Sarcastic Lutheran

Outlaw Preacher podcast - Law and Gospel

 
photo by Agnes Gossler (outside a Baptist church in Berlin, Germany)

Khad Young has posted his conversation with me here. We talk about Law and Gospel, and Anne Coulter at the Well.

More about being an "Outlaw Preacher" later...

taking the Eucharist to Denver International Airport at 10p on a Wednesday

Last Sunday I got a call at 11am.  It was Rachel calling from her home town church (denomination to remain unnamed).  It took several minutes before she could form a proper sentence through her sobs. Finally in a shaky voice, this came out:  "I'm at my parent's church....they are doing communion.....and I'm not allowed to take it."  Having spent the last year in such a deeply sacramental community where all freely receive the gifts of God Rachel was devastated at being kept from the table.  I texted her later to ask if I could share this story with some of the other HFASSers and she agreed.

"Rachel called me sobbing" I told them, "because she wasn't allowed to take communion at her parent's church this morning".  Stuart immediately responded "Well then we'll have to take her the Eucharist at the airport when she gets home".  Of course.

  When Rachel got off the escalator she saw a sign reading "Rachel" on one side and "Child of God" on the other.  I then lied just a tiny bit and asked if she wouldn't mind if we just popped upstairs because someone had asked me about the chapel and I wanted to make sure I knew where it was. 

So at 10p on a Wednesday night 8 people were waiting in the aesthetically questionable "Inter-faith prayer chapel" at Denver International Airport to give our sister in Christ the gifts of God that are truly for her and for all.

This is how they will know that you are my disciples: that you take my body and blood to the airport.
Amen?

 

Amen.

Announcing Christianity 21

 

Christianity 21: Faith in the 21st Century
21 Voices
21 Ideas
21 Minutes Each

We live in a time of epochal change.

Many find this change exciting; for others, it’s a challenge. Call it globalization, pluralization, or postmodernism, this change affects our economy, politics, government, and education—all of society. And, of course, our faith and our churches are not immune to change.

So we have gathered 21 of the most important voices for the future of Christianity—21 voices for the 21st century—to speak into our future as people of faith in this age. They represent a diverse array of backgrounds, interests, and passions, and they will provide a wide range of innovative and challenging presentations.

Christianity21 is less a conference and more a happening, an event—a gathering of voices and ideas that will shape the future of our faith. And to the 21 voices, we want you to add your voice, whether you’re a seeker or skeptic, leader or layperson, disciple or doubter.

We hope you consider joining your voice to ours at Christianity21.

Friday, October 9 – Sunday, October 11
Colonial Church of Edina
6200 Colonial Way
Minneapolis, MN 55436
$195

___________________________________________________________

I'm really excited about this event.  I'll be one of the 21 speakers but don't let that dissuade you from attending - the other presenters are legit.  It's an amazing collection of voices.

My topic: Authority; Authenticity and Assholes

Hope to see you there.

Sermon from Lent 3b

Lectionary texts:
The Ten Commandments from Exodus 20:10-17
Jesus "cleansing" the temple by overturning the tables of the money changers(John 2:13-22)
and this little gem from Paul (1 Corinth 1:18-31)

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. ²⁶Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no one might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

My friend Ryan from Church of the Beloved reminded me this week that what passes for most sermons we hear is the following formula
#1) what is the problem
#2) what you can do about it.

This is often called “Christian Moralism” or sometime “Biblical Teaching” or if you are a cool emerging church person then it’s called “Living in the Way of Jesus”   But the desire for me-based solutions is not exactly limited to church folk.  Sometimes when I first meet new people and they find out that I’m a pastor they say “I’m not into organized religion.  I just hope that being a good person is enough”.   I’m like,  “yeah, it’s not”.  But I can see where they are coming from - if you obey the 10 Commandments then you are covered, right? Of course that would make you the first person to pull it off - basically our record as a species is like 125 Billion and – 0 but hey, knock yourself out.  And we do.  We try really really hard.  Why?  Because when sinners hear the law – what sounds like demands from God, we have exactly 2 choices.  Pride.  Or Despair.

Pride in this realm is the empty comfort of being right.  On one end of things Pride under the law looks like a focus on purity and personal morality and upholding so-called family values.  It is approaching the word of God as a rule book and spiritual self-improvement policy. On the other hand pride under the law can be political correctness and the tyranny of being more anti-oppresion and more inclusive and more multi-cultural than anyone else.  It is to look at the word of god as nothing more than a public policy manual with nothing to say to me as a sinner.

 The other option of course, if we do not look at the demands of God with self-congratulations, is to look on them with despair. Jesus helped to up the ante here for those of us who think “just being a good person is enough” To those who feel self-satisfied that out of virtue they do not commit adultery (check)  he says anyone who has lust in their heart has committed adultery.  (oh.  Maybe un-check) To those who are prideful that out of our virtue we give to charity (check) Jesus says oh yeah, sell all you have and give it to the poor (ok, maybe un-check).  It can feel like a set up. Looking at how impossible it is to really fulfill God’s demands leaves us with a tortured conscience.  I wonder if moving from vice to virtue isn’t a really a lousy salvation plan namely because it’s not actually possible to pull it off. The thing is, me-based solutions don’t look very hopeful.

So if we are all hoping that “being a good person is enough” then now is as good time as any…. to see that it’s not. We’d prefer to have it be about laws that we can cling to as a plan for salvation or a way to know who is in and who is out, but in reality it’s not like that.  Paul reminds us in his letter to the Corinthians that ours is a God who chose what is foolish the world to shame the wise.  Our wisdom says that religion, when properly practiced should get us something. Our wisdom says that the solution should be a market system for making our way to God.  But that’s not it.  And the solution also isn’t to just try harder.  If trying harder worked some of us in this room would have arrived. Although honestly several of you would have no hope whatsoever. 

Well, there is a solution but there is good news and bad news about that.  The bad news is that it’s not a me-based solution.  The good news?  It’s not a me-based solution.  Even still,  my wisdom holds out for a me-based solution that I can either boast about or despair in.  But the solution isn’t me-shaped.  It’s cruciform.  This cruciform solution doesn’t earn us glory and power and status.  It actually levels our pride and inverts our sense of spiritual accomplishment.

The solution is Christ. See, when I think that my efforts toward fulfilling God’s demands or being virtuous or trying harder is what will earn my salvation then this means that I no longer really need Christ.  He is for all intents and purposes left idleing in his van on the corner.   Virtuous self-made market system rule followers just don’t end up having a great need for the cross.  Maybe because at the cross Jesus messes with all our ideas about rules and worthiness and power; here we see a messiah who is foolish enough to allow himself to be killed and not even in a neat or noble way.  The solution is for God to be made flesh and walk among us, God’s own beloved sinners. Because this changes everything.   See, Jesus isn’t a new Moses bringing a better law we’ll never live up to.  Jesus isn’t just sitting in heaven waiting to see if we can pull off the impossible and then condemning us for our inevitable failure.  Jesus subverts the entire paradigm.  Jesus actually IS our righteousness. This righteousness we have is not our own, but that of a Merciful and gracious God who comes to us in vulnerability and suffering. And the thing is….with the righteousness of Christ there is no extra credit to be obtained.

 So we offer no me-based solutions here.  Not if we preach Christ and him crucified.  Then you know what we have to offer?  Divine foolishness.  But to the weak and the cynical and the socially awkward and the gays and those injured by religion and the parentless and the unemployed and the alcoholics Christ crucified – the foolishness of God – is life in a way that our own wisdom can never be.  Only a God who intimately knows such pain and sorrow can take on all our crap at the cross and exchange it for Christ’s own tender blessings. To preach the foolishness of Christ crucified is to say ok, we can all stop clamoring our way to God.  We can all stop bringing our petty righteousness to God in some sort of market system or as Peggy preached last week, some sort of Spiritual pawn shop.  When we think we are buying our way to God through our own virtue, then we might out of the corner of our eye see Jesus making that whip out of cords.  Jesus upturns our tables of personal righteousness.  And dumps out the jars filled with coins of our virtue with which to trade for our own salvation.

A professor of mine at Luther seminary says that this whole thing isn’t about moving from vice to virtue.  We actually move from virtue to Christ.  We can stop all of it because in Christ God has come to us.  The direction is decidedly from God to us, not from us to God.  So it ends up that it actually is good news that “just being a good person” is not enough.  Because the cross is enough and perhaps we should remind each other of that whenever we slip in to pride or despair.  We should remind each other that you do stand in righteousness before your God, not due to your virtue, but due to the cross. Only a God who slips into skin taking on flesh in all it’s broken glory – only this God of foolish love who dies a scandalous death without even lifting a finger to condemn the enemy – only this God can love you where you are.  Right now.  Because in the world according to God that’s how things work.   And it’s beautifully, bafflingly foolish.
Amen.

Listen to audio of me reading stuff I wrote

If you are interested in hearing me read from an essay and then from my book you can do so here

Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television out now!

My book is now available on Amazon Here

"Turn off your TV and read this book. It's enlightening and entertaining and
it doesn't emit any radiation whatsoever."
--AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically

From 5am November 2nd to 5 am November 3rd (2007) I watched 24 consecutive hours of cable televangelism/prosperity gospel fare on Trinity Broadcasting Network.  28 contributors, including Bible Scholars from Iliff School of Theology, a gay Unitarian, her non-religious ex-boyfriend, a couple Jews, her Evangelical parents, Lutheran pastors and her 9 year old daughter all joined Nadia for an hour each so that the book becomes a conversation between what’s happening on the TV, what’s happening on the sofa, and what’s happing in the writer’s head.  The result is a narrative which is frequently hysterical, often insightful and occasionally totally surprising.

Please consider joining the Salvation on the Small Screen's Facebook group!

God's Politics Blog Posting

I seem to be spending so much of my time writing: sermons, the TBN book, articles, stuff for hire, and the God's Politics Blog.  I'm sorry to my half a dozen faithful readers....no time to blog.  I will soon.

For now check out my God's Politics posting

Pax,
Nadia

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.

Lutheran Confessions

I'm taking a 3 week class at Luther Seminary in St. Paul on Lutheran Confessional Writings.  These writings are in the Book of Concord, a 16th century collection of Reformation documents.  Basically when all hell broke loose after Martin Luther dared to speak theological truth to ecclesiastical power, a bunch of theologians worked quite hard at justifying why we are justified by faith alone and not by any effort of our own.  Which of course begs the question- doesn't that make faith a "work"?  Ney say the reformers, faith is a gift given by the Holy Spirit, as the 3rd article of the Creed in Luther's Small Catechism states:  I believe that                     I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ,                     my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me                     by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and                     kept me in the true faith. 
This is my favorite part of the catechism, because as someone who was raised in an almost entirely works based church  -  a bit like a  salvific meritocracy,  I'm inclined to find the idea that I don't have to try and muster up faith in Christ by sheer individual effort, a great comfort. If I am unable on my own to believe in Christ, then I wonder if when I feel that I am lacking in faith, that it is perhaps almost entirely absent, should I then trust that I indeed do have the faith that I do not at that moment percieve I have?  Perhaps the Holy Spirit gives us faith but not the ability to perceive we have it and we are to just have faith that we have faith and not depend on our thoughts and feelings to determine if we have it.  See, this is quite messy isn't it?

