Another from the Eugene...

I read Peteron's book, Pastor, in March 2011. There are few public figures who are able somehow to weave together an acute pastoral sensibility and keen cultural critique in a such beautiful way. Here's one from the book:

"I love being an American. I love this place in which I have been placed - it's language, its history, its energy. But I don't love 'the American way,' its culture and values. I don't love the rampant consumerism that treats God as a product to be marketed. I don't love the dehumanizing ways that turn men, woman, and children into impersonal roles and causes and statistics. I don't love the competitive spirit that treats others as rivals and even as enemies. The cultural conditions in which I am immersed require, at least for me, a kind of fierce vigilance to guard my vocation from these cultural pollutants so dangerously toxic to persons who want to follow Jesus in the way that he is Jesus. I wanted my life, both my personal and working life, to be shaped by God and the Scriptures and prayer."

- Eugene Peterson, Pastor, 4ff.

Which Translation Do You Prefer?

Which translation do you prefer? It actually probably doesn't matter because in either case you're dealing with livestock. Clearly farmers get just as frustrated with their goats as parents do with their kids such that a command was necessary.

- "You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk." Translations: NASB, NIV, NCV, 

- "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk." Translations: NRSV, The Message, KJV, Jerusalem Bible

Anyone know of another translation to this passage?

Lectio Divina is Saving My Life

Lectio divina is saving my life. Let me tell you why.

Last week at our Good Friday service our pastor asked me to find some music to play while everyone was gathering. This meant that I had to go to my office, plug in my iPod, and find something on iTunes. I realized something about myself during this little task, which is that you cannot ask a person like me to do something like this. It's not that I don't want to help. Quite the opposite, in fact. I want to help a little much for my own good. I want to narrow down all of the contemplative music that I have on my computer, sort out the ones with vocals, and then listen to each one that's left, ruling out along the way the ones that sounds a little creepy or disjointed. I can't just find something and that's the problem. I have to make an informed decision, which means that I have to listen to every single piece of music I own. Did I mention that we had ten minutes before the service started?

I am finding this to be true in a lot of other ways. I won't begin a task unless I have time to finish. I refuse to do something because I don't understand it, which means that in order to understand it I have to become and expert, but I don't have time for all of that so I don't even bother. I find this especially true when I read Scripture. I have been wanting to inhale large chunks of Scripture in order to get a better handle on the narrative flow of the bible. The problem when I do this is that about a week later I am wounded from not reading the bible with any sense of devotion. I know that makes me sound really evangelical, but I hope it's more like me sounding like I believe God can speak to me through these words, because most of the time I feel like that's all I've got.

But ... lectio divina is saving my life.

I accidentally started practicing lectio during Holy Week and I haven't been able to stop. A person like me lives in his head. If Richard Rohr is right, we enter the world either through our hearts, guts, or heads. We're either primarily emotional, intuitive, or intellectual people. And this isn't say that some are smarter or whatever. It's just that we each lean toward one more than the others. For me, lectio allows me to put something in my head and hold onto it for day. It slows me down, helping me to pay attention to my breathing, which inevitably stirs something up in soul that I need to pay attention to. Typically, when I read long chunks of Scripture I start to think about how many theology books I haven't read. And then I put the bible down and go read those books, only to find that after a few days I realize I am not reading the bible enough. And it goes on and one. I think paying attention to what is stirred up is a better way to spend my time. I don't need any more guilt about not reading enough.

I am a bit of a headcase, but then again that's how I roll, according to Rohr.

In any case, in an effort to let the words of Scripture take a little more precedence in my life, I am forgoing my usual fifteen minute sermon at the Kansas City Rescue Mission tonight. Instead, we're going to read the bible slowly and thoughtful, maybe even meditatively, and by God's grace contemplatively.

Those guys hear enough people yap at them as it is.

I hope God is good to us tonight.

Post-Sermon Reflection

A couple of weeks ago I preach on Mark 1:21-39, specifically highlighting that the gospel of Mark is giving us a picture of what a typical day would have been like for Jesus. I wanted us to remember that as much as Jesus was divine he was also human.

In the sermon I used Irenaeus' idea that in the incarnation Jesus accomplished the "work of recapitulation," which I said had to do with Jesus passing through ever stage of human life. This is important because it reminds us that salvation doesn't just come through Jesus' death and resurrection but also His birth. That God is with us in the flesh is a part of the salvation story that we tell.

Since then I have wanted to clarify this a little bit because I think I left some things out. Obviously no one can say it all in one sermon.

So, with the help of N.T. Wright, who I think says it about as clearly and concisely as anyone around (Brit's are so dang good at brevity!), I would like to add some clarification to the humanness of Jesus and His work of recapitulation.

And I am totally paraphrasing Wright so feel free to correct me in the comments with actual quotes.

Basically God has an "Adam" problem that He decides to fix through "Abraham." Adam symbolizes the entire human race and Abraham symbolized the chosen people of God (The Hebrew people, Israel). These are key people for Paul in the book of Romans. In Adam sin, death, and corruption have marked God's creation and it is through Abraham and his descendents that God decides to fix/redeem the creation.

