got questions? The Bible

We've begun a new series of messages at Arlington called "got questions?"

Over the summer, people submitted questions they have about God, church, faith, etc. Each week, we're taking one question (or a group of closely related questions) and addressing it. Most of the questions people submitted are of such depth that we can't claim to answer them, but we hope that in our reflecting together, we'll be challenged to grow and hopefully come away with better questions than we started with.

We got a lot of good questions about the Bible. What is it? How did this collection of books come to be? What do we make of it? What is this whole "taking it literally" thing about and is that the only faithful way to read it? (spoiler alert- NO!!!)

The audio of the message is below. You can listen here, on our website, or subscribe in iTunes.

A few minutes in, we reference a video whose audio had to be cut out because of copyright restrictions. "Our friend, Chuck" is Chuck Knows Church, and the episode about the Bible is below, as well.




As always, questions and comments are welcome as long as they are respectful and on topic.

A Biblical and Theological Case for Gun Control

The issue of gun control in the United States is once again at the forefront of our national conversation due to the most recent school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, being one of many similar incidents whose frequency is on the rise.

A lot of people are giving passionate and articulate cases for their particular position, and as I am neither a constitutional scholar nor an expert on firearms or public safety, I will leave those arguments to those that speak on them with authority.

I do, however, believe that the church has a significant role to play in this conversation. I believe that the biblical witness and our theological heritage gives us reason to support restrictions on firearms such as those currently being debated by the President and Congress.

I cite these things not as “proof-texts”, nor do I claim that this is the only understanding one has to arrive at to be a true follower of Jesus. I also want to state at the beginning that while I am not a gun owner, I support the rights of people to posses firearms in their home for protection and for use in hunting or other recreation.

With those disclaimers out of the way, here is what I believe to be a biblical and theological case for gun control. I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:12

Everything is permitted, but everything isn’t beneficial. Everything is permitted, but everything doesn’t build others up. 1 Corinthians 10:23

Twice in his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul talks about the intersection of freedom and responsibility. Long before Enlightenment philosophers spoke about the autonomy of the individual, St. Paul recognized that while a person has the freedom to do whatever they want, not everything is necessarily a good idea. This is particularly true if one is in a covenant relationship with others.

Paul’s immediate context in making these statements is sexual behavior and eating meat sacrificed to idols, respectively, but he is also talking about a broad approach to one’s life.

I can go where I want, when I want, spend every cent in my bank account and pick up a lady for a one night stand. But if I want to stay married to my wife and be a part of my children’s lives, I’m going to choose not to do those things. They trust that I’m going to be responsible with our shared resources. They trust that I’m going to live by the values that we as a family have agreed on and that we’re going to raise our daughters with. I choose to be faithful to this covenant because that web of relationships is more important to me than acting on every impulse I might have.

I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

What is true of a family unit is also true of the church. We covenant together to live in a certain way that glorifies God and is beneficial to one another. We sometimes choose to defer to others if they have a particular need or if exercise of our freedoms becomes an obstacle to them walking their own path of discipleship. We restrain certain individual liberties for the common good because we value those relationships more than we do our right to do whatever we want, whenever we want.

I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

An example of this outside of the church is going to the airport. I have the right to buy a plane ticket and fly wherever I want without anyone asking why or wanting to see what’s in my luggage. I’ve never done anything that would make anyone suspect I had intentions to harm my fellow passengers or anyone else. But I take off my shoes and put my laptop in a separate bin in the security line, go through a metal detector or fully-body scanner, and accept that someone from the TSA might mess up my nice, neat stack of undershirts. I gladly accept this because I value the safety of the general public more than I dislike the few minutes of inconvenience this causes me, even though I have done nothing to warrant such screenings.

I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

I have the right to buy a gun, and I have done nothing to suggest any ill intentions. But I consent to a background check because I value keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people more than I dislike having to wait a few days to complete my purchase. I have the right to buy an AR-15 assault rifle and hunt deer with it, but I choose to use a lower powered rifle with a smaller clip of ammunition because I value lowering the chance of someone walking into my children’s school and killing several dozen kids in a matter of seconds more than I value my right to squeeze off a hundred rounds a minute and feel cool like Rambo.

I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful.

At the core of many of the arguments opposing any gun control measures is the concept of “freedom”. I put that in quotes because it’s a word that means different things to different people. Some define freedom as “doing whatever I want whenever I want”, which I have just argued is not helpful for those who wish to be in covenant relationships with others.

Freedom is a recurring theme in the biblical narrative. The Hebrews in Egypt got their freedom when God plagued Egypt into letting them go, and that freedom took the form of a covenant relationship with God and with one another. They had the right to choose whether or not to be faithful to that covenant. And a big chunk of Hebrew scripture attests to how that relationship did not exactly go well, due in no small part to Israel’s leaders, and the society at large, choosing not to be faithful to that covenant. They did “what they wanted when they wanted to” and it wasn’t pretty.

The question becomes, is there a better definition of freedom? Christian theological tradition would say and emphatic “yes”.

(Quick aside- one can’t really claim one single strand of thought as “THE Christian tradition” to the exclusion of all others, as there always have been and always will be a plurality of understandings of what Christianity truly is)

Jurgen Moltmann sees the true definition of freedom in the relationship of God to God’s self in the Holy Trinity. This relationship is summed up in the term perichoresis, which means mutual interdependence and indwelling.

