Beautiful Idols

A friend and I were strolling the streets of Barcelona back in February. Our conversation turned to just how we may identify people. I will tip my hand quickly to say I fear the practice of categorization simplifies our lives. We really have no need to get to know someone. Once we can, by our ruler, measure someone we may then determine their worth to us. We either choose to engage them on deeper levels or we dismiss them. And, everyone knows our goal is simpler lives. Let’s not take the time with people - takes to much out of us.

Slowly I am making my way through Pete Gall’s My Beautiful Idol. It is not a difficult read. Rather, about the time I think I have time to make great strides through the book I encounter people. My vocation will not allow a quick dismissal. I cannot categorize those who come by as having value or merit based on some hidden ruler. Imagine the mental conversation. “Now Joe sure is getting on my nerves. I have spent hours with him and he just does not seem t listen. I am going to have to turn this one off. What a waste of time.” (Yes, fictional character.) Life would be simpler if we could dismiss those who did not benefit us in some way. Read more

Glimpse of the Relief for the World

Early this morning I boarded the treadmill. The on board computer offers a variety of ways to measure progress. One readout I watch is “distance.” My goal is at least 2 miles of cardio. The other display I watch is “time.” I like to get my two miles, walking and jogging, in about 30 minutes. Since my workouts have been irregular Monday mornings present something of a “shock.” My body pays careful attention to the time knowing relief is in sight.

The promise of Messiah offered hopeful encouragement for people given to watch for his coming. Relief would soon come. Jesus’ sojourn brought relief to a variety of human suffering. Some found release from the pain of illness, disease and broken bodies. Others were set free from oppression be it demonic or cultural. People came from all around to find relief. The King had come and gave a sign and foretaste of life in the Kingdom of God.

Sin is insidious. Its effects are felt, as Scot McKnight notes, in all of our relationships - self, others, God, and the world. Sins personal and systemic keep us all in need of relief from the its presence.

Kester Brewin offered a poem to signal indicators of the kind of relief brought in the Resurrection of Jesus. The reference may be to the giving up of Jesus by the earth which could not hold him, but the implications reach far and wide. Thanks Kester for the thoughts.

It wasn’t so much that
the stones couldn’t hold him.
More that they refused to.

All had been silent, struck dumb by deathly silence, but
“All down here is petrified but him” they cried out,
as he said they would.
“He could no more be made fossil relic by us than
the sun that melts and sublimates”

Don’t think it was some angel.
That morning,
the earth opened itself,
and gave him back.

Happy Easter.

Chancing the Pilgrim Sandals

A second “stream poem” inspired by Nude Truths. The project is the product of sisters Mary Ylvisaker Nilsen and Kristi Ylvisaker. Their artwork in this installation turns on the poetry of Denise Levertov. I was particularly taken by #6. The confluence of viewing this installation, reading N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, and thinking about the Lectionary Texts for this past Sunday form the nexus of this attempt.

Chancing the Pilgrim Sandas

My feet have often been the focus of attention
Attention drawn to a lack of uniform perspective
Perspective fixed by standards of “normal”
“Normal” leading to conformity
Conformity to substance and style determined by others
Others’ measure of and fixed forms intended for preservation

Preservation of a way, not “the” way, a way
A way that for many stands as “the way”
Way of a system once inspired to transform
Transform not so much
Much posturing, much politicking, much pandering
Pandering to others, away from The One

The One who subverts everything
Everything is in range, not just some things but all things
Things considered shielded by present infirmity
Infirmity reaching to a core allegedly untouchable
Untouchable by The One until “That Day”

“That Day” reserved for the climactic
Climactic act as though the life, death, and resurrection of The One is somehow anti-climactic
Anti-climactic due to the depth of damage to the image
Image bearing now shielded until That Day - Some Day

Some day we will find our feet
Feet no longer fixed, and flat
Flat as in unprepared, unresponsive, unmoved

Unmoved by the plight of “the other”
“The Other” who “is us”, who is “not us”
“Not us” but part of us - interrelated
Interrelated by the bearing of The Image

Image obscured by decisions - ours and others
Others’ images to be seen as those bearing the image of The One
The One who first donned the Pilgrim Sandas
Sandals holding infleshed divinity - the Son of Man
Man yet God - incarnated

Incarnated, journeying in and out, down and back
Back - where we hope to go to a future yet unknown
Unknown in its specificity, known in its purpose
Purpose bound in the Pilgrim’s Story
Story giving power to life, giving hope

Hope inspiring the feet, feet now moving
Moving in ways bringing life “the other” - poor and rich
Rich in gentleness and respect
Respect for the image buried
Buried beneath
Beneath our ruined journeys

