So, the Holy Spirit decided to throw me for a loop this morning; as the altar and pulpit were re-dressed with their paraments, my sermon manuscript got covered up, and I didn't find it until after worship. In other words, this is what my off-the-cuff Easter sermon sounds like...pretty true to the manuscript, but not entirely. I think I'll be going manuscript-free from here on out, actually...
As a bonus, check out some of our Easter festivities here at Emanuel - the first seven minutes of our worship, for your enjoyment! The sermon manuscript is covered up at about 3:30.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Not my Easter sermon
That one's still uploading. For now, its two predecessors...
Sermon, 4.10.11. Text: John 11:1-145
Sermon, 4.17.11. Text: Matthew 21:1-10. This one starts about 45 seconds into the sermon thanks to a snafu with getting the camera properly set up.
Sermon, 4.10.11. Text: John 11:1-145
Sermon, 4.17.11. Text: Matthew 21:1-10. This one starts about 45 seconds into the sermon thanks to a snafu with getting the camera properly set up.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Where's thunder when you need it?
Today, for a variety of reasons, I've been connecting with one of the Good Friday emotions we tend to downplay - anger. Yes, that's right - it's Good Friday, and instead of being sorrowful or guilt-ridden, I've been just plain ole pissed off. OK, some of it has had to do with certain situational realities of pastoring during Holy Week (e.g. feeling like absolutely nobody else around you cares about these intricate, involved, pain-in-the-butt to plan services), but as I've continued to reflect, I find myself moving past my own issues of the day...and yet still being genuinely angry.
But why? First, a musical interlude, from what is perhaps my favorite work of choral music EVER - Bach's Matthauspassion. This selection is the chorale's response to Jesus being bound and led away at Gethsemane...
Roughly translated, the first half is wondering why, at this moment, there is no thunder or lightning from on high - signs of God's wrath at the injustice taking place. The second half is pure bile and anger, begging that the mouth of hell open upon and swallow the betrayer and his murderous blood.
In a conversation with a much beloved classmate, the subject of Miguel de la Torre came up. De la Torre has written, among other things, a book that proved pretty profound in its shaping of my own life journey, spiritual convictions, and sense of call: Reading the Bible From the Margins. The title sums it up; it's principally concerned with how people from marginalized communities interpret the Bible. It blew my mind; it's well worth tracking down. Around the same time that we were reading that book for class, a guest preacher came to TLU and delivered the sermon one Sunday night for our campus ministry's worship. He spoke of seeing the suffering of a living Christ when he saw the plight of the marginalized around him, giving some specific examples.
And so, this Good Friday, I've been wondering where I see the suffering of the living Christ, the people and places in which we still see the innocent bound up, led away, and condemned by the powerful as their stooges still shout "Crucify him!" Is that what we see in bombed out Libyan towns, in the faces of those suffering from incurable diseases, in the hollow stares of starving children in a world where 2% of the world's food supply is enough to feed everybody adequately, in the difficult decisions faced by vulnerable members of society whose access to healthcare is being jeopardized by corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy exploiting tax loopholes? Do we see the living Christ, suffering before us again, when we fail to acknowledge the humanity of 11 million people living in this nation without proper paperwork, whose "illegality" testifies not to their debased nature, but rather to our broken immigration system and unjust free trade policies? Is the living Christ in our midst when we look out on futures destroyed by the greed and recklessness of unregulated Wall Street tycoons, or when we consider how much more money we spend on weaponry than on education, or on lives destroyed by substance abuse and addiction that we'd rather spend millions to punish rather than thousands to cure?
Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal - have mercy on us. We crucify you anew every single day.
But why? First, a musical interlude, from what is perhaps my favorite work of choral music EVER - Bach's Matthauspassion. This selection is the chorale's response to Jesus being bound and led away at Gethsemane...
Roughly translated, the first half is wondering why, at this moment, there is no thunder or lightning from on high - signs of God's wrath at the injustice taking place. The second half is pure bile and anger, begging that the mouth of hell open upon and swallow the betrayer and his murderous blood.
