The Suprise of Christmas

An undergraduate professor of mine once said that the key to a good poem is surprise.  There must be something in the text that is unexpected to the reader; something that confounds the reader's expectations concerning the poem's subject matter.  It is in that surprise that the power, creativity, and beauty of the poem resides.  As an example, From T.S. Eliot's masterwork, "April is the cruelest month." We don't associate April with cruelty.  The surprising association draws in the reader.  Without the element of surprise, the poem is boring and predictable. 

The beauty of the birth narratives of Jesus lay in what is surprising and unexpected about them.  The King of the Kings of the world was born in a barn because there was no room in the inn.  Does anyone think for a second that if the kings of the world were traveling through Bethlehem that there would not have been "room" at the inn? What about the Jewish religious establishment? Somehow, mysteriously, room at the inn would have appeared.  There was no room at the inn because of the one's who requested it: a Jewish Mediterranean peasant couple from an obscure village in Galilee.

The birth narratives of Jesus go from one surprise to the next, all confounding the reader's expectations of the nature and circumstance of the birth of God incarnate.  The theme that pervades the narratives is God's unequivocal rejection of all the world's power, glory, and majesty.  This is the surprise.

To truly honor and celebrate the birth of Christ, we must no gloss over the surprises, evade the surprises, or try to reconstruct the surprises.  Too often our liturgies, hymns, and celebrations of Christmas try to do so; downplaying, rather than extenuating the shock value of the narratives.  Doing so robs them of all their beauty and glory.  

God's Omnipresence

Advent is typically expressed in Church music and liturgy as a time when God suddenly, through the incarnation, became present in an open and obvious way, unlike the past and the present where God's presence is more elusive.  And the point of Advent thereby becomes a message of hope that God will one day again become revealed in a manner that is open and self-evident.

This understanding of Advent, and the story of Jesus generally, is not found in a close reading of the canonized gospels.  Instead, we see a God whose presence was evident in the same manner that God's presence was evident before Jesus and after Jesus.  When seen through the perspective of those who witnessed the events, God's presence would not have been self evident.

That, of course, does not mean that God was not present in Jesus, which is the whole point.  God always has been present and always will be; just not in the open and obvious manner that the world expects.  The task of the Church is to discern God's presence where human culture only sees absence.

Mark's gospel begins with Christ suddenly arriving and proclaiming a message of repentance.  Human culture would have seen an itinerant Jewish Mediterranean peasant rabbinic teacher.  The Church knows otherwise.  We are called to proclaim it

A Reading of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats

Towards the conclusion of Matthew's gospel, Jesus tells a story which reveals the difference between those who are living as God's people and those who are not.  In the story, those who are identified as God's people are sheet, and those who are not are goats.  The difference between the two appears on the surface to be their behaviors: the sheep are identified as God's people because they have engaged in acts of service to others: feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, and otherwise helping those in need.  The goats do not engage in these behaviors.

The tendency when we read this story is to see the point of the story as a code of ethics: as admonitions to do the actions of the sheep in order to gain God's favor, and to avoid the punishment that is given to the goats at the end of the story.  But if we place ourselves in the story, we see that the methodology by which the sheep and goats are distinguished is not known to the sheep and goats until the story is told (i.e. the sheep and goats do not know until this moment of judgment the methodology through which they will be judged).

The behaviors of the sheep is not an exhaustive list of the acts that we must engage in to be God's people.  Rather, they are representative of the things that God's people do.  And as the sheep have not been given prior notice, they do not engage in these acts because they have been commanded to, but because it is their natural propensity to do them.  A clue to understanding the story is that in the ancient world, sheep and goats were thought to have different natures: sheep were sacrificial and virtuous, and goats were not.  Just like we have natures that we attribute to animals today (e.g. dogs and cats).

