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.