terra incognita

Read This... (Seeing Her)

2012-02-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

I don't usually link to other blogs in lieu of a post, but I've always wanted to write a reflection on Judges 19 and Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology beat me to it (and he crossed the finish line far more gracefully than I could have). Hyperbole fails me: his is the most sensitive, insightful and beautiful reading of the most painful, opaque and ugly passages of scripture that I've ever read.

Read it. Please. To understand Judges 19; to understand how to read Scripture generally; to catch a glimpse of the heart of God. Read it.

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2012/02/seeing-her.html

Seeds of Shalom

2012-02-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

Deuteronomy 15:1-11

Teaching on Creation Care

2012-01-31T07:04:00.000-07:00

This week I had the opportunity to teach some of the material on Christian Faith and Creation Care that I developed as a research project when I was doing my M.Div at Briercrest Seminary.

For anyone interested, I thought I'd make the seminar material available for download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3057785/Heirs%20of%20the%20Earth.pdf

Or you can download the entire research project here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3057785/Research%20Project.pdf

Deuteronomy 14:22-29

2012-01-29T12:39:00.001-07:00

Deuteronomy 14:22-29. "To Revere the Name of the Lord"

Faramir and the Weight of Glory

2012-01-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

There's a scene in The Lord of the Rings (the novel, not the movie) that has been on my mind lately. It has no dramatic orc scrimmages or melees with arcane powers, so it’s easily overlooked, but for me it is a very poignant passage. If you recall, Frodo, Sam and Gollum have been wandering the Woods of Ithilien, looking for a path over the Mountains of Shadow and into the Land of Mordor, when Sam and Frodo are intercepted by Faramir and his band or rangers. Gollum, of course escapes and is caught later fishing in the forbidden pool by moonlight.

If that's sufficiently set the scene for you, try to remember the exchange between Faramir and Frodo, after they've brought him to their secret cave and before Sam inadvertently reveals to Faramir that they are bearing the Ring of Doom.

Earlier, Faramir had said in passing that, though he did not know what “Isildur’s Bane” was, he would not take the thing, even if it lay by the highway, not even if “Minas Tirith [were] falling in ruin and [he] alone could save her.” So when Sam later reveals the truth—that Isildur’s Bane is actually the One Ring and that Faramir actually has it within his reach—there's a moment of dramatic tension. Faramir stands up “very tall and stern,” and, though his eyes are glinting, he holds to his earlier word: “We are truth speakers, we men of Gondor. We boast seldom and then perform, or die in the attempt. Not if I found it on the highway would I take it, I said. ... even though I knew not clearly what this thing was when I spoke, I should take those words as a vow...”

Now: throughout this chapter, Faramir is characterized as sombre, wise, discerning and grave, but it’s this moment that reveals his true mettle. Something ancient and other-worldly in his nature shines in him sharply in this hour of testing, the same something that Sam later tries to articulate when he says: “You said my master had an elvish air; and that was good and true. But I can say this: you have an air too, sir, that reminds me of, well, of Gandalf, of wizards.”

Those who know well the mythic world of Middle Earth, will feel the full portent of Faramir’s response: “Maybe you discern from far away the air of Numenor.”

The reason this passage resonates with me so deeply is because I think that in this moment, Faramir is bringing us about close as we can come in fantasy fiction to what the Bible means when it talks about “the glory that is about to be revealed in us.” “Glory,” of course, is a really difficult concept for us to get. This is partly because it has such strong associations with light, which lends itself well to our modern penchant for “dazzle” but makes it difficult for us to imagine what is really in store for us in the age to come. Like C. S. Lewis once wondered—are we supposed to imagine that we’ll spend eternity walking about as living light bulbs?

Of course, in the Bible, glory is brilliant, and I don’t doubt that the Resurrected Jesus was blinding to look upon, but it’s worth remembering that in the ancient Hebrew, the word we translate as “glory”—kabod—literally means “weight.” This is probably why, over in 2 Corinthians 4:17, Paul refers to the eternal “weight” of glory (baros in the Greek) that our “light and momentary troubles" are working out for us.

Glory is as much "heavy" as it is "dazzling," as "weighty" as it is "brilliant."

Which brings us back to Faramir, because it’s not hard to imagine the weight one would feel in this princely man’s presence. In his piercing integrity, in his sombre dignity, in his far-reaching wisdom, in the “air of Numenor” that hangs about him we feel, or are meant to feel, I’m sure, something very heavy: his ears hear more than is said, his heart has deep capacity to feel, his mouth speaks only what he means. And for all this, though it is not blinding, necessarily, to look upon, there is a glory in his character.

I’ve never met a true Prince of Gondor, of course, but to a lesser extent, I have met Christians (not many—I have three men in mind here) whose presence was “weighty.” They cared enough about the truth to look intently past my masks, and to be transparent with their own; they cared enough about love that I knew they would call me honestly on my crap; their laughter rang sincerely and tears came genuinely; they meant what they said and held to their word, and when they acted there was godly intention behind it; and because of all this, it was “heavy”—both pressing but anchoring—to be in their company.

Whatever else “glory” means in the Bible, I hope that when it’s finally fully revealed in us, it will include a good full measure of these things.

Deuteronomy 8:11-20

2012-01-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here's Sunday's sermon.

Deuteronomy 8:11-20 "Remember"

Announcing a New Blogging Project

2012-01-22T19:35:00.004-07:00

Still working on that post on "Faramir and the Weight of Glory," but in the mean time, let me tell you about a new group blog I'm participating in called the conneXion. It's a project some of my friends and coleagues in the FMCiC are working on, and you're warmly invited to check out its debut over at: http://fmcictheology.blogspot.com/.

And while I'm at it...

2012-01-21T09:32:00.002-07:00

Speaking of reading (see my last post), a few months ago my pastor's network was exchanging their lists of "books that left their mark on us." In lieu of a post on "Faramir and the Weight of Glory" that I'm working on, but not quite ready to publish, I thought I'd share the list I came up with here. These kinds of lists are always so subjective (which is why they're fun... they show how dynamic our interactions with the literature are). Only 3 months after witing it, I'd probably produce a quite different list-- I re-read Mrs. Dalloway last week, for instance, and can't for the life of me figure out why I would include it on a list like this, but, that's the mystery of reading, I suppose. Anyways, for a bit of Saturday morning procrastination fodder, here goes:

Dale's List of Books that Left Their Mark on Me:

1. Jesus and the Victory of God, N. T. Wright.

A masterful, stunning and compelling portrait of the historical Jesus; scholarly, playful, generous and rich, it introduced me to the Messiah in a way few books before or since have. Read N.T. Wright. Start here.

2. The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright

This one’s tough slugging but, oh, so worth the effort. Does for the resurrection what “Jesus and the Victory of God” does for the historical Jesus. You will never celebrate Easter the same...

3. Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace, James Torrance

A short but sweet study of how Christian worship is really a participation by the Spirit in the Son’s worship of the Father. Deeply ministered to me, on so many levels.

4. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle

Read this book dozens of times as a child. The first book I remember weeping genuine, grown up tears over. A classic.

5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula LeGuinn

Re-read this childhood classic last spring, and was stunned all over again by how rich, profound and satisfying it is. If you love fantasy novels and haven’t read this one, drop everything and run (don’t walk) to your local library. You will not be disappointed.

6. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Wolfe

I have no idea why *Mrs. Dalloway* is embedded so deep in my heart. I read it for a novel course in University, and even though in almost every way it is the “anti-Dale,” it captivated me and has haunted me ever since.

7. Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius

No, I didn’t just include this one to sound smart. I read it for a course on Geoffry Chaucer in my under-grad and, man, it leaves you thinking.

8. That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis

This list could have been C.S. Lewis alone, and for sure the Narnia books belong here, but since I’ve already got one candidate from my childhood, *That Hideous Strength* will have to stand in for the C.S. Lewis corpus. This one’s well worth a read in its own right—I read it about every 4 years, and each time it’s a brand new book.

9. A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin

This one’s a relatively recent read, so time will tell if it deserves to sit in such auspicious company as Lewis and Wright, but Helprin’s a genius story teller and a masterful artist; truly great fiction.

10. How Shall We Then Live, Francis Schaeffer

I used to be quite awed by Francis Schaeffer; over the years I’ve downgraded awe to deep appreciation, but I still find much of his work compelling in over-all vision, if not always in actual content. This Evangelical “Rise and Fall of Western Civilization” seized my imagination when I first read it.

terra incognita's 2011 Literary Awards

2012-01-16T08:19:00.001-07:00

Like I usually do this time of year, I've been looking back on my reading in 2011, compiling my list of the best, the worst and the ugliest. Using the same categories from 2010, here's my reading year in review:

Most Annoying Read: Managing God's Money, Randy Alcorn

I read this one for a course on church stewardship I took in the fall and, while helpful and challenging, I list it in the "annoying" category because of its tendency to proof-text and its willingness to settle for cursive readings of the biblical text to shore up personal opinion about how to use God's money well. The "yeah-but" factor was high on this one.

Most Traumatic Read: Eaarth, Bill McKibben

Traumatic because McKibben argues that the environmental debate has moved into a whole new framework, where it's no longer meaningful to ask "what can we do to save planet Earth?" because planet Earth, as we once knew it, no longer exists (hence the extra "a" in the title). The question we need to ask now is: "What can we do to live on the 'new planet' that our failure to avert ecological disaster has thrust upon us?"

Most Bombastic Read: Love Wins, Rob Bell

Not that the book itself was particularly bombastic, rather the bombast that accompanied its release earns it this distinctive accolade. If ever there was an apt time to quote Plato-- "As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers"-- it was on the occasion of the announcement of Rob Bell's new book.

Most Disappointing Read: The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis

I remember being smitten by Lewis' incisive logic and reasoned apologetic when I first read Abolition of Man some 10 or so years ago, so it was surprisingly disappointing for me to reread this gem and discover I actually disagreed with him on a number of philosophical and theological grounds, sometimes mildly, sometimes profoundly. Did he change, or did I?

Most Rewarding Re-Read: Lavondyss, Robert Holdstock

Not sure what to make of this one-- it's utterly pagan, as fantasy novels go, probably the most "authentic" fantasy novel I've read, and surely the antithesis of the best Christian fantasy novels-- and yet at the same time, as a work of fiction it's rich, layered, original, challenging and, for all that, rewarding.

Most Enraptured Read: That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis

Why I find myself so enraptured every time I read That Hideous Strength, I'm at a loss to explain, but I love this novel. I read it once every four or five years, and every read it's a brand new novel, exactly like the last time, but entirely different. I love the insight and honesty with which Lewis portrays sins so mundane-- hypocrisy and social cliques and self-aggrandizement and marital strife-- against a backdrop of sin so cosmic and fantastical-- occult and fascism and world domination-- and the way he reveals, at the end of it all, how these two are really just different branches of the same root. And it's wonderfully-written fiction, to boot.

Most Willing Required Read: Jesus and Money, Ben Witherington III

I read three books for the aforementioned church stewardship course and this one was, by far, the most illuminating. Where Alcorn's book (above) failed, Witherington shone: careful, incisive and balanced handling of the biblical text coupled with an over-arching synthesis of the data. Don't let the sub-title (A Guide for Times of Financial Crisis) fool you: this is more a biblical theology of money than it is a fnancial guide, which is, perhaps, more helpful in times of financial crisis than any how-to guide.

Most Unexpectedly Interesting Read: Gravedigger File, Os Guinness

Sort of a C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters meets Francis Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto, Os Guinness identifies with wit and clarity what's eating the modern church from the inside out. Lots to ponder, lots to process and lots of quotable gems.

Most Edifying Read: Flame of Yaheweh, Richard Davidson

Davidson's Old Testament theology of human sexuality is stunning in its achievement, challenging in its content, and edifying in its conclusions. Davidson addresses every-- and I do mean every-- Old Testament text that deals (even obliquely) with human sexuality, and, through detailed exegesis, careful synthesis, and deep interaction with the scholarly research, develops a detailed picture of the Old Testament's vision for redeemed human sexuality. 700 pages of Biblical scholarship at its best.

Philippians 4:10-20

2012-01-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

Here is the final installment in our verse-by-verser in Philippians.

Philippians 4:10-20 The (Other) Secret

On Re-rading Mrs Dalloway (a poem)

2012-01-14T08:47:00.000-07:00

If Septimus Warren Smith be mad
then all sane men are fools
and Lear the all-wise
arbiter of them all
(having stared behind the gaping mask of death
and wept the tears of revelation)
if Septimus Warren Smith
leaping at sparrows from windows
be mad.

(My) (Evangelical) 2011 in Review

2012-01-13T08:27:00.002-07:00

The novelty of the New Year wanes quickly, so only two weeks into 2012, this reflective look back at '011 already feels a bit cool. But I was away for the first week of January so I'm only getting to it now, and hoping that enough of you are still mistakenly writing "2011" on your cheques that a year-in-review will still strike a nerve.

Not sure how many of you remember any of the following headline highlights, but each in the list below stood out to me as especially significant, either for its impact on the Christian world, or for the light it shed on the State of that Nation known as the People of God.

January 12: Jay Bakker releases Fall to Grace
Son of the infamous televangelist with the same last name, Jay Bakker released a humble-autobiography-cum-church-manifesto about what's wrong with our present practice of the Fundamentals of the Faith, and what needs to change. I was under the impression that fundamentalist snipers had neutralized most leading lights in the Emergent Church, but Bakker's book, at the very least, shows that the movement's not yet dead.

March 2: Pakistani Minorities Minister shot dead
Shahbaz Bhatti's assassination for his political work in Pakistan to guarantee the religious freedoms of that country's Christian minority (1.5% of the population) was far more stunning and troubling than either the mainstream or Christian press gave it time for. It struck me then, and later still when Coptic Christians in Egypt started to suffer persecution after the much-lauded "Arab Spring" thawed that country, how little attention the Canadian media pays to Christian persecution around the world.

March 15: Rob Bell releases Love Wins
So much to say about this whole doctrine-meets-Internet debacle, so little time (which is perhaps why some distilled their commentary down to a single Tweet). It demonstrated in ways few were prepared for what the gasoline of social media can do to the fires of doctrinal disagreement; it showed us how ill-prepared Christians really are after all to navigate the sticky strands of the World-Wide-Inter-Web; it showed us that the closets of Western Evangelicalism were bulging with Universalists of all description waiting-- just waiting-- for someone to jiggle the handle and discover it was unlocked; and it showed us (yet again) the dark under-belly of celebrity-pastor-culture.

April 23: The Conservative Party promises Canadians an "Office of Religious Freedom" if elected
Whether this was, as some cynical pundits suggested at the time, a shameless ploy to secure the Christian Right vote, or not, it does shed light on the way politics and religion mix far less easily in Canada than they do down south, and that, more than any other party, the Tories "got" the psyche of the average Canadian evangelical.

May 1: John Piper vets Rick Warren
That John Piper, the old-guard of the Neo-Reformed movement, saw fit publicly to interview Rick Warren, the Hawaiian-shirt-frocked front man for Purpose-Driven pragmatism, on his doctrinal soundness, says less about Warren's supposed "orthodoxy" than it does about the cult of celebrity in American churches, the widening fissures in Western Christendom, the crisis in Evangelical ecclesiology, the troubling in-grouping-out-grouping tendencies of the Neo-Reformed movement, and the even more troubling ex-Cathedral authority pastors with lucrative publishing deals can accumulate to themselves.

May 21: Harold Camping's Rapture doesn't come
Probably the less said about this one the better, but it did remind me why I'm an Amillenialist, all over again, and reminded me of the wisdom of humbly taking Jesus at his word, when he said what he said back in Matthew 24:36.

June 1: Christianity Today launches a "Quest for the Historical Adam"
This was, it seems, the year of the "Evangelical Doctrine on Public Display": Hell, the Rapture, and Genesis-literalism all nova-ed brightly across the canopy of cyber-space this year. Though this article received less attention than Love Wins, it did show us that the debate is much further from being settled than we ever thought, and that along with those universalists, the closets were also bulging with theo-evolutionists of a distinctly Evangelical variety.

June 12: The Book of Mormon (The Musical) wins a Tony for Best Musical
I include this one on the list because the fact that a Broadway musical about Mormonism garnered so much acclaim and accolades illustrates, among other things, how mainstream this religious movement has become. One Mormon commenter, when asked if it troubled her to see a play so directly and irreverently satirizing her faith, said it all for me in her reply: "No," she said, "it just tells me that the broader culture has finally become comfortable enough with Mormonism to poke fun at it." At the risk of sounding prophetic: this illustrates an evolution in the main-stream perception of Mormonism that will have significant implications for credal Christianity and its witness in the world.

July 7: Mark Driscoll's latest drivel
I'm thankful to Pastor Driscoll for the regular lessons he gives me in throttling my own indignation and choking back my bile. He's so uniquely adept at saying stupid things insensitively that he has almost become his own adjective. So: suffice it to say that this summer, when he posted an open invitation on Facebook for his friends and followers to share derisive stories about their encounters with "effeminate anatomically male" worship leaders, it was, for lack of a better word, totally driscollian.

July 27: John Stott passes
We commended a lovely servant of Jesus and a humble states-man for the Faith to the Grace of God this year. Preacher, pastor, evangelist, philanthropist (in the best sense of that word), writer, Christian leader, missionary, he was, by all accounts, a beautiful man and God used him wonderfully. To commemorate his going to be with the Lord, I've added The Cross of Christ to my reading list this year.

Commentaries on the Book of Philippians

2012-01-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

This fall I preached a verse-by-verse study on the Book of Philippians at the FreeWay. Being a relatively new pastor, whenever I start a new sermon series I try to invest in one or two commentaries to help build my fledgling library. See past entries for my reviews of the commentaries I used when preaching Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of John. Here are some thoughts on the three main resources I consulted in preparing my series on Philippians:

The Epistle to the Philippians (NIGTC).
Peter O'Brien
By far the best commentary on Philippians I encountered, O'Brien's work is thorough, erudite, weighty and insightful. Sometimes his exegesis went deeper and his review of scholarly debates went broader than necessary for sermon prep-- and sometimes this required a good deal of sifting and distilling on the part of the preacher--but the fruit of the labor was well worth it. It promises to be invaluable for more academic studies of Philippians (should the need arise); though for my immediate purposes, I found it helpful to couple it with other more homiletical and practical resources.

Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians.
D. A. Carson.
While I was in seminary, I always found Carson's work with the ancient text to be disciplined, reliable and intently exegetical (sometimes almost stiflingly so). His Exegetical Fallacies was required reading in one of my Greek courses, and his monumental commentary on the Gospel of John was a touchstone for a paper I wrote in Gospels class, so I came to Basics for Believers fully expecting the serious and careful handling of Philippians that I got. What I did not quite expect was the deeply pastoral and above all practical applications he would draw from his painstaking exposition. Carson's ability to take scholarly minutiae about the obscure subtleties of Greek syntax and distill them down to concrete "basics" for believers is in stellar form in this slender volume.

Rediscovering Paul.
David Capes et. al.
While not focused specifically on Philippians, Rediscovering Paul offered me a helpful overview of Paul's life, times and theology. While at times I felt it might have gone deeper, or expressed its ideas more clearly, it provides some interesting and inspiring insights into the man behind the letters. Among these is its discussion of the communal aspect of first century letter writing, and the influence of one's community on one's personal sense of identity, and how those issues might have played out in Paul's writings. Another challenging issue that it tackles is the whole process of letter writing in the Greco-Roman world, especially as regards the role a scribe often played in shaping the text, smoothing out the language or providing stock phrases, etc. Very helpful tertiary material.

