Some time in the mid-seventh century, an Anglo-Saxon herdsman living in the monastery of Streonæshalch (on the north-east coast of England) had a dream. The monks of the monastery were at feast that night, singing and harping, but because he knew no poetry, Cædmon had wandered off early to sleep in the cattle stall with the animals he tended. In his dream, "someone" approached him, calling him by name and beckoning: "Cædmon, sing me something."
Knowing no songs, Cædmon refused, but the "someone" insisted: "All the same, you have to sing for me."
"And what must I sing?"
"Sing principium creaturarum"-- The beginning of Created Things.
Immediately Cædmon's mouth was opened and he began to sing praises to the Creator. Verses he had never heard before sprang out of him, verses for the Christian God, but sung in the (till then mostly pagan) poetic tradition of his country-men.
Translated into modern English, this is what he sang:
Now must we praise heaven-kingdom's Keeper,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the work of the Glory-Father, when he of wonders every one
eternal Lord, the Beginning established.
He first created, for men's sons,
heaven as a roof, holy Creator,
then the middle-earth, mankind's Keeper,
eternal Lord, afterwards he made--
for men, earth, the Master Almighty.
Cædmon woke with this song ringing in his head, and shared it with his foreman. The foreman took him to the abbess of the monastery, who in turn affirmed it as a gift from God. Cædmon took monastic vows and began to receive instruction in Christian doctrine, learning the "whole sequence of sacred history" which he would convert into sweetest song, song "so delightful that he made his teachers, in their turn, his listeners."
He died a revered poet-saint.
And the song he received that night in the cattle-stall of a seventh-Century Christian monastery on the north-east coast of England is thought by many to be the earliest example of Anglo-Saxon poetry we have on record. You can click here to listen to a reading of Cædmon's Hymn in the original Old English. (If you've never heard Anglo-Saxon poetry before, it's worth a listen. I got my English students to listen to a bit once when we were studying poetry-- they said it sounded like Elvish from the Lord of the Rings movies.)
But there's something haunting here in this ancient story of a simple herdsman, meeting with the Christian God and finding his mouth filled with distinctly Anglo-Saxon praise. "Cædmon, sing me something" called the Spirit of Christ in the stable that night; like an altar-hot coal he touched Cædmon's lips, inspiring him to translate that touch into the rich poetic tradition of his own culture.
And there, in the alliterated syllables and Old English kennings of Cædmon's hymn- now must we praise heaven-kingdom's Keeper- the Measurer's might and his mind-plans- we can hear the Spirit calling out once more to all the nations, tribes and tongues of the Earth. "Come," it cries: "Bring to me the richest and finest and most lovely your culture has to offer- its verse, its song, its art, its craft. Bring it now through the gates of the New Jerusalem. Lay it here at the feet of the Christ of God and find it divinely-claimed, blood-bought, purified and perfected there."
"Come Cædmon, sing me something."
Caedmon, Sing Me Something
Gutenberg's Revenge and Other Thoughts
I suppose after my last post, the next logical step would be to muse a little about the revenge effects of the various technologies we've introduced to church ministry itself. When the Gutenberg Press took the Bible out of the hands of the priesthood and put it firmly into the hands of every believer-- with the laudable intention of building biblically literate, thus better, Christian communities-- I don't suppose anyone could have guessed that it might also be putting deep cracks in the foundations of Christian community, by pushing the individual's "interpretation" of the Good Book to the centre of Christian experience and pushing the community to the edge. Did Gutenberg get its revenge (mused the blogger) by filling the pews with a hundred personal popes piously practicing their private versions of the Faith, ready and able to leave when the interpretive going got tough? Is the embarrassing fragmentation of the church today part of the Gutenberg legacy?
Not that I would want to go back to the gloom of the pre-Gutenberg era, mind you... any more than I would want to go back to my pre-HTC Dream life... but perhaps if we can name the unintended effects of our technology, we can make more informed choices about when, why and how to use it.
So, off the top of my head, here are a few possible "revenge effects" of technology in the Church.
In an effort to make our preaching more effective, we've introduced a variety of presentation technologies behind the pulpit. Has this had the unintended effect of shackling our sermons to ideas that fit neatly on to PowerPoint slides and shackling our preachers to what's written on the screen?
In an effort to make our music more engaging, we've replaced hymnals with screens. Has this had the unintended effect of alienating people from the songs they're singing because they no longer have the music in front of them?
In an effort to make worship more dynamic, we've amplified everything. Has this had the unintended effect of deafening us to the voice of God and the voices of each other in our gathered times?
