Tuesday with Michael Spencer Five Reasons I Don’t Use the Term “Inerrancy”
Five Reasons I Don’t Use The Term Inerrancy:
1. Inerrancy is a term that requires too many intelligent, honest Christians to violate their consciences over what they read in the text of the Bible, and no amount of “Resolving Bible Difficulties” resources can solve these issues. The result- those who are convinced shouting derision at those who are not- is an embarrassment to the church.
2. Inerrancy is a term that needlessly divides the church, making many Bible-believing, Christ-following, Kingdom-pursuing believers into outsiders and enemies in their own house.
3. Inerrancy is a term that requires too much special definition to be generally useful. It requires such massive, scholarly, near circular, qualification of the term “error,” that it succeeds in making the word “inerrant” as applied to many Biblical texts a non sequitur.
4. Requiring allegiance to the term inerrancy has proven to be ineffective in producing the predicted revitalization in denominations, churches or the evangelical movement. “Inerrantist” evangelicalism is more idolatrous, culturally captive and spiritually impoverished than ever. In many cases, the worldliness and pragmatism of evangelicalism stands in bizarre contradistinction to their loud proclamation of belief in “inerrancy.”
5. The term inerrancy is a recent innovation, absent from most of Christian history and almost every major confession. How do contemporary evangelicals get the right to insist that a term created in their time be binding on those who say they share the same faith in the Bible as those who did not use the term? If I say, “I am going to use the same words about the Bible that _____________ used,” are you going to condemn me if I don’t use “inerrancy?”
One of these days I am going to write a tribute post to the wonderful reformed historian and biographer, Iain Murray. Murray has created a legacy of something we desperately need in Christianity: the lives of the “saints” that surround us on the journey. That’s a valuable and powerful gift to the church. Consider how scripture points us to the crowd of witnesses around, behind and ahead of us.
I was contemplating this as I prepared to preach today and reread Hebrews 12:1-4.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.* Because of the joy* awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people;* then you won’t become weary and give up. After all, you have not yet given your lives in your struggle against sin.
I’ve been in many large crowds of Christians at various festivals and events, but I realized today the New Testament really has nothing to say about the power of crowds to encourage us in true godliness. Gatherings in the New Testament era were small, and no one dreamed of a “stadium event,” except in the Kingdom to come.
The experience of being in a crowd can do a lot of things for us, but the New Testament seems remarkably uninterested in whatever they might be. On the other hand, Revelation 7 tells us that we are part of a great gathering of the redeemed that cannot be numbered. Hebrews 12:1 says we are, even now, surrounded by that number. This crowd is supposed to inspire us. In that “cloud of witnesses,” we can find some of the energy for running the race all the way home.
In the Service of Lessons and Carols at Cambridge University, there is a bidding prayer that moves me deeply each year. It certainly moves me more as I have more family members and friends on the other side. As Christians gather to hear the story of the Incarnation, a prayer always includes this paragraph:
Finally, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us but upon another shore, and in a greater light — that great cloud of witnesses, that multitude that no one can number, with whom in the Lord Jesus we are one forevermore.
The Christian commitment to look at this crowd of witnesses is a reminder that the witness of a life in Christ is not just to the lost, but to all of us. At my place of ministry we have a rich tradition of witnesses; some staff, many volunteers; of course students and friends. Our buildings are not named after people who wrote checks, but after people who spent decades of life in bringing this ministry through 107 years. This is just a small window of the crowd of witnesses that has sustained the church throughout the centuries.
We live in a world that chokes us with celebrities, athletes, musicians, criminals, actors, politicians and people whose significance to the public certainly escapes me. As Christians, it is a conscious choice to step away from and renounce this celebrity culture and idolatry of fame and significance. It is difficult to help our children understand what is at stake when they wear a name on their jerseys or a face on a shirt. Our ability to sort through the human “crowd,” and find God’s windows of grace will constantly be tested.
My heroes/saints are people like Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, OBI President Barkley Moore and recent fellow staff members John and Erma Smith. These are some of the crowd that surrounds and encourages me. They join with the names and faces of the Apostles, martyrs and servants of the King from past ages in making a “witness” to the worth and way of Jesus Christ.
