Salvation, Archie Marshall, and Larry Brown

Larry Brown, my favorite basketball coach of all-time, led the Kansas Jayhawks to the national championship in 1988. That team featured Danny Manning and a few key supporting players, including guards Kevin Pritchard and Archie Marshall. Brown is a coaching vagabond, and he left Kansas immediately following the championship to coach in the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs.

Archie Marshall had ended his Kansas season with a career-ending knee injury. This was back when an ACL tear was pretty much it for a basketball player. In Brown's first draft with the Spurs, he took Marshall in the third round even though he knew Marshall would never step on the floor. Class move on Brown's part. But I've often thought about how Marshall must have felt. I imagine it was bittersweet.

I think this because if Marshall was passionate about the game, it would not be enough to have the draft status of being an NBA player. The only satisfying thing would be to have stepped on the court to face Michael Jordan or Larry Bird, to actually play the game at the highest level.

I think about this story when I think about the meaning of salvation. Some views of salvation seem to think that being saved is being drafted even if you have no way of ever getting on the floor. What matters is being pronounced righteous, even though you're not. Salvation is about your status, and Brown's drafting Marshall even though he was not good enough to play gave him the status of being an NBA player.

But salvation is about more than status. It;s about getting on the floor and playing. Salvation in this sense would mean Marshall's knee becoming better than new. Salvation would mean lacing up the sneakers and getting on the floor, participating in the game at the highest level. And I think this is how salvation is conceived in the Bible. It is not salvation to simply be proclaimed righteous, but salvation actually involves becoming righteous. As Paul says, Christ became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.

Now when I say things like this, people think I've let loose of salvation by grace. But I don't think I have. In fact, I think I have a stronger view of grace than the view that salvation is only about being pronounced righteous. Let's see if I can walk you through that in future posts.

Generosity of Spirit

This is the ballgame for me. Don't tell me how many times you pray. Don't tell me what amazing spiritual experiences you are having. Don't tell me how many Dallas Willard seminars you've been to or labyrinths you've walked. Like any human activity, these kinds of activities can be the quickest way to self-justification. As the prophets knew well, some take up spiritual pursuits precisely as a hedge against God.

I want to see fruit, a manner of life. And not manner of life in some kind of puritanic, holier-than-thou kind of way. I want to see a manner of life that is open to others--that keeps the opportunity of life open. And I've come to call this generosity of spirit.

A person who is generous of spirit sees the other. And by this, I mean the capacity to see the other with some empathetic depth. Most people don't have as a life ambition to become pains-in-the-rear (Resisting my "those who aspire to be elders" jokes). And many of us would resign from this position once we got there if we knew how. And all of us carry around unfinished business, some pain or scar or exclusion or disappointment that frames what we see and keeps getting in our way. And some of us didn't win the genetic lottery, and so we struggle with things that other people make look easy. It all starts with the capacity to see this way.

And so it also means having the capacity to love someone for who they are, not for who they could be or for who you want them to be. And love here is not how you feel about someone. Love is the capacity to act on behalf of the other. Love is not a reward, something we extend or withhold, some quid-pro-quo related to good or bad behavior. It is the condition of acceptance that honors the fact that we are all creatures, none of us having spun our own lives out of whole cloth, all of us dependent on something that came before us, all of us products of some prior grace.

And of course it means the refusal of judgment, and its flipside, the offer of the benefit of the doubt, the refusal to assign the worst to another even if the evidence points that way. It is this capacity that allows people to come back from the dead, to have another chance, to begin again. So often, we seek to play situations to our advantage by trapping others in a mistake they made, or by pronouncing a verdict or by labeling them, or by refusing to forgive them. The generous of spirit make every effort to keep second acts alive.They don't nurse grudges or vilify their enemy or fill their thoughts like a war-chest with arguments or counter arguments.

The generous of spirit are able to reflect on their own lives. All of the above require the capacity for self-reflection. The refusal of judgment comes from someone who knows their own brokenness. The capcity to forgive comes from someone who knows how much they need forgiveness. So, the generous of spirit are able to name their weaknesses, to claim limited perspective, to own their part. They are open to being wrong and know what to apologize for. They are willing to say that their account of things is their account of things and that this is likely not exactly what happened. And so they are open to the perspective of the other, even when it disagrees with their own.And they refuse to present themselves only as a victim. All of these perspectives keep new possibility open. They are generous.

And of course, this would carry over into so many other things. The offer of our time, our resources, our bodies, our stories.