In a conversation with a much beloved classmate, the subject of Miguel de la Torre came up. De la Torre has written, among other things, a book that proved pretty profound in its shaping of my own life journey, spiritual convictions, and sense of call: Reading the Bible From the Margins. The title sums it up; it's principally concerned with how people from marginalized communities interpret the Bible. It blew my mind; it's well worth tracking down. Around the same time that we were reading that book for class, a guest preacher came to TLU and delivered the sermon one Sunday night for our campus ministry's worship. He spoke of seeing the suffering of a living Christ when he saw the plight of the marginalized around him, giving some specific examples.
And so, this Good Friday, I've been wondering where I see the suffering of the living Christ, the people and places in which we still see the innocent bound up, led away, and condemned by the powerful as their stooges still shout "Crucify him!" Is that what we see in bombed out Libyan towns, in the faces of those suffering from incurable diseases, in the hollow stares of starving children in a world where 2% of the world's food supply is enough to feed everybody adequately, in the difficult decisions faced by vulnerable members of society whose access to healthcare is being jeopardized by corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy exploiting tax loopholes? Do we see the living Christ, suffering before us again, when we fail to acknowledge the humanity of 11 million people living in this nation without proper paperwork, whose "illegality" testifies not to their debased nature, but rather to our broken immigration system and unjust free trade policies? Is the living Christ in our midst when we look out on futures destroyed by the greed and recklessness of unregulated Wall Street tycoons, or when we consider how much more money we spend on weaponry than on education, or on lives destroyed by substance abuse and addiction that we'd rather spend millions to punish rather than thousands to cure?
Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal - have mercy on us. We crucify you anew every single day.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
And now, just what you've been waiting for...another Rob Bell post!
Is it sad that I almost confused Rob Bell and Rob Halford earlier?
My comic mixing up of celebrities aside, I finally got my copy of Love Wins and read it. I've been letting it marinate for the past week or so, and I've reached the following conclusions:
-I'm not going to go back and edit my previous entries, despite the fact that my presentation of Bell-through-the-"evangelicals" is not necessarily accurate to Bell's own words.
-Bell, while not necessarily the world's greatest exegete, provides a reading of scripture that is, if absolutely nothing else, thought-provoking and opens the door for some much-needed fresh air in a theological room grown far too stuffy.
-"Evangelical" criticisms of Bell as "universalist" might have a leg to stand on, though if Bell is a universalist, then he is of the same mold as Karl Barth, who is best described as an exclusivistic universalist (i.e. everybody's getting saved, but only through Jesus Christ). I'd say that you could argue that Bell is not a universalist in that, even with his model of there being a lot of "second chances" that "evangelicals" don't support, he never asserts directly that all people will 100% for sure be saved, or say that there aren't some who will never "say yes."
-I still stand by my original position: it's not our job to save people (that's up to God), and a literal, fiery hell full of demons (whether it literally exists or not) is a completely bankrupt image in the West, and it seems to be a dramatic failure at encouraging people to consider the Gospel. What we CAN do: proclaim the Gospel, in both actions and words, and trust God to do the rest.
-I also still stand by my criticism of Bell's "evangelical" theology that revolves too heavily around the language of personal choice and decision when it comes to salvation. If it's up to us to choose, then we turn faith into a work.
-The main value of the book: emphasizing that (as one of my high school teachers put it) "eternal life begins now," and that our call as followers of Christ is to live out the world-transforming values of the Kingdom of God rather than simply wring our hands over whether our neighbor has the "right" kind of "personal relationship" (again, I stress that phrase is nowhere in the Bible) with God. We so overemphasize personal relationship that we forget that our relationship with God is supposed to be PUBLIC (thank you, Miguel de la Torre).
My comic mixing up of celebrities aside, I finally got my copy of Love Wins and read it. I've been letting it marinate for the past week or so, and I've reached the following conclusions:
-I'm not going to go back and edit my previous entries, despite the fact that my presentation of Bell-through-the-"evangelicals" is not necessarily accurate to Bell's own words.
-Bell, while not necessarily the world's greatest exegete, provides a reading of scripture that is, if absolutely nothing else, thought-provoking and opens the door for some much-needed fresh air in a theological room grown far too stuffy.