Some would say our heroes cannot be flawed, but it is the flaws of our saints that make them unique windows of the glory of God. Men like MLK faced unique challenges in their time, but their flaws are common to all of us who are sinners. As we follow their life stories, we learn where we’ve been and what we can expect around the corner. We learn God is faithful, and he will see us all the way home, no matter what our journey is like.
Along this journey, we all need companions, teachers and saints/heroes. Remember to choose and honor all three. We honor them by looking through and beyond them to our Lord Jesus Christ. We walk a way that may seem alone, but when we look at the road less taken, we will see that others have been this way before.
I don’t mean the kind of “in-house” celebrity worship that goes on on the various “teams” in evangelicalism. I want and need more than someone with two books (or a CD of greatest hits) and a big church to encourage me. Teachers and preachers have a part in the journey, but saints/heroes are different. They teach us with lives finished and well-lived.
In my office, I have a board with pictures of my “saints” and heroes. Some ancient, others contemporary. Some I know well; others just a bit. They encourage me along the way. I never feel quite alone. Each one is a specific kind of encouragement. Each one reaches me somewhere that few others do.
In Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating takes his class to a trophy case, where pictures of long deceased students and teams stare back at them from days gone by. Keating asks the boys to know that all those young men are now dead, and to take inspiration for their lives from the brevity of life itself.
We have a different experience. I look at my saints/heroes and I know they are not dead, but alive. And while on earth, they reminded me that life is a gift from God, to be lived for his glory, and in his light, but with eternity in mind.
Pick your saints and surround yourself with their evidences and “remains.” Not relics, but words and stories. (Though if you have a Merton note or letter, I do have a birthday later this year.) Be encouraged that others have been this way before and they beckon you on toward the light on the other shore.
SERMON: Sit, Walk, and Stand – the 3 postures of the Christian (Ephesians)
The Lord be with you.
Today we are deviating from the church calendar in order to begin the Epiphany season. Epiphany is tomorrow, January 6. It is the time of the church year when we mark how Jesus brought light to our dark world, revealing God’s love and shalom through his life and ministry.
In Epiphany we remember how the Gentile magi came from the east, recognizing by the light of a star that a new King had been born. We also remember Jesus’ baptism, his teaching, and his works of healing and redemption. We conclude Epiphany by celebrating Jesus’ transfiguration, when he took his disciples up the mountain and revealed his divine glory.
Epiphany is also a time when I like to do a special series of messages from the Bible. Last year, we had sermons about Christian worship — why we worship like we do and how the various elements of worship work together to help us come before God to receive his grace and mercy in Christ afresh each Sunday.
This year, I would like for us to become more familiar with one of the New Testament letters. It’s called Ephesians, and the Apostle Paul wrote it to Christians in the city of Ephesus. According to the Book of Acts, Paul founded the church there. His protegé Timothy became the city’s first bishop. Later, the Apostle John served as a pastor there. Ephesus is one of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation. The city is located in modern day Turkey, then known as Asia Minor. Today it is one of the largest Roman archaeological sites in the world, and you can see the remnants of the one of the seven wonders of the ancient world — the Temple of Artemis (or Diana). In the days of the apostles, Ephesus was a major city in the Roman empire.
Paul wrote this letter to the Ephesians from prison. It doesn’t seem to have been prompted by any particular situations or problems in the church. Paul wrote the Christians there to encourage them, to teach them, to reinforce the blessings they had in Christ, and to challenge them to show forth the light that Christ gave them to the dark world around them. It contains some of the most breathtakingly beautiful theology in the New Testament, as Paul celebrates God’s magnificent grace and God’s plan to reconcile and restore all creation to himself.
This morning, I would like to introduce this letter by using a simple template I learned long ago from a little devotional book I read on Ephesians. This template suggests that there are three postures talked about in Paul’s letter that help us understand what it means to belong to Jesus Christ and to live as a Christian in the world.
The first posture is to SIT. Ephesians 2:20 says that “God…raised [Jesus] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father, ruling over all.
But then in chapter 2, Paul says something remarkable. He writes “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Not only is Jesus seated at God’s right hand, but there is a sense in which we are right there with him. In baptism, we died and then God raised us up and now we participate in everything Jesus has done for us in salvation. What belongs to Jesus belongs to us because we have been united with him by grace through faith.