If you show me these things, I will assume they're from God one way or another. Some people, I am convinced, are genetically predisposed this way. It's naturally easier for some than for others. Since they came this way, I'm willing to say that's a gift from God. Others learned this way from their environment. Because they learned it from someplace else, I'm willing to say that it came from God's involvement in the world. Others come to it through the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit. Whatever the source, generosity of spirit marks you with grace.

Now, I should be clear here. I don't think any of us completely embody what I'm calling generosity of spirit. I certainly don't. In so many ways, I have failed to be who I want to be. I am having a particularly tough time right now being generous in light of a perceived injustice. But even to the extent that I do live in these ways, this capacity was given to me. It is not a source of boasting or pride. And I've noticed that the people who are most generous of spirit are often those who have a hard time beliving in God or praying or devoting themselves to spiritual practices. But this I believe about that--God believes in them.

Spoon on a Sunday

The NYTimes has a feature article on Spoon today on the eve of the release of their new CD, "Transference." Of course I had to read it since Spoon has become one of my favorite bands in the last 2-3 years. And to my delight, Spoon front man Britt Daniel referenced Dylan when commenting on the band's recent choice of recorded music after they leave the stage--the Star Spangled Banner followed by AC/DC's Back in Black. Why this combo? Because Dylan once left the stage in London to the playing of "God Bless the Queen."

"I always thought it was cool to play something very official afterward," said Daniel. And Spoon is cool. As the story in the Times suggests, "(Daniel's) classic vision of what is cool has guided the band since its inception." This, it seems is the band's musical classification. Are they indie, are the post-punk, are they rock and roll? They're cool.

As band member Eric Harvey tells it, Daniel insisted that none of the band members sport beards, beards just not being cool. Harvey points out that it was soon the thing for all the other bands to have beards. Not Spoon. "So, we can say the Spoon is not beard-rock." Whatever they are, they are cool.

The thing about cool is that you can't try to be cool. You have to be cool. And the other thing about cool is that you can't quantify it. It is what it is.

Daniel says the new CD is the one that sounds most like Spoon yet, which means I'll be buying it. "It's the spooniest," which is now an adjective I am committed to using if I can figure out how to be cool doing it.

I wrote in my top ten cd's of the decade list that listening to Spoon just made me feel cooler. It makes me feel like I'd look good in cigarette-leg pants and a button down shirt, which is probably an indication of how far I have to go. Cool is a tall order. Truth is, I spend most of my life feeling gangly and awkward. I know I'm cooler than some of my readers here, but these are people who read blogs about preaching and theology.

I'm content to do cool by "transference," to let others fill out that necessary aesthetic in life. I don't resent cool even if I can't live there. Part of the good news is beauty, and cool is part of that category. And cool doesn't judge. It doesn't have to.

But cool has its shortcomings. It attracts, but it doesn't embrace. And salvation is ultimately about embrace. I'm glad Jesus never said, "Blessed are the cool, for they shall inherit eternal life."

PS. Daniel is associated with two of the coolest places to live in the US. The band is from Austin, but Daniel currently lives in Portland.

The Relentless Politics of Generosity

There's this great line in the Ben Harper song, "Put it On Me." I think I have an idea of what he means when he sings, "the politics of generosity are making me weak." Sometimes, there's nothing more manipulative than kindness. And even if kindness is offered without strings, the burden of reciprocity still lingers in the one who received the kindness. The gift becomes something other than a gift. Some cultures, I have found, know how to kill you with kindness.

Don't get me wrong, generosity is a good thing. I'm always looking for persons who are generous of spirit, not small or provinical or who return evil for evil. But even good things, like the law, offered earnestly can end up enslaving us.

There's this great Gomer Pyle episode (and yes, I'm embarrassed) where Sgt. Carter saves his life only to receive in return Gomer's overwhelming gratitude, an unwelcome attention. Sgt. Carter decides that the only way to get Gomer out of his debt is to stage an opportunity for Gomer to save his life in return. Of course, Gomer messes it up and Sgt. Carter ends up having to save the both of them again, increasing Gomer's determination to smother Sgt. Carter with care. The politics of generosity can make us weak.

Several years ago there was a book on marriage entitled, His Needs, Her Needs. The book offered itself as a Christian recipe for a succesful marriage. Men and women, according to the author, have a hierarchy of needs, differing by gender. As long as you're meeting your spouse's highest needs, everything will be great. So, as long as a wife experiences affection, the husband will get sex, and vice versa. The author talked about a love bank, a place where you pile up credits that will come back to you in having your needs met. There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to begin. I'm not saying that some people couldn't manage a happy marriage this way, but this establishes for many couples a viscious cycle of reciprocity. They beat each other up for the ways their needs aren't being met. As the old Heart song, "Even it Up," puts it, "I made you your breakfast in bed, now even it up, even it up, even it up." The politics of generosity is making me weak.

