Theomedy: God is too serious not to joke about

The Last Post

2008-03-25T16:36:00.004-06:00

Well, it has been great. But, in all honesty, I am running too many blogs and need to let one go now. This will be the last post for Theomedy. I will leave it posted for te purposes of archive, as long as they will allow it to stay up.

I will be returning to my bread-and-butter blog at:
http://natebostian.blogspot.com

I will also be posting at my ministry website:
http://canterburydallas.org

Thanks for reading... and stay close to Christ!

A CHRIST FOR EVERY TASTE?

2008-03-24T23:59:00.001-06:00

A Sermon For Year A, Easter Sunday
Copyright © 2008 Nathan L. Bostian
Based on Acts 5:25-32; 10:34-43; Luke 24:13-35

1. A CHRIST FOR EVERY TASTE: One of the interesting things about being on my side of the Easter phenomenon is looking at how other churches and ministries do Easter, and comparing and contrasting it with what we do.

As I was driving around this week, I noticed at almost every major intersection in my town, clusters of plastic signs by the side of the road offering every conceivable type of Easter worship experience.

Some advertized Sunrise Easter worship services. Others advertized contemporary, relevant, rocking Easter services. Yet others advertized classic, traditional, meaningful Easter services. Some offered services tailored to teens, others services tailored to children, and yet others tailored to young twenty-somethings.

In fact, at a couple of larger churches I saw banners advertizing multiple kinds of services at the same location: It is literally the shopping mall of Easter worship, with contemporary at one end of the Church mega-plex, classic worship at the other end, and children's worship somewhere in the middle.

And you should have seen these clusters of signs by the road (maybe you did!). It was as if the signs were part of some odd football fumble drill, where they were all crowded together, desperately vying to be in front, to get the attention of the consumer public.

Now, one part of me really is glad about all of this: It shows that there are well-meaning people at churches all over the place who want people to know about Jesus and encounter his saving power! They are so intent, that they are making sure that every conceivable person with every conceivable taste has an opportunity to encounter Jesus in a way that is comfortable and meaningful for them.

This is awesome. This shows that people Love Jesus and Love those who He came to save.

But, there is another side. A less sincere side. A consumer side to the story. Why is it- do you think- that we feel the need to advertize Jesus like He was mouthwash, or a sports car? Why do we feel we have to custom make Jesus, in every style and color, just to get people to pay attention to Him? Does Jesus really need our cool "power add-ons"?

Why do we think that the Gospel message- the message that God became human and literally defeated death- why do we think THAT message needs to be "massaged" to be more hip, cool, relevant, trendy, and marketable?

Why does Jesus need OUR help to be meaningful?

When we put it like that, it sounds silly. We KNOW that Jesus doesn't need our help to be LORD or to change lives. We KNOW that his message should be the most relevant message in the history of the world- to every single person in it, regardless of personal taste or demographic- because we KNOW that only his message comes with the guarantee of a Life stronger than Death.

We KNOW it, but I think we still have to put cosmetics on Jesus because we are afraid: We are afraid that His Story isn't true. We are afraid that He WON'T back up what He says. Yet, we are also afraid He WILL back up what He says.

2. WE TAILOR CHRIST BECAUSE WE ARE AFRAID HE ISN'T REAL: So, first of all, I think we tailor Christ to our liking because many of us- deep down inside- wonder if the whole thing is too good to be true. After all, we read stories like those in Acts and the Gospels, and nothing could seem further from our everyday reality.

We find Jesus-followers boldly standing up against the authorities and proclaiming the Risen Christ. We see them unabashedly taking His message of resurrection and hope to people who have no hope. And we see that Jesus actually WORKS in miraculous ways. People are healed. Demons driven out. Christ grants them miraculous escapes from jail and danger.

But, we don't see that in our lives. We fear- I fear- mentioning Jesus in polite conversation because I might get labeled a Jesus-freak, a fanatic, or worse- the worst "f" word you could be called: A fundamentalist! [SARCASM]

We have trouble mentioning to our well-educated, respectable Atheist and Muslim friends that Jesus is Risen, and He is Lord- to say nothing of proclaiming Jesus where we might actually get persecuted!

And we don't see miracles like that either. At least not in this culture. And we are incredibly skeptical of people from other cultures who claim to experience miracles. It seems that miracles like the book of Acts hardly EVER happen to college educated, upper-crust kind of folk (like us!). [SARCASM]

And, let's be honest: When is the last time you ever saw someone rise from the dead? The whole "Christ is Risen" thing smells kind of fishy to those of us in an age of science.

So, we feel like this whole Easter thing is a happy myth that we have to fix up, and make relevant, to people who have experienced neither the power nor the passion that the Bible speaks of.

So, we custom-make Christ because we feel like we have been sold a defective product, and like a shady used-car salesman, we must exaggerate the truth to get people to buy in.

But, is it really reasonable that the Gospel Story is un-reasonable? Is it really logical that the Resurrection event is illogical?

I mean, just because we have not experienced something and have not seen it with out own eyes: Does that mean it isn't real?

We believe in blood cells, quantum atomic structure, physical laws, economic trends, and even our own brain: But we have never seen them. We believe them, on the basis of faith, based on inference from the evidence we have, as interpreted by people we trust (such as scientists).

We put our faith in the most probable inference from the facts we have, back to cause that gave rise to those fact. In other words: We look at something in our world and say: "Now why is that?" Then we weigh the possible explanations and put our faith in the reason that best fits.

But what best fits the data we have for the Resurrection? What best fits the power and passion we see in the early Church?

Were these poor, oppressed, mostly uneducated early disciples inspired to practice radical Love, overcome racial and ethnic divides, stand against the authorities, suffer and even die on the basis of a pious myth about some Rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth?

What turned disciples who were too scared to even admit they knew Jesus- who denied Him and hid from the authorities- what turned them into a movement of people that overcame the mighty Roman Empire after 300 years of non-violent social action?

If Jesus had stayed dead- if the disciples had stolen the body or made up the story- all the authorities would have had to do was grab the body, cart it through the streets, kill the leaders of the Jesus-movement: And it would have ended.

But it didn't end. And they DID kill the leaders. Yet they never found the body. Why is that? What is the most reasonable explanation? [PAUSE] Maybe the resurrection IS real.

And what about the idea that we do not see stuff like Acts happen anymore today? Is that really true? Or is it just that our culture trains us, from a very early age, to be so jaded and skeptical that we would never see a miracle even if it bit us in the butt.

We explain away everything. The things we can't explain we ignore. And the things we ignore we treat as unreal.

But what if those people from other cultures- those that claim to experience Jesus miraculous resurrection power- what if they aren't making it all up?

And how do we explain lives like Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, Martin Luther King Jr., and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (and a million others!)? How do we explain events like the abolition of slavery, and the massive movements toward racial and gender equality that have only happened in cultures impacted by the Gospel of Christ?

Where do those people come from? Where do those ideas come from? Is it just a coincidence that it is in THOSE cultures where this crazy resurrection Story is proclaimed that we see this happen?

What is the most probable inference to put our faith in?

3. WE TAILOR CHRIST BECAUSE WE ARE AFRAID HE WON'T ACT: So, let's say we are over the hump of believing the Jesus Story is too good to be true. Let's say that we actually believe that, 2000 years ago, a man rose from the dead and this impacted the rest of world history.

Why then would we still feel the need to market Jesus like diet soda? If we believe that Jesus' resurrection has the power to change individual lives and even entire cultures- a lesson we learn over and over from history- If we believe that, why do we feel that we need to "help" Jesus change lives in our culture through slick marketing?

I think we do it because we are afraid that Jesus won't actually show up when WE NEED Him. Sure, he showed up for the disciples. Sure, he showed up and changed people and cultures in the past. But that was them. This is US.

Can we trust Jesus to show up for US, here, now, and change lives?

We fear that the answer is NO. We fear that if we put too much trust in Jesus, He will leave us hanging. We fear that Jesus won't love us and help us like He does for others.

So we make backup plans. We say: "Jesus may show up, but if he doesn't- and let's be honest, we don't really think He will- if he doesn't we can still do it ourselves!"

So, we devise a system of self-help instead of relying on the resurrection. We look for relevance and style, instead of Reality and Scripture. We reduce the Gospel to something that is easily controllable, readily consumable, and will never let us down.

But, is it really true that Jesus will let us down? Or, is it the case that we never really gave Him the CHANCE to show up?

Maybe trusting Jesus is kind of like learning to ride a bike. Remember learning to ride a bike?

The hardest thing was trusting the bike enough to build up speed to actually stay balanced.

Because the bike will never balance if we hold back, and stay slow and controlled. The bike will just fall over on its side, time after time. Or worse: You will get stuck with those dinky training wheels and you will wobble back and forth, moving like a snail, with no stability.

The bike only becomes trustworthy when you put your whole trust in it, press down those pedals as hard as you can, and get enough speed going so that you are stable and secure.

It would be insane to say "Bikes are untrustworthy!" just because we am too afraid to ride them fast enough.

Yet, that is what we do with Jesus. We don't put our full trust in Him. We wobble back and forth without really committing our lives to live fully for Him.

And as a result, we never experience the power of His resurrection in our lives, and the stability and security that brings.

4. WE TAILOR CHRIST BECAUSE WE ARE AFRAID HE WILL ACT: But, let's say we are over this hurdle as well. Let's say that we both believe the resurrection IS a Reality, AND we believe that Jesus WILL act in our lives if we put our full trust in Him.

Why then do we still feel the need to custom-make Christ to fit our own style and our own needs? What stops us from trusting in Jesus alone- not "Jesus AND relevance", or "Jesus AND my demographic", or "Jesus AND my ideology"- but trusting in Jesus.

Period.

Full stop.

Jesus drunk straight, not mixed with the fashions of our age.

If we are convinced of the power and presence of the Risen Christ, why do we so often opt for something far less?

I think we do it NOT because we are afraid He isn’t real, BUT because we are afraid HE IS. I think we do it NOT because we are afraid He will not act, BUT because we are afraid He will.

I think we are scared to death of what might happen if we let the Real Jesus loose in our lives.

What might He want us to do? Where might He lead us? What would happen to all of my desires and pleasures, not to mention my favorite sins and prejudices?

We want control. We want predictability. We want what we want, when we want it. And it scares us to death to give that to Jesus.

So we tame the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and turn Him into our pet kitten. We ignore the Lord of the Universe, and make Him the mascot for our own pride and prejudice.

Even though we have every rational reason to trust Him- every logical reason to believe that His plans for us are far better than anything we could come up with on our own- We still struggle to loosen our grip and let the Real Jesus in.

And this is not just YOUR struggle, but it is MY struggle. And this is not just MY challenge, but it is YOUR challenge.

I challenge us all to loosen our grip and let Jesus be Lord. I challenge us all to surrender the rights to ourselves, and give those rights to Jesus. I challenge us all to get on the bike and pedal as fast as we can.

Tonight join with me, loosen your grip on yourself, and once again surrender ourselves to Christ. I invite you, as you come up to take the bread and wine, to give Christ your whole self: Your body, your heart, your mind, your will. You soul.

Just as the disciples 2000 years ago, I invite you to encounter the Risen Lord Jesus in the breaking of bread. Amen+

A CROWN FOR A KING

2008-03-24T23:54:00.000-06:00

A Sermon For Year A, Passion Sunday
Copyright © 2008 Nathan L. Bostian
Based on Matthew 26:69-27:54

Tonight I would like us to take a mental tour- a tour with our imagination- of the day that Jesus was condemned... The day that Jesus was finally "crowned" as a King.

A perfect life. Perfect love. He healed and delivered all who trusted in Him. The blind see. The crippled walk. The hungry are fed. And now this...

Jesus, eyes swollen, face bruised, body beaten, stands before crooked judges after becoming a victim of police brutality...

Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus:

"Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?"

Look into the narrow eyes of the high priest. Can you see the hate? Can you see the judgment? Can you see the rage?

But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked him,

"I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God."

Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? What is your verdict?"

The bloodthirsty crowd screamed "He deserves death!"

Look into the narrow eyes of the crowd around Jesus. Can you see the hate? Can you see the judgment? Can you see the rage?

Jesus didn't deserve it. He did nothing but Love. He received nothing but hate. You see, He didn't fit what they thought Messiah should be like.

They wanted Messiah to be powerful and filled with wrath. A true Messiah would kill all the Romans, all the foreigners, and everyone who didn't look right, or smell right, or believe right according to the "nice" religious people.

But Jesus didn't do that. He loved instead. He cared for women, and children, the poor, the diseased, and worst of all- non "religious" people. Non-Jews. Even Centurions in the occupying Roman Army.

He seemed to have this crazy compassion for all people- as if they mattered- as if God loved them.

He was a revolutionary. A heretic. He loved the wrong people. He didn't hate the right people. He didn't heal on the right day, or teach in the right way.

He didn't fit their stereotype, so they crucified Him. They judged Him, condemned Him, and killed Him.

And those who promised their undying devotion- people like Peter, "The Rock"- they turned their back on Jesus, and denied they even knew Him.

Can you see the look on Peter's face when the rooster crows and he finally realizes the depth to which he has sunk? Have you ever been in Peter's shoes?

Now its your turn...

You see, Jesus tells us that whatever you have done for the most insignificant people around you, you have done for Him. [Matthew 25]

And when you reject the poor, the needy, and the "different"... when you deny their humanity in your thoughts, words and deeds... you are rejecting Him too.

So its your turn. Close your eyes and answer these questions with Jesus:

Who do you judge, condemn, and crucify in your heart because they are different?

Who do you deny, and turn your back on, and pretend like you never knew them?

Is it the person who sits all alone, who doesn't talk right or look right or smell right? Is it the person who asks for change at the street corner?

Is it the person who is loud and boastful and knows it all, who deep down hates themselves?

Is it the people who try to look beautiful and trendy on the outside because on the inside they feel ugly?

Is it the person who tries to act tough, but who is scared inside?

Is it the person who has less than you and wears tattered clothes?

Is the person who has more than you, who makes you jealous?

Is it the person who has given up on life and lives in apathy, because no one has ever told them they were worth something?

Is it people who dress different, or speak a different language, or have a different skin color?

Is it people who believe differently, or have a different god?

When you condemn them and make them sub-human, you condemn Christ all over again.

When you judge them and label them based on their outward appearance, you judge Christ all over again.

When you crown them with your labels of bitterness, worthlessness, and judgment: You crown Christ with a crown of thorns all over again.

You see, after they condemned Jesus, they stripped him and put a robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head.

He deserved a crown of heavenly light arrayed with the stars of the sky, what He got was two inch barbs pressing through flesh and grinding against the bone of his skull.

They put a rod in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They spat on him, and took the rod and struck him on the head.

One day He will rule with a iron scepter that will destroy all hate and oppression and selfishness and sin. On day every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that He alone is Lord.

Yet, on that day so long ago, they used his rod to beat him, and their words to mock him.

Why did he take that mocking crown and rod? Why did He let himself be taunted and abused when He could call down millions of angels to save him? Why?

Maybe it was because He knew that when that happened, the world was over. When He comes in power, time stands still and there are no more second chances.

When He comes back to establish His eternal Kingdom, our time is through. Our choices are over, and He will judge us by what we've become.

The Light of His Love will show us who we REALLY are deep down inside: Past our masks. Beyond our facades. Underneath our excuses: We will face who we have become in the Light of Christ.

But before He comes in power and glory to judge our hearts, He wants to spread His Kingdom in a different way. He gives us the freedom to receive or ignore His Love. He gives us the choice of accepting or denying His Kingdom.

Right now, we live in a world where we are either revolutionaries who spread His Kingdom, or we are enemies opposed to it. We are either spreading Light, or bringing darkness. We are either part of Christ's solution, or part of the problem.

You make the choice. Which side are you on?

What crown will you seek after?

The crown of the world?

Or the crown of Christ?

Close your eyes for final time, and see Christ coming again in glory on that last day. He is riding the clouds, with radiant light flowing from Him and ten million angels behind Him. He sits on His throne to judge the world, and countless billions of humanity are spread out like a sea before him.

What do you want Christ to say to you? What reward do you want to see in heaven? What Kingdom do you serve? Will you wear His crown of thorns, or the crown of the world?

Look in front of you. Two people are sitting before the throne of Christ. One is clothed in a trendy suit, with polished shoes and perfect hair. He confidently comes before Christ carrying a huge burden on his shoulder. It is a sack filled with what he calls his "treasure". He opens his sack to present his achievements and trophies to Christ as proof of his worth.

Christ looks at him sadly, as the man dips his hands in the sack and pulls out nothing but crumbling debris, rust, and filth. In the light of Christ all his pretty things become ugly. He gets frantic trying to reach the bottom of his sack, his head sweaty, his hands trembling. His wealth crumbles before him. His success and power slips through his hands. The people who said they were his friends turn their heads from him. And his fine clothes begin to disintegrate from his body, leaving him cold and naked and ashamed before his Lord.

Then you see a second person walk before Christ. She is naked, and humble and hesitant and self conscious. Yet, warmth and Love radiate from Christ's face. She says she has nothing to bring before Him... and then they come forward.

One man stands beside her saying "I was hungry, and she fed me". Another women stands beside her saying "I was sick, and she healed me". Yet another, "I was lonely and she cared for me". And another, and another, and another. Soon she was surrounded by hundreds whom her life had touched... hundreds who she would be with for eternity.

And then all those who had been touched by the people she had touched came forward, and soon she was surrounded by thousands, maybe millions, who had experienced Christ's Love because of her. And from the throne, out of smiling lips and eyes filled with joyous tears, the Savior's voice boomed "Well done good and faithful servant, well done."

And as the selfish prideful man was sent away humiliated, cold, and naked, Christ clothed that woman with a warm robe of radiant white, which showed the beauty Christ shining through her for all to see.

What do you want Christ to say to you? What reward do you want to see in heaven? What Kingdom do you serve? Will you wear His crown of thorns, or the crown of the world?

Let us meditate on that question for a moment in silence... [End with Taize Song "Jesus remember me, when you come into your Kingdom"]

IMAGINE YOU ARE A BLIND BEGGAR

2008-03-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

A Sermon For Year A, Lent 4
Copyright © 2008 Nathan L. Bostian
Based on John 9:1-38

Tonight I want to do something a little different than what I usually do. Usually I try to connect with your mind, and challenge you to make a decision to follow Christ in a deeper way.

Tonight I want to engage your imagination. I want to help you see something. For some it may be seeing something entirely new. For others, it may be a reminder of things they have already seen.

I want to lead you in an ancient spiritual practice that the monastic traditions call "meditatio", and what we may know of today as "meditation".

But this is not meditation where you clear your mind and try not to think at all. Clearing oneself is actually part of something called contemplation. Rather, in Christian Spirituality, meditation actively engages the imagination to think upon a specific object, a specific image, a specific text of Scripture.

Tonight, I want to show you how to use a text of Scripture- namely our Gospel Drama tonight- to pray with Christ through your imagination.

Now, some of you may have factual questions about our Gospel from tonight: Who was the blind beggar? How did we get this story in the first place? What's up with Jesus making mud?

A few of you may even have deeper questions, like: Is Jesus really the Messiah, the Son of God, like this text claims?

These are all good questions and they deserve good answers at a Bible study sometime this week. But right now, I ask you to bracket those questions off, and put them on pause.

I want you to imagine yourself IN this Story. In fact, I want you to imagine you ARE the blind beggar.

Close your eyes. Notice the darkness...

This darkness has been with you your whole life...

You do not know what light looks like... at all...

You exist in a world only made of sound and touch... No light at all...

Now you are sitting by the road, on the same spot you have sat your entire adult life...

You feel the same rocks underneath you... You hear the same merchants around you hawking their wares...

The sun is hot on your face... You can feel the harsh dry wind of the desert blowing dust in your face...

You can taste the dust... The same dust you have tasted your entire adult life...

In one hand an old chipped pottery bowl... You can hear words come out of your mouth... Words that you don’t even think about anymore... Words you are numb to:

"Alms for a poor blind man! Please can you help me? I was born blind! Alms!"

You used to feel embarrassed to beg... But that was a long time ago... When you still felt like you were human...

But now the words just roll off your tongue. Like a puppet controlled by fate. "Alms for a poor blind man!"

And you hear the footsteps walk past... Occasionally the chink! chink! of change in your bowl...

Sometimes you hear the footsteps intentionally walk far around you... You can hear the murmur of people afraid to touch you for fear that they will be infected by your sin, by your disease...

Other times you hear muffled laughter... And suddenly a rock from a child smacks you in the side of the head... or a foot kicks the bowl out of your hand...

And you hear a roar of laughter from the crowd around you...

It has always been this way... It will always be this way...

You are blind... You are less than human... You are a toy to be played with...

You are cursed. Your parents are cursed. Someone, somewhere did something that brought the wrath of God upon your family... Upon you...

God has forsaken you... God has denied you... God has..

WAIT. Listen. Someone is talking about you.

"Tell us Teacher: who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Lord, not this again. Not the religious stuffed shirts delivering another diatribe about how God justly punishes the sinful...

Hmmm. What did he say?

"He was born so that God's work might be revealed in him..."

Impossible. I am cursed by God. God's only work in my life is to crush me and... What?

You hear the sound of a man gathering the dust from the ground by your feet. Then you hear the sound of him spit.

Now his hands are touching your face, and... and... oh God... you can feel him putting sticky saliva and gritty dirt on your eye lids...

Your mouth opens to utter a curse upon him and his family, but instead you hear him say in a calm voice, that sounds like someone you have known your entire life:

"Go. I send you to wash in the pool that is called Sent!"

You stand. Beweildered... Is this some kind of practical joke? Is this some cruel religious prank.

Is he serious? Who does he think he IS anyway? And almost as if by autopilot, you find your feet walking toward the pool you have gone to your entire life.

And as you walk. Darkness. Then a flash. Then pain. Then darkness again. A flash of brightness. Pain. Head, throbbing.

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Your feet pick up the pace. You are stumbling blindly over rocks, and over feet. Flashing. Brightness. Darkness.

You can smell the sweet humidity of the pool. Flashing. Brightness. Darkness.

You reach the edge. You plunge your head into the lukewarm water. Your hands feel your way to your eyes. You rub them and rub them until the mud is gone.

You pull your head out of the water to catch your breath... You open your EYES... Open your eyes...

And suddenly you have a new sense that you have never had before... You see. You SEE. Light. Motion. Color. People. Animals. Sun. Blue sky. People staring.

You SEE. You SEE!

"He was born so that God's work might be revealed in him..."

Is THIS what He meant? You SEE not only your world, but the meaning of your life for the first time. You have been given spiritual sight as well as physical sight.

"He was born so that God's work might be revealed in him..."

"YOU were born so that God's work might be revealed in YOU..."

However you are comfortable, with eyes opened or closed, think about the questions I will ask. You may use the candles or the icons to help you focus on Christ:

How would you FEEL if you were this beggar? What emotions would be welling up inside of you? What would be overflowing from your heart at that moment?

What would you THINK if you were this beggar? How would you begin to understand what had just happened? What questions would be raised in your mind?

What would you DO if you were this beggar? Where would you go? Who would you tell?

And what would you do about the man who healed you? What would you think of Him? How would you feel about him?

Like this beggar, we are all thrown into horrible situations beyond our control... Family situations... Health situations... Financial situations... Relationship situations... Tragedy situations... Situations that harm and demean us.

What is your situation?

Are you in this situation because of your sins or someone else's sins?

NO. You are where you are so that God's work of love, healing, and restoration may be revealed IN YOU.

You are where you are because in Christ, God wants to do something amazing in your life. Something you would have never imagined. Something as incredible as healing a man born blind.

Like this beggar, we are all beggars. We beg to be cared for. To be valued. To be worthwhile.

We beg to be secure. To be whole. To know that everything will be alright.

We beg for Meaning. For Purpose. For a reason behind all of the things we go through.

Above all, we beg for Someone who will never leave us or forsake us. Who will love us no matter who we are or what we have done.

We are all beggars.

We hunger. We yearn. We need. We thirst. We crave.

We crave that which only Christ can give us.

For a final time tonight, I ask you to imagine. Imagine Jesus Christ was standing before you, looking into your blind eyes with His eyes of infinite compassion.

Imagine he wants to reach into you and heal you at the deepest level of yourself.

What would you ask Him to be healed of? What part of your life would you ask Him to touch? Where do you need the healing touch of His infinite compassion?

Open yourself to Christ, and ask Him now to heal you. Ask Him now to touch you. Ask Him now to raise to life the dead parts of yourself.

Now imagine He is filling you with His Spirit... His healing Spirit... with the Spirit that raised Him from the dead.

Imagine the Spirit is like liquid light being poured into. Imagine the warmth and light of the Holy Spirit filling you, from the top of your head... through your neck... through your shoulders... through your body... into your arms... into your legs... Down to the very bottom of your feet.

Imagine the light and warmth of Christ's Spirit seeping into the deepest depths of yourself. Imagine the healing presence of Christ's Spirit healing those parts of you that so desperately need healing. Imagine the core of your soul being filled from top to bottom in the Love and Light and Peace of Jesus Christ.

How do you feel?

What do you think?

What will you do?

I invite you to take a couple of moments in silence just to reflect on what you have imagined and experienced... [After one minute or so, begin singing the Taize song "The Lord my Light, my light and salvation"]

IS JESUS JUST A LIFESTYLE ACCESSORY?

2008-02-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

A Sermon For Year A, Lent 3
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian
Based on Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

Have you ever thought about what it takes to make your life complete? What can you NOT imagine life without? What stuff- whether products, possessions, places, or things- do you HAVE TO HAVE to consider yourself fulfilled?

Have you ever really thought about it?

For instance: When you think about a perfectly fulfilled life, what is the minimum sized place you would have to live in?

What is the minimum car you would have to drive?

What is the minimum salary you would have to make?

What is the minimum amount of clothes and shoes you would have to own? Where is the minimum store you would buy them from?

Can you imagine living a fulfilled life without: A car? A refrigerator? Fast food? Soda? Coffee?

Could you live without an air conditioner? A television? A computer? A stereo? An I-pod? A daytimer?

How about a cell phone? Let's be honest: Can you imagine life without a cell phone? I can't...

Now, with this being a "Church service" many people might be wondering the motive behind me asking questions like that. Someone might say: "Oh, here comes the guilt trip...

"The preacher man is gonna tell us how horribly materialistic we all are... How we are addicted to stuff, and consume for the sake of consumption... He's gonna tell us how all we need is Jesus, and if we are not fulfilled by him, we are lost."

Well, I will be honest with you. I DO think we live in a materialistic culture. I DO think we are often consumed by our own consumption. And I DO think we are lost without Jesus.

But, I DO NOT think "stuff" is bad. I do not think consumption, in itself, is a bad thing. And I think that part of the way that Jesus fulfills our lives is by giving us a good world to partake in.

Let me explain...

Let me show you my backpack. My backpack is my mobile office, and contains all of the things I think it would be hard to live without... [Unload backpack and describe]

Is any of this stuff in my backpack evil (other than Microsoft Windows on my computer)? No. In fact- it is ALL a gift.

All of creation is a gift from God to fulfill his children. All of creation is a playground for us to enjoy ourselves- responsibly, in a way that saves the playground for the rest of God's children. In itself, there is nothing wrong with our stuff or my backpack.

But there is ONE thing you cannot FIND in my backpack. There is ONE thing that cannot FIT in my backpack. And yet it is THIS ONE thing that makes everything in my backpack- and everything I do with my backpack- meaningful.

What is that ONE THING?

That ONE THING is the living water that is spoken of by Jesus in our Gospel passage today. That ONE THING is the justification and reconciliation spoken of by St. Paul today. That ONE THING is the Lord to whom Moses cried out in the midst of a million faithless crybabies.

That ONE THING is not a thing at all, but a person. The person of Jesus Christ. Without him, all of this stuff in my backpack is meaningless. Without him, all of the stuff that we count on in our lives- from what we drive, to what we talk on- is empty. Without Him, there is a God shaped hole in the middle of our soul that can never be filled no matter how many products, toys, strategies, or ploys we try to shove inside.

And yet, in our culture where we are used to buying what we want, when we want it, and how we want it, we have a really hard time not treating God the same way.

We have a really hard time not treating Jesus like just another lifestyle accessory... Like just another product to be bought and consumed and put on the back shelf (or even thrown away) when we get tired of Him.

For instance, I was at one of our mega-marts the other day with my bride buying all our lifestyle accessories at bargain basement prices. And I came to the book isle: You know, where all of the books are stacked up for easy consumption.

And wedged right between the self-help books and the romance novels, they have the religious bestsellers. There you can find the man with the perfect teeth, telling you how to create a "better you", with a veneer of God around the edges. There you can find all of the designer Bibles with fancy covers- You know: one for men, one for women, one for teens, one for children, and one for husbands of women with teenage children. A Bible for every demographic!

But, sitting side by side in the middle of them all are two stacks of books. One of the stacks of books is written by the current darling of left-wing Biblical scholarship, and it is entitled "God's Problem: How the Bible fails to answer our most important question- why we suffer."

But right next to it is a right-wing stack of books entitled "Conspiracies and the Cross: How to intelligently counter the ten most important theories that attack the Gospel of Christ."

One book is seeking to destroy orthodox Christianity altogether, and the other book is seeking to uphold, at all costs, a particularly fundamental version of Christianity. And there they are, sitting side by side, in the mega-mart.

And what is important here is not which book is more correct. What is important here is that the marketers know more about religious people than we know about ourselves. They know that for most of us- and too often for myself as well- we treat God as just another consumable good.

They know that you can put all of those books side by side, and no one will raise a crisis of conscience. They will simply pick the Bible that fits their lifestyle, and read the theological flavor of the week, without it deeply impacting who they are at all.

Is that all God is: A lifestyle accessory?

Is religion just a product category that makes one a more rounded person?

Do we just buy one set of products to benefit our bodies, another set of products to strengthen our minds, yet another set of products to give us emotional wholeness, a whole other set of products to make us sexy, and finally a set of products to make us more "spiritual"?

And, please do not get me wrong: We are not the first ones to treat God like a product. Look at our reading from Exodus.

The Israelites treated God as a cosmic meal ticket: And when he did not serve them what they wanted when they wanted it, what did they do? They griped. They complained. They even got violent.

And, later, many of them left God behind altogether to worship a golden calf, who gave them more immediate gratification.

Things don't change much, do they?

Or take our lesson from St. Paul. Although it is clear that St. Paul did not treat Jesus as a product, many of those who interpret St. Paul interpret him in consumer terms.

This passage, in fact, has been treated worse than most.

In our passage tonight, He speaks of "God's love [which] has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

In the middle ages, it was common to use this passage as an image of God's grace as a sort of "substance" which was poured out through the Holy Spirit into us, to fill us up, and give favor with God. And, combined with this, it was common to say that God has given the Church the only authority to release the Holy Spirit into God's people.

Thus, the Church became the sole dispenser of God's grace to the world. If you wanted grace, if you wanted the Holy Spirit, you had to come shop at the Church. The Church claimed the power to make or break Kings, to bind or release forgiveness, and even to give those locked up in purgatory a free ride out.

But, only if you paid up.

In fact, it was the Church who developed the first advertising jingle: "Every time a coin in the plate rings, a soul from purgatory springs!"

Grace had become a consumer commodity.

So, it was with good reason that the Reformers of the 16th century tried to un-do the whole system. Instead they focused on grace as a free gift of God, received by faith.

In fact, using this same passage, they seized on the idea that we are justified and reconciled freely through Jesus Christ by putting our complete trust in Him. And, in this insight the reformers were right.

But, as time went by, and religion once again became big business in the countries that accepted the reformation, something predictable happened:

Justification and reconciliation became a product too. Instead of seeing justification and reconciliation as a new and living relationship with God through Christ, they began to be interpreted as in legal terms.

Soon, they became interpreted as merely a verdict of "not guilty" given by God to the sinner which insured that when they died they got a free ticket into heaven. The "price" you had to pay was mental acceptance of a set of doctrines, INSTEAD of a living faith in a Person.

And this became formalized in the last two centuries by revivalism, where people are emotionally manipulated to "close the deal" and come down front to pray a simple prayer with the right words, which ensure you get a ticket to heaven.

And for all the best reasons in the world, Jesus is demoted to just a product again. It is no coincidence that many of the leaders of American religious revivalism in the 1800's, are also the founders of modern marketing.

We find Jesus deconstructing the same attitude as he meets the Samaritan woman at the well. The first thing he does to deconstruct this idea that God is just a product to be consumed by the elect few, is that He crosses boundaries that nice religious people are not supposed to cross.

First, he crosses a physical boundary. He, a Jew, went into Samaritan territory. Samaritans were seen as religious and political traitors to Israel- much the same as Israelis feel about Palestinians today. Many Jews would spend an extra day going around Samaria rather than going through it.

And, in all honesty, most Samarians liked it that way.

Next, he crosses a social boundary. It was bad enough that he was in Samarian territory in close proximity to those "traitors". But, in nearly all ancient cultures, it was strictly taboo for an unmarried man to be speaking to a woman in public. That was crossing a sexual boundary and even a property boundary, for women were little more than property to their men.

Yet, He treats this woman as a PERSON, not just as a thing to be used. He even offers her to drink from His "living water", just as He offers a crowd of Jewish MEN three chapters later.

But she was used to being objectified by Jews, and treated like property by men, so she interprets Jesus' offer as just another product: "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."

Yet Jesus understands, and cuts right to the heart of her woundedness. Jesus knows she has been treated as a disposable product, by many men who wanted to use her without giving themselves to her as husband.

So, Jesus speaks to her hard words, but words that change her life: No matter who has used her, Jesus is HIMSELF living water. His Spirit is the WELL that does not run dry. No matter how many people have turned her into a disposable product, Jesus will not. Jesus will fulfill her. Jesus alone can lead her into the life of Spirit and Truth that can fill her God-shaped hole.

As He shows us with the woman from Samaria, Jesus crosses across all of our consumer boundaries, except one.

That one boundary is that we cannot put boundaries on Jesus. We cannot distill Jesus into a product to be consumed. We cannot fit Him into our time slots or budgets. We cannot buy Him at the mega mart and put Him away at will.

Instead we must fit our lives into Jesus, instead of fitting Jesus into our lives... [PAUSE]

Jesus is the Center, the Source, the Purpose, the Plot, and the Goal of our existence. He alone gives Meaning to all our stuff, all our activities, and all our relationships.

With Jesus, its either all or nothing. He cannot be JUST another spiritual product...

And that is the question I leave you with tonight: Is Jesus your everything, or just a lifestyle accessory?

You decide.

WHAT'S SO SINFUL ABOUT SIN?

2008-02-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

A Sermon For Year A, First Lent
Copyright © 2008 Nathan L. Bostian

Based on Genesis 2-3; Romans 5:12-19; Psalm 51; John 1:9-18

What's so sinful about sin? Why is sin so bad? What is all the fuss about?

I mean, if you read what Paul says in Romans, you would think the world is going to heck in a handbasket. He talks about sin entering the world through Adam, and then death happening because of sin... And eventually, like a bad Rambo movie, sin kills everyone.

It sounds like whatever sin is, it must be horrible. And whoever this Adam guy is, he must have REALLY screwed up royally.

So, you turn to the beginning to find out what all went down to make everything go bad, and what you find is... well... let's be honest here... childish.

In fact, the story looks more like a children's fantasy than an explanation about how the world got so botched. A children's story with nudity, that is.

Just look at it: You got a man and a woman innocent and happy. You have a sneaky talking snake. And you have a tree of knowledge. It sounds like a rock concert in the late 60's rather than the end of the world as we know it.

And what is the great crime that gets everyone in deep trouble? Eating a fruit. A fruit. Not killing another person (at least not yet). Not committing adultery (at least not yet).

Not even littering.

Just eating a fruit. So what's the big deal?

And if you look at the culture, or even at what is preached in many churches, you would still be hard pressed to find out what is so sinful about sin.

On one hand, in pop-psychology propaganda and pedantic pulpits everywhere, we are sold the Gospel of self-esteem and told that nothing is really ever our fault. We are really good people deep down inside, and we really always want the right thing, but we just can't do it because of our circumstances or the people around us.

If no one likes being around me, it is everyone else's fault for not understanding me, and catering to my individuality. If I can't seem to be responsible and hold down a job, it is my parent's fault, and the fault of the dreaded public school system.

If I cannot stay within a budget and am buried in credit card debt, it is the credit card company's fault for offering me the darn cards in the first place, and my job should really value me more and pay me better.

Whatever happens, it is never my fault. Blame it on parents. Blame it on people. Blame it on the system. But, whatever happens, don't blame yourself.

This pattern goes back to the Garden of Eden story too. In the next section- the one we didn't read- as soon as God comes to ask man what happened, the blame game begins.

God asks man. Man blames woman (and blames God for giving woman to man!). Woman blames snake. And the blame keeps getting passed right down to the present day where it seems like everything in society is broken, but it is never actually anyone's fault.

Perhaps the story of the sneaky snake has more going for it than we saw at first glance, after all.