The author of that little book about Ephesians said that the first thing we need to do as believers in Jesus is to learn to sit. By that he meant we need to learn to rest in all that Christ has done for us. This life is all about his grace. This life is all about what God has done for us in Jesus, not what we have done to find our way or earn our way to God. So the first posture we take as Christians is to sit, to rest in love and reconciling work of Christ. We find our identity in being the beloved people of God in Christ and this grounds everything we do.
The second posture. In Ephesians 4:1, Paul writes “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” First we sit, we rest in the Lord. Then we learn to WALK. This is the second position we take as believers in Jesus.
We start with grace but then arise and we walk, which is a metaphor for how we live our lives in the church — with our Christian family, and in the world — among our neighbors. As our baptism teaches us once again, we die to sin and are raised to walk in newness of life.
The life of a believer is a life through which we move. It is an active life, a life that is does not sit still. We walk with Christ! Grace leads to acts of gratitude. Faith flows forth in good works of love for others. When we rest in Christ by sitting with him and drawing upon all the blessings of our salvation, we gain energy to get up and go out to give our lives for the life of the world.
In walking, we walk with Jesus. We walk with each other. We walk with our neighbors. We walk in love. We walk in kindness. As we walk the Lord leads us in paths of justice and peace. As Jesus did, so we too walk among all kinds of people and learn to relate to them in ways that will bless and enrich our lives together with God’s shalom.
There is one more posture the Christian takes, according to Ephesians. First we sit, then we learn to walk, then finally we STAND. In Ephesians 6, we read “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. …Take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
Paul tells us in no uncertain terms that, as we live in this world, we will encounter powers of sin, evil, corruption, and death that will attempt to thwart us in our Christian lives. They will try to steal our rest in Christ and they will try to divert us from walking with Christ. That, Ephesians says, is when we will need to take a stand. That is when we will need to try and withstand, to resist, to oppose that which threatens shalom in our lives and in our world. This too is a part of our baptismal pledge, when we renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God.
So, this is Ephesians. We SIT — we rest in Christ. We WALK — we live out our faith in the world. We STAND — we oppose and resist the forces of chaos that foster brokenness, injustice, and conflict in our lives and relationships. I look forward to taking an Epiphany journey with you through this wonderful epistle.
May the word of Christ dwell in us with all wisdom. Amen.
It’s almost Epiphany, the end of the 12 Days of Christmas in the Western Christian world. Time to take the Christmas decorations down. Our friend Mike Bell thinks his neighbors might have left theirs up a bit too long.
‘Cause nothing says “Christmas” like illuminated sharks!
Today, we will look back on 2019 here at Internet Monk, sharks and all, and do a bit of looking forward to the new year, which promises to be just as eventful, or likely even more so — given that it’s a presidential election year, an impeachment trial is imminent, and the U.S. just poked the Iranian bear, potentially setting the entire Middle East ablaze in conflict.
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MOST-DISCUSSED INTERNET MONK POSTS OF 2019
The Mikdash Educational Center in Israel minted a “Temple Coin” featuring Donald Trump alongside King Cyrus, who 2,500 years ago allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon.
America’s Roman Catholic bishops voted in June to enact a new oversight system intended to hold them accountable for abuse and cover-ups, a move meant to restore faith in a church whose epidemic of misconduct has driven away parishioners and attracted the attention of state and federal law enforcement.
John MacArthur celebrated 50 years in the pastorate at a conference at his congregation Grace Community Church. During the event, MacArthur accused the Southern Baptist Convention of taking a “headlong plunge” toward allowing women preachers, and saying Beth Moore should “go home.”
IM Story of the Year 2019: Schisms in evangelicalism appear and widen
The world of American evangelicalism has been in the news in 2019, often for all the wrong reasons (in this writer’s opinion).
In the view of many Americans the word “evangelical” has become so intertwined with the Republican party and especially with unwavering support for President Trump that it has virtually lost all meaning as a description of Jesus-shaped faith and piety.
The band-aid was ripped off painfully once and for all recently by Mark Galli, who wrote an editorial at Christianity Today, a flagship publication of evangelicalism, called Trump Should Be Removed from Office.