Welcome 2012

2012-01-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Happy 2012 everyone. I trust you rang in the New Year with verve, and I assume the word "verve" means enthusiasm and abandon, in the context I'm using it in here. Me, I spent the evening watching family home-videos with the kids, cherishing the times and loving the people God's put in my life over the years.

For those of you who have almost given up hope of ever seeing something new posted here at terra incognita, let me assure you that my blogging hiatus is officially over and I have resolved to resume consistent posting for 2012. When I launched this blog three years ago, the well was near brimming with blogging ideas; this winter I kept putting the bucket in deeper and deeper and coming up dry. A few months break has allowed me to refresh and recharge, and I trust this coming year at terra incognita will be better than ever.

But as I sit here at the start another 365 days of potential, let me take a short glance back at the personal highlights of 2011:

1. Preaching a series on Ecclesiastes. This time last year I was gearing up to tackle this profound book in the pulpit. Little did I know how indelible mark this series would leave on my own soul.

2. My first (2) weddings. This spring I had the honour of officiating at my first two weddings (one in April, one in May) as a pastor.

3. Appointment to SCOD. This spring I also had the honour of being invited to sit on SCOD, the Free Methodist's "Study Commission on Doctrine." Our 2011 meeting was in October, and it was truly a joy to be sitting at a table with such a dynamic group of brothers and sisters in Christ who share my passion for going deep with the things of God.

4. Final ordination interview. The process to become an ordained pastor in the FMCiC involves 3 interviews with the Ministerial Education, Guidance and Placement Committee, spread out over four years. This September, being two years into the tracking process, I had my second interview. What a gift it was to discover, after the interview, that the Committee had agreed to "fast track" my journey, and my second of three interviews would serve as my final. Just this week I sent in my final paper for the final course required for ordination: the ordination itself will be sometime in the next few months.

5. Vacation to the Prairies. I miss the Prairies, a lot.

6. Learning the ukulele. We found Dani`s old childhood ukulele in a closet at my father-in-law`s house this summer. Toying around with it slowly morphed into experimenting with it into discovering its playful personality as a serious instrument.

7. Moving the church. I haven`t said much on this blog about the church move the FreeWay went through this summer. Mostly because I was so busy with the move itself, that I had little time to reflect in blogging form. I expect this winter I`ll have some time to do this kind of processing of the experience, but here as I look back at 2011, let me say that in many ways the church move dominated this year, and that God was doing some community-transforming stuff through it that has been a thrill to be part of.

Bridges: an online CD release party

2011-12-05T14:18:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I officially "released" my latest music project, a rock album called "Bridges." The CD is a collection of original songs that I wrote mostly this summer during my trip out to Alberta (there're also a few tunes on the disc I've had kicking around for a while that I finally got around to finishing). The whole disc was recorded by myself in my basement with a total of about $200 worth of recording equipment, and, other than the first few chapters of Home Recording for Dummies, I have no formal training in sound engineering or audio production, so think "diamond in the rough" as you listen-- heck, I'd settle for "cubic zirconia in the rough." My only goal is to share a bit of my spiritual journey in song and hope it's an encouragement to others.

You can download the CD here: [CD Download]

You can also download the CD booklet here: [CD Booklet]

(PS: I tried to arrange the album as a bit of a journey from dark to light, so if you're going to give it a listen, I'd suggest beginning to end.)

The Book of Philippians (9)

2011-11-24T09:42:00.001-07:00

Here's our next sermon on the Book of Philippians.

Philippians 4:1-9 "Practicing for Joy"

Prayers for Illumination

2011-11-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

In my last post I mentioned prayers for illumination that I've prayed (after reading the scripture and before the sermon) that are based on, or "riffs on" specific Bible verses. The example I gave there was:

Your word, O Lord, is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. Help us to see clearly by it today, we pray. Amen.

For the record, and in case you're a preacher and the idea of "praying the word" before "preaching the word" intrigues you, I thought I'd post a few more "prayers for illumination" I've prayed in the past at the FreeWay:

God, your word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword; we pray that it would be so here today as we turn to it now. Amen.

God, we know that all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness. We pray that it would be so for us this morning as we look to it now. Amen.

God, just like the rain comes down from heaven and doesn't return to heaven without watering the earth and making it fruitful, so is your word which comes out from your mouth:it doesn't return to you empty but accomplishes your purposes for it. May it water our hearts today and make them fruitful for you. Amen.

God, the Psalmist said: how sweet is your word to my mouth, sweeter than honey from the comb. Amen. May it be so here: give us an unquenchable taste for your word, here today. A sweet-tooth for the things of God, we pray.

God, we know that the man or woman without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. We ask, Lord, that this would not be true of us today. Give us your Spirit, so that we may understand and accept your Word and what it would say to us here. Amen.

Praying the Word

2011-11-11T05:56:00.001-07:00

If ever you've spent time with someone who's new to this "Faith thing," one of the questions that will often come up is: "How do you pray?" The most common response to a question like this is something along the lines of: "Praying is just talking to God, and you can talk to God just like you're talking to me now. Just talk to him." I fully understand the motive behind this kind of response. It helps people understand that the Christian God is real, and personal, and that he takes us as we are, and that he is so active in our everyday life that we can speak to him in everyday language.

I get all that and I think it is important.

But to be honest, I've always found something a bit unsatisfying about this answer. Because, really, you can't talk to God, just like you talk to a flesh-and-blood human being, and in asking the question, the "newbie" is recognizing that there is something sacred, something sacramental, something other about prayer, and I don't know that it's especially helpful to disavow them of this belief. Prayer is a sacred act and, while it's true that Jesus is always perfecting our prayers in heaven, no matter how imperfect they may be on earth, growing Christians should be maturing in their prayer life, too.

So I've been thinking about all this lately, and one of the things I keep coming back to is how seldom you hear Christians- especially "lifers"-- using the words of the scriptures to form the content of their prayers. This is, I'm becoming more and more convinced, the "lost art" of Christian prayer. Speaking the words of Scripture back to God, and letting them form the content of our prayers.

Some concrete examples may help. Let's say, for instance, I'm praying for someone in crisis. In the past my prayer might have sounded something like: Lord, we just want to pray for so-and-so that you would just help so-and-so and just give them peace about such-and-such.

These days, as I try to let the words of the scripture form the content of my prayers, I pray something like: Lord, you tell us not to be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, to present our request to you. And you promised that when we do, that your peace, which transcends understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. So that's what we're doing now: we pray for so-and-so, that the peace of Christ which transcends understanding would guard their hearts and minds...

Okay, that's maybe a wordy example, but let's say I'm praying for someone who is having trouble making some life decision. In the past I might have prayed something like: "Lord, we pray for so-and-so, that you would just help them know what they're to do about such-and-such."

These days, as I try to let the Scriptures form the content of my prayers, I find myself praying things like: Lord, you told us that if anyone lacked wisdom, they should ask you because you give generously to all without finding fault. And that's what we're doing for so-and-so, Lord: please give so-and-so wisdom about such-and-such generously, without finding fault, just like you promised to do....

A final example: when preaching, I always try to pray a short prayer for illumination between the reading of the scripture and the sermon itself. In the past these have been impromptu, wordy, drawn out and vague. These days, as I let the words of Scripture form the content of my prayers, I pray something like: Your word, O Lord, is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. Help us to see clearly by it today. Amen.

I could go on, because such is the breadth and depth of the Scripture's themes, that there really is no life experience we might go through that it doesn't address, and give us words to address God with in return. And that's what's happening, really, when we use the Scriptures as the content for our prayers: we're addressing God's own self with God's own words; we're entering the throne room of heaven with heaven's own "language" (so to speak) on our lips. And that's something sacred, I think.

(A final corollary of praying the scriptures I've noticed: to pray like this, I need to know what the scriptures say. To have memorized them, or, at the very least, to have internalized the gist of them so that they are on my lips, and ready to speak back to God in any given circumstance. I'm not a traditionalist, per se, and I've never decried the fact that "we don't emphasize scripture memorization anymore," like I've heard some old-timers do, but there's something to this. If I'm going to speak God's word back to him in my prayers, I need to have a heart saturated with it. And this won't happen without conscious discipline and intentional effort.)

The Book of Philippians (8)

2011-11-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

We're still working through Philippians at the FreeWay. Here's the 8th installment in our series.

Philippians 3:12-21. Eyes on the Prize

Inspiration, Imagination, and the Image of God

2011-10-28T07:45:00.000-06:00

There's a story from the cradle of humanity that describes God creating human beings by the power of his speech, and it says that he created them in his image, "male and female, in the image of God made he them." There's far more going on in these few simple words from Genesis 1:27 than could ever fit into a 500 word blog post (indeed, they've inspired theological words-in-response at a ratio of something like 1,000,000:1) but what I'm thinking about today is the fact that, in the ancient world, a king who had conquered a land would then set up his image (zelem) in that land, the idea being that the image would effect, extend and continue the King's reign even when the King himself was not physically present. And in the ancient world's framework for cosmogony (stories to explain how the cosmos came to be), creation always happened through an act of conquering and subduing chaos. So in Genesis 1: God conquers the formless-and-void chaos of the world-in-the-beginning, and, once the wild and waste world is formed and filed with verdant life, he sets humanity as his kingly "image" in the newly-conquered-Creation. The implication here (among other things) is that humanity is called to extend, effect and continue the creative work he has begun. And the implication here is that one of the ways we "image God" is through the exercise of our own forms of creativity.

And with this all in mind, I can't help but notice that the words we most often use to describe the human act of "singing/drawing/carving/writing/making original things that didn't exist before" link it to divine things. There's "creativity" itself, but there's also "inspiration" (to be "breathed" into), and there's "imagination" and "visionary" and "musical" (connected, of course, to the Greek Muses). All of these words seem to be feeling around the etymological edges of that spiritual "thing" that happens when human beings act creatively.

I mentioned before that I started doing some songwriting this summer after a three year dry spell. What I didn't mention then is how the dry spell broke. It was the morning I sat down on the edge of the bed in the basement of my father in law's house with my wife's mom's old nylon string guitar (which I always dig out of the storage room whenever I visit). I was lamenting the fact that it had been so long since I'd even felt like really singing, that in three years I'd had neither the time nor heart nor inspiration to say something musically, and that whenever I tried, the words always escaped or the tune eluded me.

I was just kind of strumming over this sadness, and I started muttering some stuff about inspiration having walked out on me. I happened to remember that in Greek myth, Calliope is the muse of epic poetry, and suddenly this image sprang up in my mind of a melancholy lover waiting for his girlfriend (Calliope) to come back to him. Slowly the ice began to thaw.

Here's the song that eventually came out of that morning.

Hey, Calliope

Previously on terra incognita...

2011-10-24T13:13:00.005-06:00

I'd mentioned that I am working on a number of new writing projects that are taking up time otherwise dedicated to blogging. Among these is a collaborative theology blog with a couple of other FMCiC pastors that I hope to have up and running in a few months-- stay tuned for that.

Another writing project I've had on the go since August is a new album of music. This summer, as I dragged myself across the finish line and out west for a three week furlough from the ministry, I found myself sitting in the middle of one of those dark nights of the soul that the spiritually wise sometimes talk about. This isn't the best forum to unpack everything that was going through my head and heart then, except to say that in the middle of it, as God graciously and patiently sat there in the darkness with me, he started to give me some new songs. I haven't had a rendezvous with "sister inspiration" in almost three years, and while many of these songs were darker and raw-er than any I've written in the past, this unexpected return of an old friend was a restorative to my soul.

I've been arranging and recording and generaly polishing them up in the last few months, and hope to "release" my new album, called Bridges, very soon. In the meantime, and by way of a sneak-peak, I offer this one here, based (loosely) on the darkest Psalm in the book:

nadir

By the banks of Babylon, that's where we hung our song

Cursed if we forget the tune, cursed if we sing along

They said: when you reach the nadir of the heart, will he be there?

There at the apex of the hurt and the despair?

Trying to write the final page of this tale of emptied hells

Vacant masks and leering laughs, this lie I know so well

And when I reach the nadir of the heart, will you be there?

There at the apex of the hurt and the despair?

Nothing left to hold on to, nothing left to say

Staring down the barrel of night, praying for the day

He said: When you reach the nadir of the heart, I'll be there

There at the apex of the hurt and the despair

Never thought I'd be that guy...

2011-10-11T08:36:00.001-06:00

When I first launched myself into the blogosphere two years and a bit ago, one of the things I noticed was the high number of blogs making apologies for "infrequent blogging of late," vowing to do better in the future (often these were stale dated, ironically, by a few months), and/or explaining why they hadn't (usually these included variations on the expression: "busier than a rented mule"). I remember, in those optimistic early days of blogging, committing to never being that guy; and yet, to my chagrin, I notice that a month has gone by since my last meaningful post. Not that I lack for blogging ideas-- I am replete with life-observations that need a good blogging-- but I've also taken on a number of new writing projects in the last few months (some of which I hope to share here at terra incognita in the near future), while the ministry at the FreeWay has entered a whole new chapter that has required much more of my spiritual and creative energy than it has in the past. All of this is my way of acknowledging that this fall terra incognita has been pretty quiet, and my way of predicting that this trend will probably continue for a few more months. I'll still post my sermons from week to week, and I'm not shutting things down altogether-- God willing, a perfect combination of "something to say" and "the time to say it in" will still coalesce-- but I feel I need to ease off the pressure of regular posting for the next few months.

In the meantime, here's the fifth sermon in our series on the Book of Philippians:

Philippians 2:19-30 "Making it Work"

The Book of Philippians (4)

2011-10-04T07:42:00.001-06:00

Here's our fourth sermon in our voyage through the book of Philippians:

Philippians 2:-1-11 "The Mark of the Cross"

The Book of Philippians (2)

2011-09-15T09:24:00.001-06:00

Here's our second sermon in our walk through the Book of Philippians.

Philippians 1:12-19 "First Things First"

"The Baptism with which I am Baptized"

2011-09-13T11:45:00.004-06:00

The other day I came across this stunning example of an ancient baptistry from the Negev (Early Byzantine). Amazing. I've preached four baptism sermons (I am, remember, a realatively green preacher), but this one photograph says a thousand words more than all of them combined, I think.

With what solemnity would we read Romans 6:4-6 ("Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.") if on the day of our baptism the baptistry looked like this?

It also helps me understand what Jesus must have meant in Mark 10:39, when he asked James and John if they could be baptised with the baptism with which he was to be baptised (meaning the pending agony of the cross). When they claimed they were up to the challenge, he replied: "You will be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with" (meaning, presumably, our union with Christ through baptism and the cross-shaped life we are called to live as his baptized followers).

The Book of Philippians (1)

2011-09-13T09:58:00.000-06:00

Two Sundays ago at the FreeWay we began a verse-by-verse series on the Book of Philippians (We also moved into our new location at Kedron Public School, which I mention here to explain why, what with a lot of extra stuff on the go, I'm a bit behind in my blog-posts). Anyways, here's the first installment in our series. The second will be along shortly.

Philippians 1:1-11 "A Partnership Made in Heaven"

Paul in Philippi

2011-08-30T09:17:00.001-06:00

Acts 16:25-34 Jailhouse Rock

A Priestly Inheritance, A City of Refuge

2011-08-23T13:14:00.006-06:00

I've been thinking a lot these days about the levitcal cities of refuge described at the end of the Book of Numbers (chpt 35).

In case it's been a while since you waded through the Book of Numbers, let me refresh your memory. It's right at the end of the desert wanderings, and the new generation of Israel is about to enter the Promised Land, Israel's ancient inheritance. So the Lord gives Moses instructions about the boundaries of Canaan, and some general directives on divvying up the land to the 12 tribes. Namely: they are to assign the land by lot to the nine and a half tribes of Israel entering Canaan (keeping in mind that two and a half tribes have already received their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan).

But then Numbers 35 reminds us that the tribe of Levi isn't going to be getting an allotment in Canaan because, as 18:20 has already indicated, Aaron (and by extension, the whole tribe of Levi with him) will have no inheritance in the land. Instead, the Lord himself is going to be the priestly tribe's inheritance among the Israelites. Rather than receiving a portion of the land, Levi is to receive simply "towns to live in from the inheritance of the [other] Israelites." These towns are scattered evenly throughout the Promised Land, seeding (in effect) a priestly presence in-and-among the whole people of God.

You can read in Joshua 20:1-9 how this command is carried out, but what strikes me here is that the Lord specifically identifies six of the Levitical towns as "cities of refuge, to which a person who has killed someone may flee." The idea is quite simple: in the case of murder, tribal codes of the sort especially prevalent among a nomadic society like Moses' Israel would require a blood relative to maintain tribal honour by avenging a murdered family member (see Genesis 34 for dark evidence that such codes were well known among nomadic Israelite society).

But such tribal customs and the violent blood feuds they inevitably perpetuate are deeply at odds with a civil society like the one Israel will become, as she stands at the threshold of the Promised Land and looks ahead to her future. In civil society, justice must be carried out by an impartial assembly according to a standard code of law; retaliation and vigilantianism has no place in a society governed by God's Shalom.

So God sets aside six of the Levitical towns as cities of refuge-- cities of asylum to which an accused killer can flee until he has stood trial and his case has been heard; and cities of shalom, where the innocent can escape the tribal custom of honour killings.

Now, I don't want to read too much into this, but here's what I can't get off my mind today: the priestly tribe had no inheritance in the land other than a special place in the Lord's plan to mediate his Shalom to the people. And with this inheritance came the cities of refuge; and with them came a calling to be a people among whom the accused found shelter, where the guilty found asylum and the harried found refuge until God's Shalom had obtained in their lives (in this case in the form of a fair and imparital trial).

And you can't reflect on all this very long before you remember that 1 Peter 2:5-9 specifically identifies followers of Jesus Christ as the priesthood of believers that the tribe of Levi prefigured and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. And if it's true, what Peter says about Christians there, and it's true what Numbers says about the inheritance of the preistly tribe here, then it would mean that in Christ we have inherited a calling to be "cities of refuge." Our communities are to be places where the accused, the guilty and the harried can find shelter so that the Shalom of God can obtain in their lives (in this case in the form of the unmerited, all-gracious justification of God through faith in Christ); what's more, this calling specifically and directly precludes any material inheritance "in the land" (i.e. the comfort, wealth, privlege and security that such an inheritance would have meant for an ancient Israelite).

And the obvious questions are staring me in the face: am I part of a community of faith that has traded in the wealth and security of its "inheritance in the land" for the privlege of being a "city of refuge" like this? And harder still: Am I willing to belong to such a community of faith? And hardest of all: what's my role in helping my church be the city of refuge that God in Numbers 35 is calling it to be?

A Stumper of a Sign

2011-08-18T11:37:00.011-06:00

Last night I was reading from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and I finally stopped to try and figure out something that has stumped me for many years. In 14:22, after a long discourse on the role and meaning of "speaking in tongues," Paul goes on to say: "Tongues, then are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers."

For the record, I am not a "charismatic" nor a "cessationist" per se, but the stump for me is just this: in what way is speaking in tongues a sign for unbelievers? A sign of what? And how, exactly does speaking in unintelligible languages function as said sign? And the stump gets stumpier, because in verse 23-25, Paul goes on to describe a scenario (ostensibly as evidence that tongues are indeed a sign for unbelievers) where the "sign" of tongues actually draws the scorn of unbelievers, and it's the sign of prophesy (which according to v. 22 is meant as a sign for believers) that convicts unbelievers and elicits from them a response of faith.

