IM Book Review: Why Many Are “Torn”

Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate
by Justin Lee
Jericho Books (2012)

* * *

What do you say about a man who, by his life experience, demolishes all the categories you have constructed in your mind to explain some aspect of reality? That is the question Christians who hold particular views of homosexuality will have to answer when they read Justin Lee’s remarkable new book, Torn.

By all accounts, Lee does not fit the mold. Raised in a conservative, Southern Baptist family, Lee reports that he had a happy childhood, with loving parents that he has always respected and loved in return. He was never abused. He developed a strong evangelical faith, so much so that other students in his high school called him, “God Boy.” He had good experiences in church and was an honor student at school. He had strong friendships with both males and females. His testimony is that he loved God, was serious about his faith, and had healthy relationships with others.

Then one day he realized he was gay.

Gay.

The word seemed to hold the weight of eternity within its single syllable.

As strange as it may seem, in all the years I had struggled with my sexuality, the idea that I could be gay had simply never crossed my mind. I was a Christian! That was my whole life! And Christians weren’t gay.

 

Continue reading “IM Book Review: Why Many Are “Torn””

Advent II: Sinai’s Last Thunder

Saint John the Baptist preaching in the Wilderness, Mola

ADVENT IIC

  • Malachi 3:1-4
  • Luke 1:68-79
  • Philippians 1:3-11
  • Luke 3:1-6

Prayer of the Day
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming give to all the people of the world knowledge of your salvation; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

* * *

Sinai’s Last Thunder (Luke 3:1-6)

What are we going to do with John the Baptist? John is one of the most vividly drawn characters in Scripture and each Advent we come face to face with him again. The four Gospels show us that Jesus’ public work began in the context of John’s ministry, and this text from Luke summarizes it well.

  • John lived in the wilderness.
  • John was a prophet to whom the Word of the Lord came.
  • Like the Hebrew prophets who came before him, John preached repentance, urging Israel to turn back to God.
  • John complemented his preaching with the prophetic action of baptism.
  • John came to fulfill God’s promise given through the prophet Isaiah — he came to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord, who was about to arrive, bringing salvation to his people.

How should we approach today’s description of John the Baptist? One way would be to discuss the theological words in this Gospel lesson. Note the rich, profound concepts that are meaningful to our faith: the Word of God, the wilderness, baptism, repentance, the forgiveness of sins, God’s promises through the prophets, the coming of the Lord, God’s salvation. We could meditate on these rich words and concepts this morning.

Another way we could approach John would be to try and understand the historical context of his ministry. Luke seems especially interested in that — did you hear how he carefully fills in the historical details about people and places that formed the social, political, and religious context for John? We could talk about why he appeared in the wilderness and why he baptized in the Jordan River and what that would have symbolized for the Jewish people. We could discuss Israel’s relationship with the Romans who ruled over them at that time, the Jews’ continuing sense of being a people in exile, and how John was raised up to address that situation.

There are many ways to approach a text as rich as this one. Today, I’d like to look at it from a close and personal angle. You see, I have an idea that John the Baptist is not a person I would like very much. And I doubt that most of you would care for him either. I’m quite sure he would not be welcomed with enthusiasm in most of our churches today.

Continue reading “Advent II: Sinai’s Last Thunder”

Saturday Ramblings 12.8.12

Greetings, iMonks. It’s time once again to clean up the leftovers from this week, a week when Chaplain Mike returned from his frivolous studies to get down to the important stuff: enlightening and educating us. I may be the abbot, but Chaplain Mike is the Father Prior of the InternetMonk iMonastery. His return was greeted with much rejoicing. And the rejoicing created quite a mess around here. So if everyone will pitch in, we’ll have this place cleaned up in no time. It’s the way we do things around here. We call it rambling …

What would Christmas be without another book telling us just who the real St. Nick is/was/will be? Here’s a new take on an old story: Seems we won’t ever know who St. Nick was, or if even really was. But that doesn’t stop this author from filling 230 pages telling us about him.

