After Christmas

Sometimes it feels this way, doesn't it.

(Another good comic from over at AsboJesus)

An Advent Sonnet -- A Great Poem by Waldo Beach

Professor Beach was a Professor Emeritus at Duke Divinity School when I was there.  He wrote this poem that I will forever remember as Christmas approaches, and, now, as I look back at it.  The poem is "Advent Sonnet" and is found in his book Christmas Praise.

On coming to Christmas, misled, we forget

That the birth of God’s son was not lovely at all.

A stench filled the gloom of the bleak manger stall.

There was blood on the straw and a halo of sweat

Around Mary’s head.  Soon, warned they should flee

To escape Herod’s sword, by stealth in the night

The family of God was driven to flight,

As from Bethlehem’s inn outcast, refugee.

But as birth of new life is sprung out of pain,

And faith out of fear, so now once again,

If we come to the stable by way of the cross

And dismantle our spirits of tinsel and dross,

We can join with glad hearts and exuberant voice

To sing with the heavenly choir, “Rejoice!”

The Incarnation -- 15

photo © 2009 Texas Bohmans | more info (via: Wylio)


"The divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needed to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child... The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets."

J.I. Packer

The Incarnation -- 14

photo © 2006 midiman | more info (via: Wylio)


"The glory of the incarnation is that it presents to our adoring gaze not a humanized God or a deified man, but a true God-man - one who is all that God is and at the same time all that man is: one on whose almighty arm we can rest, and to whose human sympathy we can appeal."

Benjamin B. Warfield

The Incarnation -- 13

photo © 2009 Liz | more info (via: Wylio)


"Lying at your feet is your dog. Imagine, for the moment, that your dog and every dog is in deep distress. Some of us love dogs very much. If it would help all the dogs in the world to become like men, would you be willing to become a dog? Would you put down your human nature, leave your loved ones, your job, hobbies, your art and literature and music, and choose instead of the intimate communion with your beloved, the poor substitute of looking into the beloved's face and wagging your tail, unable to smile or speak? Christ by becoming man limited the thing which to Him was the most precious thing in the world; his unhampered, unhindered communion with the Father. "

C.S. Lewis.

The Incarnation -- 12

photo © 2008 Mohamed Yahya | more info (via: Wylio)


As his “body,” the church, through us, members of the body, the living Christ is always intruding, going where he is not necessarily wanted or expected, taking up space where people did not expect God to be.


In his earthly ministry, Jesus intruded into the homes of sinners. He showed up at a wedding and caused a scene. He came into places of death, where people hardly knew him, and brought forth unexpected life.


Maybe that is one reason people try to keep religion theoretical and spiritual. [But] Christianity is not a “spiritual” religion: it is an incarnational religion. It believes that God has a body, that God takes up space, that God will not remain ethereal and vague, distant and detached.

Barbara Lundblad

The Incarnation -- 11

photo © 2010 Deb Nystrom | more info (via: Wylio)




Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: "a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb".   Jesus entered our world through a door marked, "No Entrance" and left through a door marked “No Exit.”

– Peter Larson

The Incarnation -- 10

photo © 2006 Dale Gillard | more info (via: Wylio)


The incarnation of Jesus Christ is God’s undeniable evidence that relevance to culture is not optional.

- Erwin McManus

The Incarnation -- 9

photo © 2009 Sharon Mollerus | more info (via: Wylio)

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If the holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.

And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and re-create the human heart, because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.

Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (Harper San Francisco, 1985)

The Incarnation -- 8

photo © 2009 Susan WD | more info (via: Wylio)



Our imitation of God in this life … must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions.

- C.S. Lewis, from his book The Four Loves

The Incarnation -- 7

photo © 2009 Alessandra Cimatti | more info (via: Wylio)


"...The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.

This is the real stumbling block in Christianity.... It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring. But once the Incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.

...If Jesus was the same person as the eternal Word...it is no wonder if fresh acts of creative power marked his coming into this world... It is not strange that he, the Author of life, should rise from the dead. If he was truly God the Son, it is much more startling that he should die than that he should rise again.

...Once we grant that Jesus was divine, it becomes unreasonable to find difficulty in any of this; it is all of a piece and hangs together completely. The Incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains."

JI Packer in Knowing God

The Incarnation -- 6

photo © 2010 Deb Nystrom | more info (via: Wylio)


"... without the incarnation, Christianity isn't even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. "Be nice to one another" is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope.


The incarnation is an essential part of Jesus-shaped spirituality."

Michael Spencer (Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality)

The Incarnation -- 4

photo © 2006 midiman | more info (via: Wylio)


"Action is always superior to speech in the Gospels, which is why the Word became flesh and not newsprint."

Colin Morris

The Incarnation -- 5

photo © 2010 emilius | more info (via: Wylio)


"...the incarnation is the complete refutation of every human system and institution that claims to control, possess, and distribute God. Whatever any church or religious leader may claim in regard to their particular access to God or control over your experience of God, the incarnation is the last word: God loves the world. God came into the world in the form of the people he created, the human race (including you and me), who bear his image. God's creation of humanity in his image gives hints of who he is, since we all are marked by his fingerprints.


But as flawed humans, we give only a vague hint of God. Our broken reflection of God's image is easily drowned out by our broken humanity. then, two thousand years ago, God came in his fullness. He came to all of us in Jesus. The incarnation is not owned, trademarked, or controlled by any church. It belongs to every human being. The incarnation is not something that requires a distributor or middleman. It is a gracious gift to every person everywhere, religious or not. God gave himself to us in Jesus."