I've been stumped over this for a long time: Paul says tongues are a sign for unbelievers, and then (it seems) he goes on to say that tongues do not bring unbelievers to faith at all, rather prophesy does.

But yesterday, I noticed that the "therefore" clause of v. 22 actually connects Paul's argument to the prophesy from Isaiah he quotes in v. 21: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me." And when you look up Isaiah 28 in context, you see that it records God's indictment against Israel for its religious apostasy and corruption, and his announcement of pending judgement in the form of Assyrian invasion (the "men of strange tongues" in question are the Assyrians, and the "strange tongues" in question is a reference to the language of the Assyrian invaders).

In Isaiah, then, Assyrians speaking in "incomprehensible languages" as they invade is a sign to unbelieving Israel that they are indeed guilty of corruption and apostasy (as charged) and that God's verdict against them is just. And, of course, Isaiah's Israel failed to feel the portent of this ominous sign, and, in verse 14 are accused of being blind scoffers who, in their unbelief, are unable to heed God's Word.

In this context the Assyrian invasion (and by metonymy, Assyria's "strange tongues") is an incomprehensible sign to unbelieving Israel of God's judgment on their disobedience.

Flash forward now some 750 years, after the death and resurrection of Jesus has recapitulated and fulfilled the story of judgment, exile and return for the people of God that Isaiah is telling here, after the gift of the Holy Spirit that Isaiah promised has been poured out lavishly on the reconstituted "Israel of God" (i.e. any and all who confess the crucified and resurrected Christ as Lord). Now Paul's claim that "tongues" are a sign to unbelievers makes perfect sense.

Obviously the charismata of tongues is a sign to unbelievers that God has punished and forgiven Israel's sin once and for all in the cross of Christ, because the promised "sign of tongues" (prefigured by the Assyrian invasion) now obtains in the Community of Faith that confesses this crucified Christ as Lord; and, further, it's a sign to unbelievers that such communities of Faith actually now comprise the reconstituted people of God, because the "sign" of Assyrian invasion that Assyria's "strange tongues" once announced to apostate Israel is now being announced (through the charismata of tongues) in the Spirit-filled Christian community; and further still, just like the Assyrian invasion once showed the world that Israel's sin has indeed been judged, so too the gift of tongues is a sign (albeit an incomprehensible one) to us that our sins have been judged through the cross of Christ.

And for those who disbelieve this inexpressibly good news, the sign of tongues not only remains inpenetrable, but actually points them out as unbelievers by their inability to understand or accept the phenomenon of tongues for what it is.

So no wonder that unbelievers in 1 Corinthians 14:23 scoff at what is, to them, an incomprehensible sign. The unbelievers in Isaiah 28:14 before them scoffed at the signs of judgment Isaiah promised, too. And I can't help but think of Babel's architects before them all as Paul's point slowly sinks in on me: the confusion of incomprehensible tongues is a sign to unbelievers that their unbelief stands judged by almighty God.

A Sermon for a Baptism

2011-08-15T11:28:00.001-06:00

Acts 8:26-40. Here's Water

On the Road with Paul

2011-08-08T14:54:00.000-06:00

I am preparing for a series on the Book of Philippians in the fall, and thought that to set the stage for it, I'd spend a bit of time in the Book of Acts, looking at Paul's story, his ministry and mission (hence the last two sermons posted here at terra incognita). This Sunday's sermon was a look at the famous Damascus Road Experience.

Acts 9:1-19. Called

Another Sermon from the Book of Acts

2011-07-10T14:54:00.000-06:00

Acts 27:27-44. Found at Sea

Happy Trails

2011-07-03T06:51:00.000-06:00

Things will be quiet here at terra incognita for the next number of weeks. The family's hitting the road for a summer road trip, and I'll be offline until sometime mid-August. I hope to be back at the blogging wheel again before summer's out, but in the meantime, happy trails and happy summer.

40 (more) Foci for Preaching

2011-07-02T07:16:00.000-06:00

Around this time last year I was reflecting on my preaching ministry at the FreeWay and posted this list of the focus statements of my first forty sermons at the FreeWay. The "homiletical focus," as I said back then, is a concise statement that distills the point of the text and anchors the theme of the sermon in a single compelling, (hopefully) vivid sentence. I'm at-or-around sermon #80 now, and feeling a little retrospetive, so I compiled this list of the focus statements of my last forty sermons at the FreeWay.

1. Romans 8:22-27: God’s Spirit labours in our weakest prayers

2. 1 Peter 2:4-10: God’s building a living cathedral made out of transformed people.

3. John 8:12-20: As God is my witness, I light the way.

4. John 6:34-51: I’m the food that will feed you forever.

5. John 10:1-10: I’m your doorway to God; and I’m God’s doorway to you.

6. John 10:11-21: I’m the God who gives his own life to give life to his own.

7. John 11:17-27: I’m the next life, happening now.

8. John 15:1-11: I’m the tree, you’re the branches, God’s the gardener, love’s the fruit.

9. John 8:49-59: Jesus is the I AM God.

10. Romans 1:14-17: The Gospel is the power of God at work.

11. Colossians 4:2-6: Pray and prepare for God to open a word door.

12. Acts 16:11-15: The Gospel stands at the crossroads with God.

13. Acts 17:22-32. I know the name of your unknown God.

14. Hebrews 10:15-18. Our God has remembered to forget.

15. Isaiah 11:1-10: The perfect son of Jesse brings us perfect knowledge of God.

16. Isaiah 9:1-7: God meets our greatest expectations through the great humility of a child.

17. Isaiah 2:1-5: The peace of God will reign in the end.

18. Luke 2:10-14: Don’t be afraid.

19. John 1:14: The glorious word of God has taken on our fragile flesh.

20. Matthew 2:1-12: Who has seen the child who upsets the status quo?

21. Matthew 4:1-11: So Jesus: what kind of Messiah are you, anyways?

22. Ecclesiastes 1:1-10: Nothing’s worth the effort in a world where nothing’s ever new.

23. Ecclesiastes 2:1-11: Filling up on pleasure only leaves you empty in the end.

24. Luke 8:26-39: The cure is sitting at Jesus’ feet.

25. Ecclesiastes 2:17-26: God can redeem the rat race.

26. Ecclesiastes 3:1-14: Everlasting God gives a season for everything and everything for a season.

27. Romans 6:1-11: Baptism shows the world I’m dead to sin and alive to God.

28. Ecclesiastes 4:1-3: I’d rather not live, in a world with no one to comfort the exploited.

29. Ecclesiastes 4:7-12: Togetherness is God’s best for us.

30. Matthew 21:12-17: The vulnerable see in Jesus what the self-sufficient never can.

31. 1 John 4:1-4: Love is a sacred choice.

32. John 19:31-37: Tonight your perfect Passover lamb is slain; his blood is on the doorpost of the world.

33. John 20:11-18: Let go of what was crucified; step into new creation.

34. John 20:19-23: Receive the Holy Spirit and let God unlock the door.

35. Proverbs 31:10-31: The King’s ideal Bride is the picture of perfect wisdom.

36. Philippians 4:9-11: Practice all the time for God’s peace (in your marriage).

37. Nehemiah 1:1-11: When the walls are broken down, that’s our call to fast and pray.

38. Matthew 28:16-20: I’m heaven’s authority on earth now—now go be my disciple-making disciples.

39. Acts 2:42-47: The Spirit-filled community overflows with life for the world.

40. Acts 20:7-12: Hey Eutychus: Wake up! Get up! And come to the table.

A Dominion Day Reflection

2011-07-01T12:40:00.013-06:00

Yesterday I bought my first ever package of fireworks. We’re going to a Canada Day barbecue today, and the last thing you want to do is show up empty handed at a Canada Day barbecue. So there I was, standing in line at Walmart with my variety pack of Roman Candles under my arm, and thinking about how it wasn’t always called “Canada Day.”

I’m just old enough to remember this, but the name of our national 1st-of-July celebration actually used to be Dominion Day. And that's because for more than a hundred years, from the first ever July 1st bash back in 1879, up until it was officially changed to “Canada Day” in 1983, the name of our nation-wide-birthday party was “Dominion Day”

Because up until about 1951, Canada’s official name used to be “the Dominion of Canada.” Because "dominion" means a place where a king rules, and Canada, of course, was established as a constitutional monarchy under the crown of Britain.

In fact, being a constitutional monarchy, the founders of Canada actually toyed with the idea of calling us “the Kingdom of Canada,” but they felt the phrase would be too provocative to our anti-monarchical neighbours to the south, so they settled for “Dominion of Canada" instead. No need ruffling Eagle feathers when you don’t have to. Hence "Dominion Day."

But there's more to it than that. The story goes that the name “Dominion of Canada” was suggested by a certain Sir Lenorad Tilley, who took the idea from Psalm 72:8.

In the KJV translation, Psalm 72 says: “Give the king thy judgements, O God... He shall judge thy people with righteousness and the poor with judgment. He shall judge the poor of the people. He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace shall endure so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

Sir Leonard Tilley, we're told, saw that bit there about God’s king having dominion from sea to sea, and he was inspired with this glorious vision of a God-fearing nation having dominion from sea to sea to sea... from Cape Spear, Newfoundland to Tofino British Columbia... and history was born. To this day, the Latin motto of Canada is "A Mari Usque Ad Mar." From Sea to Sea.

So I was thinking about all of this, after I got my package of Roman Candles safely home and all. I was thinking about how a lot has changed in Canada since the days of Sir Leonard Tilley, back when the vision of a Christian nation would have seemed pretty plausible; and I was thinking about Psalm 72, and its glorious vision of a God-fearing people whose God-fearing king has dominion from sea to sea and how it’s hard, sometimes, it’s hard to even imagine what that would look like now a days.

I mean, sure, back in 800 BC when this Psalm was written, back when “theocracy” was the only system of government the social studies text books ever mentioned, back then you could maybe imagine it, but 2800 years later, in 2011?

What are we supposed to do with this vision of a “Dominion of God” in Canada today?

Because this is actually, the big question for us as Christians in public life: how are we realizing Psalm 72’s vision of a “Dominion of God” in Canada today? Not just because today is Canada Day (formerly known as Dominion Day), but because the truth is: God demonstrates his dominion through the loving work of his people.

In the loving work of his people. That’s where you glimpse the Dominion of God today. And suddenly Psalm 72 is echoing like a trumpet call across 3 millennia, summoning us to loving action in our world.

Because, what does Psalm 72 say things will look like when God’s King has dominion?

The poor receive justice.

The children of the needy are helped.

The oppressor is disarmed, and political, social, and economic systems of oppression are dismantled.

Peace reigns... in abundance.. as long as the moon endures.

I mean: what is this other than the work of God’s people? This is stuff followers of Jesus are supposed to be about in the world. It’s salt-of-the-earth kind of stuff. Light-of-the-world kind of stuff. City-set-on-a-hill kind of stuff.

And whenever Christians are involved in this kind of work in public life— in our nations or in our neighbourhoods—as we strive to bring justice to the exploited, and a voice to the vulnerable, and freedom to the oppressed, and peace to the troubled—as we answer the call of Psalm 72 on our lives, we’ll discover, I think, that it’s true: God demonstrates his Dominion, through the loving work of his people.

Did you hear the one about Lucky Eutychus?

2011-06-27T08:18:00.002-06:00

Inasmuch as we're between sermon series at the FreeWay just now, I thought it would be the perfect Sunday to preach a text from my running list of most-obscure-Bible-passages-I've-always-wanted-to-preach-for-the-sheer-zaniness-of-the-text. It was between the resuscitation of Eutychus (Acts 20:7-12) and the strange case of the Gethsemane streaker (Mark 14:51-52). Eutychus won out in the end, but what to do with Mark 14:51-52 is still simmering on the back burner.

Here's the sermon (with apologies in advance for the sound quality; our audio levels on the recording equipment were a bit off... I wasn't really bellowing the whole way through).

Acts 20:7-12 The Fortunate Fall

Monday Morning Media Round-up

2011-06-13T09:05:00.003-06:00

Happy Monday, everybody. In the intrepid spirit of terra incognita I've been exploring some new media these days, and finding no shortage of gems. Like a cyber-Marco-Polo, I offer below some of the very best of my travels for your discriminating consideration:

From the Airwaves:

Seeds, Hey Rosetta!

I heard a track from Hey Rosetta!'s new album on CBC Radio Q, and 15 seconds in I was mesmerized. The whole album has lived up to the promise of that first 15 seconds. While I've wanted to compare it at times to Mumford & Sons, Radiohead, and Arcade Fire, there's something going on here that defies comparison. Every song is an organic, constantly evolving mini-world that becomes something new every 30 seconds. The songwriting reminds me of that line from Heraclitus: "You can't step into the same river twice." Neither can you step into the same Hey Rosetta! song twice, it seems. Oh yeah: and the production is near-flawless.

Unconvinced? Check out one of my favorite tracks from the ablum and tell me I'm wrong:

From the Blogosphere:

Experimental Theology

I stumbled across this blog on the blog roll over at this side of sunday. Richard Beck is a theologian/experimental psychologist at Abeline Christian University, and his work at Experimental Theology combines these two disciplines in fascinating and enlightening ways. I only wish I had the time to explore all the topics tagged in the sidebar (among which are series with tantalizing titles like "Alone, Suburban and Sorted," "The Theology of Humour," "The Theology of Ugly," and "Game Theory and the Kingdom of God").

Strech your mind and heart and check this blog out; and for a starter that's as light as it is heavy, I'd suggest you begin with his playful and masterful analysis of the theology of Calvin and Hobbes.

From the Tube:

The Century of the Self (part 1)

This four-part BBC documentary by award winning film-maker Adam Curtis traces the fascinating and often chilling story of Freud's influence on the shape of American culture. My friend Jon Coutts had posted a link to another Adam Curtis doc. called All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace and after watching it I was hungry for more. A few Wikipedia searches and youtube clicks later, I was watching this one. I'm only 1/2 through it, but already my mind is surging. Give it a watch.

A Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

2011-06-13T07:39:00.000-06:00

Acts 2:42-47. The Church that Plays together...

Commencement

2011-06-06T06:22:00.001-06:00

Matthew 28:16-20. Commencement

37 Good Things

2011-06-01T06:33:00.007-06:00

Last week was my 37th birthday. This time last year I composed a list of "36 reasons I'm glad to be alive" and I thought a similar post for the big 3-7 might be apropos. Reminders of reasons to love life, after all, might be first on the list.

1. Sunshine in June
2. The smell of a Russian Olive tree off in the distance
3. Camping
4. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway
5. People watching at the Y
6. U2's Achtung Baby
7. Q on CBC Radio 1
8. Dead Poets Society
9. Officiating at Weddings
10. That dusty old book-page smell that hangs about
        your face when you're reading an old book
11. Settlers of Catan
12. Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor"
13. Playing djembe on the worship team
14. Building "Thomas the Train" tracks with a child
15. Reading out loud to each other as a family
16. Memories of backpacking through Europe
17. Maps
18. Cumin
19. Watching my son become a man
20. Canola fields and blue sky
21. Cool, humid mornings that promise to become
        a scorcher of day
22. C. S. Lewis books
23. Playing Lost Heir with mom and dad
24. Stumbling across a forgotten piece of one's own juvenilia.
25. Family movie nights
26. Rainy afternoons
27. Walks in the forest park around the corner from our house
28. Teaching
29. Eating with chopsticks
30. The Breastplate of St. Patrick (the prayer and the Irish hymn)
31. Strong coffeee
32. Watching home videos on New Years Eve
33. Dancing with my kids
34. Fresh garden potatoes with dill
35. Stationary
36. Words whose form and meaning are as close
         together as possible-- like sesquipadalian and tintinnabular
37. Moments of inspiration

On Nehemiah's Wall

2011-05-31T07:17:00.002-06:00

The Book of Nehemiah spoke into the life of our church in a very specific way this Sunday. Here's the sermon:

Nehemiah 1:1-11.
The City, the Wall, the King and his Cupbearer

Sqaush and the Spiritual Life

2011-05-26T07:19:00.002-06:00

If you were like me growing up in church, analogies for the Christian life taken from the world of sport (and somehow these seemed ubiquitous in the pulpits of my youth) always came off as a little contrived. The ones that didn't leave you flat felt forced. I recognize, of course, that sporting analogies have a long and deep biblical tradition. Paul himself likened the Christian disciple at various times to a boxer in training, a runner in a footrace, an Olympic athlete striving for the laurels. But comparing an Ephesians 1:17 Christian to a basketball player putting up a hail Mary against the final buzzer in the championship game (true story, true sermon) leaves one feeling like the preacher cared more about his sport of choice than the text he was wrestling with that week.

My sport of choice is squash. And the above paragraph is my disclaimer for the squash-court epiphany I'd like to share today. I was playing with my regular partner the other day, and, though I started off strong, somewhere around the third game in the match, I noticed things starting to slip away from me. I was running ragged, wearing down, chasing shots from pillar to post. Between gasps for oxygen, I could smell skunk on the wind.

Now for those who haven't played, or maybe forget, there's a T roughly in the centre of the squash court (and a little to the back), where the two serving lines converge. It's the prime piece of real-estate in squash, because as long as you're hovering roughly over the T, you can see most of the court laid out in front of you. From the T, you can anticipate drop-shots before they happen; from the T you can reach the back corners with ease; from the T you're in control of your game, and usually his as well.  But as my game slowly unraveled, I suddenly realized that I'd not been keeping on the T. Instead I'd been chasing balls all over the place-- into the front pocket, digging deep cross-court, down into the opposite corner, now kitty-corner to where I was before. No wonder I was running down and running out of steam.

As I gasped for breath again between serves, I made a determined decision to stay on the T. After my serve, hover on the T; after my return, get on the T; after that long lunge to recover a drop shot, back to the T. And my game came back.  It was actually quite amazing how quickly peace descended on me, as long as I stayed on the T.

Now for the epiphany: because in that moment, as I realized the difference staying on the T made to my game, I suddenly saw an analogy for the Christian life-- for my Christian life. When we "get off the T," and start chasing balls - our personal ambitions, fears, goals, agendas - into the corners and along the edges of life, the game unravels really quickly. When won't hover on the T, we risk burning up our spiritual stamina and burning out our hearts.  When we fail to "get back on the T" after every shot, we wind up playing more and more desperately and out of control.

And the T is Christ.

And almost like the sting of a squash ball between the shoulder blades, it walloped me: "You've not been staying on the T." Blogs are probably not the best forums for true confessions, but let me at least say that right there on the court, in one of those rare flashes of clarity, I saw how sloppy I'd become in my discipleship of late, and next to that I saw how much burn-out and chaos I'd been feeling in my spiritual life as a result. And I realized the two were intimately connected: I'd not been staying on the T, and my heart knew it, and my soul had lost its wind because of it. The welt stung, of course, but it also woke me up: as long as you're staying as close to Christ as you possibly can, and keep your eyes open for where he is in any given moment, and move there, you'll be playing (as Paul might have said) "in such a way as to win the prize."

I won't tell you the final score that day, but I will tell you that I left the court with new resolve and eagerness to play (if I haven't yet pushed the sporting analogy too far)-- to play with my heart hovering "on the T."

Creation and Covenant

2011-05-19T06:51:00.000-06:00

Recently I've been looking through some papers and lit-reviews I wrote during my time at Briercrest. Two years doesn't seem like a long time, but more than a few times I had one of those, "Did I really write this?" moments. I thought that over the next few months it might be interesting once in a while to share some highlights from what I've been finding on my stroll down amnesia lane (to quote Dead Poet Society alumnus John Keating).

