So, I was very happy at a recent Virginia Mennonite Conference delegate assembly when we affirmed the work of the Peace Committee (led by Nicholas Detweiler-Stoddard and Spencer Bradford) to print anti-war ads in our local newspapers.

I have to admit, this sort of thing makes me proud to be a Mennonite.

For those outside the Mennonite community, you should know that the Virginia Mennonite Conference is one of the more conservative conferences in our denomination (MCUSA). For Mennonites, however, to be conservative about the tradition is to be clear about our historic position of peace. Our Mennonite conference takes seriously our mission to conserve the church’s tradition of proclaiming the peace of Christ.

From the window of the nursery I can see the cemetery that stretches across the hill alongside the church — a field planted with rectangular stones to mark the graves of the faithful: Stauffer, Newcomer, Reiff, Funk. A couple of centuries of weather have made the older headstones undecipherable. Mennonites settled here along the Beaver Creek in the middle of the 18th century. I imagine some of the jagged and blackened gravestones honor the dead from those years. The life of this church rests on the foundations laid by those who now populate the field of graves. “We are born of the dead,” Robert Pogue Harrison writes in his book The Dominion of the Dead, “of the worlds they brought into being.” We are clothed with the faithfulness of the past: cherished histories and memories, cultures and traditions that invite us to a fresh experience of the same old gos­pel. Anabaptism is not a set of disembodied principles or core convictions. It is the legacy of the dead handed down to us in real places, through particular congregations and specific people.

I also preached a sermon about Mt. Zion: Life of the Dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit

“Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind” (Acts 2:2). Pentecost happened with a bang. Heaven came down to earth and blew through the room. This heavenly wind “filled the entire house where they were sitting” (v. 2).

While all of this is very exciting, the story dances on the edge of danger: “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them” (v. 3). God’s fire isn’t something to be messed with. Remember what happened to Sodom! The people were inhospitable to strangers, to three foreigners, and God consumed the city with fire from heaven (Gen. 19).

That same fire came again at Pentecost: God’s fire, spectacular flames from heaven. Exhilaration filled the room and poured out into the streets. This wasn’t the first time divine fire excited the disciples. In Luke 9, Jesus and the disciples tried to pass through a Samaritan village. But the villagers refused. In response to their lack of hospitality, James and John asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven to consume the people (Lk. 9:54)—just like Sodom and Gomorrah. The disciples wanted to use God’s heavenly fire to punish the Samaritans, but Jesus rebuked them. God’s fire is dangerous; Jesus won’t let the disciples use it.

On Pentecost these same flames came down from heaven, but this time God’s fire didn’t destroy anything. The fire didn’t punish inhospitable people. Instead, the divine flames created the church—a group of people set ablaze with God’s spirit of hospitality. With the fire came the Holy Spirit who enabled the disciples to speak in different languages. Visitors from all over the world heard the invitation of the gospel in their own languages. The author of Acts lists all the peoples and languages in order to display the expansiveness of the Spirit’s invitation: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Rome… everyone, Jews and Gentiles (Acts 2:9-11). Everyone is invited to join this movement of God. And that’s basically Peter’s interpretation of the Pentecostal event when he quotes the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh”—notice how Joel says all flesh (v. 17). And we find the same emphasis at the end of Peter’s quotation of Joel: “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”—again, notice how Joel says everyone (v. 21).

The Spirit of God led the followers of Jesus into a mode of communication that opened them up to everyone, to different people and different languages. Pentecost was a communication miracle. And the point of the miracle was an invitation. The Holy Spirit did not descend with power in order to provide a thrilling experience that came and went. Rather, the Spirit came with fire and enabled the followers to speak in different tongues so that everyone could hear the invitation of the gospel and join the fellowship of Christ. Pentecost was the miracle of communication that led to the miracle of communion: people came together, foreigners became family, strangers became friends.

Peter’s impromptu sermon for Pentecost bore profound fruit: “So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…. All who believed were together and had all things in common…. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts” (2:41-46).