Michael Spencer (Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality)

The Incarnation -- 3

photo © 2009 Sean | more info (via: Wylio)


He became what we are that he might make us what he is.

Athanasius

The Incarnation -- 2

photo © 2006 jean-louis Zimmermann | more info (via: Wylio)


"There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation."


Madalene L'Engle

The Incarnation -- 1

photo © 2006 Ruth Lozano | more info (via: Wylio)


As far as the Incarnation is concerned, I believe firmly in it. I believe that God did lean down to become Man in order that we could reach up to Him, and that the drama which embodies that Incarnation, the drama described in the Creed, took place.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Looking For an Epic, Earth-Shattering, Violent, Christmas Upheaval

Image by Ushlambad via FlickrI sit here right now in a hospital room, worn out from a poor night of sleep as my son had a sleep study for some of his own problems.  I have Christmas bulletins in process.  There are calls to be made to make sure our various musicians know the hymns.  Later today I'll help deliver food baskets and presents to persons in our community who have some financial needs at this time of year.  I have sermons sketched out but not complete.  There are still gifts to buy and we worry that we don't have "enough" to fill the stockings of our kids with all the stuff they expect and all the stuff we want to give them.  And I'm sure, when I get up in front of the three different congregations in just a couple of nights, there will be a calm that will come over me and I'll proclaim, with joy, that Christ has come and our God is here and I'll pray that this will be a time of peace and love and joy in the lives of my hearers.  And I'll be right.

But, maybe there's more to this.  Maybe I'll run the risk of making this time just too "quaint" for what it really is.  Remember, if you will, that that lovely night that Christ was born was not lovely at all.  There was blood.  There was dirt and animals and screaming.  There was sweat.  There was a young couple with no place to stay and forced to have their baby among the livestock.  And this...THIS...is how our God comes to us.  Ironic, isn't it?  The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, born in this way.

The only people that "got it," according to our Scriptures were the shepherds themselves.  Then, of course, the Magi who came from a long way away.  All the local religious folk didn't get it.  Makes me wonder about all of our good religious folk.  Why do we think we have a corner on the market of a Christmas understanding?  We're the first ones touting all that that sweet little baby in the manger means for the world and I wonder if we're not the very people that meaning, at least in Scripture, was hidden from.

So, what if we looked for something different?   What if, instead of a "nice" Christmas or a "Merry" one, we prayed for one that would turn our world upside down and turn our lives upside down.  Childbirth is not a "silent night" event.  What if the Christ that is born anew in our hearts comes not with silence but with an upheaval of the power structures, of the priorities of the day?  What if we were a different people on December 26th?  What if our world was a different world the day after?  Perhaps that is what it means when the God of the Universe moves into our neighborhood (John 1, Peterson's The Message).

This reflection...this prayer...this morning...has been fed by Mike Cooper's blog post over at The Gospel Coalition.  It's entiteld, "Christmas: The Hinge of History."  Here's a good chunk of it.  Please go read the full post for more:

Christmas is violent. It’s earth-shattering. The very order of things, the way the world worked, was being rewritten. In 1811, an earthquake in Missouri caused church bells to ring in Philadelphia and made the Mississipi River run backwards. When the Christ-child gasped his first breath, the hinge of history swung in a new direction, and hell shuddered. The assault on its gates had begun.

We celebrate Christmas right at the Winter Solstice—a bit of metaphorical genius, if you ask me (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere). Right as the year reaches its coldest, just as the nights get their longest and darkest, we open our Bibles and read,

    The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
    on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2)

Historically, the church observed Advent in the month before Christmas, a month of fasting and anticipation. I grew up in churches that skipped the fasts and dove straight into the fa-la-la’s. Discovering Advent was like discovering Good Friday. A deep well of meaning gave Christmas wider and broader dimensions. For all of Christmas’s cause for celebration, there’s an accompanying need to awaken our minds to the surrounding desperation. The world was, and remains in many ways, in darkness. Christmas is part of that glorious already/not-yet tension, where the finished song of redemption awaits the “Amen!” of restoration. We celebrate Christmas in a broken and fallen world, in broken and fallen churches full of broken and fallen people.

Whatever we do in these coming days, let’s not miss the truly epic story of irony and violence that is the “true meaning” of Christmas.

So...what would it look like this morning, as we wait for hospital food to be delivered, as we get up and face the day, as we wonder if we got the right gifts or enough gifts...what would it look like to pray for an EPIC...EARTH-SHATTERING...VIOLENT...CHRISTMAS UPHEAVAL?

(HT to SDSmith for pointing me in Mike Cosper's direction.

Village of Quinhagak's "Hallelujah Chorus" -- Great Video

Merry Christmas From Rural Alaska

Running to Paul When Jesus Gets Uncomfortable

Image via Wikipedia

Was reading the comments section at a blog where the discussion was about social programs and charity where a person argued that Paul said we shouldn't give to a person who's just being lazy.  While "God helps those who help themselves" is really a Ben Franklin quote, you can find is alluded to in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12:

"Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you. And we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were here with you, we gave you this command, anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living." (RSV)

Here, it seems, there were folks who were living off of the church as they expected Christ to come back at any time.  There is a specific context.  And, yes, when taken out of that context it makes me uncomfortable...it seems to say that charity just for those who really need it.

But in the comments section came the following comment from someone named Leanne.  It's a great message for all who would look to Paul (or other parts of Scripture) when the Gospel passages get difficult.

