The Internet Monk Archives

Civil Religion Series: The Nations as “Babylon”

But the Bible is a profoundly political book in this fundamental sense: It describes a struggle between two kingdoms, the kingdom of God on the one hand and the nations on the other.

• Richard Hughes

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Civil Religion, part three
The Nations as “Babylon”

Presidential election years in the U.S. provide American Christians an opportunity to reflect upon our faith and how it applies to our lives as citizens and to the public issues that affect us all. We are taking many Tuesdays throughout 2016 to discuss matters like these. We will look at material from three books, the first of which is Richard Hughes’s Christian America and the Kingdom of God.

Hughes thinks “the Kingdom of God” is the primary metaphor we must consider in scripture when thinking about the nations and their relationship to God’s rule on earth. He traces the continuity of this theme from the days of Samuel, the first prophet, under whose ministry Israel became a kingdom, to the prophets of Israel, through Jesus, Paul, and the book of Revelation. As he does, he makes several pertinent points:

…the biblical vision of the kingdom of God stands in radical opposition to the traditional understanding of Christian America. (p. 31)

The kingdom of God . . . and the nations of the earth . . . embody radically different values and reflect radically different orders of reality. The kingdom of God relies on the power of self-giving love while nations— even so-called “Christian” nations— rely on the power of coercion and the sword. For that reason, nations— even “Christian” nations— inevitably go to war against their enemies while the kingdom of God has no enemies at all. The kingdom of God is universal and those who promote that kingdom care deeply for every human being in every corner of the globe, regardless of race or nationality. But earthly nations— even so-called “Christian” nations— embrace values that are inevitably nationalistic and tribal, caring especially for the welfare of those within their borders. And while the kingdom of God exalts the poor, the disenfranchised, and the dispossessed, earthly nations inevitably exalt the rich and powerful and hold them up as models to be emulated. In fact, in the context of earthly nations— even so-called “Christian” nations— the poor seldom count for much at all. (p. 31)

As we begin to examine the biblical concept of the kingdom of God, we shall see time and again that it heralds a world marked by two primary attributes: (1) equity and justice for all human beings, especially the poor, the marginalized, and the dispossessed, and (2) a world governed by peace and goodwill for all human beings. (p. 32)

The biblical vision of the kingdom of God is a subversive and countercultural vision, standing in radical opposition to empires, kingdoms, and nations that build their wealth and power on the backs of the poor and maintain their standing in the world through violence, war, injustice, and oppression. (p. 32f)

The Hebrew prophets consistently portrayed the kingdom of God as a radical alternative to politics as usual— to peace and prosperity maintained through war, violence, and oppression. For the most part, they portrayed the kingdom of God as an alternative to conventional politics within their own nation. (p. 48)

At the beginning of Israel’s kingdom, Samuel warned the people that “having a king like all the other nations” would introduce values and practices contrary to the rule of God over them as a people.

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1Sam. 8:10-18, ESV)

As Walter Brueggemann wrote about what developed under David and Solomon, “While the shift had no doubt begun and been encouraged by David, . . . the entire program of Solomon now appears to have been a self-serving achievement with its sole purpose the self-securing of king and dynasty.” Even the most benevolent of human governments must ultimately rule out of self-interest and by means of power and coercion.

In a section entitled, “The Kingdom of God in Scripture and Its Meaning for the United States,” Richard Hughes ends his biblical survey by taking us to the book of Revelation and suggesting that “its central theme simply extends and elaborates a motif that dominates the entire [Bible]— the struggle between empire and the kingdom of God, waged on behalf of the poor and oppressed of every nation and every age.”

He focuses on William Stringfellow’s interpretation of Revelation. Stringfellow was a most interesting fellow. He came through the liberal, social gospel tradition and was an activist with regard to civil rights and the Viet Nam War. But he was devoted to scripture as his source of truth and, to some, almost a fundamentalist when it came to his insistence that Christians must find their teachings and values in a plain sense reading and thoughtful application of the Bible. And he believed that Revelation was a thoroughly political book, written to describe the struggle between God’s Kingdom and the kingdoms of this world.

When looking through that lens, he understood “Babylon” as “a symbol for any and every nation that seeks to usurp the role and power of God and, in that way, seeks to determine who shall live and who shall die, and for what reasons.” (p. 99f) National loyalty becomes a citizen’s ultimate loyalty, and giving one’s life for the sake of the nation the ultimate sacrifice.

He also argued that “Babylon symbolizes nations that imagine that they alone control the course of human history.” (p. 100) Nations maintain a sense of moral arrogance by which they judge what is right and just in the world, and seek to control events so as to further those values. On earth, the nation holds the keys to life and death and uses them to advance its causes.

Stringfellow suggested, thirdly, that the practice of deceit is central to the metaphor of Babylon. Truth becomes “usurped and displaced by a self-serving version of events or facts, with whatever selectivity, distortion, falsehood, manipulation, exaggeration, evasion, [or] concoction necessary to maintain the image or enhance the survival or multiply the coercive capacities of the principality.” (p. 100f)

So here are my questions…

Was William Stringfellow right?

Are even the best and most benevolent of nations subject to assuming the character of Babylon?

What about the United States of America? Is there something uniquely different about the U.S.A. (as, it seems, those who speak of “American exceptionalism” assume) that protects us from functioning with the ethos and tools of Babylon?

How is a Christian citizen with the opportunities that come in a democratic republic like the U.S. to think about all this and our responsibility to follow Jesus in our nation?

