The Internet Monk Archives

Sundays with Michael Spencer: January 11, 2015

Note from CM: 2015 will mark five years since the death of Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk. Today, we continue our “Sundays with Michael” series with an excerpt from post that was originally published in January 2009.

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It’s a sad fact that what God has revealed about himself in Jesus doesn’t exactly have a huge audience. But say that God is angry, mean and about to show us just how much with a few displays of wrath and suffering? You’ll fill a stadium.

You see, the grace of God just doesn’t fit in our box. How can God really–I mean c’mon!–how can God be gracious to (fill in the blank with Hollywood celebrities, famous politicians, loudmouth pundits, your jerky boss, that teacher who failed you unfairly, your ex-whatever, people with guns and bombs, and so on)?

God’s gracious face makes our religion fall apart. It takes away all our soapboxes. It shuts our mouths, because none of us deserve it and all of us can have it. God’s love and grace are so far beyond our ideas of what they ought to be that none of our ideas about God can survive the good news that comes in Jesus. Jesus is a salvation, grace, goodness, God revolution.

Titus 2 puts it so well: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people…” That’s what has appeared in Jesus. He did not come to condemn, but to save. In him, there is no condemnation. In Jesus, the Father shows his gracious face to all of us, for everything.

In Mark 3: 1-6, Jesus is in church and the religious leaders want to bust him for healing on the Sabbath. They had decided that God was the kind of mean and trivial dictator that cared more about the order of service than a human being’s suffering. So Jesus heals this man, but Mark describes something utterly unique and stunning: “And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”

The image of Jesus healing in righteous anger at the religious bean counters–who were about to start the process of killing him–is for one simple reason: They sat in synagogue representing God as more interested in a stupid rule than in proclaiming and enjoying his gracious face of compassion for a hurting person.

So Jesus heals that man, put he’s pretty ticked off. If he was the God these guys believed in, he’d have turned them all into Alpacas. Which would have been pretty cool….but you get the point.

Let’s stop it. Let’s stop hiding the face of a gracious God. Let’s show it, sing it, worship in its light, live as if we know that gracious, glorious God as the one the Bible proclaims and who comes to us in Jesus.

Let’s enjoy the face of a gracious God. Now and forever.

Saturday Ramblings, January 10, 2015

Hello, imonks, and welcome to the weekend. Let’s do some rambling!

NFL wisdom: “It’s like you look at a girl who looks like you, and you find out it’s your cousin, so you can’t go on a date with her even though you’d like to, because she looks like you. But then you see her friend, and her friend’s really hot, and you’re like, ‘that’s not my cousin,’ so it’s good.” This from Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennet explaining his…ummm…mixed feelings for the Carolina Panthers. He likes them, you see, but can’t really like them, cuz they’re … cousins. Attractive cousins. REALLY attractive cousins. I’m still not sure who the hot friend is.

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This Is Where I Live

This is a post that I have been meaning to write for a few weeks, since Chaplain Mike wrote his insightful post, “Another Look: This is not where I live“. While I agree with Chaplain Mike, that real life happens outside of Internet Monk, I have a little bit of a different perspective. This week’s post on vulnerability, brought it back to mind. Of course I had been promising the review of Bruce Cockburn’s book but at over 500 pages I haven’t quite finished it yet.

I live a very siloed life. With very few exceptions, those I interact with on Internet Monk I do not interact with outside of Internet Monk. Those I interact with at work I do not interact with outside of work. These two groups combined make up no more than 2% of my Facebook friends. My life is NOT like the Venn diagram pictured here.

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Another Look: The Limits of Vulnerability

This is an excerpt from a post published in January, 2013. It has been edited and updated.

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I think that the practice of “vulnerability” as personal transparency may have gone to seed. Just take one flip around the TV channels and you can see that. What are all of these confessional talk shows, reality shows, and religious testimonial programs if not examples of “letting it all hang out” to an extreme? And don’t even get me started on social media! I could find more than enough examples on one screen shot from Facebook or Twitter to make my points. The information age has led in many cases to “TMI.” “No secrets” has become “no limits” on the personal information some will share.

Is it possible we no longer know how to value virtues like privacy, modesty, or restraint?

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The Art of Comforting Presence

Who would have thought that a conservative political columnist would write an article that a hospice chaplain would find perfect for sharing about what it means to do my work and what it means for anyone to accompany sufferers in their journeys of pain and loss?

