nate's incoherent babble

FOR ALL THE SAINTS

2009-11-07T10:06:00.001-06:00

A Sermon For All Saints, Year ABC

I bring good news from the fabled land beyond Perkins, beyond midterms, beyond papers, beyond Credos, beyond internship, and even beyond graduation: There is light at the end of the tunnel my brothers and sisters!

If I made it through, you can too! Really… Ask my professors. And I made it through with my sanity intact. Sort of. Well, I did made it through.

Anyway…

Today we come together to celebrate that rare and elusive creature in Christian culture: The Saint. Or, to be more exact, all Saints. Every single one of them.

In fact, you could say that today we come together to celebrate those who stand at a far bigger podium and say to us:

"We bring good news from the fabled land beyond death, beyond suffering, beyond trials, and even beyond tribulations: There is Light at the end of the tunnel brothers and sisters!

And if we made it through, you can too!"

In fact, in the readings for our Feast Day in the Revised Common Lectionary, I think we find this theme woven throughout the texts: The idea that there IS hope, there IS something beyond the struggles we face now... There IS a final "graduation", so to speak.

Whatever else may be said about our reading from Revelation- and there is A LOT that could be said- it is clear that the author wants to assure us that those who live AND die in Christ will have a place with God and all the saints.

A place where God, in all of God's fullness, will finally be at home among humanity, dwelling with the saints forever, as God "wipes every tear from their eyes" so that "death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

And whatever else may be said about the Gospel reading from John- and there is A LOT that could be said there too- it is clear that John wants to show us that Jesus has the power to assure us of this hope.

Jesus is revealed as the embodiment of the Love that is stronger than death, a Love that can literally summon the dead back to life. Jesus is the one who makes concrete, tangible, and accessible this hope for something beyond death, beyond suffering, beyond "normal" life.

And while this hope for our final "graduation" is all good, and true, and beautiful, I think it misses something important to our celebration of All Saints. Because Saints are not just a kind of "down payment" for an eventual life with Christ BEYOND this life.

Even more importantly, Saints are an invitation to Christ-likeness in THIS life.

Saints are notorious examples of conspicuous sanctity. Saints show us glimpses of what can happen when Jesus really takes hold in a person, and the Christ-life begins to take over.

Above all, Saints are lovers. Passionate lovers. Head over heels lovers. People crazy in love with God, and crazy to share God's Love with everyone they can.

Can you imagine what would really happen if the all-consuming Love of God were to burn within your heart?

Can you imagine what it might be like if the Life that brought Lazarus back from the dead began to resurrect the dead parts of your life?

Can you imagine what might happen if Jesus were to look straight into YOUR face and speak the words "Unbind her, and let her go!"

Well, if you can imagine such a thing, I confess your imagination is a bit bigger than mine. Because I can't imagine it. Not on my own.

But saints help with that. What I cannot imagine, God can. And what God imagines, God does. And I see THAT in the lives of the great Saints- those women and men who have burned with the passion of Christ's undying Love.

Most of us here know that, in one sense, we are all saints. Saints with a small "s". Scripture and Christian tradition says that all of God's people are "set apart", "consecrated", "sanctified", and "made holy". And that is what saint means: A set apart, sanctified, consecrated, holy one of God.

But, unless we are blind, it is clear to see that some of us are better at living into this than others. All God's children are saints with a small "s", but we recognize those who are exceptionally Christlike with a capital "S".

It is these men and women- these Saints with a capital "S"- who claim our imagination, as we try to envision what the Christ-life looks like lived out.

In fact, my favorite definition of what it means to be a Saint is actually CS Lewis' definition of what a Christian is. For Lewis, a Christian is a Christ-ian, a little christ, a little embodiment of the Divine Life that lives in Jesus. A Saint is a little christ.

A Saint is not primarily someone who does miracles and healings, although many saints have, while many more have not.

A Saint is not primarily a theologian who plumbs the depths of scholarly knowledge, although many saints have, while many more have not.

A Saint is not even primarily a mystic who climbs the heights of visionary ecstasy, although many saints have, while many more have not.

A Saint IS primarily a living embodiment of Love, a little christ who re-presents the Christ-life to the world.

Have you ever seen someone whose eyes radiate God's Light with every glance? Who exuded Love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and kindness and faith and humility and wisdom with every deed? That was a Saint.

Have you ever been around someone whose very presence assured you that God does indeed Love you and can use you, no matter how many flaws and foibles you have? That was a Saint.

Have you ever read a writer who did all of these things? A writer whose words leapt off of the page, causing you to imagine new possibilities of how this Christ-life can infect our lives, our churches, our communities, and our world? That was a Saint.

We tend to think of Saints as lofty and unapproachable and incredibly impractical. But I believe that the actual purpose of Saints in God's plan is humble and approachable and completely practical.

In fact, I believe Saints are a remedy for some of our most besetting sins in the Church, and in the Seminary.

And here is why: We like ideas and plans and programs and property and power. No, let me be honest. I like ideas and plans and programs and property and power.

And when I hear of "sanctity" and "holiness" and becoming a "little christ", the first thing I want to do is turn it into a study committee. Let's get together and come up with the ten main ideas about what it means to be holy.

That's step one. Step two is that we create a plan. How do we accomplish these ten concepts? What are our objectives? What are our benchmarks?

Step three: Let's create a program to accomplish it, complete with steps that rhyme, and some acronyms to boot.

Step four: Let's brand it and market it.

Step five: Let's get property and infrastructure to support the business model.

Step six: Let's clarify a contract to define who is "in" and who is "out" of our program, and make sure the power structure is clear.

Step seven: Let's fight each other over the concept, the brand, the program, the power, and above all the property.

Step eight: Let's sue each other. In Christ's Name, of course.

Sound familiar?

I know that was horribly reductionistic and completely unfair. But something LIKE this often happens, on the Right, on the Left, in the High Church, in the Low Church.

It has happened, and is happening, and will happen, anytime we reduce holiness to checklists and ideologies and loose sight of authentic holiness embodied in Christ and his Saints.

This is because it is easy to make holiness into something abstract, indefinite, and theoretical. And, as any Biblical scholar can tell you, it is also easy to make Christ into something abstract, indefinite, and theoretical.

I personally love the abstract and theoretical. I love ideas and systems. But Saints stand before us as actual, definite, practical witnesses of what holiness looks and feels like.

What we need, is to see Jesus with skin on. We need to feel Love embodied. That's where Saints come in.

So Saints are embarrassingly concrete embodiments of what it means to be holy, of what it means to live God's Love.

Saints are the ones who can speak Truth to power, and minister Healing to pain. Saints remind us that our life in God cannot be formulated into a simplistic plan, nor turned into some perfect program.

Saints show us that life in Christ is messy yet magnificent, and there is no shortcut, no express elevator, no inside route to holiness. The only Way to Holiness is the Way of Christ, the Way of becoming a little christ.

In fact, I wonder what would happen if we applied this definition of sainthood to everything we do in the Name of Christ.

What if we judged everything we do as Christians by whether or not it produces saints, whether or not it creates little christs?

Do our methods of reading and explaining the Bible produce saints?

Do our doctrines and doctrinal systems create little christs?

Does our teaching and preaching and catechizing draw us into Christ or make us less Christlike?

Do our liturgies and spiritual practices encourage us to live out God's Love?

Do our efforts at outreach and programs for Social Justice create Christlike communities?

Do our leadership structures facilitate or hinder saint production?

Do our controversies and squabbles and infighting produce holiness?

What if passionate, Christlike holiness was the key criteria for how we did everything as Christians. What might change?

[Pause]

At this point I want to quote at length the best sermon I have ever read about saints by Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft. Although I disagree with him on many things, about the Saints we are in complete agreement:

"The deepest reason why the Church is weak, and the world is dying, is that there are not enough saints... No, that's not quite honest. The reason is that WE are not saints.

Can you imagine what ten more Mother Teresas would do for this world? Or ten more John Wesleys? No, you can't imagine it, any more than you could imagine how twelve nice Jewish boys could conquer the Roman Empire.

You can't imagine it. But you CAN do it. You CAN become a saint. Absolutely no one and nothing can stop you. It's your totally free choice…

If you will look into your own heart in utter honesty, you must admit that there is one, and only one reason why you are not, even now, as saintly as the primitive Christians: You do not wholly WANT to be.

That insight is terrible because it is an indictment, but at the same time it is wonderful and hopeful because it is also an offer, an open door. Each of us can become a saint. We really CAN. We REALLY can.

I say it three times because I think we do not really believe it. For if we did, how could we endure being anything less?

...The human soul is a tube, like a tunnel connecting two places, heaven and earth. If the tube is open and empty and hungry on the heavenly end, to suck grace in, then and only then will the tube be full like a cornucopia on the earthly end to pour grace out.

[An] American Catholic bishop [once] commissioned one of the priests of his diocese to write up recommendations for ways to increase the number of [people] seeking to fulfill a clerical vocation.

The priest was young, but wise and holy. He concluded his report this way: "The best way to attract [people] in this diocese to the priesthood, Your Excellency, would be your canonization."

When we see a saint, we know the purpose of our own lives. Saints reproduce themselves simply by being what they are.

So why can't you be canonized- become a saint?

...It's embarrassingly simple. We have been promised, by God incarnate, that all who seek, find. In other words, "just say yes," "just DO it".

It's infinitely simple, and that's why it's hard. The hard part in the formula "just say yes" is the first word: "just". We are comfortable with Christ AND ourselves, or Christ AND our theology, or Christ AND our psychology, or Christ AND our country, or Christ AND our politics, or Christ AND culture, or [even] Christ AND counterculture;

But just plain Christ, Christ drunk straight and not mixed, is far too dangerous for us." [Peter Kreeft, How To Win The Culture War, pages 102-106]

So says Peter Kreeft. But is he right? IS just plain Christ too dangerous for us? Are we ready for Christ, the whole Christ, to infect us with His Divine Life and turn us into little christs?

We are about to approach His table once again, to partake in an ancient ritual, where we encounter this Christ in the breaking of the bread, and the drinking of the cup.

We are literally invited to the banquet table with Jesus, to drink him straight and un-mixed. With our bodies, with our mouths and our lips, with our hearts and our minds, we get to literally invite Christ once again to fill us with God's life.

Christ's invitation is here for you. He invites you to become a saint, a Christ-ian, a little christ. His invitation always stands, and never changes.

What about you? As you come forward to partake in this Holy Communion, and share in Christ's life, what is YOUR invitation to him? Amen+

[Silence]

AFFIRMATION: And now, with saints who have gone before, saints who stand with us now, and saints yet to come, let us affirm together the faith of the Church by using the words of the Nicene Creed…

What does it mean to be human?

2009-11-07T10:02:00.002-06:00

A Sermon For Year B, Proper 22

Based on Genesis 2:18-24 and Mark 10:2-9 

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a woman or a man who is made in the image of God?

When biology explains the origin and function of our physical bodies; When psychology describes the workings of our minds; When consumerism is used to manipulate our behavior and buying patterns: What is left of being human?

Is there anything special to our existence? Anything that separates us from beasts or birds or rocks or molecules or corporations?

You see, we live in a world that is often reductionistic. It is our habit, for some centuries now, to reduce human life to "nothing but".

We've all heard it before. We are nothing but the products of our environment. Or nothing but our genetics. Or nothing but how we are raised. Or nothing but electro-chemical reactions in our brains. Or nothing but a reflection of cultural expectations.

Often the people who tell us this are well meaning. They are people who have studied human life long and hard. And they finally think they have THE KEY to understanding who we are, and what it means to be human.

So they share THE KEY with us, in hopes that it will make life understandable, manageable, and predictable. And, let's be honest: Who among us would not like life better, if we could understand what is going on just a little bit more?

But, we are now several centuries into the quest of science to exhaustively explain what it means to be human. Thousands of theories of "nothing but" have come and past. And we are still as confused as ever.

We can never say exactly why one child turns into an Adolf Hitler, and another child turns into a Mother Teresa. We stand perplexed by people who have everything and fail, while others have nothing, and succeed.

And we just can't seem to scientifically create the perfect society full of virtuous people, free of tragedy and oppression. If anything, after a century of two world wars, dozens of genocides, and countless disasters, we seem more confused than ever.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think science is a great thing. I like modern medical care, and refrigeration, and flush toilets, and cell phones. Science has told us a great deal about how we work, and how to fix us.

But science just doesn't have the tools to tell us WHY we are here. Reductionism, nothing-but-ism, cannot seem to reduce the complexity of WHO we are.

Science may be able to tell us a great deal about HOW we got here. It can tell us of big bangs, and origins of species, and mechanisms for biological change over time.

But knowing our origins does not tell us our destiny. Knowing how does not mean knowing why. Knowing what does not mean knowing who. And all of the science in the world is not able to answer the question "Why is there something instead of nothing"?

Of course, poets and prophets have been prattling on about this for millennia. They have been telling us that humans can observe and explain everything, except ourselves. They have been preaching that there is more to life than meets the eye.

But poets and prophets are a strange lot, so we tend to ignore them if possible. As a result we often get into cultural wars of "either-or". Either science or spirituality. Either reason or faith. Either we are explained away as "nothing but" or we are not explained at all.

But it isn't just the occasional oddball who says that there is more to human nature than meets the reductionistic eye. Not a few scientists have said the same thing.

It was no one less than Physicist Albert Einstein who said "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind". And it was Blaise Pascal, the inventor of calculus- thanks Blaise!- who said "The heart has reasons that reason cannot know".

And they are just two of a steadily growing voice across history that has said that human life is NOT reductionistic. It is not "either-or". Rather, it is "both-and". We know what it means to be human by BOTH science AND spirituality, BOTH reason AND faith.

They complete one another. They are two sides of the same coin. Two dimensions of the same reality.

And it is this "both-and" understanding that allows us to listen to Scriptures like our readings today, to find out about what it means to be human. Because we believe that in them, God breaks through into our world to tell us things about ourselves, that we cannot learn by our own observation, no matter how scientific.

In the Creation poem that is written one chapter before our Genesis reading today, we hear the divinely inspired poet tell us that God said:

“Let us make humanity in our image… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

This God is spoken of in paradoxical and poetic ways as a Divine Person who speaks a Word of Creation, and then forms chaos into order through the work of God's Breath, the Divine Spirit.

So this God is One Reality who exists in some sort of Community as Creator, and Word, and Breath of God. This God speaks as a Community and says "Let US create humanity in OUR image". And then when humanity is created, we are created as community: As male and female together, sharing in the image of God.

This paradox of the One God in Community is made clearer through the experience of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the early Church. This eventually came to be known as the Trinity: The One God who exists in community as Father, Son, and Spirit, sharing in each other's Love for all eternity.

So when God breaks into history to tell us about what it means to be human, it turns out that our human nature is actually a picture of God's nature. And God is Love, shared between the Creator, the creative Word, and the Breath of God.

And that's where we are at when we get to the second Creation story of Genesis, which we read today. It is this story that tells us about woman as a "helper" to man, and about how they become one flesh.

And immediately following this, we hear the passage from Mark, in which Jesus gives commentary on the same text, using it as the basis for his teaching on the tragedy of divorce.

Now, I speak to you today as someone who has gone through divorce, both as a child of divorced parents and grandparents, and as someone who has been married twice myself. I know from experience how difficult these texts can be on this issue. And I know that when these texts are read, the first thing I expect is a sermon on marriage, gender, and divorce.

But instead of this, I want to listen to what these texts have to say first and foremost about what it means to be human. Because I think it is only by understanding what it means to be human that we can begin to understand why our human relationships- whether they are marriage or friendship or any relationship that shares God's Love- why they are important.

So, the first thing we hear in our Genesis reading is that it is not good for the human to be alone. And this is weird, because after every day of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, God said: It is good… It is good… It is good.

Now, suddenly, something is not good. Something is not complete. Something is missing. The question is: Why? Why is it not good?

It is not good because humans were made for community. They were made to be images of the God who IS Love and shares Love in community forever.

Our world often stresses that we are individuals first. We are individual consumers, with individual tastes and needs, and individual skills that we must use in the marketplace to maximize our value. We must individually find ourselves, and individually makes ourselves into who we want to be.

But Scripture begins with a fundamentally different starting point. It does not deny that we are individuals. In Genesis God calls individuals like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Hagar, and Rebekah.

But, God's revelation does not start with humans first as individuals, but with humans as community. And not just a community of people who are the same as each other. But as man and woman, a community of people fundamentally different from each other.

I know we are all used to it by now, but sit back and think about what a monumental difference that is. What bigger natural difference could there be than the average woman and the average man. We are shaped different. We think different. We communicate different. We operate on different biological clocks. We use the bathroom different.

And sometimes some of us forget to put the lid down when we're done.

Just think about it: Not only did God create us in God's image as a Community, but God created us as different kinds of persons bound inextricably in relationship with one another.

Our natural inclination is to think of our individual self first, and then only relate to people who are like us. But who we are is quite the opposite. We become who we are only in community, only by loving people who are different than we are.

And this fundamental difference between man and woman in the Genesis text is a metaphor for ALL the different ways there are to be human: Not only different genders, but different sizes, different ethnicities, different cultures, different skills, different ways of seeing and being in the world.

In fact, it turns out that communities of radically different persons joined together in Love reflects God's fullest intention for what it means to be human. By the time of the early Christian movement, we find Saint Paul writing things like this to the Church in Galatia:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

I often think of being in community with radically different people as a sort of "add on" to who I really am. Something I do to enrich and expand myself, like an extra-curricular activity.

Yet, when I reflect on the God who is Creator, and Word, and Spirit- the God who is a community of radically different persons joined in Love- I find that it is only in this kind of community that I find what it really means to be me.

When we enter into community with people who are different from us, we find that we become helpers to each other, just as the woman was a helper to the man in Genesis. Where one is weak, another is strong. Where one lacks, another has plenty.

Often when we hear that God will make a "helper as his partner" or "helper suitable to him", it is easy to think that the woman is being painted as somehow inferior to, and derivative to, the man.

But when you dive into the Hebrew vocabulary and ask "What does it really mean for the woman to be a helper?", you get a surprising answer. Because the word "helper" used here also refers to one other significant person in the Hebrew Bible.

That person is God.

Throughout the Hebrew Bible God is seen as the Helper who supports, fulfills, and completes human beings. Just as the Psalmist prays: "God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life."

When the poet calls woman a "helper" to man, it is actually a profound theological statement: She is one who completes God's image in humanity, as a supporter and full partner with man.

And again, looking at this through the eyes of the early Church, this role of helper becomes more than just a male-female thing. It becomes the role for all the radically different people who are joined in Love within the Church. In our differences, strengths, and weaknesses, we become helpers to each other. We fulfill the image of God in each other.

Again, Saint Paul- who never seems to be able to keep his mouth shut about this issue- devotes a whole chapter in his letter to the Corinthians explaining what it means to live as different members in the Body of Christ.

He talks about how we are all radically different, but one organism bound together by Christ's Spirit. He says things like: "the members of the body that seem to be weaker are actually indispensable", and "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it."

Different, yet one. Individuals, but only through community. Helpers, who support and complete and fulfill God's image in each other.

THIS is what it means to be human. THIS is what it means to bear God's image. THIS is why Jesus said things like "the two shall become one flesh", and Paul said things like "you are all members of one Body".

May we all become people who reflect the image of God by seeing God's image in one another. May we all help each other live into all the fullness of God's Life. And may we all remember that human destiny is joined forever with the God who is a community of Love. Amen+

JESUS AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

2009-11-07T09:57:00.002-06:00

A Sermon For Year B, Proper 12 BCP

Based on 2 Kings 2:1-15, Mark 6:45-52

So, were you REALLY listening to the Gospel Story that just got read today? Were you thinking about what was going on? Did you perhaps imagine what it was like to actually BE in that boat with the disciples, as Jesus came waltzing across the water?

I mean, do you even believe that Jesus could do such a thing? Walk on top of stormy seas without falling in?

I've known many folks who rationally dismiss the whole thing as pietistic propaganda. They say everyone knows that people simply do not walk across water. We don't have the buoyancy. We are a bit top heavy. We tend to sink.

And they lump this story in with just about every other miracle story as propaganda carefully crafted by the early Christians to get people to join the Church.

They believe that miracle stories, especially outrageous miracles like walking on water, are custom tailored to say "Look! My God is bigger than your God! NaNaNaNaNa!"

But I still believe in miracles. I have seen things that defy any attempt at purely rational explanation. I have seen lives healed, people delivered from bondage, and incredible interlocking events that cannot be accurately described by the word "coincidence".

I bet you have experienced events like that too. Miracles.

And, I even believe this miracle happened. I believe it because it doesn't read like propaganda. Propaganda is smooth, rational, carefully argued.

This story is not smooth, or rational, or carefully argued. This story is messy. In the verses before this story, Jesus just fed thousands of people with a handful of food. But, instead of resting- instead of basking in the glow of miraculous success- Jesus orders the disciples to hop in the boat and row to the other side of the lake.

And Jesus goes up to a mountain to pray.

Instead of staying for fame, publicity, and adoring crowds- which is what you would expect from propaganda- Jesus and his disciples leave.

That doesn't make sense. Not if you are interested in propaganda.

Then, with no one around except a boatful of scared, poor, ignorant fishermen- not the kind of people you want as star witnesses if you are testifying before the powers of the world- with no one around but them, Jesus does perhaps his most spectacular miracle.

He literally wills control over the laws of nature, and walks on water like a model walks on a fashion runway. If I was going to craft propaganda, I would do a much better job. I would write about Jesus doing miracles that astonished the powerful, the prosperous, and the important. But this Gospel does just the opposite.

I mean the disciples don't even GET what happens here. They think he is a ghost, a phantasm, an apparition. They are scared stiff. And when he does get in the boat and the storm ceases, they don't get that either. Their hearts are hard, impenetrable, and ignorant.

And it's not like Jesus is hiding anything here. Its all out on the table. When he says "Take heart! It is I!", what he literally says is "Be courageous! I AM!" I AM is the personal name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures.

That's an incredibly un-subtle way of saying Who he really is. He is I AM. He is God embodied. God undercover. God with us.

But nobody gets it. And that means, if it is propaganda, its really badly written propaganda. Because if there is one thing that propaganda is, it is clear. Propaganda tells you clearly what is good, what is bad, who is in, who is out, which is dark, and which is light.