Speaking in tongues was only the beginning. Complete strangers started to hang out together. They devoted themselves to fellowship, to being with one another. People opened their homes for grassroots worship services—breaking bread, talking about Jesus, and praying. And they shared their property with anyone who was in need. The miracle of communication that happened on Pentecost birthed a miracle of communion. Yes, the rhythm of communion was a miracle because coming together always stretches us beyond our limits. Tensions quickly arise if we stay with the same group of people long enough. It’s usually easier to leave one table and find another where those frictions don’t exist—yet we quickly find news quarrels to take the place of the old! But we hear in Acts that the first church regularly ate and worshiped together, probably daily (v. 46)—they were committed to table fellowship. The Spirit of Pentecost formed communities of faithful fellowship, a way of life characterized by rhythms of eating and praying together, despite the tensions. Fidelity to the movement of the Spirit meant fidelity to gathering around the same tables, day after day, week after week, year after year.

Theologians like to come up with what they call “marks of the church.” They narrow down all of the things that go on at church and come up with a few essentials. Different churches have different lists. If I were to pretend to be a theologian and come up with the two most important marks of the church according to Acts 2, they would have to be prayer and food preparation. The church needs people who are always learning how to pray and always coming up with new recipes for good food to share. Church life is very much an earthy spirituality: make food and eat it with people, and pray about what’s going on in your life.

To remember Pentecost is to remember that heaven has come to earth, that Jesus is here, that the Spirit is on the move. To believe in the Holy Spirit is to rest into God’s heavenly presence at our tables of fellowship, and to let God transform the world through our earthy spirituality. We invite others to join us in prayer, which is how we learn the intimate language of God. And we make meals and commune together, which is how we let the Spirit weave our bodies together into the body of Christ. Praying and eating—these rhythms are the ongoing movement of the Holy Spirit, re-forming us into what we shall be: the beloved community of God, resting in God’s presence for eternity, eating at the heavenly banquet table. We eat and pray today with the same people we will eat and pray with for eternity. It’s the same banquet with the same host—Jesus Christ.

I grew up with a version of Christianity that talked about faith as if it was something that happened primarily in my head, a decision I made in my mind. It was very theoretical and rational—a faith for the intellect. But the story of Pentecost displays a kind of Christian belief and spirituality that happens to the whole body. For the disciples gathered in the upper room, their minds followed their feet. The mission of the Spirit played out in their bodies as they ran out the door and into the streets to share good news in languages that their minds did not comprehend. Pentecost happened to their bodies, not just a part of their heads or their hearts.

Faith in the Spirit of God involves everything we are and all that we have. Faith happens to us as we make food and eat together, as we break bread and share a cup, as we talk about Jesus and pray for one another, and as we come back to the table even after being offended. Faith happens to us when we let strangers who’ve heard the good news invade our houses of worship, disrupt any order we’ve established, and then invite them to come back the next time we meet! That is the shape of our faith: to let the rhythm of the Spirit take control, to reassemble as the body of Christ gathered around the table, because our house of worship is where God nourishes our souls, because this mess is what salvation feels like and what the heavenly banquet looks like. Pentecost is a vision of eternal life.

We are not a bunch of rationalists who believe that what’s in our heads will save us. Instead, we believe in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, God’s love made flesh in our midst. And to believe in this saving relationship is to let our minds follow our feet; we have to lean into this relationship, to slowly and patiently live into it, to let the rhythm of the Spirit move us into communion.

The story of Pentecost begins and ends with followers of Jesus assembled together, waiting… And the Spirit does come, and continues to arrive, bringing foreigners and strangers to eat and pray at our houses of worship. So we find more chairs, find some more bread, pull out a few more cups, and hand out more hymnals—and fix up a new recipe from More-with-Less. Nothing happens as we planned. It’s a mess. But that’s how it goes for people who hope for the Spirit of Pentecost.

God is present through the ordinary life of our congregations. The life of God pulses through the body of Christ, flowing through us and with us. Congregational life ushers in the presence of God’s eternal love for the world.

