Faith – Page 89 – Pocket Sized Pastor*

One Potato, Two Potato, Three I-have-never-really-met-that-potato, Four

The evolution of my time at my field site has been rather fascinating. Its been neat seeing how the longer I’m integrated into the community and the staff at the church, the more I’m assumed to have always been there. As I near the end of my second year as their intern (and prep for the start of my internship), the assumption that I’ve just always been there has increased. Recently, people who have moved on from the church and come back to visit, either assume that they automatically know me or that I automatically know them. Folks I’ve only seen on facebook, tagged in the pictures of church members, arrive and people just automatically feel that I’ve had a relationship with them for years. My need to say “oh hey, that’s before my time” has increased. And while that might seem annoying to some people, I actually enjoy it. It doesn’t really boast my ego in the sense that I am starting to feel indispensable; rather, it helps make me feel assimilated into the community. I’m enjoying that.

Of course, there does arise situations where I end up feeling the need to “fake it” when it comes to knowing someone. Luckily, I’m getting use to introducing myself, stick my hand out there, and saying hello to people. In reality, it is the same kind of work that I’m suppose to normally do with people I don’t know anyways. But there’s a skill in showing a hint of remembrance in your eye, taking a step back and letting the conversation develop around you, and also using the time honored phrase of “what’s new?” rather than any other kind of uncovering question. In fact, “what’s new?” is becoming my standard question. I’m still working on a followup when people obviously respond with “well, nothing really. same old, same old.” But I’ll get there. And, if worse comes to worse, I’ll just show them pictures of my dog and my cat. That seems to open up people all the time.

Watching Anglican wheels turning on Lutheran Ethics

The Blue Jay is disappointed in my lack of class participation. via buzzfeed.

The problem with going to a non-Lutheran seminary is that there is a very large language gap between Lutherans and the Episcopalians/Anglicans around me. I mean, we use the same words but we’re not saying the same thing. In my class on Ethics, we attempted to examine, somewhat, Lutheran ethics through the lens of Luther’s own perspectives. Sadly, the books that were selected were actually the wrong place to start any fruitful discussion about Lutheran ethics. Rather, they were books that reinforced the misconception that Augustinian ethics is the same thing as Lutheran ethics (Luther’s two kingdoms are not the same as Augustine’s two cities, etc.). I think, based on some massive generalizations, that such a misconception arises because of the similar words used and the fact that Anglicans love the church fathers/mothers in a non-sexual, non-threatening way, in a way that actually interferes with the realization that Reformers used Augustine in different ways. Luther is Augustinian but he’s not only reading Augustine in one way; i.e. he’s not Anglican.

Now, I know I could have raised my hand and lectured the class about where Lutheran ethics possibly starts (maybe starting from the question of what faith is) but it is getting to the point in the semester where I just don’t have the energy or desire to correct people (I’ll leave that for my papers and projects). And it didn’t help that I was tired and in a bad mood either. So I just sat there, kept myself quiet, and stewed. It was fun to see the class, however, move around on the question of Luther and work some of it out – but it grated on me. And with the internet not really working during that class period, I actually felt I had to pay attention to the discussion and that just didn’t help at all.

In the interests of full communion, maybe I should have opened my mouth and educated my classmates. But, with less than a month of classes left, I just don’t have the time.

Those young people – getting their theatre on – tsk tsk.

Here’s another reason why I like to look at old magazines: finding out that I’m violating so many things, I might as well just give up and go on a bender.

From The Lutheran Quarterly, 1895 (July), page 416 (“Review of Recent Literature”)

[From the] AMERICAN LUTHERAN PUBLICATION BOARD, CHICAGO.
The Theatre. By William Dallman. pp. 112.
In the form of a dialogue with several young people the author disposes quite effectually of the arguments cited in behalf of the theatre. This is followed by an array of startling testimonies against it, and this in turn by Bible proofs, and anecdotes. A careful reading of these clear and sober pages will likely convince Christians that they ought not to patronize the theatre and that it is no place for their young people to seek amusement. This little work merits the widest circulation.
R. J. W.