We often run to Paul and to other Scriptures outside the Gospel to justify our dicomfort. But truth is, Christ called us to die, to pick up our cross. This is not a religion about what works economically. It is a belief system about God giving everything for Creation and inviting us to do the same.

...we shouldn’t run to Paul to explain Christ. We should run to Christ to explain Paul. As Bishop N.T.Wright states, read Paul first and the Gospels second, you’ll get Paul all wrong. Read Gospels first and Paul second, you’ll understand Paul in a whole new way.

I searched through a lot of N.T. Wright's stuff to find an exact quote for the above comment but couldn't find one.  If one can offer it, I'd be appreciative.

I Want to Be Welcomed Home LIKE THIS. This is HOSPITALITY.

I don't care if it is a T-Mobile ad.  This is awesome.  Do you think the church could learn something about hospitality from this?




(HT to J. Henderson for the link. It takes an airline pilot to really know what it's like to be welcomed at an airport).

Emerging Trends in Christianity. Uh oh!

photo © 2010 Luke Jones | more info (via: Wylio)
The Barna Group is out with some more research on Christianity and it's gonna be interesting.  Their work is usually a wake-up call to the church (whether or not the church wants to wake up) and this is no different.  Here are the six megathemes based on their work over the last 11 months.  I've followed each point with some commentary.

1. The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate. 

Less emphasis on the resurrection.  Not sure the Holy Spirit is an abiding presence of God.  Lack of Biblical literacy.  It's a theological free-for-all among younger folks.  This is going to make it hard for pastors and churches to proclaim some of the theological concepts we've held as truth for, well, a couple thousand years.  I think this gets at how we are training and teaching (or NOT training and teaching) our members.


2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.

We're not inviting persons to church.  We're not talking about the faith outside of church.  We don't see many good role models for Christians in the world.  All of this combines to make it less and less likely that our own Christian kids will find themselves in a church later in life.  Our faith is becoming compartmentalized.  The need for outreach and religious conversation is growing.  I think we can get into debates about what outreach and evangelism means.  But I agree with this point pretty strongly and see it in myself as well.


3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.

Don't tell us about eternal life.  Tell us how to make it through this life.  Educate us.  Give us friends.  Give us 10 simple steps to a better marriage or more money or to a better us.  Less and less is it between us and God.  Less and less is it about eternity.  I know I fall into this camp and, perhaps, more than I need to be.  After all, while Karl Barth said we need to read with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, what will it look like when all we're really doing is reading our newspaper anymore.  Perhaps the natural result of this is Joel Osteen's "prosperity Gospel" or the growth of self-help groups in churches rather than Bible Studies.


4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.

Yes doing good works is good.  Yes, it's good to work for justice and health and clean water and all of the things that I know I've worked for or my denomination has worked for.  But we need to do better connecting this with God and Bible.  Says the study:

To facilitate service as a long-term way of living and to provide people with the intrinsic joy of blessing others, churches have a window of opportunity to support such action with biblical perspective. And the more that churches and believers can be recognized as people doing good deeds out of genuine love and compassion, the more appealing the Christian life will be to those who are on the sidelines watching.

5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.

Barna doesn't merely suggest that the church has become too tolerant.  Barna says it:

Our biblical illiteracy and lack of spiritual confidence has caused Americans to avoid making discerning choices for fear of being labeled judgmental. The result is a Church that has become tolerant of a vast array of morally and spiritually dubious behaviors and philosophies.

We need to question, not whether there are moral absolutes, but what those moral absolute are.  And then we can broach the issue about whether or not these absolutes can then be placed upon society as a whole.  However, all of this is moot if the church continues in its trajectory towards believing that there are no moral absolutes in the Bible. 

The Barna report says this is about the "the balance between representing truth and acting in love."   Where I think I'd come down with a different perspective is how this relates to those inside and outside the church.  Does a moral stance, for instance, that homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian teaching mean that we should be opposed to gay marriage or "Don't ask don't tell" or death benefits for homosexual partners?  I'm not so sure I want to go there.


6. The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.


Barna reports:

Christianity has arguably added more value to American culture than any other religion, philosophy, ideology or community. Yet, contemporary Americans are hard pressed to identify any specific value added. Partly due to the nature of today’s media, they have no problem identifying the faults of the churches and Christian people.

A couple of things here.  1)  I agree that Christian influence on people's lives is largely invisible.  2)  I'm not going to blame the media for this, but rather all the points above in numbers 1-5.  3)  Perhaps, instead of lamenting the lack of influence Christianity has on people's lives, we should focus on the increased influence of other things--patriotism, capitalism, racism, individualism, and relativism.  It's not all "liberal" isms that diminish the voice of Christianity in this country.  It's just the liberal isms that get blamed.


No matter what side of the theological perspective one stands on, the research by Barna should remind us of what's going on around us if we pay attention. And it should mean we need to do a better job defining what it is that happens to us as we celebrate the birth of some insignificant baby in some insignificant part of the world...who we say has changed history and offered salvation to the earth.


Again, read the Barna report here.

"The War on Christmas" in Girdwood

Image via WikipediaOur local school has decided not to have caroling this year.  Now "caroling" is really an exaggeration.  In the past, for about 15 minutes for three different mornings kids were invited (not required) to attend a sing-a-long of holiday themed songs in the music room or the gym or wherever the designated gathering place was.  And, in between "Frosty the Snowman" and "Let It Snow" (sung with great gusto in our ski-loving community) there was usually one...one...Christian themed song.  This is not that much different than our holiday concert with mostly secular music, but a Jewish and African American one there along with the lone Christmas carol.

