Why Emergent?

I wrote the following for an online Episcopal Magazine.  Enjoy.

Reflections on the journey: From a Post-Evangelical, Emergent, Episcopalian

The conversation usually goes something like this:

Inquisitive Person: “So, what is the emergent church?”

Me: “Well, technically there is no emergent church.”

Inquisitive Person: (Blank stare)

Me: “It’s more of a conversation than a church.”

Inquisitive Person: (Continued blank stare)

The conversation started for me during college while I was on a mission trip in East Africa.  I was on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania living with a Christian pastor, preaching in the local church, and participating in door-to-door evangelism throughout the island.  More than a million people populate Zanzibar and at least ninety nine percent of the population is Muslim. It seems an obvious statement when looking at the situation from a certain perspective to say that Zanzibar had not yet been reached by the gospel.  This opportunity was rather significant for me.  I had grown up in the Christian & Missionary Alliance, an evangelical church, where my Christian formation involved sharing the gospel with all people.  I remember a youth rally I attended where a guest speaker told us that 166,000 people die everyday without knowing who Jesus is, and that it was up to us to go into the entire world in order to share the good news of Jesus.  I took that challenge to heart and I committed my life to sharing the gospel with the world.  Three years later there I was doing just that: sharing the gospel with people who had never heard it before. The mission was not going very well.  People were not receptive to our message and as far as I could tell, I could not foresee their minds changing anytime soon.

Wandering

For Lent at COTA this year a man in our parish is teaching a class on prayer entitled Great Arguments with God.  Last night we examined Jacob’s all night wrestling match with God.  To aid us in this exploratation we read from Frederick Beuchner’s The Son of Laughter.  In it Beuchner retells Jacob’s encounter with God in dramatic fashion.  What Beuchner reveals in his retelling is how Jacob really didn’t know who he was wrestling with or even why he was wrestling until the night was over.  Jacob’s confusion struck a cord with me, especially as we reflected upon prayer and fighting with God. 

It is easy to be energized by an argument or fight if one knows what it is they are fighting for.  We see this in other scriptural accounts where people argued with God because God was clearly in the wrong, or it was quite obvious that God needed to do something (i.e. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?). But what about when you are striving with God or life, or whatever, but you really don’t know why.  

I find this scenario more common for my own spiritual journey.  Wrestling in the dark with the unknown, wandering through the desert with no destination.  I’m told there is a promise, or blessing out there somewhere, but the fact that it is out there, fails to make the present any clearer.

Why Episcopal? Part V – Ash Wednesday Edition

The first Ash Wednesday service I attended was actually in an Evangelical Church a few years ago.  To this day I can still remember the feeling of the ash cross on my forehead and the words of the pastor that came with it: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  As I drove away from the service that night with the weight of the cross bearing upon my skin I was forced into introspection about my life, my mortality, and how it is in my humanity that I know God.  Out of all the worship services that I participated in at that church for a year and half, the Ash Wednesday service stands out to me most clearly.  

I remember it because the worship service engaged not just my intellect, but my senses.  The sanctuary was darkened, the mood was solemn, and then by going forward and feeling the touch of the pastor on my forehead, the harshness of the ash, and then continuing to feel the weight of the cross: all of me was caught up in an experience of God, worship, and contemplation.  

I participate in a liturgical church because my whole self is engaged in worship.  And tonight as my priest marks my head with the sign of the cross I hope that once again I am brought to a place of experience of God, worship and contemplation.

Why Episcopal? Part IV – Word and Sacrament

In an Episcopal worship service the Word and the Sacrament are of equal importance.  This is acted out liturgically in numerous ways depending upon the parish.  At St. Paul’s the service of the Word ends with the Gospel text being processed to the middle of the sanctuary and held high for everyone to see, while it processes we all chant “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  The text is then announced by the reader of the gospel (either an ordained deacon or priest): “The Holy Gospel according to…”  As this is announced we in the congregation cross our forehead, our lips, and our hearts, so that we receive the words of Christ in our minds and in our hearts and we respond with our wills (mouth).  The congregation then responds in unison “Glory to you Lord Christ.”  The gospel text is then read by the ordained clergy with hands lifted high in blessing.  Following the reading, the deacon or priest says the “The Gospel of our Lord.”  The congregation responds with “Praise to you Lord Christ.”  Following the reading of the Gospel a homily is offered; typically lasting about 12 minutes.  

COTA Reverb 2/14/09

I gave the reverb at Church of the Apostles this past Saturday. A reverb is what we call a sermon at COTA, its short for reverberation, which means that the reverb is one person’s reflection upon how a passage of scripture has impacted them.  We use the Lectionary at COTA so I did not choose this passage of scripture myself.  

For those of you hold to more conservative theological views, there will be content in my sermon that I’m quite positive you will disagree with.  I encourage you to try and listen to what I have to say, not so you can agree with me, but that you might develop the ability to listen to the “other”.  