I’m seeing Newsies in 9 days. All hope is lost for me. SAVE YOURSELVES!

Post Easter Madness

I wish I could inform all of you that this Easter Monday will consist of naps, vegging out in front of my Netflix instant stream, and eating a chocolate bunny for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But, alas, there is no rest for a seminarian who is going to finish his semester in a month. Laundry, papers, books, articles, worship design, and some web development hootenanny will devour my day today. However, I am satisfied because not only is Christ risen (Alleluia!) but I, personally, looked awesome yesterday. My easter shirt was a hit especially during the joint choir sing where I was in the center of the crowd while surrounded by folks in white choir robes. Now if only I could get a cassock in this color….

Photo by the lovely Julie. K and I didn’t plan to match, it just worked out that way.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Solem Lent, Tick Tock

Over the last two weeks, my trip to The Holy Land Experience keeps coming up in conversation. During my course on Corinthians and the Greco-Roman view of the human body, the white tinkerbell Jesus of the HLE’s passion play came up as a valid juxtaposition between modern concepts of body and what Paul thought. And in my New Testament survey course, the conversation surrounding Revelation and the macho/feminized Jesus brought to mind the image of Peter in the Scriptorium where he looks bigger than the Hulk. And, with the vigil of Easter currently being kept, the lack of solemnity when it comes to the Easter Story at the Holy Land Experience has bled into my own self-reflection. Because, in a lot of ways, this has been one of my least solemn lenten experiences since I’ve returned to church. And I’m not sure how to feel about that.

My preparation for these Holy Days has consisted of me posting web comics to Facebook, ironing while shaking my booty to mashups, and spending more (than usual) late nights out. I really didn’t give anything up nor did I take on any discipline. Sure, I’ve been reading the bible a lot, doing theological reflections, participating in worship, led a study of the Augsburg Confession, and even preached once. And I do feel like I’ve done holy things. But things felt just a tad more…bright this season? I’m not sure what it was but I felt a lack of centerness this season.

While I ironed my new Easter shirt (besides realizing that entering ordained ministry means that if I decide to have a new outfit for each easter, my wife will get upset with the number of chasubles, copes, and stoles that I spend our money on), I started to come up with reasons why I felt this way. I thought of the unusually warm and sunny winter we had (which was awesome!), the fact that I’m still digesting what it means to celebrate Lent and the Passion while living in a post-resurrection reality, and that I was just too tired doing other things to take anything else on. And, sure, all of those reasons might have applied, but I think the big one is that there’s a little person joining our family soon. It is difficult to withdraw, to scale back, when everything is about to change. And I’m ridiculously excited about this change because, well, there’s a lot of hope in this little guy entering the world. It’s an incarnational story for me – which is Jesus’ story (of course). There’s life here. So, I think, that the big difference between this Lent and Easter and previous ones, for me, is that as new life grows and develops in K, and as we prep ourselves for his entering into our world, I’m just focused on the hope of new life. I’m stuck on the beauty in the life giving act of God on the cross. The Good in Good Friday is the highlight for me this year. I’m in no rush to Easter or the resurrection; I’m in no rush to bypass Lent and enter the Easter season. There’s new life right here, right now, and I can live with that today. Is this theologically sound? Probably not. But I’ve decided that he’s got my forehead, k’s chin and lips, and my nose.

Do Seminarians Dream Dreams of Electric Chapels?

I think, maybe, just maybe, I had my first seminary dream about General Seminary last night. I’m not sure how the dream started and I don’t think my seminary was the point of the dream at all but, there it was, hanging out. However, GTS wasn’t located where it usually is in Chelsea; nor was the entire campus there. Rather, the front of the chapel was located in my neighborhood of Washington Heights. And, not only that, it was not really a chapel anymore. It had become one of those storefronts where the merchandise spills out into the street and the entire front is covered in clothes hanging from hangers. And the front was entirely black because it was covered in cassocks. They had cassocks of all sizes! Small, large, child-size, etc. I think there was even a cassock spanx option and, I kid you not, they even had those half mannequins, the ones that are just legs but have some extra room in the back (if you know what I mean) to model jeans, with cassocks on them. Cars, taxies, traffic, and people were wizzing by as I stopped to take a look. My friend Anne came out to talk to me, and several of my friends were moving cassocks from one spot to another. I don’t think they were actually trying to sell anything – they were just moving things up, down, left, right, and using that giant hook to reach the top hangers. And the chapel even had its own awning with pigeons walking along it.

