What Emanuel AME Church has to teach us about the way forward

Now that same-sex marriage is woven into the national legal fabric of the US, Christians and their communities of faith are considering how to respond. Some are angry, decrying the imminent demise of the nation; others are celebrating this progressive move.

This isn’t the first time that churches in the US have had to deal with changes in legal requirements that relate to marriage. Up until the 1970’s there had to be some provable violation of the bonds of marriage for a divorce to be granted. Since the creation of no-fault divorce, however, the process has been streamlined and made easier for everyone (except, of course, the children).

This was a challenge for people of faith, who trusted the authority of that part of the wedding ceremony that proclaimed,

“What God has joined together, let no one separate.” (A quote from Jesus, to be clear)

The State made a ruling on divorce, and churches had to live with it. How did many churches respond? Many realized that marginalizing or excluding divorced people from their fellowships was not the way of Jesus. Divorce recovery ministries sprang up. There was even a growing acceptance of those who divorced and remarried. Most didn’t do a particularly good job of exploring the theology of it all, but there was still a response that resulted in acts of ministry.

Now the State has made a ruling on marriage, and churches have to live with that as well.

So, now what?

I think that the good people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, have helped us with the way forward.

After nine worshippers were gunned down in their church, the members of Emanuel probably recognized that the rest of the world would sympathize with them if they called for retributive justice—the death of the perpetrator that might somehow set things rights. They might have called for a violent response from their community.

Instead, they sent the world a message. They said, in effect,

“In times of pain, sorrow, and grief, we begin with worship, and then we forgive. That’s how we do it.” And the world, including the media, marveled.

And now, the Supreme Court has laid claim to a time-honored tradition for religious folks of all kinds: Marriage. And, as a majority, the citizens of our nation are on board with that change. The times, indeed, are a-changin’.

So, my Christian brothers and sisters, how do we do it?

Do we spew vitriol on the Internet, drawing lines and investing ourselves in the polarized screaming matches that have too long characterized people in our society? Do we simply embrace the decision of the court and cheer for what we’ve thought was right all along?

Or, do we stop, take a breath, and consider who we are. We who follow Jesus are not called to be ideologues that live or die based on the rulings of the Court or the preferences of our culture. We are called to be God’s people for the sake and blessing of the world.

The most appropriate response to the drama of this week is, I believe, to come together in worship. I think the noble people at Emanuel AME have shown us the power of such a response. Regardless of our views about the Court’s decision, we should intentionally and vulnerably place ourselves in a posture that demonstrates the lordship of Jesus Christ and recognizes that the church in America is a church in exile.

And then we open our eyes and ears and ask ourselves: What does the ministry of Jesus look like in this time and place? In challenging times, how is the love of God made known? I’m pretty sure it won’t be made known in political posturing and venomous denunciations.

So, how will we do it? The world is watching.

Where Will God Go?

Years ago a woman approached me after our weekly church service. Since I was her pastor, she wanted to tell me something she had experienced in order to hear my perspective.

She said that, as a young teenager, she had experienced various forms of abuse, both within her family and at church. One day she made a firm decision about her life, a decision she carefully explained to God.

“God,” she said, “I want you to know that I am going to start drinking and partying and doing all kinds of things that I don’t think you’re going to like.”

She told me that she heard words in her head—tender words that she believed were from God—saying, “All right. I’ll go with you.”

During her years of self-destructive behavior—right up through her time in rehab—she never doubted that God had been with her all the time. She had no illusions about God’s approval or endorsement of her behavior. She believed that she had broken God’s heart, but that he still remained quietly with her.

I had to really think about this one. It was an important question: In our worst circumstances, when we have chosen paths of pain and dehumanization, does God abandon us or wait patiently alongside us, grieving over our self-inflicted choices?

I think that the biblical history of Israel has something to say about this. What do you think?

[My most recent novel, The Haunts of Violence, was inspired by the conversation I had with that woman]

Sin and Immigration

I once knew a man who told me that he had recently made a left turn from a parking lot and inadvertently crossed over a double yellow line. He then tearfully explained to his young son, who was in the car with him, that it was that type of thing that would send a person to Hell.

For this man, all infractions—including murder, theft, lying, and minor traffic violations—were sin, and sin is what sends a person to Hell.

In a way, he had a bit of a point. According to the Bible, sin is a general category that covers every act that is aimed away from the intentions of God. However, there are still differences. Murder and crossing a double yellow line, for example, have different consequences. They also differ in their fundamental nature.

Murder is a forbidden act in most societies. People groups might have different definitions for what differentiates murder from other forms of killing, but most would agree that the taking of a human life is essentially wrong.

There are other violations that are social in nature and subject to change. The man mentioned above might have made the same left turn the day before the lines were painted on the street and would not have seen himself barreling down the road to Perdition. There are certain social boundaries that we observe in human communities that are not universal in nature, but are functional (and sometimes arbitrary) and subject to change.

International borders are like that.

In the early 1800s, the western border of the US ended at the Rocky Mountains. Florida was Spanish territory. Much of the west and southwest belonged to Mexico. The border between Texas and Mexico was open until the 1930s. So a person could cross legally one day, and be in violation of the law the next.

I have spoken with people who insist that an undocumented worker (illegal immigrant, or whatever) stands outside of God’s favor and is in danger of eternal punishment on the basis of an unauthorized border crossing. After all, breaking the law is wrong and, therefore, sin. I’m sure that the people who hold this view never exceed the speed limits when they drive.

I’m happy to see a number of Christian leaders speaking responsibly in the current US work on immigration reform (see the “I Was a Stranger” challenge). I hope to see more Christians speaking with wisdom and theological sense into this issue. We US Christians need a lot of help in distinguishing between our partisan preferences and our call to be God’s people for the sake of the world. We also need help in our tendency to operate out of fear.

The challenge for we who follow Jesus is to act responsibly when it comes to social and political realities, but at the same time to remember that we stand in solidarity with all people, as co-humans made in the image of God. Our national boundaries are insufficient in defining people and separating them into categories that allow us to dismiss their humanity.