 

 

Mark 1:40-45  

40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”  42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.  43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once,  44 saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”  45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. 

The Story of the Unlikely Evangelist 

Our country recently went through a very long and intense political process.  The men and women who were running for our nation’s highest political office where all put under the severest inspection.  And we as a society can’t get enough of it.  We want to know everything from their attendance records as third graders to what kind of underwear they put on.  Now many of the things that are revealed through this vetting process are not game changers, if they smoked a little pot in college, it probably isn’t going to disqualify them from the race.  However, there are somethings that can pose a big threat to a candidate’s victory: associations.  Who is this person friends with?  What circles did they run in?  And who is endorsing this candidate?  This of course was a big issue for our current president Barack Obama, wither it was Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers.  The strategy for some was to disqualify Obama because he has associating with these “extreme” people.  These anti-American people.  Now sadly, with our consumer driven media, our country failed to have an intelligent conversation about these associations.  It was far too easy to stereo-type people and evoke fear, then it was to listen and try and understand who people are.  

I think Jesus found himself in a similar predicament in today’s gospel story.  Jesus had just begun his ministry on earth, he was God enfleshed, sent to earth to be the Messiah to the Jews and salvation to the Gentiles.  Now considering how prophets have often fared in the past, Jesus must have known that this was not going to be an easy nor a safe task.  He was going to have to confront the religious and political establishments of his day.  Neither of whom had a good track record of paying attention to the will of God: which is to practice radical love and justice.  Nonetheless Jesus begins his mission, and in Mark’s account of it, it has only just begun when Jesus is confronted with a dilemma: a leprous man begging for cleansing.  

166,000

 I have been reflecting on my spiritual journey quite a bit during the last few weeks due to conversations at my new job as well as through reflecting and sharing at a mutual discernment group that I am participating in.  So as I have shared my story and reflected upon where I have been the number 166,000 continues to come up.  Yes, 166,000, I’m guessing an insignificant number to you, is actually a very important figure in regards to my spiritual journey.  

 When I was in high school I participated in a weekend church retreat centered around missions.  At the end of the weekend the speaker was presenting his final appeal to us young people to take Jesus’ great commission seriously.  In his appeal he unrolled a very long scroll of paper with thousands of black vertical lines: one, two, three, four, and then a horizontal dash through the middle, five.  In total there were 166,000 black lines.  Once the scroll was unrolled the speaker told us that each one of these lines represents a person who will die today who never heard the name Jesus. These people would spend eternity in hell because they had not heard the good news of Jesus.  The speaker ended his plea by urging us to be the people who would bring the gospel to these 166,000.  I decided then and there that I would be one of those people, I would devote my life to sharing the gospel so that 166,000 people did not die every day not knowing the good news of Jesus.  

 A few years later I found myself on the small island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania with a Christian mission team that was working to share the gospel with the one million Muslims who lived there.  After spending many fruitless hours walking door to door sharing my faith with these people I found myself on the back of a truck driving through the heart of residential Zanzibar.  I thought to myself “These are the 166,000, these are the people that speaker was talking about…and this is never going to work.” 

I will never forget that moment, it has and it continues to be a defining moment in my life.  It was a moment of defeat, but it was also very much a moment of re-birth. Because it was at that moment that all my prior notions of who God was began to crumble and at the same time began to expand.  It was also then and there that I began a long journey towards a new way of life.  A way that was not consumed with making up for the irresponsibility of a petty and vengeful God but rather a way of life that was open to the unending possibilities of a world that is held in the powerful and redeeming hands of a very good and unpredictable God.

Vocation

 I delivered a homily this morning at St. Paul’s midweek mass.  It has been a couple of years since I have done something like that.  It was an enjoyable experience, and something that I am going to do more of this year.

 My homily was based on Philippians 2:5-11, since today was Holy Cross Day.  I talked about how Jesus and Paul’s vocations caused them to experience a cross and a prison cell.  I then made the link to my own experience of vocation, and how it has often been a cross and a prison.  But it has also been a place where Christ has met me, and worked redemption into my life.  

 If you have talked to me about vocation over the past couple of years I have probably expressed to you my desire to work in the realm of academia and not the church.  There is a lot of story around that desire, but ultimately I think that I have desired to be a professor because it would allow me to be theologically creative, more so than if I worked in the church.

However, after participating at St. Paul’s for the past two years I have begun to open myself up to the idea of working within the church again.  There is a lot of story behind this openness, but one aspect of it is that my theological creativity is seen as a gift and not a threat within my ecclesial community.  I experienced this phenomenon this past Sunday night at Theology on Tap, a monthly gathering at a pub for drinks and theological discussion that I have organized.  It was a real treat to gather with others from my community for the purpose of theological exploration and creativity.  Although I still think it would be fun to do that in a classroom as a teacher, there was something very satisfying doing it on the ground level, where the process and the relationships are often more important than the ideas.