The first comes from a paper I wrote on the book of Genesis. I noticed the other day that the church down the street is hosting a Creation vs. Evolution seminar in the coming days. Seeing the advert reminded me of this excerpt from a paper where I argue that Covenant is best understood theologically as a Creative act of God. This particular section talks about ways to read Genesis 1-2 in light of, and over against other Creation accounts from contemporary cultures of the Ancient Near East. If it at all piques your interest, you can read the whole paper here.

Because of our temptation to limit creation to questions of cosmogony—pitting it against big bangs and primordial soups as the only adequate account of origins, and thinking about it primarily in Aristotelian or Augustinian categories of Primum Mobile, creatio ex nihilo and the like—the suggestion that Israel understood covenant theologically as a creative act of God may strike us at first as counter-intuitive. Before examining the way creation theology informs the Noahic and Abrahamic covenants, then, it is important to examine how Genesis actually develops and defines “creation” as a theological statement about what God does as the maker of heaven and earth. Terence Fretheim gives us a helpful pointer in this regard, when he suggests that “‘creation’ is not simply a matter of origination or a divine activity chronologically set only ‘in the beginning’”; indeed, “the verb bārā’, ‘create,’ so central to speaking of creation in Genesis 1, is used more often elsewhere in the Old Testament … for God’s creative activity in and through the historical process.” He further argues that to limit “creation” to absolute beginnings is “virtually to deny the possibility of speaking of creation with respect to the Bible,” in which acts of creation include acts of originating, continuing and completing—not just the order of the physical universe—but social, cultural and national order along with it.

Likewise, Richard J. Clifford warns us that failure “to be clear about ancient and modern differences [in defining creation] has often obscured the role of ancient cosmogonies in the Bible.” He proposes four distinct differences—the process, product, manner of reporting and criterion of truth— that should inform our reading of Genesis. Ancient cosmogonies imagined the divine process of creation in more anthropomorphic terms of gods moulding the world like clay, or speaking something into existence; they understood organized human society as a natural product of the creative process; they tended to conceptualize, and thus report creation as a drama or story “on the analogy of human activity”; and they held a more dramatic, functional criterion for truth which sought “plausibility or suitability” over “complete and coherent explanation.” With this in mind, it is helpful to consider Genesis creation theology in relation to those narrative patterns and archetypal motifs it shares with the ancient Near Eastern context into which it originally spoke, however radically and subversively it has reinterpreted them. In particular, important parallels among related Mesopotamian cosmogonies include the primordial chaos as symbolized by primeval waters, (cf. the waters of Apsû in the Atra-Hasīs), and the archetypal struggle to order this chaos as dramatized by a god’s battle against a sea-monster (cf. Marduk’s battle against Tiamat in the Enûma Elish). Further to this, the idea of a “creation rest” for the creating god “is commonly found in many of the creation texts of the ancient world.” It is also important to note that ancient cosmogony conceived of creation, not as an historical, linear, one-time event to be recalled, but as a timeless, cyclical and ongoing event to be re-enacted yearly through myth and ritual, whereby the life-giving fertility of the created order was sustained and perpetuated.

To be sure, the extent to which these myths have directly influenced the shape of Genesis 1-2 is subtle; Gunkel’s claim bears repeating that “the difference between the Babylonian myth and Genesis 1 is so pronounced, in terms of both religious attitude and aesthetic quality, that at first glance the two seem to have nothing in common.” But in the broader brush-strokes of Genesis’ creation narrative, we can see shades of that archetypal chaoskampf which colours texts like the Enûma Elish. We see its silhouette, for example, in Genesis 1:2’s description of a primordial world, shrouded by the chaotic waters of the deep, and brooded over by the hovering spirit of God. Likewise, the themes of forming and filling that give shape and content to the six day creation account become, in this context, a central concept for Genesis’ creation theology: to create is to bring and sustain fertile form out of chaotic shapelessness, to fill chaotic emptiness with life-giving order. This theology underlies the various creative acts in Genesis 1, as God, by speaking (1:3), separating (1:4), naming (1:5), gathering (1:9) and blessing (1:22), creates order and fertility—form and fullness—out of empty chaos. Indeed, the language of fertility and order permeate this text: the earth sprouts with vegetation, while lights govern its days and nights (1:11, 15); waters and firmament teem with fertile life, according to ordered “kinds” (1:20-22); blessed beasts increase and multiply, while humans are enjoined to govern and steward them well (1:26). Present, too, is that ancient intuition which understood “creation” as the divine story whereby the created order is continually sustained and cyclically renewed. We see this intuition at work in the “signs” given to mark the seasons (1:14-15), in the divine mandate for humans to “image” God by further governing the created order (1: 26-27), and especially in the institution of the Sabbath as a ritual of work and rest synchronizing the rhythms of weekly life with those of the creation story. Thus creation extends far beyond merely “originating the natural universe.” By blessing family (1:28), planting and giving fruitful land (2:8-9), mandating work (2:15), sanctifying marriage (2:22-24) and so on, God continues creation by sustaining fertility and order, not only in a non-human “nature,” but also among human life and civilization as a created part of “nature.”

A Second Look at a Mother's Day Classic

2011-05-10T06:02:00.002-06:00

This Sunday, of course, was Mother's Day. They say that, next to Easter, Mother's Day is the most attended Sunday of the year for churches, statistically speaking. While I appreciate the natural impulse to honour the maternal women in our lives, and the desire to return thanks to God for them, I have to admit that as a pastor, there is always a part of me that holds his breath through Mother's Day. Not because I don't deeply value the mothers in my own life, but because, as a pastor, my heart is always going out to those who would be mothers but can't, or who have chosen not ot be mothers and feel singled out, or who lost their children through tragic circumstances, or whose mothers were lost to them, or who are struggling with issues of forgiveness or abandonment or failure when it comes to motherhood. And as a pastor I can't help but wonder how this anthropocentric emphasis on things maternal must exaserbate those feelings.

All this is to explain why in my sermon this Sunday, though I did tackle a "classic" Mother's Day text, I tried to broaden and deepen the classic reading of it, and invite the FreeWay to go a bit deeper with it.

Proverbs 31:10-31 The Princess (?) Bride

More on Word Clouds

2011-05-07T01:41:00.023-06:00

After my last post about preaching and word clouds, I was still wondering: what the word cloud for my whole preaching ministry over the last two years at the FreeWay look like? Not a few cuts-and-pastings later, I had assembled all of my sermons to date into a single document and run it through Wordle's word cloud generator. Here's what I came up with. If you could visualize the cloud of talk hovering over the FreeWay these days, it might look something like this:

I find that curious and kind of fun; but it 's even more curious and more than a bit humbling when you compare it to this: a (pretty stunning) glimpse at the word clouds of all sixty six books of the Bible:

And because I couldn't resist, I also did this one: it's the word cloud generated by all the papers I wrote during my time at Seminary. It's interesting to me to see how different the cloud is as it moves from the "Ivory Tower" down into the local church; but perhaps even more interesting are the similarities.

A Cloud of Witness(es)

2011-05-05T01:32:00.006-06:00

The other day I stumbled across Wordle, a website that generates "word clouds" from any text that you paste into its word-cloud engine. Essentially, it analyses the text, identifies statistically significant words and groups them together into a visually appealing clump; the more often the word appears in the text, the bigger the word in the cloud. You can then play around with the font, color scheme, layout, and so on.

Word clouds give you a sense of a particular text's major themes, concerns and motifs at an aesthetically pleasing glance. Someone used Wordle, for instance, to make word clouds of the 66 different books of the Bible. Check them out here-- they are absolutely fascinating.

Of course, it didn't take me long to wonder the inevitable: Inasmuch as the better part of my work lies in the world of words, what would the word cloud of my preaching look like? Because I preach pretty much directly from manuscripts, this is a relatively easy question to answer. Here, for instance, is a glimpse of the word-cloud hovering over the FreeWay during our recent 7-part series on the Book of Ecclesiastes.

And the next inevitable question, the question that may be, perhaps, the litmus test of a biblical preacher, wasn't long to follow: how closely does the word cloud for my preaching match the word cloud of the Scripture I'm preaching from? A humbling question, to be sure, but in some ways an arbitrary one. I could get the exact same word cloud by just reading the text and leaving it at that, and I wouldn't be preaching. Nevertheless, it's a revealing exercise: is the cloud of speech I'm raising each Sunday morning at all like the cloud breathing out from the Scriptures themselves? Are my concerns its concerns, my hobby-horses its hobby-horses, my themes its themes?

For instance this fall I did a series on the "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John. Here's the word-cloud that series generated:

And just to compare, here is the word cloud of the Gospel of John itself, produced by the good folks over at Sixty Six Clouds. I will refrain from commentary and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Flag Waving in the Kingdom of Heaven

2011-05-03T15:09:00.006-06:00

In chapter 13 of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells a series of seven parables to help his followers imagine the Kingdom of Heaven. Among these seven inter-connected and enigmatic word-pictures are some of Jesus' most well-known and well-loved parables, including the Sower and the Soils, the Pearl of Great Price, the Mustard Seed.

A few years ago when I was studying at Briercrest Seminary, our Seminary Chapel was planning a special "Global Missions" service. Normally we would use the flags of various nations to help capture and convey the international scope and global range of Christ's work in the world, but as I reflected on the symbolism of flags, it struck me how politicized, and polarizing, and even (at times) idolatrous these cloth symbols (and the concepts of Kingdom for which they stand) can become.  And I started thinking about the counter-Empire and anti-Empire posture the New Testament writers continually assumed.  And I started thinking about the way in which God's kingdom calls us in Christ to a radical realignment of our alligances to and our notions of kingdom. And I was left wondering if national flags actually belonged in a service dedicated to celebrating the Kingdom of God after all.

And then I remembered Matthew 13, and I wondered:  rather than national flags, what would flags for the kingdom of God look like? This idea started to germinate in my imagination and eventually I came up with this series of 7 "Kingdom of God" flags, symbolic representations of the seven parables in Matthew 13.

I am posting them here today, hoping you'll find them interesting; but also because I was up until 1:00 AM last night, watching the Canadian election unfold.  And as I listened to the various pundits and analysts earn their keep dissecting the unexpected results this morning, I kept glancing at these seven flags where they now hang on the wall in my office.  They were a helpful reminder that, for all the passion with which I participate in the privilege of Canadian democracy, I am, at the same time, the subject of a Divine King who bestows on me a Heavenly Citizenship which puts even the best-intentioned striving of our earthly nation-builders into eternal perspective.

Matthew 13:3-9. The Sower and the Soils

Matthew 13:24-29: The Wheat and the Weeds

Matthew 13:31-32: The Mustard Seed

Matthew 13:33: The Dough and the Yeast

Matthew 13:44: The Hidden Treasure

Matthew 13:45: The Pearl of Great Price

Matthew 13:47-50: The Net and the Fishes

A Second Sermon for the Easter Season

2011-05-01T13:11:00.002-06:00

John 20:19-23. Sent

All Things New

2011-04-24T13:32:00.001-06:00

John 20:10-18: New

Blood on the Lintel of the World

2011-04-23T06:24:00.003-06:00

Happy Holy Saturday everyone.

Here are a few details from our evening Good Friday service at the FreeWay last night.

John 19:31-37: Blood on the Lintel of the World

Books on the Book of Ecclesiastes

2011-04-19T01:00:00.049-06:00

Two Sundays ago I preached my last sermon in our seven part series on Ecclesiastes. I found it interesting as I was working through this challenging book to note the number of other churches that were exploring Ecclesiastes at the same time as me. My parents' church in London had finished a series on Ecclesiastes just before I began mine; my brother's church in Michigan started a series on Ecclesiastes while I was still in the middle of mine; and a friend's church in Coburg was also working on Ecclesiastes at the same time as me. I've mentioned before how poignant and relevant I've found this book; it would seem it's been speaking in similar ways to a number of other churches.

For posterity's sake, I thought I'd share a few quick notes on the commentaries and resources I used in preparing this series.

Ecclesiastes: Why Everything Matters, Philip Graham Ryken

This book was a bit of a disappointment to me. Misunderstanding the series title ("Preaching the Word"), I purchased it assuming I was getting a pulpit commentary that would help me do just that (i.e. preach the Word). Instead, Philip Ryken's book read like an extended series of sermons on the book of Ecclesiastes, which is precisely, I think, what it was meant to be. It wasn't an entire waste, of course, inasmuch as seeing how other preachers have tackled specific texts is informative, illuminating and inspiring; and there were some insights here that helped me in my own sermon prep. Overall, however, it had neither the depth nor breadth I was hoping for when I added it to the list of sermon resources.

A Time to Tear Down and A Time to Build Up, Michael v. Fox.

What Everything Matters lacked in depth, A Time to Tear Down more than compensated for. This fresh, erudite, creative and scholarly study of Ecclesiastes is, in my opinion, must-read material for anyone wanting to go deep with this book. Fox's discussion of hebel-- and the sophistication with which he compares it to Albert Camus' existentialist absurdity-- takes you to the heart of Ecclesiastes like no other book I encountered. And his work with the other major themes leave you feeling like you've really met the Teacher. His commentary section, too, is thorough and thoughtful. I drank especially deep draughts of this commentary for Sermon 1 and Sermon 3 in my series.

Preaching Christ from Ecclesiastes, Sidney Greidanus.

I've read a couple of other books by Sidney Greidanus, and his approach to Christ-centred, expository preaching has deeply impacted me. Especially his Preaching Christ from the Old Testament left a lasting mark on my own approach to preaching Old Testament texts, and from him I learned to appreciate the homiletical dictum: "Preachers turn Grace into Law whenever we present anthropocentric imperatives without the divine indicative." This book reads like an extended application of his previous work, and I found it very helpful. In the introduction he tells a story about preaching a painstakingly researched sermon on Ecclesiastes early in his preaching ministry. A seasoned pastor who was in the congregation approached him after and said: "Good sermon, pastor, but I'm wondering, could a Rabbi in a Synagogue have preached it just as easily?" This set him on a quest to uncover what it is about Christian preaching of the Old Testament that makes it especially Christian. Besides the treasure trove of exegetical insights it provided me, I found this commentary helpful as a point of reference in my own effort to keep my handling of this profound book Christ-centred.

Is this all there is to Life? Answers from Ecclesiastes, Ray Steadman.

This devotional book was actually just sitting there on the shelf in our very limited church library, so I grabbed it early on in my research to get a popular-level view of Ecclesiastes. Compared to Greidanus and Fox (and even Ryken), of course, the bones on this one seemed a little lean. For the most part, it read like the loosely compiled sermon notes of a pastor's verse-by-verser on Ecclesiastes, which he simply bound and published after the fact. But again, it was helpful to see where other preachers had gone with The Preacher, and part way through I realized I was reading Steadman more for moral support than exegetical insight.

Some Palm Sunday Re-runs

2011-04-18T01:00:00.001-06:00

What with it being Holy Week and all, I thought it would be fitting to re-post the following two posts I did las year about the fascinating connections between Christmas and Palm Sunday. Enjoy (or re-enjoy, as the case may be).

Hark the Other Hearld

Each of the four gospel writers put something different on the lips of the crowds as Jesus rode his triumphant donkey into Jerusalem the week before Passover. For Matthew, it was a reference to his Davidic pedigree. With a hosanna. For Mark, it was a reference more broadly to the coming "Kingdom of our father David." With a hosanna. For John it was a reference to Jesus as simply "the king of Israel." With a hosanna. (And yet not so simply, inasmuch as for John, Yahweh himself is the only true King of Israel).

But for Luke there was no "hosanna." Instead, the crowd shouted: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord." And then they added: "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest."

Now if I were a stout harmonizer, I'd want to throw in one of Matthew's Davidic references or one of Mark's Hosannas here for good measure. But because I'm not anymore, something jumped out at me when I read Luke 19:38 the other day that I can't get out of my mind.

"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest" cheered the crowds; and I wonder: did they know they were echoing the very words of the angelic host that heralded Christ's birth so many chapters (and some 33 years) earlier, when he was wrapped in swaddling clothes and a celestial choir declared "Glory to God in the highest / and on the earth peace ... "? Whether they heard the echoes or not, Luke doesn't seem to want us to miss them: in the original Greek, the parallels are quite striking. 2:19 reads "Glory in the highest to God, and on earth peace..." while 19:38 echoes back: "in heaven peace and glory in the highest" (almost as though they were open and close brackets respectively to the gospel narrative that has brought us to this point.)

But this is more than just a clever literary device. With its subtle echo of those of herald angels who sang glory to the newborn king back in 2:19, Luke's account of the Triumphal Entry here actually teaches us what it means to sing "God and sinners reconciled" in the fullest sense. Because as the God-Man, Jesus Christ always acts both as God before man, on God's side, and as man before God, on our side. Or as Paul put it, there is only one mediator between God and man; the man Christ Jesus.

So, when God-come-in-the-flesh was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, God made peace with humans-- in Jesus, the fully divine Messiah. Thus heavenly heralds filled the skies declaring peace on earth. But as the mediator between God and humanity, Jesus not only reconciles God to sinners, he also reconciles sinners to God. So when the true King of God's people rode humbly into the city of God's people to be enthroned as God's Prince of Peace, man made peace with God-- in Jesus, the fully human Messiah. Thus earthly heralds declared peace in heaven.

Jesus has reconciled heaven to earth; and he has reconciled earth to heaven. And in Jesus, and through faith in Jesus, we are invited to become ambassadors of that reconciliation in the fullest sense: declaring with radiant angels and dusty disciples alike that Jesus Christ has made perfect peace between Creator and creation.

Trimupal Entries and the True Meaning of Christmas

A while ago I shared some observations on the connections in Luke's Gospel between the nativity narrative and the triumphal entry. Namely: when Jesus is born, angels sing peace on earth and glory in the highest; and later when Jesus rides triumphant into Jerusalem, the disciples echo this back, shouting peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

Luke's not the only one to draw parallels between Christ's birth and his Triumphant Entry. In Matthew's narrative, three magi enter Jerusalem asking about the one born "King of the Jews," and all Jerusalem (Herod included) is "disturbed" at the query (2:3). No wonder they trembled, inasmuch as "King of the Jews" is the exact title Rome had given Herod himself back in 40 BC. This child's birth is as direct a challenge to the powers that be as Jerusalem could imagine.

But, curiously, when Jesus rides his revolutionary donkey into Jerusalem, in open defiance of those powers that be, Matthew notes how all of Jerusalem was "shaken" at the sight (21:10). Like Luke, Matthew seems intent on having the nativity narrative echo hauntingly in the background of this momentous occasion: when he was born, he stirred up the city's complacency; when he rode, thirty three years later, through the gates as its rightful and perfect king, he shook that complacency to its foundations.

I call this curious because I know that if I were to point to an event that fulfilled the "meaning" of Christ's birth, I'd point intuitively and directly to the cross; and yet these inspired narrators of Jesus' story point, instead, and specifically, to the Triumphal Entry. And I can't help but wonder why (admitting, at the same time, that the Triumphal Entry only has meaning because of the way the cross and resurrection turned the very notion of "triumph" on its head).

But maybe Matthew's point here is that the "true meaning" of this child's birth, in part, lies in the way God issues His Messianic challenge, through him, to the status quo-- to Sadducean elitism, to Herodian despotism, to Pharisaical legalism, to Roman hegemony. So when he rides a gentle donkey into the City of the Great King, as the ultimate revelation of God's challenge to the status quo, nothing could be more fitting than to remember how he once squirmed helpless on the knee of his shamed mother in the humble city of David, while foreigners and outsiders hailed him as Lord and "the status quo" worried to hear him named.