Want the best story about Santa Claus? Can’t beat Cheech and Chong’s tale of Santa Claus And His Old Lady. And this will not be last drug reference in this edition of Saturday Ramblings. Just sayin’…

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iMonk Classic: Riff on “The End of Advent”

Christmas has devoured Advent, gobbled it up with the turkey giblets and the goblets of seasonal ale. Every secularized holiday, of course, tends to lose the context it had in the liturgical year. Across the nation, even in many churches, Easter has hopped across Lent, Halloween has frightened away All Saints, and New Year’s has drunk up Epiphany.

Still, the disappearance of Advent seems especially disturbing—for it’s injured even the secular Christmas season: opening a hole, from Thanksgiving on, that can be filled only with fiercer, madder, and wilder attempts to anticipate Christmas.

– Joseph Bottum, “The End of Advent”

* * *

Riffs: Joseph Bottum on The End of Advent
(and the horror of our version of Christmas)
Classic iMonk post by Michael Spencer
November, 2008

Many years ago, we made a decision to, as much as possible, speak of Advent and not of Christmas, until Christmas. I’ve never been able to hold off the Christmas music, but as much as possible we’ve stayed with that commitment.

It’s also amusing to watch my co-workers get the puzzled look when I start referring to “advent,” something some/most of the have never heard of. They often assume I’m one of the “Christmas is a Babylonian occultic festival” whack jobs, which we usually have somewhere in the gallery.

It’s really very simple: Christmas is the feast of the incarnation and the season following that event. Advent is the recognition that we need a savior and the longing for that savior to come, according to God’s promises.Continue reading “iMonk Classic: Riff on “The End of Advent””

Nightsounds

One of the sponsors of InternetMonk is Broken Road Radio. BRR is an internet radio station playing “music for grown ups.” Jim Park hosts a live morning show and then keeps us going throughout the day with a great selection of music, some old, some new, always fun.

Jim has asked me to host a program in the evening we’re calling Broken Road Nightsounds (honoring the late, great Bill Pierce). I did the first show last week, and had a good time. I had not “done radio” in about 15 years, but it seemed to come back to me. I wanted to invite you to listen in if you need a way to unwind. Nightsounds is on Thursday nights at 10 o’clock Eastern (9 to those of us on sensible Central time).

You can listen by clicking on the link on the right side of this page. I really think Jim is on the edge of radio as it will be used in the future. Check it out and see if you agree.

Eschatological Me

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20, KJV)

You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col. 3:3, CEB)

* * *

On Monday afternoon, as I was waiting to board the bus to return home from Chicago, I walked across the street from the south side station to McDonalds. I had to go to the bathroom…bad. It’s not in the greatest neighborhood, and I noticed a sign on the wall that the bathroom was locked because of vandalism; one had to ask at the counter for someone to open the door. So I stood at the side of the counter and the young clerk looked rather disdainfully at me and said, “The restroom is for purchasing customers.” I said OK and waited. I was going to buy something, but a bodily need more urgent than thirst was demanding my attention. I didn’t realize right away that she wanted me to buy something first before she would open the bathroom, so I stood there hoping she was just finishing up with her customer and then she would help me. She, however, interpreted my standing there as stubborn insistence that I wasn’t going to buy anything but was going to sneak in the bathroom when someone else entered. So she raised her voice at me and said it again: “Paying customers only!”

I got a little angry. I told her I really wasn’t interested in buying food and then taking it into the bathroom; that I was going to buy something but wanted to use the bathroom first. I might have muttered something unkind under my breath as well. She would have none of it. So I went to the counter and bought a Diet Coke. The girl said she would hold it for me until I came out.

There I was, a chaplain, a pastor. Inspirational black gospel music was playing in the restaurant. I had just spent the morning learning and discussing theology with my sainted professor and fellow divinity students. And I was on the verge of cussing out a young woman in public because she wouldn’t open the bathroom door for me.

