Best of Bweinh — One Hundred Words (1)

10/27/2008, 11:30 am -- by Mike | 2 Comments

Originally published May 14, 2008.

There comes a moment in each sports season where I begin to let go of one team and move on to the next one. The Philadelphia Flyers ”” Bweinh! predictions to the contrary ”” are not going to win the Stanley Cup.

Yet I\’m not upset, really. I feel less ticked at their letdown, and am content to release these Flyers to the haze of history, and give my heart to another.

I have developed this coping mechanism over the last 97 Philadelphia professional sports seasons, each one ending without a championship. Perhaps the 98th ”” the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies ”” will not disappoint.

–MJ

Best of Mike: Of Football, Falling Planes, and False Attachments

08/27/2008, 11:30 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Originally published September 10, 2007.

Like all of us, I remember exactly where I was six years ago Sept. 11. Those were days while we were both in school, days before we had children, days for sleeping late. So I woke up around 8:15 or so and hopped in the car to the Acme to pick up my Daily News, which I planned to enjoy with a nice cup of coffee. I didn’t have the radio on, which I suppose was unusual. I went in and bought my Daily News (Bobby Abreu was on the back page and the Phillies had a crucial series with the Atlanta Braves coming up) and I saw some employees huddled around a TV. I left the Acme around 9, flipped on KYW News Radio, and it was obvious the world had changed forever. Mixed in with the grief and shock I felt that day was an emotion it has taken me six years to admit to myself, much less to any of you:

I felt alive.

Now, mind you, I don’t mean to say that I liked what was happening that day. But there was a sense on that day that, for the first time in my life, what I was living was real. There was a vitality to the day; when I went to the seminary where the students had a prayer meeting, I kissed Jill goodbye with more intention. The love I had for my colleagues was deeper, as we exchanged warmer hugs. The frustration I felt at some of my would-be prophetic colleagues for their easy answers was more than academic.

Perhaps I felt that for the first time in my life, I was part of something real. Perhaps, in fact, I felt so alive because I felt — maybe for the first time, really — that I might die.

The miracle of the day, or maybe not a miracle but common grace that God gives all of us, is that I was okay with that. I felt like I might die, but still I felt completely safe, like there was a life no terrorist could touch inside me. I felt like the course of my life was being altered by something enormous and world-shaking, that suddenly being a Christian was going to be a dangerous and underground thing again, and at the same time I felt completely assured that I would be okay as an alien and a stranger on this earth — or at home in heaven.

I still haven’t sorted out exactly why I felt that way on that day. But I think that it had something to do with the fact that, for the first time in my life, everything was up for grabs. For the first time, all the things that tied me down no longer had their power to bind. All the secret peace treaties I had drawn up with America — “You protect my body with military might and provide me with a prosperous land, and in return I’ll serve God” — all those treaties were now null and void because it became apparent that America could not keep them. I think I felt alive and safe in God on that day because everything but God was under threat.

Henri Nouwen wrote and spoke extensively about “false attachments.” A “false attachment,” for Nouwen, is when you give your emotions, your heart, to something which ultimately disappoints. In The Genesee Diary, Nouwen talks about how he so often allowed his spirits to rise and fall based on his number of speaking engagements, his perception of how others looked at him, and even whether or not he received mail. As he saw it, he allowed so many things to dominate his heart rather than the One who would free it to be all it could be. I think on September 11, 2001, for the first time, I saw my false attachments for what they really were — powerless to deliver the satisfaction I believed they would. Those terrorists intended it for evil, and indeed wrought great evil through it. Yet on that day, I think I saw what I will clearly see when the Kingdom comes in its fullness: I saw that all earthly kingdoms and peoples were powerless, and I saw that there is only One who is worthy to be attached to. This, I think, is why I felt fully alive.

