Isn't It Ironic?

For all that challenges me about this “in-between” that my life has found its way into, one virtue is that I have a chance to catch up on reading. So I can say without embarrassment that I was reading the May, 2009 issue of Martin Marty’s Context when I came across his summary of an article that appeared in the September 8, 2008 Christianity Today regarding what the author, Scot McKnight, dubbed “Ironic faith.”

My attention was grabbed by a reference to Brian McLaren. Several years ago I read his book, Generous Orthodoxy at the invitation of my then Associate Pastor, Steve Blackstock. I remembered as I read this article that I felt much of McLaren’s critique of the mainline was a caricature, and that many of the things he was longing for within the Evangelical church were present in the churches those Evangelicals had left behind.

McKnight talks about eight “catalysts” of this “ironic faith” that he sees emerging out of Evangelicalism, and I read the list I wondered if these were not all things that the mainline churches had tried to address as far back as the 1920’s….My quick summary of his points follows, but I urge to you read his article to see if I am being fast and loose with my understanding.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/september/39.62.html?start=2

1. Biblical inerrancy is not sufficient to express the truth of the Gospel.
2. The radical message of Jesus, often muted by the church, has political dimensions and global perspective.
3. Though committed to the bible, it is not the appropriate ground for scientific belief…when the bible and science offer different stories, science does not have to bow.
4. Authenticity—the congruence of belief and life—is an important marker of Christianity.
5. Pluralism is not a threat to true faith, but a witness to the goodness and wonder of God.
6. Images of a harsh and judging God (sometimes unfortunately equated with the “Old Testament God”) must always be viewed from the perspective of God’s love and compassion (sometimes triumphally equated with “The New Testament God, or the God of Jesus).
7. The hard rhetoric of scripture on issues of homosexuality does not have to be taken literally, and should not overtake a compassionate and loving approach to all people regardless of sexual preference or orientation.
8. I have to quote this one… “Emergents reason that theology is language-bound; language has its limits; the Bible is in language; that means the Bible, too, has the limits of language.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I read this list and it just sounds to me like what Harry Emerson Fosdick tried to argue in the face of J. Gresham Machen in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversies of the first quarter of the 20th century. For a terrific summary Wikipedia does a real service. Read more at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_controversy

All I can conclude is that it is not theology, doctrine of scripture, or even sexual politics that is keeping the “emergents” from finding their way back home. Some would argue that it’s all about worship wars, and a desire for a more casual, “contemporary” approach to worship, but again the critiques seem to me mostly grounded in caricature. Worship, at least in the Presbyterian churches I have experienced, is not what it was when the fundamentalists left, and indeed when I’ve talked to “emergents” who have found they way back into the pew, one of the things they cherish is the connection to the musical traditions of their youth…”music you can sign!”

There’s something else going on here, and I would hazard two guesses.

First, I wonder if these emergents who are looking for just what is being served in many mainline churches every Sunday are just a little afraid to walk back in the doors—if they aren’t something like poor Jacob, waiting anxiously alongside the Jabbok for his brother Esau. There is, I suspect, genuine fear that should they return they would not be welcome.

But that leads to the second “I wonder”—if the mainline isn’t just a little bit afraid of letting the emergents back in, unsure how much of their baggage they will bring with them. I, for one, am tired of fighting the fundamentalist wars. If a separate peace is the only peace that will hold, then I embrace it. But if the real longing is for a faith that earnestly addresses these eight dynamics of the “ironic faith” McKnight is trying to tease out, I wonder if we old mainliners could be gracious enough to open our doors wide to all seekers, and hospitable enough to feed them, and then listen to their honest reflections on the common life we seek to share.

Henri Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal has been immensely important to me, and as I read Marty reading McKnight I could not get the image of Rembrandt’s painting out of my head. With Nouwen’s wisdom I understand that there’s a little bit of older brother and a little bit of younger brother in us all, and that the great challenge of Christian life is to be a little bit of the father, opening our arms wide for that son who was dead but now lives, while assuring the other son “all that I have is yours!”

It’s just so hard to come home, sometimes, and truth told home can make it pretty hard to return. But as I read and reflected on all this, I felt myself longing for just a touch of grace that might help us see each other clearly, not as adversary or foe, but as children of this great God who loves us all, and longs for each of us to know that welcoming embrace.