And I'm left wondering: what would it look like if we had a "Triumphal Entry" Christmas this year? What might it mean for us if we let Christmas shake our complacency to its foundations and let Mary's Boy Child Jesus Christ, in his coming, issue God's direct challenge to our status quo-- our spiritual elitisms, our unacknowledged despotisms, our self-righteous legalisms, our unseen hegemonies-- where ever they might be?

The King and the Temple: A Sermon for Palm Sunday

2011-04-17T15:57:00.004-06:00

Here's our Palm Sunday Sermon this week at the FreeWay. Usually one of the Triumphal Entry texts gets tackled at the start of Holy Week, but for this Palm Sunday, I thought I'd go just a few verses further and take a look at the Jesus' demonstration in the Temple. Our text was Matthew 21:12-17.

Matthew 21:12-17. From the Mouths of Babes

And here's the Soreg Inscription:

P.S. (Love Wins)

2011-04-13T06:29:00.003-06:00

One of the things that makes pastoral ministry pastoral, I'm learning, is giving theological ideas "legs" for people. Which explains why, re-reading yesterday's post, I could easily imagine somebody wondering the big "So what?" as they waded through my rather abstract ramblings about the crisis of evangelical ecclesiology and the controversy over Rob Bell's Love Wins. So what...does it look like, to address the crisis in evangelical ecclesiology, after all?

This is a bigger question than a 500-word blog post could tackle, to be sure, but for starters, and as hint as to where I'd want to go with it, I'd suggest you check out my friend Jon Coutt's thorough and insightful work with Rob Bell's book over at this side of Sunday. What is particularly exceptional about his series is that Jon hasn't asked, with the likes of John Piper and Kevin De Young and the rest, "Is Rob Bell a heretic?" (and then bid him a cursive and uncharitable "farewell" (or "welcome to the club!" as the case may be).) Instead, Jon has framed his whole analysis around this question: "Could someone convinced by [this] book sign my denomination's statement of faith?" (Jon is a pastor with the Christian and Missionary Alliance).

The difference here is subtle, but profound: not "is Bell 'heretical' or 'orthodox'?" but "How does the position of my ecclesiological tradition inform and/or contrast to Bell's position." Rather than assuming the authority to pontificate ex cathedral about a Christian brother's alleged heresy, Jon's question is humble enough to admit that theological work must have an ecclesiological context, and that this context inevitably shapes and even limits (in healthy ways) our theological positions. It doesn't address the ecclesiological crisis in evangelicalism, perhaps, but it at least acknowledges it and refuses to say more than his context permits him to. Jon has read Beyond Foundationalism, too (and he reads this blog once in a while, too, so I welcome his corrective input if I've mis-represented him here).

If more evangelical leaders evidenced this kind of humility, perhaps we really would start moving in constructive ways towards a positive evangelical ecclesiology. Because what's interesting to me is that, six posts into the series, Jon hasn't even discussed Rob Bell's book yet. The way he's framed his question has forced him back to his own tradition, to explore it more deeply and question it more probingly, seeking to understand its biblical basis, its historical roots, its import and application (and he has made there some illuminating discoveries), so that he can answer his research question honestly. And it's only in that kind of probing, I think, the self-probing of our own traditions first, that we gain the necessary humility to speak the truth to one another in love.

What No One Yet has Said About the Triumph of Love

2011-04-11T05:43:00.032-06:00

In case you've been living in the evangelical world's version of a sensory deprivation tank in Siberia and somehow missed it, let me catch you up to speed. Recently, the popular and/or controversial pastor of a mega-church in Michigan published a book about Heaven and Hell that made big waves in the sea of all-things-evangelical. Actually, it was the pre-game show that really made the wave: a 3 minute advert for his book, which he posted on the Internet, in which he hinted that he would be giving some non-traditional answers to some hard questions about the doctrine of hell, about which some self-appointed watch dogs over at a blog called "The Gospel Coalition" cried universalist! and heretic!, and after which Harper Collins bumped the book's release date up by two weeks.

Here's the video:

Just how big a wave did it make? To compare: if you google Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict's most recent publication, you'll garner around 668,000 hits. A google of this pastor's Love Wins will earn you 606,000 hits. So the literary crest he's carving, it would seem, is at least as big as the Pope's. Heck: even CBC News, that pillar of secular liberalism, caught wind of it and figured it was worth a mention, though their story reads like a third-grader's account of the theory of relativity, for all the sensitivity to the real issues it shows (read the article here).

Bloggers better than I have taken more pains than I to review, dissect, respond and otherwise put their theological surfboard to the wave. I'd suggest you start here; then read this nuanced deconstruction of some of the theological terms being used in the debate; and then read this 10-part series by Steve Holmes, lecturer at St. Mary's College, St. Andrews Scotland. He offers, by all accounts, the most thorough and theologically erudite analysis of the book you'll find on the web.

Of course, after Don Miller published this scintillating review, it seemed like there was simply nothing left to say.

But there is something I haven't yet heard anyone say, and it stands out glaringly to me, so I'll offer it here.

The crisis over this book, such as it is, is not really a crisis about the doctrines of Heaven and Hell at all. It is more a crisis, I think, of ecclesiology. The problem that the guys who have come out swinging really have with this Michiagan pastor is not that he may hold untraditional views on the afterlife. By most accounts, he isn't saying anything that hasn't been said before; and to be sure, pastors who have called themselves Christian have said far more radical things than him, with impunity as far as the likes of the Gospel Coalition are concerned.

Their real problem is that "he's one of us" (so to speak), or at least in lots of other ways he sure sounds like it. He talks evangelical Jesus talk like "one of us." He's published by reputable evangelical publishers like "one of us." He calls himself evangelical, like "one of us." He upholds the Lordship of Jesus in old fashioned ways, like "one of us." If he were just a "flaky" "liberal" pastor, they could dismiss him and be done with it. And it's no coincidence that many conservatives with the hardest cores have tried to stick the anathema of "liberalism" on him in disingenuous ways, because if he were simply a "liberal" they would have just cause to turn down his application to the club without even considering it.

But he's evangelical. And because Evangelicalism is such a loosely defined tribe, a tribe where inclusion is based on whether or or not your "version" of the Gospel is like mine, or you "feel" like me when you talk about the Bible, or you "sound" like me when you pray, or sing, or wax theological, a tribe where membership is more often based on our self-identification as evangelical and, for all our talk about Sola Scriptura, authority is more often based on worldly measures of popularity (who has the biggest church, the best-selling book, the most popular broadcast, the most endorsements from other self-appointed leaders of the movement)... because evangelicalism has no Magisterium other than blog stats and book sales... because we suffer this crisis of ecclesiology, self-appointed Gospel Coalitions and self-described Christian Hedonists feel it is necessary to guard the ford, ready to execute any brother who can't pronounce Shibboleth. (And as an aside, this is why the uproar over Rick Warren's invitation to the Desiring God Conference last year was so significant-- it illustrates the same crisis in ecclesiology-- an "evangelical leader" had invited someone we weren't quite sure about to the party).

Let me try saying it this way: "Heretic" and "Orthodox" are as much ecclesiological designations as they are theological. To be orthodox is to be in keeping with the received teaching of the Church-- and to be a heretic is to be contrary to the received teaching of the Church. But the crisis is that there is no Church, as such, in Evangelicalism. There are only churches. There is no legitimate, single "body" which uniformly "receives" teaching; there are only bodies-- Zondervan and the EFC and the good folks at Christianity Today and the Gospel Coalition and the Billy Graham Association and Big Idea (until Hollywood bought them) and Vineyard (well, we'll sing their songs but we're not so sure about their methods) and so on.

In an ecclesiologically fragmented universe like this, anyone who doesn't agree with me is a heretic and anyone who does is orthodox, and it's not just my right, it's my duty to personally defend my "truth" against your "error"; and since we'll never get to sit together at the next Ecumenical Synod, the easiest way to do so is to lash out (in ways that are by turns pompous, stingy, dismissive and silly).

I haven't read Love Wins, and probably won't; I have read Stan Grenz's Beyond Foundationalism, which is perhaps a more helpful book anyways, in that it helps us to understand the interplay between the community, theology, Scripture, tradition, Church and truth that's at work here. But thinking about all this, and looking for something to say about it that 606,000 posts haven't yet touched on, I want to ask: what if, instead of 606,000 passionate posts about the controversy over Love Wins, we devoted that much web-space to equally passionate discussions about the crisis in Evangelical ecclesiology that the Love Wins controversy has simply brought to light?

Perhaps then the energy spent on self-righteously denouncing a "suspected heretic" (who, as far as I can tell, is no heretic at all) might be spent instead on making Ephesians 4:1-6 our reality as evangelicals.

A Parable for a Wedding Homily

2011-04-10T06:32:00.000-06:00

I had the honour of officiating at my first ever wedding on Saturday. There's much I might say about the day, but for now I thought I'd share a short excerpt from the introduction of my wedding homily.

I heard a story once about a Rabbi whose student came to see him after an absence of many months. The young Talmid had been looking to marry, so the Rabbi asked him: “And have you found your wife yet, my son?”

“No, Rav,” said the Talmid. “I met a woman who is quite lovely. When she smiles she lights up the room; and when she laughs it is like the brook in a spring meadow.”

“And will you not marry her?” asked the Rabbi. “I think not,” came the reply. “I am, after all, looking for the perfect woman.”

The Talmid went away for many years. When he visited his Rabbi again, he moved a bit slower, and the world had etched lines around his eyes. “And have you found your wife yet, my son?” the Rabbi asked.

“No, Rav,” said the Talmid. “I have met a woman who is quite noble. When she speaks her words are pearls of wisdom and when she works her hands are full of grace.” “And will you not marry her?”

“I think not,” came the reply. “I am, after all, looking for the perfect woman.”

Well, the Talmid was gone for many years and when he visited his Rabbi again, he moved slower still, and the world had dusted him with grey. “And have you found your wife yet, my son?” the Rabbi asked.

“Oh, Rav. I met the perfect woman. When she smiled it lit up the room, and when she spoke her words were wisdom, and when sat and did nothing, even then my heart was content. She was the perfect woman, indeed.”

“And did you not marry her?” Asked the Rabbi.

“No, Rav,” came the reply: “She was looking for the perfect man.”

Battling Blogger's Block

2011-04-09T20:33:00.019-06:00

When I started terra incognita two years ago, I never expected that 275 posts later I'd have run out of things to say. For the last three weeks, however, I've been lugging around a blogger's block the size of the Rock of Sisyphus. Every idea that comes to me seems over-done or hardly worth the effort, and that plain old green header kept staring me down every time I sat in front of the screen. Enough hits come up when I google "blogger's block" to suspect this is a common malady, and will run its course in due time.

All of that to explain the aesthetic overhaul here at terra incognita: out with the old, plain-Jane green header and white-washed colours, in with a whole new theme. This was partly an effort to inject some new life into my blog; but more to the point it was a blatant exercise in procrastination (my hope was that the blogger's block was ice, and by stalling a bit it would simply melt on its own). My first effort at re-design included a theme called "Dark Ritual," but my son, after asking cautiously if I wanted his "honest opinion," told me that when he saw it he felt like he was sitting down to read the "morbid thoughts" of a "teenaged-girl Twilight Series fan" (as though there were other kinds of Twilight fans). I squinted my eyes and tilted my head and realized he was right. This is effort two.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy. More to the point, I hope it serves its purpose and inspires some new blogging enthusiasm. Nothing like moving the furniture around to get a new lease on the place.

Hypocrisy and the Modular Mind

2011-04-05T14:49:00.030-06:00

So today's episode of CBC's The Current provided more than its fair share of blog-fodder for an explorer of spiritual terra incognita like myself. First was Neil Morrison's fascinating report about social scientist Alex Todorov, who has conducted indepth studies of our subconscious reactions to the human face. He found that when he showed children photos of political candidates and asked them to choose, based solely on facial appearance, which person would "make a better captain" for an ocean voyage game they were playing, their immediate gut reactions were able to predict actual election outcomes with more than 70% accuracy. This was fascinating enough, but then he reproduced his results with a group of PhD-credentialed psychologists, who should have known better than to let such prejudices get the better of them. His conclusion: our immediate, gut-level reaction to the faces of candidates plays a substantial (even deterministic) role in shaping how we will vote.

And while I was mulling over the theological significance the Scriptures place on the human face, and how the Pharisees, for instance, commended Jesus precisely because he refused to "look into the face" of men, and what light this might shed on Alex Todorov's study, The Current went on to talk about the controversy surrounding circumcision. They interviewed a lady who's heading a movement in the States to have neo-natal circumcisions banned, despite recent studies which suggest that circumcision significantly reduces the risk of HIV and other STD's (the lady from NO-CIRC they interviewed bandied about words like "child mutilation," "torture," and "excruciating, unnecessary pain"). And I couldn't help but ponder the theological significance the Scriptures place on circumcision as the mark of the Abrahamic covenant.

Anyways, for a blogger curious about intersections between culture and faith, The Current's fruit was indeed low-hanging and tantalizing today.

But then they went on with this segment about hypocrisy. If you have the 25 minutes to spare, give it a listen; if not, let me give you the Coles notes. Robert Cursban argues that it is decidedly hypocritical of us to denounce our politicians as "hypocritical," inasmuch as hypocrisy is built into the very architecture of our brains. He shared some neuroscience which suggests that the neurological systems which govern our behaviour and the systems which govern ethical decision making are distinctly isolated from one another, and there is nothing in us that naturally keeps these systems functioning in consistent ways. He describes this "natural inconsistency in our neuro-physiology" as having a "modular mind" (i.e. a mind in which behaviour and ethics are neurologically compartmentalized). And he says that biologically speaking, we all have modular minds.

Hearing Robert Cursban talk about the "modular mind," and that missing "something" which keeps our neurological systems functioning consistently-- the predisposition to hypocrisy that seems coded into our very DNA--I couldn't help but think of Jesus. And Matthew 7:1-6. And the vitriol he reserved for only the most hypocritical of his religious contemporaries. And I couldn't help but wonder if the wholeness that Jesus invites his followers to experience is profoundly more than any mere metaphorical wholeness. Perhaps it is a breaking down, in a very real sense, the natural walls of our modular mind.

The Wisdom of Qohelet (VI)

2011-04-04T06:49:00.007-06:00

Here is sermon 6 in our series on the Book Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 4:7-12. Life Together

The Wisdom of Qohelet (V)

2011-03-28T07:11:00.006-06:00

Here's my fifth sermon in our series on the Book of Ecclesisastes.

Ecclesiastes 4:1-3. Tears

A Few Random Dispatches from the Movies

2011-03-16T14:08:00.014-06:00

Not sure if it's because we're trapped in the late-winter doldrums, or what, but the last few weeks at the Harris household we've been watching more movies than usual; and this may be a result of the late-winter doldrums, too, but today I can think of nothing more profound for blog-fodder than to share some of my random impressions of what we've been watching.

Iron Man. This was better than many of the films I've seen in the super-hero genre, and the story of Tony Stark's redemption is not entirely without merit (even if it is a redemption-by-works-not-grace), but the idea that he created an arc-reactor-powered-battle suit out of spare parts while holed up in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan was such a big pill to swallow at the outset that my sympathy for the film was greatly diminished going forward. I'm as willing to suspend my disbelief as the next guy (usually more), but even science fiction has to set the terms of believability somewhere. But then again, lots of things blow up.

The Simpsons Movie. I stopped watching The Simpsons somewhere around Season 11, so maybe this film was just the final throes of a gradual decline that I've not been privy to, but I have to say I was pretty disappointed with this movie. I felt like all their best jokes had been told by the 25 minute mark, all their best characters were reduced to cameos and catch-phrases, and their best satire amounted to little more than obvious cheap shots at easy targets. Probably one of the biggest challenges in producing a film based on a long-running television franchise is to tell a real story that stands on its own merits while staying faithful to the series; this film, I think, did neither.

The Social Network. "Film of the Year" (Rolling Stone) seems a bit grandiose to me, but I really enjoyed this one, nonetheless. With the exception of the final exchange between Zuckerberg and the Junior Lawyer for the Defense, I appreciated how carefully they handled the (fictional) Zuckerberg as a dynamic and complex character. The lawyer's line in that final scene, "You're not an a**h*le, you're just trying too hard to be one" seemed a bit too preachy and transparent to me, as though the film didn't trust the audience to draw its own conclusions about Zuckerberg but had to force-feed us a verdict. Oh yeah, and as characters, the Winklevoss twins were almost embarrassingly flat and cliched.

The King's Speech. This was an inspiring and enjoyable movie, and Bertie was one of the most genuinely sympathetic characters I've seen in a long time: he's dynamic and complex and well-portrayed. The cinematography took creative risks that worked, and the way the film conveys the ominous uncertainty that must have overshadowed this period of history is effective. That said, it lost me (though not irredeemably) at two points: 1) Timothy Spall's Churchill seemed like he'd just stumbled out of a Monty Python sketch, or off the set of SNL (if SNL ever parodied historical British politicians, that is); 2) Bertie's "I have a voice!" assertion when Logue taunts him by sitting on St Edward's Chair seemed almost laughably contrived and transparent. This scene almost sank the movie for me. As with my critique of The Social Network above, it left me wondering: when did film-makers get the impression that audiences were so stupid that they had to club us over the head with the theme of their film at least once before the movie is done?

Sisters in Christ

2011-03-08T08:23:00.017-07:00

I feel like I'm always the last to find out about these things, but today they announced on the radio that it's International Women's Day-- a day set aside to recognize and celebrate "the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future."

Of course, you sometimes hear the claim that the Christian Faith is one of the main reasons we need things like an "International Women's Day" to rectify years of marginalization in the first place; but my experience and general impression is that people who make this claim have actually given Christianity at best a cursive and cliched reading. Not everything the Church has always said and done when it comes to gender equality has always been above reproach, to be sure, but it's not for nothing that the (highly macho) ancient world dismissed early Christianity derisively as a religion of "women and slaves."

Be that as it may, for my part on this International Women's Day and all, I began compiling a list of sisters in Christ through whom God has left a significant Kingdom-mark on the world, women whose contributions theological, pastoral, literary or missiological have spiritually enriched the heavenly coffers of the people of God, so to speak. This list morphed into the short quiz below.

Each of the following quotes are by (or in the case of those marked with an asterisk, about) a well-known woman of the Faith, past or present. How many of these Sisters in Christ can you identify correctly?

Who said (or in the case of 5 and 6, about whom was it said):

1. ...the soul is now wounded with love for its Spouse and strives for more opportunities to be alone and, in conformity with this state, to rid itself of everything that can be an obstacle to this solitude.

2. Oh, what a happy child I am, although I cannot see! I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be!

3. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos. The bush, the burning bush, is in kairos, not any burning bush, but the particular burning bush before which Moses removed his shoes; the bush I pass by on my way to the brook. In kairos that part of us which is not consumed in the burning is wholly awake.

4. I am not a man nor a minister, yet as a mother and a mistress I felt I ought to do more than I had yet done. I resolved to begin with my own children; in which I observe the following method: I take such a proportion of time as I can spare every night to discourse with each child apart. On Monday I talk with Molly, on Tuesday with Hetty, Wednesday with Nancy, Thursday with Jacky, Friday with Patty, Saturday with Charles.

5. O how great is the devotion of this woman that she should be counted worthy of the appellation of apostle. *

6. For thy hands, O my God, in the hidden design of thy providence did not desert my soul; and out of the blood of my mother's heart, through the tears that she poured out by day and by night, there was a sacrifice offered to thee for me, and by marvelous ways thou didst deal with me. *

7. A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.

8. The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.

9. So I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

10. People say to me. ‘What about the rich?’ They need Jesus too.’ Well, that’s fine if you’re called to them, but we’re called to the poor. The rich can look after themselves.