Perhaps instead of blaming everyone else about sin, we need to get deadly serious about sin, and preach sermons where we emphasize sin by making it several syllables long:

"Tew-nite we're gunna tawlk about siiiiiiiiiiiin-uh!"

But, ironically, it seems like the morbid fascination that some churches have with sin ALSO cheapens how powerful it is.

In some places, it seems that humans are treated like little more than miserable little cockroaches that feed on sin's filth. God, the cosmic exterminator, would like nothing more than to wipe us out of existence.

But, meek and mild Jesus has a thing for us little cockroaches, and begs God not to kill us. So, God puts Jesus to death in our place, and Jesus becomes our deflector shield from God's wrath.

In this theology, you really wonder why we are worth saving at all. Can anything good be found in our sin-ridden existence?

You also find that sin becomes just a long list of "do nots". Do not cuss. Do not lust. Do not question. Do not fuss. Furthermore, the list seems fairly arbitrary, and not balanced at all.

For instance, let's say we walked into any Church to give a sermon about hunger, poverty, and child prostitution in developing world nations, as well as how we could alleviate these systemic evils with our national wealth. Let's say, in the midst of describing the horror of these systemic evils, we accidentally let out the s-word or an f-bomb.

What do you think the majority of people would be offended by, the language, or the injustice that the language describes?

I give that illustration just to say that it seems that even when we seem to take sin seriously, we tend to cheapen it, by making it into a list of manageable behaviors that nice people avoid.

And so, on one hand, we are faced with a world that is in a mess: Glaring social injustice and misery face us on personal and social levels. But, on the other hand, the very concept we use to describe why this evil is so prevalent- the concept of sin- seems to be so cheapened. It is cheapened by shifting blame, or making lists, or giving a Sunday school version of the sneaky snake story.

So, what IS so sinful about sin?

But what if we return to the sneaky snake story, and find that there is another reading of it that makes better sense of all of this?

What if the key question to ask of this text is not whether it happened, but whether it happens?

We get so wrapped up in the details. Was there a real Adam and Eve, who lived in a real Garden, and were tempted by a real sneaky snake? Maybe.

I am sure we have first parents back in history. Biology class tells us that much. And, I am sure that those first humans- however they got there- were also the first people to do something that violated their own conscience, something they knew was wrong.

So, I have no doubt that at some point in history, something like this event happened. And I have no doubt that this sin was transmitted in social, spiritual, and physical ways to their children, and their children's children, and children's children's children... And eventually to us.

But doesn't this analysis kind of miss the point? Isn't that kind of the cosmic version of blaming our parents, and not taking sin seriously?

Isn't the point instead to see ourselves in the place of Adam and in the predicament of Eve? Isn’t the point to see that however that Story may have happened then, it is still happening today, right here and now, inside us and in our society?

And that damned snake is still whispering the same lies in our ears:

"You can be like God! All you need is to get a little more control! If you can just manipulate a little more, and use people a little more, to get what you want: You can be like God!"

Or he says: "Now that looks pleasing to the eye and good to consume, doesn't it? No! It doesn't matter if its wrong, because it feels so right! Just do it. You only live once!"

Or maybe he says: "Yeah, that's what they say. But you don't know for sure, do you? Just try it, and find out for yourself."

The tempter tempts. We fall from grace. We do what we know we shouldn’t do, and then we cover ourselves with the fig-leaf of denial and blaming and guilt and bitterness.

We find ourselves a million miles away from the person we know we should be. We hide from the God who made us, for fear that if we look Him in the eyes we will have to admit what we have become.

It didn't just happen then. It happens now.

And perhaps the reason this Story is told like a children's Story is because it is a Story of how God's children loose their innocence.

God is not the cosmic exterminator that we talked about earlier. Neither is God a pop-psychologist who will put up with our blame game. God is instead a Father, a parent.

Whoever you can imagine in your mind as the perfect parent, take that image and multiply it by infinity. That begins to describe the kind of parent God is. And this parent wants his children to grow up healthy and strong, mature and complete.

Yet, there is a problem. The problem is that the power of evil uses God's children to make them weak, feeble, confused, self-centered, and self-absorbed.

In fact, if you read in between the lines of this children's story of the sneaky snake, you find a different kind of children's story. You find something like a story of abuse.

In the late 90's, I spent over six years in social work. In that time, I worked with dozens of people who have experienced abuse, and many people who have been abusers themselves.

In this Genesis story, I see the same seduction, the same betrayal, and the same confusion I saw in the sad stories of the clients I worked with.

Abuse does things to people. It confuses their core identity of who they are, and fills them with shame. It turns them inward, to care only for themselves, unable to deeply share love with others. And, sadly, for many, it sets in motion a pattern of choices that leads them to abuse others with the same abuse they received.

In fact, among all of the clients I worked with who were abusers, they all had one thing in common: They had been abused themselves.

This is what I see in the Genesis story. I see an abuse of innocence: An abuse that leads the abused to become the abuser across a thousand generations, as people visit on each other the evil that has been visited on them.

It is a cycle of destruction that happened then, and it happens now. We hurt, so we hurt others. We are abused, so we abuse. God's image is demeaned in us, so we demean others to raise ourselves up.

And the solution takes more than blaming others for our problems, because however much we are the victim, we victimize others as well.

The solution even takes more than accepting our own blame. Because just admitting where we are at fault does not give us the power to change ourselves... Much less the power to change the world.

We need Someone more greater than us to save us. We need someone powerful enough to confront evil and end its abuse. We need someone strong enough to lift the burden of guilt and shame and bitterness we bear. We need someone mighty enough to reconstruct our inner-self, so that our self-image once again reflects the image of God.

Only one is that mighty. Only one is that strong. Only one is that powerful: And that One is the God who made Himself powerless, and became human just like we are, to endure all of the weakness, temptation, shame, and guilt we go through.

God did not stay in Heaven, uninvolved, detached from what His children suffer in this world infected with Sin. Rather, in Jesus Christ, God became one of us, to become the antidote for our infection.

Jesus came to restore us to our true identity as children of God: healthy, whole, and mature. He came to destroy the abuse, and heal our wounds, and bring us into the abundant life that God our Father promises.

And to be fully healed we must truly receive Christ. This is why our Gospel today says that "to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God."

Do you know your true identity as God's beloved child, free of shame, free of reproach? Do you know your identity as God's child, but you seem entangled by cords of guilt, shame, and sin? Are you confused about your identity, but really want to believe all of this is true?

Wherever you are at with God, I invite you tonight, for the first time or for the five hundredth, to receive the Christ who alone can make you free, and restore your self-image as God's child.

Tonight, as you come forward for communion, and receive Christ in your hands, receive him in your heart. Ask Him to dwell in you. To free you. To make you whole.

As you drink His presence, and eat His life, in the bread and wine, pray and ask Him to nourish your soul, and to free you from whatever bondage you face.

He is here with us. In our prayers, in our songs, and in our sacraments. He is waiting for you to open yourself to Him. I invite you to open yourself to Christ tonight and become God's child. Amen.

DO OUR SPIRITS CHANGE?

2008-02-11T12:10:00.002-07:00

Today on facebook, one of my friends asked me a difficult question about the nature of our Spirits. First he noted that:

"A) God created us in his image.
B) God is unchanging.
C) Animals are instinctive and vulgar creatures, conforming themselves to their environment to survive.
D) Humans are amphibians, part spiritual beings, part animal."

Then he asked:

"But our spirit is eternal, right? ... How about here on earth? It is possible to taint your spirit, to throw in the Enemy's camp. So our spirit is capable of change, right? What do you think?"

Here is what I think:

This is a really interesting question. It kind of goes right to the heart of what it means to be created by a Creator in his image. So, I am going to give you a long answer...

I will tell you what I think: And there are a lot of theologians who disagree with what I am about to put down here, and a lot that do. If you ever want to research this, I can lead you to some sources.

But, my basic thesis is this:
1. God is Triune [Three Subjects in One Object, Three Persons in One Being].
2. All of creation bears an analogical relationship with its Source [cf. Aquinas on "analogy of being"]
3. Therefore, we should not be surprised to find Triune structures all over creation.

I think we see this in the basic structure of creation. The basic "stuff" of creation is triune:

1. There is matter. This is the principle of "stability" in creation. We don't know exactly what it is (whether it is just dancing subatomic "strings" or something more "substantial"). But we do know that the "matter" in particles give a sort of stability, a sense of having "things" in creation. I think this principle of matter reflects the Person of God the Father, who is unchanging and ever-stable.

2. There is energy. This is the principle of movement and activity in creation. Again, physicists don't know what "energy" is, except that it is the quality of movement in what we call "matter". Furthermore, matter and energy, while being distinct, share in one another and can be transformed into one another (cf. E=MC2). I think this principle of energy reflects God the Spirit, who is the active principle of energy and creation in God.

3. There is dimensionality/relationality. Matter and energy "dance" together in space/time, according to fixed ratios and physical laws. We can see this in Einstein's equation E=MC2. E (energy) equals M (matter) according to the ratio or relation of C2 (the speed of light squared). This dimensional/relational principle reflects God the Son, who is the Logos- the Word, the Pattern, the Plot, the Form, the Relationship, the Meaning- of all Creation.

And, while matter-energy-dimensionality are all distinct, they all share in a cosmic "dance", and cannot be separated without destroying the fabric of reality. Now, this "analogy of being" between creator and Creation falls apart at some point, because while it shares in God's Being, God also transcends creation and cannot be bound by creation.

Now, since we are both part of creation, and uniquely made in God's image, we also reflect the Trinity-in-Unity of our Creator and Father. I believe that, according to an "analogy of being", humans are sort of a trinity-of-trinities. We are triune in structure, and triune in experience. Let me explain:

A. Human triune structure: Various Bible passages represent humans as: (1) One composite unity, a "living being"; (2) A dual unity, as a material body and a non-material spirit-soul [several passages seem to equate spirit and soul as the same thing]; (3) A triunity, as being made up of a body, spirit, and soul [cf. 1Th 5.23]. All of these passages are correct, from different perspectives. From one perspective, we are one organic whole, and to separate anything is to kill a human. From another perspective, we are a duality, because there is one part of us you can see and touch (the body) and a part of us you cannot (the spirit and/or soul). But, I think that triunity does the best job of describing our structure. We are:

1. Humans are body. We are matter. This body is the part of the "self" that is empirically aware of other beings, and able to relate to them in Creation. This part of the self relates directly to the principle of "matter" above.

2. Humans are spirit. We are "energy". The spirit is the part of the "self" that is spiritually aware, able to relate to spiritual realities (such as God, angels, demons), and which energizes and gives life to the body and soul. This part of the self relates directly to the principle of "energy" above.

3. Humans are soul. We are "self". The soul is the part of the "self" that is aware of the self, that is conscious. The soul gives form to the self, and is that which relates spirit to body, and relates our "self" to other beings and other selves in Reality. This part of the self relates directly to the principle of "dimensionality" above.

Body, spirit, and soul are distinct, but cannot be separated without killing a person. One cannot be a disembodied soul, because part of being a "soul" or a "self" is to be in relation to other selves. But this relationality cannot be done without a medium through which to relate(the medium we relate through is body and spirit). Just as dimensionality would be empty and void without matter and energy filling it (indeed, unimaginable without matter and energy!), so also the soul is unimaginable without connectedness to matter through the body, and connectedness to spirituality through the spirit.

B. Human triune experience: Again, various Bible passages speak of different facets of the "self" or the "soul". This is too complex to explore in detail, but suffice it to say that the Bible speaks of "heart", "mind", "strength", "will", "memory", "appetite", "conscience", and a host of other terms to describe the inner function of the self. I think that all of these facets of the self can be understood within a triune "grid" of heart, mind, and will.

1. The self as "heart": This is the affective part of the self, the wellspring of emotions and aesthetic experience. The key factor in the heart is that of being "prescriptive" and viewing Reality as it SHOULD be. Our imaginations and aesthetic ideals are based on what we hope reality SHOULD become. Our emotions are largely based on whether the state of reality conforms or deforms what we think SHOULD be.

2. The self as "mind": This is the cognitive, rational part of the self. This is largely where our worldview is formed. The key factor in the mind is that of being "descriptive", and viewing reality as it IS. In our minds we analyze and synthesize what we think the state of reality IS based off of the evidence we have gained. Our reasoning and memory may be flawed, and it is influenced by how we feel in our hearts, but this is largely how we develop our worldview.

And, as a sidenote, almost all of our education in the western world is aimed at cultivating the mind and not the heart or the will. We are very "mind-heavy" in our way of relating to Reality.

3. The self as "will": This is the volitional, active part of the self. This is the part of the self that makes choices to shape our inner and outer realities. The key factor in the will is the process of BECOMING. In fact, the desires and choice of the will can be seen as the bridge between heart and mind. The will is that part of the self that acts to conform what IS to what SHOULD be. We can either act inwardly to conform the self to reality (decide that what IS is what SHOULD be), or act outwardly to conform reality to the self (decide that what SHOULD be should shape what IS).

C. I would just like to add that there are other facets of what it means to be made in God's image, such as human community and sexuality. But, for the purposes of answering your question, these are less-than-relevant. So, I just wanted to make sure that you did not reduce being made in God's image to JUST what I have said above. There is more...
D. But, now that we have defined what I consider to be the core meaning of what it means to be "human" ( we are a triunity of body, spirit, and soul, with the soul as a triunity of heart, mind, and will), we are in a position to answer your question:

Does the Spirit change?

1. In one way, the spirit IS change itself. It is the principle that animates the Body and Soul and indeed animates the whole universe as Divine Energy. Our spirit is an extension of the Holy Spirit who "brooded over the waters" at Creation to bring forth life out of non-life (cf. Gen 1.1-3).

The Spirit is the divine energy that is drawing us into deeper relationship with God. As such, the Spirit draws us through stages and levels of awareness, and as we draw closer to God we are filled more and more with this Divine Energy.

So, on one hand the spirit does change because the Spirit is change.

2. In another way, the Spirit never changes. The Spirit is God (the third Divine Person), and God never changes. Furthermore, if the Spirit is the principle of change itself, and if it were to change from being that principle, then it would have to become non-change.

So, on this analysis, it is not the Spirit who changes, but it is the Spirit that changes all of creation from non-life to life, and from life to human life in the divine image. The Spirit stays the same as the Force that draws us into God. We change as we go through the ages and stages of growth into God's image.

3. In fact, I would ultimately argue that our "Spirit" is not ours at all, but is a gift on loan from God. In Ecclesiastes 12:7 we find that "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it". In fact, I would argue that Spirit is the gift of God Himself dwelling in us to a greater or lesser degree (as we open ourselves to God's presence). You can find information about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in places like John 14-17 and Romans 8.

From this perspective, our Spirit changes because we allow more or less of the Spirit into our lives to fill and energize us with divine life. The "gateway" which allows the Spirit in is the decisions we make in our soul. We can "harden our hearts" to the Spirit by choosing things that SHOULD not be. We can "darken our minds" to the Spirit's reality by choosing the believe things that ARE NOT true. We can "stiffen our necks" to the Holy Spirit by willing to do things that grieve God and harm his children.

All of these choices- these sins- constrict the flow of the Spirit in our lives. And if we keep it up, we can actually cut ourselves off from the Holy Spirit. If we do that, we die and become an un-man. We can either die physically, or die spiritually, as a person who is completely filled and controlled by a spirit that is not of God (i.e. possession).

E. So, to put the "cookies on the bottom shelf" I would say that:
1. The Spirit is God's Spirit, and does not ultimately belong to us, although we need Spirit to be fully alive and fully human. It is proper to speak of "our spirit" (because it is part of our structural makeup) as long as we do not forget it is ultimately God's Holy Spirit.

2. The Spirit Herself does not change, but is the Agent of God who leads us on a path of change as we are transformed into God's image.

3. We can experience more or less of the "fullness" of the Spirit based on the openness of our souls to God (whether our hearts, minds, and wills are more or less congruent with God's), and the health of our bodies (whether we are tired, injured, or have proper brain function).

4. This experience of fullness/emptiness of God's Spirit is what we think of as a "change" in our spirits, as we become further/closer to God.

5. There are other spiritual beings in creation, such as angels and demons. As far as I can tell from Scripture, God's obedient angels always stay "external" to persons and do not inhabit, fill, or possess us. It is for God's Spirit alone to fill and possess us.

Yet, fallen angels- demons- can and do take advantage of the "spiritual vacuum" that happens when we are empty of the Holy Spirit. "Nature abhors a vacuum" is a dictum not only empirically but also spiritually. If we do not have the fullness of the Holy Spirit, demons can "demonize" us and even "seize" us (i.e. fill and possess us).

Now, the authority of Christ and surrender to the Holy Spirit can fix this. But we have to will it and want it. God will not be an unwilling guest within us. Thus I end with a promise and admonition from St. Paul:

Ephesians 5:18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Scripture: The Story that Reads Us

2008-02-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

OK, instead of writing a sermon this last week, I drew a picture. Click above to see it.

The basic thesis that drives the chart above (and the sermon that went with it) is that Scripture is a grand Story which reads us and interprets our lives to us. When we find our place in the outworking Story revealed in Scripture, we find our true identity in Christ. This Story has seven "ages" or "chapters":

1. The Creation.
2. The Crisis.
3. The Calling.
4. The Champion.
5. The Commission.
6. The Climax.
7. The Consummation.

Let me describe a little of what is going on here. The idea that "Scripture is a grand Story into which all of our personal stories are being woven" is not a new one. It has its roots in the early Church tradition. One exemplar that I can think of is Irenaeus and his theory of Jesus Christ recapitulating and redeeming the whole human story.

However, the immediate inspiration for this has come over the last 5 years through three authors: (a) CS Lewis hits on this theme in several of his essays, and even implicitly in his Narnia series and Space Trilogy. (b) Brian McLaren puts forward a scheme that is substantially the same as what I have drawn above in his book "The Story we find ourselves in". This book was the first time I explicitly began to formulate my ideas of Scripture as Grand Story, and I borrow heavily from McLaren. (c) NT Wright, in his book "The Last Word" (and others) formulates an idea of Scriptural authority based in narrative consistency. His schema only uses 5 acts in the Story, but I rely on his sense of Biblical Authority.

There are also other works of systematic theology, such as VonBalthasaar's "Theo-Drama", and Kevin Vanhoozer's "The Drama of Doctrine", and Gabriel Fackre's "The Christian Story", which contribute largely to my understanding.

Anyway, enjoy the chart. I hope it makes sense. At some point I will put an essay up which describes in detail what the chart means. But, until then: My you find your story in His Story.

I WANT TO FIND GOD- BUT JUST NOT THERE

2008-01-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

A Sermon For Year A, Epiphany 3
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian
Based on 1 Corinthians 1:10-17; Matthew 4:12-23; Psalm 139

You know, in my line of work, one of the questions that frequently gets asked of me is "Where do I find God?" It may be asked many different ways.

Some may say "I just feel so distant from God. I wish he was closer. I wish I knew where to find him."

Another may say "I want to know how this God-stuff is relevant to my life. I don't get the whole Christianity thing."

Yet another may say "What does God want from my life? I keep asking for direction, but it seems like nothing happens."

The question comes in a thousand varieties, but at the core there is a similar reality: There is a hunger for God, and awareness that God SHOULD be there... But at the same time there is a profound awareness of God's absence.

It is uncomfortable. There is a numbness. A hunger. A yearning. A sense that we are just not complete. That things are not quite right, no matter what we do, or say, or don't do, or don't say.

It gets to the point that you want to cry. Or get angry. Or blame someone. Or medicate yourself in a hundred different ways.

I do it. We all probably do it.

And people want to "fix" that feeling. Heck, I want to "fix" it in myself. And I want to help you "fix" it as well.

And in my position, people EXPECT me to fix it. The guy in all the robes in the pulpit ought to have all the answers, right?

After all, what DO we pay him for?

And this puts a lot of pressure on the guy (or gal) in the pulpit to simplify things into a laundry list of nice, neat, concise, black-and-white guidelines that are guaranteed to bring you intimacy with God, spiritual blessedness, and a sure end to the deadness inside.

Many look to "professional Christians" such as ministers, priests, pastors, and preachers, to feed them with religious goods and services, to give them the proper amount of God (just as long as they don't get too much God... They don't want to become zealots!)

If they don't get what they want from one "professional Christian", then they go "Church-shopping", looking for the best religious products and services offered for the cheapest price.

In our society, where everything seems to be dominated by market economics, it is easy to treat God like a product to be consumed, and God's Church as a spiritual Wal-Mart.

It is easy to assume that our spiritual problems are cured in the same way that all of our other problems are cured: By finding the right technique, or finding the right environment.

But I am afraid that finding the right technique will not be a sure fire cure for our estrangement from God. Sure, God can- and does- use our techniques to reach us. But God cannot be pinned down to a certain technique, as if it were magic.

We cannot magically mouth some words in prayer and expect God to appear like a genie.

We cannot magically follow four spiritual laws, or five purposes, or seven steps, and expect God to appear in our lives.

In short, we cannot summon God like a lap dog.

Listen to the prophet Amos:

God is radically free and unbounded. He is a lion roaring in the forest, not a lap dog to be summoned. He is a trumpet that sounds, and strikes fear in the hearts of humanity.

He loves us as a Father, but also as a Father he will discipline and punish our sins and iniquities, until he brings us to the point where we surrender, and turn from our sin.

As Amos says: "The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?"

And yet, in our consumer society, we want God on command. We want a technique by which we can summon God at will. And if one "professional Christian" cannot give that secret to us, we go to one who can.

But as soon as we are sold a God small enough to fit into our box, that makes him too little to be the real God... Too small to be the Lion of the Tribe of Judah who roars and makes the Earth tremble.

Don't get me wrong. I think technique has its place. I think we SHOULD learn to pray with the whole family of God by using Scripture and the Prayer Book. I think we SHOULD sing together and praise the Lord. I think we SHOULD learn how to meditate, and focus, and pray spontaneously and boldly.

God can and does use all of these techniques: But only when we realize that God is not bound by these techniques. As soon as we begin to think that by doing any technique God HAS to answer prayer, the Holy Spirit leaves the building.

And we become self-righteous Pharisees.

But, if we use techniques of prayer in humility and Love, seeking God for His own sake and not for the sake of what you can "get" out of God: That is when God loves to make himself known. But it is not automatic. Not like a genie.

But slowly- after days and weeks and months of seeking God in daily prayer, in daily Scripture reading, in fellowship with His Body, and in partaking of His sacraments- slowly you will realize that Christ is beginning to inhabit your life.

That may not be the answer you want, but it is the answer that is real.

Another thing that people think will "fix" the God-problem is not found in right technique, but in going to the right environment.

They think "I just don't FEEL God here, so I am going to go somewhere else." Hang around any religious community, and you will hear several forms of this complaint:

"I just can't FEEL God in that place anymore. The Spirit is just not there. It's dead. I gotta leave."

Or "I just don't FEEL God presence around those people. I don't get them. They don't get me. I gotta leave."

So, WE get caught- and let me be honest here, I get caught- in the paradoxical situation that we want to find God... But we want to find Him ANYWHERE other than the place He has put us. "God I want to find you- just NOT there!"

And then we usually practice our culture's two great escape mechanisms: We blame and we leave.

First we blame: We assume the problem lies in someone or somewhere OUTSIDE of us when the problem is often INSIDE us.

Second we leave: We assume the pasture is greener on the other side- whatever that side may be- and we go there. And after being there a little while we find that their grass has just as many brown and barren spots as the pasture we just left.

So, then we blame and leave again: Always figuring the problem is outside of us, and the solution is somewhere else.

You can see the blame-and-leave pattern in a person who always says it is someone else's fault. You can see it in people who are always "Church shopping", never happy with their parishes and pastors.

You can see it in Churches who blame everything bad on "them" (and if we separate from "them" we will finally have a pure Church that God will bless).

And is there ever any truth to this blame-and-leave philosophy? Well, yes. There are people who are wicked and abusive, and should be abandoned. There are Churches that are wicked and abusive, and should be abandoned.

But I am convinced that these cases are infrequent compared with the amount of people who want to blame-and-leave rather than doing the hard work of dealing with themselves.

In fact, I think that in our culture, perhaps the greatest spiritual barrier to having intimacy with God is our propensity to treat spirituality like a product we consume... a product we will blame-and-leave if it is inconvenient for us.

But what does God have to say to the consumer mentality of "I want to find God, just not there?" What does the Lord Christ have to say to the idea that "I want to find God, just not with them?"

Let's look at what God is saying to us through today's readings. Check out our passage from the Psalms. Did the psalmist say "If I don't feel God's presence, he must be gone"? Or did the psalmist say "If it makes me feel uncomfortable, God must not be there"? Certainly the psalmist must have said "There are just some places where God is absent".

But no. The psalmist said none of these things.

Rather, the psalmist considers all the alternatives: What if I go to heaven? What if I go to hell? What if I am surrounded by a chaotic sea? What if I am far away from home?

To all of these he says to God: "You are there! Even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast!"

What would happen if we cultivated the same awareness of God? What if- instead of worrying about what might be, or could be, or should be- instead of griping about how things don't match my consumer preferences- what if we devoted ourselves completely to the present moment with God.

What if we treated each moment in each place as a gift, like we approach the sacrament tonight. What if we committed ourselves to the "sacrament of the present moment", expecting God to be there, to be doing something, no matter how small or how big?

What if we treated each place in time as an opportunity to see God's creativity at work, rather than as a burden we have to slog through?

What if we played a game of "Where's Waldo" with God in every place we go, and instead of looking for Waldo, we look for Jesus at work in the situations and people we encounter?

How would practicing the "sacrament of the present moment" change the way you see your classes? Your job? Your worship? Your walking on campus? Your relationships?

I bet, if we all learned to invite God to be where we are AT, rather than where we WISH we were, it would be nothing short of a spiritual revolution.

And now, what of the idea that God can be found with anyone BUT THEM (you know, the people you can't stand). What does God say to that?

Well, did you notice the story where Jesus calls the disciples? First, Jesus called them right in the middle of what they were doing. He didn't call ideal pillars of virtue and education. He called regular people in the midst of doing regular things.

Second, he called people who were hard to get along with. He called sun-dried, work-hardened, peasant fishermen. Later in the Bible we find that James and John were called "Sons of Thunder", and I will guarantee it is not because they were kind, gentle, and thoughtful.

Elsewhere in the Bible we find that Jesus called tax collectors (who were in cahoots with the Roman overlords), along with Zealots (who were revolutionaries trying to overthrow the Romans). He called pious Pharisees alongside former Prostitutes.

Even as the Jesus movement grew it included on equal footing Jews and Gentiles, women and men, slaves and masters. Nowhere in the world had anyone seen anything like it. Nothing in the world could have been as potentially explosive.

And every now and then- as we read in Paul's letter to the Corinthians- it DID explode. "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ" they said back then.

Now we say "I belong to the Conservatives" or "I am a Progressive" or "I am a Protestant" or "I am a Catholic" or even "I am a Democrat" or "I am a Republican".

So, I ask with Paul: "Has Christ been divided? Was the Republican Party crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Progressiveism?"

This thinking tries to assure us that God is the sole property of a group of people who think the same, and act the same. It is a sure-fire way to make sure that we only find God among those whom we want to find God.

But Jesus doesn't work like that. Jesus speaks through people we would never expect. Jesus says that those who accept His disciples accept Him. Jesus says that those who accept little children in His Name accept Him. Jesus says that those who accept the poor and needy and despised- the least of these- that in so doing we receive Him.

What if we not only practiced the sacrament of the present moment, but we also practiced the presence of Christ in people?

What if, in every relationship, we consciously looked for ways we could be Christ to that person, and see Christ in that person? What if, in every encounter, we prayed "Jesus, I know you have put this person in my life for a reason: Please show me what it is"? What if, in every conversation we invited Christ to speak through us?

You know what might happen... You might just find God.

And now may we all come to realize that God is not a commodity, a genie, or a lap-dog. May we all come to live in the sacrament of the present moment with God. And may we practice the presence of Christ in everyone we meet. Amen+

Christian history in a nutshell?

2007-12-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Recently on a discussion board I came across this quote which is both inaccurate and annoying:

"Christianity began as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. When it went to Athens, it became a philosophy. When it went to Rome, it became an organization. When it went to Europe, it became a culture. When it came to America, it became a business."

I know this quote is posted up all over the internet. It is an attempt to sum up Christian history in a very convenient, very protestant, very individualistic nutshell. Hopefully this blog will be read by someone to put this lie to rest:

1. "Personal" in our culture means "my very own, depending on no other". The Bible knows NOTHING of a "personal relationship" with Christ. True, we have a RELATIONSHIP with Christ, but it is always a family relationship: Never alone in an un-attached, individualistic Christianity. We depend on the entire Church, filled with God's Holy Spirit, to nourish and grow us in Christ. An un-attached Christian is a spiritually dead Christian, because to LOVE God means to LOVE His family (cf. 1John 4).

2. Christianity NEVER became a philosophy. We are called to Love God with all our heart, strength, and MIND (cf. Mat 22.37-40). Loving God with our MIND means developing a comprehensive worldview that is Christ-centered. To do that, Christians of all ages- from the Greek Apologists of the 2nd century to American Theologians of the 21st century- have used the terminology of the best thinking available. Sometimes that thinking is called "philosophy", sometimes it is "science", and sometimes it is called "wisdom". Paul used Greek philosophy to communicate the Gospel in Acts 17. We simply HAVE to express our Christian worldview in some type of language, unless we are going to limit our entire vocabulary to Biblical Greek and Hebrew.

3. The Church was ALWAYS organized as a family system. Jesus appointed Apostles to lead as fathers (and mothers!) in the faith. The Apostles appointed bishops to oversee, ordain, and teach (cf. Titus, Timothy). By 107 AD Bishop Ignatius of Antioch said "Where the bishop is, there the Church gathers". There is no such thing as a non-organized individualistic Christianity. The Church has always had "patriarchs" (in our overseers and bishops), "fathers" and "mothers" (in our elders and priests), and "elder siblings" (in our deacons and ministers). There is no such thing as a leaderless Church.

4. The only part that is true is that in America selling God became a business. And God is only able to be sold because we have deconstructed the Church, and individualized the faith, so that you can sell people ANYTHING in God's name! People who are not aware of their past are doomed to repeat it. A nice, neat way to get people to repeat their past is to simply not teach it, or teach it as clichés which deny, delete, and distort the facts.

The fact is that by the Apostolic era, the faith had definitely reached from the Middle East to Rome (just read Acts!). If you believe there is substance to early Church history (as I do) it is more probable that Christianity reached from Spain to India to China to Africa by the time the last apostle died. As it went, the apostles (and the bishops they appointed) communicated the Gospel in the languages and "philosophical constructs" of the societies they went to. Everywhere they went, they formed Christian COMMUNITIES- families of faith- in which Christians were nurtured.

So, by the end of the apostolic era you find a Church that is NOT merely "personal" but a family; NOT disorganized and autonomous, but organized as a family system; NOT reduced simply to a philosophy, but communicating the Gospel using philosophy.

Perhaps the quote should be this instead:

"In America, Christianity has become big business. To do that, the Church has allowed people to lapse into religion without history, faith without substance, and piety without community. We have substituted Love with convenience, discipleship with entertainment, and service with consumption. The result is a Christian who is perfectly suited to be sold anything in the name of God, because they think Christ only exists to serve them with blessings in this life, and heaven in the hereafter."

Yes, I my quote much better.

FINDING YOUR STORY IN HIS STORY

2007-12-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

A Sermon For Year A, Second Advent
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian
____________________________
Based on Isa. 11:1-10; Rom. 15:4-13; Mat. 3:1-12; Psa. 72
With special thanks to CS Lewis, NT Wright, and Brian McLaren
____________________________

What is your favorite story? I'm not looking for the Sunday school answer. But really: What story captures your imagination so that you read it, or see it, or listen to it, time and time again? What story gives shape to the narrative of your life?

I know that for some, your favorite stories are 19th century romances. For others it may be mysteries. For others it may be science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, biography, or historical fiction. And, for a few of you it may be animation.

But we all have stories that shape us and guide us and form us into the type of people we are. We see ourselves in the characters. We even become FRIENDS with the characters.

My favorite genre of story is probably the dystopian apocalypse. Dystopia is the opposite of utopia: It is a world where everything has gone wrong. Despite our God-like technology, and super-human knowledge, things have somehow gone horribly wrong. If you have read Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, or 1984 you know the genre. If you have seen the Matrix, Terminator, or Blade Runner, you know what I am talking about.

I guess I feel drawn to that genre because in it, the protagonist (you really can't call them a hero) is faced with an overwhelmingly messed up system that has usually been destroyed by the best of human intentions. Things seem hopeless, well-beyond repair. And all of the promises of a human utopia built by human goodness and scientific skill have been revealed as empty and illusory.

The protagonist is drawn, often unwillingly, to be the savior of a group of people. The story is spent detailing how the protagonist and his or her little band of subversives work to overthrow the system, or at least bring people to a place uncorrupted by the dystopia. The ending is usually ambiguous: Did the unwitting hero save everyone, or is the cycle doomed to start again?

I guess I love such stories because I see myself in them. Like Neo in the Matrix, I have grown up in a culture where I was always aware that something is wrong at a deep, systemic level. Despite being one of the wealthiest societies in History, we are very unhappy, very unsatisfied, and very violent.

I never set out to try and fix anything. I was quite happy being part of the problem, to be honest. And then Jesus dragged me kicking and screaming to him, and I have never been the same. I have somehow become part of his band of subversives... and most days I am not sure quite what that means, or how to live it out... But I try.

And I know Him who is heading the subversion of the powers and principalities of our culture which dehumanize and destroy...

And I trust Him to lead me, no matter where His road goes.

My life reads to me like a dystopian novel.

And many of you could say the same. Maybe not in a dystopian way. But, you see your life shaped by a central narrative, a central Plot that guides you. For some of you, this gives you great hope. It gives you a reason to wake up every morning.

For others, it is a source of despair. You feel like you are trapped in a story of failure, doomed to repeat what your parents have done, or doomed to live out the label that has been placed on you by society.

And for yet others, you are trying to find your Plot. In fact, some of the hardest times in our lives are when we "loose the plot", and forget the Story that gives our life meaning. You realize you have no idea what your Story is, and it gnaws at you somewhere in the depths of your soul: What is MY story? What does MY life mean?

But, whether we like our story, or hate it, or are still looking for it: Isn't it amazing that stories seem to shape the very fabric of our existence?

And, no matter what the genre of the Story is, it seems like all good stories have a similar shape:

First, you set the stage and populate it with characters. You introduce who everyone is, and put them in context.

Then, a crisis comes. Everything is set off-kilter. The enemy invades, or love is lost, or a tragedy happens.

Next you spend most of the story trying to fix the problem. One lover searches for another until they are found. A small band of friends try to solve the mystery. The good guys struggle against all of the odds to defeat the darkness.

And this leads to the climax. The final showdown. The last hurrah. The tangled web of intrigue and deception and heartache and struggle leads at a fever pitch to this one last event. It could not have been any other way.

Finally, the plot is resolved. Everyone gets their just desserts. The good are sent away happy, the bad are dispatched to destruction. And everyone lives "Happily ever after".

Now, I know that not every story winds up like this. Some end in dystopia. But even the dystopias end without hope for a reason: So that we will learn, and think, and perhaps avoid the bleak future they predict. They end in dystopia in the hope that they will help us to find true utopia.

And no matter what culture you go to, you find good stories, stories that are central to the very identity of that culture, which follow the same pattern: Setting the stage; Introducing the crisis; Struggling to overcome; The great climax; and the resolution.

It's almost like this universal yearning of humanity for great stories points to Something or Someone greater than all of us: A huge overarching Story that we ALL find ourselves in.

This is nothing like a proof, and I am not arguing that we can "prove" God's existence by the universal yearning of humanity for stories of a certain type. But, I am saying that it is awfully coincidental, don't you think?

In fact, it seems like our human existence, with all of the beauty and pain that goes with it, is EXACTLY the kind of world you would expect to find if we were all part of some cosmic Story.

Our yearning for the final resolution, our struggle to find ourselves, and our insistent desire for a Plot to make sense of it all, is EXACTLY what you would find if there was an Author who was writing us all into His Story.

And, if you will go this far with me, let me suggest something else: Let me suggest that the Grand Plot you find animating the Story of Scripture is precisely the Story that makes sense of all of our stories. It is the Plot that all of our personal stories fit into.

And, if we looked at Scripture as an Epic Story, I think the Plot would look something like this:

The first chapter is "The Creation": The stage is set. The Author of the play creates a universe of freedom in which real actors can act freely in His Story. Then the stage is populated with these actors, with flesh and blood humans, and magical creatures of the spiritual realm who work behind the scenes.

The second chapter is "The Crisis": Something goes wrong, very wrong. It seems to have started somewhere off stage, but it has now started to destroy the stage itself, and every actor and actress on it. A silent enemy has snuck in and taken over. All of those who the Author loves have now turned their back on Him.

The third chapter is "The Calling": The Author calls His beloved back himself through ages and stages, in the voices of poets and princes and prophets and sages. He sends messenger after messenger, tries sign after wonder after sign after wonder. But to no avail. The Enemy has too strong of a grip.

