Tag: Scripture
0 Young People Hate: Homophobic Christianity
Tony Jones has a post today reviewing the beginning of the Democratic National Convention and celebrating how the Democratic Party appears to have transitioned to full-throated support of homosexual relationships and marriage equality. It’s received little comment in the media- maybe because the media arrived at such support long ago?- but such support seemed unthinkable just a few cycles ago.
Tony concludes with this thought: This is just another sign that the tipping point has been reached. And it is yet again up to congregations and denominations and plain old Christians to decide whether they want to be on the right side or the wrong side of history.
Now I know a lot of you have a lot of different feelings when it comes same-sex relationships. I realize how sincere Christians can arrive at two very divergent points of view on the question. Christians can debate the question from a variety of scriptural and theological perspectives; indeed, Christians have been doing just that (to the overall detriment of the Church) for decades. The issue threatens Church unity in my denomination (Methodism) and has torn several other denominations asunder.
Pushing the scriptural and theological concerns aside for just one moment, on one level Tony’s point is absolutely rock-solid: demographics.
No matter the supposed scriptural or theological ‘correctness’ of those who oppose same-sex relationships, long-term it’s a losing issue for the Church.
I’ll put it stronger, long-term the Church has an image problem when it comes to how we deal with the gay issue.
Why? Because, like it or not, young people think Christians are homophobic and, overwhelmingly, young people do not share that phobia.
In his book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church, David Kinnaman cites the perceived intolerance of Christians as one of the primary reasons those in their teens and twenties leave the faith.
It’s a generational difference. Kinnaman points out how in 1960 9 of 10 young adults identified themselves as Christian. Today it’s 60%. In 1960 only 1 of every 20 births was to an unwed mother. Today it’s nearly 50%.
Young people today have grown up with a diversity (religious, ethnic, relational) unthinkable 50 years ago. Diversity is an assumed norm in their lives and they bring it to bear on the topic of homosexuality. Young people favor egalitarianism in their relationships: fairness over rightness, inclusion over exclusion, relationships over opinions and, as a result, young people simply assume the participation of homosexuals in any meaningful cultural conversation.
And there’s the demographic rub. An institution that behaves as though it values the polar opposite, the Church, seems strange, antiquated and even mean-spirited to a majority of young people.
I’m not suggesting that churches should capitulate to the cultural mores of the empire. Neither am I suggesting churches should abandon teachings they sincerely believe are given by the Holy Spirit.
I am suggesting that the demographics make it even more imperative Christians engage this conversation gently and with compassion, as though all the eyes of young people are watching.
I am suggesting that the demographic realities force Christians to consider whether being ‘right’ on this issue is more important than persuading others to the love of Christ. Or, as Tony puts it again: This is just another sign that the tipping point has been reached. And it is yet again up to congregations and denominations and plain old Christians to decide whether they want to be on the right side or the wrong side of history.
0 What? After the Flood, Noah Got Drunk and Passed Out…Naked?
In case you missed church this Sunday, here’s the last installment of our ’12 sermon series: Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School. This one comes from friend, mentee and Duke student, Taylor Mertins…
The smell was unbearable. Though he had lost track of the days, Ham was still unaccustomed to the rocking of the boat and the smell of damp animals constantly bombarding his senses. As he made his way throughout the bowels of the ship, checking on his brothers and their families, feeding the animals, and plugging leaks, Ham’s tortured mind kept replaying the details of what brought him to this ship.
His father had always been a quiet man; he mostly kept to himself and lived a humble life. His daily routine was not often interrupted until the day he began gathering copious amounts of wood from the forest. Ham could not understand the change in his father’s ambitions, but he respected him enough to not question this new driving force. Over the months a ship began to form out of the collected wood and Ham, along with his brothers, helped their father by collecting two of every animal from the surrounding countryside. Ham’s unwavering faith sustained him through the trying months where a ship stood in an open field, miles from the nearest water source. When others would have doubted his father’s project, Ham remained steadfast. And then the rain began. As the days passed, and the rain continued, Ham began to understand why his father had dedicated all of his energy to the giant raft; a flood was coming.
Ducking underneath the wooden support beams Ham pondered whether or not the boat would ever again rest on solid land. Tormented by the incessant rocking, Ham went onto the deck of the ship in order to calm his system. Usually filled with noise and activity, when Ham arrived on the deck all was silent and most of his family had gathered on the side of the boat. Worried that someone had fallen overboard, Ham rushed to the edge of the boat with his eyes drawn to the water until his father, Noah, placed a hand on Ham’s shoulder and pointed to the mountaintops that pierced the edge of the horizon: their journey was coming to an end.
The months after the flood passed by without the interruption of any major catastrophic elements. Ham and his brothers were initially shocked to discover the absurd amount of devastation that had been underwater. But as time passed, they cleaned and prepared to create a new home. While Ham and his family settled back into normalcy, his father began to cultivate fields of grapes in the same manner that he built the ark – he kept to himself yet worked with profound dedication. Eventually the fields yielded their fruit and Noah began to produce an abundance of wine.
One morning Ham was distressed to discover his father missing from his usual presence in the fields and went off to find him. Upon entering his father’s tent, Ham took in the disheveled room and tried to make sense of what was before him: Noah was completely naked surrounded by a number of empty wine bottles. Ham looked upon the body of his father and felt sorry for him, for his trials and tribulations with the ark, for his drunkenness, for his nakedness, and for his shame. He left the tent in order to find his brothers Shem and Japheth and tell them what had happened.
After debating what needed to be done, Shem and Japheth found a cloak and laying it on their shoulders they walked into their father’s tent backwards to cover the nakedness of their father. Throughout the day Ham continually walked past Noah’s tent and waited patiently for his father to awake. When Noah finally awoke from his drunken stupor, news of his nakedness and drunken escapade from the night before had made its way throughout the family. Noah, usually a man of few words, angrily made his way through the camp until he stood before his sons: “Ham I have come to curse your son, my grandson, Canaan; lowest of the slaves shall he be to his brothers! My other son Shem, blessed by the Lord my God you shall be, let your nephew Canaan be your slave! Japheth, may God make space for you in the tents of your brother Shem, and let your nephew Canaan be your slave!”
… I have no idea what this passage means. I am starting my third year of seminary and I haven’t the faintest idea how this scripture made it into the canon. I have dreaded this moment over the last few months, knowing that I was invited to come in my home church, where I would stand before so many people I love and care about, people who made me into the Christian I am today, people who helped nurture my call to the ministry. I have been terrified about preaching this sermon because I simply have no idea what this scripture means.