But that’s what David Brooks did in his wise, eloquent piece, “The Art of Presence,” written in January of last year. I recently became aware of the article while preparing a presentation for our hospice team. I will be talking about how to be with our patients and families in a way that is comforting and that gives them, as Brooks says, “the dignity of their own process.”

Brooks’s article reflects on an essay in Sojourners by Catherine Woodiwiss: “A New Normal: Ten Things I’ve Learned about Trauma,” which I also recommend to you. Brooks focuses on those aspects of the piece that talk about how those who care can truly help people who go through traumatic experiences. He gives a gem of a summary of what we in pastoral care call, “pastoral presence.” His words apply to all who seek to follow the example of Jesus and the countless biblical exhortations to care for those who are hurting, whatever their hurts may be.

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What can you do with a General?

What can you do with a General
When he stops being a General?

• Irving Berlin

The other day, my friend John Armstrong posted the following status on Facebook. This pastor’s story elicited a large number of comments, and rightly so. Though quite different in detail, his experience reminded me of my own journey of leaving parish ministry. I remember thinking quite clearly, “I have been walking a tightrope without a net all this time.”

Evangelical ecclesiology in free, “independent” churches, with its emphasis on pastors as entrepreneurs and leaders building their own institutions with unique brands, owes more to free market capitalism than it does to the organic communities of faith we see in Scripture, history, and tradition. It’s a business that must be ever-changing to satisfy the demands of the market. And everyone knows that the market is about youth, spectacle, excitement, and visible, measurable progress. Ministers and churches alike have swallowed and digested this thinking for the past fifty years to such an extent that any argument against it sounds to most ears like defeatism and a lack of faith.

Perhaps some of you have happier stories to tell in the comments today about other situations where people like this are not being cast off simply because they are too old or no longer “relevant” in the eyes of the church — I surely hope so. Is there nowhere in the evangelical world a man like this could use his gifts to bless a church and community?

Or is there any hope out there that “independent” churches have a clue that something’s wrong with this picture?

From John H. Armstrong —

I am having dinner this evening with a dear friend who was a pastor for decades. His local church asked him to step down a few years ago without any moral or pastoral reason. They simply desired to make a change. (You can fill in the blanks here and you get my point.) At the time he stepped down I feared that my friend would find the way ahead very hard. Few, if any churches, will even consider calling him. I have been right so far.

Sadly, a truly great man, with deep skill and preaching/pastoral skill, is sidelined and seeking to make ends meet in his 60s because a local church simply wanted to change pastors. Honestly, this is as much a grief to my spirit as the reverse, a bad pastor lording it over a church! Can a church lord its will over a good shepherd? You bet. If anything this kind of story proves how desperately bad “independent” evangelicalism is in modern America. . . .

Five NT texts that guide my journey

A few weeks ago, I followed the example of Pete Enns and wrote a post on ten of the texts from the Hebrew Bible that have guided me in various ways on my faith journey. Today, let’s do a list of NT texts. We’ll start with five today and maybe add some more later in the week.

And wow, will this be tough. I will try to stay away from some of the more familiar passages, even though there are many that immediately come to mind: verses from the Sermon on the Mount, for example. I don’t want to downplay these treasures of the Church, but I would like to point out some verses that have become personally meaningful to me, touching my life at key points in my journey.

Philippians 3:10: “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

The epistle to the Philippians preoccupied me for much of my young adult life, especially when I was in Bible College. There are so many wonderful passages, and I could have listed: Philippians 1:6, 1:21, 2:5-11, 2:12-13, 3:7-9 (the immediate context of the passage I have chosen), 4:4-9, 4:11, and so on. The entire letter is refreshingly joyous, despite Paul’s imprisonment and the challenges the Philippians were facing. Philippians portrays a remarkable “partnership” in the Gospel (koinonia) between the apostle and the church that is evident in every line, and the pastoral heart of Paul really comes out as he encourages them to live as humble servants of one another and their neighbors. Philippians gave me my earliest pastoral sensibilities and helped me fall in love with the church, ministry, and missions.

The passage I chose for today is at the heart of what I learned from this letter about being a Christian and laying one’s life down for others. This journey is about knowing Jesus, suffering with him, experiencing the powerful hope that comes from his resurrection life; dying daily in Christ and being raised to walk in newness of life.