Fast-forward six years to a time when I did not feel fully alive: Sunday’s Eagles-Packers football game. The Eagles are historically ill-prepared for season openers, and managed to lose a game to a vastly inferior Green Bay squad which spent most of the day unable to get out of its own way. And I was angry. In fact, I was so angry I watched the Giants-Cowboys game in hopes that somehow, someway, both teams would lose, or at least make each other miserable in the process. I wasn’t quite to the point of hoping that players got injured, but I was actively hoping to see some disappointment. The Giants scored an early touchdown on a long pass to Plaxico Burress, but then they botched the extra point and their punter got squashed in the process. This was good, as I saw it, because everyone was disappointed.

I wondered today how things have changed in the last six years, a full fifth of my life. All I know for sure is that today I am still experiencing residual anger about the capricious bounces of a football, while six years ago I felt alive even though planes were falling all around me. This is the power of false attachments, and to be honest, I have no idea when they came back. I have no idea how I got here; I have no idea when exactly I signed away my birthright for this mess of pottage. All I know is that false attachments creep back in when no one is looking, and if we are not vigilant against them, we are complicit in their power over us.

May God save us, his people, from false attachments; and may it not happen through terror, but through a re-birth only his Spirit can provide.

River to Sea

08/7/2008, 10:00 am -- by Mike | 1 Comment

This past Saturday, a longtime dream was realized when six friends and I ran the River to Sea Relay, a 7-person, 92-mile relay race across New Jersey. Each team member ran two legs of unequal length, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

The team members ranged from a 17-year-old local high school track runner to my 58-year-old dad. The race is a staggered start, meaning that the slowest team started first (around 6 AM) and the fastest team started last (around 10:15 AM), with hopes of a close finish. We believe many teams must have sandbagged their reported times, however, as we were the 40th to start — and let’s just say our time was not better than 39 other teams. This late start meant that we had to run the 92 miles at 8:33 per mile to finish by the mandated 8:30 PM.

Interestingly, I was the median runner on the team; three were slower than me, three were faster. I figured the fast and slow would cancel each other out if I could keep on pace.

We began at 7:25, my dad running the first leg down from the Delaware River bridge into Milford, NJ and south along the Delaware through the hamlet of Frenchtown; he ran a 4.8 mile leg in about 44 minutes. My soon-to-be sister-in-law Kristie ran 8.2 miles further south, finishing in about 75 minutes. We were slightly behind when I started the third stage, a trail run further south to Lambertville, NJ. A six-mile run took 47 minutes, getting our team closer to pace.

Then our fast runners were up consecutively. The fourth stage, affectionately known as “the Beast” for its terrible hills, saw one of the most amazing running displays I’ve ever seen. Steve Johnson, a marathoner from our church, tackled 8.7 miles, almost all uphill, in 59 minutes, moving us ahead of schedule. Mike Snyder, an 18-year-old runner from our church, ran 6.5 miles in about 50 minutes, and Steve Trimble, a friend of Mike’s, ran an eight-mile leg in about 68 minutes.

This was a fine, if unexceptional, time — until you consider he ran through a monsoon for half of it and had to run for shelter when it began to hail for a few minutes. Just keeping us on pace was a miracle, and the leg ended with him vomiting up ingested rain water from the beginning of the stage. The seventh stage, a four-miler, was tackled by my brother Chris in about 36 minutes. We were about 12 minutes ahead of schedule, halfway through the race.

Kristie took the first leg of the second half, a 5.5 miler. Exhaustion caught up with her, however, and she had to walk for a bit. However, she put up sub-10-minute miles, keeping us ahead of pace. My second leg came next — the longest of the race. I wasn’t sure if the young runners on our team were really training hard for the race, so I doubted they should take a 9.15-mile leg in the heat of the day. Even though they are far more gifted runners, I knew I would maximize my lesser gifts.

Big mistake. Continued here!

One Hundred Words (26)

07/29/2008, 9:00 am -- by Mike | 1 Comment

Do you love to sweat? Do you love the Garden State? If you do, you will love my plans for Saturday. Six friends and I will be running the River to Sea Relay, a 92-mile relay race across New Jersey. We will be starting at 7:25 AM at Milford, on the Delaware River, and hopefully 13 hours later will collapse into the Atlantic Ocean, but not before traveling through 34 beautiful New Jersey towns. The sights, the sounds — and yes, that unique New Jersey smell — will be enjoyed by all. I’ll share pictures and a write-up next Monday.

