A Lenten Reflection

I just discovered this poem on Christ's passion. While you want to avoid some of the Gnostic influences, it is a thoughtful encounter with the suffering that Christ endured (the writer writes from Christ's perspective). There are many aspects of atonement that would later be severed from each other that are represented here. I recommend reading it slow. Allow it to be sort of a drama unfolding as it is that one is called to reflect on Christ's passion within the context of worship as one approaches the middle of the temple. Reflections are always appreciated here.

What changes your worldview?

Last night in our Ash Wednesday service we showed two movie clips as a part of the Liturgy. They appear at two separate times and pertained to particular Scriptures of Lent. They fit the moment very well.

Scene One, Schindler’s List: This was the scene where a large group of Jewish people were outside shoveling snow when a Nazi guard pulled one man and shot him in the head. The blood stained the ground as it ran down from his head to the tip of his fingers.

Scene Two, Crash: In this scene the Persian shop owners walks up to Daniel, the Latino locksmith who he thinks has destroyed his shop. There is yelling back and forth as Daniel keeps point at his daughter for her to stay inside the house. Scared, the daughter runs out to her dad with the mom right behind. (spoiler alert). As she gets to her dad the gun goes off right in the daughters back. The father let’s a cry from the bottom of his heart. The mom breaks down. We come to find out that the daughter has not been shot. The parents are thankful. The Persian man is confused.

Did I mention that we watched these scenes without audio?!? Amazing! Powerful! I could hear the cry of the father when he thought his daughter was shot ring in my head from when I watched the movie the first time. I heard it so clear.

Why I am saying this?

I say this because I am curious to know what movies, books, songs, poems, etc, whatever, become those resources that help move us, that help us live faithfully. What helps change our worldview to the kind of worldview formed by the liturgy? What helps us live out our baptisms Eucharistically? These are the questions with which I am curious? These kinds of things do not have to be “Christian” in the manner that we have “Christian music” and “non-Christian music.” U2 for example is a good example of “non-Christian” music. Crash then, in this sense, becomes a Lenten reality for us. I have been considering the Iron and Wine On Your Wings song as particularly Lentful (did I make up that word?).

God, there is gold hidden deep in the ground
God, there's a hangman that wants to come around
How we rise when we're born like the ravens in the corn
on their wings, on our knees crawling careless from the sea

God, give us love in the time that we have

God, there are guns growing out of our bones
God, every road takes us farther from home
All these men that you made how we wither in the shade
of your trees, on your wings we are carried to the sea

God, give us love in the time that we have

So, help me out. Help me think through this.

"Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise."

On the Revolution of Love

It "Changes the World Without Making Noise" VATICAN CITY, FEB. 18, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today before reciting the midday Angelus with several thousand people gathered in St. Peter's Square.

"Dear Brothers and Sisters!

This Sunday's Gospel has one of the most typical, yet most difficult, teachings of Jesus: Love your enemies (Luke 6:27).

It is taken from the Gospel of Luke, but it is also found in Matthew's Gospel (5:44), in the context of the programmatic discourse that begins with the famous Beatitudes. Jesus delivered this address in Galilee, at the beginning of his public ministry: It was something of a "manifesto" presented to everyone, which Christ asked his disciples to accept, thus proposing to them in radical terms a model for their lives.

But what is the meaning of his teaching? Why does Jesus ask us to love our very enemies, that is, ask a love that exceeds human capacities? What is certain is that Christ's proposal is realistic, because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and that this situation cannot be overcome without positing more love, more kindness. This "more" comes from God: It is his mercy that has become flesh in Jesus and that alone can redress the balance of the world from evil to good, beginning from that small and decisive "world" which is man's heart.

This page of the Gospel is rightly considered the "magna carta" of Christian nonviolence; it does not consist in surrendering to evil -- as claims a false interpretation of "turn the other cheek" (Luke 6:29) -- but in responding to evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21), and thus breaking the chain of injustice. It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person's way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God's love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the "Christian revolution," a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God, that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise. Herein lies the heroism of the "little ones," who believe in the love of God and spread it even at the cost of life.

