Why Myron Rolle is morally superior...

My brother in law and I have had an ongoing discussion about what it would mean to be a pro athlete and a Christian. Part of the discussion stems from our own crushed dreams, and part of it stems from a comment a professor made to me once, “I am not sure a person can be a Christian and a professional athlete.” Being raised in a sports addicted family, this sounded like anathema to me, and I have been trying to parse it out ever since. I will avoid the whole discussion of positives and negatives, though that may show up some day, and rather point out two unique stories from this year’s NFL draft. Consider the case of Tim Tebow and Myron Rolle. The coverage and questions of Rolle have been fascinating to me. If you don’t know, Rolle is a Rhodes Scholar who has hopes of becoming a doctor and wants to model scholarship and professionalism to young urban students. He gave up his last year of eligibility to study in England and has now returned to try his hand as an NFL safety. The major question is whether Rolle can take the NFL seriously enough to play for a long time and stay committed. Here’s a great blog post that spells this out (http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_college_fsu/2010/04/former-florida-state-safety-myron-rolle-too-smart-for-the-nfl.html). Now Tebow. There are also a ton of questions about Tim Tebow, the mechanics of his throwing motion, his ability to take snaps, how quickly he can release the ball, how accurate can he be, etc… Not once though has anyone mentioned his Christianity as a possible drawback. No one has said, “Doesn’t your commitment to Christ make this game a bit irrelevant? How do we know that you are going to play like football is the most important thing in your life, especially when you claim to follow Christ?” In short, if scholarship and medical missions can get in the way of a productive NFL career, why can’t Jesus?

Story Worth Sharing

Recently, I was driving my children through the McDonalds drive-thru, and this prompted Colette to proclaim, "When I grow up I want to work at McDonalds." Uh-oh. "And I am going to work in the drive-thru." Oh no. "Then I can give away a bunch of money." Yes! Of course, Calvin would not let this go without commentary, "You can't work at McDonalds and give a lot of money away, you need to make a lot of money so that you can keep some money for yourself, and still give a lot away." Uh-oh, again. As I am rattling through possible responses, Josh decides to resolve the debate by dropping this bomb, "I think Jesus told a story about this. There is a rich guy who gives a lot of money away and an old lady who is poor, but gives away her last penny. Jesus says that the poor lady actually gave more." Wow. Just as I am about to break my arm patting myself on my back for my amazing parenting, Calvin humbles me with, "That's right, I remember seeing a video about that." Yuck. Curse you VeggieTales. Oh well, back to trying to teach kids about Jesus, and also learning from them.

Prayer for Easter Week 2

Rising from the dead God,
In a world full of earthquakes, coal mines, drug cartels, disease and death, you call us to believe that you have conquered such things. We confess that this sort of believing is not easy for us, and yet, you have called us to something far more difficult than just belief. You have sent us into this very same world. The only way we can even imagine attempting such a terrifying task is if you go with us Lord, if you lead us forward in the freedom of your cross and resurrection. In our world captured by the tyranny of cause and effect, make us crazy enough to be your resurrection people. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Plato, the gospel and Batman?

Awhile ago I was taught that one of the grave dangers of modernity was its tendency to dichotomize the human person. Following Plato’s idealism, layering it with Kant and America’s rugged individualism creates an anthropology that produces humanity as essentially “thinking things.” When we throw Protestant (particularly) theology into that already potent mix, we develop notions of salvation and doctrine that make almost know sense of the entire person. We find ourselves saying things like this:
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” AW Tozer
When we are radically consistent, we eventually produce a gospel message that sounds like the one I recently heard at a Tenth Avenue North concert, in which the lead singer (inspired by John Piper) talks about this clip from Batman Begins:

After doing a spot on impression of the movie the singer reminds the crowd that the problem with Batman is that he can’t be saved, and here’s the kicker- “He can’t be saved because he things that what he does matters. But its not what he does that’s important about him, its who he is.” Wow. The complete separation of deeds and self. If we take away our actions, how would we even know who we are? Are we only our actions, like Batman seems to imply? No, of course not, but we are way more than just our minds. Compare the earlier Tozer quote with this one,
“We have no idea how to live until we first know who God is. So when we say that God's name is holy, that tells us how we ought to live. Knowing the creator tells us where the creation is meant to move.” Hauerwas and Willimon, Lord, Teach Us. 46-47.
The differences are subtle, but enormous and crucial. For more on some of these connections, check out Jams KA Smith’s latest book Desiring the Kingdom.