Galli accused today’s evangelicals of hypocrisy, giving Donald Trump a free ride on his obvious and blatant moral and character issues after having insisted upon righteousness in the days of Bill Clinton.
[T]his president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationships with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.
Reactions to Galli from other evangelicals were swift and loud. Over 200 leaders wrote a letter slamming Galli’s opinion and claiming they were just “Bible-believing Christians and patriotic Americans who are simply grateful that our President has sought our advice as his administration has advanced policies that protect the unborn, promote religious freedom, reform our criminal justice system, contribute to strong working families through paid family leave, protect the freedom of conscience, prioritize parental rights, and ensure that our foreign policy aligns with our values while making our world safer, including through our support of the State of Israel.”
This led Timothy Dalrymple, the president of CT, to write a piece defending Galli, The Flag in the Whirlwind, and then Galli did an interview with the New York Times in which he lamented the “ethical naïveté” of many evangelicals. They appear, he said, to be ignorant of how grave and disturbing the president’s moral failures, character flaws, and public words and actions truly are. They have taken cues from him and have become his “disciples,” answering their critics by denigrating and dismissing them rather than engaging in serious conversation.
The ascendancy of Donald Trump and “Trumpism” has revealed a deep split at the heart of American evangelical faith and practice. Barring something I can’t forsee, it will only get worse in 2020.
NASA’s Aqua satellite used its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer to capture this view of wildfires raging on Australia’s eastern coast on Dec. 9, 2019. The wildfires were fueled by unusually hot weather and a potent drought that primed the region in October 2019, according to the space agency. (Image credit: NASA EOSDIS)
Australia is facing an apocalyptic crisis with this year’s bushfires. Our friend Susan and others have been giving regular reports to us. If you’ve been watching the news, the world is finally beginning to take notice.
We will put regular updates on the IM Bulletin Board (sidebar right) under the heading “FOR YOUR DAILY PRAYERS.”
• • •
What does the next decade hold for religion?
Religion News Service asked scholars, faith leaders, activists and other experts to reflect on the last 10 years in religion, as well what they expect to emerge for faith and practice in the 2020s.
Here is a brief sample. I encourage you to read the entire article.
Monitor the growing connections between nationalism and religion
Khyati Joshi: I’m keeping an eye on these growing bonds of nationalism and religion in America, as well as in India. In both large, officially secular democracies, a rising tide of thought and official action links national identity with the majority religion.
The nones will become a majority
Ryan Burge: I wanted to predict what American religion would look like in 2030 by extending the current trend lines of the seven major religious traditions in the United States. More specifically, I was interested in how long it would take for the religiously unaffiliated, who have seen major gains over the past decade, to be clearly the largest group in the United States. The answer that was derived from my projection model is 2029. This is the point when the model says that if the so-called nones grow at the slowest rate, they will still be larger than any other group, regardless of the margin of error.
Demographic changes will appear at the polls
Robert P. Jones: If the 2010s was the decade of transformation, the 2020s will be the decade of reckoning with change. Because white Christians vote at higher rates than other Americans, the ripple effects of these tectonic changes in the general population haven’t yet reached the ballot box. While 2008 was the last presidential election year when white Christians were still a majority among the general population, white Christians will likely remain the majority of voters in 2020. But in 2024, demographic waves will crash onto our political shores.
This new reality will impact partisan politics, particularly the calculus of future Republican presidential candidates. Currently, the GOP base is about 70% white and Christian. The more tightly President Donald Trump ties the party to this shrinking and graying base, the longer the road to victory will be in 2024 for the Republican nominee, who by necessity must create a broader, younger and more racially diverse coalition.
Jews will face a difficult 2020 and beyond
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin: [L]et me tell you what I see in the stars for world Jewry in the coming year. The picture is not pretty. This past year has seen the rapid acceleration of anti-Semitic incidents — both in Europe and in the United States. The social contract, complete with an immune system that guarded against the excesses of hate, has vanished.