Now don’t get me wrong, my last two years at Duke Divinity School have been amazing. I have garnered a significant theological education, unrivaled in the United States. My professors have taken me through amazing lectures on a myriad of subjects. I have learned how to appropriately pronounce words like eschatology, pericope, pneumatology, hermeneutics, dogmatic apologetics, latitudarianism, curvatis, kerygma, infralapsarianism, and sometimes I even know what those words mean. I have served churches in North Carolina and Michigan. I have participated in funerals and comforted grieving families. I have celebrated with parents as the brought their infant forward to be baptized into the body of Christ. I have committed myself to the call that God placed on my life so many years ago, but I still don’t know what to do with Noah’s hangover.
To begin, everyone here already knows the real story about Noah and the Ark, it’s the one your children watch on Veggie Tales, and the one your grandmother told you when you were growing up – Noah, a man of God, is the only righteous human being left; God commands him to build an ark and procure two of every animal in order to repopulate the earth after the flood; the flood comes and desolates the land, but Noah’s faith in God’s calling sustains him and his family; after the water recedes God creates a rainbow in the sky signifying the new covenant… However, this is not the end of the story.
Over the last few years I have come to appreciate the fact that the bible is full of mysterious, confusing, and seemingly un-preachable, stories. Over the last month Jason Micheli has taken this church through some of the more bizarre collections of the Word of God: You have heard about: Isaiah’s unwavering faith in the Lord to the point of remaining naked for three years; David collecting 100 Philistine foreskins in order to marry Saul’s daughter; Paul literally preaching and boring a young man to death; and God jumping out in the middle of the night in an attempt to kill Moses.
Jason has skillfully and articulately brought these stories to life, he has connected them with the modern world and brought forth a message applicable for today. Moreover, he has done what every preacher is called to do: make the Word become flesh and dwell among us.
Unlike Jason Micheli, I do not have a particular story that reflects the scripture for the day. I’m sure if Jason were preaching this morning he would tell us about getting a call one morning at his last church to visit a family within the community. Upon arriving Jason would have discovered the father passed out naked in the living room after a night of binge drinking. Jason’s description of the room would be so vivid and adjectival that we, the congregation, could smell the burnt bacon emanating from the kitchen and feel the tapioca colored carpet under our feet. At that point he would take the time to describe with absurd detail the feeling of a bead of sweat developing on his temple and slowly running down to his collar. He would then tell us about the fight that happened between the drunken man and his son, and then give us a wonderful sermonic twist by emphasizing the grace of God and then end with a witty sentence that we would carry with us the rest of the day. Unlike Jason Micheli, I do not have a story about meeting a drunk, naked man asleep on the floor.
I do not know what to do with our story today.
Most of us have never even heard it; we are content with the Veggie-Tales version that ends with the wonderful rainbow in the sky. But, if we end the story with the Rainbow we are left to wrestle with one of the bible’s most troubling theological questions: If God destroyed the world with a flood in order to destroy sin, why is the world still so messed up today?
Genesis 9.18-29 is full of problems: theological, historical, and logical:
Noah, who “found favor in the sight of the Lord” (Genesis 6.8) and who “did all that God commanded him” (6.22) was set apart from this rest of retched humanity in order to survive God’s destruction. After the flood God blesses Noah and commands him to be fruitful and multiply three times, insuring him and his family that God would never again “curse the ground because of humankind.” And how does Noah react? He builds a vineyard, gets drunk, and falls asleep naked in his tent. This doesn’t make any sense. Why would the one human, the only one God chose to save, ruin this blessed opportunity of life on drink and nudity? Why would he so defile the earth that God just saved? Why would he blatantly ignore the covenantal rainbow in the sky for a night of debauchery? It doesn’t make any sense.
But the passage isn’t over yet: Ham, the faithful son of Noah, the one who stood by his father through the ark’s construction and the great flood, Ham discovers his father’s naked body. Ham, like any good son, tells his brothers in order that they might cover up their father’s mistakes, his nakedness and drunken behavior. And how does Noah reward his faithful son? He curses his own kin! It doesn’t make any sense.
Click here to continue reading T’s sermon.
0 What the Gospels are NOT About
What the Gospels Are NOT About
To say the Gospels aim at telling a story from beginning to end with a single, primary ‘point’ is also to argue that there things the Gospels are not (primarily, least) about.
I’m reading NT Wright’s new book, How God Became King, in which Wright argues that for most of its history Western Christianity has missed the plot and point the Gospels writers intended to convey in their story. The story the Gospels tell, Wright says, is one in which God in Christ becomes King of Earth as in Heaven. This is why the Gospels give so much space to Jesus’ Kingdom teaching. Ascension then is less denouement than climax.
But if this is what the Gospels are about then the Gospels are not about other, commonly assumed things:
Going to Heaven
The Gospels tell a story not where people go to heaven when they die but where God’s people pray for the Kingdom of Heaven to be brought to Earth.
Jesus’ Ethical Teachings
The Gospels do not tell a story of Jesus the Teacher whose career was upended by those who didn’t like what he had to say. Jesus was not, as we like to think today, a 1st century Jewish analogue to the Buddha or Ben Franklin. Jesus wasn’t offering a teaching as we think of it, as a set of ideals or precepts. Jesus’ teachings were a part of his Kingdom announcement: that through him a whole new world was drawing near.
Jesus, the Moral Exemplar
In the same way the Gospels do not tell teachings, the Gospels do not tell a story primarily about a Jesus whose perfect holiness, faith and love show us how we should live and be. If this were the story the Gospels tell then they’re failures, Wright says, because none of us can possibly hope to live according to his exceedingly perfect example. The Gospels cannot be reduced to Jesus showing us how its done.
Jesus, the Perfect Sacrifice
This is the most difficult assumption to undo because the notion of Jesus dying for our sin is the single most common definition of what Christians mean by ‘gospel.’ But if the Gospels aim to tell the same story that Paul tells then they fail because it’s not at all obvious the Gospels are trying to tell a story of Jesus, the victim without blemish, dying as a sacrifice for our sin.
Proving Jesus’ Divinity
Many assume that the purpose of the Gospels was to prove Jesus’ divinity. The Gospels though don’t try to prove his divinity, they simply presuppose it. Getting back to what Wright sees as the Gospels primary story, the Gospels’ understanding of Jesus’ divinity is wrapped up with the Kingdom Jesus ushers in to our world.