–JMJ

One Hundred Words (20)

06/26/2008, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Behind every preacher’s confident gaze there is a wondering if she is being heard. In every sermon there is a hint of vocational crisis. Whenever someone has something urgent to say, it is equally urgent that someone — anyone! — is listening.

It often seems to laypeople that preachers treat preaching as its own reward, that preachers are a different breed somehow. Yet we rely on the same means of grace as anyone else: a kind word of thanks or specific appreciation for a new insight you got from a sermon or her example.

Hug a preacher — odds are he needs it.

–MJ

Best of Mike: Holy Sadness

06/24/2008, 11:45 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Originally published on February 18, 2008.

“There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives…even in the most happy moments of our existence, we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is the fear of jealousy . . . In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance . . . in all forms of light, there is surrounding darkness.” ~ Nouwen

I read an article in Newsweek recently called “Happiness: Enough Already.” (Find it here.) Its point was that in modern times, we tend to view sadness as a condition to be corrected by therapy and/or medication. The author argued that while there of course are times when a person’s sadness overtakes them and should be managed by medicine, sometimes people are just sad naturally and it is a normal part of life.

I think Henri Nouwen, the great Catholic devotional writer, would agree. Perhaps he was just melancholy, but I think he’s on to something. Even in our brightest moments of joy, we can feel sad that the joy is fleeting, not here forever. Each embrace makes us realize all of life is not an embrace; each friendship makes us realize that there is a measure of distance between us and others. Essentially, each happiness reminds us that not all of life is happy.

Are these just the musings of a depressed individual? I don’t think so. I think this is someone who has a holy dissatisfaction with life. Each human joy brings with it a reminder that we do not yet know complete joy. All human intimacies, no matter how rare and delightful, remind us that we were created “naked and unashamed,” totally vulnerable with each other, until sin fractured our intimacy and left us alone. Each human joy reminds us that we have not yet arrived at the fullness of joy.

Nouwen’s ever-present sadness marks a man who is simply longing for his home. May such a holy sadness accompany us — not so we can mope around this world, but so that we can live all of life with the awareness that better things await.

One Hundred Words (1)

05/14/2008, 10:45 pm -- by Mike | 3 Comments

In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer.

Yet I\’m not upset, really. I feel less ticked at their letdown, and am content to release these Flyers to the haze of history, and give my heart to another.

–MJ

The funniest thing currently on the Internet…

04/28/2008, 4:01 pm -- by Mike | 6 Comments

…can be found here.

It\’s funny because it\’s true. Anyone who has listened to Tony Campolo or Jim Wallis has left either disappointed and angry with every Christian they know (themselves included) or wondering what the heck just hit them. Sometimes both.

I study revivalistic worship at Drew University. Revivalists are accused (and not without some merit) of perfecting a certain recipe for worship:
1. Scare people with the torments of hell that await them.
2. Offer Jesus as an antidote to those torments of hell.
3. Watch as the converts roll in.

This way of preaching works. It did for Charles Finney 200 years ago and it does for many preachers today. Many people are converted by this type of preaching.

The only problem with this recipe is that it rarely produces mature Christians. Certainly, it gets more people to “sign their name on the dotted line” for Jesus, and whether this truly makes them Christian or not I do not presume to say. But it demonstrably fails to produce mature Christians.

People who experience worship in this way generally fall into one of two categories. They see the paramount importance of the decision for Christ, and so either they decide that there\’s no need to go much deeper, since the important stuff is done; or they come down the aisle again and again, always anxious, never sure that the last time really “took.” Such Christians never know the joy God designed for us to know in Christ.

Campolo and Wallis and their ilk might not like this assessment, but I think of them as being a lot like those revivalists. They use the same recipe as above; only step one is different. Rather than scaring us with the torments of hell, these prophets scare us in other ways: “The poor are dying, you know.” Campolo once famously said, “I have three things I\’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases caused by malnutrition. Second, most of you don\’t give a s***. What\’s worse is that you\’re more upset by the fact I said s*** than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

Just like a revivalist scares his audience and offers an antidote, so speakers like this scare their audience and offer the antidote as a more socially-oriented form of Christianity.