Dear brothers and sisters: Lent, which begins this Wednesday, with the rite of the distribution of ashes, is the favorable time in which all Christians are invited to convert ever more deeply to the love of Christ.

Let us ask the Virgin Mary, the docile disciple of the Redeemer, to help us to allow ourselves to be conquered without reservations by that love, to learn to love as he loved us, to be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful (Luke 6:36)."

Benedict XVI

"They shall look upon Him whom they have pierced'

A worthy Lenten theme indeed!

I am thankful for Pope Benedict XVI’s Lent message. (Search February 13, 2007).

The Pope calls for the faithful to direct our gaze upon the cross where God's love was fully revealed. We are reminded to consider God's love as agape and Eros. Eros? That seems a bit odd. The Pope reminds us, however, that while God looks exclusively for our own good, He desires to possess our "yes;" and so Mary becomes important for us this season as we seek to follow her first yes with our own. God is Eros. "On the cross, it is God Himself who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of everyone of us." And so, let us look upon the one whom we have pierced, drawn to the glory of the God in the face of Christ on the cross and let us confess by the Spirit our sins and receive mercy. Let us receive that Eucharistic grace that we might more fully manifest the reality of our Baptisms. Drawn out of ourselves in Baptism let us spread the love of God as we learn it in the Eucharist.

Your help, please

A pastor that I know is working to help his Church embrace some of the deeper implications of the Eucharist and he asked me to list what books I had read regarding this. I figured that I could provide a few good books but thought that maybe you all who read this blog might suggest some of your own as well. So bring on the books lists! Here are a few of my own suggestions to get us going.

Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World
William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (chapters 5 and 6)
T. F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation (chapter 3)
Lawrence Welch, Christology and Eucharist in the Early Thought of Cyril of Alexandria

p.s. Articles are welcome as well.

"Kate, dammit, run!"

LOST is back, YAY!

Confession and Counseling

I am currently in the middle of a class called Pastoral Care and Counseling. The question of confidentiality and disclosure recently came up in one of our sessions. Someone mentioned that the pastor should always keep confidentiality with the parishioner unless mandated by State and Federal law. I questioned that assumption based on a Catholic understanding of the confessional. I have a few questions for consideration.

ONE: How different is the confessional space form a counseling session?

TWO: Is the confessional exempt from State and Federally mandate laws? e.g. Do you turn in a person who is confessing his/her struggles of child molestation, that is, he/she is actually doing the acts?

THREE: What is the significance of confessional space?

My Theological Meme

Charlie has tagged me to put my own theological meme. First, the rules of the game:

1) You do not talk about fight ... Oh, sorry. Wrong game.

Here we go. Rule number one (and there are one and a half rules).

1/2) You do not meme until memed upon (actually I made that one up).
1) Name three (or more) theological works from the last 25 years (1981-2006) that you consider important and worthy to be included on a list of the most important works of theology of that last 25 years (in no particular order).

So, without further ado.

1) T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, 1995.
2) G. Simon Harak, Virtuous Passions, 2001
3) John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 2002

Schmemann’s For the Life of the World did not make the cut because it was written in 1973. That would be my alternative fourth if the time frame ever changed. Or maybe Hauerwas’, The Peaceable Kingdom … Or even Cavanaugh’s Torture and Eucharist.

Tag, you’re it: Brian Postlewait, Matt Alexander, and J.R. Caines.

The incautious importunity of loquacity

"Rulers ought also to guard with anxious thought not only against saying in any way what is wrong, but against uttering even what is right overmuch and inordinately; since the good effect of things spoken is often lost, when enfeebled to the hearts of hearers by the incautious importunity of loquacity: and this same loquacity, which knows not how to serve for the profit of the hearers, also defiles the speaker."

Gregory the Great

The city does not need Jesus

Over the past few weeks I was able to take c class through NTS called Urban Immersion: Los Angeles. The goal of the class is just that, to immerse one in many of the facets of the city. We were able to gain perspective on the social, political, and economic situation of Los Angeles through a lens of urban ministry.