0 Potiphar’s Wife: The Dreambearer’s Nightmare
We’re winding down our sermon series, ‘Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School.’ This coming Sunday we’re tackling, perhaps unwisely, the troubling passage in Exodus 4.24. Look it up, enough said.
Here’s an old sermon on the little known story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. This was my second stab at the same passage. I guess Joseph’s moral fortitude all depends on how was good-looking Potiphar’s wife…
Genesis 39
I can’t; I’m not that strong. That’s not my story.
My sermon title for you today is: In Between Doxologies.
The narrative of Genesis 39 is bookended by the doxology: ‘The Lord was with Joseph.’
At its beginning and at its end, this story asserts that the Lord was with Joseph.
But a lot happens in between.
The same is true of the Christian life, for there is much sadness, sorrow and second-guessing sandwiched in between Sundays. In between Sunday’s lofty amen, praises and Gloria Patris, our faith has to touch down and make contact with the real world.
When I deliver the benediction week in and week out and send you forth from the worship gathering, you’re sent out into a world that appears altogether deprived of dream-coats, divine intrusions or dramatic change.
In between our Sunday doxologies, we make our lives on difficult terrain. In between our Sunday doxologies, most of us lack Joseph’s uncomplaining resolve, consistent virtue and unwavering faith.
For God’s Providence is hardly that apparent, and we are seldom that strong.
The Joseph story is not an easy template around which we can stencil our lives.
Too often, when we hit up against the uncertainties of the real world, echoes of stories like this one rattle around in our memory and we think: I can’t; I’m not that strong. That’s not my story.
A congregation as smart as this one knows well that the Joseph story begins with the hopeful hints of a dream and ends with the joy of a tear-stained reconciliation.
But much happens in between.
Joseph’s dream-coat’s been worn ragged by more than a few nightmares.
The dream-bearer’s brothers have sold him into slavery, and, as chapter 39 opens, Joseph falls into the charge of Potiphar, an otherwise unknown Egyptian officer. The nightmare abates briefly as Joseph, the slave, wins his Egyptian master’s trust.
Soon Joseph has the entire Egyptian estate prospering. For a little while, the dream-bearer finds favor and comfort living under the yoke of the Egyptian empire.
But it was not to last.
For reasons ambiguous, Potiphar’s wife preys on Joseph. She may think she is looking for love, but like all such instances of sexual abuse it is really about power.
Joseph possesses a power and a virtue that Potiphar’s wife can only intuit, and she grabs after it even as she grabs for his clothes.
Joseph resists without hesitation. His virtue is as ironclad as a chastity belt. Yet Potiphar’s wife proves herself a persistent predator. She wins their seductive stalemate by accusing him of rape, waving his loincloth in the air as the damning evidence.
Her accusations fall on easy ears, for Potiphar throws Joseph into prison where, we are once again assured: ‘The Lord was with Joseph.’
No, Joseph’s story is no simple template for the life of faith.
He bears the dream with ease and grace through what we would consider an unqualified nightmare.
Joseph is no easy model of faith.
No matter the nightmares, Joseph never doubts- never resents- his divine dreams.
Through brotherly betrayal, enslavement and imprisonment; the dream-bearer never, he never once distresses. Taking everything in stride, he never utters a single complaining word about his enslavement.
After Potiphar’s wife makes her predatory accusations, Joseph is never given a fair hearing- because he never asks for one.
He never protests her charges. He never seeks retribution. He never utters an angry, disparaging word about this sly woman or her fool of a husband.
Through what we would, no doubt, consider a nightmare, Joseph bears the dream with steadfast ease. Joseph body-surfs the waves of tribulation and he never once relaxes his resolve.
He never once questions his predicament. He never once frets that the burden is too much to bear. He never once shakes his fist at the sky and pleads to know why the God who gave him dreams now has given him nightmares.
Joseph is no easy model of faith.
I can’t; I’m not that strong. That’s not my story.
I first heard those words on a steamy summer morning at the state prison in New Jersey where I ministered.
Those words pierced me with their honesty…and their hard-felt, heart-felt accuracy. In the tiring humidity, Hector Castaneda looked at me with his reluctant eyes, and- with his spare response- revealed my pastoral wisdom to be that of a bathtub: shallow but deep enough to drown in.
Hector’s beige jumpsuit showed a year’s worth of wear. He was a bit older than me and a little taller. He was stocky with short, black hair, and he had the gardner’s hands of his previous profession.
His bulky, unfashionable, state-issued glasses slid down his sweaty nose. Hector and I sat in the chaplain’s classroom just off the prison auditorium. These grimy industrial fans blew stale warm air on us and drowned out our voices.
I was the theologically trained pastor, sitting in a squat plastic chair. Hector sat across from me; he had made an appointment. To tell me his story.
Hector told me of the father back in Guatemala he never knew. He told me about the multitude of jobs his mother always selflessly juggled. He half-smiled and told me of his two small children, the children that his wife had recently left with their grandmother without explanation and without a return address.
He confessed his crime, his only one. A common one. He was guilty, yes, but his guilt was grossly exaggerated by the strict, immigrants-only sentence he had received.
Hector told me about the guards, the police officers, and the judges who all looked very much like me. And the lawyer, who also looked a lot like me and who had stopped calling once the money ran out.
Hector looked at me with earnest eyes, waiting for a wise word from this theologically trained, spiritually sophisticated pastor- a teacher of the faith.
And what did I say?
What word did I offer?
I pointed him to a concise, little prison drama in Genesis 39.
I culled my pastoral insights and tried to acquaint Hector with Joseph, the dreamer who suffered many nightmares and found himself behind bars…with nary a complaint.
I held up patient, resilient Joseph, and I encouraged Hector to stencil his life around it. It’ll work out; just stay in the lines.
But Hector checkmated me with his incisive reply: I can’t; I’m not that strong. That’s not my story.
And of course Hector was right.
I should’ve realized that Joseph makes for a difficult trace when the faithful life succeeds only in getting your things stolen every night because you refused to fight back- because that was be the Christian thing to do.
I should’ve realized Joseph was a painful model of faith, when you got beat up weekly for breaking the jailhouse silence and reporting abuse through the proper channels- because that was the Christian thing to do.
I should’ve remember the prejudicial slurs that I’d heard firsthand coming from the mouths of Hector’s guards.
I should’ve recalled the angry letters from Hector’s elementary-aged kids, wondering why he was not yet home and how they needed his help on their homework.
No, Hector’s story had a few more details than Genesis 39.
