A song I wrote a while ago as a musical reflection along the same lines of this post.
Dirty Jordan
Dirty Jordan, lying in the sun
with her grave shroud on
Crooked curves on broken banks,
what have we done?
Can you wash clean this dirty water
Can you drench down these thirsty lands
Can you wade through this holy river
Till you heal the hands of dirty Jordan?
Old man river crawling through the land
with his soul sucked dry
It's a long way home through stone and sand,
can you afford to cry?
Can you wash clean this dirty water
Can you drench down these thirsty lands
Can you wade through this holy river
Till you heal the hands of dirty Jordan?
Dirty Jordan, waiting for the Son
who wqas baptized by you
A drop of blood from his flowing veins
And he will baptize you
Can you wash clean this dirty water
Can you drench down these thirsty lands
Can you wade through this holy river
Till you heal the hands of dirty Jordan?
Musical Monday (I)
Saturday Morning Sermons (I)
Recordings of all our sermons are posted on our website, so rather than simply reduplicating the effort, I thought I'd post some short excerpts from individual sermons over the next few Saturdays-- a little spiritual food for thought to start your weekend off (and if it's only whetted your appetite, a link to the entire sermon is included below).
For starters, here's a snippet from a sermon on Acts 7:54-8:3, the Martyrdom of Stephen (July 29, 2012):
When you read closely, you’ll notice that the author has recorded Stephen's story very carefully, to show that his life is following the pattern of Christ’s life—I mean: Stephen’s story is shaped to look like Jesus’s story; and almost every detail here has been carefully worded so that it sounds hauntingly like the life and death of Jesus.You can hear the whole sermon here: Acts 7:54-8:3 "Witness: Exhibit A"
Let me explain.
I already pointed out how verse 55 says that Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit and saw heaven standing open, right? Well: over in Luke 3:21-22, it says that when Jesus was baptized at the start of his ministry, as he was coming up out of the water he saw heaven standing open and the Spirit of God coming down on him in the form of a dove.
Coincidence? Maybe, but then, in verse 58, it says that they dragged Stephen out of the city to kill him. So: in Luke 4, after Jesus’ first ever sermon, it says that the people were so furious that the dragged him out of the city to kill him (they didn’t kill him that day, of course, but both Acts 7:58 and Luke 4 use the exact same phrase to describe the scene).
And that, too, might be a coincidence, but then in verse 59, just before he dies, Stephen looks into heaven and says, “Lord Jesus, receive my Spirit.” Anyone remember what Jesus’ final word from the cross was? Wasn’t it: “Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.” (?)
And if you’re still not convinced, look at Stephen’s last words in verse 60. “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
Sound familiar? I think it’s supposed to. In Luke 23:34, while they’re nailing Jesus to the cross, he prays this prayer: “Forgive them Father, for they do not know what they are doing.”
So: can you add one and one together with me: Jesus was the Father’s Spirit-filled servant who committed his life, body and soul to God, and prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers right to the cross... and Stephen, his faithful martyr, has followed that pattern to the letter.
The fancy-schmancy word for this is cruciform—which just means living a life that’s conformed to the pattern of the cross. And if Stephen’s story has anything to say about being a Christian martyr, it’s that Christ’s witnesses must live lives that look like his: they must be Spirit-filled servants who trust themselves body and soul to the will of God, and commit themselves, life and death, to the ministry of reconciliation. Like Jesus.
That’s the kind of life this story is calling us to pursue—a life conformed to the pattern of the cross— the cruciform life—a martyr’s life.
Back in the Blogging Saddle
This summer I took a semi-intentional break from blogging. This was partly just a dry-spell in post ideas that turned into an extended hiatus, but it was also time for a gut-check for me. When I started blogging back in '09, I didn't really have a long term plan for the blog, and I was starting to wonder in '012 if I'd said all there was to say about God, life, faith, love, words and spirituality.
Enough people mention terra incognita to me off and on that I know there's somebody out there reading this. But I reached a point this June where the only thing I could think of when I sat down at the dashboard was: why bother? And so I didn't for a while.
