Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Any Street, U.S.A.

"Main Street Bethlehem. Don't miss it."

This was the advice given to me last week. The Main Street Bethlehem being referenced is a sort of attraction and a sort of play that is put on by residents of Burnet, TX. The idea is to recreate the streets of Bethlehem, circa the time that B.C. switched to A.D. I've never been to Main Street Bethlehem, but the website description sounds like a holiday experience the whole family can enjoy and I'm not hear to knock it.

But it did get me thinking. One of the biggest temptations for Christians at Christmas is to romanticize and dress up an event that was all to real and messy. We have nativities that feature the cleanest of stables, the most sanitized of animals, and the quietest of babies. I don't know if that's the Main Street Bethlehem approach, but I do know they feature free refreshments at the exit. And I'm guessing that the actual Bethlehem does not.

The thing is, the reason why Bethlehem is special is because it's where God first made His home with humanity. It's the place where God put on flesh and dwelt among us. It's where Jesus was born. Born into our mess and our brokenness and darkness. Born to bring some light and to save the world.

Over 2000 years later, the Spirit of God still longs to make His home among us. Jesus Christ looks to be born into our hearts, our lives, and our neighborhoods. God wants to move among people living on Main Street or 6th Street or 12th and Chicon or Oltorf and Lamar. And we can make such theatre of the past that we forget how the reality of the past breaks through into the present; that Jesus who was born in Bethlehem is alive and sends his Spirit today. That the light of Christ continues to break into every neighborhood and onto every street. Not just main street, but your street and my street and up streets and down streets and backstreets that you and I may go to great pains to avoid. The Spirit of God looks to be born into any and every street, the streets we drive on and past everyday and miss along the way. Miss the lost and the lonely and the angry and afraid. Miss the messy and the real.

So, here's my advice this Christmas as you walk down Any Street, U.S.A.

Don't miss it.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Prepare The Way

‎"Advent is the perfect time to clear and prepare the Way. Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace. By reflection and prayer, by reading and meditation, we can make our hearts a place where a blessing of peace would desire to abide and where the birth of the Prince of Peace might take place." -Edward Hays


Sunday, November 14, 2010

Unprotected Sex

Not to get all TMI on you, but it has been a long time since I've worn a condom. That is, up until a month or so ago. Then I started wearing them again for the first time in years. Every time. No exceptions.

Now, I'm not anti-condom or anti-birth control. That wasn't why I hadn't been wearing them. I had worn them before Harry was born and after he was born, during phases and stages when Rachel wasn't taking birth control pills and we weren't looking to have a kid.

But for the past few years, we'd been hoping to have a second child, so the condoms and pills were out.

Up until a little over a month ago.

And I realized this week that it wasn't because I've rethought wanting to have another kid. I want that as much as I did a year ago. I want it as much as I did a couple of months back, when Rachel told me she was pregnant.

But then Rachel and I went through a miscarriage. And I started using condoms.

The last few weeks of daily prayer have been revealing something to me. The time spent in our church's study of the Old Testament has reminded me that we are called to live fearlessly. And the wise words and listening ear of a close friend have helped me to realize that I'm not trying to avoid another pregnancy.

I'm trying to avoid another miscarriage.

I'm wanting a guarantee when I know that isn't how this works. I'm looking to avoid pain, even if it means missing out on something great. I'm letting fear get the best of me. I'm trying to protect myself from a bad thing that may never happen and risk missing out on a good thing that might.

And that's not how I'm called to live. It's not how I want to live. And, as a Christian, it's not how I choose to live.

So, as of today, the condoms go back in the box and I go back to unprotected sex. My wife, always more faithful and fearless than I, will be pleased.

And maybe nothing happens. And maybe we get pregnant. And maybe we miscarry again. And maybe we don't. The future is uncertain. And that scares me. But we were not made to live in fear, but in hope; by the power of the Spirit of God whose love casts out fear.

Here we go.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Prayer and Politics



Standout moment at minute 26: "I'm quickly coming to the position that politicians can't really be Christians."

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Regardless

I recommend that all of you read this article. The two standouts, for me:


Regardless of one's view about sexual ethics, family values, or same-sex marriage, I believe that encouraging or contributing to violence against LGBT people, either directly or indirectly, is the true sin against nature and creation.