The purpose of participation in the new covenant community is not to engage in specifically defined behaviors to avoid punishment, but to have our underlying nature changed from one called by Paul as the Old Adam, to the New Adam, Christ.  If we live in the Spirit of Christ, we become holy, our nature changes, and it is our natural propensity to engage in the behaviors described in the story.  We don't have to be told to do them; we do them because it is our nature to do them.  Consequently, the new covenant community should be focused not on the incidentals of what God's people should do and shouldn't do, but on the transformation of our hearts and minds

The Preoccupation of the Early Church

The Greek culture that Paul evangelized to was crowded with a number of other new religions.  One of the common characteristics of these other religions was a preoccupation with the end of the world.  This is referred to as an apocalyptic orientation.  The point of these religions, based upon an assumption that the end of the world was imminent, was to figure out when the end would happen, what would happen, and how to be protected from the anticipated violence that was associated with it.

The early converts to Christianity brought this preoccupation with them.  Paul did not seek to bring the correct understanding of the end, but to change the underlying preoccupation with it from an emphasis on the end, to an emphasis upon God's presence in the present moment, how we can discern this presence, and how to lead our lives in conformity with it

There will be a final consummation of things.  But God is unchanging and eternal.  That means that God's will for us is unchanging and eternal.  God seeks to make us holy so that we might reflect God's light and be at peace and unity with him.  As this is God's preoccupation, it should be our own, now, and forever

God's Dream for the World

The Beatitudes, which begin Jesus' sermon on the mount, comprising chapters 5-7 of Matthew's gospel, are not intended to describe the world as it is, but to provide glimpses of the world that God seeks to create.  The word "blessed," from the Greek translation, is best understood as being the recipient of an unexpected benefit.  The gentle, the pure in heart, the peacemakers; all of these persons who are out of place in the kingdoms of this world, will, unexpectedly, be first in God's Kingdom.

God's dream is that God's reign will be revealed on earth, as it is in heaven.  This vision is epitomized in the image in Revelation of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, joining God's heaven with earth.  In this new reality, all of values and principals of the kingdoms of this world will be inverted, and there will be nothing but joy and peace.  God has, in Christ, initiated the new covenant community, the Church, to evidence and bring God's vision to pass.

Imitation of Christ

When a movement has lost its way, the best way to recover the right path is to retrace its steps to its most formative principles and voices.

Christianity has lost its way.  To recover it, we should go back to its earliest expressions and manifestations.  The earliest books of the New Testament that were written were some of Paul's epistles.  They predated the writing of the first gospel, the Gospel of Mark, which was probably written between 65-70 CE, after Paul's death.

In Paul's earliest letters, particularly I Thessalonians and Philippians, Paul articulates the vision and purpose of the growing movement that arose out of the life and ministry of Christ.  God was revealed in Christ to serve us.  The role of the movement was to create a community of believers who would imitate Christ by serving others and the world.  Then, those outside the community would see those within the community and imitate them.  The goal of the community was for everyone to imitate Christ, which would bring salvation and redemption to the world and real God's Kingdom.

The Foundation of Discipleship

Repentance is the foundation of discipleship.  The significance of repentance is not the act of seeking forgiveness itself: it is the self-awareness that the act of seeking forgiveness evidences.  If repentance is genuine, it reveals that we are cognizant of ourselves as sinners; deeply flawed people who are unworthy on our own merit to enter God's Kingdom.

Without this self-awareness, every step that comes after; baptism, confession of faith, participation in the means of grace, means absolutely nothing because we do not participate in these acts with an understanding of who we are and who God is.  We remain, perpetually, sinners in need of repentance.  Discipleship and God's covenant community, the Church, must be grounded in an awareness of who we are.

Jesus told the Pharisees (in modern terms, those who were deemed holy) that a tax collector (in modern terms, a crook) who is conscious of himself as a sinner in need of repentance, is further along in his journey towards living as a Pharisee than one who closely follows the law, observes the Sabbath, and spends his life studying the Torah

The Foundation of the New Covenant Community

The Church has its foundation in forgiveness.  God, in Christ, has forgiven us.  We, in turn, are called to forgive one another.

The underlying purpose of our forgiving one another is pragmatic.  If we don't forgive, we waste an inordinate amount of time ruminating and seeking vengeance against those who we believe have wronged us.  This accomplishes nothing.  We only have a limited amount of time on this planet, and we are called to spend our time wisely.  God wants us to spend our time becoming sanctified so that we can fulfill God's commission of making disciples of all nations and transforming the world.  We cannot do so when we ruminate on the occasions when we have been wronged

We have a choice.  We can choose to forgive and live in God's light, or we can choose not to forgive and live in misery.