But there are very few things in this Gospel that are that clear. It is as if someone has all these messy stories of what Jesus did and taught, and they throw them out there, and say: "Here's what I experienced. You decide what to do with it."

In fact, when I read the Gospel of Mark, more than any other Gospel, I get the feel of sitting at the breakfast table talking to my Grandmother, my Mamaw.

Mamaw had all these great stories. And she was old enough not to care what other folks thought of her stories, or of who she was. She just told it like she remembered it. Stream of consciousness. Interjecting whatever came to mind in the middle.

She would tell of what it was like to live in the Great Depression. She would talk of her daddy, the sheriff who rode on horseback in southern Arkansas.

She would talk of being married to a bootlegger during prohibition. She could talk of making ammunition in World War II, of going through desegregation in the 1960's, and of the time she was convinced that the Russians were attacking Little Rock.

And by telling those stories, Mamaw made sense of her life. She shared what she learned, and who she was.

Were all of her stories completely accurate and delivered with scientific precision? Heck no. But were they still true? Did they still happen? Did they still shape the identity of this incredibly interesting person, and her often quirky family? Yes and Yes.

When I read Mark I get this same sense. Its almost as if someone pulled up a chair to the breakfast table with an elderly Peter, or one of the early disciples, and said: "Tell me about how it all started. What was Jesus like?"

And these experiences and stories just pour out…

"Well, there was this time we didn't have no food, and Jesus, he wanted to feed the whole crowd! And we didn't know what to do, till Jesus blessed some bread and fish, and fed the whole bunch of 'em.

"To my dying day, I will never figure out how he did that. Then I tell you what. That man told us to leave right then, and meet him on the other side of the lake. And Jesus did that thing he always did, where he went up on a hilltop and prayed.

"And like it always did, that ol' wind kicked up somethin' fierce. And that's when we saw him. Just strollin' across that ol' lake.

"Only we didn't know it was him at first. I thought it was a ghost. Andrew thought it was an angel. Then we heard that voice say 'Be Courageous! I AM!' Now what kinda person says 'I AM'. Hmmm.

"Then he got up in that boat and everything calmed down. Jesus had a way a' doin' that, y'know. Then we went right on to the other side, where, wouldn't you know it, there were a bunch a sick folks and crazy folks and…"

Have you ever read the Gospels like that? Like you are sitting at the breakfast table with an old friend who is telling stories? Have you ever imagined yourself in the stories, as a participant?

I have this bad habit when I read the Bible, and you may have it too. So, I will share it with you. You see, I often read the Bible to try and prove something. Prove I'm right. Prove someone else is wrong. So, I dissect it and rip it apart until I find just the right piece of evidence to support my case.

Then there are other folks who do the same thing to prove they are right too. And then there's a whole different group of folks who read the Bible in the same way- picking it apart- to try and prove the Bible itself is wrong.

So the Bible gets used like propaganda, to be proven or disproven as it is collected and categorized and analyzed and dissected. No wonder there are so many folks out there who are scared of the Bible and want nothing to do with it. Folks like me have a tendency to use the Bible in a scary way.

But what if that's not the point of the Bible? What if the point is to invite us into IMAGINE ourselves in a story: The Story of a God who enters into History and calls us to Love him and Love each other? What if the key to understanding the Bible is first and foremost our imagination, long before we do any rationalization?

Or, let's look at the same issue from a completely different perspective:

What kind of stories do YOU like telling over the breakfast table? What kind of stories bring a sparkle to your eye and life to your soul? What kind of stories do you get so wrapped up in that you loose time?

Here's the beginning of some stories that no one enjoys telling or hearing:

"When I met this person, and I could tell from the way they looked exactly what kind of person they were. And you know what, I was right!" Or...

"Well, let me tell you about the time I accomplished my five year plan with pinpoint accuracy!" Or...

"Here is how I make sure nothing unexpected ever happens in my life…"

Think about it: What is the most unsatisfying kind of movie to watch? What is the most boring book to read?

The kind where you know exactly what is going to happen from the very beginning. We are shaped by God to dislike stories that are predictable, punctual, planned, formulaic, and prosaic.

We crave drama, difference, distinctiveness. This is because we are created in the image of a God who does amazing, unpredictable things, like entering into His own creation and walking on water.

So why do we treat the Bible, and religion, and spirituality in a way that is predictable, punctual, planned, formulaic, and prosaic. Why do we insist on God fitting nicely into our pre-made boxes?

Now, do not get me wrong. I also believe that God made us as planners and thinkers and rational beings too. God created the world with order and structure and purpose.

Its just that in our culture, it is easy to loose the amazing, creative, unpredictable side of our life in Christ to the rote, routine, and reasonable side of life.

For example. Here is my cell phone. On this phone, I have my plans and appointments for the next two years. I also have all of my family's plans, all of our play dates, all of our sports games. I have contact information, phone numbers, and emails for all of the people in my professional and personal life.

I have five email addresses I can check. I have facebook. I have twitter. I have text messages. I have voice notes. I have a camera. I have the Bible in 30 translations. I have the Book of Common Prayer. I have internet, newspapers, files, documents, and much more.

This does not count all of the planning and preparation and paperwork on my computer, at my jobs, at home, in the mailbox, and scattered in my car. Multiply that for my wife and life gets very complex, very quickly.

And I say all of that because I know most of us in this place face similar levels of pre-planned complexity in our own lives. In fact, I know of people from Junior High age, up to well past retirement, who I would consider much busier than me.

And I think it can all take a toll on our life with God. We can have so many good things in our life- legitimately good gifts given to us by God- that we allow them to squeeze out what is best. We allow what is good to squeeze out what is God.

And not only that, but we allow it to squeeze out our sense of awe, mystery, and meaning in life. We allow it to squeeze out relationships. I know the times are few and far between, that I am able to just sit and BE with someone, and enter into their stories.

I know that if Jesus walked across the water right now, I would probably miss it because I would be too busy checking my email. I know that if God were to send flaming chariots from heaven right now, I would probably miss it because I was worried about getting to my next appointment on time.

Are you in the same place?

How long has it been since you took time to sit with God and enter into God's Story? How long has it been since you made space in your life for God to do something miraculous and awe inspiring?

How long has it been since you have watched for Jesus to walk into your life, across the troubled waves of anxiety and scheduling and responsibilities and requirements and paying the bills?

We all have to plan. We all have to structure our lives so they work. We are all busy. And much of that cannot be changed.

But we can carve out a space to sit with God at the breakfast table and listen to God's Story. We can come to Scripture without an agenda to make it say what we want, and instead imagine ourselves WITHIN the Story it tells.

We can make time to just BE with God for a while: To be a human BEING rather than just a human DOING.

And that is my prayer for us all. I pray we would make space in our lives for God to do something amazing and miraculous. I pray that in the midst of all our DOING we would remember we are human BEINGS made in God's image to live life with God. I pray that we would find Jesus telling stories at our breakfast table. Amen+

Trust Jesus to Touch You

2009-11-07T09:53:00.002-06:00

A Sermon for Year B, Proper 9. Based on Mark 6:1-13

By Nathan L. Bostian

Now, I do not know about you, but if I walked into a hospital chapel, and heard that reading from Mark, I would be wondering something. I would be asking questions. I might even be scratching my head.

Because a hospital is a house of healing. It is supposed to be an environment where our diseases can be diagnosed, and treated, and hopefully cured.

But then I walk into this chapel- a place where we are pray for the healing of the patients, and wisdom for medical caregivers- I walk in and hear this text read:

"And Jesus could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief."

What am I supposed to do with that text?

If I am patient, what am I supposed to do with the fact that there were some who Jesus couldn't heal?

If I am the loved one of a patient, what am I supposed to do with the fact that it seems like Jesus couldn't heal people because of their "unbelief"?

And if I am in the medical profession, skilled in the healing arts, what am I supposed to do with the fact that the Greatest Healer of all time couldn't heal certain people?

This is a tough text. This is a text to wrestle with. This is a text that makes us turn to Jesus and ask him "God, what is UP with that?"

It would be easier to deal with another passage where Jesus heals the multitudes, no questions asked. It would be easier to talk about the 8th chapter of Romans, where Paul says that NOTHING in all creation, neither trials nor tribulations nor life nor death, is able to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus.

It would be easier. But I don't think it would be the text God wants us to wrestle with today.

And in Church- especially in a Church where you read through all of the Bible, even the hard parts- sometimes we have to deal with readings that challenge us in the depths of our need.

Sometimes we have to deal with texts that make us wrestle, strain, struggle, sweat, and maybe even shed a tear or two.

But the promise of Jesus is that He is right there beside us, wrestling, straining, struggling, sweating, and even shedding tears.

So, let's be honest. Not everyone gets healed the way we want them to get healed. It doesn't matter if it is Jesus, or the latest multi-million dollar medical technology.

Not everyone gets healed.

And some of us may be struggling with that today. We might have a loved one who is not doing very well. We may be someone who has been looking to be healed for a long time, but it just doesn't seem to be coming. We may be someone who helps others heal, but no matter what treatments you try, there are still some patients you can't help.

And I don't know about you. But I know how I might feel. I might be hurting, physically and emotionally. I might feel scared. Or afraid. Or frustrated. I might even feel a little angry.

Maybe even more than a little bit.

And I might have questions that God does not seem to be answering.

And the reality is that in Jesus Christ, God is right there with you going through it all with you.

God did not stay up in heaven, unconcerned and untouched by all we go through. God did not stay on his Throne, afraid to get dirty with his children.

No, God did the unthinkable: In Jesus, God became one of us. God put skin on. God got his feet dirty.

In Jesus, God faced real human pain, real human frustration, real human fears, and real human death. Saint Paul's letter to the Philippians puts it this way:

"Jesus, who was in Reality God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of humans. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name."

Jesus knew what it was like to not be healed, because he faced suffering and death with us. And Jesus knew what it was like to not be able to heal others, because some would not trust him.

But Jesus also knows that this is not the end. Sickness and pain and death do not have the last word. Lack of healing does not have the last Word. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we KNOW what the last Word is.

The Last Word is Life. The Last Word is Love. The Last Word is Hope.

And so, when we read passages like ours today, we ALWAYS have to keep the Last Word in mind. That's what Jesus did. And that's what kept Jesus going.

When confronted with the struggles of real people, it was Jesus' Word of Love that kept Him going. When confronted people's lack of faith, and rejection, and suspicion, it was Jesus' Word of Hope that kept Him going. When confronted with His own mortality, it was Jesus' Word of Life that kept Him going.

So, with that Last Word in mind, what do we learn about healing and hope in our Bible reading today?

The first thing we learn is that personal trust is what allows the healing work of Jesus into our lives. Our passage today says that when many were not healed, it was somehow connected with their "unbelief".

In fact this "unbelief" amazed Jesus. It flabbergasted him. Here he was, offering to heal and make whole, and all folks could do was make fun of him, for his background and upbringing.

It would be like if I stood here offering to give you a million dollars, and instead of taking it you just stood there and made fun of how bald I was, and how funny the collar of my shirt was.

Why would they react like that to Jesus?

There was probably a lot of reasons they were skeptical and offended by Jesus, but they all boil down to what the Bible calls "unbelief".

Now, when the Bible uses words like "unbelief" or "belief" or "faith", we often think of that as something you think about. We think about belief as something that means having right ideas about God, Jesus, the Bible, and so on.

And so we falsely think, if we don't have the right ideas, then God rejects us. We mistakenly think if we have the wrong beliefs, then Jesus won't heal us.

And if we can just memorize and know the right facts about Jesus, then we can get healed. We can get God to do what we want, when we want.

But that is NOT how it works. That is not what the Bible means by "belief" or "unbelief".

When the Bible talks about belief or faith, it is talking about trust. It is not talking about having right ideas. It is talking about if you desire, depend on, hope in, confide in Someone else. It is talking about if you cling to Jesus, and won't let go.

Let me put it this way: I have a 10 month old baby boy at home. When he sees mommy or me, he crawls over to us, and wants us to pick him up. He clings to us.

When he cries, and knows we will answer him. When he hurts or is hungry, he trusts us to care for him.

Does he have a lot of right ideas about us? No.

Other than knowing I am the large, smiling guy with the beard and the shiny head, he knows no facts about me. He doesn't even know my name.

But he believes in me. He trusts me. He has faith.

That was what was missing from the folks in Jesus' home town. It wasn't that they didn't have right ideas about him. They had all the facts: They knew who he was, who his family was, and probably the whole story of his childhood.

But they didn't trust him. They didn't have faith in him. They didn't run up to him, and embrace him, and cling to him. They would not let him touch them, and it is the touch of Jesus that heals.

Think about it: In almost all the stories where people are healed by Jesus, what do they do? They touch Jesus. They embrace Jesus. They cling to Jesus.

They didn't memorize all the right facts about Jesus, and pass his pop quiz before he would heal them. They touched him, and trusted him with their needs.

That is how trust is really shown: When we allow someone to touch us, and share in our pain. When we allow Jesus to touch us, and share in our pain.

And that brings us to the second thing about Jesus' healing that is hard for us to understand: When we DO come to him, and let him touch us, then why doesn't God heal us the way we expect?

Why doesn't God make healing planned and predictable and punctual? Why do we have to wait? Why do we have to worry?

The truth is, life is messy. And when Jesus is at work in our lives, he works within our messiness, in messy ways that we cannot predict.

Or to put it another way: God heals us in many ways. When we let Jesus touch us, he is ALWAYS at work healing us, but often not in the way we expect.

For example: At the very end of our reading today, Jesus sends his disciples on a mission. And that mission was to continue Jesus' mission, and do the exact same things that he did.

What were those things?

It says that the disciples proclaimed repentance, cast out evil powers, and healed the sick. This is exactly what Jesus did.

These may seem like three separate things, but they are all part of healing the entire person. They are three parts of the same healing activity that God does in our lives.

First of all, you have "repentance". To repent is to change one's heart, to get rid of harmful ways of living, and to embrace healthy ways of thinking.

When the disciples proclaim repentance, they are healing people's hearts and minds. That is emotional healing.

Second of all, there is casting out demons. This means to get rid of evil powers that have rooted themselves in someone's spirit. It means to free them from bondage to wickedness and sin. That is spiritual healing.

And third, there is healing the sick. That's physical healing.

Emotional healing. Spiritual healing. Physical healing. All are part of the same healing touch, when we embrace Jesus in faith.

We may want physical healing, and that does not happen. But Jesus is still at work in that experience, bringing us emotional healing or spiritual healing, if we will open ourselves to it.

If we will trust him to touch us at the core of our soul.

I know that is difficult. I know it is hard to want one thing, and have God give us another. And Jesus knows it too.

And that is why he walks with us through the hardest of times, and gives us the Hope of His Resurrection.

And not only that, but we also know that if we let Jesus touch us, He will be at work healing us. It might BE a spectacular physical healing.

But often, it will be in ways that are invisible to the outside world. Even in ways we are not aware of. But Jesus will be there. Healing us with the Hope of His resurrection.

So, I encourage you today: Let the Last Word of Jesus be the Word that gives you Hope. Remember that sickness and pain and death do not have the Last Word. Resurrection does. Hope does. Jesus does.

And I invite you to trust Jesus to touch you with his healing touch. Let him touch you with the touch that can cure disease, drive out evil, comfort the heart, and even raise the dead.

Embrace Jesus. Cling to Him. Trust in Him. Amen.

Contemporary Worship, Pop Culture, and Traditional Critique

2009-11-06T10:33:00.002-06:00

Over the years I have found that I stand in a somewhat odd mediatorial role between those who love Contemporary worship styles, and those who love Traditional worship styles. This is because I actually love both styles, and I do not know of many people who can honestly say that. As a result, I have friends, parishoners and colleagues on both sides of the Contemporary/Traditional divide.

Often I hear rhetoric from both sides about how the other is dying. Advocates of Contemporary worship point to blossoming megachurches, huge concert and album sales by Contemporary artists, and the immense Christian youth culture that buys it all, as signs that traditional worship is all but dead. Advocates of Traditional worship often point backward to the fact that their style of worship has nourished millions over centuries of change, and will continue to do so through the changes in the future (they often miss the fact that at some point their style- even if it is monastic chant- was once the "new" way to worship!). They also point out the growing group of young adults who see the shallowness of much contemporary worship, and desire something deeper, more connected with the Great Tradition.

And, in all honesty, both are right on the money. And I want to explain why.

This essay was originally written to a friend of mine who is a young traditionalist, so that is why I tend to deal more with the "Contemporary" side of this debate than the "Traditional". At some point, perhaps I will be able to write an essay to someone arguing the other side of this coin. But for now, let us begin:

First of all, I know you don’t particularly like contemporary worship. And second of all, I know that you live in a cultural milieu that does not particularly like it. Thus, you think it is normative that most folks your age do not like it.

However, as a corrective I would offer this: Contemporary worship makes a ton of money, and it is marketed all over the place to every age group, in every form of media. Marketers wouldn’t do this if it was not a growing market (which it is, at every age level). If traditional worship was gathering the kind of market share you are envisioning, the marketers would not miss out on making money off of it. But, the fact of the matter is, the marketing segment devoted to traditional worship is much smaller than contemporary worship, which means that people simply aren’t buying as much. Furthermore, the younger the age group, the more of the contemporary product is bought.

This experience is echoed in my own experience as a campus pastor at a major university. Out of the 25 or so Christian ministries on campus, only about 4 of us would be considered "traditional", including Canterbury House Episcopal. Even the Catholics use mostly contemporary songs in worship. So, out of the 500-700 young adults who may be involved in Christian worship on campus in a given week, perhaps 40-60 are in solidly "traditional" worship in Episcopal, Lutheran, and Orthodox ministries; Another 40-60 meet at the Reformed University Fellowship and do hybrid worship using traditional hymns updated to modern instruments and rhythms; And another 200-250 worship at the Catholic student mass, which uses a traditional liturgy, but contemporary songs.

I have always found it fascinating that I have students come to me and ask for contemporary music "because everybody wants it that way", and also an equal number who come to me and ask to keep it all traditional "because everybody wants it that way". Apparently their circles of "everybody" do not talk to each other, because they do not seem to acknowledge each other's existence. But they sure do talk to me.

However, I think you are right that the number of 20-somethings who desire traditional worship forms is growing, and is more now than 20-somethings in 1990, or 1970 for that matter. But a similar trend can be seen in the desire of 20-somethings for ethnic food versus fast food. More 20-somethings today desire ethnic foods like Indian food or Sushi than 20-somethings in 1990 or 1970. But that does not mean that an overwhelming number do not eat at Taco Bell and McDonalds. I bet you and all of your friends prefer ethnic foods to fast food, but then again you all don’t hang out with many 20-somethings from Denton, or Mesquite, or East Texas. In many ways, I think contemporary worship is the equivalent of fast food, and traditional worship is the equivalent of ethnic food, and appeals to similar populations for similar reasons.

Or, to put it more sociologically: Contemporary versus Traditional worship covers just about the same social space as the divide between "pop" culture and "refined" culture. Those who like "pop" music tend to like contemporary worship. In fact, I would argue that a better term for contemporary worship IS "pop worship". Those who do not like "pop" music also tend to enjoy traditional worship. Likewise, those who enjoy art museums, and who listen to NPR and classical music for fun, tend to enjoy Traditional versus Pop forms of worship. The divide between the two says a great deal more about culture of origin than it does about the actual theological or liturgical differences between the two worship forms.

So, what shall I say?

On one hand, I agree with you. I obviously have serious critiques of contemporary worship, especially the evangelical variety, or else I would not have left it to come to the Episcopal Church.

I think there are at least three valid reasons to critique contemporary worship.

First, it is valid to critique it from a theological perspective. Much of the theological content is shallow, simplistic, reductionistic, and even heretical. Perhaps 70% of the songs I hear from the contemporary tradition have this problem. They are fast food.

Second, it often appeals to a hyper-individualistic, consumeristic sense of what makes ME feel good. Much of it is all about ME and MY feelings. This introduces an unhealthy narcissism into what should be a Christ-centered event. It also implicitly rules out community as it focuses on meeting MY needs.

Third, it simply is not for everyone aesthetically. Humans simply don’t like the same sounds, instruments, rhythms, and styles. And it is OK if contemporary music doesn’t do it for you aesthetically. But it is also fine if it does. And we should be honest about that.

Now, on the other hand, I think there are three invalid- even spiritually corrosive- reasons to reject contemporary worship.

First, I believe that there is not-too-subtle classism that is at the root of many people’s rejection of contemporary worship, especially in privileged areas. Traditional forms of worship- whether Jewish, Christian, Hindu, or whatever- are often associated with "high" culture. In fact, the difficulty of understanding and performing certain rituals, the difficulty of singing certain songs, and the difficulty of leafing through complex liturgical books, are all badges of accomplishment for those who want to identify themselves as “high culture”. These “religious difficulties” are often appropriated by those of a higher culture, to show that they are more able, more patient, and more refined than those of lower culture. They are used as implicit barriers to "keep out the riff raff", so we can have a "nice" Church service with "folks like us". As a result, there is an often “allergic” reaction of high culture people to popular forms of religion, which guises itself in the garb of theological or aesthetic critique, when in actuality these are just rationalizations for a desire to be "better" than those people “down there”. This kind of classism- which is also frequently racism as well- has no part in a religion which claims that all persons, of all genders, of all socio-economic backgrounds, of all educational levels, are beloved of God.

Second, most forms of popular religion are highly emotional and enthusiastic. They are overtly expressive in ways which indicate a passion and intimacy with God. The legitimate concern this can raise is emotional manipulation and an overly individualistic orientation to religion. However, many people are just plain uncomfortable with strong emotion, and may feel threatened that another person has an intimacy with God that they may not [seem to] have. And rather than deal with their own emotional baggage and relationship with God, they simply reject emotional forms of religious experience altogether. Such a rejection says more about that person’s emotional and spiritual problems than any problem with contemporary worship.

Third, I find that many people reject contemporary worship- and any other form of worship other than what "their priest" did at their "home parish" when they were growing up- because they simply fear change. They don’t like new things. They have huge control needs. And rather than admitting this, they create large facade arguments about theology or aesthetics to cover the fact that they simply want things to be the way they want them to be. Forever.