The persons of the Trinity: the Father (who is not exclusively male), Son (Jesus was a human male), and Holy Spirit (which often takes the feminine nominative case), are truly free in their perichoretic relationship with one another because of a mutual trust that because the others are focused on their good, they can focus solely on the good of the other.

What is “good” for one but not for the others is intentionally laid aside, because it is not truly good. Each member is able to feel truly free because they know that they don’t have to worry about their own well being and understand their responsibility to look out for the well being of the others.

Moltmann sees this as not only a description of God’s Trinitarian life, but also as a model for human relationships of loving community: true freedom.

 I am free and feel myself to be truly free when I am respected and recognized by others and when I for my part respect and recognize them. I become truly free when I open my life for other people and share with them, and when other people open their lives for me and share them with me. Then the other person is no longer the limitation of my freedom; he is the expansion of it. In mutual participation in life, individual people become free beyond the limits of their individuality, and discover the common room for living which their freedom offers. That is the social side of freedom. (The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 216)

I willingly give others the space to feel free by agreeing to place a formal societal limitation on my “right” to own any gun because, though I will not walk into a school and start shooting, other mentally disturbed people might. So for the good of the whole, I agree to a legal prohibition of certain guns and ammunition clips. This is the same reason I agree to speed limits, seat belt laws, and blood alcohol limits in the use of my car. This is the same reason I agree to only being able to purchase small amounts of certain cold medicines, so as to help stop the spread of meth.

We are not so naive as to believe that all of our fellow citizens will go along with these societal agreements. That is why we elect representatives who will pass laws to enforce these agreements for the good of the whole.

We do not naively assume such laws will guarantee there will never be another school shooting, any more than we assume there will never be another drunk driver or that meth labs will suddenly disappear. We do believe that such actions will reduce such incidences enough to help us be safer and closer to that true freedom whose full realization is yet to come.

I believe that this is a solid biblical and theological case for gun control laws. May we all open ourselves to the possibility of limiting certain individual liberties for the greater good and progress towards our true, God-given freedom.

Context, Context, Context

Yesterday at Arlington, we explored the last "episode" in the great narrative arc of the Bible by exploring the Book of Revelation in its historical context and pondering what it has to say to us as we are living out our own chapter in the great story of God and humanity.

You can listen to all nine episodes of the "Living the Story" series on our website, at our Sermon.net channel, or subscribe on iTunes. Below is audio of Sunday's message.



One of the main points we emphasized is that all the books of the Bible were written to people in a specific time and place, so that the original audience could understand what the author was trying to say. If we approach scripture with no knowledge of who the first hearers (not readers, per say, as these were largely pre-literate societies) were, we won't have a clue what the author is trying to say and we'll end up reading some things that were never meant to be taken from the text.

Of course, God can and often does speak through these texts in fresh ways- that's why we call the Bible the "living Word of God" after all- but very often reading an ancient text with no historical and cultural context does more harm than good.

I listened to a sermon today that illustrates this point beautifully. My colleague, Pastor Ed Zeiders of St. Paul's UMC in State College, PA, preached an amazingly pastoral and prophetic message yesterday, in the wake of recent events in their community.

Jerry Sandusky, a former football coach at Penn State and a member of St. Paul's, had been convinced just days before on a long list of charges relating to the intentional and systematic sexual abuse of young boys over many years. This situation has profoundly affected their church and their community, as well as getting the attention of the rest of the world.

The thing is, though, if we didn't know anything about what had happened with Mr. Sandusky and the Penn State football program, this sermon wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to us. Living in the same time as these events makes it easy to know what he's talking about, but people a century or a millennium for now might not know what we know. The absence of this knowledge would put them at a serious disadvantage, and their conclusions might be helpful, or the might very likely do more harm than good.

Take the time to listen to Pastor Ed's message, and bear in mind how you would be hearing this differently if you didn't know what was on everyone's mind that Sunday.



Knowing the context in which this sermon was preached is crucial to understanding what the pastor is trying to say. The same is true for all of us when we approach Holy Scripture. Let's have enough respect for the Bible to do a little homework and find out who these texts were written to. Let's take the time to see what was being proclaimed about God to the original audience, because that helps put us in a place where we are ready to hear what God wants to say to us through this text today.

400 Years of the KJV

On May 2, 1611, the King James Version of the Bible made its debut. To mark the 400th anniversary of this still highly influential translation, the folks at YouVersion put together a kind of virtual flashmob, where everyone who signed up was given one chapter to read at noon EDT. So many people signed up that the entire KJV was read over eight times this afternoon!

I was assigned Joel 1, and here's my contribution.

What about ye, dear reader? Didst thou participate in reading ye ol' KVJ today? Hast thou a favorite passage using the King's English?

A Parable of the Kingdom?

I found this over at the Emergent Village blog. I hope they don't mind me sharing this:

What is the Kingdom of God like, you ask?

A woman lived in rural central California. She was known for her kindness, generosity and love, but she was also fair and just. Her five children were normal kids, but the four youngest were known around town for their rebellious streaks. As a single mom, she did the best she could to establish both love and rules in the house, but four of her kids desired freedom over relationship. So one evening, the four youngest filled their backpacks and ran away.


The mom woke up and, finding four of her children’s beds empty, began to weep. She would not rest until her children returned home or she found them. Being a farm owner, she had plenty of hired hands to help in her search. She put the farm’s business on hold and sent her workers out to search for her lost darlings. She spent every last dime printing pamphlets, recording radio spots and inundating the TV with ads exclaiming her love for her children and her pleas for them to return home into her loving arms. All that she had, was and would be theirs.


