blog for sale...

I have decided to move my blog to another place. For those of you who care to keep track of me you can find me...

HERE

Thanks to all who put up with me and to all of you who will in the future.

Let the journey continue.

a bandaid on a broken leg...

I was sitting in class yesterday and the focus of the discussion was on the self care of clergy. Now, this is an important issues in several congregations across America because of the reliance placed upon the professional church worker. But even though I recognize the need the speak about such an issue I wonder if those strategies and/or structures that one can employ are really just putting a bandaid on a broken leg. What I mean is this, what if the problem is not one that stems from the over reliance of individuals on the professional church worker but one that stems from the existence of the church worker him/herself? Put another way, the issue is not how people engage with that professional church worker but that there is a professional church worker...

musings of a...

It has been months since I last took the time to sit down and write for this blog. So much has happened to me personally since that cold November day when I made my last post that I no longer feel that I can call this blog musings of a drop out anymore because, I'm no longer a drop out.

I am currently back in school, albeit a different seminary, to finish what I started nearly three years ago. I don't know how it all came to pass but my wife and I are back in the city we love and I'm back in the thick of things. But, I'm not where I started and to be honest this place has it's own issues. The difference is now it's ok for me to disagree, which is a nice change of pace. But I still feel like I don't belong. Like I am an exile in a foreign land.

I suppose that is a good way to think about it because I followed in the footsteps of some other people who called themselves that very title. While the struggle they fought was different I always respected their courage to walk out of the seminary, that same seminary I walked out of. And now, as I seek to finish my degree elsewhere I feel a strange connection to those brave seminex men and women. I am no longer home in the bosom of Lutheranism but I am interacting with different people steeped in different traditions and it's wonderful.

Maybe I will always be an exile. Maybe I will never fully fit in somewhere or find my ideal setting. But that's ok. Belonging to a community doesn't mean we all have to agree. It means that we all have our place among others. That we recognize that we all belong to each other whether we are part of a specific group or not. It doesn't matter if im a Lutheran among baptists or a terrorist among my victims. We all belong to one another.

As John Donne once said...

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee

the reality of the situation

Today I came across a sermon which focused on Christ the King as it was Christ the King Sunday in the revised common lectionary this past week. I was never one to go gaga for the pericopal system but today I found it particularly apropos. You can read the full text of the sermon here but I want to focus in on one quote...


"On the cross we don’t see a legal transaction where Jesus pays our debt.  We see God. The Word made flesh hangs from the cross. And let there be no mistake – this is Christ the King."


What a reminder. So often when I think about the crucifixion I focus on the result of the act. Sins paid for. Wrath poured out. The typical ideas and realities that are the result of that moment. But that is jumping the gun. It's moving past the reality of the situation. Hanging on that cross wasn't just a sacrifice that brought forgiveness it was God. Christ the king on his throne.


As we move into Advent it's so easy to jump the gun. We like Jesus as a baby but in the back of our minds we know where the story is going and it is so easy to miss the reality of the moment. That's why this Sunday's pericope and that sermon were so apropos to me, they made me focus on the situation, not the result.

the event

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is only a week away. I never seem to know where the time actually goes, but the days have ticked away and now we stand on the precipice of the holiday season. Families will come together, meals will be shared, and the inevitable trips to the mall in an effort to find that perfect gift will commence. And without fail, advertisements will saturate the airwaves, television screens, and the internet, all in an effort to help us pick out this year's hottest gift. 

Now, it is not my intent to rail against the materialism that accompanies this time of year but to point out an aspect of human behavior. Frankly, I like having things. Chances are, you like things too. For the longest time I wanted an iPhone, and when the iPhone 4 came out, I knew I had to have it. Not because I needed it, but because it was/is the pinnacle of cell phone perfection. (Some may disagree, but I happen to be a huge Apple devotee.) For whatever reason, this season really brings out the need we have to obtain the highest ideal. Thats why we line up at 2:30am the day after Thanksgiving, we want that must have perfect item, but not just the item, we want the ideal price on that item too. Its about the pinnacle of perfection. 