In an effort to make our faith more "relevant" we've introduced a wide variety of media to our worship, from video montage, to film clips, to Christianesque imagery moving behind the song lyrics on the PowerPoint slide. Has this had the unintended effect of making us less able to recognize the deeply relevant but counter-cultural aspects of life with God (things like stillness, Sabbath, quiet, simplicity)?
These are real questions, not just rhetorical points. And even if the answer is "yes" to any of them, that doesn't mean the technology itself must go (*just wait, I'm getting a call on my phone*). But if we can see the "revenge effects" of our own cleverness like this, we will also begin to see, I think, the limitations of our cleverness. And to see our own limitations is to take a humble step towards deeper dependence on God.
Can We Talk?
One of the things I've found indispensably useful since starting my new life as a pastor is my new HTC Android Dream Smart Phone. I say this with not a little sheepishness, because for a long time I held out against cell phones on principle. And now, here I am, with no mere cell phone, but a touch-sensitive cellular communications device with instant access to email, gmail, text messages and chatting, roaming internet, youtube viewing and GPS capabilities. It's like going from a pedal bike to a Porsche over night.
Now I say I held out because for a long time I had this sense that cell phone technology stunted the growth of genuine community by making us so independent and self-sufficient that we no longer need to have any real connection with the actual flesh-and-blood human beings around us. For example: time was when my car broke down on the side of the highway I would have to knock on the neighbour's door and ask for help; and more often that not, they would. Now I can call nameless, faceless roadside assistance from the comfort of my car (and view a variety of inane Youtube clips while I'm waiting for them to come).
I was talking about this with a friend a while back and she told me that she found her cell phone helpful because when she had to walk home from her university classes at night and felt unsafe, she could call her dad to come meet her. Then she said: "Of course, if I didn't have the cell phone, I'd have to get to know the other students in the class well enough that I could walk home with one of them..." And I think that was my point in the hold-out days: I felt that roaming communications technologies like cell phones allowed us to seal up our spheres of influence so tightly that the strangers around us never had to be anything more than strangers.
And maybe there's a kernel of truth there.
But here I am with my HTC Smart Phone and finding it, as I said earlier, indispensably useful.
But I'm also wondering about the revenge effects of such technology.
Author and social scientist Edward Tenner argues that all technologies have a natural tendency to "bite back" with "revenge effects" on the societies into which they are introduced. His theory is that societies are really just systems that constantly seek the "status quo." He suggests that as new technologies significantly upset this status quo, the system itself will naturally adjust in unexpected, unintended, even unconscious ways to counteract their effect, and so maintain the status quo.
Example 1: As we introduce a plethora of ingenious time-saving appliances to the kitchen, the system adjusts to maintain a status quo of business: once it's been freed from meal prep-and-clean-up hours, it's possible to overload our evening schedule with other things, and so we find ourselves busier than ever.
Example 2 (and perhaps more to the point): As communications devices make communication increasingly clear and easy, we find our actual communicating and decision-making processes more (not less) cloudy and confused because now everything has to be answered and decided and acted on under the tyranny of the now.
I'm not sure if Turner's on to anything or not (though they say that the advent of email has significantly increased-- not decreased-- paper consumption in the office workplace). But I do know this: the other day a friend called me at home and when I picked up the phone he said: "Finally found you." He'd tried my gmail, left a message on my voice mail, called my office phone, and when he couldn't get me at any of these he tried me at home. All the ways to connect with me, it seems, had actually made me harder to find.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the HTC Dream.
With Words Like Crystal
My first sermon series at the FreeWay was a four part-er on the parables of Jesus. One of the things I discovered back when I was putting this material together is that parables are really tough to preach.
When they asked Jesus, "Why do you speak in parables, anyway? Why can't you just tell it like it is?" He told them: it's because people see, but they don't see; they hear, but they don't hear. Whatever else he meant when he said this, I think he meant this: If you want to know the things of God, you'll have to listen with more than just your ears-- you have to listen with the ears of your heart.
And a parable's a pretty good way to tell who's willing to listen with the heart and who's not.
So the tough part about preaching parables is to open up the text in a way that allows people to "get it," without letting us off the hook of needing to "listen with our hearts." To let the text do what the text is doing. It's something akin to the difficulty in explaining a joke: nothing wrings the humour out of a joke faster than needing to explain why it's funny.
So too, to a certain extent, with Jesus' parables. As speech-acts, they're like crystal: they refract the light beautifully, but our best efforts to polish them so they shine can easily shatter them.
Here's one of the sermons I preached as part of that series. I hope my words didn't shatter His Word.