Then one day, it happened. One of her runaways returned home. Seeing and hearing her message, his heart melted and he came back. She embraced him, welcoming him home. She turned to her eldest son (the one that never ran away) and asked if he would help find and bring back the others. He set out with a mission and a message. When he found two of the three, he told them of their mom’s love for them and how badly she missed them and her relentless desire for all of them to come home. He also reminded them of the Great Rule, but they refused to come back with him. He never did find the forth lost one.


Years passed and no sign of her kids. Regardless, a great rule had been violated. So she climbed into her pickup truck with a few hired hands and set out to bring her children home. On May 17, she found them.


All three were huddled up near a dumpster, clutching a worn blanket. They saw her truck approach and, too tired to run, they just sat with terror I their eyes. See, while away, they had been told countless lies by countless people that their mom was not a kind woman, that she did not love them and that she was mad-as-hell at them. Added to this were their incredible loneliness, shame and feelings of worthlessness. Living on the street—isolated from love—can do this to anyone, and it certainly did them. Seeing her children and hearing about their condition, the mother reassured them of her love. But despite her undying, never-ending motherly love for her children, she knew that the Great Rule had been violated and she must act accordingly.


They pulled up into the driveway and the truck came to a dusty halt. The hired hands helped the kids climb out of the back of the truck. As the mom walked to the house she looked back one last time at her kids. Motioning to the hired hands, she firmly declared, “Take them away. They violated the Great Rule and did not return to me on their own.”


“But mom….!?”


“Not another word,” she interrupted. “Whether you knew it or not, The Great Rule says that my children shall not run away and that if they do, they are to return on their own within three years. If they do not, I will find them and the Great Punishment must be inflicted. I even sent my oldest son for you, but you did not believe him.”


“Mom, we are sorry. We were scared, hurting and full of shame. We did things we are not proud of and that you would not approve of. Deep inside, when the nights were the quietest, we knew you loved us but we were afraid that you would have nothing to do with us after all we had done.”


With tears in her eyes she slowly replied, “I understand, I see you are truly sorry and I love you. But there is nothing I can do; I am powerless against the Great Rule. Three years have passed, you did not return and the Rule is the Rule.” With that, she turned and walked towards the house where her returning-son stood on the porch, watching.


The hired hands, still clutching the children by the arms, took them away to the barn…even the fourth child who never heard the eldest son’s message. As directed by the Great Punishment, they entered the barn, tied the children to the posts and began beating them. Next came the kerosene. Then, in the midst of their screams and under the watchful eye of their loving mom, they and the barn were set ablaze.


The loving, kind, full-of-mercy, just and righteous mom, turning from the window overlooking the burning barn, looked at her oldest son and the child who returned to her, wiped the tear from her eye and smiled. She motioned once more to her hired hands and—with the other children still burning and screaming outside—the feast of feasts, the party of parties, began. The mom, her eldest son, her returning-on-his-own child, and even her hired hands lived, feasted, and partied…happily…ever…after.


The End.


Now go, and share this GOOD NEWS of the Kingdom. Praise be to God.


For those that missed the irony, this retelling of the modern evangelical Christian meta-narrative shows how unbelievably screwed up our theology is when we're very comfortable with the everyone burning in Hell,  and offended by everyone going to Heaven. Check out all the noise people have made over Rob Bell's latest book, Love Wins, if you want to know what I'm talking about.

This little parable doesn't prove universalism is true or that Hell doesn't exist, of course, but it does raise a question about what we really believe. Do we really believe that God's love conquers all, or do we believe that Jesus somehow exploits a loophole in the system set up by an angry, wrathful deity? And if the latter is the case, do we really believe that God is triune and completely of one essence in three persons?

On a personal note, as a father, myself, this story makes me sick. If this truly were the essence of the Christian faith, then I'd walk away and never set foot in a church again. Sadly, we've done a very good job convincing the world that this really is Christianity, and they've acted accordingly. I, for one, don't blame them.

Let's make sure we're not only telling a better story, but a true story about who God really is.

Whose House Would Jesus Watch Burn?

I was saddened by the news the other day that a local fire department in Tennessee had to watch a mobile home be destroyed by a fire because the owner didn't pay an annual $75 fee for fire protection. What really brakes my heart is the quote from the firefighter who said they all wanted to do something, but knew they would be in trouble if they did. So they just stood there and made sure the fire didn't harm the homes of others who had paid the fee.

Unlike a lot of news that saddens me, I was actually surprised to hear this. I didn't realize that local municipalities were so hard up for money that they had to charge extra fees for what most of us consider essential services. And even if that's the case, the firefighters must have been really afraid for their jobs to be able to fight against what basic human decency would otherwise compel them to do. It's the system, not the firefighters, that are at fault here.

As if the story wasn't sad enough to begin with, some right wing commentator felt the need to add insult to injury by claiming that letting the man's home burn was the "Christian thing to do":

In this case, critics of the fire department are confused both about right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability.
(quote courtesy of Right Wing Watch, via Tea Party Jesus)

Fischer's justification of allowing your fellow human beings to suffer right in front of you just confirms Brian McLaren's contention that there is not just one Christianity out there, but many different kinds that all demand our allegiance (check out A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith for more on this concept). I talk a lot about all followers of Jesus being one and us having to learn to live together, and I still believe that, but things like this make me wonder if people like Fischer and I really worship the same Jesus.