Journeys now shared
Shared by chancing the Pilgrim’s Sandals
Sandals of hope and peace
Peace from the Giver of Peace and His Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage chancing the Pilgrim’s Sandals

Without Reservation

One of the exercises we were invited to engage at Brian’s Everything Must Change Tour came when Linnea charged us with writing a “stream poem.” I enjoy poetry. I could not be confused with a poet. Here is my first attempt.
Without Reservation

Endless come the images provoking reform
Reform kept at bay by uncertainty
Uncertainty mounts as the wind carries
Carries us swiftly and unskilled as we look to land
Land where?
Where conviction intersects action
Action evidencing conviction
Conviction to finally take a step without reservation
Reservations as identity is often confined to labels
Labels intended to stymie, constrict and de-personalize
De-personalize denying the image bearing nature of we humans
Humans made in the image of God to reflect not themselves but the God in whose image made
Made for loving God and loving others
Others without reservation giving illustration of a reservation-less love for God

An Evening of Worship and Thinking About Waking Up

I met Brian at the very first National Pastor’s Convention in San Diego. Evangelism formed the nexus of his “breakout” during the conference. I can still see the image of the bridge in Central America after a recent hurricane. The photo taken by a National Geographic photographer captured in a photo image what Brian suggested our evangelism efforts had become - a bridge that did not connect people with the Good News. Brian would go on to write More Ready Than You Realize, his description of a way forward with the Good News of Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

Patty and I attended an “Advance” with Len Sweet who invited Brian and Grace to be the special guests. We spent a couple of days on Orcas Island. Beautiful. Thought-provoking. I will not forget Grace wrestling with the profound implications of thinking afresh about what it means to follow Jesus. The emotion was palpable. She voiced what many around the room were both feeling and thinking.

Since that time we have had a number of encounters over the past years since that retreat - Emergent Conventions, Emergent Gatherings, phone calls and e-mails. Despite the baggage that goes with “Emergent” and the regular criticisms, the deep appreciation for Brian’s honest wrestling with how Jesus may be Good News today stirs me more deeply than the rampant misunderstanding and label mongering that follows.

This evening and tomorrow I am in Dallas for Brian’s Everything Must Change Book Tour at Cliff Temple Baptist Church. I read an advance copy. I met Shawn and Nathan this evening, a couple of fellows from Frisco, TX. We enjoyed several planned “conversations” thinking about a segment of the meeting. We talkd about things we agreed with and those we thought may be over-simplifications. After all, those who attend these things are not automatons who hang on every word. Instead we have continued to think long and hard about issues raised and how we might bring the Good News of Jesus to bear on the world and among those with whom we serve.

My friend Ed loves to use the phrase, “money quote.” Well, one of the money quotes that has implications much broader than the context in which the comment came was, “We need to stop sub-contracting our brains to political parties.” Surely you may see where this quote could also go. Too many have been told what to believe - outsourcing as it were their very convictions to those either considered smarter, older, or deader (if that is a word). Contextualization demands we engage today, it is the eternal moment we live in that needs redeeming from ruin and to be found as it is lost - lost in any number of ways.

We were challenged to think what it would take, what action we may consider that would result in personal change. The one thing I am mulling at this late hour is an abandon to the way of Jesus that leads with passion and gentleness and respect. Put another way, thinking about the implications of Philip Yancey’s, The Jesus I Never Knew, and what Paul told me is that same theme on steroids in Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, it is time to help people see more than a caricature of Jesus. More than what one Damah Film submittal referred to as, “The White American Jesus.” Leading in this vein will not come without a personal commitment to an abandonment to the way of Jesus that transcends the cultural box, or sub-cultural box, in which Jesus often seems trapped.

For those concerned by this post, this is not the place where the slippery slope gets me. It is not the place to suggest an abandonment of orthodoxy. Rather, it is a re-affirmation that to maintain orthodoxy without right practice is a hollow game leading people away from the transformative work of the Triune God. A game I gave up long ago.

From the Margins … The Way Forward … More Reflections from Western Europe

Quite fitting it was to finish reading a Leslie Newbigin work on the flight over to Barcelona. Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship proved a great introduction to the thoughts if the late Michael Polanyi. Missionaries offer keen insight, especially when trying to get one’s mind around the discontinuous cultural changes we face here in North America. We do well to listen and discover the ways in which we have accommodated to a certain ethos, pathos and logos of a bygone era.

Newbigin asserts we may have built religous/spiritual infrastructure around Cartesian methodologies that undermine the move toward faith. Hoping to rival the indubitable certainties proffered by science, religious figures mounted a campaign to compete in an arena where neither discipline could possibly fare well. Achievements of objective knowing have been greatly exaggerated. When the Church hitched its proverbial wagon to the Enlightenment,

It was almost inevitable that the collapse of confidence in the great project of the Enlightenment should carry with it a collapse of confidence in the validity of the church’s worldwide missionary enterprise.