Google tells me there's a name for this malaise. At least, enough hits turn up when I type "blogging fatigue" into the search engine that I know I'm not alone. So I decided to take a breather. If you love something, they say, let it go. If it comes back to you it was meant to be.
It did come back to me. Sometime around the end of July, I started to find renewed inspiration and purpose for this site. However, rather than jumping right back in with the usual promises to do better - writing cheques I couldn't cash and all - I thought I'd just start writing without the pressure of posting for a while and see where that got me. A month or so later I've got enough posts on deck that I feel confident to announce the "relaunch" of terra incognita with a guarantee of regular posting through to January. (Given the price of this blog, I'm even prepared to make that a money-back guarantee.)
For those who have been with me on this journey since the out-set, let me thank you here for your patience as we grow to serve you better.
For those of you who are visiting for the first time, a word about this blog. terra incognita is Latin for "unknown country." It's a reference to the way Jesus leads us into unknown territory (literally or spiritually speaking) whenever we follow him in faith. You can think of this blog as a giant spiritual connect the dot, where we try to draw lines between 1) stuff I see going on in the Bible, 2) stuff I see going on in the world, 3) stuff I'm reading about, and 4) stuff I love about art, culture, media and literature.
I hope you'll pick up a crayon and join me.
Some more sermons on 1 John
So much to blog, so little time. We're right in the middle of a verse-by-verser through the Epistle of 1 John, and until the clouds of busy-ness part and some rays of spare time shine through, an update on some of the past few sermons at the FreeWay will have to stand in for more substantial blogging. Enjoy.
The Convert or the Outsider, an Inter-faith Dialogue
I probably would have let it go, but I was reading Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace at the time, a book that bills itself as a "Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation," so my sonar was perhaps more finely-tuned than usual to such "theological pings."
And what a poignant "ping" it was. Here's the back story: a few weeks earlier I happened to make a friend of a friend who happened to be a practicing Orthodox Jew. We had a very rich and illuminating conversation about the parallels and differences between my work as a Christian pastor and his work in the local synagogue. It was, I think, an example of inter-faith dialogue in the best sense of the term, and as I was leaving he said, "If you ever want to get the Jewish perspective on something, feel free to give me a call."
Flash forward a few weeks later and I'm working away on this sermon on Deuteronomy 24:17-22, which is all about our mandate as the people of God to "leave something" for the voiceless and the vulnerable. In a particular, Deuteronomy 24:17 says: "Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge" (NIV) or " You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan, nor take a widow’s garment in pledge" (NASB) or "Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow's raiment to pledge" (good ol' KJV).
My Jewish friend's invitation was still ringing a bit in my ear, and, curious about his take on the passage in question, I sent him an email to take him up on his offer. He replied very kindly with a number of interpretations from the Talmud sharing various Rabbinical reflections and applications of the text, illuminating the passage in ways I'd not yet considered.
But all the typical Christian translations of this passage use some word or other that means "the outsider" (alien, foreigner, stranger, etc.) to describe that first of the three groups of vulnerable people that deserve special consideration (so the NIV: the foreigner, the fatherless, the widow; or NASB: the alien, the widow, the orphan). The specific Hebrew word is ger. It's connected to a verb that means something like "to sojourn." It's used, for instance, to describe Abram when he was a sojourner (a foreigner, a "resident alien") in the land God told him to journey to, and it's used to describe Israel when they were captives in Egypt. Hence Christians translate it as foreigner, alien, or stranger in Deuteronomy 24:17.
And here's the ping. In his response to my email, my Jewish friend included the standard Jewish translation of the verse. In his translation, ger is translated, not as "the alien" generally but as "the convert" specifically (i.e. the non-Jew who has converted to Yahwehism).
We exchanged a few more emails about why this might be different, and he suggested that if an "outsider" was meant specifically, the term goy would have been used; and out of curiosity, I looked up the ancient Greek translation of the same verse, and they used a word that means "convert" as well; and, to be sure, the only biblical example we have of this passage being put into practice is the Book of Ruth, and there, Ruth the Moabitess is very clearly a convert to Yahwehism, besides being simply a foreigner. So I'm not saying "convert" is necessarily a mis-translation of ger.