But, alas, the school-time caroling is no more...at least not during school hours.  There will be an after school caroling party today.  And this change is for the usual reasons: 

We have a couple of Jewish students and one family that it Buddhist and "we" want to be sensitive.  True.

We have a principle who can be a stickler for rules and regulations and anything that could possibly end up in a complaint or, worse, a legal issue, must be avoided.   This does not make the principal anti-Christmas or anti-Christian or anything.  Perhaps just a bit too cautious.

We have a couple of persons who have expressed concern that the school would be endorsing one religion over others...while proponents of caroling say it's all cultural and no one is evangelizing or anything.  Admittedly, this gets tricky.

Could it be that the "War on Christmas" has come to Girdwood?

Maybe.  But let's think about this.

I have not been involved in the caroling debate.  I've shown up at school to sing with my kids because it's fun...not because I've had any role in planning this or defending it.  Because I'm a pastor, I try very hard to keep my nose out of religious issues at the school.  My kids still need to go there.  My wife teaches there.  And there are just "good parent" things I want to be involved in without having to go into the school only being seen as "Here comes the minister."   But I have put some thought into the caroling issue and how "The War on Christmas" is perceived.  Here are some of them:

• Every holiday song has a point of view, a perspective, a theology, we might say.  We don't "do" Santa at our household.  We talk a lot about the birth of Jesus but Santa doesn't make an appearance.  There is a mythology...a religion, as it were...surrounding Santa.  It comes complete with rituals and beliefs and morals.  And, I think it's in contrast to Christianity.  So, my wife and I avoid it and we tell our kids Santa doesn't exist.  I know you may do it differently in your house.  God bless you.  But, if our understanding of faith is that Santa doesn't exist, should we be offended that our kids sing about Santa at school?  A lot of the argument against caroling is that it pushes a religion (Christianity) on non-Christian kids.  I want to argue that the other songs about Santa push a religion as well...but on Christians.  I think it's helpful to see that.

• Taking Christian caroling songs out of the school does not weaken Jesus Christ or the message of the church.  If we're relying upon our schools to teach the message of Jesus to kids, then we need to be concerned about how weak the church has become.  If we can sing "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" and "I'm Gettin' Nuttin' For Christmas" and follow it with "Silent Night" and not see a problem in those mixed messages, then perhaps we need to look more closely at our understanding of the "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" who comes to bring salvation to the world.

• I know a lot of "The War on Christmas" seems to be aimed at retailers, such as Wal-Mart, where persons now say, "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."  Sure, this is not about "the holidays" for me but about Christmas.  But we need to understand that most retail places, if they thought it would increase their revenue, would tell you to "May the Force Be With You" as you entered the store.  They're out to get $$$$ from you this "Holiday Season" or "Christmas Season."  I don't want my understanding of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, to be defined by what Wal-Mart can tell me at the door.  They already own everything else.  Why should I be bothered that they've loosened their grip on Jesus?  I'm happy to say "Merry Christmas" to the greeter because that's who I am.  I think them saying "Happy Holidays" is more truthful to who they are.  (Now, if they'd just say, "Happy Holidays, please buy a bunch of stuff you don't need" that would probably be more truthful).

Look, in a little over an hour, I'm going to take our 4 year old twins to the school to join up with our 13 year old twins and a bunch of students to sing Holiday Songs.   We'll sing some traditional carols.  We'll sing Santa stuff.  We'll sing about snow.  There will be hot chocolate and it will be fun.  I know some people are mad that we won't be doing it during school hours.  I'm really not mad about that.  If there are some non-Christian, secular, Santa-loving kids who hear "Away in a Manger" and start asking questions about "the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay"... great.   If there are some folks of other religions who hear us singing and, while they may not join us, appreciate that they aren't made to feel forced upon by the Christian faith this time of year...great. 

While there are folks who still believe that we're a Christian nation, I'm not one of them.  It doesn't mean I love this country less than anyone else.  It just means that, instead of viewing this place as a Christian nation, I view it as a nation with a lot of Christians in it.  We have some great Christian (or Deist) based ideals in our founding documents because those ideals shaped our founders.  Yet we are in a constant struggle to determined how to live most faithfully in a multi-cultural environment.  And as many persons fight back against The War on Christmas, I think we need to be clear about what Jesus we're fighting for.  Is it the God of the Old and New Testaments.  Or is it Jesus-lite...a mix of secularism, nationalism, capitalism, Santa and the sweet baby in the manger.

Now...I need to get ready for some caroling fun.  I can't wait to hear how loudly the kids sing "Let It Snow."

"The Jesus Way" -- Quote from Eugene Peterson

Image via Wikipedia

. . . Do we do it in Jesus’ way or do we do it the Wal-Mart way? Spirituality is not about ends or benefits or things; it’s about means. It’s about how you do this. How do you live in reality?

So, how do you help all these people? The needs are huge. Well, you do it the way Jesus did it. You do it one at a time. You can’t do gospel work, kingdom work in an impersonal way.

Found in a 2005 article in Christianity Today, "Spirituality for all the wrong reasons"

(HT  to Chaplain Mike over at Internetmonk.com)

What Do You Mean By Literal?

This is a video I found over at Allan Bevere's site.  It's an interview of N.T. Wright by Peter Enns and is,  I think, a wonderful addition to the discussion of the "literal/metaphorical" debate.  It's a debate I've gotten into with folks because I'm not really sure if anyone falls into either camp all of the time.

