On Resurrection and Eternal Life (5)

The Doubt: ‘Can these Dry Bones Live?’ (Bowler)

Note from CM: As a hospice chaplain, my work revolves around supporting the dying and their families. I officiate many funerals. I deal with questions about death and what happens after people die. I am asked regularly about mysteries beyond our human experience in this life.

We’ve had a break for some time, but it’s time to get back into this subject, considering what Gerhard Lohfink has to say in his excellent new book, Is This All There Is?: On Resurrection and Eternal Life. After all, it is Eastertide.

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What happens to us after death is something we can only know in faith, and it is only from faith that we can ultimately speak of it. I want to say that at this point, as clearly as I can, I am not writing as a natural scientist or a student of the history of religions or as a philosopher. I write as a Christian theologian, that is, as someone whose calling is to interpret the word of God. And that is why I want to emphasize again that as regards what happens to us after death we can know nothing except through God’s own self and out of a listening faith. Christian tradition calls that “revelation.” (p. 61)

Lohfink goes on to say that God’s revelation comes through the communicated experiences of those who follow him. The greater part of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh — Israel’s story — is an example of fides quaerens intellectum, or “faith seeking understanding.” So, how did Israel’s faith and understanding develop with regard to death, resurrection, and the afterlife?

“Large portions of the Old Testament appear to know of no life after death. Death is the end” (p. 64). In the ancient world, people held the concept of Sheol, the place of the dead, the underworld, but as Lohfink reminds us, Sheol was the place of nothingness, of a shadow existence. “There is no life there that is worthy of the name” (p. 65). It’s not so much that the ancients saw in death a ceasing of existence, per se, but in Sheol all vital connection with life and the living has been severed. They no longer share in history. They are no longer part of this world of life and living.

Furthermore, there is such a separation from God that in Sheol the dead cannot praise God. Sheol is “the Pit,” and in the imagination of Israel, when a person was delivered from death he/she was raised up out of that dark, dank, lifeless and hopeless place, with feet set on terra firma, where the blessings of life are enjoyed and one may worship and celebrate the living God.

Are not the days of my life few?
Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort
before I go, never to return,
to the land of gloom and deep darkness,
the land of gloom and chaos,
where light is like darkness.’ (Job 10:20-22)

So, Israel’s sense of hope was earthy. Even the quaint phrase used when one died — “he was gathered to his people” — did not connote “the communion of saints” or life with God as Christians understand it today, but rather that they lay in death among those they loved.

Didn’t Israel have a future hope? Yes, Lohfink affirms, it was clearly held forth, especially in the Hebrew prophets, who promised that the kingdom of God would be restored in Israel, with justice and peace and shalom for all.

But all that only confirms what has been said, because in the first place it all takes place in the realm of this time and place, in this world, on this earth, in the land of Israel. If the images of peace, justice, and blessing seem to surpass the measure of normal experience, they are still located in the sphere of earthly history. (p. 68)

At this point, it is important to simply acknowledge that Israel’s faith, as spelled out through much of the Hebrew Bible, was one of “radical worldliness” (p. 68), with overwhelming blessings for future generations but no indication that the dead would be raised to share in those blessings.

Gerhard Lohfink distinguishes Israel’s faith from their neighbors in the ancient world in an interesting way. It is actually Israel that refused to sacralize death and the dead. It was those who believed in God who rejected the cultural ideas of an afterlife that were around them!

Israel believed in the God of creation, the God who had deemed this world “good,” who had delivered them out of slavery and brought them into a land of abundance. Their theological feet were firmly planted on earth, they worshiped a living God whose Torah taught them wisdom for living now, and they would not be tempted by the metaphysical myths of the nations around them who developed elaborate cults of death and the afterlife.

Israel did not take after the Canaanites, who had a god of death, and used means such as witchcraft and necromancy so that people could gain access to death’s power. They had their own rituals built around the death and resurrection of Baal and the seasonal cycles of fertility. They linked their own hope for life beyond this life in the patterns of nature and the gods. But Israel was taught to reject this kind of theology derived from the annual renewal of life.

Nor did Israel follow the ways of the Egyptians, whose thought developed from seeing eternal life as the hope of the pharaohs to a personal piety that assured an afterlife for all. In the development of Egyptian culture, it came to be that “all who lived rightly and could pass through the ‘judgment of the dead’ could become immortal gods in a life after death” (p. 73). Preparing for this afterlife was a preeminent part of Egyptian religion and, as Lohfink observes, “Egypt became a state in which immortality was better organized than anywhere else” (p. 73).

Exposed to this “cult of the tombs” face to face, the Israelites recoiled from Egypt’s obsession with the afterlife. Life and blessing in this world was what YHWH was about, not helping people “become gods” after death.

Israel, the people of the living God, resisted these and other afterlife theologies because her God created this world and created people to be God’s priestly representatives that life here might flourish. The lack of resurrection thought throughout much of Israel’s history is actually testimony to her faith in YHWH.

Nevertheless, as Israel continued to experience the goodness and salvation of God, they began to speak in terms of a “safety in God that is without limit,” especially in their psalms. The tentative expressions embedded there show a stretching of Israel’s perspective about life and what it means, now and even after death.

When we look at the wise, they die;
fool and dolt perish together
and leave their wealth to others.
Their graves are their homes for ever,
their dwelling-places to all generations,
though they named lands their own.
Mortals cannot abide in their pomp;
they are like the animals that perish.

Such is the fate of the foolhardy,
the end of those who are pleased with their lot.
Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
Death shall be their shepherd;
straight to the grave they descend,
and their form shall waste away;
Sheol shall be their home.
But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me. (Psalm 49:10-15, emphasis mine)

Most famously, we hear this hope in Psalm 16.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
For you do not give me up to Sheol,
or let your faithful one see the Pit.

You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures for evermore. (Psalm 16:9-11)

Lohfink comments:

…we see that the psalmist speaks out of a confidence that extends beyond the borders of death. Nothing is said about enemy threats, dangerous illness, or violent death. This is about death itself. The one who prays the Psalm knows that a community of life with YHWH cannot be lost; it is so profound that it lasts beyond death.

But whence this assurance? It certainly does not rest on dreams of the afterlife or speculations on eternity; rather the psalmist always sees the face of God, who constantly accompanies her or him. So the one who prays this Psalm is already living now, in this life, out of an experience of the sheltering presence of God. For such a person death is no catastrophe.

What is special about Psalm 16 is that it shows that Israel’s faith remains altogether earthly, but at depth it is open to an action of God that encompasses even the realm of death and the underworld. The psalmist lives in profound confidence that God will not abandon her or him, even in death. People who pray this Psalm know that they can trust in God absolutely. Other texts reveal the same attitude: for example, Psalms 22 and 73. Here again, nothing is said about a “resurrection of the dead,” and yet they reveal a profound confidence that the devout in Israel are always sheltered in God. (p. 78)

More next time on Israel’s growing understanding of resurrection and the life to come as seen in the pages of the Hebrew Bible.