The fourth chapter is "The Champion": In utter desperation, the Author writes Himself into His own Story. The Plot becomes a person of flesh and blood, just like us. As Isaiah says, when our Champion finally comes "The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD."

And, just like us, this real historical person suffers, and dies, and goes to the utmost depths- to hell itself- to rescue His beloved. Then, in the first great victory that turns the tide of the War, the Champion, Jesus Christ, defeats evil, suffering, and death by coming back from the dead.

The fifth chapter is "The Community": This is our chapter. In this chapter the Champion recruits subversives to help Him undermine the powers that are destroying and dehumanizing His beloved. Following his example of radical Love and forgiveness, and living in the power of His Holy Spirit, we become His Body reaching out to heal His world.

The sixth chapter will be "The Climax": At some point in the future, evil will make its last stand. Darkness will try in vain to extinguish the light. The enemy will try to make the Love of Christ's Body grow cold.

And just when the Community is trying most valiantly, against all odds, to bring light to the darkness, and love to the loveless, then the Champion will come again to complete our salvation. What He began with his resurrection will eventually triumph over all forms of death, and he alone will be victorious over all.

On that day, as Isaiah says, the Champion will judge and liberate all peoples from their bondage. "With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth". Those who have been bowed down will be lifted up, and those who lifted themselves up shall be brought low.

"He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth" and finally, once and for all, put an end to the pollution and degradation of his world. Our passage from Isaiah goes as far as to say that "with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked".

But, the translation here is a little deceptive. Because what it really means is that he shall slay wickedness itself. He will not destroy wicked people, only to allow the disease of evil to still exist and infect others. No, Christ, our Champion, will destroy wickedness itself, so that nothing will ever infect His Beloved people ever again.

And then will come the final chapter, "The Consummation": Finally, the utopia we have been yearning for will be present in all of its fullness. We will finally be at peace with God, others, and ourselves, in complete wholeness and health and joy and love.

This is what Isaiah is speaking of when he says "The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den."

I do not think that God is literally going to change carnivorous animals into herbivores (although, God has done more amazing things!). You see, wolves and leopards and bears are all symbols of wrath and judgment in Scripture. When people are ripped apart by sin and evil, the picture that is used is one of these carnivores ripping apart its prey.

Lambs and cows and oxen are all creatures that were sacrificed in Temple offerings. They were destroyed to make atonement for sins, and to wash the slate clean with God.

Snakes are, of course, symbols of temptation and evil and distrust (remember the incident in the Garden?). And little children are symbols of innocence and purity: Of people in a pure, loving, humble relationship with God their Father.

So, Isaiah is giving us a picture of the ultimate Consummation of peace, brought about by the Ultimate Champion of the world. In this world, no one will be ripped apart by sin and evil. In this world, no one else will be sacrificed and destroyed for their sins. In this world, the Tempter will no longer deceive God's children and lead them into lies.

Face to face with God our Father, we will all share that pure, undefiled, innocent Love that children have for their parents. This will be God's world. God's Kingdom. And at long last "they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea."

That is the Story we find ourselves in. That is the Story that gives all our stories meaning. That is the Story of The Creation, The Crisis, The Calling, The Champion, The Community, The Climax, and the Consummation.

And that is why Paul says that "whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope".

Scripture is a book of hope. A book that says that whatever Story you feel stuck in is NOT the end of the road. You can find a new Story. You can be joined to HIS Story: The Story of our Champion, Jesus Christ.

You can join him in the Cosmic Love Story to bring his beloved back to himself. You can fight with Him in the Epic Struggle of defeating the powers of darkness. You can search with Him to solve the mystery of how to find God at work in everyone's story.

Just as Christ welcomed me over a decade ago into His Story, so now I welcome you. Join me, and all of God's characters across History, in the Story of Redemption. I can guarantee you, it is well worth the price of admission! Amen+

HOW TO WIN THE CHRISTMAS WARS

2007-12-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

A Sermon For Year A, Advent 1
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian
____________________________
Based on Romans 13.8-14
____________________________

Ahhh! Advent! The beginning of our Church year. The time when Christians all over the world begin to prepare themselves spiritually for the arrival of our Lord.

In the Church, our color is purple. Purple is the color of Royalty. The color of Kings. The color for King Jesus, the God who became human. Our candles are lit awaiting his arrival.

Outside of the Church, the color is green and red. It is the color of ancient pagan revelry, the celebration of winter solstice.

Our garlands are wrapped, our trees are trimmed, our credit cards are getting maxed out.

You know what time it is: It is time for the cultural Christmas wars!

Don't you just love the Christmas wars? One side boycotts a business because they refuse to say "Merry Christmas". The other side boycotts a restaurant because they do say "Merry Christmas".

One side files lawsuits to allow their children to go to school and pass out Christian Gospel tracts in the form of holiday candy. The other side files lawsuits to get nativity scenes off of public property.

It's crazy. It almost reminds me of a cheesy wrestling match:

On one side of the ring is Western consumerism, dressed up like jolly old Saint Nick. "Ho! Ho! Ho!" He says "Happy Chrisma-kwanza-khuh!"

Huh. What did he say?

Oh. He means "Happy generic holiday greetings!"

And on the other side of the ring is little angry looking elf with a small shrill voice screaming "It's Christmas! Keep the Christ in CHRISTmas!"

And so both of them enter the ring swinging. Santa is wielding a huge sack of tolerance, that he keeps smacking the little elf with... Knocking him back into the ropes.

The little elf responds by smacking Santa upside the head with a huge 70 pound Bible. When that doesn't work he throws stone tablets engraved with the ten commandments at him.

Outside the ring is the American public booing and hissing at the one they don't like. Occasionally you see fights break out in the stands.

And everytime it seems like either Santa or the Elf gets the upper and, a small army of lawyers climbs into the ring and covers the other one in a stack of paper so large they cannot move.

On December 25th every year, the cage match promptly stops, with both sides claiming they have won. One side says "Look! We have defended America's heritage as a Christian nation!" The other side says "Listen! We have made sure that America is tolerant and free!"

Neither side seems to get it.

Is this what Advent is supposed to be about?

What is a Christian, a Christ-follower, to do with the Christmas culture wars? How should we follow Jesus in a culture that has largely abandoned Christ?

In many ways, it used to be that we could think of America as a "Christian Nation". Our founding fathers wrote the constitution based on Judeo-Christian principals: most importantly, the principals dignity, freedom, and worth of individual persons.

Granted, these same values were picked up by the Enlightenment and made secular values. And granted, it took over a century to fully realize the worth of some of these persons, but that is another story.

A half a century ago we could take it for granted that our neighbors either went to a church on Sunday, a synagogue on Saturday... or if they didn't, they would keep quiet about not being "religious". The Church held a privileged place in society, and people in general were afraid of angering of the dominant Christian culture. But all of that has changed.

I hate to break it to the folks who want to turn back the clock, but the United States is a largely post-Christian culture now. Yes, we have vibrant and strong Christian movements and churches, especially "down south". But, look at the phone book and see all of the temples and mosques popping up all over the place.

Look at the sheer diversity of culture and religion at the mall the next time you go. Ask any junior high kid to name the different religions and lifestyles of the kids they go to school with: They will have friends and acquaintances who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, and Atheist. Think about the commercials we watch, the magazines that are sold, and the consumer culture we live in.

Everything revolves around pleasure, marketing, and profit, not faith, love, and hope. Since you are here listening to me, you know what I am saying. You are probably doing your best to live a faithful life for Christ, and you navigate yourself through the maze of consumerism, religious options, and never-ending activities that we are subjected to every day.

Likewise, in popular media from the "Simpsons" to failed TV show "The Book of Daniel" Christians are made fun of (sometimes unfairly, but if we are going to be honest, sometimes fairly).

Christian holidays are re-named, or litigated against, by armies of lawyers in our notorious "Culture Wars" over everything from posting the Ten Commandments to where we put Baby Jesus.

And Christ himself is openly mocked. A University of Oregon student newspaper called "The Insurgent" recently featured an article titled "A Little Ranting and Raving against Christianity". On the cover of this paper a crucified Jesus was pictured, naked and "aroused". Inside, Jesus was pictured in erotic poses.

It takes a lot to disgust and offend me, and this paper did. The University has defended it as "free speech", and this is just one of a slew of such incidents. We no longer live in a culture where the Church has a dominant position.

And you know what? That may be a GOOD THING in the long run. It may be a good thing because perhaps our cultural power has made it easy for us to get too comfortable and prideful.

You see, I get into discussions all the time online, in coffee shops, and in bookstores, with non-Christians and Anti-Christians, the un-churched and the de-churched. I also meet with many students who have serious doubts, or even suspicions about Christianity. After hundreds of conversations, I can say there are two commonalities I find with people who are hostile to the message of Christ:

First, these people, like all of us, are sinners. They are afraid of repenting and giving control over to Christ. They are wounded people who need Jesus to be whole, even if they deny it.

Second, almost to a person, they have been badly hurt by people claiming to be Christians. It may have been a Christian family member, friend, or Church, who "disowned" them for something they did. It may have been a Christian who pretended to be their friend just to "covert them", and after they would not convert, turned their back on them.

It may have been someone who was told by a Christian that they were going to die and go to hell forever, but the Christian would not lift a finger to help them out.

But, in all of my conversations with non-Christians, especially the bitter ones, these two commonalities are constant: they are running from God, and Christians have made it easier to run by pushing them away and manipulating them.

So, here we are, Jesus-followers in a post-Christian culture that is often indifferent, and sometimes hostile, to the message and followers of Jesus Christ. What shall we do? Let me throw out three basic ways that Christians have used to deal with culture:

First, there is the way of surrender. Give up, give in, go with the flow. All paths to God are equally valid. Just have faith in something, and faith will get you through. As a personal preference, you may want to worship Jesus and be part of his Church, but there is no way you would force that on anyone else (or even suggest it, for fear of offending someone).

Just give up, tolerate everyone and everything. To each his own. This is the "Christ of culture" model, because it allows Christ to be whatever culture and personal preference say he is.

Second, there is the way of subjugation. We will take back our culture for Christ in a holy war of lawyers and political force. We will not let this society become post-Christian, we will legislate and litigate until this nation surrenders to the power of Christ.

Fight fire with fire: If the Anti-Christians file one lawsuit against Christian culture, we will file three for Christian culture! If the University of Oregon allows Jesus to be mocked by a student paper, we will sue them until they close the paper down.

We will send our children to school with Candy Canes and Gospel Tracts at Christmas time, and if the school district does not allow it, we will threaten lawsuits until they capitulate.

This is the "Christ against culture" model, because in it Christ is the conquering warrior who makes culture surrender to himself by forcefully using his Church to demand their "rights" in the culture.

Third, there is the way of subversion. In this model, Christ subverts culture through love and truth. Christ's Church, like Christ, does not demand their "rights" or use political force to bend culture to Christ's will.

The Church, like Christ, sometimes accepts being mocked, ridiculed, and even "crucified" by the media, without striking back. When mistreated, the Church prays for those who mistreat her.

It is like practicing Spiritual Judo against Anti-Christian culture. Instead of fighting force on force, we deflect them with Love, and allow their own force to guide them straight into the Arms of Jesus Christ.

Instead of expecting non-Christians to act Christian, we love non-Christians until they realize that Jesus is a living reality who can heal them. We realize that anti-Christian rhetoric and mockery comes from people who desperately need healing, even if they reject the Great Physician.

This model will not accept that "all roads lead to God", but neither will it use force to make others listen to the claims of Christ. Instead, it will "speak the Truth [about Christ] in Love [like Christ] so that we will in all things grow up into Christ".

This view was well summarized around 150 AD, by an early Christian who lived in an anti-Christian culture, in which Christians were not only mocked, but also imprisoned and killed. He wrote this in a letter to his friend Diognetus:

"Christians are distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by anything odd...

they follow the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct. Yet they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as resident aliens. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners...

They marry like everyone else and bear children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they live as citizens of heaven.

They obey the prescribed laws, and yet surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, yet are persecuted by all. They are unknown, condemned, and put to death, yet restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich.

They are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all. They are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. Evil is spoken against them, and yet are justified. They are mocked, yet they bless instead.

They are insulted, yet repay the insult with honor. They do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if given new life... Those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

To sum up all in one word: what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world... The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world...

The soul is confined to the body, yet preserves that very body; and Christians are confined in the world as in a prison, and yet they are the preservers of the world."

So, in this Advent, as you prepare for the coming of the Lord, and endure yet another round of the Christmas culture wars, you have three "ways" you can choose from:

The way of submission: Give up and give in.

The way of subjugation: Fight fire with fire.

The way of subversion: Practice radical Love and spiritual Judo.

In ancient anti-Christian Roman culture, only one of these models successfully converted that culture to Christ. I will let you guess which one.

Perhaps we all should follow Saint Paul's Advent Advice:

"Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light... Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law."

Amen+

CHRISTARCHY

2007-12-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

A Sermon For Christ the King Sunday, Year C
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian
____________________________
Based on Jeremiah 23:1-6, Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 23:35-43
____________________________

Not so long ago, in a suburb not so far away, there lived skater-punk, who rode around on his well worn skateboard, with hair in his eyes, a concert t-shirt, ripped up jeans, half destroyed converse shoes, and something between a smirk and a sneer constantly glued on his face.

And if you looked close at his skateboard, or his shoes, or his jeans, or his notebooks, or the back of his hand, you would see scrawled a circle with an "A" in the middle of it:

The international punk rock sign for ANARCHY.

And I can tell you so much about this skater-punk kid because he was, of course, me. And I loved the idea of "anarchy"! No religion, no rules... No master. No one to tell me what to do. Nothing to "conform to".

My motto was sung by Sid Vicious of the infamous band the "Sex Pistols" in their hit song "Anarchy in the U.K.":

"I am an antichrist! I am an anarchist!
Don't know what I want but... I know how to get it!
How many ways to get what you want...
I use the best, I use the rest"

And then, quite to my surprise, I noticed something: That cool haircut I had was the same as all my friends. And those hip, trendy, ripped up clothes were exactly like what all the skaters in the magazines wore. And there was evidently enough interest in my subversive punk-rock underground music that it kept whole record stores and record labels in business.

In short, I was, to use a phrase of Pink Floyd, "just another brick in the wall". All of us anarchist non-conformist skater kids were just affluent suburbanites conforming to the same non-conformity... which was ruled by an invisible consumerism.

Our own prophet Bob Dylan summed it up like this (using words incredibly similar to Saint Paul in Romans):

"You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody."

There really is no such thing as anarchy. There is never even such a thing as non-conformity. Even when we react against something, we are allowing what we dislike to form us and shape us by making us the opposite, mirror image of itself.

We may think we are serving ourselves, and living for ourselves, but that is not even true either. We were made to need things. We were made to worship Something. What we choose as our object of ultimate value is in fact what becomes our God, our Master, and our King.

If we think we are serving ourselves, by choosing to do whatever gives us pleasure and makes us feel good, then we soon find that we are addicted to that which we need for pleasure. What used to make us happy is no longer enough. We need more, different, and better "stuff" to be happy... Until the very thing that made us feel good becomes the thing we hate.

If we think we are serving ourselves, by choosing to do whatever makes us a success, then we soon find that we are enslaved to the very conditions of success we have defined for ourselves. Perhaps we are enslaved to the people we want to impress, or to the money and lifestyle that goes with success. Soon we find ourselves ruled by fear: Abject fear that we will loose what we have gained, and we must protect ourselves at all costs.

These are just two ways we enslave ourselves in the foolish attempt to be our own masters. I could count hundred more. We enslave ourselves by wanting to be wanted, and needing to be needed. We enslave ourselves to our lifestyle. We enslave ourselves to our pride, our prejudice and our fear.

We enslave ourselves to what we worship, to what we place as our ultimate value in life. Because we BECOME what we WORSHIP.

So we find ourselves back at the visionary words of prophet Bob:

"You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody."

So, who are you gonna serve?

Who are you gonna worship?

What is your object of ultimate value?

What do you want to become?

Instead of celebrating anarchy, or any of the powers and prince-palities that masquerade behind the illusion of self-centered anarchy, to deny, distort, demean, and destroy our lives, Today the Church celebrates a totally different kind of "archy".

Today, we celebrate "Christarchy". We celebrate the Kingship, rule, and dominion of the ONLY King that truly sets us free: Christ the King.

That is why today is called "Christ the King" Sunday.

What is a King? A King is One who has authority in a Kingdom.

The word King in American ears has imperial overtones. It reminds us of iron-fisted dictators who march armies into war to conquer and enslave helpless people. But we forget that in our own day, it is iron-fisted western consumerism that has, in the name of freedom, enslaved far more people, and steam-rolled far more cultures, than any national King ever has.

But Jesus deconstructs and reconstructs the whole idea of what it means to be a King, what it means to hold authority, and what it means to have a Kingdom.

FIRST, JESUS IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF KING. We are used to Kings who rule by taking the first place, protecting themselves, and clearly delineating who goes where in the power structure.

Yet, Jesus rules not by putting Himself over all as a Master, but under all as a slave... [ALLOW THE SPIRIT TO SPEAK]

SECOND, JESUS HOLDS A DIFFERENT KIND OF AUTHORITY. We are used to authority coming from the raw use of power to coerce people into making them do what you want. It may be the power of legislation that will send the police to stop what is frowned upon, or it may be the power of economics to withhold money until someone does what you want them to.

Yet, Jesus holds authority on the basis of his perfect Love, not powerful coercion... [ALLOW THE SPIRIT TO SPEAK]

THIRD, JESUS HAS A DIFFERENT KIND OF KINGDOM. We are used to Kingdoms having clearly defined boundaries, and clearly delineated structures, with clear signs that say who is in and who is out.

Yet, Jesus does not rule over a place, but IN a people... [ALLOW THE SPIRIT TO SPEAK]

Listen to what Saint Paul says about Christarchy, about the rule and dominion of Christ the King, in our reading today:

He says that through Jesus, God has "rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Our old addictions and bondages no longer have to rule over us. We no longer have to worship and serve that which brings death and darkness. Instead, we are forgiven and released from all of this, by giving us a new Lord to rule us: King Jesus.

Paul says that Christ is "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-- all things have been created through him and for him."

In Christ, the invisible God and Ruler of all became visible. In Christ the untouchable Lord of Creation was able to be touched... And hugged, and kissed, and slapped, and beaten, and crucified, and killed...

And brought back from the dead!

In Christ, God took upon Godself all that it means to be human, with all of the consequences, weaknesses, and suffering that goes along with it. He did not enter into life with us in some abstract way, one step removed from our humanity, only mentally aware of our pain.

No, He took on the fullness of all the joy, and all the pain, of creation into Himself. Then He showed that He alone can rule, control, tame, and transform all of it: Because He rose from the dead, and defeated death by His unstoppable life.

He alone is the King who rules death with life, pain with joy, and darkness with light. And He alone is qualified to be King of all things, and at the Core of all of Reality.

As Paul says "He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

King Jesus is Hub around which all the universe revolves.

King Jesus is the Plot which guides all History to be HIS Story.

King Jesus is the Reason which gives all of life Meaning.

King Jesus is the Score which directs the music of our lives.

It all holds together in Him, by Him, and for Him. In Him it is as if the Painter painted Himself into His own picture. It is as if the Author wrote Herself as a character into Her own book. It is as if the Composer became His own music.

It is "as if" because IT IS. Paul goes on to say: "He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross."

Whether or not we admit it or understand it, we are living in the middle of Christarchy. We are living in the middle of an Epic Drama of a King who has faced down the powers of darkness to restore unto Himself the people He loves.

And the secret is that THIS KING is not only trying to save us, but He is inviting us to join Him in the Epic Struggle as members of His own Body.

So, that is the invitation. Will you join the REAL King, or keep serving (and being enslaved by) false kings? Will you choose anarchy, which is really bondage, or Chrstarchy, which is true freedom?

"You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody."

So, I leave the choice with you. Who are you gonna serve? AMEN+

Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out?

2007-11-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

Today, a friend named Jake facebooked me this question:

-----------------------------
From Today's English Version Good News Bible: Deuteronomy 3:3 So the Lord also placed King Og and his people in our power and we slaughtered them all.

SLAUGHTERED.

Slaughtered seems a bit rough dontcha think? Why was God getting his people to be so violent and if it weren't God's intentions to be so gruesome dontcha think he would have stepped in? Continued in that chapter verses 6 and 7 speak of having put to death men, women and children and then taking livestock and plundering the towns.

Something about that seems wrong. If it were huge sinners that God ordered to be killed that might be different, but then we probably wouldn't be taking their livestock because I would think them to be "plagued by the sin of their owners" or something of that nature. So what's the deal?
-----------------------------

My Answer:

Well, if you have a problem with that section of Scripture, just wait until the first half of Joshua! Holy Jihad, Batman!

OK, let me give you three interpretations that seem somewhat reputable to me of why Scripture sanctions jihad against the Canaanites (including King Og and others):

1. Scriptures like this are not history in the same sense as we think of history, and they suffer from what we might think of as "poetic exaggeration". So, when Scripture says they killed "ALL" of the Canaanites, it really means "they totally kicked their ass in battle". In this interpretation the only people that died were those directly in combat, and thus they were legit targets for death.

That ain't pretty, but war ain't pretty. And perhaps part of the passage is to show us that war ain't pretty (see #3 below as well).

The problem with this interpretation is that this text and the Joshua text seems to be saying something more: Namely, that by the command of God, the Israelites were doing "racial cleansing" and trying to get rid of a whole culture. Now, it is clear there probably was exaggeration involved (and they didn't kill everyone, and they even let some groups who helped them stay in the land), but it is also clear that this was done for more than just winning a battle. They were aiming to eliminate a whole culture, at God's command!

2. Perhaps this was a "mercy killing" either ordered or allowed by God. If Canaanite culture was half as violent and depraved as the Bible makes it out to be, it literally sounds like hell on earth. Perhaps God, in his foreknowledge and in his mercy knew what would happen if he let that culture keep perpetuating itself: It would keep breeding endless cycles of oppression and dehumanization.

So, with that said, God authorizes the Israelites to do a "mercy killing", to amputate this fatally sick society from the face of the Earth and replace it with something better. Sure, people would die violently in the process, but at least they would not die a long, bitter, dehumanizing death by growing up in Canaanite culture.

The problem with this is several:

(a) It seems to go against God's nature as Love, and his desire to save people rather than destroy them (cf. Ezekiel 33.11; 2Peter 3.9). Although, from a cosmic perspective, it could be an act of "tough love" to amputate a diseased culture.

(b) This sets a really bad precedent for jihad in God's Name in the future.

(c) It does not seem that, in the long run, the Israelite culture that replaced the Canaanites was any better. They repeatedly fell into gross immorality even worse than the Canaanites. Psalm 106 rails against Israel for being every bit as bad as the Canaanites they replaced. And, eventually, Israel was destroyed and exiled because of their sins, just as the Canaanites were.

3. It could be that God "commanded" the slaughter in the sense that he allowed it, or authorized it (rather than directly saying "You shall do this!"). In the Hebrew Bible, especially in the early parts, God is said to cause everything. And, in a primitive sense, God DOES cause everything, because he is the original cause of the entire universe.

But, as you move on through the Bible, we learn that God not only is the active cause of some things by directly doing them (such as miracles), but He is also the passive cause by allowing other free beings to choose something. So, in a primitive sense, God is the CAUSE of sin because He created a universe that is free to sin. But, in a more advanced sense of causality, God merely allows or permits sin, so that we can also be free to choose to love Him.

In this reading, God only passively allowed or authorized the Israelites to do jihad, and it was the leaders of Israel who interpreted this as God "commanding" them to do it. So, when God allowed the Canaanites to be routed, they interpreted this as a sign that "the Lord also placed King Og and his people in our power", and then they used that as the warrant to say God "commanded" the Israelites to "slaughter them all".

Why would God "allow" this to happen, and also "allow" his allowance to be interpreted as his "command"? I think He did this for two reasons:

(a) God knew that Canaanite culture was doomed anyway. If it wasn't the Israelites who destroyed them, it would be someone. If it wasn't external strife that destroyed them, they would devour themselves from the inside. So, God allowed them to be destroyed earlier rather than later, quickly rather than slowly. Like I said above: God allowed a mercy killing.

(b) The Bible not only shows us what pleases God, but it also shows us what displeases God (see Satan tempting Jesus in Luke 4). The Bible not only shows us people following God correctly, but also people using God's Name in vain to advance their own desires (read about the Kings of Israel sometime).

How do we tell the difference between whether the Bible is telling us something God APPROVES or something God DISAPPROVES? Well, sometimes the text tells us directly. Other times, we have to look at the long term effects of what happens in Scripture. When someone does something in God's Name in the Bible, and it causes good effects, then it is something God approves.

For instance, the Truth of Christ's life and message are validated in the long run by His resurrection, the outpouring of His Spirit, the spread of the Church, and [eventually] his second coming in power and glory.

In Acts, the Jewish Rabbis are discussing what to do with the Jesus Movement. One wise Rabbi says: "So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, IT WILL FAIL; but if it is of God, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO OVERTHROW THEM-- in that case you may even be found fighting against God!" (Acts 5:38-39)

Thus, if someone does something in the Bible that God disapproves, then the long term effects will be failure, and it will not bring about the righteousness that God intends.

So, the question is: What were the long term effects from the racial cleansing of the Canaanites which God allowed? Did it bring about a lasting righteousness among God's people and a safe, peaceful land?

No. As Jesus said: "Those who live by the sword die by the sword". Read Psalm 106. The butcher of the Canaanites merely made Israel into butchers. They did not live out the Love and Justice required by the Law.

So, the second reason I believe that God allowed / authorized the jihad against the Canaanites was to show every generation afterward that JIHAD DOES NOT WORK in the long run. God's Kingdom simply cannot be established by force and coercion. Rather, it is only established by Love and Mercy and Humility (cf. Micah 6.8).

Jihad is ALWAYS a temptation to those in power to get rid of those they disagree with. God had to give us a warning, an object lesson, that this does not work. Every since Genesis chapter 4 God has been telling us that murder and hatred do not work to bring about His righteousness.

But God knows how barbaric we can be- especially when we are barbaric in HIS Name. So, God allowed, for a short time, His people to wage war in His Name. Not because He desired it, but because He knew that we needed to learn the hard way that it doesn't work.

And you will notice that after the book of Joshua, the Bible never again allows for "total war" to be unleashed without God warning His people that their violence will turn on them and destroy them in the long run.

So, ultimately, I think God is saying something like this through these passages:

"Look, it breaks my heart to do this, but I know you are a perverse and violent group of people who will only learn the hard way. So, I allow you to wipe out the Canaanites. If you don't do it, someone else will, because they are a culture even more screwed up than you. So go. Do this in my Name. But I warn you: This will not turn out well. The sword you take up will stab you in the heart. The violence you breed will come back on your children. The hatred you harbor in my Name will eventually make you even more wicked than the Canaanites, and I will have to allow you to be destroyed as well. But after you are destroyed, you will learn. And then you will call out for me to save you, and I will come. And when I come as a man, I will put death to death in my own Body, and then conquer it by my resurrection, so that you may finally live in faith, hope, and love."

So, that is what I think is going on in these passages. When you read them in light of the "big picture" which includes Jesus, it makes more sense.

Anglican versus Andersonian Ecclesiology

2007-10-26T16:40:00.000-06:00

Alright. I am just as tired of "conservative" schismatics, as I am of "revisionist" heretics. I need a little ranting room, if you don't mind. I do not know what to post first here, so I will let you (the reader) decide. This article is about an email I received from David Anderson of the American Anglican Council (one of the soon-to-be schismatic groups vying for American conservative Anglicans and their money).

I have pasted the email at the end, with my own paragraph markings [] for easy reference. Anytime you see a number inside [ ], that is a reference to Anderson's letter. The people referred to in the article are Rowan++ (the archbishop of Canterbury) and John Howe+ (the bishop of Central Florida).

Anderson writes an odd, and somewhat unconnected letter about what is wrong with the way Rowan++ perceives the Church, and underlying his critique, there seems to be a radical revision of Anglican ecclesiology going on in Anderson's mind. Ecclesiology, if you do not know, is the doctrine of the Church (ekklesia), what the Church is, how She is led, and what She does. This article is an attempt to tease out this new, revisionist "Andersonian" ecclesiology (and why it is neither Biblical nor Anglican).

Traditionally, in Anglican ecclesiology, there are three levels of the Church: At a primary level, there is the "head pastor" of a local region (the bishop), and his Church (the Diocese). Secondarily, within this Diocese are local assemblies of believers called "parishes", which are led by local church elders (priests). Third, the Dioceses are connected together into a worldwide communion, as each Bishop recognizes, receives, and shares sacraments with other bishops.

As a secondary historical development, sometimes groups of Dioceses are organized into provinces, or national Churches, with each bishop equal to every other bishop, and not able to intervene in each other's Diocese. They are organized this way for practical, administrative, and resource-sharing reasons, not because the "province" is actually a real entity in the Church.

In [2] he seems to be implying that the REAL work of the Church is done on the parish level, and thus the parish is the actual basic unit of the Church, except for the fact that bishops are needed to ordain and confirm. Then, in [3] he implies that bishops (and hence their dioceses) cannot be the basic unit of the Church, because more than one bishop is needed to consecrate a new bishop. Then he launches into a critique of what is going on with Howe+ in Central Florida [4-6].

In [6] he begins a critique of Rowan's++ letter to Howe+, and Rowan's++ assumption that the Anglican communion is made up of Diocesan bishops in communion with the Diocesan bishop of Canterbury. Also, in [6] he accuses Rowan++ of following a Roman Catholic model, and thus Anderson sets up the province/national church as the "primary unit" of the Church, rather than the Diocese.

In [7] Anderson concocts a theory that Rowan++ is trying to topple the Primatial structure of the Church. Thus, in [7] Rowan++ is compared with Charles I, with the not-too-veiled threat that the Anglican primates will "cut off his head" (ecclessially speaking) if he does not recognize the Primatial nature of the Church.

In [8-10] Anderson basically re-iterates that Rowan++ is making all "True Anglicans" mad, and that if he continues to do so, his side will loose members and eventually the Anglican communion. Anderson ends with the quip about spreading the faith [11]. One might ask, how does he plan to do this? The faith requires something or someone to spread it.

He seems to be basically implying that He wants to create a new "holy club", which will spread this faith, in a new denomination, with an "Andersonian" ecclesiology. The two units of this new denomination are the provincial/national Church and it's "flying bishops", and the local parish and its priests. The Diocese has no place to play in his schema. The only really worldwide fellowship in the Andersonian denomination would be the "national headquarters" of each denominational affiliate province. Each parish would be basically autonomous Congregationalists, with no direct pastoral oversight, other than paying a bishop to fly in and lay hands on people sometimes.

I think that he presents a bold new vision of a new kind of hybrid Baptist-episcopal Church, don't you? Or do I read him wrong? I mean, he can claim this vision is "episcopal", because it still uses bishops for something. But the bishops would have a position not really known in the history of the Church. Biblically, we find regional Diocesan Churches (i.e. "The Church of Rome", "The Church in Galatia", etc.). And we find house churches, or parishes, within these Dioceses (i.e. the house church of Nympha in Colossians, or that of Prisca and Aquilla in Romans). We even find references to the universal, worldwide Church.

But, in the Bible, we do not find any reference to Provinces that are sub-universal, but trans-regional. We do not find a "Church of the Roman Empire", nor a "Church of the Persians". Diocesan Churches are always connected with a specific city (Rome, Corinth, Canterbury, Dallas), or regional district (Galatia). Provincial, national, and primatial Churches are a second-order administrative development made later in history for the purpose of unifying Dioceses together in a region, led by an "elder brother" bishop (who, I may add, did not have the ability to directly intervene in a brother-bishop's Diocese).

So, Anderson has taken a second-order historical creation (the Province), endowed it with new powers, and is trying to write it off as an "orthodox" conception of the Church? Hrrrrmph! Ecclessiologically, he seems to be every bit the revisionist that "The Episcopal Church" is regarding human sexuality! Am I reading this right? Because just as he claims that he must read Rowan's++ letter in light of other things he has done [9], so I also must read this article in light of what separatist Anglo-protestants seem to be doing.

If I am right, then our choice is clear: EITHER we opt for a historic Anglican conciliar-catholic vision of the Church, in which the primary unit of the Church is the Diocese, and communion is based on mutual recognition of Diocesan bishops OR we opt for the revisionist Andersonian vision of autonomous local Congregationalist churches who hold onto the vestiges of episcopacy, and basically pay bishops for what their hands can do.

What do you think?
___________________________________
ORIGINAL EMAIL

Friday, October 26, 2007

A Message From Bishop-elect David C. Anderson

[1] For years as a parish priest I heard the arguments over which is more important, or the basic unit of the church, the local parish or the diocese.

[2] Is the basic unit the diocese with bishop and people or is it the local parish church? A parish church and priest can baptize, celebrate Holy Communion, marry, anoint the sick, hear confessions and grant absolution. The two things the local church and priest cannot do are confirm and ordain. A local church which is well managed might feel quite self-sufficient ecclesiastically until they need to have someone ordained. The American Episcopal Church went from the early 1600s until the late 1700s - not quite two hundred years - without Confirmation generally being available since Bishops were unwilling to venture to the American colonies. Priests had to be imported, or candidates sent to England for ordination.

[3] From a standpoint of continuity it would seem that the smallest complete unit of the church is the Bishop and his flock, even though by custom when a bishop is consecrated there are three bishops doing the laying-on-of-hands. Now there is a new dimension to the argument that takes it to the Province level and even to the See of Canterbury. Archbishop Rowan Williams has used the recent writings of others on this subject and applied it in a novel and two-fold way; more about this in a moment.

[4] The Rt. Rev. John Howe, Bishop of Central Florida and an orthodox and faithful man of God, has of recent confused many of his clergy as to where EXACTLY he stands in his relationship with the revisionist and heterodox top leadership of TEC. As the actions of the principal leadership of the Episcopal Church have more and more offended and disturbed the orthodox laity and clergy of his diocese of Central Florida, more and more of them have wondered if they still have a place in TEC, and indeed even in his diocese.

[5] Very recently nine of the congregations, some of them the largest in the diocese, announced that they are in conversation with Bishop Howe about their departure. Bishop Howe's orthodoxy is noted, yet the congregations and clergy felt that their Anglican connection through the heterodox TEC leadership and Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori was negatively impacting their life, ministry and proclamation of the Gospel. Bishop Howe has been clear that he is staying in TEC no matter what, so that left the clergy and congregations looking for departure options.

[6] Howe wanted to reassure these congregations (and others which haven't spoken out yet) that there is another option, and so he wrote to Rowan Williams. At the same time, it seems that Dr. Williams has several things he wishes to accomplish besides holding onto the current American Episcopal Church and her money: he wishes to project, strengthen, and expand a special relationship between individual bishops of the Communion and himself along a Roman model; he also wishes to undercut and diminish the power of the Anglican Primates whose strength has been growing of recent and is a challenge to him. Dr. Williams wrote a letter to Howe, meaning for it, in a sense, to apply to Howe's special appeal, but at the same time to move the larger agendas forward. In his letter, Dr. Williams discouraged "separatist" plans, urging all Windsor-supportive Anglicans "to regard the bishop and the diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity, rather than the abstract reality of the 'national church.'"

[7] I believe it was King Charles I who, when he couldn't control the English Parliament, decided not to convene it. Unconvened, Parliament couldn't exercise any power, he thought. Finally when he had to convene it to raise taxes, it set in play a sequence of events that cost Charles his crown and the head that it sat upon. Dr. Williams, having tried to manage the Primates (with some success at the October 2003 London Primates Meeting, then less so at Dromantine, and still less so in Dar es Salaam) has decided and stated publicly that there will be no Primates Meeting prior to the Lambeth Conference 2008. It is, quite honestly, a gamble on his part. Can he suppress the Primates Meeting and undercut the role of the Primates and Provinces by establishing that what makes a bishop Anglican is the relationship with Rowan Williams as the Archbishop of Canterbury? If that is successful it would mean that to be Anglican is defined by Canterbury alone. This seems like a dangerous road to go down, especially since this Archbishop's own orthodoxy seems to waver.

[8] When the Archbishop of Canterbury first surprised everyone with the release of the list of invitees to Lambeth, it was noted that they were not invited by Province, but individually. This seemed like a slight against the Primates, but the concern quickly focused on the inclusion of those bishops who consecrated Gene Robinson and the exclusion of Robinson Cavalcanti of Recife and a number of American bishops connected to African Provinces. Now after the letter to Howe, it becomes clear that this is part of an orchestrated attempt to pull down the Provincial structure as a means of international accountability, and to pull down the role of the Primates as a college of Primates, sitting with Rowan, who is first among equals.

[9] With the blogging world and the HoB/D list serve going crazy, and some very harsh things being said about His Grace, a second letter was released. It was a "What the Archbishop meant to say was..." which attempted to put his remarks into a narrow context. Viewed alone you might be tempted to accept that, but with the earlier invitation list following the same stream of thought, it becomes clearer that Rowan isn't making this up as he goes along.