For the literalists, there are sections of the scriptures that are just too metaphorical to be viewed literally...Song of Solomon, for instance.  And, for the metaphorical-ists, there are sections that are too important to be viewed as less than literal...the death and resurrection of Christ, for instance.

Here's the video.

Black Friday. A Commentary (Complete With Sighs).

Image via WikipediaOK.  So, this isn't much of a "commentary."  I get it.  I think a lot of this just kind of speaks for itself.

First, we have a woman threatening to shoot her fellow shoppers at a Toys R Us in Madison, Wisconsin.  Says the report:

The TV news station has the incident report from the Madison Police Department that reveals "several hundred shoppers were waiting in line for the Toys "R" Us store to open when a 21-year-old woman attempted to move to the front of the line."

"She was confronted by numerous shoppers and in turn she made threats to retrieve a gun and shoot the shoppers."

The NY Daily News has a statement from a police spokesman.

"She's now spending her shopping money to post bond," said Madison Police Sgt. Erik Fuhremann.

SIGH.

Let's see.  Next we move from the great city of Madison, Wisconsin all the way down to Boynton Beach in Florida.  There a shopper was detained for shopping at Wal-Mart, fully armed.  For some reason he found it necessary to bring some concealed weapons into the store.  And, while I'm sure they were all expecting some crowds, most people don't find it necessary to be ready for a stand-off or whatever.  The report out of The Palm Beach Post says:

Boynton Beach police said they arrested Christopher D. Scott, 49, just after midnight today in a checkout line at the Walmart at 3200 Old Boynton Road.

Scott is charged with three counts each of carrying a concealed firearm, carrying a concealed weapon, and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription.

Officers had been doing an extra patrol at the store because of the large crowd seeking early bargains.
A police log said Scott wore a .40-caliber Glock handgun with a 30-round magazine in a holster at his hip, as well as two concealed knives and a "pepper grenade."

SIGH.

And, lastly, back up north in Buffalo, New York problems ensued at a Target store...also pronounced "Tar-jay" by some :).  In the quest to get the best deals, chaos won out over civility.  Says the WIBD TV station website:

Shoppers waited out in the cold wet weather for hours. When the doors opened at 4 a.m. the Black Friday chaos turned ugly.

Seconds after the doors opened, something went dangerously wrong.

Crazed Black Friday shoppers began piling up on each other.

"It went from controlled to a mob in less than five minutes and it just got nasty," said a shopper.

When officials heard the screams, they ran over right away to help.

Shopper Rich Mathewson said, "It was a lot of angry people just jumping in after we waited patiently for a long time. It actually started way before that, people started getting angry at everybody."

SIGH.

Lovely...ain't it. 

I've written a lot about consumerism here in the great U.S. of A.  It's something we all struggle with.  We have this sort of inborn desire to WANT things and every one of us loves to get a deal.  But, as we stretch to get that "deal" we need to keep in perspective that the stores don't LOSE money on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.   They aren't giving away free money and if we only get in line first, we'll be the ones to get the handouts.  They MAKE money.  And, when it comes down to it, most of those "special deals" can be gotten at other times if we all just do a little homework.  But there's a spiritual side to all of this.  There is a spiritual warfare going on for our souls and we're finding it particularly hard to serve both God and money when we go into these crazed shopping sprees.

I confess to you that I made some purchases today.  Every year I get my older kids Christian T-Shirts for Christmas.  I don't even wrap them.  I just lay them on the Christmas tree and they find them when they get up on Christmas morning.  It probably sprang from laziness at one point.  But now it's "tradition."  So, today I placed that order.  And, hey, I got a deal.  They were only $10 each!  (And I could have clothed them for a lot less if I shopped at Value Village in Anchorage).   That was my big "Black Friday" experience.  I'm out some money but no violence was threatened against anyone.  I don't think anyone got hurt.  And, now I can get some things done around the house.

The Wild, Hospitable Holiness of Jesus

photo © 2004 Jared and Corin | more info (via: Wylio)

In today's world (a phrase I use more than I probably should), there seems to be a struggle within the church to define holiness.  This hit home to me when a United Methodist Bishop at General Conference in 2008 addressed the homosexuality debate that occurred on the conference floor by saying it was a battle between two competing goods, "holiness" and "hospitality." 

He said that there are some within the UMC who wanted to preserve the holiness of the church, keeping it pure.  Therefore, this camp wanted to keep homosexuals out of the church.  Homosexual practice is a sin and, therefore, the church needs to take a stand against it.  Homosexuals should not be members.  Homosexuals should not be ordained.  The whole notion of "reconciling churches," welcoming the LGBT community, in this perspective, would be anathema.  Keep the church holy.

On the other hand, there were those who theologically emphasized hospitality, welcoming all.  Therefore, when lines were to be drawn about who was "in" and who was "out" in the church, the biblical concept of hospitality trumped all others.  The church should, as a rule, exclude no one.  All are welcomed to the table of Christ.  As the saying goes, "When Jesus is up on that cross, arms outstretched, who is it that he can NOT embrace?"  The implied answer is no one.  All are welcome.

However, are these really two competing interests, holiness and hospitality?  Are they really opposed to one another?

Alan and Debra Hirsch are two missional leaders over at CatalystSpace.  They address the strange holiness of Jesus that was not opposed to hospitality in a blog post entitled, "What Kind of Holiness is This?"