What It Means to Take Up Our Cross

In the gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary today, Jesus tells us that if anyone seeks to follow him, they must take up their own cross and follow.

In the ancient and medieval church, this was taken literally.  What was considered an ideal Christian lifestyle was to become an ascetic and intentionally inflict torture and suffering upon oneself, intentionally mirroring the suffering that Christ endured.  The modern Church just ignores the text and pretends that it does not exist because it stands contrary to the prevailing understanding that God seeks to take us away from suffering and trials.

The ancient and medieval church got it wrong; Christ did not undergo suffering, torture, and death as an end in itself.  The modern church obviously gets it wrong by not engaging the text; whatever the text means, it means something.

The key to understanding the text lies in why Christ traveled to Jerusalem where he faced the cross, suffering and death; he did it to fulfill God's will of effecting the salvation and redemption of the world.  We are similarly called to follow God's call, wherever it leads.  Most of the time, it will lead us to places where we would choose not to go, requiring us to overcome our fear.  If we live under the Lordship of Christ, we will go where God commands us to go, even to Jerusalem, because there are tasks that God must fulfill in our time, so that God's vision might be realized and the Kingdom of God might be revealed on earth as it is in heaven.

A Tale of Two Banquets

In Matthew's gospel, the story of Herod's banquet which results in the execution of John the Baptist immediately proceeds the story of the feeding of the 5,000.  Comparing and contrasting these two "banquets" evidences the distinction between human culture and the culture of God.

The engine that drives Herod's banquet is fear.  The guest list is limited to those whom Herod needs to keep his power, status, and wealth; Herod is driven by fear.  And the guests show up out of fear, because they need to stay in Herod's good graces.  Herodias is driven by fear in inciting Herod to execute John the Baptist, the innocent victim.  Although he is the one person in Israel who would seem to have autonomy, Herod concedes to the request despite the fact that he did not want to execute John the Baptist out of fear.
Human culture is driven by fear, resulting in a perception of scarcity, absence of choice, and the death of the innocent.

The engine that drives the Kingdom of God is self-giving love.  The banquet is in the desert, where there appears to be only scarcity, yet there is nothing but abundance.  There is no exclusivity; everyone is invited.  Christ only gives, and everyone is filled.  And in the end of the gospel story, rather than facilitating the execution of the innocent victim, Christ becomes the innocent victim out of sacrifice and self-giving love.

The Church, which seeks to evidence the Kingdom of God, is called to facilitate a community, and ultimately, a world that casts out fear, where there is only self-giving love

What To Invest Our Lives In

Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to treasure hidden in a field.  Someone, knowing that the treasure was hidden in the field, sold all they had and bought the field.

Roman law at the time of Jesus provided that if you discovered treasure on land owned by someone else, you had to give the owner half of the treasure.  Similarly, Jewish law placed limitations on the ownership rights of the discoverer of treasure on land that someone else owned.  Consequently, the reason why the discoverer purchases the land is to acquire ownership of the entire treasure.  The discoverer purchased what appeared to others to be a parcel of little value, because they knew that the field was of infinite value, due to the hidden treasure

Followers of Jesus in ancient times were often called "People of the Way." Life is about a series of choices and decisions.  We all have one life to invest, and we make choices of what we will invest our life in.  Those who live under the Lordship of Christ in the Kingdom of God follow the "Way" of Christ exemplified in the cross; centered in service to others.  This appears to human culture as of little value; like an empty field.  People of the way know that it is worth investing all of our life; because we know the story of the cross and the nature of God revealed therein

God's Nature

God's fundamental nature: what ultimately drives God to do what God does, is creativity.  God creates things.  And this creative power is an end in itself.  God created the universe billions of years before sentient beings appeared who could perceive it and, ultimately, recognize God as the One who created all things.

God's redemptive activity in Christ was an anomaly necessitated by humanity's sin.  It is an interruption in creativity.  God's desire that we repent and turn to God and become sanctified is not an end in itself; it is a means to the removal of the anomaly so that the infinite creativity in the world can resume.