Mondays with Michael Spencer: February 29, 2016

On Mondays we’ve been looking at several things that Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, wrote on the subject of preaching. Today, here is an excerpt from a post in which Michael describes an experience that confirmed what he wrote in a classic article called, On Christless Preaching, and gave him further reason for staying on the post-evangelical path.

Past posts:
• Part 1: The sermon’s too long
• Part 2: The sermon’s boring
• Part 3: The sermon — I don’t understand it
• Part 4: The sermon — it isn’t practical
• Part 5: The sermon — More stories please!
• Part 6: The sermon in the Evangelical Liturgy

• • •

The Sermon that Needs No Jesus

Recently I was traveling to a conference with a friend, and I listened to a sermon. Preached by a Christian, a Baptist, a minister at a church, a graduate of a Christian school training ministers to serve and communicate Jesus.

This preacher gave a message that he had worked hard to prepare; a message he had presented before. A message he deeply believed in.

It was a message well organized, passionately delivered and completely sincere. It was a message with an application about having a purpose in living that many people need to hear.

So why am I writing about that sermon? Did it change my life?

I’m writing about that sermon because it was a perfect illustration of Christless preaching.

There was not a single mention of Jesus. Not once. Not in any way. Nowhere.

It was as if Jesus had never been born. It was as if Jesus never existed.

Jesus made no difference, made no contribution, determined no truth, solved no problem, offered no hope, performed no miracle, never interceded, never atoned, never taught, never lived the truth. Jesus made no claims, offered no invitations, defined no choices.

In fairness, the sermon was on an older testament story, but I am holding the preacher responsible for somehow preaching a Christian sermon, not a motivational talk. Christian preaching, no matter where it comes from, is necessarily oriented to the person, work and gospel of Jesus Christ in some way.

This was a talk about human motivation, with no more salvation than knowing God wanted you to change your own life, find a purpose and accomplish more in the future than you did in the past.

In short, here’s what we heard:

Your big problem is that you are not doing much with your life.
What you need is a passion for what you can do with your life.
God wants you to trust him so that you’ll have a dream and a purpose.
The story of Joshua illustrates this.
And the premise: I’m going to tell you how to have a great life.

“Great life?” Sound familiar, anyone? Think “blinking teeth.” Think “Best Life Now.” Think “Becoming a Better You.”

People ask me all the time why I call myself post-evangelical. Reformed watchbloggers routinely refer to the term “post-evangelical” with contempt. Many others seem to prefer some other term to more accurately map themselves on the journey of faith. Are critics of the term “post-evangelical” paying any attention to evangelicals?

Let me suggest that if the sermon I heard represents what we have to look forward to in evangelicalism, then being post-evangelical means that Jesus matters, the Gospel is the Biblical good news and faithfulness to either requires an intentional removal from what is happening in evangelicalism. Post-evangelicalism is a place to stand in the midsts of a tide that has washed everything out and left the flotsam and jetsam of a crumbling, degraded culture on the beaches of a vacillating, deluded church.

When a preacher can stand in the pulpit, hold the Bible, represent a significant church and the training of a major school, claim to expound the meaning of the Bible and never even once mention Jesus or the Christian good news at all, there is something monumentally wrong at work.

“Houston, we have a problem….Jesus has left the sermon.”

Lent III: Richard Rohr on Merton and a Life of Contradictions

Lent III
Richard Rohr on Merton and a Life of Contradictions

On Sundays in Lent this year I’m sharing some things I’ve been learning from Richard Rohr.

Lent (Spring) is such a time of contradictions! Yesterday we were in northern Indiana, where a foot of snow had fallen a few days before. Large piles of plowed snow along the edges of the road framed our journey. Snowmen were standing tall in suburban yards. Snow still blanketed the sides of the trees in the woods where it had blown during the blizzard.

And yet it was over fifty degrees outside, with a bright sun shining and crystal blue skies. We felt warm. Entire yards and fields exposed to the sun all day were now bereft of snow, except in patches, and the mud and grass and plants formed a patchwork of colors and textures.

Spring is the in-between time, when we don’t always know what to expect and don’t always know how to dress. Frankly, we only tolerate it because it sparks a sense of hope. We know we are in a transition, a season that points beyond itself to fertile days ahead.

Today, Richard Rohr has a few thoughts on Thomas Merton’s perspective on the contradictions in our lives.

I believe Thomas Merton is one of the most significant American Catholics of the twentieth century. His whole life is a parable and a paradox, as are all of our lives. Merton wrote, “I have had to accept the fact that my life is almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn gradually to get along without apologizing for the fact, even to myself. . . . It is in the paradox itself, the paradox which was and still is a source of insecurity, that I have come to find the greatest security.”

I’m convinced that is the very meaning of faith. Faith is agreeing to live without full resolution. Both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures make that very clear. We are often called to walk in darkness, where God leads us to that next step which is usually not clear, predictable, or controllable by the rational mind.

“I have become convinced,” Merton goes on to write, “that the very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God’s mercy to me: if only because someone so complicated and so prone to confusion and self-defeat could hardly survive for long without special mercy.”

Messy spring.

Messy life.

Merciful God.

Saturday Ramblings: February 27, 2016

f71e42cd1484549c9b087cc4aaff4abb — 1950 Nash Rambler Airflyte Convertible Landau

February has been a traditional month for auto shows and car shopping. Wouldn’t it be great if you could walk into a showroom today and buy one of these beauties?