The Priority of Ministry in the Debate about Homosexuality

There are some interesting, unexpected twists in the Bible. For example:

Jesus defies theological tradition and heals people on the Sabbath, claiming that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.

Peter and the council in Jerusalem accept the idea that uncircumcised Gentiles are as favored by God as the Jews, after Peter shares his story of witnessing the Holy Spirit fall on his new, non-Jewish, God-fearing friends. (Acts 10-11)

Paul pushes against multiple religious sensibilities when he tells both Jewish and Gentile Christians to let their convictions guide them regarding eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols.

These are examples of how theology is impacted when preceded by ministry.

Jesus preferred people over theological tradition and scandalized his opponents. Peter engaged with the Gentiles in Antioch long before Paul developed a theological framework for what had happened there. Paul’s concern for how Jews and Gentiles were going to live as one people as followers of Jesus formed his thinking about religious dietary regulations.

I’ve been talking to some people (again) about the various controversies regarding same-sex marriage and the place (or even the possibility) of gay people in the life of the church. The polarizations that have resulted from the larger discussions out there have done little except to fragment churches, denominations, and people.

We in the west tend to sort things out by starting with the abstract (theories and theologies) and then moving toward some sort of ministry practice or standard of behavior. But what might happen if we began by engaging with real, live people instead? That isn’t to say that having theological convictions isn’t important; it’s that theological convictions should arise out of our engagement with Scripture and with what we believe that God is doing in the world.

Denominations have crafted two polarized responses to same-sex marriage, with any number of variations in between them. One pole is grounded in particular texts of Scripture and denies gay people membership in the church. The other operates out of a conviction of God’s love for all people and fully embraces gay people and affirms gay marriage. They both begin with a theological standard and follow with a standard of behavior.

I am curious about what would happen if some of the leaders in these various groups sat down with some gay people who claimed to be followers of Jesus, and asked them to talk about how they saw the spirit of Jesus at work in their lives? If there were couples at the table, they could be asked how they were experiencing and demonstrating the presence of Jesus in their relationships. Then others in the room could offer their own testimonies. I wonder if the people would be challenged in the way that Peter was challenged when he saw the Holy Spirit at work among the Gentiles? Or would the room just be silent?

I’ve had such an experience. I have spent quite a bit of time with some devout Christian friends who were also gay. I have heard their testimonies and stories, of encounter and faithfulness, of deep struggle and pain, of joy found in salvation and in the presence of Jesus. We have prayed together and prayed for others together.

At the same time, I was raised with some very traditional and negative views about homosexuality. A long time ago I had to start living between the tension of my received convictions and what I was seeing in the lives of my friends. This has not been abstract for me—the process began in earnest when I became a pastor and there were gay people who came to my church. These were not people with some kind of political agenda. They were, like me, people who wanted to orient their lives around Jesus.

I’m hoping that some folks will rise up—people like the apostle Paul—who will help us with a responsible, theological way forward. We need someone who is willing to revisit our Scriptures without simply editing out the parts that offend. We need someone who is willing to take on the risky task of exploring what God might be doing in some unexpected places (there’s a lot of that in the New Testament, as I recall) without simply declaring that all is okay, everyone is okay, and let’s all just get along (I’m pretty sure that none of us is okay. That’s why we trust in a lot of things about God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, and the need for reconciliation).

There are precedents for this kind of thing throughout church history. It’s never been easy and it won’t be easy now. That is, if anyone is willing to do it.

The Self-Thwarting God

Sometimes we speak of God as though he is strangely self-thwarting. We talk and sing about how we deserve God’s wrath, how we ought to die because of our sins, and how God rages against our transgressions. We speak about God loving the sinner but hating the sin, which doesn’t make good theological sense in the first place. If God is only mad about sin, then his wrath is only directed at something that is separate from us. But that’s not how we speak. We speak of God’s anger being directly and specifically toward us.

God is strange, indeed. It seems that he is self-thwarting—he stops himself from doing what he is inclined to do, which is to wipe us out. He sends Jesus to us because someone has got to die or God is going to lose control. Fortunately, Jesus pulls it off and God doesn’t kill everyone. He’s still mad, of course, but Jesus runs interference for us and keeps God at bay.

Sometimes we speak that way. We need better ways to speak of God.

Dallas Willard, who passed away yesterday, had some helpful words in this regard (thanks to Rachel Held Evans for posting this quotation from The Divine Conspiracy):

“We must understand that God does not 'love' us without liking us - through gritted teeth - as 'Christian' love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core - which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word 'love'.”

There are a number of instances in the Bible where God’s wrath is the equivalent of allowing people to suffer the consequences of their actions. For example:

Adam and Eve crash, and the consequences are dire and irreversible. But God meets them in their hiddenness and shame, fashioning new garments for them.

The people of Israel want a king other than God, and God lets them have what they want. As a result, the nation fractures and then collapses, and the people are exiled. But God still brings them home again.

Young Saul (soon to be Paul) persecutes Christians, becoming guilty, in effect, of persecuting Jesus. But Jesus comes to him and conscripts him into friendship, launching him into his famous missional/theological life. But Paul would always carry the memory of his past offenses.

We should not speak of a bi-polar God who is shifts eternally between rage and love. The Bible does not teach us that the core of God’s being is anger. God’s essence is love. That does not mean that God does not react negatively toward the power and effects of sin. But we dare not caricature him so that he looks to us like a petty despot who needs suffering and death in order to be appeased.

The Undead and Christian Theology

Not too long ago a friend contacted me and suggested that I submit a paper to be read at Azusa Pacific University’s upcoming Conference on Christianity and Literature, titled The Company of Others: Literary Collaboration and the Common Good. My friend knows that I write both non-fiction and fiction, and she was interested in having me produce a paper that deals with dark, supernatural stories and what place those stories have in literature that might be described as Christian.