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Sundays with Michael Spencer: January 4, 2015

Note from CM: 2015 will mark five years since the death of Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk. Throughout the year, we will feature special remembrances to honor his memory and contributions. One of the ways we will do that is to give Michael his say every Sunday. We continue today, with a post that was originally published in January 2009.

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Back in the day, I got a psych major in my undergrad work. That’s pretty ironic, believe me, in more ways than you can imagine.

I can’t say I learned a great deal, but I did begin a lifelong journey of making observations and drawing tentative conclusions about myself. If I would have paid attention to all I’ve discovered about myself, I’d have a very different life. Some psychologist can tell me why I routinely ignore the lessons I’ve learned and repeat all the same mistakes.

One thing I’ve learned is that I’ve got some holes in my personality that go a lot deeper than I can understand. They are caverns in my self-understanding; potholes in the soul, so to speak. Like a series of tunnels that connect with points in my past and experience, these dark places are imperfectly mapped, sometimes frightening and very, very real when you fall into one.

What I’ve found in some of those dark places can be amusing, irritating or terrifying.

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Saturday Ramblings, January 3, 2015

Welcome to the weekend, imonkers. Actually, welcome to the New Year. Just in case you weren’t feeling old enough, remind yourself that we are now as close to 2040 as we are to 1990. And by the way, since it’s 2015, aren’t we all supposed to start dressing like this now?

And by the way, WHERE'S MY HOVER-BOARD??? — And by the way, WHERE’S MY HOVER-BOARD???

How are your New Year’s Resolutions going? Tullian Tchividjian (Billy Graham’s grandson) hopes you’ve already crashed and burned. “In other words, underneath our New Year’s resolutions is the drive to save ourselves by generating our own value, significance, meaning, and security by what we do and by who we can become…[they are a] burdening attempt to fix ourselves and make ourselves more lovable.” Agree?

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IM Book Review: Rumours of Glory – Part 1: My Journey with Bruce

Rumours of Glory: A Memoir
Bruce Cockburn
Harper and Collins 2014

Over the next several Fridays, I will be delving into Bruce Cockburn’s memoir: Rumours of Glory. For those who do not know Bruce or his music, here is a quick overview taken from the publisher’s summary.

Legendary Canadian singer and songwriter Bruce Cockburn delivers his long-awaited memoir—a chronicle of faith, fear, and activism that is also a lively cultural and musical tour through the late twentieth century.

Award-winning songwriter and pioneering guitarist Bruce Cockburn’s life has been shaped by politics, protest, romance, and spiritual discovery. For more than five decades he has toured the globe, visiting far-flung places such as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique, Afghanistan, and Nepal, performing and speaking out on diverse issues, from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt. His journeys have been reflected in his music and evolving styles: folk, jazz, blues, rock, and worldbeat. Drawing from his experiences, he continues to create memorable songs about his ever-expanding universe of wonders.

As an artist with thirty-one albums, Cockburn has won numerous awards and the devotion of legions of fans across America and his native Canada, where he is a household name. Yet the man himself has remained a mystery. In his memoir, Cockburn invites us into his private world, sharing his Christian convictions, his personal relationships, and the social and political activism that has defined him and has both invigorated and incited his fans.

This week, by way of introduction, I want to tell the story of my own stories of Bruce. None of these will show up in his memoir, as I have had no personal interaction with him, but nonetheless they are all important to me.

In 1980, while I was in grade 11, I started taking guitar lessons, from a guy by the name of Trevor Toop who was one year older than me. He had been strongly influenced by Bruce’s fingerpicking style, and endeavored to teach it to me. One of the first songs I learned was “Tokyo”, a song that was characteristic of Bruce’s style of keeping the rhythm with his bare thumb on the bass strings. I liked the way his song told a story in such a way that I could imagine being there.

Tokyo

They’re getting prepared to haul a car out of the river
Noise and smoke and concrete seem to be going on forever
Grinding gears and drivers getting high on exhaust
I’m thinking about the water down below and what got lost
Pachinko jingle and space torpedo beams
Comic book violence and escaping steam
Grey suited business men pissing against the wall —
Cut to crumbling guardrail, slow motions car fall
Oh Tokyo — I never can sleep in your arms
Mind keeps on ringing like a fire alarm
Me and all these other dice bouncing around in the cup
Did you have to show me that accident scene
Didn’t I get enough shaking up?
Still I’m gonna miss you…

Bruce Cockburn – Humans 1980

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