Author: MASadmin

Sometimes, it’s hard to be a progressive Christian

I really shouldn’t respond to things posted on Huffington Post but, well, this piece on Christian Social Ethics really ticked me off. It makes me feel annoyed about being a progressive Christian. Though, to be honest, it is also hard to be a Christian since the body of Christ contains people quite different politically, socially, and morally than me. The gulf between me and, say, Rick Santorum, is vast but that’s the very nature of the church. The problem with God is that God keeps being bigger than me.

But what I really struggle with is when progressives start touting the argument about “conservative” Christianity being Pauline. The problem with that argument is that it tries to do a couple of things: 1) it removes Paul from the canon 2) it tries to get us off the hook when it comes to dealing with statements that Paul makes and 3) it cuts out later Christian thought from Augustine through Martin Luther and down to me. It actually undercuts my theology and I’m (probably) on their side! It also, dangerously, declares my theology and tradition as, somehow, anti-social justice, anti-Jesus, anti-poor, and anti-loving-my-neighbors. It also makes some mistakes because it generalizes Paul, forgets that he collected money for the church in Jerusalem, and forgets that Paul wrote Romans. There is a lot wrong with the kind of argument that Mike Lux is making because it starts in the wrong place. It is arguing for a purity of practice, trying to somehow return to “Jesus” and pull out his “true” teaching as a way to influence current social and Christian practices. It is, in a nutshell, doing exactly what the “conservatives” do but switching to a more socially liberal direction. And that’s fine but if you’re going to undercut tradition, the canon, and use weak exegetical and theological arguments to make your point, you’re going to weaken your argument, not strengthen it.

I completely disagree with what Santorum said but I’m not so sure that he is using liberal the way that Lux thinks he is. Actually, I don’t think Santorum knows what the word liberal is because, when it comes to the concept of liberal in the Christian world (and specifically in Catholic teaching), liberal is a specific thing. My definition (that it’s not liberal to say that Jesus healed the sick and we should to; liberal means saying things like the resurrection didn’t happen) is a product of the development of liberal thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Santorum is taking the term liberal, as it is used in our current political structures, and merging it with a system of theology that the Catholic church reacted against. He’s also equating theological liberalism with liberation theology (which, honestly, I think is a very hard case to make) and trying to tie those two things together through the social liberalism. He’s combining terms, misusing them for sound bytes, and people ARE BUYING IT. He’s using the term liberal to claim that all progressive Christians are theologically liberal and aren’t true Christians. It’s a fine attempt at word play but it is extremely inaccurate. He might not be doing this combination on purpose but if a writer responds like Mike Lux did, you fall into Santorum’s trap and you begin to make the mistake of throwing Paul under the bus. Take Santorum down for saying that liberation theology is not a salvation theology (how can he even make that claim?). Or, better yet, take him to task for disavowing the language of liberation theology, the same language that Pope John Paul II loved to use when he talked about the God’s “preferential love for the poor.” That’s social justice! Point out Santorum’s own flawed reasoning and have him do battle with his own Catholic heritage!

To claim that “conservatives” or “evangelicals” or the religious right are somehow “Pauline” (i.e. not Jesus Christians) makes the mistake of throwing entire groups of people under the bus for no reason. On Sunday, I preached on what Paul says that the Corinthian community (and Paul) do – “we proclaim Christ crucified.” As a Lutheran Christian, I cannot see myself proclaiming anything else. In Lux’s definition, I’m not on Christ’s side.

In Lux’s defense, he’s arguing against a specific framework or ideology that, in his mind, does not change behavior. He sees a Jesus who ate with sinners and sees professing Christians who don’t match that image. Christians, for Lux, are to be transformative characters in the world. His criticism is a valid and is not a new point to make. But he never actually brings up a counter to the theory. He attacks the outcome of his theory of individual salvation but never counters with a different point of view. Instead, he shuts down the theory by saying that to a true Christian, one can’t be “only Pauline” (whatever that means). He doesn’t argue salvation, he doesn’t argue theology, he instead argues actions, morality, and behaviors. He identifies proper Christianity with proper action. In my mind, he’s making the same theological mistakes that the conservatives he dislikes are making! (but, hey, I’m Lutheran so I would make that jump). In Lux’s eyes, to not do as Jesus did is to, in some ways, be an incomplete Christian. He’s taking Santorum’s quote and using it in reverse, to exclude Santorum and his ilk from the body of Christ. The underlying assumption (the notion of salvation, what that means, where it comes froms, etc) in Lux’s argument is never questioned. Rather, Lux’s version of Paul’s theology gets attack, thrown under the bus, and painted as something wrong. He falls into the talking point trap. And it’s this type of argument that fails to actually encourage debate. It doesn’t engage with the other side. It does what the Santorum does and I really don’t see what’s very progressive about it.