Regardless of what these groups may believe about sin, they need to speak out against this violence. That, to me, is what it truly means to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Hipster Christian

Recently, Eileen Flynn, religion columnist for the Austin American Statesman, wrote to me to get feedback about Brett McCracken's recent book, Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide. She couldn't have used my entire response, but encouraged me to write it down somewhere. Here is that response:


By strange coincidence, I just picked up Hipster Christianity this week, though I haven't had the chance to dip into it much. However, I share McCracken's concerns, to be sure. If there's one way we've put our own spin on the boomer Christian legacy of marrying Christianity to power, it is in our marrying Christianity to "cool". While sincere Christians from my parents' generation (this does not, by the way, include my specific parents and they are not the only exceptions) can object to the loss of public prayer in schools or the legalization of gay marriage; I sense that what is often behind these objections is a desire not to be left out of the mainstream. If gay marriage is legalized, the church that objects to it is suddenly on the outskirts again. If public prayer isn't standard practice in public schools, then we start to feel like we're on the fringe. Folks from my generation scoff at their parents' stance on some of these issues and yet long to sit at "the cool kids table" as much as their parents long to sit in positions of power. We speak as if we're pursuing an edgier, weirder kind of Christianity, but it is too often a new spin on a worn out record. That isn't to say that much of what is transpiring in younger churches isn't a good thing. The call to marry the gospel to social justice is right and good. We've been too long concerned with what will happen if we die tonight, but not what happens if we live tomorrow. We're seeing a renewed vigor to effect the here and now as well as the hereafter, and I praise God for it. But we are also a generation that embraces what is ironic and "hip" to our detriment. We squirm in the face of earnestness and sincerity, when these are both qualities that faith requires. We celebrate Leslie as an iconic Austinite, but still ignore the awkward kid with the out of date clothes. 

Part of the problem is that we saw some sacred cows that needed skewering and enjoyed it so much, we skewered anything sacred. Now we take pride in the idea that nothing offends us, that we don't have the religious hang ups our parents did and, most importantly, that we aren't any different from "you". And that's the truly frightening thing behind the power play and the commitment to cool; we want to make a difference, but not at the risk of being different. We don't want to be "set apart", we don't want to be God's "peculiar people". 

My sister Bri used to joke that Austin's motto should be "Keep Austin Manageably Quirky", because we aren't ready for the truly weird. A new generation of Christians struggle with that same problem. "Manageably quirky" can be cool, but "weird", almost by definition, is not. The weirdness of Christian faith uses words like purity alongside words like passion, it speaks of fidelity alongside faith. It does not self-promote or worry about who's watching. It loves it's neighbor, even if it's neighbor is strange or smelly or simply "uncool". Especially then. It promotes hospitality as well a charity and practices spiritual discipline alongside social justice. It submits itself, humbles itself, and loses itself. It celebrates the meek as well as the merciful, the poor in spirit as well as the peacemaker. The years we spent pursuing power left us unable to embrace that sort of faith. We should be careful not to repeat past mistakes on a quest for what's cool.

I'm reminded of something one of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace, wrote before he died: 

The next..."rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.

And now one final thought. The apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians: "...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." But we don't use words like "true" and "noble" and "right" and "lovely" anymore. They're too candid, too devout, too heartfelt, too plain. They aren't cool. We need to rediscover these words and the character that comes with them. We need to remember a savior about whom scripture says, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." We need to model ourselves on a man who was most certainly relevant, but almost certainly not cool.

What It Means To Be "Chosen"

Christ didn’t come to create a closed up and closed off "chosen people", he came that any might be chosen who are willing to choose; choose to take up their cross, to die to themselves, and to live in trust and obedience to God. He came to adopt us all, to save us all, to make us all his brothers and sisters. Whether they be the descendants of Ishmael or Isaac or neither of the two, every person on earth is called to be a child of God. And God’s children do not exist to simply celebrate their status as children or to bask in the glow of the coming reward, but are set apart as a peculiar people to bring good news to the poor and the prisoner, to share light with the lost and the lonely, to walk in a new way and to invite others to walk in it, to hear God’s word and put it into practice, to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. We celebrate God’s grace by sharing it, we celebrate His Kingdom by living in it, we celebrate being children of God by living as children of God. As God sent His Son, He is sending His children, He is calling us, as He did Abraham, to leave our old life behind us and to walk in the way we should go. 

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Blue Notebook No. 2

Was recommending Daniil Kharms to a friend today and, as I always am when I recommend a favorite, was reminded of what a brilliant author he was. He wrote children's books, poems, and absurd short (and I do mean short) stories published in underground magazines and banned by Stalin. Here is one example:


    Once there was a redheaded man without eyes and without ears. 
    He had no hair either, so that he was a redhead was just something they said.
He could not speak, for he had no mouth. He had no nose either.
He didn't even have arms or legs. He had no stomach either, and he had no back, and he had no spine, and no intestines of any kind. He didn't have anything at all. So it is hard to understand whom we are really talking about.
So it is probably best not to talk about him any more.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

I'll See You In Hell

The following is a speech/sermon given by Hugh Hollowell at the Big Tent Christianity gathering:

According to Jesus, loving your neighbor is half of the greatest commandment. Pretty much everyone agrees that, if taken seriously, it’s a radical idea that could change the world. And yet it seems nearly impossible for American Christians, liberal or conservative, to agree on what it looks like.

Let me make a modest proposal.

Loving your neighbor begins by being in a relationship with your neighbor.