[10] Surprisingly, this letter to Howe has managed to upset both revisionists and the orthodox at the same time - but perhaps Dr. Williams doesn't mind this. The difficulty is his belief that there is a mythical middle that he can work with, unaware that the "Windsor" bishops are about to experience a hemorrhage of members themselves. More and more, especially after a number of entire dioceses and bishops depart for other Provinces, he will discover how serious is his misunderstanding. Is there such a thing as "divine right of the primal archbishopric?" Good sense would argue for a catholic and evangelical faith united, within an Anglican Communion globally made up of a family of orthodox Provinces and Primates, with clear faith and discipline applied both within Provinces and between Provinces. Although many of us are to some extent Anglophiles, the location of the see city is less important than the vitality of the faith and a structure that encourages that faith to grow.

[11] In closing, don't just keep the faith. Spread it.

MY ADDRESS TO DIOCESE CONVENTION 2007

2007-10-21T09:01:00.000-06:00

The Rt. Rev. James Stanton, Bishop of Dallas, speaking to convention in 2006.

Well, this weekend was the annual convention for the Diocese of Dallas. There was a possibility of things being really contentious (with everything going on in the National Church, and the Anglican Communion). But, I have to hand it to our bishop and our whole Diocese family: We all did a good job of holding it together. I am proud of us.

At the convention I was elected to be one of our representatives to our Province. For those who are Episcopal-challenged, here is an outline of our Church organization, and what a Province is: The basic unit of the Church is the Diocese, which is the entire Church in a geographic region (think of it like this: When Paul writes to "The Church in Rome" or "The Church in Galatia", he is writing to every Christian in that entire area, whether or not they meet in several locations or not. This region is a Diocese).

Within each Diocese are dozens of parishes, or local manifestations of the Church (think of it like this: At the end of Romans when Paul speaks of individual house-churches within the entire Roman Church, this is like a Parish). Now, for the purpose of organizing together, Dioceses are usually grouped in Provinces, which are made up of multiple Dioceses. And provinces make up national churches (like the Church of England, Nigeria, or the United States). Then all of these national Churches make up the whole Anglican Communion. There are some exceptions to this rule (hey, we're Anglican, and there's always exceptions), but this is the general outline.

So, it goes like this from small to big: Parish - DIOCESE - Province - National Church - Worldwide Communion. Make sense?

OK, well I was elected to represent this Diocese at the Provincial level. Our Provence (Provence 7) is made up of the Dioceses of Arkansas, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Kansas, Northwest Texas, Oklahoma, Rio Grande, Texas, Western Louisiana, Western Kansas, West Texas, and West Missouri.

That means that I will have exotic, all-expense paid trips to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri! But, in all seriousness, it was a real honor for me.

I also got to speak to our entire Convention for 10 minutes about College Ministries in our Diocese, and issue a call for involvement in reaching College Students. The address went over pretty well. Here is what I said:

Right Reverend Sir...

Delegates to the Convention...

I Bring you greetings in the Name of our Risen Lord from Canterbury Episcopal College Ministries.

I would like to begin this address by asking you all to do something for me. If you were involved in a Canterbury program during college, I ask you to please stand up.

And, of those who are standing, I ask you: If your involvement in Canterbury was formative in helping you follow the call of God on your life, please raise your hand.

Hmmm. Just as I thought. You may sit down.

Thank you. It is demonstrations like that which tell me two things about college ministry: First, college ministry works. Second, college ministry is something we need to be passionate about in this Diocese.

College ministry works because, in a way that is unlike any other ministry in the Church, college ministry raises up young leaders who will shape the Church for decades to come as clergy and lay leaders.

College is where we send our best and brightest to learn how to be leaders in the world of business and industry, science and politics.

College ministry is something to be passionate about because through it, we are able to connect these growing young leaders into the Body of Christ, so they can find who God made them to be, and in turn lead the Church to find out who God made us to be.

We don't have to assume that our young women and men will leave the Church during college and become practically pagan. We do not have to wait for them to get married and have 2.5 kids before they realize they need to come back to Church to get everyone baptized.

No. We can be proactive. We don't have to leave college ministry to other evangelical groups. Young adults are hungry for the Christ we can offer them. I tell you, the fields are ripe for harvest!

Do you remember being a college student or young adult? Do you remember the feeling of freedom as you finally were able to spread your wings and explore the world "on your own"? Do you remember the fears and anxieties and questions that arose from trying to find where you fit in the world? Can you remember who helped you on your journey to adulthood?

In a superficial world of social masks and false promises, young adults are looking for deep, safe relationships where they can be who they are, warts and all.

In a world immersed in information, and drowning in activities, young adults need a place where they can escape to think, and ask honest questions, and get real answers about the meaning of life.

In a world stripped of mystery and transcendence, young adults need a sacred space and a sacred time to connect with the God who made them, through meaningful worship and authentic prayer.

And finally, in a world that defines success largely as being king of your own world, young adults need to find a real King they can give their lives to, who will never let them down: the Lord Jesus Christ.

In short, young adults need to find Christ-centered fellowship, formation, worship, and vocation.

The mission of Canterbury College ministries is to provide young adults with guidance on this journey. On campuses all over this Diocese, from Texarkana to SMU, from Texas A&M Commerce to our Community colleges, from private universities to the University of North Texas, we are helping students on this journey.

We are doing this with food and friendship, through fellowship and worship, in Bible studies and mission trips, drinking gallons of coffee, and staying up till all hours of the night.

And, we are rebuilding the student center and chapel at SMU to facilitate this mission to college students, as a hub of college outreach in our Diocese. Thanks to the hard work of the Canterbury board at SMU, dozens of incredible donors, and support from the Diocese, we are almost done rebuilding this fantastic facility. We invite you to take a drive down Daniel street, on the north side of SMU, and come visit the new building, and see what God is doing there.

Yet, as vibrant and hopeful as all of these things are, they are not enough. The fields are ripe for harvest, but the workers are few. We must join together as a Diocese and do this mission together. We need your help.

First and foremost, we need your prayers. Pray for the colleges of this Diocese. Pray that students would be open to the Gospel, and come into a saving relationship with Christ through His Church. Pray for those of us on the front line of college ministry, that we would be effective at what God has called us to do.

Second, we need you to contact us and get involved. For the last year a small group of us have been meeting as the "College and Young Adult Committee". We have been trying to find better ways to get students connected with college ministry, and get local parishes connected with students. If you want to be involved with this committee, come and see us at the Canterbury booth. We would love to get you connected.

Third, we need your support. It takes time, money, and manpower to do effective ministry anywhere, including on campus. We are almost done building the new student center, but we are not done paying for it. We need all the support we can get.

So, will you pray for us, that God would do something incredible at our colleges? Will you join with us in this strategic mission to see young lives healed and transformed? Will you support our call to reach and raise up our next generation of leaders in this Church?

I pray you will. And I pray that 30 years from now, our Church will be packed with men and women who will stand up, and say that the college ministries we support now, helped them encounter Christ and become who they are.

Thank you.

SOLDIERS, FARMERS, AND ATHLETES

2007-10-15T21:41:00.000-06:00

A Sermon For Year C, Proper 23
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

-------------------------------
2 Timothy 2:3-15
-------------------------------

SERMON: I was wondering: Just between you and me, do the Bible readings on Sunday ever make you uncomfortable? Do you ever feel like you come to worship for joy and encouragement, only to be confronted with ideas that are uncomfortable and perplexing?

I mean, we have had a difficult month of readings. Last week, we heard the prophet Habakkuk get angry and ask God hard questions about how he could let the wicked prosper and the righteous perish.

The week before that we heard Jesus tell a story about a rich man suffering in the flames of hell. And the week before that Jesus told us a parable about how an embezzling manager not only got away with embezzlement, but was rewarded for his shrewdness in doing so!

These readings do not leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling. They often leave us with more questions than answers: questions about God's justice, about God's goodness, about the purity of our own motives, and about our eternal destiny. These are hard questions. Disturbing questions.

And after all of these tough readings, I find that I want something light. Something encouraging. I want to hear Philippians 4:4 "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!"

I want to hear Jeremiah 29.11 "For I know the plans I have for you- declares the Lord- plans for your wholeness and not your harm, plans to give you a hope and a future."

But, that's not what we hear today. In fact, what we hear in Paul's second letter to Timothy is one of the most perplexing readings I know of, because I do not know many other readings that are both so encouraging- and so challenging- at the same time.

Paul gives us three images- a soldier, a farmer, and an athlete- to describe the life of a Jesus-follower. Each image is both shocking and encouraging, but each for different reasons. And I think each of these images corrects the flaws and the possible distortions of the other two, because our Christian life is so incredibly rich that it cannot be nailed down by one precise definition.

So Paul starts by telling Timothy "Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier's aim is to please the enlisting officer."

Comparing the Christ-life to that of a soldier is scandalous for us for several reasons. To begin with, we live in an era that has seen the carnage of two world wars, Nazi Holocausts, Stalinist purges, and three decades of every misstep of our military being beamed into our homes via Television. In such an age, it is easy to get jaded. It is easy to confuse the heroism of multitudes of good soldiers, with the war crimes of a few.

Unfortunately, since the honorable image of a soldier is tainted in our society, it becomes shocking to compare following Jesus with being his soldier. But, for Paul the image would have been even more tainted, because the word that Paul uses here would have brought up the image of a Roman soldier.

It was Roman soldiers who ruthlessly crushed opposition to Rome all over the known world. It was Roman soldiers who unjustly crucified Christ. And, by the time the letter was written, the first great persecution of Christians in Rome had probably happened, in which Roman soldiers rounded up innocent Christians and imprisoned them in the Coliseum to be tortured and executed publicly.

So, for Paul and the early Christians, the image of soldier was as tainted as it could ever be: And yet Paul still used it. Why?

In what ways are being a despised Roman soldier like being a beloved disciple?

First of all, a Roman soldier knew what it meant to have unswerving loyalty to their commander. It was not Roman military technology or technique that enabled them to conquer the known world. In many ways, from Carthage's war elephants to Persian longbow archers to savage Barbarian hordes, the Roman army was often out-manned and out-gunned on the battlefield.

But, there was one thing the Roman soldier was known for worldwide: Their obedience and discipline. They would not break rank or shirk from orders. When their commanders told them to stand firm, they stood firm. When their commanders told them to advance, they advanced. With interlocking shields, and interlocking footsteps, they advanced as one man... and for centuries, they conquered everywhere they went.

And in using the image of soldier, Paul is saying: Look at these soldiers, obeying as one man the commands of a petty potentate, advancing to conquer a kingdom that will not last. If these soldiers are willing to do this for something temporary and someone unjust, how much more should the disciples of Christ be willing to obey the Lord of Love, who rules a Kingdom that will not end?

And if these soldiers are willing to wield weapons of hate and violence in the name of Caesar, how much more should we be willing to wield weapons of mercy and love in the Name of the King of Kings?

We must be willing to stand firm when our Lord says stand firm, and advance when He says advance, with interlocking hearts and interlocking minds, moving together as one man, to heal our world, our communities, and our families, by His power.

The other thing that the image of soldier shows us is that following Jesus entails suffering. It entails walking the road Jesus walked, and carrying the cross he carried.

Yet, I fear that there is a deeper reason why the image of a soldier is shocking to us. It is shocking because it implies fighting and suffering for something. Perhaps being a soldier for Christ is shocking to us is NOT just because of the injustice of war crimes, BUT because most of us do not want to suffer for anything, ever.

In fact, some may doubt whether there is anything worth suffering for at all. If you look at our media, our commercials, our TV shows, our magazines, it seems that our society has an obsession with feeling good and looking better. We want comfort and convenience, and we want it NOW... I want it now.

In our instant society and consumer culture, perhaps the greatest two sins are to make people wait, and to cause them discomfort. We avoid activities which might take time and effort and pain. We avoid people who might tell us hard truths about ourselves, which make us feel bad, and force us to change.

Just stay up late some night and watch all of the infomercials that promise you rock hard abdominals, and a tight rear end in only 10 minutes a day, without any pain.

Just the other day I heard a commercial for some new system to learn a Spanish fluently, without having to memorize any vocabulary or do any grammar drills. They said all of that old-school, time-consuming stuff was "useless", and they had a system to be fluent in Spanish in only minutes a day. No pain, all gain.

But, being a soldier for Christ- a disciple of Christ- means precisely that we will have to wait, and endure suffering, in His Name. Just as military campaigns take time and effort and pain, so also spreading Christ's Kingdom will take time and effort and pain. It takes time and effort and pain to see our own lives changed, our families changed, our communities changed. If we want to participate with Jesus in the healing of the world, we will have to be willing to march in step with Him for the duration of the campaign.

If we were just left with the metaphor of a soldier, we might be tempted to think that the war would be quick. We might be tempted to think that the power of Christ's resurrection was going to obliterate evil immediately... That the war would be brief, and intense, and then be over, in a snap.

But Paul gives us the image of a farmer to challenge this, because God's Kingdom grows much more like a crop being harvested than like a war being won. In a war, the opposition can be overcome by sheer force of numbers, and sheer power of technology. But, a farmer must wait for the right time, the right season, and the right soil. You cannot force a harvest. You have to work with the land, not against it.

To spread God's Love requires NOT an overwhelming show of force, BUT a patient awareness of the people you love. It takes making the most of teachable moments, not beating them over the head with a Bible. It takes a prayerful awareness of the right words to say at the right time, not arguing them into submission. It takes compassion for the needs and hurts of others, not a drill sergeant screaming: GET YOUR LIFE TOGETHER!

In short, spreading God's Love takes the patience of a farmer.

Also, if the metaphor of soldier was left alone, it might imply that we can spread God's Kingdom through raw power and forcing others to submit (or else!). After all, in the heat of battle, even the best soldier can fall into hatred and inhumanity.

So, to remedy this, Paul gives us the metaphor of an athlete. He says "in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules".

The phrase "competing according to the rules" is an important one, because in Greco-Roman society, this is what distinguished professional athletes from amateurs. Often it seems like our culture is completely the opposite: These days it is the amateur Olympians who must scrupulously follow the rules, while professional athletes can flaunt all the rules of society and sport and get away with it.

But not so in Paul's day. For them, it was the professional athlete that was known for perfectly following the rules. It was the professional athlete who trained with scrupulous discipline, day in and day out, in good seasons and in bad. If they didn't, they would be disqualified, and all of their hard work would be for naught.

And the same is true for Christ followers. Jesus summed our rules quite succinctly in the Great Commandments: Love God above all, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

We are called to do this, day in and day out, in good and bad seasons. We are called to love the unlovable, to forgive the unforgiven, and care for the forgotten. And we do this, not on our own power, but by staying connected to the source of our Love: our Risen Lord.

This is hard, and it requires lots of training, and that is why we are athletes. While you can win a war by cheating and being inhumane, you cannot win the athletic competition by flouting the rules. We become what we practice.

We cannot bring about God's Kingdom of Love by using weapons of un-love. We cannot heal our world by ripping it apart with power politics and bitter animosity (both of which characterize so much of the rhetoric we find in our church and our nation these days).

We must compete according to the rule of Love. Only Christ's Love can bring about Christ's Kingdom. We are His Body, his own hands and feet, reaching out to heal the world.

I do not know exactly what that means, and I do not know exactly how to live this Love, but I have some idea. And you do to. And I ask you to join me with interlocking hearts and interlocking minds to figure it out together.

And this leads me to the encouragement that all three of these images bring to us: They all bring us a vision of hope. The soldier hopes to end war and bring peace. The farmer hopes for harvest. The athlete hopes for victory.

As we follow Christ, our hope is sure. We ARE on the winning team. Some day the war will end, and God's peace will fill the earth. Some day there will be a harvest of righteousness, and everywhere we will share the fruit of Love. Some day there will be victory, when the light of Christ banishes all darkness, and the life of Christ defeats death.

I ask you to join me in that hope. Together. As one Body, with one Spirit, serving one Lord.

For we are His soldiers.

His farmers.

His athletes.

Amen+

AFFIRMATION: And now, as Christ's soldiers, and farmers, and athletes, let us affirm together or faith in the Risen Lord using the words of the Nicene Creed...

ANGRY WITH GOD

2007-10-07T21:41:00.000-06:00

A Sermon For Year C, Proper 22
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

-------------------------------
Based on Habakkuk 1:1-13;2:1-4
-------------------------------

SERMON: Quick quiz: As followers of Jesus, what is the proper range of emotions to express in our relationship with God? What are the "correct" emotional responses to feel toward God?

Well, as Jesus followers from the Episcopal tribe, we are very comfortable with reverence. We like to be reverent toward God, with a sort of muted awe, silent admiration, and inward appreciation of God's beauty. We know what it means to "worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness".

We also value thoughtfulness. We like to meditate on God, without being given the "answers", as we look at ideas about God in our imagination. We truly value asking difficult questions, and deeply pondering the possible answers. In fact, sometimes we so deeply value thinking ABOUT God, that we fail talk TO God!

But, that's another sermon...

And while Episcopal Jesus people value reverence and thoughtfulness, Jesus followers from other Christian tribes value other things. Some value excitement! They want the joy of the Lord to pour out like a gushing river every time they worship. Their worship gatherings often look more like rock concerts than what we think of as Church... But at least they are excited!

Other Jesus followers value faith and confidence in Christ. They think it is important for Christians to step out in faith into the great unknown, trusting that God will provide for them in every way. They believe that Christians should be the bravest people on earth, because they put their whole trust in a God who will not let them down.

Still others place the supreme value on sacrifice. Jesus followers should be willing to sacrifice everything for their Lord, giving up all their rights and privileges for the sake of spreading God's Kingdom, God's Justice, and God's Gospel on the Earth. For them, the major sin is to hold back even a little part of oneself from God.

Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul tended to put supreme value on Love: Agape Love. Unconditional, unselfish, unstoppable Love. Jesus said that this Love is what all the Law and the Prophets depended on. Paul said that this Love sums up the Law, and he spent a chapter in his first letter to the Corinthians talking about how it is the supreme gift of the Spirit.

And, when you put it that way, you can see how Love includes all of the lesser, but still important, values of reverence, thoughtfulness, excitement, trust, and sacrifice. If you Love God you will be reverent to Him, but also excited about Him. If you Love God you will trust Him, and also be thoughtful about Him. If you Love God, you will sacrifice yourself for the things He values: Like Justice and Charity and spreading the Gospel.

But, is this the total emotional range we are allowed to feel toward God? Or, are there some emotions that are "off limits" in dealing with God?

Honestly, I think that many Christians would say yes. There are some things that "real Christians" cannot feel toward God. There are some ideas and emotions that cannot enter your heart or mind, or else you are becoming faithless and endangering your very soul.

Because if you felt THAT- you know what THAT is- if you felt THAT then it means that you must be denying God.

Quick! Think about something else! Pretend you didn't just feel that! Ignore it! Deny it! By all means, do not admit to anyone that THAT thought ever passed through your mind!

And- this is important- DO NOT tell God about THAT. God is not big enough to handle it. God is much too fragile. If you tell God THAT He might just disappear, and cease to exist. Or, even worse, God might throw a cosmic temper tantrum, hurl a few lightning bolts at you, and make your life hell.

Wait, it sounds kind of silly when I put it that way. Doesn't it?

I mean, if God is who we say God is, He should Love us enough to walk with us through whatever we FEEL, right? And if God is big enough to make the universe and everything in it, He should be big enough to deal with my crisis, right? And if God is powerful enough to become a powerless carpenter from Nazareth who lived, suffered, and died as one of us, he should be powerful enough to help me through my pain, right?

We know this when we sit down and think about it, but we still walk around with the assumption that our entire emotional range in dealing with God can only consist of "positive" emotions.

Above all, most people believe that getting angry and frustrated with God is complete blasphemy. You CAN'T get mad at God! He is blameless! He is holy! He could squash you like a bug!

So, we sit on our anger. We stuff it. We pretend it is not there. We go through pain and suffering and rejection and humiliation and we smile weakly and say "It is all in God's plan". We witness astounding injustice- corruption, embezzlement, apathy, hate, homicide, and genocide- and we smile weakly and say "Everything works out for the best".

And the resentment grows. Instead of crying out to God and saying "How could you let this happen to them! How could you let this happen to me!", we choose to cling to a few bland clichés: "A smile is just a frown turned upside down!"

Eventually the resentment reaches a crisis point, and we either explode, or melt down, or loose our faith altogether. Sadly, after doing 15 years of ministry, I find that most people wind up choosing the last option.

Some people feel so let down by God, and so unable to be honest about how they feel, that they just give up on the whole God-business altogether.

But God HAS designed us emotionally to deal with this. For every relationship based on Love, there is a solution for pent-up frustration: Honest anger. You can get angry at God, and He will listen, and He is big enough to walk you through it.

I promise.

Listen to the prophet Habakkuk: "O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous-- therefore judgment comes forth perverted."

Can you hear the anger? Habakkuk is seeing the wicked prosper, and the righteous suffer, and he wants to know where God is! He can see that the ruthless and violent Chaldeans are going to attack and destroy his people, and he wants to know how God could let that happen!

He knows his own people are a real piece of work. He knows they are hypocrites and scoundrels, greedy and unjust, but they are not as bad as the Chaldeans! How can God bring judgment on His own people by using a people who are WORSE than His own people!

Habakkuk wants answers!

So, what does Habakkuk do? He goes up to his watchtower and sits and waits for God to answer. He demands that God answer, and then he has the audacity to SIT and wait for it!

And you know what God did? He answered.

Habakkuk was not afraid to get angry with God. He was willing to argue with God to His face. He was willing to wrestle with God, to struggle with God, to stubbornly wait for God to answer.

What we think of as unthinkable- getting angry and frustrated with God- is in fact at the core of how the Bible pictures our relationship with God. And, if you want to get down to it, it is at the core of how God designed us as humans.

In our culture, raw, honest emotions scare us. We are afraid of honest anger, in the same way that we are afraid of deep passion. We want to keep everything light and bouncy. Nothing too deep.

But, if you really love someone, one of the most important skills to learn is how to get angry with each other, and argue in a constructive way, and forgive each other from the heart. If you do not learn how to do this with your friends, with your spouse, and even with your God, your relationships will not last long, and they will be amazingly shallow.

You can always tell a relationship is in trouble if you are always walking on eggshells, bottling up resentment, and never admitting when there is a problem. The healthiest relationships are those where people honestly express what is wrong, honestly try to fix the problem, and honestly forgive each other.

And, this is true all over the Bible in our relationship with God. In Genesis chapter 18, Abraham has an argument with God about saving the righteous out of Sodom and Gomorrah. And because of this, God allows Abraham to rescue his family members from the oncoming wrath.

In Genesis chapter 32, Jacob literally wrestles with God all night. As a result, God blesses Him and gives Him a new name: The name Israel. Israel literally means "the one who wrestles with God". So, all of the Hebrew people came to be named "Israelites": God-wrestlers! And now, the Church is the "new Israel", a people called by God to wrestle with Him.

Later on in the Bible we see Moses getting angry with God and wrestling with Him. Job has a famous wrestling match with God, and so did the prophet Jeremiah. Even Jonah wrestles with God and has to spend three days in a stinking fish before he stopped being stubborn. And the result of all of this wrestling was that God spoke to them, and met them where they were at.

Wrestling God in frustration and anger is all over the Psalms. Time after time we read the psalmists who cry out and say things like "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?"

Even Jesus wrestles with God in frustration. In the garden before his arrest, He prays three times "Father, I do not want to go through with this! Isn't there some other way? Yet, not my will, but your will be done." On the cross, Jesus cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Jesus, the Son of God, was a God-Wrestler as well. And God spoke through Him too, by raising Him from the dead.

But this did not stop Jesus' disciples from being God-wrestlers. Thomas was so jaded by the death of Jesus that he said He would not believe He was raised until He saw Jesus' face, and touched His wounds. And what did Jesus do? Turn his back? Hurl lighting bolts at him for blasphemy? No, he showed up. Jesus showed up and showed Thomas his wounds.

And the God-wrestling does not stop there. In the last book of the Bible- the revelation of John- we find martyrs crying out with the same question that Habakkuk had asked hundreds of years earlier: "Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood?"

All of God's people are God-wrestlers. We are called to Love God with all we have- with all of our passion, all our reverence, all our trust, all of our thoughtfulness. But, loving God with that intensity means we need to be honest as well. There are times when we wonder where God is. There are times when we ache for God. There are times when the apparent absence of God makes us...

Makes us mad.

And God wants us to express that to Him. God wants us to wrestle with Him. The worst thing to do with anger is to hide it, and talk about it behind someone's back. And this is doubly true with God. Don't talk about God behind his back. Tell it to His face. He is big enough. He is strong enough. And He loves you enough.

And when you do honestly wrestle with God, and when you climb up into your watchtower with Habakkuk and say "I am not leaving here until you tell me something, God!", you will find that the strangest thing happens: God speaks. God acts. God brings resurrection where there was death.

He doesn't do it like you would expect. But, does God EVER do what we expect? Yet, He will do something. And that something will change your life, and change your world. I promise.

BENEDICTION: And now may you become a God-wrestler. May your love affair with Jesus become so real, that you are able to honestly bring your emotions- all of your emotions- to God. And may God answer you in your time of need, and bring resurrection to all of the dead places in your life. Amen+

ONE HELL OF A SERMON

2007-10-01T14:13:00.000-06:00

A Sermon For Proper 21 Year C
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

-------------------------------
Based on 1 Timothy 6:11-19; Luke 16:19-31
-------------------------------

After hearing a Gospel reading like that, I bet I know what many people are thinking "Is he really serious about all of this eternal torment stuff?"

And it is not Jesus who we are talking about. Many of us assume that Jesus' "hell parables" are either over-exaggerations intended to make us behave, or simply deluded holdovers from a backwards world-view, that believes in eternal torment.

Now, since most of us want to make Jesus into the prototypical enlightened humanist, we prefer to say that he was not deluded. Instead, he was just exaggerating. His is giving us a carrot and a stick to make us into nice people. The carrot is heaven, and the stick is the threat of hell.

But we are enlightened, and educated, and anything but fundamentalist, so we don't need the stick of hell to make us nice people. So, lets get to the point: Be nice to people who are not as well off as you are. Pat them on the head, give them charity. That's the point, right?

So, the question on most people's mind becomes: Is the person preaching really serious about all that hell business?

So, let me ask you a question: If I was serious, would you listen? If I believe that Jesus is really pointing to torment after death, which is in some way based on what we did in this life, would you care?

Or, are you so convinced that because God is Love, hell must therefore be an outdated, arbitrary, barbarian concept suitable only for people who hijack planes, or advocate crusades?

There is a very popular, oft repeated line of logic that runs thus: If God loves us, God would want us happy. And hell is not a place of happiness. Therefore God does not send people to hell.

Furthermore, it is impossible to imagine God tormenting us with an eternal amount of punishment based on a limited amount of sin. Could God be such a sadist? And if so, would such a God be worthy of worship?

I don't know about you, but we had to read Jonathan Edward's sermon "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God" in my high school English class. And we all mocked it, and laughed at it.

Yet, it was a nervous laughter. Sometimes very nervous.

Because we still had to wonder... Don't you? I do.

I mean, the way I figure it, there are two major options that could happen when I die. Either I continue to exist personally, as a conscious subject who is able to identify myself as "me".

Or I don't. None of us do. We all cease to exist at death.

Now, this second view is rather popular. You can get to it by being a materialist who believes physical matter is all there is to reality, and our personalities are nothing but a phenomenon that radiates from the electrical impulses that course through the protein in our brains.

And when this protein computer is finally unplugged, we cease to be.

Period.

You can also get to it by believing that we are all part of an impersonal cosmic force, and when we die, the energy we know as our "self" is released from the illusion of being separate, and it returns to the force. We never again exist as "me" again, nor are conscious of what we were.

Now believing we cease to exist after death eliminates the need for hell, and the reality of heaven. It also makes Christ's teaching ridiculous, his resurrection impossible, and our being here right now comical.

And all of that is worthy of discussion. But not in this sermon. In this sermon, lets assume that Christ's teaching is accurate, his resurrection is real, and that we personally exist after we die.

If we assume all of this, then we begin to see that Jesus has actually walked through the "valley of the shadow of death", like we all will have to do some day. He has faced his own mortality. In fact, if you will believe it, He has literally been to hell and back.

Then He defeated death. He rose from the grave. And He imparted his own Spirit to guide his disciples in writing and recording the stories and teachings that we need to make the same journey he did.

So, I assume he has some authority on this matter which I need to listen to.

And his message might be unpacked like this: At death, our true self- our soul, our spirit, our ego, whatever term you want to use- that true self is stripped bare of all illusion to encounter the fullness of God's reality.

This means, on our side, we loose all of our "props", and face who we have become. No more masks. No more possessions to hide behind. No more people to blame. We stand as naked as we could possibly be before the Ultimate Reality of the Universe.

And, what is that Ultimate Reality? In our reading from First Timothy, we are told it is a God who dwells in "inapproachable light". Elsewhere in the Bible, we are told that this God IS light, and this God IS Love, and this God IS a consuming fire.

We will stand in the presence of a Being of such pure, unconditional, unquenchable, unselfish Love, that this God will radiate like an eternal fire, bringing light to every area of darkness in our lives.

And Jesus Himself says that "There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known."

And, if we start to understand death in those terms, I think the problem becomes obvious. It suddenly stops being a question of whether or not God will let you into heaven. It becomes a question of whether or not you will let Heaven into you.

It stops being a question of how a Loving God could make an eternal hell. It becomes a question of whether we will experience God's Love AS eternal hell.

Because one day, we will all come face to face with this Love that will not die, this Love that has loved us from eternity and will never stop Loving us. And on that Day, we will choose one of three things: Hate God, Hide from God, or Hold God.

Jesus says some people will choose to hate God with a burning hatred. They will resent that God would make claims on ME. I am the boss of ME. MY stuff is MY stuff. No one can tell me how to live MY life. I did it MY way, and damn it, no one, not even God, will tell ME otherwise.

This hatred burns with fury, and rages like fire. And in the face of such hatred, God's self-giving Love burns ever more brightly. And it is perhaps for this reason that in many of Jesus' parables hell is pictured as fire and flames and torment.

But Jesus also says that some will choose to hide from God. Some will stand before God's undying Love, and will be so ashamed of their selfishness and sin that they will refuse to allow Him to forgive them. They will flee inward, into the icy black darkness of their souls, naked and ashamed before the living God.

Their shame and inability to let go of their mistakes will cause them eternal loneliness. And it is perhaps for this reason that in many other parables, Jesus describes hell as darkness, loneliness, isolation, and weeping.

And then, some of us- hopefully all of us- will not choose hate nor hiding. Instead we will choose to hold on to God. To grasp His Love. To cling to Him as Healer. To embrace Him as Father.

We will let the Light of His Love drive out the remaining darkness within. We will let Him heal us and cleanse us and make us whole. We will surrender all of our little idols and subtle selfishnesses, and allow Him to burn them away.

But here is the catch to it all. This is the reason why Jesus always connected his hell parables to how we actually treat others in this life. This is the reason why Jesus aimed these parables almost exclusively at religious people like us, who knew all of the right answers about God in their heads:

It isn't enough to know it. We gotta DO it.

If we don't learn how to love, and give, and repent, and forgive, in THIS LIFE, then it will be next to impossible to do it on the other side of life.

If we make a repeated habit of bitterness, self-centeredness, entitlement, and apathy right here, right now, how will we be in any shape to receive the fullness of God on the other side?

When you were a kid, did your parents ever tell you not to make ugly faces, because your face might just stick like that? You can see it was true in my case [MAKE AN UGLY FACE].

But what if they were spiritually right? What if there is a real danger in making our soul ugly, because our soul might just stick like that?

CS Lewis puts it this way: "every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature:

"either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other."

The longer you practice something, the better you get at it. This goes for basketball and band, as well as for sin and saintliness.

We all know people who lie over and over until they become the lie. They cannot grasp the Truth because they can no longer tell what is truth or fabrication about themselves.

We all know people who will not forgive others. The longer they choose not to forgive, the more the bitterness and hatred becomes a hardened ball inside their soul... A cancer that destroys their lives.

We all know people who only think about themselves. And the longer they do it, the more narcissistic they become, until they cannot have a relationship with anyone without figuring a way to manipulate them to get what they want.

There is only one way to break the cycle and become a "heavenly creature"- Someone who is able to allow heaven inside themselves:

That way is the Way who is Jesus. That Way is to repent of all our lesser gods, and turn to Him and accept His forgiveness. That Way is to stop creating an ugly life, and to start imitating a beautiful life. And the most beautiful life is the Life of Jesus.

If we imitate Him long enough, maybe our face will starting looking like His.

I know it isn't easy, and we are bound to fail in many astounding acts of hypocrisy. But what is the alternative? Stop repenting and become the type of soul that is hell? Stop accepting forgiveness and become a black hole of guilt and denial?

But, if you are bold enough to follow Christ, there is a promise. Saint Paul, in the eight chapter of Romans, puts the promise this way:

"I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us. For the whole creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God."

Later on he says:

"In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

But, what about Lazarus and the impassible chasm that kept him from Heaven? What about all who have made their lives hell? Will they forever stay separated from God's Love by their own stubbornness?

I don't know for sure. I hope not. I serve a Risen Lord who crossed that un-crossable chasm of hell and death. I teach about a God who has put death to death, and made captivity his captive. I preach about a Creator who, according to His own promise in Colossians chapter one, will "reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross".

But, I do know this for sure. If we start following Jesus right here, right now, and if we live our lives in a way that helps others follow Jesus too, we can know we are on the Way to heaven. We can know that we are letting heaven into us. We can know Him who IS heaven.

May we ALL make Him our Way, our Truth, and our Life. Amen+

T.E.C. TAC TOE: Who will win in "The Episcopal Church"?

2007-09-13T10:24:00.001-06:00

I want to start out with a bit of honesty. I have hesitated finishing this article because I did not want to say anything negative about Christ Church leaving the Diocese of Dallas. But, I cannot help it. I feel shocked, saddened, and betrayed by the actions of Christ Church. I feel hurt, like a man whose friend flees when the fight gets too tough. I feel more hurt by them than anything New Hampshire or the national church has ever done, because what they did is more personal. CS Lewis says that the devil sends error into the world in twos, so that by avoiding one you fall into the other. Well, Christ Church has answered the heresy of the national church with schism, and last I checked neither is pleasing to Christ. May God have mercy on us all.

Before Christ Church went into schism; many people asked me what my take is on the crisis in the national church, and what I think our response should be. The words I emailed them then are even more appropriate now in light of recent events. And I want to begin by saying that I have real problems with many people on the "extremes" in the debate. In this debate, there are really four sides, not just two. Here are the key players:

THE REVISIONISTS: These are the folks who advocate a whole host of changes to the way we do Church, including blessing same-sex "marriages" and ordaining actively gay clergy. They do not believe in the Creed, nor that Jesus literally lived, died, and rose from the dead the way Scripture says He did. They do not believe Scripture is God's actual word to mankind, but rather some out-of-date man-made stories about God. They want to revise the faith and they want to shove this revision down everyone's throats by making them accept gay clergy, bad theology, and a whole host of "improvements" to the Christian faith.

THE SEPARATISTS: These are the folks who hold to an orthodox version of the faith (theBible is God's inspired word, and Jesus is God's Word made flesh, the second Person of the Trinity, who really rose from the dead). Yet, they push this orthodoxy in the direction of having a special club of only "pure" believers who are not tainted by any of the sins of the world or of the revisionists. They want to split from the Episcopal Church as soon as possible to create a "pure" Church, free from unrepentant sinners like the revisionists. These folks are very similar to the revisionists in this: they are not interested in dialogue or in fellowship with people who are not like them. They want everyone on their side, or they don't want to have anything to do with them.

THE COMPROMISERS: These folks may or may not have a particular stand on any of the issues. They may believe in Scripture, or not. They may want gay marriage, or not. The main thing is that they just want everyone to "get along". They want to hide their heads in the sand and pretend it is not happening. They tend to be upset with orthodox believers for making such a big deal about everything. Can't everyone just play nice?

THE ORTHODOX: These are folks who have an orthodox, Biblical, historical version of the Christian faith. They do not believe in the revisions of the revisionists, nor do they go along with the quick-to-jump-ship attitude of the separatists, nor do they believe we can pretend it all didn't happen like the compromisers. They think that the split of the Church is a very serious, very sad thing: like having a leg amputated. The orthodox genuinely love their revisionist brothers and sisters, and desperately want them to repent. They want to do everything humanly possible to save the Church from amputation, just as a surgeon wants to do everything possible to save the leg before amputating it. They are also not under the separatist delusion that we can create a "pure" Church by separating from the "impure". No matter how "pure" we try and make the Church, we will still have issues with sin. And if we try to be too "pure" we run the risk of becoming self-righteous Pharisees who are too afraid to reach out to the lost world to share Christ's Love (check Matthew 23 on that). Yet, the orthodox sadly realize that there is a very high possibility that the Church may be split - the better word is amputated - but they do not rejoice and get giddy about it like the separatists do.