Of course Campolo is right. We should not forget this. The fact of hunger, the fact of poverty ”” and not the mere facts but the human faces behind them ”” are vital to God. Wrestling with questions like these is foundational to our Christian identity. We simply cannot be content while such problems exist in the world.

Yet there is something about their technique, borrowed as it is, that produces the same results as those old revivalists. They tend to produce progressive Christians overwhelmed with social problems, who operate from a place of anxiety, even anger, and rarely know the deep joy of Christ.

Speaking as a somewhat progressive (somewhat conservative) Christian, I would love to see the church proclaim a different message. God is doing something in the world: bringing in His Kingdom, begun and incarnated in Jesus. We are privileged to be a part of it. Inasmuch as we do take part in it, we will know the joy of Christ and touch the world with his love. Inasmuch as we do not take part in it, we cheat ourselves. But we do not have to be scared that God\’s work somehow depends on our whipping ourselves into spiritual shape ”” if we fail God, he yet remains faithful.

In short, I would love to see Christianity proclaimed as a life to be lived, progressively discovered, with many layers. The Christian life is so beautiful, so profound, so challenging, such an adventure. Almost every day I find something new I am holding back and I have the joy of turning it over to God, or trying to. I am grateful and content with what God has wrought in me so far, and grateful and content that my future is in his hands and that he will do more with me in ten years than I can imagine now. That is the Christianity I love, not a series of terrifying decisions where I live in constant alarm over the state of my soul or the state of inner-city Philadelphia.

I do not have to be bullied into walking down an aisle of conversion. I do not have to be bullied into walking into a “bad” neighborhood and sharing Jesus\’ love in an incarnational way. Preachers do themselves a disservice by bullying their congregations. We live in an angry, drab, gray world where people are imprisoned by their ways of living and don\’t even know it. What is needed in such a world is not more bullying, but beauty. What is needed are preachers who can speak transparently, who recognize the Kingdom has its own beauty that can speak to this world if we will but let it.

Best of Mike — Pied Beauty

04/21/2008, 11:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Originally published on July 16, 2007.

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.

I am not a poetry person, usually. Yet I ran across this poem a couple years ago and it captured me and has not let me go. I love how it images the “useless” things in creation: freckles, the play of clouds in the sky, the chestnuts that fall to the earth. All of these things are “counter, original, spare, strange” and yet their beauty cannot help but point to the greatness of the One who made them.

Romans 8:19 says, “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” Why? Why bother? Why would creation wait for us? Isn’t the creation Hopkins describes perfect on its own? What possibly could creation want from us?

I think creation longs for us because the children of God are to be the pinnacle of all this wonderful creation. We, of all people, can afford to be counter, original, spare and strange to a world which lives in captivity to itself. When God set us apart to be his people, he made us beautiful and strange in the same way so much of his creation is beautiful and strange. We do not have to reflect the tired gray of those around us; instead, we can be dappled and beautiful and strange and point the world to the Beautiful One.

It was a wonderful revelation when I realized that part of our call as Christians is to be beautiful, the pinnacle of a beautiful creation. Not what the world calls beautiful, not silicone or sinew, but the simple beauty of being what we were created to be. I struggled (and still struggle) to have the world see me as pious, knowledgeable and wise, but at my best I am simply focusing on being beautiful, on settling for no other agenda for my life than finding who I am and being that person. This is a personal task, to be sure, but never individualistic — I discover myself best in community, when other beautiful people are gently alerting me to what is beautiful in me.

What about you? Will you settle for being virtuous in another person’s eyes? Will you allow the Democrats or the Republicans to sell you their version of the beautiful life? Will you allow the tabloids to tell you who is beautiful? Will you allow Pottery Barn to define beauty for you?