Preaching Baptism – Quote

From “Preaching the Sacraments” in The Preached God by Gerhard O. Forde. Edited by Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007). For future reference (cuz that’s the problem with library books – I have to return them and I forget where the quote comes from!)

But how shall we do it? No doubt sacraments should find their way into a good many sermons if not all of them. When there is a baptism or a baptism Sunday there should be a specific baptismal sermon. Perhaps the best way to close out this essay is to offer again some concrete suggestions and experiments to exemplify what I have been talking about.
I begin with baptism. If baptism is to be preached in accord with what I have been saying, it should be preached as the unrelenting and unconditional divine yes that cuts off our inward flight at every point, lays the old to rest, and calls forth the new. It would probably go something as follows. Baptism regenerates, it works forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. But how can it do that? Simply by being what it is, a washing with water that cannot be erased together with the speaking of the promise, the creative word, the divine yes spoken over us, spoken to us from the outside, from the beginning, the first an the last word about us, the word calling us to life out of our death “in Adam.” “You are mine,” says the Lord God. “You always have been and always will be.” But that, of course, is incredible. Maybe even frightening. Thus all the questions come tumbling out, all of them attempts to take the gift and retreat inside, protests of the old Adam and Even who know themselves to be under radical attack in their inner bastions.
But in the preaching all the questions must be countered relentlessly by the divine yes. Is baptism enough? Yes! It works forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Live in that and hear it again each day. Believe that it is enough and that is certainly enough! Would it have all the significance even if I were only a baby and did not know what was going on? Yes, because it was God who spoke that yes over you. God is God. What about my response? Are you saying that I do not even have to respond? Now that, of course, is the trickiest question of all in the old Adam’s aresenal. It too can only be countered ultimately with what is perhaps an equally tricky yes. Yes, I am saying you do not have to respond. What is the matter, do you not want to? It is the old Adam who can only think in dreary terms of have to and ask stupid questions about it. The old is through, drowned in the water. If you think it is a matter of have to, forget it! Here we are calling forth the new who simply wants to. This is the divine yes calling to our yes in the Spirit. “Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead!” Come out of your stinking tomb! But, but, do you mean to say I am not free to reject? Yes, I should hope so! What in the world do you want to do that for? How could you call such rejection freedom? To reject must be only the most horrible form of bondage. It certainly is not “freedom”! Does that not mean that God is taking a great risk? Yes indeed. But he takes it nevertheless, even unto death. Are you saying, “Once saved, always saved”? Yes. What is wrong with that? I am counting on it, aren’t you? It is the divine yes, God’s Word. You do not mean that grace is irresistible, do you? Yes. I find it to be so, do you not? To be sure, grace is not force. Grace is just grace and as such it is by definition “irresistible,” I expect! Does that not mean it could be grossly misunderstood, misused, and abused? Yes, I expect it does. But God suffered all the abuse to bring it to light. Is that not what it’s all about? Should God, as Luther could put it, call off his goodness for the sake of the ungodly? If so, who at all would be saved?
The answer, you see, is yes, yes, yes. It is God’s yes, and he will go on saying it until finally you die of it and being to whisper, “Amen! So be it Lord!” Baptism does regenerate. Of course this is dangerous business! So-called evangelicals will howl about sacramentalism and object vociferously to the “magic” of such externalism. And they are quite right to do so if sacraments are only analogies of allegories of our inner life. If sacraments, that is, leave the old subject intact we could not speak like this or put such confidence in sacraments. Either we must preach them so they kill the old Adam and Eve or we’d better forget them. A sacrament that has all the objective validity we want to claim for it and still leaves the old subject intact is only an invitation to disaster.

Prayers from a(n almost) dad


K and Mr. Bear try out our new Moby wrap.

In the wider scheme of things, K and I are one of the few folks we know, our age, who are having a child. This being New York, your late twenties is just not right to be building a family. But we’re all about breaking the mold. And, lucky for us, we’re not the only ones in our wide circle of friends who are entering parenthood. A few friends of ours recently gave birth to young, strapping boys. And since all our apartments are small, our friends want to get rid of the stuff their kids have outgrown – which means free stuff for us.

Ca-ching!

