Dylan on a Sunday

These are my Sunday words from Dylan for this week. They're from Ballad of a Thin Man, a song which really comes alive in the great movie about Dylan, I'm Not There. Because all of us have a thin man in our life. Don't we, Mr. Jones.

You raise up your head
And you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says
"It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?"
And somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone?"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

God the Spirit

One of the best books I've encountered thus far in my recent studies is God the Spirit, by Michael Welker. There is so much to say about this book that is important. Let me begin by just saying that Welker's study is a fairly comprehensive look at the person and work of the Spirit throughout all of Scripture. He calls his reading a realistic reading (which I will talk about in another post), and its yield is impressive.

Welker notes the dramatic growth of Pentecostal movements on the contemporary world Christianity scene. This phenomenon is to be welcomed, but also tested against the biblical testimony.

Much of what we associate with the work of the Spirit is often highly individual and internal (the Spirit led me or encouraged me), and/or the special or supranatural (tongues, healing, prophecy). Welker denies importance to none of these, but when the entire biblical witness is taken into account, these are not the things that rise to the top of the list.

Welker's work demonstrates the very public and communal nature of the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is always working to create a new public reality which brings deliverance and new solidarity to human communities.

I've taken some liberties with one of Welker's summaries toward the end of his book. These are the things typical of the Spirit of Christ.

The Spirit of Christ...
Brings help when individuals and communities feel powerless, captive, and trapped.
Gathers people to the emerging, public reign of God.
Acts to deliver from human distress and sin.
Restores community solidarity and the capacity for communal action.
Acts to preserve life in the midst of conflict.
Transforms and renews people and opens them to God’s creative purposes.
Makes it possible to recognize lying or deceiving spirits.
Provides a focus on God’s work even in an overwhelming and confusing world.

I like this list a lot. I want to spend some time looking at a few of these over the next few days. I want to start from the bottom. It's often the hardest part of the Christian faith, at least for me, to find evidence for the reign of God in the world. The victory of God is hidden in the cross of Jesus, and the evidence is not always obvious or apparent. Welker suggests that this is one of the tasks of the Spirit, to help us recognize the rule of God in an overwhelming and confusing world.

More on that in the next post.

The Olympics and Christian Identity

I have so many vivd memories from the Olympics through the years. The '68 games in Mexico City were really the first I remember. The image of Tommie Smith and John Charles with their gloved fists raised during the national anthem, a sign of Black power and pride over against the red, white and blue, was a startling awakening to the fact that not all experienced God and country in the same way.

I also remember being crushed that Kip Keino (Kenya) crushed my idol, Jim Ryun in the 1,500 meters in 1968. Ryun was the world record holder. More, I knew he was a Christian, and a Christian of the right brand. I had read a biography on Ryun that featured a picture of him in the foyer of the Church of Christ in Lawrence, Kansas. Our identities were fused. How could he lose? When he fell in Munich in 1972, I was equally heartbroken.

That was the same Olympics that my other middle distance hero, Steve Prefontaine, came in fourth in the 5,000 meters. I lived in Portland, Oregon at the time, but had seen Pre run in Eugene on several occasions. There was nothing more electric. But at the Olympics, Lassie Viren beat my hometown hero, who fell across the finish line just outside the medals.

Few events have the ability to stir the emotion of belonging and collective identity like the Olympics. I watch sports and events I would otherwise have no concern about just to see if an American walks away with hardware.

I am somewhat troubled by this. It's the one place where I am most susceptible to a blind nationalism. And I'm pretty sure that runs counter to a Christian view of the world.

Take Kip Keino for instance. My broken little Olympics heart loathed him. He was the villain (give me a break, I was 8 years old) who had beat my Church of Christ hero, Ryun. Later in life, I learned much about Keino and his Christian commitments. Ryun, it turns out left Churches of Christ for some even more generic brand of the faith, and worse, became a Republican congressman. My post prized autograph now is my Keino signature, and he is one of the persons in the world with whom I would most like to have dinner.

The question is, for whom do we root and why? Put another way, to whom do we pledge allegiance and how does this influence the way we see the world?

I don't lose sleep over this. In terms of jingoism, this is a fairly benign sort. I am more concerned about the kinds of national interests that would lead to war, things based on a sort of score card on the world that revolves around the accident of where I happened to be born. I have a visceral reaction in church when someone prays for "our soldiers." As a Christian, who are "our soldiers?" I don't have a problem praying for soldiers, I just think we ought to pray for all of them.

I am currently taking classes with several international students. I don't have a problem with them rooting for their own, nationally speaking. It's how we're conditioned to see the world and its not evil by defintion. My South African friend, Janni, was very pleased when Trevor Immelman won the Master's golf tourney this year. And I was happy for him. However, Janni's rooting for Immelman caused me to see him differently and took some of the edge off of my Tiger-mania (USA! USA! USA!). I'm learning to be more of a citizen of the world, and I think that makes me a better Christian.