-"Evangelical" criticisms of Bell as "universalist" might have a leg to stand on, though if Bell is a universalist, then he is of the same mold as Karl Barth, who is best described as an exclusivistic universalist (i.e. everybody's getting saved, but only through Jesus Christ). I'd say that you could argue that Bell is not a universalist in that, even with his model of there being a lot of "second chances" that "evangelicals" don't support, he never asserts directly that all people will 100% for sure be saved, or say that there aren't some who will never "say yes."
-I still stand by my original position: it's not our job to save people (that's up to God), and a literal, fiery hell full of demons (whether it literally exists or not) is a completely bankrupt image in the West, and it seems to be a dramatic failure at encouraging people to consider the Gospel. What we CAN do: proclaim the Gospel, in both actions and words, and trust God to do the rest.
-I also still stand by my criticism of Bell's "evangelical" theology that revolves too heavily around the language of personal choice and decision when it comes to salvation. If it's up to us to choose, then we turn faith into a work.
-The main value of the book: emphasizing that (as one of my high school teachers put it) "eternal life begins now," and that our call as followers of Christ is to live out the world-transforming values of the Kingdom of God rather than simply wring our hands over whether our neighbor has the "right" kind of "personal relationship" (again, I stress that phrase is nowhere in the Bible) with God. We so overemphasize personal relationship that we forget that our relationship with God is supposed to be PUBLIC (thank you, Miguel de la Torre).
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Sharkboating
I suspect that, until the day I die, the phrase "sharkboat" will always elicit a laugh from me. A much-loved classmate of mine misheard our (rather thickly accented) Brazilian professor; he described skepticism as "sharp, bold agnosticism," but she heard "sharkboat agnosticism." I like her version better.
As you might have figured out by now, the theme of agnosticism is on my mind today - the saying, in regard to questions of the eternal nature, a simple "I don't know." Not even necessarily "I don't care;" just simply not knowing enough to take a particularly hard stance one way or the other. The issue of agnosticism, for me, raises with it the (perhaps even bigger) issue of knowledge. What does it mean to know anything? What does it mean to know if there's a God, or to know God? These are pretty fundamental questions, after all - how do we know anything, let alone God?
Rather than prattle on about epistemology, I'd rather play around. Knowledge. Knowing things. How do you know anything? I don't know, truth be told, how it is we know. I'll leave that debate for the philosophers among us. One thing that's obvous, though, is how one defines knowledge is pretty important in how one goes about defining what it means to know something...or someone. Is knowledge pure, verifiable, factually provable? Is that what knowledge must be for us to know something?
If that's the case...well, then knowing if God exists, let alone knowing God, is a doomed cause. Let's be completely, totally frank. If God, or God's existence, were knowable in the same way that something factually demonstrable, like 2+2=4 or that the capital of Spain is Madrid, then faith wouldn't be faith. There is no element of trust required on my part when it comes to knowledge of the factually demonstrable. It simply is, and barring the sort of fringe folks who populate groups like the Flat Earth Society, there isn't room for debate or dispute. Of course, there are some who argue that God's existence is factually demonstrable, but considering that every attempt using science or philosophical reasoning to prove God's existence has been met by an equally compelling counter-argument, I'm going to say those folks fall into a fringe group.
At the end of the day, we don't know God (or of God's existence or non-existence) through the scientific method or logical processes. Stating that there is a God requires taking a step beyond what science or logic can prove. Of course, so does stating a lot of things that are taken for granted in daily life. It makes quite a bit of sense that I won't get hit by a car if I look both ways before crossing the street and only cross at a crosswalk and only when I have a walk signal...but that doesn't necessarily mean that someone carelessly making a right hand turn while driving too fast won't zip around the corner and clip me. We as modernists tend to assume we can really, truly know a lot of things...and forget in the process that much of life's fundamental realities aren't always governed by the guaranteed or the factually verifiable.
