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A Simple Story?

I was just reading a storybook about the life of Jesus to my son. When we got to the part about Jesus being arrested he was very interested in the Roman soldiers. He wished he could be one, probably because the one guy had a sword in the picture.

When I told him about how they were coming to arrest him and that he would be killed, he became very agitated. He was insisting that Jesus needed to go into town to get away from them. I made a feeble attempt to explain to him about a sacrifice and how Jesus wanted to be a sacrifice.

At the end of the story, Liam still wanted to be a Roman soldier. I said, "Don't you think that would be mean to do that to Jesus?" I had said that God wanted this to happen, so his response was that he would want to do what God wanted him to do!

I, of course, had to backtrack a bit and explain that God didn't tell them to do it. So much for simple Bible stories!

Sing Quick!

My family and I are on our way back to New Jersey this afternoon for a two-week Christmas visit. Before we go, however, I have to lead worship in the second service at our church in Torrance. My son has been getting excited about our trip for a long time. We were talking about it this morning and when I said that we had to go to church first, he told me I have to sing quick!

Library Fun

I have a bibliography and outline for my church history paper due tomorrow.  I was searching for resources pertaining to one Andreas Karlstadt and found something that looked perfect: A Reformation Debate: Karlstadt, Emser, and Eck on Sacred Images: Three Treatises in Translation.  I discovered that the library at Fuller had a copy, but to my dismay it was checked out.  As I lamented my bad luck, wondering who else would be checking out such a book it suddenly hit me...it was me that checked it out.  It was sitting on the floor right next to me!

Snuggling Jesus

This is the gist of a conversation I just had with my three yearold son, Liam, this morning:

Bill: Worship is when we thank God and sings songs to him and praise him...we show him how much we love him.

Liam: Awwww....that's nice.  I'm gonna snuggle Jesus.

Bill: Someday you will be able to.

Liam: And then I'll snuggle my Dad.

Bill: We can make an Ooly sandwich with Jesus. (meaning we would all hug together with Liam in the middle)

Liam: I wanna make a Jesus sandwich.

Bill: He would probably like that.

Liam: Yeah, and then he'll make us lunch.

Picasso on Objectivity

Somebody was saying to Picasso that he ought to make pictures of things the way they are—objective pictures.  He mumbled he wasn't quite sure what that would be.  The person who was bullying him produced a photograph of his wife from his wallet and said, "There, you see, that is a picture of how she really is."  Picasso looked at it and said, "She is rather small, isn't she?  And flat?"

(Gregory Bateson, quoted in The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil, p.159)

WWYD?

Leonard Sweet tells a great story about the importance of relationships in his new book, Out of the Question...Into the Mystery.  Tom's new truck was dented when his neighbor's basketball post fell on it.  The neighbor refused to claim responsibility for it.  When Dr. Sweet asked Tom how he was going to mak his neighbor pay for it, this was his reply:

"This has been a real spiritual journey for me.  After a lot of soul-searching and discussions with my wife about hiring an attorney, it came down to this: I can either be in the right, or I can be in a relationship with my neighbor.  Since my neighbor will probably be be with me longer than this truck, I decided that I'd rather be in a relatioship than be right.  Besides, trucks are meant to be banged up, so I got mine initiated into the real world a bit earlier than expected." (p.91)

What would you do?

Marketplace Theology

Jesus spent a lot of time in public places, engaging people, hearing their stories, and telling his. He developed his theological approach within the marketplace, telling stories that made God's kingdom relevant to the people he encountered. At the same time, he directed blistering challenges to the prevailing trends within his own religious tradition...We contend that the marketplace (the cultural hot seat) was Jesus' academic arena, his theological context. (A Matrix of Meanings by Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor, p.27)

I don't often think about how Jesus went about developing his theology or his storytelling abilities. I forget that he wasn't simply born able to do everything perfectly.

Beyond that, this quote raises some interesting questions. How does a "marketplace" theology differ from traditional or modern strains? Was Jesus really trying to be relevant?

Another thing that just jumped out at me is the phrase "hearing their stories." We normally think about Jesus doing all the talking, don't we? Do you think Jesus was (is) a good listener, too?

An Orthodox Christmas

This post contains some thoughts I have decided to share with our church choir tonight.  It's our first rehearsal for our Christmas concert.  I thought it might be worth sharing with some of you.  Many of you will recognize the long quote from chapter 1 of McLaren's "A Generous Orthodoxy."  If you've already read that chapter, you can probably skip past the story and read my comments afterward.
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I decided I wanted to share some thoughts about Christmas right at the outset of this new choir season.  This year I have been exposed, for the first time, to some of the views of the Orthodox church.  I’m talking about the group of Christians from the Eastern part of Europe who broke off from the catholic church in around 1000 AD.  These are churches such as the Greek Orthodox church and the Russian Orthodox church. 

Probably the only things I knew about these churches in the past was that they celebrate Easter on a different day and they use icons in their worship.  The differences, of course, go beyond that.  One huge difference is a matter of emphasis on the various aspects of Christ’s work here on earth.  Evangelicals tend to emphasize the death of Christ.  It is by his blood that we are cleansed.  It is by his stripes we are healed.  I have found, in my own life, that this strong emphasis on the Passion story has made me doubt the importance of celebrating Christmas.  It has made me question the hype.  Why get all worked up?  After all, he hadn’t done anything yet, right?