Some of the highlights included a half-day walk through the downtown area. We spent a great deal of time in Skid Row, a shocking environment after one has toured “Bunker Hill”, which if you know anything about this area the most significant point might be made that it sits on artificially raised structures that serve to restrict unwanted visitors. The local security proves this point. The way the downtown area has founded itself structured provides a scene of hopelessness for those trapped in the plight of the city. I witnessed first hand the sweatshops located just above the shops that sell the products. Products marked too high that serve to pay workers at ridiculous wages. [If the U.S wants to rid the country of illegal immigrants then the best way is to stop buying the products made or the food grown by “illegal hands” … but that might leave the poor without a cloak or tunic, naked and helpless for all the world to see. Perhaps that might leave the powers naked and helpless for all the world to see.]

The city does not need Jesus, the world need only recognize His presence already there.

"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all [people] to myself."

Anyways…just some thoughts.

Smith, Derrida, and the Church

Despite the dire effects of procrastinating, I am forgoing some of my reading for school to post a few comments on James Smith’s, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism. For a more exhaustive dialogue you can visit The Church and Postmodern Culture: Conversation and find a chapter-by-chapter discussion of the book beginning in July archives.

Smith’s book is the first in a book series that will draw on the “culture of postmodernity as an opportunity for rethinking the shape of our churches” (9). “Opportunity” indicates that the realm of postmodern culture and theory can be utilized by the Church to help it recover a better ecclesiology, which Smith suggests is both ancient and liturgical. To utilize postmodern culture and theory is to neither shun it nor baptize it, an important point to be kept in mind! For the Church Smith is encouraging a “creative recovery of ancient themes and figures” (25), as opposed suggesting a paleo-orthodox route.

As this is not meant to be a blog post exhaustive of Smith’s book, there are a few highlights I would like to make.

On Presuppositional Apologetics: Presuppostional apologetics means exactly that, a person’s worldview has inherent presuppositions that give is shape. There is no neutral rational playing field where everything means the same thing. One’s experience has and is determining what is true and false. For the Church this means that we have to recognize and embrace people will different worldviews. We cannot expect people to understand what we mean when we say, the “Word became flesh”, or “Christ’s blood is the blood of the new covenant.” Smith suggests that the primary responsibility of the Church is proclamation (kerygma). The church is not a system of truth dictate by neutral reason but a story that requires eyes to see and ears to hear (28). Revelation is the key to this kerygmatic proclamation.

On Derrida’s claim, “there is nothing outside the text”: Essentially, there is nothing outside of context (52). There is no neutral rational playing field. Interpretation is always context sensitive. Simply put, we cannot escape our own skin. Everything must be interpreted in order to be experienced (38). To experience something is to interpret it. However, Derrida goes on to say that an interpretation is good or bad based on the guidelines of one’s context, or community.

There is a lot that can be said further, especially as one gets into some of the finer nuances of “deconstruction”. For now I just want to highlight what Smith has to say about a deconstructive church.

On a deconstructive church: A deconstructive church embraces the entire biblical text in the form of the lectionary, converses with ancient voices in the form of creeds and preaching, and listens through prayer to global voices of today’s Church, especially those marginalized voices for the gospel, which is largely “foolishness” is to be spoken from the sidelines (58). A deconstructive Church is a prophetic Church because it does not count on people simply seeing that Christianity is true it proclaims the truth of the gospel and trusts the Spirit to illuminate that truth. Worship in a deconstructive church shapes our worldview to be able to call out the false realities of the world that claim they are the truth. In worship we give ourselves to be formed after the image of God so that we can interpret the world according to the gospel.

Now, why the short summary of a few chapters of a book?

I guess when I read something like this I find many of faith gaps of my life being filled with a certain level of assurance of my being a follower of Christ. Proclamation makes more sense, if you will, than demonstration (according to Smith). How can I ever prove the gospel according to a neutral rational playing field? Now, I am not suggesting that the church proclaim a certain level of ignorance. Proclamation assumes language and practice. That said, the Church is to prove the gospel through its communal witness as it exists in space and time. This kind of “prove” is a demonstration not according to common sense but faithful witness. We will prove the things of God by our lives and always by the Holy Spirit.

