The Magi In My Life

This is an Epiphany sermon based in the story of the magi from Matthew 2.1-11, as well as the Episcopal School of Dallas virtue of “Openness” for the month of February. In the Spirit of openness, I decided to give a sermon a little differently than I normally do. From a pulpit. I hope you will be open to this! Now if you are skeptical like me, you may wonder if openness is even a virtue, and if so, why is it important enough to devote a whole MONTH to it. Well, I am glad you asked!

Easter and the philosophy of embodiment and matter

Around Easter, I was in another discussion about the necessity of the resurrection for the hope proclaimed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is a perpetual tension I find between people who believe two different kinds of things about the hope that the Gospel, or "Good News of Jesus", offers us for the end of physical life. The first cluster of ideas is that a general faith in personal existence after death is sufficient for the Gospel, and all we need to affirm is that "we go to heaven when we die". The second cluster of ideas is that the Gospel entails a much more particular hope that in Christ we will be resurrected and re-embodied in a New Creation at the end of all things. I trend strongly toward the second cluster of ideas for both Biblical reasons and the philosophical implications of resurrection for full human flourishing.

The Body of Christ needs a Left and a Right

This was written in 2007 for a class I was taking on the Church and Social Change. I have never posted it online because I received negative feedback on the thesis because it did not adhere closely enough to established political options available in our society (the subtext seemed to be that I failed to “take a side” in the way my professor wanted me to). Re-reading it in light of what has happened in our country in the last 15 years, it seems to me that this holds insights I would like to share. Most importantly the core theme and metaphor of the paper: We are the Body of Christ, and all functioning bodies have a right and a left side. And in the Church and the Body Politic of Society, we need to realize that we need each other from all sides, and we need to stop demonizing those who are not in “our” side of the Body. As the original subtitle of this paper stated: "Why the Church needs to get beyond Polemics to resist the rise of Global Corporate Consumerism".

Christ's Way and the ways of religion

 

For years I have been teaching on Global Religions and Comparative Theology, with a particular passion for talking about how Christ relates to world religions. I thought I would republish my class notes on how Christ relates to world religions, incorporating material from professor Keith Ward on a view called by many “Expansivism”. This updates my previous class notes on this subject found in the post Christ and the Religions.

Overview of the Seven "Ecumenical" Councils

Ecumenical derives from the Greek word "oikumene", which roughly translates to "whole inhabited world". A Church Council is an official gathering of representatives to settle Church business, often dealing with doctrine (belief), behavior (morality), and questions of Church polity (canon law). Worldwide Councils are called rarely and are not the same as the regular regional gatherings of church leaders (synods, conventions, etc). An "Ecumenical Council" is one at which the whole Church is represented from throughout the world. 

Scriptures on experiencing Divine Light

I figured I would start the year with a little Bible study. Here are some things that Scripture tells us about Divine Light and how we may experience and embody Light in our lives. The following is a Scriptural outline on how we can experience Divine Light, through Jesus Christ, but the power of God's Spirit.

Sophiology: Holy Wisdom as the Divine Feminine

Throughout Church history, Orthodox theologians from the Second Council of Nicaea (787) to the 20th century Russian "Sophiologist" Sergei Bulgakov have identified the Divine Feminine in God with "Holy Wisdom" (which is a translation of the feminine Greek term "Hagia Sophia", and the Hebrew term "Hokmah"). Nicaea II states it thus: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, the self-existent Wisdom (Sophia) of God the Father, who manifested Himself in the flesh, and by His great and divine dispensation freed us from the snares of idolatry, clothing Himself in our nature, restored it through the cooperation of the Spirit, who shares God's mind..." In more recent configurations, Divine Wisdom is identified as a personified attribute shared by all the members of the Trinity, yet primarily embodied in Jesus Christ. This has led to charges against Sophiologists that they have made Divine Wisdom into a fourth member of the Trinity, or a kind of separate "Mother Goddess" like Gaia. 

God's relationship with the world and culture

This is intended to help us understand how "Scripture speaks" on various topics. I have taken topical outlines I created for preaching and teaching, and reformatted them as articles to provide minimal framing and commentary, so that Scripture passages on certain topics may be collected, read, and meditated on. This is not an exhaustive commentary on Scripture, but rather an opportunity to collect thematic Scriptures together to see the trajectory that Hebrew and Christian Scriptures take, and how they converge and diverge on various topics. This is drawn from my own eclectic reading in Biblical and Systematic Theology, as well as topical resources such as Alister McGrath’s Thematic Reference Bible, Walter Elwell’s Topical Analysis of the Bible, Nave’s Topical Bible, Bible Gateway online, and the Open Bible online. 