So, because I don’t know how to say no to opportunities that are completely outside of my levels of competence, I agreed. The steering committee, for some bizarre reason, accepted my abstract. I share it with you now:

“Christians have long accepted the graphic accounts in scripture that describe horrific violence and bloodshed as part of the narrative of God’s work and mission in the world. Those stories carry into the text the tragic and gritty reality of evil, even when such evil is perpetrated by seemingly good people. The horror genre, as with others, contains the possibility of contrasting the good news of Jesus Christ with the dominant claims of evil and injustice. This paper argues that contemporary Christian horror literature personifies evil in characters ranging from the monstrous (e.g. vampires, zombies, werewolves) to the monstrously human (e.g. serial killers and other rogues), while at the same time embedding important theological themes. Without forcing a story into an allegory or an agenda, Christian writers can allow such themes to play out in a macabre tale without giving way to either gratuitous violence or unrealistic sanitization. Literature to be discussed includes Bram Stoker’s Dracula, C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, and Frank Peretti’s The Oath.”

Having written the abstract and realizing that it had been accepted and I was now on the program, I figured I’d better actually write the paper. It’s almost done now, but it has been a challenge to write something that is somewhat outside of my scope of qualification.

But I don’t read my work until the end of the conference, so it will be too late to kick me out if my paper is scandalous and I embarrass myself, which I’ve done before and it’s not really all that bad of an experience once you hit a certain age and merely find yourself and others amusing.

I’m grateful to my friend for extending the opportunity and I’m looking forward to hanging around with some big-brained literature people. I expect to learn a lot at the conference. I noticed that another person on my panel is reading his paper about the theology in zombie movies. He is from the same institution where I am employed. There might be a theme here . . .

Science and Artistry in Theology

The creation account in Genesis chapter one didn’t emerge out of a vacuum. There were already mythologies about creation that would have been available in the ancient near east and Africa. The Babylonians had the Enuma Elish, which described a violent, cosmic battle among the gods, who, after tearing each other to shreds, created human beings to do all their work for them. Egyptian and central African cosmologies have primordial deities who vomit things into existence. Quite a lovely image.

I find it interesting that people want to interpret Genesis chapter one scientifically rather than artistically. Genesis is an iron-age creation, written over a period of time when science, at least as we have come to understand it, did not exist. Ancient writers knew how to write things that were procedural, methodological, and structural (think of God’s directives in the construction of Noah’s ark, or of Solomon’s temple).

But the creation account isn’t that way. It flows like poetry, it dances to hidden music, it tells a story that is prone to melody and song.

It is also deeply theological, something we often miss when trying to force it into a creationistic-scientific box.

There is something different at play with this story that sets it apart from those that came before it. Creation is not the result of divine nausea, nor are human beings fashioned in order to be slaves of the gods. The emergence of the universe comes because God speaks the words of creation. He forms human beings to reflect God’s own image as male and female. And then he calls it all good.

This is grand artistry.

There are some radical declarations in this theatrical theology. Creation might come ex nihilo—out of nothing—but it doesn’t come as a result of the self-focused infighting of the petty gods. There is a rhymic peacefulness to the account as God seems to gently say, “Let there be . . .”

The Egyptians put the sun god Ra at the top of the divine hierarchy. They saw this god traversing the sky on a daily basis, and served under the power of his avatar, Pharaoh. But Genesis topples that connection between god and sun, and demotes the sun to the fourth day of creation.

The most ancient of the Hebrew people—the ones who were liberated from their slavery in Egypt—would have remembered the old cosmologies. They also would have remembered that the God declared by Moses—the I AM of the burning bush—was the one who defeated the gods of Egypt and brought about the rescue of his people.

One of the most radical revelations of Genesis one is that it links the God of Israel’s rescue to the God who created all things (keep in mind: The Exodus took place long before the writing of Genesis). The I AM was no territorial god who happened to be stronger than the others in the neighborhood. There were, in reality, no other gods in the first place. The God of rescue and the God of all creation was—and is—the same God.

Only an artist could really tell that story. Good theology—the kind that liberates and reveals—is best when it is art. Too much of our current theology is dominated by thinking that tries to be scientific. Once our precisely constructed, immoveable theologies are crafted, we then crash people against them. We sometimes act as though humans were created for theology, rather than the other way around.

There are a number of theological artists in our day who are asking new questions. It’s too bad that we burn some of them at our respective stakes. That’s a tremendous loss to us all because we need the artists to remind us who we are and from where we’ve come. We need artists to help us as we hope for God’s intended future. Part of their role among us is to ask disturbing questions about our certainties and help us explore new possibilities that we might have missed along the way. Scientists deal in facts and tangible realities, and I’m glad we have them. But in theological reflection we need more artists than scientists. We need a more robust theological imagination among us than we’ve had in recent years.

We need more theological artists.

Dethroning the Big Stories

In all the commotion created by the debates surrounding same-sex marriage, I have to wonder if there isn’t something else going on, something that reaches beyond this topic to a larger cultural upheaval.

There is an interesting characteristic of the shift in western culture that philosophers and theologians refer to as “postmodern.” It’s a kind of vague term that points to a movement in culture after the modern period, a period in history marked by the certainties and perceptual frameworks that emerged out of the Enlightenment.

There were a lot of assumptions about life that came about over the last few hundred years—assumptions about dominant power (mostly white, male, and European), marital relationships (exclusively heterosexual and linked to both the state and the church), economics (increasingly dominated by what people are now calling “the haves”), science (marked by the belief that people can be purely objective in their observations), and religion (mostly dominated by western Christendom).

Each of these assumptions carried the conviction of a larger story that drove actions and practices. And as long as the people who constituted a majority kept the story alive, the domination remained in tact. That’s sort of how the thinking goes.

I wonder if the dismantling (okay, redefining. Whatever) of traditional marriage is part of the larger culture’s willingness to deny the power of any story that claims dominance over competing narratives. After all, the gay community is a very small percentage of the overall population (probably somewhere around 3%). Yet, almost half of the US population is in favor of gay marriage. Half of the citizens of the US are willing to let the old story of heterosexual marriage as the exclusive and dominant story of committed relationships be removed from its prominent position.