I could have blamed it on the fact that I had been up since two a.m. with only a few fitful hours of sleep. I was tired and ready to go home. I was in a bit of a time crunch, fearing I might miss my bus. My bodily needs were screaming at me. I had my reasons.

Also, I think of myself as a fairly trustworthy person, and to be honest, it was insulting that she didn’t trust me. Of course I understood where I was and the kinds of people she had to deal with all day. I’m sure I didn’t appear all that impressive to her — in dungarees and ball cap, with scraggly beard and circles under my eyes. But her automatic dismissal and distrust awakened the dragon in me.

I had, at that moment and upon further consideration, yet another opportunity to reflect on what Jürgen Moltmann calls, “the notion of paradoxical identity,” his phrase for the famous theological dictum, “simul iustus et peccator” (at the same time righteous and a sinner).

But I think somewhat differently about that concept these days. I’ve come to understand it in eschatological terms.

Continue reading “Eschatological Me”

It Always Comes Back to the Ending

Advent is about eschatology.

That five dollar theological term simply means “the study of the eschaton” (the last day). The Bible divides time into two great epochs: this present age and the age to come. We live in the now; we await the not yet. Scripture anticipates the end from the start. When Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning…” it is already preparing the way for what the Torah calls “the end of days” (see Deut. 4:30). When Jesus proclaimed that God’s Kingdom was at hand, he was announcing the in-breaking of the age to come, and Peter specifically spoke of the arrival of “the last days” on the day of Pentecost.

The intriguing characteristic of Biblical eschatology is that the age to come actually breaks in and infiltrates the present age now, before the end. Therefore, theologians speak of the “already” and the “not yet.” By grace through faith, believers are raised up with Christ into the new creation already even as they hope for its consummation when Christ returns and the dead are resurrected. We live simultaneously as citizens of two worlds, continually looking forward and moving toward a goal that not only defines our future but also transforms our present.

Eschatology is not just a teaching of the Bible, it is the very structure of reality, the context of creation and new creation, the enlivening power of the Christian’s life.

Today, here is a remarkable passage from Jürgen Moltmann that I encourage you to savor and keep in mind throughout this Advent season.

Eschatology was long called the ‘doctrine of the last things’ or the ‘doctrine of the end’. By these last things were meant events which will one day break upon man, history and the world at the end of time. They included the return of Christ in universal glory, the judgment of the world and the consummation of the kingdom, the general resurrection of the dead and the new creation of all things. These end events were to break into this world from somewhere beyond history, and to put an end to the history in which all things here live and move. But the relegating of these events to the ‘last day’ robbed them of their directive, uplifting and critical significance for all the days which are spent here, this side of the end, in history. Thus these teachings about the end led a peculiarly barren existence at the end of Christian dogmatics. They were like a loosely attached appendix that wandered off into obscure irrelevancies. They bore no relation to the doctrines of the cross and resurrection, the exaltation and sovereignty of Christ, and did not derive from these by any logical necessity. They were as far removed from them as All Souls’ Day sermons are from Easter. The more Christianity became an organization for discipleship under the auspices of the Roman state religion and persistently upheld the claims of that religion, the more eschatology and its mobilizing, revolutionizing, and critical effects upon history as it has now to be lived were left to fanatical sects and revolutionary groups. Owing to the fact that Christian faith banished from its life the future hope by which it is upheld, and relegated the future to a beyond, or to eternity, whereas the biblical testimonies which it handed on are yet full to the brim with future hope of a messianic kind for the world, — owing to this, hope emigrated as it were from the Church and turned in one distorted form or another against the Church.

