All posts tagged Jesus

  • May 15, 2018

    This is America: My Thoughts

    If you haven’t taken the time to watch the music video to Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” you need to.

    It isn’t just another music video dreamed up by a marketing team to sell records. This video is an art piece. As with any good piece of art it will mess with you. It works on you. It doesn’t leave your memory. It will stick with you.

    Over the last week I have watched it more than a dozen times and I cannot stop thinking about the images, the lyrics, and I how I feel every time I watch it. I can’t get the lyrics out of my head.

    This is America
    Don’t catch you slippin’ up

    Every time I watch it, I want to write something…my thoughts…my feelings…my reactions…my anger…my hope. It seems like I have a different reaction every time I watch it, but one thought continues to remain consistent: this song is important.

    In some ways this is the “The Times They Are A-Changin'” for a new generation. Bob Dylan wrote that song in 1963 and was later called the voice of a generation. I don’t know if generations have a single voice anymore. We are so polarized and tribal and live in such a pluralistic world that maybe there isn’t one song that will speak to and for an entire generation.

    But then again, maybe this is the song and voice and message for this generation.

    So watch and listen with an open mind and heart. Be prepared to be moved. If you have already watched it once or twice, watch it again…and again. Listen and watch. The video is just as important as the song.

    Be warned. Some lyrics are explicit and some images are graphic, but still…you need to watch this.

    Whoa. This is America.

    America are you listening?

    There is more in this song and video than I will take time to comment on. Others have written about all the symbolism here, but let me start with the obvious: This is America and America we have a problem.

    We have a revolving door of violence and it seems like after we all offer “thoughts and prayers,” we go back to life as normal. Particularly people like me. I am a middle class white dude. When I watch “This Is America,” I do so with white eyes. I make no apology for my ethnicity and socioeconomic status. I just acknowledge that it exists and I am aware of it. I’m aware that because of my place in life, I see things with certain biases and assumptions. I do not know what it is like to live in fear. I do not know what it is like to be a black man in America. I see Glover running at the end of this video with fear in his eyes and I cannot imagine a situation where I will ever know a moment of terror like that. One thing I do know: #BlackLivesMatter.

    America we have a problem and guns are a part of that problem.

    In the opening scene when the guitar player (minus his guitar) is executed, the man’s body is dragged off only after the gun used in his murder is carefully handed off in a red cloth. In America guns have become sacred and any talk of ending the proliferation of guns is met by outrage and resistance. (I have written about that here.) I know we have second amendment rights. I know we need armed law enforcement. Nobody is saying we have to eliminate all guns but what can we do to end the spread of guns and gun violence?

    How long will we rant on social media over escalating violence in America and then go back to:

    Look how I’m geekin’ out
    I’m so fitted
    I’m on Gucci
    I’m so pretty

    How long? How long until we say enough is enough?

    How long until we as a people can say innocent black men gunned down in the streets of America is not OK?

    How long until we say people being killed in our schools, churches, and movie theaters is not OK?

    How long until we say violence on the “other” side of town is my problem too?

    How long until we learn to put down our guns and love one another?

    As a pastor I have the opportunity to serve communion week after week. Very often as I serve the wine with the words “the blood of Christ shed for you,” I think this is the way: we don’t need to shed blood anymore, Jesus shed his blood for us. The only way to peace is to confess our sin, abandon our ways, and follow the Jesus way empowered by the Spirit. This is the hope I have for America. My hope is for baptized followers of Jesus Christ to shed their political affiliations and ideological covers and wrap themselves with the other-worldly, enemy-loving, counterintuitive ways of Jesus.

    This is the way. Jesus is the way. Peace is the way. There is no way to peace…peace is the way. If we will embrace Jesus, he can save us, not to take us to a distant world, but so he can save this world.

    Childish Gambino has awaken something. Let’s not grow comfortable with violence. Let’s stay awake and aware. Let’s stay woke.

    America are you listening?

    2 Comments / Life /

  • August 28, 2017

    My New Book is Here

    Releasing a new a book is what I imagine giving birth is like minus the excruciating pain. 

    The idea was conceived pretty quickly and now for “nine months” I have been laboring and struggling to write and edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite and rewrite and edit and..well, you understand. Writing is a slow and often uncomfortable process. But then the moment happens when the book enters into the world with applause and smiles, and even a tear or two.

    I am so happy to announce my new baby, er…book, is here! N.T. Wright and the Revolutionary Cross is a reader’s guide to N.T. “Tom” Wright’s 2016 book on the cross, The Day the Revolution Began. This is the second reader’s guide I have written for a N.T. Wright book. The first one, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright, was released in 2015. I’m surprised at how well-received that book has become. I continue to hear from people (two years after its release) who have found it helpful. This new book will give you access to exploring the meaning of the cross.

    Click here to download Chapter 1 of N.T. Wright and the Revolutionary Cross for free.

    A Peek Inside the Book

    This reader’s guide to Tom’s book on the cross is like my previous reader’s guide with a few upgrades. In the introduction, I write:

    While in my previous reader’s guide I did less interpretive work, I do more in this one. As I have become more familiar with Tom’s work and as it has affected my own, I have grown more comfortable with blending my own interpretation of Tom with his key concepts. Another difference between this reader’s guide and the last is I have included reflection questions at the end of each chapter to be used for personal or small group study.

    The reflection questions at the end of each of the six chapters will be a great way for individuals or groups to use this book to dig deeper into Tom’s world. I believe his book is a real game changer. He wrote The Day the Revolution Began on a “popular level,” leaving out long footnotes and references to other works, but his book still ended up over 400 pages in length. My reader’s guide will help you understand most of Tom’s primary points which I hope opens up new vistas of the love of God revealed in the cross.

    What Does Tom Think About This Book?