I love Johnny Cash. I have the entire Cash Discography – all the way back to the 1950′s. Love me some Johnny Cash.

Or do I?

Because I also love my wife, and I am here to tell you that while I feel consistently good toward Johnny Cash, how I feel toward my wife depends on what day it is, how our finances are doing, if I have indigestion, whether I had a good day at work… But I always feel ecstatic toward Johnny Cash.

Because I don’t really know Johnny Cash. I love my impression of Johnny Cash. It is fair to say I am a fan, or that I very much like his music, or that I love the idea of Johnny Cash. I submit there can be no love outside of relationship.

By that standard, most Christians don’t really love their neighbor. They love the idea of their neighbor. 


We vote for this candidate or that candidate, whoever promises to provide the sort of help we think people need. We outsource our compassion to the soup kitchens, to the clothing closets, to the homeless shelters. On Thanksgiving day, we load the youth group up in the van, to go feed the “less fortunate”, so the kids can be “exposed” to poverty, while never giving thought to wonder what they do for food the other 364 days of the year. And if that thought come up, we quickly suppress that thought and write a check. We outsource it.

Loving your neighbor presupposes a relationship. It means knowing your neighbor is going through a divorce, that the lady who cleans your office has a mother that is dying, that the man at the end of the street holding a cardboard sign has been outside for three years now, and his name is Brian. In the story we call the Good Samaritan, it meant getting in the ditch to bind the man’s wounds yourself.

When the average person in the pews can tell you the names of all the Judges on American Idol, or can name all the Glee cast members, but does not know a soul that makes 1/4th their income, I think it is fair to say we have lost our sense of mission as co-creators of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus told us the poor would always be with us – but we don’t really want the poor among us – we want someone else to handle that.

Last year in the US, some 17 million kids went to bed hungry. 17 million. In a nation where we throw away 40% of all the food we buy, where 1 in three of us is obese, and yet children are laying in bed, hungry. How can this happen?

Because none of those kids know you.

Because if you knew a kid who was hungry, you would move heaven and hell to get that kid some food.


But because those 17 million kids don’t know you, they laid in bed last night, hungry.

Here in Wake County, the official statistics say there are approximately 1200 homeless people. And many hundreds of Christian congregations. You cannot tell me that out of the many thousands of Christian homes represented by those churches, there are not 1200 empty beds somewhere. Of course there are. But we save those beds for people we actually know.

The justice of Jesus is brought about by sacrifice, love and suffering. And to the extent that we do not exercise sacrificial love, suffering and proclaim the Reign of God, we are far from the way of Jesus.
Jesus calls us to serve, not lead. The way is not about political solutions – in fact, Jesus said political power would be used against us as we sought to bring about God’s justice. The way does not involve courting those in power – the Apostle Paul told us Jesus made a spectacle of the powers of this world.

There are any number of passages in both the Hebrew scriptures as well as the New Testament that speak of God’s love for the victims of injustice and our responsibility to work to bring that justice into fruition. The one I am thinking about right now, however, is Matthew 16:18, where Jesus tells Peter that …”I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it”.

I am not the first person to note that Jesus refers to the gates as a defense measure. Those gates are there to keep us out. Just what does Jesus expect of us?

Jesus expects us to storm down those gates and invade Hell itself. Jesus is telling us to go to Hell to be with the drug addict and the alcoholic. Go to Hell to be with the victims of abuse, and with the abusers. Go to hell and liberate the adulterer, the homeless man, the pornographer. In hell is where we will find the single mother and the embezzler, the pimps and the pimped, the hungry, the broken, the forgotten.


We, you and I together, should be wading into hell itself and proclaiming that there is a new way to live and a new way to love, and that new way is bringing about the justice of God.

The justice of Jesus is a personal justice. It involves sacrificial, relational love. It involves dying to ourselves, our ambitions, our preconceived notions of how things work. The way of Jesus invites us to be the means by which God’s justice comes into being. It invites us to go to Hell, for the sake of those imprisoned there.

Today, in this Big Tent, my most fervent prayer for the church is simply this: I pray I will see you in hell. They need us there.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

The Day Everything Changed

“American imperialism, often celebrated as the new globalism, is a frightening power. It is frightening not only because of the harm such power inflicts on the innocent, but because it is difficult to imagine alternatives. Pacifists are often challenged after an event like September 11 with the question, ‘Well, what alternative do you have to bombing Afghanistan?’ Such a question assumes that pacifists must have an alternative foreign policy. My response is I do not have a foreign policy. I have something much better - a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill.

“Indeed I fear that absent a countercommunity to challenge America, bin Laden has given Americans what they so desperately needed - a war without end. America is a country that lives off the moral capital of our wars. War names the time we send the youth to kill and die (maybe) in an effort to assure ourselves the lives we lead are worthy of such sacrifices. They kill and die to protect our ‘freedom.’ But what can freedom mean if the prime instance of the exercise of such freedom is to shop? The very fact that we can and do go to war is a moral necessity for a nation of consumers. War makes clear we must believe in something even if we are not sure what that something is, except that it has something to do with the ‘American way of life.’….

