Pastor Scott's Thoughts

Prayer of Blessing for APU Convocation

I was asked to speak for Senior Convocation yesterday at APU. I used Luke 19 to speak on the tension that I feel between the Parables of the Talents and the Pounds (see previous blog). As we send graduates from Chrsitian colleges out into the world I always feel conflcted about whether the world should want them or reject them, whether they should fit well into the systems of power in the world or live prophetically in contrast to them.

I won't repeat the whole message here, but I've had several requests for the prayer of blessing that I wrote for the class of 2012. Here it is:

Blessing of the Talents and Pounds

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May he make his face to shine upon you and give you peace.

May you discover the mystery of living in the world but not being of it.

Like Daniel, may the leaders of nations want you in their inner circle of authority because of your divinely-given wisdom and insight.

But like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, may the leaders of nations hold you in furnace-building suspicion because you claim a higher citizenship than any nation can offer and you will always obey God rather than rulers.

Like Joseph, may your integrity and determination lead the prominent and mighty corporations of the world to place you in seats of power and influence.

But like the apostle Paul in Ephesus, may your prophetic life so call into question the idolatry on which our lives are built that the unjust economic systems of our world conspire to run you out of town before you undo their mythology.

May the great graduate schools and universities fight over you because they long to have students who committedly give their minds back to God as a an act of worship.

But may they not know what to do with brilliant people who rather than identifying themselves with the cultured elites, keep finding their identity with the poor and the marginalized.

Like Enoch, may you live long productive lives so connected with God that your transition to the next life will be like taking an unbroken stroll into the next life surrounded by the presence of the Spirit.

But like Stephen, may you lay down your life, in the prime of life, as a peaceful witness to a kingdom the world cannot see.

Like our Lord, may the world love you, and despise you.

May you be embraced, and rejected.

May you be given all things, but keep nothing.

May multitudes follow you, but may you take up your cross daily.

May you become first by being last, and may you become great by being the servant of all.

May you daily give your talents to the Lord prepared to one day be held accountable for how you have used the gift of life he has given you.

But, like Zacchaeus, - refusing to be conformed to this present age - may you wrap up and give back the pound the principalities and powers will offer to you, willing to pay the cost of discipleship.

May your life be lived in the tension between the talents and pounds.

God has called you to help him heal the broken world. May the world be both excited and terrified that you are on the way.

And may he who began a good work in you, may he carry it completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Amen.

 

Caught Between Talents and Pounds

I spent last Thursday and Friday on retreat with scholars from theology, business, and communication mixed together with Christian leaders in business, film, and various other fields. The APU School of Theology has been given a grant from the Kern Family Foundation to explore how to better prepare ministers to think and teach Christianly about the areas of work and economics and the retreat was set up to help kick off the project.

One of the interesting things about the conversation surrounding work and faith is the inherent tension concerning whether or not the system of wealth and capitalism in which most of us are embedded is good or bad. The conversation is actually quite complicated because the problems and blessings of our economic systems are varied. The conversation at the retreat was certainly lively.

One of the things I wanted to do was to give the group permission to be comfortable with the tension that we often feel as Christians when we think, speak, and write about faith and economics. Not just as a scholar but more especially as a pastor I find myself caught in the tension between the importance of our material nature (especially as it pertains to the importance of our bodies and our work) and materialism (the worship or improper use and valuing of material things).

I shared with the group that I often describe the tension as a conflict between the parable of the talents and the parable of the pounds. Matthew gives us the parable of the talents (Matthew 25) and Luke gives us the parable of the pounds (Luke 19).

The parables are nearly identical and very likely were used by Matthew and Luke from the same or at least similar original sources. In each version the beginning of the parable is almost identical. Matthew and Luke tell their readers (through Jesus) the parable as a story about a master who goes away and leaves three servants or stewards in charge of their resources. To the first he gives five talents or ten pounds. To the second he gives two talents or five pounds. And to the last he gives one talent or one pound.

In both versions of the parable the endings are nearly identical. When the master returns he rewards the fist two servants because they have doubled their resources. But the last servant is punished for having hidden rather than having used his talent or pound. What he has received is taken away and given to the first servant.

Most of the time when this parable is preached it is Matthew's version - the parable of the talents - that is used. I think the preference for Matthew's version of the parable, at least in part, has to do with the ease with which the monetary unit called a "talent" can be translated to include not just our wealth, but our gifts, strengths, and "talents" for the purposes of God and his kingdom.

Matthew places the parable of the talents in chapter 25 among other instructions from Jesus about being ready for judgment. It is found in between the parable of the ten virgins and the parable of the sheep and the goats. All three parables have the theme of taking seriously the responsibility that we have to use the gifts, strengths, and resources that God has given us for his purposes in the world and that we will all be held accountable for how we have "invested" those gifts.

So on one side is the responsibility that all humans have as those created in God's image and sharing what some theologians call co-creation powers with God. God has formed as as people with creative bodies and minds and expects us to use those in ways that share in the goodness of his creative purposes. In that way all work can be seen as an act of worship back to the Creator. Our work inevitably forms larger structures of communities, cultures, and economies. So we can't help but be economic beings finding ways to work together for the good of all and for the glory of the God who not only creates us but holds us accountable for our work.

But on the other side is the parable of the pounds. Scholars like Kenneth Bailey and William Herzog have helped me read Luke's version of the parable in what I think are better ways. They argue - and I think the are correct - that Luke uses the parable differently than Matthew.

In Luke the parable is placed in chapter 19 between the story of Zacchaeus' conversion and Jesus' cleansing of the Temple. In both of those stories the emphasis is not on being ready but on the ways that the surrounding economic systems were corrupting the life and worship of God's people.