    One question I’m often asked is, “What does N.T. Wright think of your summary work?”

    The answer is as complex as Tom himself.

    Professor Wright has been my primary theological mentor for years now and there is no denying my man crush (#bromance). I am a Tom Wright super fan! I talked to him briefly at Missio Alliance’s Awakenings gathering earlier this year and I asked him if it was ok if I continued my summary work. He said he understood why I am doing what I’m doing and expressed his appreciation. In previous emails to me, he was clear that he really didn’t like being summarized because of what is left out in a summary of his books. When I finished the manuscript for N.T. Wright and the Revolutionary Cross and began the editing process, I sent it to him.

    Two weeks later I got a response.

    He again thanked me for my work, but felt that there seemed to be a better way of doing this. Time limitations and work demands prevent us from working together on some other way of disseminating his ideas, so for now a reader’s guide is all I have to offer. He did read the manuscript and offer over 30 comments. This was such a gift! There were no major corrections. Rather he offered subtle critiques here and there. He did in the end say that he felt like I got some things right and in other places I said some things in my own words, things he was not saying in the book.

    As a reader’s guide this is both summary and interpretation. If you want to know whether what I have written in N.T. Wright and the Revolutionary Cross is my words or Tom’s, you will have to read my book along side his. Reading them together is the best way to get the most out of my book.

    The Revolutionary Cross

    What N.T. Wright and the Revolutionary Cross will do, in less than 100 pages, is present to you, in stunning clarity, the power and beauty of the cross. Those of us who have grown up in an evangelical context have one or more ways of seeing the cross that have obstructed our view of the revolutionary nature of the cross. We have debated and argued about “atonement,” the precise meaning of how the cross saves us, but I fear we get lost in the trees, not seeing the expanse of the forest.

    I don’t want to dismiss the theological work going on around the topic of the atonement. It is important for us to work with Scripture and the Christian tradition to understand what it means when we say: Christ died for our sins. (With some trepidation I have entered into the atonement debate here and here.)

    My reader’s guide to Tom’s book on the cross will give you a new lens in which you can see that God’s saving work on the cross is nothing short of a revolution. This world-changing revolution is found in the story Scripture is telling. While evangelicals have emphasized the cross as the means by which believers can go to heaven when they die, the Scripture tells the story of new creation breaking into our broken down world with the cross as the pivotal moment of that story. The cross is the climax of the story the Bible tells, the clearest moment of the revelation of who God is. According to Tom,

    The Messiah’s crucifixion unveiled the very nature of God himself at work in generous self-giving love to overthrow all power structures by dealing with the sin that had given them their power, that same divine nature would now be at work through the ministry of the gospel not only through what was said, but through the character and the circumstances of the people who were saying it.

    I would love for you to get a copy of my book. It is available NOW in paperback and as a Kindle download from Amazon.com. It will be available at Word of Life Church/Solomon’s Porch in St. Joe beginning Sunday, September 9.

    If you do get the book could you do a couple other things to help get the word out?

    1. Mention the book on social media using this link: www.amazon.com/dp/1973839415/
    2. Write an Amazon review
    3. Tell your friends
    4. Form a small group to read and discuss the book
    5. Write your congressman and senator (ok, well maybe not)

    Tom Wright says a revolution has begun, a revolution initiated by the death of Jesus on the cross.

    This revolution beckons us to join. I am in. How about you?

    No Comments / Theology /

  • June 20, 2016

    Book Review: How Jesus Saves the World From Us

    How Jesus Saves the World from Us_book image copy

    Morgan Guyton is on a journey.

    He has left behind Christian fundamentalism with its debilitating toxins and has trekked his way through the expanse of God’s wide-open grace. His book How Jesus Saves the World From Us serves, in part, as a chronicle of that journey. He does not presume to have arrived, as many of his humble, self-deprecating stories reveal. He is following Jesus with sincerity and intent and has shared with us what he has gained from his experience. Parts of what he has learned on his journey resonates with my own story. In these sections, I found myself applauding Guyton. In other parts of the book, I found myself scratching my head as I failed, at times, to connect the dots as he offers a better way to live the Christian life than the narrow confines of ugly fundamentalism. A few times I found his anecdotes and illustrations distasteful. In these sections I felt my attention distracted from the richness of the solutions he was offering. In the end, much of the valuable insights in this book are overshadowed by a dualistic, polemical tone that is a toxin of its own kind. It seems this book is an attempt to be prophetic in the Hebrew tradition of prophets. In Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann makes the case that Hebrew prophets both energize and criticize the people of Israel through their acts of prophecy. In the case of How Jesus Saves the Word From Us, Guyton seems to be far too critical and far less energizing in most chapters.

    Strengths of the Book

    Let me back up a few steps and draw out some of the strengths of this book. First, Guyton writes from a Christ-centered and Church-centered perspective. This is a book for the church, for those who are serious about following Jesus and working to support the work of Jesus in building healthy churches. One of the strongest chapters in the book is “Servanthood, Not Leadership.” Guyton writes:

    “When Christian leaders structure their churches around their need to feel important, they are creating cancer in the body of Christ. What would our Christian communities look like if our leaders truly sought to define themselves primarily as servants?”

    He rightly identifies the rampant self-ambition in church leadership and offers a Jesus-model of leading through servanthood. Other chapters have equally strong solutions which will promote church health.

    Second, he consistently draws upon love as the supreme ethic whereby we can identify and remove the toxins in the church. For example, in the chapter entitled “Honor, Not Terror,” he describes the fear of the Lord not in terms being scared of God, but honoring God and honoring the God-image in other people. He uses the story of Huck Finn who goes against his cultural and religious upbringing to show kindness to his friend Jim, the slave, even if such kindness will “send him to hell.” Guyton writes:

    “Fearing God is not being afraid of what God will do to me, but afraid of what I might do to Jesus.”