By analogy, when we choose to build a house, we don't build the house so that one day the roof will leak and require time and energy expended in repairing it.  The leaky roof is an anomaly that prevents the home from being what it is.  We fix the leaky roof, irritated by the interruption in the natural order of things, so we can get back to the business of the home being what it is.

The Illusion of Freedom

Paul's worldview is grounded in the notion of a great cosmic struggle between two principalities and powers: God and evil.  And all of our acts and omissions serve one of these two principalities and powers.  We don't choose between freedom and servitude.  We choose between two masters.  When our actions manifest righteousness, we are serving God.  When our actions manifest sin, we are acting in the service of evil.

Living under the Lordship of Christ means being aware of the two collars that we are able to wear: that of sin and that of righteousness, and choosing to wear the collar of righteousness.  When we first make the decision to live under the Lordship of Christ, we do not discard the sin collar and permanently put on the righteousness collar.  Instead, we begin the process of maximizing the time that we are wearing the righteousness collar and minimizing the time that we wear the sin collar.  Our goal, sanctification, means that we cast off the sin collar for good.  This requires a lifetime of spiritual discipline and practicing the means of grace

Humanity's Treatment of God

Today is Trinity Sunday in the liturgical year, when the work of the trinity is emphasized.  We acknowledge through the trinity that God was revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--three persons of one substance.

As we acknowledge that God and Christ are one substance, what was done to Jesus when he walked this earth was also done to God.  This represents a profound indictment of our political, social, and religious systems, and reveals the depth of our individual and collective sin.  Rome's judicial process, which it took so much pride in, resulted in the conviction and execution of the God that Rome endorsed when it endorsed the Nicene Creed, from which our orthodox understanding of the trinity ultimately derives.  The Jewish religious establishment concluded that God was a blasphemer, was irreligious, and would not have permitted God from entering locations in the temple in Jerusalem reserved for the priestly class.

God, in Christ, would have received the same reception in every culture and in every age, including ours.  And here we arrive at the foundation of discipleship; a recognition of our depravity and need for redemption.  In order to live under the Lordship of Christ, we must first acknowledge the depth of our need for God's Kingdom and that we enter into God's Kingdom solely through God's grace

What the Church Knows and What the Church Doesn't Know

Pentecost Sunday celebrates the birth of the Church.  On Pentecost, the disciples started speaking in other languages.  The was bewildering to the crowd.

What neither the disciples nor the crowd knew was why God's Spirit was manifest by the disciples speaking other languages.  The Church identifies it as a manifestation of God's Spirit, but the Church does not know any more than the world why God would choose to be manifest in this manner rather than another

What the Church does know, and what Peter proclaimed to the crowd, is the identity of the God that was manifest.  And the fact that this God was the same God who created all things, redeemed us in Christ, and who sustains us with his Spirit.

The world is bewildering, mysterious, and full of wonder.  It is also a place where both the believer and non-believer experience beauty and joy.  What the Church is called to proclaim is the God who underlies it.  The buildings where the Church gathers are not themselves holy.  They are built to remind the gathered faithful of the holiness of God and to reveal to the non-believer the holy God who is the source of all the beauty and joy they experience in the world.

Jesus' Parting Words to the Disciples in John's Gospel

Towards the conclusion of John's gospel, Jesus spends a great deal of time explaining to the disciples what they are called to do after his resurrection.  Jesus' message to the disciples is all about empowerment.  Jesus tells them that as he is one with God, they are one with Him.  Jesus unleashes the disciples into the world to transform the world, knowing that as the disciples are one with Him, there is no limit to what they can do in His name.

God enters into our lives to unleash us into the world to live as God's holy people, for the transformation of the world.  God knows the unlimited potential that lies within us, because we are God's children and bear the image of God within us.  All that is required from us is to do what it is natural for us to do: to reflect the nature of the God who is our Father and sacrifice ourselves for others as God in Jesus sacrificed Himself for the world.

What We Need Salvation From

Contemporary culture seems to be grounded today in an atmosphere of fear and anxiety.  We are a lot like the disciples who were hiding in a room after the crucifixion.  They were afraid that they would be charged with sedition and crucified like Jesus.

