Jesus HEART U on your bumper…

So today on my way home from school I am listening to CBC radio – like the geek that I am. The feed is from Calgary so after 3pm I get to hear about Calgary traffic woes – which all seems a little pedestrian…

The traffic reporter comes on with her litany of fender benders, tow trucks this and that and a handful of road closures. Turns out today the weather  and not the usual ineptitude of Calgary’s drivers that is the worst enemy of the homeward bound commute. It is some freakishly cold temperature and blowing snow – etc, etc. Apparently, there are several hills in Calgary that can in these conditions get quite icy and make progress up the hill largely impossible. This is not a reasonable calculation to many Calgarian drivers as they unheedingly attempt to rocket their way up these inclines (let’s be clear these are not really challenging grades except for Albertans whose predilection for flat open spaces seems to hinder their judgement of rudimentary principles of physics). Squiggling and swerving out of control as they were the traffic stacks up behind them.

“It seems a group of high school boys are out there on Center Street helping to push cars up the hill”

The traffic reporter barely even squeezes the words out – but my mind is popping. i know that area of Calgary and I know that there is a small Mennonite church sitting basically at the bottom of that hill. I know too that there is a volunteer youth worker at that church who has led small groups of high school boys for years. Its weird but somehow I know the number of the church and after I call it my hunch is confirmed: his small group of boys had not even gotten down to doing their Bible Study they had spent the whole time pushing cars up the hill.

I told him his group had made the traffic report. “Shoot,” he said, “we didn’t want to get noticed.”

Sometimes, I hear evangelicals debating evangelism over service formerly known as the Social Gospel. I think that argument ought to be put to bed at least for a good long rest. The answer is simple.

I wonder if sometimes this debate is entertained because we are just looking for the easiest way to appease the guilt we face when we encounter the servanthood that characterized Jesus ministry. Some people argue that there is little point to good deeds if we can’t somehow communicate the reason for our good works. Rubbish! Jesus didn’t teach us to do good deeds because they will allow us to do some other more important thing. Jesus did good things – he served people – because it was the best thing he could do for them. That’s it! No other agenda!

Could it be that we somehow think that the ‘telling’ will allow us to get away with doing less for people? I mean follow the logic. Maybe our desire to share the gospel with people is actually a result of the fact that we really are not that interested in serving them wholeheartedly. Maybe we think well if THEY have Jesus they probably will pull THEMSELVES up by the boot straps and put their lives back together. Or maybe we think – I’m not totally willing to serve THEM (you Jesus called this bringing Kingdom of Heaven to the earth) so I will at least make sure that I seal their eternal fate by telling them about Jesus. Or maybe worst of all we think that some flimsy act of randomish kindness that cost us very little is actually meaningful to the receiver of that gift and that adding the phrase “because Jesus loves you!” really cuts the mustard. Dude! Let’s give our heads a shake if that is where we are at!

That’s what I thought about when I heard about these boys. Okay so in some ways maybe their service was not the deepest most engaged action they could have taken. Who knows? But I do know that when they saw a REAL problem they rolled up their sleeves and pitched in. Done. No – hey I am gonna push you up the hill and write Jesus hearts U on your dirty bumper as you drive off. These guys were even bummed to get mentioned on the traffic report!

Look all I’m saying is until we are willing to serve people in as much depth as Jesus was we should probably SHUT UP about claiming to do things in his name – THAT’s ALL!

Overheard…

A relatively larger first year student who lives in residence at the university to her relatively thinner first year classmate (who seem to incessantly have a predisposition to high-fiving each other over the most meaningless trivialities), “university student breakfast” = one half of a bagel and a whole Roma tomato.