From Newbigin’s experience he witnessed sudden collapses. An entire continent once thought its mission was to bring civilization to the rest of the world now seemed to come to the place where religion once a vehicle of enculturation was pressed to the edges, marginalized. He notes the disconnect between the world of the individual and the “real” world in which people live and move. The dualism created by these two places of living sent people spiraling toward a nihilism void of real purpose. Exploring the real world placed a distant second to, “Who am I?”

Listening to missionaries in Western Europe seemed to evidence Newbigin’s description. Missing from Western Europe are the stories of widespread evangelization. Rather than a vibrant house church movement or the existence of a strengthening Christian movement noted in the global south, these missionaries face the difficult task of offering a voice from the margins. We pastors who spent the week in Barcelona sense the setting here in the States is not dissimilar.

Speaking from the margins reminds me of Father Richard Rohr’s article that forms the title of this blog, “The Edge of the Inside.” It may well be time to explicate just why I chose this for a title.

To my new friends, let’s learn together how to live the way of Jesus from the margins for the glory of God and the blessing of the world. I will be looking to learn from you.

Great quote

I have read David Wayne for some time. I really enjoy his photography tips. Today  I read this quote and thought it worth posting,

 …dogmatics cannot just be the recitation of the doctrinal statements of the church in a topical rather than a historical order nor can it be just the contemporary exposition of someone’s theological ideas, no matter how brilliant they might be. The doctrines must be churchly, and the exposition, also churchly in its basic attitude and approach, must be contemporary in its expression. If the contemporary aspect of the definition is lost, the exposition lapses into a reconstructive, historically defined approach that can at best produce for present-day examination a doctrinal overview from a bygone era. This kind of theology is no better than the attempt to take a particular document from a past era—even a document as valuable as Calvin’s Institutes or Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae—and use it as a textbook in theology. The past must be consulted, but not copied without regard to the new historical and cultural situation in which we find ourselves. If, on the other hand, the great doctrines of the church are not addressed, the exposition lapses into a subjectivity and personal or even idiosyncratic statement….There is, therefore, in dogmatic or doctrinal theology a clear relationship between contemporary faith-statement and the normative doctrinal constructs known as dogmas. The question for dogmatic theology is precisely how these dogmas relate to the biblical witness on which they have been founded, to the larger body of doctrines that belongs to theology but that has not been as closely defined as the so-called dogmas, and to the ability of the contemporary theologian or minister to proclaim the significance of the biblical witness for the present. (611) 

Frye Exegetes the Gospel via Newbigin

I came across this sentence from Leslie Newbigin from his book Truth to Tell…“The missionary action of the Church is the exegesis of the Gospel.”

 John Frye at Jesus the Radical Pastor

Book Tag

Generally my brother has a bit of disdain for being tagged. Yet, he and I share an appreciation for the thoughtful writing of Emily Hunter McGowin. So, when she tagged Paul he obliged. Then as any good brother would do, he shared the love and tagged me. I thought, “What are brothers for?” I’ll give the tag a go.