Johnny Cash, Outlaw, Sufferer, and the Gospel

Rick Rubin is one of my heroes these days. He's a record producer who makes everyone sound great. I'm enjoying Jakob Dylan's solo cd these days, a Rubin product. Though I haven't heard it (really, I haven't), he also did the new Neil Diamond cd that debuted at #1 (I did see Neil Diamond at Starbuck's in Malibu a few weeks ago. So, there's that).

To me, however, Rubin's most amazing achievement was with Johnny Cash, late in Cash's life. Rubin produced the American Songbook series. There were some Cash originals in the mix (e.g., Unchained, The Man Comes Around), but most were covers, and some were spectacular. He covered acts as diverse as U2 (One), Depeche Mode (Personal Jesus), Soundgarden (Rusty Cage), Tom Petty (Won't Back Down), and Nine Inch Nails (Hurt). Cash's version of Hurt is unbelievably gripping.

I'm of the opinion that the American collection is Cash's best work. I like the early Cash (Walk the Line, Still Miss Someone, Ring of Fire) and the later Cash. The middle years, I can do without. And part of it, I think, is due to the conflicting images Cash tried to hold together. He cultivated both his image as an outlaw and a saint. He sang Folsom Prison Blues and Rock of Ages, trying to be simulataneously sinner and saint. As a result, in my opinion, he couldn't find his voice.

I'm currently studying at a Lutheran seminary. I know the way that a particular reading of justification by faith has produced a strong theological tradition that emphasizes humans as simultaneously sinners and saints. At one level, this is undeniable, and there are healthy gains that come from regonizing both.

This is a tough tension, however, around which to sustain an identity. The outlaw image tends to prevail. Romans 7 typically kicks Romans 8's rear, experientially speaking. Moreover, guilt and shame are not the only human issues addressed by the cross. Which brings me back to Cash.

Rubin has written about the first time he ever saw Johnny Cash. Cash had to be carried down a set of stairs into the recording studio. He was crippled and nearly blind. Rubin thought he had made a mistake to throw his lot in with Cash. Until they handed Cash a guitar and he started singing. Those who have listened to the America cd's know that his voice is not the same. It's not as strong. It's a little ragged at times. But it is nonetheless powerful. It carries forward all the years and experiences of his life. You can hear both the pain and the hope.

Over the later years of his life, pain was Cash's constant companion. And his song choices dealt less and less with the theme of the outlaw, and more with the image of the sufferer. As a result, Hurt and When the Man Comes Around sit comfortably together on the same CD. They are of a piece. And they carry deep pathos. You don't doubt that Cash is singing about something real.

When Christians tries to engage in public speech, often we want to talk about guilt (it would be an improvement to talk about shame). It's a tough conversation, one in which we're classifying sinners and saints (even if we don't intend to). Even if we have good news about all of that, its a tough convesation to get off the ground.

The gospel of a crucified God, however, has great resonance with suffering, and suffering cuts across every human life in ways that demand an account of God's presence in the world. Part of Cash's appeal in his later work was due undoubtedly to Rubin's genius as a producer. But part of it has to do with his move away from outlaw/saint to sufferer/saint. I think we might learn a thing from Johnny Cash.

Missional and Emergent, Part 6

My friend, Jerry Wolfe, asked after my last M&E post to talk about how congregations who see worship and mission as separate things might go about bridging that gap. Great question. And one we ususally get wrong. We tend to think of change as a process of information and application. If we have all the right info, we will make all the necessary adjustments. Alas, this is a noose many church leaders have tied for themselves.

I want to talk about congregational culture change in future posts. (So, Jerry, hang on, I'll get there). In this post I want to grab some conceptual ground concerning worship and mission. This sounds like teaching, and it is. Teaching is important. But typically it won't in and of itself produce big change.

The biblical image I want to use to bring mission and worship together is the priesthood of believers. Believers, taken together, constitute a priesthood. It might be true that we function individually in priestly sort of ways. But when the Bible uses the phrase priesthood of believers it has the entire community in view.

The people of God have a priestly vocation in the world. And what does a priest do? A priest stands in between, in this case in between God and the world. The people of God represent God to the world, and the world to God. We don't worship primarily for our own sake. Like Jesus, our service is for the sake of others. We worship to learn better how to love God and neighbor.

Seen this way, worship maintains a public horizon. That is, its primary orientation is the relationship between God and the world. Our worship horizons tend to be much smaller. We evaluate worship on whether or not it met my needs or whether or not I enjoyed it, was personally challenged, inspired, etc.

This is a private horizon. The focus of the worship is the interior of the individual. It doesn't take much of an audit of our worship language and practices to see that the interior of the individual is typically what we're putting our focus on in worship.

Now, let me be clear. It is not wrong for there to be focus in worship on the interior of the individual. The problem comes when this becomes our exclusive focus and when we see it as an end in itself. Our focus on the individual should always be with an eye toward creating a community who exists for the sake of God's world.