Therefore, in the parable of the pounds, rather than the third servant being the "bad guy" he may actually be the "good guy." It is possible, given the context, that the third servant recognizes that the world's economic systems are often ruthless (like the power gathering master). And he sees that the ways of gathering more power are unjust (gathering where they did not sow). And the parable also seems to recognize that in the system the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. So he cannot find a way to participate in this ruthless system. What happens? Like many of the early believers, the servant who is unwilling to work for the building up of the "empire" he dragged before the people and slain.

Maybe we can think of the parable this way... Have you ever wondered what happened to Zacchaeus after his confession to Christ when he went back to work on Monday (or Sunday) and told his tax bosses that he could no longer participate in the system of exploitation that he had so cleverly led up until this point? Do you think his boss shared in his conversion?

When Jesus cleansed the Temple he ended up getting crucified. My guess is that Zacchaeus' end was not a whole lot more successful than his Lord's.

And so here we are. Christians called to use their gifts everyday in ways that add value to others and to God's creation. We are accountable to work as unto the Lord. But we are also stuck in systems of injustice and brokenness in which we are called to live prophetically. And as we live prophetically we are called to count the cost of that discipleship.

This is a tension that the earliest disciples of Jesus felt everyday as they took up their cross. Two-thousand years later we are still caught in the tension between the talents and the pounds.

 

The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight

There is has been a growing angst among evangelical Christians for the last several decades over the question of salvation. The angst takes several different forms. It shows up in questions about whether modern American evangelical Christianity looks more like Paul than like Jesus. It shows up in tense debates over substitutionary atonement in relationship to other understandings of Christ's work on the cross. It shows up in the questions about the goal of salvation. (Is the ultimate goal of salvation to get people to heaven or to redeem the creation)? In the Church of the Nazarene (and other Holiness traditions) the tension shows up in the on-going conversations about the relationship between justification and sanctification.

There are other manifestations of the angst that could be pointed to, but the root issue or question is the same: What is the good news of the Gospel? Or to say it another way: What do Christians mean when they invite people to be "saved"?

There are many books that have tried to address this question. Dallas Willard addresses the question in both The Divine Conspiracy and in The Great Omission. NT Wright has taken on the question in books like Justification, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, and his most recent book Simply Jesus. As I look at my book shelf and the three piles of books on my floor waiting to be read, I count somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty or forty books that are trying to address the question of the Gospel under the assumption that at least part of what American Christianity has been advocating as the good news is at least partly incomplete (if not outright distorted).

A very gifted writer and thinker - Scot McKnight - also takes on this question in his latest book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. Scot may be the king of the theological bloggers and I frequently find his insights helpful. So I'm not surprised that I found his most recent book The King Jesus Gospel very thoughtful and helpful. The book is not very long and is written at a level that most lay people will find accessible. I think it will be a nice book for small groups to wrestle with.

Scot's main concern is that the contemporary church has become what he calls a "salvation culture" rather than a "gospel culture." A salvation culture is fixated on the question "who's in and who's out"? A salvation culture, argues McKight, separates salvation from the gospel.

The key to overcoming this divide, for Scot, is rooting the "plan of salvation" into the larger story of God's redemption in the world. He argues that there are four big categories or themes given in the Scripture. The primary story is the story of God's redemptive work in the people of Israel. The story of Israel not only tells us what is wrong with the world, but it gives us the vision for a renewed creation and the trajectory of God's plan of redemption.

The second big category is the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus is embedded within the story of Israel. This is the primary reason why the early church refused to get rid of the Old Testament. But it is clear when one reads each of the four Gospels that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are clearly retelling the story of Jesus within the categories and themes of the story of Israel. Jesus is the completion of the story of what God was doing in Israel and apart from that story the story of Jesus makes little or no sense.

The third big category is the plan of salvation. This is the key idea for Scot. The plan of salvation cannot be removed from its location within the story of Israel and Jesus. When one is "saved" one does not just simply cognitively affirm a few ideas about God and his Son Jesus, one enters into the story of God's redemption and salvation as it is revealed in the stories of Israel and Jesus.

The last big category for Scot is then the method of persuasion or evangelism that flows from those first three categories. If salvation is not simply convincing someone of a few ideas (or a few spiritual laws) but inviting someone to enter into God's redemptive story, then our methods of evangelism must flow from those stories. In particular, I believe this is why a re-affirmation of baptism as a means of receiving salvation is so critical. In baptism the new believer leaves behind their former story, former life of sin, and their former story and enters by faith into God's story, God's new life, and God's redemptive story. 

Scot goes on to demonstrate biblically how the preaching of both Peter and Paul reflect a "gospel culture" and not just a "salvation culture." I particularly appreciated the last sections of the book that address how a church can begin to form and reflect a gospel culture.

If you are looking for a good introduction to many of the important conversations going on regarding salvation today, or are looking for a good small group book for discussion. As always, Scot McKnight gives the church a really nice resource for helping us live into the mission God has given us.

Reflections on a Year in Mark

It was a transformational experience for me to have to wrestle my way through the Gospel of Mark this last year. It is fun for me to look through my bible now and see all the marked up places in the second book of the New Testament. I hope your bible got a little “marked up” also (pun intended).

I have been spending some time these last few days reflecting on what parts of Mark have stuck deep inside me.

Without question the first thing I think about is the kingdom of God. There are many stories and sermons in the Gospel, but there is one primary message: “…the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15). Whatever else the early church thought about Jesus, they knew this one truth; Christ had come to announce the reign of God in creation. That reign establishes a new reality, a new people, and a new way of living in the world. The call of the Gospel, first and foremost is to repent of all of the former ways of life and to enter into God’s new kingdom through Jesus. 