Thy Kingdom Come

I wanted to another little write up about this section of the Lord's prayer to continue our series, but I am having a hard time spitting it out. I will not leave you longing for my thoughts on this, though, as I do have some scattered ideas and a not great talk on this part. First the scattered thoughts:
1. Just as God’s name opens for us the challenge of living holy lives, so to does the prayer for God’s kingdom. To be God’s kingdom people, the people who pray and work and long for the kingdom, means to be a people whose lives are characterized by Kingdom dreams and hopes.

2. “In saying, ‘Your Kingdom come,’ we are acknowledging that faith in Jesus is not simply an idea or an emotion. It is a concrete reality in which we are to become part or else appear to be out of step with the way things are now that God has come into the world in Jesus. When the kingdom comes, we are ‘to repent [i.e., change, let go of our citizenship in the old kingdoms] and believe the good news [i.e., join up, become part of the revolution].” Lord Teach Us. Hauerwas and Willimon, page 51.

And as promised, an entirely mediocre talk on the Kingdom of God:

Introducing the Bridge

Thw Bridge has been a big part of my life for the last two years. The Bridge is a worship service I direct at St. Mary's every Wednesday night throughout the school year. My main jobs are preaching and building relationships. I have recorded my sermons for the last year or so, and I think I have finally figure out how to embed them here. This is my first talk from this year:



If you are really interested in hearing these talks, take a look at the previous posts, I have updated the one's on the Lord's prayer by inserting audio of those talks as well.

Hallowed Be Your Name

The first point to make about this line is that it serves as a bridge between the first phrase we talked about last week (Our Father in heaven), and the phrase (your Kingdom come) that immediately follows it. Our separating out this phrase, and all the phrases for that matter, is simply an effort to explore more deeply some of the individual pieces of the prayer, but we should always be aware that these phrases make up one, beautiful, cohesive prayer.
We begin by admitting that we almost never use the word "hallowed" unless we are a sports announcer talking about Lambeau Field or Cameron Indoor Stadium. For our purposes it will do to simply mean "holy" when we think of hallowed. As is often the case, by defining the one difficult word, with another difficult word we have gotten really nowhere at all. A quick survey of college students yielded these definitions of holy, "happy," "blessed," "special," "sacred," and "something about God." All of these touch on an element of the way we use the word, but the etymology of the word goes to something like "separate, different, other." Holy be you name becomes a short hand way of saying that God is different than us. Our father who is in heaven is not us. In fact, God is not us too such a degree, that even God's name is holy.

We have no idea how to live until we first know who God is. So when we say that God's name is holy, that tells us how we ought to live. Knowing the creator tells us where the creation is meant to move...The Lord's Prayer us like a bomb ticking in church, waiting to explode and demolish our temples to false gods." Hauerwas and Willimon, Lord, Teach Us. 46-47.

Once we begin to trace the idea of God's name being holy, we open up a ton of interesting stories and images from the Scriptures. We are reminded of Moses meeting God in the burning bush, and quickly recognize how holiness works in Exodus 3, when even the ground near the bush is considered "holy" just because of God's presence. God's presence doesn't just make the ground holy, but also causes Moses to hide his face. As we trace God's holy presence, we begin to see a pattern of people encountering God in God's holiness and being left silent. God's holiness is where our language goes to die. In even naming God's name, we have reached the limits of language. In the face of this limiting, we are forced into the most basic of Christian practices- confession and prayer. Here again we notice that throughout the New Testament there is an understanding that some day, all will bow before the name of God. Just on hearing God's name, all of creation, humans, whales, trees, turtles, everything will bow in reverence. The Christian life then is a call to live this now. Contrary to the often misunderstood command about taking the Lord's name in vain, when we pray the Lord's prayer and ask God to make God's name holy, we are attempting to bow our lives to God's will. This finally is the picture of God's name being made holy. All of creation bowing before a loving creator. This is God's kingdom coming on Earth as it is in Heaven. More on that next week.
UPDATE Here is the audio of this talk.