So, perhaps "can I prove God's existence?" is the wrong way to go about addressing the matter of whether or not there is a God, and if so, what that God is like. I'm reminded of one of my favorite aspects of the Spanish language - there are two ways to say "to know." One is saber - this is the verb for knowledge of facts. I "saber" that 2+2=4, or that Madrid is the capital or Spain, or that my name is Kevin. However, the verb conocer also exists to describe relational knowledge. I "saber" that my friend KJ lives in New York, but I "conocer" her very well after three years of seminary together.
But...what does that have to do with anything? I suggest that our definition, in English, of "to know" has been corrupted by modernity and robbed of its relational connotation. I can't know, with factual certainty, of God's existence, but I can surmise on a subjective level based off experience and a relational sense of connection to a superhuman reality that, yes, I am convinced that there is a God...even as I acknowledge that my conviction necessitates stepping past the strict boundaries of what I can intellectually know. In other words, there's an inherent element of trust present in this. I don't know there is a God, but I believe there is a God. It's what Kierkegaard might call a "leap of faith" - we go past what can know (a risky business), trusting that beyond the boundaries of knowledge there is Something, and that this Something is trustworthy. Perhaps far more than skepticism or agnosticism, professing to believe in God is a journey in a sharkboat, sailing across an ocean of doubt, improbabilities, and unanswerable questions in the hope of some form of peace to be found on the unseen shore of a strange, distant New World.
As you might have figured out by now, the theme of agnosticism is on my mind today - the saying, in regard to questions of the eternal nature, a simple "I don't know." Not even necessarily "I don't care;" just simply not knowing enough to take a particularly hard stance one way or the other. The issue of agnosticism, for me, raises with it the (perhaps even bigger) issue of knowledge. What does it mean to know anything? What does it mean to know if there's a God, or to know God? These are pretty fundamental questions, after all - how do we know anything, let alone God?
Rather than prattle on about epistemology, I'd rather play around. Knowledge. Knowing things. How do you know anything? I don't know, truth be told, how it is we know. I'll leave that debate for the philosophers among us. One thing that's obvous, though, is how one defines knowledge is pretty important in how one goes about defining what it means to know something...or someone. Is knowledge pure, verifiable, factually provable? Is that what knowledge must be for us to know something?
If that's the case...well, then knowing if God exists, let alone knowing God, is a doomed cause. Let's be completely, totally frank. If God, or God's existence, were knowable in the same way that something factually demonstrable, like 2+2=4 or that the capital of Spain is Madrid, then faith wouldn't be faith. There is no element of trust required on my part when it comes to knowledge of the factually demonstrable. It simply is, and barring the sort of fringe folks who populate groups like the Flat Earth Society, there isn't room for debate or dispute. Of course, there are some who argue that God's existence is factually demonstrable, but considering that every attempt using science or philosophical reasoning to prove God's existence has been met by an equally compelling counter-argument, I'm going to say those folks fall into a fringe group.
At the end of the day, we don't know God (or of God's existence or non-existence) through the scientific method or logical processes. Stating that there is a God requires taking a step beyond what science or logic can prove. Of course, so does stating a lot of things that are taken for granted in daily life. It makes quite a bit of sense that I won't get hit by a car if I look both ways before crossing the street and only cross at a crosswalk and only when I have a walk signal...but that doesn't necessarily mean that someone carelessly making a right hand turn while driving too fast won't zip around the corner and clip me. We as modernists tend to assume we can really, truly know a lot of things...and forget in the process that much of life's fundamental realities aren't always governed by the guaranteed or the factually verifiable.
So, perhaps "can I prove God's existence?" is the wrong way to go about addressing the matter of whether or not there is a God, and if so, what that God is like. I'm reminded of one of my favorite aspects of the Spanish language - there are two ways to say "to know." One is saber - this is the verb for knowledge of facts. I "saber" that 2+2=4, or that Madrid is the capital or Spain, or that my name is Kevin. However, the verb conocer also exists to describe relational knowledge. I "saber" that my friend KJ lives in New York, but I "conocer" her very well after three years of seminary together.