Now, I also want to note that a reverse corollary of people who reject traditional worship in favor of contemporary worship is true too. First, such a rejection may be a function of classism (I don’t want to be like those rich people!) or ageism (I don’t want to be like those old people!) or racism (I don’t want to be like those white people!). Second, it might be because they simply do not want to use their minds in worship, and instead prefer to always be swept away by their “emotions”. Third, it might be that they think worship always has to be different, new, and novel, and they have an inbred dislike for routine, tradition and discipline.

I also want to note that these are ploys of a consumer culture to get more people to purchase more product. First, socialize people to have a dislike of the "Other" (in classism, racism, ageism, etc.), and get them to want to purchase product based on "not being like them". Second, get them to stop thinking and rely only on emotions. This creates impulse buyers. Third, create in them the idea that things always have to be new and different, that novelty is good and tradition is bad. Then they will purchase things just for the sake of their newness, and to not be "old fashioned" or "out of date". So, I think that much of what drives pop culture- including pop worship- is a demonic consumerism that is sustained by the profit motive rather than the prophet motive. But that is another sermon.

I think that most people who reject forms of worship- whether traditional or contemporary- are actually doing so because of implicit classism, fear of emotion (or of reason), or fear of change (or of routine). These socio-emotional motives for rejection are then clothed with theological and aesthetic rationale to be given respectability, so that even those who complain and reject do not realize the REAL reasons why they are doing it.

So, with that said, I would like to offer three brief reasons why the Church needs traditional worship AND three brief reasons why the Church needs contemporary (or “pop”) worship.

First, the Church needs traditional worship for continuity. It is axiomatic that traditional worship preserves tradition. Tradition is the living memory of the organism of Christ’s Body. Without it, we perform a lobotomy on Christ’s memory and are doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over. Thus, tradition is a constant reminder of our identity and our story as Christ’s Body. And traditional worship rehearses this identity and story with maximal continuity.

Second, the Church needs traditional worship to feed the mind. Let’s face it: Traditional hymnody and liturgy is just deeper on a cognitive level. The great hymns and liturgies are repositories of spiritual knowledge, and often whole sermons- and systematic theologies- are played out as we rehearse traditional liturgical forms.

Third, the Church needs traditional worship for the fullness of the sacraments. Because traditional worship is an implicit recognition that the Holy Spirit functions through certain regular, repeated, routine actions of the Church, it is also an implicit recognition of sacraments. Much more than “new” forms, traditional forms of liturgy convey the idea that God is at work in and through human action, created matter, and repeated ritual.

And now for contemporary, or “pop” worship:

First, the Church needs contemporary worship to make use of all the tools God has given the Church. We take it for granted that God has given the Church the “technologies” of wine fermentation, bread baking, flame, and the printing press to worship God. However, we somehow doubt (or at least demean) that God has also given us other technologies, like drum sets, computers, projection systems, and sound systems for worship as well. As good and faithful stewards, we are called to at least explore the use of the technologies God gives us as means of worship. The early Anglo-catholic ritualist movement recognized this, and they moved the Church from a very “logocentric” spirituality, to a spirituality that made use of sight, sound, touch, and smell. They began in low class neighborhoods in England’s growing cities, and were roundly criticized by “proper” English culture in many of the same terms that "high culture" condemns popular worship today. But they were right in advocating “multi-media” worship, and I believe that we must make use of “multi-media” as much as we can today. But these new technologies, including projection and modern instrumentation, can also be used with traditional forms of hymnody and liturgy. It is often said that this is “not the Episcopal way”, but that is the same thing they said of the Anglo-catholics in the 1860s. Furthermore, as I have noted above, “not the Episcopal way” is frequently a catch-phrase for “i reject it because it does not fit the social class I want to be a part of”.

Second, the Church needs contemporary worship to meet the developmental levels of God’s people. Contemporary music is almost always less complex musically and theologically than traditional hymnody, while also being more complex than children’s songs. The reason is that, developmentally, it fits between the two. We sing children’s songs and preach children’s sermons to children because developmentally they cannot make sense of adult concepts and syntax. In addition, all the great studies of cognitive development show that a great many people reach a certain developmental level and stay there, with only minor changes over their lifetime. In the same way that not everyone can read a book on systematic theology and make sense of it, so also not everyone can “get” traditional worship. I would argue that it’s complexity both in style and cognitive substance make it harder to follow. Thus for completely developmental reasons there are many people- perhaps even the majority- will be touched by “pop” worship because it speaks to their developmental level. They should still be challenged and pushed to greater spiritual depths, but their normal “mode” of worship and religious experience rests soundly in the "popular" realm, and always will.

Third, the Church needs to be open to experimental worship to honor the creativity of God’s Spirit. The Holy Spirit is radically free, and radically creative, and inspires creativity in all of God’s children, whether they are Pentecostal or Anglican, refined or pop, highly educated or average. And when the Spirit inspires someone, that inspiration will be reflected in their abilities and on their developmental level. So, when we reject popular or contemporary worship simply because it is new or different, we are not just rejecting the artist, pastor, or musician, we are rejecting the Spirit that inspired them.

So, in conclusion, I advocate a healthy critique of contemporary worship, especially when it is theologically or morally dubious, simplistic, or in error. I encourage everyone to worship in a way that best fits their aesthetic and developmental levels, and to be honest when a worship form simply does not “fit” with who they are.

But I also encourage brutal honesty with ourselves about WHY we critique certain worship forms, with special emphasis on whether we are doing so because of classism, racism, agism, or because we are afraid of emotion, or rationality, or change, or routine.

In the end, I have one definition of "good worship": And that is worship which "draws" people into Christ. I mean draw in at least two senses: First, I mean draw in the sense of being brought closer, into deeper levels of union with the Triune God revealed in Christ, through greater emotional intimacy and cognitive knowledge of God. Second, I mean draw in the sense of an artist drawing someone or something. We are drawn into Christ as we become more Christ-like, more full of agape Love, more merciful, more just, more compassionate, more like Jesus. Good worship draws people into Christ in both senses, both as individuals and as a community, so that good worship creates individuals, families, parishes, and communities that embody the Risen Christ to the world.

This means that there are objective criteria for good worship. There are theological, moral, and social errors that can be objectively pointed out and named as corrosive to people being "drawn into Christ". But, good worship is also irreducibly subjective as well. Some folks are moved by a hip hop beat, while others like a waltz, while others like Anglican chant. Some are touched by a guitar, some by a harp, and some by an organ. Some feel distracted from worshipping God by big theological words and complex syntax in prayer, and some feel positively drawn closer to God by those same things. Even in the Bible, some Psalms are simple and repetitive, while others are complex poetic treatises. Even the two Pauline Christ-hymns in Philippians 2 and Colossians 1 are very stylistically different ways of speaking of the same Event of the Incarnation of God in Christ.

All of this is to say that our opinions on worship forms need to be held with a large dose of humility. We need to realize that our opinions on both style and substance are often held primarily because of cultural, aesthetic, and developmental reasons, rather than because of solid moral or theological criteria. Furthermore, when we feel like seriously critiquing another's worship on theological or moral grounds, we need to first do a "gut check" and honestly assess whether or not our critique really arises from a base motive, only to clothe itself in theological respectability. There ARE valid critiques of worship to be made, but they can only be made with a pure motive: And that motive is the legitimate concern to see people drawn into Christ.

I will end with a paraphrase of St. Paul's letter to the Romans [14.1-12]. In the original he is speaking of those who eat meat and those who don't. I will take some liberties and replace these words with forms of worship:

"As for the one who is one-sided in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he must worship with contemporary music, while the other person worships only in traditional ways. Let not the one who uses contemporary worship despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who uses contemporary worship, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

One person esteems one style of music as better than another, while another esteems all music alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who uses only one type of music, does it in honor of the Lord. The one who uses other forms of music, sings in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brothers and sisters? Or you, why do you despise your them? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us will give an account of himself to God."

Nate's Ordination Nov 21 at 10am

2009-10-27T22:06:00.004-05:00

Nate and Kim Bostian cordially invite you

November 21st 2009 at 10:00 am
God willing

The Right Reverend
James Monte Stanton
Bishop of Dallas
will ordain

Nathan Louis Bostian
and
Robert Jemonde Taylor

to the Sacred Order of Priests
In Christ's One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church

On Saturday, the Twenty-First of November
Two Thousand and Nine
Ten o'clock in the Morning
Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
8011 Douglas Avenue
Dallas, Texas

Your Presence and Prayers are requested.

Clergy: Cassock, Surplice, and White Stoles.

Reception following in Parish Hall
______________________________________________________
Email | Facebook | Map | Mailed Invitation | Directions | Saintmichael.org

NATE'S CORE BELIEFS AFTER A DECADE

2009-08-26T11:44:00.002-05:00

Every now and then it is fun to look at how you have changed, and how you have stayed the same, over time. In fall of 1999 I created a statement of my Core Beliefs to prepare my resume for my first applications to become a full-time youth minister. It is called "The Disciples Creed" (in retrospect that was probably a presumptuous name for it!). This week, fall of 2009, I have completed a statement of "Core Ministry Values" to prepare my curricula vitae (CV) for my final interviews for (hopeful) ordination to the Sacred order of Priests in the Episcopal Church.

In ten years I have gone from being an evangelical, charismatic social worker who is proficient in Biblical Greek, to a college and young adult minister who has made it through a mainline seminary, with experience in "high", "low", and "broad" Episcopal traditions (and limited ability in Hebrew to boot!). When it dawned on me that it has been a decade between each of my "creeds", I thought it would be fun to compare them. The one commonality between the two is that they were both designed to fit on a single page in 12 point font (so they are not exhaustive doctrinal statements of belief). Funny how an 8.5 x 11" page can fit more after a decade…

THE DISCIPLE'S CREED [Fall 1999]

I believe in the one true God Yahweh, eternal, infinite and perfect; all knowing, all present and all powerful; unchanging, loving and good. He is personal yet beyond personhood, eternally existing as one Being in three Persons- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I believe in God the Father, the sovereign King of the universe. He is Creator of all things visible and invisible, He has chosen me as His own, and out of His indescribable Love He sent His only Son to die for me.

I believe in God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, fully God yet fully human. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He died to take the penalty for my sin and was physically resurrected from the dead. He ascended into Heaven and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in God the Holy Spirit, God’s very presence in my heart. He calls me to God, He counsels and compels me to live as Christ, and He gives me divine power and spiritual gifts to help others. He enables me to understand and apply God's Word and through Him I can communicate with God in prayer.

I believe the Bible is God’s living Word, divinely inspired from Genesis to Revelation, completely accurate in all it teaches, in authority over everything that claims truth, needing nothing added to it nor taken away to accomplish God’s purposes for me.

I believe I am created in God’s image to Love God and be Loved by Him. Without Him there can be no fulfillment in life, nor any goodness in me. Yet I am a sinner separated from God by my own limitations, my own ignorance of God, and my own evil choices. The just penalty for this sin is death, eternal suffering, and permanent separation from God.

I believe I am reconciled to God, and saved from sin, only by God's grace shown in Jesus Christ, through trusting in Him as my Savior, confessing Him as my Lord, repenting from sin and turning to God, and Baptism that joins me to Christ. Because of this I have forgiveness of sins, the assurance of eternal life, and the hope of the resurrection.

I believe in the one unified Church of God, the Body of Christ in the world, faithful in Confession, Baptism, and Communion. Our duty as a community, and my duty as an individual, is to worship the living God, to obey all He commands, and to share His Love by word and deed with all people. Amen.

CORE MINISTRY VALUES [Fall 2009]
I would like to articulate ten "Core Ministry Values" which reflect what I believe to be at the center of effective Christian ministry within the Anglican-Episcopal tradition. The first five are "theological" or "doctrinal" values, and the second five are "pastoral" or "practical" values.

TRINITARIAN: Effective ministry connects people with the Triune God who is the Source, Center, and Purpose of all Reality. Above all, God is Love, shared in community through all eternity by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our Triune God is the Author, Plot, and Director of History, who beckons all persons to passionate relationship with the Father, through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit.

CHRISTOCENTRIC: Jesus Christ is God's Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, incarnate in a historical human life, who embodies God's Love and healing Purpose. Jesus is our at-one-ment with God through His conception, birth, life, ministry, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and return. His self-giving Love, exemplified in servant-leadership, is the Pattern for all effective Christian ministry.

SPIRITUAL: Just as Jesus' ministry was accomplished by the power of God's Spirit [cf. Luke 4.18-19], so also our ministry can only be accomplished by the power of the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead [cf. Acts 1.8-9]. We rely on the Spirit of God as the wildly creative Third Person of the Trinity, who indwells and infills God's people with gifts and graces to live out Christ's Love in our world.

SACRAMENTAL: Following the pattern of the Incarnation, through which God is embodied in Christ to make atonement and impart healing, Christ has given the the Church Sacred Acts through which He still reaches out to save and heal God's children. The Church makes use of these Sacred Acts- above all Baptism and Eucharist- to incorporate people, by faith, into the saving Reality of Christ.

SCRIPTURAL: As God's Word is embodied in Jesus, so also God's Word is inscribed in Canonical Scripture, which is inspired by God, to point us to God's great salvific acts that reach fulfillment in Jesus. Scripture is the authentic, non-negotiable, and necessary means through which we come to know these saving acts, and upon which God has authorized the Church to make decisions about faith and practice.

PASSIONATE: Jesus summed up the ultimate Purpose of our life in the command to "Love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength". All effective ministry flows forth from an impassioned soul set ablaze with the Love of God, through prayerful surrender to Christ, in all we think, feel, say, and do.

COMPASSIONATE: Jesus also says that our "vertical" Love for God cannot be contained, but must overflow "horizontally" as we Love our neighbors as ourselves. Ministry is the overflow of God's Love into concrete acts of mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, service, and healing for all of God's children.

MESSY: Just as Jesus reached out to lepers, traitors, and prostitutes, so also the ministry of Christ's compassion and healing means reaching out to the lost, the last, and the least in our society. This makes ministry profoundly messy, dirty, unpredictable, problematic... And also profoundly rewarding.

MIRTHFUL: The passionate, compassionate, messy mission of Jesus is also joyful, ironic, paradoxical, and even humorous. We rejoice in our Lord God who became a human servant, who defeated cosmic powers with crucified powerlessness, who put death to death by resurrection, who rules a Kingdom where the first are last and the last are first, so we can live as creative children of our Creative Creator.

MISSIONAL: As Christians, we are called to continue Christ's mission to reach the world, and heal all persons. Teresa of Avila wisely notes "Christ has no body now on earth but ours." As C.S. Lewis has said about our common life as Christ's Body: "The Church exists for nothing else but to draw [people] into Christ, to make them little christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose."

A Litany to Pray Upon the Reading of Church Blogs

2009-06-24T22:52:00.000-05:00

Rubric: This Litany will help after reading Church blogs and news websites who capitalize and sensationalize schism and heresy in the Church for the purpose of increased readership. It is effective after reading blogs and websites of all persuasions, whether left or right, high or low. When you experience signs of nausea, mental exhaustion, blurring eyes, or demon possession after imbibing these types of blogs, simply pray this Litany. It may be helpful also to sing a hymn such as "The Church's One Foundation", "Amazing Grace", or "Lift High the Cross".

Jesus, the Lord of the Church and the Lord of History:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, that Word become flesh who speaks the Word of Life:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, the Center of the Cosmos and the Center of our Lives:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, who crucified sin and put death to death upon the cross:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, who defeated the power of evil by rising physically from the grave:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, who is the Plot of Scripture, and the Key to the Church's teaching:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, who accepted the outcast, included the unworthy, and loved the least of us:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, who stood against the powers, the powerful, the privileged, and the oppressors:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, who sends us on your mission to spread the Good News of yourself to all creation:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, whose mission intertwines preaching and healing, teaching and justice, word and sacrament, speech and deed:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, who gives us your Word to heal and liberate, not to argue and ignore:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we forget that you are the Point instead of our talking points:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we manipulate truth about our enemies on behalf of your Truth:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we confuse our worship of You with the You we worship:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we confuse our words about you with Your Word:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we want to be right more than we want to be servants:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we worry about events we cannot control instead of serving those you put in our life:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we put power politics before your healing power:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we confuse our kingdoms of property and income and ownership and legality and rights with your Kingdom of Light:
Have Mercy Upon Us.

Jesus, for all the times we read and rehearse the lies that help us fall into all of these idolatries, instead of falling deeper in Love with you and your people:
Have mercy upon us, heal us, and convert us once again. Amen+

Stop the Storm or Ride the Rapids?

2009-06-20T22:10:00.000-05:00

A Sermon by Nathan L. Bostian
For Year B, Proper 7, based on Mark 4:35-41

When I read stories like today's Gospel reading- stories where Jesus does something awesome that literally moves heaven and earth- I often find myself asking a question that goes something like this:

"Jesus, why don't you calm MY storms like that?"

Have you ever found yourself wondering the same thing? Have you ever found yourself drowning in trouble, knocked back and forth by waves of anger and sorrow and frustration and fear, wondering "Where is God in this?".

Is God asleep at the wheel? Does Jesus not see what I am going through here? Is he literally in the back of the boat taking a nap, leaving me to bail out buckets of my own tears?

I think this is a deep question that goes straight to the heart of our relationship with God. What is Jesus doing in the storms of our lives? This is something we all need to ask. And I want to give us permission to ask it.

And so we can answer the question of what Jesus is doing in OUR storms, let us first answer the question: "What is Jesus doing in the storm of THIS story?"

Some say that Jesus was acting out of a deep sense of compassion. He saw his friends in need, about to drown, buffeted by waves beyond their control.

And seeing that, Jesus' deep sense of compassion took over- that sense of compassion that led him to feed the hungry, and heal the sick, and forgive the sinful. It broke his heart to see his friends in trouble, so he acted to save him.

And this is important for us to know. We need to know that God has deep compassion for our deepest needs. We have to know that God's mercy is stronger than ANY of the storms we face. We must know that God's Love will eventually grant peace and tranquility to our stormy souls.

Others say that this was an object lesson for Jesus. Jesus had "stacked the deck" and knew that the storm was coming. He knew his disciples would freak out. He knew the storm would push them to understand how little trust they had, and how they needed to grow in faith.

So, Jesus went to sleep until just the right time to reveal his Divine power and glory. It was a hurricane-sized lesson to teach his disciples that he is indeed God in human flesh, and that they need to put all their trust in him as their Lord.

Indeed, for the original hearers, at the end of this Gospel story I am sure that the storyteller turned to his audience, looked them in the eyes, and spoke the question: "Who IS this that even the wind and the waves obey him?"

The implied answer is, of course, that Jesus has power over nature because he is the One that created nature. He is the Creator embodied as a creature.

And surely this too is an important lesson for us: Jesus is God in human form, and he is worthy of all our trust and faith.

Still others say that this Story is a lesson on spiritual warfare. In the preceding days and weeks, Jesus had been teaching, preaching, healing, and casting out evil powers in the Name of Love. Jesus was manifesting God's power over the forces of evil- the forces of sickness, sin, bondage, and hate- and that was making the evil powers ANGRY.

So, the forces of evil took their opportunity to STRIKE while Jesus was asleep, while the disciples were defenseless in the middle of a huge lake. Evil lashed out and struck that little boat with gusts of fear, and waves of panic.

But at just the right time, Jesus arose and demonstrated his power over evil once again. If you notice the way he rebukes the storm, and orders it to be still, it follows the pattern he uses to cast out demons.

In fact, the command "Be still!" literally means "Be muzzled!" like an angry barking dog. It is the same thing Jesus would tell the unclean spirits, right before he cast them out into the abyss.

This third interpretation also carries a powerful message for us: Jesus is our Victor. Christ is our Champion. In the end, evil and suffering do not have the last word. Jesus has the last Word. And his Word is peace.

So, which is it? Did Jesus calm the storm to save his friends, or to give them faith that he is God, or to demonstrate his victory over evil? Tell us preacher: What does this mean?

Well, to be honest with you, I think all three are a bit of the truth. And all three miss a bit of the point. I think the reason why Jesus acted here is a bit different from everything we have talked about so far.

Let's review the tape shall we? What had Jesus been doing before he got in the boat? [Wait for answers]

Yes, Jesus had been preaching and teaching and healing and casting out evil. He had been ministering to people in the hot Judean sun for days upon end. People had been coming up to him, in unceasing numbers, needing and asking and wanting and talking and debating.

Jesus was exhausted. Jesus was tired deep down into his bones. Jesus was so weary he was able to go to sleep in the back of a small, creaky fishing boat, surrounded by loud, smelly, working fishermen. He literally slept through a storm!

That storm is a regular occurrence on the Galilean sea. As the water cools down after the relentless sun has finally set, the hot air dissipates, and the cool air descends from the mountains. The friction causes squalls and storms and wind and waves to break across the sea.

There was nothing surprising here. In fact, it had happened dozens, hundreds of times to these experienced fishermen. This storm may have been particularly severe, but it was not so severe as to wake Jesus up from his well deserved sleep.

Sure, the disciples had let it get away from them a little bit. Sure, the water was flooding the boat in their negligence. But it was still not enough to wake Jesus up. It was still not beyond the realm of what experienced fishermen could expect.

And yet, as the wind and waves beat against that boat, as they bailed water out, as the gusts made the little boat yaw and twist in gut wrenching directions, you can see the look of frustration on the disciples faces as Jesus keeps on sleeping.

I can hear them griping now: "Here we are doing all the hard work. And what is Jesus doing? Nothing! We have heard his words cast demons out and cure the incurable, and now that WE are in trouble, what do we hear? Snoring!"

"Hey! Sleeping beauty! We are about to drown here! You think you could wake up long enough to DO SOMETHING?"

At the voice of his best friends, Jesus finally comes to. You know how it feels. There is that moment when you get jarred into consciousness, and for a second your dream world merges with the real world, as your dreary eyes snap to attention.

He hears their last comment "Don't you care that we are perishing?"

Can you imagine the frustration as Jesus realized that they were waking him up for a slightly-bigger-than-normal Galilee sea storm? Can you imagine the frustration of Jesus being accused of not caring?

I can almost hear Jesus thinking: "You would accuse me of not caring? It was my caring that brought me to this world! It was my caring that led me to preach and teach and heal and cast out evil!

It was my caring that led me to be here with you, in the middle of this sea, in the midst of this storm! OK, I will show you caring! I will give you what you asked for!"