    This helpful corrective rightly classifies the fear of the Lord as a kind careful respect, locating Jesus in and among the suffering and the oppressed.

    Third, the chapters in this book are written from the vantage point of a life lived in honest pursuit of Christ and his kingdom. Guyton has no pretense in telling his stories, stories of pain and stories of transformation. Never is this transparency more clear than in the story he tells about encountering poverty while on vacation in Mexico. A young five-year old girl in a dirty dress is begging Guyton to buy a doll from her. This encounter wrecked him. This moment was when he claims he “got saved.” Stories like these are raw and honest and lend credibility to many of the solutions Guyton offers the church.

    Weaknesses of the Book

    For all of it’s strengths, I found How Jesus Saves the World From Us riddled with weaknesses which honestly surprised me. First, the book is trapped within a dualist, “us vs. them” paradigm. The overarching theme throughout the book, as captured in the title, is that the church, primarily the evangelical American church, is filled with toxic practices and beliefs hindering the brightness and beauty of the gospel. Guyton argues for solutions to these toxins as way for God to save the world from us and our unhealthy ways. Sadly this dualistic theme (the world against us) undercuts the many helpful solutions Guyton offers because it pits the world against the church, or at least the unhealthy church. The classic Wesleyan vision is of God at work among his people for the sake of the world, and not, as Guyton positions things: God saving the world from his people. This dualism, the world against the people of God, filters into a number of issues dividing progressive and conservative evangelicals.

    For example, in the chapter on “Outsiders, Not Insiders” Guyton argues that Jesus was not a religious “insider,” but that he associated with the “outsiders” (i.e. sinners). He creates a false dichotomy here in that Jesus was both a religious Jew who came as a fulfillment of the Law to be Israel’s Messiah (as an insider) and he was fulfilling Israel’s vocation to bring the light of salvation to the sinful Gentile world (as an outsider). Guyton does rightly advocate for the church to embrace the outsider, but he does so from a dualistic point of view. When speaking of the church’s response to the LGBT community, a sensitive and delicate topic among progressives and conservatives, he creates an unhelpful divide. He confesses that he has “almost given up on trying to argue (that being “queer” isn’t sinful), because it seems like so many insider Christians are so invested in their anti-LGBTQ stance that it’s become their litmus test for Christian identity.” The language here sadly reveals the antagonism between progressives and conservatives causing ongoing disintegration in the conversation in the church on how to best love our LGBT neighbors. If I stand with the great tradition of the church in defining marriage as a sacred, male plus female relationship, which I do, then am I anti-LGBT and against their community? He has already defined Jesus in this chapter as an outsider, which implies I am an insider not only opposing a community of people for their sexual orientation, but I am opposing Jesus. This kind of unhelpful polemic only creates greater divide in the body of Christ. I too do not want to argue with gay-affirming evangelicals, because arguments and debates seldom produce the love Jesus commands of us.

    Second, I found some of Guyton’s anecdotes and illustrations cynical and at times distasteful. I sense that Guyton is attempting to be provocative, but I felt he pushed some metaphors too far. He mentions yelling at his kids, teenage boys who are “horny and incapable of controlling themselves,” a girl who was molested by Bill Gothard, and worship through fasting as an “erotic experience,” an illustration to which he adds the disclaimer: “as icky as that may sound.” Yes it was icky. He should have left that one out. These are examples in just the first three chapters. I found these and other anecdotes distracting me from some of the great points he was making. For example the worship through fasting description is in the context of a larger metaphor for hearts that need to be emptied of clutter more than they need to be cleaned. And while I think this metaphor is a false dichotomy (I think we need both a decluttered heart and a clean heart), it is a helpful way for us to think through the difficult subject of sanctification.

    How Jesus Saves the Word From Us is a mixed bag. There is so much I loved about this book and so much I disliked. In the end I think there are better, more constructive, ways to root out the pathogens in the modern American evangelical church. The ancient Church has given us ways through prayer and conversation to root out those things hindering the work of the gospel. It begins with prayer, contemplative prayer, rising above the harsh dualisms of “good guys” and “bad guys,” “right Christians” and “wrong Christians.” Guyton loves the church and I appreciate his work in calling us to greater faithfulness to the mission of Jesus, but solutions tainted with dualisms fail to bring about their intended cure.

    No Comments / Theology /

  • February 17, 2015

    Lent 2015

    lent_2015Lent comes early this year. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season, is tomorrow. Christmas Day is the same day every year on the calendar. Easter moves around…something about the phases of the moon. I’m not sure. Lent has been a part of the Christian tradition for a long, long time; I have only been observing Lent for six or seven years. My mistake.

    Lent has become a regular part of the year for me. I look forward to it, not in the same way I look forward to Christmas or Easter (Have you ever tried frozen peeps!). I look forward to Lent because it has been a time-tested practice of the church to grow in faith and identify with Jesus. Lent is a season on the church calendar the 40 days before Easter that helps us to prepare for Easter. It is designed to be a time of confession, prayer, repentance, fasting, and “giving something up” in order to identify with the sufferings of Jesus. Every Sunday is a mini celebration of the resurrection, but Easter Sunday is the ultimate celebration of the resurrection. For those of us following Jesus resurrection is a BIG deal. So for many of us the season of Lent has become a big deal. Lent is important as a way to prepare for Easter, because…

    You cannot know the joy of the resurrection without enduring the sorrow of the cross.

    Lent gives us a slow, winding, meticulous way to reflect on the sufferings of Christ culminating on his death on the cross. Lent is not convenient. Lent is not comfortable. It does not fit our consumer-driven sensibilities. It does help to form us in Christ-likeness. It does help expose our idols. It does help us to grow up.