It would be deceptive of me to pretend that this was limited to buying gifts, this behavior plays out in various areas of life. Whether its sports, education, music, art, even drug use, all of these activities are manifestations of us attempting to obtain an ideal, whether that is a skill or a state of mind or an emotion.  Life's pursuits are often tied to an ideal. 

My own pursuit for an ideal has caused me to become bitter and jaded. I am often so full of cynicism its hard to tell what I acutally believe. The ideal I pursue is the perfect "church," or a perfect version of Christian thought and experience. I know I am not the only one wants to obtain this ideal. So many of us want to find the perfect church, want to have the perfect theology, want to be the perfect christians. This isn't just personal though, entire denominations have formed because of people earnestly striving for this ideal. 

Throughout this pursuit there are times when we encounter ideas we don't agree with and we retreat to the safety of the past, taking comfort in the thoughts and beliefs of those who have gone before us. There are also times when we encounter ideas that we reject the past completely and offer up our own interpretation, or if we don't reject the past, we attempt to go back further to somehow trump the argument. 

Recently I discovered a well known author/philosopher/theologian named Peter Rollins. A few days ago I posted on my blog a quote from him which deals directly with the pursuit of this ideal. He says, "The task today does not lie in some naive attempt to return to the early church. The church before Constantine. The church before Platonic philosophy. The church before Paul. The church before... For these moves fail to bring us back far enough. 

Rather we must call a new army of agitators into being. Dissidents courageous enough to return to the event that gave birth to the early church. A new breed of individuals brave enough to turn back so as to advance." 

Its not about a return to or the pursuit of an ideal, its about a return to an event. 


THE EVENT.


Christ on a cross.


Death and Resurrection.  

The more I think about my own pursuit, the more I think he is right. You cant experience an ideal. But in that event, you experience death and resurrection. You experience grace. Isn't that the point?

What do you think?

the task

"The task today does not lie in some naive attempt to return to the early church. The church before Constantine. The church before Platonic philosophy. The church before Paul. The church before... For these moves fail to bring us back far enough. Rather we must call a new army of agitators into being. Dissidents courageous enough to return to the event that gave birth to the early church. A new breed of individuals brave enough to turn back so as to advance." - Peter Rollins


Thoughts? More to come...

God is in the rain?

Last night my wife and I watched V for Vendetta. A superb film, one of my favorites, I was amazed at how much I still loved this movie not having seen it in a while. (Just in case someone hasn't seen it who might be reading this I wont give away the plot). There is one scene, that although is serious in the film, makes me burst out laughing. Its the scene when "Eve" is on the roof and it is raining. I know it is emotionally moving but for me, it brings back a different memory. 


A while back when I was still in college my friend and I were facilitating a college-age small group get together at Starbucks. There never were more than a handful but I really enjoyed those little meetings. One night it was a little rainy as we were about to finish up. During the prayer, my best friend blurted out, "And as we learned from V for Vendetta, you are in the rain." 


I will always laugh at this because it was one of those usual occurrences of my friend saying something stupid and at the time, we all poked fun at him for it. But last night, as I watched that scene and remembered that moment I thought to myself that maybe he wasn't all that far off. Not in his assertion that God somehow inhabits the rain, but in that he found a truth concerning the omnipresence of his creator in a source outside the biblical narrative.


Paul spoke to something similar to this in Romans when he said, "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Now, I know that this passage is usually taken to mean the natural aspects God's creation, the physical earth and all its creatures, but I wonder if its more than that. If God left marks of jimself upon the ground he created, as Paul is claiming, why couldn't he leave marks of himself in other things like books, movies, or other technology? Is it possible for this verse to mean that God left marks of himself throughout the whole of his creation, even in what we create? Im not sure, but I'm curious.