Joseph was no simple stencil for the life of faith.
Friends, this is my tenth year of ministry. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that folks like Hector are all around us.
They may look different. They may surprise you. They may come to church every Sunday dressed gloriously and sing like angels.
But, like Hector, they feel pulled by the tension between faith and life.
God’s voice frequently sounds muted to them. God does not always overwhelm or intrude upon their lives. There are some who are so mired in the ups and downs of their everydays that falling in and out of faith is the only constant rhythm to their lives.
Yes, there are folks like Hector all around you, if you only look.
You may be like Hector yourself, thinking you can’t, thinking you’re not strong enough, thinking this Story isn’t your story.
Hectors are everywhere. The Josephs are rare indeed.
Joseph’s resolve is not necessarily our resolve.
Joseph’s virtue is not always our virtue.
Joseph’s faithfulness is not often our faithfulness.
More often than not, when we’re knee-deep in the gray water of life- the real world, what will come to us won’t be Joseph’s unwavering, uncomplaining unafraid resolve.
What will come to us will be something more like Hector’s exhausted confession: ‘I can’t; I’m not that strong. That’s not my story.’
But here’s the thing-
It doesn’t have to be.
Joseph’s story doesn’t have to be our story. Or, better still, our story doesn’t need to resemble Joseph’s story…
Because you and I:
We have Jesus.
We have the One who modeled the life of faith and obedience perfectly.
For our sake.
For all time.
We have Jesus of Nazareth, the One in whom God has come to us and through whom God has become one of us- for us.
Neither Hector nor I nor you can reliably trump trial and tribulation, day in and day out.
But we need not despair, because for forty days Jesus Christ faced that which Israel never could, that which we cannot.
We can’t; we’re not that strong.
But we don’t have to be, for in Jesus Christ God does that which we cannot do ourselves.
In the garden, Christ prays in our place, because he dares to pray ‘Thy will be done’ even as he knows that prayer will lead him to the Cross.
We can’t. We’re not that strong.
But we don’t have to be.
Rather than despair over what you’re not, over who you’re not- you can instead rejoice that in Jesus Christ God becomes the accursed, the condemned, the Judge judged in your place.
So come to the Table and do not despair over the disparity between who you are and who God would have you be.
But rejoice- rejoice that Jesus Christ is the one true sacrifice for all those ways and all those days when you are not as strong, not as virtuous, not as resilient as Joseph.
Come to the Table and rejoice- because more than anything this bread and this wine remind us that its not our faithfulness- its not our obedience- that God measures us by. It’s Jesus Christ’s.
Come to the Table and rejoice- because more than anything this bread and this wine remind us that our weakness has been overwhelmed by his strength, his obedience counts for more than our disobedience, our every sin and our every shortcoming has been swallowed up by his perfect sacrifice.
Come to the Table and rejoice- because more than anything this bread and this wine promise us:
that when you’re in between the doxologies in your life
when you’re sure you can’t
when you’re locked away in some dark place
and you’re convinced you’re not strong enough-
it’s not your strength God’s given you to lean on.
But Jesus Christ’s
That’s our Story.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
2 Boring God
We’re in the midst of a sermon series on ‘Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School.’ Here’s one from Acts 20.7-12. Paul, apparently, was windy and/or boring.
Some years ago I served as a chaplain at the UVA Hospital. It was a regular 9-5 gig, excepting that once a week I covered the overnight shift.
One of the responsibilities of the overnight chaplain was to supervise the transfer of dead bodies from the hospital’s possession to whichever funeral home the dearly departed’s family had selected.
And so, if paged in the middle of night I’d call down to the morgue:
‘This is the chaplain’s office’ I’d say, when the attendant picked up.
And no matter the employee, the response was always the same:
‘Yeah, chaplain, we’ve got a live one. Need you to pick up.’
I’d trudge down into the bowels of the hospital, and, after gathering the necessary paperwork, the attendant and I would push a body bag, down a long tapioca-colored hallway, to a delivery door, where a funeral home employee would be waiting.
We’d push the body through the doors and then, like a UPS man dropping off your latest purchase from EBay, I’d ask the funeral home person to ‘sign here please’ and then the ‘package’ would be his.
The morgue itself with its walk-in fridge, stainless steel tools hanging along the walls, the tiled floor and rubber mats and the music blasting from a boom box- all together it reminded me of the restaurant kitchen where I’d once worked.
A mental association that turned my stomach.
Compared to the holy moments I spent with people during their deaths, the moments I spent with them afterwards, in the morgue, always struck me as disconcertingly casual.
For example, the first time I went to pick up a body- a farmer who’d died when his tractor rolled over on him- when I arrived at the morgue the attendant, a 40-something mustached man, was watching the Adam Sandler movie, Happy Gilmore, and eating pepperoni pizza.
‘Want some?’ he asked with his mouth full.
‘No thanks.’
Or there was the time when the attendant caught me wrinkling my nose at a decidedly postmortem smell and asked: ‘Wanna know what that smell is?’
‘Not really’ I thought.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is the smell of job security.’
Or, for instance, I’d always associated the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song, ‘Under the Bridge,’ with my first kiss. But now I associate it with the middle aged lawyer who aspirated while trying to eat a pastrami sandwich on the toilet.
The morgue attendant sang ‘sometimes I feel like my only friend’ as we pushed the former counsel for the defense through the double doors.
Some of the bodies I came to claim were people I’d been with as they died, people whose hands I’d held and whose eyes I closed to this world with my palm.
And so it always felt odd to me to see these same people again as they were zipped into what looked like garment bags by an attendant who oftentimes was snacking on a Spicy Hawaiin Hot Pocket and laughing to David Letterman’s latest Top Ten List.
Sometimes the attendants would want to chat it up about UVA Football.
At other times they’d offer me bits of professional trivia.
‘Did you know,’ an attendant said one night as he zipped up a body, ‘that an adult kidney can fit inside a 7-11 Big Gulp?’
‘No, I didn’t know that’ I said, as I briefly tried to imagine the scenario in which discovery was made.
It was gallows humor. I suppose anything else would’ve made it an impossible job.
As a pastor I’ve been around a lot of dead bodies. It’s never really bothered me. But in the morgue the bodies existed in a kind of limbo without anyone to give them context.
I could handle being around the bodies; what I couldn’t handle was their anonymity.
And I think for that reason I’d always ask the attendant for whatever they could tell me about the person.
So that’s how one winter night, I learned about George.