The Chapel of the Good Shepherd as a literal storefront church – that would be pretty wild. I don’t think of mainline protestant churches as storefronts. Even the storefront churches in my neighborhood are being closed down and transformed back into restaurants, stores, and condos. The very idea of a “storefront church” seems rather foreign in a neighborhood that is being gentrified. But it would be wild to take the seminary’s chapel, a chapel that is designed to perform the daily office, and that is locked inside the fortress walls of General Seminary, and put it right out there, on the street, so that anyone could access it. It seems that every week, as I leave seminary, someone on the street and speaks to me that they didn’t know a church was there until they heard the chimes. People don’t really look up, they don’t see signs labeling the building or the entrances; something needs to catch their eye or their ears and intrude into their iPod/iPhone earbud shielded worlds. I wonder if a storefront full of black cassocks, on a Good Friday, when the sky is darkened as Jesus’ breathed his last on the cross – I wonder if all that pious black, would somehow crack into a random passerby’s world, just for a moment, or if, being New Yorkers, we’d need a little more – like some chimes, a loud cry, or maybe a Mr. Softie Ice Cream truck – church style. Hmmm. I don’t know. But a Mr. Softie Ice Cream truck playing A Mighty Fortress is My God might get noticed.

Rethinking Heaven: Teaser

It seems that Time Magazine didn’t want to let Newsweek be the only one to talk about Jesus this week. Rethinking Heaven is Time’s foray into eschatology. I wish I could read the whole thing but I’m not a subscriber. The cover enticed me and, I’ll admit, I want that guys shoes. However, the Politico Playbook felt like sending out a teaser today.

Heaven Can’t Wait: Why rethinking the hereafter could make the world a better place”: “Angels and harps are all well and good, [some younger] Christians believe, but fighting HIV/AIDS is more urgent. This younger generation is driven by … issues of social justice like combatting slavery and homelessness. … The debate doesn’t fit easily on the usual left-right, blue-red, liberal-conservative spectrum. … The divide isn’t about a secular ideal of service vs. a religiously infused vision of reality. It’s about whether believing Christians see earthly life as inextricably bound up with eternal life or as simply a prelude to a heavenly existence elsewhere. …

“I’m a Christian-a poor one, to be sure-who keeps the feast and says his prayers . For me, the scholarly redefinition of heaven as a manifestation of God’s love on earth … at once puts believers in closer proximity to the intent of the New Testament authors and should inspire the religious to open their arms more often than they point fingers. Heaven thus becomes, for now, the reality one creates in the service of the poor, the sick, the enslaved, the oppressed. It is not paradise in the sky but acts of selflessness and love that bring God’s sacred space and grace to a broken world suffused with tragedy until, in theological terms, the unknown hour when the world we struggle to piece together is made whole again.”

Now, I know that this is a generalized news magazine and, based on the quote above, I’m pretty sure that they’re arguing for a scholarly redefinition of heaven that is based, largely, on what is going around in “Evangelical” circles ever since Rob Bell wrote his book last year. “Evangelicals” seem to make a lot of noise so and they seem to have numbers, so they get the articles. But I’m having a hard time seeing how this redefinition of heaven is “new.” I’m currently reading Carl Braaten’s Eschatology and Ethics for my Ethics class and his book, in many ways, is about a basic definition of eschatology where the future is breaking into the current world. It is an eschatology grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ which “announces the future with the power to shape the present(pg. 70).” And this idea isn’t new. Braaten’s book was written in 1972 and I’m sure that Luther, and Augustine, wrote similarly. My guess, in many ways, is that Time’s new article is a story on the re-structuring of what The Book of Revelation says. It sounds like the article is going to report that young Christians, now, are not buying into the escapism that dominated the conversation, in certain Christian circles, for so long. And, sure, I could easily attack the line about creating heaven on earth but I’m gonna give the quote the benefit of the doubt and let it slide because, well, I don’t have the full article.