Most people make this about the "Liberals" (which includes revisionists and compromisers) versus the "Conservatives" (which includes separatists and orthodox), but I think that is misleading. Both the labels conservative and liberal are so over-used and fuzzy that they have become meaningless. And, as I have shown, they represent people who are very different in what they want out of this Church conflict.

Also, you can see that the conflict is very deep and not as simple as people make it. The conflict is not just about New Hampshire ordaining gays (from one side), nor about "conservatives" being "homophobes" (from the other side). These things are just symptoms of a deeper problem. It is like a foundation problem in a house. When a house gets foundation problems, the first signs are cracks in the wall and doors that won't shut right. Yet, if we just patch the cracks and fix the doors, we will do nothing to actually fix the problem. We have to dig deep and fix the foundation.

The foundation is cracked in the Episcopal Church. Trying to make the walls pretty won't fix anything. Part of the Church is trying to build on Christ and His Word, which is the only true foundation (the orthodox position, cf. 1Cor 3). Part of the Church is trying to build on political correctness and the fashions of this Age (the Revisionist position). Part of the Church wants to build on just getting along and playing nice (the Compromise position). And part of the Church wants to build on the foundation of Christ, but they don't want anything to do with the old building. They want to dig up the foundation of Christ and move it to a new location (the Separatist position). As a result, the house of faith is getting cracks all over the place, and may implode before all is said and done.

I will be completely honest: There is a reason why the position of certain parishes is so confusing when they say things like "we are still under the bishop but we are not part of the Episcopal Church". It is because they don't make sense, and I think their logic is flawed. They have made the logically contradictory statement that they are in communion with the bishop, but they are separate from the Episcopal Church. Now, the bishop is still in communion with the bishops of the Episcopal Church, even if he is not happy with many of them right now. It is impossible to say you are in communion with the whole and not the part. It is like saying "I am connected with my finger, but not with my arm". It is literal nonsense to say you are in communion with the bishop but not with the Episcopal Church.

Furthermore, it undermines the leadership of the bishop to make such a nonsense statement. We say that the bishop is truly our "head pastor" in the Diocese (and that is what he is- see the prayer book and the Bible when it speaks of "overseers"). If he is the head pastor, then we must wait on HIM to make decisions about what other head pastors and dioceses we are in communion with or not in communion with. He is the one who has the God-given responsibility and authority to make such decisions, not us, and not our priests, no matter how popular they are. And our bishop is a good man and has a lot more wisdom than most priests I know. He will navigate our diocese in the right direction, and that is his job to do so. Not ours. Our job is to evangelize and serve the towns we live in, and let him worry about the national and international stuff. If we would spend as much time in MISSION to our communities as we do GRIPING about the Episcopal Church, imagine the impact we would have!

Yet, some of our local pastors and vestries have taken it upon themselves to make the bishop's decision for him by saying nonsense like "we are in communion with our bishop, but not the Episcopal Church". If they want to do that, they might as well become non-denominational Congregationalists, because that is how they make decisions. If they truly believe that the bishop is not their head pastor, then they should be honest with how they run their church, and join the Southern Baptist convention. But, if they are Anglicans, then they confess that the Church is a unified organism called the Body of Christ. Furthermore, they confess that Christ has ordained bishops to structure this Body like a spine structures our own physical bodies (and we have a bishop who actually has a spine!). Anglicans confess this bishop is our head pastor. He is our "overseer", for that is what "bishop" means in Greek.

I choose to be orthodox and stand with the bishop, and I choose not to be revisionist, separatist, or a compromiser. I choose to dwell in the ruins of the Church with my bishop if that is where he leads us, because I trust him and I have sworn to follow his lead as my head pastor. And if revisionist dioceses will not agree to walk together with the Anglican Communion by acting on the Windsor Report, and agreeing to any Anglican Covenants that may arise from the Report, then I will follow our bishop in the process of sadly severing our connection with those dioceses. But, in the meantime, I will pray it will not come to that.

As far as Christ Church and the separatists are concerned, I will say this:

Too often we confuse big churches, and big attendance, and precise doctrinal statements with faithfulness to the Risen Christ. We forget that often faithfulness to Christ means being called to rebuild the ruins (like Ezra and Nehemiah in the Bible), rather than jumping ship. We forget that all of the prophets of the Bible, including Jesus, preached renewal from within God's people, rather than leaving God's people to go start another tribe. What should that tell us today as God's people?

Between the twin evils of heresy and schism, I trust the bishop. If and when he calls us to amputate the Episcopal Church, I will follow him. If and when he calls us to rebuild the ruins, I will follow him. And if he calls us to wait and have patience, I will follow him. And in the meantime, I will be faithful to the mission Christ has given me in the community I am in, and I will trust the bishop to deal with the national and international situation. There are many priests and parishes who exemplify this, and who are focusing on bringing their towns to know Christ, while allowing the bishop to do his job. May we do the same.

[This article was originally published in 2006 by my old parish (Apostles in Coppell TX), and by my Diocese (Dallas)]

A TALE OF FOUR GOSPELS

2007-09-07T18:02:00.000-06:00

A Sermon For Year C Proper 18
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

Based on Luke 14.25-33

SERMON: What is the best news you have ever had? Can you remember a time when you sat around, waiting, wondering, hoping… Just to hear some news- some GOOD news- about something or someone you cared about deeply?

What was that good news? Was it news that someone you liked, liked you in return? Was it news that someone survived, made it through, and made it home? Was it news that all the tests came in, and it wasn't as bad as everyone thought it might be?

Or was it news that you got in! You made it! You got an opportunity of a lifetime!

What was your good news?

I think good news is like the very air we breathe. Without good news- news of hope, news that things will be different and better- without that news we gradually wither and die.

Good news gives us hope, and hope is the oxygen of life. Without this spiritual oxygen, we gradually suffocate on the misery, hopelessness, and depression of a thousand disappointments.

God knows that we need hope to breathe, that we will suffocate without good news. And that is why the central reading of our worship service proclaims to us GOOD NEWS.

In fact, you may not know this, but that is precisely what "Gospel" means. Gospel comes from the Germanic roots of "Gut" (meaning good) and "spiel" (meaning story or news). The Gospel is the Gut-spiel of what God has done for us in Christ.

And that is a pretty faithful translation of the original Greek word for Gospel, which is "e-u-angellion", where we get the word "Evangelism" and "Evangelical". Euangellion is the "good news" that a King's messenger would bring to a town.

This message might be news that the King would be coming to visit, or that the King had won a battle. The good news would be met with feasting and partying and preparation for the King's arrival.

And it is this Good News, this Gut-spiel, this Euangellion, that is the very life-blood, the very oxygen, of our life in Christ. It gives us hope, and that hope empowers us to live a life WORTH living. It is this good news that stops us from suffocating on our sorrows.

It is for this reason that the four books that give us four perspectives on the life and ministry of Jesus, are called "Gospels". They are four proclamations of the Good News that in Jesus, the King HAS come among us - HAS defeated evil through His resurrection- HAS given us His resurrection Spirit to live as He did - and WILL come again to bring all of Creation to fulfillment in Himself.

So, it is with a great deal of irony that we read today's Gospel, which seems to be anything BUT "good news". How is it good news to hate your family? How is it Gut-spiel to carry our cross? How is it euangellion to give up all we possess?

Far from being good news, it sounds like suffocating disappointment.

But it only suffocates if we do not have a clear idea of what "good" is in the first place. So, today I want to tell you a tale of four Gospels. Not the four books in the Bible, but four ways of interpreting the meaning of the "Good News" found in them.

The first gospel is the gospel of "I'm OK, your OK". It is the "good news" that God loves you the way that you are, BUT God does not want to change you at all.

It is the gospel of "self-esteem". And, in this gospel, Jesus is the supreme prophet of loving yourself. In this gospel, Jesus would never say anything unkind or judgmental. He just sits little children on his lap and hugs them and tells them "You are good enough, and smart enough, and gosh-darnit, I like you!"

God would never judge us, or impose anything on us that would make us uncomfortable, or cause us to question ourselves. In fact, in this gospel, the only people we can judge are those who might judge us.

So, this gospel winds up being something like a child's security blanket. My daughter has a pink security blanket, and she takes it everywhere she goes. It is not long enough to cover her, or useful enough to keep her warm, but it makes her feel happy.

And this is what the "I'm OK, you're OK" gospel does for people. It surrounds them with this pink, cuddly assurance that God will never judge them, and that they will go to heaven in the sweet bye and bye when they die.

But, when life's pain comes crashing in, and rips away all our hope, and leaves us to suffocate, this gospel won't cover us. It leaves us cold, hopeless, and vulnerable.

And when we read a passage like today, we cannot make sense out of it. How could the cuddly security-blanket god ever speak of hate? How could he want us to sacrifice? Why would he want us to surrender?

Not only does the "I'm OK, you're OK" gospel leave us without tools to live life, it leaves us without a way to understand the REAL Jesus. God may love us the way we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way!

So, we move to our second gospel. It is diametrically opposed to "I'm OK, you're OK". We could call it the gospel of "home improvement".

In the gospel of home improvement, Jesus comes to us like a home inspector. He takes a look at our foundation, at our roof, and inside our walls, and tells us what is wrong with us.

His "good news" is that we can finally fix what is wrong inside us! Jesus gives us a set of tools- moral platitudes and spiritual principals- that, if followed correctly, will lead to an abundant life.

This gospel winds up looking like a blueprint, or even a recipe book, to ensure "your best life now", and to assure you that God will have a mansion waiting on you in heaven if you jump through all His hoops.

All you have to do is master the five purposes, the seven principals, the ten steps, the twelve fundamentals, or whatever other recipe you can squeeze Jesus into.

And, on good days, this gospel works great. When the world is right, and your schedule is good, and nothing out of the ordinary happens, you feel great about yourself. You are successful, and getting better every day in every way.

But, this gospel cannot make sense of why Jesus would use the word "hate" either. Aren't we supposed to be successful and well liked? And this gospel can't make sense of why we would have to "carry our cross". Isn't your best life supposed to be filled with pleasure and prosperity?

And, this gospel utterly fails when our world falls apart. That means that for 99% of us, 95% the time this gospel is a pipe-dream. Because we live in a world where our lives, our relationships, and our families are torn apart by forces we do not understand, and cannot control.

And in the face of that, a gospel of home-improvement seems laughable. For those who have struggled for years in failure after failure despite their best efforts, this gospel is suffocating.

We just can't do it on our own. We don't need a God who is merely our "life coach". We need a God big enough to take our burdens onto Himself, and go with us through our despair and pain.

The third gospel is one way of dealing with this, and I call it "Easy believism". Easy believism takes it for granted that life is hard and painful, and also that we will fail even in our best efforts. And it also sees the need for God to directly help us, to pull us out of the ditch.

So, the solution it proposes is that Jesus took all of our sin and suffering into Himself on the cross, and died for us, so that we can be forgiven and get to heaven. All we have to do is believe in Him.

That's it. That's the good news. Life here WILL be hard and uncertain. You WILL fail and sin. But Jesus will be waiting for you at the end of it all, to comfort you, and make you feel better.

If we believe, we have a ticket to heaven. If we refuse to believe, we earn a ticket to hell. Either way, this world is going to hell in a hand-basket… So repent and believe while you still have time.

But "easy believism" cannot make sense out of our Gospel passage any more than the others. According to our passage, Jesus says we are supposed to "carry" our cross, "build" our lives, "fight" a war, and "give up" our possessions. These are things we DO, not just things we BELIEVE. And this happens NOW, not just in the sweet bye and bye.

Now, don't get me wrong. Belief is a necessary first step. We do not go to a college without first believing that college is worth going to. We do not marry a person unless we first trust them. And we do not LIVE for Christ unless we first BELIEVE that He is the Risen Lord, and thus worth living for.

Let me give you a fourth way to look at the Gospel, and lets call it the Good News of the Great Physician. To understand this version of the "good news", we have to understand that the "bad news" is not primarily a lack of self-esteem, or a lack of obedience to God's principals of success, or even a lack of belief.

To be sure, problems of self-image, lack of obedience, and unbelief flow from the primary problem (along with evil, suffering, and death). But, at the core of all of this is the fact that we all have been infected with a disease, a cancer, that is selfishness and sin.

This cancer eats up society, eats up relationships, and eats up individuals. It is a spiritual disease that kills souls, just as sure as a physical cancer that kills bodies. Once we have the disease, there are things we do that can make it worse- lifestyle choices, relationship choices, and belief-system choices.

But there is nothing we can do, in ourselves, of ourselves, to cure it. We need medicine. We need a Physician, who can reach inside us, and take all of the cancer out.

Think about what happens in the course of recovering from cancer. First, the sick person has to realize that they are sick. This can be a tough process, with lots of denial involved.

One they realize they are sick, they have to put their trust in a certain physician, who has the cure they need. Then they have to surrender to the surgery or chemotherapy that this physician prescribes.

Finally, after the surgery, they have to co-operate with the physician to recover and stay healthy. This will mean un-learning some unhealthy choices (like not smoking five packs a day), while learning healthy ways of life (like eating vegetables and fiber).

With the spiritual cancer of sin, the good news is that Jesus IS our cure. He has put our death to death on the cross, and overcome it by His resurrection. And if we trust Him to open us up and do radical surgery- and remove from us the tumors of idolatry, deception, selfishness, and hate- then He will inject us with His resurrection Spirit, to enable live a life WORTH living.

And once the Physician performs this radical surgery, there will be some things we will have to do to recover and stay healthy. We can't smoke five packs of sin a day, without expecting to have another round of spiritual surgery or chemotherapy!

But, recovery is hard. It will be like tearing down our old life, and building something entirely new. And Jesus is asking us "Are you ready to build WITH me?" It will be like waging a war against the selfishness and self-deception that used to rule your life. And Jesus is asking us "Are you ready for the conflict to come?"

Recovery will require us making a decision to put Him at the very core of our lives. To do that, we will have to get rid of lots of things that act as "gods" for us. For some, it is our possessions that are our "gods". We can't bear to be without them. That is why Jesus says that if we want to be healthy, we must give them to Him.

For others, it is our relationships that are our "gods". We worry more about what our family and friends think about us, than we worry about who God made us to be. Our desire to please or impress others is a cancer that eats away at our souls.

And that is why Jesus tells us to "hate" our family and friends. Because, compared to our love for Him, all lesser loves must be despised. And the paradox is, that if we make Jesus the sole love of our lives, we will love others MORE than we ever did when our own self-worth depended on whether or not they liked us.

This Gospel of the Great Physician, is the only Gospel that can make sense out of passages like this, and show us how this too is "good news": Because radical surgery- even if it is painful- is always good news to those who KNOW how deadly their disease is.

BENEDICTION: And now may put your whole trust in the Great Physician. May you allow Him to remove from you the cancer of sin, and fill you with His resurrection Spirit. And may you embody His Gospel of Healing with everyone you know. Amen+

AFFIRMATION: And now, let us affirm together our Faith in the Great Physician, joining our voices with all who have been healed by Christ in all ages, as we recite together the Nicene Creed…

On the Difference Between the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Church

2007-09-05T12:42:00.000-06:00

One of my college students asked me the following question:

I went to a reformed Episcopal church on Sunday. The church was beautiful but the service was so different. I noticed that the BCP 1928 seemed to be a lot different than what I was used to. whats up with that? Just wondering.

My answer is as follows:

The short answer is that the Reformed Episcopal Church is a split-off group that formed as a reaction to: (a) Growing liberalism in the Church, especially in denying chief doctrines of the Protestant Reformation (such as the total corruption of human sinners, and Christ's sacrifice as a substitutionary payment for our sins); (b) Growing Catholicism in the Church, especially vestments, ornate ceremonies, and the recovery of "catholic" liturgies that emphasize the Incarnation and the Church, rather that the Cross and the sinner.

A longer answer requires a short refresher on "Reformed" theology (i.e. that theology that flows out of John Calvin and Zwingli in Europe, and out of Thomas Cranmer in England). Reformed theology is usually summed up in the acronym "TULIP":

T=Total Depravity. Humans are completely useless and worthless due to sin, unable to offer God anything of value, nor even respond to God due to the damage of sin in them. All are bound for hell.

U=Unconditional Election. Because of His mercy, God elects some out of this mass of perdition and misery to be saved. Because we cannot do anything to save ourselves, it is infinitely merciful for God to elect even one person to be saved and re-born. (One might ask: "If God can elect one or some, why not All, if He loves them?" But don't let logic or Scripture get in the way of a good theological system).

L=Limited Atonement. Christ's death on the cross was a "substitutionary propitiation" for our sins. It is substitution, because in it, He takes the punishment we deserve. It is a propitiation because a "propitiation" (also called "expiation") is an offering that turns away wrath. It is "limited" because it is only applied to the elect. Everyone else is S.O.L. Christ's death on the cross is thus kind of like a "deflector shield". God the Father wants to utterly destroy us because we have rebelled against Him, but Jesus stands in our place and takes the wrath for us. Another picture is that of the court-room: God is the judge who declares us guilty and gives us the death sentence, and then takes off His robes and dies for us. But this is only if you are elect. Everyone else is screwed.

I=Irresistible Grace. Those who God elects, and who Christ atones for, will inevitably be drawn to receive Christ. The Holy Spirit will get inside them and "regenerate" them, so that they can hear the Gospel, understand it, and respond in faith (and be saved). Without this regeneration, everyone else is doomed to die and go to hell. One may ask: "How are they condemned if they cannot understand how to be saved?" But, don't ask questions. They only screw up a good theological system.

P=Perseverance of the Elect. Those who are elected, atoned, and called, will be brought through life to receive heaven. "Once saved, always saved". God's power will keep them from loosing faith. And, the flipside is also true: Those not elect will inevitably, despite anything else, inherit damnation.

OK, so this TULIP is what makes the "Reformed" Episcopal Church reformed. Thus, in their liturgy and preaching, you will notice the following:

1. Usually minimal vestments. A few robes. No really ornate stuff (some are different, but this is a general rule). The idea is that they want as few distractions as possible from hearing the Gospel of the Cross.

2. Many of the prayers are very sin-centered. They are centered on making us ponder what miserable sinners we are, who do not deserve even the least attention from God. In the new 1979 Prayer Book, there is much more emphasis on how we are loved by God just the way we are. In the 1928, there is much more emphasis on our need to humbly repent.

3. Much of the service is cross centered. The liturgy (and usually the preaching) centers on the "great transaction" where Jesus took our sin for us, and has given us His righteousness and forgiveness. In the 1979, we tend to focus more on the Incarnation of Christ, rather than on His death. We tend to focus on how God became one of us in every way- including death- by becoming incarnate. In the Reformed EC, the emphasis is on the cross as God's primary saving act, whereas in our Church (and the Catholic Church) the emphasis is on the total incarnation- from birth, to death, to resurrection, to coming again- as the primary saving act.

4. Because the newer liturgies in the 1979 BCP have taken on a more "catholic" flavor, and an older ordering, the R.E.C. rejects the 1979 BCP and sticks with the 1928, which reflects a more "Reformed" theology, and a more "Reformed" way of ordering the service.

The basic difference in the Liturgy could be summed up this way:

1928 BCP: Confession of sin and unworthiness --> Focus on the Cross as our salvation --> Sacrament reminds us of cross.

1979 BCP: God made us to love and share Himself with --> Focus on the Incarnation as the ultimate embodiment of God's Love --> Sacrament shares the Incarnation with us here and now.

Many of my critiques of the R.E.C. are apparent in this essay. But I would like to add the following:

A. I think that the REC is partially right in stressing our sin and need to repent. This is something we often overlook, and we ARE sick with sin, and we DO need to repent and return to the Lord to be healed.

B. I do think that there is a substitutionary aspect of the cross and Incarnation that we need to emphasize that we do not sometimes because of our horror over "deflector shield" or "courtroom" images of substitution. But, the real nature of the substitution is that Jesus is a physician that has infected Himself with our disease (and death) so that He can find a way to cure us. And that cure is in the resurrection. His substitution is that God so loved us that He took upon Himself the natural consequence of our sins, so that we may be healed.

C. I do think that the normal preaching and liturgy of the REC would dispose one to think of their relationship with God as a legal transaction, instead of as a love affair with God. And, due to the weaknesses of Reformed theology (the TULIP), I think it would be very hard to change that "legalistic" assumption that is present in nearly all they do.

There… Probably more than you wanted to know… But that's what I think.

May Christ fill your life,
Nate

INTOLERANT ABOUT HOSPITALITY

2007-09-02T12:09:00.000-06:00

A Sermon For Year C Proper 17
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

Based on Hebrews 13:1-8 and Luke 14:1-14

SERMON: Did you ever watch cartoons on TV when you were a kid? How about last night on cartoon network?

I loved cartoons. Every afternoon in third and fourth grade I would race home after school to watch my all-time favorite cartoon series: G.I. Joe- a REAL American Hero!

Like most kids growing up in Arkansas at the time, I loved guns, tanks, bombs, and explosions. And G.I. Joe supplied that yearning with an endless conflict between "the good guys", and bland, non-descript, faceless enemy called Cobra.

They were always locked in a properly-neutered, politically-correct, no-one-ever-really-dies war which never seemed to end… but which did seem to spawn the production of really cool gadgets and playsets, which my dad would pay hundreds of dollars to buy.

Looking back, it was kind of the macho equivalent of "Barbie Dolls".

But, G.I. Joe had one thing that Barbie never got until the late 90's: DIVERSITY. Whereas Barbie has had a whites-only policy at the dream house until recently, G.I. Joe always featured a rainbow of diversity, that joined together to fight against the forces of evil.

Every week on G.I. Joe you would see red and yellow, black and white / joined together for the fight / battling evil with all their might! I think G.I. Joe may have been he first place where women served on the battlefield. G.I. Joe was a beacon of "progressive thought" for me.

And now I have a nearly-three-year-old daughter, and she likes to watch cartoons. And the values that were "progressive" 25 years ago, are commonplace today.

It is almost as if every show has to fit a certain rubber stamped model of inclusivity and toleration to be put on TV. It is totally predictable. If there are four kids on the show, then two have to be boys, and two have to be girls.

One of them has to be of African heritage, one has to be of Hispanic heritage, one has to be Asian, and then there is the token white kid. If there are five kids, the last one has to be in a wheel chair. And then, almost as if by law, the Hispanic kid has to drop in one Spanish word for every two or three sentences of dialogue.

Now, if this is supposed to teach my daughter to be tolerant of diversity, and to respect people's differences, then that is a good thing. A very good thing… But, somehow, I get the idea that precisely the opposite is going on.

You see, the only thing that is really different about any of these characters is that they are colored differently, and occasionally use a Spanish word. Other than that, they talk the same, dress the same, act the same, and share the same values and assumptions.

In short, they are all are stereotypes of a certain cultural vision that is very "modern", university-educated, wealthy, sterile, and western-European. It is like "we want you all to be diverse, but diverse in a way that makes wealthy western intellectuals comfortable."

The vision of "toleration" they are committed to is deeply hypocritical, and acts as a cultural steamroller that destroys or ignores true differences between people.

Where are the poor people? Where are the mentally handicapped? Where are those who are not considered beautiful? Where are the fat people? Where are the people who speak in a dialect you cannot understand? Where are the dumb people? Where are the elderly and infirm? Where are the "closed-minded" folk who zealously believe things that are outside of the politically correct norm?

Oh, I forget. These people are all the villains.

And it isn't just the world of cartoons that is stuck in the open-minded hypocrisy that is "toleration". It is the cultural air we breathe, especially in an "enlightened" place like SMU.

I was at a conference for college students recently that had a four hour long segment on "toleration". It featured a huge group session that dealt with stereotypes, followed by small group discussions on the virtues of toleration.

What was interesting is what was NOT present in the discussion, and how the students reacted to diversity training.

What was NOT present was any mention of people "not like us". Sure, we hit all of the requisite categories of race, gender, sexuality, hair color, and even religions that we are comfortable with (such as Christianity, Islam, and atheism… but no one who sacrifices chickens).

But, the underlying assumption was that we would only have to tolerate people who are around the same age as us, from the same western-european dominated culture as us, who are roughly the same level of wealth and social standing as us.

There was no discussion of the disabled, the very old, the very young, or anyone not in the general category of beautiful people.

Interesting, right?

Wrong. The student reaction to this spiel on toleration was profound boredom. "Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. People are different from me. I leave them alone, they leave me alone, and we can all talk about how enlightened and tolerant we are."

"We know the drill…"

And I just sat there thinking: There has got to be something BEYOND mere toleration. There has got to be something BEYOND just grinning and bearing each other's differences, as long as we are different in very narrow, socially prescribed ways.

And there is. There is a profound practice, that flows straight from the heart of God, that takes all that is good about "toleration", and cleanses it off all its hypocrisy, and raises it to new life in Christ.

Jesus speaks of it today in our Gospel reading, and the author of Hebrews gives it a title: Hospitality.

Hospitality differs from toleration in five major ways:

First, toleration is based on an absence, where as hospitality is based on a presence. Toleration is the mere absence of hatred, of prejudice, and of injustice. It tries to get rid of hate, but it does not replace it with anything.

But hospitality is the presence of Love: unconditional, unselfish, unstoppable Love. The Love found in Jesus. The Love defined in First Corinthians 13. It goes beyond merely getting rid of bad passions. It replaces them with a greater passion. And only a greater passion can drive out lesser passions.

Second, toleration is based on a profoundly undefined core of pluralism. Why is toleration good? "Because it is." But why? "Because it makes sure nobody gets hurt." But why is it good that nobody gets hurt? "It just is good. Now stop asking questions before we label you as a narrow-minded bigot!"

Tolerance for its own sake cannot even define why it is a virtue at all. But hospitality has a core that is defined. That core is a God who is Love, and who commands Love because it flows from who God is.

God is profoundly self-giving, self-sharing, self-sacrificial Love that deeply enjoys those who He shares Himself with. That Love is embodied in Jesus, who is God in human flesh.

Only this Love can form a foundation that can bear the massive weight of a life of Love, a lifestyle of hospitality. If we try to base such a life on a profoundly ambiguous concept like pluralistic toleration, it will crumble into hatred and apathy.

This is one reason why it is so profoundly important for us to personally give ourselves to Christ… to surrender all we are to the God of Love we find through Him. Only He can fill us with the power to Love God, Love others, and Love ourselves with true hospitality.

And if you have not consciously given yourself over to Christ to be filled with His Love, I invite you to tonight: Right here, right now.

Don’t wait. As you come forward tonight to receive Holy Communion, use it as a time to give yourself to Christ for the first time, or the fiftieth. He will welcome you with true hospitality.

Third, toleration is accomplished largely by big, impersonal programs, lawsuits and lawmaking, and a media culture, designed to mold us into a culture that has just the optimal amount of diversity, so that we can all be good consumers.

Toleration seeks to make us all "nice" people so that we can create an efficient consumer economy, and stable political power base, to ensure the most "pleasure" for the most people… Except of course for the people who don't count. But we don't mention them.

Hospitality, on the other hand, is profoundly personal and relational. It is about you and me, as individuals, reaching out to others, as individuals, to share God's blessings with them.

Hospitality cannot be accomplished by passing a law, or creating a mandatory diversity workshop. It can only be accomplished by you choosing to be the hands and feet of Christ reaching out to hurting and forgotten people.

Fourth, toleration demands nothing of us, other than that we shrug, and smile blandly at each other, and say "that is nice… we are soooo diverse".

But, Hospitality demands sacrifice. In fact, it demands a radical re-orientation of our lives from the idea that "It's all about me", to "It's all about Love".

And the paradox is that if we seek ourselves, and live in bland toleration, we will end up with profoundly bland lives. But, if we give our lives to Christ, and seek to radically live out His agenda of hospitality, we will end up having an abundant life… and incredible life… an outstanding life.

For those who seek their lives will loose them, but those who loose their lives for Christ and His Love will find true life.

Finally, toleration is actually limited in scope to who we will tolerate. Only people who fit certain guidelines are worthy of toleration. All of those who are too young, too old, too poor, or too useless to fit in the category of toleration are simply forgotten, or not tolerated.

But hospitality does not limit the scope on who we should reach out to. Our readings today tell us to reach out to strangers and wierdos, convicts and prisoners, those abused and tortured, those who lead and those who follow, the crippled and disabled.

Jesus says for us to surrender our places of honor, and give them to others, so that we can have a banquet with "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind". Only then will we be blessed, because though they cannot repay us, we will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

The Kingdom of God is a Party of Radical Hospitality, where everyone is invited, whether the world considers them valuable or not. And the only way to get prepared for that party is to start partying like that right here, right now.

"For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." Will you humble yourself tonight, and choose to join Jesus' Banquet of radical hospitality?

BENEDICTION: And now may you move past toleration to hospitality. May you get over yourself, and get into Christ's Love. And may you live every moment as the hands of Christ reaching out to your world. Amen+

AFFIRMATION: And now, let us affirm together the faith of Christ's followers in every Age, of every tribe and tongue, of all races and walks of life, in the words of the Nicene Creed…

AN UNWELCOME SERMON

2007-09-02T12:07:00.001-06:00

A SERMON FOR Proper 16 Year C
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

Based on Hebrews 12:18-29 and Luke 13:22-30

As I stand here, I can't help but grin because of the situation. Here I am on the first Sunday back after a summer break, and I am nervous about getting Canterbury going again. Lots of things to get done. Tons of new people to meet, including many of you.

And there you are. You are beginning a new school year with tons of courses, and a to-do list a mile long. For some of you it is your first time away from home. For others it may your first time to walk into an Episcopal worship service.

And I am supposed to preach a welcome sermon. A sermon to help you get acclimated to your new semester, and hopefully to your new family of faith away from home.

And to do that, I must use the Bible readings appointed for today from our lectionary. For those of you who do not know: The lectionary is a cycle of Bible readings for every Sunday, designed to help the Church read through most of the Bible every three years.

In many ways, it is great. It keeps me from preaching from on my five favorite Bible passages every week. It makes the Church listen to, and struggle through, all that God's Word has to say.

But, then there are days like today. In any sermon, particularly a welcome sermon, there are three types of Bible texts you DON'T want to preach on:

First, you don't want texts that have obscure Old Testament references that you have to explain.

Second, you don't want texts that are complex and difficult to read.

Third, you don't want texts that scare the hell out of people.

CONGRATULATIONS! We hit the jackpot with all three!

So, instead of a fluffy non-descript message that tells you all what you probably knew already… How about we tackle this obscure, difficult, and scary passage, and see if we can make some sense out of it?

I know that is a challenging assignment: But I figure that if you could make it into SMU, you are up to the task!

We start with our passage from Hebrews. The first thing you need to know about Hebrews, is that it was written to Hebrews. It is a letter written by an un-named Jew- possibly even by a Jewish woman named Priscilla- to other Jews in an attempt to convince them to follow Jesus as their Messiah.

Thus it uses a whole lot of images and stories from the Hebrew Bible- what we call the Old Testament- to convey the importance of who Jesus is, and what He did for humanity.

Just like we might speak in the language of our culture to make sense of Jesus- by comparing Him to Aslan from Narnia, or Harry Potter, or Neo in the Matrix- so also they used the language of Moses and the prophets to make sense of Jesus.

The writer of Hebrews- I am going to assume she was a woman because I like that theory- she begins in verse 18 by talking about the mountain of "blazing fire" that Moses received the Ten Commandments on.

You know the mountain: Vast and terrible. On top, Charleton Heston with a white beard hangs out with God, who writes the Ten Commandments on two slabs of rock. Then Charleton- AKA Moses- takes those slabs down the mountain with his rippling biceps and gives them to the Nation of Israel. For Moses, its just another day at the office, right?

Wrong. Moses was terrified. The Jews were terrified. Like wet-your-pants terrified. God was awesome and vast and spoke with a voice that would split you in two.

Now, I get in lots of conversations with people who either reject God's existence, or are on-the-fence about the Supreme Being. And one of the frequent requests I hear from them is this: "If God would just SHOW Himself in power and might, THEN I would believe."

But they don't know what they are asking. God HAS done just that very thing on this "terrible mountain". Sure, everybody at the bottom of the mountain believed, but out of fear, not out of love. And belief out of fear never works in the long run.

It didn't work in the Jewish Story either. While Moses was on the mountain, they made idols to worship. While they were traveling to the "promised land" they rejected the God who led them. And when they made it to the promised land, it got worse.

Belief based on fear- whether fear of the muzzle of a gun, or fear of the flames of hell- doesn't stay belief for long. It becomes bland indifference. It doesn't work.

In fact, a great many of the Stories we read in the Hebrew Bible are illustrations of what DOESN'T work. But it isn't because God is on a learning curve, and needs to experiment before he gets it right.

It is because God knows that we need to know what doesn't work, and often we need to experience failure before we will appreciate what DOES work. Think about it. Most of us have a bad habit of having to learn "the hard way".

We continually deny what we know is right, and do what we know doesn’t work. We think if we just manipulate things a little better, or use people a little more, or get really wasted this time, it will all turn out better. And it may for a while. And then it bites us in the butt. It never works long-term.

And we promise we will never do it again. Until next time…

But God wants to get us out of the loop of failing over and over. God wants to move us past what doesn't work, into His abundant life. He wants to fill us with His Love, a Love that overcomes all our fears.

So after God shows us terror doesn't work, He arrives in our world in a totally different way. A way you never could have guessed in a million years. He arrives not in power and glory and terrible thunder.

Instead, He arrives powerless, in tattered clothes, in the cry of a baby. God empties Godself and becomes one of us in Jesus Christ. And in Jesus, God pours Himself out, and invites us to become one with Him in Love.

In fact, this Love is the reason why God is called "a consuming fire" in verse 29. This is because when you love someone with your whole heart, you can't just Love them a little. Love consumes you. It becomes a fire burning within. And that is how God feels about you: He is consumed with Love for you, and longs for you to become consumed with Love for Him and His children.

When we become one with God through Jesus, we become part of His Body, which we call the Church. The Church is not a place, it is a people: A people who Love God through Jesus Christ… A people who live to share that Love with everyone… A people who are the real hands and feet of Jesus reaching into a hurting world.

In verse 22 the author uses Hebrew images to describe this new reality we have come to in Christ: She calls it "Mount Zion" (which is where the Temple was built); "The city of the living God" (which is Jerusalem, where the Temple resided); "The heavenly Jerusalem" (reminding us that Jerusalem is not something that can be pinned down on a map, but a spiritual reality beyond the physical city).

The author says that this "Zion-City-Jerusalem" reality is what we have come to. But what does that mean? Does it mean heaven, as in a place we go to after we die? NO, because the author says that we are there NOW. We don't have to die to get there.

Instead, we have come to "the assembly of the firstborn". This gathering of people may be "enrolled in heaven", but they live now on Earth. This assembly is the Church: The Body of Christ, the community who lives in communion with the God of Love.

The Church has a unique way of describing this God of Love. We describe God as a communion of three Persons eternally sharing in one other: God the Father, God the Spirit, and God the Son. And the author says we have come to communion with all three:

In verse 23, she says we have come to "God the judge of all". The idea of "judge" carries baggage for us. We tend to think of a judge as someone who imprisons us and declares us guilty forever. But Jews would have heard "judge" in a completely different way.

When the Jews heard "judge" they thought of the Book of Judges, and the heroic "judges" that God raised up to deliver his people from oppression. While we tend to think of a judge as an oppressor, they thought of judge as a deliverer: Someone who judged oppression and defeated it.

She is saying that we have come to our God and Father, who judges all of our sins and addictions and oppressions, so that He can deliver us from them all, and bring us into His Love forever.

She goes on to say that we have come to "the spirits of the righteous made perfect". This refers to the work of God's Spirit within the spirits of those in Christ's Body.

Within our spirits, God's Spirit does two things. First, the spirit makes us "righteous". This is not "self-righteous", as in "I-am-a-super-religious-holier-than-thou-zealot-who-is-better-than-you". Rather, righteous means to be "made right", or "put in a right relationship".

It means to straighten out our lives, from the inside out. That's what

God's Spirit does in the spirits of God's children: The Spirit straightens us out, so we can have right relationships with God, others, and ourselves.

The second thing God's Spirit does in our spirits is "perfect" us. This doesn't mean perfection as in "flawless hair, rock hard abs, and a glowing smile". This means perfect in Love. It means being able to love others the way God loves us: completely and unconditionally.

So, when the author says we have come "to the spirits of the righteous made perfect", it means we have come to the community where God's Spirit is at work, straightening out lives and enabling us to love like God loves.

Finally, she tells us that we have come to "to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."

A "mediator" is someone who stands between two alienated parties and brings them back together. Jesus- God the Son- is the one who stands between us and God.

The problem is that we have fallen from God's Love. We don't love God or others the way we should. We walk past people who we should help, we hate people we should forgive. And we forget God all the time. I do it. You do it. It alienates us from God, and from the very reason He gave us life.

So Jesus stands between us and God. He mediates for us. He leaves the Spiritual realm and becomes one of us, to enter fully into our lives, and go through everything we go through.