As George was zipped into a bag I asked the 20-something attendant: So, how did he die?
‘Heart attack’ he said, ‘in his sleep.’
‘I guess that’s the way to go’ I said.
‘Yep, they didn’t know he’d died until the service was over.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘He died in church, fell asleep and had a heart attack. The ushers didn’t
realize he was dead until the organ stopped playing.’
‘Can you imagine that?’ the attendant said. ‘Someone sleeping so hard
through church that he could die and no one would know?’
‘You must not be a United Methodist,’ I said.
‘The paperwork says he died at Mt Pisgah Church- do you know that church?’ he asked me.
But my mind wandered. I thought about…
Jake, who was a member of my church and who every Sunday would fall stone cold asleep about 3 sentences into my sermon and who, after I’d been preaching a while would start to argue with his ex-wife in his sleep.
And so when the morgue attendant asked me about Mt Pisgah Church, even though I’d never heard of it and did not know where it was, nonetheless I replied:
‘Yes, I know that church.’
‘I preach there all the time.’
Evidently, according to St Luke, preachers like me have been boring people to death since the very founding of the Church.
That might not come as a surprise to you, having to listen to Dennis every other week, but why on earth would St. Luke ever openly admit that?
Luke’s supposed to be an evangelist remember.
These stories are meant to convert people to the faith not confirm all their worst assumptions about the faith.
What kind of advertisement is this for the church? Come check out our church; our pastor’s a killer preacher?
The story’s even worse than it appears at first glance.
This is the very first mention in the entire New Testament of a Christian- not a Jewish- Sabbath Service.
In other words, this is Kick-Off Sunday for the history of Christian worship and does St Luke have to report?
That Paul is full of hot air and drones on all day, because he’s on his way to Jerusalem and has to leave in the morning.
And so on Kick-Off Sunday Christian preaching claims its first victim.
It’s an odd story. Why would Luke tell it?
It gets even worse.
Paul’s victim is one of only two ‘young people’ mentioned in the New Testament. There just aren’t a lot of youth in the New Testament.
The first one mentioned is the rich, young ruler that Jesus sends away in tears because the young man doesn’t want to sell all his stuff and give the money to the poor.
The other young person mentioned in scripture is Eutychus, who’s killed by one of Jesus’ preachers.
Eutychus- his name in Greek means ‘Lucky,’ which is ironic since he’s not.
It’s a strange story.
And it’s a strange story for Luke of all people to tell.
Luke’s Book of Acts is filled with hyperbolic stories that cast the church in a flattering, almost heroic, light.
Peter’s sermon convert thousands.
Paul’s conversion is filled with dazzling light and high drama.
The apostles routinely evade evil by just a hair’s breadth.
This mention of a youth named Lucky whom Paul bores to death- it doesn’t jive with the rest of Luke’s book.
So why would Luke even jot it down?
After all, Luke was there when it happened.
Luke’s not simply recording something told to him. Here in chapter 20, Luke switches from 3rd person narration to 1st person plural. He says ‘we.’
He was there. So Luke knows what bad press this is for the church.
There’s every reason not to, so there must be a reason why he does include this story.
What are we to make of this story?
It’s not just an odd story for Luke to tell.
It’s odd the way Luke tells it too.
Luke goes overboard with details up front in the beginning of the story.
He tells you about the time and the bread and the lamps and the young man’s name and the exact floor on which the sanctuary was located.
Luke gives all these details in just a couple of verses but then he just, ho-hum, matter-of-factly mentions that Paul brings Lucky back to life. That’s it.
It’s an odd way to tell a resurrection story.
And it’s odd that we don’t hear from Eutychus at all.
He just goes home to nurse his sore back and bruises.
And everyone else- they get back to worship as though this kind of thing were an every day occurrence.
The attendant matched the toe tag on George’s foot with the name on the transfer papers.
‘So, have you ever put anyone to sleep?’ he asked absent-mindedly.
‘Me? No, I’ve never put anyone to sleep’ I lied.
‘Really?’ he squinted at me.
‘Look,’ I shot back, ‘it’s harder than it looks. It takes hours every day. They can’t all be home runs. Believe me, if I could stage car chases in the sanctuary or take half-naked women into the pulpit with me I would.’
He just laughed.
We were about to push George down the hallway to wait for the hearse, but the attendant looked at his watch and said: ‘We’ve got a few minutes. I’ve got a couple sandwiches if you want to grab a bite. Liverwurst.’
I realize some people might think it revolting to eat pureed liver in the approximate vicinity of several dozen corpses not to mention the many appendages and organs with no body to call home. You’re entitled to opinion.
But since I was a boy I’ve not been able to resist liverwurst.
He handed me a sandwich and I sat down at his desk. He got a paper towel and, as casually as if he were sitting at a picnic table, laid his liver sandwich on George’s chest.
‘So you don’t go to church?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I did as a kid.’
‘Alright,’ I said, ‘you tell me. What could someone like me do to make worship less boring to someone like you?’
He wiped is mouth. ‘I don’t think there’s anything you could do.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘The problem’s not preachers. The problem’s every one else. They make Christianity seem so dull. Most Christians are as cold and stiff as old George here’ and he patted George’s midsection.
‘Even God must be bored by them.’
It’s not really fair to beat up on preachers for being boring.
It’s too obvious. One of the reasons I became a preacher was so I wouldn’t have to sit out there in the pews and suffer like you.
I don’t know how you do it. In an age of iPhones and iPads and Facebook and PowerPoint and Hulu and IMAX to just sit quietly for 20 minutes and listen? That’s a nearly impossible task.
And I know I can be boring, predictable, prosaic. I can see everything from up here-I’m well aware there’s some of you on whom I have an almost narcotic effect.
But, even still, I’m not sure that I’m the problem.
I mean, I’m only up here preaching for one hour a week.
That leaves 167 hours in the week when you’re the preacher.
167 hours in which you proclaim, in which you announce, in which you communicate to anyone around you and everyone in your lives whether or not this God is interesting enough, captivating enough, compelling enough to give not just an hour of your time but to give your lives to.
This past week I studied surveys, done by the Barna Group, of Christians in their teens and twenties. According to the research, a sizeable majority of young people find Christianity to be boring.
Know why? It’s not because of worship or sermons or songs.
No, a majority of young people think Christianity is boring because faith doesn’t appear to be a relevant, real-life, or every day thing for the adults in their lives.