When they experience the risen Christ, they are not delivered or protected from the source of their fear.  In fact, they are commissioned to go into the Roman world to proclaim the gospel.  The disciples thought they needed to be saved from the world.  What Christ revealed is that the source of their fear was illusory.

One of the greatest errors that can be made by the Church today is to accept as true what human culture tells us truly matters, and to then be afraid that these things will be taken away.  Being God's people does not mean that we will be protected and delivered from the world.  It means that like the disciples in that room, we will realize that what the world tells us we should fear doesn't matter.  And only by seeing ourselves and the world for what it is can we truly go into the world to bring Christ's news of salvation.

The Tone of Easter Morning

The tone of each of the four canonized gospels changes dramatically when we move from the crucifixion to the resurrection narratives.  From Jesus' entry into Jerusalem to Jesus' death on the cross, everything is public, noisy, and bombastic.  Things move frenetically, with lots of characters that enter the scene and exit quickly.  We see evidence of the chaos of human political, religious, and social systems as Jesus is arrested, tried, convicted, and all the political posturing of the Roman and Jewish power structures.

The resurrection narratives have an entirely different tone and ambience.  Things are quiet, private, and move slowly.  The characters in these narratives are few.  The tone is entirely unlike Handel's Messiah.  The resurrection narratives in all four gospels have the feel of an epilogue.

The resurrection stories also have the feel of a new beginning rather than an ending.  Sort of like the cliffhanger ending to one season of a series that leaves the viewer's attention not on what has passed, but what is to come.  The reader's attention is turned not to the empty tomb, but towards what comes next: the proclamation of a new age centered in the risen Christ. 

The message is clear: the fun is just getting started.  The new covenant community, the Ekklesia, has been born, with a mission to transform the world and usher in a new age.

The Dominant Characteristic of Human Culture

Paul describes the fundamental characteristic of human culture through the Greek word "orge," which combines the elements of wrath, conflict, and violence.  Orge pervades our social, economic, and political systems, locally and globally.

Orge is manifest in the story of Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well.  The woman is at the well at a time when the woman knew that no one else would be present.  She is hiding from the exclusion and marginalization of her surrounding culture.

But orge is also manifest in Jesus' earlier encounter with Nicodemus.  He is hiding too; as a member of the religious establishment, he is concerned about becoming marginalized and excluded.  The irrationality of human systems of exclusion and violence is demonstrated by the fact that they harm everyone.

Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well evidences how the Church should respond to the wrath, conflict, and violence of human culture; he bypasses it.  He simply engages the woman at the well in conversation, which violated social norms, to bring her salvation.  God's Kingdom is characterized by the absolute absence of wrath, conflict, and violence.    When this dominant element of human culture is removed, there is only God's grace and mercy.

The Purpose of Lent

Today is the first Sunday in the Season of Lent.  The purpose of Lent, on the deepest level, is self-awareness.  It is about us being aware of ourselves.  Lent precedes Easter because Easter, on the deepest level, is an awareness of who God is and what God has accomplished in Jesus.  In order for the Church to grasp the wonder of God's salvation, it must be aware of the nature of the human race that God seeks to save.

Human culture is grounded in violence, exclusion, and casting-out.  Human culture even cast out God when God was revealed on earth in Christ.  God was cast out of the inn for lack of room.  God was cast out of Israel fleeing Herod's persecution.  God was cast out from his hometown.  God was ultimately cast out of human life and crucified.

Images of God often reflect nothing more than a projection of the human propensity to cast out.  God is perceived as arbitrary and capricious, reducing religion to the process of running around trying to figure out how to appease God.  God not only does not cast out; God seeks the redemption of those who cast God out, and continues to seek re-entry into our lives when we cast out God.

What the Church Sees that the World Doesn't

Tomorrow is Transfiguration Sunday in the liturgical year.  The gospel lesson consists of Matthew's account of the transfiguration.  In the story, Christ is revealed to be God's Son.  It represents a climactic moment in Matthew's gospel

The significance of the transfiguration lies in its juxtaposition with the stories that precede it concerning who witnesses the event.  The transfiguration is not only not witnessed by all 12 of the closest followers of Jesus; it is only witnessed by the inner circle of the closest followers.  This exclusion was intentional on Jesus' part.

