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At some point in my sermon preparation I turn to Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. This time Brevard Childs’ commentary on Exodus pointed me to Barth’s reading of the golden calf incident in Ex 32. I’ve never understood how theology professors assign readings in the Dogmatics and tell their students to skip over the small print material—they call the small print “footnotes.” (You need to flip through a volume to see how Barth organizes his writing). This is a drastic mischaracterization. The small print is usually the most interesting stuff. That’s where Barth does his Scriptural exegesis, which is the heart of his project.

His exegesis of Exodus 32 is beautiful. You should read it: Church Dogmatics, IV/1, 425f. Below are some highlights.

Barth turns the bull into an image of Israel creating a god in it’s own likeness. The bull “is the essence of the people.” The golden calf is a product, a manufactured good—God is commodified:

the bull as a symbol of virility and fertility, signifying the essence of the people’s power as a people… Israel itself was this bull, defiantly standing on its short thick thighs and feet, tossing and threshing its tail. But Israel in a divine eschatological and hypostasising itself, and therefore its god. And Israel, too, in the divine form constructed and manufactured by itself…. This was the breach of the covenant, and Israel regarded it as the supreme fulfillment of the covenant, an act of concrete religion. (427-428)

Herbert McCabe is a theologian that I come back on a monthly (sometimes weekly) basis. In my attempt to learn more about his context, I’ve started reading the writers who formed the radical Catholic journal called “Slant.” Their ranks include names like Terry Eagleton, Brian Wicker, Adrian Cunningham, Martin Redfern, Laurence Bright and Neil Middleton—a bunch of Catholic Marxists with Dominican sensibilities. Apparently Herbert McCabe was an influential member of the Slant group.

This interest led me to Brian Wicker’s book, Culture and Liturgy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963). It’s a blur of a read. He covers a lot of distance at high speeds—from Thomas Aquinas to D.H. Lawrence in a matter of sentences. The work of Raymond Williams seems to connect the dots.

I can’t say that I would recommend to book. I didn’t find it too interesting, other than giving me a window into the world of Slant. But I thought I should remember a few passages, and so I’ll share them below.

He’s refreshingly honest about the interconnections between church and society:

Any view of the Church as a lonely island of fidelity, morality or spirituality in a surrounding sea of corruption, faithlessness and materialism is liable to degenerate into the vision of a similar split between the Church and the world which, in a real sense, nourishes her. (32)

The fact is that, outside Marxism, it is only a profound Christian theology rooted in the idea of ‘salvation history’ as the key to history itself, which can restore the idea of social progress to its legitimate position in our culture. (35)

On September 28th we finally completed our 9 months of waiting and had our first kid, Gryffin (yes, the name is inspired by Gryffindor in Harry Potter, but Gryffin’s are also mythological creatures that you’ll find on old churches because they symbolized the dual nature of Jesus.  A theologian’s dream back story…).  Anyhow, at 5am Nance noticed contractions starting, by 6am we were counting and watching TV in bed to pass the time, by 1pm we headed off to the hospital, by 7pm we were feeling desperate and Nance was in serious pain, by 8pm she had an epidural, and at 9:18pm she gave birth to healthy 6lb 7.5oz boy.

It was one of the most incredible events of my 28 years and hanging out with him these past 8 days has been better than the anticipation.  Anyhow, for those interested, below is a video of the day, and I have a slideshow up on flickr.

Title: dark sayings
Date: Sept 28, 2008
Texts: Ex 17:1-7; Ps 78:1-4, 12-16; Philippians 2:1-13

Psalm 78:2, “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.” Or as other translations put it, “I will speak secret saying, mysteries, dark sayings.”

What strange words? When I first read through the lectionary passages, these words captured my attention but I didn’t know what to do with them. But luckily I had some help. As we were waiting to get on our flight, Patty Shelly, a professor at Bethel College, asked me what I was going to preach about this week. I told her about this “dark sayings” stuff, and how I was at a loss for how to turn it into a sermon. So, she gave me a clue: she pointed out how Matthew quotes Psalm 78:2 to explain Jesus’ use of parables—that’s earlier in Matthew, chapter 13:34-35. As I thought through her insight, something clicked. There’s a sense in which Jesus is this mysterious speech of God, Jesus utters the things hidden since the foundation of the world. Jesus is God’s dark sayings. This evening I want to work out what this means for how we use Jesus’ name.

I’ll start with a phone call from a friend I received this past week. We haven’t talked in 9 months. He told me that he just resigned from his job as a pastor. He couldn’t work there any longer. The senior pastor (his boss) was involved in sketchy business practices and basically stole money from the church. The people were devastated. This was a church where many people found they could hear the name of Jesus again and not cringe and run away. My friend’s congregation was a place where the good news of Jesus could be heard as good, as life-giving, as gospel. This church was a place of healing for people who had been damaged from others who used Jesus’ name for selfish ends.