The second thing I think about, however, is how hard it is for us to imagine that a new kingdom is present. I am convinced that this is a major part of the reason Mark gives the reader the parables of Jesus. The parables help disciples discover the unusual reality of God’s kingdom. Parables help to subvert our imaginations. The parable that resonates with me most from Mark is the Parable of the Sower (4:1-9). When we hear the word “kingdom” we usually think about power, might, wealth, pomp, and circumstance. But the kingdom of God is not like a warrior who went out to conquer. It is not like an emperor who goes out to expand his empire. The kingdom of God is like a sower who went out to sow seed. What a contrast! Every kingdom that has come in human history has come through conquest and revolution. God’s kingdom will come like a farmer faithfully distributing seed and waiting for the good soil to respond. Amazing! I have a hard time even imagining that. (Which is exactly the point).

The importance of the signs of the kingdom breaking into the world is the third thing that sticks with me from Mark. The miracles of Jesus are clearly not just present in the Gospel to let the reader know the power present in the life of Jesus. Rather, the signs reveal something about the nature of the kingdom as it breaks in. Those paralyzed by sin are able to walk. Those who cannot hear or speak about the kingdom are healed. Lepers who are considered unclean and thus excluded from community are not only restored to health but to relationship with others. People oppressed and possessed by the principalities and powers that bring destruction are set free to be what God created them to be. But most importantly for Mark, those who are blind – those who simply cannot see what the kingdom of God is about – are touched so that they can clearly see the truth of the kingdom clearly.

The most marked up places in my bible are chapters 8 through 11 where three times Jesus talks about how the Messiah must suffer, but the disciples simply cannot see what he means. He keeps talking about the self-giving love that is the essence of the kingdom, while they keep fighting over who is the greatest and arguing about who will get to sit at the right and the left in the kingdom. They, like us, need a complete do-over. Unless we become like little children, we will never see, let alone enter, the kingdom of God.

The fourth and perhaps most important idea that sticks with me from Mark is the call to take up the cross (8:34-35). When the good news about Jesus is proclaimed today it is often preached as something Jesus did for us so that we now don’t have to do anything except cognitively ascent to a few propositions. Certainly Jesus did something for us that we could not do for ourselves. He alone brought the kingdom and he invites us by grace alone to share in it. But the call is for disciples not just to cognitively ascent (to “believe”) in what he has done, but we are called to share in the kingdom. The invitation to discipleship in Mark is for the disciple to take up their cross also and follow Jesus.

Discipleship is a call to kingdom work, but it is not a call to “works righteousness.” This is the fifth thing that I take away from Mark. The call of Jesus is to kingdom faithfulness but it is not a call to religiosity. I have been deeply shaken by Mark chapters 11-13 that deal primarily with the fall of Jerusalem and the religious establishment that gave structure to the life of Jesus and the disciples. Readers of Mark should always be keenly aware that the Pharisees, scribes, and other Jerusalem leaders, who so badly missed seeing the kingdom, were not secular people but very religious. I do not believe that the religious leaders were evil people. In fact, I think they probably look a lot like me. I believe their intentions were to protect the faith that they loved and the temple establishment that gave meaning to their existence. Before we get too critical of the pagans in our world today we should never forget that well-intentioned religious leaders crucified Jesus. Lord, have mercy.

Finally, I take away the young naked man who fled from the Gethsemane (14:51). I don’t know if the scholars who see this young man as a literary devise used by Mark to symbolize the church are right. But that interpretation does make a lot of sense to me. I love that like the rest of the disciples who run away when persecution comes, this young man’s flaws, fears, and sin are exposed. Before the cost of discipleship we are all exposed as naked and broken. But I am convinced that it is this same young man who reappears in chapter 16 at the empty tomb as the witness to the resurrected Lord. He is no longer naked but wrapped in the white robe of the saints. He is the Church. He is every one of us. He is the sinful person redeemed by God’s grace to be a witness to the most important truth in the world: the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and forever.

I love that Mark begins his account of the life of Jesus this way, “The beginning of the good news (the Gospel) of Jesus, the Son of God” (1:1). What Mark has given us is the beginning of the coming of the kingdom. The continuation of the Gospel takes place in and through you and me. May it be so.

Cue the Locusts

Pay attention, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such-and-such a town. We will stay there a year, buying and selling, and making a profit." You don't really know about tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for only a short while before it vanishes. Here's what you ought to say: "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."

- James 4:13-15

 

This last week has certainly been a wild one in the Pasadena area. Debbie and I have often commented that one of the reasons we like living in Southern California is because we seemingly get a different natural disaster (or human disaster like a riot) about once a year which forces all of our friends and family to get in contact with us to make sure we are okay. We have found that it's a good way to maintain long distance relationships.

The winds last Wednesday night into Thursday morning were simply awesome. Not in a skater sense of "that's awesome dude," but in the sense of truly forming a sense of overwhelming awe. Driving around and witnessing the destruction the winds caused around Monrovia, Sierra Madre, and Pasadena has been awe-inducing. Trees that have been standing longer than any of the currently living humans have been around fell to the winds with their deep and complex root systems now exposed for all to see.

This certainly wasn't the way those of us at PazNaz hoped to make the national news, but the destruction of the roof caused by what some speculate to have been 100 mph wind gusts or better was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen. Long, heavy sheets of metal had been twisted into every conceivable shape and were scattered in no discernible pattern.