“Christians are not called to be heroes or shoppers. We are called to be holy. We do not think holiness is an individual achievement, but rather a set of practices to sustain a people who refuse to have their lives determined by the fear and denial of death. We believe by so living we offer our non-Christian brothers and sisters an alternative to all politics based on the denial of death. Christians are acutely aware that we are seldom faithful to the gifts God has given us, but we hope the confession of our sins is a sign of hope in a world without hope. This means pacifists do have a response to September 11, 2001. Our response is to continue living in a manner that witnesses to our belief that the world was not changed on September 11, 2001. The world was changed during the celebration of Passover in A.D. 33.”

Stanley Hauerwas, “September 11, 2001: A Pacifist Response”, in Stanley Hauerwas and Frank Lentricchis (eds.), Dissent from the Homeland: Essays after September 11 (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 186, 188.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The Good News of the Great Flood


My preaching professor in college once said that your job is to find the gospel in any passage you preach on. This week I preach on the flood and Noah and while you can see good news in Noah's salvation, most sermons seem to pass over the mass drowning of the rest of humanity. It can be difficult to see the good news in Noah.

I think we have to come at this story from an angle that we try to avoid. We like to think of ourselves as good people and God as an easy-going god. This story tells us “how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” and God as having “regretted that He had made human beings.” I think we conjure up images of humanity before the flood as unruly kids throwing the ultimate keg party/orgy. We see it as rowdy and out of hand, not as deserving destruction.

But I what if we think about a world in which every human being is evil. Think of the things we would do to one another. Think about the things we do to each other today and then take the worst of it and make it a constant. Think about the murder and rape and abuse. Verse 11 of Genesis 6 describes the earth as “full of violence”. Think of a world with so much violence that there was no room for anything else. Ask yourself if God’s mercy could allow that to go on.

I wrestled with this story a lot this week. Because I kept seeing this as a story of God’s justice, and it seemed like a horrible justice. But I have come to see it as a story of God’s mercy, even if it is a severe mercy. A mercy that won’t allow human beings to continue to do such violence and evil to one another. A mercy that steps in and makes it stop.

But then the mercy of God goes a step further. God makes a way to carry on. When He could just end humanity as a failed experiment, He chooses Noah and his family and animals and an ark, and He keeps things going.

Sit with that for a second. God would not only have been justified in wiping them all out, He’d have been merciful in doing so. Instead, He refuses to give up on them at their worst. His mercy cannot allow human beings to continue along the path they are on, but it can allow them to continue along a different path.

So, what does this story tell us about God and His relationship to us?

First, it states that the violence we do to one another will not be allowed to go on indefinitely. And, I don’t know about you, but I see that as a good thing. I want war to end, even if it means that the parts of me that make war inevitable have to be destroyed. And God plans to do just that. He plans to destroy me.

Which leads us to the second part, how God provides a way out. And that is in the person of Jesus and the Way of Jesus. It is in the Kingdom coming and world made new. In Christ, there is a new creation.

In Jesus, God makes a way to carry on. He could have looked at those He had called as His people and simply given up on them. Instead, He makes a way where there seems to be no way. His mercy cannot allow them to continue along the way they are going, but it can allow them to continue along a different way. And Jesus is that way.

So, the cross isn’t about God’s demanding that we kill His Son so that His wrath can be satisfied, it is a story of God who would send His Son, knowing that we would kill him…because that’s the kind of people we are, full of evil and of violence. “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

But even that is not the end, it’s the beginning. Christ’s resurrection means that we can be made new, our story can continue if we are willing to die, to have our old selves drowned in the water of baptism in order that we might be raised to new life in the way of Jesus. For our baptism is not just of water, but of the Spirit. We can carry on only if we will allow the Spirit’s fire to refine us, to make us into someone new. It will be a painful process. Sometimes it will be difficult to see God’s mercy in it. But it is His mercy that cannot allow us to be who we were and to behave as we did, It is His mercy that destroys our old selves and refines our new selves into the image of Jesus.

We use the language of death all the time in baptism, but how seriously do we mean it? Are we willing to die in order to be made new? Are we willing to see our old selves, our old desires, our old priorities, our old sickness and sin, our old ways put to death in order that we might have new life and walk in a new way? Would we rather be dead than live in a world that Jesus isn't Lord of?

That is what Christ demands, but it is a merciful demand. He seeks to destroy us so that he can start again, making us into the people that we were always meant to be.

Thoughts On Eternal Life

So, I'm no expert on what exactly happens after we die, and none of us really knows for sure all the ins and outs, but I do believe we're given hints and clues and outright statements and I believe that what Jesus promises is a physical resurrection in order that we might live forever under his reign as King.