And when I say go through everything, I mean everything. All of the suffering. All of the pain. All of the frustration and humiliation. Even death. God loves us so much that in Christ, He went through our death and died for us, so He could defeat death forever by His resurrection.

This is why His blood "speaks a better word" than the blood of Abel. You remember Abel, right? Genesis chapter four. Two brothers: Cain and Abel. Cain gets jealous of Abel and can't have what Abel has, so Cain kills Abel in cold blood.

Abel is the first of billions of people murdered by human greed. And all of their blood cries out "Useless! Useless! Why did we die???"

But through the resurrection, Jesus' blood speaks a "better word". His blood cries out "By my death I have destroyed death, so that everyone might come within the embrace of God's Love!"

Jesus is the mediator who holds our hand, and holds God's hand, and brings us back together. And THIS is the God who we have come to: Not a God of terror, but a God who enters into our lives as Father, Son, and Spirit to share all He is with us.

This God is the only One in Whom we find the meaning of life. This God is the only One who has the power to deliver us from our selfishness and hopelessness. And this is the reason why the author warns us not to "refuse the one who is speaking".

To refuse Him is to refuse our very self. It is like saying we can live without Him who is life, or love others while denying Him who is love. It is a contradiction, and we can only live in a contradiction so long before it is shaken away.

Perhaps this is why today's Scriptures about judgment are so scary to us. Christ is not arbitrary in describing the consequences of denying God. He is describing natural consequences. For if we deny Him who is joy and purpose, we will eventually be shaken by our own misery and meaninglessness.

And so, we enter into yet another year at college. For some it is your first. For others it is your last. But one thing is for sure. It will shake you. It will challenge you. It will topple your illusions.

As you are shaken, may you cling to Christ who is your unshakable foundation. As Jesus says, may you "strive" to enter into His reality and His salvation. And in Canterbury House may you find a community who will help you strive for Christ, and live upon His unshakeable Love. Amen+

And now, let us affirm together our unshakable faith in an unshakable God through the words of the Nicene Creed…

CELEBRATING IN-DEPENDENCE DAY

2007-06-30T21:30:00.000-06:00

A SERMON FOR YEAR C, 5th Pentecost, Proper-8
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian
Scriptures: Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, our Rock and Redeemer. Amen+

What was your favorite holiday as a kid? Which holiday did you enjoy the most, regardless of whether or not you got presents?

For me the answer is simple: The Fourth of July. Independence Day. Perhaps it is because in the town I grew up in, it was the one day of the year when it was legally sanctioned to BLOW THINGS UP.

As a kid, I had this ritual leading up to Independence Day. I would build models of tanks, and jeeps, and even balsa wood airplanes for weeks before the fourth of July. I would collect armies of little green army men. And the week before, I would prepare the battlefield by building fortresses, and digging trenches, in our front lawn.

Then the day would come. I had positioned my soldiers. I had attached bottle rockets to my balsa wood planes. The tanks and jeeps were filled with miniature explosives. I had a lighter in one hand, and fists full of fireworks in the other.

It was time. Operation Independence Day was a go!

For hours the battle would rage: Pieces of plastic flying everywhere. Balsa wood planes exploding in midair. The smell of burning plastic filled the nostrils. Scorched earth covered the lawn.

It was a good day, even though everyone lost except me.

And, as fun as that was, I still love Independence Day because I identify with its core message. It is the day when a small group of backwoods rebels took on the mightiest nation in the world, and won… It is a "manly", courageous holiday that celebrates both the costs and the blessings of victory.

From that victory we have gained prosperity. Indeed, we are undeniably the wealthiest, most blessed nation in the history of the world. From that victory we have gained freedom. Freedom to do anything and be anyone we want to be, without any class system to stop us.

Patriotism, Prosperity, and Freedom. These are good gifts. And Independence Day gives us an opportunity to thank the Giver of them all. He gives us good things so we can grow in His Love, and share that Love with others.

But however good these blessings may be, our readings today serve as a powerful reminder that they can be used wrongly.

They CAN become curses. They can be MADE into idols.

Even the best blessing, if abused, can slowly kill our souls. You see, an idol is usually not a bad thing in itself. Idols are good things that are used wrongly. And we have a habit of taking what is good, and allowing it to choke out of our lives what it best.

Goods were given by God as tools to help us grow in His Love. But, too often, we make our goods our goal, and use God as the tool to get them. God becomes the errand boy who, with prayer and supplication, makes sure we are healthy, wealthy, and comfortable.

But, when we let our goods to become our gods, then God becomes no good to us. We gain the world, yet forfeit our own souls.

If we look at the Gospel passage through the lens of the idolatry, it all makes sense. But, if we do not understand our human tendency to turn our goods into gods, then Jesus just sounds cruel.

I mean, we have Jesus telling one guy he will be homeless, another that he can't attend his father's funeral, and yet another that he can't even say goodbye to his family. Where is the "sweet and gentle" Jesus that puts little children on His knee? How can we reconcile this wild-eyed fanatic, with the preacher of Love and peace?

It is simple. Jesus is the Great Physician. And a physician that has a comforting bedside manner, who always assures us that everything will be OK, is the same surgeon that is a wild-eyed fanatic about getting every last bit of cancer out of our body.

This passage performs radical surgery on three good things- Patriotism, Prosperity, and Freedom- that can grow into cancerous idols.

First we see patriotism at its worst. Jesus had "set his face" on going to Jerusalem from Galilee. He was on a mission, which would culminate in his death and resurrection, and open the door to salvation for all people… even salvation for the Samaritans.

Now, as we know from the parable of the Good Samaritan [2], there was an extreme patriotic hatred between so-called pious Jews and so-called godless Samaritans. They had different racial stock, different religious traditions, an intense disagreement over the Scriptures, and saw each other as traitors to their national identity.

If you were going from Galilee to Jerusalem, the most direct route was through Samaria. Yet, most Jews would take the long way around out of spite. But not Jesus. Jesus' path of salvation may have started with the Jews, but it branched out to include all people- even those who were deemed "a national threat" to Jewish interests.

You would think that this would make the Samaritans glad. They would receive him with joy as their Messiah and Savior, right? Wrong.

They shut him out. They shut out the King of Glory, the Savior of Mankind. His ethnicity and political affiliation was offensive to them. He might heal the sick and raise the dead, but he wasn't "like folks around here". He was a danged ol' fer-in-err [foreigner].

And it was not only the Samaritans who shut Jesus out as a political threat. His own people tried to silence him by crucifixion for the same reason. Neither the Jews nor the Samaritans "got it", so they rejected Jesus instead.

And even His own disciples didn't "get it". They thought Jesus' agenda of radical Love could be accomplished by "power politics". In this case, it was calling down the power of God, to destroy those they disagreed with. So, Jesus had to yell at them too. No one got Jesus.

This makes us question to what degree our politics- our vision of a good America- keeps us from "getting Jesus". Do we shut out Jesus because, if we really followed him, He might change our affiliations and our goals for society? If we really served Christ, who might we have to listen to, that we ignore right now?

This is a question for the Right and the Left, and everyone in the middle. Because it is King Jesus that judges all our kings, His Kingdom that judges our politics, and it is His agenda of radical Love that judges our agendas and asks: "Is THIS an idol?"

But this passage not only questions Patriotism, but Prosperity as well. This is quite obvious when Jesus tells the man that following Him means He probably be worse off than even the foxes and the birds.

The point is that following Jesus is not a "get rich quick scheme". The point of following Jesus- no matter what the TV preachers may say- is not to be healthy, wealthy, and comfortable. The point is to learn how to live radical, self-sacrificial, unconditional Love. To grow into Christ's image. To possess the "fruit of the Spirit".

For some, this may mean that God entrusts you with a great deal of financial blessings, so that you in turn can bless the world. For others, it means that God calls you to live a life of radical dependence on God's provision.

Either way, Jesus makes it clear that He is not a meal ticket. He is the goal, not the means. And prosperity is the means to bless others, not the goal. When we confuse this, we allow a cancerous idolatry to squeeze the life out of our souls.

In a less obvious way, this is also what is behind Jesus not allowing the man to bury his father. You see, in the ancient world after a male buried his father, he was given his inheritance.

What the man is saying here is not "Let me bury my father, because I miss him so much". He is saying "I want to serve you Jesus, but only after I get all my financial ducks in a row. Let me get my inheritance, pay off all my credit cards, and set up my 401K. And after I am completely financially secure and do not really have to depend on you, THEN I will follow you".

And we all know what happens when we tell God "Yes, I will serve you, but the time is not right. Let me get a few things in order first".

Those few things turn into hundreds of things. Weeks turn into months. Responsibilities and requirements mount up. Pretty soon, a half a lifetime has passed, and we have not followed Christ.

Christ's word to that is "NO. I come first. Right here, right now, with whatever you have, or do not have, serve me. I will worry about the future, because I made it. But you… you worry about me."

And along with raising questions about Patriotism and Prosperity, Christ calls into question what true Freedom is. In our culture, we tend to think of freedom as being free "FROM": Free from slavery. Free from kings and dictators. Free from anyone telling us what we have to do!

But this is not Christ's concept of freedom. Or rather, it is only half of Christ's concept of freedom, and half the truth is a whole heresy.

Christian freedom is not only freedom "from", but it is freedom "to". We are free from oppression, from sin, and from death. But, if "freedom from" is not combined with "freedom to", it becomes a soul killing idolatry. It puts us- not God- in the center of our universe.

By His death and resurrection, Christ frees us FROM bondage so that we are free TO love like He does. It is "for freedom Christ has set us free". Before Christ frees us, we cannot serve Him. We are held in bondage to selfishness, sin, and idolatry.

But, after Christ frees us, we can finally love like He does. We do not have to be held in bondage to our past, our addictions, or our pet sins. We are free TO live in love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, humility, and self control.

But, as Paul says, this freedom is accomplished by total dependence on Christ's Spirit living in us, and giving us the strength and wisdom to live in that freedom. Paul calls this dependence "walking in the Spirit", "living by the Spirit", and "keeping in step with the Spirit".

And this is what is behind Jesus saying that following Him means having "nowhere to lay our head". We have no way to live in Christ's freedom, except by laying our head on Him, and constantly relying on Him to give us the power to love like He does.

This concept of true freedom, by depending on Christ alone, is also what is behind Jesus telling the last would-be disciple that he could not go back and say goodbye to his family.

You see, going home to say goodbye also meant going home to get approval. And Jesus knew what that man would face at home. Blank stares. Rolling eyes. A million and one really good reasons why now is a bad time to follow Christ.

When family functions as God intended, it is a beautiful gift. A good family is an incredible source of wisdom, nurture, and encouragement. But, when family goes wrong, it can be an incredible source of excuses, guilt, and discouragement.

We all know someone who has spent years in guilt, trying desperately to live up to the expectations of a family member who is never satisfied. We all know someone who's dreams were slowly crushed to death by the disapproval and discouragement of a loved one.

We all know someone who spent a lifetime hearing "better safe than sorry", only to wake up one day and find out they were sorry because they always played it safe. They never risked anything. They chose approval over the destiny God called them to.

And for this man, Jesus words were not cruel harassment, but loving surgery, as Jesus gave him the cure for his idolatry. He says to that man what he says to us all:

"Don't live for approval. Don't look back. Follow me. You can't plow a straight furrow if you are always looking behind you, and you aren’t ready for my Kingdom if I am not your true King. Follow me."

This Fourth of July, we celebrate Independence Day, because Jesus has freed us from the powers of darkness. But, we also celebrate IN-dependence, because we can only live in freedom by being in-dependence on Christ at all times.

This Wednesday, as we celebrate our independence and all of our national blessings, may we always live IN-dependence on Him who blesses us. May the King of the Universe guide us to true patriotism, may Christ our Liberator guide us into true freedom, and may He give us the prosperity that comes from the Fruit of His Spirit. Amen+

To Matt on the Problem of Petitionary Prayer

2007-06-11T10:54:00.000-06:00

My buddy Matt Tapie recently wrote a blog that deals with faith in God and the problem of petitionary prayer (i.e. Prayers that ask God to DO something to help us). The central problem is always this: Why does God help some and not others? A few major solutions have arisen to deal with this problem:

Are all "miracles" just coincidences, completely explainable by scientific cause and effect? In this case, God is like a scientist who made this huge science fair project we call "creation", and then sits back passively to watch it run. This, by the way, is called Deism, and it leads directly to Atheism, because if God is nowhere involved in Creation, then there is no need of using God as a causal or explanatory factor at all.

Or, is God bound by the processes of the Universe to evolve along with it, growing and changing as the Universe grows and changes, like a soul that grows with a body? In this case, God cannot do anything other than what is already happening, because what is happening- good and bad- is God's personal evolution. God is doing the best God can. This is called process Theism, or panentheism, and because it leads to a view in which God never intervenes in Cration to express His personality, it usually leads to pantheism. Pantheism is the view that "God" is really the impersonal life force of the universe, source of good and evil, and unknowable to any personal being (like us).

So, all of the major solutions seem to deny key features of the Biblical revelation of God we find epitomized in Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. This God is personal, does "intervene" on some occasions, does do "miracles" (but infrequently), and does seem to be moved by petitionary prayers. But, why is God not moved by EVERY petitionary prayer (if, indeed, he loves everyone)? Here is what I wrote to Matt:

Have you ever read CS Lewis' book "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer"? It has some truly brilliant parts in it about intercessory prayer.

I think my problem with intercessory prayer is solved primarily by the fact that God is a Person, not merely a principal. He can act as he wills, in random freedom. This is not to say that He is capricious. I believe he always acts out of His own Nature as Triune Love.

But HOW that Love is manifested in our lives and in our world is diverse. I assume that in any choice that God makes (or any of us make, for that matter), someone is benefitted more, and some less, by the consequences of that choice. If there are a hundred people, and if God acts in any one of their lives, the consequences of that action will result in some level of benefit for 20 of them, some level of detriment for 20 of them, and no effect on the rest, how will God act?

God could enter into History in a radical way, and destroy all contingencies which cause adverse effects (including destroying all sin and those who will not relinquish sin). But this would be the end of the world and the end of History. All human striving and accomplishment would end, and we would forever come face to face with what we have become.

But, I assume that God has chosen that the costs associated with the end of History are not yet worth the benefits, so He has not chosen to enter into history in a complete and comprehensive way. He has chosen to limit his divine causality in such a way that positive and negative consequences are actualized by his activity in the world.

Take, for instance, the Incarnation. That bit of Divine action in space and time created the means for our salvation and deification. But at what cost? It led to the crucifixion of God's only Son. And that led to His resurrection. And that led to the growth- and ultimate persecution- of the Christian movement. And this, over time has led to billions being saved and millions being martyred.

I believe that God thought the positive consequences outweighed the negative, but it is important to note that not even such a great "miracle" as the Incarnation of God was not without serious, and lasting, negative consequences.

This same thing could be said for God's calling and election of Israel as His People before Christ. God's intervention caused endless grief for the patriarchs. It caused the loss of all the first born in Egypt. It caused the death of a whole generation of grumblers in the desert. It caused genocide for the Canaanites. It has caused endless wars and pogroms and holocausts and exiles for the Jewish people through the ages.

Is it all worth it? Yes. It means the ultimate redemption of the world through the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ. But this divine intervention is not without serious cost.

And what about the blind and the lame who are miraculously healed by Christ (in the Bible) and by His Spirit (in the continuing history of the Church)? Are such "miraculuous interventions" without cost? Think of Lazarus who, once raised, had to die again. Think of the lepers who had togo back home, back to work, back to society, and deal with the heartache associated with that. Think of the paralytic who has to learn how to work and integrate into society. And think of anyone who has 20 years added to their lives through a divine healing. They have to deal with the death of family, the betrayal of friends, and the brokenness that comes with just living in this world.

In the long run, isn’t it hard to calculate if a "miracle" gives more than it takes?

Or, to take a final example. Who would have thought seven years ago that it would be a BAD idea to get rid of an oppressive dictator who was jailing, torturing, and killing dozens of people every year in his country? Who would have thought that it was a bad idea to invade and "liberate" people? Who would have thought that people might be "better off" with an oppressive government?

And yet, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the consequences were not as we thought. We do not know what the long term effects will be. But, we do know that secret police raids that killed or tortured dozens every month, have turned into sectarian violence that kills hundreds every month. And we have learned that there are some things a country has to do for itself, or else it does not "own" the change it creates. Swooping in with US military might may not, after all, be such a wise idea if democracy and freedom is to be spread in a genuine way.

There are many times when a person (or even a country) cannot "liberate" someone else. It only causes a mixed bag of resentment and dependence toward the liberator. Instead, the would-be liberator must give power to the oppressed to free themselves, and if they do not use that power, they go on being oppressed.

All of this goes for God as for men. Does God "intervene" and do amazing things in the world? Yes. But all of these interventions have positive and negative consequences, and you can bet that there is a Divine calculus that goes into making such decisions, which is unfathomable to us who can only hold "seven units" of information in our minds at any one time.

God's normal method of intervention, is to give us the spiritual power [i.e. grace] we need to liberate ourselves and others, because if he swooped in and causally did it for us, we would be immature and spoiled. God knows when it is better to do it for us (by miracle) and when it is better, in the long run, to help us do it for ourselves (as is the norm).

And then there is the problem that we often do not realize that allowing us to undergo temporary pain is often needed for long-term health. For instance, one day after my daughter turned two I had to take her down to get shots. She hated them, and she was very angry at me, for taking her to get them. It will be years before she realizes that they were necessary for her health in the long run.

The same is true for us. We do not realize why we must go through pain. But we will. And even physical death is an incomparably small price to pay to save us from a dead soul due to pride and selfishness. I am convinced God allows many to be taken away from this life so they do not grow into monsters or sub-humans.

All of this taken together, I think I am starting to grasp why God does not always intervene or heal in the way I expect Him to. I think our prayer and petition is related to how God acts, but in a systemic, and not a linear way. It is not as if my request [A] causes response [B]. Rather, in the timelessness of eternity, God hears my request [A], and does Divine Calculus with factors [B] through [Y], and then chooses in freedom to act in method [Z].

I also think that we must understand another thing from Scripture: All of the passages that speak in terms of "ask and it will be given you", are all written in second person plural. It is not an individualistic "you" who asks God, without discerning the will of God. It is a communal "y'all" who petitions God, after discussing and discerning together what should be asked. As Westerners, we tend to think of spirituality and petitionary prayer as the work of an individual, rather than as the work of Christ's Body, the Community of God.

In the final equation, God's answer to prayer isn't actually like an equation at all. It is more like a marriage. And while your spouse often acts in ways you might expect, you can never quite pin them down as if they were a machine. The same is true of God, in a cosmic, sinless, perfectly loving way.

Does Atheism Cause Child Abuse?

2007-06-09T19:45:00.000-06:00

[An essay on the logical implications of one's worldview on morality]

I recently had a discussion with a young atheist who could not believe in God because of all the pain and suffering in the world. In particular he pointed out child abuse and the death of innocents as a key stumbling block. I pointed out that without God, he had no basis to call such things "evil", since there is no evil in a materialist framework, only personal values and opinions. He had no clear answer to this, other than to say that he did value moral goodness, and he did believe that children are necessary even in an atheist worldview for the "continuation of the species". I simply retorted that he had no basis for such values from within his worldview, and he had to "back door" such values into his system from Christianity. Then we moved on with the discussion…

Today, I ran across an article about Richard Dawkins commenting on how he thought that religion was "child abuse" (especially telling children that they may die and go to hell). Of course, this is all begging the question of whether or not there is a hell. If there is a hell, isn't it child abuse NOT to warn people about it? And, if hell (or heaven, for that matter) is a trans-dimensional reality outside of our universe, as most theistic religions claim, wouldn't empirical science be powerless to discover it, since the only tools empiricism has are those which deal with this material universe? But, I digress…

In pondering the moral flaws of materialist atheism, and thinking about the issue of child abuse, a thought occurred to me: Atheism is completely compatable with child abuse. In fact, it is the perfect philosophy to validate the abuse of those weaker than ourselves. This is not to say that atheists are child abusers in a greater percentage than other religious adherents. This is because they back-door Christian moral assumptions into their system without giving an adequate basis for such morality. Another way to say this is to say that, as people made in God's image, they cannot help reflecting God's goodness in some ways, even though they deny his reality.

But, when taken as a logical system, atheism is the perfect system to validate the abuse of children (even if very few push it to its logical extreme). Most, if not all atheists, ground their moral concepts ultimately in the "good" of the individual person. What counts as "good" is ultimately utilitarian (i.e. actions are only good which act as instruments to produce personal pleasure or satisfaction, along with health and the extension of life). Furthermore, what counts as "evil" or "bad" are those things that harm personal pleasure and health, and go against our "instinct of self-preservation".

Now, children, of all creatures, are most unable to defend themselves from abuse, or put forward sufficient force to harm or destroy an attacker. Thus, they have no power to retaliate and harm this "instinct of self-preservation" put forward by atheists. The use and abuse of a child (or a disabled person, or someone significantly weaker than yourself) carries no inherent consequence which would harm someone. There may be imposed consequences from society, but these aren't necessary in a "perfect atheist world". We will discuss this more later, but it is sufficient to notice that in a framework without God and absolute justice, a child may be used for personal pleasure without causing self-harm. This is different from actions that inherently cause self harm, no matter how much immediate pleasure they bring about (doing heroin comes to mind).

Thus, if an atheist gains pleasure from the use and abuse of children, there should be no moral objection for it from their moral perspective. In fact, there should only be approval, since it is morally good (in the atheist framework) to do what pleases oneself and extends health and vitality.

There is no negative consequence inherent IN the act of child abuse (as there is, in say, doing drugs, or attacking someone who can retaliate). By the sheer nature of doing such acts of violence against other powerful, intelligent beings, personal existence and well-being probably will be harmed. But there is no such inherent consequence for abusing someone so much less powerful than yourself. In fact, the only consequence for such an action is indirect and external to the act, in the form of police action (i.e. punishing child-abusers as criminals). But, the presuppositions that lead society to punish child abuse cannot be drawn from a materialist utilitarian moral philosophy.

The only reason why a society should outlaw child abuse is if there is a clear moral reason for having children and raising them well. This is because part of raising MY child well will be to stop others (and myself) from abusing her. So, if it is logical to value raising children well, it is logical to create a society which protects children. And thus, not only is MY child protected, but all children are protected. Yet, the idea that we should become parents, and we should raise children well (and thus not abuse them), cannot derive from an atheist moral philosophy.

In fact, it is contrary to it, because the bearing of children is frequently harmful to personal health (possibly negating one's own existence). And the raising of children is painful on many occasions (and can result in the spending of personal resources to raise the child which could better be used for personal pleasure or extension of life). Thus, there is no good moral reason for having children and raising them well, and many reasons not to (in a coherent atheist framework). And because there is no moral reason to raise kids well, there is no reason to protect them (in fact, there may be a better reason to eliminate them if it will free up more resources for my pleasure and health!). Therefore there is no reason to stop child abuse.

Furthermore, the idea that any weak beings (i.e. children, the disabled, and anyone weaker than we are) are actually persons, and actually have some instrinsic value apart from what we can use them for, and actually deserve to be protected, cannot be gained from an atheist moral philosophy. This is for several reasons:

1. Most atheists tell some tired version of the idea that we should care about the "protection of our species", and thus we have children to extend the race. But, this is just ludicrous and self-contrdictory from an atheist perspective. For one thing, we simply will cease to exist at death and have no reason to care if there is anything else after we die. We may be inbed with a "species survival instinct" in our genes or in our sub-conscious, but this species survival instinct actually hinders our personal well-being. It causes us to have and raise kids, which is problematic and contradictory to our own good (as I noted above). It also causes us to sacrifice our well-being, and even our lives, to help others. As far as personal pleasure and health go, we should eradicate and destroy this instinct because it causes us to do things that are against our best interest. Only the weak- in an atheist framework- can be guided by the idea of "species survival".

The human race will die out. The universe will die out. All people become moot at their personal death, and all things are rendered ultimately moot by the death of the universe. They are all "sound and fury signifying nothing" if the atheist is right about the world. A truly honest materialist can only logically care for one thing: Their own pleasure and health. The coherent atheist realizes that there is no "us", only "me", and "you" only exist as a means to benefit my well-being, and "you" are completely worthless when you cease to benefit me.

I know atheists who DO care about others, but they do so irrationally, and against the clear ramifications of the worldview they espouse. They care for the Earth, for their children, and for moral goodness, but they do not have a reason "why" (other than the clearly faulty idea that they should extend the existence of the human race).

But, any argument that it is morally good to preserve "us" (our race, our civilization, our world) cannot be based on a materialistic universe. It has to be brought in back-door from a Theistic moral source that says that the world and the people in it are inherently valuable because they were created so by a Creator.

2. But, since we are talking about honest, consistent atheism, where there is no "us", and only "me", we have to say that anything which gets in the way of pleasure and health should be stopped. Now, the stopping of some of these things- even in an atheist system- is problematic to pleasure and health. For instance, trying to kill people who try to hinder you from fulfilling your desires could likely result in your own death or injury, even if there was no police force to stop you (due to the "law of the jungle").

So, instead of killing them, you pursue a relational calculus, using negotiation and deception and compromise, to get us much as you can from them, while giving as little as you can of yourself. But, this only applies to dealing with other persons who are at least as powerful and as intelligent as you are. What if they are considerably weaker and they stand in your way? What if their non-existence would ultimately further your own pleasure and health? It would be "morally good" to get rid of them to attain your own bliss. Furthermore, it would be irrational, even morally evil (in the atheistic framework) NOT to do so (because to leave them alive would drain precious resources which could benefit you).

3. Finally, in such an atheistic framework, anything that causes pleasure and health should be pursued. If, for whatever reason, what pleases you most is sexual gratification from children then (in a coherent atheist position) it should be done. If what pleases you most is causing physical pain to the disabled, then you should do so. If you can grow children to be organ donors to further your life, you should do so. In fact, to NOT do any of these things- assuming it is what "turns you on"- would be immoral and evil in a coherent atheist framework.

4. And, if we are going to create a society that will maximize our personal "good", by furthering our own pleasure and health- without reference to any fictions of "preserving the race" or any other kind of irrational altruism- then we should abolish legal systems that are based on immoral values (i.e. laws which preserve the rights of the weak, and hinder the pursuit of personal pleasure and health). This is because, unless you make all of the laws to benefit yourself by controlling others, it is best to abolish all laws and systems of social control which stop you from using others to get what you want. The more you abolish, the freer you are to pursue your own "good".

Now, this kind of society scares the hell out of most people, atheists included, but it is perfectly logically consistent with the ramifications of atheist morality. The only reason to favor social controls which stop the powerful from abusing the weak is because you fear that you are one of the weak ones who should have their pleasure and health protected. So, you give up some of your immediate power and pleasure to the "state" to protect you, and ensure your pleasure and health in the long run.

But, this is the weakling position. And while it may be a perfectly logical moral position for the weak person in an atheist worldview, for the strong person, it is not acceptable. If they possess the power to dominate others and use them for their own ends, they should abolish all social structures and strictures which stop them from actualizing and maximizing their own pleasure and health. In a coherent atheist framework, the best society is the one in which the most powerful have the most complete dominance over those who pleasure them. The only sin is to be too weak to pursue whatever you want.

Thus, the coherent atheist who rationally cares about his own self-interest will work for a "good" society that does not stop the strong from using the weak. The coherent atheist will work for the repeal of social systems that allow the weak to live and leech off of the well-being of the strong. The coherent atheist will applaud child abuse as an entirely proper use of one's own power to gain personal gratification. Finally, the coherent atheist cannot help but applaud a society in which all weaklings- children, slaves, women, the handicapped- are used simply as means to personal benefit, or eliminated altogether when they cease to be a benefit.

Now, I give hearty congratulations to incoherent atheists everywhere who do not live like this. It shows a sign that their souls have not yet become a wasteland and a haunt of demons. But, the logical implications of atheism lead naturally, intrinsically, and compulsively to a moral system where the strong uses and abuses the weak for their own self-interest.

Which is real child abuse? Is it teaching a child that God has made them in His image, that all people are loved and valued as God's own children, and that we should unconditionally love and protect every person, especially the weak? Or, is it teaching them that the only person they can really care for is themselves, and the only reason they have to live is pursue pleasure and power to keep on existing? Which will most logically bring about a world that we want to bear and raise children in?

So, does atheism cause child abuse? Logically, yes. Practically, no. But, if we want a world where love really rules, and everyone is cared for, we will need to adopt the moral teaching of Christ, regardless of whether we acknowledge His Reality. May all Christians live lives consistent with what they say they believe, and may all atheists live lives inconsistent with that they say they believe. Amen.

Cacophony or Communion [part 1]

2007-05-24T14:44:00.000-06:00

Exploring the Open Question of Identity, Authority, and Unity in Anglicanism
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

"[T]he Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose." -C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity", book IV, ch. 8

"However we judge the theological concept that the divine became human so that the human could become divine, it is a philosophical, even a metaphysical concept. It is not concrete and will not 'preach'… [It will not] cut the Gordian Knot of human bondage to guilt and stress." -Paul F.M. Zahl, "The Protestant Face of Anglicanism", p. 37

"[W]e do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships… We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children… are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church… we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate…" -Navasota Statement by the Episcopal House of Bishops, March 20, 2007

I. Introduction: Standard Anglican Typologies of Church.

We come finally to the question of "What will become of the Anglican Church?" To answer this we must ask a deeper, more profound, theological question: "What is the Church to Anglicans?" The three quotes above display three essential trajectories in Anglican ecclesiology. Lewis' quote embodies the core genius of the Anglo-catholic position: The Church is an ontological entity, an extension of Christ Himself, reaching out into the world draw humanity into the Reality of Christ's life and thereby "divinize" them as partakers of Christ. This the Church does this via sacramental means, using those rites, rituals, and practices through which Christ has promised to share His life with the world.

Zahl's quote, while not mentioning the Church per se, embodies the core Anglo-protestant resistance to, and answer to, the Anglo-catholic position. No talk of metaphysics or "popery" here. The Church is just a collection of individuals who consent to preachable propositions that are concrete and explicitly Biblical. It has a doctrine to proclaim, which centers on one core transaction: The imputation of Christ's righteousness to our account so that we may be released from our "guilt and stress". It is also helpful to note what Zahl, the consummate low-church Anglo-protestant, does not talk about. His book, A Short Systematic Theology, is a series of numbered theological propositions for the individual believer to assent to, which supposedly represent the whole scope of essential Christian belief. Yet none of these propositions deal with the nature or mission of the Church. This omission speaks volumes about protestant assumptions concerning the Church.

And this leads us to the statement by our own House of Bishops, which says things that are quintessential to the Anglo-liberal position. If the Anglo-catholic is focused on sacramental transformation, while the Anglo-protestant is focused on doctrinal proclamation, the Anglo-liberal focuses on inclusive toleration. The core genius here is a post-Enlightenment egalitarianism that uses words like "free", "equal", "diversity", and "open" to refer to everyone who agrees with their open-mindedness. The key is to find an absolute minimum which all reasonable people can agree to, and exclude the rest.

Catholic, protestant, or liberal? Transformation, proclamation, or toleration? Will the real Anglican ecclesiology please stand up? The answer to what is "authentically Anglican" cannot be settled by historical research, or mining our "standard divines" for proof-texts that our party is more "Anglo-than-thou". As we have learned this semester, all three have a flawless pedigree, and heavy-weight thinkers, with which they can claim to be truly "Anglican". And while there are countless permutations of each, and various attempted compromise positions, these three typologies of the Church recur with great regularity.

II. Top-Down and Bottom-Up Views of Church.

Perhaps the question of which ecclesiology is more definitively Anglican can better be answered by looking to the future, while learning from our past, and asking the question "Which ecclesiology best answers the question of what the Church is, and how it can best
preserve unity and extend mission in the future?"

We can start by answering whether the Church is a real ontological entity, or if it is just a name we assign to a group of people who are joined together for a common cause. When we define "Church", do we begin "top-down", by saying "there is this Reality called the Body of Christ, of which Christ is really the head, and into which people are incorporated as something like members or cells?" Or, do we begin "bottom-up", by saying that we are autonomous individuals, who, by a free act of our will, choose to form this club we call the "Body of Christ"? Does the universal Reality of Christ govern our particular lives (top-down), or do our particular experiences create our reality (bottom-up)?

How we answer this question will put us a large way toward how we conceive of Anglican unity, and how we can maintain that unity. Because, if something like the top-down approach is right, and we are a living organism of which Christ is the head, then we can expect that Christ has grown His Body in such a way that there are already structures and organs ontologically inherent in the Body, designed to maintain unity and structure. If this concept of the Church is essentially right, then the ordered ministry is meant to function as something like a skeletal system. And the "rule of faith" passed down through that ordered ministry as something like DNA, which governs the growth and development of the Body. If the ordered ministry is broken, then it becomes something like a broken bone, and if the DNA is altered, it becomes something like a cancerous growth.

If the Church is an ontological entity, then we identify her first and foremost by her "nature" or "structure", and only secondarily by what she does. However, if something like the bottom-up approach is right, things are much less clear. We can only identify her by what she does: her function(s). While an ontological definition of the Church is the Anglo-catholic position, the protestant and liberal positions start from a "bottom-up" conception
and thus rely on solely functional definitions of the Church.

This functional definition of the Church is enshrined in Article 19 of the 39 Articles: "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men" [notice the bottom-up conception implied here] "in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered, according to Christ’s ordinance." Who are "faithful men"? Those who agree to consent to a set of doctrines, as laid out propositionally in the Articles. How do they make sure they fulfill the functions of preaching and administering sacraments? They do it "according to Christ's ordinance". How do they do this? By following Holy Writ. Who's interpretation of Holy Writ? The Church's, as found in the confession of the 39 Articles. Who gave the Church authority to define what Holy Writ means? Well…

At this point, if you are protestant, you punt back to Scriptural authority as interpreted by the confession of the Church (which is a hopelessly circular argument), or you realize there is no real authority here and go the liberal route of including anyone who seems even moderately interested in religion. That is, unless we take the escape hatch of a top-down, ontological concept of the Church. This is because all purely functional accounts of the Church falter on the fact that, ultimately, we need an ontological unity with Christ, mediated through the structures of His Body, to explain why the Church has any authority at all. A catholic, holistic concept of the Church can comprehend, order, and explain the varied functions of the Church, while a purely functional definition cannot.

III. Problems Found in Merely Functional Unity.

In fact, there are about three types of functional categories used to define the Church: How we feel, how we think, and how we act (i.e. experiential, doctrinal, and practical). An experiential-functional definition sees the Church as a collection of folks who have a common experience of God, whether in gender/ race/ sexuality/ oppression (in Liberation theologies), in conversion testimony (among Evangelicals), or in ecstatic encounter (among Pentecostals). Many Anglican groups unite based on shared experience, such as conservative charismatics, revisionist radicals, "Anglophiles" in love with all things English, or connoisseurs of a certain type of liturgical aesthetic. Yet, without an ontological authority structure within the Church, this experiential unity quickly dissolves when the Church is either unwilling or unable to cater to everyone's styles, tastes, and expectations.

Doctrinal-functional definitions of the Church tend to focus on the Church as a group of people who assent to a certain set of propositions. This list of propositions can be a highly-structured "maximalism", such as the strident Anglo-protestant variety that would demand adherence to all 39 Articles (and hopefully the Westminster confession as well). Or, this list of propositions can be lowest-common-denominator "minimalism", as in the case of the original Latitudinarians, who paved the road to Deism, or contemporary pluralists, who travel the road to Pantheism. Without an ontological authority structure within the Church, the maximalist variety quickly becomes a self-refuting epistemological "circular argument" (witness the never-ending splits in protestant churches over doctrinal issues ranging from baptism to eschatology), and the minimalist variety becomes something that is in no way identifiable as Christian (witness Bishop Spong).

Practical-functional definitions of the Church tend to focus on the Church as a group of people joined together who do a certain task. There are those who say that the core of our Identity as Anglicans rests on the fact that we worship as one, with one common Book. We can believe anything we want, so long as we worship together! And while this is a romantic notion, it simply does not fit the facts. When our own national Church has seven different canons of the Mass in one book, not to mention the parishes who use morning prayer or the 1928 Prayer book, not to mention a worldwide Communion that uses sources as diverse as the 1662 English Prayer Book and the New Zealand Prayer Book, with at least three lectionaries (BCP, Revised Common, and Roman Catholic), it is simply not feasible to say we worship together in form or function. Imagine what would happen if we actually tried to mandate that everyone worship from the same liturgy, in the same Book!

Another practical-functional way to define the Church is that we are committed to a common mission, be it pursuing social justice or missionary activity. But no sooner have we said that, than we ask "whose justice, by what authority?" With that, we are back to the same circular argument that befuddles doctrinal-functional definitions. This also tends to reduce the Church to the religious arm of a political party, either as the "Democratic Party at Prayer", or the "Republican Party at Prayer". And while missionary activity is a noble, essential mission of the Church, it suffers the same defects. No sooner do you send missionaries than you have to teach converts what type of Church they are baptized into, what that Church believes, and how that Church lives, on what authority. And this, in turn, opens up every functional problem listed so far.