Sundays in Easter: The Very Good Gospel (1)

Through the Field… another walk. Photo by David Cornwell

Shalom is the stuff of the Kingdom. It’s what the Kingdom of God looks like in context. It’s what citizenship in the Kingdom of God requires and what the Kingdom promises to those who choose God and God’s ways to peace.

• Lisa Sharon Harper

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On Sundays in Easter, we will hear from Lisa Sharon Harper about The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right. Her book is about the fullness of the good news that Jesus lived, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven to give us. Harper tells us that this good news is about shalom, the opposite of what she calls our commonly “thin” understanding of the gospel.

Today, a quote from chapter one. Here are three points she will flesh out in the rest of the book.

1. If one’s gospel falls mute when facing people who need good news the most— the impoverished, the oppressed, and the broken— then it’s no gospel at all.

2. Shalom is what the Kingdom of God smells like. It’s what the Kingdom looks like and what Jesus requires of the Kingdom’s citizens. It’s when everyone has enough. It’s when families are healed. It’s when shame is renounced and inner freedom is laid hold of. It’s when human dignity, bestowed by the image of God in all humanity, is cultivated, protected, and served in families, faith communities, and schools and through public policy. Shalom is when the capacity to lead is recognized in every human being and when nations join together to protect the environment.

3. At its heart, the biblical concept of shalom is about God’s vision for the emphatic goodness of all relationships. In his book Peace, Walter Brueggemann wrote, “The vision of wholeness, which is the supreme will of the biblical God, is the outgrowth of a covenant of shalom (see Ezekiel 34: 25), in which persons are bound not only to God but to one another in a caring, sharing, rejoicing community with none to make them afraid.”

The Saturday Monks Brunch: April 7, 2018

MICHAEL SPENCER MEMORIAL EDITION

Michael Spencer left us eight years ago, on April 5, 2010. We miss him greatly, and want to honor his legacy today. So, we devote this week’s Brunch to Michael, the original Internet Monk.

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THE VOICE OF THE INTERNET MONK…

Let’s start by hearing the voice of the master himself. This is an excerpt from Michael’s 100th podcast, June 14, 2008, nearly ten years ago. You’ll get a sense of Michael’s love for playing with sound and the computer, and you’ll certainly get a taste of his sense of humor.

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MICHAEL SPENCER 101…

Every so often, it seems like a good idea to get the basic facts about your Internet Monk straight. I do this mainly for the sake of commenters and others who sometimes make factual errors. I’m often stunned at the weird things people believe and say about me, what I do and what is my real-life ministry.

My name is Dennis Michael Spencer. I go by Michael. I prefer not to be called Mike. I have gone by Dennis occasionally, such as in college.

I’m 52, born in 1956.

I’m the campus minister and Bible teacher for a large Christian school in southeastern Kentucky, I’ve been here for almost 17 years. Most of my students are not Christians. Many are internationals.

I preach 9-12x a month to approximately 300+ students and staff, sometimes in daily chapel and sometimes on Sundays. I teach 4 classes of Bible and one section of AP English IV every weekday. I teach English III in the summer.

Speaking publicly is easy for me, but it’s harder as I get older. It’s odd that I make my living talking, because for the first 14 years of my life I was a tremendous stutterer.

Before this job, I was a pastor for 4 years and a full time youth ministry specialist for 13 years. I worked for 5 SBC different churches in various staff positions and for one as a pastor.

I graduated from Kentucky Wesleyan College with majors in Philosophy and Psychology, and a minor in English.

I graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with an M.Div. I did 34 hours of a D. Min, but didn’t finish the thesis or get the degree.

Denise and I have been married for 30 years. We have two children- a married daughter and a son who will be married in May ’09.

We have two cats and one dog. The dog is half Cairn terrier/half Scottish terrier. She’s called Maize.

I’m a member of a Southern Baptist Church. I worship each week (morning and evening) at the worship gatherings our school provides for our students. I’ve taught an adult Bible study for 16 years. Once a month I worship with St. Patrick’s Anglican Church in Lexington.

I’ve always lived in Kentucky. I’m originally from Owensboro, Kentucky and I graduated from public school there. I became a Christian at age 15 and was a member of a large fundamentalist SBC church where my uncle was a prominent pastor.

I was ordained into the Gospel ministry by my church in 1980.

I did a lot of youth ministry consulting back in the day. For 12 years, I was the preaching supply minister for a PCUSA church in Manchester, Ky. I really enjoyed that experience and miss it a lot.

I was awarded a pastoral sabbatical in the summer of ’08 by the Louisville Institute.

I’m not a Calvinist. I am a Reformation-appreciating Christian. I’m more about the solas than I am the TULIP. I have a great deal of respect for Calvinists and would be part of a “Founders” church if I had the option. I like the way they do church, worship and missions.

I sing pretty well. I play guitar better than average, but haven’t in a while. I’m passionate about baseball, particularly the Cincinnati Reds and the minor league Louisville Bats and Lexington Legends.

I think I’m a good communicator in words or in person, but I’m also deeply aware of my failures to communicate and all the sins that relate to my use/abuse of words.

I’m something of an amateur Shakespeare scholar. I know a lot about Kentucky monastic writer Thomas Merton.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

I’m always looking for an experience of Christian community that I’ll never find. I call that the “evangelical wilderness,” and call myself a “post-evangelical.” A “post-evangelical” wants to combine the best of evangelicalism with the broader, deeper, more ancient Christian tradition.

I have no idea what the future holds, but I plan to keep teaching, preaching and writing as long as I’m able.

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WISDOM FROM CLASSIC IMONK POSTS…

From Wretched Urgency: The Grace of God, or Hamsters on a Wheel?

Here. Quote me. There is no urgent concern for converting people in the New Testament. Did you get that down? There is also no urgent concern for the numerical growth of churches by the efforts of members to convert others. There are no burgeoning church programs. There are no plans to train everyone to door knock and sell Jesus. There is an urgent concern for doctrinal and personal Christ-likeness. There is a concern for leadership, integrity, honesty and obedience to Christ in our personal lives. The idea that we are here to “win souls” and not to know and show God is bogus.

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From On Christless Preaching

The most distressing reason for the disappearing Jesus is the pragmatism of the current church growth culture. If the church growth gurus were telling their flocks of ministerial admirers that the way to grow a megachurch was to preach Jesus and to focus sermons on Christ, it would be happening. In large measure, it’s not happening because the church growth experts don’t believe it works. It isn’t seeker sensitive. This is why some preachers are purposely avoiding Jesus, and instead talking about life issues like “success” and parenting. They are hoping to “hook ’em” with the church program before they “cook ’em” in the frying pan of commitment to Jesus. This bass ackwards approach is remarkably successful, and it apparently a hard habit to break. Jesus increasingly isn’t showing up except at the Easter and Christmas pageants.

What works is life principles, low content and plenty of entertaining anecdotes. Preaching Christ, God’s primary ordained means of growing a church and developing disciples, is held in suspicion among the seeker-sensitive crowd. When Jesus makes it to the big show it’s going to be either as a “life coach” or because a cultural discussion of The Passion of the Christ makes it acceptable to preach about Jesus. I read with amazement Rick Warren’s enthusiasm for using the Gibson movie as a suddenly ripe opportunity to talk about Jesus. Does anyone else find that notion bizarre?

