Before the Beginning...a Further Reflection

I was thinking about this whole Jesus is the theological center thing all weekend and realized that this rabbit hole is ridiculously deep. I mean here is the God of the universe walking among us. Here, present, in time and space. Think about this reality, just for a moment. It's pretty astounding isn't it? The burning bush, the pillar of cloud and fire, theophanies. But, here is the person of God perfectly human and perfectly divine. To explore the riches of this reality is something that we cannot possibly come to an end of. The practical realities of this truth are limitless as well, are they not? Where did God go when he was here? A manger. A wedding. The wilderness. Dusty roads. A place everyone else avoided. The tax collector's booth. The sea. The mountains. The prostitute's corner. The drunk's table. The Temple. The synagogue. God entered. He engaged this lost world in a very raw and very real way. He didn't hole up in the Temple courts or in the synagogue. He didn't only hang with the religious people. He said things like, "I came to seek and save the lost." "This sick need a physician not the healthy." He said things like, "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off." "The son of man has no place to lay his head." He said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it." He leads us out into expedition. He leads us to a dangerous place. He leads to the place of faith. This is not for the faint-hearted but the for the courageous who can follow a master that is more concerned about glory than safety. I have come to this question, "Am I living safe?" If I am living "safe", I am not following the one who called me. Living "safe" means that I will not be in danger of losing my life. I love the fact that there are people in my life who are not living "safe". They inspire me. They inspire me because they are following Jesus. I want to follow Jesus too. I want to go where he goes. I really do. But, it is scary.

Big Tent or Single Issue?

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As I mentioned in my previous post, I am on a study leave this week and a big part of that is preparing for the year that is to come.  I am enjoying the time to think and plan.  The Big Tent Synchroblog has been stimulating some of my thinking and has been a welcome distraction to punctuate my work chunks. My initial response to the blogs is that there seems to be a couple of main issues surfacing in the conversation.  What are these issues you ask?  It's the issue of human sexuality.  Chad Holtz, and Rachel Held Evans are good examples.The other issue is that of what do we do with those who disagree with us. David Adams, Greg Bolt, Julie Clawson are good representatives of this side of the coin. As I think about these two sides of the same coin I begin to wonder if we are missing the key issues that are potentially at stake in this conversation.  While we talk about enlarging our tent, I think we are missing the key issue, as Scott Frederickson helpfully points out, taking our tables out of the tent. I am growing more and more convinced that as we authentically engage in the lives of people we will change our understanding of the way we understand "who" can belong.  People with real relationships with the homeless easily include them in the community.  People with real relationships with homosexuals easily include them in the community. People with real relationships with heterosexually broken people easily include them in the community. The list could go on... The issue that continues to rise to the forefront of my mind is this: Who we know determines who we love. The unknown creates fear.  To broaden the "tent" we must broaden our relationships. As we broaden our relationships we will constantly have to return to the question of grace and what it means to embrace those who "live in a broken world with broken relationships and bad records". Check out the blogs and let me know what you think... I hope that as the week continues we will see conversations move from our personal "hot button issues" to grand visions of a unified body of Jesus.

Big Tent Christianity 1

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So, I am a day late to the Big Tent Christiaity Synchroblog.   Here is the theme that we will be discussing this week: What are your hopes and dreams for the Church? More specifically, what does “big tent Christianity” mean to you? And what does it look like in your context? Oddly enough I am in the midst of a study leave this week and one of the questions my counter part in ministry asked me to wrestle with was, "What are your hopes and dreams for the Church?"  Brilliant! What are your hopes and dreams for the church? I think that before I can answer that question I need to ask a more fundamental question.  What is the church?  There are so many definitions running around that it's hard to keep up.  It used to be (back in the 50s in America) that the "church" was simply those folks who showed up and sat in their pew on a Sunday morning.  Now we have "communities" and "networks" and "friends"  and "who knows what else".  So, I don't think I can express my dreams for the church until I can have some working definition of what the "church" really is. I want to follow most of those before me and say that the church is broken up into two large parts, the church visible and the church invisible or universal.  I hold to a robust sovereignty of God and so I leave the latter to mystery, I am more concerned with the former. The definition that I want to posit for the "church" is a group of people who communing together in the midst of being on mission with Jesus. So, let's break that down. "A group of people": this is necessary because following Jesus does not call people to be alone on mission.  He calls them to be a part of his body, family, and bride.  I think you can get a good sense of this from this clip: The body of Christ ought be a collection of people of who speak with one voice because they are centered on one man and pursuing the same mission. "Communing together".  Alan Hirsch calls this "Communitas". Whatever you want to call it, I think that the church must go beyond community to communing.  This is the active lived life of a group of people together.  They are engaged with one another sharing the mission, life, and life of Jesus. They are practicing the sacraments together (communion and baptism).  This is a group of people who worship around a common table and as they commune with Jesus through the Spirit they find themselves drawn to one another. " In the midst of being on mission with Jesus".  A group of people doing "community" does not the church make.  They must be on mission with Jesus.  There is no other mission that they are to be on.  They are to be on Jesus' mission. This means that they are glocally concerned with living revolutionary lives calling those around them into this mission.  It is interesting that Jesus' invitation was always to follow him.  This following was at its core an invitation to join him in his mission. So, that's my definition. What do you think? Later, I will post some comments on the other blogs in the discussion.  Tomorrow, I will write about my dream for the church.