Assuming that's so, isn't it possible, even probable, that what eternal life is is simply that, we live eternally? What I mean is that we're not (as we often seem to believe) going to suddenly be some other heart, soul, and mind, but will continue to become the people we are as the heart, soul, mind, and body that feel and think and do the things that our hearts, souls, minds, and bodies do. What I mean is that we keep being who we are, but for eternity. And that the eternal aspect simply means that we continue to become the people that we are already on our way to becoming.

If that were so, then we get free of the disconnect of not following Jesus now and being the kind of people who somehow will later. We stop thinking we can be people who fight in wars now, but will suddenly beat swords into plough shares in an instant. We stop thinking that we can feel one way about money and power now, but will abruptly feel another way about it when Jesus returns. Eternity becomes an opportunity to become someone who is following Jesus or someone who isn't. To turn into the person we are currently becoming.

Your eternal life would then be shaped by who it is that you become and that, in turn, is shaped by who it is you choose to follow. Those who walk in the way of Jesus; a way of love of God and neighbor, of justice and mercy and humility, of worship and service, of trust and obedience, find themselves and the world around them getting better every day. Those who choose to walk in their own way, find themselves and the world around them getting worse.

And maybe that's what we mean when we talk about heaven and hell. Maybe we've seen glimpses of them already. Maybe eternity has already started. Maybe we're already on our way to wherever it is we're headed. And maybe it isn't too late to change direction and walk in a different way. And maybe that's what Jesus came to show us how to do.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Hope Makes Plans

Today we turned our calendar to October to write in an event and saw that Rachel had previously written "should be able to feel the baby move."


I know that Romans 5 says different, but sometimes hope disappoints us.


Today is going to be a rough day.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Is Your Church Becoming New Age?

In his book Reason, Faith, and Revolution, Terry Eagleton makes the following critique of the new age movement; "It offers a refuge from the world, not a mission to transform it."


A church that isn't on mission isn't a church and has nothing to offer that isn't being offered already.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Healing of Habits

I've always thought that "ritual" was a silly critique and that "habit" gets a bad rap, particularly when it comes to faith. I understand that empty ritual and meaningless habits are to be avoided, but ritual doesn't equal empty and meaningless and habit and not necessarily synonymous.

That has been particularly true during these past 5 days. As someone who has committed to a communal way of life that includes daily prayer and reading of scripture, weekly worship and house church gatherings, and regular practices of hospitality and service, I have seen why that commitment is a blessing even when (maybe especially when) I'm not feeling up for it or into it. Many times this week I have found myself not wanting to pray or meditate on the Bible. I certainly didn't want to worship on Wednesday and am not feeling all that excited about house church on Sunday. And yet, Wednesday's worship was just what I needed* and my habit of prayer and meditation has been just what I needed to steady me as my emotions are in an almost constant state of flux.

All that to say, I can see, now more than ever, the benefit of doing something out of habit, simply because you know it to be a good thing and not because you necessarily feel like doing it. If our habits are godly habits, then they should not be viewed as burdens, but as potential for blessing.

*that said, I do wish it were someone else's job to preach and plan for a couple of weeks

Friday, August 20, 2010

The Sound of Silence

It's a strange feeling to want desperately to draw comfort from the presence of others and yet to want to sit in silence. I'm realizing just how important funerals are, for just that reason. I find myself wanting to gather my friends and family in a room together to sit in silence; to acknowledge with our silence that something is wrong that can't be fixed with words.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

I'm Fine

My first day back to work since the miscarriage. It was rough, but good to be among friends that feel like family.

The hardest part was having to answer the question, "how are you?" With co-workers, I can be honest, and it was a blessing to be able to be. But, with customers, there's no appropriate way to be honest, so I just ended up saying, "I'm fine, and you?" Usually, this is an honest and heartfelt response, but today it felt empty and dull. It wore me out to have to keep it up. But how do you tell a stranger who's barely listening for a response that it's been a really rough week?

So, for those of you who read this blog, give someone a gift this week; ask them how they're doing and listen long enough and attentively enough to find out the answer. You have no idea how much it means.

Thanks to all of those at work for asking attentively. I'm blessed to have you in my life.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Life Goes On

Today has had its share of lighter moments. After which (and in the midst of) I find myself feeling bad about feeling better.

As my baby's life doesn't go on, it feels wrong and strange that mine should.

Life goes on. That's not usually something that I have mixed feelings about.

I feel like life should pause for awhile. Long enough for me to get into bed and not come out for awhile.

But there's people that need me to get out of bed. And that's a good thing, I guess.

Life goes on.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Sorry For Being Sad

Putting Harry to bed tonight, I told him that I was sorry for being so sad the past couple of days.


"Oh dad," he said, "you don't ever have to be sorry for being sad."


It was a good reminder. I am grateful for it.

Drunk

I've never been drunk.