In the New Testament, Paul is very careful to root his relationships with churches in something other than reciprocity. He refuses, for instance, the patronage of the Corinthians precisely so that what he offers them will be experienced as free. In Philippians, he takes great pains to make sure that the gift they sent him while he was in prison is not seen as an obligation for him to return.

This is not because Paul does not want to be in service to others. He does. But he removes service from the human economy of generosity and reciprocity. He places his sense of security, not in the response of others, but in the resurrection of Jesus. Here love can remain a gift, something we do not manage or produce, but something that sustains us anyway. Gift. Love. Freedom. These things go together for Paul and allow a new way of human relating.

Some days I'm better at seeing this than others. I fall too easily out of thankfulness, or try to secure my own sense of well-being through generosity. And it makes me weak and I love poorly. So, today I am living in the confession "that the one who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us also with you..." Gift.

Believe the Good News, 6

So, what is the good news?

In the last post we suggested that for both Paul and Jesus (in the synoptic gospels), the good news is the announcement of an event, a dramatic turning of the ages. God's future day of salvation has broken into the present, and it is possible for us to belong to that day now and participate in its reality, even if only partially.

Let me note here two things about this before I move on to another aspect of the gospel. Salvation here belongs to God. It is his realm in which we participate, not a status that we own as our private possession. This is a pretty big distinction, the implications of which would change the way we do a lot of things in Christian practice. Tied to this is the idea that salvation encompasses more than just individuals. Salvation is intended for all of creation. As Paul points out in Romans 8, "for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious freedom of the children of God." The salvation of God is big, and includes more than just my skinny rear end getting to heaven.

But back to our question, what is the gospel? While both Mark 1:15 and 1 Cor 15 see the gospel as the announcement of an event, they use different language to talk about it. In Mark, Jesus proclaims the "gospel of God," namely the nearness of God's kingdom, or his reign. In 1 Cor 15, the event Paul proclaims as gospel is the death and resurrection of Jesus. Are these two different things?

Let's start on the gospels side of things (and here I mean the synoptics, John's gospel being yet another expression). The kingdom of God is a different way of ordering reality, and specifically it is another way of understanding power. It is a way of establishing order through self-giving, not through the politics of preservation and privilege. The way of the kingdom, the path on which it emerges, is precisely the way of the cross.

Think about this. It is possible to tell the story of Jesus without telling an infancy narrative. Neither Mark or John include one. But it is not possible to tell the story apart from the death and resurection. Several have referred to the gospels as passion stories with introductions. In the case of Mark, the narrative is brisk and spare until we get to Jerusalem for the final episodes in Jesus' life. Luke leaves no doubt that Jesus is going to Jerusalem, that this is the payoff of the story. His death and resurrection is not simply an event on his horizon, it is the event that allows to understand everything he does.

This is why followers are called to take up their crosses and follow Jesus. This way, the way of the last becoming the first, the least becoming the greatest, children being received and the rich sent away empty, is the way that the reign of God becomes visible, manifest in the world. This is not an abdication of power on the part of Jesus. It is the very demonstration of God's redeeming power. Humility is power. It makes things happen and in certain ways: the same for meekness, peacemaking, mourning, etc. The sign that this way of life will endure in the age to come is the resurrection. This is the life that God honors.

So, in the gospels, the kingdom of God and the death and resurrection are inseparably linked. But what about in Paul's account of the gospel? Is the account of Jesus' death and resurrection about a new ordering of reality?

in 1 Cor 15, Paul insists that the gospel he proclaimed is that which they "received, in which they stand, through which they are being saved." That's a lot to claim for the gospel. It is not simply a message for outsiders to "receive." It is also that which allows believers to "stand," a reality in which "they are being saved." This language of "being saved" echoes 1 Cor 1:18, "the word of the cross is foolishness to those who perishing, but to those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God."

Notice, this word (logos) of the cross is defined by Paul as the power of God. It creates a certain kind of world. It is operational. I like the language or Romans 5 where Paul compares the "dominion" of sin and death to the "dominion of grace." We tend to think of grace as simply God's willingness to overlook our shortcomings. But its much bigger than that for Paul. It is an environment, a dominion, a way of ordering the world, through which a whole new human community emerges. The logic of the cross, a script of radical trust in God, allows us to consider others ahead of ourselves, to love one another with deep affection, to contribute to the needs of the saints. These are the actions of those who trust in the power of God who raised Jesus from the dead. The fruit of the Spirit are not simply prerequisites for power: they are God's power and the produce a different kind of ordering where faith works itself out in love.