What else are we supposed to be talking about in the church?

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From Our Problem with Grace

I’ve thought a lot about grace as I’ve gotten older and lived the Christian life longer. I see and hear young, fired up, Pentecostal preacher boys, full of sermons about what will happen if we will pray more, live holy lives, get extreme, go the distance and all that fizz. It doesn’t get to me anymore. I am slowly living past the point of being affected by all the rah-rah Christianity around me.

I know I am not very obedient. I know my sinful patterns and my perennial laziness. I know where I fall short. I am well acquainted with my lusts, my pettiness and my stupid pride. I may make more progress on these things, but honestly, I doubt it. My efforts at obedience have about run their course. Most of what I am going to be as a human being living as a Christian on this planet, I’ve probably already achieved. I want all the years God has for me, and I want to honor and glorify him, but if I am going to learn about grace, now is the time. I need it now.

…Here’s where I am. When it comes time for me to die, I’ll only have one work to do. All the options will be gone. We don’t like to think about that, because we like to see our lives as full of all the options of youth, vigor, work, opportunity to change and the results of effort. We’re going to do better, we say. But in the end, the only “work” we can do will be to trust ourselves to God. Simple. Beautiful, in its way.

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From Dancing at the Fundamentalist Ball

Among, fundamentalists, however, my departure has been noticed for some time, both theologically and culturally. I hold no place for young earth creationism. I do not read the King James Version, and I do not want others to do so. My description of scripture does not choose to use the word, “inerrant.” I do not believe in the rapture. I abhor revivalism and its shallow, manipulative techniques. The four Spiritual laws are not the Gospel. Aisle walking is just plain wrong. I strongly suspect that most of what is on the shelves of Christian bookstores is somewhere between shallow and heretical. Women in ministry is good Bible as far as I am concerned. I avoid TBN like a fundamentalist avoids MTV. I like a whole bunch of Roman Catholics. Sometimes, I don’t pray over my food. (Actually, I pray one prayer on January 1st for the whole year, but that’s another column.)

On the cultural front, I consider the temperate use of alcohol to be harmless, if not mildly virtuous. (Alert Baptists: Psalms 4:7, 104:15. Read it first before you do anything rash.) I wish I danced and intend for my children to do so. I read a variety of books that fundamentalists consider occultic, worldly and dangerous. I listen to music ranging from Led Zeppelin to the Beatles to Dave Mathews. I find Contemporary Christian music to be, in the main, embarrassing. (With a few significant exceptions.)Â I love movies and the language doesn’t bother me, though I certainly don’t want to talk that way. I have raised my children in the Christian faith, but I have not sheltered them from bad culture, bad language or flawed people. I have not taught my children that it impresses God if you dress nicely for church, wear a WWJD bracelet or listen to the Christian radio station. I’ve actually told them God is great and loving enough to speak through any medium he desires. I bought my son three Harry Potter books. I love Halloween. I think Landover Baptist Church is stone cold funny.

This could go on, but I would belabor, bore and give my critics ammunition. I left the Fundamentalist ranch a long time ago. Every so often, I look back from my new view up in the hills and think of the good times, the good friends and the good truth, but I am not raising my kids there, and I am not going back.

And here is the main reason I have decided to move on. (There are many, for you e-mailers.) I don’t think Jesus was a mean, negative person who viewed life as a conspiracy. I think Jesus was a positive, gracious person who thought God was into everything, which was a matter of great rejoicing. I have decided Jesus was not a fundamentalist, and so I am not going to be either.

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From I Have My Doubts

I have my doubts. About it all. God. Jesus. Life after death. Heaven. The Bible. Prayer. Miracles. Morality. Everything.

“But you are a pastor. A Christian leader.” That’s right, and I am an encyclopedia of doubts. Sometimes it scares me to death.

I’m terrified by the possibility that I might have wasted my entire life on the proposition that Christianity was true, when in fact it wasn’t even close. I wonder if I have been mentally honest with myself or with others, or have I compromised my own integrity in order to collect a paycheck and have a roof over my head? Have I acted as if the case for faith was clear when it was a muddled mess in my own mind?

What’s really frightening is that these doubts persist and get stronger the longer I live. They aren’t childish doubts; they are serious, grown-up fears. I don’t have the kind of faith that looks forward to death. The prospect terrifies me, sometimes to the point I am afraid to close my eyes at night. I have more questions about the Bible and Christianity than ever, even as I am more skilled at giving answers to the questions of others. I can proclaim the truth with zeal and fervor, but I can be riddled with doubts at the same time.

When I meet Christians whose Christian experience is apparently so full of divine revelation and miraculous evidence that they are beyond doubts, I am tempted to either resent them or conclude that they are fakes or simpletons. The power of self-delusion in the face of a Godless, meaningless life is undeniable. If there is no God, can I really blame someone for “taking the pill” to remain in his unquestioning certainties?

There is sometimes nothing worse than being able to comprehend both all my doubts and all the accepted, expected answers. It tears at the soul, and declares war on the mind. I feel remarkably alone in my moments of doubt, and wonder, “Do other Christians feel this yawning abyss of doubt, or am I just a bad Christian?”

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From Michael’s Book: Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality

The decision to pursue a Jesus-shaped spirituality won’t take you to a building with a sign out front. You may have to look hard to see the overgrown path of the “road less traveled by…that has made all the difference.”

You will be cutting against the grain and swimming against the current. You may find yourself far outside the doors of many churches and thrown in with whomever the scapegoats of the hour happen to be. You should expect to be called liberal, emerging, naive, rebellious, and unsaved. Heads will shake and fingers will wag. But you’re in good company. Jesus’ own family raised questions about his stability.

…trust me you are not alone. There are millions like you, coming from every possible church, experience, school, ministry, and family in Christendom. I believe your presence is changing the landscape of the Western Christian world (p. 211).

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From Michael’s Final Post: Real Apologetics (2/10/10)

The ultimate apologetic is to a dying man.

That is what all those “Where is God?” statements in the Psalms are all about. They are, at least partially, invitations to Christians to speak up for the dying.

All the affirmations to God as creator and designer are fine, but it is as the God of the dying that the Christian has a testimony to give that absolutely no one else can give.

We need to remember that each day dying people are waiting for the word of death and RESURRECTION.

The are a lot of different kinds of Good News, but there is little good news in “My argument scored more points than you argument.” But the news that “Christ is risen!” really is Good News for one kind of person: The person who is dying.

If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.

What is your apologetic? Make it the full and complete announcement of the Life Giving news about Jesus.

Richard Beck on Tribes

Hove Beach Huts. Photo by Margaret Woods/Moore

In memory of Michael Spencer, who died 8 years ago on April 5, 2010.

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A part of the reason post-evangelicals have a hard time emotionally moving on from evangelicalism is that a part of them misses it.

• Richard Beck

What’s hard is losing friends, a community, a sense of belonging, a shared narrative. It’s not so much about friends becoming enemies, but the more subtle disorientation of not really fitting anywhere.

• Peter Enns

…the great source of suffering in our modern world is the loss of tribe, the loss of belonging to a tight knit community that grounds us, supports us, and gives us a sense of home and purpose.