Maybe I'm just too "liberal", or I've been co-opted by "feminized Christianity" (only women stood by Jesus at the cross, while all the guys ran and hid, so maybe a feminine touch isn't such a bad thing?), but when I read Matthew 25, I can't find Jesus saying to the sheep (the ones who get into heaven),

Blessed are you, for when you saw me hungry, you told me to get a job. When you saw me in prison you advocated for longer sentences and the death penalty. When you saw me sick you said I didn't deserve health care. When you saw my house burning you stood there and watched it burn because I didn't have the money to pay a fee. You guys really taught me a great lesson!


I've read lots of different translations, and I can even read a little Greek. Trust me, it's not in there!


Incidents like this are part of the larger problem of the disgusting state of public discourse in our country. People see that they will get lots of attention if they say the meanest, most hateful, most divisive things they can think of, regardless of whether they actually believe these things or not.

One of the young ladies in my congregation posted a very insightful poem that sums up what many of us in the "Reasonable Majority" feel about the current state of political dialogue in our country. Take a minute and read "Politics, Ugh" by Melissa Smith.

I continue to hope that this moment in history will be a brief, ugly chapter in a story that ultimately climaxes with the triumph of God's reign in the world. But living in this moment is really hard, so the sooner we start the next chapter, the better.

Podcast Episode 12- The Jesus Question

A new episode of The Truth As Best I Know It Podcast is now live.

We're continue our journey through Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that Are Transforming the Faith with “The Jesus Question”.
We talk about differing conceptions of Jesus, casting Jesus in our own image, the variety of things the New Testament says about Jesus, and how the way we answer the question “who is Jesus” tells us a lot about our theology and about who we are.

You can listen to the episode on Podbean (the gracious hosts of our podcast), or download it on iTunes. If you're an iTunes subscriber, please take a few minutes to rate our show and write a review!

For those that may not have seen it, here is the scene from Talladega Nights we reference in this episode:

Guest Blogging- Sunday Sermon

This week I've been invited to guest blog on GoodPreacher.com's Homiletical Hot Tub.

If you're not a member of GoodPreacher.com (and if you're a pastor, you should be- it's full of great resources), you can read what I wrote below.

This is the sermon I preached on the final Sunday of our Capital Campaign, "Bethlehem on the Rise". The title is "Sun Rising", and it is based on Genesis 1:3-5 and Matthew 5:14-16.


We just read from the first of two creation stories in the Book of Genesis. The one we just read from was probably composed in the form we have it about five centuries before the time of Jesus, and it is this beautiful liturgical song of praise about how God took the primal chaos and shaped it into the amazing created order that we see in the world today. This story has been around for at least twenty five hundred years, and it still takes our breath away.

Unfortunately, in our time, some of the beauty of this story has been clouded over because, for a couple centuries, Christians of different stripes have kept trying to turn the creation stories of Genesis into something they’re not, and we’ve done some damage to ourselves in the process. The generations of folks who passed down this story verbally from generation to generation, and eventually wrote it down had what we now call a “pre-scientific” understanding of the universe. For all they knew, the earth was flat and everything in the sky revolved around the earth. They weren’t dumb by any stretch of the imagination. They talked about who God is and how God works using of their best understanding of the shape of the universe and our place in it.

But over time that understanding began to evolve. In the sixteenth century we see a Polish priest named Nicholas Copernicus who also happens to dabble in mathematics and astronomy realizes that it isn’t the sun that revolved around the earth, the earth actually revolves around the Sun! About a generation later, an Italian guy named Galileo Galilei, who is also a faithful Catholic, says the same stuff and a lot of people start to think that there’s something to this.

Sadly, these brilliant men and their ideas didn’t exactly get a positive reception. They were called heretics and Galileo was actually dragged to Rome and tried by the Inquisition as a heretic. The church (and I’m talking about all churches: Catholic, Methodist, everyone) is and always has been a human institution, and in many of these critical moments we have succumbed to that most basic of human flaws: fear. Fear of change. Fear of new knowledge that might threaten the established order and our power in it. Fear of the unknown. Too often we reject new ideas and understandings because we are afraid and we only see the negative possibilities, and we miss out on the potential they bring.

Today’s theme in our worship is the “Sun Rising”, and the evolution in our understanding of what the Sun is, and in turn, what our place in the universe is, serves to remind us who we are and who God is. The very phrase, “watching the Sun rise” implies that we are standing still and that everything revolves around us. But if you’ve ever been on a beach or on top of a mountain and watched the Sun rise, you’ve probably been struck by how big this world is, and how small we are in comparison. As scientific discovery has shown us that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and that even the Sun revolves around the center of our galaxy that is just one of billions in the universe, we’ve seen that truth again. We are not the center of the universe! We’re actually quite small in the grand scheme of things! We are not ultimate: God is. And the God who is ultimate, the God who is the center of the universe, cares deeply about each and every one of us. Little ‘ol you, and little ‘ol me are of sacred worth because we are created in the image of our great big God.

Perhaps this lesson about humanity’s place in the universe is also a word to our community today. We’re raising money right now to build a new church home. We’re in the midst of doing something really important, and any time we’re doing something important we can easily get stressed and blow things out of proportion and succumb to fear. So when that stress hits, when that fear is right in our face threatening to swallow us whole, let us remember our place in the created order. That amazingly beautiful, sacred piece of property on Gholson Road is but a speck on this Earth, this planet that revolves around the Sun, which is one of billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is but one of billions, or more likely, trillions of galaxies in this universe.

