority of the Future and it basically says: whatever turns out to be true in the end will have been true the entire time whether we knew it or not … whether we believed in it or not.

Like gravity it acts upon us before we are aware of it or understand it. It has its pull on us.

We live in a day when people have reduced faith and belief into these little pithy sayings that can be dismissed or explained away.

Just try talking about heaven and watch people eye-roll so hard they are in danger of injuring themselves or twitching so hard that might pull a muscle.

But if the afterlife turns out to be true – that there is existence on the other side of this life – some of you are going to be really surprised! (or disappointed). You will be like the person who wakes up tomorrow in Hawaii and thinks, “if I had known I would packed my bag differently!!”

Resurrection is like this. Easter is about new life – hope – possibility – vindication for the victim – and life!!!!!

It is not about physics. It is not about verification of historical accounts. That is the wrong kind of foolish.

Easter fools are people who live into hope, possibility, justice, imagination, and second chances.

  • Life ruptured death.
  • Christ penetrated history and split it in two.
  • Hope overcame darkness.
  • New life rose up out of the ashes.

This is the fascinating and troubling thing to me. We live in an either/or world. Nearly every topic gets broken down into ‘this or that’ categories.  [examples]

Easter has been affected too. Every year I hear people (and especially preachers) talk about a physical vs. a spiritual resurrection. Did Jesus’ corpse get resuscitated or did his spirit just manifest which is why the disciples thought he was gardener or a pilgrim and it took a while to recognize him and figure out who he was.

The truth is that both of these positions are to miss the point!!!  The reality is that neither is a good option. The problem is that one starts with science and then reads that back onto the narrative – the other starts with history and the imposes that on the text.

But if you actually look at the gospel accounts of Easter, you get a very different picture. The better option might be a third way called “glorified”.  Jesus had a glorified body post-Easter.  It could both walk through walls (for miraculous entrances) but was solid enough to make breakfast on the shore for his disciples. It bore the scars of Calvary so that (doubting) Thomas could touch his side where the spear had entered, but different enough that he could be mistaken for strangers at first. He was neither a zombie nor a ghost – we have completely missed the point of Easter: GLORY!!!   Jesus had a glorified body and was glorifying God.

This matters because your body really matters to god. It is not insignificant to your journey and your experience. You are not just a mud shell that houses the good (and eternal) part of you called your spirit. That is Gnosticism and not Christianity at all.

Look if you don’t want to get into debates about resurrection, or resuscitation, or reanimation .. I get it.  But don’t you dare give up on concepts like hope, new life, possibility, and glory.

We are to be, among all people, fools for this kind of thing.  Easter fools. We see Christ in the gardener and the in the traveler. We bear the marks of our experience – but they do not limit us. Our body informs our experience of the divine but it does not define it or exhaust it.

We are an Easter people.  Fools who believe in a better way. The world does not have to work the way it currently does. We can imagine the world working a different way. Call that foolish if you want.  It is actually part of the job description – to be foolish. Fools for new life, hope, and justice.  Easter fools.  Fools who believe in a better way.

For some of you your faith had died. You either thought it to death or life just beat it out of you.

Today might be a good day for some resurrection. For some new life. For some hope.

Does that sound A little foolish? Well that is what Easter is all about. Fools for a different way of being in the world. Easter Fools.

3

Good Friday Homily

Here is my short homily for tonight. We are doing a Tenebrae service where we start in total light and descend into darkness.

He didn’t deserve this.

He never deserved this.

For what?

Telling people to be nice to each other and speaking in riddles? For healing people and feeding people?

No.

But he made them nervous – so they made an example out of him.

But they didn’t need to do it like this – they could have just killed him and been done with it.

Crosses are cruel. They are torture.  They are not just death – they are spectacle.

Crosses are designed to humiliate the victim and intimidate the rest of us.

They are tools of terror meant to scare the rest of us into submission.

He didn’t deserve this. He got scapegoated.  They always do this.

When the pressure builds too much it has be vented. The machine has to blow off steam before there is a rebellion.

They choose a goat and they blame and place all the guilt on its head.

What do you do when the goat is innocent and goes silently like a lamb led to slaughter?

He said nothing when he had the chance to defend himself. Now he says things like ‘forgive them, they know not what they are doing’.

The angels are not coming to save him. They would if he would cry out. But he won’t.

Instead he is exposing the system. He is laying bare the powers that be and exposing the scapegoat mechanism.  IT doesn’t work … to scapegoat others. It never worked.

God sent us this man some call the Christ. And we killed him.

It is almost as if God is saying through him, “you do this to the innocent, you do this to my servants, and you would even do this to me”.

Someone needs to break this system of scapegoating. Someone needs finish this once and for all.   Someone needs to say, “don’t do this to anyone anymore … it is finished.”

2

After Easter – Sacred Every Day

Where do you find the divine in your everyday?

Is it possible for the ordinary stuff of life to take on sacred meaning?

We are going to find out!!

After Easter, starting April 8th, my church will begin a 3 month journey that I wanted to let you know about!

Please join us for these conversations about significance and meaning in the everyday.

You might be surprised where you find the divine presence in a normal day.  

1 Waking  Up                                        April 8

2 Making the Bed                                April 15

3 Brushing Teeth                                 April 22

4 Losing Keys                                       April 29

5 Eating Leftovers                               May 6

6 Fighting Well                                    May 13

7 Checking Email                                 May 20

8 Sitting in Traffic                                May 27

9 Calling a Friend                                June 3

10 Drinking Tea                                   June 10

11 Sleeping                                           June 17

Practical Divinity                                 June 24

 

Join us to find meaning every day.