On Sentences and Theolo-tweets

2011-03-04T01:00:00.005-07:00

If you're here today because you're like me and you're curious about the relationship between words and spirituality, do yourself a favor and listen to this. It's an interview Anna Maria Termonti had on CBC's The Current with acclaimed literary critic Stanley Fish, about the place and power of the sentence in our lives. He has some thought-provokingly insightful things to say about the power of a well-crafted sentence, and he says them articulately and eloquently. If nothing more, it will inspire you to try your hand at writing
a scintillating sentence.

If you don't have the 25 minutes to treat yourself today, let me offer you this sample of his musings, by way of tantalization:

"A sentence is an admission by each of us who writes a sentence, or reads one, that we are not where we want to be; that is: a sentence is a statement which indicates distance, both from the people we're talking to, and the objects we're hoping to commune about. And in a theological vision of unity with God, everyone is united, speech is not necessary, meaning is full, and sentences need not be produced. [In other words], sentences, and the need to write them, are signs of our mortality."

Later he will talk incisively about modern technologies like Twitter, and the limitations they place on our ability and willingness to express ourselves in sentences longer than 140 characters. He won't say what you might expect a literary critic to say (that Twitter has somehow irreparably "undermined" the sentence). But he will say this: "If your entire imperative or sense of obligation in relation to sentences can be summed up by words like brevity and concision, you've cut yourself off not only from the pleasures of reading other kinds of sentences, but from the pleasure of trying to produce them." (And he'll say that off the top of his head, too.)

But this brings me to the reason I haven't been able yet to shake this interview.

It's because recently, a rather well known, if controversial Evangelical Pastor from Michigan announced that he's got a new book coming out about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who ever Lived. And he made his announcement by means of a brief 3 minute promotional video that did little more than ask rhetorical questions about the traditional Christian position on our prospects in the hereafter. And true to his controversial reputation, he implied that some sacred cows may be on their way to a theological burger-joint near you; or, put less metaphorically: that he was about to give the traditional doctrine of Hell some sceptical scrutiny.

The book's slated for release March 29th.

Before the book hit the shelves, however, another well-known, if vociferously straight-laced Evangelical Pastor from Minnesota saw a brief blog post which denounced the book (and its author), unread, as "universalist" (i.e. not "believing in" Hell). This third-hand, hear-say evidence prompted the pastor from Minnesota to tweet this cursive dismissal of the pastor in question: Farewell, Rob Bell.

Rob Bell trended, briefly. The barometer of the Evangelical blog-o-sphere plunged, briefly. Bell's publishers moved the release date for the book up to March 15th. And I think I heard laughing on the way to the bank.

But here's where Stanley Fish comes in, because I'm wondering today what light he might shed on this sordid business, with all his philosophical musings about the power of carefully crafted sentences to enrich our worlds and deepen our lives and humble us with a sense of our own limitation. Because a humble, deep, and generous contribution to theological discourse "Farewell Rob Bell " is not.

To be fair, the aforementioned pastor from Minnesota has tackled pastors that he's disagreed with in book-length dissertations, too (he's sort of the Michael Strahan of the Evangelical world when it comes to tackling pastors he disagrees with). But this 4-word dismissal of a man, an (unread) book, a theological issue and all those who are willing to engage it made me feel especially sad. After all: has Twitter really reduced theology to this? Is our dialogue about God and his plan for his creation worth no more effort and grace than we might exert in vetting the Oscars?

To paraphrase Fish quite liberally: "If your entire imperative in relation to theological issues can be summed up by words like brevity and concision, you've cut yourself off from more than just the pleasure of reading a well-crafted sentence." You've cut yourself off, perhaps, from the pleasure of really truthing one another in love.

Seven Words to the Wise

2011-03-01T16:21:00.022-07:00

As I mentioned before, I've been working through the Book of Ecclesiastes for about a month now, and finding it challenging, inspiring and poignant. At one point I said to my wife: I feel like I'm being converted, all over again. My tongue was in my cheek, of course, but what I meant was: when I read Ecclesiastes, I discover this way of being in the world that is very wise, but in many ways very different from how I've learned to be Christian over the years.

Here are some of the lessons The Teacher's been coaching me on so far:

1. Don't flatter yourself: ennui over the fact that there's nothing new under the sun is itself nothing new under the sun.

2. All we are and all we do is "under the sun": contrary to appearances, human potential-- even human wisdom--is not limitless, nor was it meant to be.

3. To accept the existential absurdities of life is a source of great wisdom: Everything is "hebel" ("vapor," KJV's vanity, NIV's meaningless) not because it's worthless, but because it refuses to line up with our human intuition of rational cause and effect; don't rage against this, but accept the Creator's prerogative.

4. Work is only good because it's not ultimate: accepting the limitations the Creator has placed on the outcomes of our work (and our ministries) sets us free to enjoy our work for what it is.

5. Savor simplicity: luxury itself is "hebel".

6. Stay in the Now: "There is a time for everything," and right now is the time for what's happening right now.

7. Hold your tongue: "The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools." Full stop.

The Wisdom of Qohelet (IV)

2011-02-27T15:15:00.009-07:00

Working on the book of Ecclesiastes for the last six weeks or so, it's struck me over and over again how poignantly, vividly and compellingly this 3000 year old book speaks to our world: living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

Here's the fourth sermon in our series:

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14. The Time(s) of Your Life

Prayer for the Offering (8)

2011-02-22T11:17:00.008-07:00

I haven't posted any prayers for the offering for a few months now, but I know that people check in once in a while on these, and find them helpful, so I thought I'd add some to the archive today. Lately at the FreeWay we've been working through the Book of Ecclesiastes, so many of our offeratory prayers have been written in response to the incisive and rather pointed things The Teacher has had to say about money in this very wise book.

God, the ancient Teacher you inspired once
looked at the way things are with people and money,
and he said: “All our toil in life is for the sake of our mouths,
and yet our appetites are never satisfied.”

And we know Lord, that you meant:
If you’re trying to satisfy your longing for life with things like money, stuff, property wealth— you’re sure to come up empty.

God, we want our lives, as your people, to be about so much more than that— we want our lives to count for you. So can you set us free, today from working just for the sake of our own mouths—our appetites—desires—wants— and set us instead on the path of working for you in the world.

Make us your servants today, Lord, because we know you’re the only task-master worth serving.

And then, God, can you make this offering here just one small sign of that life-altering work your doing here in our midst. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

***
God, you give us all work to do:

From the jobsite to the household
From the classroom to the boardroom
At the office desk, the computer terminal, the workbench,
the countertop, the restaurant, the home, the shop—
Where ever it was that we earned the money
we’re about to give today,
you were with us there.

Even the Adam in perfect paradise had work to do—
he was made to till the ground and take care of it.
And so we acknowledge, God that you’ve given us all our work
And you give us daily, the heart, strength, skill and wisdom to do it.

Thank you for these gifts to us.

As we rest from work today, may this offering of money
Be our way of admitting that all we have and all we do
Is really a gift from you.

And with this offering, God , please receive our prayer
For the wisdom, grace, mercy and faith
To be instruments of your peace
in whatever job you’ve given us to do.

We’re going to need this if we’re going to be
fully-devoted followers of Jesus in this world,
Because it’s in his name and for his sake we pray,
Amen.

***

Father in heaven,

Thousands of years ago, one of the wise teachers you inspired looked at the global economy—though it wasn’t called that then—but he looked at it and called the whole project “a chasing after the wind.”

He said things like, “whoever loves money never has money enough and whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.” He said things like, “The sleep of a poor labourer is sweet, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.” He said things like, “I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth is hoarded, to the harm of its owner, or lost through some misfortune.”

“This, too, is vanity.”

God, thousands of years later we still stand under those all-wise words. And if we’ve been losing sleep over our money, or hoarding money to our own harm, or never satisfied with our income, Lord, I invite your gracious, loving Spirit to convict us of that vanity today.

Set us free from chasing after the wind, and set us, instead, to chasing after the Way of Jesus. With all our heart, soul, mind and strength may we live as his servant-followers and sibling-friends.

It’s in his name and for his sake we pray, amen.

The Wisdom of Qohelet (III)

2011-02-20T17:45:00.009-07:00

Contrary to appearances, I have not fallen into a space time vortex, or been abducted by aliens, or called out on assignment with the British Secret Service. My recent slackness in blogging is due to a much more mundane cause: a sinus infection has been having its way with me, leaving me with little energy for the simple pleasures of life, like musing about love, faith, words and spirituality. I intend to be back at my posting post in the coming days, but in the mean time, let me offer here Sunday's sermon, the third installment in my series on the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 2:17-26: Running in the Rat Race

The Wisdom of Qohelet (II)

2011-02-06T13:01:00.006-07:00

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11: The Pursuit of Happiness?

every day (a poem)

2011-02-03T08:57:00.006-07:00

and is this my work to love:
that every day I hear the call
to make of the ineffable
the everyday,
and speak the everyday, ineffable,
and every day to fall, and move,
and lift my eyes to the silent blue
above
and get to laugh for trying?

The Wisdom of Qohelet (I)

2011-01-30T15:11:00.012-07:00

We started a series this week at the FreeWay on the Book of Ecclesiastes. So far it's turned out to be a far richer and more challenging study than I expected. I plan to post some more thoughts on this book in the next few weeks, but for now I hope this first installment of my preaching series brings you encouragement and edification today.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11: What's New?

Dancing with the (Saskatchewan) Wind

2011-01-22T01:00:00.010-07:00

I'll be orbiting the outer reaches of the blog-o-sphere for the next little while, with light posting ahead, as I'm leaving this afternoon for a trip to that most enviable of vacation hotspots-- Saskatchewan in January! My wife is taking a course at Briercrest Seminary (Pauline Epistles) and I get to tag along. Nothing says "Pastor's vacation" like a week at a biblical seminary in the middle of the prairies in the depths of winter, with nothing to do but hang out in the library, visit with bible-scholar types, maybe eaves-drop on a lecture about Paul or two, and generally spiritually de-compress. I wish I could bring you all along.

I'll be back in a week or so, but in the meantime, I thought I'd post this song, in honour of my trip. I wrote it a number of years ago for my daughters, when I was still living in Saskatchewan and wondering what God's future held for us. It's about growing up, and growing up, especially, on the prairies. Enjoy.

Dancing with the Wind

On the Temptation of Christ (V)

2011-01-22T01:00:00.009-07:00

Okay: I know I said I was done with Matthew 4:1-11 last time, but I also remembered this excerpt from a paper I wrote a while ago that discusses Jesus' temptation in terms of his role as the one who fulfills Israel's covenant story. I post it here with full apologies for its technical density, in hopes that it might shed inspire further meditation on this multi-layered text.

Though each of the Evangelists deals in their own way with Jesus’ identity as the “true Israel” in whom God fulfills the covenant, a close reading of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism makes it especially clear. We note first the significant contribution Matthew makes to the baptism tradition by describing Jesus’ insistence that John must baptize him in order “to fulfill” (πληρῶσαι) all righteousness (Matt 3:15). Of course Matthew uses the theme of “fulfillment” elsewhere to indicate the fulfillment of Israel’s covenant history in Jesus’ own story: the flight to Egypt “fulfills” Hosea’s vision of the Exodus wherein Israel is the beloved and called out son of Yahweh (Matt 2:15 ἵνα πληρωθῇ; cf. Hos 11:1); the massacre of the innocents “fulfills” Jeremiah’s vision of Rachel, the archetypal mother of Israel, weeping over her exiled children and receiving the promise that they will return from the land of the enemy (Matt 2:17 τότε ἐπληρώθη, cf. Jer 31:15-16), and so on (cf. also 2:23, 4:14, 8:17, 21:4, etc.).

In the theophanic revelation of Jesus as the Son of God after his baptism (Matt 3:16-17) we see specifically how “all righteousness,” and with it Israel’s vocation as God’s covenant people, is indeed being fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Though it is difficult to align Matthew 3:16-17 with a precise OT passage, it is likely that texts like Psalm 2:7 (cf. Act 13:33, Heb 1:5) and especially—given the Isaianic context of John’s ministry—Isaiah 42:1 form the OT context for God’s declaration that Jesus is his “beloved Son”. And when we turn to Isaiah 42:1 with Jesus’ baptism in mind, we see Yahweh choosing his servant, declaring his delight in him, and putting his Spirit upon him, in a passage that finds striking parallels to the theophany of Matt 3:16-17. Notably, Matthew will specifically apply Isaiah 42:1 to Jesus later as a sign of his Messianic identity (12:17-18, no par.), but will render בְּחִירִי (“my elect/chosen one”) as ὁ αγαπητός μου (“my beloved”). This translation is the more intriguing when we consider that the LXX translatesבְּחִירִי in 42:1 with ὁ ἐκλεκτός μου (“my elect”), which suggests that Matthew is working with an independent tradition, one that understands the “chosen one” of Isaiah 42:1 and the “beloved Son” revealed at Jesus’ baptism to be one and the same. Though a full discussion of the Christological issues at play here is beyond the scope of this study, we must also pause to consider how the “servant” who is introduced in Isaiah 42:1 is envisioned throughout Second Isaiah as a personification of the nation of Israel (cf. Isa 44:21, 45:4, 49:3, etc.). That Isaiah 42:1 was indeed understood in Jesus’ day as a picture of Israel personified is reinforced when we consider how the LXX translates this reference to עַבְדִּי (“my servant”) as Ιακωβ ὁ παῖς μου (“Jacob my servant/ child”) and Ισραηλ ὁ ἑκλεκτός μου (“Israel my chosen one”).

All of this suggests that when Jesus emerges from the Jordan river, still dripping with that baptism administered by the eschatological “second Elijah” as a sign of the reconstitution of Israel, and the Holy Spirit descends on him, revealing him as the true Son of God in whom the Father delights, his Sonship involves a calling as the “true Israel” who will take up into himself the story and fulfill the vocation of God’s covenant people. Thus, just as the nation of Israel—the son whom Yahweh called out of Egypt (Hos 11:1)—emerged from the waters of the Red Sea as a “new-created people” (cf. Ex 15:17 עַם־זוּ קָנִיתָ), only to be led by the Spirit of God through forty years of testing in the desert, so Jesus emerges from the waters of the Jordan, revealed as the true Son of God, only to be led by the Spirit to be tested in the desert for forty days (Matt 4:1). As suggested by the references to Deuteronomy which Jesus uses to resist the Devil, Jesus’ testing in the wilderness is intricately related to his role in fulfilling the story of Israel: though Israel grumbled for bread in the desert (Deut 8:2-3), Jesus will be satisfied with every word that comes of the mouth of God (Matt 4:4); though the people tested God’s faithfulness at the waters of Massah (Deut 6:16), Jesus will not put the Lord his God to the test (Matt 4:6); and though the people fell into idolatry (Deut 6:12-13), Jesus will bow and worship the Lord alone (Matt 4:10).

On the Temptation of Christ (IV)

2011-01-21T01:00:00.003-07:00

I said that my last post on this passage would be just that, but I don't suppose a series of reflections on Matthew 4:1-11 would be complete without at least passing reference to N. T. Wright's historical/psychological reading of the Temptation of Christ. From his incisive and monumental book on the historical Jesus, Jesus and the Victory of God, I offer these tantalizing thoughts, with the hope that they will lure you into reading his whole treatment of this episode in the life of Jesus:

"The struggle is precisely about the nature of Jesus’ vocation and ministry. The pull of hunger, the lure of cheap and quick ‘success’, the desire to change the vocation to be the light of the world into the vocation to bring all nations under his powerful rule by other means—all of these would easily combine into the temptation to doubt the nature of the vocation of which he had been sure at the time of John’s baptism. If you are the Son of God...

"There are many different styles of career, ministry, and agenda that Jesus might have adopted. Messiahs came in many shapes and sizes. It was by no means clear from anything in the culture of the time exactly how someone who believed himself to be the eschatological prophet, let alone YHWH’s anointed, ought to behave, what his programme should be, or how he should set about implementing it. Finding the way forward was bound to be a battle, involving all the uncertainty and doubt inherent in going out to unknown territory assumed to be under enemy occupation.

"When, therefore, we ask how Jesus conceived of the battle which he claimed to have fought as an initially decisive one [here Wright is referring to Jesus’ cryptic saying about binding up the strong man], the evangelists offer us a suggestion which we cannot lightly dismiss. That the battle had been successful from Jesus’ point of view is witnessed by the fact that he had not adopted any of the “messianic” styles offered to him by his culture. We cannot doubt that Jesus was tempted to share, and act in accordance with, the mindset of most Jews of his day. He cannot have been indifferent to the plight of his fellow Jews, as they were systematically crushed, economically, politically and militarily by Rome. The temptation to be the sort of Messiah that many wanted must have been real and strong. But it was, from the point of view of his mindset, precisely a temptation. He had faced it, and defeated it in principle, and had thereby confirmed the direction for the mission he should undertake." (Jesus and the Victory of God, 458)

On the Temptation of Christ (III)

2011-01-19T06:02:00.019-07:00

A final thought on the Temptation of Christ that's still humming in my head: I can't help but notice that later, in Matthew 16:23, Jesus will say the very same thing to Peter that he says here, as he resists the Satan's temptation: "Depart from me Satan!" (the same Greek verb hupago is used in both places). Now, I'm not the only one to notice the uncanny parallels between 4:10 and 16:23. Though most manuscripts record Jesus' words in 4:10 as a simple "Depart from me, Satan," at least some ancient manuscripts (C, D and L especially, for all you textual criticism buffs out there), have him saying exactly word-for-word what he'll say to Peter later on: "Get thee behind me, Satan" (lit. hupage opiso mou Satana).

What's going on here?

A re-cap may help. In Matthew 16:23, Jesus has just told his newly-named "Rock" that it is necessary for God's true Christ to suffer shame and die disgracefully; to which Peter has just expressed his worldly incredulity: "Lord have mercy! May it never be!" And it's in that moment, it seems, that Peter has become a stumbling block to him, a "scandalizer" who is thinking not after the way of God, but after the way of the world (16:23). And when I line up 16:23 with 4:10 (the way some ancient scribes, it seems, wanted to), it all becomes clear: in insisting that Jesus be a Messiah after the way of the world, and asking him to forsake the path to Golgatha, Peter is holding out to Jesus the very same temptation he faced on that extremely high mountain, when the satan offered him every messianic glory the world had to offer, if he would only bow to the devil's means and seize it. In insisting Jesus live up to his own worldly measure of "Messiah", Peter, however unwittingly, has become a temptation to Jesus all over again.

And here's where the questions rush at me. Do we tempt Christ, ourselves, like this, whenever we come to him demanding he fit whatever worldly measures of "the Christ" we've set up for ourselves? Do we put God to the test (in a way that Jesus himself refused to do, standing that day on the wing of the Temple), whenever we weigh his Christ against our personal criteria for what makes a Lord-and-Saviour a Lord-and-Saviour? Do we stop our own ears to his invitation to follow him in a life of self-denial and cross-bearing (16:24), because no Messiah in the world would ever suggest that a "life of self-denial" was the "life lived to the full." And in those moments, when we do, are we actually standing like Peter was, on the side of the tempter in Matthew 4:10?

In the wake these questions I'm left wondering if the greatest temptation in the Christian life might be our temptation to tempt Christ, by insisting that he be the kind of Messiah we think we want (a rocks-to-bread, never have to suffer, way-of-the world Messiah), rather than the Messiah God has revealed him to be: the Messiah of the cross.