About 1:30am Thursday morning the three of us (and the dogs) with bedrooms at the back of the house were awakened by the flying debris hitting the windows and so we huddled together in the front of the house praying that the trees would stay up and the roof would stay put. In that moment I realized something critically important. At a very significant level we are all powerless in the face of greater powers. I had no way to stop the wind. No way to keep the trees up. No way to make the shingles on the roof stay in place. If the winds wanted to continue until everything clinging to land had been blown into the Pacific I suppose that it could. And there would be nothing available in any of our humanness to stop its force.

Call me Exodus obsessed, but I couldn't help but think about Pharaoh Thursday morning while I laid fearful in the dark. I couldn't help but think about Pharaoh with all of his power and wealth, Pharaoh with all of his mythology of universal control, huddling behind a wall in his palace powerless to stop another of the plagues sent by Yahweh through Moses. Apparently one of my staff members at church thought of Pharaoh also because as we were trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces at the church Thursday morning, one of them said, "It seemed so Apocalyptic last night that I felt like someone should say, 'Okay, stop the wind, cue the locusts.'"

Some of the apocalyptic talk came about because I have been preaching through Mark 13 during this Advent season. We are two weeks into Advent and I will admit that it has been a challenge. These days Advent has really become an extended celebration of Christmas filled with frankly sappy songs, stories, and movies about family, mistletoe, and gentle drifts of snow on the roof. I like all of those Hallmark-ish kind of things, but it has been really hard to figure out how to fit biblical texts about the desecrating sacrilege in the Temple, the moon turning to darkness, and the stars falling from the heavens around tinsel, baby Jesus, and cute little children dressed like shepherds and angels.

The advent of the Santa Ana winds may have saved my preaching this year. The season of Advent really is about being reminded that things that seem permanent - Rome, Caesar Augustus, Herod, taxes, Temples, over-populated cities, Black Fridays, Cyber-Mondays, BCS standings, stock market downturns, presidential politics, and continuing wars on terror - are not only temporal but are quietly being subverted by a kingdom that actually is eternal. The Temple becomes rubble, the moon turns to darkness, and the stars fall because another empire that believes itself to be eternal (an empire that drinks the same kool-aid as Pharaoh) is being replaced by a new heavens and a new earth.

So in a strange way I'm thankful for the Advent Santa Ana winds that blew away an awful lot of what seemed permanent in the San Gabriel Valley. It is an important reminder that we are very, very temporal and that we live most of our days living out Pharaoh's same myth of control. James is right. Our language should more often reflect what ought to be a deeper conviction. We more frequently ought to say: "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."

I found myself on Thursday morning deeply thankful for God's mercy in not allowing the winds to keep blowing. But I also found myself more grateful for what I do have, grateful for the kingdom work I have been gifted with today, and grateful that I am ultimately free from the burdensome myth that I am ultimately the one that controls all the outcomes of my existence. 

It took ten plagues to try and teach Pharaoh that he was not in control. His hard heart never learned the lesson and so his mythology of over-blown self-importance came to an ugly and unfortunate end at the Red Sea. I'm sure by this time next week I too will be right back into my self-reliant mythology of control, but I am thankful for this moment of grace to try and break out of my Pharaoh-complex. But I'm sure it will be back soon. So, cue the locusts.

Reflections on Remembering as a Christian Practice on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

I am posting some reflections on the practice of remembering that I used as part of my message today on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I hope they are helpful.

I have been praying and thinking a lot this week about the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon – especially given the fact that the anniversary falls on a Sunday. The challenge for us as disciples of Jesus Christ is to figure out how we approach a day like today not just as citizens of a particular nation, but as members of Christ’s body. And so we come together as the Church on September 11^th asking God to help us reflect on all that has happened over the last ten years in ways that bring him glory and reflect his love.

I have been drawn again and again this week to many of the words found in the Torah. In particular the book of Deuteronomy, perhaps more than any other biblical book, is filled with divine commands to remember and not to forget. If most Old Testament scholars are correct, then Deuteronomy and the other books of the Pentateuch came together in their final form after the Babylonian exile as the people of Israel pondered what had gone right and wrong in their historical journey with God. For those who put together the ancient pieces that formed what we now know as the book of Deuteronomy, the basic sin of Israel that had caused them to go from exile in Egypt to the power of Solomon, back exile again was this: they failed to remember.

Today, on this tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon the word that will resonate through the media and through every community gathering is the word remember. And rightly so: because if Deuteronomy is correct, one important way a nation declines is when they fail to remember.

Although there are many aspects to remembering, there are four from Deuteronomy that I would like to highlight. 

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Deut. 9:27).

We are called to remember those who came before us who carried the promise faithfully. In other words, we are to remember our heroes. Deuteronomy 9 is actually part of a prayer urging God to remember the heroes of our faith so that he might bless us with favor due to their noble lives. And so on this tenth anniversary it is critical and right for us to remember the 2,977 people who were unnecessarily and tragically killed on an otherwise normal, beautiful, September morning.

Ten years later we are still haunted by the images of destruction from that morning.

It still causes us pain to imagine the terror that must have gripped those passengers who died onboard those high-jacked planes.

We are still deeply unsettled by the images and stories of victims working in the twin towers who lived just long enough to experience the fear of certain demise.

We will forever be in awe of those whose sense of duty to others runs so deep within their spirit that they sprinted headlong into the devastation and gave up their lives trying to save neighbors and strangers alike.

And we are still proud of those who immediately headed to Ground Zero to endure the unimaginable in the hopes of rescuing some and giving dignity to the dead.

And we are still proud of those who without knowing the full extent of the violence that had been unleashed on the world that Tuesday morning, signed up and placed themselves on the front lines of terror for the sake of their nation and their neighbor.