But I Know what I Like
In an attic storage room behind the choir loft of my old church, wedged in between some dusty Christmas decorations and a couple of boxes of tattered hymnals, rests an ostentatiously-framed print of Warner Sallman's Christ at Heart's Door. Though there is maybe something (more than a bit) kitschy about this depiction of Jesus knocking at what appears to be Snow White's heart's door, in its day it was like the Mona Lisa of Evangelical artistic expression.
The day I stumbled across it (looking for an advent wreath, I think), it got me thinking about the place of art in the experience of Faith, and especially the Evangelical "tradition" of producing art that does little more than reiterate sentimentalized stereotypes about Jesus and the experience of life with him. (Notice the heart-shaped aura of light formed by the arch of the door together with the curve of light behind this "Swedish Jesus's'" shoulder.)
I lingered that day in the attic, though, because only a few months earlier I'd read David Morgan's Visual Piety, which examines artistic representations of Christ and explores their function in the religious experience of 20th century North America. The premise of his study is that popular religious imagery like this has power and significance specifically because it "contributes to the social construction of reality."
In other words, for all its sentimentality, popular religious imagery like Sallman’s has played an important sociological role in both shaping and affirming people’s religious experience. Morgan develops an aesthetic of “visual piety”- an experience of religious devotion mediated through visual imagery that depends on a “psychology of recognition.” Here the aesthetic experience of the image becomes function not of its formal artistic qualities, but of its conformity to the viewer’s preconceived religious ideal. Thus in the experience of “visual piety,” the picture’s beauty “consists in the satisfying experience of perceiving a particular understanding of Jesus adequately visualized."
In American religious experience, “Sallman’s image of Jesus confirms the traditional formula or convention of Christ’s appearance, but tailors it to the modern evangelical notion of Christ as obedient son and intimate friend." So, according to Morgan, when I see Sallman’s Head of Christ, I see my own preconceived understandings of Christ visually projected; but at the same time I receive and accept cultural values associated with the American Evangelical experience of Jesus. In a related discussion, he describes the process of “composition,” whereby a picture like Sallman’s brings together the essential elements of a wide range of historical and cultural representations of Christ, projecting the “essence” of the Jesus that pervades them all. As a medium of visual piety, then, Sallman’s picture becomes a “picture about pictures,” a cultural apparatus by which people can conjure up in a single representation “the elusive presence [of Jesus] immanent in and authorizing countless pictures."
What does all this mean? (Morgan is a religious-art-history prof at Berkley, after all...)
On the one hand, I suppose it suggests that before we abandon that Sallman print to the "religious kitsch" table at the next church yard sale, we should at least acknowledge the role it's played in a larger cultural discourse about who Jesus is and how we see him. Perhaps more importantly, though, we should let Sallman illustrate for us how tempting it is to try and fashion this Jesus into our own image, and how much we might miss out on (aesthetically and spiritually) when we do.
Centurion
for Matthew 8:5-13
Centurion.
you man of war,
hekatonarkos, noun, singular masculine: Centurion. Lord of a hundred.
Man of control. man in control. like one with authority. under authority.
man of control.
you arm of Caesar, you
fist of Herod, you.
who says go and come, and it comes and goes. who says do.
it gets done.
like one with authority.
But so, so unlike him.
pagan. No Son of Abraham, you.
oppressor. Not yours, the Kingdom.
heir of darkness. heir of idols. child of wrath.
The Kingdom?
you are uncovantanted Heathen,
chief of those who stand against the Kingdom.
you are un-kingdom: Babylon and Rome.
you yourself are anti-Kingdom.
Centurion.
Calling on him, from east or west, with this single war
your word could not command:
“my lad lies languishing, lord.”
So you come,
nothing to offer but
a legacy of enmity: “Shall I myself come and heal him?”
an inheritance of exclusion:
“Not so, my lord, for I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.”
Shall he come to sit at your defiled table? Under your unclean roof?
Profane Pagan.
who calls on this Jewish healer
from a place among those excluded, the unworthy
the least among the polluted: scaly-skinned lepers
and those outside: fever-addled women
and the demonized having badly.
Yet you are centurion.
“Please speak the word and he will be healed.”
Healed. You cannot ask for cleansing.
for you cannot see your filth.
This law that called for cleansing was not inscribed for you.
The covenant of purity, the ritual of washing are neither your inheritance.
Only pagan sickness.
Simple. Impure.
Only heal him. My lad lies languishing, lord.
Only heal. lies languishing, lord.
Only. Languishing,
Lord.
And there you teach me my story.
For the same physician who marveled over your broken, heathen faith.
the like of which was not in all of Israel—
that same healer who raised up to you your lad—no Son of Abraham, you—
cleansed me. And raised us up—both—as out of stone—
children to Abraham where there were none.