This column will be a series of scenes from God’s mission among rural and urban congregations, wealthy and poor, young and old, recent church plants and historic congregations.

I hope to see Christ’s love made flesh in the diversity of his many members. I hope to see the features of God’s face in the sisters and brothers of the Mennonite family.

Here’s some local media coverage of our worship service and protest: “Protesters hold demonstration,” and “Taking the Cross to the streets.”

And here’s an excerpt from the short sermon I preached at the detention center as a Cary police officer kept telling me to stop preaching and leave the premises:

This chair here will remain empty as a sign of all the bodies that the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have hidden from us, the bodies that law enforcement agents have torn from our communities and our families in the middle of the night, the bodies that they have ripped away from our churches. By refusing to let us wash the feet of the people hidden in their detention centers, the federal government has dismembered the body of Christ, they have torn apart the church, they have pierced and severed the body of Jesus.

Our Mennonite identity is always disturbed; the church is broken; our congregations are torn. People come and go. Disagreements reemerge and threaten to drive us apart. Congregations dissolve, and others are born.

The church is in a precarious state of unsettled tornness. That’s simply what it means to be the body of Christ. We shouldn’t attempt to hide our divisions and our wounds. In fact, we confess that this tornness is part of the good news. “The body of Christ, broken for you.”

The tearing and scattering of the body of Christ took on new meaning for me a few months ago when Dave and Laura Nickel joined our congregation.

On how Eckblad envisions himself as a midwife in Bible studies:

In my preaching and teaching I envision my role as that of a facilitator and midwife….  As midwife I assist during the birthing process recognizing that the work is done by the Spirit in intimate communion with people in the depths of their beings. I seek to be present as appropriately as possible—getting out of the way or intervening when necessary. I set up the birthing room as it were, making sure that the interpreting process gets off to the best start with a given group and text…

My objective is that people would find themselves inside the text as met or addressed by YHWH, Jesus, one of the apostles—or whoever mediates the message or saving action in the Biblical story. I see myself as one who pulls people together for a potential encounter: a life-giving meeting between individuals and God that may result in comfort, healing, a change of heart, call. I am an unknowing midwife at best—not knowing what the encounter will birth…

His critique of the pedagogical method of many churches and Bible studies:

Paulo Freire critiques what he calls the “banking method” of communication—which corresponds in many ways with the religious system embodied by the Pharisees in John’s Gospel. According to the banking method, knowledge or information is disseminated to passive recipients in ways that reinforce comfortable and oppressive patters of dependency.

Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.

They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system.

For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, people cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry people pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other

In contrast to the banking method, a truly liberating pedagogy happens best using a dialogical approach. The pedagogue must deliberately subvert the system of dependency. This is done by creating an environment of trust whereby the voices of the “voiceless” are sought after and elevated—a first step in education for a critical consciousness and empowerment…

Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the later strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.

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).

Pastor Hipps considers how the internet feeds off our desire for community. “Our electronic media has rekindled our interest in community and made us aware of our total interdependence on one another” (121). Hipps quotes Marshall McLuhan to this extent: “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village” (103). The internet has shown us how we are connected to the rest of the world. We inhabit a global village. While the internet displays our interdependence, it also offers us cheap community, a simulacra of intimacy. “In our quest for meaningful connections we encounter convenient decoys—the always-appealing cotton candy communities of the virtual world” (121).

Probably Hipps’ best technological criticism comes into play when he describes the egalitarian nature of church and recent developments in shareware and collaberative technologies. His guide is Marshal McLuhan who writes, “Christianity—in a centralized, administrative, bureaucratic form—is certainly irrelavent…. We must get rid of the hierarachy if we want participation” (125). Hipps welcomes the organization structure displayed in our electronic age. “This shift toward information diffusion and the subsequent diffusion of power are providing us with a helpful corrective to the long history of centralized, top-down authority in the church” (130). This is an example where techonology can help us relearn what it means to be a faithful church. “Electronic culture is helping us recover a biblical vision for more collaborative and egalitarian leadership models” (143). Church is a non-hierarchical, highly participatory community. Thus decision-making through consensus is the decisive practice that displays this power-sharing organization. But, as Hipps notes, our media culture forms us to be impatient people who value instant results. Thus we have hard work ahead of us in our churches as we try to cultivate virtues and practices of patience that make space for the hard work of communal intimacy. A patient church that takes time to listen to the weakest voices in our midst is a counter-(media)cultural church.