But...what does that have to do with anything? I suggest that our definition, in English, of "to know" has been corrupted by modernity and robbed of its relational connotation. I can't know, with factual certainty, of God's existence, but I can surmise on a subjective level based off experience and a relational sense of connection to a superhuman reality that, yes, I am convinced that there is a God...even as I acknowledge that my conviction necessitates stepping past the strict boundaries of what I can intellectually know. In other words, there's an inherent element of trust present in this. I don't know there is a God, but I believe there is a God. It's what Kierkegaard might call a "leap of faith" - we go past what can know (a risky business), trusting that beyond the boundaries of knowledge there is Something, and that this Something is trustworthy. Perhaps far more than skepticism or agnosticism, professing to believe in God is a journey in a sharkboat, sailing across an ocean of doubt, improbabilities, and unanswerable questions in the hope of some form of peace to be found on the unseen shore of a strange, distant New World.
Monday, April 4, 2011
I solemnly swear that I am up to no good
Thus says my coffee mug. When you add a hot liquid to it, the phrase "Mischief managed" shows up beneath it. Amazingly, I did not actually purchase this item...it was a free gift that came from Warner Brothers as a "sorry your girlfriend's Christmas present is back-ordered; we're going to bribe you with a free coffee mug so you won't give us bad press or send us anymore snarky e-mails" token. Of course, by the time the package with the earrings and the mug arrived, the girlfriend had become my ex-girlfriend....but that's another blog entry. Actually, probably not.
Beyond all of that, as I sit here, drinking my magic morning elixir through which I become a human being every morning, I can't help but think back to yesterday's Gospel reading...John 9, for those of you who don't use the Revised Common Lectionary. I chose to take a slightly tamer (or is that lamer?) route in my preaching of the text (see the forthcoming video), but the more I think about it, the more dominant the image of Jesus as radically subversive proves to be.
Wait, what? Jesus as subversive? That can't be right! Jesus is the perfect image of law-n-order, conservatism, "family values" (as long as your family looks like they belong in a laundry detergent commercial), and Prozac-colored blue skies and butterflies, isn't He? Let's consider that in light of the Gospel reading. Jesus...
-Completely rejects the dominant theology of the time. A person's misfortune is not, in fact, divine retribution for wrongdoing. In other words, the poor, and AIDS patients, and people with mental illness, or who come from broken homes and suffer from emotional disorders don't just "have it coming" because they're "bad people."
-Dares to interact with the rejected. He doesn't just drop a coin in the guy's empty McDonald's cup, or refuse to look him in the eye while saying "sorry, I don't have any change."
-Anoints him. Yes, that's right - anoints him. Learn some Greek - the word translated as "spread" or "smear" here is the same word as "anoint." Now HERE is some mind-bending stuff. Not only is Jesus, literally, getting down in the dirt with the lowest of the low...Jesus is ANOINTING (the sign of, among other things, the coronation of a king) the lowest of the low. Who do YOU think is the apple of God's eye here - wealthy, healthy, upwardly mobile movers-n-shakers? Or is Jesus up to something different?
-Calls out the Religious Right of the time period. It's bad exegesis to do this in some ways, but if we're going to layer contemporary realities onto the text, the Pharisees are the Pat Robertsons, etc. of the four gospels. They insist upon literalistic, rigid, legalistic readings of the scriptures, which ultimately just isolate people from one another as they emphasize who's in, and who's out, by casting the less-than-perfect as unrighteous dolts who deserve every misfortune they get. They're also violent, power-hungry hypocrites. And...Jesus calls them (I'm paraphrasing) as lost as geese in a hailstorm. The ones who claim to "get" what God's all about actually are total failures on the "understanding God" front because they can't see past their own selfishness, hard-heartedness, and judgmental dispositions.
When we try to tame Jesus down to being a benign endorser of all of our ideas of what counts as "righteousness," we lose touch with what the scriptures actually SAY about Jesus. Jesus doesn't give a nice, big thumbs-up to the way things are; Jesus relentlessly challenges the systems of exclusion and oppression that human society excels at creating. And, as much as I'm stepping on my own toes here, I'll say it - when we think we've got Jesus all figured out and put into a nice, red-white-and-blue box that fits in perfectly with what we'd LIKE to think is the way things ought to be, then we've lost sight of Jesus and started worshipping ourselves....and if there's one thing the Bible isn't ambiguous about, it's idolatry. Maybe we need to let Jesus come bursting through the walls of that box (like the SNL skit where Janet Reno busts in on Will Farrell-as-Janet-Reno and breaks up the party) and remind us, again, that when we follow Him, we're called to be outsiders by the standards of this world, not the grinning face of middle class prosperity.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Baseball season's underway...time to get ready for a brand new day!