We don’t have to worry, because the fate of the cosmos does not hang on what we do here! We are important, but we are not ultimate. God is the center of the universe. God is ultimate.

Jesus tells us we are the light of the world, and to let our light shine. Just as we are not at the center of the created order, neither are we the source of that light. We are not the light of the world because of some innate goodness on our part. We are the light of the world because we are created by God, the God who actually spoke light into existence! We are not the source, we merely reflect the source of this light. So all we have to do is be what we are. Jesus tells us to let our light shine before people so that they may see it and praise the God who is ultimate, the God who is the center of the universe, the God who is the source of the light we shine.

So let us build our new church home, and let us attract some attention as we do it. Not for the purpose of being satisfied with the works of our hands, but to direct attention to the source of that light that is within us, so that all may see and praise the God who said “let there be light”. Saints of Bethlehem, let it shine.

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Guest Blogging- Wednesday

I'm guest blogging this week over at GoodPreacher.com's "Homiletical Hot Tub", sharing about my weekly sermon preparation process.

If you're not a subscriber to GoodPreacher.com (and if you're a pastor, you should be), you can read what I wrote below.

On Tuesday night our church holds our Roundtable Pulpit gathering at a local Starbucks to discuss the passages and themes for the coming Sunday. You can read more about our collaborative preaching process here.

It would be difficult if not impossible to replicate the entire conversation. And any attempt to do so would violate the “safe space” spirit we’ve cultivated for these gatherings, so what I will share is a slightly expanded form of the notes I took during last night’s conversation.

As a side note, my exegetical work and notes from the Roundtable conversation usually stay in handwritten bullet points in my notebook. This is the first time I’ve ever tried to make coherent paragraphs out of them. I’m not sure what kind of difference this new experience will make in the final product, but I’ll let you know at the end of the week.

Without further ado, here are some highlights of last night’s Roundtable Pulpit conversation on Genesis 1:3-5 and Matthew 5:14-16, and the theme of the “Sun Rising”.

We are supposed to be the light of the world, but what if our light is somehow dimmed or tainted? God is the source of the light, and any marring of that comes from us or those around us, life circumstances, etc.

Light illuminates other things, but also draws your attention to its source. We are to be like a mirror, reflecting the light of Christ, but ultimately calling attention away from ourselves and giving the glory to God. Drawing attention to our deeds but effectively giving God the glory is very hard do to, and this kind of humility is never perfected.

Physics has taught us that we can’t see anything without light bouncing off of it, and the way we perceive things like colors is due to how things filter and refract light. What do we filter out and what do we let through? What kind of a prism are we?

There’s something significant about the light and dark being separated at the beginning of creation. The idea that “we all start off in darkness” can be taken in multiple ways. Theologically, some people believe that one only “sees the light” at a specific moment, at which time they become “saved”. We can also understand it in terms of being in the womb, and when a baby comes out there are bright lights, so it shuts its eyes and screams because it has no idea what is going on.

Regarding sources of light, why are we drawn to them? When we have a campfire, why do we sit there and watch it dance, as if transfixed? We don’t usually build a fire unless it is dark, but a fire takes on a life of its own and we don’t know which way it will go next. Fire also purifies. It is how we separate elements like silver and gold to make jewelry.

When our new church building is being constructed, it will literally rise (gradually) from the ground up. It will attract lots of attention, and there will probably be a number of visitors who come because they are curious and want to see what we’ve built. Our challenge will be to direct their attention toward the glory of God and not to be too proud of what we have made with our hands.

Our understanding of the sun has evolved over the centuries. For a long time we thought the earth was the center of the universe. Then we learned that the earth revolved around the sun, and later that even the sun wasn’t stationary, but revolved around the center of a galaxy that is merely one of billions in the universe. Even though it took the church a few centuries to catch up to this evolving scientific knowledge (in many ways we’re still catching up), we have a better understanding of our place in creation and how we are not the center of it all.

We could easily have carried on this conversation for much longer, but at the end of the designated hour we closed with prayer. Over the rest of the week I will be distilling all of this into one core idea, and build the sermon around that. Friday is designated as “sermon writing day”, and hopefully I’ll share some kind of outline by then.

Until then, thanks for reading. Blessings to all you pastors out there crafting your messages for Sunday!

Homiletical Hot Tub- Monday

I'm guest blogging this week over at GoodPreacher.com's "Homiletical Hot Tub", sharing my weekly process of composing a sermon for each Sunday

If you're a subscriber to GoodPreacher.com (and you really should be, it's full of great preaching resources), you can read the first post here.

For those who aren't subscribers, here's what I wrote (hopefully I won't get in trouble for sharing subscriber content on my site)

Hello, friends. My name is Matt Kelley, and I’ve been asked to blog about my sermon writing process this week here in the Homiletical Hot Tub.

I practice a model of collaborative preaching that is partially based on the work of one of my seminary professors (more about that in a minute), so I follow a weekly schedule for the whole process to work properly along with all the other demands of parish ministry.

First thing’s first. I’m the pastor of Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee. Last year we lost our historic church building when a bolt of lightning hit our steeple and burned the building down. During the last year we’ve been engaged in a process of revisioning and planning for the rebuilding, and during the month of August we’re conducting our capital campaign to raise funds for a new church building.

The theme of our campaign is “Bethlehem on the Rise”, and each of the worship services this month has had a theme of something rising. For August 29, the theme is “The Sun Rising”, and the scriptures, sermon, music, etc. are all chosen to fit this theme. So the two passages our capital campaign team picked for this Sunday are Genesis 1:3-5 and Matthew 5:14-16.

