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>After Easter

He is risen!   …  now what?


Last week I was a part of two vigorous online conversations regarding the resurrection. Then I had a wonderful opportunity to celebrate Easter Sunday in a glorious way. I thought it might be good to recap the implications of last week’s conversations and celebrations as we turn the corner toward Pentecost. 



The next question seems to be “what do we do with this?” – also known as the so what question. People want to know because there are 3 key passages in the New Testament that say Jesus’ resurrection has consequences for what we as believers can expect after our death. 


Here are the 4 layers of thought that seem to come out of the Resurrection conversation.  
Continue reading “>After Easter” →

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>Resurrecting space for belief

It goes without saying, Easter is a big deal. I only have to mention the significance of passages like Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 15:13-15 (NIV) 

13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.



As I a pastor I looked forward to Easter so much, but I knew that we would have  visitors, family members, and friends who would come to our services out of relational obligation or for social interest in the event. I knew that some of these would not believe in the literalness of the resurrection of Jesus’ body. 



I always had to think through how I was going to talk about this as a way that was both faithful in proclamation for us as a community of faith, while also attempting to be invitational and sensitive to potential objections or barriers from our guests. 


I have no interest in apologizing for what we believe as a faith community. But neither do I want to dogmatically push an ancient worldview that may, to the listener, be suspicious at best and incompatible at worst.  Continue reading “>Resurrecting space for belief” →

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>the springs of Saratoga – a story (part 2)

in part 1 I began to tell the story of the springs …


When I first became inspired about the imagery of the springs, the language contributed a definite gravity to the direction of my sermons and the content of my congregation’s prayers. We began to see miraculous healings and answers to prayer that convinced us that there was something deep to this idea. 


I shared these developments with my regional pastor group and also my denominational pastors gathering. I was met at both places with a swift warning. “Make sure that your people know that the power for healing is with God and not with the water.”   This caused me to be very hesitant as I was continuously exhorted by other pastors and leaders not to “take it too far.”

 My wife would object to their line of reasoning by asking rhetorically “ If they have a headache and take an aspirin, do they think that the power is with God or the aspirin?” 
Continue reading “>the springs of Saratoga – a story (part 2)” →

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>Clearing the Air – 4 changes

>

I have been doing Everyday Theology for the almost 3 years. I love it. Of all my projects, it is my favorite. 
As I continue my transition from being a local church minister (only) to an academic and a public theologian – things will necessarily need to change.
There are four changes that I just wanted to  “get out on the table” to talk about what is going on behind the scenes or what is driving this conversation from my side. 
Here are the four things:
  1. I believe that almost everything about the Christian faith needs to be updated for the world that we live in.  The first implication is that   
  2. we have to get rid of words like “supernatural” 
  3. I need to start quoting people by name for accountability and credibility  
  4. there are some big and/or fancy words that I need to get comfortable using. I will always try to define and explain things as we go – but some of these words are too good and too helpful to continue not using them.  
Number one is obvious. There is no aspect of our lives that has gone unchanged in the last 2000 years. From basic things like food and sex to more complicated things like politics and economics , everything has changed. 
It’s not that these things have changed entirely – it’s that nothing has gone entirely unchanged. 
Religion is in this category. Christianity, both in it’s revealed nature (revelation) and it’s organization (religion) has evolved, adapted, and transformed immensely. I think that is a good thing. The only thing about it that is not good is that some believe that is has not changed or that it isn’t suppose to change. That is where the problem comes.
In the coming month I will be floating some thoughts about prayer, biology and reading the Bible in light of these necessary and good changes. 
The second thing is an immediate casualty. There are many things that are gained by updating, but there will also be some things that get sacrificed in the transition. This involves moving away from the supernatural.
I do not believe in the supernatural. I still believe in miracles – just not in the supernatural. Neither the word or the idea is in the Bible and it is really hurting us in the post-modern (and modern) world.
sidenote: the fact that most people do not know how that is possible shows how limited our conversation has been around this issue. 
What we call the super-natural is really just left over language from the pre-natural mindset of ancient times.  I believe that God’s work in the world in the most natural thing in the world. It is not SUPER-natural, which really means UN-natural. It is just natural.  Everything is natural.  Praying for someone to be healed is natural.  Someone who you are in relationship giving you their car when they hear about your need is natural.  
It might be miraculous (surprising to us) but it is not super-natural or un-natural. It is just natural. It is how God works. [if you want to read something similar that I wrote about discerning God’s will click here]
The third change is quoting people. I have avoided this for three years because sometimes people are scared off by name dropping as it can seem too academic or highbrow.  I think that avoiding author’s and expert’s names has been the right decision up to this point, but that continuing to do so will be limiting. For both accountability and credibility I need to make this change. I know that some people will be turned off by it – but hopefully we can meet in the middle!
The fourth change is using some multi-syllable words. I have avoided this for the same reason as I have avoided quoting authors. But the simple fact is that this conversation is framed by some ideas that are encapsulated in good words. I need to become proficient is using these words well and being comfortable explaining them and integrating them. I will try to do this with clarity and caution – not for the sake of using the $10 word, but for  reasons that it propels the conversation forward in a good and helpful direction. 
I just wanted to clear the air. Two main points A) as I continue to learn and translate and participate in public theology, I wanted to show my cards so that everyone knew where I was coming from.   B) Sometimes people push back on me (which I enjoy) but are surprised that I don’t just repeat the same ‘apologetics’ answers that I learned in Bible College (Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Ravi Zacharias, etc.) 
I want to be really clear about what I am doing. I am participating in a great global conversation about updating the faith for the 21st century that is both: 
  • in continuity with the historical christian tradition 
  • relevant and has accounted for the realities of the world in which we live
If you want to know why I am doing this read this article by N.T. Wright – or on his website
If you want to check out the kind of thing I am after check out this article by F. Leron Shultz [link]
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>the value of adding an ‘s’

>Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!  I wish you the very best.

It is difficult, to say the least, to give a gift via a blog. Such is the nature of the beast. But if I could give you one thing that would have a big different in this coming year, it would be this: I would give you an ‘s’.

An ‘s’ can be a wonderful thing. Especially when you put it at the end of words that have been made singular but that should be plural!

Two historic examples and then some contemporary ones:

The Industrial Revolution, according to historians like John Merriman, was actually three industrial revolutions.
The first was an agricultural revolution which allowed people to grow more, which encouraged a bigger population and thus all the surplus labor that would be needed. The second was inventions that impacted small groups of workers, like the cotton gin. Then came the big one that generally gets all the headlines with big industry and coal burning factories. The name ‘the industrial revolution’ is a bit of a misnomer that lumps these three together. They actually happened progressively over quite a long period of time.

The same happens with the ‘Protestant Reformation’. Most people don’t know that Luther and Zwingli were kind of up to two different things and that later Calvin came in (initially as a Lutheran) and then there were at least three little reformations. Then there was England’s Anglican movement that was doing its own thing, and the Anabaptists. That is 5 reformation movements.

When it comes to religions, it is often appropriate to add an ‘s’. 

When we lump together the Jewish religion or the Jewish perspective, we may be overlooking the fact that there are three huge branches within Judaism, as well as many other splinters. There is a Reformed Judaism, a Conservative, and an Orthodox.  They are very different from each other.

Islam is the same way – there are over 80 types of Islam. So when we say “Muslims _____”  we may want to be careful and be more specific by adding a plural mentality and saying “some types of Muslims ______”.

Even within Christianity there are God knows how many different kinds of Christianity. So to say that “Christians believe ______” is more than challenging.  It may be misleading.

There are several Judaisms, several types of Islams, and multiple Christian perspectives.

Sometimes people say things like “the Biblical Worldview” as if there is only one. There are actually many worldviews that informed Scripture. Certainly the view of those who wandered in the desert in the Exodus story had a different view of the world than Paul the cosmopolitan Roman citizen of Jewish descent.  And one can clearly see that what Paul wrote in Romans 13 to submit to governments because they do God’s work was a different worldview than the person who wrote Revelation and called Rome ‘Babylon’  and a ‘whore who is drunk on the blood of that nations’. There are many examples that I could use but the important thing to note is that there are many worldviews in the Bible.