In a similar way, we’re seeing that in other areas of western culture. The Occupy Wall Street movement, as scrappy as it was, was an attempt to dethrone the powers of western economics. The attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular may be an attempt to dethrone faith from its position of power and favor.

Indeed, there may be something bigger going on.

So, again, I have to ask: In this new world of uncharted waters, what will be the church’s posture? We can hunker down and reinforce our walls of protection, keeping all new ideas out. We can take the walls down altogether and embrace everything that comes our way, allowing the shifting preferences of culture serve as our interpretive guide for faith. We can embed our convictions in our preferred political party and hope for shelter and a renewal of our power. In my view, each of those options are perilous in their possible consequences.

Maybe, for we who follow Jesus, it will become a time to rediscover who we really are when we no longer enjoy a place of favor and prestige in the culture. As Christians—particularly in the western world—are increasingly marginalized, we might have to recapture our identity without the advantage of cultural dominance.

As the accouterments of power and dominance are slowly stripped away from the western church, when our resources dry up, we will look around and wonder what has happened to us. What will we see? Will we see nothing? Will we see a purely secular world where faith has no impact or place? Or will we see “. . . Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone”? (Hebrews 4:9)

Remember: When it comes to Jesus, where there is death, there is always resurrection. Resurrection is not resuscitation; that’s just the reanimating of something that’s dead. Resurrection is new life altogether.

Homosexuality: On Being Human

A friend of mine once invited me to go with him to see a movie in Hollywood. It was an Indie film at one of those cool, small-venue theaters, and was about a Mormon family dealing with the news that one of the sons was gay.

Another man was planning to join us that day. I had met Tom (not his real name) once or twice before, and knew that he had recently made the determination that he was gay. He was about 40 years old, single, and had been struggling with a lot of identity issues in his life. He had come to the conclusion that the source of his problem had been the denial of his sexuality.

So off we went on a Saturday morning, stopping for breakfast at a tiny Hollywood deli, and then landing at the theater about 20 minutes early. The other two had decided against the original movie choice, and instead opted for a dark mystery. That was fine with me. I like mysteries, especially dark ones.

As we were waiting, Tom and I started talking. He knew that I was, at the time, a Christian and a pastor, and he launched into an unsolicited defense of his newfound sexuality. He observed how some people think that homosexuality is a result of some childhood trauma or neglect, but that wasn’t true. People are just born that way and there’s no disputing it, he said.

I hadn’t actually been disputing anything. I was just reading movie posters and thinking about popcorn. But I felt like I’d been baited, and I knew I didn’t want to go down some no-win street with him. So, I dipped into my few remaining memory banks and remembered something from a systematic theology class I’d taken, and said this:

“Tom, I’m not smart enough to know who’s born with what and who gets things forced on them along the way. But I really can’t start my conversation with anyone in that place. I want to start as co-humans, made in the image of God. That’s something we share in common.”

Tom didn’t even respond to me, but at least, I thought, we’d gotten off that track.

We watched the movie, went to lunch, and even saw a movie star or two while we ate. Then we took off for home, but the freeway was jammed because there had been an accident somewhere off in the distance. What should have been a 40 minute drive ended up taking two hours.

But it was a very interesting two hours. Tom opened up his life (again, unsolicited) and poured out stories of abuse, neglect, and pain that he had suffered as a child. He described the sense of isolation and alienation that he had been experiencing as an adult. We talked together now as friends, hearing stories and entering into shared human realities.

I don’t know if Tom was really gay or not. I don’t know if he was just looking for some kind, any kind, of label to give his life a framework. But I do know that, on that day, homosexuality wore a real human face, not a caricature.

About a year or so later, I was doing a series of surveys for my doctoral project, asking all kinds of people about their perceptions of their own spirituality. I asked Tom to participate, and he agreed. When I asked him some of the questions on my survey, he didn’t tell me about his spirituality being based in friendships, family, mountain climbing, or a vague intuition about something “out there.” He told me about his trust in Jesus, and offered up a pretty clear Christian testimony.

Didn’t see that one coming. Go figure.

Same-Sex Marriage: A Parallel

In the conversation about same-sex marriage, please allow me to offer a theological parallel that might help us.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the evangelical church, in general, didn’t know what do with divorced people. In the little church where I grew up, while we didn’t see many divorces back in the 1960s, if someone did suffer a marital break up, they just disappeared from our faith community. There was simply no place for them. There was this unspoken assumption that something was wrong with that person that wasn’t wrong with the rest of us—a leper among the healthy.

A greater problem emerged when these divorced people remarried. After all, we had a text of scripture, words from Jesus, which prohibited this:

“I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:32)

But when the national divorce rate skyrocketed, churches started reaching out by creating divorce recovery groups and embracing these people, even those who had remarried.

There was a practical side to this accommodation. If a high percentage of people are now divorced, and some are remarried, ignoring or shunning them would be to turn away from some very deep human needs. Such neglect would also affect whether or not people would find a place in the community of faith. Churches could shrink pretty quickly.

I’m not sure, however, that there was a lot of theological exploration on the issue. There were (and still are) churches that draw a hard line about biblical grounds for divorce and remarriage, and how people who violate those grounds will be subject to church discipline and, if necessary, dismissed from the church. Others, however, seem to have decided that God’s grace and love trumps the text.

There were some who took the theology of the problem seriously. They looked at the texts of scripture (such as the one above) and realized that Jesus’ words were in reaction to the male-controlled process of easy dismissal of an unfavored wife, one who would be desperate to remarry in order to keep from becoming homeless. Jesus also extended the culpability in the sin of adultery by claiming that even a lustful thought about a women (again, he spoke directly to the men in the audience) produced the guilt of infidelity (Matthew 5:28). In other words, there was a pervasive solidarity in the sin of adultery. It was real for everyone, and wrong for everyone. Everyone with a mind and body had the stain of adultery on them. All were in need of forgiveness.