On the Temptation of Christ (II)

2011-01-18T08:35:00.012-07:00

Still mulling over Matthew 4:1-11. There is so much more to say about this inexhaustibly rich text than could ever fit into a 25 minute sermon. These thoughts didn't make it directly into my sermon on Sunday, but working on it last week, I had Henri Nouwen's reflections on our Lord's temptation echoing in my head and heart the whole time.

These come from a talk he gave on Christian leadership for the Center for Human Development back in 1989. He draws a link between Christ's temptation in the desert and our temptation, as Christian leaders, to be "relevant." The first time I read them they shone light on my own struggles in ministry with all poignancy, wisdom and grace. Still meditating on Christ's temptation today, I offer them here; may they minister to you today wherever you're at:

Jesus' first temptation was to be relevant: to turn stones into bread. Oh, how often have I wished I could do that! Walking through the "young towns" on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, where children die of malnutrition and contaminated water, I would not have been able to reject the magical gift of making the dusty stone-covered streets into places where people could pick up any of the thousands of rocks and discover that they were croissants, coffee cakes, or fresh-baked buns, and where they could fill their cupped hands with stale water from the cisterns and joyfully realize that what they were drinking was delicious milk. Aren't we priests and ministers called to help people, to feed the hungry, to save those who are starving? Are we not called to do something that makes people realize that what we do makes a difference in their lives? Aren't we called to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and alleviate the suffering poor? Jesus was faced with these same questions, but when he was asked to prove his power as the Son of God by the relevant behavior of changing stones into bread, he clung to his mission to proclaim the Word, and said, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4).

On the Temptation of Christ (I)

2011-01-16T17:09:00.007-07:00

Matthew 4:1-11: The Test

Top Lyrics of 2010

2011-01-11T01:03:00.002-07:00

The problem is that these kinds of lists are entirely subjective, and if I tried to explain why the following song lyrics hit me the way they did this year, I'd only betray them; so I offer them here with the simple explanation that each of the following lines hit me somehow or somewhere this year, on the heights or in the depths of ministry, and brought me out of the mire or back down to earth, as the case may be.

"I remember the day when you said you weren't afraid to die / I don't think you're brave for it / I just think you're more afraid of being alive" John Mark McMillan, The Medicine

"When I was all messed up and I heard opera in my head / your love was like a light bulb hanging over my bed" U2, Ultraviolet

"I'm so far from what I want to be / Oh I really am my own worst enemy / Please don't let me get the better of me / Take this earthly thing and make in finally / something heavenly" Downhere, Something Heavenly

"There's a man down here / somewhere in-between the Saturday cartoons and the dirty magazines / He's raising the dead in the graveyards / where we've laid down our dreams / and his name is hope" John Mark McMillan, Between the Cracks

"In an inter-stellar burst, I'm back to save the universe" Radiohead, Airbag

"The majestic voice of God I hear / saying this is the way. / Turn around and walk here / And walk here." Liana Klassen, The Way

"One day, I am gonna grow wings / a chemical reaction / hysterical and useless / hysterical and / let down and hanging around" Radiohead, Let Down

"You came to take us / all things go, all things go / to recreate us / all things grow, all things grow" Sufjan Stevens, Chicago (thank you to Jon Coutts for this one: it has become a bit of a family anthem for us).

The 2010 terra incognita Literary Awards

2011-01-09T01:00:00.001-07:00

For the last two years at terra incognita, I've taken a moment in January to list the top ten reads of the previous year. As I worked on my list for 2010, I found my selections more eclectic than usual, so I thought I'd put a slightly different spin on things. Rather than a generic "Top Ten," I offer here the 2010 terra incognita literary awards (drum-roll, please):

1. Most annoying read: Shopping for God, James B. Twitchell.

A self-described "apatheist," James Twitchell offers a secular market analysis of American Christianity that examines it strictly as a phenomenon of Western capitalism. His thesis: in the saturated market of American Christendom, those denominations that best "market" their "product" will thrive, while those that have lost touch with the market will soon be going into receivership. I call it annoying because, even though he confused evangelism with advertising in a way that made me want to scream "you just don't get it!" at the same time he kept putting his finger on things wrong in the church with a clarity and wit that kept shutting me up.

2. Most traumatic read: Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges argues that North American culture is on the brink of moral, political and economic collapse, and that in the triumph of spectacle over literacy that we see in every venue of social discourse-- politics, business, entertainment, news media, higher education (nothing escapes his levelled critique)-- we are actually witnessing the final throes of a debauched culture, medicating itself with fantasy and illusion in the face of its own demise. He then offers an unflinching, if graphic description of the culture's worst debauches to prove his point. Please note: I do not recommend this book to the faint of spirit. I was quite literally shaken for a week after reading it.

3. Most bombastic read: Shake-Down, Ezra Levant.

Ezra Levant writes with the tenacity of a bulldog, the alacrity an injury lawyer and the tact of a town-crier. Shake-Down is the chronicle of his legal contest with the Canadian Human Rights Commission after a Calgary Imam charged him with hate-speech for re-printing the notorious Danish political cartoons about Mohamed back in 2005; it is also his scalding critique of the HRC and the poorly-checked legal clout that it wields; it is also his call for a drastic over-haul (if not complete disbanding) of the HRC as an unnecessary and unCanadian institution.

4. Most disappointing read: Hey Nostradamus, Douglas Coupland.

I started reading this multi-layered story about some survivors of a school shooting when I was a sub back in the Moose Jaw days, because the remedial English class I was teaching was studying it. The gig ended before we finished the novel, and I never got to hear how Jason's bizarre story finished. So when I saw it in the library this summer, I thought I'd give it a re-try. Those first fifty pages in Moose Jaw, it turns out, were the best of the book. Especially disappointing was his depiction of the religious nut, Reg. Not that I have a problem with caricatures of religious nuts in literature, but Coupland writes about religious fanaticism like someone who has no clue what religious fanaticism really looks or sounds like, and thinks he can just drop lame lines like "all I ever wanted for you was the kingdom" (fanatic Reg to his estranged son), wink knowingly at the audience, and we'll just let our anti-religion prejudice do the work of characterization for him.

5. Most rewarding re-read: A Wizard of Earthsea,Ursual Le Guin

The beauty of A Wizard of Earthsea wasn't entirely lost on me when I read it back in Grade 7, but re-reading this gem 24 years later, I was caught off guard with its depth, lyricism and wisdom. Earthsea is as compelling a world as Middle-Earth and more vivid than Narnia, but its Ged's journey to name his shadow that works away at you long after the book is closed. I wonder how it will be reading it again when I'm 70?

6. Most enraptured read: A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin

I've had Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War sitting unread on my bookshelf for almost 15 years; I bought it at a used book store because I'd read his Winter's Tale and loved it. This fall I finally decided it was time to justify lugging this 700+ pager with me on 5 consecutive moves, so I made the time to read it. I'm glad I did: one of the purest works of fiction I've read in a long time.

7. Most edifying read: Theology for the Community of God, Stan Grenz.

Stan Grenz has renewed my appreciation for systematic theology and has convinced me that more than any practical church-growth books or ministry manuals, what pastors most need to read is theology. He is irenic, erudite, lucid and reverent in this book, and there were times when reading his work led me into a profound experience of worship-- and he never even picked up a guitar. My wife and I are contemplating reading it together as a devotional book this year.

8. Most willing required read: The New Creation, Theodore Runyon
Required reading for a Wesleyan Theology course I took this spring as part of my ordination in the FMCiC, Runyon's study of "The Image of God" in Wesley's soteriology was inspring and challenging. (The "Most Willing" in the award title is also my indication that there were some required reads this year that I read somewhat begrudgingly).

9. Most unexpectedly interesting read: How Soccer Explains the World,Franklin Foer
Unexpectedly interesting because I am not a soccer fan-- I'm so not a soccer fan that I didn't even know I'd started reading it the same time the FIFA World Cup was about to begin in South Africa. Foer's thesis is that soccer offers us a vivid microcosm of the global economy, and he travels the world to show how beautifully soccer illustrates the ironic effect of globalism, which entrenches us in ever tightening tribes even as it homogenizes us as global consumers. By the time I was done the book, I had become fascinated enough with "the beautiful game" to watch the World Cup final with enthusiasm and appreciation.

10.Best all-round read: The Year of Living Biblically, A. J. Jacobs
I've written about this book here and here, so I won't repeat myself now, except to say that of all the good books I read about the Good Book this year, I'm glad this was one of them.

On Christmas and the Crucifixion, a reflection for Epiphany

2011-01-07T01:00:00.025-07:00

Those of you who follow the Christian calendar with even mild interest may know that yesterday was the feast day of Epiphany (and those of you who, like me, have spent a bit of your life around people of Ukrainian heritage, will know that this morning marks the start of Ukrainian Christmas).

I'll refer you to Sunday's sermon for some more extended thoughts on the spiritual significance of the Day of Epiphany, but now that the Birth and Appearance of Our Lord has been celebrated in every room of that venerable house called Christendom, I thought I'd offer this epiphany of my own for reflection, which I had a few weeks ago in the depths (and on the heights) of Christmas business.

***

I've been thinking a lot this year about the War on Christmas. Apparently a secular campaign has been raging for almost a decade now against religious traditions that Christians hold dear (like greeting one another with a decisive "Merry Christ-mas" (while wassailing, of course, with figgy puddings and jingling sleigh bells among the leaves so green)). As a way of describing the increasing secularization of the winter holiday season, conservative American media personalities like Bill O'Riley and Peter Brimelow first popularized the the term "War on Christmas" around the turn of the new millennium. I'm always the last to know. Until recently, I had been living like a Yule-tide Switzerland, blissfully neutral to the whole conflict, but the war on Christmas became a specially poignant issue to me this year, in part because it kept coming up on the blogs I was reading through Christmas (see especially here).

Tactics in the War on Christmas include: infiltration of our traditional password protocol by replacing "Merry Christmas" with the insidiously innocuous "Happy Holidays," trade embargoes on traditional carols in schools, and guerrilla attacks on creches in public places.

But these things aren't especially why "The War on Christmas" was on my mind this Holiday (read: Christmas) Season. It's a parallel issue that I've been wrestling with-- and this one seriously wrestling with-- the gross commercialization of Christmas.

I'm not sure if it was because a) I watched the (very flawed) film What Would Jesus Buy at the start of Advent this year, or if it's because b) I'm still working through some issues about what it means to be a pastor at Christmas time, or if it's because c) the commercialization of Christmas really has gotten grosser than ever... but it sure seemed like answer "c" to me this year. My wrestling has to do with this question: Do we really honour Christ's name best by associating it so closely with this frenzied celebration of stuff? Like I prayed in a prayer at church one Sunday morning: it seems almost silly for us to say: Jesus is the Reason for the Season. The one who came to give us divine simplicity, pure generosity and holy rest; is he the reason for all of this hectic buying and getting and rushing around?

I don't have easy answers to these questions, except to confess that they were heavier on my heart this year than ever before. At its heaviest, the question hit me like this: Do we crucify Christ every Christmas, when we throw ourselves a hedonistic winter bacchanalia, and then justify it by glossing it with his name?
And the moment that question hit me, I thought of the War on Christmas.

And I thought: how like the God of the Crucified Jesus would it be, if he won the War on Christmas by losing it absolutely and altogether? Because if we really did reach a time when Christ's name was no longer associated with the market economy's year end projections-- if there really did come a day when the last vestiges of its Christian trappings were stripped away from the fundamentally pagan celebration of consumption that happens every December-- if the Holiday Season really did banish the Christ from the party we once held in his honour, for good--

Well: what freedom to really celebrate the "Reason for the Season" might we discover then, stepping glorious out of the empty tomb of all our "Merry Christmases"?

Top Headlines of (my) Evangelical 2010

2011-01-05T01:00:00.015-07:00

The parenthetical "my" in the above title is my acknowledgement that I am neither knowledgeable nor impartial enough to offer a list like this with any objectivity. That said, I've put together this survey of news items from 2010 that stood out to me as notable landmarks on the evangelical landscape. I post it here IMHO, and welcome any nominations for additions to the list:

January 12:, 2010 Pat Robertson waxes inflammatory on Haitian disaster.

Not that I think his (at best) poorly timed comments and (at worst) cruel drivel about Haiti's alleged "pact with the devil" was even worthy of the attention it got, but it made me sad on a number of fronts: sad that for some, Pat Robertson's comments will just reinforce the tainted view of Christianity they already have; sad that a camera and the celebrity it creates has made a man like this some sort of spokesperson for a certain kind of Christianity (and that this "kind of Christianity" is so often held up as normative by the secular media); and sad, too, that mere "outrage" has somehow become a legitimate and sufficient moral response to ideas we dislike.

April 27, 2010: N. T. Wright announces his retirement as Bishop of Durham and his appointment as Research Professor at St. Andrews University.

This barely made a ripple in the headlines, I admit, but the fact that one of my favorite biblical scholars has taken a teaching post at St. Andrews was news to me, inasmuch as it gave me hope that the eagerly anticipated fourth volume of his Christian Origins and the Question of God series may be along sooner rather than later.

June 30, 2010: Anti-theist Christopher Hitchens diagnosed with cancer.

One of the world's best-known and more vitriolic opponents of religion announced this summer that he's been diagnosed with cancer. While some people (people of Pat Robertson's stripe, perhaps) have taken this opportunity to use vindictive phrases like "what he had coming," and "cosmic justice," others have taken the opportunity to practice pious prayer for the enemy, which, depending on the motive and content of the prayers, may be just as opportunistic.

July 13, 2010: The Canadian Government scraps the mandatory long-form census.

While this made more than a ripple in the secular media, I only noticed it because it hit the fan the week my family was away in Alberta and I was home alone, so I was listening to the CBC more than usual. At the time I didn't give it much thought. The portent of the decision didn't sink in until months later, when I was sitting in a room full of pastors, and a representative from the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada explained to us how we might use statistical data to help us in ministry, and I finally realized how useful a tool we'd lost.

July 31: Author Ann Rice "quits Christianity."

When Ann Rice first became a Christian, it turned heads especially because she was the famous writer of novels that could morph into multi-million dollar Hollywood productions staring the likes of Tom Cruise. Now that she's "left" the church (in her words: "In the name of Christ, I quit being a Christian") this is "news" only for the same reason; the story mattered to me primarily because it seems to illustrate James' wisdom in warning us against giving preferential treatment to the rich and famous (James 2:1-5).

August 15, 2010: Theologian Clark Pinnock dies at age 73.

I've read very little of this somewhat controversial theologian, but parts of his Flame of Love and parts of his Wideness in God's Mercy were helpful to me. I'll refer you to David Guretzki's tribute to him over at Theommentary, and commend him here to the mystery of the divine grace he worked his lifetime to describe.

August 24, 2010: Donald Bloesch dies at age 82.

It struck me as notable that two theological servants of the church-- in many ways so different in their theological bent-- should both pass away within 10 days of each other. I read swaths of Bloesch's work in Seminary, and found him to be thorough and challenging. When I heard about his death, I thought of a line in Barth (a theologian for whom he had a special affinity). I remember it imperfectly, but he wondered out loud once if God didn't laugh to see him pushing around his wheelbarrow full of books. I commend Bloesch, and his own wheelbarrow full of books, to the mystery of God's grace.

September 7, 2010: Florida's Terry Jones threatens to burn thousands of copies of the Koran on September 11.

Not that I believe a guy like this deserves anywhere near the amount of the attention he got, but it illustrated a number of things for me: a) the media's tendency to pour gasoline on a fire so they can write with incredulity about the religious flames; b) again how we've come to value "outrage" as some sort of "moral" response to things we think are wrong; and c) how tribal the notion of god has become in a world of tolerance and wars on terror.

October 1, 2010: Rick Warren speaks at John Piper's national "Desiring God Conference."

Purpose-driven Pragmatism meets Hedonistic Calvinism? This one raised my eyebrow. After all, when one of the most vociferous doctrinal watchdogs of American Evangelicalism invites one of the most effective pragmatists of American Evangliscalism to the party, eyebrows are going to raise. And they did: 40,000 blog-posts worth of indignant eyebrows, apparently; some even invoked 2 Timothy 4:3 and warnings about latter-days apostasy. For my part, I was left musing about how, in the absence of a clear ecclesiology, Evangelicalism in this part of the world looks and feels like a doctrinal clique.

December 13, 2010: Barna survey finds North American church to be theologically illiterate.

For the record, I saw methodological problems with Barna's survey so huge that it was hard to take their conclusions seriously, but at the very least this headline shored up my resolve to preach on the Incarnation the first Sunday after Christmas.

A Blogging Year in Review

2011-01-03T08:05:00.012-07:00

Happy 2011 everyone. I trust you rang in the New Year with verve and gusto. Me: a rollicking game of Settlers of Catan followed by our family's New Years tradition: watching home movies. Nothing like welcoming a new year by laughing and reflecting together on the last 12 as a family.

And speaking of traditions: this time last year I posted a random list of stats and figures on my first year blogging. Not long after that post, I discovered Google Analytics, a free service provided by Google that tracks a wide variety of stats on your web-site's usage. With the help of Google Analytics I've compiled this list of statistical curiosities from another year blogging at terra incognita. For those of you who contributed to any of the following numbers, thanks for joining me for another trip around the blog-o-sphere sun. For what they're worth, here're some random weights and measures of 2010 .

1. Top five cities from which visitors arrived: Oshawa, Ontario (327); Toronto, Ontario (204) Grand Rapids, Michigan (194),Caronport, Saskatchewan (177); London, Ontario (125)

2. Most distant visitor: Someone from Chennai, India, (13,646 km away)

3. Most common landing keyword (i.e. what people typed into Google to find their way to me): “prayer for the offering”

4. Top five most commonly visited posts: A Prayer for the Offering (916); On Kafka Dreams (113); Tidings of Great Joy (96); Pangs of Northerness(92); The Geometry of Heaven? (66);

5. Overall average time spent on site: 49 seconds

6. Most common (non-search engine) referring site: This Side of Sunday (314)

7. Total hits in 2010: 6,646

8. Most Commented-on Post: Blogging in the Echo Chamber (5)

9. Worst Post: Upon hearing that Austin Texas is renaming 2nd Street (this one sounded funnier in my head than it did on the screen; at least it was short).

10. Most Fun Post to Write: The Adventures of Elroy (or what has Nintendo to do with Jerusalem?)

A sermon for Epiphany

2011-01-02T12:59:00.004-07:00

Matthew 2:1-12: The Birth that Turned the World Upside-Down

A Christmas Sermon

2010-12-26T13:38:00.013-07:00

John 1:14: "One of Us?"

Chrismas Eve Children's Homily

2010-12-24T22:34:00.005-07:00

We're home now from a really uplifting Christmas Eve service at the FreeWay, where I had the honor of giving the children's sermon. Because terra incognita will probably be on pause until the new year, I thought I'd post my notes from the talk I gave, to give you something to read between now and then. We'd invited children to come dressed in their PJs, and had a bunch of big old pillows for them to sit on at the front during the service, so as you read, try to imagine me sitting on the floor with about fifteen or so children, all in their PJs and humming with all the excitement of Christmas eve.

Talk to you-- or blog to you (with you? at you?) in the New Year.

Luke 2:10: A Message from Heaven

Can I tell you about a time me and my family went to Disney World? While we were all standing in line to get some pizza, I happened to look up in the sky, and I saw this sort of thin looking cloud that looked like a long, white pencil stroke.