Our Father In Heaven

Over the next few months, I am going to be posting some reflections on the Lord's prayer that are the basis of a sermon series I am giving at St. Mary's University on Wednesday nights. Tonight we begin with, "Our Father in heaven." The designation of God as "Father" is always a bit of an issue, and particularly so right now at places like Princeton where the gender inclusive language sprung up again. Is this prayer claiming that God is a man? What about the other questions for people who have serious "Father" issues? Is this prayer somehow a painful reminder for those who have been abused or abandoned? Perhaps. Lets look a bit at the prayer, and see what we can see. To begin with, Jesus is not calling us to pray to an abstract, ideal, Platonic, Father. Rather, the opening of this prayer surprising tells us something of ourselves- we are God's children. The "our" in this prayer is significant. We are God's children, and through Jesus we can call God Father. This leads to the next observation, namely that the designation of Father, is uniquely Trinitarian. Without the Son, there is no Father, and in fact without the relationship between the two that allows them to communicate as Father and Son, there is no Spirit. All of this to say, that while we sometimes hear "Father" and cringe at our own histories of violence and neglect, we are challenged to overcome those histories. We are called to witness this specific Father, of this specific Son, and in the strength of the Holy Spirit, proclaim our Father.

"When Christians pray, 'Our Father,' we are not merely declaring that God created us. We are saying that, in Jesus Christ, God has saved us." (Hauerwas and Willimon, Lord, Teach Us)

The second point worth unpacking a bit is the "in Heaven" portion of our prayer. I believe that when Christians pray the Lord's prayer, to the extent that they ever think about the "in heaven" part, they think of this as a designation of place. We tend to hear "in heaven" as God's address. This is, of course, no doubt true on some level, but we miss the wealth of Scripture's witness if we are content to simply stop here. I am convinced, that if we take some more time with our Old Testaments, we will uncover that "in heaven" is not simply a designation of God's place, but also of God's person. Heaven moves from simply being where God dwells, to being intimately connected to who God is. The Hebrew God of Abraham (Gn. 14:19-22), Moses (Ex. 20:22, Dt 4:39) and Ezra (Ezra 1:2, 5:11-12) is the God who is "in heaven." When Jesus invokes this phrase, and we follow his lead in repeating it, we are conjuring up all of these Old Testament stories right into our simple prayer. Jesus has masterfully carried in the whole of the Old Testament with two simple words: in heaven. It is not simply where God is, it is who God is.
We began by acknowledging the difficulty around this phrase, "Our Father in Heaven," by hearing the real concerns about God being a man's name, and by acknowledging the terrible images that can come flooding in on us when we even mention the label Father. I think the Lord's prayer is able to hear these criticisms, and hurts, and respond in love. To the question of gender the Lord's prayer says lets not talk about all men every where, lets talk about Jesus' father. To the children of absentee Dad's the Lord's prayer tells story, after story, after story of our Father working on behalf of his children. To the victims of abuse at the hands of fathers, we catch a glimpse of our Father in heaven, and are reminded that heaven is not only the place of comfort and hope, but also of justice and judgement. Our Father in heaven will side with the victims, and God can not be bribed or bought off. This God is not an abstract unknown deity, but rather has a long history, a people, has been faithful even unto death, and is more than worthy of being prayed to as "Our Father in heaven."
UPDATE Here is the audio of this talk:

The Economic Crisis

Despite the fact that I have no money, I have been terribly interested in the current state of the economy on theological and ethical grounds. In early Spring this year I was asked, "Do you think the recession is God's punishing us?" My knee jerk reaction was that this could only be punishment if our economic boons were God's blessing, and I am just not sure we can say that either. I don't deny that for many Christians in America we have assumed that economic prosperity has been a direct result of God's blessing, but I do deny that anything like this comes to us from Scripture. Rather we have another classic example of the American church hearing America everytime a blessing is promised to Israel. Ironically, we do not here America when there is punishment or blame to go around in the Prophets, particularly for things like unjust scales and economies that destroy poor people, but there is still something to commend in the question. This question assumes that God is wrapped up in and concerned about the economic life of the world/country/church/his followers (depending on how you read the "us" in our question). While I like that we see God working, I am uncomfortable with the thin categories we have for naming God's work. Going forward, I want to suggest that before we get into the habit of naming blessings and curses we do at least two things:
1. Know the situation we are attempting to name. Have cogent account of how we have contributed to what is happening around us and know why it is happening in human terms. Be able to describe the situation clearly. In keeping with our current topic of the economy, there are least a a few articles we should be reading, and here are two of my favorites: Matt Taibbi and Michael Lewis.
2. Take the time to do thoughtful theological reflection. Don't be limited to the sort of rhetoric we constantly encounter on talk radio and television news shows. There is no need for the Church, and its members, to make sure it is the first voice people hear on issues, but rather it is time to demonstrate a thorough, consistent, faithful, theological, response to a wide range of issues we face currently.
For an absolutely fantastic example of how to do both of these practices well, listen to William Cavanaugh accomplish just such a feat in his presentation at the Eklessia Project Gathering.