We’ll have to settle for rambling ’round the internet today, but as we do I’ll be imagining myself in this brilliant blue Landau, top down, wind in my face, cogitatin’ on my philosophy of life as the countryside flies by. It’s a thoughtful time of the year, and today Charlie Brown will help us think together about the meaning of life.

Whatever it is, I hope it has a 1950 Nash Rambler Airflyte Convertible Landau waiting for me!

SBC missions cuts. The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention announced that 983 missionaries and 149 US staff have accepted the IMB’s offer of voluntary early retirement or resignation, cutting their missions force to 1993 levels.

This is more severe than president David Platt had predicted back in November, when the mission’s cost-saving decisions led CT to question whether or not this might signal the imminent end of the traditional model of the full-time missionary.

Platt, however, sees this as a temporary measure that will make the SBC mission force even stronger in the future. “The stage is now set financially, organizationally and spiritually for IMB to work with Southern Baptist churches to create exponentially more opportunities for disciple making and church planting among unreached peoples around the world,” stated Platt in IMB’s press release. “IMB is committed to a future marked by faithful stewardship, operational excellence, wise evaluation, ongoing innovation and joyful devotion to making disciples and multiplying churches among the unreached.”

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Super Bloom in Death Valley. According to a recent release by the National Park Service, the desert this year is blooming like a rose.

Their statement says: “There are unusually dense displays of wildflowers in several areas of Death Valley National Park. Triggered by a series of storms in October, the current flower display is the best the park has experienced in a decade.”

Death Valley is the hottest place on the planet, and only averages about two inches of rain each year. When the area does get more rain in cooler months some years, wildflower seeds sprout and may lay dormant for a long time, even years. When conditions become just right, they then bloom.

Some people are calling the current wildflower display a “super bloom.” The NPS statement quotes Park Ranger Alan Van Valkenburg, who has lived in Death Valley for 25 years. According to the ranger, “I’m not really sure where the term ‘super bloom’ originated, but when I first came to work here in the early 1990s I kept hearing the old timers talk about super blooms as a near mythical thing–the ultimate possibility of what a desert wildflower bloom could be. I saw several impressive displays of wildflowers over the years and always wondered how anything could beat them, until I saw my first super bloom in 1998. Then I understood. I never imagined that so much life could exist here in such staggering abundance and intense beauty.”

Park rangers are posting regular updates about wildflowers to www.nps.gov/deva and www.facebook.com/DeathValleyNP. Here is a video showing some of the astounding beauty.

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Challenger engineer fights guilt. NPR ran a poignant story about guilt and forgiveness this week.

Bob Ebeling, a former engineer for shuttle contractor Morton Thiokol had joined four colleagues on Jan. 27, 1986 to try and keep the Space Shuttle Challenger grounded. They argued for hours that the launch the next morning would be the coldest ever. Freezing temperatures, their data showed, stiffened rubber O-rings that keep burning rocket fuel from leaking out of the joints in the shuttle’s boosters.

However, NASA and Thiokol executives dismissed the data and ordered that the launch proceed. About a minute after liftoff, Challenger exploded in the sky, killing seven astronauts. The cause? Cold weather and O-ring failure.

For thirty years, Bob Ebeling has carried the guilt of what happened that morning.

“That was one of the mistakes God made,” Ebeling, now 89, told NPR’s Bob Berkes at his home in Brigham City, Utah. “He shouldn’t have picked me for that job. But next time I talk to him, I’m gonna ask him, ‘Why me? You picked a loser.’ “

An earlier NPR story about Ebeling and the guilt he feels inspired public radio listeners to flood the engineer’s home with emails and letters of encouragement. Over and over again people affirmed the good job he did in informing the decision-makers and trying to warn them off a launch.

But Bob Ebeling just couldn’t feel forgiven. No matter what anyone else said to him, he had never heard from his employers or supervisors affirming his work. His daughter Kathy noted that neither Thiokol nor NASA had contacted her dad since deep depression prompted his retirement shortly after the Challenger disaster. “He’s never gotten confirmation that he did do his job and he was a good worker and he told the truth,” Kathy said.

But then, because of the NPR stories, Ebeling heard from Allan McDonald, who was Ebeling’s boss at the time and a leader of the effort to postpone the launch. Then he received a phone call from Robert Lund, another key participant in the launch decision and Thiokol’s vice president for engineering at the time. Then, a note came from George Hardy, a deputy director of engineering at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, which supervised Thiokol’s production of the shuttle’s booster rockets. Finally, he heard from NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, a former astronaut.

NPR’s Berkes reports what these contacts have meant to Bob Ebeling:

Ebeling is now more buoyant than at any time I’ve seen or talked to him in the past 30 years. It’s been a rough three decades, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. He’s near the end of his predicted life expectancy for prostate cancer and has hospice care at home. He said he’ll pray for God’s assessment once our interview ends.

I asked him one more question. “What would you like to say to all the people who have written you?”

“Thank you,” he said. “You helped bring my worrisome mind to ease. You have to have an end to everything.”

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Boycott the “Worship Industry”? Jonathan Aigner says he will, and he encourages all of us to do so as well.

He’s had it with the church mimicking pop culture, letting money drive what churches sing, and falling into the trap of revering the celebrity “idols” it creates.

He believes the congregation’s voice should be front and center, not the praise band. He rejects the common acceptance of emotionalism through music as “worship.”