In other words, the way to make young people more excited about the faith isn’t contemporary music or pyrotechnic sermons or flat screens in the sanctuary. The way to make young people more interested in the faith is for there to be more interesting Christians.
When you think about it, to make this God seem boring is quite a feat.
This God, who shed eternity and took on flesh as a poor Jewish carpenter.
This God, whose teaching is always upside down and unexpected and not as we would like it.
This God, who befriended all the wrong people and offended all the right people until it landed him on a cross.
This God, who swallowed up Death and then handed us the keys to his Kingdom and invited us to give our everything to it.
I mean- you can dismiss this God. You can argue with this God.
You can doubt, or disbelieve or run away from this God.
You can even hate this God if you want.
But for God’s sake don’t make this God seem boring.
And maybe that’s Luke’s point
in telling this story the way he does
so ho-hum, matter-of-fact
about this congregation where no one even blinks at a little thing like
someone being raised from death to life.
Because apparently they’re used to that kind of thing.
Maybe this is Luke’s way of saying that this is how Christianity should be.
Maybe Luke’s saying
that God- the Living God- should be such a part of our lives
not just in here
but out there and everywhere
such a part of our lives
that resurrection is an every day expectation,
Maybe Luke’s saying
that God should be such a part of our each and every day life
that we should just expect for this God
to wake people up
to shake people up
to knock people down
and raise them up to a new way of life.
A church with expectations like that
could survive even a boring preacher.
A preacher with that kind of church
would be lucky.
4 The Bible Plus: The Books of Mormonism
Here’s a thorough piece from The Christian Century on Mormonism and its texts.
A Latter-day Saint friend of mine once invited an evangelical coworker to church. The coworker found much that was familiar in the LDS service: hymn singing, an informal sermon style, robust fellowshiping and scripture-driven Sunday school. But then came the moment when the Sunday school teacher, after beginning with Genesis, said “Let’s now turn to the Book of Moses” and began reading: “The presence of God withdrew from Moses . . . and he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.’” I am told that the visitor reflexively searched through his Bible before he realized that he’d never heard of such a book, though of course the story of the burning bush was familiar. And while he didn’t mind the sentiments expressed in the words he’d heard, he knew that they were not in his Bible.
This mix of the familiar and the strange is a common experience for any who have spent even minimal time with the Latter-day Saints. The greatest contributing factor to this mix is Mormonism’s dependence on and sophisticated redaction of the Bible. All of Mormonism, even its most unfamiliar tenants, rests in some element of the biblical narrative. Academics would explain this in terms of intertextuality, noting that the meanings of Mormonism, even its unique scriptures, are achieved within the larger complex of the Christian canon. You don’t need to be a scholar to recognize this. You need only open and read the first words you see in any one of Mormonism’s unique scriptures.
The Latter-day Saint canon consists of four books: the Bible and three other texts—the Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Each reads very much like the Bible in type and breadth of thematic concerns and literary forms (history, law, psalm). Even the rhetorical stance of each canon is biblical: God is speaking to prophets faced with temporal crises of spiritual significance. In terms of the authority granted these four texts, all have equal weight, including both Bible testaments, as historical witnesses to God’s promise of salvation, enacted by covenant with the Israelites and fulfilled in the atonement of Jesus Christ as the only begotten of the Father.
The LDS Church’s confidence in the authority and historicity of the Bible is mitigated only by scruples regarding the Bible’s history as a book. The Bible is “the word of God insofar as it is translated correctly.” The other three Latter-day Saint scriptures are also believed to be historical witnesses to God’s promise of salvation. Considered translations by or direct revelation to Joseph Smith, the church’s founding prophet, they are considered correct in their representation of God’s will and word, though they possibly contain flaws resulting from “the mistakes of men.” What follows is a brief description of these three texts and a few examples of how they reshape Christian tradition and influence Latter-day Saint belief and practice.
The Book of Mormon is the narrative of a prophet-led people’s experience with God over a thousand-year period, beginning with the flight of two Israelite families from Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE on the eve of Babylonian captivity. The people of God eventually create a complex civilization in the Western Hemisphere. The story is a cautionary tale of cycles of conversion and backsliding. It concludes in approximately the fourth century CE with an account of wickedness and consequent destruction. The climax of the narrative occurs midway with the appearance of Jesus Christ immediately after his resurrection to a chastened remnant in the Americas who are taught by him to repent, embrace the gospel and establish a church. Thus, the Book of Mormon not only echoes the narrative style and certain contents of the Bible, such as the Beatitudes, but also functions as second witness to the Bible’s testimony that Jesus is the source of salvation for all.
The Book of Mormon clearly deviates from Christian tradition by not limiting Christ’s ministry to a particular people and time. The rejection of such limitations is one of the book’s main points. The claim that “we need no more Bible” is made the object of God’s rebuke: “Know ye not that there are more nations than one? . . . because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another.” Clearly, the Book of Mormon’s purpose is not only to second the biblical witness but also to evidence the ongoing revelation of the gospel. Notwithstanding its orthodox representation of that gospel, the Book of Mormon takes a position on certain historic theological questions. For example, while teaching the reality and catastrophe of the Fall, the prophets of the Book of Mormon reject notions of human creatureliness and depravity. Humans are not utterly foreign to God’s being. They are inherently made capable of acting for good, though only through Christ’s sacrifice is this capacity liberated from the enslaving effect of the Fall on human will. It is “by grace we are saved after all we can do.” Thus in Mormonism God’s economy of salvation is broad, though not universal in its promise of glory. Humans are prone to sin, free to reject grace and may fall from grace. Nevertheless, grace is freely given to those who in faith repent.
Click to continue
0 A Better Conversation about Homosexuality – #5
Some responded to previous posts, asking for attention upon specific scripture texts.
Here goes. Most of the oft-quoted Old Testament passages are not really relevant for the conversation. They’re either used out of context and not really about homosexuality (the Sodom and Gomorrah story) or they’re couched in Levitical codes otherwise dismissed by Christians as superceded by Jesus.
The text with which every one in this conversation, on both sides of the issue, must wrestle is Romans 1.18-32. Look it up.
It is the only passage in scripture that treats the subject in more than an illustrative fashion, and it is the only passage in scripture that reflects on it in theological terms.
No matter what you conclude about this passage and its understanding of homosexuality, the theological context is crucial. Here in the first chapter of Romans, Paul is attempting to demonstrate how the Gospel, rather than a set of philosophical precepts or moral teachings, is the power of God active in the world and in fact acting to overturn the world.