Daily Advent Gospel Reading December 10, 2009

Matthew 23:13-26

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

"Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.' You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, 'Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.' How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean."

Yep, for those of you accustomed to receiving your Gospel in Sunday-sized portions, that really IS Jesus talking. I’m not sure if Luke or Matthew got it right, but in Matthew the equivalent of these verses will be found tacked right on to the Beatitudes, though to Luke’s credit some of the scorch has been removed. It does give you a sense of why those Scribes and Pharisees might have gotten fed up with Jesus, though. How many times would you have to hear “You cross land and sea to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” before you began to fantasize taking this guy out? Blind fools….hypocrites…blind guides…I don’t know but if this is a verbatim speech of Jesus, you might just see the referee pulling out a yellow flag and making the universal sign for “Piling On.”

But then, Jesus has this edginess throughout these Advent readings, doesn’t he? One of the books I’m wading through is entitled The Forgotten Ways. It’s a pretty thorough critique of how we good “mainline” folk have mostly missed the boat when it comes to really being the church in the 21st century. The author, Alan Hirsch, comes from a perspective that is, well, not exactly compatible with my own, yet I find him often making points I have to nod to. Specifically, he wonders whether we have allowed the institutions of Christendom to obscure or derail the church’s mission. I’m still licking my wounds from his critique of “ordained” leadership (he prefers “apostolic” leaders…the difference a topic for another post!) but as I read the Gospel for today, I wondered if Jesus would not be nodding in at least timid agreement.

The line that got me in the Gospel was “you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, and mercy, and faith.” Yep, I thought….bring all the seasoning but forget about the meat! Small wonder that one of the stories I heard more times than I can remember as a child growing up in the church was good old, “Stone Soup.” It did occur to me every now and then when yet another well-intentioned adult decided it was just the right children’s sermon, that it would not have broken anyone’s bank to throw in a little pork, or chicken, or beef. When I got a little older, and offered the same children’s sermon myself, usually around Lent, and usually as a prelude to a soup meal at the church, I knew when the time came to actually MAKE the stone soup it would be a good idea to start off with a few cups of good beef or chicken broth.

Maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t want the spices we can part with. Maybe God wants the meat and bones of this enterprise. Maybe that is why it wasn’t good enough to wait until He could Twitter or IM his Good News—He had to take on true, full humanity if He was to save it…leaving it forever with the problem of addressing One beyond “he” or “she” as one or the other and always leaving someone unsatisfied….

By now, Good Christian, I am guessing you have made at least a dent in your Christmas shopping list. My ears are still burning from Jesus’ tirade and so I have to ponder, and suggest, that somewhere on that Christmas list we should give some consideration to what it is that God really wants this Christmas. Meat and potatoes. Justice. Mercy. Faith.

Just for kicks, give a wonder to what Jesus might have to say as, say, the City Council argues about whether or not churches can allow the homeless to sleep in their basements during the Advent season…can they have cots? What happens if they get unruly? Will the good upstanding Scribes and Pharisees appointed to watch the unruly hoard fall asleep? Then what? Would Jesus sputter and shout? Or would he just sigh, shake his head, and wonder if the next Nazareth down the road might be a little more open to His Presence?

That’s Advent…cleaning the inside of the cup so that it’s ready when the gifts of heaven pour forth. “For unto you is born this day a Savior….” Pray that we are ready!

1, 2, Skip a Few, 99, 100

And it's not even my thought, really, but one that wound its way to me through Fred Gaines, from his son. I file it under an Advent meditation for "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light."

Fred shared the story in the context of his own walk with cancer. I am honored and humbled to be invited to share the journey...and then I think..."Hey, wait a minute...that's what Advent is about, too. We're invited to share a journey."

Rabbi Nightengale, if your eyes ever light upon this page, Blessed are you for sharing this story.

http://www.aish.com/jw/s/66842652.html

Meditations on the Advent Gospel Readings: December 1

NRS Matthew 21:12-22

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a den of robbers."

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became angry and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?" Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, 'Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself'?" He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!" And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, "How did the fig tree wither at once?" Jesus answered them, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive."