For Paul, the death and resurrection of Jesus is a continuing event. For those who participate in this event, there is a new creation, a new ordering of God's world established by self-giving love. It is a dominion, a reign, a kingdom.

One last word. It is important that we remember that this reign comes to us from the future. It is done. It is accomplished. There is nothing we can do to extend it, increase its borders, or put it at risk. As such, it is a gift. While it involves a way of life (repent and believe the good news), this is no works salvation. It belongs to God. It is his future. We cannot build it, we can only receive it. This is grace.

Notice here that we have talked about the gospel and salvation without talking about a theory of the atonement. Yet for many people, the gospel is equal to penal substitutionary atonement without remainder. I want to continue to push on this, because it's a big deal. I think without pushing on this, the attempt to become missional churches will falter. We define mission in relation to our understanding of salvation, and a theory of atonement, any theory of the atonement, simply won't get us to missional.

A Picture of Grace

I was sitting outside drinking coffee in my local neighborhood recently. There was music playing and people were milling about. I noticed a large shirtless man in a kilt standing across the street dancing to the music--all by himself. Large shirtless men in kilts tend to grab one's attention. And it was like the combination of the attire and the wild, erratic dancing created about a 30 foot forcefield around him. Everyone walked a wide circle around him.

It reminded me of a scene I witnessed in Boston a few years ago. I had gone to Harvard for a workshop on case teaching and was spending this hot summer evening walking the streets of Cambridge. There was a rock and roll band playing in a large triangular island where three streets came together just above a subway entrance. I got there for the first chord of Born to Be Wild. They were good and so I stayed to listen.

A large young man in a dirty t-shirt and cut-off jeans moved right in front of the band and began dancing wildly. We were collectively embarrassed or ashamed or something, because all the air seemed to get sucked right out of the place. It was a buzz killer and I could tell the band was disturbed. People began to leave.

Just then a gorgeous young woman in a short, white summer dress and long tanned legs took off her shoes and began to dance with him. Not just around him, or at the same time as him. But with him. It was one of the most striking things I have ever seen in my life. And soon, the whole place was dancing. The band plowed right into Brown Sugar and the place went going crazy. (I of course, being very Church of Christ, did not dance, but I did tap my feet a little, and I smiled broadly at the entire scene. Ok, I danced a little, but I was keeping it real). And while the transformative figure of the evening was the young woman, the star was the wild young man. People began imitating his wild dancing. He was beside himself with joy and it was contagious. It's one of the happiest moments of my life. And its times like that make me believe that things can change, that transformation is possible, and that there's a Holy Spirit at work in the world. Grace.

The Miracle of Being Known

I have been confronted yet again this week with the reality that I am the one in who in some ways knows myself the least. It is always startling to come to this realization. After all, I'm the one who knows what's going on in my head (a very interesting place most days). No other person is privy to my inner dialogue. And for this inner dialogue to occur at all, there has to be some sense of who I am, some authorial voice in my head that narrates my actions, perceptions, judgments, etc.

But I am not simply a self in my head, I am a self in relation to others. And others are accounting for my life as well, putting my actions in meaningful relationship to any number of factors. They do this from a greater distance than the inside of my head, and that distance allows them to have perspective that I simply can't gain. It's not that their perceptions are necessarily more true than mine. Often they are not. But sometimes it takes the very distance of the other for my own tightly wound little account of reality to be overthrown.

Now I am an intensely introspective kind of person. By temperment and training I am constantly interpreting myself as a symbolic presence among others. I think this is why it is particularly unsettling for me to be brought up short. To learn that the person I think I am is not the same thing as the person I am is always a humbling experience. Usually, I have found, that realization is a negative one. Yikes.

Self-knowledge is not a stable thing, at least not in people worth knowing. I am highly untrusting of people who act always out of total conviction, without a shred of doubt, assuming only two options--the wrong one and the one they have chosen. Still, the lack of center in a self, a self always given over to review, a self always in flux, makes for a very neurotic existence.