Review: Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, published by Thomas Nelson.  Jesus Manifesto brings Jesus to the front and center.  Sweet and Viola seek to highlight Jesus' sovereignty and supremacy. This is a great little text that is worth the read.  I found it to be very devotional and it met its goal of bringing Jesus front and center.  It is always good to be reminded of the centrality of Jesus to the life of the believer. This not a book that wows you.  There is nothing controversial or new.  It is a book that you read and then you find yourself thinking about an illustration from it. It is a book you read and then find yourself mulling over some description of Jesus.  It is a book you read and then find yourself quoting it to someone else in conversation. The only thing that twinged me as a downside was from the introduction. The comment made there is, "So what is Christianity? It is Christ. Nothing more. Nothing less. (xxii)"  I agree that Jesus is central to the Christian. However, to say that Jesus is the full sum of the Christian faith is not exactly accurate. I would suggest that this be edited to highlighting his centrality. This statement by Sweet and Viola I think pushes down toward the problematic view of "me and Jesus" that is predominant in our post-modern world. Overall: grab the book.  It's always worth the time remind ourselves how incredibly great Jesus is.

Are you gonna eat that?

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We had been walking for a week straight.  The pace was incredible.  We did not even feel like they had homes any more because we were always on the move.  This is the way it always was. There was a constant pressure to move on to the next town and to continue proclaiming the "good news".  Saturday was always the hardest day.  Usually there was no way to prepare and have extra food on hand so Saturday was a hungry day. Today, was especially tough though.  Our travels took us through a grain field! It was excruciating. But, to our astonishment the Teacher grabbed the head of a grain rubbed it in his hands and ate the kernel.  We looked at one another, confused, it was the Sabbath wasn't it? But, the Teacher picked and ate.  We did too. Then "they" showed up. The religious, the high and mighty Pharisees.  They were always around.  They said, "Your disciples are breaking the Sabbath rules!" The Teacher's response was amazing, "Really? Didn't you ever read what David and his companions did when they were hungry, how they entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, bread that no one but priests were allowed to eat? And didn't you ever read in God's Law that priests carrying out their Temple duties break Sabbath rules all the time and it's not held against them? There is far more at stake here than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant—'I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual'—you wouldn't be nitpicking like this. The Son of Man is no lackey to the Sabbath; he's in charge." Then we went into the Synagogue for worship.  When we got there "they" thought they had the Teacher trapped because there was a crippled man there. "They" asked, "Is it legal to heal on the Sabbath?" The Teacher got them again, "Is there a person here who, finding one of your lambs fallen into a ravine, wouldn't, even though it was a Sabbath, pull it out? Surely kindness to people is as legal as kindness to animals!" Then he said to the man, "Hold out your hand." He held it out and it was healed. "They" walked out furious, sputtering about how they were going to ruin Jesus. (Based on Matthew 12:1-14, with a little help from the Message) -- This is an amazing story.  It's really a central text for our question about freedom and law. The law said, "Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don't do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days Godmade Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day." The Pharisees were somewhat right in their questioning of Jesus and the disciples.  In their minds they really were breaking the sabbath commandment. But Jesus response flips their understanding of the commandment on its head, "the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath". Brilliant!  He even says that the disciples in this case are guiltless!  He goes so far as to point out that they missed the point of the command when he quotes Hosea 6:6. In Hosea God has his people in the dock and calling them to account.  The Pharisees would have felt the sting. Jesus was calling them out as heartless and completely disconnected from God himself. In their quest to be faithful to God the Pharisees had missed God's heart and his desire for them to worship.  I think we are guilty of this.  What are the rules that you have put in place to be faithful to God? Maybe some of these ring true:
  • No R rated movies.
  • No secular music.
  • No smoking.
  • No drinking.
  • No dating.
  • No being a Democrat.
  • No being a Republican.
  • No being Pro-Choice.
  • No being Pro-Life.
  • No watching MSNBC.
  • No rooting for Ohio State University (OK, this is mine, I admit it.  I think God's OK with it.)
Freedom is about worship.  Freedom is about coming to the God of the universe and being with him and with his people. There are no longer divisions.  The boundary markers of in and out are changed they are now spiritual and communal.  They are no longer based on law. What's your list?  How does it need to change? Are you building barriers on behalf of God? Are you OK with God's dismantling of barriers through the crucifixion of Jesus?