But another question had to follow: Was divorce and remarriage the unpardonable sin? If one lacked the so-called biblical grounds for divorce, was that person eternally consigned to a solitary life? Or could there be forgiveness available for the one who helped destroy a marriage, and grace to start anew? Some of these thinkers said yes. In these situations, everything was not okay. Something sacred had been broken and destroyed. The marks and scars would always remain. But there could be forgiveness and grace.

I am watching to see if the churches that are talking about the implications of same-sex marriage will engage in deep theological and biblical reflection on this topic—not to dismiss Scripture, but to question our own hermeneutic (interpretation) as was done with divorce and remarriage. And not to be theologically reckless, tossed about by every new cultural preference that blows across the landscape, but to be theologically alert, willing to think broadly and to pray humbly.

And I hope we will remember that we follow Jesus, the one called by the religious elite “the friend of sinners.”

A Lenten Reflection for March 23, 2013

Then Jesus cried aloud: “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.” (John 12:44-50)


Recently my 6-year-old grandson Jack complained to me that he couldn’t find his toy Star Wars light saber. I suggested that perhaps Darth Vader had slipped into his room and ran off with it. Jack replied dismissively, “He’s not real, dude.”

Aside from needing to recover from being called “dude” by my grandson (as though I were Grandpa Lebowski), it was an appropriate reality check: Avoid believing in things that aren’t real.

Jesus called upon people to believe in him. When we think of believing in him, we think of believing that he existed at a point in history, that he was who he claimed to be, and that he accomplished theologically exactly what we have been trained to understand.

But his original audience was called to believe in a different way. They didn’t have to stretch too far to believe that Jesus existed—he was standing right in front of them. They didn’t have access yet to any of the apostle Paul’s theological explorations about Jesus. Did they need to believe that he performed miraculous signs? All they had to do was hang around awhile for that one. That he was the Son of God? Yes, that one might have taken some work on their part.

But in this text from John, Jesus isn’t asking his hearers to believe in him the way people might believe in ghosts (or in Darth Vader, for that matter). The belief is directed toward God the Father. But these were first-century Jews, and they had no trouble believing in God. But there was something about God that Jesus wanted them to believe, something new and revelatory about God that would be new for them.

And in Jesus, they could see that new and revelatory thing. They already felt that they were under God’s judgment—that’s why the Romans were in charge of everything. But Jesus showed them the redeeming, saving, healing face of God, the face that their ancestors experienced long ago when being rescued from slavery in Egypt. Jesus wanted the people to believe what he was saying and doing—his words and his works—so that they might be reborn as God’s people, a people destined to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, God’s people through whom all the families of the world would find blessing.

And many did believe. But enough didn’t believe and ultimately they won the day. The face of God that Jesus showed them impacted them in such a way that they could rise up and proclaim with one voice:

“Crucify him!”

Because, he was real, dude.

A Lenten Reflection for March 15, 2013

For he satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things. Some sat in darkness and in gloom, prisoners in misery and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High. Their hearts were bowed down with hard labor; they fell down, with no one to help. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress . . . (Psalm 107:9-13)

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? (Romans 8:31)


It is usually at Christmas time that we sing songs about Jesus that employ the Hebrew name Emmanuel—God is with us. But we ought to sing songs like that all year round so that we never, never, forget that God is truly with us.

God’s withness is not meant to be an abstraction of theology. The Bible speaks of God as the One who allows his people to suffer the consequences of their actions and choices, but who also meets them in their desperation, hears their cry, and rescues them. God remains with us even in the worst of circumstances.

I once knew a woman who told me that, as a young teenager, having suffered through more pain than a kid should have to endure, she made a decision to stop trying to be good and to embrace the hard-drinking party life. And she told God she was going to do that. She said that she heard God say to her, “Alright. I’ll go with you.” Years later, when she cried out to God in her alcoholic desperation, he rescued her. She still carried the burden of her recovery, but she knew that God continued to be with her.

I’ve thought a lot about that over the years. Does God really stand by us when we deliberately choose paths that will inevitably result in pain and suffering? I believe that he does. I can imagine God standing next to that young, angry teenager, carrying the pain of her life on his shoulders while she vainly tried to medicate her agony. He said he would be with her, and he was.

And when I think of God doing that, I see Jesus.

Jesus was soundly criticized for coming alongside people considered to be sinners. But in Jesus the face of God was revealed in a way that scandalized those who thought they were above sin. But the sinners knew they were sinners, and Jesus knew that, too. He came alongside them and entered their pain. They took his hand as he reached out, and he rescued them. Jesus was with them.

God has, in human skin, become Emmanuel to us. Jesus is with us.

A Lenten Reflection for March 11, 2013

I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.
I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.

The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it—you have founded them. (Psalm 89:1-2, 11)


When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” (John 6:14)


The Bible begins with a story about creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” But the first hearers of that story did not listen from a theological vacuum. Before they were the people of Genesis, they were the people of the Exodus.

The ancient Hebrew people were encountered by God (not the other way around) when they were rescued from their slavery in Egypt. God continued his redemptive work by leading them through the wilderness and to a place that would be the land promised to them by God. They first of all experienced God as their redeemer, their rescuer.

And then the opening chapters of Genesis connect some stunning theological dots: The God who rescued the people from slavery is also the God who created all things. This wasn’t the act of a territorial god who just happened to outsmart the Egyptian deities. There were, in fact, no other gods. The God of the Exodus, the I AM of the burning bush, the God whose steadfast love and faithfulness is celebrated by the psalmist, is the one, true God. This same God created the heavens and the earth. The redeemer God and the creator God as one in the same.

The people experienced Jesus in a similar way. Their understanding was not very theological and it clearly wasn’t framed by scientific inquiry. They experienced Jesus as redeemer, as the one who rescued them from demonic oppression, sickness, hunger, marginalization, and even death. Like the people of Moses’ day, the theological dots wouldn’t be connected for quite some time.