But the reason I'm still reflecting on this months later is because it seems to me there are profound ethical and theological implications for what we do with the ger in Deuteronomy 24. The question, as I see it, boils down to this: does God call us to take care of "the other" because they are "other" and regardless of whether or not they have made a profession of commitment to our community of Faith, or is conversion a necessary requisite for inclusion (and the hospitable helping that inclusion entails)?
Without the elaborate exposition that a careful handling of all these issues would require, let me at least suggest here that a radical inclusion-- one that translates ger as generously as possible-- is one of the themes of Jesus' preaching, who taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and to discover our sonship in the kingdom by living out its radical peace-making mission in tangible and concrete ways. In this regard, radical inclusion of the other is one of the harmony notes to the melody of the Gospel.
When the North Star of Prayer is Cast into the Sea
One morning on his way to the Temple, Jesus curses a fig-tree because it didn't have out-of-season figs when he was hungry. After this he enters Jerusalem, enacts a prophetic announcement of God's judgement on Herod's Temple, overturning the money-changer's tables and saying, in effect: "God is about to overturn this whole Temple and the worship-charade it houses, because 'my house was supposed to be a house of prayer for the nations' and you've made it into a monument to your own nationalistic agendas and revolutionary zeal." Then, on the way back to Bethany in the evening, the disciples discover that the cursed fig-tree has withered, just like Jesus said it would.
Ok: this would all be confusing enough, but then, when they ask him about the tree, he declares: "Have faith in God: truly I say to you that if one has faith, he should say to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and cast into the sea' and if he does not doubt in his heart but he believes that what he says will be so, it will be so for him." Or something like that. Then he adds: "Because I tell you this: everything you pray and request, believe that you have received, and it will be so for you."
I've been thinking about this passage a lot over the last little while. Because it seems to imply that the operative factor in determining whether or not we receive what we pray for is the degree of faith with which we ask-- i.e. the one who believes firmly that they will receive what they've prayed for will receive it; by implication the one who doubts won't; and by further implication, the more strongly you believe the more likely you are to receive. This is, at least, how I've often understood it. And there are huge pastoral implications for this reading: do we tell people, explicitly or implicitly, that when they don't receive what they're praying for, it's because they don't have enough faith? Especially when there's a lot on the line (for a child, perhaps, praying for the healing of a loved one), this can insidiously turn the life of faith, which was meant to be liberating, into a life of bondage and guilt.
So here's what I got: when you read the whole passage (Mark 11:20-25) in context, notice that: 1) Jesus doesn't actually tell us to believe that we will receive, but that we already have received what we're looking for (the verb tense in v. 24 is aorist, not future); 2) Jesus doesn`t say "ìf you have faith in God" in verse 22, but "have faith in God" (some early manuscripts say "if you have faith" but the most reliable say, simply, "have faith in God") The point: this is not a "conditional statement" (i.e. you'll be answered if (and only if) you have faith); it's an imperative: "Have faith when you pray. Believe that you have 'received' and it will be so for you."
Which brings us to note three: this promise of having received when we pray is embedded right in the middle of Jesus' prophetic announcement that the Temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed. He acted out its destruction through the whole money-changers demonstration, and then he symbolically predicted it with the whole fig-tree curse. Just like the fig-tree didn't have fruit when God's Messiah came looking for it, and was destroyed because of it, so too the Temple: it didn't have the "fruit" of righteousness when God's Messiah came to it, so it will be destroyed. And in as much as the fig-tree did shrivel at a word from Jesus, so too the Temple: its predicted destruction is assured.
Which brings me to note four. Jesus tells us that the primary content of our prayer should be that "this" mountain be lifted up and cast into the sea. I always used to think he was speaking generally and metaphorically; i.e. you could ask for something so impossible as a mountain to be thrown into the sea, and if you've got enough faith, it will happen. But. Jesus has just pronounced and enacted God's judgment on the Temple-- which is situated on the Temple Mount. He's actually standing (presumably) in the shadow of the Temple Mount when he utters verse 23. The "this" of "this mountain," it turns out, is a very literal and very specific "this." He means the Temple Mount. He's saying, in light of his ominous announcement that the Temple is slated for demolition: if you have faith, you could say to this Temple (and the Mountain on which it stands) be cast into the sea, and it will be so (v.23): and once it's so, whatever you pray for will still ascend lovingly and confidently to the gracious ears of God, by faith (v.24).