It's All About Sex Baby! or The Sex Question

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This is the seventh post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts.  The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections. The Sex Question: Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it? McLaren begins this second question of application in a way that plays to our prejudices (it's a fantastic bit of writing!).  He paints the picture of what many Christians would consider to be the "homosexual movement".  However, he is really painting a picture of what he calls "fundasexuality" which is centered on "heterophobia" or the fear of the different. He says that this is packaged in many forms, "Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or even atheist. (174-175)" McLaren goes on to argue that sociology tells us that "groups can exist without a god, but no group can exist without a devil (175)." Who is the devil for the fundasexualist? Gays, lesbians, bisexual, and trans-gendered people. The argument against "fundasexualism" is built on the story of Ethiopian eunuch from Acts 8.  I think I rightly summarize the argument this way:
  • The Ethiopian eunuch had visited Jerusalem to worship.
  • The Ethiopian eunuch had not been allowed to worship because he was not Jewish and Deuteronomy 23:1 prohibited a eunuch from doing so.
  • The Ethiopian eunuch hears the gospel of creation, liberation, and reconciliation "embodied in a man who was stripped naked and publicly humiliated, despised, rejected, and misunderstood, a man without physical descendants, a man who was cut and scarred forever." This is a man to whom the Ehtiopian eunuch can relate.
  • The Ethiopian eunuch who was condemned "by the Jewish scriptures" now has found entrance into the kingdom of God and requests baptism. Which he is by Philip.
  • The Ethiopian eunuch a "non-heterosexual" becomes a missional leader taking the gospel to Ethiopia.
This argument is then extrapolated to be inclusive of homosexuals and undocumented aliens. McLaren continues to paint the horrific picture of sexual brokenness that exists in the heterosexual world and within the church. The list of sexual sin is long, painful, and honest. The solution? "We must pursue a practical, down-to-earth theology and an honest, fully embodied spirituality that speak truthfully and openly about our sexuality, in all its straight and gay complexity.(189)" Reflections I continue to appreciate the fact that McLaren does not let us get away from the hard questions that face us today. Sex is the predominant topic everywhere.  Ads, pop culture, the news, and even Sportscenter: sex overshadows it all.  I agree with McLaren that the dialogue must be opened.  We have to have the conversation, no, we need to have the conversation.  I also agree that we must move beyond the binary, "I'm right, you're wrong" bickering. I agree with McLaren's conclusion. There are parts of the discussion that I disagree with though.  I think that he makes a leap with Ethiopian eunuch.  There is nothing in the text which tells us of his gender identity.  We simply know of his physical limitation to carry out the sex act.  This has nothing to do with gender.  To make the leap that he was "non-heterosexual" is too far and it is too far to assume that he was "heterosexual". I think that his sexual identity is not the question at hand.  I think that McLaren rightly identifies the issue of the Ethiopian eunuch not being allowed to worship, but is wrong when he asserts it has to do with gender identity. I come back to the same issue as I have had so many times before.  How? At this point in the text McLaren has removed all means by which to have any kind of authoritative ethic.  Sexual conduct is of deep concern in the Scriptures and there is an expectation of honoring God with our bodies and there are limits. However, if the Scriptures are simply one voice in the discussion then we can regulate them to a more primitive idea and that we have evolved past their prescriptions for healthy lives. This is very dangerous and unwise. The sexual brokenness that exists in our world is in desperate of not only a "man who was stripped naked and publicly humiliated, despised, rejected, and misunderstood, a man without physical descendants, a man who was cut and scarred forever" but a man who also died and rose again and in so doing made a way for reconciliation between God and people, people and creation, and people and people.