One of the confronting questions we find ourselves repeatedly asking is: What is it about the holiness of Jesus that caused "sinners" to flock to him like a magnet and yet manages to seriously antagonize the religious people? This question begs yet another, even more confronting question: Why does our more churchy form of holiness seem to get it the other way around – to comfort the religious and antagonize the sinners?

Jesus's brand of holiness (the true form) didn't seem to deter the sinners from wanting to get up close and personal with him. The gospel is full of stories of sinners, the bungled, the broken, and the bent clamoring to be near Jesus. Jesus was different. He wasn't like the other holy rollers, the religious folk, of his day. There was something magnetic about his persona that caused even the most desperate to do the unthinkable and violate not only social etiquette of the day, but risk further marginalization by being close to him.

No doubt about it, Jesus' holiness was compelling. The Gospels clearly show us that social rejects loved to be around Jesus. Think of prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, adulterers, Roman soldiers, Samaritans, Gentiles, and the list goes on. They couldn't get enough of him. In hanging out with people like these, Jesus shows us that one cannot achieve holiness by separation from the unclean.

The holiness of Jesus, it seems, is a redemptive, missional, world-embracing holiness that does not separate itself from the world, but rather liberates it. And it wasn't that Jesus was simply "a nice inclusive guy." Everyone loves a nice guy, but nice guys don't end up murdered on crosses. Actually, as Ben Witherington says, it's not surprising (because of his actions and teachings) that Jesus was crucified. The surprising thing is that it didn't happen sooner!

A lot of what is given to us as "holiness" today is really nothing more than morality.  I'm not saying that I want everyone to be "immoral" but I don't think "immorality" excludes one from the heart of God--and therefore should not exclude one from the heart of the church. And this is not just about homosexuality.   Homosexuality is just the hot-button issue where this discussion, debate, fight, is taking place.  We could have similar discussions about welcoming the drug dealers, the divorced, the unwed mothers, the goth, the tattooed, the addicted, the poor, the.... well you get the picture.

I have recently been dealing with the death of a young man in the community who was loved by many.  I had the privilege of leading a memorial service for the family yesterday.  This young man, somewhere along the way, got into a hole that he just kept digging deeper into as he tried to get out.  Drugs.  Theft.  Lies.  Turning against the very ones who loved him most.  Very difficult situation.  But in his death the survivors are left with the tough questions like, "Did God love him?"  "Could God welcome a sinner such as he?"  "Is he in heaven?"  These are tough questions and I always fall back on the testimony of the love of God.  That's where it starts.  That's where it ends.  Period.  The holiness of God is intimately connected to his hospitality.  It is not opposed to it.

This is a "wild holiness." It calls into question those of us in the church who would be bound to religious codes, separating ourselves from others.

We must again be surprised by the amazing capacity of Jesus to break religious stereotypes and to embody a kind of holiness that embraces the seriously weird and the wonderful, this is the Jesus we follow.

The Good Samaritan and The Church -- A Parable from Leonard Sweet

Image by Tom Haymes via FlickrThere was once a broken-down old mainline/sideline/offline church traveling on the road from yesterday to tomorrow when it fell among postmodern culture. It was stripped of its place in society, leaving it beat up, left behind, and more than half dead.

Now by chance there was a doctoral student going down the road who passed by on the other side. “I’ve got papers due, and besides, that dead old denomination hasn’t got any life left in it.”

In the same way a prophetic pastor came to the place, saw the broken-down church, and whispered to himself, “O Lord, let me retire before it finally dies.”
 
But then a complete nobody, who didn’t know enough not to get involved, and who had failed the Jesus course, found the church and had compassion on it.  She/he bound up its wounds, pouring on the oil of hope and the wine of Christ’s blood, poured out the oil of forgiveness of sin; then set it on his/her own beast and took it to a place where it could re:flect and re:fresh and find healing. He/she said to the keeper, “This poor old church is almost dead. It may or may not have anything to say to a new world; but make it as comfortable as you can, spend whatever you have to, until I come back…”

Found in Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful

HT:  NextReformation

Church History in 4 Minutes

I have a friend in seminary now. I wonder if this could take the place of her history class.

"A Gospel with Few Consequences" -- Quote from Ken Myers

Image via Wikipedia

“Believing in a gospel that has few earthly consequences is, ironically, just the sort of state our secularist neighbors would wish us to sustain. They, too, are dualists, believing that religion may be a fine thing for people, so long as they keep it private. Their secularism isn’t threatened by Christians as long as they aren’t too ‘Incarnational.’ As long as the cultural lives of Christians aren’t significantly different from those of materialists and pagans, secularism is safe. Christians may pray ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ but as long as they don’t actually do anything that demonstrates how such a petition should affect their political, economic, and cultural activities, the Enlightenment legacy is safe.”

Ken Myers

We're Building a Church. What Do We Mean When We Say "Church"?

This is a great little video from a church in Brussels.

The church isn't a "WHAT." It's a "WHO." It's a people.

Or...as we've stated...it's not a NOUN but a VERB. It's not just a bunch of poeple but a bunch of people engaged in and changing the world.

Or, as the kids' song says, "The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is a people."

Or...well...take a look at the video...


When We Say Church from Doug Peterson on Vimeo.

"Should We Have Constructed This Church at All?" -- A Look at N.T. Wright

As readers of my blog will know, I've been pastor at Girdwood Chapel for 10 years so far and much of that time has been spent working towards constructing a new church facility.