We are entering an era of Plurality and Multiplicity. These are two things that I value tremendously.  Adding an ‘s’ is sometimes the key to getting it right – to move it from overly simple singularity to the possibilities of seeing the diversity.

There is not one kind of Judaism or a Jewish perspective. There is not one type of Islam or a singular ‘Muslim’ perspective.  There is not one one kind of Christianity or a single ‘Christian’ perspective.

My gift to you this holiday season is an ‘s’. It may seem little… but trust me, it can be very powerful when used in the right place.

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>Christmas is not Easter

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Christmas is not Easter. They each hold a meaning that is in danger of getting lost when it all collapses into one thing. For the purpose of this conversation, I would like to even pull apart the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Each of these three is essential, and while there is a unity that ties them together, there is something  particular to each one – a uniqueness that we don’t want to lose.
 [if you get what I am saying – go ahead and jump down to the main point… you can just skip the side thought]
Listen to the Podcast [here]

Side Thought: I generally do not like when things get mashed together – especially when I am not sure that they belong together. I think that it often takes away from the very thing that it is suppose to provide our understanding.

There are four gospels.  We love to ‘harmonize’ them make it one gospel – which can be a helpful study tool – but let’s not be under the impression that there is only one gospel account.

Then there is that crazy thing people do with the Anti-Christ. When most people talk about the mythical character, what they actually do is mash together 5 biblical bad guys from  various genres and centuries. You end up with the Prince (of Daniel 9), the False Prophet, the man of Lawlessness, and the Beast jammed into one Big Bad Guy that – if you actually read the four passages in John – don’t sound like a single person or in a single time period.

We already covered the whole Heaven & Hell mashup and the Devil mashup last month (and earlier). But it is a real problem! It’s this darn thing that when Jesus says “wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction” and people automatically swap out ‘destruction’ for ‘hell’ when that passage is clearly not about hell.

So as you can see, this is a real problem. I love that every modern Christian can have a Bible in their hand. But as with most things, there is both an upside and a downside. The downside is that a lazy condensing or mashing together can result in something that leads to monstrous amalgamations.

You might think that I am overstating it, but I actually think that the amalgamations are perverse. This whole shorthand thing that we do with Heaven & Hell, the Devil, Salvation, the Anti-Christ and prophecy drives me crazy. I actually have come to think that they are a form of false-religion that keeps us from true religion (as defined in James )

Oh – one more… when we talk about Jesus‘ miracles by simply saying “he was God” , that sunday school answer actually becomes a real problem. By not celebrating Jesus’ humanity we cripple ourselves when it comes to participating is the kind of miraculous religion that we (who love the Bible) celebrate so much in the book of Acts.

But that is a side note. 

Main Point: Leading up to Christmas, I love to ask church and non-church people of all ages “why did Jesus come?”  The most frequent response is ‘to die for our sins’ or ‘to save us’.  Which is fine enough I guess (on one level) but is really more of an Easter answer and not a Christmas answer.

One of my favorite professors in Seminary made the point (I think that he may have been  quoting James McClendon) that if the whole point is for the just to die for the unjust then Jesus could have been ‘created’ by God as a sinless little baby and plopped in the Arctic, to die in the harsh elements.  That would have satisfied the sinless life expectation of ‘the righteous for the unrighteous’.

But that is not how it happened. Jesus was born to a family, in a place, learned a language, and participated in a culture. That was not a random detail or an accidental circumstance. That is important and central to the story.

If God could have accomplished the atonement in the Arctic – having made Jesus to suffer and die the cruel effects of human existence and to experience an unjust death that would satisfy the wrath of God and heal the broken gulf between God and his creation… since that is how it could have happened (and it could have) – then there is something significant in the fact that it did not happen that way.

No, Jesus was born via painful labor, to a family, with a family name (Bar Joseph), and he learned to speak their language and practice their religion. He participated in ceremonies and cared for his sibling and mother. This is all a part of the incarnation. It is not secondary or inconsequential – it is central.