Maundy Thursday Thoughts

For some reason, I always love our Maundy Thursday service. The liturgy is beautiful, and the readings are amazing. I have preached at this service, and listened to other really good preachers preach at this service, and I am pretty sure the sermon needs to go. I think the act of foot washing, essentially reencating the gospel text is more than enough. The other observation is that the John reading is a great place to turn for the wedding of both doctrine and embodiment. We are all aware of the embodiment piece, but there is this great nugget, "Jesus, knowing, that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself." (Jn 13:3-4) I guess if you were going to preach you could preach something on that relationship.

Fear and Loathing in Piedras Negras

For those of you wondering, our mission trip went well, and here is the piece I wrote about it for the newsletter:

On March 7 a small team of five left San Antonio, TX and headed to Piedras Negras, Mexico. It was a short two and a half hour drive, but to hear the media talk about it, our team was risking life and limb to enter a battle zone. Mexico had been captured by drug lords and corrupt cops, and was allegedly on the brink of civil war. You can imagine our shock when we were greeted with a warm smile and bear hug by a Danny Devito-esque Mexican priest, Padre Miguel.
Padre Miguel is the priest of El Buen Pastor, a congregation that has grown exponentially and considers its mission to be very simple: tell people about Jesus and help whoever you can. This church stood in stark contrast to everything we had been prepared to encounter in Mexico. Where we were expecting to see pain, suffering and death, we instead encountered hugs, smiles and vibrant life. The whole time we kept thinking, these people live where we are afraid to go.
Our team spent four days in Piedras Negras building relationships in the church and digging a ditch that will be used to lay the foundation for an addition to the church. This addition will be used as a computer lab/ sewing center and will give El Buen Pastor even more ways to serve its city. We saw the living conditions of many of the poor, the dirt floors, the crate walls, no heat, and no water. Even these poor welcomed us, and rather than being angry or dejected they were hopeful that perhaps these American Christians could help.
Maybe we can help. That question has haunted me since we returned to San Antonio. Maybe we can help. We should be able too. We have the means, the talent and the energy. But we are also gripped by fear. Unlike past years, the overwhelming response to this trip, was, “Don’t go, its too dangerous.” We took the media descriptions of violence to be gospel truth. We took general government warnings to be specific calls on our life. Maybe we can help. Maybe, but it is going to take trusting Jesus more than our local news anchor, and loving our neighbors more than we love our own safety. Maybe we can help. Our team prays that we can.

Cigarettes and Flossing

Alright, one week in, and I have done a far better job with the things I am giving up than the things I am taking on. A full week of no soda or candy has passed, and has gone fairly well. The task of attempting to blog more frequently (while not a total failure- once a week is still pretty decent) has not flourished with the same level of success. I am reminded of a line I heard from a friend of mine (Dan McCarthy), which I am sure he swiped from someone, that he shared when the lead singer of a band asked if anyone had tried to quit smoking, because it was the hardest thing he had ever done. Dan replied, "No way, have you ever tried to start flossing? That's way harder."
Also, I am excited about an upcoming project that I will reveal on this site once we get it going, and I am confident we will have it in place before the end of Lent, so stay tuned.

Ash Wednesday

Lent is upon us again and it begins with Ash Wednesday. I am really excited this year to be taking Josh and Calvin out school to bring them to our noon service for Ash Wednesday. We gave them the option of being able to go tonight at 7, or going during the day and then having to go back to school with the crosses on their heads. Josh's response was both typical (of him) and amazing, "That would be great, because then everyone would be able to tell we were Christians just by looking." On my personal list of Lenten vows, no soda and no candy. I am also adding in that I will blog throughout Lent, so hopefully you find something mildly interesting back on this site soon. In other news, I have a side project I am working on, that I think a number of you may find really interesting, and as soon as I figure out the technology I will be making a big announcement about it here. For now though, I will close with one of the oldest Lenten prayers,
Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord, that by the observance of this Lent we may advance in the knowledge of the mystery of Christ, and show forth his mind in conduct worthy of our calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Politics of Jesus: Chapter 1, Part 2