He invited me, with you,
to the feast
in from the unclean outside
in from the pagan darkness
to sit with Abraham and his sons
Isaac and Jacob and all over whom the god of Abraham reigns
a seat at the table of fellowship in
god’s people
god’s promises
god’s pleasure
A child of Abraham as from stone.
A child of the covenant where there was none.
Rolling Rivers of Real Worship
Here's last Sunday's sermon. Still talking these days about the vision and values of the FreeWay. This week we were looking at the "W" in "NEWS": "Worshipping Together."
[Sorry about the last 4 minutes of the sermon-- not sure what went wrong there, but some technical glitch made them a little fuzzy.]
Rolling Rivers of Real Worship
Top Ten Classes Revisited
About five months ago, as I was preparing for my OCE (Oral Comprehensive Exam) at Briercrest Seminary, I posted an annotated list of the the top ten classes I took in seminary. At the time this represented the list of classes that I felt had most shaped my heart for doing ministry.
So here's an interesting exercise: now 2 months into my new life as a pastor, I've been reflecting on the various roles, tasks and experiences I've had since I got here, and I've been taking quiet note of which classes have come to mind the most. That is: which classes have I actually been drawing on to do and be the things that God is calling me to do and be in this new role?
Here's the list of the ten classes I've recalled most in the last two months. It's interesting because it suggests that in my time at Briercrest, God was not only shaping my heart for ministry, but also my hands--I was getting practical tools as well as spiritual formation. It's interesting, too, because the top five of this list were in the top ten of my previous list-- the ivory tower had its foundations on earth after all. (Though, alas, as deeply as they shaped me at the time, none of my 7 biblical languages courses make this new list. (Yet.))
10. Pastoral Theology and Practice: This was a kind of a "pastoring 101" course; not as theologically lofty in content as some of the entries on my first list, but it did give me a helpful framework for understanding my role as a pastor.
9. Sign, Symbol and Sacred Act: Among other things, this class helped me develop a more theologically-rounded view of communion. I've led communion at the FreeWay twice now, and I have to admit that this act of extending Christ's invitation to his followers to come freely to his table and share a holy meal where he is both host and feast-- this is when I've felt most like I'm doing Christian ministry.
8. Contemporary Worship Leadership: I've thought over some of the very practical, rubber-meets-the-road discussions we had in this class about leading through change more than once over the last few months.
7. Organizational Function and Design: I had no idea when I was taking it how important the leadership concepts this class was giving me would be in ministry: I've reread the papers I wrote in this course about three times recently, and each time it's like buckling on Batman's utility belt.
6. Philosophy and Foundation for Ministry: I've looked back to the "personal philosophy of ministry" I developed in this class a lot lately, especially when I'm trying to gauge if I'm really ministering the way I feel God has called me to.
5. Pentateuch: Not exactly sure why this course still ranks as high as it does, except that I've been preaching a number of OT texts lately, and this was the class that taught me how to really "see Christ in the Old Testament." That, and the compelling vision of creation shalom that I picked up somewhere along the way has been an important theme in my heart these days.
4. Theology of Worship: The mediation of Christ. This is the concept that will forever change the reality of the believer it takes hold of. This is the class where it first took hold of me. You can read the paper that changed my world forever here.
3. Homiletics: Still trying to find a rhythm for weekly sermon prep that really works, I find myself going back continually to the homiletical method I learned in this class: Hear the text. Let the text say and do what the text is saying and doing. And if you haven't hit oil in 30 minutes, stop boring.
2. Marriage and Family Counselling: This class taught me the one ministry lesson I've thought about more than any other in the last two months: Listen. Before you give answers, give ear. Just listen. I had no idea how vital this lesson would be, but this was the class where I first learned to see listening as a spiritual act.
1. Shepherd the Flock: Pastoral Theology of Church, Sacraments, Preahcing and Missions: My #5 class from last time is now in the #1 slot, because it was here I learned the lesson about minsitry that has the potential to save: Ministry is our participation by the power of the Holy Spirit in Christ's mninstry to the Father for the sake of the world. It's not us. It's Christ. He's doing it. We just have to see it and join him in it, and the Spirit will make that possible if we'll let him.
Building for the Blessing of Babylon
Here's last Sunday's sermon.
We've been going through a series on the vision and values of the FreeWay family (i.e. "what we care about and what we want to see God make us into").
The leadership at our church have identified four specific values that define us as a church. And for those that appreciate mneumonic devices, they form the acronym N.E.W.S. At the FreeWay, we care about "Nurturing Community," "Embracing Durham and beyond," "Worshiping Together," and "Serving Others."
Last Sunday we were exploring what the Bible has to say about what it might mean for us to "Embrace our communities."