And so as we pray as to the Lord today, we will ask him to remember those lost through victimization and through valor, and we ask him to remember the families who loved them and lost them. And we will ask him to help us as a nation to not forget them today.

But remembering heroes is only part of the act of remembering. Deuteronomy also calls us to remember God’s work of redemption.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm (Deut. 5:15).

I remember in the days immediately following 9/11, no one was sure if life would ever be normal again. For several days it felt like time was frozen and we weren’t sure how and if we could move forward.

Ten years later, life has returned, for the most part, to normal. We have many reasons to give God thanks. We are thankful that over the last ten years, there has not been another significant act of destruction within our nation’s borders. And we are thankful for those who vigilantly keep watch in order to – as best they can – keep another singular act of massive violence from happening again.

A people who remember are a people who give thanks. But when God’s people remember, they also remember to confess. 

Remember this and never forget how you aroused the anger of the LORD your God in the wilderness (Deut 9:7).

One of the ways God worked in us after the attacks of 9/11 was the way he helped us to bond together as a people. There was a unity of purpose and vision that was significant and powerful. Ten years later we confess that we have returned to being deeply divided.

In the days after 9/11 there was an incredible spirit of help and service. We confess that ten years later in a time of economic fear our spirit of help and assistance has largely waned.

In particular today we confess ten years later our inability to find creative ways to make peace with our enemies in the ways that Jesus and the Apostle Paul instructed us. We remember today not just those that died in the attacks ten years ago. We also remember that in the wars started since 9/11 just over 6,000 US soldiers and approximately 137,000 civilians in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have also died. Most sources conservatively estimate the number of war dead, in uniform and out, to be 225,000. The number of displaced war refugees today stands at 7.8 million. We try and remember all of them today as well.

Ten years later we remember that $3.2 trillion dollars has been spent as part of the efforts of war with no real hope of long-lasting peace at the end. One wonders what potential long-terms possibilities for peace could have been accomplished if half of that amount had been spent in projects of construction rather than destruction.

In Genesis chapter 4 Lamech (the seventh generation after Adam) sings a song of retribution to his wives. He proclaims that if Cain is avenged seven-fold, then Lamech will be avenged seventy-seven-fold. Ten years after 9/11 we have enacted just over a seventy-five-fold vengeance. We haven’t quite met Lamech’s standards. But as Christ’s disciples we certainly have not met his requirements of a seventy-seven-fold forgiveness.

There have been moments over these last ten years when images and stories of our own cruelty to our enemies has been revealed. These are moments we would just as soon forget, but God’s confessing people have to remember these moments of our own ugliness as well.

I will admit how fearful I am to even speak these things today, because confession is hard. But as God’s people, we must confess our sins today because confession is a critical part of remembering. A people who cannot confess their sins cannot receive God’s grace. And a people who cannot confess are doomed to ultimate destruction because their inability to be honest about their inability to be what God has called us to be dooms us to the exile and destruction that comes at the end of our sin. 

Finally, in Deuteronomy we are called to remember for the sake of our children.

Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God… It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness (Deut. 11:2, 5).

Ten years ago on September 12^th I attended a prayer service at the church we were serving in Oklahoma. The pastor invited people to come to the altar to pray. First he invited people to come and represent the families of those who had lost loved ones in the attacks. Many people came forward. He invited people to come and pray for our national and civic leaders who were in the midst of making critical decisions. Again many people came forward. He invited people to come and pray for God’s protection on the nation and for his help in keeping people safe. Again many people came forward. But then he asked if there might be a few who we be bold enough to come and pray for our enemies and to pray for their redemption and for reconciliation to take place. At that point the largest number of people (including my wife and two oldest sons) got up and came forward to pray.

I remember thinking at that moment how thankful I was to be part of the Body of Christ and how grateful I was that my children were being shaped by such a profoundly grace-filled body of believers.

 Jonah was too young to remember and Sophie was not yet alive. But my hope is today that as we remember. We will remember in ways that will shape them to be the body of Christ. We urge God to help us remember those who have fallen. We remember that God has been at work and stop to give him thanks today. But we also ask him to help us remember our sins so that we can remember today in ways that give him glory.

 And so I’m going to ask us to pray today…

 

 

Get Radical

As I have been preaching through the Gospel of Mark this year I have been reminded repeatedly how often Christians divide the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus from his life and teachings. I hope no one would articulate it this way, but at times I have a feeling that some Christians view the point of Jesus' life as his death on the cross ("he came to die") and his life and teachings were a nice bonus that he gave us on the way to his true purpose.

So it's wonderful to come across a book - written for everyday Christians - that encourages believers to take seriously the full gospel of Jesus. Dr. David Platt is the lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills, a four-thousand-member congregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Cynically one might expect a mega-church pastor to be writing books about self-actualization in order to draw in more Christian consumers. But Platt has written a wonderful and challenging book calling believers to be Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.

Platt wrote the book after realizing that he "was on a collision course with an American church culture where success is defined by bigger crowds, bigger budgets, and bigger buildings." The problem for him was that the Jesus he encountered in the Scripture "actually spurned the things that my church culture said were most important." And so he had to decide whether or not he was going to take Jesus seriously. And he is hoping the reader will wrestle with the same dilemma. As he puts it, "...this is where we need to pause. Because we are starting to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn't mind our materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have... A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are."

The strength of Dr. Platt's book is its accessibility. This is a perfect book for a Sunday school class or a small group to wrestle with. There are two things I especially like in what he does. First, he forces readers to consider if American Christians have merged the "American dream" with the gospel - thus giving into a form of idolatry. As he states, "While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God."