But he doesn’t think simply being a dissatisfied customer will change anything. So, Jonathan Aigner says:

…it’s time to speak up or move on. We must. Corporate worship is more important than programs for your family. It’s more important than your life group relationships. It’s theological at its very core, so the like-mindedness you sense may be shallower than you realize. We have to make ourselves heard. The industry’s chokehold is starving us of the vital nutrients we so desperately need, Word and Sacrament, and offering the empty carbs of commercial entertainment in its place. It’s killing us, and we’re consenting to the slow, agonizing death.

So I’m done with the worship industry. It’s not out of spite. It’s not out of false piety or sensationalism. It’s a matter of conscience. I can’t do it anymore.

I won’t buy their music. I won’t listen to their radio stations. I won’t go to their concerts. I won’t purchase their songbooks. I won’t attend or serve a church that does without speaking up.

So who’s with me?

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Today in music. Mark Knopfler is a musical hero of mine, a superb craftsman on the guitar and a painter of wonderful portraits in his songwriting.

The other night I watched a delightful Guitar Stories documentary on YouTube about Knopfler, organized around the six guitars that marked important transitions in his career.

The sixth and final guitar was handcrafted for Mark Knopfler by one of the world’s great luthiers, John Monteleone of Long Island.

In the documentary, the guitarist tells of communications he had from the guitar maker while his instrument was being crafted. Monteleone would end his notes with simple, quaint sayings: “The chisels are calling…” and “It’s time to make sawdust…” etc.

Knopfler ended up writing a delicate, captivating tribute to John Monteleone. Today’s video is a live performance of this song from 2009.

Another Look: Chris

The chaplain stood in front of Chris’s casket and nodded as mourners filed by. Glancing around, he saw a flower arrangement behind him with an interesting note on it: “From your friends at Green Lake Campground.” It was striking to him that owners of a campground would send such a lush bouquet and that it would be displayed so prominently, close to the casket.

Then again, as he was preparing for the service, the chaplain discovered that Chris and Peggy had spent twenty summers at Green Lake with their family and friends. It was as much their community as the neighborhood in which they lived. Most of the pictures pinned on the display boards around the funeral home showed them enjoying activities there. As their hospice chaplain, he hadn’t known them for long, and it was only after Chris’s death that he had learned about some of the activities that had shaped their lives over the years.

Just then, a man and woman passed by, extending their hands. “Hi, we’re Joe and Marie from Green Lake Campground. Thanks so much for the service today. Chris and Peggy have been good friends for many years.”

“I knew they enjoyed camping,” said the chaplain, “but I never knew how much until today. And you came! I’m sure it means the world to them.”

A few moments, later, another man shook his hand and introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Carl. I own the Country Kitchen restaurant on Jefferson Street.”

The chaplain recognized the restaurant. “I’ve heard a lot about you. It was important to Chris, even when it was difficult for him to get out, to try and go to lunch at your restaurant several times a week. You were like their extended family. They raved about how you treated them.”

The man wiped a tear from his eye and tried to say something, but the words didn’t come.

“Thanks for coming,” the chaplain said. “I know they appreciate it.”

He had visited at Chris and Peggy’s house only a couple of times. They lived on a small street in the heart of one of the city’s old neighborhoods. Cars parked on one side made it impossible for two-way traffic to flow. If you turned on to the street and saw a car coming in the opposite direction, you had to stop and back up to let them by. He always forgot which side of the street the cars were parked on, so on the few times he called on them, he had to drive down to the other end, turn around and come back and try and find a place near the house.

Their home was small, cluttered, and smelled of cigarette smoke. There were a couple of lawn chairs on a small front porch and a table between them with an ashtray and they tried to smoke out there whenever possible, but the winter and Chris’s limited mobility meant they indulged in the house more often these days.

Chris’s first wife had died of cancer as a young woman. Then he met Peggy, a divorcee, and they hit it off. He worked in one of the auto plants, she cleaned houses, and they blended their families together the best they could. Each only had one child, but both Chris and Peggy had siblings with whom they were close, and soon they were all spending time together each summer down at the campground. It was like an extended family reunion down there. An observer would have had a hard time distinguishing whose kids belonged to whom.

But Chris was obviously one of the leaders. All the children wanted to be around Uncle Chris. He would take them fishing, give them an endless supply of quarters for the game room, hand out candy all day long, join them in various games at the campsite, and make sure they got their marshmallows and S’mores at night. When the young ones were snug in their sleeping bags, he and the other adults would sit around the campfire, which he tended, until the wee hours, drinking beer and telling stories. It was his habit to bring a large piece of wood — almost a stump — and throw it on the fire the first night they arrived so it would keep burning for days and days. Like that never-ending campfire, Chris’s heart glowed with joy at the campground. He was in his element.

He thought about retiring early so they could spend more time there. But then the bad news came: Chris, who had been feeling strangely weak at times, learned he had a debilitating disease. He quit work, however, it wasn’t on his terms as he had hoped. The terrible disease would take his life, probably within a couple of years. He watched himself go quickly from being careful to walking with a cane to using a walker to being confined to a powered wheelchair. To his credit, Chris never stopped trying to stay active, never diminished in his desire to be around family and friends, and never lost his sense of humor.

That’s when the restaurant became even more important as a place of fellowship and encouragement. He and Peggy would go every day for lunch, until that became too hard, and then it was maybe two or three times a week. One of their young nephews who was tall and strong moved into help them, and whenever Chris gave the word, he would load the power chair into the trunk of the car and accompany Uncle Chris and Aunt Peggy to the Country Kitchen.