Here's been my main issue in this class: lack of humility.  Would it have killed the reformers to hedge even a little bit in the absolute certainty with which they made their proclamations?  In class the other day  we were talking about how we are all simultaneously sinner and saint.  A student then asked "How are we seen by God?"  The professor then answered - it was convoluted, I could not begin to explicate it here, but the thing that struck me was how certain and immediate his answer was.  So we can know the mind of the Almighty?  We can definitively say "Well, here's how God sees this..."  I'm not so sure.  I think there is a limit to rational thought and we best start confessing THAT.  Here's why I believe this lack of humility exists, and it's a bit circular, so stay with me.   We get that God  is bigger than and has more authority than us, so  in matters of theology we cannot rely on "human experience" or "ideas of man" to tell us about who God is, so we claim that the confession we make - the official church doctrines - are "scriptural" and not of human origin, therefore we have no reason to hedge in our absolute certainty in these matters, for they are from God and not from us.   The problem is that these ARE all human ideas and creations...I'll not get into the issue of authority of scripture, but even giving scripture a high authority - the way in which it is used and explained is entirely human.  Even if you believe that "God wrote the Bible", God did not also write a commentary on the Bible, so any interpretation is going to be from human thought and experience.  I think perhaps we ought to be honest about this and not hide behind "scriptural authority" by trying to pawn off our ideas as God's.  Are we so scared of mystery that in our pride we trust our reason to explain every doctrinal and theological minutiae so that in the end it's all explained to our satisfaction, packaged neatly and tied with a bow?
I love the Creeds and the Augsburg Confession, I even trust them, but I'm just not willing to eliminate the possibility that maybe we got something wrong.  These doctrines are our best shot at the truth, not the truth itself.  I guess I'm just more comforted by mystery than certainty. 
So call me a heretic...again.

Ruth and Mary Magdalene sermon

I know that sermons are a bit long for blog posting...but for the half a dozen people out there who actually read sermons on line....

The lectionary reading are from the 1st chapter of Ruth and the 20th chapter of John...I also refer to this text from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene:

The disciples were in sorrow, shedding many tears and saying: "How are we to go among the unbelievers and announce the gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man?  They did not spare His life, so why should they spare ours?"

Then Mary (Magdalene arose, embraced them all, and began to speak to her brothers:

"Do not remain in sorrow and doubt, for His Grace will guide you and comfort you.  Instead, let us praise His greatness, for He has prepared us for this.  He is calling upon us to become fully human."

Thus Mary turned their hearts toward the Good, and they began to discuss the meaning of the Teacher's words.

Picture if you will the perfect cliché’wedding.  Bridesmaids in garish matching taffeta.  The sweating groom,  Pachebell’s canon, or if the church will allow, perhaps the shrill, endless vowels of Whitney Houston's “Iiiiiiiiii will always love youuuuuuuuu”,
and a reading from Ruth:
Where you go I will go
Where you lodge I will lodge
Your people shall be my people
And your God my God.

  When these words are spoken in the context of a wedding, a man and a woman pledge their love to one another and they become one in the eyes of their families and friends and society. 

But these rich love filled verses were not from a wedding, and not spoken between a man and a woman, they were from one woman to another.  More specifically, these words are said from a young Moabite woman to an old Hebrew woman.

Ruth and Naomi’s story starts in the time of the Judges.  The Hebrew people have settled in Canaan, but the time of King David has not yet come about.  There is a famine in the land.  Famine in the promised land.  Famine in Bethlehem, which in Hebrew ironically means the “house of Bread” wow. Naomi, her husband and 2 sons go to Moab where there is food. Moab.  Moab is not exactly spoken of kindly in the rest of the Hebrew Bible.  I can’t imagine what this must have been like.  Perhaps not unlike if we  in America, this land of plenty had a famine and were so desperate for food that we had to go to Saudi Arabia because their crops were growing like gangbusters.  I think perhaps this type of situation would make it difficult to maintain our idea that WE had “Most Favored Nation” status in the eyes of the Almighty.  So the House of Bread is pretty much out of bread, but the Moabites who are not exactly best friends with the Hebrew people, much less with their God ha’shem, apparently are doing ok.
Famine.  In the Promised Land.  Famine.  In the House of Bread -
So, where  exactly is God? 

After having to leave Bethlehem because of famine and after having to go and live with the Moabites,  Naomi’s husband dies leaving her a widow, but at least she has her two sons.  Still, where exactly is God?

So,then Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women. The Hebrew people have continually been told to not intermarry.   Isn’t this a big deal in the Torah that they not marry pagans?  That should settle it shouldn’t it.  This type of marriage is ok, this type is not.  I secretly wonder if they ever claimed to love the pagan, but hate the paganism. 
So Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women and then, after famine in Bethlehem, and after having to flee to Moab, and after her sons marry Moabite women, and ten years after she became a widow, she becomes childless.  All she has is her sons and her sons die.  So, Where exactly is God we ask? Still no mention of God.

So now there are three husbandless women and let me tell you, Life is not friendly to widows.  The fear must have been unimaginable.  It’s not like today when Naomi could “go back to teaching” or even work at Starbucks for the health benefits.  Being a widow meant throwing yourself on the mercy of your kinfolks and hoping...hoping they take care of you.  So Naomi decides to go home after hearing that the LORD had recently  “considered his people” in Bethlehem and given them food again.  OK so, God finally shows up, but only in rumor really and if you ask me, maybe too little too late.  In Naomi’s place I know I would have wondered if it would have been too much to ask for God to have “considered his people” before the famine that caused me to go to Moab where my husband and children died.

So, Naomi has no choice but to return home ... the 3 set out for Bethlehem together - Three childless widows, two were Moabites.  Naomi feels as though God has turned God’s hand from her.   And who can blame her really?  Famine has forced her from her land.  Her husband is dead.  Her sons are dead.  Her value in life is dead.  From this diminished, hollow, dusty place she does what I and perhaps you have done when feeling particularly unlovable and entirely without value.  She tries to push people away from her so as to not feel the pain of being loved while feeling unlovable  To the only 2 people she had left in the world she says “go away from me.  save yourselves for God has turned his hand against me.    I am of no value to you.  maybe the LORD will be good to you if you leave me” and when they protest, when they say, no we want to stay with you, she’s like “Why?  I am only the mother of your dead husbands  - my value to you is only as your provider of husbands, and I have no husbands left in this belly for you.  and look, even if I found a husband tonight and bore more sons for you, be real...it’s a long wait till you could marry them....that’s a long time for a gal to be...you know... unmarried, don’t you think you’d get I don’t know, a bit cranky waiting that long?”  You see, Naomi is barren in more than one way.  Naomi is barren in spirit.    SO Where exactly  is God we ask?
Why didn’t God show up and stop the famine?
Why didn’t God show up and stop the death of her husband and sons?
Why didn't God show up and stop hurricane Katrrina?
Why didn’t God show up and stop the massacre At Virginia Tech?
I don’t know.
But I do know that in our text, God does show up.
God shows up in these words:
where you go, i will go
where you lodge I will lodge
your people shall be my people
and your God, my God.
God has not turn God’s hand against her, because God’s love is right there, revealed in Ruth’s love for her.  Sometimes God’s presence isn’t felt until we cleave to one another.

@@@@@
Naomi’s primary identity was as “one who bore children”, and when those children were gone, she was bitter, and hollowed out and sure God had turned against her.  Now, lest I judge her too harshly, I have to admit there have been hollow times in my life when I too have been bitter and wondered “where exactly is God”, which always seems to be the time when some act of love from another person completely breaks me open till I see that God lives in these sometimes small, sometimes great acts of love toward one another.

In these words of love from Ruth, Naomi’s primary identity shifts from “widow” to her true name of beloved of God where it belongs.
And these shifts in identity due to acts of love happen for us too.

So where exactly is God we ask?
God is in love that gives a new primary identity.  In love shown to oneanother which then returns us to our true identity, beloved of God

Mary Magdalene whose feast we celebrate today...her identity shifted from demon posessed woman to beloved of God through the love of Christ.  In our reading from John today we see her weeping at the empty tomb.  She’s been on a bit of a wild ride the past couple of years.  I imagine that she had been posessed for such a long time...dealing with her demons...filled with despair...being alienated from herself, from her God and from her  community.  Then she met this teacher from Gallilee and everything changed.  He called her by name.  He called her Mary,  not demoniac.  He called her into the fullness of her humanity, into her new primary identity as beloved of God.  But then he was gone. tortured. crucified. dead. buried. gone. “so where is God” she must have asked.  Is it really all over now? They have taken him away and I do not know where he is.   But then it happened again.  While she was in despair weeping for her disappeared Lord she, in a foux pax of historic proportion,  mistakes him for the gardener...how exactly do you live that down?  In her pain and sorrow she mistakes him for the gardener UNTIL  .....he speaks her name.  “Mary”.  He speaks her true name “Beloved of God”  His love for her shifted her primary identity.  In a culture where she was not only a woman, but one who was posessed of demons, one who was outcast, one who was the ‘Other’, he loved her into becoming fully human.  And then chose her to be the first witness to the resurrection and to be the apostles to the apostels.  It is Mary who is given the task of proclaiming the risenChrist, while the boys were arguing about “which one of us is greatest?  who is going to be at your right hand in glory?  Who is first in the kingdom?”  God chooses an outcast woman to tell them that they are beloved of God, that they are called to be fully human and to turn their hearts to the good.
So where is God we ask?
No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another God’s love lives in us and is perfected in us.
Isn’t that what the church is in a way?  A group in which our value comes from being the beloved of God, children of the Most High and not our jobs, or bank accounts or status in society, or sexual orientation...ideally speaking?
There are plenty of times in life when we wonder “Where exactly is God?” when the events of life are painful, or unjust or downright devastating.  When we too are barren of spirit.  Sometimes there are no miraculous healings, or partings of the seas or raising of the dead.  Sometimes there is just us asking where is God.  But Sometimes God is that still small voice of gentle kindnesses toward one another.  Sometimes God is the roaring wind of our mercies undeserved.  But always God is revealed in acts of love toward one another.  No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another God lives in us and God’s love is perfected in us. 

So, my friends, close your eyes if you choose and visualize above your head some of your most primary identities : mother, husband, elderly, lawyer, high schooler, ...whatever they may be.  And as I say these words of love from these women of God, visualize these labels being erased and replaced boldly with the words beloved of God

Where you go I will go
where you lodge, I will lodge
Your people shall be my people
and your God my God

Do not remain in sorrow, for God’s grace will guide you and comfort you.  God is calling us to become fully human.  God had prepared us for this.   Turn your hearts to the good.
You are the Beloved of God

AMEN

Why I have a "low anthropology" and a progessive theology

Why?
It's a rare, but in my mind a kick a** position.
You see most Christian progressives (or liberals if you will) have what is called a "high anthropology" meaning that they think quite highly of human beings and what we are capable of all on our own.  In other words, those with a high anthropology will perhaps say things like "all the truth you need to know is inside of yourself" or "we aren't bad sinful creatures, but are co-creators with God" to which I find myself thinking "what the hell planet are you from?, because here on Earth people just aren't that frickin' good...just read the paper or watch pretty much anything on the WB....we're NOT GOD...clearly.

As a good Lutheran I have what is called a "low anthropology".  In other words I think that we are sinful depraved people in need of God's grace.  Why do I believe this?  Several reasons.
1) I know myself...pretty well
2) I take in the news
3) I have children.  I didn't actually believe in original sin until I had kids, and I'm still not convinced, but now am sure that if humans are left unguided and undisciplined let me tell you...it ain't pretty.
4) I know other people
5) Did I mention that I know myself?...thoughts, words and deeds, what I have done and what I have left undone?  Yeah, that's the best evidence. Slam dunk really.