It was well planned to leak or release this article on Maundy Thursday. Later this evening, I will gather with my fellow Christians at my field site and we will wash each other’s feet. We will share in Holy Communion and we will, at least briefly, share in Christ’s service. At the end of the service, the altar will be stripped, and the lights lowered as we begin the walk into Good Friday. A rethinking of heaven, grounded in a “realized eschatology” grounded on…something…, could be linked to the act that we commemorate today in our liturgy. But I wonder if this article is going to miss the boat when it comes to mainline churches, especially us Lutherans. I’m pretty young, and I haven’t been in this church for decades, but this image of eschatology appears to play a role in what the Lutheran church has done for many, many years. Luther’s cry for all of us to be “little Christs” to one another is a cry that hasn’t just been rediscovered now. And I hope that little bit shows up in the article. If it doesn’t, then that might be a sign that us Lutherans need to do a better PR job.

Pietism 2.0, the New York Hipster Jesus

I know I shouldn’t read Andrew Sullivan. I know that I disagree with most of what he writes and, to be honest, his most recent editorial about Christianity is no different. He feels the need to jump on the Jefferson bandwagon and mistake Jefferson’s Americanizing of Jesus as, somehow, anti-political-power. Jefferson’s Jesus is not an exaltation of Jesus but rather a reduction of Jesus into a time specific, American, identity. Jefferson’s legacy, when it comes to Jesus, is to do what America does all the time about Jesus – molding Jesus into what they project onto the Jesus project. Jesus doesn’t break into the world but, rather, Jesus is a product of an idealized, American world.

That’s what really gets me about Sullivan. The argument for a simplified Christianity, a Jesus-focused Christianity, is an old argument. The Reformers of the 16th century pushed for that. The men and women who went into the desert pushed for that. The ancestors to current American Evangelicalism pushed for that. Hell, pietism and my pal Henry Muhlenberg pushed for that. What Sullivan is arguing is a return to what Spener wanted in the 17th century – a visualized, simplified, transformative Christianity that is visibly seen in the church. The true church, then, is the church of Jesus! Simplicity! That’s the key to thing. Even Sullivan’s argument about Francis is all about simplicity. His argument is that Christianity is overload, too political, and too influenced by “worldliness.” Sullivan sounds like many of the young, hipster-esque non-denominational pastors out there but also sounds a lot like those who feel that Jesus wasn’t divine but, rather, a moral teacher. The idea is to strip Christianity back to Jesus – with the assumption that we, unlike the disciples in Mark, get it and we know even better than Peter, John, James, and Paul.

But here’s where Sullivan really blows it and that’s with the statement “As Jesus was without politics, so was Francis.” What? Or how about “When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all.” Or, better yet, let’s make silly arguments and throw out parts of the gospel story by claiming that the patrons in Luke and Paul didn’t exist: “Jesus, like Francis, was a homeless person, as were his closest followers. He possessed nothing‚Äîand thereby everything.” All of this is, in reality, unscriptural. It’s a reduction of the complex reality of the what the scriptures are. It also tries to remove the current church, or argue that the crisis in the church can be resolved by removing itself out of its reality and where it is. By excising true Christianity from the rest of reality, true change can occur, true love can flourish, and we can get everyone to like us. Or something like that.