I would not say that I have come to a place of vocational clarity, but I can say that I find myself in a place of openness towards to the future.  Which for me is a big step.

Why Episcopal? Part III: Episcopal and Emergent

                  

Last night Kate and I attended the first class of a three part series at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on exploring our Anglo-Catholic identity (more on Anglo-Catholicism in a later post).  Part of the material that we covered last night was looking broadly at the characteristics that describe Episcopal spirituality and temperament.  As we discussed these characteristics what stood out to me was that these characteristics could just as easily describe the Emerging Church.  Also, it is because of these characteristics that I find myself at home in the Episcopal Church. 

Here are the characteristics, I’m I right?  This list is taken from St. Paul’s Websitewhich used the work of John Westerhoff.

Episcopal Spirituality:

Liturgical/Biblical: Book of Common Prayer.

Communal: Communal prayer comes before and shapes personal prayer.

Sacramental: The material world is capable of mediating the grace of God.  Baptism and Eucharist are highly emphasized.

Incarnational: God became flesh; the created world and all of its creatures are good, the extraordinary is found in the ordinary.

Mystical: Union with God is the telos of a long, progressive journey. 

Episcopal Temperament:

Comprehensive: Truth is found in the tension between counter-opposites: sacred/secular, material/non-material, mind/heart, God’s transcendence/immanence.

Ambiguous: Not “black and white”; life is ambiguous and complex.

Open-minded: A questioning faith; wisdom is found in listening to others and being honest with our doubts.

Intuitive: Episcopal theology is best represented by writers, poets, pastors and musicians with images, symbols, myths, rituals and the arts.

Aesthetic: Beauty is the doorway to truth and goodness and that beauty is a doorway to God.

Moderate: Godly life is one that is disciplined, balanced and temperate.

Naturalistic: Reverence for nature and its rhythms; care for the natural world.

Political: Christian life has political implications that encourages participation in civic life.

So this leads me to wonder: “How could the Episcopal Church and the Emergent Church work together?”  The Episcopal Church has wisdom, tried and true traditions and practices, and resources.  The Emergent Church has people who are under the age of 35 .  Seems like a match made in heaven to me.  Actually, there is much more to be said about how these two groups could benefit each other, but that will have to wait for another day.

Reverend Wright

I sat down yesterday and actually watched one of Reverend Wright’s recent speeches (the one he recently gave at the National Press Club) in its entirety.  So many things were being said about this man that I thought “wow he must be completely wacked out of his mind.”  So I prepared myself for all sorts of craziness as I started to watch.  What I heard though was an articulate explanation of black liberation theology, a thoughtful interaction with the ethnic and religious plurality that exists here in America, and a biographical report of the many good things that Trinity Church has done over the years.  At many points in the speech I was greatly moved, encouraged and challenged. 

Reading forsakeness through the lens of the Old Testament

Today is Good Friday, the day the church remembers the death of Jesus.  As Christians gather tonight, many sermons will be preached that will expound upon the meaning of this death.  The variety of interpretations will be great.  This demonstrates the multiplicity of images in the New Testiment witness to Jesus’ death and the contextual nature of theology.  So I will add my two cents to all of the theologizing that will be taking place tonight.

 In Mark and Matthew’s account of Christ’s death, Jesus cries out on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  In my theology class this week, a student referenced that passage to support the idea that at that moment the sin of the world was placed upon Jesus and God turned God’s back upon the Son.  At that moment the Son was separated from the Father because the Son was covered by sin and no longer acceptable to God. 

There are many reasons why I disagree with that interpretation; but I will offer only one.  Read Psalm 22 (the psalm that Jesus quotes from), the psalmist feels forsaken by God not because s/he is sinful, but rather because s/he is faithful and more importantly because s/he knows the God of Israel to be faithful. 

Forsakeness in the OT is often a paradox: “Why do the righteous suffer?”  The righteous suffer because they oppose evil, they defend the widow and the orphan, they relentlessly offer forgiveness, they practice sabbath, they worship a God who can’t be seen…  The testimony of the psalmists and the lives of the prophets reveal to us over and over again that this is true: if you are obedient to God suffering will follow. 

Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel.  He more than anyone else lives the life of a righteous and obedient follower of God.  He non-violently opposes evil, he offers radical forgiveness, he proclaims the year of God’s favor, and how is he re-payed, he is killed.  Not by God, but by the evil of this world.  God then raises Jesus from the dead and identifies God’s life with the life of Jesus.  God establishes that what Jesus did, God does, has done and forever will do. God will continually confront evil and violence with self-sacrificial love and despite the deathly opposition, in the end, the life of God (resurrection) will triumph.