This new building was a dream of the congregation's before I got here.  They'd been planning for a new building since even before their last pastor, their first full-time pastor, showed up in 1996.  After I got here they'd already pushed back plans to begin construction twice, each time having to turn away work teams from the lower-48 that were very eager to help with the construction.  The congregation had been planning to build with the good folk of the local Catholic congregation on some property together, but kept getting delayed as they worked on issues with the property.

Well, why was a congregation that averaged only about 35 people so eager to construct a building?  Was their ministry really, in a any way, intimately tied to a "brick and mortar" facility?  Couldn't most of their ministries take place outside of a church building?

These are good questions.  And I'm not really sure how to answer them for the time before I was here as a pastor.  My guess is that a lot of the construction talk was, perhaps, a little premature.  However, even though they only had about 35 in attendance, they shared the small 30-foot by 30-foot building with the local Catholic congregation, effectively doubling the size of the congregation that was worshipping in that very tiny (some call it "quaint") building.  Plus, I think we need to understand that the present focus on "house churches" wasn't quite as strong.

However, a couple of years after I got here, we started averaging above 50 in worship and we had to add a second service to accommodate the growth.  This is because, with an average of 50 in worship, we were having some Sundays at 60...which stressing our space.  That was a problem.  Also, we were having trouble meeting the educational needs of the congregation as we were beginning to have Sunday School in three different facilities:  children at the Chapel, youth off-site at a restaurant, and adults at a member's home.  We were finding that the ministries we wanted to be involved in were having trouble because of the lack of space.   Moreover, not having a restroom limited the number of user groups that wanted to use our small space.

We looked around at other options in the community--the school, rental property--but couldn't find anything.  The monthly rents seemed just too high for what we'd be getting out of the deal.  There was no "community center" (as there is now) and there was no "Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church" building (as there is now).  We didn't seem to have any options.  And so, we started planning for a new facility and, probably 8 years after that time, we're still trying to get into the new space.

I feel, in a way, that I have to make excuses for why we're building a new facility.  I know that the amount of time we've been taking on this construction has worn down, emotionally and energy-wise, our congregation.  And I know that we're going to be dealing with the debt to pay it off for some time.  And, furthermore, I know that a lot of new ministries and churches are finding that they really don't need "brick and mortar" buildings to engage in ministries and build relationships.  And, perhaps, if we'd been a brand-spanking new ministry, we would have found that we could have evolved on a more "house church" model.  But we were a church that had been around for 50 years...now 60...and already had identified with a church facility.  That facility was just too small for it.  And, after all, we knew that the building was not an end in and of itself but was a "tool" -- a tool to build and foster community and a place from which to send people out in ministry in the world.  I think we've been clear about that all along.

I recently received some help in my reflection on this on buildings and ministries through an interview with N.T. Wright in "Faith and Leadership" called "N.T. Wright: Working on a Building."

Although he was Bishop of Durham in the Church of England for seven years, N.T. Wright doesn’t think about the church in terms of institutions. He thinks in terms of community.

“The institution is like the scaffolding that you need to be working on the building,” Wright said. “The scaffolding isn’t the reality.”

The General Synod, the Church of England’s legislative body, for example, is basically like plumbing, Wright said: “When you go into a friend’s house, you don’t expect to see the plumbing, but you need to know that it’s working, because if it’s not, fairly soon there’ll be a bad smell in the house.”

That is, the church’s institutions have to work well, or things can go wrong. People can get hurt, Wright said. Church leaders may sometimes feel like they’re working on scaffolding all day rather than living in the house, but “somebody has got to do that stuff so that the mission of the church can go forward.”

What we are building is part of the institution.  We're building a structure, a part of the institutional church. And it's a beautiful part of it.  Thanks be to God, we're going to have a beautiful facility--the walls, the roof-line, the office space, and, (thank you, Jesus!) the bathrooms.  But that structure is there merely to shape the underlying reality which is a church body that is growing closer to God and each other in community.

That building we're building, that debt we're taking on, all of the energy that we're putting forward...well...it's all so the mission of the church can go forward.  We're not building a building, even though it may look that way.  We're supporting and expanding a ministry.  We're not constructing walls.  We're building a place to construct disciples.  And while I do hope, unlike Wright's metaphor for the institutional church, that people "see" our plumbing and the heavy timbers in the sanctuary and our beautiful front entrance, I hope what they come here for is the life of community that springs up from this place.

So, should we have constructed a church building at all?  Yes.  For this ministry.   For this town.

Ministering in Community: Loving When You're Not Loved Back

Image via WikipediaThis is my 11th year in Girdwood.  We've loved it here.  The church has been challenging and fun.  The construction project has been long and a valuable learning experience.  I think I've grown a lot here…as a person and a pastor.  We know this is the place that our kids (at least the three older ones) have grown up.  I often say that, as persons grow older, I think there's always some place that they think of as "home" to themselves…even if they may have lived in several different towns or states.  I may have been born in Massachusetts, I may have graduated high school in Indiana, I may have gone to seminary in North Carolina, and I may have lived in Alaska for the last 13 years, but I'm always clear that I "grew up in New York."  That's where I had my formative childhood years, from age 5-15,  Well, my kids will, maybe forever, say they grew up in Girdwood, Alaska.  How awesome is that?

Plus, Girdwood is just strikingly beautiful.  The mountains creep right in on you.  You can ski and watch the tide roll in.  And while we get a lot of rain, being that we're in the most northern temperate rain forest in the world, the beautiful days make up for it.  I still remember the first visit my parents made to Girdwood after our three years in Kenai.  I stood with my dad on the porch of our new home we were renting and he said, "You know, Jim, don't take this for granted.  You may never live in a more beautiful place than this."  And he's right.  There are a lot of beautiful places in the world and I've seen several of them.  But, I may never live in a more beautiful place than this.