No, this is not Berlin, 1938. And yet, it is disturbing and disorienting. European Jews are “accustomed” to this; it has been part of their narrative for the past thousand years. For American Jews, this is something for which nothing in their history or experience has prepared them. More disconcerting: With the exception of certain major cities, synagogue affiliation rates are dropping. Fewer young people are getting a quality Jewish education. With a shrinking sense of religious community — less communal Velcro — young Jews, and others, will be less prepared to meet the external challenges they will face.
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A PERSONAL WORD FROM CHAPLAIN MIKE
The Spencers & the Mercers, 2009
It’s hard to fathom, but this year marks my tenth year as lead writer for Internet Monk. And April 10th greets us as the tenth anniversary of Michael Spencer’s death.
I find it hard to put into words what this blog has meant to me, but it has become an integral part of my life, my inner being, my spirituality, my faith and practice.
Thanks to so many people, most especially Michael and Denise, for giving me this opportunity. But also, to Jeff Dunn, Damaris, Mike Bell, Lisa, Joe the Plumber, Mike the Geologist, Pastor Dan, Randy Thompson, Ted the Lobsterman (please tell me when they need a minister on the Cranberry Islands again!), Michael Buckley (our artist), Adam Palmer, Adam McHugh, and others who have contributed by writing, reading, commenting, supporting, befriending, and challenging me — heartfelt gratitude for all you’ve done to enrich my life and this website.
2020 may — may — find me stepping back a bit from writing as often. I’m still trying to work out a plan for the year. But I guarantee you this: we will always try to keep things interesting, to keep things Jesus-shaped, to keep things honest, and to keep things conversational.
Our goal is to continue the vision I stated in a 2015 site update: to be a post-evangelical, ecumenical, pastoral, and contemplative site, devoted to maintaining a legacy of Jesus-shaped Christianity.
You won’t always like what you read here. But I hope you’ll always find something nourishing and challenging.
We could always use financial support — I promise we won’t ask often, but we do need to keep feeding the gerbils that keep this site turning. You can use the “Donate” button at the top.
Ten years. Who’d a-thunk it?
Best to you for 2020 and beyond. May God bless us, every one.
DECADE’S END 30 Favorite and Important Books I Read — 2010-2019
This list by no means represents all the books I read and enjoyed in the past ten years, but I have tried to boil it down to some of the most important and eye-opening ones I’ve had the privilege of digesting.
I thought I’d review the relationship between science and the Christian faith for the past year. This is strictly from my own perspective as chronicler of things science-y and faith-y for Internet Monk and I don’t purport to be exhaustive or even statistically significant (hah, hah, see what I did there). Commentators are always welcome to weigh in with their opinions.
Let’s review the bad news first, so we can end this review on a high note. First and maybe worst is the ignoring or outright opposition to scientific thinking by the Trump administration. From climate-change denialism to meeting with a vaccine critic while planning a commission on autism (Trump himself has tweeted that there are “many cases” of children who become autistic after receiving vaccinations) to rollbacks on environmental protections; it seems some of this anti-scientific attitude reflects accommodating Trump’s so-called “evangelical” supporters.
Perhaps the most potentially devastating proposal came last November where the administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policy making including invalidating studies that have been used for decades to show, for example, that mercury from power plants impairs brain development, or that lead in paint dust is tied to behavioral disorders in children — might be inadmissible when existing regulations come up for renewal.
flat earth model
Next up would be the rise in flat-earthism. As I wrote here in Part 6 of the review of Wallace’s book, Love and Quasars:
What does this trend signify? I shudder to think. It simply amazes and dismays me to realize this has become a thing. Although there appears to be a religious component to this; some proponents assert flat earth is what the bible says, flat earthism seems mostly to be a psychological phenomenon associated with “conspiracy theory” thinking.
In July, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) passed a resolution at their convention affirming the belief that God created the Earth “in six natural days”. I posted on the topic here. The LCMS is the eleventh largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with about 2.3 million members. I have to admit I don’t really know why they did it. LCMS member and Imonk commentator, Miguel Ruiz, seems to think it was more a theological issue than a scientific one. To be fair, the vote was 662 in favor and 309 against, so there was quite a bit of dissent about the resolution. Dissenting members decried the lack of clarity in that what the heck is a “natural” day before there was any sun in the sky. How do you have an “evening and a morning” without a sun, because, remember, the Genesis account says the sun wasn’t created until the FOURTH DAY? My rant was probably uncharitable, nevertheless, it was disappointing to see a major Protestant denomination take such an obvious unscientific stance.