God writes His character onto a particular people so that through them the whole world would once again bear God's image and share God's character. Abraham is called to be a blessing. This is about holiness and love. Through Abraham God would restore Adam, through the particular God would restore the whole. Some are elect but only for the sake of inclusion, not for the sake of exclusion. Election is for the life of the world. Remember that!

But along the way God begins to face an Abraham problem. His chosen people aren't faithful. Now God has two problems: He has a creation problem (Adam), in that His main goal is to restore the original intent for His creation, which is to bear God's image and to share in God's character, to keep and till the earth, to cultivate, create, build, produce, and govern this world as God's vicegerents (Wright's word). And now He has an Abraham problem in that the people who were supposed to be a microcosm of God's character (love, holiness, justice, peace, forgiveness, mercy) look and act just like everyone else in the world. The creation is still corrupt, marked by all kinds of Sin and death.

And not only that, God's own character is on the line because He has entered into a covenant with a particular people (Abraham, Israel) and they are not reflecting God's image/character very well. This begs the question that if they are not faithful then what does that say about God? How can we trust God?

So, in order to deal with these two problems, God comes to us in Jesus. Jesus fulfills the call of Abraham to be a blessing to the nations and in doing so fulfills the call of humanity to keep and till the earth, to bear God's image, to share in His character. Humans were to bear that image, not just the chosen people. But it was through the chosen people that God chose to restore His creation, and specifically humanity's capacity to bear the image of God. God wrote His character in small on Abraham (one small nation) so that it would spread to Adam (all other nations) and that this has happened in Jesus. Jesus was faithful as a Israelite and, thus, as a human, He bore the image of God, He shared in God's character, which means blessing for the life of the world.

So back to the sermon. This means that it's not enough to say that Jesus passed through every stage of human life. We can poke too many holes in that by saying, "but Jesus was a male, so what about females? Are they not saved because He didn't pass through every stage of life as a female?" Or, "He was Jewish so what about Americans?" Or "He never lived to be eight years old, so what about the elderly?" Recapitulation is not about making Jesus' existential experience of the world exactly like ours.

The idea of recapitulation is more about humanity's capacity once again to bear God's image once again, to share in God's character, to fulfill our call as governors of God's creation.

Of course, there is a whole other side to this regarding Jesus' divinity, which we also have to confess to be true.

But I wanted to make a point to saying something about the necessity of His humanity as it relates to the story of God we read in the bible. I hope this clarified some what I was trying to say in my sermon about the humanity of Jesus.

More on Mark Driscoll

The old adage is that there's no such thing as bad publicity, the idea being that it's all good as long as people are talking about you, no matter what you are saying or doing.

That's true to an extent, but even for Hollywood stars, who seem to receive more grace than anyone else, the bell will toll.

I tend not to play that angry critic game.

I'm not out to get anyone.

If I criticize, I hope it is always for the sake of something constructive. Even as the best construction is good deconstruction, they must be in the right order, if can say it that way.

Enough throat clearing.

Mark Driscoll (I won't link to him, go find him yourself) has been in the news lately, a little more so than usual, and not in a good way. He's the pastor of a church in Seattle, decisively Neo-Reformed (of the John Piper flavor), and brutish as many have criticized his male chauvinism, machismo, version of Christianity that puts men on a pedestal and views woman as inferior, to say the least.

There's a lot of speculation out there.

No one really gets all up in arms about differing version of the Christian tradition (except for maybe the Reformed folk, but then that's pretty telling). Anymore there is very generous conversation happening about what it means to be the church.

Driscoll's Neo-Reformed version of Christianity, as such, does not bother me. I have some issues with it that I would gladly discuss, but I'm not mad at anyone.

What concerns me most that leads me to the things that I do get mad over are how theologies play themselves out. For example, Neo-Reformed theologies can lend themselves to forming very angry and closed minded and prideful people who often seem to have more faith in the bible than in Jesus. And really more faith in themselves than whatever god they confess to believe in.

(As an aside, I actually read a blog post comment where someone claimed that Christians need to obey the bible. It is a serious problem if the bible, and not the God spoken of in the bible, is to be obey.)

Case in point - about how our theologies actually play themselves out - is the story I stumbled upon recently. Not long ago I started to wonder when the first-hand stories would start to fly about Mark Driscoll from people who have been involved in his church. You can read the story here.

In short, it's a story about an attempt at how Driscoll's church attempted to "discipline" some guy who was "in sin" that just went seriously bad.

This is the first one of its kind that I've found, but I'm sure there are more out there. It's long, but you got to read it all the way through.

Why mention all of this?

Because in our celebrity culture where people can manipulate any amount of media/social networking with any amount of organizational skill - and Driscoll's Acts 29 Network is extremely organized - people can get away with a lot. I let a lot of stuff slide, but something is happening to Driscoll that just seems vicious to me and if this story is true in any way then there are things rippling out into Driscoll's wider leadership base/influence that are really unhealthy, the second being their abusive use of Scripture. The fist being their misspeaking of the God that has revealed Himself in Jesus.

I hope I'm not misunderstood. I hope this is received generously. I welcome correction and feedback from those who know. I am an outsider, like most of us, looking in. But from what I can tell, there is more damage being done than anything else.

Where am I wrong? What am I missing?