Over the past three years, I've become a pretty dedicated Cubs fan. It's funny; I never really appreciated baseball when I was growing up. This might have to do with my growing up in Astros country; to be perfectly frank, there is nothing inspiring about a team with origins in my parents' lifetime that is, in general, pretty crappy. Not that the Cubs have the world's best record, either, but at the very least there's over a century of history and heritage. Also, southeast Texas is one of the least pleasant places to live that I can imagine, whereas Chicago is (in the words of Frank Sinatra) my kind of town.
Beyond my confused sense of "what is home?," I've come to appreciate baseball itself as a sport - and more than a sport, a metaphor for life. Baseball season is born as life starts coming back at the dawning of spring, and it ends when the leaves turn colors and fall to the ground. It's a long season, full of daily struggle - you don't get too many days off in-season. You're not expected to win every day; if you're winning more than half of the time, then you're sitting pretty. Time is different than in other sports; namely, it isn't kept. You play until the game is finished - if that means extra innings, then you play the extra innings.
As a player, you're doing a great job if you get a hit every third time you come up to bat - that means a good game is typically two, maybe three hits. When you fail to do your job, it's an error - and everybody makes mistakes. You might slump...and people tend to be forgiving in the end. You have a bad day...people tend to be forgiving in the end. There is almost always a chance for redemption - the player who is booed while taking the field (coughAlfonsoSorianocough) might just be the one who hits the game-winning home run...and you can bet he's not going to be booed again for a while after that.
And, at the end of the season, most our teams won't be headed to the playoffs (unlike certain other sports). You grieve, you drink a beer more than usual, and you move on, hopeful that next year will be the year. Baseball, more than any sport, is a sport which showcases grace and hope. No wonder that the theologian in me loves it so much...
Beyond my confused sense of "what is home?," I've come to appreciate baseball itself as a sport - and more than a sport, a metaphor for life. Baseball season is born as life starts coming back at the dawning of spring, and it ends when the leaves turn colors and fall to the ground. It's a long season, full of daily struggle - you don't get too many days off in-season. You're not expected to win every day; if you're winning more than half of the time, then you're sitting pretty. Time is different than in other sports; namely, it isn't kept. You play until the game is finished - if that means extra innings, then you play the extra innings.
As a player, you're doing a great job if you get a hit every third time you come up to bat - that means a good game is typically two, maybe three hits. When you fail to do your job, it's an error - and everybody makes mistakes. You might slump...and people tend to be forgiving in the end. You have a bad day...people tend to be forgiving in the end. There is almost always a chance for redemption - the player who is booed while taking the field (coughAlfonsoSorianocough) might just be the one who hits the game-winning home run...and you can bet he's not going to be booed again for a while after that.
And, at the end of the season, most our teams won't be headed to the playoffs (unlike certain other sports). You grieve, you drink a beer more than usual, and you move on, hopeful that next year will be the year. Baseball, more than any sport, is a sport which showcases grace and hope. No wonder that the theologian in me loves it so much...
Friday, April 1, 2011
Churchy Stuff
"But wait," you are no doubt thinking. "Don't you ALWAYS talk about churchy stuff? Isn't that kind of what your life revolves around." Fair enough. But, right now...I want to talk about what it means to be CHURCH.
We've been having some really quality discussions lately, here in Dayton, about what things like evangelism mean. What's the point of evangelism and community outreach? Is it to grow our numbers? Is it to share our gifts with the community without being concerned about numbers? And...what does it even mean to share the Good News? Does that mean we have to start going out, two by two, on bikes while wearing shirts and ties...or is it something different?
