Sarcastic Lutheran

The Year of Living Biblically

I just finished (in 2 1/2 days) the book by Esquire editor and writer AJ Jacobs The Year of Living Biblically.  This is a journal of sorts from a secular Jewish New Yorker who decided to try to follow all the rules in the Bible as literally as possible for an entire year.  The result is funny and surprising.  The moments when, even as an agnostic, he feels changed by his daily prayer life are compelling. His foray into snake handling and Crown Heights Hasidic rituals bring a shifting contextuality to the experiment which make me want to undergo something that could only be called the  "Great American Religious Road trip", anyone else wanna come?

Finally!

There is finally a book about emerging church that is a)about EC in the mainline liturgical traditions and b) written by a woman!
Becky Garrison (senior editor for the Wittenburg Door) has written Rising From the Ashes: Rethinking Church (seabury press) which is a compilation of interviews with the likes of NT Wright, Phyllis Tickle, Pete Rollins (ikon, Belfast), Jonny Baker (Grace, London), Karen Ward (Church of the Apostles, Seattle), Ian Mobsby (Moot, London) and (for some reason) myself.

This is well worth checking out.

Wanna be in my new book?

Ok, so the life of The Sarcastic Lutheran is a bit insane right now.  Mr. SL got a new call to a church in a Denver suburb and we bought a house in the Park Hill neighborhood in Denver, which is an old multi-cultural-right-next-to-City-Park  urban area.  The house is a bit of a fixer-upper, so we've been insanely busy trying to do improvements while moving in.  The kids start their new school tomorrow and I've just come back 2 days ago from Luther Seminary.  Add to that my new book deal and what do you get?   A very happy , very  busy gal who is attempting to  manage the embarrassment of blessings in her life while trying to remember not to speak of herself in the third person.

The book:
I was approached by Church Publishing/Seabury Books to write a book, kind of a social and religious commentary about the Christian Industrial Complex based on me watching 24 straight hours of Trinity Broadcast Network which is a televangelism cable channel.  I suggested that perhaps the Geneva Convention might address making a person do this sort of thing....right after the paragraph on waterboarding, but then I agreed to it because, well, it was about the weirdest thing someone had asked me to do in a while,so how could I say no?.  I am having a pleasingly bizzare assortment of folks come for an hour each and watch with me so that those chapters become a conversation between us about what we are seeing. Here's where you come in.  I'm inviting my readers to do the unthinkable.  Please watch TBN ... any amount you'd like, between 5:30am Friday August 24th and 5:30am Saturday August 25th (Mountain time) and e-mail me your comments to sarcasticlutheran@gmail.com.  I will have my computer on the whole time as I will be taking notes and may be able to have a little chat right there and then.    Then I may just these comments in the book.  I'm looking for any kind of ideas about what you see: what does it say theologically? about gender? about consumerism? about beauty?  were you surprised?  was the gospel preached despite the makeup and hairspray?   
The book will hopefully be out a year from now so that I can take it to Greenbelt.

Well, there's your mission if you choose to accept it, as fucking weird as it is.

Be well.

Pain and carnival

Wednesday night I got a half dozen friends together to begin having a conversation about the emerging church start here in Denver.  The project won't start officially until I get back from Luther Seminary in St. Paul in December (those denominational hoops must be jumped through), but I wanted to start the conversation now.  What better way to start a postmodern, urban, nu-monastic, Christian community that with dahl and beer?  So with a plate full of curried lentils, overcooked rice and just cooked tortillas, we sat down to what ended up being a really amazing conversation. Here's what I read ( pertaining to a vision of  being church in the city) from Kester Brewin's Signs of Emergence: A Vision For Church that is Organic/ Networked/ Decentralized/ Bottom-up/ Communal/ Flexible/ Always Evolving: "We are the community of the Creator, so we must create.  We are the community that looks forward to the city where divinity and humanity will live side by side, so we must give birth to an emergent, conjunctive, self-renewing, adaptable church that can model this in inclusivity, generosity,creativity and flexibility, welcoming the Other, providing true space for pain, and real time for carnival."  (143)

The idea of providing true space for pain and real time for carnival really sparked some beautiful, rich, thoughtful, hysterical ideas from the group. 

In the end I think that we all agreed that it's possible, needed and timely.

I'm so excited I can hardly sit still.