Before we move onto the next major section surrounding this messianic ethic, I want to quickly explain what Yoder means by “politics.” He doesn’t bother to explain the term in Politics of Jesus, but he does take the time to walk through what he means by “politics” in one of his other books, Body Politics. In his Body Politics Yoder acknowledges that we tend to think of politics as “what governments do or what ‘politicians’ do, and ‘church’ people can avoid that.” In contrast to this way of thinking about politics, Yoder wants to recognize that, “The Christian community, like any community held together by commitment to important values, is a political reality. That is, the church has the character of a polis (the Greek word from which we get political), namely a structured social body. It has its ways of making decisions, defining membership, and carrying out common tasks. That makes the Christian community a political entity in the simplest meaning of the term.” Put a touch more simply, “To be political is to make decisions, to assign roles, and to distribute powers, and the Christian community cannot do otherwise than exercise these same functions…” While the church is and must be political in the simplest sense of this phrase, the church must also be political beyond the simplest meaning. “Politics affirms an unblinking recognition that we deal with matters of power, of rank and of money, of costly decisions and dirty hands, of memories and feelings. The difference between church and state or between a faithful and an unfaithful church is not that one is political and the other not, but that they are political in different ways.” This understanding of politics is key for us to understand how Yoder thinks of Jesus being political in the Politics of Jesus. For Yoder it is not simply that the church cares about money, power, relationships and costly decisions, it is that the church cares about these political things because Jesus did and does.
With that in mind, we return to the second part of chapter one. By functioning with the aforementioned “Eight ways of making Jesus Irrelevant” our current situation creates a giant need. Because Jesus is fundamentally irrelevant to how we make decisions or live in the world (think about the definition of politics here) the result is we need “Some kind of bridge or transition into another realm…” Yoder uses the image of a bridge to hint at how precarious our situation is without Jesus. The bridge itself is too narrow and rickety to do a lot of good, and if we are to live well than “the substance of ethics must be reconstructed on our side of the bridge.” When we must construct an ethic on our side of the bridge, with little to no help from Jesus, then we will almost always choose “either common sense [or] the nature of things” as the basis for moral living.
Once these foundations for ethics are mixed with a Spiritual Jesus we are left with “a kind of negative feedback into the interpretation of the New Testament itself.” Put another way, this dangerous mixture is self perpetuating. Once you decide Jesus was not political, and you must view the world through either common sense or natural law you begin to develop practices for reading Scripture that make it very difficult to ever hear Jesus as political at all. Yoder rightly warns that if this mixture is permitted to run rampant we will eventually be forced to ask honestly, “Is there such a thing as a Christian ethic at all?” Yoder of course will say that there is. He will attempt to argue “the hypothesis that the ministry and the claims of Jesus are best understood as presenting to hearers and readers not the avoidance of political options, but one particular social-political-ethical option.” In short Yoder will attempt to argue throughout Politics of Jesus that Jesus “is not only relevant but also normative for a contemporary social ethic.” If there is a coherent Christian ethic, then Yoder expects to be able to find it in the gospel accounts of Jesus, and this is precisely where he turns in chapter 2.

Politics of Jesus: Chapter 1, Part 1

This is the second part of our series reading through John Howard Yoder's Politics of Jesus John Howard Yoder’s initial chapter begins with, “the observation that Jesus is simply not relevant in any immediate sense to the question of social ethics.” Yoder recognizes that neither the academy, nor the Church has been able to hear Jesus in any discussions around politics or how one acts in the world. Not much has changed. We are still in a very similar predicament, even in a church culture that “values Scripture” we have been unable to make the jump to connect our social lives with the Jesus of the Bible. Yoder rightly decries this situation and blames it both of Biblical scholarship, and their intense naval gazing, and on Church leaders who refuse to do the Biblical work necessary to hear Jesus speaking to us now.
Yoder spends a significant amount of space in this chapter laying out ways in which we miss Jesus all the time. Yoder wants us to understand better how it is that we come to expect Jesus to be irrelevant. Yoder initially recognizes six key ways in the first edition of Politics of Jesus and then adds two more ways in the second edition.