Then I can see Jesus turn with that look- that look of power and frustration and compassion and exhaustion all combined into one glance- I can see him turn to the sea and scream in exasperated power "Peace! Be muzzled!"

Then it all stops. An awful, dreadful, wonderful, deep, powerful, scary peace descends upon the sea. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs. Nothing.

No wind. No waves. Dead calm. All you can hear is the breathing of the fishermen, and the drops of water falling off of the boat into the sea. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Then Jesus flashes that look to his disciples, and with deep compassion and frustration in his voice says: "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"

Without a word, Jesus turns, lays down on his pillow, and goes back to sleep.

Everyone is afraid to talk in the eerie silence. Finally, someone whispers in the darkness "Who IS this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?"

More silence.

After a few minutes someone says: "You know, there's no wind now".

Another replies "Yep, I know."

"That means the sails won't work."

"Yep."

"That means we are going to have to row seven or eight miles to get to the other side."

"Yep."

"Well, he didn't have to get rid of ALL of the wind. He could have left us some, you know? Maybe I should wake him up again and ask him to…"

"I wouldn't do that."

"Ummm. You are probably right. It's time to row, isn't it?"

"Yep."

And so they spend the rest of the night into the early dawn rowing and rowing and rowing until they finally make landfall.

Now, I know I have taken some liberties here with the story. But, when I put myself in that boat, that's the way I imagine it.

You don't have to go there with me. But, if you do go there with me, I think we learn a couple of different things about how Jesus is at work in our storms.

The first thing I find is that our relationship with God is a real relationship, not some idealized relationship where nothing ever goes wrong, and we never get mad at each other.

You know, sometimes, we get frustrated with God. We get frustrated that we pray, and seek him, and try to do the right thing, and still, storms happen. Storms that perhaps we could have handled better. But storms that we still cannot control.

Can't God just make things easier? What is the deal?

In our relationship with God- as in ANY relationship where we deeply love another person- we are going to get frustrated. We are going to have to work through issues with God. God knows, because that is how God made us.

And God will get frustrated with us as well. After all the times, in all the many ways, in all the different circumstances, that Jesus has shown God's Love to us, we STILL have problems trusting in God's goodness.

We cannot seem to have faith in the fact that Jesus is right there with us, going through everything with us, giving us strength in ways we are not aware of, and cannot comprehend.

Our lack of trust, our failure of faith, frustrates God. My lack of trust, my failure of faith, makes Jesus mutter "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"

But Jesus never gives up on us. As Saint Paul says in one of his letters to Timothy: "When we are faithless, Jesus is faithful, for He cannot disown Himself".

You see, no matter how frustrated we are with God, and no matter how we frustrate God, God never ever gets out of the boat with us. Sink or swim, in storms and in peace, Jesus stays with us. And he will be with us all the way to the other side.

And that leads me to the last thing I learn from this story: Often, if God acted the way that I wanted God to act, and snapped his fingers and made everything calm, it would actually make MORE work for me to learn how to be Christlike.

When Jesus calmed the storm, the disciples probably had to do hours of backbreaking rowing to get to the other side.

If they had just trusted that Jesus' very presence on the ship would protect them- If they had worked together in faith- If they had just relied on the silent strength of Jesus to get through the storm, they would have made it through to the other side without rowing.

But they didn't. And in the long run, Jesus' immediate rescue of them led to more work to get to the other side.

We are all on a journey to cross to the other side. We are on a journey in our spiritual growth, personal development, and emotional maturity. We are on a journey in our relationships, marriages, and families. We are on a journey in our careers, our successes, and even our failures.

And in that journey, we will face storms. Some of those storms will be bigger than we can face, and we will need God's power to stop them from sinking us. But some of those storms will also be tools that God uses to help us grow more Christlike.

In fact, many storms are tests of character. They are the methods God uses to show us how to love more like Jesus, to have more joy or peace or patience or compassion or faith or self-discipline.

And if we run from those storms- if we demand God to stop them, or just give up and go back to the shore- then we will find that we will have a lot more rowing than if we just faced the storm with Jesus in the first place.

In our journey with Jesus, may God give us the wisdom to know when we need Him to stop the storms, and when we need to ride the rapids.

And when we ride the rapids, may God give us Christ's silent strength and courageous faith to learn and grow and overcome.

And may we always know that Jesus is always in the boat with us, in joy and in frustration, in peace and in the storm, and he will never leave us. Amen+

A PASSION FOR UNITY

2009-05-25T01:24:00.002-05:00

Today Jesus prayed that we would be one as he and his Father are one. He prayed for unity: The kind of unity that has always existed within the God who is Love.

He prayed that we would not be separate and splintered and splayed out like a dinner plate we just dropped on the floor…

But that we would be single, united, one.

I want to you to think: What does unity mean to you? Is there a time when you felt united with others? Can you remember an experience where you felt like you were one with someone else: One mind, one will, one heartbeat?

When you think of unity, perhaps you think of a defining romantic moment. The first kiss. The time that you realized that he or she was "the one". The moment you stood before God and everyone else and said "I do".

Or, when you think of unity, do you think of some shared experience with others. Maybe a stadium full of folks singing the national anthem, or the same stadium of folks cheering the team to victory.

Perhaps it is a shared experience of dread. I will always remember where I was, and what I was doing when the Space Shuttle exploded, and when the two planes hit the twin towers.

Or perhaps unity brings to mind a defining moment of accomplishment with others. For some it was the day you graduated bootcamp with your fellow soldiers. For others, it came at the end of a performance, when you knew in your gut that everyone had "nailed it" with flawless accuracy.

So when we imagine what unity is about, when we remember what unity feels like, we find that unity revolves around a shared passion, a shared experience, and a shared mission.

Some of my most powerful memories of unity come from my experience in high school and college football as a defensive lineman. When you spend hours upon hours, days upon days, seasons upon seasons with people in an environment like that, you can't help but feel united.

You help each other and hit each other. You encourage each other and scream at each other. You run together, fall together, get up together, sweat together, and yes, you smell together.

Good Lord, how you smell together! [Cringe]

One very powerful experience of unity came one game my senior year when we- a no-name team with no ranking- were playing a state ranked team with a top ten running back.

We were not supposed to win. Not even come close. This running back was supposed to literally run all over us.

But they didn't. In fact, the entire game was back and forth until the very end. We did an incredible job of shutting down the running back. Every time they scored, we would score. Every time we would score, they would return the favor.

And so, it gets down to the fourth quarter, in the closing minute of the game. We lead the other team by less than a touchdown, and it is their possession, and they are driving.

We are tired. The Friday night lights are bright. The crowd is going wild. If they score on this drive, it is all over. We have no time to score back on them. But, if we hold them, we win in a massive upset.

First down. We held them to only a couple of yards. Second down. They got three or four yards. Third down. Almost no gain. It is too far from the uprights to attempt a field goal. If they punt it, the game is over. We win.

So they call a time out to try and make the first down. You can feel the electricity, the tension, the passion. The gravity of the situation is almost unendurable.

And then, out of nowhere, our band begins playing The Doors tune "Come on Baby Light My Fire". It was completely random, weird, and inappropriate for the situation. But somehow it fit...

I look at my defensive end, and we smile at each other. And we start singing The Doors. Right there. On the middle of the field. At the biggest moment of our biggest game of the year. We let go of the tension, and belt out "Come on baby light my fi-ire"!

Then the whistle blows. And the teams face each other across the scrimmage line. They hike the ball. The linemen clash. The handoff is made. And… And…

And they are stopped at the line of scrimmage! We win!

And then came the hugging, and the high fives, and the pouring of the gatorade on the coach. And if you think this celebration is out of proportion to the game we won, you might be right. But then again, you don't know how mediocre my team was.

I wish I could tell you that this game changed our season, took us to the playoffs, or led us to the state championship. It didn't. We ended with a 5 and 5 record. And at least one game, our defense had more rushing yardage than our offense.

See, I told you we were mediocre.

But for that brief and brilliant moment we experienced unity. True unity. The kind of unity that only a shared experience, a shared passion, and a shared mission can bring.

I think it was that kind of unity that Jesus was praying for when he prayed that we may be one.

No, I don't think Jesus and the Disciples sat around singing songs by the Doors. But I do think they had a shared experience that united them.

Think about it: They had been with Jesus. In fact, in our reading from Acts, one of the criteria for selecting a "replacement Apostle" was that they had to "have accompanied [the disciples] during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among [them], beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from [them]" to be a witness to his resurrection.

In short, they had to have a shared experience of Jesus' life, ministry, miracles, and teachings. They had to have a shared experience of talking with Jesus over the campfire, after an exhausting day of ministry, laughing and enjoying finally getting a bite to eat.

They had to have a shared experience of how Jesus had transformed the lives of those whom he encountered, beginning with their own life.

Above all, they had to have a shared experience of Jesus' resurrection. They had to know the depths of dread, and despair, and fear that came with Jesus' death, along with the heights of excitement, and amazement, and hope that came with Jesus' victory over the grave.

The early Church knew the power of a shared experience: How it united a rag-tag group of nobodies, into an unbreakable band of brothers and sisters who achieved the unthinkable.

But not only did the early Church have a shared experience. They also had a shared passion. They had sat at the feet of the God of Love embodied in human form for over three years. They had received the Spirit of Love pouring out on them at Pentecost.

The love, the power, the passion that had always been in God, that had created the Universe, and had brought Jesus back from the dead: This passion now lived inside of them, and overflowed from them.

They had absorbed the passion of Divine Love sitting at Jesus' feet, and breathed the power of Divine Love at Pentecost. Now the passion of the Holy Spirit animated their hearts, and energized their will, with a Love that is stronger than death.

Before that, they were pathetic. Before that, they were powerless. Before that, they were passionless. They fled when Jesus was arrested, and hid when he was executed. They had been separate and splintered and splayed out like a dinner plate dropped on the floor.

Now, finally now, they could live into Jesus' prayer that they would be one as he was one with the Father. Now, finally now, they could give themselves fully to fulfilling the Great Commandments to Love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love their neighbors as themselves.

And it was this passion that led them to a shared mission. Near the end of His prayer today, Jesus says "As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world".

In the end of the Gospel remembrance of Matthew, Jesus says "Therefore go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them everything I have commanded you".

You see, their shared experience led to a shared passion. And passion cannot be contained. Passion cannot be covered up. Passion leads to mission.

Have you ever seen someone who has fallen in Love? Real Love? Head over heels passionate love? They beam. They glow. They shout it from the rooftops, and tell everyone they know how incredible their beloved is.

They might annoy us. They might even nauseate us. But they also inspire us. Because when we lack passion, and we encounter someone so passionate, we yearn deep inside to believe in someone so much that WE would be that excited.

The truth is that passion drives mission. You show me someone who has passion for something, and I will show you someone who is on a mission to share what they Love.

And so we return to the Early Church. They were so head over heels in Love with Jesus, and they believed so much that His Love was stronger than death, that they could not help telling others and bringing them to experience the same Risen Jesus.

You could mock and scorn them. Didn't stop their mission.

You could arrest and imprison them. Didn't stop their mission.

You could torture and kill them. Didn't stop their mission.

They were one mind, one will, one heartbeat. They knew unity.

And that unity lasted all of five chapters in the book of Acts. Five powerful, passionate, world-changing chapters.

By chapter 6 we see the first Church schisms start to form between the Aramaic and Greek speaking Christians. By chapter 15 we see serious tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christians. And it pretty much goes downhill from there.

And so we turn to the Church today, with its thousands of different denominations, schisms, and separations. We are separate and splintered and splayed out like a dinner plate we just dropped on the floor.

What can be done to fix it? What can be done to restore the unity that our Lord prayed for?

Some people think we can restore unity by drawing up lists of essential beliefs, and restricted practices, that we must all agree on before we can be united. And if they don't agree with us, then they are not part of the true Church, or even worse: Not even Christians.

And instead of unity, we wind up with warring factions bludgeoning each other to death with endless lists of non-negotiable doctrines and practices.

Other people think we can restore unity by adopting an identically opposite strategy of trying to pear religion down to the least common denominator of basic belief: Something that anyone with a pulse can agree to.

But instead of unity, we wind up with the bland leading the bland into a passionless religiosity: A religion that means nothing to anyone because it tries to be everything to everyone.

Both seem to miss the point, because they miss the passion. Unity cannot be locked down by reducing a relationship with the Living God to a set of beliefs.

Beliefs are helpful tools to describe and understand what we Love, but they cannot be confused with WHO we Love. For instance, I have some definite beliefs about my wife Kim.

But, if you came up and asked me to describe my beloved Kim, I am not going to rattle off a list of twenty beliefs and practices acceptable to Kim. Neither am I going to tell you the bare minimum I can get away with and still be her husband.

Instead am going to share with you my experience of her, my passion for her, and our shared mission as a family. I think our unity as followers of Jesus is a lot like that.

Remember the defensive end who sang with me at the football game? Well, his name is Bo. We had dinner last night, and he is one of my best friends. He is also a minister and a Church planter, in a Christian tradition that is radically different from ours.

They do not use a written liturgy, or a Prayer Book, or a Hymnal. Everything they do is projected on a screen. They only sing contemporary music played by a band. And, his church meets in a bar. That's right. A bar.

Externally, there is almost NOTHING similar about how we worship God. And yet, I still identify Him as someone who follows Jesus. The same Risen Jesus I follow.

Why is that?

I find in him the same experience of the Risen Jesus. I find in him the same passion set on fire by Divine Love. And I find in him the same mission to share that Love in every way we can, with every one who will receive it.

We do it in totally different ways, using different methods, and different means. But the same Christ is at the Center of it all.

So I challenge us all to dig deep to remember our experience with the Risen Christ- to recognize the ways in which Christ has healed us, and changed us, and transformed our lives.

I challenge us to open our hearts to the passion of Divine Love, the passion that can ignite our weary souls with the power of the resurrection.

And I challenge us to re-engage in our mission to share this Divine Love with everyone we can, in big ways and small ways, in spoken words and deeds that speak for themselves, using all the diverse and creative methods we can.

If we can recover our shared experience of Christ, our shared passion for Christ, and our shared mission from Christ, then maybe, just maybe, we can become one: Just like Christ prayed we would be.

Apparently, I am being podcasted

2009-05-24T17:20:00.003-05:00

Hey folks, I did not realize this, but Saint Michael and All Angels is podcasting my sermons when I preach there (well, sort of: It does not have an RSS feed).

Anyway, several of you have asked for mp3 versions of my sermons, so I will post them when I remember to do that.

I have a sermons from January to April online right now, and I will post them below.

March 1 8:45 a.m. — The Reverend Nate Bostian
January 25 9 a.m. — The Reverend Nate Bostian
December 28 11 a.m. — The Reverend Nate Bostian

The Greater Miracle

2009-04-18T19:44:00.000-05:00

An Easter Sermon based on Acts 5:29-32, Colossians 3:1-14, Luke 24:13-35

Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe that God CAN reach into time and space and act in ways that we could have never predicted- ways that defy every attempt at "scientific" explanation? Do you believe that God has IN FACT done this through Jesus Christ, to heal and revive and guide us into God's Life?

Well, if you think miracles are possible- If you think they are probable- If you think they have in fact happened: Then let me ask you another question.

What is the biggest miracle in the history of the universe?

Is it creation itself? Is it the parting of the Red Sea? Is it God making donkeys talk or giving prophets a ride to heaven on flaming chariots? Is it God causing a Virgin to bear His life into the world through the birth of Jesus Christ? Is Christ's healings and exorcisms and control over nature?

No, these are not the biggest miracle by any stretch of the imagination.

I know what you are thinking is the biggest miracle in history: The Resurrection.

Right?

The conquest of evil, suffering, and death by raising our Crucified God from the dead. That has to be the biggest miracle in history!

Right?

Wrong. I don't think it is.

I think the biggest miracle in the world comes AFTER Easter. I think it has come in the 20 centuries of the history of the Church, the Mystical Body of the Risen Christ.

This is the miracle I stand in dreadful amazement at: How Christ's Church has tamed and domesticated and abused Her Lord's resurrection. I stand in amazement at how I tame and domesticate and abuse MY Risen Lord.

Think about it: What do most people think of the Church? Boring. Irrelevant. Powerless. Lifeless. Useless.

How did the most powerful Event in the history of the world- the Raising to life of Someone tortured to death- how did this event become boring? How did this message of new life- of Resurrected life following the pattern of Jesus' life- how did this news become bad news, irrelevant news, useless news? How did this New Life become so… so… lifeless?

How did it happen that we live in a society where everything seems more interesting than the most interesting Event ever to come across the world stage? We should be jumping for joy, exuberant, excited, electric over the fact that God has shown us in Jesus that Love is stronger than death, and that we can share in this Love by trusting in Him.

Instead, we will watch anything, do anything, think about anything, entertain ourselves with anything, talk about anything BUT the Greatest Event in History.

Think about it: At any given time you have umpteen tasks to do for work or school, and endless opportunities for fun and pleasure. Where does the Risen Christ fit in on your to-do list? Where does prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and service to others in Christ's Name get put on your to-do list?

I know where he fits in on my list most of the time. Dead last. If I get absolutely everything else done that I want to do, and I need to do, then just maybe I might fit in time to really connect deeply with the Person who has literally raised me from the dead with Him.

And most of us- even the most dedicated of us- are probably in the same boat.

And what do many of us who are in Church come for? We come to be consoled. We come to be comforted. We come to be patted on the back for how right we are, and congratulated that we are NOT "like them": Whoever "them" might be, whether conservatives or liberals, fundamentalists or revisionists, catholics or protestants, pentecostals or proper people, non-Christians or super-Christians.

So often we do Church- we do theology, we do Bible reading, we do prayer- in such a way as to make sure we are NOT like "them". We forget that the purpose of Church is instead to be LIKE HIM: The Resurrected Jesus.

Instead, we domesticate Jesus. We tame the Lion of Judah. We shove His Spirit into a closet and lock the door. We make sure that everything we do conforms to a pattern to carefully make sure we are not "like them". We may follow an Episcopal pattern, or a Baptist pattern, or a Pentecostal pattern, or a Liberal pattern. But whatever our pattern is, it quickly becomes a box that we shove the Risen Christ into.

And do you know what you have to do to fit a person in a box that is too small for them? You have to cut off their arms and legs and make them a corpse. That's the only way to make someone stay in your box.

So the greatest miracle in History to me is the Anti-miracle of how we take the Risen Jesus and turn Him into a corpse again. It is the reversal of Jesus first miracle of water and wine: We take Jesus' wine of Resurrection Life and turn it into watered down, tame, civil religion that is all about making people merely "nice" rather than making them into "little christs".

No wonder the outside world looks at Christianity as if it is Boring. Irrelevant. Powerless. Lifeless. Useless. The Church, all too often, deserves it.

Now, I am not saying that Christians- Christ-followers, little christs- should seek to please or impress the outside world. If we are being true to Christ, we cannot- we will not- please the outside world. The outside world looked at Jesus as threateningly strange and subversive, YET strangely attractive and compassionate.

That is how the early disciples were treated too. In the book of Acts, we find Jesus followers being accused of turning the world upside down. We see them arrested, beaten, mocked, and killed. Just like Jesus.

But we also see the mysterious world transforming power of Christ's resurrection Spirit working through them. We see in them a Love that cannot be killed, a mercy that will not die. Just like Jesus.

But, three centuries later, ten centuries later, twenty centuries later we instead find Christians who want to be at home in the world. We find Christians who want to be merely "nice": Merely good citizens who don't make waves in their culture. We find Christians who take it for granted that the way things are is the way they have to be, and the way they always will be.

It's best to give up and go along after all...

So, we try to find a way out of the discomfort of being seen as threateningly strange and subversive. We want to be upstanding citizens of this world, well respected by those we respect as respectable.

But as Christians give up their peculiarity- as we give up living in the peculiar Way of the Risen Jesus- as we give up being threateningly strange and subversive- we find that we give up something else. We give up being strangely attractive and compassionate.

We become Mundane. Boring. Irrelevant. Powerless. Lifeless. Useless.

We become anything BUT Christ-like.

And the Great Anti-miracle does its dirty work of turning the Good News of the Resurrected Jesus into the bad news of an impotent, incompetent, irrelevant Institution.

But I think a Greater Miracle can happen.

And Jesus did too.

According to John, chapter 14, Jesus promised us that "whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father" (because He will send us His Resurrection Spirit).

Now THAT is a Greater Miracle. Not just one Christ with a capital "C" spreading His resurrected life throughout the world. But dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of Christians- little christs- spreading that same Life. Infecting the world with the Love that cannot die. What Greater Miracle is there than that?

And while many might say this is an empty promise, I tend to believe it is true. Because the guy who said it knows a little something about God, about miracles, and about rising from the dead.

And I believe we can see bright shining glimmers of this Greater Miracle coming true through the History of Christ's Church. We see it in the lives of His followers who were not content to merely be "nice" people, or good citizens of this world. We see it in those who were able to see past mundane religiosity to the glorious Christ.

We see it in those who not only came to Church, and partook the sacraments, and heard the Word preached, but who actually went out into the world around the Church to become living sacraments who embodied God's Word to the world around them.

We see it in Peter and Paul; In Mary and Junia; In Priscilla and Aquilla; In Roman Martyrs and Desert Mystics; In Medieval Theologians and Monastic Revivals; In Julian of Norwich and Anselm of Canterbury; In John Wesley and William Wilberforce; In CS Lewis and Deiterich Bonhoeffer; In Martin Luther King and Archbishop Desmond Tutu; In Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II; In the lives of Christ followers who are not famous- or infamous- but who live their normal lives in a way that is threateningly strange and subversive, YET strangely attractive and compassionate.

These people lived- and live- the Resurrection Life of Christ in a way that is anything but Boring. Irrelevant. Powerless. Lifeless. Useless.

This is the Greater Miracle. And it is spreading. Silently. Slowly. Stealthily. Subversively. It is spreading.

This Greater Miracle will undo the Great Anti-miracle of turning Christ back into a corpse. This Greater Miracle will unleash a vast tidal-wave of innumerable little christs into the world. And I think this Greater Miracle will include all of us gathered here.

If you will allow it. If you will surrender to it. If you will let the Resurrected Jesus capture your imagination, seize your desires, and infect your soul with His Compassion that is stronger than death.