Secondly, Platt exposes the way in which all of us tend to think that the hard claims of the gospel are for someone else. The call to "go into the world" with the gospel is not just a call upon those called to be missionaries. It is a call for the entire Church. As a pastor and preacher I especially loved his section on "receivers and reproducers." Platt argues that all believers are called to be reproducers of God's Word in the world but we tend to be receivers. Here is the difference:

Imagine being in Sudan. You walk into a thatched hut with a small group of Sudanese church leaders, and you sit down to teach them God's Word. As soon as you start, you lose eye contact with all of them. No one is looking at you, and you hardly see their eyes the rest of the time. The reason is because they're writing down every word you say, "Teacher, we are going to take everything we have learned from God's Word, translate it into our languages, and teach it to our tribes." They were not listening to receive but to reproduce.

Now journey with me to a contemporary worship service in the United States. Some people have their Bibles open, while others don't have a Bible with them. A few people are taking notes, but for the most part they are passively sitting in the audience. While some are probably disengaged, others are intently focused on what the preacher is saying, listening to God's Word to hear how it applies to their lives. But the reality is, few are listening to reproduce.

We are, by nature, receivers. Even if we have a desire to learn God's word, we still listen from a default self-centered mind-set that is always asking, "What can I get out of this?" But as we have seen, this is unbiblical Christianity. What if we changed the question whenever we gathered to learn God's Word? What if we began to think, "How can I listen to his Word so that I am equipped to teach this Word to others?"

This changes everything. All of a sudden the pen and paper come out...

As a pastor and preacher, I loved this! What if the congregation came to understand that they were not there to be receivers but were there to learn what they needed to become reproducers of the gospel in the world? I can't imagine how fun it would be to preach if people believed that they would have to in turn teach this same material to others.

Dr. Platt has a Ph.D from New Orleans Baptist Seminary and my one complaint with the book is likely just a Wesleyan one. Although Platt does a nice job calling Christians to take seriously both the cross and the teachings of Jesus, I don't think he connects them together very well. His description of Christ's work on the cross is entirely substitutional in nature. (On the cross Christ becomes our substitute and bears God's wrath against sin). Although this is an important aspect of the cross, it is not they only work Christ accomplishes there. The cross is also Christ's victory over sin and death and it is the very way of the kingdom. Let me give you three examples of how this narrow view of the cross hurts the book.

First, although Platt does an amazing job of taking seriously some of the hard claims of Christ's teaching, he ignores the one that I think is central to the gospel - "If any want to become my disciple, they must take up their cross daily and follow me." This is the central claim of discipleship but it's essentially ignored in the book. If the cross is only the means by which Jesus took on God's wrath, then I'm not sure what it would mean for a disciple to take it up. But if the cross is the way of the kingdom and the central means by which Christ overcomes evil with good, then the disciple's cross makes sense.

Second, although he mentions the kingdom of God in several places it is usually associated with heaven or the life to come. The more I wrestle with the four Gospels in the New Testament, the more I am convinced that the primary message is that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." I think Platt leans a little too far toward associating the good news with going to heaven when we die. The good news is not that we go to heaven, the good news is that heaven has come here (and we can live in it now and for eternity). For example, when Platt talks about the death of Stephen he is primarily described as an example of how the blood of martyrs (ancient and contemporary) is seed for the Church. But I think it is equally important to recognize that when he dies that Stephen sees "the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the Father." That is kingdom language. Stephen lives as a member of the kingdom now and therefore he can pray a prayer of forgiveness upon those killing him because they don't (or won't) see that the kingdom of God is already at hand.

Third, I wish he took more seriously the redemption of creation. He has a very interesting reading of Romans that rightly calls all believers to be instruments of the gospel in the world. But I think he ends before getting to the "groaning of all creation" as it waits for redemption. Platt rightly calls people to enter into places of poverty and brokenness in the world, but more often than not he thinks we should do that because Jesus calls us to be compassionate and because we need to help the lost get to heaven. I just think Platt would be better served with a more robust understanding of the presence of the kingdom and God's desire to redeem all of creation. The result would be the same. Believers would be going to every corner of creation. But we would go not just to obey a command or to get people to heaven, but we would go because God's kingdom has claimed every inch of the creation and where God's kingdom is, his justice and righteousness must be also.

I think these issues are more than just nit-picking. (It's not a good thing that the resurrection is only mentioned twice). But I don't think any of these critiques invalidate how helpful this book would be for groups of Christians to wrestle with.

The best, and most unique, part of Platt's book are his five suggestions at the end of the book for believers to dare to live out. I won't tell you what the five are, because I think you ought to buy the book and read it. There are other books out there that call Christians to live out the radical claims of discipleship, but most of them end in somewhat idealistic and impractical places. I really appreciated Dr. Platt's suggestions for believers who want to take first steps toward radical discipleship and I think you will appreciate them also.

If you are looking for a wonderful book that will create some exciting, lively, and important discussion in your Sunday school class or small group, get Radical.

There Aint No Rest for the Wicked

My teenage sons have introduced me to the rock group Cage the Elephant. I especially like their song entitled Aint No Rest for the Wicked. In the song the story-teller/singer encounters three different people: a prostitute, a mugger, and a preacher who got caught stealing all the "righteous dollar bills" from the church. In each verse the singer asks these three various people why they have chosen their particular life, and in each case the response is the same chorus.

Oh, there aint no rest for the wicked.

Money don't grow on trees.

I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed;

There aint nothin' in this world for free.

I can't slow down. I can't hold back.