Why does this context matter? For a first Century Jew, Herod's Temple is the Spiritual North Star of your whole religious life. You prayed toward the Temple, as a First Century Jew, because this was where God's Name dwelt. Your prayers were heard and answered, as a First Century Jew, because God's Name and Glory still "dwelt" in the Temple of Jerusalem. And Jesus is speaking to First Century Jews when he tells them: because of its corruption, the Temple is about to be destroyed.
It would be like telling a devout Muslim that Mecca will soon be no more.
Can you hear the anguished reply: But then how will we pray now? How will our prayers be heard (let alone answered) now? By what will we navigate, spiritually speaking, if the lode-star of our spiritual lives is cast into the sea?
The question throbbing in this passage isn't "what does it take to get my prayers answered?" The question is: how could we even imagine praying at all, if the Temple is destroyed (which the lesson of the fig tree, well learned, assures us it will be)? Because to pray that this particular mountain be thrown into the sea is actually to pray for a whole new way of coming to God in prayer, period.
And God says: believe in your heart, and do not doubt, and you will receive exactly that.
Because Jesus says: "Have Faith in God. He's doing a new thing in me and through me. And for those who have faith in me, and through me, the Temple can be cast into the sea, and prayer will not cease; in fact it will have just begun to thrive, because it will no longer be centred around a building made by hands, but will be empowered and filled and transformed by my resurrected and life-giving spirit. If you believe this, then even before you pray, you will have received the hearing from God that up till now you've assumed is only possible in and through this Temple."
And in answering the question like that, Jesus has made faith, once again, the life of freedom and communion with God that it was meant to be.
Palm Sunday and History
What I'm thinking about the morning-after Palm Sunday today, however, is how vital this prophetically-loaded donkey ride into Jerusalem is for historically embedding both Jesus of Nazareth and, more significantly, God's act of salvation in and through him. What I mean is this: Christmas, and the Incarnation that Christmas celebrates, could have happened anywhere and anytime. Not really, of course: Paul says it was at just the right time Jesus came, and Gabriel told Mary that she had found unique favor among God, but even without its specific historical provenance in 1st Century Bethlehem, we could still draw from the Incarnation the theological import that we usually want to draw from it: that the Creator came to his Creation to save it by being born in flesh-and-blood and through the flesh-and-blood of a virgin.
So too, with Easter-- again, not really: there is a historical necessity to all these events, the where, the when, the who-- but then again an a-historical story about the Creator who loved his Creation so much he willingly died for it to heal and save and forgive it would still make sense to us whether it happened in 1st Century Jerusalem or not. (And, as a test of this, notice how often our discussions of Easter and Christmas are distinctly a-historical (sometimes almost gnostically so).)
But with the Triumphal Entry it's different. Who cares that Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, really, unless the political and spiritual and historical tensions of this time and place and allowed to shine like a spotlight on his mounted figure winding its way down the Mount of Olives? At least: we have difficulty feeling the theological significance of this story as a story let alone as a saving act of God, until we discover the profound anti-Rome, anti-Herod, anti-Sadducean sentiment in the City, Jesus' allusion to the previous "triumphal entry" by Maccabeus in 164 BC, the historical iimportance of the Temple that Jesus purges, the ache for Shalom that echoes in the Prophetic Tradition of the Hebrew People, and the tragic fulfillment of Jesus' own prophetic actions when Titus Vespasian demolished Jerusalem some 40 years later, in 70 AD.
And whatever else it means, the Triumphal Entry reminds us that God's saving acts are deeply embedded in history: Jesus' donkey is bearing him, not only into Jerusalem, but into the annals of God's salvation-history, and there he reminds us that our God is a God of history, and that an a-historical Gospel is no Gospel at all.
For the record, here's my sermon from Sunday:
"A Prophet, the City, its King and his Donkey"