Ok, so does that mean that I do evil shit all the time?  No.  Does it mean that I am some sort of demon child?  Not most days.  What it does mean is that the good in me and the good that I am able to do is as a result of God's always radical choice to use the broken and unlikely to do God's work in the world and not as a result of my own shiny soul.  There is no true altruism, at least for me.  I can't do a pure fucking thing to save my life.  This is actually very hopeful.  It means that there is a source from which I came and from which I draw and that source, unlike me, is endless.  If my ability to "be good" is reliant only on my own goodness then I'm screwed.  There is so much freedom in the fact that God and not myself is my source.  However, to be a bit circular in my logic, I am still a broken person who inevitably will try and rely on self and not on God and will once again screw things up and be in need of God's grace which in always and already, just sittin' there waiting for me to realize it.
Still, I believe that we are made in the image of God and are Children of the Most High, but like all children we seldom know what's best for us and we need discipline.
As Luther said- we're a bit like snow covered dung - we look good but still smell like sh*t.

.

Sermon I preached at Holden Village

I was shocked, thrilled and horrified to be asked to preach at Holden Village.  I had just a day and a half to write a sermon, which I balked at, but that Holy Spirit showed up and she kind of rocked my world.
The lectionary texts were Galations 5: 1-25 and Luke 9:51-62, The Galations reading deals with Christian freedom and the workd of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit.  When folks entered the worship space they were met with a table with two bowls filled with bits of paper folded in half.  The bowl on the right  was filled with the fruits of the spirit "Take one"  the bowl on the left, the works of the flesh "take one"  above the bowls was written: Simul iustus et peccator (Simultaniously sinner and saint) "reflect."  So every one got a random paper from each bowl.  My favorite was Pastor Eric who got "fornication" and "faithfulness". hmmmm. 

Here's the manuscript:

Grace peace and mercy to you from the Triune God. Amen.
So Jesus is kinda harsh in this gospel reading, but
Honestly, I love these Gospel texts like this one which are called “problematic texts”, which is greek for “ones we’d never voluntarily preach on but which come up in the lectionary so we’re stuck with them.  But the Hebrew translation of  “Problematic text in the lectionary” is just “guest preacher”, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Pastor Eric for the invitation to preach today....i think.

It’s kind of a weird little story in Luke...
At the beginning of this chapter Jesus has just given the 12 power and authority to cast out demons and to cure diseases and has sent them out to proclaim the kingdom and to heal. This is kind of an important point.  Jesus gave them power and authority, power and authority did not come from them- they weren’t born with it, they did not stumble upon it and the certainly didn’t earn it.  It was given to them from Jesus. 
               So, what do they do with this freedom and this gift they did not earn? If we put this text in conversation with the Galatians reading, we could say that the disciples used their freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence an certainly did not become slaves to one another.  Instead, It totally goes to their heads, they forget that all their mojo comes from God and not themselves and so they start arguing about which one of them was the greatest. ok so that’s strike one.  Strike 2 is that soon after this they come to Jesus and say "so we were out using our power to cast out demons when we came across some guy who was also casting out demons in your name....and we don't know who this guy thinks he is, but we tried to put a stop to that real quick."  to which he answered “give me a break! whoever is not against you is for you.” The very next verse is where we enter in today’s text. 
           So he’s stuck with this ridiculous band of followers who are totally full of themselves and acting like jerks while he has set his face to Jerusalem and what awaits him there, namely the cross.  The passages about the would-be followers we just read are a bit harsh because come on, let’s not forget that Jesus was fully divine AND fully human...the guy has to be already a little irritated: he gives the 12 power to heal and proclaim the kingdom which immediately goes to their heads and they end up arguing, of all things,  about who is the greatest when in fact the only greatness they might have comes not from themselves but from Jesus who granted them power in the first place, so it’s kind of no surprise when in our gospel reading for today strike 3 happens: James and John come back rejected by the Samaritan village and ask “ so, should we rain fire down from heaven to consume them?” Jesus just had to of rolled his eyes.  These guys were a real piece of work.  I read this and thought “so exactly when did raining fire down to consume the villages of folks they don’t like become an option for them"? I even went back to the first verses of the chapter to check...power and authority to cast out demons is there, healing and proclaiming the kingdom is there, but strangely enough, incinerating an entire village because they made you look bad...hmmm...strangely absent. 
         So maybe in these harsh proclamations about what it takes to be a disciple: - that you won't have a place to sleep and can't bury your poor old dad,  or even take a minute to say farewell to your family... maybe what we see here is Jesus indulging in a bit of hyperbole in order to knock some sense into his disciples about what it means to be a follower of Christ.  So he responds to these three would-be followers we meet in today’s text by raising the bar for what it means to live a radical discipleship and I kinda like to imagine that he did this with his voice raised just enough so that he was sure James and John were in earshot.

     Barbara Rossing talked this week in Bible study about  our society’s escaltology...the ideas of the fullness of life, what is the culmination of human potential, which for us might be that that I should buy Loreal shampoo because I’m worth it, that the right car can bring me to the height of what it means to be human, that the fulfillment of all my wants will bring me all I need, that immortality can be obtained through consumption.  She then showed us images from the Roman Empire which portrayed their escatology: a belief that they would always have dominion over other nations as a imperial force, that they had the Gods on their side and they were living into the eschatological fulness of life where they had forever been destined to be the victors and other nations had forever been destined to be the conquered on whose backs and labor the empire rightly stood ...  victoriously in the fullness of time - world without end.
     Standing as we are in the 21st century knowing the rest of the story, namely the deterioration of the Roman Empire ... we snicker at them, knowing it is a farce and that they are just the dead burying the dead... that they are simply whistling in the graveyard.  From there it's almost effortless for us to turn to the empires of our day, the multinational corporations, the military industrial complex, Halibuton, Pepsico etc..Do you, like I, recognize Rome in their flawed and deceitful message of victory, entitlement and dominion?  We see environmental devastation and know that the planet cannot possibly sustain this empire for much longer.  We know that these empires are not the life giving gospel but are the death dealing forces.  They, like the village in Samaria are rejecting Christ and the Kingdom of God. They are the works of the flesh on a global scale.   And with fingers pointing to these death dealers we too say “Absolutely, let the dead bury the dead".  We see Rome burning and we want to hurry the process asking   “do you want us to command fire down from Heaven and consume them? “  And I wonder if we listen for the answer... if we might also hear Jesus rebuking us.    Because to turn from  empire we turn not to a victory party of righteousness where we, like the disciples,, can become drunk on self-congratulations, but we are called with Christ to turn our faces to Jerusalem and what waits there.... namely the cross. Yes we are called to let the dead bury the dead and to turn from Rome and our yoke of slavery to the lies of our culture's escatology - but I guess I wonder if, like in our Galatians text,  we simply are trading one yoke for another, if maybe we become slaves to self righteousness because by having our fingers pointed to the obvious evils we are drawing a line between them - the works of the flesh and us, the fruits of the spirit.  When in reality, we are all simultaneously sinner and saint. 
    Jesus is calling us, like the would-be followers in this text away from comfort and security perhaps even the comfort and security of our own confidence in our righteousness.  But that calling is not just from something but is also to something.  To a life of radical discipleship where we are free from the bondage of self and this freedom allows us to be slaves of one another  This Christian freedom is in self-giving in which we receive much.  This freedom allows us to love one another as we love ourselves.

             This all sounds kind of nice and fluffy, doesn’t it?  A Christian community of folks who are all self-giving slaves of one another?  How exactly does the math work on that?  If we are all set to serve one another, then who is getting served?  How exactly do we, as Paul suggests, “through love be slaves of one another”?  what does that look like? “you go first, oh no you go first, oh no really you go on” 
    In my blog I recently wrote about Christian love and how we are called to this radical loving of one another which is transformative and how this is so beautiful  and I'm totally onboard with the whole Christian love thing except for one little problem: and that is the annoying people.  Seriously, being slave to the annoying or the mean or the manipulative....this is a problem.  But Paul is pretty clear on this one: “Through love become slaves to one another”  So when it comes down to it, I just don’t think I can muster up that much love.  Seriously.  When it comes to Love and for that matter we might as well include joy, peace, patience, kindness,  generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and  (for sure) self-control, I and perhaps you can come up pretty short.  But here’s the good news - these are not the fruits of Nadia.  These are the fruits of the Spirit.
        Maybe that love is not from us but from Christ through us.  If our faces are set towards Jerusalem, then they are set towards the cross and God’s reconciling and redeeming work in the world, not our work in the world...so maybe the love by which we are to be slaves of one another is already accomplished and thankfully does not rely on our own efforts.
Perhaps is this new economy of sinner saint servanthood we all fall short to be fit for the kingdom.  I mean seriously.   Look at the poor would-be disciples in our text who wanted to follow Jesus - the bar gets set pretty high:  it's a bit of a set up really, there's no way to pull it off through our their own efforts, and maybe that's the point, because the good news is that we don't have to.  God's redeeming work through the cross provides for us a source which is an endless source.  Truly world without end.  If Luther is right about Christian freedom and that we are lord of all subject to none and at the same time dutiful servant of all, subject to everyone, then - this source, this power we have is a spiritual source....and it comes from ascribing glory and honor not to ourselves, but to God which then reckons us honorable and glorified through the beautiful paradox of II Corinthians that  “Power is made perfect in weakness”
         So while we should by all means turn from the bondage of empire and the death dealing powers of society with the false eschatology, the false messages of what it means to be fully human, we should  have faith that we are also free from the bondage of self - from idolatry, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, envy and the like.  So here’s the other word of good news:  I not only cannot overcome these death dealing forces within myself, but I am not expected to because it was Christ who set his face to Jerusalem and the suffering of the cross.  He says Follow me...he says to us, come and see.  He does not along this road ask us for directions or ask us to lead the way and thanks be to God for that,   But he set his face to Jerusalem and the inbreaking of God’s reign on earth through the suffering on the cross - where the false eschatology of earthly empire was inverted by the perfecting of true power in weakness.  So if we are called to "Through love be slaves to oneanother", then the good news is that this redeeming work of God and not ourselves is the source of love that makes it possible that we might be free from self and slaves to one another.   This source from which we drink is an endless source, truly world without end.  And this table to which we are about to come is simple bread and wine, but is the most abundant feast.  A feast in which we are called to freely partake.  And the good news is that we don’t all have to show up with our own bread.  And we don’t receive amounts in accordance with our goodness...we are all fed this broken and poured out Christ which gives us freedom and nourishes us to be as Luther says the most free lords of all and subjects to none; and the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone.   Christian freedom brothers and sisters- come and taste, come and drink, come and see.