I don't share that self-righteously, I've just never seen the appeal. Maybe I've been around too many people when they were drunk or heard their next day apologies and regrets.


But, for the last two days, I've seen the appeal. I want to get drunk. I want to drink until I'm not feeling what I'm feeling, until I can forget the last two days, my pain, and my name.


Now I know that Marx would say that religion is its own opiate and that many of you would agree, but it's Jesus that has kept me sober. Jesus whose example shows that reality is better dealt with than avoided. That our plans for escaping the difficult stuff are what really lead to our destruction. 


So, I woke up today and will wake up tomorrow and will face reality, with all its confusion and pain.


But don't be too impressed. Because it's only by Christ's example and Christ's strength that I do it.


Because it's 11:36 and my brain won't rest and there's a bottle of sipping whiskey in the cupboard.


And I really just want to get drunk.

Monday, August 16, 2010

He Made Me Hope Again

Working through a lot of pain and frustration with Rachel today. Was struck when she said, "I had resolved myself to the fact that another child wasn't a part of God's plan for us. And I really was OK. And then...He made me hope again. And now that's just really hard."


I agree. Why get our hopes up? Help me understand.


Our doctor, who really is great, frustrated me today when she said, "The good news here is we know you can get pregnant when we didn't think you could."


I needed her not to say that. I needed her to recognize that there was no good news here.

God Is Good...All The Time?

This is a different sort of blogpost in that I feel the need to spill my guts more than share my thoughts. I tend to think my posts through a bit more, but I need to get this one out.


I also hate that it requires some back story explanation, because I barely feel up to that. What I want to do is shout angrily from my front porch, but this will have to suffice.


3 years ago, Rachel and I decided to try for baby #2, Harry's little brother or sister. Given how easy it had been to conceive Harry, we felt confident it would go as smoothly a second time. It did not. Months passed. A year. And, finally, Rachel's doctor said she doubted that Rachel would ever get pregnant again.


Rachel and I had always said that we would pursue adoption, should something like this situation arise, and took this as a sign that adoption was in our future. We were discouraged to discover that adoption was far more expensive than we had anticipated and, given that our church-planting efforts had meant less money every month and not more, adoption seemed less and less likely a reality.


Through all of this, we prayed. Prayed to know God's will for us, prayed for God to make a way where there seemed to be no way.


And then, 3 weeks ago, we discovered that Rachel was 6 weeks pregnant. We were ecstatic, overjoyed, elated. We celebrated with our friends and talked with our church and with our son about the way in which God can still work miracles and does. The last 3 weeks, we have been walking on air. Just this past week, our church has been studying the last part of the book of James and prayers offered in faith.


Then, last night, Rachel began to have some bleeding. And I started offering prayers in faith. We made an appointment with her doctor for this morning. The sonogram revealed that our baby no longer had a heartbeat.


We are devastated. I know we're not the first people to experience a miscarriage and that many people, some of you who will read this blog, have experienced much worse. Still, we are devastated. We are angry. We are hurt. We are confused. And James 5 reads like a bad joke.


And yet, there's something else that I really need to get out. Within minutes of receiving the news, I felt this compulsion, almost as strong as a voice in my head, to acknowledge, out loud, that God is good.


I ignored it. Screw Him, I wouldn't give Him the satisfaction. But it persisted. A basic knowledge of what is true and a need to express it, despite the circumstances. Hours later, about 10 minutes ago, I broke down and did it.


At church we grew up saying to one another, "God is good...all the time. And all the time...God is good." And I believe it as strongly today as I have any day of my life. But, in some ways, that just makes it worse. That just makes this hurt more.


The subject of this post asks a question, but I know the answer; God is good.  Today, that is making me angry and confused. And, I guess, I'll just have to sit with that and think and feel and pray my way through it. But I also had to stop and acknowledge, publicly, that God is good, even if, today, that leaves me with as many questions as it does answers.


Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Farther Than Most Would Want To Go

"...we need folks who will start churches to help alienated churchgoers ... people who will drop out of church unless somebody forms a more open space where they can survive and thrive spiritually. But no less important - more important, in my opinion - we need church planters who will go much farther than most alienated churchgoers would want to go - to meet the "spiritual but not religious" where they are and form faith communities among them, forming authentic disciples or followers of Jesus..."    -Brian McLaren

Monday, July 26, 2010

Question

James 5:4 states, "Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."


Sometimes I think we miss the most practical indictments to be had in scripture. Is it possible that the application of this passage to my own life is that I shouldn't pay the guy who mows my lawn only $10 simply because he's too desperate to ask for more? Is it possible that this passage ought to be read that literally?


James 5 is a passage about how the rich oppress the poor. And it's easy to read and write off as "I'm not rich and I'm not trying to oppress anyone." Except that verse 6 of the same chapter reads, "You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you." This isn't just a passage about slave drivers who knowingly kill the innocent, it's about those whose lifestyle of "luxury and self-indulgence" (verse 5) have, unwittingly, brought about oppression and death.