So here is my theory:  Christmas is not primarily about the salvation of mankind or the redemption of the world. That is what the crucifixion and resurrection are about!  (they – by the way – are not the same thing either and there is something that we are suppose to learn from each of them as well – by resisting the temptation to mash them together into one… but that is for a Pod about 4 months from now.)

Christmas is about Incarnation.  Incarnation tells us that God has drawn near to humanity. We know that God has bridged the gap and that this is in order to restore the broken relationship. In fact, God did not just visit for a day and import, impose, and implement a new order… God dwelt with us.  Literally (in the original language) God tabernacled with us. As The Message has it “God moved into the neighborhood”.

God is not afraid of our sin. God is not offended by our presence. In fact, God became one of us.  And here is the wild twist – God became like us so that we may become like God. This is an ancient tradition called Theosis – made famous by St. Athanasius of Alexandria.

In fact,  what the Incarnation is to the beginning, Pentecost is to the middle. Not only did God become one of us – but God gave us the Spirit of God as a gift to help us along the way and God’s Spirit remains on the earth as a constant presence … but I don’t want to get ahead of myself and mash things together that do not go together.

Bottom Line: the Christian life is not to simply to believe that in a time long, long ago in a land far, far away that God did something … and that if you just believe and receive that ‘truth’, that after you die, then God will take one part of you (your soul) to another place.

No. There is something else going on in the Christmas story. It has to do with the fact that God loves the world. That God became one of us, spoke human language (not heavenly or angelic language) and showed us the way to live.

The goal is not so much to believe right things so that I go to a better place after I die – but to behave like Jesus showed me so that I experience that life of the ages (the eternal life) before I die and then impact this world that God loves so much that God came and visited in person – becoming one of us.

We miss most of that when we mash Christmas and Easter together. Incarnation is the thing that God did and it is what we are suppose to learn (and do) with Christmas: move into a neighborhood, learn a language, give our life and show the way.

The Christian religion is to be – first and foremost – relational.  It is transformational (of both person and place) and this is accomplished by being incarnational. Christmas is suppose to remind of this every year: live in the place, speak the language, love the people, and show the way.

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>Friday Follow-up: Mary & Jesus

>Harold posted an amazing thought (from Wendell Berry) on the Facebook discussion and I wanted to follow up on it.

I had asked: If someone came out with the Magnificat today, do you think that it would be disregarded as a John Lennon style “Imagine” daydream, or dismissed as socialist utopian propaganda, or even disparaged as a Liberal agenda?

Harold responded:  I was reading “The Burden of the Gospels,” by Wendell Berry the other day ( http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3248 ), and he put forth a similar, thought-provoking question:

“If you bad been living in Jesus’ time and had heard him teaching, would you have been one of his followers?

To be an honest taker of this test, I think you have to try to forget that you have read the Gospels and that Jesus has been a “big name” for 2,000 years. You have to imagine instead that you are walking past the local courthouse and you come upon a crowd listening to a man named Joe Green or Green Joe, depending on judgments whispered among the listeners on the fringe. You too stop to listen, and you soon realize that Joe Green is saying something utterly scandalous, utterly unexpectable from the premises of modern society. He is saying:

“Don’t resist evil. If somebody slaps your right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. Love your enemies. When people curse you, you must bless them. When people hate you, you must treat them kindly. When people mistrust you, you must pray for them. This is the way you must act if you want to be children of God.” Well, you know how happily that would be received, not only in the White House and the Capitol, but among most of your neighbors. And then suppose this Joe Green looks at you over the heads of the crowd, calls you by name and says, I want to come to dinner at your house.

“I suppose that you, like me, hope very much that you would say, “Come ahead.” But I suppose also that you, like me, had better not be too sure. You will remember that in Jesus’ lifetime even his most intimate friends could hardly be described as overconfident.”

Definitely makes one think.

Joe said: It seems we most often assume we’re one of the people trying to really understand his teachings…but I think we would do well to place ourselves in the shoes of the Pharisees (trying to discredit and disagree at every point) or the Roman guards, looking over the crowd of peasants and trying to determine what to do if they get out-of-hand. I think in subtle ways we often take on one or both of those roles.