AMEN

sin

At theology pub this week we talked about sin.  And it was good.
I have a problem with sin being only equated with behavior.  Yes there are some sinful behaviors, but I think that what makes them sinful is the injury that results from the behavior, injury to the one who committed the sin and injury to others as well.  For instance, and I know a lot of people have a different opinion on this, but I do not believe sex outside of marriage is sinful on its own.  I don't know that God really cares about sex, I think God cares about hurting ourselves and others and when this happens as a result of sexual behavior then it draws us further from being in harmony with our source, God, and thus is sinful.  This can happen in or outside of marriage and by trying to eqate its sinfulness with behavior and not with harm, then we miss the mark.  Is it possible to live in a manner so that no harm or injury come to yourself or others as a result of your actions?  no. Even if I withdrew from society all together and lived as a hermitess (and there are days when this sounds absolutely delicious), I am still removing myself from community (in which I believe Christ is revealed), and thus am causing myself harm. 
Props to Martin Luther for the whole "we are all simultaneously sinner and saint" thing.  Brilliant.  Holding these two in tension is the stuff of faith to me.  Yes I sin and am oriented to self and not God (more often than not), however, I am made imago dei, in the image of God and am beloved of God.  Both are true.  To live as though I am all of one and not the other is simply fraudulent.  The beauty in this is how the two natures are in relationship and not seperate from  each other.  Yes, I sin.   My thoughts and behaviors cause harm to myself and others, but as one made in the image of God (as one who still is connected to the source from whence I came and to where I will go), I have available to me the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation.  To not be a slave to sin is to admit when I am wrong, which then allows me to receive forgiveness from God (although this idea is shaky for me), myself and others.  I don't believe in the cosmic gumball machine of forgiveness as it were, where IF I put a quarter in (confess my sin), THEN God releases the gumball of forgiveness.  I just don't see myself as that powerful really, to cause God to forgive me.  Instead, I think maybe that the flowing spring of forgiveness and reconciliation is ever flowing.  We do not cause it to flow.  It is always and already.  But we cannot drink from it standing up.  We have to do two things in order to maintain a posture to be able to recieve this healing water. 1. admit I fucking NEED it. 2. get down on my knees.  By doing this I do not cause the spring to flow, I only allow it to feed me. 
We do this for each other as well.  Forgiveness and reconciliation is the stuff of the gospel.  It's hard too.  But the water of Life flows deep and strong and we all need a drink.

John 5:1-9

"Dude, high five!"

John 5:1-9
1After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. 5One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ 7The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ 8Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a sabbath.

Here's my sermon for this Sunday:

Jesus asks  “do you want to be made well?’” a yes or no question.
does he get a yes or no answer?  not so much.
what he does get to his yes or no question is this:
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”
This is kind of a puzzling anwer to the “do you want to be made well”  question isn’t it?

To be honest, the first time I looked over our text for today my first reaction wasn’t “oh, what a beautiful healing narrative”, it wasn’t even “wow, what a weird healing narrative”....trust me, we’ll get to that, but was “where the heck is verse 4?”  Well, lest we think there is some Divinci Code conspiracy to keep verse 4 from us, I’ll assure you, that verse 4 is included in some Bibles and in one family of ancient manuscripts, but not in others.  If you have a King James version at home you’ll see there’s a verse 4 in there.    Here’s what verse 4 says......  ***For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.***
So given that information, the answer to Jesus’ question-“Do you want to be made well?” being, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” makes more sense. 

But still, that’s a bit disturbing isn’t it?First invalid in the pool gets healed?  What kind of theology is that?
Can you imagine being that guy?  Sitting at the pool for 38 years waiting for someone to carry you in so that you’re the first invalid in the pool. Kind of explains the man’s answer though doesn’t is?  Here’s how I imagine the lame man heard Jesus’ question: “Do you WANT to be healed? I mean come on already,  Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”
So he was a little defensive, who can blame him?  Hey, “no one will carry me down and when I try and hobble down myself, other guys get in front of me  I’ve tried and tried to be made whole, but it never happens.“ He’s basically saying to Jesus :cut me some slack here.

My theory is that he misheard the question due straight up to sin.  I’m talking straight up sin.
and that sin is a woeful lack of imagination
does that ever fit into our confession?I confess that I’ve sinned against you in thought, word and deed.....and by a woeful lack of imagination.

the sin of lacking imagination looks like this:
it’s as though Jesus has an airplane and is asking :would you like to go flying?  and we say “sounds nice, but I don’t think I have the arm strength to get that thing in the air”
The man at the pool, like us, Completely fails to understand what is being offered to him and, like us, is entirely unable to see that the Son of God LIVING WATER is right before him offering peace and wholeness and God’s shalom.   But he’s just looking for a lift into the pool.. but still....and here’s the cool thing folks,  Jesus heals him anyway... knowing that he didn’t even have the capacity to answer the yes or no question..... knowing that unlike the other healing stories there was no crowd watching who are going to witness this miracle and believeth...... perhaps even knowing that this guy still wouldn’t get it.  he healed him.  He looked on him and despite his inadequacies, or maybe, just maybe ...BECAUSE of his inadequacies, he healed him.  God didn’t insist that this lame man have the right attitude, or that he even understand what was being accomplished in him.   no.  he was unknowingly conscripted into the opus dei, the work of God without being qualified, likable, worthy or even terribly bright.

so  Jesus heals the guy who doesn’t even understand his question, he receives God’s shalom without even having seen it as a possibility, much less having earned it in some way..
This irony is the great thing about John’s gospel, as Tom Thatcher suggests, we get to snicker at all the characters, the Samaritan woman, Nicodemus, this guy....who, unlike us, didn’t have the benefit of reading John’s prologue to his gospel account.  you know, the word was with God and the Word was God and the word was made flesh.  You see, we know by reading John’s prologue that Jesus isn’t just another weird Galilean, but is God made flesh.  He’s not just another prophet, but is LIVING WATER.   this is not information the characters who encounter Jesus have the benefit of knowing.  So we chuckle at people like the lame man at the pool who doesn’t understand what is really going on, who doesn’t understand who’s really talking to him.  We snicker, that is, until the last verse of this passage when we find out the joke is really on us.  Jesus just healed a man who had been sick for 38 years, tells him to walk and carry his mat which we might think was just a little housekeeping detail...”don’t just leave your matt here for someone else to have to pick up”.  But we don’t really get what’s going on until that last verse when the tables are turned on us ....you see, we think we know what’s going on ...that the son of God is healing a lame man...until these 5 little words “this happened on the sabbath”.  what!  We thought it was all about the healing of a man who doesn’t  get it, but no... Now it is US who don’t have the benefit of important background information that might help us understand the importance of this interaction.   Now, in the verses that follow our reading for this morning the man encounters leaders from the temple who say “who told you to carry your matt on the sabbath...yada yada..”.but lest we use yet another opportunity to deride the Jews for their ridiculous rules....we should consider the possibility that when we see Jesus doing something he shouldn’t be doing on the sabbath, this is an invitation for us to reflect on how much we love, I mean LOVE to limit how and with what or whom we think God can be at work in the world.......
a woeful lack of imagination

this  happens in two ways,  -  one:
We kind of have the tendency to limit how we think God might use others.  Look again at the text.  Not only is the lame man at the Bethesda pool lacking imagination, he’s doesn’t even have the manners to ask Jesus’ name...when the leaders at the temple  ask who healed him he’s like “I don’t know, some guy”  In other healing narratives, the one who is healed believes and so do the witnesses to the healing, then they praise God and it’s a big victory party.  Not here. So in our lack of imagination we like to think that God only is at work in those who believe, those who are grateful, those who are deserving.  Not here. When Jesus tells him to walk and carry his mat on the sabbath,  he is conscripted into God’s redeeming work in the world and he’s not even necessarily  a believer....doesn’t even know Jesus’ name!  Ultimately, what is considered sacred is changing and the lame man is swept up into this expanding sacrality of the Kingdom of God. 
Here as always Jesus is messing with our heads.  Upturning our assumptions, inverting our values and loving our brokeness.

Secondly, these sabbath violations are all about us and how we like to limit how we think God can work through us in the world.... 
woeful lack of imagination
  It’s remarkable to me that despite the fact that just about every hero in the bible is really an anti-hero of some sort- David the adulterer, Mary Magdalene the demonic, Peter the denier,  Mary the unwed mother, Rahab the prostitute...despite all that,  we’re still  sure that God can only use perfect people, or at the very least, people better than us .  Show me one character (who isn’t the second person of the trinity) in the Bible , used to participate in God’s work who was used because they were perfect, or grateful, or worthy

  How do we answer when asked if we want to be made whole?  Are we imaginative?  We have a healing ministry right here at Bethlehem...Stephan ministers offer healing prayer on the first sunday...., not just for those who are in need of physical healing, but those who are in need of blessing, of encouragement, in need of God’s shalom.....and that’s ALL of us.  I know I hesitate to take advantage of this because if I admitted that I need healing then others may think that I need healing and would then they’d assume I’m not perfect and we just can’t have that sort of thing going on.
I wonder if God is saying to us: “do you want to be made whole, to 

participate in the inbreaking of my kingdom here and now...to

glimpse the New Jerusalem? 

and then we say: Dude, we’re just hoping for a lift into the pool.
A woeful lack of imagination

Our lack of imagination doesn’t keep God from washing us up into God’s work...work that is happening often far outside of where we look for it.  Our lack of imagination, like that of the lame man in John, just keeps us from naming who healed us, naming who reconciled a broken relationship, who healed our fractured selves.

Beloved of God, Hear the good news:

While we might settle for just a lift into the pool, right in front of us is living water....water available to all .... even us, the young, the old, the smug, the overlooked, the single mothers, the housewives, homeless and the business executives. Water which sweeps us up into God’s work in the world. Not through our own righteousness, not through our own perfection but through the grace of a loving baffling God.   The availability of this water has nothing to do with believing or being grateful, or being worthy.  It has to do with being.  Being children of God in this creation of God’s and being caught up into the work of God.
You are made whole by living water of the risen Christ, may you continue to be swept up into the unexpected and baffling shalom of God. 
AMEN

Scum of the Earth

A couple of weeks ago I visited a church in Denver called Scum of the Earth.  They meet in a huge old grocery store turned into a worship space.

Cool stuff:

• Every Sunday night before worship they serve a free meal to whoever shows up, and trust me...they show up.  Lots of Denver's homeless are fed each week as well as other folks.  A church that feeds people before feeding people is a good thing.
• The room was filled with not only the homeless, but skate punks, street kids, goths, you name it...it was difficult trying to conjure the image of another local church where these guys would be found.  I liked that my heavily tattooed arms were not looked at twice except in admiration.  This is an unusual experience for me in a church setting.

Not so cool stuff

• worship sucked ass.  Seriously.  There is a huge stage on which stood a band who played (well I might add) rocked up versions of praise songs, 3 of them, followed by a 35 minute sermon follwed by another 3 praise songs.  That's it.  That's what they did.  For a gal who's a liturgy princess, this was weird.  No ritual, no liturgy.  It felt like a birthday party without a cake or presents or decorations, just the song.
• It's no secret that I'm generally not a big fan of the praise music (to be clear, I'm all for offering thanks and praise to God, just not with vapid lyrics sung to really bad soft-rock).  I often refer to this as "Jesus is my Boyfriend" music and no shit, there was a line sung during their worship service that talked (to Jesus) in this way: "Your intoxicating scent when we meet in our secret place".  EEWWW!  I felt like I needed a shower.  You CANNOT talk about Jesus that way....creepy.
• The first words on their "Statement of Faith" sheet are as follows: We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, free from error and the final authority in matters of life and faith. The sixty-six books of the Protestant Cannon contain God's written revelation of himself.  Which leads me to wonder "have you read the thing?"  Free from error?  Read the synoptics in parallel and get back to me on that.

Conclusion:

Not my bag theologically or liturgically (if you could even use that word).  However, they feed a bunch of folks and there are plenty of churches whose worship I love and with whose theology I agree who don't do anything close to that and where these kids would not be found.    I didn't feel like a freak at church and that was nice.  They have a Christian community with whom to worship God and that's a good thing.