On Monday I do my exegetical work. I always use the, a set of which I have at home. I also consult other resources, depending on the passages and themes for the week. This week I also consulted the Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 1: Genesis 1-15  and Detrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, since it contains and extended meditation on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and David N. Mosser’s The Stewardship Companion: Lectionary Resources for Preaching.New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary

I usually also consult a variety of online resources. There’s a wealth of good stuff here on GoodPreacher.com, as you probably already know. It’s all divided up according to the Revised Common Lectionary, but if you’re preaching from different texts, go to Vanderbilt’s Lectionary Website, type in the passage(s) you’re using in the search bar, and it will tell you when and where it occurs in the RCL. If you are following the lectionary (as I usually do), Journey with Jesus is another great site.

Using the resources mentioned above, and knowing I’ll need to incorporate the themes of Sun and light, and somehow tie that into giving money for our new building, here is my Monday exegesis.

Genesis 1 is part of the first of two creation stories that begin the Bible. The first creation story is generally credited to the Priestly source (read more on the 4 source theory for Genesis here), and may have been composed in its present form as late as the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (5th century BCE). It’s important to remember that this text represents a pre-scientific world view, so it should not be judged by post-Enlightenment standards of fact. God creates the light on day 1, and the Sun on day 2, suggesting that the ancients saw light as having a divine origin, the Sun being one of many luminaries placed in the sky. The sun goes away at night and returns in the morning, making each day a new creation, filled with possibility.

Jesus also talks about the concept of light in the Sermon on the Mount. He talks about it in two contrasting ways. Calling his followers “the light of the world”, Jesus may be highlighting that the purpose of light is not for itself, but for other things to be illuminated. Light points to something beyond itself. However, in the very next breath Jesus calls his followers “a city on a hill”, which certainly does draw attention to itself! The idea that the works of disciples of Jesus are to be seen stands in tension with other sayings about doing things “in secret” (ex- Matthew 6:3). These tensions should not be seen as “contradictions”, but as illustrative of the very real tension that followers of Christ experience in striving to live in such a way that points beyond themselves to the greatness of God.

Bohoeffer points out that disciples are not told to “become” or “strive to be” light for the world. Jesus makes the statement in the present tense: “you are the light”. Jesus is telling his followers to be what they already are. The light is a gift of which we are stewards, meant to be shared with everyone and not just those we want to let in. This passage occurs in the context of a teaching to a large group of people, most of whom are curious about Jesus but not yet committed followers. This is not a private teaching to the twelve. The very setting indicates the inclusiveness of Jesus’ gospel and reminds the church that it is not a closed society of the elect, but an ad hoc committee dedicated to the redemption of the entire world.

I have these exegetical insights in a notebook, which I will have with me on Tuesday night at our congregation’s weekly Roundtable Pulpit. We meet at a local Starbucks, and anyone (church members, friends, and complete strangers) is welcome to come and reflect on the texts and themes for the week. I take notes in the same notebook, and have it with me the rest of the week while I’m composing my Sunday sermon.

The title Roundtable Pulpit is unashamedly ripped off from a book of the same name written by John McClure, with whom I had the pleasure of studying at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

A while back I wrote an article on Worship Connection about the collaborative preaching process, and you can read that if you want to know more.

I’ll post again on Wednesday with a summary of our Tuesday night conversation, and again later in the week as I try to put it all together for Sunday.

Next Week

Next week I'll be guest blogging over at GoodPreacher.com's "Homiletical Hot Tub" (I'll give an honorable mention to whomever comes up with the best "Hot Tub Time Machine" reference for a preaching site).

The texts I'll be working on next week will be Genesis 1:3-5, and Matthew 5:14-16. We're in the midst of our Bethlehem on the Rise capital campaign, and the overall theme will be "Sunrise" for that Sunday.

I'll post the link when it's up.

Addendum

In the last episode of our podcast, we talked about the idea of an evolution in humanity's understanding of God being traceable in the texts of the Bible.

There are two really interesting books by Jack Miles that tackle this subject from a literary standpoint. God: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God treat God as a literary character (much like Tom Sawyer or Jack Ryan) and trace his evolution within the biblical text.

A word of caution about these books: Miles is making no attempt at any kind of theological statement. I kept having to push aside my own reactions to some of the things he says about the character named God, who often times seems at odds with the God of the universe that I worship. The assumption that the Bible is one single, coherent narrative is also problematic, but only from a theological standpoint. Setting those issues aside will enable you to really enjoy Miles literary analysis.

These aren't devotional books by any means, but they do give great insight into the many varying, and sometimes conflicting roles the Bible plays to different people.

Podcast Episode 11- The God Question

We're continuing our series podcasting our way through Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith.

We tackle such weighty subjects as the question of whether God is violent, supersessionism and anti-Judaism, natural theology, and the relationship between Quaker scholar Elton Trueblood and the HBO show, "Trueblood".

You can listen to and/or download this episode on Podbean (whose allegedly embeddable player won't work on Blogger for some reason), or subscribe to us on iTunes.

As always, comments and other feedback are always welcome.

Podcast Episode 10- The Authority Question

The latest episode of The Truth As Best I Know It Podcast is up.

Jessica and I are continuing with our discussion of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. Here we focus on question 2- the Authority Question.

You can listen or download the episode from Podbean, subscribe on iTunes, or listen on the player below.