It is with this in mind, that I am reminded of a passage in Galatians. It's actually a parenthetical statement in an argument very different than the one I'm laying out here. But I am learning to place a lot of stock in it. Paul is talking about a former time when we did not know God. But now that we know God...and then the parenthetical statement. It seems like almost an afterthought. He says, "Now, however, that you know God, or rather are known by God, how can you turn back..." (Gal 4:9).

I have no doubt that there is great benefit in knowing God. But I wonder if salvation doesn't consist in resting in the fact that I am known by God. This is more than just saying, God knows all my secrets and still accepts me (though those are no small potatos). This is saying, I think, that I am a definable self, a knowable self, in relation to God. It's not that I have to figure out amid all the contradictory evidence exactly who it is that I am. I am a known quantity to God. I am not in the business of constructing a self, or of figuring out a self, but of receiving a self secure in the knowledge of God. My life is a gift, secure in God's knowing.

This idea offers me both more openness to change and less subjectivity to volatility, a greater chance in both cases to develop into a dependable character in both my life and the lives of others.

I am often struck by the way we elude each other, and even ourselves. But in the grace and freedom of Christ, we are known by God.

State Fairs and Grace

I spent Monday afternoon and evening at the Minnesota State Fair. There is nothing like a State Fair. It is a parallel world that has no real point of contact with everyday suburban life. It is an exotic world of livestock, fried food, and bad wardrobes. I know this sounds like an elitist critique, but its offered in appreciation. Being at the State Fair makes me feel very much a part of the whole created order. It's a little like being an original human, seeing animals born, eating fried chocolate, viewing the dairy queen's face carved in a slab of butter.

Seriously, at the Minnesota State Fair they carve the faces of past and present fair royalty in big slabs of butter. They display them in a rotating, refrigerated case in the dairy exhibit building. They are there in all their yellow splendor next to the image of the young dairy queen in a full color picture. Now, I'm just assuming that butter is a very hard medium in which to work, since it was not always obvious that the person in the picture and the person in the butter slab were the same. I think butter must add 50 pounds. But I'm sure as butter sculpture goes, its pretty impressive.

I went to the Oregon State Fair as a kid. It was the first place I ever smoked a cigarette (don't tell my mom). I was there with the church youth group. How else are you going to learn to smoke? A girl in a halter top gave me my first taste of cancer. That's the thing you have to know about girls in halter tops. And at the state fair, that's pretty much all there is.

I've been reading Charles Taylor's book, A Secular Age, and there he talks about the careful equilibrium maintained in society in the late middle ages. There was ordinary life, which maintained a sense of human flourishing through a carefully ordered hierarchy that kept chaos at bay. Good magic keeping bad magic away. But routine has its limits, and over time crushes and drains the very power it is trying to protect. There has to be a reset button of sorts, a chance to let chaos have its day so that it can again be subsumed under a larger order. This happened in very deliberate ways in societal festivals. It's "as though the effort to maintain order against chaos could not but in the end weaken, tire, unless this order were replunged into the primal energies of chaos to emerge with renewed strength. Or something like that; it's hard to get entirely clear."

He is absolutely describing the state fair. It's a replunging of life into the primal energies of chaos, in this case girls with halter tops and cigarettes, dangerous guys with slicked back hair, fried food on a stick, and men in shorts and black socks. Equilibrium restored.

I went to the fair mainly to hear Brandi Carlile who played a free concert that night. (Unbelievable performance. Her cover of Folsom Prison Blues was a religious experience). To get a good seat, I sat through the semifinals of the State Fair talent show. Actually, I stood, because evidently Minnesotans take their talent shows very seriously. Beside the usual singers belting out country tunes to a background track, there were the kinds of acts you only see in parallel universes.

There were the two young ladies who fumbled through a synchronized tumbling act--a really tough thing to pull off only a day after the closing of the Olympics. The real thing is too fresh on our minds. There was an amazing young violinist, 14 years old, who stood on that very informal stage, just paces from fresh manure in any direction, in a full length pink, um, not sure the right description. It looked like kind of a crepe paper explosion. Under lights in a concert hall it would probably look elegant, but here it was, well, a whole buncha lotta pink.

You haven't lived until you've heard a stooped 70+ year old woman in a sequined gown play The Battle Hymn of the Republic on the mirimbas. She followed a group of testostorone driven young men roughly covering the great Aerosmith song Dream On. They followed three very well nourished young women in camoflaged miniskirts singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.

Seriously, I love events like this. It felt so real, so human, so filled with grace. People stood and applauded the Battle Hymn of the Republic on the mirimbas, and you could tell this was the event of this woman's life. Grace comes out of stuff like this. I was proud to be a Minnesotan.