According the Friendly Atheist ticket sales for the Ark Encounter were up in July but down slightly in October. I couldn’t find comparable numbers for the Creation Museum, but it looks like Ken Ham’s odes to pseudoscience are still humming along (for now anyway).
And now, for the good news. A recent Gallup poll regarding American views on creation and evolution showed the acceptance of Creationism, the belief that God made humans as they are today and did so roughly 10,000 years ago, has hit its lowest point since Gallup began asking the question 35 years ago .
According to this 2015 Slate article, the people responsible for this shift are the young. According to a recent Pew Research Center report, 73 percent of American adults younger than 30 expressed some sort of belief in evolution, a jump from 61 percent in 2009, the first year in which the question was asked.
Francis Collins
I believe this trend is due to the number of Christian scientists speaking out on the issue. This began in earnest with Francis Collins. He led the Human Genome Project and now directs the National Institutes of Health. In 2006, he wrote the best-selling book The Language of God in which he tells his journey from atheism to Christian belief, showing that science is not in conflict with the Bible, but actually enhances faith. In 2009, he launched the Biologos Forum and Biologos sponsors a number of conferences across the country that address science-faith issues.
There are also a number of science and faith blogs by believing scientists that also cover the science/faith issue. These include RJS at Jesus Creed, Science and Religion: A View from an Evolutionary Creationist by Jim Kidder, NATURALIS HISTORIA by Joel Duff, and regular podcasts by “Science Mike” McHargue. Finally, there is the venerable American Scientific Affiliation, or ASA, that was founded in 1941 as an international network of Christians in the sciences, who publish the quarterly Perspectives on Science & Christian Faith journal.
My overall perspective is that slowly acceptance of science by American evangelicals is gaining ground. Sure, there is some doubling down by fundamentalists, and some of the acceptance of science is due to the overall increasing trend of secularization in American society at the expense of Christian belief. Nevertheless, the young people who continue to follow Christ seem to be more receptive to scientific reality than ever before. I remain cautiously optimistic.
DECADE’S END My Favorite Albums Each Year from 2010-2019
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2010: Harlem River Blues, Justin Townes Earle
Runner-up: American VI: Ain’t No Grave, Johnny Cash
2011: Barton Hollow, The Civil Wars
Runner-up: So Beautiful or So What, Paul Simon
2012: Ashes & Roses, Mary Chapin Carpenter
Runner-up: That’s Why God Made the Radio, The Beach Boys
2013: Lines We Trace, Hey Marseilles
Runner-up: Old Yellow Moon, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
2014: The River & the Thread, Roseanne Cash
Runner-up: Standing in the Breach, Jackson Browne
2015: Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens
Runner-up: Something More than Free, Jason Isbell
2016: A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, Sturgill Simpson
Runner-up: Are You Serious, Andrew Bird
2017: A Deeper Understanding, War on Drugs
Runner-up: Windy City, Alison Krauss
2018: Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves
Runner-up: By the Way, I Forgive You, Brandi Carlisle
2019: Tides of a Teardrop, Mandolin Orange
Runner-up: Amidst the Chaos, Sara Bareilles
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SONG OF THE YEAR 2019
“Golden Embers,” from Tides of a Teardrop by Mandolin Orange
This year’s best song describes how hard we must work to help each other in the face of devastating losses, lest they divide and overcome us. The poignant video portrays a father and son, each grappling with his own grief and how it threatens their ongoing relationship.
The Angel Appears to the Shepherds, von Carolsfield
Christmas Cheer and the Fear of the Lord by Randy Thompson
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. (Luke 2:8, KJV)
In reading Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus, we tend to go flying past “and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified” to get to the angel’s “I am bringing you good news of great joy.” Countless church Christmas pageants and sentimental candle-lit Christmas Eve services distract us from the fact that Luke intends for us to notice that the prelude to the good news that makes us happy is stark terror.
By all accounts, the revelation of the glory of God is not initially a comforting or comfortable phenomenon.