The owner and staff learned to watch for them coming. Since they came around the same time each day, one of the servers would keep an eye out to spot their car pulling into the parking lot. She’d give the signal, and they’d get a table set up for them that Chris could get to easily. They’d put out Chris’s salad and drink and make sure the cracker basket had only the kinds in it that he liked. Someone would go hold the door for them, welcome them, and usher them to their table. Sometimes they stayed for two hours, catching up with the other regulars and the staff, laughing together through lots of stories and jokes and teasing conversations.

They went one last time the week Chris died.

After the funeral, the whole family, many neighbors, and friends from church were invited to the house for food and fellowship. It was an unusually warm day for the time of year, bright and dry. The gathering spilled out of the little house onto the small front porch and into the backyard. Carl had one of his servers deliver several boxes of food and drink from the Country Kitchen. If he had been there, Chris would have loved it and would have taken over as the life of the party. It seemed so funny not to hear his voice. The children didn’t know who to ask for candy.

Time stretched on toward evening. Peggy heard a commotion out in the backyard and went out to see what was happening. She saw a large circle of people huddled together, a plume of smoke rising from the midst of them. The circle parted when a few saw her coming and a friend invited her to sit down near the center. The next door neighbor had brought over his firepit and started a blazing fire. Someone produced some sticks and marshmallows. Another was handing out graham crackers and chocolate from a grocery bag. The younger kids squealed with delight and the older ones steadied their hands and showed them how to hold a stick over the fire. Some of the adults were popping the tabs on their beer cans, while others waited for a pot of camp coffee on the fire to start steaming. Conversation and laughter filled the early evening air.

Life would never be the same. But even on that first day, Peggy knew she would be all right.

Early the next week, the chaplain called to see if he could come by and visit. Peggy’s nephew answered. “I’m sorry, she’s not here and probably won’t be back for a couple of hours. She went to the Country Kitchen for lunch.”

The chaplain smiled and hung up. Yes, she’d be all right.

The Cruelest of Teachings

Kate Bowler is an assistant professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. She has written an informative book which has put a lot in perspective for me about the origins and development of the “prosperity gospel” in the U.S. I highly recommend it; it’s called Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel.

What drew my attention to this book, however, wasn’t just its subject matter.

Just a few months ago, at age 35, Kate Bowler learned she had a massive abdominal tumor — stage four cancer.

Her excellent, moving article in the New York Times, “Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me,” shows more humanity and insight in a single sentence than all the health and wealth sermons that have been preached over the past 125 years or so.

Bowler’s story has made me realize afresh that there is little which is more culture-bound and cruel than this perversion of the Christian faith, which is so prominent around us.

[A] neighbor knocked on our door to tell my husband that everything happens for a reason.

“I’d love to hear it,” my husband said.

“Pardon?” she said, startled.

“I’d love to hear the reason my wife is dying,” he said, in that sweet and sour way he has.

My neighbor wasn’t trying to sell him a spiritual guarantee. But there was a reason she wanted to fill that silence around why some people die young and others grow old and fussy about their lawns. She wanted some kind of order behind this chaos. Because the opposite of #blessed is leaving a husband and a toddler behind, and people can’t quite let themselves say it: “Wow. That’s awful.” There has to be a reason, because without one we are left as helpless and possibly as unlucky as everyone else. (NYT)

The false promise of the prosperity gospel is that we get to escape our humanity. We get to control how it goes. We get to rise above the herd. And, most damning of all, we get these blessings not because God sovereignly and graciously bestowed them upon us, but because we somehow got in on God’s “secret” and said the right things, did the right things, and planted the right “seeds,” guaranteeing a good “harvest” in our lives.

Bowler’s research led her to understand that the prosperity gospel is “composed of three distinct though intersecting streams: pentecostalism; New Thought (an amalgam of metaphysics and Protestantism…); and an American gospel of pragmatism, individualism, and upward mobility” (Blessed, p. 11). The theological father of the movement was E.W. Kenyon (1867-1948), who defined faith as a “confident assurance based on absolute knowledge that everything is already provided through the operation of certain immutable laws.” One main key to unlocking the power of this faith to bring blessing is for a believer to speak the word of faith, to give a good confession, to put faith into positive words. As God spoke creation into existence, so the believer may speak blessing into existence when his/her positive confession activates faith.

New Thought uncovered the hidden truth that Americans longed to hear— that divinity was lodged somewhere in their beings and that their secret powers demanded expression. It represented a powerful combination of two spiritual conclusions, “inner divinity” and “outer power” (p. 36).

New Thought ideology has worked itself out in many ways — both religious and secular — in the subsequent history of the United States.

For example, as New Thought ideas intersected with Pentecostalism, Bowler writes, “the resulting messages combined a Christological framework with the mechanism of mind-power, guaranteeing believers the ability to change their circumstances by tapping into new spiritual powers.” Over the course of time, business people were also encouraged to tap into this power through “positive thinking,” and “leadership secrets.” Today, Kate Bowler writes that her scientific friends seem to attribute a certain power to out-witting one’s disease through research, while her hippie friends keep pushing kale salads on her as the answer.

In other words, all this positive thinking and unleashing of inner power is as American as apple pie. In its Christian forms it brings together a lethal combination of evangelical doctrines and symbolism, a certain gnostic pride in having the “answers,” and following the secret rules, and a puritanical kind of separatism and self-righteousness that refuses to admit fear or any identification with the struggles of our lower nature (or those of our neighbors).