What I appreciate about Hipps’ book is the way he turns a conversation about electronic culture into a argument about the shape of a faithful church—a clever move. Questions about technology and media become unimportant. For Pastor Hipps, what matters is the way we exercise ecclesial authority and how we welcome and listen to friends and enemies. What is missing in his critical engagement is the role of socio-economic class. But he is not uniquely culpable for this blindness. It’s quite typical for church leaders to ignore the question of class when they discuss worship styles, communication technologies, and cultural relevance. To be fair to Hipps, at least he does mention the economic factors of techonological relevance: “Extensive resources are being sunk into editing equipment, audio systems, video projectors, light shows, and more. there is no other period in church history when relevance has cost so much time and money” (154). Hipps does put spending practices on the table. But, at the beginning of the book he tells a story that puts the question of economics on the back burner: “We wondered were the money would come from? Would the screen be obtrusive?.... These were all valid and important quesitons, but we began to believe these were not the most important questions for us to ask” (21). Economic issues don’t take center stage because we don’t worship with needy people. We can ignore issues of cost in our discussions of technology because we lack the prophetic presence of the poor.

In Simple Spirituality (IVP, 2008), Chris Heuertz challenges our churches to think how we’ve created cultures of worship that are inhospitable to the poor. “[T]he church…isolates the poor” (72). The poor have their place in the world, and we have ours. Heuertz asks, “Do our multi-million-dollar sanctuaries in North America send the same message?” Even if they did stumble into our worship services, could we hear their silent cries over the perfectly amplified music and the crystal clear voice of the preacher on his cordless mic? “As the statistics of poverty grow, the church only sings louder so as not to hear the staggering numbers and the cries of the victims” (71). Our state of the art worship tends toward immorality because we use it to cushion ourselves against what Heuertz calls “the prophetic presence of the poor” (82). Our churches look and feel different when we worship alongside someone who doesn’t know where they will sleep that night, or a parent who has to prostitute themselves so they can put food on the table. How much does that cordless microphone cost, anyhow? Heuertz can’t help but think about economic realities: “my waste was offensive…. My poor friends became a prophetic presence” (83). “We would often invite local friends (many of them extremely poor) to join us, their presence a constant reminder not to waste” (86). Thus the cost of technology isn’t important to those who don’t have the prophetic presence of the poor. And if we lack their presence, we aren’t living into Christ’s mission: “to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4).

Part 2

If Marshall McLuhan’s dictum, “the medium is the message,” is helpful (as Shane Hipps argues), then we must go all the way down; we must dig into the materiality of the medium. We must investigate the conditions that make possible the process of production. Hidden powers are physically remembered in the pieces of technology we use.

Most popular discussions of technology and worship fail to explore the realities of material production—the where, when, why, and how of invention and assembly. From readings these books on media and worship, one would that assume technologies magically appear—created out of nothing. Since electronic devices are available, we have to figure out ways to make them liturgically productive. The problem, according to Eileen D. Crowley, is that “Most churches lag at least twenty years or more behind the art world in the kind of media art they create or purchase and in how they imagine that media might be integrated within worship” (32). Our churches are not on the cutting edge of media. Our liturgical media is passé. We have failed to encourage the development of artists who makes use of anything at their disposal to lead us into an “experience of the Holy” (32)