“In both philosophy and everyday life we imagine that there is a real or true self which lies deep within us. On the surface is  found the clothing which may represent us and may reveal a truth about ourselves, but it may also lie. It is as though if we peeled off the outer layers we would finally get to the real self within. But what was revealed by the absence of clothes was not the Emperor’s (of the infamous fairytale) inner self but his outward conceit. Actually, as Ibsen’s Peer Gynt observed, we are all onions. If you keep peeling off our layers you find – absolutely nothing left. there is not true inner self. We are not Emperors represented by clothes, because if we remove the clothes there isn’t an inner core. The clothes were not superficial, they actually were what made us what we think we are.” – Daniel Miller in STUFF

The point Miller is trying to make is that the illusion of an inner self might actually be illusory especially in the sense that it might somehow be distinct from its external representation. I believe another wise ONE said something like, “By their fruit you will recognize them”. This concept is not easily reconciled with the modern conception of the self where we talk about finding ourselves and seeing ourselves in a new light. But really when you think of it those ideas are actually quite odd since they clearly suggest that we somehow live outside of ourselves almost like two people. What Miller is saying about clothing – we can surely say about food especially if we follow Barthes ideas in the previous post.
So my classmate is not just trying to produce an identity the food itself is identifying her or rather it is constituting her – both physiologically and socially…
The interesting thing might be to see how indeed those food item speak. I have been known as a coffee expert – a moniker that although I treasure it somewhat I feel uncomfortable wearing – it is restrictive in many situations where people find it necessary to justify their apparently inferior coffee when serving it to me. I always say, “Listen, I seriously don’t mind drinking any coffee at all – as long as it is black and caffeinated.” Of course this is not actually true since there clearly are some coffees that I refuse to drink. But saying allows me to negotiate what might otherwise be regarded a peculiar arrogance. Or is it my way of reinforcing my social construction as connoisseur by granting a certain ‘grace’ to my hosts in drinking their beverage? And what might happen if after losing all this weight I can no longer lay claim to the that same status?

Weight log:227lb

Ugly: an Advent/Christmas Liturgy

Mom and Dad were talking about possible themes for Advent in their church so I gave them an ear full of my theological perspective. See here and here. As we talked about it we began brainstorming what advent series might look like if we followed some of these themes. I have sketched out some of my thinking below…

Theme:

John 1:1-5, 14 "1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Incarnation is the heart of the Gospel (Good News) message. God not only accomplished our redemption to himself by providing the ultimate sacrifice but he demonstrated how the human life/experience was meant to be lived. Ask yourself what required more sacrifice from God's perspective: accomplishing the work of redemption (cross) to bring his beloved back to himself; or identifying with the failing, feeble - generally ugly condition of human existence. (Obviously, I think the latter) The incarnation represents a profound reality about God's grace – we were not just worth saving – we were worth identifying with. This good news can speak profoundly to the kids/people in your ministry. The crap of their lives is not an isolated experience that they need to find their own way through. Our crap is God's crap – cause he knows. In a sense advent can be seen then as a preparatory shift that Christ had to take to identify with us – From the 'God of Glory' or the 'Son of Man'. He got Ugly.

Method:

Usually the advent season is this build up to 'glorious' climax of Christ's birth. Angels sing, wise men visit, etc. This time take the opposite approach – almost in the mood of a Tenebrae service except stretched out over a few weeks. The idea is to create a progressively uglier setting and motif for your meetings.

Ideas:

Start the first week with a polished celebratory service utilizing all the best aspects of your 'congregation' – this will reflect the tenor of heaven. Decorate with as much flare and beauty as possible. Have a banquet. Make the event celebratory. As you progress through the season allow the decorations to fall into disrepair and add junk and garbage till you have created a truly ugly (even smelly) place by the end. Or as you progress through the season remove decorations till you are left with a bare/stark motif for your gathering place. Also scale your 'production' back. In fact incorporate less and less 'talented' people in presenting the music or other content of the events. You might even want to orchestrate some actual failure into the flow of your meeting times. Awkward pauses and hiccups could reinforce the point in a powerful aesthetic way. Start with the all the candles in the Christmas wreath lit and extinguish one each week. End the Christmas Eve with only one light glowing from the manger.