What Sullivan should be arguing is the question that Christianity has been working out since Constantine converted: how does Christianity work when it is in a position of political power? Because we still HAVEN’T figured that out (though I think Two Kingdom’s theology gets that bit right :p). And it doesn’t matter if its right wing or left wing, social justice oriented or rapture-focused, any Christianity in a position of political power is going to find itself in a dangerous position because of the political reality and visions within the gospel itself. A reduction to just a “Jesus focused” reality won’t change that problem. And we know that won’t work because we’ve been trying to do that for two thousand years. Reducing our actions to just what Jesus did, or taught, or what we believe Jesus did or taught, in many ways, denies Sin. It denies the need for Christ to die. And it reduces faith. Removing complexity from Christianity, Jesus, and God does the opposite of what Sullivan claims he wants to do. It’s not about accepting mystery and burying complexity into the mist of “somewhere else.” It’s actually how we get ourselves off the hook from the troubling parts of scripture, the complexity of canon, and the complexity of our own history and story. And why should we deny that? The Gospel is bigger than our complexity; God is bigger than our own failures; and we should own it, and never, ever, runaway from it.

A Note to the Church while talking about Trayvon Martin

My friend Jan found my cat’s tag sign on the Lower East Side of Manhattan – that cat gets around!

I know I’ve been avoiding talking about the Trayvon Martin murder in depth. The event was tragic, terrible, and I feel for the all the families of the victim. The amount of videos, press information, and criminal reports I’ve read about the event is staggering compared to how I usually follow events like these. I’m hoping an arrest is made and criminal charges are pressed on Zimmerman and I’m appalled at the blatant racism that has been displayed by many, many people. It’s a reminder, to me at least, of how far this country has yet to go in regards to racial acceptance.

Bishop Hanson’s message was right on target, I think, and I’ve heard that Martin’s death has been on the radar of faithful Christians all over the place. It’s discussion has caused some soul searching, empathy, and it seems to be in the air even if its impact might be minimal in some places. But I would like to share one suggestion to those in the church who would like to discuss this attack (and racial issues) in general: please don’t use the word “become” as in “what has our society become that allows this to happen?” Speaking for myself, that phrase just shuts me down. In that one simple word and thought, what I see is a romanticism of the past, a rejection of all the other cases of racial violence/discrimination that have happened over the years, and a misidentification of the fact that race in the United States is still a big deal. Discrimination is still a big deal. We, collectively, are not moving away from some golden age but, rather, we’re suppose to be on track towards something better. The amazing thing is not that such an event happened but, rather, that there has existed, and continues to exist, a systematic structure in our society’s very being that allows such a thing to happen. If you are speaking of the law and searching for the gospel, if you are trying to tell the church how the world truly is, focusing on that one act isn’t enough. The groundwork that led to such an event is bigger than that and is built into our very bones. That’s sin and that needs to be talked about, and not washed away under some assumed golden age that was in our recent past.

Today’s reading in the lectionary for Holy Week is John 12:1-11. “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me” Jesus said to the disciples after they complained about Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet. I’ll admit I’ve always struggled with what Jesus said. Even when I exegete it, contextualize the story, and reframe the discussion to argue that what Jesus is commenting on is the lack of faithfulness that the disciples have, I still always return to that phrase “you will always have the poor with you” and shudder. It’s always struck me as an un-hopeful phrase. We will always have the poor with us? Really? We’ll always have the rejected, the unwanted, those who we don’t want to belong? We’ll always have people that we will not invite to our table but that only Jesus will? Always? For all time? Sheesh. What kind of Messiah are you, then? Can’t you just go ahead and take care of it all, wipe the poverty, injustice, fear, from the world, and end the very idea of the poor? I know that the Old Testament told us to let the poor glean but you just marched into Jerusalem with palms and garments thrown on your path – can’t you do MORE?

Today, for me at least, what Jesus tells the disciples is how I’ll frame what the church needs to say about racial injustice in this country. Don’t romanticize the past and claim that the “poor” were never there. Don’t, also, claim that this will be a topic that we’ll ever NOT have to talk about. We don’t, really, live in a post-racial society. We don’t live in a post-class society. We don’t live in a post-gender society. We don’t live in a post-sexuality society. As a church, we need to be honest and keep describing how the world truly is. The world needs to be broken into, changed, and made right. And as we march through this Holy Week, towards the Cross, lets try to keep all of this in mind. We’re not re-enacting the passion story – we’re proclaiming it because it is still needed to be heard today.