Not any more. Now even my friend is suspicious of what people do and say in the name of Jesus—and he used to work for the church. It seems that we make Christ’s name unholy by what we do. Our lives are the contexts that help us speak the name of Jesus so others can hear that name as good news. Yes, our words matter. But the name of Jesus is a word that takes your whole body to speak—not just your mouth. It takes arms and hands and legs to say the name of Jesus so that others can hear it as good news. Context matters. Our bodies matter. It takes every bit of our lives to speak the name of Jesus.

That’s why, in our passage from Philippians 2, Paul speaks the mysteries of Christ in the context of humility. We let God’s humility transform our lives so that, as he says in verse 10 and 11, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

The name of Jesus is spoken through our lives of humility and service. [Read more →]

The Mennonite recently printed a short piece I wrote about church. There’s nothing original about it. I basically rip off a couple lines from an article my friend Peter Dula wrote. His article is much better. You can read what I wrote here: Fugitive Church.

Our communion in Christ’s Spirit is not a possession, something we can make happen with the right new pastor or a new initiative. Disciples aren’t magicians who wave wands and cast spells to make the Spirit fall and conjure a community. Instead, Christ is a beckoning presence, and we follow by stumbling into the alluring grace of the Holy Spirit, which comes with a companion, with the intimacy of two or three.

I preached my first sermon at Quest a couple Sundays ago.  Our pastor asked me to do it as part of my new position as college and community ministry director and ostensibly to give me a scary challenge in my first month.  It was scary, but it was also great.  I neglected taking any homiletics classes while at Fuller and so powered through Christ-Centered Preaching which was recommended to me (and it was helpful in pointing out many a mistake I was about to make in preparing).  While I enjoyed the whole process, I am now in wonder at how you would do it week in and week out.  And not to shamelessly self-promote, but if you are going to read the whole thing, it may be more up your alley to listen to it.
—-

Passage: Acts 13:32-52

Good news compels us.  It inspires us.  When we hear good  news we’re not content to keep it to ourselves.  Michael Phelps becomes the first to win 8 gold medals in an Olympics and it’s all the papers and pundits can talk about.  A sunset over our Olympics startles us out of our daily routine and we remember that God has sustained us through another day, and with color and beauty no less.  But we are forgetful people who are easily jaded.  Even my favorite afternoon cookie at the Q cafe becomes hum-drum when I eat it every day (I should know, since I have such ample time there to test the theory).  Whether you are looking into the Christian faith or have been a follower of Jesus for many years, it is easy to hear Paul’s declaration of the “good news,” and be underwhelmed.  Perhaps it is hard to relate this good news for the Jews to us, most of us anyway, the Gentiles.  Or maybe we have made the gospel, which means good news, and the God who brings it small and manageable, rather than world-altering and risky.  It could be we’ve heard it so many times that it no longer startles us.  Whatever it might be, I want to spend our time camped on the theme that ties this passage together, which is the question of what is so good about the news of a crucified and risen Jewish Messiah. [Read more →]

My sermon is indebted to two quotes.

Karl Barth, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (pp. 492 and 496):

Love of one another ought to be undertaken as the protest against the course of this world, and it ought to continue without interruption…. Love is that denial and demolition of the existing order which no revolt can bring about. In this lies the strange novelty of love…. Love…sets up no idol, is the demolition of every idol. Love is the destruction of everything that is—like God: the end of all hierarchies and authorities and intermediaries, because, in every particular man and also in the ‘Many’, it addresses itself, without fear of contradiction—to the One

[When the kingdom comes] we shall be able to blow off all those books written by the atheists and humanists and even some of the curious works written by the God-is-dead theologians, and find that at last they come true in an odd way. They all thought that talk of God was just a convoluted and misleading way of talking about man; what we will come to see when we come to the kingdom of divine love is that talk about man is then the only clear and luminous way of talking about God.

Passover is how Israel prepares and remembers how God delivers them from Egypt. God doesn’t forget the plight of Israel. Last week we read from Exodus 3 where God comes to Moses at the burning bush because the cries of Israel have reached up into heaven. God said to Moses: “the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt” (Ex 3:9-10)

Now Israel on the verge of escape—that’s where we pick up the story today. God will deliver the people. So they eat with anticipation: “you shall eat your meal hurriedly,” God says in verse 11. The Exodus is imminent. They are on the edge of new life.

This is an explosive story. African slaves heard this story of escape from Egyptian oppression as good news for them. God will set them free; they believed it. Early Anabaptists also remembered this story and believed in Israel’s God. The peasants who later became Mennonites retold the story of Israel’s redemption as their own story. Itinerant preachers proclaimed the hope of Passover and exodus across the countryside, saying: “The people shall go free; and God alone will be their lord.”

The people shall go free and God alone will be their lord. Passover was how Israel celebrated that good news in anticipation of their salvation from Egypt. It’s the good news that inspired hope among the enslaved Africans. It’s the good news that spread the Radical Reformation across Europe, shining some light into the darkness. And it’s good news for us. But how?

What would it mean for us to be set free from Egypt? Think about that for a moment. What are the powers of Egypt that enslave us? I’ll bring us back to this question at the end of my sermon. Keep it on your mind.