Or will you follow the One who dared to say the beautiful life always begins with a crucifixion? Will you be children of that God? Will you be counter, spare, original, strange? Will you be a playful part of the way God is redeeming creation? The chestnuts and the finches, the trout and the skies — all of dappled creation awaits your answer.

A Few Thoughts on Vocation

04/15/2008, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

A person knows when she has found her vocation when she stops thinking and begins to live . . . When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of our conscience. When we find our vocation — thought and life are one. — Thomas Merton

All of us know how difficult it can be to feel like we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our desires are at war with our reality; we find ourselves wishing we could spend more time on some activity but feel unable to give it the attention we want. Or, worse, we’re unsure what we really, deeply want in life. If life is about finding the unique purpose God has charged us with, that is of course the deepest desire of our heart; and yet often we don’t know what that is.

Catholic mystic Thomas Merton gives us a clue. When Merton speaks of “vocation,” he is speaking more deeply than our paid employment. He is speaking about the deep callings of our hearts, that unique way of being human that both encourages your heart and touches the world with God’s love. When we are living out our vocation, Merton holds, there is a certain integrity to our lives. If we are living out God’s call on our lives, our thoughts and desires will not be at war with reality because we will be living out the deepest desires of our hearts.

In other words, suppose your vocation is “brother”; that is, suppose God’s plan for your life is that you are a brother to other people, to be a faithful, brotherly presence to others in the world. You will know the most peace in your life when you are actually acting as a brother to other people, and when you construct your life in such a way that you are leaving time for this deep calling and desire of your heart.

If you are fortunate, your paid employment and your vocation will overlap. If not, you have to be creative and find a way to live out your vocation and still keep your job! Still, you must live out your vocation if you want to know this sense of wholeness in your life. If you spend your life chasing other goals, wealth, self-fulfillment, or even some other form of Christian ministry, you will never know the same peace and integrity you will know when you are living as a brother.

The natural corollary to this is that we need to be aware of when we are feeling that sense of joy and wholeness. We need to be attentive to our spirits, to get to know that feeling of deep joy that comes when we are doing exactly that task for which God created us, and to begin to discern patterns in our lives. Is there a behavior that interrupts or hinders that sense? We must lay it aside. Is there a behavior that prompts or increases that deep wholeness? We must encourage and increase it. In so doing, we begin to learn more fully what it is to enter into God’s vocation for our lives.

Dateline: Houghton

03/31/2008, 12:00 am -- by Mike | 1 Comment

I am here at my beloved alma mater for the first extended length of time since my graduation almost (gulp) nine years ago, working on the beginnings of my doctoral dissertation. I am in a strange building which resembles a large Country Inn & Suites except for the London Underground-style sign over the door that assures me this is actually the College Flats. Good to see the Anglophilia of recent years is intact.

Coming back to a place after so long brings memories back and makes me reflect on myself and my journey. Some random thoughts:

1. I’m different than I was then. For one thing, I had a wife and almost-two-year-old daughter in tow. They dropped me off here and continued on to Jill’s parents, where they’ll spend the week while I work here on my paper. Grace, my daughter, gleefully announced, “This is where Daddy lives now!” Yeah, I’ll miss you too, kid.

So much is different in my life than when I was here last. The people I love are different. Some are gone, like my Grandpa Lindley who taught at Houghton. Some are forgotten. Some are loved more intensely than I thought possible when I was here, like Jill and Grace. My outlook on life is different; I realized how much of my four years here were spent in crisis mode. Sometimes, I ran from the crisis, and sometimes I romanticized the crisis and wrote poetry about it, but I always felt like I was in crisis. I always wanted to prove myself as a student, as a popular guy on campus, as a spiritual leader, as a friend, as a boyfriend, as a comic. I had to be the best at everything, and it had to appear effortless.