And lest someone might think I am advocating some free-for-all, do-it-yourself, anti-Church kind of Christianity, where we throw our Prayer Books and Hymnals and Theology books on a bonfire and storm the streets with Jesus banners. I am not.

Although, I am not against Jesus banners, provided there is some incense too!

No, I believe the Church, and Her sacred acts, Her sacred traditions are a key part of this Greater Miracle. I believe our sacred actions- through which we encounter the Risen Lord in hearing and taste and touch and smell and praying and preaching and praising and personal contact- I believe these are the Greatest tools we have to allow this Resurrection Life to flow into us, and through us into the world.

But, this Greater Miracle hinges on IF you choose to encounter the Risen Christ personally- and HOW you encounter the Risen Christ personally- through the sacraments and sacred texts of His Church.

Are we coming to worship, to prayer, to Eucharist, to Scripture hoping to be coddled and confirmed in our prejudices? Or are we coming to the challenged, to be transformed, by the Resurrection power at work in these rituals?

We should come to worship expecting Christ to show up, and leave worship assured that Christ is working through us to transform our lives and transform our world.

This is the Greater Miracle, and I want to see us all a part of it. I want to see a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand of us rise up with Christ's resurrection power on this campus.

I want to see us live a resurrection Love that accepts all and rejects none- A resurrection Love that will not give up until everyone is treated with justice and dignity and compassion and not like consumable objects- A resurrection Love that does not stop until everyone comes to know the Risen Lord who is the Source for all true Love.

I want to see a resurrection People who pray without ceasing, who live like there is no tomorrow, and who will not capitulate to the world's demands to label people, and put them in boxes, and consume them like fast food.

And to make this Greater Miracle a reality in our community, I want to challenge you to become the catalyst. And to begin this, I want to dare you to do three things:

First of all, I dare you to use your imagination. Imagine yourself, your community, as part of the Greater Miracle. What might that look like? How can you be used to make this happen?

And to help you in your imagination, I challenge you to do some imaginative reading. Read the end of the Gospel of Luke where Jesus rises from the dead. And then read all of the Book of Acts, where the early Christians begin to live this Greater Miracle. And as you read, do not read to analyze for parse out the story. I want you to imagine yourself as part of that early Jesus-movement.

Imagine: How would you feel? What would you see? How would you live? Keep a journal. Write your thoughts down. Underline the parts of your Bible that speak to you.

Finally, imagine what that would look like transposed into your life in this culture. On this campus. What if the Greater Miracle began in you, right here, right now?

After you have done this, I dare you to Question yourself: "Am I willing to risk the embarrassment that will come if I allow the Risen Christ to work through me in this way?"

Am I willing to live in a way that people will think of me as threateningly strange and subversive, YET strangely attractive and compassionate?

This is a crucial question. Because, if you boil down the reason why the Church is so often powerless and boring, it is usually because deep down we are embarrassed. The Risen Jesus embarrasses us. Living in His way of resurrection Love embarrasses us. We don't want people to think us strange, peculiar, or weird. So we go along to get along.

And now, if you are willing to imagine the Greater Miracle, and you are willing to be embarrassed by the Greater Miracle, I have one last dare:

Pray.

Pray and ask that it would happen in you, through you, with you. None of us together or apart can make this Greater Miracle happen on our own, no matter how big our imagination. But Christ can. And Christ will.

If we are willing to imagine a New Life, question ourselves, and pray with passion, Christ will. Amen+

A Facebook Passion

2009-04-04T21:19:00.003-05:00

See the Passion in a new way...

http://canter.s437.sureserver.com/fbp/facebookpassion.pdf

New Shelves, Spring Cleaning, and Spirituality

2009-04-04T18:32:00.002-05:00

For reasons I am still not entirely sure of, I decided yesterday that it was time to clean the garage, re-organize, and build bookshelves that I have been meaning to build for months. My wife suggested that it would be a good day to do it- like she suggests every couple of weeks when we have a few spare hours in the schedule.

But yesterday, it seemed like time. It just felt right.

Maybe it is because I want to start working out on weights again, and I can't until I uncover them from all the stuff on top of them. Maybe it is because I have walked past the mess one too many times, and am tired of being harassed by it. Or maybe it is because I would like to put our new huge recycling tub in a place where we will actually USE it.

Whatever the reason, it seemed right.

So, from 5pm to 2am I worked on it (yep, I am THAT neighbor). And after 40 cinder blocks, 20 2x10x10ft boards, two trips to Home Depot, a can of spackle, a mound of trash taller than me, and a really sore lower back, I am finished.

There is a new set of 8 foot tall shelves along every wall, and the weight set is prettier than I remembered it. A ton of extraneous junk is gone (and more will leave once Kim picks through it). Walls are patched. Everything is re-organized. Everything has a place, and there is a place for everything… and then some.

And for the first time in the history of our home ownership, we could actually park our car in our garage if needed.

I am happy.

I am at peace.

I am sore (in a good way).

And in the midst of praying about my happiness (yes, I actually prayed and thanked Jesus after finishing), it dawned on me:

This is a lot like what God has been doing to me lately. In fact, it might be a perfect parallel.

Anyone who knows me knows that this has been a crazy year: Going through ordination process, graduating seminary, having second child, starting new job, working two jobs, getting ordained deacon, having new chapel built, keeping up with wife and two kids, etc. etc...

As a result my interior self has gotten cluttered. Imagine if you can only respond to 20 emails a day with any type of sincerity, but you get 50 emails a day. Or imagine if you can only label and store 20 items a day in your garage, but you get 30 or 40 items a day to put up. Imagine what your inbox would look like- or your garage would look like- after six months of that.

That is kind of what my inner life looks like right now. its confusing, bewildering, and often overwhelming.

It is just like my garage has been for the last few months since we found out we had termites and had to move everything to the middle of the floor to get rid of the little pests.

And just like going through a re-organizing my garage, I find that re-organizing my soul has the following characteristics:

- You find out that your storage space is insufficient, and you have to build new, sturdier shelves and place new hooks to hang things off of.

- You find treasures that you had forgotten you had, and you pull them out, dust them off, and start using them again.

- You find things that you once thought were valuable, but are now really trashy, or poor quality, or just horribly insufficient for life as you live it now.

- You find that the whole floor space needs to be reconfigured to make room for what really matters.

- You find that too much clutter can take all the joy out of what should be a really cool space.

- Conversely, you find that once the clutter is removed, a sense of peace and deep joy (that far exceeds the amount of work you put into it) suddenly fills your soul.

- But, you do have to put hard work into it, and you have to make time to do the deep cleaning and hard construction. You can't just sit around hoping it will happen. You have to do it.

- You never know when the time will be right to do it. Sometimes, it just happens.

- Like the project last night- which was suggested by my wife, and assisted by several people at Home Depot and my brother in law and neighbor who took items we no longer need- our spiritual growth is something we simply cannot do on our own. We need the grace of God and the help of others.

- It isn't finished. There are still lots of things that can be put up, and re-organized. But I am light years ahead of where I started.

I know this sounds corny, but the process of organizing my garage actually makes me feel like somehow I have cleaned, organized, and built new storage for my soul as well. I just feel more whole somehow.

I hope that as I pray and sort through what has been one of the most life-changing years of my life thus far, that the Lord Jesus will help me to do in my soul what I did last night in my garage. And I hope He will do the same for you too.

HARD QUESTIONS

2009-03-10T21:49:00.001-05:00

A Sermon For Year B, First Lent
Copyright © 2009 Nathan L. Bostian
Based on Gen 9:8-17, 1Pe 3:18-22, Mar 1:9-13, Psa 25:3-9

Well, once again it is Lent. Four days after Ash Wednesday. Six weeks until Easter. We have just begun our yearly journey into the wilderness with Jesus.

Lent is a time when we ask hard questions of ourselves, and our relationship with God. No, I don't mean questions like "What will accessorize with purple?" I don't even mean "How do I get this darn streak of ashes out of my shirt?"

I mean hard questions about our failures and weaknesses. Questions about our motives and desires. Questions about whether all of these things are drawing us into Christ, growing us into Love, and helping become healthier people emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps there are things in our lives- even deep down in our hearts- that are making us less Christlike. Less loving. Less healthy. Maybe there are things we need healing from. Things we need release from. Things we need to let go of.

These are difficult questions. They are hard to answer. When we do answer them, they are hard to be honest about. It is easy to avoid the hard answers. And perhaps the easiest way is to refuse to ask these questions at all.

And, if you have journeyed into the wilderness this far with Christ- if you are courageous enough to ask hard questions about yourself- then you might find that these hard questions lead you to ask hard questions about God too.

They are hard because they deal with the very foundation of our existence, the very nature of God: Questions about God's goodness, God's Love, and God's justice.

No, I am not talking about questions like "Why did God make the duck-billed platypus?" (as strange as that is) or "Where did God come from?" (as mind-bending as that is). I am not even talking about "Why does God allow Reality TV shows?" (even though this is surely an affront to God's good taste).

I am talking about hard questions like those raised by today's readings. In fact, our readings today form a sort of "trifecta" of deeply problematic questions about the goodness of God.

It turns out that Lent is not just a difficult time for us. It is difficult time for God too.

Let's start with the Psalm. The Psalm tells us wonderful things about our God. God is described as "compassionate" and "good", "gracious" and "upright". A God whose "paths… are love and faithfulness".

This description is not unique, but echoes the essential character of God across the Scriptures, culminating in the God who Jesus called "Father", "Abba", and "Daddy". It is the same God John spoke of when he penned the words "God is Love".

But then we read our other readings, and questions arise. Let's start with the Genesis reading. Genesis chapter nine comes right after God- according to the text- knowingly allowed the entire world to be wiped out in a flood. How could the Loving God of Scripture allow every man, woman, child, and animal to perish in an unspeakable tragedy, when God could have prevented it?

Hmmm. That's a difficult one to deal with.

Then we turn to our Epistle reading. The reading from First Peter begins with the statement "Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous."

Where is the justice in that? Why did Jesus- a righteous, kind, just person if ever there was one- why did he have to die like a criminal?

Why did His God- whom He called Father- why did this God abandon Jesus to die like that? Where is God's justice and love for this person who placed all his trust in God?

The questions are not getting any easier...

Yet, perhaps the most difficult question comes from the final reading out of Mark's Gospel. You see, apparently this relationship Jesus had with God was not one sided. God felt that way too.

In that Gospel, after Jesus was baptized, we hear God say: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." And then the VERY next verse we read that God's Spirit "immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness".

Wait, wait, wait! That's NOT how this deal is supposed to work out! When we are obedient to God, everything is supposed to work out right. Right? I mean, if God's Spirit is leading us, God will lead us into health, happiness, prosperity, and feeling good. Right?

How can it be that God can love someone, and send the Spirit to guide them, and then make their life MORE complicated? MORE messy? MORE problematic?

How can this good and loving God be a part of a process that eventually leads Jesus- His only unique Son- to an undeserved death as a criminal?

I am not sure the questions can get more difficult than that.

And its not like those questions "camp out" in the Bible, never to raise their heads in our lives. They are symptomatic of our Journey with God in every age, and through every life.

No one can live long on this planet without asking questions like "Why did God let my loved one die?", "Why did God let this tragedy happen to me?", and "Where is God in all of the suffering of the world?"

The problem of evil and suffering is great. It is so great, that Paul, who was no stranger to suffering, called this problem "the mystery of iniquity". It is beyond us. A problem cloaked in deepest darkness.

Because, if God is as good and loving as Jesus thought, then God should not want his children to suffer like they do. He should not want his firstborn child- Jesus- to suffer as He did.

And, if God is as powerful as Scripture claims God is- the maker of all worlds, the Almighty creator- then God should be able to keep His children from suffering. In short, it seems that God should desire, and be able, to keep life from being so messy and so painful.

But God doesn't. Life has been messy and painful from the time of Noah's Ark, to Jesus life, to our world today. So where is God? Is God not good enough, or not powerful enough, or simply not there?

So, it turns out that Lent is not just a wilderness for us. God is in the wilderness with us too.

There are many who are afraid to Journey with God through hard questions like this. And I just want to say that it OK to ask hard questions about God. It is good to wrestle with God through difficult problems. In fact, if we are going to have the kind of faith that Jesus or Mary or Paul had, then we must face questions like this... In the wilderness... With God.

Because, if we don't, we will not have a faith that can make it through hard times. We will have a faith that gives up, and gives in, in the wilderness of life.

As for me, I honestly do not have these questions all wrapped up in a nice little bow, and answered. None of my classes in theology or psychology or Biblical studies have made the mystery of suffering suddenly un-mysterious. None of my experiences in Social Work or ministry or parenthood have made evil easier to deal with.

But, I have some hunches. I think there are some sign-posts that give us direction on our Lenten Journey in the wilderness.

My first hunch is this: I think that a free world somehow is more satisfying than a world where everything is determined. I think that God- who is a God of creative freedom- created us as creative creatures who mirror their Creator.

From the bottom to the top, God's creation shares in God's freedom. From the indeterminate movements of subatomic particles, to unpredictable weather, to what humans choose for breakfast: We are made free.

Freedom is that gift that allows us to share in God's creativity. With our freedom we can choose love, we can choose life, and we can choose to become people who reveal the splendor of God's beauty.

But our freedom has its price. Freedom can be misused. Freedom can be abused. Freedom can abuse others. And this happens in tragedies, in relationships, and even in genocides. Freedom has IMMENSE consequences, both good and bad.

And this leads to my second hunch: God knows the consequences of freedom. God knew the cost of Love when God chose to make a world to share Love with. God knows Love is messy.

I guess it is a little bit like parenthood. From the Love that two people share, we choose to make new little lives to share our Love with. And when those babies are born- crying and cooing and eating and pooping- we know that this Love will cost us everything.

It will cost us sleepless nights and crazy mornings. It will cost us new clothes and college tuition. It will cost us visits to the principal's office, and wrecked cars, and broken hearts. Love costs everything: Money, time, effort, emotion. Everything.

Why then do we Love?

Because of the sheer beauty of weaving our lives together with someone else. Because of the sheer joy of giving the gift of life to another person. Because Love is worth all the messy consequences.

I think that must be something like what God feels about His free Creation, with its chaos and messiness and pain, always existing alongside its beauty and wonder and joy.

And I do not think that God exempted Godself from the consequences of this world's freedom. I do not think God sits in heaven, far removed from the joy and pain we go through.

I think that in Christ, God chose to take the full consequences of the world onto Himself. In Jesus, God became one of us, and one with us, through joy and pain, height and depth, good and evil. In Christ, God experiences personally, concretely, what it means to live and die as one of us.

God knows what it means to face fear and suffering and death, because Jesus did. God knows what it means to loose the one closest to you, because the Father lost His Son that day on the cross. God knows what it means to walk in our shoes, because Jesus trod the path we all tread.

And that leads to my next hunch in this Lenten Journey. That is the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Victory of God.

Death is not the last word. Life is. Suffering is not the last word. Joy is. Chaos does not have the final say. Christ does.

When faced with the enormity of the question of evil and suffering- a question raised by genocide and murder, injustice and mayhem, hate and hypocrisy- we need a hope that is audacious enough to pull us through.

The boldness of our hope comes not through a program or a plan, but in a Person. The Person who defeated death. The Person who made all things, and takes the consequence for all things upon Himself, and who will raise all things to new life in the resurrection.

He "suffered for sins once for all". Although He was "righteous", He defeated all our "unrighteousness", in order to bring us to God. "He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit", and He will make all things alive again by the power of that same Spirit.

My final hunch on our Lenten Journey comes from years of watching my grandmother weave intricate needlepoint pictures. One thing that always struck me was how different her needlepoint pictures looked on each side.

From the bottom of a needlepoint, all you see is a jumble of threads, going this way and that, with very little discernible pattern. It is messy. It is chaos. It is ugly.

But, when you see the top of the needlepoint, you see how everything fit together. You see how she took the dark colors and the bright colors and wove them to create something beautiful. What was chaos on one side, is marvelous on the other.

I think that Jesus' resurrection is the pledge that God is going to do something like that with all of our joys and pains. On this side of history, what looks like chaos and mayhem, will be woven into a beautiful tapestry, on the other side.

And I have a hunch that somehow, someway, Christ's life, death, and resurrection will be the scarlet thread that ties us all together. Amen

Dealing with Doubt: What happens when life and God don't make sense together?

2009-01-28T17:26:00.000-06:00

A Talk for GAP on TAP
2009.01.28
Copyright 2009 Nathan L. Bostian

Tonight our topic is "Dealing with Doubt: What happens when life and God don't make sense together?" Have you ever had doubts? Doubts about God, Jesus, Scripture, Christianity, or religion in general? What do YOU do when what you experience in life does not seem to mesh with what you know- or thought you knew- about God?

There are some forms of religion- of Christianity in particular- who view doubt as the chief enemy of faith in God. The object of this form of spirituality is to build such an immense foundation of faith, with such high walls of proof and certainty surrounding it, that nothing could ever possibly cause the great Castle of Religion to collapse. The irony of course is that no matter how thick the foundation is, the shifting soils of experience cause cracks all the time.

And when the cracks appear people are left with the alternative of pretending they do not see the cracks, or running away from the collapsing castle wall as fast as they can. We have all met people of both types. We all know people who think they have to defend their religion to the point of absurdity, ignoring or dismissing any doubts that may arise. We also all know people who perhaps grew up in a restrictive, exclusive form of religion and then "lost faith" at some point in their lives. Now faith is just some kind of joke for naive people.

Perhaps, like me, we have actually BEEN these types of people. Perhaps, like me, you can identify with the words of Songwriter Sting in his song "If I ever lost my faith in you" [play song].

You could say I lost my faith in science and progress
You could say I lost my belief in the holy church
You could say I lost my sense of direction
You could say all of this and worse but

If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do

Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on TV
You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me

If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do

I could be lost inside their lies without a trace
But every time I close my eyes I see your face

I never saw miracle of science
That didn't go from blessing to a curse
I never saw no military solution
That didn't always end up as something worse but
Let me say this first

If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do

Sting here sounds like the posterchild for what it means to live in the 21st century Western world. Some call this world "emerging", others call it "postmodern", still others call it "postsecular", and finally some call it "postchristian". Perhaps they are all right.

We live in a condition where we have seen 20 centuries of utopian schemes implode. We have seen the utopian scheme of Christian Europe implode in the crusades, inquisitions, and reformations of the middle ages. We have seen the utopian schemes of nation-states with national-churches implode in two world wars and two atomic bombs. We have seen leftist utopian dreams implode as the Berlin Wall and Kremlin fell. Likewise, we are seeing the right wing dreams of utopian free markets implode with investment scandals and a ravenous consumerism that leaves used and abused communities in its wake. The utopian dream of technology and time-saving devices only seem to create MORE work, MORE multitasking, and LESS ability to concentrate on what really matters. Who here does not feel captive, some times, to their cell phones, text messages, emails, twitters, and facebooks!

In fact, no matter what our pet utopian scheme is- no matter if it based in politics or religion, self-improvement or community activism- it seems that our schemes fail to achieve the ends we have envisioned for them. We say "true, but if only this was changed, it would be a success… If only we could try it MY way." Perhaps. Or more probably, we would just join the last 20 centuries of failed "if only's".

Sting, with a prophetic voice, speaks of at least four areas of doubt that we struggle with in our common lives:

First, we have lost our faith in the secular dream of "science and progress". Along with Sting, who among us has not seen a "miracle of science, that didn't go from blessing to a curse". Don't get me wrong. I love refrigeration. I love modern medicine. I even love my iPhone, when I'm not busy cringing while it rings and blings off the hook. I would not want to go back to a time without most of my technological conveniences.

But the same technology that allows us to split subatomic particles allows us to destroy entire cities. The same GPS technology that can get us anywhere in America without a missed turn is the same technology that allows us to flip a switch and bomb anyone, anywhere, at any time without even thinking about their humanity. The same technology that allows us to have fast transportation and fast food also destroys our ecosystems in big and small ways. And the technology that makes us able to communicate with anyone, also opens the doors for unimagined invasions of privacy.

Sting is right. Every opportunity that science opens seems to also open up a doorway for oppression and destruction. Technology is not an unqualified good, nor a guarantee of "progress".

Second, Sting notes that we have lost our faith "in our politicians, they all seemed like game show hosts to me". I know I am treading on thin ice here, with the election of a new president who brings so much charisma, vision, and hope with him into office. I pray for him that he will be truly outstanding- someone who unites this country as never before. "If only" he can do it.

But, looking at the last five centuries of Western politics, and the last two and a half centuries of American politics, I also believe in being realistic. Every ruler, every president, every elected body in our history has fallen far short of the hopes and dreams of those who put them in power, and has to some degree earned the criticism of those who opposed them. None of the political schemes- nor matter how far left or right they have been- have effected the eradication of the basic causes of oppression and its victims.

While politics undoubtedly does SOME good, Sting is basically right. There seems to be something at the core of human pain and suffering that defies a political solution.

Sting even speaks of our lost faith in those who are supposed to be the guardians of Truth in our culture. We have lost our faith "in the people on TV". Gone are the days when Walter Cronkite would give us the objective truth about the world on the evening news. Now we are in the world of talking heads. We are in the world of politicized and consumerized news. We pick our news vendors based on what our political or cultural affiliation is.

We no longer watch or read or listen to the news passively. We ask ourselves "What is the spin here? What are they trying to sell me? Who are they trying to get me to vote for?" Most importantly, we ask "What is being left out here?"

With these three critiques- of technology, of politics, and of the media- Sting is steering us into a cultural space that is "postmodern" and "postsecular". It is post-modern because we can no longer believe in the "modern" dream was some sort of peaceful utopia brought about by human effort and skill. After three centuries of the modern dream, we just seem to keep killing more people century after century, decade after decade. The 20th century amassed the biggest bodycount in world history, and the 21st century doesn't seem to be starting out any better.

It is "post-secular" because we have come to realize that there is no "secular", objective, value-free space to evaluate culture, apart from personal bias and ideology. Instead, the Western secular tradition sounds a lot like a University-educated upper-class European who systematically excludes the voices of other cultures and other genders from the discussion. And while that might seem all academic, it has caused no end of trouble with our dealings with other non-European nations.