In order to understand how to navigate our relationship with the world we live in, and the cultures we are immersed in, we need to understand the relationship of God to our world and the cultures in it. This can be difficult, because at different times in Scripture, there are different relationships between God's people and the world they inhabit, and the cultures that surround them. Sometimes, such as during the Davidic Kings of Judah, God's people were in charge of their culture and were directed to use that culture for the full flourishing of the people in it. Other times, such as during the Babylonian Exile or the period of Roman domination, God's people were called to create their own culture in the midst of cultures that ranged from being apathetic toward God's people, to being actively hostile to them. Despite this diversity of cultural context, there are some common Biblical themes that emerge:

Twas the Night Before Christmas, Gym Edition

Twas the Night before Christmas and all through the gym

Every lifter was repping to get swole or get thin

The Weightlifters snatched and cleaned with great care

Crossfitters did muscle-ups and thrusters into the air

Strongwomen flipped tires and atlas stones over bars

As Powerlifters benched, squatted, and deadlifted PRs

Bodybuilders put their dumbbells neatly in rows

For endless drop-sets to feel the pump as they grow

When what to their wondering eyes did appear

But Jacked Santa Claus dragging exhausted reindeer 

He farmer-carried Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen!

And repped Rudolph, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen!

Everyone was shocked at the six pack in his belly

"We thought that you jiggled, like a bowl full of jelly!"

Santa then replied with his loud booming voice

"One day I realized that my health was my choice

So I learned how to get ripped, strong, muscular, and mobile

Like a supple leopard, sleek, powerful, and noble.

I had the elves build a gym, and learn about nutrition

To keep me always in peak gift-delivery condition.

I traded in cookies and milk for vitamins and whey.

I drink gallons of water and 200 grams of protein per day.

So throw some plates on the bar and then let's train

Merry Christmas to all, may you all make great gains!"

Making Artificial Intelligence in the Image of God?

As we have recently read about in the New York Times and the Atlantic, very powerful Artificial Intelligence programs have now become available for free or cheap online. Programs of similar capabilities have been around for a few years and have even written Op Eds. But what has changed is that the same computing power and access to AI is now available to the masses. In particular, I have had dozens of conversations with this AI:

https://chat.openai.com/chat

I have used this AI to produce topical sermons, fictional stories, literary comparisons, romance novels, historical essays, fake quotes, philosophical analyses, theological explanations, legal arguments, Biblical interpretations, mathematic equations, science term papers, working computer code, workout plans, recipes, topical prayers, free verse poetry, Shakespearean sonnets, and even rap battles between historical figures (and these are only what I have tried since last weekend!). In fact, I interviewed this AI to introduce it to the faculty at my school.

The Empty House and Evil Squatters

Recently a friend of mine read Jesus’ parable about the empty house of the soul, and the evil squatters who come back to take possession of it:

Luke 11.24–26 [24] “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ [25] When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order*. [26] Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.” (*The parallel text in Matthew 12.43-45 makes it clear the house is “empty” as well)

Does priesthood derive from the New Testament?

I have a friend who objects to the idea of Christian priesthood because he believes it diminishes and even denigrates other members of the Body of Christ who are not priests or bishops. His objection is to a distinctly “sacerdotal” image of the priesthood, in which only the priests or bishops can perform sacraments and teach in the Church, while all other members are more or less passive. To put it in a simplistic and crass way: Priests and bishops are seen to have “magic hands” which can consecrate sacraments, while everyone else is “non-magical”. To be fair, this view of the priesthood is a caricature, and very few people would insist that all ministry must be done by ordained clergy, while everyone else must be passive and receptive. However, this CAN be an implication of some early modern conceptions of the “sacerdotal” priesthood.

Seven Tips on Leading Camp Songs in School Chapel

So, you have gone on retreat, or to camp, and you have had an amazing experience of God, and now you want to share that with your local congregation! Awesome! That is exactly what God wants us to do with our passion and our gifts: Share them with others. However, sharing the gift of music is not as easy as it seems, and is not always received the way you intend it. To help avoid some of the pitfalls of sharing your music in Church, here are seven helpful hints by someone who is not musically trained, but has been a camp counselor, youth minister, priest in the Church, and school chaplain. I have seen this done well, and done not-so-well.

The Politics of God’s Kingdom

For a long time I have said: Wherever there are people, there are politics. Politics are the distinctive ways of organizing a community, ensuring justice and fair treatment for all members, and creating social structures to make it possible to live into those supreme values which the community serves. And make no mistake: Every community has its supreme values, its gods and masters, which it sacrifices for and serves. It may be power or profit or praise or pride or possessions or position. It may be God or gods or kings or supreme rulers or parties or free markets or liberty or control or ideology. But every community serves some set of supreme values. And every community creates structures and strictures and sanctions and stimulus packages to enact those values. 