A final practical-functional definition of Church unity says that we are a group of people who agree on a method: A distinctive way of looking at, and working through theological problems. And Anglicanism does bring to Christianity a unique sense of balanced synthesis, "passionate patience", and dialogical interplay to theological dialogue, as we try to work through our various "sources" for theology (whether in the form of a stool or a quadrilateral!). On bad days, this method can look like compromise or cowardice. But, on good days, this method looks like a via media that affirms what is good and true in opposing theological camps, while avoiding what is unhealthy. However, method does not unity make. A lawyer can only make so many procedural motions before her case gets tried. You can only think about the wedding proposal so long before you have to say yes or no. Whatever our method is, eventually it must lead us to concrete decisions about the nature of the Church, and how it functions in "faith and practice".

IV. The Need for an Ontological Unity.

This brings us to the need for a "top-down" ontological conception of the Church, which has certain God-given, authoritative structures for identifying and preserving unity. If one looks at those Church bodies which hold a high view of the ontological, divinely-structured unity of the Church- notably the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox- you find a type of long-term unity that is missing in Protestant churches that define themselves functionally. This is not to say that ontologically-based churches do not split. Over 1900 years of Church history, you can trace dozens of splits- major and minor- in these more "catholic" traditions. But this is a far cry from the thousands of schisms and splits that have come from Protestant and "non-denominational" churches in the last 500 years.

Clearly, if one views the effects of theology from a pragmatic standpoint, the ontological concept of Church has something going for it that other conceptions do not have. Across time and space, there is more unity, more consistency in doctrine and practice, more membership, and a broader sweep of territory, included by ontologically-based churches than their functionally-based protestant counterparts. They are, in a word, more "universal"- more "catholic". Do these ontologically-based Churches use functional instruments to help evaluate unity? Yes. Romans have a Magisterium, Orthodox have the Seven Councils, and both have approved canons for discipline and worship. But these functional instruments flow from a divinely-given, authoritative organ of unity within the Church, instead of creating a merely functional unity.

[Works cited and consulted are in comments section. This paper originally had footnotes, but these did not work in blogger format. If you want footnotes, please email Nate and he will send you a .pdf of this essay]

Cacophony or Communion [part 2]

2007-05-24T14:38:00.000-06:00

This continues the post above which explores the Open Question of Identity, Authority, and Unity in Anglicanism
Copyright © 2007 Nathan L. Bostian

V. Problems and Promises associated with the Ontological View.

And this is not to say that getting together and deciding "we are an ontological entity" will automatically save the Anglican Communion. Even within the ontological conception, there are serious issues to work out. For instance, in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches there are two different ways of conceiving the organ of unity. For Romans, unity and authority flows from a titular head (the Pope) down through the Curia and then to local bishops. For Orthodox (and Anglo-catholics), the principal of collegiality dictates that all bishops are equally part of that organ of unity, and any difference between bishops is one of honor, not ontological status, so that even Archbishops and Primates are "first among equals" with other bishops. These issues of the "flow of authority" must be dealt with, lest the Body of Christ become deformed. Historically, there have been four "deformations" that plague the ontological Church: acromegaly, obesity, cancer, and broken bones.

Acromegaly is when one part of the skeleton grows at the expense of the others, often creating obscenely large extremities. In the Church, perhaps the most conspicuous example of this is Papacy of the medieval Church, which was so power-and-money hungry that it incited the Eastern Church to cleave, and set the stage for the chaos of the Reformation. Yet, at the base of Papal claims is the realization that one bishop should have the primacy of honor to be able to convene Church councils, and act as a spokesperson for the decisions of the college of bishops. In fact, every province of the Church needs someone like an "archbishop" who has a primacy of honor to be able to call regional councils, and speak for the regional church as well. However, a brief perusal of Church history will show that it is easy for this primacy of honor to be distorted into an ontological primacy, in which the Pope (or archbishop!) claims wild powers and privileges over the rest of the Church that result in acromegaly of Christ's Body. The protestant solution to this was to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and go for a strictly functional solution. But five centuries of the misery of protestant schism upon schism indicates this works worse that the alternative.

Obesity is the next major problem that the ontological Church has. Because episcopacy is a time-proven way to preserve Tradition, it has been incredibly easy to add tradition upon tradition until there is a very "fat" Church, which it is hard to see the muscle of Christ through. Perhaps a good example of this is some of the overly complex liturgies of the East which combine so many ancient elements that it is hard to discern a structure, a message, or a method in the liturgy anymore. The same obesity can be seen in Church structure where so many layers of "middle management" is added to Church bureaucracy, with so much money and resources going to it, that it forgets its real purpose to heal and reconcile the world as Christ's hands and feet.

Cancer also plagues both the functional and ontological conceptions of the Church. The DNA of the Church is found in its "rule of faith": the "gospel" which it proclaims. This DNA leads the Church to grow and develop over time, much the same way that an Oak Tree develops from an acorn, or an adult human develops from a sperm and an egg. Neither the Church's organism or doctrine looks the way it did when it was young (in the Apostolic Age), but it has developed according to the DNA of the gospel. Except when the DNA is distorted, deleted, or added to in a way that makes it cancerous. Cancerous DNA- heretical teaching- spiritually distorts individual cells within Christ's Body and spreads like gangrene. All forms of Christianity have a problem with creating, teaching, and preaching cancerous doctrine. But, when we compare distorted Catholic DNA, such as Papal infallibility or Marian dogmas, with the obliterated DNA of protestant denominations that have deleted canonical Scripture, the Trinity, and the Incarnation from their teaching, it is clear which seems to stay healthier over time. Furthermore, councils like the Seven Ecumenical Councils, Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II have actually shown an ability to remove "cancer" and decrease "obesity" in the Body. Protestant bodies have no similar reforming capability, and the best they seem to be able to do is reform by schism, in which they cut off Christ's limbs.

The last deformation of the ontological church comes in the form of broken bones. This happens when episcopal structures, all ordained in legitimate succession, cease to have communion with each other. The key to understanding this is to understand that apostolic succession is not merely a functional act. While the transmission of "apostolic DNA" is a key element, on it's own it will merely become a defective form of doctrinal-functional unity. And, while commitment to "apostolic mission" is another key element, on it's own it degenerates into another form of practical-functional unity. To tie all of this together, there has to be an ontological element to apostolic succession. This ontological element is found in the actual physical act of prayer and laying on of hands which has been the "matter" in the sacrament of ordination since the time of the Apostles. The fullest form of the Church- the ontological fullness- happens when the episcopal structure is in tactile apostolic succession that is traced back to the Apostles and Christ Himself.

But, even within those episcopal church structures which maintain apostolic succession in its fullness- Romans, Old Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglican- we have breaks in communion. Christ's Body has broken bones. And that must be remedied in time. But it cannot be remedied from the Anglican side if we choose to splinter into a dozen more denominations because we are pursuing a merely functional form of Church unity. We must pursue a thoroughly ontological concept of the Church that will be strong enough to unify the functional elements of experience, doctrine, and practice. The question thus becomes, what type of ontological structure will keep the Anglican Communion together? What instruments should this structure use to make authoritative decisions?

VI. The Windsor Report and Ontological Unity.

The Windsor Report, in outlining a structure for the unity of the Church, proposes that unity is rooted in a certain conception of communion which is both covenantal and ontological in nature: We are bound by relational promises and as organic members of the Anglican instantiation of the catholic Body of Christ. Individual provinces "express their own communion relationships in a variety of juridical forms, as: bipartite (in communion with Canterbury); multipartite (in communion with all Anglican churches); or simply through the idea of 'belonging to the Anglican Communion'". This communion is "all about mutual relationships" which are identified in various and commonsense ways, such as "community, equality, common life, sharing, interdependence, and mutual affection and respect. It subsists in visible unity, common confession of the apostolic faith, common belief in scripture and the creeds, common baptism and shared eucharist, and a mutually recognised common ministry". Yet, while methods of identifying communion have been developed, there has been no "negative criteria" developed to identify impaired or destroyed communion.

At this point the Report launches into a discussion of the different "bonds" of our communion. It makes clear that while Scripture is the authentic source of information about God in Christ, it has to be interpreted by teachers who have their authority from Christ. This is because, while the Bible holds the most authentic information we can possibly have about God's self-revelation through Israel, Jesus Christ, and His Church, it simply is not self-interpreting. The Bible will not stand up and tell us how it has to be interpreted. The history of protestantism is full of this lesson, over and over and over, as the "clear and apparent" meaning of Scripture leads to arguments, sectarian splits, and even wars, based on different interpretations. Rather, the Windsor Report wisely notes that it is the authority of God that works through Scripture, and is expressed in the teaching authority of the episcopate, which tells us authoritatively how Scripture must be interpreted. Then it goes on to point out how the episcopate is integrally, even ontologically, constituent of Anglican unity, expressed in the principal of synodality (i.e. their authority is most fully expressed in synods).

Thus, the episcopate is "essential" to the unity of the Church, and bishops are "more than simply the local chief pastor… [they] represent the universal Church to the local and vice versa". This is continued by saying "Bishops represent Christ to the people, but also bring the people and their prayers to God" . This strong affirmation that Bishops are essential- of the essence or substance of the Body- grants the episcopacy its rightful status as the ontological organ of unity and authority. Immediately after this, when one might expect the Report to express some definite recommendations about placing our authority for interpretation of Scripture in the hands of episcopal synods, the Report instead launches into a discussion of discernment, diversity, and adiaphora. Finally, in paragraphs 97-104, it launches into a description of the instruments of unity for our communion. This organ of unity finds its focus- but not its source- in the person of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who acts as a moderator for- but not a monarch over- his fellow bishops. The ABC moderates the decisions of the Communion through the "Instruments of Unity", found in the The Lambeth Conference, The Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting (of the chief bishops of each province).

Paragraph 42 of the Report is right when it sums up the whole problem in one key word: authority. Who has it? Pieces of paper who cannot argue, or persons who can? A inanimate Book, or the living organ of Episcopate? Section C of the Report ends with recommendations on the instruments of unity. It poses the question of whether or not the Lambeth conference could function as "the gathering of the chief pastors and teachers… [to] have a ‘magisterium’, a teaching authority of special status" which befits the apostolic teaching authority conferred onto the episcopate. It also proposes that, as a method of evaluating the unity of the Communion and determining the status of constituent members, we devise an "Anglican Covenant" , which would measure the functional degree to which a province or diocese conforms to essential doctrine and practice. This Covenant would spell out this authority structure in detail and provide a mechanism for future decision making over contentious issues in the communion. While the Windsor Report tries to avoid the implication that the proposed bond of unity will be similar to Roman Catholicism , it seems clear that, we seem to be headed toward a well-defined form of "conciliar catholicism" with some similar structures to the Roman Church, though without a supreme pontiff from whom authority flows. I think that this ontological, structural unity actually could save the communion, but only if we do not let the merely functional definitions of unity offered by protestants or liberals derail the process.

VII. Recommendations for the Anglican Covenant.

Yet, Windsor is a bit vague about how exactly all of these organs, instruments, and covenants would work together. Would authority flow ultimately from the covenant (making us another protestant confessional church), or from the episcopate? Is it possible that using "instruments of unity" could just dissolve into another form of methodological, not ontological, unity? Finally, will this form of "conciliar catholicism" actually maintain true communion, or will it degenerate into just another protestant cacophony?

In view of the preceding analysis, I would offer some suggestions for the way forward, all of which are in accord with an Anglo-catholic interpretation of the Windsor Report:

1. The Anglican Covenant should clearly spell out the primary ontological basis of Church unity, in terms which make it clear that the episcopate, in full apostolic succession, is the essential element from which teaching authority flows in the Church, and that this episcopate is not merely an accident of historical development, or conducive to the English temperament. It is a God-given organ of unity in the Body of Christ.

2. We should make clear[er] the role of the ABC as a primacy of honor, and not ontology. Furthermore, we need to grant similar regional primacies of honor, not ontology, to provincial primates, so that they have the responsibility to call councils and synods, act as their moderators, and speak as their spokespersons. This should be done without conceding, in any way, a greater ontological level of authority or voting power to the ABC or provincial primates.

3. We should outline the structure of authority so that local parishes are accountable to their diocesan bishop, diocesan bishops are accountable to provincial synods, and provincial synods are accountable to worldwide councils (such as the Lambeth Conference).

4. We should create a system whereby a majority agreement of provincial primates, acting in emergency situations, have the ability to change or veto the policy of individual provinces or dioceses, until the next general conference of all Communion bishops at Lambeth can meet to decide more comprehensively.

5. Major doctrinal and moral decisions at Lambeth would have to be ratified by the next successive regular meeting (every ten years). This would put major decisions at a 10-20 year interval, which would help insure that such decisions were not merely caused by cultural contingencies, but expressed the genuine growth of the Church's DNA.

These steps would help insure Communion and avoid cacophony. It will offend those with a more "bottom-up" concept of the Church, and possibly lead them to leave. But, as I have shown, it is only a matter of time before that happens anyway with a merely functional church unity. Over time, such a concept would help us avoid acromegaly, cancer, and obesity of the Body, while setting the stage for a future healing of the broken bones of the Church. I truly believe that what the Anglican Communion offers the larger Church is worth the effort. For, at our best, we offer what I call a "creative, conciliar catholicism" to the rest of the Church. We are conciliar because we have a collegial conception of ontological unity that places ultimate authority in the hands of the whole college- the whole organ- of bishops, and not in the hands of one monarchial bishop. We are creative because of the unique method and sensibilities we bring to doing life with God (as I outlined above). And while this method gets us in trouble occasionally, I believe that if we will become willing to be disciplined and corrected by the whole Church, our creativity is worth the occasional trouble it causes us. We have a unique, beautiful, messy, magnificent history that should be woven together with the whole Church. My sincere hope is that something like the steps I have outlined will create an ontological unity that will save our Communion.

[Works cited and consulted are in comments section. This paper originally had footnotes, but these did not work in blogger format. If you want footnotes, please email Nate and he will send you a .pdf of this essay]

Subverting Submission: A Rhetorical Analysis of Ephesians 5

2007-05-13T18:01:00.000-06:00

Most of the scholarship surrounding Ephesians 5 revolves around the "revisionist versus traditionalist" axis. One side, hating the idea of unqualified female submission to a Jewish form of male chauvinism, reject the passage as spurious or semi-spurious. They develop possible literary hypothesis upon possible literary hypothesis, without hard evidence, to prove that Paul did not, in fact write it. And then, based on their leaning tower of hypotheses, they reject it as non-apostolic, therefore non-canonical, and therefore non-binding on Christians.

The other side, convinced of the much more probable hypothesis that Paul indeed did write it- or if he did not, one of his close disciples did- rightfully side with the catholic Church and accept it as canonical. They believe that God is, in fact, speaking through it to the Church today, and we need to listen to it as a foundational document for the Church. But, they read it in such a way that it supports something close to a ancient Jewish "second class status" for women.

One side wrongly approaches Biblical authenticity, but rightly discerns the Gospel message of liberation. The other side rightly approaches Biblical authenticity, but wrongly discerns the message. What shall we do?

Is there any way to reconcile this Paul:

"For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." (Galatians 3:26-29, circa 48-49 CE)

With this Paul?

"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church submits to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind-- yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband." (Ephesians 5:21-33, circa 54-63 CE)

What if both sides are right in what they affirm, but wrong in what they deny. What if, an older, wiser Paul, toughened by a decade of debate and persecution, wrote Ephesians with the same CORE MESSAGE as Galatians, but a different way of getting there?

My hypothesis is that a younger Paul wrote Galatians, and preached openly and loudly the complete abolition of social structures of oppression that separated and demeaned Jew from Greek, Slave from Free, Female from Male. And when Paul proclaimed this, it exploded like a social nuclear bomb in the communities he preached in. To traditionalists (both Jewish Rabbis and their Roman overlords), he sounded like an anarchist. To the oppressed, it sounded like he was giving them a free pass to get even with those who had oppressed them.

The result? Chaos in the Church. Pissed off traditionalists are trying to put a cap on it all, and tell everyone Paul is a false apostle. Angry women are berating husbands in public assembly. The rich are leaving the poor behind, while the poor are hating the rich. Everyone is emphasizing ecstatic experience over the Love of Christ (this is all what is behind 1Corinthians 10, 11, 14, and 1Timothy 2).

Everything is coming unhinged socially, and Paul is getting challenged intellectually by traditionalist Rabbis about his social teaching.

Something must be done.

So, Paul does something very "postmodern". Rather than trying a full frontal assault on the social system like he did in Galatians, he decides to deconstruct the social systems by using its own logic against it. He decides to use the logic of submission to subvert submission.

And, this is what you find in Ephesians 5. If you are reading it as a "straight", "up-front", "literal" reading, then you will not get it. You will think that the Paul is contradicting himself while trying to uphold traditional gender roles of female submission. I say this, because, even on the most traditionalist reading, the text does not fully support what traditionalists want it to say.

In verse 21-22 (one sentence in Greek) it literally says "Submitting to one another in respect of Christ, the wives are to be to their husbands as to the Lord". So, it starts with the idea of MUTUAL submission. Now, many traditionalist translations will hide this by repeating the verb "submit" (which is only used once), and separating verse 21 and 22 as two separate sentences. Then, they will place verse 21 with the section above, and put verse 22 with the husbands and wives paragraph. Check out the NIV or NASB on this.

Now, this is a mistranslation that borders on un-ethical, and it makes the passage sound like it un-equivocally supports female submission. But it doesn't. It starts with the principal of mutual submission. So, this is one strike against the traditionalist interpretation.

Next, the passage does go on and strongly advocate female submission. But then Paul throws in the second monkey wrench. He gives the husbands a condition too. He pulls out the relationship of Christ to the Church, and says, not only should wives be to husbands like the Church is to Christ (something supported by traditionalists). But, husbands are to be to their wives like Christ is to the Church as well. That means giving up themselves- to the very last- for the good of their wives.

That puts a big hitch in a straight traditionalist reading of Ephesians 5.

Finally, Paul puts a third hitch in the traditionalist reading. In verse 33 Paul puts a condition on the wife's obedience and respect for the husband. He must earn it by loving her like Christ loves the Church. He literally says "Nevertheless, also each one of y'all is to love his own wife as himself, and the wife in order that she should respect the husband". It essentially says that the wife's respect of the husband is conditional upon the husband's love of his wife. It is not unconditional submission, but conditioned upon the selfless love of the husband.

And, back to verse 21, all of this is held within the bounds of mutual submission.

So, even a straight textual reading of the passage blows huge holes in a traditionalist reading of the passage. And yet, in verse 24 Paul drops a huge traditionalist bomb "Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands."

In everything? Everything?

How does that fit with the rest of the passage?

Now, it is at this point you have to make a faith choice about the passage. Is the passage trying to sneak a traditionalist message in through liberating clothes? Or, is the passage trying to sneak a liberating message in through traditionalist clothes?

I opt for the latter, and I think there is a rhetorical reason for this. You see, I do not think that this is a straight, literal passage. Rather, I think Paul is having a conversation with traditionalists here in which he is using their own logic of female submission to destroy the whole system of submission. I think Paul is deconstructing their argument with rhetorical genius, and I think that if you use this hermeneutic to unlock the passage, it makes sense of everything in it.

In fact, when viewed from the standpoint of rhetorical deconstruction, you can see how Paul is creating the same message as Galatians 3, but coming from a different direction. I think his conversation actually looks something like this:

TRADITIONALIST: Paul, you are upsetting the world with this egalitarianism. We know from the Rabbis and the Torah that a wife is to submit to her husband!

PAUL: You know, that is what I have been saying all along. Submission. Everyone should submit to one another.

TRADITIONALIST: Perhaps. But, don't you agree that wives must submit to their husbands?

PAUL: Of course! They should submit in everything. A woman is to her husband as the Church is to Christ. Do you not agree?

TRADITIONALIST: Certainly. The relationship of the Church to Christ is a perfect analogy. The husband is Lord, and the wife submits.

PAUL: We are in agreement. And we know how our Lord treats the Church, right?

TRADITIONALIST: Well, yes…

PAUL: He gives up his life for her. He gives up everything. Everything he does is for HER good, not his own, right?

TRADITIONALIST: OK, but…

PAUL: No buts here. We agree. Christ is our model. So we need to follow the logic. Yes, a wife submits in everything, but the husband gives himself completely in everything. Right?

TRADITIONALIST: I don't see how…

PAUL: Of course you do, silly. We are in agreement here. Complete surrender of self based on the relationship between Christ and the Church. That is what we are REALLY talking about here, because marriage is a mirror of the Church. You don’t want to disagree with the Lord, do you?

TRADITIONALIST: Well, no, I don't…

PAUL: Then we agree! It would simply be dishonoring for a husband to fall short of the standard of Christ, wouldn't it? After all, he does bear Christ's role, right?

TRADITIONALIST: Yes…

PAUL: Then, that means that the woman's submission is conditioned on the husband treating her as Christ would. If a husband does not love her with that kind of love, he destroys her whole basis for submission. It is the husband's responsibility to do the right thing.

TRADITIONALIST: But the wife has the responsibility to…

PAUL: To submit in everything. Of course. We agree. But, we know that her husband must lay down his very life, submit everything he has and is, for her sake. He is to treat her as his own body. That is the only way this works. Right?

TRADITIONALIST: I suppose.

PAUL: And so we see that they are both equal in Christ. This is not an equality that asserts our rights and uses each other to get what we want. This is an equality that equally submits, surrenders, respects, and loves one another. That is the only way a wife can submit to her husband in everything, if she has a husband who is surrendering everything back to her.

TRADITIONALIST: But, that's not what I meant to say…

PAUL: Of course it is. We both agree. [Walks away with sly smirk on his face]

Thus, I believe that Paul subverts submission through submission and gets the Ephesians to the exact same place as he got the Galatians. This is the only interpretation I know of that makes sense of all of the evidence here. Paul is not a traditionalist. He is a rhetorical genius.

Coaches and Parents, Body and Bones.

2007-05-10T17:26:00.000-06:00

[1] Our Cultural Problem with Authority.

In an age when many consider putting on a belt and a button-up shirt "dressing up", it an be quite a culture shock to walk into a sacramental church and find a priest wearing a tab-collar, a robe, and a stole that drapes down off of her neck. If a bishop is present, wearing his flame-shaped, miter hat, and carrying his large shepherd's staff, it can be an even greater shock.

Our natural reaction, as folks living in a consumer culture with a democratic government, is to ask: Why on Earth are they wearing THAT? Why are they standing up front, preaching, teaching, and praying? Who do they think they are?

Now, the shock is not really because what they are wearing is strange. We are tolerant people living in an accepting age, and we see actors on TV and teenagers at the mall wearing much stranger things. The shock is actually due to what the clothing represents, not what the clothing is. The clothing represents something we are not. It represents a certain authority.

For the priest, the tab-collar says that she has a different vocation- a different calling in life- that her neck is yoked to. Her identity is yoked to Christ, serving Him as an elder in His Church. That is, after all, what "priest" means. It comes from the Greek word for "elder": pres-byoo-ter-os. Her stole reminds us of the towel ancient servants would hang around their necks, with which they would wash their master's feet and house. It means that she is a servant of the servants of God.

For the bishop, the pointy, flame-shaped miter represents that he is anointed with the same Spirit of flame that descended upon the Apostles [1]. It means that he is a successor of the Apostles, and he shares in their authority [2]. Likewise, his large shepherd's staff says that he is "chief shepherd" of the Church in his region (which is usually called his "diocese") [3].

And, one of the reasons this disturbs us is because, in a distorted way, our assumptions about authority and social position come from the Bible. In several places the Bible makes the astonishing claim that everyone in Christ is a "priest" of God [4]. It says that being baptized into Christ erases structures of social oppression so that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female", but we are all one in Christ, and equally God's children [5].

Our culture has erased the need to be "in Christ", and declared all people equal, period. From this flows many good gifts: Civil rights, freedom, and democracy. But, this non-Christian concept of freedom forgets that we have rights because we are made in God's image. Thus we forget that God has the right to order our lives. So, we do what we want, completely forgetting Who makes us free and why.

[2] Structure flows from the Identity of the Church.

Yet, the idea of authority and ordered ministry does not flow from our rights, but from God's. It is God's right to define how His Church functions. This makes sense if we remember the foundational images of the Church.

Scripture often speaks of the Church as something like an army [1]. Armies have a definite authority structure. If everyone was a general, the army couldn't march! A similar analogy is a team. Football teams have to have a coach to lead players with separate positions. There may only be one quarterback and six linemen, but they will loose if the linemen keep trying to pass the ball! Every position is an equal member, but all have different functions.

The Church is also called the Family of God [2]. We are God's "children", and Christ's "bride" [3]. And even in this family, the Bible calls some "fathers" and others "little children" [4]. And while the organization of a team or an army is somewhat arbitrary (after all, a lineman could sub-in as quarterback if he really had to), the organization of a family is not.

By age, origin, and DNA, some are grandfathers and grandmothers, some are fathers and mothers, some are older siblings, and some are children. You can't sub-in mom for granddad, or your brother for your mother. All are equal members, with different places.

Finally, the Bible says the Church is the "Body of Christ" [5]. This does not mean that we are simply a group of free individuals who got together to form a club, and then called it a "body". It means that there is a Reality, of which Christ is really the head, and into which we are incorporated by faith and baptism as individual "cells" or "members" [6].

This means that just like any body, the Body of Christ has different organs which contribute to the health of the whole. And Christ has made one of these organs into something like a skeleton, which gives form to the Body, which the muscles attach to, to do the work of the Body. All organs are equal members, but they need the skeleton to work.

[3] From Apostles to Bishops, to Priests, to Deacons.

When Christ ordained and commissioned his apostles, he was beginning this skeleton [1]. He sent them out to grow His Body by bringing new members- new cells- to be part of His life. These apostles, in turn, ordained overseers to continue their ministry around the world [2]. The Greek word for overseer- "e-pis-ko-pos"- was later changed to the Latin "bis-co-pus", and then became our English word "bishop".

These early bishops were given whole cities and regions to oversee, which later developed into a system of dioceses. And, as early as Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus, we find bishops ordaining elders to be extensions of their ministry in local congregations within their diocese [3]. Also, following the Apostles' example, early bishops ordained ministers to take care of the physical needs of God's people, such as teaching and leading the Church in acts of charity [4].

The Greek word for "minister" is "diakonos", from which we get "deacon" [5]. So, when we see bishops, priests, and deacons, we are seeing the growth and continuation of Christ's structure for his Body. And, there are not three skeletons. Bishops, priests, and deacons all share in same skeleton that holds the Church together. It is this ordered, ordained skeleton that the other organs and muscle cells attach to, so Christ's Body can reach out to the world.

And Jesus only ordained one organ of leadership: His Apostles [6]. These Apostles gave their authority and function to the bishops that they ordained [7]. This is why one early bishop wrote "where the bishop is, there the Church is" [8]. The bishop is a sacrament, who re-presents Christ to his people, and represents his people to Christ [9]. Priests and deacons only exist as extensions of the bishop, performing local functions that he cannot do because of the size of the diocese.

[4] The Roles of Clergy and Laity.

This explains the difference between "clergy" and "laity", and why one cannot be Church without the other. Clergy comes from the Greek word "kleros", which means "specially chosen". Clergy are those specially chosen by Christ, through His Church, to be this skeleton [1]. Laity comes from the Greek word "laos", meaning "people" [2]. The clergy give the Body form, so that the laity can function as Christ's muscles and organs.

You cannot have a healthy Body without both. Without the clergy, the Body is a blob. Without the laity, the Body is a dead, dried up mummy. So we can see why ALL Christians are priests in one sense [3]. In English, the word "priest" represents two Greek words. One word means "elder", but the other word means "one who mediates between humans and God through sacrifice" [4].

Because we are ALL cells in the Body, we all function together as Christ's hands and feet doing His work, sacrificing ourselves to help others. We are ALL priests in the second sense, and we all act as mediators between Christ, who is our head, and humanity, who He is reaching out to save. But, only some are chosen as priests in the first sense to be part of His "skeleton".

Now, if we look at the Church as God's Family, we also understand a few other things about the difference between clergy and laity. At family meals, it is the parent who sits at the head of the table and presides over dinner. It is usually the parent who resolves conflict and has the authority to discipline. And it is the parent who is the primary teacher.

When one of the children becomes the "elder sibling", then parents often delegate responsibilities to them. They may help younger siblings, or do chores for the parents. Thus, in God's Family it is the "elder" or "parent" who has the responsibility of presiding over the family meal of communion. They have the duty of teaching and discipline as well. And deacons act as "elder siblings" by serving God's children, and helping them serve the world.

This is why we often call our priests "mother" or "father" [5]. It is healthy as long as we remember that their parenthood and teaching flows from our Father God, and our Teacher Christ, and is not their own. An unhealthy view of clergy comes when we forget that they are merely mirrors of God's authority and organs in Christ's Body, and we begin to "idolize" them as THE Father or THE Teacher [6].

Clergy are also our "shepherds" or "pastors" [7]. They have the responsibility to lead God's sometimes-stubborn flock to healthy food and living water, to defend them from wolves, and rescue the lost sheep. By seeing clergy as parents and shepherds, we can understand the self-sacrificial lifestyle, and God-given authority, that comes with God's call to ministry.

[5] The Roles of the Bishop, Priest, and Deacon.

Thus, the bishop is our "grandparent" in the faith, responsible for guarding the unity, discipline, teaching, and mission in the regional family of a diocese. Within that diocese, priests are our "parents" who celebrate communion, teach, and shepherd local Church families (usually called parishes or congregations). And deacons are our "brothers" and "sisters" who teach God's children to live as Christ, and help them reach into their communities to serve the needy [1].

And, if the Church is a team, then the clergy are our "coaches". It is not the coach's job to play the game, but to empower the team to play together effectively. Thus, clergy are not supposed to DO everything- or even most things- in the Church. Rather, it is their job to teach us and "equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until we all come to… the full stature of Christ." [2]

If there is a problem in a parish, the local priest generally handles it. If that problem grows larger, it is the responsibility of the bishop. And, if a problem affects the Church nationally or worldwide, then bishops follow the early Church who called a council of "apostles and elders" to decide tough issues [3]. Led by the Holy Spirit, bishops will meet together in regional or worldwide councils, and make decisions that are binding on the faith and life of the Church [4].

[6] Identifying clergy.

Now, the question becomes "Who can become clergy?" And the answer is both personal and communal. Personally, someone may feel specially called by God, and they may have individual experiences which lead them to feel like God made them to be clergy. But since clergy are members of the Body, it takes the whole Body to recognize this call [1].

Thus, the Body, led by our bishops, will often look for people to become clergy who have Christlike character, who believe in Scripture and the teaching of the Church, and who exhibit special gifts, such as preaching, teaching, counseling or administration [2]. These three categories- character, doctrine, and ministry gifts- are the primary indicators someone may be called to be clergy.

Some traditions say that only unmarried people may become clergy, but the early Church had ministers and even apostles who were married [3]. And while being unmarried may help some clergy focus solely on ministry [4], it is evident that there are many situations where married clergy can more effectively minister, such as family and marriage counseling.

Also, many traditions exclude women from ministry on the basis of Biblical passages that seem to prohibit women from speaking in Church, teaching, or holding authority over men [5]. But a quick look at the original languages shows that these texts speak specifically about marriage problems between husbands and wives. When Scripture speaks of men and women in general, it uses more generic words for "male" and "female" [6].

Thus in Genesis, men and women are equally made in God's image [7]. In Romans, we are equally infected with sin [8]. And in Galatians, we are equally redeemed in Christ [9]. Several passages make it clear that women taught, preached, ministered, led local Churches, and were "among the apostles" in the early Church [10]. It just makes sense that if the Church reflects redeemed humanity, it should embody the fullness of God's image through male and female leadership.

Thus, men and women, married and unmarried, are identified by the Church as potential clergy. After much training and interviewing, these people can be ordained into the "ordered ministry" as deacons. If they continue to show a calling and ability to be a priest, they may be ordained to that order. And, if the Church recognizes that a priest has unique gifts which indicate God has called them to shepherd a diocese, they may be ordained as bishops.

At this point it becomes personal. What ministry are YOU called to? It is not a question of IF you are called. We all are called. It is a question of who God has made you to be. Where do you fit in the Body? Are you a muscle? An organ? Part of His skeleton? How will you fulfill your vocation as a Christian- a "little Christ"? May Christ Himself guide you in prayer and discernment as you ask yourself, and your Church, this question.

[Endnotes in comments section]

LOVING TRUE IS HARD TO DO

2007-05-06T23:35:00.000-06:00

LOVING TRUE IS HARD TO DO
A SERMON FOR YEAR C, SEASON EASTER 5
By Nathan L. Bostian

Let us pray: Come Lord Jesus: Fill us with your Spirit, and drive far from this place anything that would distract us from you. Let your Word transform our mind, reform our heart, and conform our will: That we may know you more clearly, and love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, now and forever. Amen+

Wow. The last Eucharist of 2007. The end of a year together. It has been a year of triumph: For some of us, this has been our first successful year on our own in the big world, with all of the stupid mistakes, and fun times that come with it. Others of us have arisen victorious over the evil forces of tests, projects, and papers to receive our diploma. And me… I survived becoming a college chaplain. A year of triumph.

But it has also been a year of tragedy. We have lost friends close to home, and seen lives needlessly lost in murderous rampages. We see terrorists blowing up the innocent on TV screens, while elected officials from every side use tragedy as an excuse to get "face time" to fund their election campaigns. As Charles Dickens said in that book that nobody in English class wanted to read: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

And now, most of you are going away for the summer, and I ask myself: What do I want to leave you with as you head out? What does God want me to say to you, to help you deal with the joy and pain that comes from living in a world like ours?

And its days like this that I am glad I minister in a Church that uses a lectionary. A lectionary is a reading schedule that picks the readings for every week during a three-year cycle, so that they are thematically connected with where we are at in the Church year.

That's right, I don't just pick this stuff at random, or play "Bible roulette" to figure out what I am going to talk about.

The lectionary will take you through nearly all of the "preachable" parts of the Bible- minus most of the endless lists "begats", and strange dietary laws- so that, if you prayerfully listen hard every three years, you will know the Bible better than any fundamentalist. I promise.

And it is amazing how the lectionary almost always fits with what we are going through, right here, right now. [Sarcasm] It's almost as if the Bible were really inspired by God, and God really speaks into our lives through it! What a thought…

Anyway. If I could leave you with one thought this summer, it would be precisely what Jesus leaves His disciples with in our lectionary reading today: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Now, it is just like God to say something that is so simple, and so complex, at the same time. It is something we understand in an instant. In fact, I believe God programmed it into our souls, so that we are born knowing that love is, what we were made for. But, even though we understand it, we spend the rest of our lives figuring how to live it, rationalizing why we don't live it, and repenting to try again.

In fact, I want to do something I don't normally do. I want to unpack this command piece by piece. Because, if you look at this command deeply enough, you find something like a mini-systematic theology.

Jesus starts with "just as I have loved you". How did He love us? Well, if Jesus is the Lord God in human form, and not just a liar or a lunatic, then the answer to this does not start with how Jesus loved in his earthly ministry. It starts in who God is.

And Scripture does not say God IS truth, or God IS justice, or God IS power, or even that God IS existence. But, the first letter of John does say "God IS Love" [4.8]. God does not exist to Love. God exists as Love. God's attributes, such as truth, justice, power, and existence flow out of God's essential nature as Love.

And Love cannot exist alone, by itself. I cannot say "I am loving" or "I am in love", and yet have no person to Love. Love requires a beloved. And so, based on what God has shown us about Godself, in Scripture orthodox Christianity comes up with the most outrageous claim that anyone has ever made about God:

That God's being is Love, and that this being is Love because it is made of three eternal persons: The Lover, the Beloved, and the Love they share- The Father, the Son, and the Spirit- that have forever been sharing in each other, dancing with each other, and caring for each other. When we say that God is eternally Three Persons in One Being, the only way to grasp that is to KNOW Love.

But God did not want to keep this Love to Godself, because if you ever encounter true Love, you find that it has one key characteristic: It longs to give itself to others, to share itself, to bring others into the beauty of itself.

So, this undulating, pulsing, dancing Love of God did what Love does: It overflowed. And that overflow is US. All of creation is the result of that cosmic dance of union and separateness, that has always been inside God. And if God is this eternally bonded, interpenetrating, joyfully dancing, self-giving Love that creates life, then you begin to understand the reason for a lot of things: From the playful dance of sub-atomic particles, to the mystery of marriage and sexuality.

It ALL mirrors God.

And this Love made us to share in God's own life, forever. But to do that, God had to give us a choice. God had to give us freedom to deny Love, to hate, to hurt, to destroy the goodness God made. God Loved us enough to risk everything- including His Love- to make us in God's image.

And we took him up on the offer. From hatred, to wars, to adultery, to overdoses… we took Him up on the beautiful, awful, offer of freedom.