In actual fact, however, eschatology means the doctrine of the Christian hope, which embraces both the object hoped for and also the hope inspired by it. From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present. The eschatological is not one element of Christianity, but it is the medium of Christian faith as such, the key in which everything in it is set, the glow that suffuses everything here in the dawn of an expected new day. For Christian faith lives from the raising of the crucified Christ, and strains after the promises of the universal future of Christ. Eschatology is the passionate suffering and passionate longing kindled by the Messiah. Hence eschatology cannot really be only a part of Christian doctrine. Rather, the eschatological outlook is characteristic of all Christian proclamation, of every Christian existence and of the whole Church. There is therefore only one real problem in Christian theology, which its own object forces upon it and which it in turn forces on mankind and on human thought: the problem of the future. For the element of otherness that encounters us in the hope of the Old and New Testaments — the thing we cannot already think out and picture for ourselves on the basis of the given world and of the experiences we already have of that world — is one that confronts us with a promise of something new and with the hope of a future given by God. The God spoken of here is no intra-worldly or extra-worldly God, but the ‘God of hope’ (Rom. 15.13), a God with ‘future as his essential nature’ (as E. Bloch puts it), as made known in Exodus and in Israelite prophecy, the God whom we therefore cannot really have in us or over us but always only before us, who encounters us in his promises for the future, and whom we therefore cannot ‘have’ either, but can only await in active hope. A proper theology would therefore have to be constructed in the light of its future goal. Eschatology should not be its end, but its beginning.

• Theology of Hope

IM Book Review: An Apocalyptic Luther

Luther: Man Between God and the Devil
Heiko A. Oberman
Yale University Press (1989)

* * *

If you want to read a biography of Martin Luther, it is probably wise to start with one that outlines his life and times in fairly standard terms. I would recommend Roland Bainton’s classic, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Those who are interested in a more comprehensive study should check out Martin Brecht’s three volume set, which gives the most detailed description of Luther’s life and work available in an English language biography.

But if you want to be exposed to a groundbreaking perspective that will create an indelible impression of Martin Luther as a medieval religious man, caught up in what he considered to be a profound battle between the forces of God and the Devil in the End Times, then I recommend you consider the best book I’ve read this year: Heiko Oberman’s Luther: Man Between God and the Devil.

Oberman’s thesis, vividly drawn and defended, is summarized in his prologue:

Luther’s measure of time was calibrated with yardsticks other than those of modernity and enlightenment, progress and tolerance. Knowing that the renewal of the Church could be expected to come only from God and only at the end of time, he would have had no trouble enduring curbs on the Evangelical movement. According to Luther’s prediction, the Devil would not “tolerate” the rediscovery of the Gospel; he would rebel with all his might, and muster all his forces against it. God’s Reformation would be preceded by a counterreformation, and the Devil’s progress would mark the Last Days. For where God is at work — in man and in human history — the Devil, the spirit of negation, is never far away.

To understand Luther, we must read the history of his life from an unconventional perspective. It is history “sub specie aeternitatis,” in the light of eternity; not in the mild glow of constant progress toward Heaven, but in the shadow of the chaos of the Last Days and the imminence of eternity.”

Oberman introduces us to the apocalyptic Luther.

Continue reading “IM Book Review: An Apocalyptic Luther”

Sabbatical? Ha!

Sabbatical? Ha!
or, What I learned on my summer November “vacation”

First, let me say, it’s good to be back. Helpful as it is to take a breather once in awhile, I miss the conversation. Actually, I’m not sure I could have participated anyway. I’ll explain in a moment.

Second, thanks to Jeff and the other writers for taking on extra duty in November. It’s great to have such gifted and loving colleagues.

Now, as for my “month off” — last year I had a genuine sabbatical. I took two full weeks off work, spent most of a week at Gethsemani Abbey in silence and prayer, spent another week on a leisurely tour of family visits. And for the whole month, I was able to rest, relax, and get out from under the pressure of daily deadlines.

Not so this year.