Eight Ways of Making Jesus Irrelevant (In some particular order)
1. First amongst these is what we will call, “Temporary Jesus.” This argument assumed that Jesus thought He would be gone for a little while, only to return after a brief hiatus. Because of how temporary the in between time was, Jesus simply had no stake in the overall health and stability of society as a whole.
2. Second is what we will call “Farm Boy Jesus.” Jesus was an essentially rural figure who never saw fit to involve himself in the political systems of his day. “There is thus in the ethic of Jesus no intention to speak substantially to the problems of complex organization, of institutions and offices, cliques and power and crowd.” In asking Jesus to speak about politics, we would be asking him to do something he is unqualified for.
3. Third is what we can call “Powerless Jesus.” The option for any sort of political power never existed for Jesus, and thus he is unable to speak to politics today in which the church has some sort of power. This is particularly problematic for those of us in democratic societies where we are convinced political power lies with the individual.
4. Fourth is what we will term “Spiritual Jesus.” This is perhaps the most insipid version of Jesus we have. Central to this picture is “the inwardness of faith” in which Jesus is really only concerned with our hearts (More on the dangers of this version in just a bit). Because of this radical spiritualizing, Jesus simply has nothing to say physical, political sort of things.
5. Fifth is what we shall name “Theological Jesus.” This one on the surface does not seem so bad, but when it is finally completed is quite dangerous. This version of Jesus emphasizes the “radical discontinuity between humanity and God,” and distinctly because of this difference it makes all human ethics flawed. We must never accept a finite system of action in place of God’s infinite hopes for the world. The infinite hopes are almost entirely expressed as principles and values.
6. Sixth is what we can call “Sacrificing Jesus.” This picture of Jesus emphasizes the truth that Jesus came as a gift of grace and sacrifice for our sins. The key piece here is that because the work of Jesus is grace for us, it would be wrong to turn his life into something like a work that must be followed politically or otherwise. “How the death of Jesus works our justification is a divine miracle and mystery; how he died, or the kind of life which led to the kind of death is therefore ethically immaterial.
7. Seventh is what we can call “Cloudy Jesus.” This picture of Jesus is way less prevalent in evangelical circles, though it does seem to be on the rise. This version says that Jesus is irrelevant simply because we do not have a clear enough picture of who Jesus was and what he did. The accounts we do have are sparse and at times contradictory, and this is certainly no way to build a coherent set of political actions.
8. Eighth is “Overly Important Jesus.” This version is related closely to “Theological Jesus” and centers on an odd bit of Trinitarian logic. Trinitarian means relating to the Trinity, which is the Christian way of speaking about who God is in himself, namely Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the Western church we speak of God in this language and acknowledge that all three “persons” of the Trinity are equally God. The argument then comes that to privilege Jesus above the other two members of the Trinity is to give him a status that is inconsistent with who God is.
These eight pictures of Jesus taken together can be a bit daunting, though the response I tend to get from other evangelicals is simply that none of these categories actually apply. Before we move away from this series of pictures and onto what Yoder has next, lets take this objection seriously by looking at a specific passage. Turn to Luke 6:27-31 and let’s see what Jesus says about money. In this passage Jesus says “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”
The question we must ask is, “Does Jesus mean it? Is it relevant for what we do with our money now? Why not?” Whatever we answer to the why not question, is our picture of Jesus that makes him irrelevant. Whether its because Jesus is talking about our spiritual heart attitude towards money (Spiritual Jesus) or he is simply giving us a principle like be generous (Theological Jesus) or Jesus’ teaching here is interesting but it actually gets trumped by Paul’s teaching on money because of dispensations (A combination of Spiritual Jesus and Sacrificing Jesus) or maybe because there is a huge translation question (Cloudy Jesus). When really pushed on this, it seems that Yoder may be right after all.