Transfiguration Sunday ends the season of Epiphany; the season of the year when we acknowledge that God's light is present in the world.  The story of the transfiguration reveals that God's true light is not visible to the causal observer, even the casual follower of Jesus.  God's true light only becomes visible when we truly commit ourselves to following the way of the cross, traveling up the mountain where few would choose to go.

God's light is present to the invisible community of the true faithful in moments where others would only see the mundane realities of the God.  God's presence is hidden from the casual observer, who would only see an empty field where treasure is hidden.  God's presence is hidden like a gold coin is hidden and only found through passionate and perpetual search.

The transfiguration story is an important metaphor for the Church.  The Church, if it is faithful, will see God's light through cultivating holiness and seeking to live according to the example of Christ.  The Church will even see God's presence in the crucifixion, where the world saw only an absence of power and glory

Rethinking the Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount contains admonitions that appear to be impossible to comply with.  Jesus tells his listeners that unlike the Mosaic covenant, where Israel was commanded not to kill, Jesus commanded that we not be angry with another or chastise others who we perceive to be foolish.  Jesus indicates that if we fail to fulfill these commandments, we will be punished.

God, ultimately, just wants us to live lives of peace, fulfillment, and happiness.  God doesn't want us to be angry or disparaging to our neighbor because it prevents us from living in these states of mind.  Being angry and critical prevents us from being peaceful, fulfilled, and happy.  When we live in these states of mind, we punish ourselves.  Jesus alluded to the valley in Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump where fires constantly burned.  It was a place of ugliness.  The last place in Jerusalem that you wanted to be.  Jesus says that if we live our lives in anger and are obsessively critical of others, this is where we will live.  God doesn't need to punish us.  We have already punished ourselves.  And God wants nothing more for us to walk out of the garbage dump.  Through God's grace, we can walk out at any time and live in places of beauty, peace, and serenity.  This is all God wants

The Ecclesial Fallacy of Schism

Since the Protestant Reformation, schism has been rampant

Schism reflects a flawed understanding of the nature of the Church.  The Church is the invisible community of all those who seek to live under the Lordship of Christ.  It is thereby not only invisible, but indivisible.  Our Pauline heritage also describes the Church as holy and apostolic.

The underlying assumption of schism is that by distinguishing between right and wrong belief and practice and excluding those who demonstrate incorrect belief and practice, we can maintain or restore the Church as pristine and pure.  This is fallacious for several reasons.  Most importantly, it makes the arrogant assumption that we have the wisdom and discernment to create a community of individuals who are completely pure and pristine and an underlying theology, liturgy, and polity that is without blemish.  It also ignores one of the most fundamental purposes of the Church; to be a place where those who are truly trying to live according to the example of Christ but are in error can find redemption.  Ultimately, the Church is a hospital for sinners and not a club for saints.

The Church can be divided bureaucratically, administratively, and legally.  But it remains indivisible, holy, apostolic, and invisible.  What we attempt to accomplish by schism is thereby illusory.

Why Re-Baptism Isn't Necessary

I get requests from parishioners who have already been baptized to be baptized again.  For a long time my response was to go into a tedious recitation of the reasons why being baptized again makes absolutely no theological sense in the Wesleyan tradition.  And it doesn't.  Baptism in Methodism is sacramental.  It is a visible sign of an inward spiritual grace, representing and acknowledging that God was active in us before we were capable of speaking God's name.  It is in our profession of faith that we choose to accept Christ as Lord.

Now I realize that when a parishioner asks to be baptized again, the impetus actually has nothing to do with wanting to be baptized.  It is about wanting to start over again and be symbolically ridden of whatever guilt, shame, and remorse they are holding onto.  So now I bypass the theology of baptism and tell them that they don't need to be baptized again to start over.  All they have to do is be truly penitent, ask God for forgiveness, and in God's eyes, they have been given a new start.  What they yearn for doesn't require ceremony or ritual.  It just requires a penitent heart and a yearning to be holy.