So, unless we are going to live alone on a desert island, we will have politics because we will live with people. We were made for community. So it isn’t a question of IF we will be political, but HOW we will be political. And this is where I think the Way of Jesus offers a different kind of politics: A Way of Love. Not a way of imposing politics on others by force, but a way of inviting people into a politics of full human flourishing. Not a way of violence and exclusion and coercion. But a Way of healing and inclusion and persuasion. Not join us “or else death!” but join us “because of life!”

The Politics of the Kingdom of God is wholly different from the politics of the world and its crumbling fiefdoms. It calls God’s people out of partisan politics and into a deeper walk with Jesus; Out of step with the world and into step with Christ’s Spirit; Out of faith in parties and politicians and into faithfulness to the Father. Where each decision is not made to advance an ideological platform, but to love our neighbor in concrete ways; To judge situation by situation, and person by person, so we choose the most good and the least evil; The most life and the least death; The most love and the least hate; The most compassion and the least apathy. Because, as Saint Irenaeus reminds us, “the  glory of God is humanity fully alive”, but the death and destruction and degradation of any of God’s children dishonors the One who made them. So vote with ballots as a necessary evil when you must. But vote with Christlike words and deeds every day in every situation with every person God brings into your life. 

The Metaphysics of Materialism

Materialist determinism is a perpetually popular view in the modern world. It is the metaphysical viewpoint which denies metaphysics by positing that: 1. Reality is made of matter and only matter. The only reality is matter and the physical forces which operate within material interaction. This raises the thorny question of what exactly matter is. But let’s bracket this and assume there is something called “matter”, and it is the only constituent of reality (as opposed to “spirit” or “mind” or “consciousness”). 2. The events in reality are causally determined by material laws and forces, such that even the workings of mind and consciousness are determined by the physical states which preceded them. There is no free will or choice. All are illusory experiences formed in brains after events have happened. All phenomena can be fully explained in a mechanistic way through the matter and forces at work in an event, without any reference to choices or intentions or motives or thoughts.

However, as elegant as materialist determinism seems to be, it has some rather impractical and non-elegant implications. 

Should we rethink the dates of the New Testament?

Recently, New Testament scholar Jonathan Bernier has put forth a powerful proposal about  "Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament". He shows that in the era of modern Biblical scholarship, there have been three basic kinds of dates proposed for the writing of the New Testament:

Why God cannot be evil

Recently I was in a discussion in which someone asked whether God could be evil. Is it possible that the Ultimate Reality that is the source of all other realities is actually malevolent? Fortunately, it is both an evidential and a logical impossibility for God to be evil. God cannot be evil due to both an a priori reason (a reason which comes prior to experience in the world) and an a posteriori reason (a reason which comes from reflection on experience in the world). 

Twitter Gospel

A friend talked about summarizing the Gospel in 280 characters for Twitter. So here’s my Twitter Gospel. What is yours?

The Good News is that the LORD of Love is drawing us ALL into God’s embrace through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, as God journeys with us through our hells &  heavens, and guides us in our trials & triumphs, so we may share fully in God’s Life and Love and Light.

I even have a 9 word version:

Christ shows God. 

God is Love. 

Love heals all. 

Amen.

Beware of Prophets for Profits

“Think again Sunshine!” Pop-intellectual Jordan Peterson has released a video in which he takes the role of a prophet and tells all Christian churches— Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox— how to do outreach and what our message should be. It is a video in which an exemplar of unhealthy right wing “good think” lobs rhetorical grenades at unhealthy left wing “political correctness” in the name of a religion and a God he himself does not embrace. His central thesis is that young men are burdened with a version of “original sin” experienced as guilt and shame for three overstated reasons, promoted by his enemies such as Derrida and Marx, deconstructionists and cultural Marxists. 

The Spirituality of Physical Training

Lord of Life strengthen us in Spirit, body, and soul: With our mind, heart, and will in your loving control; So we can heal our world, and make your children whole.

One of the driving concerns behind my entire life project is integral holism: To help us become healthy and whole in body, spirit, and soul. I believe the integration of bodily health and activity is foundational for our spiritual vitality and psychological wholeness. As a Christian pastor, my primary means of accessing wholeness and purpose and integration in life is through the God of Love revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. Followers of Jesus are not usually known for their dedication to physical training and integration. But I think this is a mistake. After all, Jesus usually met people's bodily needs by feeding and healing them, before he taught them spiritual and ethical truths. And the "abundant life" promised by Jesus has physical as well as spiritual dimensions, such as making "our daily bread" a central concern in Jesus' model prayer.

Just as Jesus combined both physical and spiritual dimensions in his ministry, I usually combine my spiritual training with physical training, staying mindful of my diet and rest, exercise and mobility. This practice uses many of the spiritual-physical insights we find in Christian asceticism, as well as Hatha Yoga, and modern ideas of physical mobility, to create a method of living which not only connects us with Christ, but also makes us the strongest version of ourselves, which is holistically holy and wholly whole.