    At Word of Life Church, we are venturing out into the Lenten season with four Ash Wednesday Services (7 a.m., noon, 5:30 p.m., and 7 p.m.) and then we are praying every day (except for Sunday) in our Upper Room prayer chapel at 12:15 p.m. These prayer gatherings will follow a Midday Prayer Liturgy that will sound and feel the same every day. We are baptizing people on the first Sunday of Lent and we are offering Lenten Small Groups on Sunday morning immediately following the worship service. We have also put together a Lenten Scripture Reading Guide to focus your Bible reading on the sufferings of Christ.

    For me personally, I am reading three books: Simply Good News by N.T. Wright, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers compiled by Andrew Louth and Maxwell Staniforth, and Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words by Rod Bennett. I try to pick books to read during Lent with a particular focus on Jesus. This year I wanted to read from some of the writings of the church fathers. I threw in an N.T. Wright book in the mix just because.

    I invite you to join us on this Lenten journey. Pick some meals or days during the week and fast. Give something up. Seek out silence. Repent. Give yourself to prayer. Join a small group. Read. Read slowly. Read contemplatively. Expect things to change. And most of all, look for Jesus.

    No Comments / Life, Ministry /

  • August 23, 2013

    I Believe in Hell

    I recently responded to a member of my church who was asking questions about hell. I sent him a 750-word email in response to his questions about hell, who goes there, and how long it lasts. This response was not my first, nor will it be my last, to questions about hell. People want to know which raises the first of many questions in my mind: Why are some pockets of the Christian community obsessed with hell? Of course, I propose that question with my tongue well-planted in my cheek. I have a lot of thoughts as to why people really want to understand the nature of hell, but I ask because Christianity (and Judaism) is not primarily an afterlife religion. The setting of the story of Israel, Jesus’ life and ministry, and the mission of the church is here, the earth.

    Jesus, who was working within a Jewish context, was focused, as he taught us to pray, on God’s kingdom coming from heaven to earth. The Old Testament spoke sparsely of what is popularly imagined as “heaven” and “hell.” In the Old Testament “hell” was a reference to the place of the dead (Hebrew: sheol), but the Old Testament writers do not describe this reality with much or any depth. Jesus did speak of hell (Greek: hades or gehenna), but he spoke little about “heaven.” And to the surprise of many, he never talked about “going to heaven when you die,” at least not in those terms.

    Nevertheless, I do believe in hell.

    I believe whatever Jesus believes about hell. I am just not sure we always understand him quite right. For example in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, many people focus on the rich man in hell (Greek word: hades) assuming Jesus was telling a story about how to avoid hell, when the rhetorical climax of the story focuses our attention on the rich man’s desire for his brother’s to repent. The point of the story is not to give us an accurate description of hell, but to challenge us to think about how we treat the poor.

    In that story in Luke 16, the word for “hell” is hades, but the more common word translated “hell” in the teachings of Jesus is gehenna. Jesus uses this term, much like Jeremiah does in the Old Testament, to describe earthly destruction, which is a judgment of sorts. Brad Jersak notes, “ Gehenna is judgment to be sure—and may even point secondarily to final judgment—but the picture is first of all about the destructive wake left behind by our sin here and now, not an afterlife of eternal, conscious torment. It is quite literally ‘the way of death’” (Her Gates Shall Never Be Shut 61). (BTW I recommend Brad Jersak’s book as a way to explore the various biblical and historical readings of hell. Brad does a good job of exploring the key texts in Scripture and highlights some of the key historical contributions to this topic. Brad helped me see there a number of interpretations of hell that fit within Christian orthodoxy.) So here are my thoughts today on hell. I offer these in humility as a follow of Jesus trying to make sense of these weighty subjects.

    1) I believe in hell, not only here and now, but I believe in a hell that is an eternal death. What the experience of hell is like is a bit of mystery, but we have metaphors of torment, flames, fire unquenched, weeping, utter darkness, and the like that draws a pretty grim picture. I reject the doctrines of Christian universalism and universal reconciliation (apocatastasis), while I do respect the reasoning that has led some Christians to those conclusions.

    2) I believe hell is rooted in the love of God. God does not send people to hell. We choose hell when we choose to reject God. When we say “no” to God, he allows us go into eternity separated and isolated from him and his grace. God is not going to force anyone to live under his rule and reign. If we want to remain stiff-necked, self-reliant, stubborn, and rebellious, God will allow us, but we will find it to be hell. Furthermore hell as a form of judgment is rooted in God’s love, because we cannot call God good or loving if we were to assume he merely turns a blind eye to evil and injustice. For God to be love, he must not only love that which is good, he must also reject and condemn that which destroys the good. (Side note: The Eastern Orthodox of view of hell would challenge the Western idea of hell as separation. I am allow that thought work on me.)

    3) I do not know with absolute certainty who will experience hell. I do not know the heart of person. I do not know the faith of a person. I do know God is good, merciful, holy, and just. I also believe God can save who he wants. Anyone who is saved is saved by Jesus and through Jesus. And I trust Jesus to do what is right concerning people in his acts of judgment. I do know that all those who call on the Lord, and turn to him in faith and repentance, shall be saved. I have given up on the game of saying who is “in” and who is “out;” that’s God’s job not mine. My job is to love God and love people, follow Jesus and proclaim the Gospel, make disciples and serve the church.

    4) I don’t want anybody to go to hell. If there is somebody I think is outside of the grace and mercy of God, and I secretly desire for them to go to hell and suffer, then I should really check my heart. I don’t want anyone to perish but to come to repentance. If I start wishing for people to go to hell so they can “get what they deserve,” I have just stepped off the Jesus way and I need repentance. In talking to people about hell, I have asked, “So who do you really want to go to hell?” The answer to that question says a lot about our hearts. It is also one of the quickest ways to expose self-righteousness.