As I ran tonight around campus, I was at times painfully aware that I am 30. Flecks of gray, the whole thing. But I was also relieved not to be 20 again. I was relieved that I’m out of that stage where I feel like I have to separate myself from the pack, that so much depends upon every little move I make. I’m relieved, frankly, that I have learned the spiritual value of inertia: that sometimes there is real value in simply staying put, in not doing anything but simply being and listening where you are. I’m relieved that I don’t feel like I have a future to create anymore. I have a future, but it is entirely in God’s hands. In my case, this was a lesson I could learn only from the passage of time; perhaps some 20-year-olds have it down, but I think my experience is not uncommon.

2. God is so much better than we ever realize. As I reflected further on my 20-year-old self, I realized how little I would trust that person if I met him today. And yet, when I think about the major life decisions that 20-year-old made, I’m stunned at how well they turned out. I married wisely. As a pastor, I know how many people lament their marriage choices. Blinded by hormones and inexperience, in the fishbowl that is Houghton life, it can be difficult to choose a spouse well. And yet no other decision besides my decision to follow Jesus has shaped me so profoundly for the good as my decision to marry Jill. She balances me, teaches me, learns from me, supports me and gives me someone to support. We have the tools to raise children well who will help in building God’s Kingdom, and we have complementary gifts to do our own Kingdom-building with our time here. A 20-year-old can only make such a decision well with God’s help, and He has been faithful and good.

Same with my decision to enter seminary. That decision was made about 2 in the morning as I worked overnights at a gas station between my junior and senior years in college. I had hoped to go to grad school for history, but came to a realization at a certain moment that I simply could not do that and needed to focus my energies on something related to the church and worship because those were my real God-given passions. How the heck does a 20-year-old know what those passions are? Perhaps some 20-year-olds do, but I didn’t. But God was faithful and good and opened up a door I never could have imagined, leading me into graduate work in Liturgical Studies, which I literally did not know existed when I decided to go to seminary. This work has given me life and God uses me in it to bring life to others; and my decision to do it was not of my own strength, but completely God’s.

3. I still don’t know very much. There are enough 20-year-olds who write for this website that I want to be careful to say that I’m not now endowed with perfect perspective on life that you don’t have. On the contrary. As I ran tonight, I realized that things will be different when I am 40, and that the little dreams I dream today will probably die and be replaced by better dreams than I can imagine. That’s simply the way of the God we know, who called Jeremiah to buy a field in the middle of a war, who called Noah to build a boat long before the flood started, who called Peter to eat dirty food and bring dirty people into the Kingdom. It is, in fact, the same God who chose to bring salvation into the world through the womb of another confused teenager, the young virgin Mary.

May God continue to do great things through unwitting people; may he continue to sow life in the world through the blind, faithful flailing of youth, and old age; may he use you in all your inadequacies, all your anxieties, all your flaws.

A “Baptismal love letter”

03/10/2008, 12:00 pm -- by Mike | 8 Comments

A priest whose blog I read writes “baptismal love letters” to the infants she baptizes and posts them on her blog. (FYI: her blog is here, and those of you who think I’m liberal should read this lady.)

Anyway, I’ll be doing a baptism Sunday for three of our young people, and here’s my letter to them, which will be featured in our bulletin on Sunday. Hope it is meaningful for you too.

Tyler, Melissa and Patrick,

Today you join a ragged band. As you are baptized, I am mindful that Christians have not always lived up to their baptismal vows. Too often, we have been indifferent to truth and to love; too often, we have pursued our own agendas instead of “following Christ in word and deed throughout our lives.”

And yet, here you are. Splendid, youthful, and each of you beautiful. Each of you with God’s Spirit living in you, refracting differently through each of your hearts and personalities. Each of you is a shining testimony: that despite our shortcomings as Christians, God’s Spirit is still active and touching hearts through His church today. Somehow, sometimes despite His people, God still works! Each of you is proof of this.

Today, as you are baptized, the old heads will sigh and cry, and you will be hugged and cheered and loved. But if we are careful, we might forget (and even you might forget) why we cry great tears of joy. We cry, not because you are so young and full of possibility (though you are).

We cry because despite it all, God is still good. We cheer you because you are the most recent evidence that God is still active.