Get the book and follow along – there will be daily reflections posted on the blog
You can order the book here [Link]    It is on Audible and is also on Kindle [ Link]

1

Z is for Zebra (understanding our opponents)

There is a great danger – especially in 2018 – of not understanding the thought and convictions of those you disagree with.

I was taught to refute evolution. From 5th grade Sunday School, through youth group to Bible college and into my early years of ministry. It was a cornerstone to evangelical apologetics.

I did not understand evolution well, I only learned how to combat it.

Zebras and their stripes were a popular example used to refute evolution (along with the human eye and other things). If the stripes are for camouflaging a herd of zebras from

predators … then the first striped offspring would have actually stood out from the heard and thus been an easy target.

This is an example of getting ahead of oneself without fully entering into the school of thought one is trying to combat.
We saw this same problem with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron’s banana conversation [watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfucpGCm5hY].

You can’t simply start with where we are and extrapolate backwards from there.

You have to understand the primary concern:
• Science has a commitment to the process.
• Apologetics has a conviction of the conclusions.

We can’t pretend to honestly engage in asking questions if we begin with the assumption of the answers. That will always result in coming out with twisted conclusions.

Admittedly, scientists have been baffled over the zebra’s stripes for a long time. Recently some strong studies1 has have shown that the stripes are not about camouflaging herds from large predators but about flies. {Link here}

The region where zebras dwell has a breed of flies called tsetse that are legendary in their viciousness. Scientists have historically known that flies have an aversion to landing on striped surfaces. The zebra’s striped pattern acts then as a natural deterrent. This leads to greater health with less blood loss and therefore greater vitality which benefits reproduction – passing on those key genetics to offspring.

It turns out that zebras stripes are not about herds camouflaging from large predators but about individuals deterring small pests.

 

This means that the initial zebra ancestor to have that genetic variation would have benefited and thus that attribute would be more likely to be passed on to the next generation.

The apologetics argument I learned is flawed and would not refute the point it is intended to.

That is the first problem with not fully entering into an idea well enough to understand it – there has to be a commitment to the question not just a conviction about the conclusion.

The second problem is that much of the suspicion from creationists about evolutionary thought is based on the hard and cold version of survival of the fittest from a century ago. Many don’t know of newer strains of evolutionary thought that incorporate cooperation, mutuality, and emergence thought (see O is for Open & Relational).

Evolution has evolved in the past 30 years but many creation apologists prefer to takes pot-shots at the straw man caricature of Darwinian schools of the past. They have perfected taking swings at shadows of where the theory used to stand.

As we wrap up the ABC’s series, I wanted to acknowledge that not only has Christian belief evolved and adapted over the centuries but to encourage you to embrace these historic adjustments.

The gospel is itself incarnational and the universe is evolutionary. Those two things go together beautifully. The gospel is good news and is constantly in need to be contextualized to new times and new places. The scriptures are inherently translatable and come into every language and culture. This is one of the unique aspects of the christian religion (K is for Kenosis).

If evolution is true of the universe, Christians should have no need

to avoid or refute it. We can embrace evolutionary thought wholeheartedly.

Christians should, after all, be people who love truth.

If we want to contest certain aspects of the evolutionary theory, we should at least understand its claims thoroughly so that we can do that well.

____________

This is the final week of the ABC series for Sunday School. See preview here

1

Sacraments As Enacted Parables

Here is a way of thinking about sacraments that is congruent with the 21st century because it takes seriously both the way that the world works and the way that words work.

  • Baptism is an embodied metaphor
  • Communion is an enacted parable
  • Weddings are performed symbols

Let’s be clear about the difference between a sign and a symbol.

A sign is a signifier that points to a reality beyond itself. A symbol is much bigger – it is a sign that participates in the reality that it points to.

Sacraments are enacted symbols. In this way, they are both signs that point to a greater reality and they are performed signifiers that can never fully reveal or contain the antecedent they are attempting to signify. Sacraments are both significant artifacts of the church and they are gifts and graces (charis) that both form and inform our faith and practice.

In this sense, sacraments are symbols that participate at some level in the reality that they point to. When we are at the table, we are re-membering the body of Christ as the members of the body. It is beautiful symbolism. When we stand in the waters of baptism we have entered the body – like the waters of birth, we are now born of both water and spirit. The same is true for the wedding ceremony – the two become one in the company and community of witnesses. Wearing a wedding ring is an enacted-embodied-performed symbol.

Sacraments and corporate worship are then a parable of the kin-dom. Jesus used parables (not earthly stories with heavenly meanings but earthy stories with heavy meanings) to slide underneath the listener’s defenses in order to interrogate the ‘way things are’. Jesus did this to subvert the unjust status quo and turn upside-down the listener’s presumptions about the way things are and the way that God wants them.

Said a different way: Parables are often misunderstood. Not just the meaning of the parable – those are often elusive – but the very nature of parables.  Many have been told that parables are ‘earthly stories with heavenly meaning’. This is not true!

Parables are better thought of as ‘earthy stories with heavy meanings’. We error when we think that what Jesus was talking about was pie in the sky or the great beyond.

Parables cause the listener to investigate their assumptions (the Samaritan is the ‘good guy’?) and change their mind (literally: repent).

This is the prophetic ministry of the church – to imagine the world a different way and to image what that looks like to the world around us.

The next time you are preparing to come to the table, or enter the waters of baptism, or attend a wedding … remember that you are participating in an embodied metaphor, an enacted parable, and a performed symbol.

2

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