I can attempt to know God through theological and scientific inquiry, but I won’t encounter him that way. God, however, is the one who initiates encounter with me, and it comes as he determines. My inquiries just might produce revelations along the way, but they won’t serve as stepping stones up the tall mountain where I just might locate God.

Sometimes people chafe at the particularity of Jesus. Why, as Christians insist, would God reveal himself in that one person at a specific point in history and in a backwater location at the fringe of the Roman Empire? Why not to all people everywhere at the same time?

It seems, however, that particularity is the way that God does his redeeming work. To act universally would be to act outside of history. God works with real people in real human existence to redeem and rescue in real time. And through God’s particular, redeeming work, a universal call comes to the world.

A Writer's Confession

Here’s the deal: I love to write about God, Christian faith, theology, ministry. I love exploring ideas that have caused people like me to question and wrestle and struggle with God. I hope that my own reflections and investigations will help others along the journey of faith in Jesus.

But I also like to write scary, thrillerish, fictional stuff. I write about ghosts and vampires and zombies, and I do that for two reasons:

Reason One: Supernatural monsters offer a great context for exploring theological themes related to good and evil, heaven and hell, life and death (for example, one of my novels is actually asking about the nature of evil and hell; its sequel deals with human trafficking). The monsters always symbolize something and the characters in the story are given the space to navigate the drama while engaging with deeper issues.

Reason Two: I just like scary stuff. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved spooky stories and, especially, scary movies. There was an L.A. based series in the 1950s and 60s called “The Million Dollar Movie.” It would run for a week at 7:00 in the evening, showing the same movie each night, Monday through Friday. When our TV guide would arrive, I’d scour it to see what was playing. When I spotted Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman, or Invaders from Mars (I didn’t care that the Martians all had zippers down their backs), I’d plan to watch every single night until my eyeballs exploded.

But if you write about monsters (and even the human, serial-killer type monsters), then you have to write some gory stuff or people won’t stay in the story. Let’s face it: Vampires bite necks and drink blood, and then get impaled through the heart with a wooden stake. Werewolves stalk people, tear them apart, and then get killed by a silver bullet before they have time to turn back into an accountant or a hedge fund manager. You get the idea.

I recently read a couple of fresh chapters from one of my novels-in-process to two women I know, each at a separate reading. When I was finished, each gave me the same startled look that suggested they were thinking, in the imaginary bubbles over their heads, “What in the world is wrong with you?” It’s probably a legitimate question, which I hope will go unanswered.

There is an important precedent for this kind of thing, however. Here are some hideous, gory examples:

A woman gives shelter to a high-profile refugee, and then pounds a tent stake through his head and into the ground while he sleeps.

A woman is gang-raped, and then her body is dismembered and the butchered pieces sent around to leaders in the community.

A national leader’s duplicity is revealed, and he is impaled alive on a tall, wooden beam and left to die a slow, painful death while the people of the community watch.

These rather graphic, bloody examples, are found in the Bible (in order: Jael and Sisera, Judges chapter 4; the Levite’s Concubine, Judges chapter 19; the execution of Haman, Esther chapter 7).

I fear that Christian fiction can be overly sanitized because publishers worry that graphic scenes or language will cause Christian consumers to close their pocketbooks. Maybe Christian novelists even fear that they are crossing a moral line by engaging in such writing. One thing is for sure: Religious editors for centuries have certainly overlooked the graphic nature of the Bible. And yet I hear it’s a pretty big seller.

This is not an argument for gratuitous violence and rough language. But if we who love stories don’t allow the characters to act true to their character—even if that character is dark and dangerous—then we’re not telling our stories well.

Having said all that, the second book in my vampire trilogy—A Body Given—is now in publication (Kindle and Nook to follow soon). If you like that sort of thing, see for yourself if the creep factor serves the story well. It’s too late for me to change it anyway.

What Happens in Vegas . . .

A couple of years ago my wife and I decided to take a wedding anniversary trip to a place we had never been: Las Vegas. I have lived in southern California my entire life and, except to pass through once on my way to somewhere else, I had never been to Las Vegas. The town simply does not connect for me. I have no interest in gambling and the never-ending nightlife offers no appeal, since I find the night a very convenient time for sleeping.

We chose to drive there, however, in order to see the Cirque du Soleil show, Beatles Love.

We are both fans of the Beatles and have been since their arrival in the US in 1964. I was just entering the netherworld of male puberty when I was imprinted with this music and it has been echoing in my brain ever since. I think that if someone were to do study about the kind of music you listen to when puberty hits they would find that the music forms your appreciation for a certain type of music for the rest of your life. That’s my theory.

We arrived at the hotel in the afternoon and decided to walk around the Strip for awhile. It was December and the Nevada desert was sparkly and chilled. I marveled at the garish architecture and tried to steer clear of the street hawkers attempting to hand us invitations to strip clubs. Then we had a very nice dinner and entered the theater, where we ran into one of my students and his wife (reminding me that God's watchful eye is even in Vegas, and nothing will just stay in Vegas).

The show was delightful and clearly worth our time and money. We then stood outside with all the other tourists and watched the fake volcano spew water all over the place, forcing us all to clap our hands as if we’d never seen such a thing.

The next morning we had breakfast and then walked through the casino part of the hotel as we prepared to head for home. As we walked the curving, carpeted pathway that drew us through the aisles of slot machines, I heard music playing over the hotel speakers. Holiday music had been playing at the hotel constantly since our arrival. It was the culturally-correct stuff that you often hear, fun but having little to do with Christmas. My eyes were taking in the images of early morning gamblers staring at the lights and flashes of the machines, some with drinks from the bar at their elbows, when I stopped in my tracks. The music was different now and the difference hit me like rock. Rather than hearing Mel Torme or Bing Crosby, I heard a choir, and these were the words I could make out:

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glory of his righteousness
And wonders of his love

It was Joy to the World, but with a boldness that I had never heard before. It was a proclamation of the kingdom of God, not coming from a small band of the faithful out in the street, but right in the middle of a casino. The good news that God is king resonated through the building, and I may have been the only one to hear it.