I wanted to add two points:  I have heard it said (and I wish that I could remember who said it – I am suspicious that it was Peter Rollins) that we need to be careful when we read a parable to find ourself in the story. If , for instance we are reading the parable of the Good Samaritan and we cast ourself in the role of the Good Samaritan… we are reading it wrong.
    If on the other hand we see ourself in the religious leaders walking by or in the wounded traveler (or god forbid in the robbers who did the harm) then we are hearing what Jesus was saying.
    We have to be mindful of our privileged perspective and remember that the Gospel that Jesus came to preach was good news in a specific direction. (see Luke 4:16-21)

Secondly, I run into this odd line of reasoning with people who Major in Church History. There seem to be a weird attraction to defending people of the past by dismissing any bad behavior as simply “a product of their time” and stating confidently “if you had lived during that era – you would have done exactly the same.”

This line of reasoning seems to fly in the face of a two evidences to the contrary:

A) There were people at that time who did differently and spoke out against the way things were! So apparently it IS possible to have historically deviated from the ‘spirit of the Age’ and actually thought for oneself and followed ones conviction!  (I have a Podcast on this coming out in January called “the Minority Report”)

B) IF you do not hold opinions in opposition to your government, protest agains the economic oppression of your era, or buck the dogmatic stance of your denomination today… then “no” I don’t suppose that you could have been expected to do any different than was done by the majority in any period of history. IF however you exhibit resistance now and demonstrate a prophetic stance in our current era – then I think it is fair to at least entertain the possibility that you MIGHT have done differently had you lived in the past.

The simple fact is that we will never know. It is all speculation – we are not in charge of which era we were born into. However, what we are in charge of is what we stand for and how we counter-culture in our actual era.

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>The Kingdom Comes : in 3-D !

>Buried deep in the hot & heavy give and take of this weekend’s conversation – in the fallout of the Friday followup was something that I really believe and don’t want to be lost as comment #10 in a 20 deep running tally.

 I have modified it slightly so that it doesn’t read like an answer but like an idea.

There is a moment when we jump from being two-dimensional drawings in the pages of a novel and we become the real-life Heroes of the Kingdom who live and move and have our being in the Prince of Peace!! This is where we walk in the land of the living and move out of the land of the dreaming (sin) and move beyond the realm of talking (doctrine).   Now we act!

The jump happens because of a simple realization: we are not the world. We are in the world but our power is not from the world. IN FACT – we are the world’s only chance to realize that it is the world!

The people of God being the Church is not the kingdom but is suppose to be a “coming attractions” of what it will be like when God is in charge of all of our lives. The people of God being the Church is the only chance that the world has to see that it is the world… and repent.

The problem is that we are JUST like the world. We make the mistake of saying that we are “Not of this world” thinking that it means ‘meant for another world‘ (which is not the Biblical word or idea) and this mistake then leads to us living exactly like the world while we wait to go the next world.

This is why our credit cards are at the same levels of debt, our divorce rates are the same, we shop for Christmas presents the same, we vote in roughly the same proportions, we own the same number of cars, our teenagers get pregnant at the same rate, … you name it. Those inside and outside the church are nearly indistinguishable by almost any statistical measure – amounts spent on makeup, clothes, or movies. (not that I want to judge anyone of any of those in particular) You get my point.

It is not enough to say “I am just like you – only I believe in Jesus … and so I will go to heaven after I die.”

But when it comes to violence… we are the same too. And this is a travesty! Because Jesus did not participate in the ordinary human violence of his day during the Pax Romana. We have an opportunity to stand up for the right thing in the right way and to show the world that it is the world ! SO THAT it may see it’s reflection in our mirror (as we reflect Christ) and recognize what it is NOT and come to terms with what it IS.
Our truth is the world’s only chance to escape it’s lie -the world is deceived and it lives in a lie.

But when the church is too much like the world then the world does not see and the church has nothing to say. 

It’s time to move from the two-dimensional characters on a page and walk into our 3-D destiny. This is how the Kingdom comes – one life at time making one decision at a time.  The kingdom comes where God’s will is done.

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