[Grid::Blog::Via Crucis 2007] Mary Magdalene

John 20

Via Crucis GridBlog is now into the stations of the resurrection and I gleefully signed up for "Christ appears to Mary Magdalene"

This is my favorite passage in the entire Bible for the following reasons:

*Mary is despondent about the death of her teacher whom she loved so deeply.  She's so filled with grief that she doesn't even recognize him in her midst, instead confusing him for the gardener (how do you possibly ever live that down?  I imagine her and other Christians late at night drinking wine telling stories about Jesus and inevitably someone going "Yeah...and remember when Mary thought he was the gardener!! Hey Mary, how'd you know he was the gardener and not say, the plummer or maybe just a florist???!!!")

??? A Question: How often in our own lives do we fail to recognize Christ in our midst?

* She has no idea he is there or that the resurrection even took place until...."Mary".  He speaks her name.  This is beautiful to me.  I have heard my name and it made all the difference.

???  A Question: How is Christ calling our name?

* Christ appoints her to be the Apostle to the Apostles.  She is chosen to let the boys in on the news.  Her.  A woman.  A former demonic.  Her.      Wow.   
(Mary M was not a prostitute nor was she the woman caught in adultery.)  Read Dr. Ann Brock's book Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority

??? A Question: How are we unlikely proclaimers of the the risen Christ?

p.s. yeah, that's my arm.

Dear God,
Thank you for the faithful witness of Mary Magdalene.  Help me to recognize Christ in my midst.  Help me to listen for my name.  Help me to stop questioning your judgment around my own call to announce the resurrection.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

*

The Problem WIth Christian Love

Here's the problem I have with Christian love: people who I don't like.

As those who follow Christ we are called to love others. This can be highly inconvenient. It's so easy to be loving toward people I like. It's even easy to be loving toward people who aren't in the category of "people I like", but just "people who don't bug the shit out of me". It's the people who fall into the latter that I struggle with. These people aren't even "my enemies", they're just irritating.

Here is one reason that I never thought of myself as pastor material: I avoid emotionally needy people. This isn't the most pastoral trait in the world. Now, we're not talking about someone in crisis because of a recent tragedy. We're talking about people who think they are in crisis, but aren't. These are people who are emotional vacuums who will suck all the focus and energy from a group given the chance.

In my morning prayer I can hold them in God's love. I can wish them to have health and healing. Just don't ask me to be in the same room with them. I love them in the sense that I want good things for them, only I don't want them to obtain these good things by emotionally sucking them out of me. The problem with this is that I suspect that love is as much a feeling as it is an action and I can have all the nice fuzzy thoughts and prayers about damaged, socially awkward people as I want, but if I "have not love" I am a "noisy gong, a clanging cymbal" as Paul says to the Corinthians.

It's not easy to have my values (love, inclusively, grace) with my personality (sarcastic, judgmental, acerbic)

Dear God,
Some of your children are extremely irritating and honestly, difficult to love. I don't really want to be around these people, but know that I am called to reflect your love to them. This is really gonna need to come from you. Pony up the extra measure if you don't mind, because I've got nothin'. Remind me that you, and not my personality, are my source, and that that is an endless source.
AMEN

doubt and idolatry

“If we fail to recognize that the term ‘God’ always falls short of that towards which the word is supposed to point, we will end up bowing down before our own conceptual creations forged from the raw materials of our self-image, rather than bowing before the one who stands over and above that creation. Hence Meister Eckhart famously prays, ‘God rid me of God’, a prayer that acknowledges how the God we are in relationship with is bigger, better and different than our understanding of that God”. ( Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God19)

I've been thinking about conceptual idolatry. In the fundamentalist theological system that I was taught growing up, doubt was the opposite of faith, essentially equated with disbelief. Any attempt to question the faith or the biblical text was seen as Satan trying to get me to not believe in Jesus and thus "red rover, red rover, send Nadia right over" to his side. This was dangerous business obviously as any questions one might have about, I don't know, maybe the logical inconsistencies of biblical literalism, or the fact that God sends all people who don't believe in Jesus to Hell (even those who never heard of the guy) all potentially meant putting your soul in eternal peril, so they largely just went unasked. Of course now I see doubt as a cornerstone of faith. To strenuously engage with, struggle with and question the text and the faith is a deeply faithful act. The faith and the text can take it. really. it stands up to what we throw against it. This is not to imply that there is a singular, orthodox truth which always shines through, but that the wisdom contained in the faith and the text does not go up in smoke when we question it. Paradoxically the wisdom of the faith and the text comes alive when we dare to wrestle it ... and then ask for its blessing. This critical, often angry engagement is the opposite of idolatry. Kenneth Leech in Experiencing God": Theology as Spirituality, says "Such doubt is not the enemy of faith, but an essential element within it. For faith in God does not bring the false peace of answered questions and resolved paradoxes. Rather it can be seen as a process of 'unceasing interrogation'" (25). OK, so here's the rub. As a progressive thinking Christian, I'm totally on board with this critical engagement and not making the biblical text an idol. But what about my own theologically sacred cows? What about the all-star notion that God is Love? Let's question that. (actually, my friend the Hebrew Bible professor thinks that there are enough texts in the Bible to support a book called "God is a Tyrant") What about the liberal notion of Jesus as one who favors women and the poor? Let's question that too. I'm not trying to imply that these two ideas are not true, only that when we hold onto them too tightly we may do so at the peril of a richer theological understanding. When we are unwilling to doubt or question the theological ideas we cherish the most, we are in danger of reifying our own conceptions and thus allowing them to limit what they point to.

Dear God,
Forgive me when I confuse YOU with my limited idea of you. Help me faithfully to wonder, question and engage my assumptions and beliefs, not so that they dissolve in the process, but that they then become more alive. Show me how my strangle hold on ideas about the Bible and the faith keep them from breathing. Destroy my conceptual idols. When I seek the comfort of sure answers, discomfort me. When I seek you instead, give me comfort.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

Hell of a sermon

This is a copy of the sermon from this past sunday preached by the fabulous Kevin Maly pastor of St. Paul's in downtown Denver. Kevin is to be my supervisor for internship...how lucky am I?

It’s certainly been an interesting week in the world of religion. The Discovery Channel, along with Harper San Francisco, announced the release of their television documentary and book, “The Jesus Family Tomb.” If you watched any of the morning TV shows you heard and saw tabloid TV director Simcha Jacobovici and “Titanic” director James Cameron holding slickly forth about their work detailing the finding of the bones of Jesus, his mother Mary, supposed wife Mary Magdalen, a son and assorted other relatives. When first I heard the story on the Today Show, I groaned right out loud. I just knew that the week would bring all sorts of questions as to what I thought about this so-called discovery. Before even hearing the show-biz types “pimping off the Bible,” as Joe Zias, retired curator at the Rockefeller Musueum in Jerusalem, characterized the work of Jacobovici and Cameron, I had already come up with my reply. I decided I would simply borrow Rhett Butler’s remark to Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
But what if they really have found the bones of Jesus? Long ago in seminary we were already hearing the question about what if the bones of Jesus were ever found. There wasn’t a single professor who didn’t remark along the lines of “Who cares?” Well, apparently lots of people. Quoting Joe Zias again, “People want signs and wonders.” People want signs and wonders. Seems we’ve heard that one somewhere before too.
In this morning’s Gospel story we hear some Pharisees – of all people – urging Jesus to run away. “Herod,” they tell Jesus, “wants to kill you.” More likely, given who they are, the Pharisees are afraid they and a whole lot of others might just see signs and wonders from Jesus. Have no fear says Jesus, all you will see me do is what I have always done: I will be found with the outcasts and the unclean. I AM the one who is like a mother hen, gathering her weak chicks under her wings.
God, a mother hen tucking her little ones under her wings. How . . . . . . . . pathetic, really. What is a mother hen in the face of a jackal like Herod? What is a mother hen in the face of the insanities being perpetrated by the powers and principalities of this shadowed planet? A mother hen, what a hoot! The chicks might get away – for a few moments, but mama’s going to be Sunday dinner for the fox, the jackal, and every other assorted predator. We don’t want some feathered chicken, we want signs and wonders. You know, the glorified body of Christ did pass through walls! You know what that means! Perhaps he did leave his bones behind. Then what a find! Wow, we could reach out and touch the real bones of the real body. Perhaps if we were to wave a thigh bone in the air like some truly cosmic magic wand, we could cure AIDS, end poverty, house the homeless, and have real regime change for a change. That would be a real triumph. Get that body off the cross, shoo away that silly hen, who needs Lent and all that dreary Golgotha stuff, let’s get on with the victory party!!
So, what if they are the bones of Jesus, the relic of relics? Frankly, I doubt they are and I hope they are not – the world doesn’t need any more crap and stupidity in the name of Christianity. Besides, bones don’t matter to me, for I have already seen Christ, and I come to bear witness and to testify: you along with me this very day will see the true body of Christ. In this morning’s Gospel we hear Jesus promise: “You will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’” And today that prophecy will be fulfilled as you join millions on earth and untold multitudes in heaven in singing that unending hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of power and might! Hosanna in the highest, hosanna in the highest.” And then, as Martin Luther writes in his instruction on the Mass, the Priest raises the bread and wine as the people sing – here it is – “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” It has come to pass: We see Christ!
Hmm. Not very . . . . . . . . impressive. Looks like simple bread and wine. About as powerful as some dumb hen. But . . . God, nonetheless. Our God – the one who whose power and might are made perfect in weakness. Our God, whose throne is upon the dung heap surrounded by the thieves, the whores, the murderers, the defectives, and the diseased. Our God – the one who dies daily of AIDS in Africa, the one who is maimed and murdered with the service men and women in Iraq, the one who is continually being slaughtered with the hundred thousand and more Iraqi citizens in that hideous war. Our God – the one who says for those who mock and murder God, who says for you and for me, for those in Washington D.C., and even for the suicide bombers – forgive them.
You with me this day will see Jesus, hidden in, with, and under simple bread and wine. And you and I will take the true body and blood of Jesus into our bodies, and we will all go out from this place, forgiven to be sure, but even more – with Christ in our bodies – all of us – made one with Christ, to BE Christ in and for the world. No, not the cosmically powerful Christ, but the Christ who is mother, caring for the children in our midst and for all the vulnerable ones who cross our paths. Christ – the one who touches and loves the last, the least, and the most unlovely. You and I – Christ hidden within us – going out into the world to cast out the demons of racism in our words, in our deeds, in our advocacy, and in our voting. You and I – Christ hidden within us – working to bring an end to the insanities of this and every war. You and I – Christ hidden within us – living simply and simply refusing to cooperate with a culture of materialism and gross over-consumption. You and I, Christ hidden within this faith community in this city for good – this faith community which is an announcement of grace for all people – for all people . . . without exception.
Frankly my dears, you and I don’t give a damn about the bones. The real thing, it’s right and simply here. So prepare yourselves: you’re about to saved and the whole world with you. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Praise be.