Politics of Jesus: An Introduction

In September 2001, most of our lives, particularly in the United States, were altered forever. For the first time my generation could remember, we clearly understood that some in the world hated us. It was a time to ask serious questions about what it means to be Americans, and for some of us what it means to be a Christian. For me, questions centering on violence, enemies, politics, Jesus and the gospel all came together in one place. This one place, was not Ground Zero, the Pentagon or a farm in Pennsylvania, it was in a little book written by a Mennonite in 1972. Just over 25 years after it was first written, John Howard Yoder’s seminal work, The Politics of Jesus, provided me with the crucial tools necessary to salvage my faith and engage this new world breaking in all around me.
During the seven plus years that have followed my first reading of Politics of Jesus I would guess that I have read through it at least ten more times. It has also been my practice to convince as many people as possible to read through it, though this has been a largely unsuccessful effort. Along the way I have had the chance to teach some of the material in this book to youth and college students, particularly in Sunday School classes and have learned a great deal in doing so. One of the consistent responses to Yoder’s work has been that it is simply too difficult to get into. Whatever value there is in Politics of Jesus is lost amongst my well meaning friends, because Yoder is operating with categories that they can not move around in. After years of hearing this criticism, and a number of pleas from the aforementioned friends, I have finally decided to attempt something like a brief, guided tour through The Politics of Jesus. I will attempt to point out any crucial places, while highlighting key ideas for how we might think through what it would look like to call ourselves Christians in the times we find ourselves.
One final note, The Politics of Jesus once in a while gets easily dismissed as a book about pacifism. Yoder no doubt feeds this misconception in his preface to the first edition when he claims that the meaning of the book is, “On the least sophisticated, most argumentative level, it is the simple rebound of a Christian pacifist commitment as it responds to the ways in which mainstream Christian theology has set aside the pacifist implications of the New Testament message.” Despite Yoder’s intentions otherwise, I am going to respectfully disagree. This book I believe is only secondarily about pacifism, it is in fact much more so about Jesus. A book only on pacifism would certainly not stick around and continue to have the sort of impact this book has had two generations later, but a book that speaks the truth about Jesus might in fact have that sort of staying power. This point is poignantly made in the final line of the book:
Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur: Our Lamb has conquered; him let us follow.
The Politics of Jesus is fundamentally about what it might look like to follow our Lamb, Jesus who was crucified and resurrected to conquer death and bring reconciliation to the world, and that sort of book is well worth reading through.

Remembering A Saint on All Saints

This summer I watched my Aunt Janis die. She had cancer which grew at an uncontrollable rate in the final weeks of her life. After complaining of a soar back, originally misdiagnosed as bursitis, she made it seven more weeks before dying. I keep using the words death and die, because somehow the euphemisms we have for it are too tame. My aunt, after all, did not succumb to cancer, she died, and I suspect she would be mad at me for saying otherwise. This is meant to be a bit of a reflection on my life with Aunt Jan, and who she helped me to become. It’s worth noting that if there is a danger here it is that this is more of a caricature of my aunt than an effort at an over accurate depiction, and is a totally biased one sided account of my life with her. She was not just my aunt, there are many others who would have even better stories of my aunt, and who in fact may find my themes at least a bit surprising, and would probably have better suggestions of their own. Nonetheless there is something to be said for reflecting, and I suppose even Aunt Jan would not have minded me writing something down, so here goes.

Aunt Janis was proud of being Irish, and nowhere was she more Irish than in her lightning quick wit. She was incredibly sharp and loved to hear people laugh. Often you learn to admire things because people you admire respect and admire those things, and this is how I learned to admire and respect my aunt’s wit. While riding in the car with my family an ad, which I can no longer remember, came on the radio and within a half second my aunt had made a witty retort, which I also can not remember. While the retort was unmemorable, I distinctly remember my father, who is still one of the wittiest people I know, being amazed at how “quick” my aunt Jan was. That picture of my father being impressed with my aunt’s mental speed has never left me, and no doubt influences the way I still interact with my world.

One of the key pieces of my aunt’s wit was her love of language. This love of language could be clever, in the way she could turn around an argument, or often it was imaginative. She was always crafting stories to entertain us, to scare us, or to simply surprise us. I have been on the receiving side of my aunt’s love of language my entire life, as both a child learning how the world works, and as a parent seeing my own children light up at one her crazy stories. From Jedi trails to talking rabbits, from scissors to smacks and from poetry to Roger Rabbit my aunt loved language, and she shared that love with everyone she met.

I loved to introduce my friends to my aunt, and I still think this is the best part of being from a huge family. Small families feel like families are great because they are private, and there is this closed circle of memories and people, but large families know that families are great because anyone can belong. If my aunt had an irritating quality, it was that she simply refused to believe there was much difference between strangers and family. This meant there were very rarely private meals or holidays where you knew everyone, and many times you had to weigh out the options of what crazy person Jan may have invited. It never occurred to you that you may be the crazy person she invited, but this was only because she was incredibly good at making you feel like your presence made all the difference.

If all this were not enough, my aunt passionately loved Jesus. This may be the wrong order to put things, because after all my aunt would confess that this love of Jesus is what made the other things I have mentioned, language and hospitality, mean anything. I find myself reflecting on my aunt’s life, realizing how true that objection is. I also find myself a bit surprised that these are likewise the themes in my own work and life.