I'm not sure that I have answers, let alone good ones, but what I do feel like I can say is that if we continue, as a Church universal, not to wrestle with some of these questions, then you might as well stick a fork in us. We could spin our tires in the mud right now, throwing out the doom-n-gloom statistics about decline in mainline Protestant churches. We could spend hour upon hour trying to reduce the supposed success of "evangelical" churches down to a magic formula for growth and prosperity - some sort of ecclesial alchemy by which we turn doctrinal apathy, liturgical confusion, and institutional staleness into gold as shiny as Joel Osteen's slicked back hair.
One of my professors joked in my Intro to Theology class that "don't tell anyone!" is the only commandment of Jesus that Lutherans really take seriously. What would things look like if we invited friends to church more often than twice a lifetime for a baptism or confirmation? What would it look like if we learned how to articulate our faith rather than just know that we have it, but not really know or care how to put it into words? What would it look like if our primary goal every day wasn't just to survive work and not burn supper when we get home, but to serve other people with the same love that Jesus showed in his earthly ministry?
Of course, equipping people to do those sorts of things is a little difficult at congregations that, too often, become more about hotdish than the Holy Spirit. What would a congregation geared toward forming people's faith into a dynamic, active force in their lives look like? What would it look like if we stopped arguing about "traditional" versus "contemporary" and focused on worshipping in the timeless rhythm of Gather-Word-Meal-Send regardless of whether the music was played on an organ or a guitar? What would it look like if we had fewer debates about the appearance of the lawn and more community gardens growing on our grounds? What would it be like if, instead of Bible studies that talk down to people or impose a set, rigid understanding of what the "right" interpretation of a passage is, we found ways to read the Bible together and celebrate how God speaks to us through the words of scripture? How would we feel when we come out of worship if we heard sermons brimming over with Gospel, and were fed by sacraments that are treated as being physical proclamations of the same Gospel?
Now wouldn't that be something?
We've been having some really quality discussions lately, here in Dayton, about what things like evangelism mean. What's the point of evangelism and community outreach? Is it to grow our numbers? Is it to share our gifts with the community without being concerned about numbers? And...what does it even mean to share the Good News? Does that mean we have to start going out, two by two, on bikes while wearing shirts and ties...or is it something different?
I'm not sure that I have answers, let alone good ones, but what I do feel like I can say is that if we continue, as a Church universal, not to wrestle with some of these questions, then you might as well stick a fork in us. We could spin our tires in the mud right now, throwing out the doom-n-gloom statistics about decline in mainline Protestant churches. We could spend hour upon hour trying to reduce the supposed success of "evangelical" churches down to a magic formula for growth and prosperity - some sort of ecclesial alchemy by which we turn doctrinal apathy, liturgical confusion, and institutional staleness into gold as shiny as Joel Osteen's slicked back hair.
One of my professors joked in my Intro to Theology class that "don't tell anyone!" is the only commandment of Jesus that Lutherans really take seriously. What would things look like if we invited friends to church more often than twice a lifetime for a baptism or confirmation? What would it look like if we learned how to articulate our faith rather than just know that we have it, but not really know or care how to put it into words? What would it look like if our primary goal every day wasn't just to survive work and not burn supper when we get home, but to serve other people with the same love that Jesus showed in his earthly ministry?
Of course, equipping people to do those sorts of things is a little difficult at congregations that, too often, become more about hotdish than the Holy Spirit. What would a congregation geared toward forming people's faith into a dynamic, active force in their lives look like? What would it look like if we stopped arguing about "traditional" versus "contemporary" and focused on worshipping in the timeless rhythm of Gather-Word-Meal-Send regardless of whether the music was played on an organ or a guitar? What would it look like if we had fewer debates about the appearance of the lawn and more community gardens growing on our grounds? What would it be like if, instead of Bible studies that talk down to people or impose a set, rigid understanding of what the "right" interpretation of a passage is, we found ways to read the Bible together and celebrate how God speaks to us through the words of scripture? How would we feel when we come out of worship if we heard sermons brimming over with Gospel, and were fed by sacraments that are treated as being physical proclamations of the same Gospel?
Now wouldn't that be something?
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