Dear God,
Make your presence known in this weird little project.  Without your guidance we're sunk.  But with the Holy Spirit in our midst things can be so crazy beautiful and more real that we can imagine.  If our pride and hurt and fear and selfishness and insecurity hinder us, as they will, be a big old carpet thrown over our brokenness over which we can scurry.  That stuff is there, but in You there is a way over.  Thanks for those spaces for pain and those times for carnival in both of which you are to be found.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

buy this book

Ian Mobsby of Moot in lLondon has published his MA thesis on the emerging church in the Fresh Expressions program in the Church of England...he has a pleasingly trinitarian take on post-modern Christianity. Buy it here.

Are you an ass? I am.

One issue I struggle with is that of becoming an asshole...I mean, more of an asshole.  I'm embarking on starting an "emerging church" in Denver (eventually) and am wondering how I might keep from thinking I'm some sort of ecclesiastical rock star.  God has given me some very public gifts for ministry, great.  I find myself simultaneously craving and repulsed by people's praise of my gifts.  This morning I stumbled on Brother Martin's (Luther)thoughts on this matter from his "Preface to the Wittenburg edition" (1539 ce) He's brilliant, self-effacing, and funny as hell:

If, however, you feel that you are inclined to think you have "made it", flattering yourself with your own little books, teaching, or writing, because you have done it beautifully and preached excellently; if you are highly pleased when someone praises you in the presence of others; if you perhaps look for praise, and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you do not get it  - if you are of that stripe, dear friend, then take yourself by the ears, and if you do this in the right way you will find a beautiful pair of big, long, shaggy donkey ears.  Then do not spare any expense! Decorate them with golden bells, so that people will be able to hear you wherever you go, point their fingers at you, and say, "See, See! There goes that clever beast, who can write such exquisite books and preach so remarkably well."

A prayer for today:
Dear God,
Thank you for my gifts.  May they always be used to point to you and not to myself.  I understand this is not likely to happen, but perhaps with your help I might be less of an asshole.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

what I listen to while running (or, more evidence on how Nadia is a big nerd)

I'd love to be the kind of runner who doesn't need to listen to an iPod, but I'm not. On my weekly long runs I listen to NPR programing that I've downloaded...they have a podcast of stories involving religion which are usually worth a listen. I've also discovered a Bill Moyers podcast on Faith and Reason in which he interviews writers. Yesterday my run was a little over 2 hours so I got to listen to 2 episodes, one of which featured American writer Mary Gordon who is a devout Catholic. Here's a great quote from that interview:
"Faith without doubt is either a kind of nostalgia, or addiction"
I totally value doubt in faith.

Geez Magazine

Geez magazine is created in part by the original editor of Ad Busters. One of their subtitles for the magazine is An Altar Call Fram The Fringes Of Faith. This rag is gorgeous and pleasingly dangerous. Check it out: www.geezmagazine.org

A New Reformation - my thoughts on reading Matthew Fox

This is the first of what will be many posts on Matthew Fox's Book, "A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality and the Transformation of Christianity" (2005).

Fox is a controversial figure, an ex-catholic preist who has been engaged in creative-creation theology with the likes of Starhawk, a wiccan priestess and famous author. While I am not completely on Fox's bus, I appriciate the theological and ecclesiological questions he raises.

Fox offers an insight that I and my friends (who also occupy the lunatic fringe of The Lutheran Church) have been discussing for years: that we find ourselves in the midst of profound cultural and social shifts which in many ways mirror those of Martin and Katie Luther's time. We are experiencing a democratization of information, much like when the printing press was introduced. Power shifts from Nation-States to multi-national corporations mirror the sifts from fiefdoms to nation-states. We have also share a corruption of the church and theological ideology as well as an increase in the ranks of the educated elite.

Here's a great quote from Fox: "The current papacy can run the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's Basilica, but we can let go of religion and begin to get serious about spiritual practice. Protestantism can shed its apathy and ask not 'What did Luther or Calvin say five hundred years ago?' but rather 'What would Luther and Calvin say and do in today's global ecological and ecclesial crisis?' We can draw on rather than neglect, the riches of the Roman Church's mystics and prophets of past and present..." (17)

This seems like a bit of contradiction to me. I'm all for a new Reformation and a focus on Christian spiritual practice, but "let go of religion"? Hell no. I refuse to allow the church-as-it-is to be THE CHURCH. I would be willing to bet that Luther wouldn't abdicate either. He wasn't interested in letting go of religion, conversely, he wouldn't allow the church-as-it-was to be THE Church. He knew the time was right to REform the church. And the time is right again friends. It's up to us.