Public Jesus

Every year our church does something called The Blitz. The idea is that if you want to tackle the quarter back, you call for a blitz. Substitute quarterback with community and you get The Blitz. Every year we try to tackle community. Pretty simple (it’s a metaphor). Each year we intentionally sync up around some kind of teaching/practice. That's the gist.

This year we're using Public Jesus by TimSuttle. (By the way, if you haven’t already checked out some of the stuff that The House Studio is putting out, you should. It’s great for small groups and it features people such as Stanley Hauerwas and Walter Brueggemann, people who have been extremely influential in my own development.)

Tim is a good friend and pastor of Redemption Church here in Olathe, KS. I’m excited to dig into this book with the rest of the Redemption Church people. And maybe others, if you all want to participate. I’m sure it will provoke many thoughts and questions that will challenge our assumptions about what it means to confess that Jesus is Lord.

In the introduction we get a little taste of what to expect:

- “What role should our faith play in public life?”

- What does it mean to say “the public square belongs to God”?

- “What would the world be like if God were in charge?”

- How does a theology of creation inform this?

- Why is Jesus good news?

- What is the mission of God?

- Why are secularism and fundamentalism the most common ditches people fall in to?

Perhaps it could be said that the heart of Public Jesus is a “[wrestling] with all kinds of questions about what it would mean for us to live our lives as though we believe Jesus is Lord of all” (16).

Over the next few weeks, I hope to prime the pump a bit by noting some of what’s in store for us here.

Here's a quote:

"Living in the way of Jesus cannot be merely a personal, private thing because faith is meant to impact every aspect of life. God cares about all of life. I cannot check my faith at the door when I go into the supermarket, drive my car, pay my taxes, give to a charity, volunteer, cash my paycheck, or vote. Everything I do in my life - be it private or public - is meant to be informed by my most basic identity: I am a follower  of Jesus Christ, a Christian. When I live in faithfulness to Jesus as I navigate public space, I believe that I am participating in the deep and seminal reality that God is trying to bring right order to the world. My faith in Jesus must impact all that I say and do when I inhabit public space."

Also, check out one of the videos here.

Hauerwas 101

I just came across a video interview of Stanley Hauerwas that is a perfect beginning point for those interested in Hauerwas who have not yet delved into reading him. Several "famous" lines and stories make there way in here, which made it enjoyable to revisit. Any newbie's to Hauerwas will find it a valuable and challenging introduction!

John Wright on Postliberal Theology

The following quote comes from a book edited by one of my college professors, John Wright. In 2007 Nazarene Theological Seminary hosted George Lindbeck, David Burrell, and Stanley Hauerwas for an interview/conversation-type night in order to reflect on the intersection of church unity and something called Postliberal Theology. I was there that night, but I am terrible at taking notes during things like this, so I am thankful for this book. The following quote captures the essence (goal?) of Postliberal Theology, namely that the Christian witness of peace is directly related to the question of unity. And that Christians capable of killing other Christians in the name of some other loyalty, be it the state or otherwise, is a problem.

"This theological program grew out of and developed its ecumenical potential as a response to a divided church whose witness was helpless—a church that had even supported the devastation that World War II wrought upon the world. For the postliberals Christian language is not merely verbal, but is encoded within the embodied life and practices of the ecclesiastic body and its individual members. The Christian witness to peace is inextricably bound to the ability of the church to live, speak, and confess in harmony. Postliberal theology addresses concerns for unity of the church within a world devastated by violence and war."

- John Wright, Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic: Conversations with George Lindbeck, David Burrell, and Stanley Hauerwas, 5.

What do you think?

Around the Horn: Covering lots of bases this week, pun intended.

James K. A. Smith, a la Hauerwas, on how making Christianity sexy takes imagination.

This is enough to get me to watch The Cabin in the Woods.

Obama/Fallon slow jam.

Scot McKnight leaves North Park University, heads to Northern Seminary.

That's right, Food Porn.

For shame, TSA. They defended the pat-down of crying 4-year-old girl at Kansas airport.

For shame, Ashley Madison. The company is offering $1 million to prove Tim Tebow is not a virgin. Ridiculous.

Of Irony, Sentimentality, and Good Friday

Read John 19:1-37.

I'll warn you ... I meander a bit here. This turns into more off-the-cuff thoughts. And for some reason I have violence on my mind. Probably because of last nights Maundy Thursday reading, Luke 22:51, "Stop! No more of this."