There is an entire Advent’s worth of meditation on this one Gospel reading alone, out of place as it all might seem. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever really attended to the movement of Matthew’s narrative. In my mind Jesus in the temple has stood as something of a SWAT operation. Part of my image is Jesus fuming off down the road to Bethany while shell-shocked merchants shook their fists at his fury. It’s hard to imagine Jesus tearing through the outer courts of the temple and then sitting down and attending to those who came to him for healing and comfort.

I’m not sure I have ever attended to the brisk confrontation as the chief priests and scribes find themselves caught between fury, fear, and frustration. Their eyes beheld the healings but they knew that the songs of children would make their way to Pilate’s ears and threaten the delicate balances they had forged with the Roman occupiers. There was no room for another King in the land, and there’s no rocket science involved in figuring out how Caesar would respond to any challenge to his authority. It’s a different, defiant Jesus who strides back to Bethany. This was no retreat.

Then there’s that whole fig tree thing…it hardly seems fair that a tree that did not bring fruit out of season would be cursed, and how this all stands as a testament to faith is troubling if you think about it too much. Just who would want mountains lifting up and getting thrown into seas anyway? Are there not some things better left to the hand of God?

So, I reflect a week late and well into this season of waiting I wonder what would happen if it were the REAL Jesus who met us, and not the one we have wrapped a little too tight in swaddling clothes, and consigned to an eternal manger. Yes, of course, the story starts there, but the season of Advent prepares us for the One who is to come, and this is One who will catch us unaware, threaten and challenge us, and even sometimes curse innocent fig trees that are just minding their own business.

I recall the nativity story from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, in which Owen, consigned to the role of the baby Jesus but merging the part with John the Baptist, spies his parents in the audience and creaks out in his Owen Meany voice, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING HERE?” It’s a question that deserves some attention as we shop and wrap and deck all our halls. Are we really ready for the One we await? Take a minute before you vote, okay?

Reflections on the Advent Daily Gospel Lessons - The First Monday of Advent

Matthew 21:1-11

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, 'The Lord needs them.' And he will send them immediately. " This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, "Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey." The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?" The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."

Odd place to start Advent, isn’t it? One of my favorite prayers for this season comes from Frederick Buechner, in which he calls us to the edge of our seats to watch this most familiar story unfold, “leaning forward to hear what will happen, even though they already know what will happen and what will not happen”. We know about Mary and the angel Gabriel, sent by God. Shake the dust a bit and we remember Joseph and something about being unable to speak. But as we move into the days of Advent, the lectionary plays a trick, pointing us not to the familiar stories of the early chapters of Matthew and Luke, but to the story from the other end of Jesus’ life. It is, I believe, intended to push us into the mood of the Advent spiritual—to “wonder as we wander, out under the sky, why Jesus the Savior did come for to die…”

It is that odd sense of repetition that catches me when I listen to this story in the darkening days of Advent—how Jesus knew what would happen, and what would not happen. “If anyone asks you, just say this…” Matthew is scrupulous in his explanation. “This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet.” But you have to believe the two disciples would have been a little slower to complete their assignment if they could have seen even around the corner of this week that would be, maybe setting that colt facing Bethany and giving it a good swift swat to send it running away. So you think one of the things those two disciples muttered to each other over their goblets on wine on Saturday night was, “If only we had known!”

Advent is a queer season of knowing and unknowing, of being surprised by exactly what you knew was going to be. It’s a beginning, of course, but an ending as well. Once that child’s cry pierced the night on Christmas Eve, nothing could ever be the same, not even the telling of how it all came to be.

Buechner’s prayer cuts right to the heart of the matter. Even if we DID know exactly what was happening, and what was not happening, it wouldn’t matter all that much. This season is not about recounting events. It is about meanings. Our meanings. And it is about hearing, only faintly at first, the beating of unseen wings.

At least for this year, if we walk beside the lectionary, the parade to Bethlehem starts at the Mount of Olives, beginning with the end in mind. For poor, ornery people like you and like me. I wonder, as I wander….

There is a time when it begins, and therefore a time before it begins, when it is coming but not yet here, and this is the time that Mary was in when Gabriel came to her. It is Advent: the time just before the adventure begins, when everybody is leaning forward to hear what will happen, even though they already know what will happen and what will not happen, when they listen for meaning, their meaning, and begin to hear, only faintly at first, the beating of unseen wings - Frederick Buechner