Something to consider as I go through life always looking for the cheapest price on food, clothing, and lawn care. Is it possible that what I'm not paying is causing someone else to pay? Is it possible that what I failed to pay may, one day, cry out against me?

Sunday, July 25, 2010

My Kind of Fundamentalism

Years ago, I wrote an article titled "Does Believing In The Fundamentals Make Me A Fundamentalist?" in which I explored all the negative connotations associated with fundamentalism juxtaposed with a desire to get back to basics; to what, in basketball, one would call "the fundamentals". There seemed to be, in our postmodern efforts to eschew fundamentalism, an unwillingness to submit ourselves to tradition and wisdom married to a desire to equate newness with goodness. Did our efforts to live in the moment not put us at risk to simply make it up as we went along? Like jazz musicians who know to learn basic notes and rhythms before they ever attempt to improvise, ought we not also return to the fundamentals before attempting to improvise on faith? Then again, does this "back to basics" approach make us closed off and stagnant, placing rules over relationship and old law over new life?


It's something I still wrestle with, but this excerpt from Slavoj Zizek's Violence helped to articulate what I've been feeling in better words than I could write:


...are the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish is the U.S.: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers' way of life. If today's so-called fundamentalists really believe they have found their way to truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns him. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist's search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated by the sinful life of non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful Other, they are fighting their own temptation. These so-called Christian or Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalism.


Yeah. What he said. Let us who are Christians, remember that there is no shame in being a "true believer", but that what we believe in is the God who became man so that, in Christ, He might convince and not coerce, He might show us the promise of the Kingdom coming and then offer the invitation to "Come, follow me." Let us take up our cross, lead by example, and live and tell the story of the One in whom the entire universe will one day be reconciled, inviting others to be reconciled to God in Christ and to become ministers of reconciliation even as we have chosen to be. Let us go back to the basics of love of God and of neighbor, back to the hard truths of Jesus' sermon on the hill, back to the kind of fundamentalism that brings hope to the world.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

All That You Have Is Your Soul

"...millions of Americans espouse this soul-oriented life, but it appears that many of them feel isolated in their convictions. They see a national persona of hype, ambition, narcissism, and materialism. Their values seem vulnerable and soft in comparison, their voices quiet and their ambitions humble. As a nation, we hardly know they exist. But we need their example and their testimony...or else I fear that the uncontained spirits of personal ambition and greed will finally make us savage and dangerous to each other." -Thomas Moore


"What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" -Jesus

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Why I Will Be Made A Fool



This past Sunday, after house church, Rachel and Harry and I got to head out to my friend Mark’s house in Wimberley for fireworks and fun. It was the first time that I have had a chance to see Mark’s shop. Mark is a woodworker by trade and an extremely good one. But he wasn’t born with a natural knack. He decided one day, about 15 years ago, to apprentice himself out to one of the greatest woodworkers in Texas at the time. He asked the man to teach him everything he knew. The man agreed.

A month in and Mark was beginning to regret his choice. All that the man had allowed Mark to do was sand wood. Every day that Mark came into the shop he watched this man saw and mold and shape wood into some of the most beautiful pieces he had ever seen. But all the man would allow Mark to do was sand wood. Every day. For days and weeks and then some.

There were many days when Mark wanted to quit. And when I see the work that Mark is doing now, I’m glad he didn’t. But not as glad as Mark is.

While we were out on Sunday, Mark introduced me to a guy who has become his apprentice. They showed me a desk that they were working on. I asked the man what Mark had him doing. “Sanding, mostly,” he said.

We are a people unwilling to sit still and shut up long enough to listen and learn. As a result, we miss out on wisdom. We don’t like the idea of things taking time or effort, so we often avoid the things that do. We don’t like the idea of failure, so we pursue those areas only where we are sure we can succeed.

In college, I was a mostly A, sometimes B student. Until I took a class from a man named Tony Ash. Dr. Ash gave me my first (and, as it turned out, only) C. As a result, I avoided taking classes from him for the next two years. During those two years he hounded me to take another class. Finally, I complained that he had given me a C and that I couldn’t risk another. His response was to turn red and almost shout, “Did you come to college to make good grades or to learn something?” He didn’t convince me.

But in the time since I have often wished that I had spent more time in college learning something and less time trying to get a good grade. This is why they say that undergraduates know “just enough to be dangerous”. That has certainly been true of me. Much of why I read so much and so often is because I’ve been unable to go to seminary and yet continue to see how much I have to learn.

Throughout the Bible the people of God are asked whether they are willing to do what it takes to gain wisdom, and we are assured that wisdom is found by sitting at the feet of Jesus. It is found in humility and in patience and in obedience and trust.

But we are raised to desire and to be driven, to want what our neighbor’s got and to go get it. We are raised on envy and ambition, the two things that James tells us are the enemy of wisdom.