Worship with a public horizon represents the concerns of the world before God. I've had the practice for awhile now of reading the NY Times with a certain prayerfulness. Over against the trouble of our world clearly revealed in a newspaper, I am often struck with how glib and easy our congregational praise can be. It seems sometimes a little like turning up the volume on the car radio to drown out the pinging of the engine. We don't worship to avoid the world, but to learn to engage the world with a different kind of power.

Worship with a public horizon honors the stranger. This is not because we want to convert the stranger, though we would certainly celebrate this. (There is a difference between public and evangelistic). The "other" is necessary for something to be public. Accounting for and welcoming the other as an irreducible other (not just a target for congregational growth) allows us to participate in the Trinitarian life of God. We learn to be persons in the image of God as we learn to welcome the stranger.

Though we're often impressed with our friendliness as a congregation, we don't really do a good job of welcoming strangers. Friendliness and publicness are not the same thing.

I recently visited a church that worships in the round. They sit on sofas, rummage sale sofas. Now, it's hard enough to get me to share a sofa with my wife. I'm not about to sit on a sofa with someone I do not know, especially a sofa for which we have no history. I found the only folding chair in the building, which made me immediately conspicuous as one who might not belong.

The high point of the service, according to the woman who explained what we were doing, was the Lord's Supper. This was the moment where it all comes together for them, a time when they celebrate being together as a community. She pointed out the presence of small tables all over the building that had bread and wine. She invited us all to go to a table, a kind of serve yourself affair, and enjoy being together. When we moved to tables, I found myself immediately outside several circles of intimacy. The church has collectively and literally turned its back on me. That's all I could see.

Now I admit, I'm an introvert. I'm not the kind of person who will push his way into a group of persons already familiar with each other. This seemed like their table, something other than the table of the Lord.

In contrast, I think about a church I've visited where the table is also explained as the high point of their service. There, the woman who presided invited us all to the table, "those who come each week, and those who have not been for a long time; those who have much faith, and those who hope for more..." I knew I was being invited to the table. And when I moved forward in this company of strangers I felt the welcome of God. My participation with God did not depend on my prior relatioship with these people. Yet, here I was in relationship with them. Moving to the table with them. And there I was welcomed and fed.

We often confuse friendliness, intimacy, and spontaneity as welcome. But these things are often the very things that exclude the stranger and keep us from fulfilling our priestly vocation. And when our worship retreats into the horizon of the private, of the individual, into a culture of intimacy, worship loses its capacity for mission.

Dylan on a Sunday

I ran this morning for about 85 minutes in Como park. Water, trees, golf course, light rain. Perfect. It's put me in a Dylan mood. These are my words to live by today from the great song, "Spirit on the Water."

You think I'm over the hill
You think I'm past my prime
Let me see what you got
We can have a whoppin' good time

Great thing about Dylan. He gives you words to dwell in no matter what the day brings.

Which reminds me, I had a dog named Dylan. Great dog. He was stolen. Dang. I'll find other words for that tomorrow.

Book, #2, Echoes of Scripture in Paul, Richard Hays

I often heard in my early days in ministry education, "you can't read texts like Paul does. You'd flunk this class if you read texts the way that he does." My profs were referring to Paul's creative, sometimes allegorical, readings of Old Testament texts. Because Paul was inspired, he could get away with those kinds of non-historical readings. But for us mere exegetical mortals, these kinds of readings were out of bounds.

Richard Hays convinced me otherwise. Hays' genius is his way of exposing all of the echoes and allusions that lie within and around texts. He reads Scripture intra-textually, noticing all of the ways that biblical authors appropriate prior texts. The text, in Hays' hands, is a thick environment, brimming with emergent meanings.

When it comes to Paul's reading of Scripture, Hays demonstrates that Paul is a very careful reader of Old Testament texts. His use of them, however, is not methodologically determined as much as it is theologically determined. He reads texts with a certain understanding of what God is up to in Jesus Christ. He reads texts with an ecclesio-centric hermeneutic, seeing the revelation of a new human family as the harbinger of a new age. He reads texts eschatologically, convinced that Jesus has inaugurated a new age, an age that allows for a privileged perspective on what God has been up to all along. Christians are those "upon whom the end of the ages has fallen."

These theological commitments produce a consistent interpretation of the text, even though Paul's method varies from occasion to occasion. And this theological perspective encourages, even requires, imagination and creativity. More, it requires a habitation, a deep dwelling with texts, that allows them to come alive in light of the inbreaking of a new and determinative age.

This book changed the way I read Scripture. That's huge. And in turn, it changed how I thought about preaching and ministry. That's huge. The biggest gain along these lines came from my commitment to let Scripture speak, as often as possible, in the present tense. The Bible isn't simply a historical record that we visit like we would a museum. It is a living voice, speaking in a very direct way to those of us upon whom the end of the ages has fallen.