    5) Is it possible for people to choose salvation after death and be rescued out of hell? I don’t know. The Scripture and teachings of the historic church are not clear on this matter. Some would say definitively, “no, once a person dies that is it…they go to hell forever.” My question is when (or where) do we get the indication in Scripture that human choice ends at death? I do not know if people can repent and choose to turn in faith to Jesus from hell, but I hope so. What if mercy does finally triumph over judgment? What if his love does endure forever? What if human choice does indeed continue after death? I cannot answer these questions with certainty so I invite people to choose Jesus now, choose life now, repent now and make no plans to experience eternal death.

    3 Comments / Theology /

  • June 25, 2013

    Substance and Evidence

    Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1 KJV)

    Faith is a human attribute. Faith is an essential human attribute. God has no need of faith because nothing is unseen for him, but we earth-bound creatures live with many things out of sight. We exercise faith as a part of our human nature. We all exercise faith and we do so all time. Eating in a restaurant requires faith. I trust the people preparing my food have done so with the highest standards of sanitation. I have heard of the “5 second rule,” but I hope it is not true. You know the rule that says if a cook drops your food on the floor they have five seconds to pick it up! Driving down the road requires faith. I trust nobody will intentionally run a red light and crash into me. I understand that accidents happen and so I wear a seat belt, but I trust the other drivers on the road to obey the traffic laws. Every friendship requires faith. I trust my friends will do me no harm. Friendships cannot exist without faith which is why betrayal, gossip, lying, rumors hurt so bad. Trust is assumed and when it is violated, we experience pain.

    At first glance it does not look like we could tag substance and evidence to our faith. “Substance” and “evidence” are words from here, from earth. They speak of things that are tangible and certain. “Faith,” particularly Christian faith, is a word from heaven. It speaks of things hoped for in the future, things unseen. Our faith is forward-looking. Our faith has always been looking into the future.

    • Abraham was looking for a city.
    • Moses was looking for a promised land.
    • David was looking for a kingdom.
    • Israel was looking for a Messiah.
    • The Church is looking for a resurrection & new creation when Jesus returns.

    Our faith is connected with the future, but words like “substance” and “evidence” are connected to the present so how exactly is faith substance and evidence?

    Let’s start by answering this question with some of the ways faith is NOT substance and evidence.

    First, faith is not a spiritual substance. Some define faith as spiritual power. They speak of the “force of faith,” something we possess and can use, but as a substance, faith cannot be reduced to a power under our control. Faith as spiritual substance is much closer to what you see in science fiction movies like Star Wars were people have superhuman powers. This view is not how we see faith at work in Scripture or in the history of the church. We see ourselves as powerless, dependent beings. Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5 ESV). Faith is not all-powerful, but it is the medium that connects us to the all-powerful One.

    Second, faith is not empirical evidence. The word “empirical” means evidence that has come by clear observation and experimentation. Empirical evidence has its place in the medical community, but not so much in the community of faith. There are reasons behind our faith and you can explore those reasons, but if you are looking for air-tight empirical evidence that will answer every question you will be disappointed. Faith doesn’t work that way. You cannot discover God with a microscope or a telescope. Empiricism sets the rules defining what evidence is and God defies their rules! Faith is evidence, but it is not evidence according to empirical standards, because faith is a matter of the heart and not the five physical senses.

    So how exactly is faith substance and evidence? Faith is substance and evidence as it is confessed and lived out in the life of the Church.

    Faith is communal. It is not my faith, but our faith. This shared nature of faith is why Hebrews 11 goes on to list men and woman of faith who did things by this communal faith. It is not one person doing something great by faith. Hebrews could have just mentioned Abraham, but it provides a list of Israel’s hero who did thing by faith. So Hebrews 11 is not a record of an isolated individual doing something by faith, it is a record of a community of faith doing things by this communal faith.  “Now faith is the assurance (substance) of things hoped for, the conviction (evidence) of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation (Hebrews 11:1-2 ESV). Our faith is not subjective. It is not just something we merely experience in our hearts. The writer of Hebrews says faith is that which is shared by “the people of old,” people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the people of Israel, Rahab, and on the list goes. They are the substance and evidence of our faith. When we exercise personal faith (and we should), we are tapping into a shared faith that is so much bigger than ourselves. It is our shared faith, and not our own personal faith, that is substance and evidence.

    Personal faith happens when we as individuals confess and live out the faith. Our faith is not internal and private. It is by nature external and public. So we confess both our sins and our faith. Confession in the Christian faith means to “say the same thing.” When we confess our faith we are saying the same thing the Church says about the matters of faith. It is not enough to simple think about the faith. It must be confessed and vocalized. We confess: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is God’s son and our Lord. Jesus died. Buried. Descended. Raised. Ascended and coming again. The substance and evidence in our confession is not in the words we speak. The substance and evidence is in act of saying the same thing the church has said for 2,000. Our heritage is the substance and evidence.

    It is not enough merely to confess our faith. We must live it out, because faith without corresponding activity is dead (See James 2:17-18). You know the old adage: easier said than done? That applies to our faith. My oldest son Wesley and I just had a conversation about that phrase. We were asking ourselves, “Isn’t everything easier said than done? Why do we say things like that?” Faith is substance and evidence when we can point to people living it. We believe in Jesus because people have been following Jesus for 2,000. When our faith gets week we look to the Church and find substance for our faith to grow from the confession and lifestyle of others living by faith.

    After Hebrews 11 lists all the people of faith. It goes on to encourage us with these words: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV).

    We run with endurance sustained by, and receiving evidence from, this great cloud of witnesses, the community of faith, who are cheering us on. Not only do we receive substance and evidence by others, but when we are confessing and living out our faith we become the substance and evidence for others. We are the substance of faith. We are the evidence of faith. The degree by which we confess and life out or faith is the degree by which we will be substance and evidence.