• Sebastian Junger

• • •

What an insightful set of posts I’ve been reading over at Experimental Theology, Richard Beck’s blog!

One thing I love about Beck is that he is self-critical about his life and his beliefs and loyalties. In recent months he has been practicing that critique toward the post-evangelical, progressive Christian movement, of which he considers himself a part. The current series examines the question of why post-evangelicals are having such a hard time disconnecting from the nostalgia of their past and why they continue, in many cases, to find themselves in what we here at IM have long called “the post-evangelical wilderness.”

Beck thinks it has something to do with people leaving a well-defined “tribe” but never finding one to replace it.

Following Jonathan Haidt, whose book on moral reasoning we studied last year, Beck has come to see that “Tribes run deep into the human psyche. Tribes are integral to human flourishing. Tribes help us carry our suffering and pain, and they give us a sense of shared purpose and meaning. Tribes give us a home.”

That’s why it’s not easy to leave a tribe without simultaneously aching for the home we once knew. The mixture of exhilarating freedom from the strictures of the tribe combined with a poignant sense of loss and lostness can be confusing, even paralyzing.

Hey folks, this is Chaplain Mike. I’m still writing about post-evangelicalism and it’s 13 years out now.

To illustrate, in one of his posts Richard Beck talks about how hard it can be for soldiers to reintegrate back into society after having the powerful bonding experiences they’ve known in a “band of brothers” who lay down their lives for each other.

I’ve seen this happen with groups we’ve taken on mission trips. The intense immersive experience of being dropped into a wildly different culture with others, sharing new, exotic, and transformative experiences not only shapes the individuals who participate, but creates bonds that last forever. Coming home can be a serious letdown. We have reunions and tell the stories over and over again.

The evangelical church was long my tribe. I still feel strong bonds with people from all the churches in which I served and the congregations among whom I lived. I’ve always tried to view church in terms of extended family, and that is what these parishes have been for me. Though I have moved away from many of the beliefs we shared, I cannot put aside the organic connections I made with brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m happy to be free from bad theology; I miss the closeness of sharing a common life with people I love.

As Beck describes them, tribes seem to work best with a more conservative ethos. The moral values Jonathan Haidt talks about that conservatives treasure, such as loyalty, sacredness, and respect for authority, are fundamental to building strong tribes.

On the other hand, progressives tend to value inclusiveness, creative innovation, and change. These kinds of emphases tend to “aerosolize” groups — accentuating individuality, freedom, liberality, and diversity. They are liberating values, not “binding,” cohesive ones.

As a result, post-evangelicals who departed from evangelicalism and moved to the left tend to be “lone wolves” looking for a home. And simultaneously not wanting one.

Richard Beck has come to recognize this as a problem for progressives. Believing that “tribes are necessary for human flourishing,” Beck describes many of us as “unmoored, lonely and adrift as isolated, aerosolized individuals living life in late-modern capitalism.”

Nevertheless, we find it hard to get excited about finding a new tribe. Too many bad memories. Too much institutional suspicion. Too much wariness about the potential for toxicity and spiritual abuse.

One of the reasons we abandoned evangelicalism is that we found it to be unself-aware and therefore lacking the ability to be self-critical. Beck’s post on “Tribes and Self-Criticism” encourages us to seek tribes that, on the other hand, have the resources to look in the mirror and reform themselves. In a brilliant take on the Hebrew Bible, he notes that the entire First Testament is actually an exercise in self-criticism, as the exilic community is encouraged to look back on their history and learn its lessons so that they might adapt and have hope going forward.

If we need to be members of tribes, let us at least seek ones that examine themselves and face the truth.

Bottom line: “the counter-cultural way of Jesus requires a community of spiritual formation.” A tribe if you will. A supportive home. A “world,” I sometimes call it (a Seinfeldian reference). If evangelicalism is no longer my “world,” what is?

Richard Beck suggests that progressives need their own versions of Dreher’s The Benedict Option, which is, after all, an encouragement for Christians to build strong tribes in which to raise our young and pass on the teachings and values of Christ. Why? Because, as Beck so rightly says…

Cruciform, self-donating love is way, way more than liberal tolerance. Cruciform, self-donating love is hard, sacrificially hard. Consequently, we need a tribe to form us into the ways of Jesus.

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Richard Beck’s “On Tribes and Community” Posts

Miracles and Science, Part 4 by Ard Louis

Miracles and Science, Part 4 by Ard Louis

We are continuing our reflections on Miracles and Science based on a series of blog posts by Ard Louis of BioLogos.  The blog posts can be found on the BioLogos web site archives here .  The blog posts are based on a scholarly essay Louis did for BioLogos in 2007 which can be found here .

Louis begins this post by recalling his skeptical unbelieving colleague Martin and noting that if they continued their conversation he might have raised the 4-fold objection to miracles raised by Hume:

  • Witness testimony is often suspect.
  • Stories get exaggerated in the retelling.
  • Miracles are chiefly seen among ignorant and barbarous people.
  • Rival religions also have miracle stories, so they cancel each other out.

Of course, these arguments are substantial and have inspired voluminous volumes of voluble discourse, some of which is footnoted in Louis’ part 1 blog post .  Louis is going to take a stab at the first two.  He says:

It is true that witness testimony cannot always be trusted and that stories change with time. But these are the same problems that face legal systems and historians. Nonetheless, we can employ the tools of these professions to examine biblical miracles. Take, for example, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is significant extra biblical historical evidence that he indeed lived. Much has been written about the general trustworthiness of the Gospels. For example, there is much internal evidence, in both the style and content of the narratives, that the writers themselves were convinced that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. Tradition holds that 11 of the 12 original apostles were martyred for this belief that turned a group of cowards into a people who “turned the world upside down.” Although it is well beyond the scope of this essay, a very strong case for the plausibility of the resurrection can be made.  Similar analysis can be brought to bear on other miracle claims, including those of other religions. After all, every meaningful system of thought must be open to careful scrutiny.

Now we Imonkers have been down this road a time or two, most recently with your humble interlocutor’s post on Chapter 7 of John Polkinghorne’s book, “Testing Scripture” .  Frequent commenter, Numo, who has some experience with historical studies, took me to task and pointed out:

 Mike, no offense intended, but there is no other documentation to support the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. I personally believe that it happened. But, as one who trained as a historian, the Gospels and other NT documents are not and never were intended to be assertions of objective truth *as we understand that now*… Most of us automatically default to a journalistic mindset whenever we think of accounts of events. The resurrection accounts are meant to *bear witness,* and not as reports of objective facts as we understand that today. The Gospels themselves are pretty clearly aimed at “having faith in his name…”

They are incredibly important *historic* documents of faith, but the way you are using the word “historical” is misleading. Because there just aren’t any other contemporary documents that can be correlated with the resurrection accounts of the Gospels.

I replied defensively (and pompously) with some argle-bargle about “a narrow technical and academic standpoint of the professional historian”, “using the term ‘historical’ in a more popular sense”, and “employing rhetoric”.  Commenter RDavid tried to bail me out with:

In regards to the gospels as history, I think Mike is simply saying they are presented as such in their context, and that we need to be careful that we are reading them in that light, reading them properly, and not trying to throw them out simply because they do not conform to present day communication methods.