I guess I’ll end my comments for now.

Peace,
Scott

You have got to be kidding me!

I actually saw this today at Target. Wow!

For if Christ is God, as indeed He is, but took not human nature upon Him, we are strangers to salvation

Some good stuff from Cyril of Jerusalem for Christmas.

"Nurslings of purity and disciples of chastity, raise we our hymn to the Virgin-born God with lips full of purity. Deemed worthy to partake of the flesh of the Spiritual Lamb, let us take the head together with the feet, the Deity being understood as the head, and the Manhood taken as the feet. Hearers of the Holy Gospels, let us listen to John the Divine. For he who said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, went on to say, and the Word was made flesh. For neither is it holy to worship the mere man, nor religious to say that He is God only without the Manhood. For if Christ is God, as indeed He is, but took not human nature upon Him, we are strangers to salvation. Let us then worship Him as God, but believe that He also was made Man. For neither is there any profit in calling Him man without Godhead nor any salvation in refusing to confess the Manhood together with the Godhead. Let us confess the presence of Him who is both King and Physician. For Jesus the King when about to become our Physician, girded Himself with the linen of humanity, and healed that which was sick. The perfect Teacher of babes became a babe among babes, that He might give wisdom to the foolish. The Bread of heaven came down on earth that He might feed the hungry."

The Beginning is Near (part 2)

The Beginning is Near (part 1)

Thanks to Wil and Charlie for helping us worship this advent with this video.

The Drama Persists!

A very profound insight on preaching from Willimon.

"Therefore, I think the best preaching from the Bible is that preaching that is evocative, suggestive, and thick, rather than that preaching which, in wooden fashion, merely lays out principles and precepts, abstractions and rules. We pastors are those who are called, in great part, to open up the imagination of our congregations to what is possible and probable now that a creative God is determined to get back what belongs to God. Too often we preachers think that our job is to take a biblical text and narrow the possibilities of that text, force it to speak univocally, and reduce it to the one authoritative, right interpretation. More creative, and perhaps more faithful, biblical interpretation and exhortation seeks to multiply the possibilities, to open up new perspectives, and to help us see something that we would not have seen without the imaginative stimulation of Scripture."

I particularly was interested in his saying that preaching should be evocative, suggestive, and thick, that it should open up the imagination of the congregation. Perhaps we ought to start preaching “fictionally”. Not in a sense that what we have to say is all make-believe but rather that through the words we are drawn to what is beyond the words, letting the biblical narrative breath its ancient wisdom drawing us forever into the fullness of God’s reality through Christ and by the Spirit.

Willimon also said something that interested me as well in regards to how the Church speaks about the time between the times, that is in a "post" biblical context. He notes that too often Christians believe that "the dramatic parts of the Christian story are over; except for some commotion at the end on which it’s best not to dwell." I found this helpful especially as I think about my own denomination as it finds its place in a divided Church, as I wonder about its purpose for existing. We Nazarenes are not a people wandering aimlessly, merely waiting for the end to occur, passing the time by promoting the life of holiness as sort of a hobby. That makes no sense. If we believe we have something to offer the Church catholic (Rome, Orthodox, and Protestant) in regards to holy and faithful living then we need to find ourselves within the tradition, not in a sense that it is their tradition in which we seek to return but in fact that it is our tradition in which we seek to find ourselves faithful. There is hope as the Church seeks to be One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic that the dramatic parts of the biblical story do indeed continue today because we people of who the Book gives witness, and witnesses ourselves who give stature to the Book. The Church truly is the living end of God’s work of creation and redemption. The end is here, now, and charging at us in God’s Spirit. The drama persists!

Christology, Peace, and Advent

Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 126
Philippians 1:1-11
Luke 1:68-70; 3:1-6

I was particularly drawn to Sunday’s advent Scripture readings. I am not sure, if it has to do with the upcoming finale of the fall semester in which I am more inclined to be thinking about beginnings and endings, or rather if it is because it is advent and I am forced to think about beginnings and endings and seemingly never ending “middles” of time. Probably both.