I know that faith up in Alaska, in the realm of "rugged individualism," can be a difficult thing.  Persons here tend not to be "joiners" and many of them have been burned by churches in the Lower-48 where they used to live and are really hoping to stay as far away from church as they can.  Therefore, I have worked very hard to carry myself in such a way that I'd be seen as non-threatening in the community.  I've participated in the life of the community.  I've served on boards and attended meetings.  I've raised my kids, fully engaging the activities of the community for them.  And our congregation has worked very hard at being seen as a source of good in the community…we've painted and cleaned and shoveled and given and helped etc.  We want to be seen as a place that emanates the love of God, but in a way that works alongside those not in the church to bring about change for the common good.  The difference, we hope, between us and the non-Christians, is that we do it all out of a response to the justification by faith offered by Christ.  We live out out faith by being a people working on behalf of others in the community.  And it's made a difference.  It is easier to be me…a pastor…today than it was ten years ago.  I've been around long enough that persons, I don't think, feel like they have to be on their guard when they see me.

However…

I've been surprised, along the way, by the level of animosity expressed by some (not all) members of the community.  And sometimes I have to catch myself, recognizing that it's not about me but about the church.  And it's really probably not about Jesus, but about the experiences some have had of the church.

My first, sort of, tangible expression of the "us/them" mentality was early on as our congregation's event flyers were taken down from the post office.  Girdwood is a community that communicates through posted notices at the Post Office.  If you want to find out what band is playing where, who has skis for sale, who's hiring, and what meeting is coming up, that's the place to look.  It's also the place you'd look to find out what the times of Christmas worship services are.  However, more frequently in my early years here, it was the Girdwood Chapel posters that kept getting taken down.  I'd put up a flyer.  The next day it was gone.  I'd keep extra flyers in my car just so I could keep replacing the ones that had been removed.  At one point I had congregational members with flyers so they could put them up as well…just to keep up with those who were removing the flyers.

Another expression of this animosity really hit me on on a spiritual level.  One day as I showed up to our new construction, probably in 2007 and opened up the construction door only to find feces…yes, poop…on the handle.  Someone had deliberately put poop on the door so that a person going in would grab on to it.  There was also garbage and beer bottles left at the front door that day as well.  I remember, looking back, the feelings of anger…I'll go so far to say "righteous anger"…welling up inside of me.  I felt violated.  I felt that the Holy Ground of our church had been violated, that there was a spiritual offense launched against it.  I didn't know what to do and I ran off to the home of one of our members to pray.  I needed someone to pray for me.   I wanted to pray for the community…perhaps for "the horrible sinners who did this"...even if the prayer ended up being mostly for me.

There have been others. But the latest comes just a couple of weeks ago as we're getting ready for our big Building Consecration.   Every week we have about 70-100 persons come to the church to pick up boxes of organic vegetables.  We've been doing this for a few years, providing space and leaving the church unlocked for 2.5 days a week.  Plus, we're left to work around the vegetables every once in a while and donate unclaimed boxes after a couple days.  This has been a service to the community…just because we love the community and believe that, even if we don't agree on many spiritual issues, we can agree that eating organic, more locally-produced, food is a good thing for the world and for the world's peoples.  I wanted to make sure that all these good folks who picked up vegetable boxes knew about our Consecration and I wanted to let them know that, as we've been helping them for a couple years with the vegetable pick-up, it would be helpful to our church if they came to our Consecration.  It would help us celebrate and would help the conversation we were planning to have about ways our new building could be used in the future.  It might be a little crass to call it a "quid pro quo" arrangement, but I was hoping that the gift of presence and space that we had been offering could come back to us a gift of their presence at our Consecration.   That was my hope.  So, to encourage this, I put what I thought was a very non-threatening and non-religious note on the vegetable boxes, inviting those who picked them up to attend our Consecration.

Perhaps my note wasn't non-threatening enough.  A couple days later I got a call from the distributor of the boxes saying that they had receive a call from on of the recipients who was extremely upset at the note from the church and I received a verbal hand-slap for trying to mix anything remotely churchy with the boxes.  My emotions were already running high because of the build up to the dedication.  Here I was trying to do something that would further our participation in the life of the community and I had someone from the community who was "extremely upset" with the church.  I don't do well when I have people extremely upset we me.

My emotions welled up inside of me again and what I wanted to say to the person on the phone is that…OK, I wouldn't put anything on the boxes anymore but they need to realize the gift that I/We have been giving their company over these past years and put that into perspective.  And I wanted to get the name of the person who complained and tell him or her that they can certainly make arrangements to pick up their box in Anchorage at one of the non-church sites.

I didn't do either of these.

I kept my mouth shut.

And I realized that this was just one person in the grand scheme of things and the majority of the community around us, I think, appreciates how we try to love them…whether or not they appreciate that we try to love them with the love of God.

It can be hard to love when you're not loved back.  That's just the way it is.  I think the animosity has subsided some over the last several years as we've tried to embrace our role as a Good Samaritan in the community.  But the answer when faced with this is never to withhold your love, to lessen your grace, to stop doing good works…no matter how little love you are shown in return.

All you can do is keep on loving with the love of Jesus.

After all, that's what Jesus did.

And it got far worse for him.