Which I could have said with a tenth of the argle and just a soupçon of the bargle.  Numo replied to me with:

Mike, I don’t have time for a longer response just now, but have to say that I’m bafgled by your use of both “narrow” and “technical” to describe the approach I outlined, which is the basic methodology of historical studies and *so* many other disciplines, the sciences included.

Well, “bafgled” is what happens to you when you’re fed a bunch of bargle.  (You know the old saying, “if you can’t blind them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit”.)  She concluded, in part, with:

I think the Gospels are about what is “true,” was true for those who passed on the stories of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection to those who finally wrote them down, collated and edited them. I think the writers would be utterly baffled by people in our day trying to use their work to “prove” anything, vis-a-vis apologetics. They wrote what they wrote for entirely different reasons than that, and if they could, they would likely tell us to stop doing those things and pay attention.

Well, a good time was had by all.  And Numo’s point is well taken, and shared by Ard Louis as well, I believe.

Louis thinks the third objection is the strongest one to moderns who are so impressed with… well… their modernity.  I think he has a strong point here, because modern science has been so successful with its technological applications.  The New Atheists are fond of asking Christians to name one thing theology has produced that compares to our modern technology.  Louis quotes the famous Rudolf Bultmann edict:

It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.

He notes that Bultmann and his followers hoped to make the Christian story more palatable to modern man by getting rid of the miracle stories in the Bible.  But that viewpoint is simply not intellectually consistent.  Maybe some miracle stories could be excised from the Bible without doing damage to the overarching narrative, but the resurrection of Jesus is not one of them.  The New Testament asserts that Jesus’ resurrection is foundational to the “Christian story” as a fact that took place within space-time.  As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:14-19:

14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.  15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.  16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: 17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.  18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.  19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

Although Louis has asserted that there was a unity of quality in ancient thought between “natural” and “supernatural” and that modernity makes a much sharper distinction between them; nevertheless, it is chronological snobbery to think that all ancients were gullible rubes and all moderns are skeptical sophisticates.  The ancients weren’t stupid; they knew very well dead men stay dead.  In fact, they’re experience with death was probably more explicit than your average modern American.  And as far as Bultmann and the myth-dispelling power of modern technology, I think frequent commenter Robert F put it very well in a comment in last week’s post:

 I continue to disagree with the idea you present in this comment, and have in previous ones, that there is a marked distinction between ancient and modern modes of consciousness. It reminds me of Bultmann’s contention in the first half of the twentieth century that, in the era of electricity and the radio, it is impossible for “modern man” to believe in angels, demons, miracles, or the two-story universe. Yet, despite your and Bultmann’s contention, and even apart from Christianity, many people throughout the world and even in the secular West do believe in such things, even as they continue to turn on the radio and operate highly sophisticated communication technology as a matter of routine: they believe in angels, demons, miracles, reiki, horoscope, reincarnation, karma, astral projection, ritual magic, spirit guides, prayer, you name it, they believe in it, and simultaneously have real if rudimentary belief in laws of nature. Sometimes they even believe that the rules of their own particular metaphysical beliefs are correlative on the “spiritual plane” with scientific laws on the material one. Such beliefs are in fact as widespread now as at any time in history, and exist quite nicely beside acceptance of the validity of science.

Louis tries to take a closer analytical look at some basic presuppositions and quotes Polkinghorne:

If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points: either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world.

To judge those presuppositions we have to see where the worldview so constructed is going to take us as we consider, “what kind of sense does it make of experience, morality, truth, beauty, and our place in the world?”  He returns to the tapestry analogy and asks, “does our tapestry possess those qualities of coherence and (surprising) fruitfulness that characterize the best scientific tapestries?”

As David Bentley Hart said, “the question of being cannot be answered by a theory that applies only to physical realities” (The Experience of God, Being, Consciousness, Bliss, Yale University Press, 2013).  A tapestry woven of only the “brute facts of nature” is unable to be both rigorous and rich enough to make sufficient sense of the world.  But if you start by assuming a divine will and purpose you can construct a much more compelling tapestry that incorporates all of the threads of human existence.  Within a purposeful world, the case for Christianity is much more persuasive.  Louis quotes C. S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen-not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.

Louis says, “It is the sum total of all those arguments that convinces me of the veracity of biblical miracles.”  He then finishes with the analogy of the master artist or composer.  The master follows the rules, but now and then you see the rule broken, but always in a way that illuminates the whole and makes the whole painting or musical composition that much more complete and satisfying.  He quotes Colin Humphreys:

If he is a great composer, the accidentals will never be used capriciously: they will always make better music. It is the accidentals which contribute to making the piece of music great. The analogy with how God operates is clear: God created and upholds the universe but, like the great composer, he is free to override his own rules. However, if he is a consistent God, it must make more sense than less for him to override his rules.

I think that is the best argument that can be made.

More Quotes that Have My Attention Recently

Waiting for an answer to prayer from the Ice Cube God

Some recent quotes that got my attention…

Over the last few years I have to say that I have become less than convinced that the Bible intends, anywhere, to portray the origin of sin. We don’t know why, for example, the snake is in the garden trying to corrupt Eve and thus Adam also. Rebellion began before Adam. That sin enters the human line with an original pair simply doesn’t seem to be the point in either the Old or New Testaments. On the other hand, the Bible clearly portrays the universal impact of sin and the places the blame firmly on mankind as a species, as communities, and as individuals. Rebellion is the point. We are formed to need God, to be in fellowship with God. But this relationship, like our other relationships, is broken. Broken by us, not by God. Broken time and time again.

• • •

Another staggering mishandling of Scripture occurs when Piper claims that the household codes of the New Testament, wherein the biblical writers urge wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to love their wives, are unique to the Bible and that “there’s nothing like it in any culture in the world.” This is categorically untrue. In fact, the authors of those New Testament texts were undoubtedly drawing from very similar instructions written by Aristotle, Philo and Josephus, known well throughout the Greco-Roman world.  What makes the household codes of the New Testament different is not that they reinforce the patriarchal ordering of a household, but that they point to the humility of Jesus as the model for every relationship, inviting the first Christians—a strange mix of Jews and gentiles, masters and slaves, husbands and wives and widows and orphans—to look beyond cultural status to a better Kingdom in which “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

• Rachel Held Evans, responding to John Piper

• • •

In short, our need for a tribe isn’t about reducing loneliness, about how nice it would be to have a few friends over for dinner tonight. Tribes run deep into the human psyche. Tribes are integral to human flourishing. Tribes help us carry our suffering and pain, and they give us a sense of shared purpose and meaning.

Tribes give us a home.

And this, I would argue, is the deep source of post-evangelical nostalgia. They have memories of being a part of a tribe.

Yes, tribes create tribalism, and there are toxic, dysfunction, and abusive tribes. But without a tribe there is listlessness, loneliness, and pain.

• Richard Beck

• • •

On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination…

King was the chief apostle for that idea, which is the reason we honor him with a place on the Mall. But he knew that he would not live to see the Promised Land.