1. One book that changed your life. I am a bibliophile. To attempt to narrow the books that have influenced me to one is nigh impossible. Nearly ten years ago I received a copy of The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. Ironically it was given to me for helping coordinate the time of “Invitation” at Falls Creek one summer. Two interesting things - the giver had not read the book and I did not immediately read it. A couple of years before receiving my copy of The Divine Conspiracy, a friend we were talking about what we were reading. Hance suggested I pick up a copy of The Jesus I Never Knew. Immediately Phillip Yancey became one of my, if not the, favorite authors. I literally sought to buy nearly everything he had written. I have read most of his books and to this day am deeply indebted to the suggestion to read this book. Shortly after finishing The Jesus I Never Knew and What’s So Amazing About Grace, I ventured into Willard’s book. A road exposed by Yancey became one I would not soon leave as I worked through The Divine Conspiracy. (Those of you who have stayed past the first three chapters of this book know well what I mean when I use the word, “worked.”)
2. One book you have read more than once. My mother in law gave me an old copy of Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. Another volume I did not immediately read but after reading Willard’s book, I picked up this classic and have read it a few times. I am not sure there is another book I have read a second time - ever.
3. One book you would want on a desert island. In college Dr. Hall taught a course on survival. Since I did not take the course, I would want to get a copy of a survival guide like those noted by Emily and Paul.
4. Two books that made you laugh. There are likely a number of books that have made me laugh. My new friend Jim Palmer gave me a copy of his first book, Divine Nobodies. I finished this book, all but about 20 pages, on a flight from Miami to Dallas this past October. I immediately wrote Jim and e-mail thanking him for the book. I told him he made me laugh and cry. While Jim opens readers up to his experiences, some funny and some sad, he writes with such a style that keeps you ready for the next comedic description of some event or conversation. For some of the same reasons, it reminded me of a book I read in the early 1990’s by a Bruce McIver, Stories I Could Not Tell While I Was a Pastor. I am not sure I have laughed harder than reading and identifying with much of what Bruce wrote in 1991.
5. One book that made you cry. There are some stories that are hard to tell. People will suggest the process is something akin to cathartic. We often run the risk of reducing someone’s story to how is “speaks” to us or for us. In doing so we may minimize the pain and the courage taken to tell those hard stories. Rene Alston wrote Stumbling Toward Faith. Rather than risk doing just what I described, I will simply say, you must read this book and you must be prepared when you do.
6. One book you wish you’d written. There is something about identifying with those whose picture of Jesus tended toward the very one dimensional variety. Yancy, I think, referred to it as the “flannel graph.” For those too young to remember the flanner graph, think the stories you have heard of “vinyl albums.” Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew restored the humanity of Jesus and helped overcome something of a gnostic vision we tend toward by pristinating his every encounter.
7. One book you wish had never been written. I am going to re-post Paul’s description here. This is tough because I generally think there is some value to most books including the ones with which I would violently disagree because I think there is something to be learned from them. I think the worst books are those that are entirely unoriginal and just boring or incredibly superficial. That said I think I’d have to go with the entire Left Behind series, mainly because I think they are deceptive. If people understood up front that they are just fiction that would be one thing. That they are taken so seriously and that the authors want them to be taken seriously leads me to view them as eschatological versions of The DaVinci Code.
8. Two books you are currently reading. Recent conversations with a couple of theologians inspired me to pick up Leslie Newbigin’s, Proper Confidence. Something of an explication of Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, Newbigin notes the need for intruders. His own story of living among the Hindu in India helped him provide insightful missiological principles for Western Churches and Christians. The rash of “new atheist” tomes - thinking Dawkins and Hitchens here - led me to pick up I Sold My Soul on eBay by Hemant Mehta. Jim Henderson of Off the Map won the eBay auction and sent this “friendly atheist” to church. We need to listen to those “intruders” willing to share life and a conversation with us. (Note: David Phillips told me reading Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge was like a root canal. I am looking for the nitrous before sitting in my chair to read it.)
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read. My friend John recommended Christopher Wright’s, The Mission of God. I admit this is way down in the stack. It looks like it could take a short sabbatical to get through. I might note, I have also meant to read Friedman’s, The World Is Flat.
10. Five people that I tag. Natalie Burris, Rick Davis, Steve McCoy, David Phillips, and Alan Cross.

Books, Books, Books

Recent additions will keep me busy for some time to come.

Chasing Francis a Pilgrim’s Tale Intriguing story of “pilgrimage.”

I Sold My Soul On eBay: Viewing Faith Through an Atheist’s Eyes I met Jim Henderson a few years ago and when I heard about Hement’s story, the “Introduction” grabbed me as if to say, “Will we listen?”

Jim and Casper Go to Church: Frank Conversations about Faith, Churches, and Well-Meaning Christians More from Jim Henderson.

Constants inn Context: A Theology of Mission for Today I recently enjoyed some time with John Franke. He not only mentioned this book but suggested reading a number of missiological texts.

More Than a Name: Preserving Our Baptist Identity I remember Stan before he was Dr. Norman. We shared a fun time during one of my many BWA trips. Quite interesting conversations about Baptist “distinctives.” Hot topic today for we who are still “Baptist.”

The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church I hope to meet Alan soon. Lance at Shapevine works with Alan and offers a course with Alan based on this “missiological” text from an Aussie. Will be working with Lance and Alan on the this course to be taught through Biblical Seminary.

unChristian: What a New Generation Thinks about Christianity and Why It Matters I have a few friends who consider themselves, “post-Christian.” While this is my term for some of our conversations, it really means a move beyond our expressions of “Christian.” In other words, the rejection is not of Jesus but a form of Christianity that seems to deny Jesus.

Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy David has done it to me again. He is working on his D.Min. with George Fox under Len Sweet. He noted Len requires this book to be read of his students. I have David’s reading list for this semester and either I will not get much sleep following his reading schedule or I will wait on his written reviews.

This does not account for quite a few others already in the batter’s box - Proper Confidence, Whose Religion Is Christianity?, James Baldwin’s Essays, and literally a stack of others.

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