The prosperity gospel popularized a Christian explanation for why some people make it and some do not. They revolutionized prayer as an instrument for getting God always to say “yes.” It offers people a guarantee: Follow these rules, and God will reward you, heal you, restore you. It’s also distressingly similar to the popular cartoon emojis for the iPhone, the ones that show you images of yourself in various poses. One of the standard cartoons shows me holding a #blessed sign. My world is conspiring to make me believe that I am special, that I am the exception whose character will save me from the grisly predictions and the CT scans in my inbox. I am blessed.

The prosperity gospel holds to this illusion of control until the very end. If a believer gets sick and dies, shame compounds the grief. Those who are loved and lost are just that — those who have lost the test of faith. In my work, I have heard countless stories of refusing to acknowledge that the end had finally come. An emaciated man was pushed about a megachurch in a wheelchair as churchgoers declared that he was already healed. A woman danced around her sister’s deathbed shouting to horrified family members that the body can yet live. There is no graceful death, no ars moriendi, in the prosperity gospel. There are only jarring disappointments after fevered attempts to deny its inevitability. (NYT)

Kate Bowler has to be one of the most gracious and understanding of people. Thankfully, she seems to be grounded in a more realistic and Christ-centered faith. This shows when, at the end of her article, knowing all that she knows about this crazy and crazy-making amalgam of spiritualism and American moxie, she still praises the stubborn resolve of many of the people who have bought into these teachings, recognizing in the end that in some ways we all are in this together, and that we have all been affected by “the American God” we’ve created.

At age 35, dying of cancer, with a young family she knows she’ll leave behind, she is big enough to look at life and say, “Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard,” and not express any bitterness toward a very popular system of teaching that considers her a loser and a failure when it comes to faith.

So I guess I get to state my anger about it today.

When I look at her beautiful face and try to imagine what she and her family are going through, I am so ashamed to be called a “Christian” when that designation is associated with the likes of this, the cruelest of teachings that has nothing but false hope and empty “principles” to offer her.

Charles H. Featherstone: Lent – By Grace Alone

Hubble Image of M13's Nucleus — Hubble Image of M13’s Nucleus

Note from CM: I preached on Abraham from Genesis 15 last Sunday. I love what Charles says about the patriarch here, and wish I had said it half as well as he does.

• • •

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

✧

What did Abraham believe? A simple promise of children — because Abraham thought his chief servant, Eliezer, would be his heir. Abraham had no children, no one to pass his wealth, his name, his story onto.

But God says no, and pulls Abraham outside. See the stars? You will have more children than you can count. And childless Abraham — desperate, anxious, fearful Abraham — believes. This promise of God.

He will never live to see it. He will die long before his descendants become that numerous. He will father many sons — and probably more than a few daughters too. But he will never to live to something like that dark sky full of stars. He will never live to see the world full of “his” people.

Abraham trusted God. Trusted a promise. David trusted God, a promise that God forgives our lawless deeds, blots them out, erases them from whatever accounting ledger God keeps.

To live as a people justified by the God who forgives, and covers, who blots out and does not count, means that we must also forgive and cover and blot out and not count each other’s sin. It means we must not continue to hold misdeeds against each other. We are all recipients of a gift, a gift of grace. We have not earned it, no matter what we think. We cannot earn it.

Our redemption is relational. It’s not just a feeling. To be real, we must live it amidst and with other forgiven people. We must forgive as we are forgiven.

And yet, we must also live with the faith of Abraham. The faith that trusts in something it may never see. The world — the church — may never treat us as redeemed people, instead counting our sins against us as indelible marks of “character” that can never be changed. Proof of an essential nature which is so corrupt it is beyond the saving grace of God. We may never live in a world where we are considered forgiven and redeemed people. That doesn’t matter.

We are called to trust. To believe. In the promise of God alone.

• • •

Check out Charles’s blog.

Another Look: Lent – Praying with the Exiles

O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
When God restores the fortunes of his people,
Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

• Psalm 53:6

When we read and pray the Psalms, we enter into the prayers of David and the other psalmists, we enter into the prayers of the exiles who composed, edited, and arranged the Old Testament, and we enter into the prayers of Jesus the Christ, the Son of David, the ideal King who brought us salvation.

Tonight in Psalm 53, we hear the voices of those Babylonian exiles most clearly. In this psalm they lament the ungodliness of their captors, they lament their own captive condition, and they pray for God to save them and restore them.

All through the Bible, the theme of “exile” is present. The worst penalty imagined is to be exiled from the good land, separated from home, alienated from God, under enemy rule. So tonight, in Psalm 53, we hear the voices of the exiles.

Tonight we hear the voices of Eve and Adam, cast from the Garden because of their transgression to a life east of Eden.

Tonight we hear the voice of Cain, sentenced to wander the earth after failing to be his brother’s keeper.

Tonight we hear the voice of Joseph, sold by his brothers into slavery and exiled in Egypt. We then hear the voices of Jacob’s entire family as they are forced to resettle in Egypt, where eventually they become slaves to the cruel Pharaoh.

Tonight we hear the voices of the people of Israel, wandering through the wilderness until an entire generation died off, because of their unbelief.

Tonight we hear the cries of women like Naomi, who left the land in time of famine and suffered the loss of her husband and sons.

Tonight we hear the sad prayers and songs of David, God’s chosen king but also the exiled king, as he dwelt among the rocks and the caves while fleeing King Saul – David, who was later forced from his throne by members of his own family, exiled from Jerusalem.

Tonight we sit in silence with Elijah the prophet, who hid in the wilderness from King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, alone by the brook, fed by ravens.