    Listen to the sermon version of this blog post here.

    1 Comment / Life, Ministry, Theology /

  • March 21, 2013

    N.T. Wright on the Ordination of Practicing Homosexuals

    The acceptability of homosexuality is becoming one of the defining issues of our day. Gay marriage has become a polarizing cultural issue  with current trends showing a rise in the support for the legalization of same-sex unions. A recent ABC News/Washington Post survey showed 58% of those polls are in favor of gay and lesbian couples legally being allowed to get married. The cultural issue has stirred the conversation with the Church regarding the ordination of practicing homosexual clergy. In 2009 the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the US broke from the tradition of the Anglican communion by allowing those in same-sex relationships to receive ordination without condition. This action was followed by an op-ed piece in the London Times, written by N.T. (Tom) Wright.

    I understand some of the complexity of the issue both in the Church and in the wider community. I understand that LGBT people have found themselves at the other end of the hostility and acrimony of professing and practicing followers of Jesus. For that I am deeply sorry. I am a huge advocate for dialogue between homosexual and heterosexual people, so we can begin to understand each other. I am an equally huge advocate for understanding the teachings of Jesus and the Church regarding sexual ethics. In following Jesus, I hear him call us to “lose ourselves” and “die to ourselves,” that is, die to our agendas, dreams, and desires, so we may find ourselves and live in him. As a follower of Jesus, I embrace the Way of Jesus and desire to understand all moral and ethical issues an interpreted by the light of Christ.

    In attempting to understand Jesus and the Jesus Way, I have found N.T. Wright to be helpful and compelling  His op-ed piece in response to the Episcopal Church in the US entitled “The Americans Know this will End in Schism” was particularly helpful in the conversation about homosexuality in the confines of the Church. I believe this article has implications for the larger conversation about same-sex unions in the wider culture, but the context of Wright’s comments are about the issue within the Church.

    I understand that N.T. Wright will not be popular in what he has to say here, but I think he gets to the heart of the teachings of Jesus and the Church on this issue.

    Here is what Wright had to say:

    In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States has voted decisively to allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships. This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.

    Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops. They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future — the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion). They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apart”.

    Granted, the TEC resolution indicates a strong willingness to remain within the Anglican Communion. But saying “we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules” is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled.

    Of course, matters didn’t begin with the consecration of Gene Robinson. The floodgates opened several years before, particularly in 1996 when a church court acquitted a bishop who had ordained active homosexuals. Many in TEC have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional.

    That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

    Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.

    The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace. The appeal also seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself, not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls. Justice never means “treating everybody the same way”, but “treating people appropriately”, which involves making distinctions between different people and situations. Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

    Such a novel usage would also raise the further question of identity. It is a very recent innovation to consider sexual preferences as a marker of “identity” parallel to, say, being male or female, English or African, rich or poor. Within the “gay community” much postmodern reflection has turned away from “identity” as a modernist fiction. We simply “construct” ourselves from day to day.

    We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.

    The question then presses: who, in the US, is now in communion with the great majority of the Anglican world? It would be too hasty to answer, the newly formed “province” of the “Anglican Church in North America”. One can sympathise with some of the motivations of these breakaway Episcopalians. But we should not forget the Episcopalian bishops, who, doggedly loyal to their own Church, and to the expressed mind of the wider Communion, voted against the current resolution. Nor should we forget the many parishes and worshippers who take the same stance. There are many American Episcopalians, inside and outside the present TEC, who are eager to sign the proposed Covenant. That aspiration must be honoured.

    Contrary to some who have recently adopted the phrase, there is already a “fellowship of confessing Anglicans”. It is called the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is now distancing itself from that fellowship. Ways must be found for all in America who want to be loyal to it, and to scripture, tradition and Jesus, to have that loyalty recognised and affirmed at the highest level.

    Tom Wright in The Times 
    July 14th, 2009

    4 Comments / Life, Ministry, Theology /

  • February 17, 2010

    Lent 2010

    Today is the eve of Ash Wednesday (some traditions call it Shrove Tuesday). It is the day before Lent begins. It is the final day of preparation for a 40-day season of prayer and fasting that will lead up to Resurrection Sunday, the ultimate day of Christian celebration. This will be my third year practicing Lent. It has become a helpful practice for me. It has given me a systematic way to be disciplined in the area of prayer and fasting. And I need all the help I can get when it comes to fasting, because…well…fasting stinks. Eating is so much better than fasting. But I have come to find the value in delaying gratification, in saying “no” to natural appetites, so that I can say “yes” to a hunger for righteousness.

    This year I am reading through N.T. Wright’s book Jesus and the Victory of God during the 40 days of Lent. Wright was my companion last year during Lent as I devoted 40 days to his massive book on the resurrection. This year I am reading through his book on Jesus, a fitting focus for Lent.

    I am not observing Lent, because it has become in vogue for young, hip, contemporary, postmodern evangelical-types to take up ancient practices.

    I am observing lent because I have repented of pride and arrogance.

    For so long, I carried myself in pride, scoffing at traditional Christian churches with all of their “dead” rituals and traditions. I assumed that the traditions in my brand of Christianity were the only valid traditions because we have guitars after all; not to mention multi-media projectors and web infused technology! I have come to realize that my brothers and sisters in Christ who belong to more liturgical traditions have something to offer the greater body of Christ. Ancient traditions like Lent help us slow down and pay attention.

    I have repented of my arrogance (and ignorance). I am learning to walk down, well-worn paths like Lent, paths that have been walked by millions (billions?) of Christians before me. I have repented of my snobbery and I have welcome in the traditions of the past. Traditions are not so bad. Concerning tradition, G.K Chesterton wrote:

    “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”    –G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

    Join us on this 40 -day journey of prayer and fasting. Some people chose to give something up for Lent, which is just fine. There are no rules. My oldest son Wesley, said he wants to give up Pop-Tarts for Lent. I say, “Go for it.”