The world teaches us to be “know-it-alls”, to never doubt ourselves, to never show weakness. Just think about the classically touchy subjects of religion and politics. Both have become about choosing a side and never backing down. We aren’t out to humbly submit, but to win. We don’t want to gain wisdom, we just want to be on the “right” side of the debate. As a result, we learn to be crafty and savvy and shrewd, but we never learn to be wise.

It’s been said that “The wise man questions the wisdom of others as he questions his own, the foolish man, as it is different from his own.” We are taught to never question ourselves and to always question others and so, we are not wise.

Jesus invites us to have less confidence in ourselves and more confidence in him. He invites us into a posture of humility and patience and obedience and trust.

In the David Foster Wallace novel Infinite Jest there is a section in which a longtime AA member named Gene talks with a rookie member named Gately who chafes at the idea of being given steps to follow as if he were a small child. They go back and forth in frustration, one certain of the good of the 12 Steps, the other trained to be skeptical. A paraphrase of Gene's final thoughts goes as follows: 

He told Gately to just imagine he’s holding a box of Betty Crocker Cake Mix, which represents the 12 Steps. The box had directions on the side any eight-year-old could read, all Gately had to do was for once shut up and follow the directions.  It didn’t matter whether Gately believed a cake would result, or whether he understood the baking-chemistry of how a cake would result: if he just followed the directions and had sense enough to get help from slightly more experienced bakers if he got confused somehow, a cake would result. (pg. 467)

This makes sense to someone desperate enough to join AA, but it makes less sense to too many of us. We’re not alcoholics. We’re not sick. We can take care of ourselves.

But Jesus states that “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” It’s our unwillingness to follow “doctor’s orders” that is keeping us sick. It is our insistence on our wellness that keeps us from getting well. We want Jesus to heal us, but we’re like a patient who won’t listen to his doctor. “Eat right. Exercise. Stop smoking.” Listen and live. Ignore at your own risk. But I’m smarter than my doctor, so I don’t listen.

The same is true when it comes to following Jesus. We try to think our way around obedience. “He couldn’t have really meant ‘turn the other cheek’ or ‘love your enemies’ or ‘speak the truth’” And nowhere do we “outsmart” God more than at the cross.

1 Corinthians 1:18 says that the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing.” It reminds me of a line from the recently released Iron Man 2, in which the villain states that “If you can make God bleed, then people will cease to believe in Him.”

On the cross, man made God bleed. But we don’t want to believe it. We preach the strength of God, not the weakness, even though it is in weakness that God’s strength is revealed.

Are we strong enough to be weak? Are we humble enough to be wise?

Proverbs 19:20 admonishes us to “listen to advice and accept instruction and in the end you will be wise.”

Is it too late for us to set aside our skepticism? Can we sit still and shut up long enough to learn? Will we submit, be humble, trust, and obey?

Matthew 18:2-4 says we must become like children in order to enter the Kingdom. This is not saying that we must become as innocent as children, but as humble and trusting and obedient.

1 Corinthians 3:18 states that a man “should become a ‘fool’ so that he can become wise.”

Can we embrace that kind of foolishness? Are we desperate enough in our own sickness to try anything Jesus commands? Are we ready to stop trying to outthink Jesus and, instead, simply obey him? Is it possible that he meant the things he said and that, if we obeyed we’d get well?

I say we give it a try; that we stop trying to make Christ’s teachings agree with our lives and start making our lives agree with his teaching. The church that I pastor claims as part of its mission "to be Jesus to people”, but we must recognize that that begins by bringing ourselves to Jesus. By sitting at his feet and humbly learning to walk in his way.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Sermons We See


I'd rather see a sermon
than hear one any day;
I'd rather one should walk with me
than merely tell the way.

The eye's a better pupil
and more willing than the ear,
Fine counsel is confusing,
but example's always clear;

And the best of all the preachers
are the men who live their creeds,
For to see good put in action
is what everybody needs.

I soon can learn to do it
if you'll let me see it done;
I can watch your hands in action,
but your tongue too fast may run.

And the lecture you deliver
may be very wise and true,
But I'd rather get my lessons
by observing what you do;

For I might misunderstand you
and the high advice you give,
But there's no misunderstanding
how you act and how you live.

When I see a deed of kindness,
I am eager to be kind.
When a weaker brother stumbles
and a strong man stays behind

Just to see if he can help him,
then the wish grows strong in me
To become as big and thoughtful
as I know that friend to be.

And all travelers can witness
that the best of guides today
Is not the one who tells them,
but the one who shows the way.

One good man teaches many,
men believe what they behold;
One deed of kindness noticed
is worth forty that are told.

Who stands with men of honor
learns to hold his honor dear,
For right living speaks a language
which to every one is clear.

Though an able speaker charms me
with his eloquence, I say,
I'd rather see a sermon
than to hear one, any day.


-Edgar Guest, Sermons We See