Direction:

You could take this one of two ways (maybe more) in terms of teaching focus. Typically Advent includes five events (including Christmas Eve). Here's two outline that might be possible:

#1 Celebration – The Glory of God (use scripture passages that speak of God's greatness, holiness, glory and majesty; have a sharing time that identifies the goodness of God; sing praise songs; Hallelujah chorus; trumpets;)

#2 God identifies with my World – Global focus. (use scripture passages that focus on the condition of the poor or war or disease and calamity; don't forget to include some of the beautiful things in nature; focus on specific world events; have a presentation from a relief organization; reflect on the lowliness of Christ's world at the time of his birth; read the stories of Christ's compassion on the poor and helpless)

#3 God identifies with my culture – national or cultural focus (use scripture passages that show how Christ took on the establishment of his culture; talk about the busyness of technology and how it affects our lives, media influences, you could add a bunch of busted TV's to the display; identify other cultural values that Christ challenged or reinterpreted – use the sermon on the mount as a guide)

#4God identifies with my community – local focus (read scriptures about the local setting that Christ was born in, take a tour around your town, focus on local issues; help participants to identify both the ugly and pretty side of the local setting imagine the birth of Christ as it might of occurred in this local setting.)

#5 God identifies with me – personal focus (read scriptures about how God loves each person individually; talk about personal garbage like broken relationships, woman at the well, woman caught in adultery; talk about personal fear and anxiety; talk about insignificance especially in light of the glory of heaven; end with a prayer services and personal sharing. Ask participants to reflect on how Christ's identification with them give them hope for their own lives and for further action in the world they live in)

Or you could develop a more topical approach to identification with something like this:

#1 Celebration – the Glory and Majesty of God (as above)

#2 God identifies with human relationships -- #3 God identifies with human fears -- #4 God identifies with human suffering -- #5 God identifies with human condition – sin

A few more thoughts. It seems to me that sometimes we approach Advent with a sense of anticipatory relief. I have often seen how the Advent season has been used to parallel the expectation of the return of Christ. This is a valuable parallel but in our times when some of our theological perspectives seem to be alienating us from reality (you know that sense that we need to just remain faithful while the world around us crumbles) I think it could be refreshing to see that Christ models the type of identificatory life that we should lead – the essence of our 'mission' in this world. While a progressively uglier advent season might be difficult to pull off in many of our churches or youth – it is precisely because of the 'glam' factor of the Christmas season that we should possibly consider a different approach. This type of approach could help us to regain some of the vital aspects of the incarnation regardless of whatever your theological 'priorities' might be…

Discrimination

My philosophy prof is quite the trip - - - like most ardent/aggressive atheists he spends a lot of time talking about God. He's a pretty scattered flappermouth (hmmm – I don't know anyone else like that eh?). But Monday this is sorta how the discussion went. We were talking about Janus words. The prof doesn't actually hold to the strict definition of the concept he says that a Janus word is one that has both a value association in one sense and neutral value in another. Normal could be an example of this. Normal could mean the average of collection of measures (neutral) but normal also is used to refer to nothing being wrong (value).

Anywho we started talking about the word discrimination. "To discriminate" actually is a complex Janus word because it not only has a neutral meaning (being able to distinguish between various objects or concepts – value neutral) but it has two covert value meanings (1. Neg. to let irrelevant factors count in some circumstance and Pos. to let all and only relevant factors count). The Negative meaning we all recognize when people don't allow people to be hired based on gender or racial differences. The positive we recognize as connoisseurs – people who have discriminating taste for wine or cheese. As an example of all this he held up this dilemma:

We expect judges to be unbiased in their judgements. We could say they should not discriminate (racist judges would not last long in our system) in their judgements. But in another sense we could say that judges should be discriminating in their judgements (here we mean that the judge should weigh all and only the relevant information about the case to make a precise decision). We would ask judges to care about everyone involved equally – so as to be an impartial judge. But the judge could not be impartial if either the defendant to the prosecution was his/her daughter – we would ask that judge to recuse him/herself for that case. So we could see that it would be ridiculous to expect a parent to not care more for their own kids than for other people in the courtroom. Or in our neighbourhood for instance let's say that Char and I had only $100 dollars for food. You would expect us to spend that hundred on groceries for our own kids. You would look at us weird if we were to decide to divide that money between all the children in our neighbourhood (not to mention that if we really didn't want to discriminate we might consider sharing it with ever kid in the whole world).