    You choose how to pray and when to fast, but use this as an opportunity to confess and repent of sin and identify with Jesus. This is the purpose of Lent: to identify with Jesus, to see Jesus, to love Jesus, to commune with Jesus, to encounter him passionately, deeply, and reverently.

    For more info and resources go to: http://www.churchyear.net/lent.html

    Here is my prayer as I go into Lent 2010. It is a song from Dustine Kensrue:

    “Consider the Ravens”
    By Dustine Kensrue

    I’ve got bills to pay
    Taxman on my tail
    Just keep prayin’ that
    the check’s in the mail

    There are times it seems
    when everything’s lost
    and I’m moaning, I’m tossed
    and I see..

    Between the river and the ravens I’m fed
    Between oblivion and the blazes I’m led
    So father give me faith, providence and grace
    Between the river and ravens I’m fed
    Sweet deliver, oh you lift up my head
    and lead me in your way

    I’ve grown sick and tired
    of trying to stand still
    I’ve learned to let the wind
    pull me where it will

    Throw myself into
    the will of the wait
    I can never be great
    ’til we’re free

    Between the river and the ravens I’m fed
    Between oblivion and the blazes I’m led
    So father give me faith, providence and grace
    Between the river and ravens I’m fed
    Sweet deliver, oh you lift up my head
    and lead me in your way

    Although I’m walking through
    the valley of the shadow of death
    evils all around
    It’s coming from the right and the left

    Trust that I will see
    the glory above
    Oh, your banner of love
    flies over me

    Between the river and the ravens I’m fed
    Between oblivion and the blazes I’m led
    So father give me faith, providence and grace
    Between the river and ravens I’m fed
    Sweet deliver, oh you lift up my head
    and lead me in your way

    Amen and Amen

    Here is a live version of Dustin Kensrue performing “Consider the Ravens”

    5 Comments / Family, Life, Ministry, Theology /

  • October 15, 2009

    A Refocused Hope

    I have been reading and listening to N.T. Wright for a few years now. During the 40 days of lent earlier this year, I read through his massive work on the resurrection: The Resurrection of the Son of God. I have also read Simply Christian and listened to a few lectures on the resurrection here and here. I was familiar with Wright’s position on Christian hope, but Surprised by Hope was the book that I so wanted to read so I could capture Wright’s complete vision of our future. I began reading it a little more than a month ago to prepare for a message I was preaching on death and the afterlife. I thought that I would skim through the book to help with the sermon, but once I started, I could not stop until I finished and I wasn’t disappointed. Surprised by Hope concluded a two-year process of reshaping my vision of the future, particularly related to heaven and bodily resurrection. I cannot think of a book that has more impacted me than this one.

    I have been a Christian for nearly 20 years and a pastor for 10. During my years in the church prior to full-time ministry, I cannot recall a message being preached on bodily resurrection. I can remember numerous messages on heaven, and of course, the rapture of the church, but none on the resurrection of the dead. Over the last few years, I had been teaching on bodily resurrection in the context of divine healing. How is it that God can make a covenant of healing with his people and yet choose, at times, not to immediately answer prayers for healing? Answer: bodily resurrection. All of God’s promises to heal the sick will be fulfilled at the return of Christ when the dead in Christ shall be raised and given a new physical body. Nevertheless, I had a far too limited few of the resurrection. I still saw the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as the means by which we could go to heaven when we die. Heaven was my hope. The resurrection of the dead was an awkward aside to the majesty of eternal life in heaven. Wright has helped me rethink that concept in the light of clear biblical teaching. He has given me a refocused hope.

    My wife has one of those expensive digital cameras with multiple lenses. With her camera you can focus on an object that is near to you and make the background fuzzy. You can also refocus the camera to make objects in the foreground blurry and objects in the background clear. Surprised by Hope has helped to refocus my hope beyond heaven and onto our ultimate destination, eternal life on a new earth, in a new resurrected body. Wright explains: “Instead of talking vaguely about heaven and then trying to fit the language of resurrection into that, we should talk with biblical precision about the resurrection and reorganize our language about heaven around that. What is more, as I shall show in the final part of this book, when we do this we discover and excellent foundation, not, as some suppose, for an escapist or quietist piety (that belongs more with the traditional and misleading language about heaven), but for lively and creative Christian work within the present world.” (148)

    Does this mean that we do not go to heaven when we die, if we die in faith? Certainly not. Wright is not taking heaven away from us. It is not that we don’t “go to heaven” when we die. Rather, “going to heaven when we die” is not the point. It is not the message of Jesus or the Apostles. The New Testament says very little about going to heaven when you die, but we evangelicals have made it the great goal of the Christian experience. One of the largest evangelical denominations in the United States even notes in their statement of faith concerning “Last Things” that “The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.” They correctly included the resurrection of the body, but where is the recreation of the new heavens and the new earth? Is this the goal to enjoy God forever in heaven or on the earth?

    This refocused hope changes everything for me.

    If our future hope is new creation (a resurrected body and the recreation of the earth) then what we do in the body matters. What we do with the earth matters. It is not that Jesus is returning to whisk away the Christians and destroy the earth with fire, so that we can live with him forever in a non-physical heaven. God’s creation is good and our human bodies are good and so we should be good stewards of the earth and our physical bodies. When we bury our dead, and I do agree with Wright that we should carry on the tradition of burying our dead and not cremating them, we should bury them in the hope of the resurrection. We should proclaim that death (and disease) has been defeated by the resurrection of Jesus and one day, we too will stand victorious over death…at the resurrection. We should enjoy the goodness of God’s creation and experience his invisible attributes stamped on his good creation. We should work to keep our air, streams, and land clear of pollution. All of those things matter, if indeed our hope is resurrection and new creation.