I looked again at the floor of the casino. There it was: The place of empty promises and broken dreams. And into the midst of that false reality came the proclamation of the only thing that is real—the kingdom of God.

How amazing that the good news that Jesus proclaimed and lived out would come to us as invitation to his table. How amazing that, just for a few moments, voices would call out to the bleary-eyed Las Vegas gamblers that a new reality was theirs for the receiving. I wondered: Who were the people in the casino who were being called through this song? Surely there were just everyday people off on an excursion, but there might also be a pickpocket or two and maybe some prostitutes. There might be people who had lost it all and were dumping their last dollars into the machines that they prayed would change their lives. The music went out to them all.

While I couldn’t hear it, there is a verse that precedes this one:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found . . .

Sins—the many ways that we humans forget about God—and sorrows—the consequence of believing that God has forgotten us—are, we hear, no longer allowed to grow. Jesus has come to bring blessing to the world and the song was sung that December morning in a Vegas hotel casino. I wonder if someone else took notice. I wonder if someone got up from a slot machine, looked around, and headed outside to find the wonders of God’s love. I don’t know.

But I know that I heard it. And I believed it.

(From my book, Shadow Meal: Reflections on Eucharist)

Christianity and Angry Critics

I’ve been reading various blog comments regarding Christianity on a number of sites. I find myself perplexed and bothered by the vitriolic responses by some non-religious folks who find the Christian faith to be stupid, violent, evil, repulsive, and dangerous (one commenter even offered the hope that a certain high-profile TV preacher would be “taken out” by some disillusioned parishioner).

One thing I notice is that much of the angry comments are crafted around a lot of popular distortions of Christian faith—including some distortions maintained by Christians themselves. On occasion I read critiques against Christians by atheists and am somewhat disturbed that I don’t entirely disagree with them.

It is rare to see a religious skeptic taking issue with legitimate biblical scholars or theologians. The kind of reasonable reflection that comes from some of those Christians in the academic world is not typically the fuel that lights up the commentator’s fires. Most of the attack is on popular religion and too much of it reeks of deep hatred and even violence.

I worry about this. I don’t mind that some people find Christians to be irrelevant or mistaken—that’s been going on for a couple of thousand years. But I am concerned when the blogosphere carries comments and declarations suggesting that a purging of Christianity from society would be the balm that soothes the wounds of the nation (although people like the Emperor Nero and Adolf Hitler thought the same thing).

I wonder if there aren’t two things going on here:

1. Through the angry words of the critics, should we who follow Jesus take an honest look at ourselves and see if the critiques are, in any way, warranted? Is it possible that God could be speaking through some of the more thoughtful critics, and even through the ones who are rageful?

2. Could much of the anger that we hear be grounded in the perception that Christianity—at least in America—is not so much a description of the movement of faithful people who follow Jesus, but instead is a dominant political and social force that is viewed as an oppressor of freedom? Is the fury that we witness a tool for unseating the perceived power of Christendom?

This is disturbing stuff and we ignore it to our peril. Strategizing ways to retain or gain power is not, in my view, the answer. But I think the answer might be found in revisiting our identity as followers of the humble king who “came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). We may truly end up being pushed to the margins of society (as has happened elsewhere in the history of the world), but it may be that we meet Jesus anew at those places at the edge.

Rachel Held Evans and her V-Victory

Rachel Held Evans’ recent campaign to get her publisher to allow the word vagina to remain in her upcoming book was not only funny, but also successful. She correctly describes the concerns and fears of editors and publishers that the use of certain words will offend their popular Christian readership and diminish book sales. Rachel rightly calls for that to change.

But it probably won’t, at least not anytime soon. Publishers of popular Christian books seem to view their audience as ones who don’t want to read things that go too deep, ask too many uncomfortable questions, contain violence, or use offensive language. A visit to one of the few remaining Christian bookstores will offer evidence of the literary Pablum that people seem to want to slurp.

However, I don’t think our publishing friends give their audiences enough credit. I’m not saying that everything has to be heavy-duty academic stuff, but the history of Christianity is hardly bereft of weighty writings or scandalous stories. The first three hundred years of the church alone produced volumes of serious theological thought that still line the shelves of academicians today.

There are popular speakers who add to this illusion. I heard the popular writer Donald Miller (whose first book, Blue Like Jazz, I loved) speak recently and he spent a great deal of time telling people that scholarship was dispensable when it came to being a follower of Jesus. I suspect he was trying to say that lack of theological credentials shouldn’t disqualify a person from being a disciple, but it didn’t come off that way. I’m concerned about how people heard his message. It suggested an anti-intellectualism that isn't helpful to any of us.

As far as scandalous material goes, it’s a good thing that current Christian publishers didn’t have a hand in determining what went into the Bible. Otherwise they might have sanitized

•Jael pounding a tent stake through Sisera’s head (Judges 4)

•Onan terminating intercourse and spilling his semen on the ground (Genesis 38)

•The gang-rape and dismemberment of a woman (Judges 19)

•All kinds of steamy sex talk (Song of Solomon)

You get the idea. Using language gratuitously in order to sell books is no better than sanitizing language for the same reason. But I would hope that some brave editors and publishers would push the envelope a bit and see if their audiences would rise to the occasion. Authenticity, intelligence, and artful use of language are good things.

So, hurray for Rachel and her vagina victory.

Theology and Vampires

Later this month—May 17-19, to be precise—my collection of short stories, Dark Ocean, will be available as a free download through Amazon. A special bonus at the back of the book offers a few chapters from a previous novel, This Side of Death.

This Side of Death is a horror story. It involves vampires. I should probably explain why I like to write theological-type things and also creepy, spooky stories. Both my mother and my wife have their own explanations for my behavior, but I don’t buy into the whole demonic possession thing.