My prayer for you is that you reflect this truth your whole life long. May it not be just for a day when you are young, but throughout your whole lives, may God’s purposes and love be seen in your life. As you grow up and grow old, may you be the hands and feet of Christ, bringing hope and joy to a dangerous world.

~ In Christ’s love, Pastor Mike

Best of Mike — The Clamp

03/3/2008, 5:30 pm -- by Mike | No Comments

Originally printed April 23, 2007.

Here is something I came across in my reading for school this week.

The clamp in which evangelical Christianity perpetually finds itself is that it simultaneously wants to define itself over against modern culture and yet be convincing or persuasive with respect to that culture.
~ Graham Hughes, Worship as Meaning

Hughes does not write as an evangelical Christian, but I think he lays a finger on the evangelical dilemma and perhaps the reason for so much evangelical ennui.

On the one hand, we reject much of modern culture. We decry it as hedonistic or relativistic or insufficiently grounded. Yet, on the other hand, we are the masters at imitating that culture and twisting it to other ends.

So we can go to our local Christian bookstore and find a chart that says, “If you like U2, you might like (insert flavor-of-the-week band here).” Or we can stress the ease with which a person becomes a Christian, saying, “You’re still the same person; it’s just, you know, you have Jesus now.” Or we can create thoroughly consumerist modern Christian churches which offer all the music and good coffee you could want, so long as you’re willing to accept the Gospel as part of the bundle.

I have to admit that I am both fascinated and repelled by our ability to use culture so well. It demonstrates a certain flexibility and resourcefulness that is commendable.

Yet I wonder if it does not cost us. In our desire to make the gospel so accessible, we often play up its similarity to modern culture. Yet it makes the next, vital step of Christian discipleship extremely difficult, perhaps impossible. That next step is being able to self-differentiate from modern culture, asking critical questions of it. How does the modern way of living bring Christlikeness, bring true life? How does the modern way of life bring death and distance between us and Christ? Sadly, we know that there are too few ways modern culture brings life, and too many where it brings death. Mature Christians have to be capable of detecting and avoiding that which is dangerous in the culture around us.

But because we are so wedded to the similarities between our churches and modern culture, all too often our churches (clergy included) are ill-equipped to help people navigate these waters.

Perhaps our church music and architecture and our very ways of evangelism and living should not seek to impress the world with how much like the world we are, but how very different we are.

Holy Sadness

02/18/2008, 4:05 pm -- by Mike | 3 Comments

Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 25

12/25/2007, 7:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas Day
“This is the revelation of God’s love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.” (I John 4:9, in the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)

Christmas Days come and go so fast. This year, I will be celebrating my 30th Christmas and I cannot tell you in detail about any single one of them. I only have snippets of memories here and there. I can remember being about 7 or 8 and arriving home from my grandparents’ house after midnight, sitting bleary-eyed before the lighted tree, trying to squeeze another few minutes of joy from the day. I can remember being 12 and starring in our church’s Christmas pageant, The Sixth-Grade Scrooge, and experiencing the rush of making an audience laugh for the first time. I can remember being 23 and visiting Jill’s parents, listening to her sister ring handbells at the local Methodist church.

Because Christmases are so fast and furious, it is vain to try to use them to communicate very much. We say that Christmas is about family. And about love. And about Jesus. And about giving. And about feasting. With all these Christmas ideals swirling about, it’s no wonder we don’t know any of them very deeply! We try to make the holiday do too much.

This year, I invite you into a deeper idea of what Christmas is. Because, first and foremost, Christmas is not about any of those things I have just mentioned. Most of all, Christmas is about God showing us how much He loves us. When we look into the manger, and we see the Baby lying there, we see God’s love more fully than we see it anywhere else. God gave us many good gifts before Jesus: water and food, summer and winter, the Law, the Prophets. And God has given us many good gifts since Jesus — our families, our homes, our churches, each other. Yet all those gifts point back to that one Greatest Gift, sending His Son to earth for our sake. His presence with us is the best evidence that God indeed loves us and longs to draw us to Him.

May you know that deep love of God this Christmas, and may the Baby of Bethlehem remind you always of how deeply God loves us.