Copyright, 2007, Kevin R. Maly

The Transfiguration of our Lord

I feel each day as though I am being pulled deeper into the mystery of the faith. I'm not sure how else to describe it, but the deeper I'm drawn, the more like a neophyte I feel. It's as though this sacred, blessed, mystery religion, ripe with endless possibility, meaning and import has been hiding all along behind the facade of the Church; hidden by pews in straight lines and nicy-nice chit-chat, and minutiae of doctrine, and bad organ music, and intolerance or at best irrelevance. Faith to me is an experience and not intellectual assent to a set of propositions and I just want to invite others into the experience, not tell them what it means or try and get them to agree with me, but to create space where they can engage the mystery of Christ. Here's something I read this morning pertaining to the Transfiguration of our Lord which I found to be beautiful:

The basic response of the soul to the Light is internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender and listening. The secret places of the heart cease to be our noisy workshop. They become a holy sanctuary of adoration and of self-oblation, where we are kept in perfect peace, if our minds be stayed on Him who has found us in the inward springs of our life. And in brief intervals of overpowering visitation we are able to carry the sanctuary from of mind out into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness, and in a hyperaesthesia (pathological increase of sensitivity) of the soul, we see all mankind tinged with deeper shadows, and touched with Galilean glories. Powerfully are the springs of will moved to an abandon of singing love toward God; powerfully are we moved to a new and overcoming love toward time-blinded men and all creation. In this Center of Creation all things are ours, and we are CHrist's and CHrist is God's. We are owned men ready to run and not be weary and to walk and not faint.
A Testimonial of Devotion
Thomas Kelly (1893-1941)

Portland Emerging Women's conference

I'm back from the Emerging Women's conference in Portland. I was nervous about going as I seldom break away from my Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran tribe (more about that here). I thought that I, as a progressive Christian, would be hit with the scripture stick by my more conservative sisters. This did not happen, but the conference was difficult for me in an entirely different way. Seeing so many amazing women deeply wounded by the church was really tough. I met a lot of gals who were so deeply faithful and who felt a call from God to be leaders but who were told it was sinful to even presume that God would call a woman to ministry. I met gals who, even within traditions that ordain women, were told that if they were ordained, no man would ever want to marry them. (I see this as a positive selection process myself). I met older women who have engaged this struggle for decades - machete in their hands making the path that much clearer for women behind them. I too came from a religious background in which women were second class citizens, not permitted to even pray aloud if men were present, (that part of my story here), but I left that church 20 years ago and spent ten years exploring the female face of God as a way of reclaiming that of God within myself which I felt in my upbringing had been silenced. It was only after years of seeing Goddess in the world and in myself and not only God (I see these as two faces of one deity), that I was able to go back to the church...that is another story for another time. Many of my tattoos are related to this narrative in my life, including one of The Snake Goddess pictured above...she's so strong and fierce and curvy and beautiful....by claiming her in me when I was in my early twenties, I was able to come back to Christianity having learned, experienced, felt and claimed that I too am a child of the Creator. Many of the women I met this weekend are trying to go through a transformation into their own power within the church and my prayers are with them. I was glad to have been with them all. As for the Lutheran church, we have ordained women for 32 some odd years, but seriously, can 2000 years of male domination be overcome and made right in 32 years?

Dear God,
Send your healing to women who have been told that you don't want their leadership and to those who told them such a lie. Heal your church that we may feel, experience and know the wholeness you intend for us.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

I love the smell of Schleiermacher in the morning....smells like victory

So what good is a Monday morning without a Nineteenth century German theologian?

"With ignorance your knowledge will ever be mixed, but the true and proper opposite of knowledge is presumption of knowledge."

-Friederich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Theological "Sardines"

Church youth groups are known to play "sardines" in which 1 person hides somewhere in the church building and the others all try and find them. When the hider is found, the seeker quietly joins them until everyone is in the hiding place together, all squished together like "sardines".

For the Morning Office I use For All The Saints: A Prayer Book For and By the Church, which contains the Daily Office readings as well as a writing each day from a theologian or saint or some such. (For the Daily Office prayers...Matins, noon, Vespers and Compline, I use The Divine Hours). Today's Gospel is the Samaritan woman at the well, which is a favorite of mine, although I have to admit, meeting someone at the water fountain who "told me everything I did" might be kind of freaky and a bit humiliating (and I imagine rather time consuming), but I digress. The extra-Biblical writing from today was from some guy named Fulton J. Sheen. His take on the Gospel text is the worst I've encountered, but what really was creepy was his assertion that "There are only two classes of people in the world - those who have found God and those who are looking for Him." So I guess God is hiding in the church building and there are those who have found him and those who are looking for him. If that's the case, I'd rather be the latter than the former. I'm still looking and part of that looking is proclaiming my experiences of God. If "finding God" implies then that I 'll be pressed up against a group of smug people who have also "found Him", then I'd rather keep looking, thanks. It seems a bit more satisfying.
Having said that I must admit that I love hearing of and telling personal experiences of God, which I believe are not only possible but transformative, both personally and globally. It's just that believing you've arrived at the final destination "God" is an illusion and a dangerous one. For me it doesn't work like that.

Detroit

Ryan Torma (minister of community life at Spirit Garage in Minneapolis) and I spent the last two days in Detroit. The Bishop's office there is looking at the possibility of an emerging church plant near Wayne State University and wanted our input. First of all...heaps of praise to these people (synod staff, local clergy, outreach board, Episcopal and Lutheran campus ministry) for casting a vision for something they are new to and are only in the begining stages of learning about! There's a good scene there that would lend itself well to postmodern Christian community.

Jack Eggleston from the Bishop's office drove us around downtown Detroit and I still don't quite know how to process what I saw. It was like a bombed out war zone. There were large areas with more abandoned buildings than occupied, including neighborhoods with large victorian homes which hinted at their previous beauty but are now burned up, decimated and raw. These are truly the abdandoned places of empire. Detroit never quite recovered from the race riots of the 1960's and the "White Flight" from the inner city drained the area of needed resources and infastructure. Today in Detroit, one block will be abandoned and another will hold a row of new lofts. One block will have only a run down liquor store with barred windows and the next will host a new gallery and hipster bar. I guess it felt weird to say to them that yeah, there's a happenin' arts and music scene and the creative class are moving back to the city, and then have nothing to say about the death and hopelessness surrounding the "hip scene". The whole experience was darkly and unavoidably punctuated by a reality I would rather not know about...but don't have the option of ignoring anymore.

I don't even have a prayer for this. Do any of you?

A Christmas Gift from the Sarcastic Lutheran

Let us, then, meditate upon the nativity just as we see it happening in our own babies. Behold Christ lying in the lap of his own mother. What can be sweeter than the Babe, what more lovely than the young mother! What fairer than her youth! What more gracious than her virginity! Look at the Child, knowing nothing. Yet all that is belongs to him, that your conscience should not fear but take comfort in him. Doubt nothing. To me there is no greater consolation given to mankind than this, that Christ became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap and at the breasts of his most gracious mother. Who is there that this sight would not comfort? Now is overcome the power of sin, death, hell, conscience, and guilt, if you come to this gurgling Babe and believe that he is come, not to judge you, but to save.

-Martin Luther's Christmas sermon

A blessed Christmas to all!

Luke 3:7-18

This coming Sunday (3rd Sunday in Advent)'s gospel reading is a doosey. So John the baptist is doing his whole cool-but-weird prophet thing and telling the crowds to not be so complacent in their religiosity and to make their faith really mean something in the world. After which they're like, "ok then what do we do?" to which J.t.B. says to share your extra stuff with the folks who don't have anything and to not cheat or extort money. This is not exactly spiritual brain surgery. It's "Be a Good Person 101" if anything.
The difficult part is next. "I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire".( Luke 3 16-17 NRSV)

Here are 2 ways to look at this:
1) I'm "saved" and you're "damned" - Jesus is a comin' and he's gonna put all the good folks in his heavenly barn and the bad folks are gonna burn in the eternal fires of Hell (strangely enough, this is a position generally upheld only by people who see themselves as the "good folks")

2) Perhaps I should Thank God Jesus has the winnowing fork and not me because there's stuff about me that I'm sure is wheat, but that God may see as chaff and there has been chaff in me that I'm certain should be burned but which God seems to insist is still useful. To me there is great hope in this passage. The Holy Spirit is an unquechable fire which burns up the dead, useless stuff in us? Then sign me up! To me, the whole "Jesus with a winnowing fork" thing is cool. Winnow away.

A Prayer:
Dear God,
I'm lousey at knowing what in me is useful, so just use what you can and burn the rest...I'll try and stay out of the way.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

Advent

This first day of Advent has me wondering about waiting and disappointment. There's a certain deliciousness to waiting, in that when you're preparing for something to happen or to arrive, that time is filled with possibility. You have not yet been disappointed by the actuality of the event or object. As a child I remember the anticipation of what I would get for Christmas. My mom would give us the Sears Wish Book (a catalogue of Christmas gifts) and we would circle what we wanted, which we generally never actually got. It took me years to realize that my Mom didn't actually shop at Sears but at the "BX", (or "PX") at the Air Force Base. This is sort of like a discount store filled with last year's products and off-brands that went unsold at regular stores, or simply just random stuff that the military got a deal on. So we got whatever happened to be on sale at the PX, which pretty much never was the cool stuff in the Sears Wish Book,(this wan an economic necessity given our military pay). Herein lies the problem with Advent having turned into the period in which we wait for the holiday of Christmas, that glorious day in which we get to open presents and overeat - in this framework for waiting we're dissappointed by all the wrong things; bad gifts, lousy relatives, over dry turkey etc... when what we should be dissappointed in is the Christmas story itself, meaning that we never can predict how God will show up in the world. When advent is about waiting on God's incarnation into the world and into our lives, as it should be, then the outcome is much better. Don't get me wrong there is still disappointment in this story as well. The King of Glory coming to earth in the form of a ....drum roll please.....helpless baby of an unwed mother???? This is the kind of disappointment which illuminates God's upside-down kingdom on Earth. It is the kind of disappointment which satisfies like the fulfillment of personal desires cannot. This is a God of irony, which I find terribly comforting.
Dear God,
May we all be fulfilled with the the Holy Disappointment of Advent!
Save us from the idolatry of an American Christmas
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

Matthew 20:1-16

This past weekend I took a class on Taize prayers, which was amazing. We did 4 Taize services in 2 days, lots of singing, lots of silence. Brad Berglund led the workshop and he's the real thing...an amazing guy. Anyhow, he spoke quite a bit about the Taize community and the brothers there who serve the young people who come to them, and give their personal inheritances to the poor. I left thinking, "wow, I'm kind of a shitty Christian compared to these guys" which brings us to the Gospel reading a few days ago from the daily office. It's the whole workers in the vineyard thing. Basically this landowner hires some laborers to work his fields, he tells them he'll pay them say, $100 for a day's work. Well then at like, noon the guys hires some other dudes and then about 20 minutes before the close of the work day he hires some more guys (or gals, whatever). Here's the kicker: He pays $100 to the original workers who were there all day AND to the ones who only worked since noon, AND to the ones who worked 20 minutes. The ones who worked all day were pissed about this. The boss says "hey I am paying you we agreed on, are you just jealous because I'm generous? Get over yourselves." (revised Nadia translation)
In the profoundly conservative church I was raised in, this passage was always read as meaning that if you "become a Christian" and follow all the silly little rules (no smoking, no dancing, no drinking, no swearing (fuck that!), no having friends who aren't in the church etc...) for 50 years and then die, then if someone "becomes a Christian" on their death bed after having loads of fun their whole life....TOO BAD, that's the ways it goes.
This week I read it differently. I relate so much more with the 20 minute workers. SO I'm not a Christian monastic who prays all day and has no possessions. Maybe they're the all day worker and I'm the 20 minute worker. It doesn't matter. I don't have to be that person to serve God. That's what's so weird and amazing about my life. God has called ME, as flawed and sarcastic and tattooed and foul-mouthed as I am. Yes, sometimes that causes me to question God's judgment, but the fact is that God is gracious to us 20 minute workers. That's the Gospel isn't it? Thank God we don't have to earn God's grace, because frankly, that would be exhausting.

A prayer:
Dear God,
Sometimes you can be a really great boss who pays me a full wage even when I come into work hung over, with a bad attitude 20 minutes before the end of the shift. Thanks for that. Help me to remember that you never leave me as I am, but always transform me in your Work.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN.