My daily work on Internet Monk was replaced by reading, study, travel, preparation for services and sermons, and other responsibilities related to my ordination process. Each week started on Monday with a twenty-hour day of traveling to Chicago (described in this post) to attend the “Theology of Luther” class at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. There was a time when I could do something like that with impunity, but I am no longer as…er…adaptable as I once was. This body wants some sleep. Needless to say, that long day sets me back and I’m scrambling to catch up the rest of the week.

The class has been wonderful. It makes me want to read and learn from Martin Luther more and more. After the jump, I’ll share some of what I learned from my class project.

I have also been working in a congregation on Sundays, which involves a forty-mile drive each way. Working with the pastor has been great. I’ve been helping celebrate the Sunday worship service, preach, lead the adult Sunday School class, and plan various prayers and elements in the services. I’m also planning and leading some special services: Thanksgiving, a “Blue Christmas” service, and a New Year’s Eve service.

I’ve started a new blog to keep track of the sermons I’m preaching: Mike’s Sermon Blog. The first sermon and children’s sermon is up, and I’ll be preaching again next Sunday.

And of course, I continue to work with my beloved hospice patients each day.

Continue reading “Sabbatical? Ha!”

Advent I: Apocalypse Then. What about Now?

ADVENT IC

  • Jeremiah 33:14-16
  • Psalm 25:1-10
  • 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
  • Luke 21:25-36

Prayer of the Day
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come. Protect us by your strength and save us from the threatening dangers of our sins, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

* * *

Apocalypse Then. What about Now?

Advent is about the Lord’s coming. Many of the Biblical texts we hear in Advent sound ominous. The refreshing rain of salvation comes amidst dark thunderous clouds of judgment and brisk winds of prophetic warning that send shivers down our spines. The warning signs are everywhere: Repent, for the End is near!

On this first Sunday of Advent, I have a confession: the older I get, the more I find apocalyptic doom and gloom the least helpful kind of Christian (or human) perspective. The other day, while sitting in a waiting room, I caught a glimpse of the National Geographic television show, “Doomsday Preppers.” Wow. You can go to their website and take a survey to find out your “Prepper Score” — how prepared you are to face a global cataclysm. I’m guessing mine’s hovering around zero.

However, there are times in history when apocalyptic is appropriate. Today’s Gospel text is an example.

One key to understanding Jesus’ words in Luke 21:25-36 is to accept the timing he pinpoints: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place” (21:32). Our Lord was warning his disciples about tumultuous events that would happen in their lifetime. Therefore, I think Tom Wright has it right in terms of the basic contours of how we should interpret Jesus’ words in Luke 21:

The best place to begin is on safe ground — safe for us in terms of our understanding the text, but decidedly unsafe for anyone there at the time. Verses 20-24 are clear, and fit with everything Luke has reported Jesus as saying up to this point. A time of great crisis is coming, in which the failure of Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular to repent and follow the kingdom-way advocated by Jesus would have its disastrous result. The Romans would come (they are not mentioned by name, but if anyone was likely to surround Jerusalem with armies it was surely them) and would lay siege to the city. The result would not be in doubt.

• Luke for Everyone

Wright proceeds to discuss how the apocalyptic language in the passage is best understood in terms of the prophetic visions of Daniel 7, which speak to the vindication of the Son of Man and the people of God. Whether or not Jesus’ words have reverberations beyond the Fall of Jerusalem is another question, but I accept the position that the events described here took place within the lifetime of his audience.

So then, what we have in today’s gospel lesson is “Apocalypse Then” — a look back at a pending crisis that would affect Jerusalem, the Jewish nation and religion, and the young Christian church forever. Jesus exhorts his disciples to recognize the signs of things to come and to stay prepared and alert to face the impending onslaught. The Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, with its national and international impact, was an event tied to both world history and salvation history — an apocalyptic occurrence worthy of that kind of thinking, talking, and acting.

Continue reading “Advent I: Apocalypse Then. What about Now?”