    N.T. Wright has written with clarity and persuasion and Surprised by Hope has become a catalyst in refocusing my hope based on teachings of Scripture.

    No Comments / Theology /

  • August 21, 2009

    Incarnation: Holding on to Our Tradition

    An appreciation of tradition puts us on the road towards humility.

    Pride listens to the council of self-reliance. You don’t need to know how we got here.
    Just do your thing. Like a 17 year-old rock n’ roller, who wants to start a garage band, but knows nothing of Hendrix, the Beatles, Clapton, Dylan, the Stones, Queen, Zeppelin, Chuck Berry, BB King, and the like.

    We do what we do today because of tradition. We are standing on the shoulders of giants. We are only able to break out and do something unique (and new?) because of the tradition we are standing on. To reject tradition, to ignore it and give it the proverbial stiff arm is to walk the road of pride which always leads to destruction.

    Our faith as 21st century followers of Jesus, is built on a tradition.

    A nearly 2,000 year tradition built upon creeds, councils, prayers, sermons, wars, sacrifice, bloodshed, tears, celebration, and worship. We cannot lose what those in this historical church have given us. John the apostle writes in his second letter: “Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward” (2 John 8).

    While John may have been talking about many things, there is no doubt that he was talking about the Gospel and specifically the incarnation.

    The incarnation is the fact that Jesus, who was the eternal Son of God, became a man. In becoming a man, he did not cease in being God. He was, and is, fully God and fully human.

    We do not have to work as hard today to communicate the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a real human being. Ancient historians have documented his brief life. The Jewish historian Josephus calls him a sophos aner, a wise man. We spend much more time communicating the truth that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s own son and the Savior of the world.

    Nevertheless, we cannot lose this great doctrine of the incarnation. If we do, we lose the very heart of the Christian story. Here are ten reasons why the incarnation is so important.

    1. Creation
    Incarnation reminds us that God’s creation is good. Even though all of creation has been twisted by sin, the goodness of God has not been eradicated. We can still see God’s divine attributes in creation. We can still encounter God in nature, because the mountains, and trees, and flowers, and roaring oceans speak to us of God’s grandeur and holiness.

    2. The Body
    Incarnation reminds us that our physical bodies are good. We are a body as much as we are a spirit. There was a teaching that was popular in evangelical circles not too long ago that made the case that we are a spirit ( a spiritual being), that has a soul (whatever that means), who lives in a body. This is much closer to Greek philosophy (Platonism) than biblical Christianity. Our physical bodies are a part of who we are. We are not real human beings without our human bodies. We do have an immaterial component to our human nature, but to be a “spirit” without a body is to be exposed and naked.

    3. Salvation
    God’s salvation includes the salvation body. God’s desire is to save both our material selves and immaterial selves, both our spirits and our bodies. We do not “get saved;” we are being saved, rescued, and transformed. We currently in a process of spiritual transformation and when Jesus returns, we will experience physical transformation as our bodies our resurrected. Bodily resurrection at the end is foreshadowed now as God continues to heal people physically through his Church.

    4. The Kingdom of God
    God’s kingdom is physical. To say God’s kingdom is spiritual is to relegate it to mysticism or folk religion. For some time I would say that God’s kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, which confused the early disciples who were expected a political kingdom. However, what I meant by “spiritual kingdom,” is that the kingdom of God is not a militant kingdom. Jesus has waged war on a world gone wrong with the weapons of love and forgiveness and not guns and bombs. At the incarnation, God’s kingdom has broken into human history and it continues to expand as a physical kingdom through the Church.

    5. Morality
    What you do in your body is important. What you do physically affects you spiritually. There were people in the Apostle John’s churches who had left the orthodox faith, because they said they had not sinned (I John 1:10). They reasoned that since Jesus did not have a real body, then we could do anything we wanted to in our bodies without consequences. John argues against such theological nonsense. Jesus came in a real human body in order to transform all creation because of man’s sin (committed in physical bodies).

    6. Redemption
    God regained in the body what was lost in the body. Sin is physical and obedience is physical. Adam disobeyed, but Jesus obeyed. As Gregory of Nazianzus, the fourth century church father, put it: the unassumed is the unredeemed. That is, if Jesus Christ did not assume a real human body with a real human mind/spirit/will, then nothing of humanity can be redeemed.

    7. Revelation
    God chose to reveal himself in the incarnation. The word that the Bible uses for reveal or revelation means to “pull back the curtain. In the incarnation we see God in real life. Not God not a mystical religion, but God in human terms. He chose to reveal himself in a way so that we could begin to understand his character and nature.

    8. Demonstration
    Not only do we see who God is, we also see how we ought to be as human beings. Jesus is our example of a human living out his humanity to its fullest. When we question how we should live and how we should treat one another, we look at Jesus. He is the answer.

    9. Righteousness
    God is faithful to his promises to Israel. The OT promises salvation through a king, born of a virgin, born of the house of David, born in Bethlehem, born to put the government on his shoulders. God did not revoke those promises and disregard his covenant with Israel. He fulfilled his promises and remained in the “right” (thus the word “righteousness”) by send his son born of a woman born under the Levitical law.

    10. Truth
    God’s story from creation to consummation, from Genesis to Revelation is a story of God’s battle for truth. All idolatry is an attack on God’s truth. Idolatry is taking a good thing and making it a God thing. Taking something temporary and making it ultimate. God’s truth, which wages war against idolatry, is communicated through human relationships. This is not truth not as abstract philosophy, but truth as a person.

    So yeah, I would say that the incarnation is pretty important. Let’s not lose it after the historic Church worked so hard to preserve it.

    8 Comments / Theology /
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