I guess I never realized the incredible movement of clothing, beds, and devices from one baby generation to the next. Over the weekend, we picked up more clothes and a co-sleeper from a friend. The weekend before that, a car seat; the weekend before that, more clothes. We’re stocking up and it feels oh so good.

Another plus for us is that the newborn boys we met are incredibly HUGGEEE. On the growth charts, they are all at the 120 percentile – they’re toddler sized, driving cars, going to college – it’s wild. Our friends had to switch into new wardrobes which means their little guys were unable to wear quite a bit of their clothing. That’s great for us because we’ve been given entire stockpiles of normal sized, completely unworn, clothing. And this has led my daily prayers into a new direction. Besides my usual prayers for a safe pregnancy and a happy, healthy baby, I’m also praying for a NORMAL sized kidling. And if he wants to be a little small and grow into his new clothing, I’m okay with that too.

Great Expectations: 3rd Sunday in Lent Sermon

My sermon from this morning, typos and all. I always forget how much of this I change on the fly – little additions here, different stresses, hand motions, etc. I think there was between 170-180 people today at church (between the two services).

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3rd Sunday in Lent (Exodus 20:1-17;Psalm 19;1 Corinthians 1:18-25;John 2:13-22).
Advent Lutheran Church, New York City
March 11, 2012

Great Expectations: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

We’ve got some great lessons this week, don’t we?
There’s Jesus, in the temple, throwing out the money changers – Rambo style – and then there’s Moses coming down the mountain, and delivering the ten commandments – and then we have Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians talking about the cross being a stumbling block and foolishness. And it’s that line from Corinthians that I seem to see a lot.
Earlier this week, I visited Union Seminary’s library, digging around for some old magazines – and rather than getting a stack of old paper or a pdf or computer files – the librarian went ahead and handed me these weird little boxes containing…film? And I had to go thread the film into this giant noisy machine, with levers and knobs and pulleys. And with the article displayed on this giant screen in front of me , I would cycle through the pages and it would make that noise che-che-che-che-che-che as the pages zoomed by. And I stopped, and right there, on the cover of the magazine, below the title, in big bold letters, was First Corinthians, verse 23: “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”
In a way, that phrase is one of those rallying points for us I think. It’s a phrase we love to say, to hear, to call as our own. It’s a phrase that seems to say that God is bigger than our expectations, that God doesn’t work the way we sometimes imagine, and that God is bigger than who we imagine ourselves to be. And there’s a lot of hope in that.
And as I soaked in 1 Corinthians 23 as the sub-title for the magazine, I couldn’t help but notice the date. 1914. The same year that the hopes of the 19th century – of so much progress – the development of so many things that we take for granted now – modern medicine, the rise of the middle class, the birth of New York City, flight, industrialization, electric lights, movies, radio, and even the subway – that century where so much hope was put into the idea of progress – that magazine cover, with that verse of hope in big bold letters on it – came from the same year when all that progress – all that human ingenuity, strength, power – all those great expectations – they all came crashing down with the start of World War One.
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1850 years, or so, before that – Paul had an issue on his hands. He had just received word that there were issues in the Corinth community. Paul had moved on, gone off to spread the gospel in a new place. And when Chloe’s people told him what was going on in Corinth, how splits were developing within the community, he felt he had to step in. So, he wrote to them. In the beginning of our letter, he lays out some ground rules. He asserts his authority as founder of the community, he works on breaking down the sides that people had started to form – with one side saying I’m on Paul’s side, the other on Apollos, the other on Christ’s – and he lays into the power of the cross and he does that by burying our trust in wisdom, signs, and miracles, saying that God’s weakness is greater than any human strength.
So why does Paul only talk about miracles, signs, and wisdom?
I mean, I think those are things we can relate to. I think those are things our brothers and sisters 100 years ago could relate to. That…trust, that the more we learn, the more we discuss, the more we share, the more we discover, the better we’ll become; the stronger we will become. That, somehow, we can out think our way out of issues, and, sure it might take awhile – but we’ll get there. We’re always improving. Our science, our morality, our education, our politics, our economy, our…progress. There’s trust there. Or maybe it’s more of a trust in ourselves, of what we can do. And, if that doesn’t work, well, hey – we go to church, we pray – God will take care of it. That’s a kind of strength.
But…there’s something missing there. And I think the Corinthians would have noticed that too because how can you, when talking about those things that are powerful, wise, the epitome of human strength – how could Paul, and us, forget about who dominated both the Greeks and the scattered Jewish People throughout the Mediterranean world? Why doesn’t Paul mention Rome?
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I mean, in his day, and for the people of Corinth, Rome was strength – the sheer image of human might. The Greeks might have given the world philosophy, and the Chosen People brought God to the world – but both had been conquered by Rome. Both had to bend their knee to the Emperor. Both were just one of many peoples who had succumbed to the military, political, and economic might of Rome.
And Corinth itself, at this time, wasn’t a Grecian City. It had been recently destroyed by Rome and re-colonized, a few generations before, by veterans of the army. The Corinthians that Paul taught the gospel to were descendants of Rome’s military machine. And the city was built in the image of Rome and was covered in images of what it meant to be a part of Rome. It was in the air – that not only was the Roman Empire powerful, but that Rome was divinely blessed, led by a son of the gods, and Rom had the right to conquer everyone and everything. Paul’s Corinthian community, in their everyday lives, as they went to the market, or the temple, or out to the fields to work – they would’ve passed countless statues – and these statues would be of slaves, of conquered warriors, of prisoners of war, being powerless, insignificant, and weak. Some would have their bodies bent, arms behind their backs, holding up roofs and columns and towers – like this (DEMONSTRATE) – like gargoyles on some old building today but rather than monsters – they were people caught up in Rome’s might.
It’s not the Greek’s wisdom or the Jewish God that would have seem oh so powerful to the Corinthians – that’s not human strength – human strength, divine strength – that was Rome.
And this Rome was so powerful, that it took the land of Judah.
And when it met Jesus – the Son of God – who the Corinthian community claimed as divine – that Rome crucified him, like he was a common criminal, a slave. He was insignificant – a mosquito to be swatted and nothing more.
Because that was Rome’s expectation of what it meant to handle any one person who had the audacity to cause a scene in a religious center.
That person who had the audacity to bring good news to the poor, to cure the sick, to feed the hungry, to love.
That person who had the audacity to challenge the systems of expectations that we have – and Rome had – and Corinth had – about who is powerful, who is mighty, and who deserves dignity, and who deserves God’s grace and mercy.
I think the Corinthian community would have read that mention of human strength at the end of our reading – and they would have thought of Rome.
And how so very odd it is to proclaim, and teach, and talk, and believe – it that supposed insignificant man that Rome killed.
Rome’s power and belief in itself was all around them.
And, yet, that Corinthian community proclaimed the unrealistic.
As we go through Lent – we began remembering where we came – from insignificant dust – and as we walk together on the path towards Calvary –
Where we’ll see Jesus, like those statues of slaves in Corinth, his head down, his body broken –
But he won’t be bent.
Because Jesus’s arms that day weren’t bent behind his back.
They were open, nailed to the Cross, and spread as wide as they could possibly be.
For God has something else planned
Something that didn’t rest on our own powers
our own thoughts on what it means to be great, or strong, or smart, or wise
or whatever is in the air.
But, instead, Jesus’s arms are open wide
welcoming all of us –
and showing that God’s love does not depend on us.
And that its God’s expectations that have the final say
Because its through Jesus….. that Jesus Christ, crucified,
where we find exactly what it means
for us, for you……….. to be loved. Amen.