Paul believes that the very righteousness of God is present in the Gospel, and for Paul God’s righteousness is a verb not a descriptor. The Gospel is God’s way of making righteousness happen in the world. For Paul, then, Jesus Christ is the embodiment, the incarnation, of God’s righteousness. This is Paul’s orienting and overarching perspective in his Letter to the Romans.
In chapter 1 he takes as his task drawing a comparison between the righteousness of God disclosed in Christ and the unrighteousness of fallen humanity (1.18). The word “wicked” in most English translations can be more clearly (but more awkwardly) translated as “unrighteousness.”
The following verses (19-32) serve for Paul as his exhibits of the evidence for the unrighteousness of the fallen world. Paul catalogs homosexuality as part of his thesis. Homosexuality’s inclusion in this series of illustrations should not obscure Paul’s larger rhetorical point. As verse 21 indicates, the cited sins all fall under the more general, and more damning, indictment that these fallen sinners have failed to honor God and render him his due thanksgiving. The sin Paul is zeroing in on, in other words, is idolatry.
In what way does Paul understand homosexuality as idolatry?
A majority of biblical scholars and cultural historians concur that Paul has in mind not monogamous homosexual relationships as we might know today but heterosexuals in the wider Greco-Roman culture who engaged in homosexual acts purely for the sake of sex. This means that Paul is critiquing those who have made sex and end in itself, unattached to any sacred or intimate relationship of trust. In Paul’s mind, sex has become (or is one example of) an idol.
It is also necessary that readers not miss Paul’s larger argument and the implications it bears for how we think of homosexuality. Paul, in chapter 1 of Romans, is not warning his readers of God’s wrath to come if they should engage in such sinful, idolatrous acts.
On the contrary, and this is fundamental, Paul begins Romans with the premise that the world is already suffering God’s wrath (the Fall). If this is so, then Paul understands homosexuality not as a sin deserving of God’s wrath. This is important! He instead sees the presence of homosexual acts as proof of God’s wrath.
Paul is diagnosing the human condition as he sees it theologically; he is not prescribing wrath or punishment.
While this may be cold comfort to gay Christians, it should preclude Christians from singling out homosexuals as peculiarly deserving of God’s wrath. Indeed if one is faithful and literal to the text of Paul’s argument, homosexuality is no more grave a sin than those who are “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”
Paul, quite intentionally I think, provides an exhaustive and all-inclusive list. After all, his point is that all of creation is groaning in rebellion to God and we are all victims of and participants in unrighteousness.
On the other hand, Paul’s theological point in Romans also gives grist to the argument that many Christians make that homosexuality violates God’s creative intent for humanity. While gay Christians may feel that they were created so, readers of Paul can make the theological claim that homosexuality is a sign of how Sin in our fallen world has distorted God’s aims in creation. Nothing in creation, some might posit, presently resembles what God intended in the beginning.
Paul’s writing in Romans is dense and difficult. Readers should not forget that Paul’s argument is a theological one not a moral one. To be faithful to the text, the arguments and conclusions one makes about homosexuality, at least in terms of Romans, should be theological ones.
Another word of caution to those who debate these matters, and the word of caution comes from Paul. As Paul’s reasoning continues into chapter two of Romans, Paul warns that “you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things” (2.1).
2 How is Scripture the Word of God?
I thought this might happen. I suppose I have no one to blame but myself.
Our summer sermon series on ‘Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School’ has provoked some parody and tongue-in-cheek playfulness with scripture. What else are you supposed to do with Isaiah preaching in the buff for 3 years? There’s way too much self-seriousness in churches, I think.
Anyway, the ribbing of certain scriptures provoked a few to email me with the same general question:
If parts of scripture are up for grabs to poke fun at, then exactly how is scripture supposed to be the Word of God?
More than any other part or movement, scripture’s the essential and requisite component of Christian worship. That this is so testifies to how Christianity is a revealed religion. We can’t think our way to the God of Jesus Christ. We cannot get to this God by way of philosophical or scientific investigation. We can’t discover this God in the beauty of the natural world. We know this God only because he has made himself known. The primary form in which God has made himself known to us is speech. God has spoken. Scripture is God’s self-communication, his self-disclosure.
In some Christian congregations, the scripture will be carried into the sanctuary as part of the processional, held aloft and kissed before it is read. In many congregations, and often in our own, we stand for the Gospel reading, thus marking its importance in the scriptural canon.
The 20th century theologian Karl Barth provided an image in his work The Church Dogmatics that not only has helped me think through scripture’s authority but also steers a helpful course around some common approaches to scripture which are inadequate or worse.
According to Barth, when Christians use the term ‘the Word of God’ we’re actually referring to multiple forms. John’s Gospel, after all, refers to Jesus as the Word of God, does it not? How are we to think of Jesus-as-the Word in relation to scripture as God’s Word?
Barth used the image of three concentric circles, which he called the three-fold form of the Word of God. In the inner, centermost circle Barth places the Logos, the eternal Word of God that was made flesh in Jesus Christ. Next, Barth places the Word of God as testified to us by Israel, the prophets and the Church, which we call scripture. Finally, in the outer circle Barth places the Word of God as its proclaimed and interpreted in the worship and ministry of the Church.
By arranging the Word of God in this way, Barth successfully illustrated that while Christianity is indeed a revealed religion, the revelation of the Word of God is a mediated revelation.
Our access to the Logos comes to us only by way of scripture and the Church. Scripture therefore is not revelation. The pages and printed words in your bible are not, in and of themselves, the Word of God. They are our testimony to God’s Word as its been disclosed to Israel and the Church. Because of that testimony, scripture is authoritative for us and it is sufficient for communicating all we need to know of and follow this God.
At the same time, one’s testimony is never identical with the person of whom one testifies. Scripture’s testimony can only partially and provisionally capture the mystery of the eternal Word.
Barth’s model provides the framework for Christians to concede that scripture is not without error. Scripture does contain geographical and historical errors. The Gospels do have different and at times contradictory chronologies. Its depiction of God is not always consistent or easily juxtaposed with other texts. Translators make decisions, not always without an agenda for their own. Traditions have different canons. There are many questions we ask that scripture is simply not interested in answering.
None of this should be threatening to Christians, however, precisely because the Word is a mediated revelation. Testimony can be imperfect without jeopardizing the perfection of the One to whom scripture testifies.
In other words, Barth’s three-fold form secures our recognition that we do not believe in the bible; we believe in the One to whom the bible testifies. We worship Jesus Christ not the bible.
Barth’s three-fold form also gives us grounds for both humility and pride.