So far, Sting has extended the area of our postmodern doubt to technology, politics, and the media. But that is not all. He extends our doubt in a post-christian direction as well.

In subtle ways, with Sting, we have lost our "belief in the holy church" as well. We are all swimming in a ocean of postchristian culture. For instance, as recently as a century ago, Church leaders were regularly pop-culture superstars. Theological discussions and debates used to routinely make it on the front page of newspapers. Theologians and Church leaders were sought out for commentary on politics, philosophy, culture, and even science.

Now, how many of us would not be skeptical of a Church leader speaking publicly as an expert on any of these topics? How many of us would be uneasy with a leader of "the Faith" making public declarations about "secular" matters? How many of us are profoundly uneasy about making our own opinions known about religious faith and politics, or faith and science, or faith and culture?

What has made the difference? Why the change? What has caused our trust in religious faith to shrink to such a tiny, private area of our lives (if we even give it that much)?

The answers to that question are manifold. We might have doubts caused by the amount of suffering that has been caused in the Name of God and religion. We might have doubts caused by the fact that religion- especially conservative religion- often seems to be on the wrong side of history in areas like civil rights or women's rights. We might have doubts about whether the foundational documents of religion- such as Scripture- or the foundational doctrines of religion- such as our Creeds- seem to be at odds with what we know from Science and History.

Or, our doubts might arise from a more fundamental sense of uneasiness about the presence of God in History. Things are changing so fast, and the world often seems to be spinning out of control. People are suffering all over the place, and we seem to devise new methods of creating suffering every day. If God is good, and God is love, then where is God in all of this? God seems to be absent, or perhaps asleep at the wheel.

Finally, our doubts might arise from personal experience. We just don't feel God there with us anymore. Perhaps God was there once, but God just seems so distant now. Where is God in all of this?

What is the solution to all of this? Should we put our religious blinders on and just build up the walls of faith, and ignore the doubts? Should we just choose one form of rigorous fundamental religion, that will spoon-feed us all the answers, and leave us no room for doubt?

Or perhaps we should just give in to doubt. There is nothing to have faith in. All is meaningless and a chasing after the wind. Eat, drink, and be merry- for tomorrow we die. Just submerge all those deep questions about the Meaning of Existence, and suffocate our yearning for a Love that transcends this Life, and give up on faith.

Or is there another way?

In the midst of all his doubt Sting seems to have an object of faith which transcends his doubts, and is able to carry Him through his doubts. Sting only refers to this person as "you". Who is the "you" who he puts his faith in?

Is this "you" another person: Perhaps a lover, or spouse, or friend, or even a parent? Perhaps. But, judging from the entire catalogue of songs by Sting and the Police, he seems to understand well how fickle human love is- especially human romantic Love. People leave. People grow apart. People die.

I don't think Sting's "you" is another human, but someone who transcends humanity, politics, technology, and even religion. Now, Sting, as far as I know, is a Buddhist. His "you" probably refers to the Nameless power that sustains all existence. "You" is Sting's name for the Reality that gives all reality its real-ness.

And I will go this far with Sting. But perhaps, just perhaps, this Nameless power took on a Name once. Perhaps the Nameless One entered History as a real person and struggled with doubt in the same way we do. What if this invulnerable power became vulnerable- just like everyone in this room- and cried out in doubt and anguish "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?"

And what if that Nameless Power with a Human Name was filled with a Love that actually defeated death, and opened a path of Hope for us? What if that embodied God understands our doubts and sufferings because He experienced them personally? And what if this Person- this "You" that beckons for our faith- what if He deals with our doubts by walking with us THROUGH doubt, rather than rescuing us FROM doubt?

And finally, what if this embodied God does not punish us for our doubt, but treats us like he did his friend "doubting Thomas". Thomas doubted the resurrection. Thomas had lost all hope. Thomas would not believe until he saw and touched Jesus. Jesus showed Himself to Thomas in just the way he needed, to make it through his doubt.

What if- in the middle of a world where politics fails, and technology fails, and media fails, and even religion fails- what if there is a Embodied God who will walk with us through our doubt, in just the way we need, when we need this God the most?

A Poetic Response to Truth and Deconstruction

2009-01-17T17:41:00.002-06:00

OK, so I teach this youth ministry class with two talented colleagues. And this week we talked about youth culture and "postmodernity" (yeah, yeah, overused term… but give me another term to use that is more useful and I will use it).

Anyway, we got into the issues of "discourse as violence" and language and idea-systems as means of power and social control. That led us to talk a bit about deconstruction, and why people feel the need to deconstruct discourse, language, and idea-systems. We also talked about how the youth of today use implicit, simplified, and naive tools of deconstruction when examining Truth claims (perhaps the best is the question "So what?").

So, in the course of the conversation at one point I wound up sounding (to myself) like an unabashed pluralist and deconstructionist (which I am actually not). However, I will admit that I find the tools of deconstruction helpful in examining culture. I also will admit that, due to the multiple dimensions of human experience, and my own experience of doing things for competing motives, that I think there are often many legitimate "reads" on a particular event… Even Biblical events (there… I said it!).

However, I also believe that deconstruction presupposes a "word" or a "reason" or a "purpose" which is used to analyze and deconstruct discourse and narratives. It may the the "word" of feminine empowerment, or the "word" of class liberation, or the "word" of pluralism, or event the "word" of libertarian hedonism. The "word" acts as the key, the purpose, and the plan by which the interpreter exposes the fault lines in the text, and turns it inward on itself, so that it can be used to validate the "word" of deconstruction.

Well, I believe that there is a Word which deconstructs all our words, and which is the Key to unlocking the hidden fault lines of all our discourses. That Word left the realm of ideas and ideals, and became enfleshed for us in the Person of Jesus Christ. He is the Word that made all worlds, and by His Word he deconstructs our word-worlds.

So, to try and put that Word into my own words, I wrote a poem (a poem with a huge preface!). Here is the poem:

Just to clarify a thing or two
When I happen to deconstruct our truths
I believe in Truth with a capital "T"
But this Truth is not an "It" but "He"
We are all relative to this Truth-full Lord
And we must deconstruct our world by His Word

A Song for True Anglicans Everywhere

2009-01-10T21:31:00.001-06:00

You know you are Anglican / Episcopalian if...

Holy holy - Wholly whole

2008-12-30T16:20:00.002-06:00

Holy holy! Wholly whole!
Come consuming fire and burn down my soul!
Make me truly yours! Make me really me!
Form and shape this clay into what I can be!

But Love became bland. Holiness became boredom.
The Church clothed in tattered rags of whoredom.
Holy! Different! Beyond! Revolution!
Or socially-conditioned blank stares of confusion?

When did the fragrance of life become the stench of death?
When did incense on the altar make me hold my breath?
When did the Lion get chained to become our pet?
When did earth shattering faith become just a good bet?

Holy, holy, holy! Come restore what we lost!
Destroy our sameness, no matter the cost!
Make us different! Take us beyond! Bring the revolution!
Replace our anemic blood with your blazing infusion!

All consuming fire we see in Christ's consuming gaze:
Break through our mundane calculating consumer haze,
Where people become things, and things are made divine.
Shatter this fog of lies until we are truly thine!

Holy holy! Wholly whole!
Come consuming fire and burn down my soul!
Make me truly yours! Make me really me!
Form and shape this clay into what I can be!

Copyright © 2008 Nathan L. Bostian

THEME SONGS, DARTH VADER, AND BABY JESUS

2008-12-28T19:33:00.000-06:00

LET US PRAY: Come Lord Jesus: Fill us with your Spirit, and drive far from this place everything that distracts us from you. Let your Word transform our mind, reform our heart, and conform our will: That we may know you more clearly, and love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly. Amen+

SERMON: Well, I don't know what the day-after-Christmas ritual is in your house, but growing up, my family spent most of the day after Christmas in the movie theater, watching at least one, often two, and sometimes three movies in a row.

It was the perfect way to recover from the insulin-induced-lethargy that comes from overdosing on too much food and sweets.

And after the all-too-real reality of spending the last 36 hours with family members you spent all year avoiding, it was nice to slip into someone else's reality on the big screen for a while.

And the thing that always intrigued me about the movies was how each character had their own theme song. And in just a few bars of that song, you knew everything you needed to know about the character.

If the music was deep and brooding, you knew it was a villain. If it was light and funny, you knew it was the awkward sidekick. If it was eerie, you knew something bad was about to happen. And if it was powerful and victorious, you knew that the hero was coming to save the day.

So, that raises the question: If your life was a movie, what would your theme song be? When you entered the room, what music would play behind you?

Would it be a string quartet, or an old country song? Would it be a rock and roll power ballad, or full symphony? Would it be a sad song, a glad song, or a very very mad song? What music follows you through your life?

Now, I've got to be honest here: Ever since I was six years old, I knew what I wanted for my theme music. Ever since I saw that black shiny helmet leading an army of storm troopers through the death star: I knew I wanted the Imperial March!

Dum Dum Dum, Dum ta Dum, Dum ta Dum!

That music had to be my theme song, because that music says "I am important! I am powerful! Don't mess with me!"

You add that theme song to James Earl Jones' voice and you get one thing: Coolness.

Now, my dreams of dominating the universe by using my Jedi powers have long since faded, but the connection between movies, Christmas, and theme songs never has.

Because what always strikes me as so incredible about Christmas is that when God became human, he did not come using the theme music we all expect him to.

What I mean is this: Pretend you are God for a second. You are the Creator, and you are going to make your grand entrance into your own Creation, in person.

You are the Rightful King, and you are coming back to a Kingdom that is in rebellion against you. You are coming to rid the world of evil, and restore it to how you made it to be!

What theme music are you gonna use?

If I was God- let's be honest here- I am gonna choose the Imperial March. I am going to come in power and glory. I am going to show everyone who is boss. I am gonna have laser beams shooting from my eyes, and lightning from my fingers, and no one is ever going to mess up my world again!

And the entire time I am making my grand appearance, you are going to hear "Dum Dum Dum, Dum ta Dum, Dum ta Dum!"

And if we are going to be honest with ourselves, that's how many of us would do it to. If the world is broken, we fix it with force. Power overcoming power, might defeating might.

And we are not alone, because in first century Palestine many Jewish groups were looking for a Messiah to do just that: Come in power and glory, and smite the enemies of God, to establish God's Kingdom forever.

But what the Incarnation shows us is that- thank God- God is NOT like a lot of us. God is not a super-cosmic version of Darth Vader.

God's theme music on Christmas is not the "Imperial March", but "Silent Night".

God saves the world not by power-on-power conflicts that destroy evil and suffering. Rather, in Jesus the Messiah, God takes into Himself the fullness of human experience, the fullness of human suffering, the fullness of living in a world oppressed by evil. He takes all of that into Himself through his growth, life, suffering, and even death.

Then in the resurrection He raises it to new life, to glorified life, forever. And with Him, He raises US forever too.

In fact, if you will follow the movie metaphor a bit further with me, you will find out something amazing.

Because- in all honesty- the Story we find in Scripture, the Story we find written across all of History, is a lot more like a Movie, than a random string of meaningless events.

It is a movie written by a God who is the Author, the Plot, and the Director of History- or as we better know God: Father, Son, and Spirit. And this Three-in-One Author, Plot, and Director of History is knitting together a Story for the Ages.

This Triune Storyteller created a set for His Story to play out on: The Set of Creation. Then he allowed Actors to emerge from that Set who could "bear the image of God" as creative creatures who mirror their creative Creator.

That's us.

And God gave us the freedom receive or reject His love, to accept or deny our role in His Movie. And then God let the Story unfold, always directing and urging it toward Godself through His Holy Spirit, but never taking away the freedom of the actors to act.

And what a Story it has been!

It is a cosmic tale of the Lover seeking to save His Beloved. It is a saga of a King trying to defeat the tyranny that has enslaved the Kingdom. It is an epic of a Hero who gives everything to rescue those He loves.

But, at the same time, what God has done for us in Jesus Christ goes beyond ALL of those stories. The Apostle John says it this way in the poem that begins His Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Now, the word "Word" that John uses goes far beyond just the words we hear, or read on a page. What John is doing here is skillfully trying to tie together both the Greek and the Jewish worlds He inhabited by using the word "Word".

In Greek, the word is "Logos", where we derive the English word "logic". It is the root for all of those "-ology" words that mean "study of", like biology ("the study of life"), or theology ("the study of God").

Logos is a word that can refer to words we speak, but it also refers to the inner logic of what we say. It refers to the meaning, purpose, plan, and inner shape of something. The Logos is the inner reality that lies behind the outer reality.

if we are talking about our choices, then Logos would be the motive of our choice. If we are talking about a Movie, the Logos would be the Plot.

And for about five centuries before John, the philosophically-minded Greeks had used Logos as a shorthand to describe the Purpose, plan, and meaning of the Universe.

Across the Aegean sea, the Jewish people also had a concept for the "Word of God". In Hebrew, their word for Word was Dabar. While the Greek Word was abstract and theoretical, the Hebrew Word was concrete and active.

For the Jews, God's Word could be literal words that came from the mouth of a prophet, giving a message from God. But, often it also referred to actions: To deeds of power that God performed to save and redeem His people.

For the Jews, God's Word was God's self-disclosure through the "body language" of deliverance, redemption, and justice. It was not God communicating abstractly about meaning and purpose, but God getting dirty in concrete acts of salvation.

And for the Apostle John, who was a Jew, writing a gospel that would be largely read by Greeks, the idea of the "Word" connected both of these worlds.

It's as if John is saying to Greeks: Hey! You know that Divine Word of meaning and purpose you have been talking about in abstract ways for the last five centuries? Well, it is concretely embodied in Jesus the Lord!

And He is sayings to the Jews: Hey! You remember all of those acts of redemption that God's Word wrought for our matriarchs and patriarchs? Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet! That same Word of God is incarnate in Jesus the Messiah!

And for folks like you and I, who usually spend a lot more time watching movies than reading Greek philosophers or Jewish sages, John has the same message:

Hey! You know how you want to find a Purpose and a Plot to life? You know how you like to watch a great movie that unfolds into hope and redemption?

Well, what do you think all of that points to? The Plot of the Story of the Universe has become embodied in Jesus!

The Plot has stepped off of the page and entered into His own Story, to become the Hero, the Lover, and the King that fulfills all things!

God has not stayed in Heaven, far removed from you, like a playwright who only observes his plays from the audience! No, God has become the lead character in His own Story, and has taken upon Himself everything it means to be an actor: All the joy and pain, happiness and frustration.

He did it all to draw us into His Love. To show us what Love looks like truly embodied. To reveal to us how to really be human.

And with that said: You remember how I asked you what your theme song is?

How many of you are tired of that song? How many of you have a song that is too sad, or mad, or fearful, or frustrated?

How many of you long to have a new song?

You know, every actress or actor gets a new theme song when they enter into a new movie. With a new Plot comes a new role, and new theme music.

Maybe you are living in an old, worn out Plot that is not what God intended. Maybe you are living in a Plot that revolves around your own selfishness, or someone else's selfishness, or an old wound that won't heal.

In Jesus the Messiah, we can all find a new plot. A plot of grace and Truth. A Story of healing and hope.

And in His Epic Story, we can receive a new name, a new role, and new theme music. If you are tired, and weary, and burdened, and need a new song, I encourage you: Give yourself to His Story today. Amen+

Invitation to Nate's Ordination

2008-11-27T14:50:00.001-06:00

God willing

The Right Reverend James Monte Stanton,
Bishop of Dallas

will ordain

Nathan Louis Bostian

to the Sacred Order of Deacons
In Christ's One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church

On Saturday, the Thirteenth of December
Two Thousand and Eight
Ten o'clock in the Morning
The Cathedral Church of Saint Matthew
5100 Ross Avenue
Dallas, Texas

Your Prayers and Presence are Requested

Clergy: White Stoles

Reception Following in Parish Hall

Get a map to the Cathedral HERE

www.episcopalcathedral.org

Request card invitation HERE

[All Dallas Clergy are already recieving one]

Bill Maher: Apostle of Religulous Fundamentalism

2008-09-24T00:42:00.007-05:00

Tonight was an interesting night. A friend of mine snagged some free tickets to the sneak preview of Bill Maher's new movie which lampoons religion in America. The movie is named "Religulous", because in the words of its Lion's Gate Films website it "describes religious ideas, beliefs, or claims that are patently absurd, comical, or ridiculous". While the movie does some creative editing and video splicing to make religion look absurd, comical, and ridiculous, it also makes Bill Maher look like a bully who is ridiculous in his own right, and even worse, tedious and preachy. I will explain by filing my comments under three headings: "Amens", "Not-so-muches", and "Reallys".

AMEN! Here are some places where Maher was right on target:

Greed, Guns, and God: Maher nailed it on the head in continually pointing out how religion- whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim- is either politicized or turned into a means to get rich quick. Over and over he pointed out the lamentable connection between God and Guns (using the Almighty as a mascot to hate, exclude, murder, and make war on one's opponents), and between God and Greed (using God as a vending machine to acquire wealth or power or both). I think Bill and Jesus are on the same page here. Amen, Bill!

Missing Jesus' Point: Several times in the course of the film, Maher pointed out that what Christianity has grown into- with its wealth, opulence, hierarchy, and power-mongering- radically misses the message that Christ intended. This is ironic, since Bill also says that Jesus "never existed", and thus could not have intended anything. But, despite the logical leap there, Bill is on target. Jesus would not live in a palace or wear a $2000 suit like some folks in the film. Amen, Bill!

Funny Fundamentalists: There are some drop dead, laugh-till-you-wet-yourself moments in the film. His deliciously awkward interview with the "ex-gay" minister is one such moment. Another happens when Bill suggests to a Hispanic would-be Messiah that he might be the second incarnation of Carmen Miranda. And then there is the interview with the prosperity preacher, and another dozen to boot. Amen, Bill!

NOT-SO-MUCH. Here are some places where Maher plays fast and loose with facts, logic, or both:

Signposts to nowhere? Several times in the movie Bill makes the amazingly uneducated statement that Jesus "never existed". This is something that not even a skeptical historian, or jaded Biblical scholar, would claim (as well as something that other historians like NT Wright easily refute). Luckily, Maher doesn't actually deal with historical facts, and instead focuses on funny rhetoric. The outdated strategy he uses several times is listing all of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths that speak of incarnate gods, virgin births, and dead-yet-risen saviors. He implies that since all of these myths were not historically true, then neither is Jesus. That's basically like saying "You see all these signs that point to God intervening in history? They point to nothing!" That is kind of like never going to Dallas, and then seeing hundreds of street signs pointing to Dallas, and saying "See all these signs! That proves it: There is no Dallas!" Nope. The more reasonable and probable explanation is that anytime we see a whole lot of signs pointing in the same direction, then there is likely a real, concrete destination that corresponds to the signs. God has been posting signs throughout history in stories, myths, hopes, and dreams, which point to a concrete, historical destination that is found in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Biblical Genre-bending? Several times Bill tries to dismiss Scripture by treating its non-historical texts as if it was modern history. Basically, while he rails against and debunks a Fundamentalist-six-day-creationist reading of Scripture, he also reads the Bible in the same way, and will not allow any other reading of it. He will not allow the Genesis creation story to be read as a poem, or Jonah to be read as a children's moral fable, or the Gospels to be read as persuasive rhetoric meant to convert people to Christ. Instead, like any Fundamentalist, he insists that they ALL be read and judged as if they were modern works of scientific historiography. This is as ridiculous as insisting that your spouse's love letters be read like a history book. He misses the point, because he misses the genre.

Anti-miraculousity? Maher assumes that our physical universe is a closed system, and that empirical methods of knowledge are the only way of knowing what is really real. He will not even seriously consider the concept of "miracle" or "divine intervention". This is an incredible- yet implicit- claim to human omniscience. The implied idea is that humans know completely that there is only one way to know anything, and that is by empirical methods. Yet, the claim that only empirical knowledge is real knowledge is itself a non-empirical claim (you can't physically test it in a controlled lab setup). Thus, he is self-refuting. Furthermore, he chides religion for selling an invisible product (God), while in the film he himself unabashedly sells his own invisible product (doubt). In fact, his movie is charging $8 a piece to "sell" people his own set of non-empirical, invisible, un-provable ideas. Yet, he has the nerve to criticize religion for selling invisible ideas. Not-so-much, Bill.

Religion = Evil? Not that I expected balance in the movie, but Bill was really lopsided here. He rightfully points out that religion is at the core of a great deal of inhumanity. We should deeply repent- and fix- religious sins such as crusades, inquisitions, jihads, abuse, and hatred in the Name of God. However, Bill paints an outdated picture of Enlightenment optimism when he says we have to "grow up", become rational, and put religion behind us, to survive and thrive as humans. Did he forget that it was the most educated, enlightened, technologically superior nations who killed each other in record numbers in the world wars and colonial conflicts of the last two centuries? Did he forget that it was modern secular rationalists such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot who slaughtered people in numbers undreamed of by even the worst religious despots? Or did he forget that the modern movements for anti-slavery, women's rights, civil rights, children's rights, prison reform, and world peace were led by confessing Christians? Or, perhaps he forgot that- despite all the evil Christianity has caused- it has also caused more hospitals, charities, schools, and universities than any other movement in world history.

REALLY? Here are some places where Maher dips into his own Religulous fundamentalism:

Straw MAN arguments: We all know what a straw man is. A straw man argument is where you set up a cartoon, a caricature, or a "straw man" of your opponent's position, and then knock it down as if it was the real opponent. Furthermore, a "straw MAN" argument is when you do it by interviewing almost entirely men (and often dumb men at that), while excluding women from dialogue. This is where Bill really came off looking like the intellectual equivalent of a schoolyard bully. In order to "knock down" religion, he almost always chose men who represented the most extreme versions of the religions available: The most fundamentalist, most legalistic, easiest-to-mock versions. And, to top it off, he often picked people who were far below his intellectual level. Didn't someone ever tell Bill to "pick on someone your own size"? You don't prove you are tough by stealing lunch money from school kids, and you don't prove that your ideas are right by debating people who are half your IQ. Where are the moderate voices in religion? Excluded. Where are the female voices in the conversation? Excluded. To Bill's credit, he did actually listen to two Catholic priests and give them space to talk. Is that some kind of freudian respect for a father figure? To his detriment, when he actually talked to a thoughtful intellectual Christian (geneticist Francis Collins), he so butchered the tape of the interview that all you really heard was Bill. Really, Bill? Really?