History Lesson

Well, I just finished the second draft of my sermon for Sunday. I’ll probably write one more before I print it out and start crossing out words and practicing my delivery (there are sound effects that I need to get just right). I’ll see if the dog and cat mind being my audience.

Part of my experimentation with this sermon is, besides preaching mostly on the Epistle and integrating my current school work into it, is to stretch myself a little bit. Rather than do what I usually do, grounding the lesson in its narrative context and then filtering through that context with contemporary images, I’m framing this sermon mostly as a history lesson. Of course, I like history, and I think any modern interpretation of history is, by its nature, filled with contemporary images. But I’m curious how it will go over with the congregation. I think some will like it but I’m not sure if enough will get the punch. And I wonder how appropriate for Lent it is.

One thing that I hope will help, however, is the Hymn of the Day. Rather than try to do what I usually do and pick a hymn that reinforces the message, I tried to use the sermon hymn as a continuation of my words. In a sense, the hymn isn’t (I hope) going to be merely a rehashing of the sermon but rather an integrated part to it. And with a replacement to the creed we’ve inserted into the bulletin this week, I’m hoping those three parts of the service will flow and reinforce each other. So, if someone took a step back, those sections would appear as a whole rather than just complementary sections. I have no idea if this will actually work, mind you, but I’m gonna give it a shot.

And, as an aside, I can see that I’m copying a certain preacher I know by starting with something funny and then moving on to seriousness. I hope that’s not copyrighted!