It gives us cause for humility in that it forces us to recognize how our apprehension of the Word is mediated to us by the proclamation and interpretation of the Church. In the same way that scripture contains textual errors, it should surprise no one that the Church contains fallible people. The Church has included both saints and sinners from the very beginning. Our access to the Word both is enabled and limited by those who have come before us (and those among us today). Our convictions about ‘what scripture says’ are never without the residue of historical, cultural and personal bias. As Paul writes, we never cease seeing the Word through a prism darkly.
That the Word is mediated to us through something so fallible as the Church, however, is a cause for joy too for by God’s own choosing we have a role in the revelation of God’s Word. God has chosen to disclose his Word through the matrix of humanity, first by taking flesh in Christ and second by taking flesh in us. No Church, no Word of God.
Scripture, then, is no less incarnational than Jesus. In scripture and its proclamation, the eternal Word takes on the finitude and fallibility of followers like you and me. And just as this gives us pause in all our certitudes, it is also good news.
0 Is There a Point to Sunday School?
We’re in the throes of VBS this week, our second VBS of the summer. Nearly 300 kids from the community are busting the seams of the church. Two of them are my boys. For the next few days I’ll compromise on my normal ‘cool music in the car only’ policy, and we’ll be riding around Alexandria listening to bible songs and talking about the fiery furnace and other stories.
A few days ago, Tony Jones’ post raised a question about why we (churches) do Sunday School at all. I’ll admit at the time I read the article it annoyed me; I’d just spent several hours planning for our fall kick-off. I was invested.
Now, in the midst of VBS and having thunk on it, I have a better sense of why we- as church- do what we do with our children.
The answer takes me all the way back to my own childhood. So bear with me.
The Bible and Basic Cable
Like most children of divorce, I grew up with Basic Cable as my primary babysitter, or, at least, the only babysitter that could reliably subdue me into docile behavior.
At some point in my early elementary years, I stumbled upon a children’s cartoon called The Flying House. The show featured three kids, some sort of robotic creature called SIR and a scientist named Professor Bumble, who bore an eerie asiatic resemblance to Doc Brown from Back to the Future. In the show, the children somehow stumble into Professor Bumble’s house just as a strike of lightening has jinxed the time machine the professor has invented.
All this happens of course during the opening score whereupon all five characters are jettisoned back in time to first century Israel. Each of the fifty-two episodes that followed take place during some moment in the life and ministry of Jesus. Even as a child I thought the plot conceit rather thin, and with every new episode I expressed incredulity over the odds of Professor Bumble’s time machine always landing the characters in the same three year span of time, to say nothing of the fact they repeatedly found themselves in the same little patch of the Ancient Near East.
My incredulity was feigned, however. Secretly I loved each of the episodes and the Gospel stories they traced. I would’ve been nothing but disappointed if, for an episode, Professor Bumble accidentally took them to the Gettysburg Address or to some alternate geographic spot in the first century. In ways I couldn’t articulate I yearned for Professor Bumble to take me to the empty tomb, to the Damascus Road or to the Father’s runaway youngest son.
I didn’t grow up in a religious home or family. My grandmother was the only person I’d ever seen praying. Jesus was someone I knew only as the person nailed above every bed in our small home. Church was a cold, dank castle we went when my Aunt Lisa married a guy named Chet. The Flying House was my congregation, my Sunday School and my VBS rolled into one. It was the Church where I first learned the stories of scripture, where I ingested the themes of mercy and forgiveness and God’s choosing of the lowly over the proud.
Looking back, I can say without exaggeration that this crappy, Japanese import converted my imagination and, unseen, laid the foundation for the faith I received years later.
All kidding aside the guiding convictions I share today about scripture can be traced back to The Flying House. Scripture’s ability to transform the imagination, scripture’s essential characteristic as story or narrative, and it’s primary function as script are all orientations I first acquired sitting on the cold basement floor in front of the television.
Script-ure
Philosopher Alistair McIntyre says that humans are ‘story-telling animals.’ We’re narrative creatures.
I learned from The Flying House that scripture is essentially story in the sense that it provides us with a narrative framework around which we can pursue our lives. That’s what those forty-three minute anime episodes were doing to me- they were giving me a narrative by which I could better answer the question ‘What must I do?’
Scripture is essentially story not only because it gives us a narrative structure to our lives. Scripture is itself essentially a story. This is one of the significant ways Jews and Christians part ways not only with Islam but with many other of the world’s religions.
For some reason (I blame it on the Enlightenment), we associate ‘story’ with fiction. We relegate it to a lower tier of truth than rationally, generally derived principles. In this our thinking is exactly the opposite from the Hebrew way of thinking.
Despite our prejudices ‘story’ is the primary vehicle by which God has chosen to communicate with us. After all, we refer to God as the ‘Word.’ Scripture of course includes many genres, such as poetry, law, letters, and history, yet scripture is overwhelmingly a narrative vehicle. The majority of scripture is told through stories and within all those stories, books and genres scripture conveys one, singular overarching story (Time in ministry has taught me that it’s this core story that eludes many earnest, even life-long Christians).
The fact that my very first immersion in scripture came in the format of a cartoon show helped form my guiding belief that the primary way we receive these stories is as script. These are stories meant to be performed. They’re not intended to be believed in- how do you believe in Psalm 23? They’re not meant to be passively received, as words that forever will remain on the page. They’re not meant to be understood at arm’s length as history. They’re meant to be performed in the sense that Psalm 23 invites us to live a life where God is our shepherd, our only want and we fear nothing, not even death.
Thinking of scripture as script allows us to recognize that scripture’s meaning, it’s this-world implications, and it’s emotional texture will differ as its taken up and performed by different Christians in different times and places. The story of Jesus washing his friends‘ feet will in one context be a story about how humble, humiliating service best summarizes discipleship. In another context that same story will be a story about repentance and baptism, about how only those who’ve been ‘washed by Jesus‘ may have a share with Jesus.
And where a stage is the proper venue for Hamlet to flourish, worship- the gathered community- is, I believe, scripture’s native soil.
And this venues like Sunday School and VBS come into play and play an urgent role. If scripture is primarily narrative that’s meant to be embodied and performed in our lives, then the necessary first step is to LEARN THE STORIES.
It’s because I’m thinking of who my boys will become that I’m willing to listen to terrible bible songs in the car. Bad music is a small price to pay if it means I get to hear that my boys now know the story of Daniel and ‘Nebuchawhat?’