Perhaps my favorite theological axiom is that, “We can only live in a world we can see, and you can only see in a world you can say.” My Aunt taught me to “say.” She helped me see the world that is there, and never let me forget that there is more to the world than there appears at first glance. As Christians, we are forced to imagine and see our world differently. Because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, we learn the skills of radical hospitality that my Aunt practiced her whole life, namely the discipline of recognizing strangers as family. I was taught to sing very early on that, “Jesus Loves Me, for the Bible tells me so” and while this is true, I know the Bible tells me so because people like my Aunt Jan loved me. If my primary job description as a Christian minister is to love people, then the top of my resume aught to read, Nephew of Janis Routh.

The Rest is for Remembering

Today was maybe the hardest day so far, but not physically. We only worked for half the day, though we were doing some of the worst of the painting, but in the afternoon we took a guided tour of New Orleans, particularly paying attention to the damage the flood did. This is the second time I have had the tour, but it still grabs you in a weird way. I was struck between the time Katrina hit, and the time the levees broke. Our guide said it was something like 12 hours, and people had actually begun to put lawnmowers and outdoor work equipment back outside. Then the levees broke. The tour made me wonder and pray for the Midwest and the flooding there. New Orleans has begun to come back, but it is long and slow and urban. I wonder what will happen to those small towns in Wisconsin and Iowa. As I saw the places again I was reminded of my reflection a year and a half ago. This is what I wrote then, still in pretty rough form:

What makes you feel safe? What do you rely on? Who do you trust?

Our Psalmist raises these same questions when he asks (Ps. 20:7)

The right answer to these questions according to this psalm is the name of the Lord.

But, in the light of our trip to New Orleans, and all the devastation we witnessed, that answer, although theologically accurate is not quite as appealing as we once may have thought. We now have another question, “Why did God allow this to happen?” There is not a simple answer, but I would like to look at two scriptures to begin to form something of an answer. Turn with me to Luke 13.

The first part of the answer according to this passage is that we are all asking the wrong question. The flood in New Orleans should drop us to our knees in repentance. We are to repent of those things we trust too much. Those things that can not bear the weight of our trust. Popularity. Boyfriends, girlfriends. Jobs. Parents. Our stuff. All of these are misplaced trusts.

The second part of the answer to “Why God would…” involves something larger and more cosmic. Namely, part of the answer is the end of the world. (Revelation 21)

THE END IS LIKE THE BEGINNING

Is. 25:1-9 as background to Revelation 21.

The honest answer as to why God allowed New Orleans to be flooded is that we don’t know 100% why. But, what we do know 100% is how we are to respond to it. Repent- trade in your false trusts and BELIEVE- fully rely and be confident in God’s ability to bring about His plan.

Tuesdays are for Painting

Lots of work today. Most of today was filled with painting, the inside and outside of a house in Broadmoor. The painting was for an older woman who had to leave New Orleans by helicopter after the levees broke. She got to her local Catholic church, and then her and a few other were helicoptered to safety. Afterwards she spent the next year or so in Cottage Grove, MN.

I have learned a bit about myself over the last two days. One, I hate window glazing as much as I have ever hated anything. Second, I don't mind painting- too much. Third, I don't mind heights. Also, I have a couple of more insights from Acts, but no time to share them now, I will share them later. Take a look at this picture:


The dark parts of the shirt are sweat. The humidity was brutal, but you actually felt like you did work, which was nice.

Monday is mission day

Long day today. Our group is staying at an awesome church in the neighborhood of Broadmoor in New Orleans, and you can check out the way they work in their community at their website: http://www.annunciationbroadmoor.org/ To me these people represent the best of Christian political involvement (particularly check out the way they are aiding Midwesterners who have been flooded and their Broadmoor Improvement Associastion). This church has responded to adversity, tragedy, and huge amounts of sorrow by reimagining what it means to be a church at all. Our lessons for this week are focussed on the end of Acts 2, and tonight we asked the big question, "How do you become part of this people?" By looking back at Peter's sermon, particularly, the conclusion, we realized that one of the key pieces of being the Church is recognizing who Jesus is. Asking and answering the question of what it means for Jesus to be the Lord and the Christ. The immediate response is to repent of our misunderstandings of Jesus. This, it seems to me, is exactly what has happend here in New Orleans. The Free Church of the Annunciation, has repented of false ways of viewing Jesus, particularly ways that allowed them to be oblivious and seperate from their neighborhood. In what can only be described as providential irony, here is the stained glass from their previously flooded altar:

Jesus pulling Peter from the surging water while the rest of the disciples look on, realizing that Jesus is the Christ, Lord of this sea. When Peter turns back to Jesus, he represents exactly the repentance he will commend to those on Pentecost. Beautiful really. Our God does move in mysterious ways.