These readings compel me to wonder about the purpose and mission of the Church as it relates to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ who is to come again to fulfill what He has already accomplished in Himself in our redemption. The Psalm teaches us to sing of our freedom from captivity and our return to Zion by the mighty works of God and yet Paul is painting a picture of the ever-approaching fullness of our freedom in Christ when he comes again. I am drawn to the gospel of Luke and Zechariah’s prophecy of the gospel of peace, a peace accomplished by the Lord God of Israel and our ever increasing knowledge of this mighty reality as, to mix metaphors, the love of God unfolds like a blanket on the earth, shinning down until all darkness is destroyed.

Peace is inextricably wrapped up in the incarnation of the Word of God. It would be a shame to for us to miss how important it is that the Church be a community after the Shalom of God for it is that very reality that has been made known to us in Christ who stands, even now, as the first true worshipper of God, for his perfect obedience unto death was that right and proper worship that humanity abandoned so long ago. O how peace has to do with worshipping in Spirit and in truth. Let us this advent be the peace of God even now amidst a violent world as a witness to the peace of Christ we know only by Hs life, death, and resurrection.

Sorry (maybe not) for the blog sermon. The tension between the times is sometimes too overwhelming!

Consider this the next time you watch a commercial on TV

“It is the intent of this study to tell … how ordinary folk came to distrust leaders of genius and talent and to defend the right of common people to shape their own faith and submit to leaders of their own choosing. This story also provides new insight into how America became a liberal, competitive, and market-driven society … In this way, religious movements eager to preserve the supernatural in everyday life had the ironic effect of accelerating the break-up of tradition society and the advent of a social order of competition, self-expression, and free enterprise. In this moment of democratic aspirations, religious leaders could not foresee that their assault upon mediating structures could produce society in which grasping entrepreneurs could erect new forms of tyranny in religious, political, and economic institutions.”

Pastor Athanasius

"For as a kind teacher who cares for His disciples, if some of them cannot profit by higher subjects, comes down to their level, and teaches them at any rate by simpler courses; so also did the Word of God. As Paul also says: 'For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the word preached to save them that believe'. For seeing that men, having rejected the contemplation of God, and with their eyes downward, as though sunk in the deep, were seeking about for God in nature and in the world of sense, feigning gods for themselves of mortal men and demons; to this end the loving and general Saviour of all, the Word of God, takes to Himself a body, and as Man walks among men and meets the senses of all men half-way, to the end, I say, that they who think that God is corporeal may from what the Lord effects by His body perceive the truth, and through Him recognize the Father. So, men as they were, and human in all their thoughts, on whatever objects they fixed their senses, there they saw themselves met half way, and taught the truth from every side. For if they looked with awe upon the Creation, yet they saw how she confessed Christ as Lord; or if their mind was swayed toward men, so as to think them gods, yet from the Saviour's works, supposing they compared them, the Saviour alone among men appeared Son of God; for there were no such works done among the rest as have been done by the Word of God. Or if they were biassed toward evil spirits, even, yet seeing them cast out by the Word, they were to know that He alone, the Word of God, was God, and that the spirits were none. Or if their mind had already sunk even to the dead, so as to worship heroes, and the gods spoken of in the poets, yet, seeing the Saviour's resurrection, they were to confess them to be false gods, and that the Lord alone is true, the Word of the Father, that was Lord even of death. For this cause He was both born and appeared as Man, and died, and rose again, dulling and casting into the shade the works of all former men by His own, that in whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence He might recall them, and teach them of His own true Father, as He Himself says: 'I came to save and to find that which was lost'."

St. Athanasius

The Vicarious Humanity of Christ

"The vicarious humanity of Christ thus became integral to the doctrine of the ‘atoning exchange’ effected by him and in him between God and man. Hence the Gospel of the reconciliation of man with God has to be understood not just in terms of God’s mighty acts of salvation upon our humanity, but in terms of its actualization within the depths of our human existence in the perfecting and presenting in and through Jesus of our response of faith and obedience, in love and worship, to God the Father. For us to share in the worship of the Father through, with and in Jesus Christ belongs to the essence of our reconciliation to God, and is over the very substance of the Gospel.”