Peter, for example, responds to the glory of God revealed in a net-breaking catch of fish by falling down at Jesus’ feet and saying “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:9). Whatever else the fear of the Lord is, it is a profound sense of the darkness and sickness of one’s heart in the presence of a health and holiness that is utterly alien to human experience.
Sentimental piety can’t abide this blast of spiritual reality. It latches on to the positive and upbeat while trying desperately to avoid the probing light shining in the general direction of the dark corners of our hearts.
Unfortunately for sentimental piety, the “good news of great joy” is that light shining into those dark corners of our lives that we pretend aren’t there. The result is, we’re left with beautiful and inspiring Christmas card images of angels and shepherds and creches that leave us inspired and unchanged.
Apart from the “fear of the Lord,” the angel’s message that comes to us about a savior being born is incomprehensible. It may be general and even generic good news, but it can’t be good news for us as individuals. Note that the angel speaks of good news of great joy “for all the people,” but then speaks personally, specifically and even oddly to the shepherds: “to you is born this day. . . a Savior” who is also Christ and Lord.
It is to the shepherds specifically that the angel says “to you is born this day.” We are so used to this passage that we fail to notice what an odd turn of phrase this is. This is something a doctor or midwife would say to a new father or mother, “to you this day is born. . . “This is very intimate language, when you stop and think about it. The shepherds are not the baby’s fathers and mothers, or grandfathers or grandmothers, but unto them this baby is born, and born a savior.
When God’s fearful presence in our lives reveals to us who we are and who God is, we are given ears to hear and eyes to see not only that we need a savior, but to recognize the heart-relevance of the joyfulness of this heavenly good news of a savior baby born to us.
Not only has God given to us a Savior, but God has not left all of us shepherds out in the fields at night clueless. This will be a sign unto you. . . “ they were told, and we are told. You will find him in Bethlehem, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Children are born daily all over the world. Which one might be Savior, Christ, and Lord? How could anyone know? Again, heaven leaves nothing to chance. You’ll find this Savior, Christ, and Lord, they are told, in a manger in Bethlehem.
With this practical bit of information, the gates of heaven open a bit wider, and the shepherds hear and see the worship of heaven, which praises God and blesses humankind with the peace of heaven. The Prince of Peace is born here on earth to save us and lead us through these gates of heaven, that we might participate in heaven’s praise of God’s excellence.
The gates of heaven close, and the shepherds are left to themselves in their night watch over their sheep. Yet, in light of the glories they’ve seen, they cannot continue to stay where they are. A response to heaven’s message is demanded, and so they go to Bethlehem to see a human baby who is Savior, Christ, and Lord.
Of course, the baby they seek and find in a Bethlehem stable is just a human baby, just like any other. Yet, they are now able to see this child with heaven’s eyes. They may not fully know what a Savior is, or what it means to be the Christ, or what it means to call a baby in a manger Lord. But they have heard the angel voices, they now know what they can’t yet fully understand, and can speak confidently about what they can’t yet fully understand.
They have heard heavenly voices. They report what they have heard, and that is good enough. We who have heard the shepherd’s voices know something heavenly has been loosed upon the earth, and so we wait to see what will come.
And so they waited. Thirty years they waited to see heaven show itself in the baby grown into a man, and were amazed to see one despised and rejected, taking upon himself the sins of the world on a cross that finally couldn’t hold him. The one proclaimed Savior, Christ and Lord at birth is now our Savior, Christ, and Lord in heaven.
And, as the shepherds waited thirty years to see the baby become what he was proclaimed to be, so we too wait to see the gates of heaven open once again, when our expected Savior, Christ and Lord will break down the barrier between heaven and earth so that “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).
Note from CM: We are on the road for a few days, so no Sunday sermon for this post. Here is the sermon I preached on Christmas Eve, giving a different perspective on what that first Christmas might have been like.
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Sermon: Christmas Eve 2019 The first family Christmas
The Lord be with you.
I read a very interesting article by Todd Brewer at Mockingbird recently that challenged some of our common understandings of the Christmas story as the Gospel tells it here in Luke, chapter two. I’m still thinking about it, but I thought I’d share it with you tonight, because I think, if it’s accurate, it has some relevance to our own Christmas celebrations.
In the article, Brewer describes what I think is a fairly common understanding of the Christmas story.