Powered by Podbean.com

As always, comments and questions are always welcome. If you're reading through the book right now and have specific issues or questions you'd like us to address, please let us know!

... then the terrorists win

If Americans continue in their fear and hatred of Islam, then the terrorists win.

I realize this might be a provocative statement. Hear me out.

I realize using "then the terrorists win" as the predicate to any statement makes it quite logically suspect since it's highly pejorative and almost entirely devoid of context. So let me explain what I mean.

Americans who have lived through the past decade generally associate the term "terrorists" with Osama bin Laden, al Qeda, and others who advocate and practice indiscriminate violence against others in the name of Islam. For the moment, this is what I mean as well.

The thing is, though, that "the terrorists" do not truly represent Islam. As one of the three great monotheistic religions that follow the God of Abraham, true Islam is a beautiful, peaceful religion that has been twisted and used as a front by those whose core values have nothing to do with the God they claim to worship. "The terrorists" are a very small minority, and it is a tragedy that people who should know better group all Muslims in with them.

In fact, the real tragedy is that most of those who judge Islam by its worst examples claim to be Christians. And it's not like Christianity hasn't had more than its share of worst examples. We have a Christian terrorist group that started in my home state of Tennessee: it's called the Ku Klux Klan. Christianity has its own shameful history of indiscriminate violence that blasphemes everything that Jesus stood for and died for: the Crusades.

The essential message of "the terrorists", people like Osama bin Laden, is this: this world isn't big enough for the both of us. We can't all live together in peace. One of us has to go. It's either you or us.

That's what "the terrorists" believe. And sadly, it's what a growing number of Americans believe. Our country is beginning to come to the same conclusion as those for whom death for their enemies is the only justice. Those who believe this ignore the teachings of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, which tell us that to love our enemies and to live in peace with all of God's children is the true will of God.

With all that said, I'll say it again: if Americans continue in their fear and hatred of Islam, then the terrorists win.

If communities in New York City and Middle Tennessee reject the building of mosques for no reason other than fear and misunderstanding, then the terrorists win.

If a church in Florida holds an "International Burn the Koran Day" on September 11, then the terrorists win.

I don't want "the terrorists" to win. I don't want to live in a world where we believe that we can't all live together as one great human family. I don't want to live in a world where hatred gets the last word, and someone has to lose for us to "win". Do you?

If you don't, please take a stand with me. One way you can take a stand is to sign this petition saying that you support freedom for all religions in the USA. America is a country for whom freedom of religion is a core value, and at this moment we stand in very real danger of tossing this value out the window.

Take a stand. Speak up. Don't let "the terrorists" win.

A Much Needed Word

I read a story today about a pastor named Matt Chandler, of whom I have unfortunately been unaware until today, giving an address at the Southern Baptist Pastor's Convention a few days ago. In his talk, he didn't hold back on calling out the hypocracy he sees in many clergy.

One quote literally made me stand up and cheer, causing my toddler to give me a strange look. "I, unfortunately, with a great deal of sorrow have walked away from the idea that all of you are men and women of the Word. I've just come to find that a lot of you are really good at cliches and really bad a tying in the Word."

Chandler articulates well my own frustration with many of my fellow clergy, and often times, myself.

While I probably have some significant hermenutical differences with Chandler (for example, I'd couch the issue in terms of the Kingdom of God rather than "The Word", but ultimately that's not that big of a deal), his critique of clergy is spot on. We often pretend that we have everything figured out and are afraid to admit that we are human beings on a journey like everyone else.

What makes us do this? Part of it is pressure we put on ourselves that is rooted in a genuine desire to please God, but it's twisted by a lack of real trust in God's grace. Part of it is the (either real or presumed) pressure that comes from the people in our congregations. On some level they want a "perfect" (whatever that means) person to lead them. Or it might just be the result of their experiences with other clergy who do a darn good job pretending they don't have any flaws. If folks are buying what they're selling, then they expect us to sell them the same bill of goods, too.

While Chandler's talk was directed at Southern Baptist pastors, his challenge transcends denominational and, dare I say it, lay/clerical divides. We all need the kind of reality check Matt Chandler is offering. I for one am thankful he had the courage to say it.

Podcast Episode 9- A New Kind of Christianity Part 2

The latest episode of The Truth As Best I Know It Podcast is up! Well, actually, it's been out there for almost a week. Less than 24 hours after recording and publishing the episode, the hard drive on my computer crashed, and it is currently in the shop. The good news is that sometime in the middle of next week everything will be fixed and we'll be able to record a new episode.

In this episode, we continue our look at Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith. Jessica and I discuss the first question, "The Narrative Question".

You can listen on Podbean, or download the episode on iTunes.

We invite you to read along with us and interact with us in the comments section. You can pick up a copy of the book at your local book store or by clicking on the link above.

Podcast Episode 8- A New Kind of Christianity part 1

The Truth As Best I Know It podcast is back!

After nearly a year, we're relaunching the podcast, and Jessica and I are spending the summer podcasting our way through Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith.

In this episode, Jessica and I discuss the opening chapters of the book and preview the sections we'll be reading through this summer.

You can listen to this episode on the player below, on Podbean (the fine folks who host our show), or you can download it on iTunes.

Powered by Podbean.com

We invite you to read along with us. You can pick up a copy of the book at your local bookstore or click on the link above.

McLaren recently teamed up with Spencer Burke of theooze.com and TheOozeTV, making videos where they discuss each of the ten questions. Jessica and I are intentionally avoiding these videos for the time being so we don't just parrot what they say, but you should check them out if you're interested in further interaction with the material.