Though you know I wish I could.

Oh no, there aint no rest for the wicked

Until we close our eyes for good.

I was interviewed yesterday about the role of the Sabbath in the Scriptures and Cage the Elephant came immediately to mind. They give us the perfect testimony of the "way of the world" if you will. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount called the life of worry the way of the Gentiles. The Gentiles, preaches Jesus, are fixated on what they are going to eat, what they are going to wear, and where they are going to live. They are driven not only by their desires but by their fears that there will never be enough.

To be a people shaped by a Sabbath mentality, in contrast, is to live a life of trust that the God who feeds the birds, clothes the lilies, and grows the grass also will care for those created in his own image.

I have been writing today about some of the myths that shape us as a culture. Myths like:

• The myth of value: This myth says that what I eat, what I wear, (what I drive), and where I live add value to who I am as a person or even define in many ways my worth. (Isn't it interesting that when we talk about how much money a particular person has we will ask, "What is he or she worth?").
• The myth of consumption: This culture story says that I am, by nature, empty and need to be filled. Usually this myth says I am just one purchase away from happiness. (A capitalistic culture, BTW, needs to keep this myth going or the economy shuts down. Contented people are horrible for capitalism).
• The myth of scarcity: Walter Brueggemann argues that the one of the main purposes of the OT is to break us out of the fear that there will never be enough good things to go around. The myth of scarcity means that if we have good resources then we should hoard them. God wants to teach his people to trust in his goodness and to believe that there is enough for all to share. (Pharaoh builds more storehouses. God gives his people manna day-by-day in the wilderness).
• The myth of control: Super-powers are built in part by convincing people that they are eternal and secure. God sent ten plagues to let Pharaoh know that he didn't have as much control over life as he thought he did. Maybe God can use a horrible recession to remind us all that economic and political security is a myth.

I realize that a guy with two full-time jobs should not be doing interviews (or blog) about Sabbath-keeping and rest, but I do think the purpose of the Sabbath is to form a different mentality in God's people. Sabbath is a discipline that keeps us from finally giving in to the impulse to be defined by work and by gain. In the end, it is God's goodness, and not our strivings, that bring life to us. God's people work hard, but they find ways to rest, trust, and find balance.

I think Cage the Elephant is right. There aint no rest for the wicked. But a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God... Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest (Hebrews 4:9-11).

In Praise of Peace and Quiet

I had the privilege this week of speaking for the Northwest Yearly Meeting of the (Evangelical) Friends Church at George Fox University in Oregon. It was a wonderful time in a beautiful place. Although I have had great relationships with many Quakers over the years, and we have a Friends Center here at APU, this was my first opportunity to be an adopted "Friend" for any period of time. Although there are several differences between the Quaker and Holiness traditions, our mutual pietistic roots make us kindred spirits in many ways.

I am a Nazarene because they raised me, messed me up, and now they're stuck with me. But if for some reason they were to boot me out, I would be very open to finding shelter among the Friends. I often tell students that Wesleyans - like the Nazarenes - are awesome because we held to an optimism of transformational grace (grace necessary for entire sanctification) before it became cool to talk about God's holistic redemption of creation, and we held to a quadrilateral of sources for revelation (Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience) before non-foundationalist epistemologies became all the rage. (I know I lost some of you there... but trust me, those two things really make Wesleyans theologically hip).

Nevertheless, there are two things about the Quakers/Friends that I really wish we Holiness types had more of, namely peace and quiet.

Those of you who know me well know that I have been so shaped by theologians like Yoder and Hauerwas that in my heart I'm a messianic pacifist even if in my head I end up being a just-war theorist. It's my sense that many modern-day Friends are in the same place. Although open advocates for peace and deeply shaped by the non-violent tradition, many among them at the same time recognize the need to curb evil when it is out of control and to honor those who put their lives at risk in the service of others. But I wish we were more like the Quakers and we started from a position of peacemaking and were struggling with the hard questions of the use of violence. It is my sense that own tradition starts from a place of siding with the "powers" and then struggles with whether or not we ought to be a peaceable people or not.

I think my line in a sermon they loved the most this week was when I was talking to them about the call that God has placed upon our lives to be a people who are separated from the world, filled with Christ's presence, in order to be a blessing in the world. I said something to the effect of, "This divine call invites us to be a unique and alien people in the world. This is a part of the story that you folk should understand better than most. You have been working hard at being weird for most of your history." They ERUPTED in laughter because they knew it was true - and they were proud of it. I mean they are weird in the same way that all of us who grew up in small churches and small towns are weird, but they also know what it means - as the children and grandchildren of people who at the cost of reptuation and social standing refused to be manipulated into acts of lethal violence - to live as though their citizenship and allegiance belonged to an "alien" and heavenly people.

I can't help it. I just thoroughly enjoyed being with a people for whom social justice is not a new church growth strategy and where peacemaking is not a trendy political ideology but where standing with the oppressed and witnessing to the ways that good might conquer evil have been part of the fabric of their attempts to be faithful to Jesus. That's a weirdness that gets into your spiritual DNA and I think the universal church could use more of it.

I also appreciate the quietness. This particular group of Friends worships pretty much like the rest of us. In fact one night the youth led the worship using what they described as the nine different forms of expression. They were singing, painting, reading, dancing, and whatever the other five forms of expression are all at once. It was chaotic, noisy, beautiful, and worshipful. But several times throughout the week there were moments of intentional extended silence in the worship service.