Who's the Boss? or The Authority Question

[caption id="attachment_771" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Well that's not quite how it works..."]
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[/caption] This is the second post interacting with Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts.  The first will be a summary of McLaren's discussion and the second will be my reflections. The Authority Question: How should the Bible be understood? As with the narrative question, McLaren, sets up two opposing views of how to understand the Bible.  The first is what he calls the "Constitutional View (78)."  He sees this view as the cause for three critical problems he highlights regarding our use and understanding of the Bible:
  1. The scientific mess (68)
  2. The ethical mess (68)
  3. The peace mess (69)
We come out on the "wrong side" of these issues over and over again because we have missed the very nature of the Bible. McLaren argues his case by using the issue of slavery and comparing how Christians in the South used the Bible to defend slavery.  As a result, "We must find new approaches to our sacred texts, approaches that sanely, critically, and fairly engage with honest scientific inquiry, approaches that help us derive constructive and relevant guidance in dealing with pressing personal and social problems, and approaches that lead us in the sweet pathway of peacemaking rather than the broad, deep rut of mutually assured destruction (70)." McLaren goes on to argue that as a result of our understanding the Bible in a constitutional matter we read it like lawyers in a courtroom.  In so doing we create a case for a particular and then look to find how to support our case by the precedents found in the text. This approach, it is argued, creates tensions in the text that have to be reconciled and in so doing damage is done to the Bible.  The greatest problem is that unlike constitutions which can be amended, the Bible is the word of God and therefore cannot be. This is in opposition to the nature of the Bible that McLaren proposes, that of a library of culture and community.  This means that it is a "carefully selected group of ancient documents of paramount importance for people who want to understand and belong to the community of people who seek God and, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus (81)." The Bible then should be expected to have tension and even contradictions. Why? Because it is a library with different works of literature that are coming from different perspectives. This is what we expect in any library and the biblical library is no different. Internal discrepancies within a constitution are great problems but they are signs of "vitality and vigor in the literature of a culture (82)." How does then apply out to understanding the issue of authority?  If the Bible is not full of propositional truth, then how does revelation work?  It works, says McLaren, through conversation.  The basis for his argument comes from the book of Job.  He sees in Job proof that, "revelation occurs not in the words and statements of individuals, but in the conversation among individuals and God, we might say (italics original, 89-90)." How does he get here?  He does so by seeing that Job's companions are chastised by God even though they were quoting from the Bible in their responses to Job. Job is not chastised and yet he was the one questioning God.  The problem continues for McLaren because in Job we have Satan speaking and God speaking and these other characters.  Are their words inspired by God?  Certainly not, McLaren says.  These words are used by God to draw us into conversation with the text to leave us in a place of wonder. He contrasts his view with conservatives who seek to "put us 'under' Scripture (96)." He also contrasts his view with liberals who seek to "put us 'over' Scripture (96)."  McLaren's desire is to "put us 'in' Scripture (96)." Reflections I really appreciate the call that McLaren makes in regard to how we understand the Bible.  I have seen this constitutional view in action and it is disheartening.  I also appreciate how he desires us to come to the Bible with awe and wonder.  This is good, nay, very good.  I really like how he closes this section out, "I hope this approach can help us enter and abide in the presence, love, and reverence of the living God all the days of our lives and in God's mission as humble, wholehearted servants day by day and moment by moment (97)." Any approach to the Bible that short circuits this response is flawed and yet often times the lack of this response is not due to our approach but to our hearts. I think that where I struggle with McLaren's approach is that, in my opinion, he does not give the Scriptures their due.  It seems that he has made them less than what they are.  To relegate them as  a mere conversation partner in our spirituality pushes them to the periphery, by definition.  Looking at Job it seems that revelation comes through God's self-disclosure, not as result of conversation.  The Scriptures are a special revelation of the transcendant God to his creation and in so doing help us experience his immanence.  It is here where our sense of awe is derived, the immanence of the transcendant God before us in the Bible. When we read the Bible we interact with God.  We must ask questions and seek him in the midst of this.  We must engage fully.  Dare I say even converse? Yes.  In so doing though we must acknowledge that this interaction is more along the lines of a student conversing with a professor as opposed to a peer.  The Bible is not an ongoing conversation.  It is not changing.  When the authors wrote they wrote with purpose.  They had an intended meaning.  We engage with the Bible and ask questions to understand this meaning, then we must understand how it applies to our world now.  This process does not change the Bible.  It changes us.

Kicking Butt for Jesus or "I Smacked the Other Cheek" or "I am Going to Beat the Hell (literally) Out Of You"

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The New York Times published an article recently about the rise of Mixed Martial Arts being used as an outreach by evangelical churches for men. I know that guys like Mark Driscoll are all over this and that men are drawn to MMA and that God is using it. I am not going to lie to you, I enjoy a little Fight Club and some MMA myself.  However, I am concerned by some of the statements that I read in the article. Here a few of them:

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