Okay, I wouldn’t have put it that way, but maybe you know what I mean.  I’m wondering if maybe taking a look at the Orthodox perspective on the incarnation of Christ will help to balance out our views a little bit.  Maybe it will help us to really celebrate Christmas for all it’s worth.

a cautionary tale

Will Samson of willzhead just reminded me of a story I told him awhile ago. I don't remember all the exact details, but this is based on a true story. I'll change the names to keep peoples' privacy intact.
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Doug was a P.K.—a pastor's kid. Throughout life, he always felt the particular pressures of being in the public eye. Church people somehow always expected that he should act or speak or think a certain way. They certainly expected him to be a cut above their own children.

You might be suprised that when Doug finally graduated high school he decided to study Bible in college. Perhaps he saw something special in that book everybody had fifteen of. Perhaps he thought he could learn something new. Perhaps.

After graduating college he decided to get his Masters at one of those "liberal schools." All schools, as you will have heard, eventually "go liberal." It is the inevitable result of sin and entropy and the Democratic party. But I digress...

Doug loved to snowboard. While snowboarding in Colorado one day, Doug came across his hero. I can't think of his name because I'm not the extreme sports kind of guy. But this dude was very famous. We'll just call him Famous Dude.

Doug introduced himself and gushed about what a big fan he was. Famous Dude ended up asking him where he was from.

"Oh you wouldn't have heard of it," said Doug. "It's a tiny little town in New Jersey."

"Oh really?" replied Famous Dude. "My wife grew up in Such-and-Such Town, New Jersey. What town are you from?"

"What a coincidence. I'm from Shall-Remain-Nameless Township. It's right across the highway."

Somehow, it came out that Doug's father was the pastor of a little church there.

With a half chuckle, Famous Dude asked, "That's not the church with the sign, is it?"

Doug gulped and cringed and got that P.K.-in-the-headlights look on his face. Famous Dude's wife, as it turned out, knew exactly which church Doug grew up in. It was the one with the sign. The one that mocked and/or confused people as they drove by. The one with messages written in such a thick Christianese dialect that although people sensed that somehow they were being judged, they didn't quite understand how.

Doug got himself out of the conversation as soon as possible, vowing to never admit where he grew up again.

The Storyteller

Once there was a storyteller who wove magical tales about an entire world of people, places, and things. He told the stories with all of his being...movements, the tone of his voice, the dramatic pauses all combined to create something real. He had a particular lilt in his voice, unmatched by anyone or anything, which made the stories come to life. They took on a life of their own, his characters a reflection of the teller. Yet somehow, they were so life-like that they became more than just "like life." They became real. The listeners could imagine what might happen next, but they could never be too sure. In fact, the storyteller allowed his characters to begin to write their own story.

But something awful happened...the characters turned on the storyteller.

Not that he did not anticipate this, mind you. There was a greater theme behind this story than you might first anticipate. Something so big that when people first hear of it, they know deep down inside that it must be true.

The characters of this new story began to go their own way and immediately trouble ensued. On their own, the characters turned on themselves, threatening to erase any meaning the story ever had.

The storyteller selected one character...perhaps one of those you would least expect to be chosen...and gave him a new name. And with that name he gave him a promise:

"You will change the story for the better. You will help people to be a part of the original plot-line."

As the storyteller expected, this character with a new name went right ahead and avoided his new mission. But inside of him was a little speck of a dream...a vision of what might be. And somehow that was enough. He and his children and his children's children carried that dream with them.

That family became a whole nation of storytellers within the story. They sung and spoke to each other about the bigger story--the storyteller's original plotline. They celebrated the steps the storyteller took to keep the dream alive inside of them. Oh, they suffered, too. And they did the wrong things. Sometimes, in fact, they were as unlovable as they were loved.

And then a strange notion began to overtake these people. They began to imagine something so unimaginable that they never quite understood it until after it happened. Something big was going to happen. Something bigger than big. One of them was going to somehow fix everything. The story was going to be put back on track. They didn't really comprehend the full extent of this new idea, but they put their hope in it. And they waited...

And they waited...

And one day, a day just like any other, it happened. The storyteller wove himself into the story in a new, completely implausible way. He actually became a character in the story, one of the children of this "people of the dream." Not a superman or woman, not some kind of Herculean, half-god hero. But a real character.

And this character began to say things...and do things that...well, that sometimes didn't make any sense. The perspective of this new character was so new, so unusual, so BIG. What this character said and did were almost too big, or so it seemed. This character made such a mess of the petty, misguided lives he came into contact with that some of them began to change dramatically...some for the better...and some for the worse.

Some of the characters did not want to change. They had missed the point of the story for so long that they no longer recognized the original storyteller. And so they killed him. They murdered the author of their lives. They thought they could do away with him. They thought they could go on doing what they wanted to do, rejecting the original plot-line for their own twisted desires.

Would it seem like cheating if I told you the "storyteller/real character" didn't stay dead? Does that sound too much like a classic Deus ex machina? Well, I have to tell it like it is. Maybe you can see that this is exactly what had to happen. This is somehow what the storyteller had planned all along. It was a part of the original plotline.

And so the storyteller came back to life, once again amazing his characters. He succeeded in reigniting that original spark of a dream...that idea that the story can be changed back. That the original plot-line, the happy ending everyone was hoping for but was afraid to live for, could really be resuscitated. The storyteller really was going to finish the story. Some day, when the last notes of this epic ballad were sounded, the story would all make sense. Everything would fall into place and every character would get to see how their little stories fit into the big story.

This story wouldn't be a real one if every character bought into this dream. Some of them refused to acknowledge it. Some of them actively opposed it...and still do.

But some of them are spending their days and nights trying to make the "bigger" story come alive in a whole new way. They seek to write their own part of the story as an important sub-plot in this grandest of epics. They look forward to the finale, dwelling on its outcome, but focusing all the more on the words that are written today. They think about that time when the storyteller became a real character...and they imagine what might, no, what will be.

THE END FOR NOW...