Thanks for listening! Your comments and questions are always welcome. Look for the next episode, where we discuss "The Narrative Question" in about a week.

Superbowl Ads

Like many red-blooded American males, I like football. I like watching it, I like talking about it with other guys, and I even briefly tried to play it in middle school (let's not talk about how that one went). So even if my second favorite team, the Indianapolis Colts, wasn't in the game, I'd still be excited about this weekend's Superbowl.

One of the reasons I like the Superbowl is that it is the one football game a year that I can get my wife to watch with me. She doesn't care much about the game, despite my numerous, patient, and erudite attempts to explain it to her, but she does like the commercials. Large companies spend millions of dollars per second competing with each other to see who can put on the most lavish production, which may or may not have even the tiniest connection with the product they're selling. Kind of like the game itself, watching the Superbowl commercials is mindless fun, a great escape from the grind of everyday life.

That is, until this year. It turns out that Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, a devout and vocal (although not in an annoying way, thankfully) evangelical Christian, is appearing with his mother in a pro-life ad sponsored by Focus on the Family (one of the few remaining home-bases of the religious right). Predictably, there was vocal reaction from all sides, because few issues get people up in arms these days like abortion.

This development didn't bug me, personally. If Focus on the Family wants to spend the money to buy air-time during the Superbowl, it's their right to do so. They air beer commercials during the Superbowl, and not everyone approves of alcohol use. For that matter, they air soda ads, and some religious traditions forbid consumption of caffeine. The ability to purchase air-time is an exercise of the First Amendment.

What disturbs me is that CBS is now applying inconsistent standards in what ads they'll air during the Superbowl. A dating website that caters specifically to those with same-sex attraction attempted to buy air-time, and they were rejected, even though the only thing they showed was two guys holding hands. CBS claims the ad "is not within the Network's broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday." Scantily clad women selling beer and couples heading off for a one night stand selling condoms are OK, but not two guys holding hands? Really?

Ad to this the fact that CBS rejected an ad several years ago from MoveOn.org that was critical of then-President Bush. They have also previously rejected ads from the United Church of Christ, a progressive Christian denomination. If everyone has the right to buy air-time if they can afford it, why is CBS discriminating?

Once again we see that conservative Christian groups have tremendous power in America because they are more than willing to unleash their wrath on people and groups they perceive to have offended them in the smallest way. I don't think CBS has a political agenda. CBS is a publicly traded corporation, and as such it is afraid of bad press and boycotts that would hurt their ratings, both of which the Christian-media-industrial-complex is happy to use as weapons.

It's really sad that the dominant voices in our society of those who allegedly represent Jesus Christ, a man who was killed for preaching love and grace against the fear-based, violently coercive systems of his day, use as their first option the tactics against which Jesus preached.

I'm going to enjoy the Superbowl this year, especially if the Colts win, but seeing certain ads included and excluded based almost solely on the fear of issue-groups will lessen my enjoyment.

Conversion as a "great example to the world"

By now you've probably heard about Fox News' Brit Hume's take on Tiger Woods' personal problems. For those that haven't, here's what he said on "Fox News Sunday":



Let's assume for a moment that Brit Hume (who has no education or experience in theology, comparative religion, or interfaith dialogue) intended this statement as something more than mere pandering to the  rich, white, wealthy, suburban, evangelical Christian demographic that makes up the core of Fox News' audience. Let's assume he's trying to make a substantive point.

First, on what basis does Mr. Hume claim that Buddhism does not have the redemptive qualities of Christianity? For that matter, where has he heard that Tiger Woods is a Buddhist?

It's true that Buddhism does not place an emphasis on radical, instantaneous conversion in the same way as does Western, post-Augustinian Christianity (particularly the American brand that styles itself in the mold of the Second Great Awakening). But to say that Buddhism doesn't speak to Tiger Woods' or any other person's moral failings is simply not true.

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism state that the suffering of life comes from our attachment to worldly things, and that the way to alleviate suffering is to combat this attachment. If Tiger Woods is, in fact, a sex addict, as some have suggested, isn't his problem too great a desire for worldly pleasures? Might the core tenants of Buddhism encourage him to detach himself from his desires be very helpful? For something to be redemptive, it must, by definition, participate in healing and making something new. The Buddhist faith would, in fact, be very redemptive for Tiger Woods' situation.

Along the same lines, I have to wonder where Mr. Hume grounds his claim for Christianity as being more redemptive than Buddhism or any other religion? Does he ground this in the examples of Christian ministers who used to be guests on his channel until their own moral failings came to light (Ted Haggard, etc.)? Or on the televangelists who frequently appear on the network, who make their reputations more on who they hate and what they oppose than on the God of love and peace made known to us in the Bible they claim to take so seriously?

As a Christian I do believe in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. It is a claim upon which I have staked my life and my very being. But why do we have to attempt to prove that by bashing other religions about which we know so little? And aren't there better reasons to enter into the journey of being a disciple of Jesus Christ than "to be a great example to the rest of the world"?

The faith of the one who said "deny thyself, take up your cross and follow me" (Luke 9:23) means ridding ourselves of our attachment to our reputations and not worrying about "being a great example to the world". It actually means the opposite and being thought a fool by most of the world.

Mr. Hume, let me encourage you to read a bit about Buddhism, and maybe a little bit about Christianity, before you try making any more grand theological statements.