He also knew, as Jefferson and Lincoln knew, that the upward arc of the moral universe was constantly being pulled back to earth by the gravitational force of racism. Every step forward produces progress that generates a backlash.

• Joseph J. Ellis

• • •

A few of the many (64) reasons you always proofread the bulletin…

  • From the Apostles’ Creed: “…born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Panties Pilate…”
  • Sermon… “Why Adultery” Last hymn… “Why Not Tonight”
  • “For ours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.”
  • “Hymns in the Park! Come prepared to sin!”
  • Entered “Panis Angelicus” as prelude. Secretary accidentally changed first “a” to an “e”.
  • In another bulletin some years ago the word “Whitsunday” had the capital W replaced with a capital S.
  • “Anus Dei”
  • “I am the alfalfa and the omega”
  • The week before Daylight Savings Time was to start, the biggest church in our town put a reminder in the bulletin to “set your clocks forward next Sunday.” Only they left the L out of “clocks.”
  • “I upped my tithe this year. Up yours.”

• Jonathan Aigner

• • •

Perhaps the most striking thing about human beings is that we don’t actually come into existence by ourselves. There are parents (two of them when the laws of biology are allowed to work). The parents themselves are points of contact to a much larger world of the family and the culture itself. Human beings do not come without cultures. In a relatively short time, we acquire language and a host of other things from this culture around us. Concepts, beliefs, understandings will all be engaged only in a cultural context. There is something individual about us, but mostly in the abstract. It is not just other humans that we need: we cannot exist without bacteria. We have more of them in our gut than the number of cells in our bodies. We do not exist alone. In the story of our creation, we were told, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” And so we are “male and female.” How is it that our lives exist only in such a shared manner and yet many want to image that our salvation is entirely individual?

No one is saved as an individual.

• Fr. Stephen Freeman

Mike Bell: Canadian Office reopens with a Waterfall Tour!


Over the years interacting on Internet Monk, Klasie Kraalogies and I have become quite good friends. We both have lived in Southern Africa and Saskatchewan, love rocks, and like to hang out at Internet Monk. Klasie still lives in Southern Saskatchewan. Google “Southern Saskatchewan Waterfall”. Yes, there are no results! When I heard that we was coming for a conference in my area, I decided to take him for a waterfall hike/drive through some of more interesting waterfalls in my part of the city.

One of Hamilton’s best kept secrets until recently has been its waterfalls. Geologically Hamilton, and in particular the part of Hamilton where I live, the Dundas valley, is surrounded on three sides by the Niagara Escarpment. It is a beautiful area of hills, outcroppings, ravines and forest, and is known for inspiring the hymn “This is my Father’s world”. Whenever a stream, or river crosses the escarpment, you get a waterfall. The escarpment’s most famous one of course is Niagara Falls, but in Hamilton alone there are over 100 named waterfalls!

My plan was that I would pick Klasie up at the Toronto airport at 11:30 a.m., drive 45 minutes to Hamilton, have lunch, tour waterfalls, and then drop him off at the train station just outside Hamilton by 3:45 p.m. Total waterfall viewing time would be just over three hours. My initial goal was six waterfalls. I expanded that to ten. We settled on eight waterfalls plus a hike to a restored ruins.

Lunch was at the iconic Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons was founded in Hamilton in 1964 by Ron Joyce and hockey player Tim Horton. (Tim died in a car crash in 1974). Hamilton was very much a blue collar town at the time, and Tim Hortons built a reputation as the coffee shop for the everyday Canadian. (Its reputation has been sullied recently by its now Brazilian owners, not properly recognizing that, and not treating workers fairly during a minimum wage hike, but that is very much a different topic.)

All the waterfalls we visited were within a 10 minute drive from my house! Hopefully you will get a real sense from these pictures of the beauty of the area.

The first waterfall was just three minutes from the restaurant. Tiffany Falls (9 minutes from home) is one of the prettiest waterfalls in Hamilton. It is just a 250 yard walk from the parking lot to the base of the falls. We had a snowfall a few days prior, so the trail was VERY icy. The falls looks deceptively small in this picture, but it is 69 feet from base to top. In the winter it is a popular ice climbing destination.

Klasie has a liking for lichen, so was stopping to take photos along the way.

Our next stop, just a few minutes away was Mills Falls (8 minutes from home). This waterfall has been the location of four different saw and grist mills for over 200 years. (The first three were destroyed by fire.) The last one built in 1863, was converted into a restaurant in 1979 and now has a reputation for being one of the finest restaurants in the area. The waterfall runs through the middle of the restaurant! One of the original mill’s claim to fame was that it was used as a jail to hold traitors in the war of 1812. Fifteen were sentenced to death, eight of these were hung, and had their heads chopped off and displayed on poles in an event that became known as the Bloody Assize of 1814. As (For those not familiar with their history the outcome of the war was that the area that is now Canada remained in the control of the British.)

We then descended to the bottom of the escarpment, Sherman falls is just 650 yards away, but is located on a different creek! There Klasie took this picture of me that I now use as my facebook profile.

I think the falls is a little nicer in focus! It is 55 feet high, so just a little shorter than Tiffany falls.

Our next step was the thirteen foot high Hermitage Cascade, a seven minute drive away. Had a large tree not just fallen in front of the falls, it would have looked like this (picture not mine).

The waterfall was the site of a suicide in the 1830s, the result of a banned relationship between a servant and a niece of the landowner. The body was interred at the closest crossroads, and the street is known to this day as “Lover’s Lane.”

The house on the property, nicknamed the Hermitage, was acquired by the Leith family in 1853, but was destroyed by fire in 1934. Restoration attempts have been made over the years to preserve the ruins, with the most successful being completed just last year. Klasie and I hiked up to the house and took the opportunity to take some photos.

Klasie lent me his camera to take a picture, which he later sent to me. I hope work goes well for him so he can afford a colour camera! I should mention that it was at that moment that I dropped my phone without realizing it. It was found by a five year old whose family lived half an hour away. I was able to recover it later that evening. As a result however, all the remaining pictures are strictly from Klasie’s camera.

“The Hermitage” is on one of my favourite trails, the 2 mile main loop, that takes is a wide variety of scenic vistas. There are about 25 miles of marked trails in the valley, with about an equal number of unmarked trails.

From the Hermitage we took a short drive to downtown Dundas which is overshadowed by the Dundas Peak. It is a popular hiking destination from Tews Falls (coming up). Note the people at the top of the peak to get an idea of scale. You can see my house from the top of peak! From where this picture was taken I am just three minutes from home.

Just one city block away from where this picture was taken was our next waterfalls. Dundas Falls is a leftover from when Dundas was an industrial powerhouse. In the 1800s water meant power, and as you can tell from these pictures, the area had lots of power sources. This falls was the site of a paper mill until 1929, when the mill was torn down to provide space for a high school. The high school was converted into luxury condos just a few years ago, and the falls runs past it on the left.

We continued up the road that ran by Dundas Falls, and stopped briefly to take some pictures at the top of the hill. Way off in the distance you can see downtown Hamilton along with just a sliver of Lake Ontario.