Time and space prohibit me from really describing the convolution of images that John has brought together in order to write about the death of Jesus: The irony of being crown king by the very people who will kill Him. The presentation of the new Adam, i.e. the new creation, when Pilate says, "Behold, the Man!" The irony that Jesus is the passover lamb, simultaneously refused as the Messiah from God and offered as a sacrifice in memory of how God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. Your just going to have to spend some time with the text to let the full implications of that night seep deeply in your hearts and minds.

"It is finished." That's one of the words Jesus spoke from the cross. As Stanley Hauerwas writes, "The work that is finished ... is the cross."

He continues, "He will be and is resurrected, but that resurrected One remains the One crucified. Rowan Williams remind us of Pascal's stark remark that 'Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world.'"

Think about that for a moment, especially in light of what Hauerwas says about sentimentality, which I'll interject here in the middle of this quote: "I think nothing is more destructive for our ability to confess that the crucified Jesus is Lord than the sentimentality that grips so much that passes for Christianity in our day. Sentimentality is the attempt to make the gospel conform to our needs, to make Jesus Christ our 'personal' savior, to make the suffering Christ on the cross but an instant of general unavoidable suffering. I should like to think the relentless theological character of these meditations helps us avoid our sinful temptation to make Jesus's words from the cross to be all about us."

In what ways do we cheapen the cross by reducing it to a mere act-in-the-past that is all but disconnected from our actual on the ground, day to day, lives? How is the story of God about memory? How is it about more than memory? What does it require of our bodies?

That Christ is in agony until the end of the world, when all is put right, " ... is a remark that makes unavoidable the recognition that we live in the time between the times - the kingdom is begun in Christ but will not be consummated or perfected until the end of the world. Williams observes that Pascal's comment on Jesus's ongoing agony is not an observation about the deplorable state of unbelievers; it is instead an exhortation not to become nostalgic," or sentimental, "for a supposedly less compromised past or take refuge in some imagined purified future, but to dwell in the tension-filled time between the times, to remain awake to our inability to 'stay in the almost unbearable present moment where Jesus is.'"

Tension, indeed, for today our Lord dies and there is nothing we can do about it. And tomorrow, on Holy Saturday, we will be forced to remember that old line from the creed, "He descended into hell." There is no quick pass to Easter. Before their is resurrection, there is death and waiting.

All of this shapes and forms us, as the church, to be a people who live in tension of the times between the times, between the first and second coming of Jesus. The question before us is how should we live in the meantime? Does the cross say anything about the trajectory of our lives, marriages, and friendships? Does it question our politics, wars, and violence? Does it stir up compassion, justice, and peace? Or is it just something that happened in the past that doesn't make claims on our lives today?

Perhaps the greatest irony of the cross today is our sentimental embrace and, thus, refusal of its deepest implications. The first being, in light of death/cross of Jesus, that perhaps violence get's us nowhere.

What is finished? Jesus's life? Creation, which means that the New Creation is about to begin? Violence? There's a lot to consider here.

When we say "God"

It's hard out here for a pastor. The tendency towards professional expertise in our cutlure has formed pastors into the kinds of people who separate leadership, spiritual formation, social justice, evangelism, and education (so that we actually know something about the Christian tradition, the bible, and theology) from one another. Go to any church and pastors will embody one of these things more than the others. My problem is that I think that's okay. I think pastoring looks like all of this in a variety of different forms. The Spirit gives different gifts to different people, which means that every pastor has a different mix of what these things look like, which makes for very kinds of pastors.

It doesn't justify that a pastor who is better at leadership should not also read theology or know something about prayer. The problem comes when people push towards one of these aspects as more important than the other. To me, these are the ingredient (and there are probably more) that God uses to shape and form different kinds of pastors for different kinds of work in the world.

We need the leadership pastor that can organize and streamline processes. We need the wise sage who is really good spiritual formation, who knows how to ask the kinds of questions that melt away the resistance. We need the justice oriented person who reads newspaper and listens to politicians and knows when the city council is meeting and organize rallies and protests and shelters. We need deep readers of the faith who know the bible, tradition, and theology. We need these people!

And we need them (me, us) to work together!

But is there a way to bring it all together?

An article by Stanley Hauerwas seems to help me here. In the article he is talking about what it means to be a theologian, but I don't separate very much being a "pastor" from being a "theologian" and vice versa. I think the end is same for both, it just comes in different ways (again, the spirit gives gifts). What Hauerwas says about being a theologian I want to also say about being a pastor:

"It is important to ask some to do nothing with their lives but to think about what we say when we say 'God.'"

What do ya think?

UPDATE: Click here to read the article.