Tonight we watch in horror as the Assyrians conquer and scatter the northern tribes of Israel, demolishing their kingdom and dispersing the people far and wide into foreign lands.

And then we lament as the Babylonians sack Jerusalem, plunder and destroy the Temple, and then take the people captive, transporting them into exile, where they hang their harps by the waters of Babylon, longing for home.

We rejoice when they return to the land by King Cyrus’s edict, but our joy is mixed. For tonight we remember that, generation after generation, other nations came in to rule over Israel. Though they had returned from literal, geographical exile, they remained captives and slaves in their own land under enemy rule.

And so we pray with them. We pray for an end to the exile.

O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
When God restores the fortunes of his people,
Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

And then we see a baby born in Bethlehem, the city of David the psalmist and hear that he is destined for David’s throne.

While just an infant, he and his family are forced to flee in exile to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath.

For years, he lives in obscurity, until a man named John comes.

John goes out into self-imposed exile in the wilderness, near the Jordan River, the place where Israel first came from their wanderings and crossed into the Promised Land. He announces that the time has arrived. Israel’s exile is about to end. The Promised One is coming! John calls Israel to once more immerse themselves in the Jordan, to cross over once more from the wilderness of exile into the Promised Land of God’s Kingdom, to welcome their King with repentance and faith.

And so Jesus appears in public. He identifies with the people by being baptized and immediately goes into the wilderness himself to be tested as the people were in their exile.

After successfully resisting the devil and winning where Israel failed, Jesus begins going throughout the land, announcing that the Kingdom is at hand, the day of salvation has dawned, and that God has sent him to announce release to the captives. He shows this by delivering people from sin and sickness and the oppression of evil spirits. He speaks the truth. He restores life and health and peace. He overcomes the powers that hold the people captive.

Then one day, the tables turn and Jesus dies and goes himself into the ultimate exile – the exile of death.

On Holy Saturday, it appears that the captors have won and that there was one great power that Jesus could not conquer. On that solemn day, it seems there will be no salvation, no restoration from exile. I can imagine that Jesus’ disciples and friends may have prayed Psalm 53 that day:

O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!

This is Lent.

Praying with the exiles.

Recognizing our own captivity, our own exile.

Crying out with them for release and restoration.

Waiting…waiting…until it comes.

Mondays with Michael Spencer: February 22, 2016

Lenten sanctuary (1)

This is an extra post on preaching that I’d like to add to the series of 2006 iMonk posts that we’ve been running on Mondays. That series was called “What’s Wrong with the Sermon?” and this particular post (from 2009), that was originally part of Michael’s “Evangelical Liturgy” series, summarizes much of what that series covered, adding some important points to Michael’s perspective on preaching.

• • •

The Sermon in the Evangelical Liturgy

This post is particularly about the place of the sermon in the evangelical liturgy.

First: The first thing I want to say is that the sermon must be prominent, but not dominate a service of worship. We are living in a time when preaching is experienced in extremes and balanced preaching is rare.

What is balanced preaching?

Appropriate length. Not too long (most anything past 25 minutes is in danger) or too short. (I heard a Catholic homily last week that clocked in at just under 5 minutes.)
Law and Gospel, sin and grace, exposition and application and so on. There are many of these balances that, while not always present in every sermon, are importance to consider in every sermon, and important to consider over the long whole of a preacher’s ministry.
Personal and objective. Popular preaching today- with a few exceptions- tends to be dominated by the personality and personal life of the preacher. The long-term results of this in the life of Christians is bad, no matter how much people like it.
Biblical and illustrative. Biblical material needs to be illustrated with material close to the life experience of the congregation. Scripture itself demonstrates this and no one was a better practitioner than Jesus. The best preachers are skillful illustrators. Ravi Zacharias is a master of this.
Traditional and creative. Communication needs structure, but it also needs the freedom to go in an unexpected direction. Calvin and Lloyd-Jones are good examples of traditional approaches. People you may not want to admit you listen to may be great examples of creativity.
Lectionary and selected text. The lectionary is a fine guide, but a good preacher will use the “spaces” in the Christian year- ordinary time especially- to depart from the lectionary and address needed subjects.

Second: In a service that uses frequent communion, the sermon will be early in the service, and I hope my evangelical friends will see the value of this. The sermon should come after the scripture readings, and it should not bear the burden of closing the worship gathering. (Invitationalism has done terrible things to much evangelical preaching, and none worse than making the sermon a 30 minute plea to walk forward.)

Third: Some of you are going to wince here, but getting rid of the pulpit was a bad idea. In fact, I can’t think of a single change in architecture that says more negative things about worship than the removal of the pulpit, or replacing it with a clear plastic podium. The desire to make worship into non-worship was facilitated more by the removal of the pulpit than anything else. All the “barrier between the pastor and the congregation” rhetoric is specious.

The pulpit speaks of the centrality and importance of the Word of God proclaimed, and it relativizes the preacher into a proper place: disciplined and called to stay behind the Word. Harness the personality to the Word. The preacher stalking the stage with an open Bible is a scene out of balance: the preacher and his personality are overly emphasized. The Word is literally being “used” by the preacher before our eyes.

I recently read a Roman Catholic priest’s letter to his congregation explaining the valuing of making the service ad orientum, i.e. with the priest facing front rather than facing the people. He listed several liturgical reasons, but he was doing all he could to say one thing without actually saying it: Look what making the minister the central focus has done in Protestantism/evangelicalism!

He is right, and many evangelical churches will never have a balanced and disciplined liturgy because the church must be the preacher’s stage.