Mary, about to give birth, treks down with Joseph to the backwater town of Bethlehem to fulfill Caesar’s census decree. They arrive at Joseph’s hometown and are greeted by “no vacancy” signs at all hotels…. The snow begins to fall. They are jet-lagged from travel. The only accommodation they can find is some dingy, smelly, cold cave [or maybe it’s a stable], full of animals. The soon-to-be parents are alone as Mary goes into labor and Joseph stands helplessly by. Finally, the moment comes and Jesus is wrapped in tattered clothes as he is placed in a feeding trough, an unassuming birthplace more fitting for a lamb than a King. The Son of God comes into the world just as he left it: poor, destitute, and rejected by those he came to save.
The problem, as the author says, is that we have misunderstood what it means when the Gospel says, “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
I don’t know about you, but when I think of the word “inn” I imagine a Holiday Inn, a Hampton Inn, or a Fairfield Inn – a hotel — or maybe some local bed & breakfast that calls itself an inn.
However, if you read the New International Version translation, which gives a more literal sense of what the word meant in that culture, a whole new picture emerges. It reads “and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”
The author explains that Joseph and Mary likely had relatives in Bethlehem, and that the couple would have stayed in one of their homes. Now the homes in those days usually had space for the animals as a part of the house and not in a separate facility. The animals’ quarters may have been on the ground floor with the family living space above or they may have been attached to the house in some other way. At any rate, it wasn’t like the farms many of you have or see in our area, where the house is for people and the barn or the stables are for the animals. People and animals lived close together in the same dwelling. There are still many parts of the world where this is the arrangement.
When it says that Joseph and Mary could find no room in that setting, it means that the house was so crowded with relatives that all the guest rooms were taken, all the spare beds were being slept in. The family members that had gathered there in Bethlehem were so numerous that they had overflowed into the part of the house that was occupied by the animals.
What this means, if this is accurate, is that we have far too few pieces in our Nativity sets!
Joseph and Mary weren’t alone in Bethlehem, they were likely surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins and all manner of distant relatives. The birth of Jesus didn’t take place on a “silent night,” it happened in the midst of a crowded home full of noise and conversation and anticipation and support. Jesus was born in the midst of a joyful gathering of loving and excited kin.
Maybe the birth of Jesus was more like the following description.
Mary, about to give birth, treks down with Joseph to the royal town of Bethlehem to fulfill Caesar’s census decree. They arrive at Joseph’s hometown and are greeted by … hoards of his second cousins, great-aunts and -uncles, and distant relatives. The whole gang is in town, and together they trade travel stories while quietly cursing Caesar’s ridiculous decree. Tired from the journey and the hot sun, Mary goes into labor surrounded by extended family and the local midwife. Finally, the moment comes and Jesus is swaddled as he is placed in the living room feeding trough because the guest room was already full of out-of-town guests. The Son of God comes into the world and everyone rejoices in song at the birth of the newest addition to the family.
You may not know this, but my wife Gail gave birth to three of our children at home. We had other kids running around, a doctor and a midwife who came to help, friends we had asked to be there, other family members who had come in from out of town to either witness the event or support us afterward. We weren’t tucked away in a hospital room with only the medical staff present. It was a family occasion, a time we wanted to share with others, a time of joy and rejoicing.
So, if what this author describes is a more realistic setting for Jesus’ birth, our Savior was born in the same kind of context. The angels weren’t the only ones singing that night. The shepherds weren’t the only ones running with excitement to see the baby and spread the news. Mary and Joseph were surrounded by a large, extended family who rejoiced with them when the baby Jesus was born. It may have been a quiet birth from the standpoint that the world outside took little notice, but in a house with its attached animal quarters in Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary’s relatives were having a Christmas party. The first Christmas family gathering.
I say all this to encourage you to enjoy this Christmas with your family and friends. I encourage you to sing. I encourage you to laugh, to feast, to tell stories, play games, and make it a family get-together to remember.
It seems as though that’s exactly what the first Christmas may have been like — an occasion for family and friends to come together and make merry over the good news that a baby has been born to bring us joy forever.
, by Scot Mcknight; and 
, by N.T. Wright
; and 
, by Ron Rolheiser
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