At this point we were only about half a mile from the Darnley Cascade, which I had originally planned to see, but we were starting to run short on time, and there were more impressive waterfalls up ahead.

Just a few blocks away from the previous vista was Webster’s Falls (10 minutes from home). The falls and its surrounding park have become a popular tourist destination in recent years, so much so that access has to be restricted in the summer months. We were able to park right at the falls to grab some quick photos.

This is a waterfall that changes its personality based on the waterflow and time of year. One of my favourite hikes is into the bottom of the falls. The area is absolutely gorgeous in the autumn, especially in the weeks around Canadian thanksgiving. More on that later.

Another of my favourite hikes is the hike from Webster’s Falls to Tews Falls and out to Dundas Peak. The trail is temporarily closed between the two falls, but we were able to drive right up to Tews Falls (9 minutes from home) to take some pictures. Note the large block of ice at the bottom of the falls, the remnant of a cold winter.

Tews Falls is the tallest falls in Hamilton at 135 feet in height. As such it is just shorter than Niagara Falls. The size of the gorge indicates that this would have been a much more significant falls at some point in its geological history.

The last falls of the day that we had time for was the 49 feet tall Borer’s Falls (9 minutes from home). While some of the other falls have become tourist attractions, Borer’s Falls does not even have a parking lot, and so we pulled off on the side of the road to take a look. I am friends with the Borer family who ran a sawmill on this site for over a century. It too is a popular ice climbing destination in the winter when it freezes over.

It was now 3:30 and Klasie had to be on his train by 4:00. We were about 13 minutes from the train station, 20 minutes if we stopped to see one final waterfall, Smokey Hollow Falls. I decided that would be cutting things a little too tight, so we headed off to the train station where we said our final goodbyes.

There were a number of other waterfalls and vistas within a few hundred yards of our tour. Some we did not have time to see, others were not accessible at this time of year. I will give you and Klasie a sneak peek in my next post as he has already promised to come back and do some more touring.

As noted above, the Canadian Office has reopened! I hope to be contributing more to Internet Monk in the coming months sharing some stories with a Canadian perspective. I already have a few more posts in the works, so stay tuned.

Friends Without Benefits

Even “egalitarian” evangelicals can’t seem to shake off their fundamental discomfort with sexuality and how it impacts male/female relationships outside of marriage.

In his insightful response to the recent revelations that egalitarian extraordinaire Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church might have behaved inappropriately with female colleagues, flirting and displaying affection with women not his wife, initiating intimate moments with women in hotels and on business trips, Dan J. Brennan puts it out there plainly — even those evangelicals who espouse that there is “no male or female in Christ” are often pretty clueless about sex and the power dynamics involved in it, and have little idea how to construct close friendships and partnerships between males and females without ongoing sexual tension.

One of the fallouts of the Willow Creek smackdown between Hybels vs Beach/Ortbergs is that a gift-based egalitarian model has not adequately challenged the high anxiety for male leaders to surrender power in one-on-one relationships between men and women. In the egalitarian conversation, there is this huge blindspot or weakness when you have so many egalitarian male leaders who can only speak about this in theory or about a few occasions.

Brennan writes out of personal experience in discovering this blindspot.

I was in for a big surprise when I started to go public about my friendships with women a little over ten years ago. I thought evangelical egalitarians would enthusiastically see all the benefits of intentional spiritual friendships out in the open. It was quite a jolt to me when I began to run into skeptical egalitarians.

To say I encountered spiritual anxiety among these unconvinced Christians would be an understatement. It was not that they were opposed to cross-sex friendships. They had plenty of opposite-sex friends.

What, then, were they anxious about? It soon became clear to me: my intention to practice dyadic opposite-sex friendships before a watching world. They were highly anxious in men and women sharing authentic power and risk in one-on-one relationships with no one else around. Friendship was not foundational to any Willow Creek model. It was not even up there on the high priority list.

Dan Brennan goes on to mention that Christian leaders I admire, such as Scot McKnight and David Fitch, have advocated strongly for women in ministry and leadership, but have still advanced an egalitarian model that seems to have no room for close friendships between men and women who are not married. The specter of sexual temptation erects boundaries even when people are strongly committed to gender equality based on the mutual giftedness of men and women. Close friendships are not even on the radar.

Men, in particular, if the Hybels example holds up, have a hard time giving up an ingrained sense of power and privilege over women when it comes to sex. How else can one explain a man who was able to strongly advocate gender equality and to work with colleagues so well for years turning around and inviting some of them to join him in his hotel room or into settings which can only be described as “romantic”?

Where’s any sense of egalitarianism in that? That is not the mentality of mutual respect. Rather, it exhibits the sense that I, as a male, have the right to exert my will toward women for my own ends. There is no sharing of power here. There is no equality, no matter my theological position. You, a woman, can be my friend, but I reserve the right to ask for “benefits” if I feel the impulse.

Spiritual intimacy (shared power and vulnerability) between a male leader and a female leader alone is unheard of in the Willow Creek model. It’s not addressed or encouraged in any of these blogs, articles, and books by people shaped by this egalitarianism. In this model, it is giftedness that is at the heart of egalitarianism, not friendship.

In the gifted model a man is never confronted to be attentive to shared power in one-on-one relationships when one else is around.

In a 2014 article by Ty Grigg at MissioAlliance, the author reminds us that egalitarians are not suggesting we erase all boundaries. Instead, he encourages us to learn to view one another and the wisdom of appropriate boundaries through a different lens.

Grigg is writing about those on the other end of the evangelical spectrum, who think having “rules” (like the so-called “Billy Graham Rule”) should guide us in our relationships between men and women. However, as he observes, rules like this do not build trust or help us cultivate wisdom and true mutuality between men and women.

Boundaries in any relationship are essential. But when the boundaries become the focus, the relationship turns into an abstraction. We dehumanize the other gender to protect the boundary. Fear based boundaries, like the Billy Graham rule, block out mutual trust. Building trust requires hundreds of small positive interactions. When you take away those interactions, trust has no way to progress healthily. Where there is little trust, fear and suspicion grows. Where trust is lacking, there can be no real relationship or ministry.

As a male pastor, I communicate fear when I tell a woman to leave the door open when she comes in to my office. I communicate fear when I tell a woman that we cannot meet because there are not enough other people around. I communicate fear when I say we have to take separate cars. Pastors sacrifice their call to pastor the other gender on the altar of rule-keeping and appearance-managing and holy code-checklisting. This sounds more like the Pharisees than Jesus.

Rather than erecting boundaries by establishing rules, Grigg suggests that we follow Jesus in choosing boundaries that are based on hospitality.

Hospitality is concerned with the physical and emotional elements that make a space safe.  The focus is not on the host’s needs but on what makes the guest feel safe and at ease.

…For example, I would not meet another woman in my bedroom, because that space is dripping with the intimacy of life with my wife and the privacy of where I sleep at night.  Nobody would feel comfortable meeting in there.  I would not have a candlelit dinner alone with a woman at a nice restaurant, not because it’s breaking a rule, but because it feels inhospitable.  The space would be working against us, not for us.