Enter the teachings of Christ. Love your neighbour as yourself. Is this to be taken literally? We would say yes? Stuck? Well maybe but then our prof goes on to suggest that God (the supreme judge in Christianity) was definitely not impartial. He chose and paid special attention to the Jews. Our prof then asked if we could really suggest that God was just. He pointed out that one of the central messages of Jesus was captured in the parable of the Good Samaritan yet historically according to the Biblical account God seemed to anything but impartial. So there you go. Wrestle with that one. See if you can come up with some counter proposals or other arguments – just curious how you might respond to that.

Mmmhhmmm

thanks to Everette for turning me on to this one

Apology Accepted?

I tracked this post by Folmsbee which made me stop and think. As such I am not opposed to apologizing for areas where we have failed collectively or individually. I think the stuff Chris apologizes for is sincere and accurate not just for him but for, i assume, many of us.

Here's the thing: I wonder what the point of apologizing is. In our house we have mantra that we repeat as often as we have conflict - this is it: "Sorry is not good enough - you need to make it up with the person you have offended". So we ask our boys to ask each other - "what can I do to make it up to you?"

I guess the issue for me is what exactly does apologizing do if it is not met with the repentant behaviour change that the apologiy suggests. I have found that we often use apology to absolve oursleves from guilt and responsibility for the crummy behaviour we have displayed. So it become a cover up and essentially a dishonest thing.

I have also noticed a tendency to use apology as a self depricating tool. You've the kind of person who is perpetually apologizing so as to assume the role of the pitiable bumbling idiot. Sometimes I sorta get the idea that perhaps that attitude is creepying in around the corners of Christian identity. There are many things that have been done in the name of Christianity that we should be ashamed of but we need to be careful not to compromise the core nature of Christian identity in the process. What I mean is that an apology can go too far in not just asking for pardon for the problem but actually asking for pardon for the individual's very existence (in some cases). Woe to those of us who choose to follow Christ and apologize for Jesus (his real essence) at the same time.

Jesus was sinless right?

Sermon on Sunday made me think…
It’s interesting that we always talk about Jesus being the sinless atonement for our sins. I’m just wondering how we measure that statement. Sometimes it feels like we have to do a bunch of wiggling to make that idea true. Lets’ look at a couple ideas…
According to whose standards is/was Jesus sinless:
Measured against the religious laws of the day as up held by the Pharisees Jesus could not have been sinless. We often look at Jesus’ trail as evidence that the Pharisees did not have anything on Jesus. Truth is they had a lot on Jesus – otherwise Jesus would not have been a threat to them. Jesus broke the rules of cleanliness, working on the Sabbath. He contravened the prescriptions against association with women and other undesirables. He allow a harlot to perform an intrinsically provocative act. What the Pharisees did not have on Jesus was something to put him to death.
Now of course we easily dismiss the Pharisaic laws because of their own hypocrisy. But we should not dismiss them so easily. After all, their laws were the laws of the religious context that Jesus lived in. And let’s not forget that many of those same laws have been upheld over the years in the church. Working on Sunday, rules about association have al been a part of the church’s historical perspective. So why does Jesus get to break the rules and still be called sinless. None of the rest of us could get away with it. Is it because the fact that he was God that he gets to operate by his own set of laws or regulations? If that is true then how are we supposed know which laws are supposed to be followed?
But then there is that time at the temple. Did Jesus have a good reason for being angry? You bet! But the fact was that he was angry. And his anger affected other people.
He makes wine and drinks it also –
So how do we account for all that?
Jesus needs to be sinless in order for his death and resurrection to mean anything at all. But Jesus would not have and been considered sinless back in his day – shoot he wouldn’t get a clean grade in our more ‘enlightened’ age. So how does he do it?
I think that the deal is that Jesus is living a principled life. It’s not that he chose a new set of standards to live by. He made his actions match the principles that guided the intention of the laws. So in places where the laws matched his principles he followed them. Where they did not he chose other actions which seemingly broke the convention.
This makes me think that it is important to continually evaluate things we call sin to see if they match the principles that God has set up for human life…