At the end of my message one night no one came to the platform. The entire congregation just sat in silence and reflection. At first it made me nervous. I kept wondering if someone forgot that they were supposed to close the service. But no one left. We sat listening to what the Spirit had to say to us. Eventually a young girl stood up and shared what the message had meant to her and asked that we pray for her. A couple of other people shared similar reflections about themselves or about what they thought God was trying to say to them as a church. It was not long. It was not overly emotional. It was just beautiful and Spirit filled.

It made me wonder about how choreographed our services are. We are constantly working on "flow" so there is no "dead air" in the worship. Maybe we need a few Quakers to remind us that in worship the air is never dead but it is filled with God's presence and if we'd all stop talking for a minute he might say something to us.

I know all these things can become legalistic and routine and all of our traditions can easily become traditionalism (the dead faith of living people rather than the living faith of dead people). But my experience this week among our Quaker brothers and sisters reminded me that we really do need each other in the larger Body of Christ to serve as important witnesses to that vastness, richness, and beauty that is our walk with our Creator.

Not Knowing, but Believing

I have written this memoir in an attempt to understand myself, something that would be impossible without my friends. I have had a wonderful life because I have had wonderful friends. So this attempt to understand myself is not just about “me” but about the friends who have made me who I am. It is also about God – the god who has forced be to be who I am. Indeed, trying to figure out how I ended up being Stanley Hauerwas requires that I say how God figures into the story, and this is a frightening prospect. – Hannah’s Child

I have been reading Hannah’s Child the new memoir by Stanley Hauerwas. Stanley has probably been the most influential theologian and ethicist in my own development and was named by Time Magazine a few years ago “America’s Best Theologian.” His new book is about how God shaped a young boy raised in a dysfunctional Texas brick-layer’s home into a highly influential theologian and author who has spent decades teaching in places like Notre Dame and Duke Divinity School. I don’t know if I would recommend the book to everyone although I am enjoying it very much. Those not familiar with Stanley’s work probably won’t fully appreciate many of the references he makes, but the main issue (as it always is when introducing someone to Stanley) is that although he is as thoughtful and Christ-centered as any theologian I know he still talks and writes with the colorful language of a Texas brick-layer. So consider yourself warned.

The point of his memoir, however, is the way in which God’s providence worked to take him from relationship to relationship, from influence to influence, helping him to become who he is today as an instrument in God’s kingdom. The obvious effect of the book is to get the reader thinking about God’s providence in their own life. So as I have been reading I have been reflecting and giving thanks to God for his providential hand in my own life.

You don’t have to be a great psychologist to figure out that my reasons for pursuing ministry have to be deeply rooted in my family of origin, but the settling of that call happened, I believe, because I went to a youth conference in Mexico and one night rather than sit in the back (as I had been doing) my friend invited me to sit near the front so we could be close to a girl he was chasing. Sitting near the front, God got my attention and I responded to what I sensed to be his unique call on my life.

I’m not sure that I would have pursued a PhD in seminary if a friend hadn’t taken me to lunch and convinced me that I looked too young to be a senior pastor and that I ought to pursue more education so other doors in ministry would open and I could write books someday. Even then I doubt very seriously if I would have taken the leap into higher education if Debbie had not (against my protests) invited Dr. and Mrs. Richard Mouw over to our tiny little apartment for dinner while we were students at Fuller. At the time Rich (I still struggle to call him that) was the Provost and President-Elect at the seminary and over pizza that night he encouraged me to apply.

I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today if Dr. Steve Green hadn’t taken me to lunch (why is it that God’s best work occurs around meals?) and asked if I might be interested in being an intern with him and hang out doing ministry at PazNaz. It was life-changing to have a pastor and friend who would read people like Hauerwas with me and figure out how it applied to ministry.

I may not have ended up being a college professor if an adjunct hadn’t quit at APU the week before classes started, making them very desperate for someone to teach. My passion for the Old Testament arose in large part through seven years of daily conversations with my colleague Marty Michelson at SNU. God used a weekend trip to Dallas to get me to start thinking about being a senior pastor. A random but timely lunch with Scott Anderson opened the door for both of us to work together in ministry. And a lunch with friends from PazNaz at General Assembly in 2005 put my name on the search committee’s radar, which led to us coming back to Pasadena… The list of God’s good providential moments could go on and on.

Some of the moments that I now see as God’s leading were not fun at the time. If Notre Dame hadn’t lost my paperwork when I applied for their PhD program in ethics, I might be a very different kind of scholar than I am today. If the theology department at SNU hadn’t come under attack by some fundamentalists in the community then I may not have been tired and frustrated and open for God to do something new. If a couple of members at the church in Seattle I grew up in had been able to think about me as their potential pastor rather than just the teenager who used to run around the place, the road would have definitely been different. God works through our moments of questions and pain as well.

Thinking about providence and God’s leading always makes me think about Abraham. In July and August I will be preaching about the life, the faith, and the failings of Abraham. His story, like all of our stories, is not so much about what he accomplished as it is a story about God’s call upon him and his leading of Abraham. The writer of Hebrews says this about Abraham,

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. (11:8)

It helps me to know that Abraham followed God but he had absolutely no idea where he was going. None of us really knows God’s ultimate purposes for us in his kingdom. At times we can look back and see how God has led us and the relationships and circumstances he has used to bring us where we are. But the truth is that he is never quite through with us. And so like Abraham we are called to believe and obey and walk with God, trusting that although we’re not quite sure where our story ends up, the God in whom we have put our trust knows where we are going and he will lead us.

Sometimes on the mount where the sun shines so bright,

God leads His dear children along;

Sometimes in the valley, in darkest of night,

God leads His dear children along.

 

Some through the waters, some through the flood,

Some through the fire, but all through the blood;

Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song,

In the night season and all the day long.