Two-faced Bill: At one point in the film, Maher chides Muslims for being two-faced. He says that many Muslims expect the right of free speech in Western secular societies, while at the same time expecting to silence (or even kill) non-Muslims who disagree with them. He doesn't like it when religious people claim one stance outwardly, but another within their own faith community. And yet, Maher does a similar thing. At several points in the movie, he claims to the people he is interviewing that he is just an agnostic asking questions and seeking truth. However, at other points he proves just the opposite: He is a secular fundamentalist driven to promote his views of anti-religion. Behind the irony, sarcasm, quick-wit, and leading questions, he is every bit as dogmatic as the people he interviews. There is no objectivity. Like any fundamentalist preacher, he is firmly committed to "my way or the highway". Really, Bill? Really?

The Atheist turn-or-burn: Several times in the movie, Bill rightly criticizes the idea that we should believe in God just as fire insurance. Like myself, Bill does not find it persuasive to believe in God simply to avoid hell. He rightly perceives that this makes belief less-than-sincere, and God less-than-good. It's not good enough to believe in God just because you get something out of it. You should believe only for one reason: Because it is true. However, Bill DOES EXACTLY THE SAME THING! In the last 15 minutes of the movie, pictures of death and destruction are constantly interspersed with pictures of religious activity. Over and over he drives home the [false] connection between religion and destruction, and preaches that if we want to avoid destruction we must "grow up" and get beyond religion. He does not say "Accept my ideas because they are true". Instead, he implicitly says repeatedly "You must accept my dogma to avoid hell on Earth!". How is this any different than the religious claim that "You must accept my dogma to avoid hell after death!"? He is preaching the same turn-or-burn that he chides fundamentalists for preaching. Really, Bill? Really?

And, in the end, this is what turned me off to the movie. It could have been a great movie, if Bill had stayed away from the pulpit. But he had to preach. In the end, he came off as a shrill little tedious man who has forgotten his own sense of humor. If Bill could stay away from being a fundamentalist, he might make a heck of a comedian.

ROWAN RESPONDS TO GAFCON

2008-06-30T11:39:00.003-05:00

As usual, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has responded to GAFCON in a way that is more concise, more thoughtful, and more irenic than anything I could write. His statement brings up nearly every problem I noted in my blog about GAFCON, and then some (my meager article is posted below this one).

He is a brilliant, godly leader (but of course not without flaws, and huge eyebrows!). I hope all sides will listen to him, and work with him, before it is too late and this whole thing comes unhinged. You can read his entire statement below, or go to the communion website.
________________________________________
GAFCON affirmations and rebuttals by ++Rowan Williams:

The Final Statement from the GAFCON meeting in Jordan and Jerusalem contains much that is positive and encouraging about the priorities of those who met for prayer and pilgrimage in the last week. The ‘tenets of orthodoxy’ spelled out in the document will be acceptable to and shared by the vast majority of Anglicans in every province, even if there may be differences of emphasis and perspective on some issues. I agree that the Communion needs to be united in its commitments on these matters, and I have no doubt that the Lambeth Conference will wish to affirm all these positive aspects of GAFCON’s deliberations. Despite the claims of some, the conviction of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and God and the absolute imperative of evangelism are not in dispute in the common life of the Communion

However, GAFCON’s proposals for the way ahead are problematic in all sorts of ways, and I urge those who have outlined these to think very carefully about the risks entailed.

A ‘Primates’ Council’ which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion. And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties, both theological and practical – theological because of our historic commitments to mutual recognition of ministries in the Communion, practical because of the obvious strain of responsibly exercising episcopal or primatial authority across enormous geographical and cultural divides.

Two questions arise at once about what has been proposed. By what authority are Primates deemed acceptable or unacceptable members of any new primatial council? And how is effective discipline to be maintained in a situation of overlapping and competing jurisdictions?

No-one should for a moment impute selfish or malicious motives to those who have offered pastoral oversight to congregations in other provinces; these actions, however we judge them, arise from pastoral and spiritual concern. But one question has repeatedly been raised which is now becoming very serious: how is a bishop or primate in another continent able to discriminate effectively between a genuine crisis of pastoral relationship and theological integrity, and a situation where there are underlying non-theological motivations at work? We have seen instances of intervention in dioceses whose leadership is unquestionably orthodox simply because of local difficulties of a personal and administrative nature. We have also seen instances of clergy disciplined for scandalous behaviour in one jurisdiction accepted in another, apparently without due process. Some other Christian churches have unhappy experience of this problem and it needs to be addressed honestly.

It is not enough to dismiss the existing structures of the Communion. If they are not working effectively, the challenge is to renew them rather than to improvise solutions that may seem to be effective for some in the short term but will continue to create more problems than they solve. This challenge is one of the most significant focuses for the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. One of its major stated aims is to restore and deepen confidence in our Anglican identity. And this task will require all who care as deeply as the authors of the statement say they do about the future of Anglicanism to play their part.

The language of ‘colonialism’ has been freely used of existing patterns. No-one is likely to look back with complacency to the colonial legacy. But emerging from the legacy of colonialism must mean a new co-operation of equals, not a simple reversal of power. If those who speak for GAFCON are willing to share in a genuine renewal of all our patterns of reflection and decision-making in the Communion, they are welcome, especially in the shaping of an effective Covenant for our future together.

I believe that it is wrong to assume we are now so far apart that all those outside the GAFCON network are simply proclaiming another gospel. This is not the case; it is not the experience of millions of faithful and biblically focused Anglicans in every province. What is true is that, on all sides of our controversies, slogans, misrepresentations and caricatures abound. And they need to be challenged in the name of the respect and patience we owe to each other in Jesus Christ.

I have in the past quoted to some in the Communion who would call themselves radical the words of the Apostle in I Cor.11.33: ‘wait for one another’. I would say the same to those in whose name this statement has been issued. An impatience at all costs to clear the Lord’s field of the weeds that may appear among the shoots of true life (Matt.13.29) will put at risk our clarity and effectiveness in communicating just those evangelical and catholic truths which the GAFCON statement presents.

© Rowan Williams

GAFCON: Saving the Church one Acronym at a time?

2008-06-30T01:47:00.006-05:00

For those of you who may not know, or may not care, what GAFCON is: It is an acronym for "Global Anglican Futures CONference". It is another in a long line of acronym-agencies (such as the AMiA, the AAC, CANA, and others) which were put together to separate "orthodox" Anglicans from the "apostate" Episcopal Church of the USA.

It was a conference consisting of over 1000 Anglicans, with 250+ bishops, from around the Anglican Communion, which was held in Jerusalem. Its purpose was to put together a plan for the Re-formation of the Anglican Communion, centering around Anglican bishops from the Global South, and their unique Anglo-Protestant brand of Christian "orthodoxy".

I put "orthodoxy" in quotes, not because I doubt that GAFCON is Biblical or Christian, but because their version of "orthodox" differs in significant ways from older Christian communions which have a better claim to "orthodoxy" (notably the Roman Catholic and/or Eastern Orthodox churches). It would be an interesting theological project for the members of GAFCON to provide a theological justification for how they can significantly revise older versions of Christian Orthodoxy, while at the same time claiming to be more "orthodox" than those who would seek to revise the Anglo-Protestant "orthodoxy" represented by GAFCON.

For instance, think about how points 3, 4, 6, and 7 of the "Jerusalem Declaration" below conflict with both Rome and the Eastern churches in fundamental ways (I will talk more about this later). On the face of it, it seems like a hard project to "freeze" one's definition of orthodoxy in a early 1900's Anglo-Protestant vision of the Church, which is a revision of Anglo-Protestant scholastic orthodoxy from the 17-1800's, which is a revision of the Elizabethan compromise of the mid-1600's, which is a revision of the Henrician-Cranmerian reformation of the mid-1500's, which is a serious revision of late Medieval Roman Catholic orthodoxy, which in turn is a serious revision of the Apostolic faith represented by the early Fathers and Church councils.

So, it just seems interesting that a group claiming to be the true upholders of Biblical orthodoxy would choose one form of revisionism as their "orthodoxy", while denying others forms of revisionism as "orthodox".

But, theological inconsistencies aside, I will grant that GAFCON represents a form of right-wing revisionism which is more in line with God's self-revelation in Scripture, and ultimately in Christ, than many left-wing revisionists who would relativize both Scripture and Christ, and put them on the same level as other claims to revelation. In their essential "creedal orthodoxy", I affirm the vision of GAFCON, and pray fervently that the rest of the Anglican Communion- especially The Episcopal Church- would regain this vision.

However, in terms of a viable solution to maintaining or restoring the Church, I have grave reservations about the efficacy of GAFCON. Instead of merely talking about the GAFCON statement and plan, I will here quote it in full, and add my own comments. My comments will be in double brackets with numbers, and I will comment after each paragraph in which I insert [[brackets]]. So, without further adieu...
_________________________________________________________
THE GAFCON STATEMENT ON THE GLOBAL ANGLICAN FUTURE

Praise the LORD! It is good to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting. The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. (Psalm 147:1-2)

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, send you greetings from Jerusalem!

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which was held in Jerusalem from 22-29 June 2008, is a spiritual movement to preserve and promote the truth and power of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ as we Anglicans have received it [[1]]. The movement is global: it has mobilised Anglicans from around the world. We are Anglican: 1148 lay and clergy participants, including 291 bishops representing millions of faithful Anglican Christians. We cherish our Anglican heritage and the Anglican Communion and have no intention of departing from it. And we believe that, in God’s providence, Anglicanism has a bright future in obedience to our Lord’s Great Commission to make disciples of all nations and to build up the church on the foundation of biblical truth (Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 2:20).

[[1. "As we Anglicans have received it". I personally like this language. It shows that Anglicans have a unique way of following Jesus and interpreting His Gospel. However, it opens the door to relativistic interpretations: What is to stop anyone from declaring themselves orthodox "as their group has received" the Gospel? To use relativistic language such as this is to betray the very spirit of GAFCON, which is to cement "THE" way, and not merely "A" way, in which to interpret the Gospel. It is almost as if GAFCON is trying to be absolutist in a relativist way, which is simply a contradiction.]]

GAFCON is not just a moment in time, but a movement in the Spirit, and we hereby:
+ launch the GAFCON movement as a fellowship of confessing Anglicans
+ publish the Jerusalem Declaration as the basis of the fellowship [[2]]
+ encourage GAFCON Primates to form a Council. [[3]]

[[2. Note that Anglicans ALREADY have a "confession" which is supposed to form the basis of fellowship: The 39 Articles. Yet, this confession has rarely been enforced as the basis of fellowship (i.e. no one has threatened to defrock or excommunicate Anglicans who teach against the 39 Articles in centuries). The reason for this is simple: The 39 Articles, like all other forms of Reformed Protestant confessionalism, are both too sectarian, and too open to interpretation, to be the basis of a Church. You can never get the more "liberal" Anglicans to agree with the more "reformed" Anglicans over the Articles, and neither can agree with the more "catholic" Anglicans. So, if the 39 Articles have failed as a source of unity, how do they expect the Jerusalem Declaration to succeed, especially since it both includes, and ADDS TO the 39 Articles?]]

[[3. The Lambeth conference was formed in 1867 as an instrument of unity to discipline errant Anglican bishops (such as Bishop Colenso). As such, it should be the place where all Anglican primates and bishops gather to vote and discipline the errant. If the conciliar plan of Lambeth is failing to discipline errant bishops, then why plan ANOTHER conference of bishops? What will happen in two decades (or less!) when ideological rifts begin to occur in the GAFCON structure? Will Anglicans have to create a new conference, to reform the conference, that reformed the conference? And then a couple of decades after this, create a conference to reform the conference, that reformed the conference, that reformed the conference? Where does the infinite regress stop? Instead, why not make use of what is already there, and reform Lambeth BY TAKING PART IN IT!]]

SECTION 2: THE GLOBAL ANGLICAN CONTEXT
The future of the Anglican Communion is but a piece of the wider scenario of opportunities and challenges for the gospel in 21st century global culture. We rejoice in the way God has opened doors for gospel mission among many peoples, but we grieve for the spiritual decline in the most economically developed nations, where the forces of militant secularism and pluralism are eating away the fabric of society and churches are compromised and enfeebled in their witness [[4]]. The vacuum left by them is readily filled by other faiths and deceptive cults [[5]]. To meet these challenges will require Christians to work together to understand and oppose these forces and to liberate those under their sway. It will entail the planting of new churches among unreached peoples and also committed action to restore authentic Christianity to compromised churches [[6]].

[[4. And yet, Anglicans in the Global South routinely send their best clergy to get advanced degrees in the West. If the West is as ransacked by these forces as GAFCON claims, then why send clergy to be educated at the most respected educational institutions in the West?]]

[[5. The Global South is home to Islam (the fastest growing religion in the world right now), as well as all manner of cults and semi-Christian sects. I do not think the "us" versus "them" rhetoric here is helpful, since both cultures- Western and Global South- struggle mightily with non-Christian and semi-Christian challenges to the Church.]]

[[6. So, what is "authentic" Christianity? Are they really claiming GAFCON to be more "authentic" than Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches that are older than the Anglican Church? But, let's say that "creedal orthodoxy" is what they mean by "authentic" Christianity (in sort of a CS Lewis "Mere Christianity" kind of way). Why then are many of the GAFCON schismatic groups operating in Episcopal Dioceses where the bishops ARE authentically creedally orthodox? If this statement were really true, and not propaganda, would it not be true that the majority of money and effort from GAFCON groups goes to plant churches in Dioceses that are creedally apostate? But this, sadly, does not seem to be the case. Instead, it seems that many of these GAFCON Anglican splinter groups spend most of their effort leeching congregations from creedally orthodox bishops, such as my own. In light of this, it becomes hard to take this statement seriously.]]

The Anglican Communion, present in six continents, is well positioned to address this challenge, but currently it is divided and distracted. The Global Anglican Future Conference emerged in response to a crisis within the Anglican Communion, a crisis involving three undeniable facts concerning world Anglicanism.

The first fact is the acceptance and promotion within the provinces of the Anglican Communion of a different ‘gospel’ (cf. Galatians 1:6-8) which is contrary to the apostolic gospel. This false gospel undermines the authority of God’s Word written and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the author of salvation from sin, death and judgement [[7]]. Many of its proponents claim that all religions offer equal access to God and that Jesus is only a way, not the way, the truth and the life [[8]]. It promotes a variety of sexual preferences and immoral behaviour as a universal human right. It claims God’s blessing for same-sex unions over against the biblical teaching on holy matrimony [[9]]. In 2003 this false gospel led to the consecration of a bishop living in a homosexual relationship [[10]].

[[7. Agreed.]]

[[8. Agreed again.]]

[[9. I do not side with the "left wing" of The Episcopal Church on this issue. However, I do believe in accurately assessing the position of your opponent. And I think that the wording "over against" does not accurately reflect the left-wing revisionist teaching. It is not that same-sex unions are seen as superior to marriage, or against marriage. Rather, they see such unions as having the same status as marriage, and they also see unions and marriage as standing against promiscuity, infidelity, and adultery. They do not question the normativeness or goodness of heterosexual marriage, but rather question whether those who cannot be married because of lack of desire for the opposite sex can at least share in some aspects of what it means to be married through a union. They would question whether the prohibitions against same-sex sexual activity in Scripture have in mind the type of lifelong union proposed for homosexual couples. Furthermore, I think they would agree that sexuality is not a "right", but a Divine gift, a privilege, and a responsibility not to be taken lightly. The big question which GAFCON leaders and pro-homosexual leaders disagree on is WHO gets to exercise the privilege and responsibility of sexuality, and HOW can they exercise it.]]

[[10. Agreed. This was a schismatic step which crossed a line that no one was ready for. Those bishops who participated in this consecration should be disciplined BY THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE.]]

The second fact is the declaration by provincial bodies in the Global South that they are out of communion with bishops and churches that promote this false gospel. These declarations have resulted in a realignment whereby faithful Anglican Christians have left existing territorial parishes [[11]], dioceses and provinces in certain Western churches and become members of other dioceses and provinces, all within the Anglican Communion. These actions have also led to the appointment of new Anglican bishops set over geographic areas already occupied by other Anglican bishops [[12]]. A major realignment has occurred and will continue to unfold.

[[11. Notice the revisionist overtone here: For the entire history of the Church, bishops have been the head pastors of "territorial" geographically-defined areas (usually called Dioceses). This is the clear pattern set up by Paul's appointment of Timothy and Titus over regional jurisdictions, and this pattern is displayed by every Church father and council which speaks on the issue. Now GAFCON is putting together the revisionist idea that dioceses are not necessarily "territorial", but can, in effect, be ideological. This is Ecclesial revisionism on par with anything the Episcopal Church has done.]]

[[12. This action of one bishop invading another bishop's jurisdiction is REPEATEDLY condemned by the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, as well as numerous local Councils in the ancient Church. Now GAFCON is putting it forward as a normative practice. This is surely as schismatic as the consecration of a gay bishop! The way to correct an apostate bishop is to excommunicate him, not invade his diocese.]]

The third fact is the manifest failure of the Communion Instruments to exercise discipline in the face of overt heterodoxy. [[13]] The Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada, in proclaiming this false gospel, have consistently defied the 1998 Lambeth statement of biblical moral principle (Resolution 1.10). Despite numerous meetings and reports to and from the ‘Instruments of Unity,’ no effective action has been taken, and the bishops of these unrepentant churches are welcomed to Lambeth 2008 [[14]]. To make matters worse, there has been a failure to honour promises of discipline, the authority of the Primates’ Meeting has been undermined [[15]] and the Lambeth Conference has been structured so as to avoid any hard decisions. We can only come to the devastating conclusion that ‘we are a global Communion with a colonial structure’ [[15a]].

[[13. There simply is NO manifest failure. The instrument with which to discipline errant bishops is the LAMBETH CONFERENCE. This conference meets EVERY 10 YEARS. The GAFCON folk have simply been too impatient to let the course of discipline work the way it should! If they would just wait for the appointed time, show up en masse, and vote to discipline the apostate bishops at the Lambeth Conference, everything would be fine. As it is, they do not have the patience. Or rather, after waiting FIVE YEARS since 2003 to discipline the errant bishops of the Episcopal Church, they cannot wait FIVE MORE MONTHS to discipline them in the right way, at the right time, using the right means (which is Lambeth). Rather, they have to make a schismatic move NOW to do it. It sounds more like impatient, spoiled kids making sure they get their way than people who really want to guard and protect the Church.]]

[[14. At the Council of Nicea (325 AD), and at the Council of Constantinople (381 AD) the heretical Arians and Semi-Arians were present along with the Orthodox. And the heretics left those Councils either defrocked or excommunicated. This is because the Councils functioned AS THE MEANS BY WHICH ORTHODOXY WAS DISCERNED! To do that, you cannot pre-decide the discernment process by excluding those you disagree with. All bishops must come to the table, where issues are debated, and actions are then taken. GAFCON instead wants to pre-decide the Lambeth Conference before it can meet. They want to decide for Lambeth if indeed some of the members of Lambeth have violated the decisions of Lambeth 1998. Yet, isn't this backwards and presumptive? Shouldn't Lambeth itself decide who has broken Lambeth? And, in order for Lambeth to decide this, doesn't Lambeth actually have to meet? And in order for Lambeth to meet, shouldn't everyone involved in Lambeth actually WAIT for the time that is appointed to meet? Or, are we really to believe that the consecration of one gay bishop is such an emergency crisis that the Church has to meet NOW to decide it (especially in light of the fact that neither the crisis of WWI nor WWII nor any other theological crisis since 1867 has made it necessary for an emergency convention of Lambeth).]]

[[15. I agree that the Primate's meeting should have some binding authority to enact emergency discipline in between Lambeth Conferences. The problem is that this "primatial authority" has NEVER BEEN DEFINED. In order to define it, so that the Primate's CAN act, Lambeth would have to meet again and decide that the Primates do indeed have authority, and determine how much authority that is. Yet, GAFCON wants to short circuit the whole process and determine "primatial authority" without meeting together at Lambeth. The whole thing smacks of a power grab, not a sincere attempt to save the Anglican Communion from apostasy.]]

[[15a. I know there is much resentment and even injustice associated with Western colonialism, and a fervent desire to move into a "post-colonial" phase of the Church. But that is EVEN MORE reason to come to Lambeth. If the post-colonial global south desires a non-Canterburian moderator of the Anglican communion, then come to Lambeth and vote it so! Do not go around the instruments of unity, because that will lead to only more Protestant-style anarchy as we go forward in history, with schism upon schism upon schism. Going around the instruments of unity is, in fact, EXACTLY what GAFCON is protesting against in the way that the left-wing revisionists have gone about consecration of a gay bishop, and the authorization of gay unions. The old saying is that "two wrongs don't make a right". If the left-wing has gone around the instruments of unity and fractured communion, the solution is NOT found by the right-wing doing the same thing. If we are going to move into a post-colonial phase of Anglicanism, then let's do it TOGETHER using the instruments of unity that the Spirit has led us to thus far.]]

Sadly, this crisis has torn the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together [[16]]. At the same time, it has brought together many Anglicans across the globe into personal and pastoral relationships in a fellowship which is faithful to biblical teaching [[17]], more representative of the demographic distribution of global Anglicanism [[18]] today and stronger as an instrument of effective mission, ministry and social involvement.

[[16. Especially if right-wing revisionists like GAFCON keep making moves that are as schismatic as the left-wing revisionists of The Episcopal Church!]]

[[17. Faithful to Biblical teaching? Certainly not the Biblical teaching on the unity of the Church (cf. John 17; Eph 4; 1Co 12). Certainly not the Biblical example of Acts 15, where ALL SIDES were brought to the ORIGINAL Jerusalem Council to decide the thorny issue of Gentile inclusion. So, exactly which Biblical texts ARE they being faithful to?]]

[[18. Aha! The real issue: Equal representation! Those with the most people behind them should decide the issue, eh? How democratic this is. What if the "majority" of Anglicans wanted to affirm that the Bible, the Quran, and the Tao Te Ching are equal revelations of God? Would that make it right? Of course not! Why then does it make it right for GAFCON to claim it's rightness on the basis of demographic representation? This smacks of "might makes right" and power by numbers. It also places two forces alien to Scripture- democracy and sociology- square in the middle of the Church's decision making process (something the left-wing revisionists are guilty of as well!). When all is said, the Church is not a democracy. The Church should do things because they are right, not because they have the most support. And issues should be decided on the basis of what is right, not who can claim more followers.]]