Fourth: Allow me to give a few words of practical advice:

Series are over-rated and over done. The single text message is still a good idea. The copying of series ideas- SEX!!- has become absurd. Congregations should be suing ministers.

Use a text. Explain a text. Illustrate a text. Apply a text.

Preaching robes are a fine idea for evangelical ministers. Obviously not for everyone, but they are a good middle ground between showing off a suit and being so casual that worship leading seems almost inappropriate.

Have someone identify your characteristic grammatical, rhetorical and homiletic problems. Then work on them.

Use a Trinitarian blessing at the end of the message.

Transitions to and out of the sermon make liturgy flow. For example, I’ve used the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed as a transition out of the sermon for many years.

Don’t talk about your sermon preparation. Nothing shouts self-importance more than “I spent 30 hours pouring over this text.” And if you claim “the Holy Spirit changed my mind at the last minute,” I tend to think something else entirely is going on.

Don’t invest a single sermon with so much importance that it drives you to distraction. Relax. Enjoy the text.

Stop listening to the preachers that tend to make you want to preach, sound or look like them. Just stop.

Listen to preachers who challenge you in areas where you need to grow. I listen to Willimon and Zahl. I’m nothing like either. I want to be like both.

Instead of listening to all those mp3s of celebrity preachers, read some books by some practitioners. Read Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching. Read Craddock. Read Buttrick. Read Inductive Preaching by Lewis. Read Clyde Fant’s book on developing an oral manuscript. Read Stott. Read Lloyd-Jones, On Preachers and Preaching. Anything by Willimon or Capon, The Foolishness of Preaching. Those books will help you more than sermons.

You aren’t and never will be Spurgeon. He had a lot of bad habits. Remember that popular preachers get by with things you won’t get by with.

Read Luther’s House Postils. Great examples of evangelical preaching in a pastoral context.

Don’t seek to be loved as a preacher. That’s the biggest mistake I’ve made in life and ministry. Seek to be loved as a shepherd, pastor, leader and above all, fellow pilgrim. Better yet, just seek to love others and look past assessments of your popularity. Have an audience of one and a flock to feed and serve.

You should, if you are truly called and prepared, be able to put together a good talk in a couple of/few hours. If it takes you 25 hours to create a sermon, I am deeply suspicious of what you are up to and why. Did your people call you to live in the study?

Lent II: Richard Rohr on the Dance of Breath and Soil

Sweet Gum Spring

Lent II
Richard Rohr on the Dance of Breath and Soil

During Lent, on Sundays I’m sharing some things I’ve been learning from Richard Rohr.

Rohr is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fr. Richard’s teaching is grounded in “Franciscan alternative orthodoxy,” which emphasizes both practices of contemplation and acts of radical compassion, particularly for those who are on the margins of society. Each day, in my inbox I receive daily meditations by Rohr that I’ve been keeping and through which I occasionally meander. I will be quoting from these and making comments for our Sunday times together.

Today, on this second Sunday of Lent, as spring creeps closer, we hear of two fundamental springtime realities: breath (wind) and soil. From the beginning of scripture to its end, these images describe human life animated by the Spirit of God. As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.

The whole process of living, dying, and then living again starts with Yahweh “breathing into clay,” which then becomes “a living being” (Genesis 2:7) called Adam (“of the earth”). A drama is forever set in motion between breath and what appears to be mere soil or earth (humus, human, adamah). The Formless One forever takes on form as “Adam” (and in Jesus “the new Adam”), and then takes us back to the Formless. Each form painfully surrenders the small self that it has known for a while and returns to its original shape in the Great Self we call God. “I am returning to take you with me, so that where I am you also may be,” says Jesus (John 14:3). This changing of forms is called death and resurrection, and the return is called ascension, although to us it just looks like loss.

After the resurrection when Jesus “breathed on” the fearful disciples and said, “Peace be with you. . . . Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:21-22), he was making a clear connection with the first creation of Adam. Jesus is now re-created. He is mimicking the creation story. Adam represents the great human forgetfulness and fragility. Christ is the great divine memory and strength. Humanity is being re-animated with what it always forgets; breath and soil, spirit and matter are again reminded that they are in fact one. God is again breathing into “the clay of the earth” (Genesis 2:7) and reminding it that it is never just earth and clay. This, of course, makes resurrection a foregone conclusion, because in fact Spirit can never die “and as we have borne the likeness of the earthly one, so we shall also bear the likeness of the heavenly one” (1 Corinthians 15:49). Jesus’ resurrection is not a one-time anomaly, but the regular and universal structure of reality revealed in one person.

…Christians call it incarnation, culminating in death, resurrection, and ascension. Whatever we call it, this process is about all of us, and surely all of creation, coming forth as individuals and then going back into God, into the Ground of all Being. This cyclical wholeness should make us unafraid of all death and uniquely able to appreciate life. “To God, all people are in fact alive,” as Jesus put it (Luke 20:38). We are just in different stages of that aliveness. One of these stages looks and feels like deadness–the phase that demands our greatest trust and surrender. And of course, if humanity is free we must always leave open the possibility that some could choose this permanent deadness, which we call “hell.” No one is in that state unless they choose to be.

…The Risen Christ represents the final form of every person who has walked the human journey on this earth.

And here we are, near spring.

Awaiting the wind to blow warmer days our way.

Awaiting the sun to shine its healing, transforming light.

Awaiting the soil to shake off its chill and hold the seeds in warm embrace.

Awaiting the rains to baptize us all and bring forth new life.