And as I watched it for a minute, I realized that in a way, it sort of was a big white pencil stroke. Because it was an airplane with a stream of cloud coming off behind it, and this airplane was flying all zig-zaggy so that the cloud would spell out letters in the sky. And while I watched, it formed a big “J” and then an “E” and then an “S” (it was a long line up to get pizza).

Anyone want to guess what the plane was spelling? [take responses] It was spelling: Jesus Loves You.

We were in Disney World, of course, so I don’t know who else noticed the writing in the sky that day, but that pilot sure wanted the world to know that Jesus loves us. But I’m wondering: if an angel from heaven were to write a message in the sky tonight, what do you think he (or she) would write? [Take responses.]

Those are all good ideas, but I think his message would be: “Don’t be afraid.” Do you know why? Because just about every angel that ever speaks in the Bible starts by saying: “Don’t be afraid.”

Like: there’s a story about a servant girl called Hagar, who was forced to have her master’s baby, but then, when the baby’s born, the master’s wife (who was the one who forced her to have the baby in the first place) she got so mad that she sent her out into the desert to die. And when she’s out there all alone, an angel comes to her. And the very first thing the angel says is: “Don’t be afraid, Hagar.”

And there’s another story about a prophet called Daniel, who’s been having nightmares about the future. Well, they’re so terrifying that he starts to pray really hard for God to help him, and after three weeks of this, an angel finally comes to him and the first thing the angel says is: “Don’t be afraid, Daniel.”

And of course, it’s Christmas Eve, right? And there’re lots of angels in the Christmas stories, aren’t there? But if you read closely you’ll see that every one of them, before they say anything else, they say, “Don’t be afraid.”

Like, there was this priest named Zechariah, and an angel met him in the temple to tell him that he was going to have a son called John the Baptist. But when Zechariah saw the angel he was so scared he could hardly speak, so the angel said: “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah.”

And then there was this humble maiden called Mary, and when an angel came to tell her that she was going to be the mother of Jesus, the very first thing he said was: “Don’t be afraid, Mary.”

And when Mary’s fiancé Joseph found out that she had a little baby growing inside her, but he wasn’t the Daddy, he thought: If I marry her now, I’ll bring shame on my whole family, but if I don’t marry her, I’ll bring shame on her... what should I do? But then an angel came to him in a dream and said: “Don’t be afraid, Joseph.”

And then, on the night when Jesus was born, the Bible says there were shepherds guarding their sheep out in the fields at night, and the angel of the Lord appeared to them, and it says: suddenly the brilliant light of God’s pure holiness and his perfect love was burning all around them—so bright that it stung their eyes, and they had to hide their faces from it—and they fell on their knees totally, and completely undone.

And anyone want to guess what the angel said?

“Don’t be afraid.”

The angel said, “I have a message straight from heaven tonight. You don’t have to be afraid. Because tonight a savior is born, and now, in him, God’s making peace with his world.”

So, I think that if an angel from heaven were going to write a message in the sky tonight, it would be: “Don’t be afraid."

But I wonder why? Why do you think angels keep telling us folk here on earth not to be afraid?

I think part of it has to do with the fact that... well there’s something about God—the real, true, living God?—there’s something about him that can be kind of scary to us. Like those shepherds, falling on their faces when the glory of the Lord shone round about them? I mean: when they saw how pure and holy God was, they were afraid, because they looked kinda shabby next to that—and when they felt how perfectly and completely God loved—they were afraid—because they looked kinda small and selfish next to that—and when they heard how beautiful heavenly worship sounded—they were afraid—because they thought, if we were to sing along, it would sound like nails on a chalkboard next to that.

But the very first thing God says to them, through his angel, is: “Don’t be afraid.”

And what he means is: “Don’t be afraid of me.

“Because I love you. And the thing is—anything between you and me that might have made it scary for you to be in my presence—well I love you way too much for that to stand between us. I don’t want you to feel like you’re being called to the principal’s office every time I speak your name. That’s not love. So I’ve come to you in Jesus to make peace—and in Jesus, I’m going change whatever might have made me scary to you—your shabbiness or your selfishness or your brokenness—I’m going to replace that with my holiness, and my goodness, and my love. So you don’t have to be afraid of me, anymore.

But there’s more to it than that. Because, well, life with God can feel kinda scary sometimes, but you know what’s even more scary: life without God. I mean, sometimes people feel like they’re all alone in the whole wide world and no one knows what it’s like to be them. And that can be a scary feeling. And sometimes people think about the future and they have no clue whatsoever if things are going to turn out okay. And that’s scary. And sometimes people feel like everyone’s turned their back on them and no one loves them.

And that’s really scary.

So that night, when God’s angels started writing God’s message in the sky, the first thing they said was: “Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone in the dark.

Because tonight, this very night, God himself has come into the world as a little human baby, to show you: God himself is with you in the whole wide world; God himself knows what it’s like to be you; God himself will turn things out okay in the end; God himself loves you.

So don’t be afraid. And that’s good news.

It may be tonight, on Christmas Eve and all, you’re not feeling too afraid. Or maybe you are. I don’t know. But I know that this is God’s message for to you tonight: “Don’t be afraid. Because in Jesus I am making peace between heaven and earth at last.” And like one of the writers in the Bible says it in a different place: “If God is for us, who can be against us.” Or, tonight, let’s it like this: “if the Most High God in Heaven has showed us tonight he loves us perfectly in Jesus Christ—well what is there left to be afraid of?”

Heart of God: A Song for Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T08:00:00.002-07:00

I didn't have Christmas in mind specifically when I set this poem to music, but today the words seem particularly suited to a Christmas Eve vigil. The text comes almost directly from this Vachel Lindsay poem. Happy Christmas, everyone.

Heart of God

All is Bright: A Christmas Story

2010-12-21T00:00:00.007-07:00

“And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not receive it.”

How it could possibly have come down to this was still beyond Nathan’s ability to explain. He swore every year that things would be different. Swore that he’d do it right next year, start sooner, plan better.

He swore. Literally, he swore, as an on-coming car jerked in front of him and lurched into the parking spot that he’d been aiming for. As he rolled past the holiday motorist who’d just stolen that prime piece of real estate out from under his nose, he muttered ominously under his breath about decking somebody’s halls.

Looking in vain for a new place to park that was still within trekking distance to the Wal Mart entrance, he came to rest at last at the furthest corner of the parking lot. Flinging his scarf over his shoulder with all the bravado of a WW I pilot, he stepped out into the blinding blizzard.

It would have been lovely, really—haloes of coloured Christmas lights shimmering just barely through the thick white haze—lovely, if it weren’t December 24th.

It would have been breathtakingly beautiful—pure drifting sheets of silent snow—beautiful, if it weren’t 10:33 pm.

It would have been picturesque, even—if he wasn’t a last-minute Christmas shopper on his way to Wal-Mart, of all places on Christmas Eve; Wal-Mart, because they were now open until midnight on this Most Wonderful Night of the Year.

So he squinted into the blinding white wind, and swore: things would be different next year.

By the time he reached the doors, the blizzard had piled a good couple of centimetres on his shoulders—the dandruff of heaven, he might have mused, if his mission hadn’t cleared all whimsical sentiments from his heart and replaced them with one single clear purpose, burning like a Christmas candle in the window of his soul: must find the perfect gift. (At 10:42 pm, Christmas Eve).

He’d need some wrapping paper, too, he noted as he pushed his way through the bottle neck of beleaguered boyfriends, desperate Dads and harried husbands who, like himself, had left this one male shopping duty of the year to the last possible moment, and were now muttering ominously under their breath about showing them who’s naughty and who’s nice.

He stumbled past the happy-face badge on the chest of the sad-faced greeter at the door, and squinted at last in the florescent glare of the store. 10:51.

A robotic Santa Claus boomed a metallic “Ho. Ho. Ho.” at him, from a display of last minute Christmas decorations. The vaguely evil undertones of this animatronic belly laugh mingled with a vaguely threatening rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” that poured from invisible speakers somewhere overhead. For just a moment the Christmas Candle in his soul flickered, and allowed him the briefest of whimsical thoughts: he remembered sitting in church with his buddy Eddie, during a Christmas Eve service they were ignoring as kids, and Eddie had showed him how you could rearrange the letters in the name Santa to spell the name “Satan”; he even wrote it out on the back of the bulletin while they both giggled under their breath.

Nathan squinted suspiciously at the Robotic Santa. “Ho. Ho. Ho.”

But then his mission was burning in him with full flame again, and he pushed past Santa on his way towards the perfume-trinkets-watches-jewelery-sunglasses-make-up-and-other-things-generally-feminine section of the store. Surely if the perfect gift existed, it lay-to-rest under those gleaming posters of radiant young women in jewellery or makeup, photos hung like so many summoning angels over the respective products they announced.

Nathan shuffled his way towards them.

Before he reached the place over which these posters shone, however, a frantic looking dad had knocked him sideways, on his eleventh-hour mission to get the last Liv Doll in the store. A man with a dull gleam in his eye jostled him to the right, pushing past him on his way to the pet supplies because, Nathan could only assume, because little Fido had asked for a box of liver Puppie-Yums for Christmas and they’d accidentally bought chicken.

But by this time, the jewellery section itself was but a faint legend from the distant past, like stories about frankincense and myrrh washing up on the shores of Christmases gone by, and he found himself standing instead in the electronics section, of all places, trying to convince himself that nothing said Merry Christmas like a spool of re-writable CDs made in China.

In the distance he could hear Robo-Santa laughing at him. The florescent light battered him mercilessly.

“You’d better watch out”

Maybe if he threw in a gift card for i-tunes?

“Ho. Ho. Ho.”

The two centimetres of snow had soaked through his coat now and had begun to trickle, like cold regret down his spine.

“You’d better not pout, I’m telling you why.”

The WW I flying-ace scarf slipped from his shoulders as they drooped. He turned to go.

And then: if Nathan’s life had a sound track, the sound of a record needle scratching abruptly on vinyl would have blurted out suddenly, strangling the Wal-Mart muzak to silence. The Ho. Ho. Ho. would have dullened to a slow, echoy, pulse, like an anxious heart. And choral music—the angelic humming of children, maybe, or silvery seraph song—would have begun softly, swelling into a single, throbbing: “Ahhh!” that drowned out everything else.

Because there it was: the perfect gift. She’d asked for it every day of the last 364—in one way or another—she’d been asking for it—maybe all her life. Not with words, of course—never in any audible speech—but with every gesture: that slight turn of her head when she said, “You know what I wish?” That faint droop at the corner of her mouth when she said: “You know what I hate?” That soft sigh that escaped her when she flumped in front of the TV after too-long and too-hard a day at work. That sort of mist in her eyes that she got when the sap was running a bit too thick on a re-run of Little House on the Prairie.

All of it—everything—all of it had really been about this. This gift... this perfect present... The Candle in his Soul burned with white hot light as he reached for it.

And then the lights went out.

The store plunged into instant darkness. A miraculous darkness, he would find later, because the blizzard that had piling snow on the power lines all day, knocked out Wal-Mart’s backup generator, just at the exact moment the wind finally brought down the power poles, and, with a sudden flash at the fuse box that stank worse than a Radio Shack on fire, it plunged the whole world of Wal-Mart into pitch and utter night.

Nathan stood there, frozen in darkness, his hand still reaching for that now invisible, perfect gift.

And in the dark, whimsical thoughts rushed at last through his mind: he saw visions of Pompeii caught in the ash of Vesuvius, frozen forever in the everyday act of living, buying, selling, giving in marriage until the bitter end. In the black distance, Robo-Santa’s laugh ground down to silence, and he thought of air escaping a long-discarded accordion.

“Ho.... ho.... o...”

For a surprisingly long moment nothing happened. The dark was so thick. And more miracles: no one cried out, no one shouted, no one said anything at all, for just a moment. You could hear them all, that hot press of humanity, still and silent, but close, in the dark. And no one dared to move.

And then somehow, more whimsical thoughts rushed at Nathan in that dark pause: he remembered snippets of those stories that he and Eddie had giggled their way through—stories about a little child who broke into the brilliant chaos of this world with a light that no one could see—and about some who could see it, but could barely recognize it as light, because it hurt their eyes.

He remembered vaguely about an old man up at the front who’d said something about how this child had come to upset the status quo... to turn things on their heads... to name our darkness for what it is.

And give us real light.

And he remembered lighting a candle, quite vividly, this, while a chorus of bashful and rusty singing voices lunged for the top note in Silent Night.

Holy Night.

All is Calm.

All is bright.

And his hand fell with heavenly peace, in the darkness, to his side.

Of course, because it was Wal-Mart, of all places, on Christmas Eve, someone in a back room somewhere fired up the back up, back up generator. Florescent light blared out over the store once more and the cogs of the machine started to move again.

But Nathan was already on his way towards the door. As he stumbled outside, into the haloes of coloured Christmas lights, that shimmered just barely through the thick white haze, he checked his watch: it was nearly midnight.

House of Bread: a Christmas poem

2010-12-17T12:27:00.012-07:00

O little humble House of Bread
how still we see thee
rise--
where once they buried
long ago his father's father's father's
father's one true love,
whose ancient tears his coming will
unwittingly awake--
(Rachel, weeping, because her innocents are no more)

O little simple house of bread:
in whose heart of mystery
is born today
the Christ child's hidden presence:
stolen away by dreams and night
and brought back to us the same--
(that out of Egypt Rachel's innocents might find their way back home)

O little broken house of bread,
soaked that day, and now today,
in wine-red blood
(that she, at last, might find God's solace for her tears)--
at your table we discover it again:
the hopes and fears of all the years
are truly met in thee
tonight.

The Triumphal Entry and the "True Meaning" of Christmas.

2010-12-16T14:01:00.021-07:00

A while ago I shared some observations on the connections in Luke's Gospel between the nativity narrative and the triumphal entry. Namely: when Jesus is born, angels sing peace on earth and glory in the highest; and later when Jesus rides triumphant into Jerusalem, the disciples echo this back, shouting peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

Luke's not the only one to draw parallels between Christ's birth and his Triumphant Entry. In Matthew's narrative, three magi enter Jerusalem asking about the one born "King of the Jews," and all Jerusalem (Herod included) is "disturbed" at the query (2:3). No wonder they trembled, inasmuch as "King of the Jews" is the exact title Rome had given Herod himself back in 40 BC. This child's birth is as direct a challenge to the powers that be as Jerusalem could imagine.

But, curiously, when Jesus rides his revolutionary donkey into Jerusalem, in open defiance of those powers that be, Matthew notes how all of Jerusalem was "shaken" at the sight (21:10). Like Luke, Matthew seems intent on having the nativity narrative echo hauntingly in the background of this momentous occasion: when he was born, he stirred up the city's complacency; when he rode, thirty three years later, through the gates as its rightful and perfect king, he shook that complacency to its foundations.

I call this curious because I know that if I were to point to an event that fulfilled the "meaning" of Christ's birth, I'd point intuitively and directly to the cross; and yet these inspired narrators of Jesus' story point, instead, and specifically, to the Triumphal Entry. And I can't help but wonder why (admitting, at the same time, that the Triumphal Entry only has meaning because of the way the cross and resurrection turned the very notion of "triumph" on its head).

But maybe Matthew's point here is that the "true meaning" of this child's birth, in part, lies in the way God issues His Messianic challenge, through him, to the status quo-- to Sadducean elitism, to Herodian despotism, to Pharisaical legalism, to Roman hegemony. So when he rides a gentle donkey into the City of the Great King, as the ultimate revelation of God's challenge to the status quo, nothing could be more fitting than to remember how he once squirmed helpless on the knee of his shamed mother in the humble city of David, while foreigners and outsiders hailed him as Lord and "the status quo" worried to hear him named.

And I'm left wondering: what would it look like if we had a "Triumphal Entry" Christmas this year? What might it mean for us if we let Christmas shake our complacency to its foundations and let Mary's Boy Child Jesus Christ, in his coming, issue God's direct challenge to our status quo-- our spiritual elitisms, our unacknowledged despotisms, our self-righteous legalisms, our unseen hegemonies-- where ever they might be?

Prayer for the (Advent) Offering

2010-12-14T01:00:00.007-07:00

Over the Advent season I've found the offertory prayer more difficult to write than usual. This is partly because the consumeristic spirit of Christmas these days leaves me hesitant to associate Jesus with the gift-getting impulse of our annual, year-end Saturnalia. Full confession: there's a growing part of me that deeply struggles when I hear things like "Jesus is the Greatest Gift of All" at Christmastime, because it leaves me wondering if we aren't really saying, or at least leaving non-Christians with the impression that we're saying: "Not only does Jesus endorse the hedonistic, consumeristic, materialistic frenzy of December, he is, in fact, nothing more (or less) than its ultimate climax."

As I continue to wrestle with this, I thought I'd post a few of the gift-giving prayers we've prayed at the Freeway.

Father in Heaven,

As we pause in the middle of this busy time of year, it seems almost silly for us to say: Jesus is the Reason for the Season. The one who came to give us divine simplicity, pure generosity and holy rest; is he the reason for all of this hectic buying and getting and rushing around?

But God, he is the reason for what we do in this place this morning, because he is your gift of life and love and hope to us. And his presence has always inspired joyful gift-giving in the hearts of his followers.

So when three learned star-gazers followed the omens at his birth and found him lying in the lap of his virgin mother, they gave gold and frankincense and myrrh in humble awe.

And later when he came to eat in the house of a humiliatingly-short tax-collector who’d climbed a tree to get a glimpse of him, that tax-collector gave half of all he owned to the poor for pure joy.

And later still, when he sat in the house of his friends the week before he would be executed, a woman named Mary gave a pint of pure perfume, poured a year’s wages-worth over his feet and wiped it with her hair in deep gratitude.

God, can you inspire that kind of gift-giving in us again?

And as we worship him through our gifts and offerings today, we invite you to teach us once more the divine simplicity, and pure generosity, and holy rest that is your gift to us in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

***

God, as we give our tithes and offerings today,
We want to do it with the all trust and simplicity of a child.

After all, your Son Jesus told us
that we would enter the Kingdom of Heaven
only if we could receive it with the humility of a child.

And so on this second Sunday of Advent, we remember that
Old children’s carol, and make it our humble prayer today:

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
Yet what I can, I give him, give him my heart.

Amen.

How One Man Changed the World

2010-12-13T07:50:00.023-07:00

One of the courses I took when I was in Seminary was called "Outreach Ministries of a Vital Church." It was primarily about how to engage our contemporary, post-Christendom culture with the message of Jesus. For our final project, we were supposed to develop an introduction to Christianity that presented the faith in ways that avoided the typical "Christian-ese cliches" and "theo-jargon" that often just comes across as so much opaque God-speak for someone with little-to-no Christian background. At the time, I think, I kind of missed the point, and for all my efforts to avoid it, the material I put together turned out to be denser with Christian jargon than I even knew.

That was a number of years ago now, and at the time it was an entirely academic exercise, but since becoming a pastor I've revisited this question: how do we share the message of Jesus with a culture that didn't grow up on Sunday School flannel-graphs, but instead on the one-dimensional caricatures of Evangelicalism that modern media hawks at us? As a second kick at that ponderous cat, I recently put together a seven-week introduction to the Christian Faith called "How One Man Changed the World." Throughout, I tried to present the story of Jesus in ways that avoided opaque Christian-ese.

Last night I finished teaching this course a second time; response has been positive. Some have asked if I could make this material available, and I thought the easiest way would be to post it here. You can click on the picture to the right to download it. I welcome feedback: it could still stand some jargon-trimming, probably, but I think I came closer to answering the question this time.