SECTION 3: A FELLOWSHIP OF CONFESSING ANGLICANS
We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, are a fellowship of confessing Anglicans for the benefit of the Church and the furtherance of its mission. We are a fellowship of people united in the communion (koinonia) of the one Spirit and committed to work and pray together in the common mission of Christ. It is a confessing fellowship in that its members confess the faith of Christ crucified, stand firm for the gospel in the global and Anglican context, and affirm a contemporary rule, the Jerusalem Declaration, to guide the movement for the future [[19]]. We are a fellowship of Anglicans, including provinces, dioceses, churches, missionary jurisdictions, para-church organisations and individual Anglican Christians whose goal is to reform, heal and revitalise the Anglican Communion [[20]] and expand its mission to the world.

[[19. Again, if the old "rule" of the 39 Articles, and the "Rule of Prayer" found in the Prayer Book has not been sufficient over the last 500 years to ensure the kind of Anglicanism that GAFCON desires, how do they think their "rule" will do any better over time? You simply cannot legislate Church unity by making people sign on dotted lines.]]

[[20. So you are going to accomplish this mission of reformation and healing by precipitating schismatic actions, and ignoring or avoiding the instruments of unity that are already available? That is simply contradictory.]]

Our fellowship is not breaking away from the Anglican Communion [[21]]. We, together with many other faithful Anglicans throughout the world, believe the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism, which defines our core identity as Anglicans, is expressed in these words: The doctrine of the Church is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular, such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. [[22]] We intend to remain faithful to this standard [[23]], and we call on others in the Communion to reaffirm and return to it. While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury [[24]]. Building on the above doctrinal foundation of Anglican identity [[25]], we hereby publish the Jerusalem Declaration as the basis of our fellowship.

[[21. Yes you are. By going around Lambeth and supplanting the Archbishop of Canterbury by the authority of GAFCON, you are in deed breaking away from the Anglican Communion, even if you do not claim to in word. If I claim to be someone's friend, and then keep on ignoring them completely, then I am IN FACT not a friend, no matter what my words may say. The same is true for Church Communions. NOTE: I am NOT saying that The Episcopal Church has been faithful to the Anglican Communion. The actions of 2003 have shown that. But I AM saying that GAFCON is at least as unfaithful as the actions of The Episcopal Church.]]

[[22. Again, we have had EACH of these things for at least 340 years, and in that time they have not ensured unity nor uniformity. If they have failed so miserably to obtain unity (as have all forms of Protestantism) how then can they be suitable candidates for Anglican "Core Identity"?]]

[[23. Should we remain faithful to a "standard" or faithful to Jesus Christ our Lord? GAFCON is subtly replacing allegiance to a living Person with allegiance to a set of dead propositions. Propositions cannot secure the unity or mission of the Church. Only the Person of Jesus Christ can. Furthermore, to take this confessional route to Church unity is to make Church primarily a set of epistemic issues (i.e. What do we know? What can we agree on? How do we know for sure?). But Church is not primarily concerned with epistemology. It is primarily concerned with people: Connecting lost, sinful people with the only Person who can heal them and make them whole, Jesus Christ our Lord. ]]

[[24. But SURELY this is as revisionist to the ethos of Anglicanism as ANYTHING anyone else has done! Remember the relativistic statement that started this whole GAFCON article? We follow the Gospel "as Anglicans have received it". Well, Anglicans have ALWAYS received the Gospel with the Archbishop of Canterbury as the focal point for our communion together. To alter that is to alter the very DNA of Anglicanism and change it into something else. If that is what GAFCON wants to do, then fine: Let's vote that in at Lambeth according to the instruments of unity we have already agreed on. But, if you want to oust the Archbishop in an ecclesial coup outside of Lambeth, just be honest about it and do not call it "Anglican". But, if you do persist in radical revisionism of this nature, and continue to call it "Anglican", you do not have the moral ground to stand on to complain that other groups are revising the Anglican faith.]]

[[25. What is the FOUNDATION of the Anglican Communion, really? I argue, with the Windsor Report, that the Communion is fundamentally relational, pastoral, and organic. To oversimplify: It is fundamentally a relationship of bishops who look at the Archbishop of Canterbury and say "I am in Communion with you!", and to whom the Archbishop replies "And I am in communion with you to!". GAFCON is instead advocating a communion that is foundationally LEGALISTIC, rather than relational and organic. They are proposing a deep revision in the DNA of Anglicanism, whereby our communion is determined by whether we adhere to the letter of a certain "law" which is called the "Jerusalem Declaration" (along with all the sundry documents it refers to and draws from). Is it really a step forward to move from relational unity to legalistic unity? It is certainly "cleaner" and "less messy". It would be easier to tell who is "in" and who is "out". It would be easier to kick out people you disagree with, or just don't like. But is it BETTER, more CHRISTLIKE? I argue that it is not, for the many of the same reasons that it is not better to trade a messy marriage for a legally-defined contract with a concubine.]]

SECTION 4: THE JERUSALEM DECLARATION
In the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit:

We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference [[26]], have met in the land of Jesus’ birth. We express our loyalty as disciples to the King of kings, the Lord Jesus [[27]]. We joyfully embrace his command to proclaim the reality of his kingdom which he first announced in this land [[28]]. The gospel of the kingdom is the good news of salvation, liberation and transformation for all [[29]]. In light of the above, we agree to chart a way forward together that promotes and protects the biblical gospel and mission to the world, solemnly declaring the following tenets of orthodoxy which underpin our Anglican identity [[30]].

[[26. The participants of this conference were SELF selected. They did not represent the whole scope of all those who consider themselves "Anglicans" today. By their own estimate, they represented about 35 million of Anglicanism's 77 million adherents. Does this mean that the other 35+ million Anglicans do not matter? Or are they not "real" Anglicans? By what authority was this determined? Does the entire GAFCON movement devolve down into self-selection by people who read the Bible in a certain way? How is this any better than "enlightened" left-wing revisionist Episcopalians who gather together on the basis of a certain reading of Scripture? Both the right and the left seem to be involved with highly individualistic, culturally-relative revisions of the Anglican faith.]]

[[27. How do you express loyalty to Jesus as Lord if you ignore the very leadership structures (i.e. Lambeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury) which you solemnly agreed to work within upon your consecration to be a bishop? I believe that the clear expectation of the standards of unity referred to in #6 and #7 below require a bishop to work within certain structures to maintain unity and discipline. These structures include the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury. If one flouts those authorities ordained by King Jesus (cf. Romans 13), how are they not also flouting he Kingship of Jesus Himself?]]

[[28. Amen!]]

[[29. Amen again!!!]]

[[30. Again, whose orthodoxy? A central tenet of Roman orthodoxy is the primacy of the Pope. Shall GAFCON declare that tenet? A central tenet of Eastern orthodoxy is acceptance of all seven Ecumenical Councils. GAFCON only accepts four of them (see #3 below). Both Rome and the East include- and have always included- certain books in the Old Testament that GAFCON excludes (see the 39 Articles). So, GAFCON's claim to uphold all of the central tenets of "orthodoxy" is problematic at best. GAFCON seems to deny aspects of other communions that have a better claim to "orthodoxy", and they seriously revise any standard definition of what it means to be an "Anglican" communion. Perhaps GAFCON should drop the words "orthodox" and "Anglican", and replace them with a more fitting adjective: GAFCONish. They are advocating the GAFCONish faith, and a GAFCONish communion, for all adherents of GAFCONism.]]

1. We rejoice in the gospel of God through which we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because God first loved us, we love him and as believers bring forth fruits of love, ongoing repentance, lively hope and thanksgiving to God in all things [[31]].

[[31. Amen]]

2. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading [[32]].

[[32. Pray tell: What is the "plain and canonical" sense of the book of Revelation, or even Genesis 1-3? Or, better yet: Let's lock five classically orthodox scholars from the Lutheran, Calvinist, Arminian, Anglican, and Roman Catholic traditions in a room, and get them to agree on the "church's historic and consensual reading" of Paul's letter to the Romans. These words are propaganda, not an actual definition. GAFCON should re-write this to say "We believe the Holy Scriptures as interpreted by GAFCON".]]

3. We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils [[33]] and the three historic Creeds [[34]] as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

[[33.Which ones? The Eastern Orthodox have seven. The Romans have 21. Do you pick only the first four, or any four that suits you? And why not the first seven? The undivided Church agreed on all of them? By what authority do you delete councils 5-7?]]

[[34. That is, the Nicene, Apostles, and Athanasian Creeds. Yet, only the Nicene Creed was accepted by the whole Church. On what authority does GAFCON include the other two?]]

4. We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today [[35]].

[[35. More beating a dead horse: When has the 39 Articles either been agreed on by Anglicans, or actually worked as an instrument of unity?]]

5. We gladly proclaim and submit to the unique and universal Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humanity’s only Saviour from sin, judgement and hell, who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve [[36]]. By his atoning death and glorious resurrection, he secured the redemption of all who come to him in repentance and faith [[37]].

[[36. Amen! The phrase "who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve" is beautiful.]]

[[37. Amen again! But please, don't leave out baptism!]]

6. We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer [[38]] as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.

[[38. So, we are going to flush the entire liturgical renewal movement of the 20th century down the toilet, and opt for a Prayer Book which clearly draws on liturgical traditions which are not the most ancient, nor the most universal, nor the most apostolic? Again, by what authority does GAFCON freeze liturgical orthodoxy at the year 1662?]]

7. We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders [[39]].

[[39. The classic Anglican Ordinal? Which one? 1549? 1552? 1559? 1662? All of these ordinals have caused untold difficulties in getting Anglican orders recognized as valid by the Roman and Eastern churches. Are these ordinals not part of the PROBLEM of Church schism? Again: By what authority does GAFCON insist that THIS is the most valid way to ordain people?]]

8. We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married [[40]].

[[40. Amen.]]

9. We gladly accept the Great Commission of the risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, to seek those who do not know Christ and to baptise, teach and bring new believers to maturity [[41]].

[[41. Amen]]

10. We are mindful of our responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, to uphold and advocate justice in society, and to seek relief and empowerment of the poor and needy [[42]].

[[42. Amen.]]

11. We are committed to the unity of all those who know and love Christ and to building authentic ecumenical relationships [[43]]. We recognise the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration [[44]].

[[43. A willingness to build ecumenical relationships while AT THE SAME TIME taking precipitous schismatic action in your own communion, by ignoring your own authoritative instruments of unity. Hmmm. That makes no sense. It is like a fireman who advocates fire safety by burning down his own house.]]

[[44. This is simply a lie. This is false witness. This is breaking the 8th commandment. My bishop is orthodox and biblical in precisely the terms which GAFCON defines. And yet, there are at least a half-dozen GAFCON related churches that operate in, or which have splintered from, this Diocese. Their GAFCON bishops are NOT respecting my bishop's jurisdiction. And this has happened all over orthodox Episcopal Dioceses in the USA. In this statement GAFCON is simply lying through its teeth.]]

12. We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters. We pledge to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us [[45]].

[[45. But the fact that GAFCON has flouted Lambeth, flouted the Archbishop, and flouted the jurisdiction of orthodox bishops says that they in fact WILL NOT work together to seek the mind of Christ. This is simply and obviously an empty statement. Perhaps GAFCON is more a child of the Western Church than they want to admit: Just like The Episcopal Church, they want what they want when they want it, and if they cannot get it, they will mandate it by their own conference called together by their own authority.]]

13. We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed [[46]]. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.

[[46. Does this statement go back only to a gay bishop in 2003? Or does it go back to 1537 when Henry VIII used a legal fiction to split the Church of England from Roman orthodoxy? By what authority does GAFCON have the right to determine who is orthodox?]]

14. We rejoice at the prospect of Jesus’ coming again in glory, and while we await this final event of history [[47]], we praise him for the way he builds up his church through his Spirit by miraculously changing lives.

[[47. Because it is only Jesus who can untangle this screwed up mess!!!]]

SECTION 5: THE ROAD AHEAD
We believe the Holy Spirit has led us during this week in Jerusalem to begin a new work [[48]]. There are many important decisions for the development of this fellowship which will take more time, prayer and deliberation. Among other matters, we shall seek to expand participation in this fellowship beyond those who have come to Jerusalem, including cooperation with the Global South and the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa. We can, however, discern certain milestones on the road ahead.

[[48. Was it also the Holy Spirit who led you to all of the contradictions and mis-statements I have pointed out thus far, or was some other spirit involved as well?]]

SECTION 6: PRIMATES’ COUNCIL
We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, do hereby acknowledge the participating Primates of GAFCON who have called us together, and encourage them to form the initial Council of the GAFCON movement [[49]]. We look forward to the enlargement of the Council and entreat the Primates to organise and expand the fellowship of confessing Anglicans.

[[49. A schismatic action which will produce an instrument of unity for a schismatic communion, which will turn on itself within a generation, and split into more and more warring rival communions, all bearing the name "Anglican". For the Love of Christ, do not go this route. Please, please, repent and come to Lambeth. Use Lambeth as the place of discipline, and the instrument of unity. Use Lambeth to give the Primates authority to discipline errant bishops. Don't do this and repeat the misery or Protestantism all over again.]]

We urge the Primates’ Council to authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations and to encourage all Anglicans to promote the gospel and defend the faith.

We recognise the desirability of territorial jurisdiction for provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion, except in those areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are preventing its spread, and in a few areas for which overlapping jurisdictions are beneficial for historical or cultural reasons.

We thank God for the courageous actions of those Primates and provinces who have offered orthodox oversight to churches under false leadership, especially in North and South America. The actions of these Primates have been a positive response to pastoral necessities and mission opportunities. We believe that such actions will continue to be necessary and we support them in offering help around the world.

We believe this is a critical moment when the Primates’ Council will need to put in place structures to lead and support the church. In particular, we believe the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognised by the Primates’ Council [[50]].

[[50. Again, I beg you: Use Lambeth for this purpose. Vote at Lambeth to declare errant bishops apostate. Vote at Lambeth to give the Primates emergency powers. Even vote at Lambeth for another archbishop to be the center of Anglican unity if you must. Then you may have the right to enter those defunct dioceses and plant new churches. But, without that authoritative Council to enact church discipline, you are merely invading the dioceses of duly ordained bishops, thereby acting contrary to the earliest councils of the Church and the Spirit of the New Testament.]]

SECTION 7: CONCLUSION: MESSAGE FROM JERUSALEM
We, the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, were summoned by the Primates’ leadership team to Jerusalem in June 2008 to deliberate on the crisis that has divided the Anglican Communion for the past decade and to seek direction for the future. We have visited holy sites, prayed together, listened to God’s Word preached and expounded, learned from various speakers and teachers, and shared our thoughts and hopes with each other.

The meeting in Jerusalem this week was called in a sense of urgency that a false gospel has so paralysed the Anglican Communion that this crisis must be addressed. The chief threat of this dispute involves the compromising of the integrity of the church’s worldwide mission. The primary reason we have come to Jerusalem and issued this declaration is to free our churches to give clear and certain witness to Jesus Christ.

It is our hope that this Statement on the Global Anglican Future will be received with comfort and joy by many Anglicans around the world who have been distressed about the direction of the Communion. We believe the Anglican Communion should and will be reformed around the biblical gospel and mandate to go into all the world and present Christ to the nations [[51]].

[[51. The Anglican Communion needs reformation, but not this way. You cannot heal the patient by cutting her in half. The instruments of unity are already there to reform the Communion. We must be patient and make use of them, and reform them so they can reform the Church. Creating an alternate Anglican Communion is not the solution. History has shown that this never works. It merely creates an unceasing succession of reforming groups: Each smaller, weaker, and more narrow than the one before it. The weariness generated by generations of sectarian "conservative" schisms always leads to a liberal revisionism which rebels from the schismatics. To go this GAFCON route is to condemn our children and our theological heirs to repeat every misstep of the last two centuries. Please, before you step over the brink: Think about it. Don’t do it. I beg you. You cannot save the Church one acronym at a time.]]

THE BIBLE I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED

2008-06-20T21:58:00.003-05:00

For all the Scripture snobs and Greek geeks out there:

I know you know the feeling. You get a new Bible, and use it for a couple of months, and then you are aware of all its foibles and inconsistencies. So, you go and buy another study Bible. And the same thing happens. And the addictive cycle happens over and over and over.

It's even worse when you are competent with the original languages, because you do not feel like you have really "read" Scripture until you have translated at least part of your reading out of the original text. And to do that, you have to have a separate original language NT or OT (or both!). Or you have to have an interlinear (which, by the way, can be very useful, but it can also be incredibly easy to cheat and just read the English text below the Greek).

So, you wind up carrying 2-3 Bibles with you in your knapsack (which can harm your spine over time, and make you look like the obsessive-compulsive Bibliophile you really are to everyone who sees inside your pack). Or you do something even more OCD: You bind together several Bibles into one volume, thus creating the dreaded "FrankenBible". OK, so maybe YOU wouldn't do it, but I did. I actually bound together a Greek English NT with a NRSV OT and Apocrypha, and then created 125 page introduction with topical resources and Book introductions. It is huge! So huge, in fact, it is quite hard to pull in and out of my pack, or fit other books around. And it isn't even my favorite English translation. The English Standard Version is.

So, dissatisfied with all of the options thus far, I decided to do something FAR more obsessive-compulsive. I decided to edit together and print my own Study Bible. Here are the parameters:

1. Since my daytimer and journal are in a standard 8.5" x 11" binder, and I take that binder with me on most occasions, the Bible had to measure 8.5" x 11" to snug up alongside the daytimer in my pack (not hard to do since paper is that size anyway).

2. It had to be less than 1.5 inches thick. Bigger than that, and it would weigh too much for carrying around on a regular basis. In terms of pages, that means that it had to be less than 300 pieces of paper or so (at the paper weight of 20-22 lb paper). That means that the total pages for the Bible would have to be 600 or less (since 2 pages are printed, front-and-back, on each piece of paper).

3. It had to have Greek-English parallel text for the New Testament. Having side-by-side text gives you just enough help to remind you what a Greek word is when you are rusty, but not so much help that you can completely cheat while reading Greek (like an Interlinear Bible).

4. At least part of the OT must have Hebrew-English parallel text, especially the Psalms. I read at least a Psalm a day, so it would be a good thing to have the Hebrew side-by-side to read a couple of verses in Hebrew on a daily basis.

On the other hand, a full-on parallel Hebrew-English OT would make the entire Bible too long (about 700-750 pages total). So, what I did was make the entire Psalter parallel, and then a scattering of my other favorite passages parallel.

5. It had to use the ESV text as the principal English text (although I did modify some passages where the translation is squirrely dealing with gender issues).

6. It had to have "the rest of the Bible that the Protestants threw out". So, I included the Catholic Deuterocanonicals in the NRSV version, ordered according to the Roman Catholic canonical ordering.

I know this could turn into a huge discussion, but basically I believe the Deuterocanonicals are fully as canonical as the rest of the OT, and were used up to the Reformation uniformly. Anglican and Episcopal lectionaries have always included Deuterocanonical readings (especially from the book of Wisdom!). Practically, I do not think any of the Deuterocanonicals present difficulties greater than the ideological problems we already find in the Hebrew OT (cf. the Jihad of Joshua, the pessimism of Ecclesiastes, the polygamy of Song of Songs, and the political "spin" of the Samuels, Kings, and Chronicles). And theologically, I think the Protestant willingness to revise the Canon of Scripture in the 1500's has led to a theological trajectory where Protestant revisionists of the 1800-2000's have been willing to revise EVERYTHING canonical about the Christian faith. Thus, as a small step at reversing the trajectory: I include the books in my canon.

7. It had to include my favorite maps and charts from the NIV Study Bible, the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (5 vol.), the New International Dictionary of the Bible, and the New Bible Atlas. All of the texts, charts, and maps were imported from Bibleworks ™, Zondervan Pradis ™, and Libronix ™ Bible software packages.

8. It had to have Bible book introductions that were short enough to jog the memory on dates, authorship, historical context, and major themes, WHILE at the same time taking seriously critical study of the Bible, WHILE at the same time taking seriously Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures, WHILE at the same time dealing with the Deuterocanonicals as well.

Thus, I used the Book introductions from the New American Bible. They fit all the criteria above AND they are available online: http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/

9. It had to include a number of charts I have developed myself, including my summary chart of the Seven Ecumenical Councils as a guide to Biblical interpretation.

Thus, at the end of the NT I have included a "Canonical Outline of the Faith" which includes a summary of the issues and solutions offered by the 7 ecumenical councils, a swell as the Nicene, Chalcedonian, and Apostle's Creeds in three languages (Greek, Latin, English). Finally, I have included my own "mini-systematic" theological-Scriptural outline based on the Creed.

10. So, I edited it all together. First, I exported the Bible texts from Bibleworks software into an excel spreadsheet, where I combined the text with the outline of Scripture found in Bibleworks software. Then I mail-merged the text into a series of Word documents, so the Bible text was formatted the way I wanted them. Then I created a series of publisher files for the final formatting and parallel-texting. After that, I exported it all into adobe pdf's. Then I printed them at Kinko's, bound them into a book, and put a cover on it!

I have posted it online. Since I own everything in them through buying the software, or have used free sources, they are legal copies of what is legally mine: And I am NOT selling this Bible [I say all of that for copyright reasons]. I am assuming, however, that downloading these files and printing them would be a violation of copyright. So I ask you please to not do this.

But, I do offer them as "fodder for the imagination" for people who might want to construct a Bible like this (or for Bible companies who might want to produce a product like this with a FULL Hebrew-English OT!).

You can find the pdf files here (the OT is 17 mb, and the NT is 14 mb):

Old Testament:
http://canter.s437.sureserver.com/teaching/NSB-1_OT.pdf

New Testament:
http://canter.s437.sureserver.com/teaching/NSB-2_NT.pdf

And just "The Canonical Faith" outline:
http://canter.s437.sureserver.com/teaching/The_Canonical_Faith.pdf

It is finally the Bible I have always wanted. Have fun!