The best books on media and worship call us to create ecclesial cultures of creative cooperation. Media should not be imposed from above by consultants and experts. Rather, our use of technology at church should arise from the discernment of the people. In Liturgical Art for a Media Culture (Liturgical Press, 2007), Professor Crowley offers on such argument, typical among the most helpful books on liturgical use of media. She engages in a discussion of the dangers and possitive possibilities of our media culture for worship and offers reasoned “tools [that] can help a church decide whether this new media  and new ministry are appropriate for their circumstances” (90). While Prof. Crowley wants to situate our modern use of technology in worship in a long history of multimedia liturgy, she doesn’t engage the history of technological production. Since church has always been a multimedia performance, Crowley argues, then we deceive ourselves when we think that there is a kind of worship that is not already multimedia. “Adding today’s new media to these old media does not make worship multimedia. Liturgy has always been multimedia” (8). She exposes the false distinctions that underlie our usual ways of thinking about using multimedia in worship. We already do! We have done so for centuries.

The problem, according to Prof. Crowley, is that we lack a theologically informed process of ecclesial discernment. She proposes a highly participatory liturgical use of technology that invites as many people as possible to the planning table. Her model “includes all the faithful in the creative process, and encourages the creation of locally produced liturgical media” (90). The problems with technology in worship happen when a select few of experts and consultants impose change from above. They force technological changes to worship without any engagement with the people.

While her model describes a healthy egalitarian and communal decision-making process, Crowley never digs into what matters most: the economic, political, and social realities that make technological production possible. All those factors remain hidden. Her readers are left with the impression that pieces from technology exist creatio ex nihilo. Speakers, screen, computers, and microphones magically appear in catalogs and box stores. Where does the LCD monitor come from? Best Buy or Circuit City. End of story. The shear existence of technologies warrents our use. It’s at the store, so we think through what it will do to our worship and community if we use it. It’s a utilitarian argument.

Thomas Friedman begins to open our eyes to the reality of the conditions that make technologies possible. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree (2000), he writes, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist… And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps” (pp. 464-475, quoted in Gorringe, p. 88). Our electronic devices receive their life-blood from weapons of mass destruction. Sophisticated weaponry and well-trained soldiers make possible our technological arsenal for worship. And our indebtedness to Silicon Valley provides the cultural legitimacy to our military machine—they defend our technological way of life. The hidden power of our liturgical electronic art is violence. To repeat Friedman’s line, the U.S. armed forces is “the hidden fist that keeps to world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish.” How can we worship God with devices that reverberate with effects of violence? Our church sound booths are awash with the blood of victims.

Crowley is right to say that “the creation of media for worship raises social justice issues” (83). But she doesn’t expose the fibers of the dead that hold together our liturgical electronics, nor does she unmask the clean surfaces to show how they are infused with violence. She does not help us listen for the voices. She isn’t haunted by their cries echoing in the microphones and reverberating through the amplifiers. Attempts at redeeming technologies through ethical use simply ignores the issue. Our self-justifying attempts at redemption aid our convenient forgetfulness; we wash our hands and move on. But God is not fooled by our trickery, nor does God absolve our sins of omissive memories: “Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10). God want us to listen with penetrating ears. Can we tune our senses to penetrate through the desired technological sensations and hear what civilization wants us to forget? Electronic media has a lot to hide in order to make its way into our spaces of worship.

Here’s a piece of it if you want to get a sense of it:

In worship we open our arms to receive the intimacy of God’s communion found when eyes meet—or when we shake hands, or share meals, or speak prayers, or exchange words. The eternal love of the Holy Spirit breathes through these gestures, knitting us together into the body of Christ.

Mourning is worship. Sometimes we worship with our tears. To worship any differently would be dishonest and deny what Paul affirms: We preach Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:23). We misunderstand the message of resurrection if we think it means we must always rejoice in our worship. Resurrection doesn’t mean we rush past the wounds of suffering in order to find hope. We too easily forget that the risen Jesus appears to his followers with open wounds. In John 21, Thomas can put his hand into the hole in Jesus’ side. The crucifixion is not erased at resurrection; Easter doesn’t rush past Good Friday. Instead, resurrection remembers forever the wounds of suffering and the pain of death. As Blaise Pascal put it, “Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world” (Pensée 919).