But Love did not stop. It did not give up. It did not relent. Love pursued us. Love ceased being an Ideal in Heaven, and became a man on earth. Jesus IS Love Embodied- in human flesh- fully God, fully human, fully Love.

And that Love loved us to the very depths of our pain. The Love sat at the last supper with Judas, who would sell his life for 30 coins. That Love ate with Peter, who would deny that he even knew Jesus when He needed Peter the most. That Love shared food with ten other disciples who would completely abandon Him in a few hours.

Then that Love took up a cross, and endured the death that we all deserve, as a natural consequence of walking away from Love. And, like we have been celebrating over the great 50 days of Easter season, that Love conquered death.

So, when Jesus says "as I have loved", this is a short roadmap of all that this entails. He wants us to love with that same intensity. And the crazy thing is that, if we have joined ourselves to Christ by faith and sacrament, we actually CAN love with that intensity.

Because just one chapter over in John, Jesus tells us "Very truly, I tell you, the one who puts their trust in me will do the works that I do. They will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father" [14.12]. And from the Father he pours out His very own Spirit of Love, the Spirit that brought Him back from the dead, so that we too, can bring back to life a culture of death.

Thus, Jesus follows "as I have loved" with the imperative verb "Love!" It is a command. A verb. An action word. A choice. It is not a sentimental feeling, or a gushy warmth. Love is something you do, even if you don’t feel like it. Liking others is a feeling. But Jesus did not say "Like others as I have liked you". He said "LOVE!"

Now, feelings are nice, and I am not dissing them. But they are not the core of what Love is… although, as you seek to really, truly, selflessly love others, you will find that will start to actually LIKE them too. In fact, you will find all kinds of warm, gushy, sentimental feelings once you start DOING Love. But the doing comes first.

So, what exactly does this "doing" look like in a more general sense? I mean, we know what Love looks like embodied in a first century Jew in an age without the internet or flush toilets. And the example of Jesus does in fact transfer in a whole lot of ways to our own day. But, there are some things that "What would Jesus do?" simply will not answer.

An example is great, but we need a definition too.

And, it just so happens that God thought the same thing, because he had a guy named Paul write a definition, that we hear read at weddings all the time… But if divorce statistics are right, only half of the people actually pay attention to what it says in any lasting way.

It says that Love is "patient". That literally means "long suffering" in Greek. Real Love is willing to suffer with others to do good to them.

It says "love is kind". That means it gives itself for the good of someone else, even when they don't really "deserve" it.

It says "Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude". That means that real love does not put others down, in sneers or snide remarks, to try and raise itself up and feel superior.

It says Love "does not insist on its own way". Another way to translate this is "Love does not grasp things for itself". It isn't selfish. It's selfless. It isn't taking. It's giving. It does not use people as means, but treats them- all of them, even the ones we can't stand- as children of God.

College is a time when it is incredibly easy to be self-centered. No accountability. No spouse. No kids. It is easy to think "it's all about ME!" Love begs us to re-think that.

It says Love "it is not irritable or resentful", and it "does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth". In an age when people are more than willing to believe the worst of their political opponents, and hope for the suffering of those who have wronged them, we need to remember that love is precisely opposite from this.

It doesn't gossip. It doesn't say things to make others look bad. It doesn't make checklists of bad deeds the other person did, to pull out later and beat them over the head with guilt.

Paul's definition of Love ends by saying that Love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things". Love is like God, because it IS God's essence. And God never retreats, never surrenders, never stops, never gives up, never rests until he has brought every single one of his children, every last one of his lost sheep, to know Him and Love Him.

If our Church practiced that kind of Love, how different would we look?

How different would the world look?

How different would you and I look?

And it is not that we do not have the ability to Love like that. We do. We have Christ's resurrection Spirit, the Spirit of Love. We can do "greater things" than Christ, because no longer is there one Christ on the world stage living in God's Love.

There are now millions- even billions- of Christ-ians, little Christs, filled with Christ's Spirit, who could Love like Him if they would just surrender their whole self- body, spirit, and soul- to that Love.

But we don't surrender because we can't conceive it, or don't believe it, or we just find that we have better things to do…

Things to make ME happy…

Man, I am glad God didn't have better things to do. I am glad Jesus isn't just concerned with making himself happy…

What about you?

Can you conceive it? Can you get a vision of this awe-inspiring, world-transforming Love that existed before all time, and has become embodied in Jesus, and now has been poured into you?

Can you believe it? Can you believe that it is this Love that has always Loved you, and wants to transform you into something so beautiful that you can scarcely imagine it?

And if you can really, truly conceive it, and believe it, how can you possibly have something better to do with your life? [PAUSE]

As we leave here and go our separate ways this summer, I have one prayer for each of you, and it is this:

"May Christ fill your life, so much that the Cosmic dance of God's Love overflows from you, so that you may TRULY Love one another as He has Loved you. Amen+"

A Little Make Believe

2007-05-03T11:24:00.000-06:00

I love kids stuff. I work with it every day. My nieces, however, get the biggest dose of my dotage. Last October, I walked into FAO Schwartz to begin planning my Christmas spoilage of Emily, who would be 2 ½ that December.

I went past the life-sized stuffed animals, up the escalator and towards the “Big” piano. The musical instruments… Perfect. No batteries required. No way to stop the noise. The perfect present from an Aunt. Then I saw it. It was pink. It had 3 octaves. It had a matching stool. It was a tiny little piano. It was $150…

I emailed a picture of it to my sister-in-law (whom I love) with the simple question: “How dead would I be if this arrived under the tree?”

Her response: “Not dead. But it would look really cute in your living room when Emily comes to live with you until she’s 18.”

Okay. Maybe something else.

That’s when I found a great gift for any 2 ½ year old. A kitchen set. Now, before you start asking me how I could get my niece something so anti-feminist let me explain two things.
1. She had been playing with mommy’s pans which really wasn’t an approved use for Calphalon.
2. It wasn’t pink. In fact, had no pink anywhere in the set. It was a nice, blue, red and silver set that matched the living room décor pretty well, actually.

It was a huge hit come December. (after the two hour snap-a-thon of putting it together).

Two months later I received the following phone call from my big brother:
Brother: You’ll never guess what your niece did.
Me: Um, does this involve me buying you new flooring?

He then proceeded to tell me (between giggle fits) that Emily, in her wisdom, decided that she needed to wash her dishes. You see, being a toy kitchen it has a sink and a faucet, but no running water or drain…

Emily began by emptying her sippy-cup of water into the bowl/sink and then made two or three trips to the refrigerator door for refills. Once the sink was sufficiently filled, she began to ‘wash’ every dish that came with the kitchen.

About 30 minutes or so later, all the dishes ‘clean’ she now had a new problem. What to do with all the water? Remember, there is no drain in a sink with no running water.

Being the smart little monkey she is, Emily took the aforementioned sippy-cup and proceeded to DRINK the sink water a cup at a time. The entire sink-ful of water was gone in a matter of a few large gulps.

How my brother kept from laughing like a goon at the time, I’ll never know.

It struck me later how many times I’ve been ‘washing the dishes in a toy kitchen.’

When the real thing isn’t available, isn’t an option, I tend to make do with a lesser equivalent. How often do we go through the motions, substituting the next best thing instead of doing the slightly harder work it takes to get the real McCoy? There are times when we can only get so close to the real thing but instead of continuing to work for the prize, we settle for the knock-off, for the fake, for the impostor.

Sure what Emily was doing had all the same elements of actually washing the dishes: water, scrubbing, drying. But it was missing a few key element: soap, heat, a drain, in essence, the parts that actually do the cleaning. At the same time, if I can get the same good feeling by just going through the motions of getting clean, why should I put myself through all the trouble of actually getting clean?

Because I’m a grown up.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. (1 Corinthians 13:11)
The things I fake my way through should just be exercises, practice to prepare me for the day when I feel ready to grow up, put on my big girl pants, and do it for real. You only take a driver’s test after you’ve practiced and learned; so why not learn how to be a Christian gradually, as a child learns.

I think it’s great that Emily now knows how to wash the dishes, and when she gets older, she can help out and wash the real dishes. But for now, she’ll learn by playing.

And maybe, get a little water on the floor.

ARE YOU SHEEPISH?

2007-04-29T16:04:00.000-06:00

ARE YOU SHEEPISH?
A Sermon for Year C, Easter 4
By Nathan L. Bostian

Let us pray: Come Lord Jesus: Fill us with your Spirit, and drive far from this place anything that would distract us from you. Let your Word transform our mind, reform our heart, and conform our will: That we may know you more clearly, and love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, now and forever. Amen+

In the interests of Orthodox Christianity, I would like to start off tonight's sermon in a very unorthodox way. I want to ask you a silly question, and I would like your silly response:

When you were a kid (or an adult!) what animal did you want to be, and why? [ASK AROUND FOR ANSWERS]

I have to admit that I never really fantasized about being an animal. An astronaut, or a knight, or GI Joe, yes. But animals: not so much.

However, I thought that it would be really cool to be a huge, ferocious bird of some type. An Eagle, or a Falcon: Something with huge talons and that blood-curdling scream that would make your prey wet itself. And yeah, the idea of flying was pretty cool too.

But there is one animal hardly anyone fantasizes about being: A sheep.

Have you ever been around sheep for any length of time? I mean, in Sunday School as kids we got great felt-board pictures of happy fluffy sheep. And if you were lucky, you got to make one out of cotton balls, and take to your parents. But, the reality is not so cuddly…

First of all, sheep stink. Have you ever petted a sheep and smelled your hand? It's enough to make your eyes water. They smell because of the urine and feces… and Lord knows what else is growing in that fur. They are dirty, messy, smelly creatures who have no way of grooming themselves. Sheep are eating and pooping machines!

Second of all, sheep are dumb and near sighted. They have been known to eat their way off of a cliff, if their shepherd is not careful. They only focus about what is right in front of them, right here, right now. They only care about feeding their stomachs.

Third of all, sheep are pretty defenseless. I mean, they can kick hard and hurt you (especially if they kick a man in the just the right spot!). And they can take a good nip out of you, especially if you get between them and their food. But, if a truly ferocious animal comes into a sheep pen- like a wolf or a mountain lion- they are toast.

Finally, sheep are cranky. If they are hungry or thirsty, they are not meek and docile. They complain and whine and BAA BAA BAA. They will chew on your clothes. They will ram into you, and into each other, if they think someone has something good to eat. And if you think sheep just sit there while you try to shear them, think again!

At shearing time, it is a wrestling match that would be tough for Hulk Hogan or the Rock. They bite, kick, yelp, head butt, and try to run. I know people who shear sheep, and they are some of the toughest folks I have ever met.

Maybe that is why Jesus compares us to sheep. I know I have many days when I am messy, cranky, defenseless, and dumb. Many times I am near-sighted, and I only care about the next thing I can consume to meet MY needs. And I can be grumpy, complaining, mean, rude, and even… smelly… How about you?

And this is the point where I admit that out of all of the images that Jesus uses to talk about our relationship with him, the image of sheep is the one I like the least. I don't like it for two reasons:

First, in all of the dozens of sermons I have heard about sheep- until one I heard last week- I have never figured out WHY Jesus would want to save sheep. I mean, if sheep are so worthless and bad, why would the shepherd even CARE about them? The image of the sheep shows us how bad we NEED the good shepherd, but it does not seem to tell us WHY the shepherd would want to save us in the first place.

Second, like all of you in this room, I would rather be another, better animal… ANY animal… Anything except a sheep.

I mean, couldn't I be a dog. Dogs are friendly, warm, lovable, and even helpful. But dogs have one and only one thing they want out of life: They want to feel good. They want to live to party and howl at the moon. They will eat anything that tastes good, and if they are in heat, they will run out the door and take anything they can get! They will do anything to get their head patted, their belly rubbed, and their mouth around that treat in your hands.

The motus operandi of the dog is to achieve happy feelings and avoid bad feelings. There is nothing greater to life. I can be a dog. Can you? Are there days when your whole purpose in life is achieve pleasure, and avoid pain?

But, how about a cat? I am not the biggest cat fan in the world, but my mother is. She says that cats have ever-so-much more personality than dogs. You can pet them and cuddle them: but on THEIR terms. Cats are calm and collected and always aloof.

If dogs live for pleasure, then the goal of a cat's life is pride. Cats are better than all other animals, and they know it, and you know it… Because they have YOU trained. They look down their noses at sloppy dogs, and stupid sheep. They are one of the only animals who can sneer…

Do you have days when you are a cat? Are there times when you raise your self up, by putting down others, because you are more enlightened, more cultured, more intelligent, or just more…

I know there are days I am a cat. And when I am it shows…

Or perhaps some of us have wanted to be a racing stallion or a majestic mare. Beautiful, powerful, and successful: these animals decorate more paintings than just about any other animal except humans. Their mane is just so, their muscles ripple, they race and do not grow tired… They are, in a word, studs.

Is it a horse you want to be? The person who turns heads when they enter the room. The "winner". The "success". The "professional".

I have days I want to be a horse. How about you?

But there are those of us who are not happy enough to be dogs, nor coy enough to be cats, nor successful enough to be horses. And we resent the hell out of them for it. So we choose a different strategy, a different mascot:

We choose to be a Rhinocerous. Powerful, ferocious, armor plated. Rhinos are feared even by the King of the Beasts: The Lion. In fact, not many human weapons can take down a Rhino. The Rhino dominates the animal world by sheer power.

Are you a Rhino that tries to dominate your world by sheer power? Do you keep others out, by building up armor plates, to keep everyone away from the real you deep inside?

What is your armor plating, your source of power? Is it having all the answers, and using your intellect to annihilate your opponents? Is it being the dedicated martyr, that always does everything, yet never gets the appreciation you deserve? Is it using guilt and anger to always keep others under your control?

We all have days when we are pleasure seeking dogs, or pride seeking cats, or prestige seeking horses, or power seeking rhinos. But a sheep, believe it or not, does something that NONE of these animals will ever do.

All of these animals exist to TAKE from others. But sheep are PRODUCING animals. Out of all of these animals, only sheep can produce something that is of value to others. They were made to produce, to benefit others, and they do it NATURALLY.

In the ancient middle east, you could use sheep for many things: You could milk them, eat them, or skin them. But this was not their main value, and in all honesty you could use better animals to milk, eat, or skin. But, sheep had one thing that none of the other domestic animals had: Their wool.

With the wool of a sheep you could make tunics, togas, blankets, tents, and any number of other cloth items… All without killing the sheep. Sheep, in the ancient middle east, were the perfect renewable resource! Sure, Egyptian cotton might breathe better, but would you want it on a cold desert night to keep you warm? Sure, papyrus was easier to find, but would you want to use a place-mat for a shirt?

And I think this is why Jesus uses the metaphor of sheep. Because on one hand: Sheep REALLY need a shepherd. Like I said, they are messy, cranky, dumb, nearsighted, and almost defenseless to the enemy… Just like we are.

But, on the other hand, they are uniquely productive creatures. And in the hands of a master craftsman, the thread and fabric made from sheep can create masterpieces! To switch the metaphor just a bit, I think this is the idea behind what Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-10:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life."

Like sheep, we cannot save ourselves. We fall into ditches all the time, and cannot pull ourselves out. We are constantly attacked by forces of evil and consumerism, that will utterly consume us like a rabid wolf, unless we have a shepherd to do battle or us.

But, once we allow the shepherd to save us and guide us, we begin to live into what we were made to be all along: A uniquely creative masterpiece, that does good works, which really change the world.

What kind of masterpiece will we be? The original text of this Ephesians passage uses the Greek word for a sculpture or a piece of pottery. But, if you will allow me a little prophetic imagination, I am thinking about another kind of masterpiece that is in line with our "sheepishness".

Do you have anyone in your life that does needlepoint work? My wife, my mother, and my grandmother all do needlepoint. My grandmother won championships for her work. She would spend days on end, patiently weaving together the most intricate and creative pieces.

One of the things that always struck me about her work was how it looked in the process of making it: It looked horrible right up until the end. It was splotchy on top, and from the underside it was just a knotted tangle of random colors.

Then, one day, you could see it: A picture of a lamb, or a cat, or a dog, or a horse, or a rhino… Yes, she actually did do pictures of all of these animals, and a hundred others.

Somehow, in the hands of a master craftswoman, the random threads became something beautiful. From the underside it looked like nothing but a tangle of random string, but from the top, it was breathtaking.

Imagine for a moment you are a sheep. And each one of you has a different color coat. Some are white, some brown, some yellow, some blue, some red, some… Tie dyed. Each of you has a unique coat, with a unique color, that God made only for you.

If you hold back your life, from the Good Shepherd, and your coat from His Father the Master Craftsman, you can never, ever become what you were made to be. The enemy will come in and slaughter you. Your unique color will never be woven into the fabric of creation.

If you refuse to drink from the Living Water of God's Holy Spirit, and instead choose to drink from the polluted wells of consumer society, you will never grow the coat God designed you to have. You will grow sick, and die. But, there is another way…

Don't despise your sheepishness. Don't walk around life trying to be a cat, or a dog, or a horse, or a rhino. Be a sheep. Listen for the Shepherd's voice amidst the maddening noise of the world.

Give thanks for the times when you are sheared- even though they are often painful- knowing that God is making something beautiful out of all of your trouble, just like He made resurrection out of the death of His Son.

And, if you surrender yourself to the guidance of the Good Shepherd, He will lead you to the pasture of life, because He alone has walked through the valley of Death, and He knows the way home.

If you drink deeply from the Spirit's living water, you will grow healthy and strong, and your coat will be shining and glorious.

And if you surrender yourself to be sheared by the Father, who is the Master Craftsman, he will take your wool and weave it into a picture that you scarcely would have imagined, and never will forget.

And now, may you find true life in the Living Water of the Spirit. May you find true Love in the arms of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. And may you find true purpose in the Master Craftsman, God the Father Almighty. Amen+

Restoring or Distorting Christianity?

2007-04-25T21:37:00.000-06:00

[The following is a letter written to some hokey heretics who run a website called http://restoringchristianity.com. Their ideas stem from a familiar hyper-protestant assumption that they are "restoring" the "true Church" after it has been corrupted for 19 centuries. This, of course, assumes that God allowed His Church to be lost for nearly 2000 years without doing anything until he raised up this new group to restore everything! Anyway, the three keys to the website are:

1. They claim there is no Trinity, Jesus is not God, and the only God is the Father. But, if you wonder why Trinitarianism makes sense (and they don't!), and why Jesus is God, read CS Lewis "Mere Christianity", Peter Kreeft's "Handbook of Christian Apologetics", Thomas Oden's "Systematic Theology", Athanasius' "On the Incarnation", and Augustine's "De Trinitatae".

2. They claim that salvation is conditional, and we must be baptized into Christ to be saved. But, of course, one may ask: How would baptism save us if Christ is not divine, since we are being included in Him? It would seem that only God could save us and bring us to God, and if Christ is not God, he is a created being like us who needs to be saved just as we do.

3. They claim that their anti-Trinitarianism is a new idea, and unknown for most of Church History. This is utterly bogus too. Read on to find out more!

So, I wrote this letter to mock their assumptions, in a tone which makes it sound like I approve of them. Everything here is tongue-in-cheek. But note, I never actually use words of approval. I wonder if they will catch on…]

Welcome to the club!

It looks like you have found what I like to call the "open secret": The belief that Jesus is not a god, much less "the God". So many have often wondered why simple-minded Christians (and many with much more intellectual firepower) would want to affirm such a complex and paradoxical doctrine.

As you have so shrewdly noted, we must allow our pure reason and logic to govern our interpretation of the Scriptures, and allow no conceptions of God which are not fully comprehendible within the bounds of individual, personal reason at all. We are individuals made in God's image- the image of a solitary, single individual Mind- and therefore we cannot allow any so-called community, tradition, or other human invention to impede our rational progress. It is obvious to all enlightened people that this is the only way.

Thus, we were quite obviously made to stand alone as solitary individuals before God, with our chief test in life to comprehend and assent to Truth as God has propositionally revealed His Truth in Scripture. There is no higher purpose for humankind than the rational apprehension of, and application of, propositional Truth! We shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set us free!

So, I am quite excited you have unshackled yourself from the chains of all tradition, community, and the so-called historical development of Christian doctrine. In fact, this leads to my critique of your website:

You claim that what you present is the "minority" position in Christian history. You also demonstrate a somewhat limited knowledge of the facts of history. Why sell yourself short? Why sell human intellect and intuition short?

If you will, let me instruct you on some historical facts about the belief in one unitary God, as opposed to a Trinity, and why this may be the majority view of God, not a minority.

First of all, it is clear that the Jews believed in a single, simple Divine Unity. Whether through human reason alone, or through borrowing from the Jews, the ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Artistotle believed in Divine Unity too. In fact, Islam can be seen as a misguided attempt to restore Divine Unity from the paradoxical concept of the Trinity.

Secondly, I would argue that Divine Unity has either been a strong minority, or actual majority, belief within Christianity for it's entire History, especially within its self-proclaimed Intellectually Enlightened followers.

During the first few centuries, belief in Divine Unity was expressed among a number of movements that later were deemed "heretical". Gnostics, Dynamic Monarchians, Adoptionists, Ebionites, Manichees, and a host of other Christian groups that were eventually declared outside of "the Church" held views similar to, or identical to, Divine Unity. For a biased but useful sketch of such movements, check out Irenaeus' five books of "Against Heresies" (Adversus Haereses),

The Biblical scholar and theologian Arius let the cat out of the bag and openly declared Divine Unity in the 300's. Contrary to your [mis]reading of history, Arius almost took the day and defeated the arch-Trinitarian bishop Athanasius. Most of the Roman Emperors of the fourth century were smart enough to realize the practical wisdom of Divine Unity, and tried to suppress the Trinity doctrine any way they could, and get rid of the Nicene Creed. Even the great Empweror Constantine and his friend bishop Eusebius held views similar to Divine Unity.

Throughout the middle ages, many thinkers and groups held views of Divine Unity. These people were ruthlessly dealt with by capital punishment and even by open warfare (in some Crusades and the Inquistion). Groups that held views like Divine Unity include the Albigenses, Cathari, and Bogomiles. Unitarianism grew nonetheless in certain areas, notably Spain, until the condemnation of Felix of Urgel by the Frankish Church in A.D. 799. Since these groups and thinkers were so ruthlessly dealt with, we do not have any idea what their extent was. However, we do know there were enough of them to demand a seven year crusade to stamp out the Albigenses.

As an organized movement Unitarianism, first in Poland and Hungary, dates from the Anabaptists of the Reformation, but not until recently have there been Unitarian denominations. It was revived in the Reformation period and was most obvious among Socinians. It spread particularly in Poland and Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and later in England and America.

Prominent anti-Trinitarian proponents were Girgio Blandrata, Francis David, Michael Servetus, Fausto Sozzini, and John Biddle. Servetus died at the stake for his views, but others fared better. In Poland the physician Blandrata dominated the early phases of the movement until 1563. In 1565, Polish Unitarians were excluded from the Reformed Church, but created their own “Minor Church” and issued the Unitarian Racovian Catechism in 1605. After the death of Sozzini (1604) they lost influence. In 1638 Jesuits took over their college, and in 1658 Unitarians were expelled from Poland.

Meanwhile Blandrata had gone to Hungary and won his monarch John Sigismund to anti-Trinitarianism. David was made Unitarian bishop in 1568, but had troubles after the king’s death, and died in the dungeon. Although harassed by the government, Unitarians created a common confession in 1638, and later were recognized.

English Unitarianism is traced to John Biddle, although no separate congregation existed until Theophilus Lindsey formed Essex Chapel, London. Joseph Priestley ministered to Unitarian congregations in Leeds and later Birmingham before a mob destroyed his chapel and his belongings. In 1794 he went to the United States and formed a church at Northumberland, Pennsylvania. English Unitarians were recognized by law in 1813; the British and Foreign Unitarian Association was formed in 1825; and in 1881 the national conference was created.

Alongside of this is he development of English Deism, which holds a doctrine of Divine Unity and actually boasted having many (if not most) of the English clergy and university professors during the 17th-19th centuries, although most could not be "open" about their Deistic views because English Law demanded adherence to Trinitarianism if they were to hold clerical positions or professorships.

Isaac Newton, who had Deistic leanings, had begun to unlock the secrets of the universe, while John Locke peered into the human mind. Locke’s "Reasonableness of Christianity" (1695) was a spur to the rationalization of the Christian faith, and it is implicitly anti-Trinitarian, although though he disavowed claims of Deists to be following his lead.

As early as 1624 Lord Herbert of Cherbury had taught that all religions had five basic ideas in common and denied the need for revelation. In 1696 John Toland published "Christianity not Mysterious", and Matthew Tindal produced the most competent exposition of this natural religion in "Christianity as old as the Creation" (1730). Both of these books highlight the idea that Divine Unity is the most rationalistic form of religious belief, and the type of religious belief most universally known to enlightened people.

And, back on the continent in Germany and France, the ideals of Divine Unity took over early, and all but wiped out Trinitarian belief by the mid-1800's. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant, and theologians like Fredereich Schleirmacher, were very successful in pointing out how irrational belief in the Trinity was, and how it needed to be re-interpreted at worst, abandoned at best. In fact, the State Church of the Nazis taught a form of Divine Unity developed from German rationalism.

But the most successful Unitarian church body has been in the USA. Prominent Americans like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin held anti-Trinitarian ideas. The first Unitarian congregation—King’s Chapel, Boston—was formed out of the oldest Episcopal parish in America when the rector, James Freeman, ignored references in the Book of Common Prayer to the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. American Unitarianism developed in the Congregational churches of Massachusetts. More recently, Jehovah's Witnesses have developed and thrived from an essentially Unitarian theology.

So, far from being a hidden idea, or a minority opinion, I would argue that what you espouse on your website is at least one form of regular, garden variety Religion (if not THE form).

So congratulations on going where the natural human mind takes you: To a non-divine, non-mysterious, non-problematic Jesus Christ. You are now just like everyone else who denies that Jesus is YHWH (i.e. Lord). Perhaps your streamlined, rationalized faith will lead you to greater self-esteem, more self-reliance, and liberation from the bondage of classical Christianity. And may providence direct you as you seek to "restore Christianity", and may God reward you according to what your doctrine deserves.

DRAMA AND DOGMA

2007-04-22T00:31:00.000-06:00

DRAMA AND DOGMA
A Sermon for Year C, Easter-3
By Nathan L. Bostian

Let us pray: Come Lord Jesus: Fill us with your Spirit, and drive far from this place anything that would distract us from you. Let your Word transform our mind, reform our heart, and conform our will: That we may know you more clearly, and love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, now and forever. Amen+

I have to admit it: I love the 80's. One of the reasons why my wife and I got rid of cable TV, is because we wasted literally whole days of our lives watching the various VH-1 renditions of "I love the 80's" and mockumentaries of hair bands and all-time worst rap songs.

I am a child of the 80's, and in many ways I will always be stuck in the era of Reaganomics, female shoulder pads, Tom Cruise bomber jackets, acid washed jeans, and t-shirts for "The Cure". Sometimes I still listen to Synth Rock, Punk Rock, Hair Bands, and rap songs performed by guys who wore enormous clocks around their necks.

And, its not just me. It seems that everyone I know has a fascination with some era in history, whether it is the one they grew up in, or an era much earlier than that.

And that leads me to a question: Why do we have such a love-hate relationship with history? Because it seems like culture is schizophrenic on this subject (and a hundred others!)

On one hand, our culture makes money hand-over-fist by playing on our nostalgia. We dedicate whole channels to it (the History Channel: All Nazis, all the time!). We make movies about it all the time, whether tales of fallen dictators, stories about sinking ships, or tragedies about greased-down Greek warriors. And every five years you can be assured that some type of retro fashion trend will be dug out of the closet, and make everything old, new again.

Yet, as much as we love nostalgia, we usually hate history. Very few of us have any interest in knowing it, and even fewer of us think we can learn from it. Most of us suffer from a self-imposed blindness that CS Lewis calls "chronological snobbery". It is the false belief that just because we have computers, flush toilets, and other technological advances over past ages, we are also more advanced than they are socially, morally, and spiritually.

We are sure that if THEY had the level of technology WE have, all they would do would be wage endless wars on each other, with staggering death tolls, all while technologically rich countries systematically oppress poorer countries. Wait a minute…

Anyway… There is no greater evidence of chronological snobbery than among those who believe that the classical Christian faith- especially as expressed in our Creed- that this faith is hopelessly outdated, and needs a new image. They want to do the theological equivalent of "pimp my ride".

A great example of this is found in an interesting book I was recently given called "Creating Uncommon Worship". On one hand, it is filled with many interesting ways to make our style of liturgical worship more rich and impacting. On the other hand, it is also filled with a revisionist attack on classical Christianity, particularly the Creed.

It's author says that the Creed causes us to turn a "somersault in an unceasing attempt to make sense of… thought forms and issues which no longer have much meaning for us." It is "an indication of the perverseness of the Church in obscuring Jesus behind a smokescreen of fourth-century philosophical jargon."

Notice the first move here. The Creed is not wrong because it is untrue, but because it is old. It is the Creed's fault for not using up-to-date language that we can understand… not OUR responsibility to try and understand what it is really saying, and ONLY THEN judge it.

Could you imagine if you required your psychology, calculus, or economics professors to speak in "thought forms and issues" that were meaningful to you, before you took notes? Would you tell the IRS to use jargon you could understand, before paying your taxes?

I think it makes sense that if we are going to really try to understand God, it might require us to stretch our brains a bit… Don't you?

Then the author pulls his second weapon: Inclusion. He says "Those Christian traditions which today insist on the Nicene Creed as the only permissible creedal formula exhibit a mind-blowing insensitivity to how far humankind has since traveled"

There you have it. Because it is old and crusty- not because it is untrue- the Creed violates our sense of inclusivity, and the triumph of our undeniable progress… undeniable as long as you don't speak to any victim of the genocides or world-wars of the last century.

To be more inclusive, the author says that the local "community of faith might take on the project of writing its own creed, giving unique expression to the life and power of God in its midst."

Let me get this straight. By creating a local creed, written by a small group of people, from one place, at one time, we are more inclusive than using a Creed that has been used for dozens of centuries, by every tribe, and tongue, and sex, and age, of people.

Yep, that's REAL inclusive.

Actually, it is the ultimate form of Ageism, because it ignores and excludes whole eras of humanity, in favor of our little clique here and now. If we want to be really inclusive, shouldn't we actually include the whole Church through all time and not just a select group of wealthy folk, educated in the western intellectual tradition?

GK Chesterton calls this the "democracy of the dead", because we allow the whole communion of saints- not just our little club of like-minded people- to guide us in our life in Christ.

The third weapon he pulls out is what I call the "enlightened sneer". He uses it when he says that those who use a Creed demonstrate "a marked lack of creativity", and that "[t]o recite parrot-fashion the Nicene Creed is no way… for grown-ups to reaffirm their faith."

Someone has said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true, a sneer is worth a thousand pictures. With one facial contortion, without any argument at all, the argument gets decided.

[SNEERING] "Oh, you couldn't possibly believe that old-fashioned idea, could you?"

With one roll of the eyes, the opposition is silenced…

[SNEERING, EYE ROLLING] "Oh, not that tired stuff again."

The sneer is the perfect tactic for the person who feels like rejecting something, but cannot come up with any valid reason why. Just gather a group of people who look like you, and think like you, and by using the sneer you can reject ANYONE and ANYTHING as utterly irrelevant… Without EVER actually justifying it!

Just say they are not "creative", or they are just "parrots", or they are not "adult". And if that doesn’t work, simply flash that ever-so-knowing look to your friends that signifies that "we KNOW we are SO much smarter than these peasants".

But notice, the author here has proved nothing, other than His own taste. He has not demonstrated whether the Creed was right or wrong, true or false. He has simply shown that His enlightened community does not LIKE it.

The closest he comes to any factual statement about the Creed is to note that it was "not handed down to us from God on tablets of stone", but was a product of fierce debate, fighting, and historical development. But this does not make the Creed untrue, because EVERY field of knowledge, from Scripture to Science, comes to us through fierce debate, fighting, and historical development.

He also repeats the myth that the Creed- and classical Christianity- came about because it had all of the power on its side. In actual reality, Saint Athanasius, the greatest proponent of the Creed and the faith it proclaimed, was EXILED at least five times because He would not stop teaching it.

This is because the Creedal faith proclaims a Reality that threatens human power:

It starts by proclaiming that God is a Trinity. God is three Persons in one unified Being, three Subjects in one Object, three Personalities in one Reality.

God is Triune because God is Love. The inner-reality of God is Love, shared between the Father, Son, and Spirit for all eternity… and our creation and salvation, are entirely from the overflow of this Love.

The next thing the Creed proclaims- which flows logically from the Reality of the Trinity- is that this God became uniquely and fully present, in space and time, in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus the unknown God becomes knowable, and the untouchable God is touched.

This is why the Creed says that Jesus is "God from God", and the same "Being" as the Father. It means He is fully part of the Reality that is God, and there was never a time when He wasn't God.

This is also why it says that Jesus is "light from light". The metaphor here is fire. Fire is three aspects of one reality: The Source, the Light, and the Heat. These three aspects are different, but can never exist apart from each other. The Father is the Source, Jesus is the Light, and the Holy Spirit is the heat.

And this is why the Creed says that Jesus is "begotten" of the Father, and not "made". The analogy here is that humans MAKE things that are not human- like computers, cars, and furniture. But humans can only BEGAT- or cause the birth of- other humans. Jesus comes forth from the Father, but not as something made by the Father. Instead, the Creator can only begat someone that is the same as the Creator. Jesus is one with this Creator, not just His creation.

Now, for the first three centuries of this faith, the Church was persecuted from outside by the Roman State, and from the inside from pseudo-Christian groups who wanted to create a easier-to-control, more "culturally-relevant", faith.

And once Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, it did not mean that the rich, complex Trinitarian faith won. In fact, most Roman emperors, for a century after Christianity became accepted, saw that a fully Divine Christ was a threat to their power.

If the Church proclaimed a Jesus who was fully God, then that meant that Christ was more important than the Empire, and even more important than the Emperor. With a fully divine Christ, if the choice was "follow the Emperor" or "follow Christ", the choice was clear.

But, if the Church proclaimed a simple, unitary God, and a Christ who was just a really good guy- and not the God-man- then the Emperor had a place to stand. The Emperor is God's man on earth, just like Jesus was. And, if Christ is not God, the Emperor's rules RULE. This is why 1700 years later Hitler supported a state religion which said Jesus was not God. It made his "final solution" possible.

So, for that century most Emperors condemned and exiled Church leaders who supported the Creed and the God-man it proclaimed. They wanted power, and they needed a tame Jesus to get it.

Yet, despite persecution, the Creed and the faith it represents won out. Not because those who supported it were more powerful, but because it more accurately reflected the Reality of God in Christ.

Now, I am not saying the Creed is perfect, nor that it is easy to understand. I am simply saying it is true, and it safeguards realities that are essential to knowing who God is, and who we are.

Perhaps the best objection I have heard about the Creed is this: In Scripture, when we read the Drama of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, we find something vibrant, passionate, and powerful. He appears personally. He impacts lives. He changes the world.

When we see the Drama of Heaven found in our reading from Revelation, we encounter something dynamic, fiery, and alive. How does this Drama relate to the cold, objective, complex Dogma we find in our Creed? Doesn’t this Creed somehow flatten our Faith and make it something LESS alive than the Jesus we worship?

Perhaps…

But, the Dogma of the Creed relates to the Drama of Jesus in the same way that skydiving classes relate to the actual experience of skydiving.

Now, you might be able to strap on a parachute, jump out of a plane, and land safely, without ever even reading the instructions or being instructed. You might… But would you really want to bet on it?

Would you complain that the instructor used too much jargon… or that what they described was not relevant to your experience?

No. You would get instructed. It would probably be slightly boring, and it would seem a little irrelevant. But it would make your actual experience of skydiving much more enjoyable, and it might just save your life.

Now, the Creed is a bit like a checklist before skydiving. It is a list of the essential things you need to remember on your journey with God. It was developed by three centuries of people who suffered and died for the Christ it preaches, and it has been re-affirmed by 17 centuries of people who suffered and lived for the God it proclaims.

It is the result of the Church wrestling with the fact that there is one God, but that somehow this God is known in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father. It comes from the deep realization that ONLY God can save us and bring us to Godself, and that Jesus is the ONE who does this. It stems from the understanding that we simply cannot find God on our own, but that God has found us in Jesus.

There is one thing I concur with the author on. He says our affirmation of faith "has to be something we are proud to say, not an embarrassment." We should be able to "[a]ffirm our faith in God and in the risen Lord Christ without having to cross our fingers behind our backs."

I agree. Let us declare our common belief in the Reality of the Triune God, who has been made known to us in Jesus Christ. Let us affirm our faith loudly and proudly with the whole Church, in every place, through all time. And let us remember that this is just a checklist to help us dive deep into the life of God, and not a substitute for the Drama of loving Christ passionately, with our whole heart. Amen+

And now join me in affirming this faith along with God's people around the world, and all of the prophets, saints, apostles, and martyrs who have gone before us, by praying together the words of our Creed found on page 358.