I started writing This Side of Death a few years ago because my grandchildren were reading the Twilight series and trying to convince me that vampires were not evil, but were actually a misunderstood and marginalized race of beings. I set out to show my descendants the truth about the undead.

But the story sort of got away from me and I discovered that it was fertile ground for exploring questions of faith. In This Side of Death, a family has suffered the loss of their husband and father, a good man who died a horrible and violent death. The son, Jay, drifts from anger to disillusionment to a deep sense of responsibility. His sister, Vickie, mostly stays in the anger mode.

They are drawn into a story of violence and horror, seeking to answer the question, What is hell? For them, hell has come to visit them on earth. Vickie declares that God himself should be banished there after what he allowed to happen to their father. A local priest, who keeps appearing at the margins of the family’s life, speaks pastorally to them and offers a way of thinking about life and God that they have not yet considered.

This story will end up being a trilogy. The second book, Morana, should be out this year (if my copyeditor will quit having a life of her own and do what I demand!) and the third is in process. Anglican priests keep popping up in the story, sometimes as key characters. They provide the theological and ethical voices of the stories. In This Side of Death, they offer a perspective on the nature of evil; in Morana they actively confront social injustice that appears in the form of human trafficking, a horror that is orchestrated by—you guessed it—another vampire.

Fiction—especially creepy fiction—is a great way, I believe, to hash out theological ideas. Characters get to wrestle with their doubts and fears in ways that are not always permitted in Christian non-fiction (nevermind that most Christian publishers won’t publish the kind of fictional trash that I write).

The one who used fiction as a theological vehicle better than anyone in the world was Jesus. His parables tell stories that offer characters that walk out the implications of his teachings. The characters don’t always fare well, and sometimes suffer great pain. But the stories make the point, don’t they?

The Day of the Second Death

On the Friday of Holy Week, evil has its way. The forces that seek power, domination, and predictability have carried the day, silencing the one who challenged their dominance.

On the Saturday of Holy Week it is apparent that death, too, has had its way. Jesus lies cold in a donated tomb, inhabiting the space that all people will ultimately occupy. The grave makes commoners of us all, giving no preference to any in the end. Jesus, it appears, was just another good person who met the same end as all other people.

And Saturday is a silent day, a day of grief, a day that marks the loss of hope.

In some Hispanic cultures, there is an annual celebration called El Dia de los Muertos—The Day of the Dead. Amidst all the celebration and candy skeletons and music, there is a core purpose to this day. It is a day to remember the loved ones who have preceded us to the grave.

People in these cultures sometimes say that they celebrate this day because there are three deaths. The first is when your body stops functioning and you breathe your last. The second is when your body is lowered into the ground and you are buried.

The third death is when you are forgotten.

Holy Saturday is a second-death day. For some, it is the day that the challenge to religious, political, and military dominance is buried. For others, it is the day that hope and wonder find their place in the grave. For still others, it is the day that another nuisance is covered with dirt and the process of forgetting begins so that everything can return to normal.

But on this second-death day, Jesus takes normal to the grave with him.

The players in this ancient drama all stand in the same place. Their world is now one without Jesus. While some rejoice and others mourn, they all await the third death. They all know that their memories will ultimately decline. And with that third death, all will affirm that the grave does, indeed, have the last word.

And on the third day, there will be a third death, as memory begins its decay like the organisms that slowly consume a corpse.

And on the third day, there will be a third death . . .

And on the third day . . .

Exiles

When I use the word “exiles,” I mean outsiders—outsiders to the world of church. The kind of outsiders to which I refer are not, generally speaking, ones who have been excluded by others, but are rather those who can’t seem to find where they fit any more.

With those kinds of outsiders there are three groups. The first the group of people that shop for church as religious consumers. Their disconnection from church tends to come from the perceived desire for a particular kind of music, an acceptable morning speaker, programs for the kids, and few demands on an otherwise busy life. Attempting to keep the religious life alive in a demanding, consumer-based culture is a difficult and sometimes noble task, but does not necessarily qualify, in my estimation, as the life of an exile. The second is also based in consumerism, but of a theological kind. The people in this group have very specific ideas about what constitutes an acceptable and orthodox system of Christian belief. They often seek to carefully read statements of faith and, if possible, to interview the church leaders to make sure they have the correct doctrinal positions. While a concern about doctrine is not unimportant, it is a concern that the kind of exiles I have in mind wouldn’t consider to be primary.

There is, as I see it, a third group of outsiders. These are the ones who would say that they have trusted Jesus with their lives, that they have an awareness of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and a confidence in God’s generous and expansive love. For any number of reasons, however, this authentic inner life of faith has difficulty in finding expression and nurture in that most common of Christian gatherings that we call the church. These are the ones I call exiles.

Unlike other exiles, these are not outsiders because of deportation, political oppression, or banishment. They find the reasons for their isolation to be within themselves and they don’t know how to find a remedy. Yes, they might have any number of critiques about the way church is done (at least in the ways that are familiar to them), but they know that there is something within them that is real, and it doesn’t seem to fit well in church.

Within this group of exiles there is a sub-group. These are people like me who have served as pastors and leaders in the church. They have given their vocational life to Christian leadership but are no longer serving in that role. For them, attending a church service can become a dislocating experience, a sense of displacement that requires them to become observers to something that they had come to cherish. It’s a handicap of sorts, but a real one nonetheless.

Musicians experience this same sensation with frequency. It is difficult for a musician to sit in the audience during a concert without watching the way the performers play their instruments and listening to every note with a critical ear. They can’t help themselves from doing it; after all, they’ve been up on that stage, and perhaps could even play the music more proficiently than those who are currently capturing everyone’s attention. The rest of the audience is simply enjoying the concert, but the musician suffers.

What do you think? Do you know such a person? Are you one? Do you feel like you are, in a sense, a person without a country? I'd love to hear from you to see how you are dealing with this life of exile and where you think it will go.