Korean Woman Theologian

This blew me away today:

Can this Korean women’s theology be a Christian theology with these two norms: liberation (Han-pu-ri) and life giving power? Surely it can because we Korean women believe in good news (gospel), not bad news. For us, the gospel of Jesus means liberation (Han-pu-ri) and life-giving power. In that sense, we are Christians. WHere there is genuine experience of liberation (Han-pu-ri) and life-giving power, we meet our God, Christ, and the power of the Spirit. That is Good News. We Korean Christian women define our Christian identity according to our lived inherited experience which stretches five thousand years back, even beyond the birth of Jesus.”

"Han-pu-ri": Doing Theology from Korean Women's Perspective Chung Hyun Kyung Dr. Hyun Kyung Chung is Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City

The whole "gay" thing

There is a discussion about homosexuality on emerging women

Here are my comments I posted:

There are those of us out here who read the passages from the Bible that pertain to homosexuality as condemning sexual violence, not gay people.

In my theological purview it is difficult to picture a God who would not support love and commitment in a world so desperately in need of both.

I don't think God cares about sex. I think God cares about hurting others and hurting ourselves (through sex, words, images, consumption, commerce, you name it)

I am deeply committed to a denomination who does not allow non-celebate homosexuals to serve in ordained positions and this is deeply difficult for me. I have (as have many others) decided I love the Lutheran church too much to leave it as it is. We will not be silent, or silenced.

The whole "love the sinner, hate the sin" in reference to gays is total bull-shit to me. We could say this about abusive partners, the promiscuous (straight or gay), white collar criminals, any other collar criminal etc. But not gay people, or short people or Republicans, or people with bad hair (no matter how much we'd like to)

Can we please stop using scripture to proof-text our own bigotry...it has also been used to keep women out of ordained ministry, to uphold the legitimacy of slave-holding, to justify genocide etc...Find something else to help you hate who you hate.

More than watchmen for the morning

My little boy was hospitalized Tuesday for croup (for the third time) He's totally fine now, but I was exhausted by the experience and Thursday I was whining to my sister about my string of humiliations over the past week and a half (only some of which have shown up on Sarcastic Lutheran). She mentioned that perhaps God was humbling me, so that I have planty of practice for when I'm a pastor. My first thought was "thanks a lot bitch". my second thought was "I'm so grateful to have a deeply spiritual sister who can speak the truth to me". I think she's on to something. There are lessons to be learned from the past couple of weeks that would haave been impossible to learn from success-success-success.
Last night I was the volunteer on-call chaplain at the hospital and ended up spending two hours with a young couple who had just lost thier baby...the mother, 7 months pregnant, was in an accident and the baby couldn't be saved from the emergency c-section. Really all I did was sit with them, I'm no ace-chaplain, but driving home I wonder how my spirit while in that room with them and their tiny deceased baby would have been a little different if I had just experienced 2 weeks of utter success in my life.

Dear God,
When I complain about stuff, forgive me.
Teach me to wait for you.
More than watchmen for the morning.
More than watchmen for the morning.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

My demons are now in those drowning swine

Today's gospel reading from the daily office is from Luke 8, the story of the man possessed by a legion of demons. Not unlike most of scripture, this is a weird story. The demons within the man appeal to Jesus not to cast them into the abyss. In my comic book way of thinking I expect this: Jesus=good, demons=bad, so the good guy should pretty much cast the bad guy into the abyss, right? The weird thing is that when the demons suggest that they could leave the man's body and enter that herd of pigs on the hill over there, Jesus says, "OK". Huh? Does Jesus show compassion even for demons? If so then perhaps I should attempt to show compassion to members of the Religious Right. At this point the demons enter the swine, who then all run down into the river and drown themselves. So does that end the demons too? Who knows. Poor pigs though, right? I guess as a first century Jew, Jesus' highest concern was probably not for the well being of pigs.
What I love the most is what Jesus tells the man now free from his demons. He wanted to go with Jesus (who was sent out of the town because the townsfolk were afraid of his having healed the demonic), but Jesus said "Go home and tell what God has done for you". Isn't this all God asks of us in a way? Recognize what God is doing in the world and tell people about it.
I don't have much problem telling of God's work in the world and in my life when it is positive in nature, but when there are disappointments (like yesterday's race) I tend to focus on what I did, is this perhaps another form of self-centeredness? I love the 16th century Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila who, at the end of her unbelievably beautiful writings she would always say something to the effect of: If there was something written here that was enlightening or helpful it came from God, if it was not, it came from me.

Dear God,
Please cast my demons (self-centeredness, pride, addiction, self-loathing, envy) into whatever herd of swine might be available. Then give me the eyes to see that this is your work and to speak of it continually - but not so much that people think I'm crazy and then stop listening.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

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

John 9: 1-17

The gospel reading today in the lectionary is the one where Jesus restores sight to the blind beggar. Here are some messages I see in this story.
*that we like to blame people or their families for what we see as their misfortune.
* that our difficulties in life are stages on which the Mercy of God dances.
* sometimes it is we who get to show the Mercy of God to the world.
*when we are more attached to religion than to God, we can become blind to God's work around us.
A prayer for today:
Dear God,
Help me to understand your great mercy. And even if I can't understand it, please give me your strength to dance it out into the world. Help me to not be so judgemental of others. For the times when I have been blind to your work in the world, forgive me. Spread your mud over MY eyes, that I might wash and see you.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

the image is a cross stitch pattern that is titled "Jesus healing the blind man", but perhaps should have been something like "Jesus poking out the eye of a little boy"

Blog Day 2006

Apparently today is Blog Day 2006. I'm not entirely sure what that means exactly, but I know that I should list 5 blogs I like that I haven't mentioned before:
eclectic itchings
ninja nun
stupid church people
swan dive
emerging women

Bonhoeffer is a total Rock Star

It would be difficult for me to be less of a poetry person, but I picked up Voices in the Night: The Prison Poems of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (edited and translated by Edwin Robertson) this morning and read this:

Christians and Others ("others" can also be translated as "Pagans")

1. All go to God in their distress,
seek help and pray for bread and happiness,
deliverance from pain, guilt and death.
ALL do, Christians and others.

2. ALL go to God in His distress,
find him poor, reviled without shelter or bread,
watch him tormented by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in His agony.

3. God goes to ALL in their distress,
satisfies body and soul with His bread,
dies, crucified for all, Christians and others
and both alike forgiving.

I may have to rethink my distaste for poetry. Holy shit this is good stuff. Bonhoeffer is such a rock star to me. If you don't know who he is, it is worth finding out - he wrote this and volumes of theology while imprisoned by the Nazis (who later executed him) for his involvement in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. He was a powerful voice of resistance to not only the Nazi Party, but the church in which he was a pastor - a church that was silently complicit in the death of millions.

In the commentary on the next page, Robertson says that soon after writing this poem Bonhoeffer said in a letter that: "It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but the participation in the suffering of God in the world."

Robertson goes on to say:

By now Bonhoeffer had observed Christians and others, finding, as he said, that it was easier to talk about God with unbelievers than with Christians. One is reminded of the answer given by Jurgen Moltmann to the question, "are you, then, a Universalist?" to which as a good Calvinist he had to say "No!", but he added, "I sometimes suspect that God is."

I'm thinking this will be what we discuss at Theology Pub this Thursday.

Happy Meal God

Dear God,
I ask your forgiveness for when I make you a plastic, disposable God to be used for my purposes and then forgotten like a Happy Meal toy. Please clean out my Junk Drawer, so stuffed full with false yous that it's hardly openable. Replace the False, fill me (and my junk drawer) with your Truth.
AMEN.

Smells like Jesus

I am reading 2 Corinthians right now and love this passage:

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not peddlers of God's word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in God's presence.

Questions:

1) How exactly do we go about smelling of Christ? Really this is such a weird notion: being the aroma of Christ. But perhaps it's pretty cool too. Smell is the greatest trigger for memory. If we can be the aroma of Christ, do we in our spirit, actions and words bring others to the memory of themselves as Imago Dei (made in the image of God)?

2) Who is sufficient for these things? Me? (perhaps) You? (perhaps) Pat Robertson? (no fu**ing way) Does hate, whether it is from Pat Robertson against gays, or from myself against Pat Robertson carry the aroma of Christ? Not so much, huh? It's amazing how vitriolic I can be about the religious right's vitriol. I'm a big fat hypocrite, of course this qualifies me to be a Christian, so there you go.

I'm kind of digging the word sufficient. Not perfect, not ideal, but sufficient. Kind of an easier mark to aim for.

3) I'm also digging the distinction between being peddlers of God's word and being sincere in Christ and standing in God's presence. Here is a distinction that I always look for in theology: does it point to me, or does it point to God?

Death

"Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"
I read this saying from Isaiah 25 in 1 Corinthians 15 this morning. Paul is trying to explain the "resurrection of the body", if you haven't read this chapter, do, because he really fumbles around trying to explain this idea. It's actually kind of funny because Paul can be so clear and succinct, even elegant is his writing, and then a paragraph later totally muck it up.
Anyhow, my friend Kae (pastor at The Mercy Seat) likes to say "I just really believe that Jesus can raise the dead." I think this is the basis for my conversion to Christ, which was not an event, but is a daily process. Everyday I am reminded that the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not (can not, shall not, will not) overcome it. This morning I wept while praying, thinking of a part of me that feels dead. In this prayer I just kept saying, "I know you can raise me from the dead, I know you can raise me from the dead." I always feel weird asking God for something specific, I can't give God the command to raise me from the dead, but I feel that to admit that God has the power to do so is a moment of conversion from pointing to self to pointing to God. I believe that it is in these moments that prayer is completed, not because I say the magic works and POOF! my little Genie-God grants my wish, but that I am drawn closer to God and am more deeply aware of God's power and presence in my life. That, to me, is answered prayer.

Little old ladies

During my last week as a hospital chaplain (during my clinical pastoral education internship), I met a 93 year old woman who was in for...well it doesn't really matter. Let's call her Lucy. Lucy never had children and she's been widowed for over 20 years. The only relative who lives close by is a nephew of her late husband who visits occasionally. Before I realized what I was saying, I asked if I could visit her when she gets out. I've visited her weekly for the last couple of months, with my kids in tow. The problem is that instead of being the kind of person who visits childless old ladies in retirement homes I'm more of the kind of person who likes to think that she is the kind of person who visits childless old ladies in retirement homes. These are 2 very different kinds of people. In other words, I end up dreading the visit, I scold myself for having ever promised this lady that I would, out of the goodness of my heart, come and see her each week, and then I feel like shit for feeling the regret. What I've realized is that this is a spiritual discipline like any other. I am trying to make this woman's life a little brighter not because I'm Julie fuckin' Andrews, but because I'm not and I think maybe that God is using this situation to discipline me. Now, I realize that discipline is not a very cool word, we head strong obstinant, opinionated types cringe at the sound of it, but I think there's something very rich and useful in spiritual discipline. For me it simply means that I am being freed from the bondage of self. Self, in my case, is very centered on itself and profoundly undisciplined. Any freedom from this that I've experienced in life is not a result of my ability to discipline myself, but God's ability to change me, and for this I am deeply grateful. I do, however, have to be willing to participate in God's work in my life. Sometimes I am able to muster this up and other times I am not. So, I guess I'm going to keep visiting Lucy, it means so much to her and I guess I can get over the fact that I'm not really the selfless-big-hearted gal I want to be, and simply be content with being deeply flawed and deeply faithful.

this morning

Here's part of my prayer this morning:
"please guide me in your will.
i want to do your will, but only thiiiiis much more than I really want my own way.
good thing that's enough.
may people in positions of power align themselves with you and your will
easier said then done really,
I only occasionally am able to align myself with you and I'm a grad student with little to no power.
make me the mother you woulf have me be
and if I already am, then take away the self-loathing..."

you get the idea.