He reminds us that Jesus broke all kinds of gender-based intimacy codes in his own day — meeting with the Samaritan woman by himself, allowing “fallen” women to touch and exhibit love in public toward him, even appearing to Mary alone in the garden after the resurrection. Women traveled with Jesus and the disciples and supported him financially, making them part of his inner circle of associates. To the Pharisees and others, this must have seemed utterly compromising and morally dangerous.

In our sexualized society, it is easy to understand why some people might want to erect strong, rule-based boundaries about cross-sex relationships. I have news for you. Those boundaries haven’t stopped or even slowed down immoral behavior, and if I read Paul correctly, trying to control sin by implementing law only exacerbates the problem (Romans 7).

I believe God calls us to maturity and wisdom in all of our relationships. I have long been “egalitarian” in my theological position (I’d rather say I believe in full partnership and mutuality between men and women). But this article has caused me to question a huge blindspot in egalitarian teaching and practice.

We have not truly learned to welcome each other, live with each other, and serve one another as true brothers and sisters until we can learn to be friends. Without benefits.

Easter 2018: Thank God for the Gospel of Mark

Easter 2018
Sermon: Thank God for the Gospel of Mark

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

• Mark 16:1-8

The Lord be with you.

Thank God for the Gospel of Mark.

Thank God for a Gospel written to Christians in Rome who were under intense persecution. Though they trusted in Jesus and tried to follow him, they lived in fear and struggled in their faith. The Gospel of Mark helped them by allowing them to identify with Jesus’ first disciples.

  • Like Jesus’ disciples, I can imagine that some of them might have struggled to understand that following Jesus means taking the way of the cross.
  • Like Peter, I can imagine that some of them might have been tempted to deny Jesus at moments of great crisis.
  • Like the young man in the Garden of Gethsemane, I can imagine that some of of them might have been ashamed of running away rather than standing with Jesus in times of great testing.
  • Like the father in the story of the young boy overcome by evil spirits, I can imagine many of them crying out for Jesus to help them, saying “I believe; but help my unbelief!”
  • Like blind Bartimeus, I can imagine that they felt impoverished and marginalized, and all they could do was cry out to Jesus to help them in their time of need.

And like these women who came to the tomb, who had seen Jesus crucified, who had laid his body in the tomb, I can imagine that the first readers of this Gospel found it wildly impossible to grasp that Jesus was alive and with them in their circumstances of fear and confusion.

Mark’s Gospel is the only one of the four Gospels that does not record an appearance of the risen Christ. Instead it ends with today’s text, which describes…

  • an empty tomb,
  • an angel of God announcing the Good News that Jesus has been raised from the dead,
  • a promise that Jesus has gone before them and will meet them as he promised,
  • a word of instruction that these women go and tell his disciples the Good News,
  • and a description of these women, overcome with awe and amazement, unable at first to speak about the unimaginable, incredible Good News they’ve heard.

Thank God for the Gospel of Mark and its story of the resurrection, because I find it to be the most down-to-earth account of Easter morning. It is the most realistic portrayal, the account that is most sympathetic to our human nature and experience.

Mark knows that this Good News is almost too good to be true. It’s too much to take in in a single moment. It announces something so outside the bounds of what we could ever dream up. And, coming on the heels of the crucifixion — which was another absolute shocker to those who followed Jesus — these women must have felt like they just got sucker-punched twice. They must have been so stunned, so dazed, so completely incapable of taking this in.

Thank God for the Gospel of Mark and its frank description of what it’s like to follow Jesus. All throughout this Gospel, the disciples always seem to be a few steps behind. They don’t quite get the teaching. They ask dumb questions. They do dumb things, like shoo children away from Jesus and argue about who’s going to get the best seat in the coming kingdom. They focus on all the wrong things. Once in awhile the light breaks through, but most of the time they’re rather clueless.

Yet, Jesus stays with them. Jesus keeps them at his side. Jesus patiently teaches them and gives them remedial lessons when they need it. He confronts what they’re doing and then tells them why it’s not compatible with the values of God’s kingdom. He points out examples of faith to help them see what it means to trust him. He continually reminds them of the way of the cross and urges them to prepare for the troubles to come. Jesus loves them with a persevering love. He never gives up on them, never abandons them, never considers them lost causes.

Does this all sound familiar? It should, because it’s the story of OUR journey too. Even on Easter Sunday, when we’re all dressed up and gathered among the lilies, singing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” and sharing special meals and fellowship with our families and fellow believers, we mustn’t forget that we are a lot like these disciples. Faith isn’t easy. The journey can be a struggle.

And that’s true of Easter too! If we were to stop and seriously think about that first Easter morning and what a shock it was, what an incomprehensible stunner it was, I think we’d not be so quick to say “He is risen indeed!” We might all be like these women, these lovely, faithful women who loved Jesus so much.

When they came to the tomb, they were utterly gobsmacked to see a stone rolled away, to meet a messenger from God, to hear that the Jesus they just watched being executed was alive again, that they were supposed to go meet him, and that they needed to go tell the other disciples. Our text says they witnessed all of this and then ran for their lives! As Mark puts it, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Thank God for a Gospel that tells it like it is for ordinary human beings to truly encounter God.

Thank God that it gives room for “terror and amazement,” for being stunned by inexplicable news of a man raised from the dead, for people who are not ready to jump in to the Easter Parade right away but who first run lickety-split away from that tomb like they’ve seen a ghost.

Thank God for a Gospel that doesn’t criticize them for being human as they tried to take it all in.

Thank God for being patient with these women, for giving them time to begin to process this.

And thank God for challenging us to do the same. We’re not here today just because it’s a special holiday on the annual calendar. We’re here because something happened in human history on a Sunday morning long ago that is still utterly impossible to fathom. Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant rabbi in Israel, was executed as a criminal and buried. Then he rose again from the dead. Rose from the dead. That’s right, I said rose from the dead. Not resuscitated. Not brought back by CPR and placed on a ventilator in the hospital. But raised up in a new and eternal body as Lord of all.

If that doesn’t shake my world, I don’t know what will. If that doesn’t grab me with awe and amazement, indeed, if that doesn’t scare the wits out of me, then I’m not really getting it. If I ever simply take this for granted, if I can’t feel this in my gut, if it doesn’t take my breath away, if I lose the wonder and utter impossibility of this, then I’m just playing church.

God doesn’t want any of us to do that.

That’s why he gave us a resurrection story like the one here in the Gospel of Mark. “…they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Thank God.

Holy Saturday: Today Hades Groans

The Entombment. Caravaggio

Holy Saturday

Today Hades tearfully sighs: “Would that I had not received him who was born of Mary, for he came to me and destroyed my power; he broke my bronze gates, and being God, delivered the souls I had been holding captive.”

O Lord, glory to your cross and to your holy resurrection!

Today Hades groans: “My power has vanished. I received one who died as mortals die, but I could not hold him; with him and through him I lost those over which I had ruled. I had held control over the dead since the world began, and lo, he raises them all up with him!”

O Lord, glory to your cross and to your holy resurrection!

• Holy Saturday Orthodox Liturgy
A Triduum Sourcebook, p. 66

 

As the proper response on Holy Saturday is silence, no comments will be taken today.