(pause)

On Friday morning, as I made my way back to the kitchen for a coffee refill, I noticed a cnn video Katie was watching on the computer. Shocking—a protestor in the streets of St. Paul Minnesota, trying to get to her feet, getting rammed by police officers on bicycles. I couldn’t shake that picture from my head. In the afternoon I searched the web for that video. I couldn’t find it; instead I found footage of all sorts of people taking to the streets over the past few days… Incredible scenes, hard for me to believe.

I get angry sometimes, mad at the world, mad at Egypt. There are times when I hear some news on the radio when driving, and I yell at whoever it is that dropped more bombs and accidently killed some kids. Of course, I make sure I’m alone and the windows are rolled up. It’s not very becoming of pastors to be angry.
Or I get angry when I hear about friends who do the best they can, but it’s never enough. They are up against the world, and there’s no way out. There’s not a clear villain, just an assembly of forces that seem to set everyone against you. There’s no escape, it seems. All you can do is protest—make some noise, burn some tires, get in the way. But, usually, everyone goes home or to jail and it’s business as usual. Egypt seems to always win. [Read more →]

This week I was shocked to see the protests on the streets of St. Paul. So many people, some of whom probably went too far. But the riot police didn’t help matters with their brutality. This got me thinking about how church is like a boring protest. Sure, getting together for church doesn’t take much courage. But it is a protest against the powers of evil that haven’t yet given up their stranglehold on God’s good creation. And, like the protests this week, it is business as usual when people go home. Nothing much changes.

Anyhow… here’s a passage from Karl Barth on our lectionary text from Romans 13; he talks about church as a protest as well:

“Love of one another ought to be undertaken as the protest against the course of this world, and it ought to continue without interruption” (492). “Love is that denial and demolition of the existing order which no revolt can bring about. In this lies the strange novelty of love…. Love…sets up no idol, is the demolition of every idol. Love is the destruction of everything that is—like God: the end of all hierarchies and authorities and intermediaries, because, in every particular man and also in the ‘Many’, it addresses itself, without fear of contradiction—to the One” (496).

From Barth’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.

I’m am beginning to work on a essay for a conversation on technology and worship sponsored by Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Below you can read my initial attempt at working through some of the literature.

Part 1

Why not start with Karl Barth? In his essay, “Church and Culture” (in Theology and Church, London: SCM, 1962), Barth disallows any uncritical approval of culture, nor does take a consistent stand against culture. As usual, Barth makes things complicated. On the one side of the dialectic, Barth takes up the ax of John the Baptist: “Christian preaching…has met every culture, however supposedly rich and mature, with ultimate sharp skepticism” (quoted in T.J. Gorringe, Furthering Humanity: A Theology of Culture, p. 18). But later in that same essay, Barth has no patience for a spiritualism that ignores our cultural milieu. There is no room, Barth writes, “for a basic blindness to the possibility that culture may be revelatory, that it can be filled with promise.” The seeds of God’s kingdom proliferate throughout the world. Barth pursues the same line of thinking in Church Dogmatics IV/3, where he claims that if “all things are created in and through Jesus” (Colossians 1:16-17), then, as Peter Dula puts it, “there is nowhere, not even the mouth of an ass, that we cannot expect to find words reflecting the light of the Word” (Peter Dula, “A Theology of Interfaith Bridge Building,” p. 164 in Borders and Bridges: Mennonite Witness in a Religiously Diverse World). Barth goes on to call these diverse worldly witnesses to God’s kingdom “secular parables” (CD IV/3, p. 115). The earth and human culture resound with echoes of the one Word of God and speaks into existence the kingdom of God. Therefore we must pay attention to the places we inhabit, the cultures that permeate us. “The Church,” he writes, “will be alert for the signs which, perhaps in many cultural achievements, announce that the kingdom approaches” (20). The kingdom does come. The question Barth poses to the church is whether she is ready to receive it, however strange it may appear.

It’s a strange possibility to consider how the pieces of culture called ‘technology’ may display God’s kingdom, if only parabolically. Barth won’t let us rule out an abstract category like “technology” without serious engagement in particular technological machineries—he calls them “cultural achievements.” Nor will he take up every new sophisticated invention as a chance for the kingdom to make headway. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of skepticism.

In The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture (Zondervan, 2005), pastor Shane Hipps critically considers the place of technologies in worship. He carefully steers clear of many church leaders who welcome any and every form of technology as the panacea for dying churches. Blidly welcoming technology into church life turns worship into another capitalist commodity. We then become one show among many where Christians can find “new experiences to consume” (15). In Modernity, writes Hipps, “churches heeded consumer demands and sough to reinvent church. They either had to compete in teh consumer marketplace on the consumer’s terms or face extinction. In the spirit of modernity, these churches reincarnated themselves as highly competent vendors of religious programs and services” (99). But the answer, according to Hipps, is not a reactionary turn against all forms of technology. “I’m not arguing for some Luddite strategy of literally destroying media” (65). Instead, we carefully and communally discern how modern technologies can aid us as we embody the good news of Christ. In Hipps’ words, “We learn to understand the power of our technologies to shape us, thereby regaining power over them” (122). [Read more →]