God know my parenthetical thoughts too, might as well put 'em out there

tattoo

Our family is on vacation this week at Pagosa Springs Colorado (near New Mexico). We're staying at this place that has cable television, which we only see when staying at a hotel or on vacation. I found myself watching 3 episodes of this show called Miami Ink on TLC which is a reality show about a tattoo parlor in Florida. I loved hearing about why people were coming in to get tattooed. One couple had lost a baby and wanted hands holding a child with the words In His Hands, several people came in to get memorial tattoos to honor friends who had died. One woman wanted to mark the new life she is living in sobriety after years of addiction. I have gotten tattoos for very spiritual reasons as well. I really think God is at work in these people's lives and in this process. So many people talked about the healing they felt from being tattooed, which I very much relate to. Here's the tattoo I want next, it is an image of Mary Magdalene (I love that she was the first witness to the resurrection) letting the guys in on the big news:

Psalms

Paul Westermeyer (sacred music guy from Luther Seminary) calls the Psalms "the hymn book of the church", but there's so much in there that I personally wouldn't want to be singing about. Monastics often read through all the Psalms either every week or every month, so there's something cool there right? Well, I find myself in the unenviable position of thinking that a whole lot of the Psalms are kind of whack, which is a pretty un-cool and unpopular thing to say. However, they (like all scripture) are strong enough to withstand scrutiny, so I go on without fear. SO, I'm reading 5 Psalms in the morning thinking that I'll be totally absorbed into their poetic beauty and gorgeous lament. Yeah, that's there for sure but buried in a whole lot of Psalms about how God's favor will bring the military defeat of the Psalmist's enemies, and how these enemies apparently spend all their time planning strategy for the ruin of this poor guy. I realize that the covenant with Israel and the political reality therein is just a bit different than the current state of the US, but I'm not sure that the Religious Right shares this understanding. The RR need only look to the Psalms to bolster their certainty that the US has "Most Favored Nation" status in the eyes of The Almighty. This takes a bit of hubris.
Perhaps another way of reading the bits about enemies and defeat and whatnot, would be to think of our pride and selfishness as being the enemy which plots against us and the Psalms as a plea for God's help in our struggle with self.

Who does God love the most?

According to my friend Kyle, "God loves Fuck-ups". It's true. Look who is chosen throughout scripture to do God's work: some guy who is a lousy public speaker brings Israel the 10 commandments, King David is an adulterer and murderer, Paul was a total jerk, Mary M had a questionable past, Peter on whom the church was built denied Christ when shit hit the fan...so I guess I should feel like my shortcomings and my dark past should actually qualify me to do God's work. Cool.

Running

I ran this morning here in St. Paul by some beautiful crop fields and really was feeling strong. I just felt like I could go forever, thinking "wow, I'm really fit". Then I turned around. Now I felt like I was a brand new runner and totally out of shape, thinking "why do I bother?'. It seems that during the first half of my run the wind was at my back and I hadn't realized it, instead choosing to attribute the ease of my run to my increased fitness level. On the second half of my run, against the wind, I began to question my strength and stamina. The reality is that I had the same level of fitness during the entire run, I just internalized the external factors. I wonder how often I do this in other areas of my life? Do I attribute God's guidance to my own intuition, do I claim my own failings as the reason someone is an asshole? Aren't both of those tendencies just another form of self-centeredness?

preservatives

.

I read 5 psalms every morning. Once again, this is not because I am this really spiritual person, but that I'm actually a fucking lunatic and I think this helps. Anyhow, I read the 25th psalm this morning and was struck by this line: May integrity and uprightness preserve me for I wait for you (verse 21). I 'm pretty much against preservatives in food. All that added junk in the processed foods we eat is problematic, however, I love this idea of integrity as a preservative. Perhaps having integrity preserves us from rotting. I have countless opportunities daily to choose to have integrity or not: do I show kindness to those I interact with, including really slow cashiers and bad drivers? Do I buy stuff I don't need with money I don't really have? Do I pass up the opportunity to talk smack about someone who "really deserves it"? Do I put down my lap-top and jump on the trampoline with my kids? Do I act graciously toward conservative evangelicals? Perhaps these are all opportunities I have to preserve myself from rotting.....I think everytime I act with integrity and uprightness, I recieve preservatives from God which protect me from the hatred, greed, and malice of the world and indeed, of myself. It is not as though I earn these preservatives by my thoughts and actions, only that I am then in a posture of recieving them

redemption song

In my work as chaplain at the hospital I am finding it much easier to hold the hope for those I meet who are honest about themselves and the choices they've made. How do we speak of forgivnesss or of hope when someone is unwilling to admit their part in life? I know this is dangerous ground and that I am sounding a bit like I;m blamin gthe victim, but I am having difficulty locating the hope in people who feel they are only and totally victims. I love finding redemption in others. I feel like they are participating in God's grace. I had a nasty little drug and alcohol problem for years and have been clean and sober for 14 1/2 years and so know about God's grace first hand. In my religious tradition (Lutheranism) we very much stress that God's grace is a gift freely given and that there is nothing we can do to earn it, we simply live our lives in response to the gift. In a nut shell, this is our theology of grace and I love it and know it to be true. The only reason I am sober is as a result of God's grace. However, I was willing to do a "searching and fearless moral inventory" of myself without which I couldn't have stayed clean. I have seen countless people who are not willing or able to be honest about themselves and their shit and they are basically screwed until then can. I guess I'm questioning what agency we have in God's grace?? Is it by the grace of God that I became willing to be honest about myself? Or did I have to become willing on my own in order to place myself in the position of recieving God's grace? The former feel arbitrary but the later feels a bit more realistic, but dangerously close to sounding like "earning" God's grace. My friend Hal wrote an interesting essay called "Theological Reflections on Ambiguity" in which he claims that human history (including the events of our own lives) is a result of social forces out of our controll, our own choices and God. This triad creates every event, but with each element always having differing effect. If God was the only one acting, then (looking at human history) I would have to question God's sanity, if society was the on ly factor then how could I ever take responsibility for my actions and how would I account for the grace and wonder in life? If it was only me then how would I ever be able to get out of bed in the morning?

My best friend, who is as hot as she is brilliant

This was written by my friend Stephanie- she's amazing.
i suppose the most difficult (and the most radical) thing for us humans to
do is accept our worth as children of the Lord no matter what we have done,
and how we might think. the Christ Jesus showered such sentiments upon all
of mankind while he was alive. so, this acceptance is not at all a matter
of ego, but a matter of our Being, which tiny as it is, is but the greatest
gift. there is strength and power in this smallness, and therein lies the
difficulty: learning that we matter, but not in some spectacular way as a
"sinner" dangling over hell-fire, or a "good person" clawing our way to an
imagined paradise we are angry having lost. instead, we accept our
smallness as a condition in the world where everything and everyone is more
EQUAL than we imagine from our limited HUMAN perspective. it is ONLY IN
THIS CONDITION that we may humbly walk with Jesus, be open to Him, relate,
and make our way through this world with the honesty that the truth is far
more mysterious and complicated than we will ever fathom. frankly, i, nor
the Mother Theresa (if you read her writings), the Great Trappist Monk (now
deceased) Thomas Merton, Father Thomas Keating-- etcetera, do not see how
the traditional hell fits in with any sort of Divine justice. fundamental
"hell" is simply vengeance theory, and the Christ (Jesus) was not about
vengeance, He was about justice.

Faith or Belief?

I'm puzzled by my readings in John. There are so many references to folks "believing in Jesus" when they saw his signs and miraculous works. OK, so they came to believe when they saw him raise Lazarus from the dead. Big Deal. Who wouldn't believe? I want to see something cool like that, it would certainly make the whole believing in Jesus, (or believing Jesus) thing a hell of a lot easier. I guess when I think a bit more about it I realize that I still see Christ rising from the dead, both himself and others. Reading the Gospel is a transformative act for me. I am changed by the beauty and complexity/simplicity of God incarnate in Christ. Dying to self and gaining new life in Christ is, for me, a dialectical process and not a final destination. My own resurrection is a daily event punctuated by my own self centered brokenness from which resurrection is necessary. I guess I'm thoroughly unimpressed by the folks in the Gospel who believed when the saw some crazy miracles, but show me someone for whom there is seemingly no hope who has embraced the mystery of God incarnate in Christ and the miracle of their own resurrection in the risen Christ and I'll show you some pretty cool shit. Perhaps that is faith, rather than belief.

Cocoa Puffs for dinner

I just survived a horrible morning with my daughter. She's about as willful and defiant as myself and therefore about as impossible to parent as I'm sure I was. It seems that it doesn't matter *how* gently and lovingly we encourage her to eat her breakfast, put on her uniform and make her lunch she refuses to actually obey us. And no matter *how* strict and punishing we are about her morning routine she still acts as though she is in charge. Don't get me wrong we are in no way the kind of parents who have a child-run house. We respect our kids as individuals with their own idea, and strengths etc..., but we do not abdicate authority to them in the creepy way I see others do. God bless 'em if it works for them, but I pretty much think that we're the parents and they're the kids and it's our responsibility (among other things) to civilize them so that others can stand to be around them. (nothing more pleasant than an afternoon with a child who is allowed to be in charge of their parents) Anyhow, here we are setting limits and enforcing consequences while always communicating options to her and somehow we are under the impression that this stellar parenting should net the results of a responsible and responsive kid, but Holy Shit, is that totally NOT the case. Let me tell you, if you have ever doubted the concept of original sin, just have kids. I'm telling you, we are a fallen, broken people who really need some good parenting. So my kid likes to feel like she's in charge, so when I tell her she has 5 minutes to get dressed for school, she spends that time sitting on the floor of her room (still in her PJs) reading a book. Therefore, she then loses the choice of what to wear that day and I now choose her least favorite uniform. (all the best Mamas are just a *little* bit mean). Now she has 10 minutes to make her lunch...(this is fully communicated to her) which she chooses to spend....playing in her room. SO Mama makes her lunch with all the healthiest and least fun foods in the house. Then we literally carry her out of the house and into the car kicking and screaming...surely Social Services is on their way as I type....
When my blood pressure returned to normal I began to think - Are we, as God's children, equally as willful and defiant? Does God's blood pressure rocket when God has to carry our kicking and screaming selves to the car? I know for me that I feel very much like a kicking and screaming 7 year old throwing a tantrum when I act like I am the one in charge, but then I don't get my way. So what does it mean to be children of God? I hate "obedience" language as much as the next willful child, but what does obedience mean in my life? Do I desire a God who allows me to metaphorically eat Cocoa Puffs for dinner? I'm certain that there are many times my daughter wishes I was a Mama who let her be in charge, but the big picture for her life would be pretty dismal if this came true. I feel like on some level I want a God who would allow me to have a six figure income, and perfect children and brand new boobs and Cocoa Puffs for dinner. But as with my daughter, my life would surely be dismal if I was the one in charge. I'm amazed how many times I feel the Holy Spirit saving me from myself.
As far as parenting is concerned, it's a continually humbling process. I often feel as though I am taking a test for which there are no correct answers, yet I'm being graded anyway. It's good fodder for prayer, let's put it that way.