Some Reading Hopes for the New Year, and the Book of Luke

Well, I'm not one for new year's resolutions, but I have been finding myself assembling some intentions for reading in the next 6 months to a year.  Here's what I've got so far: Frank Viola's Epic Jesus, Tullian Tchividjian's Jesus + Nothing = Everything, N.T. Wright's Simply Jesus, George MacDonald's Phantastes, the Auralia's Colors Series by a guy named Jeffrey Overstreet. I'm deep into the very intriguing Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, the first in the Mars Trilogy, a sci-fi series about the colonization of Red Planet.


As far as the Bible is concerned, I plan on spending most of my time in the book of Luke.  I've spent a long time in the book of John, and then Matthew.  My plan has been to do this with each Gospel- spend a couple of years just getting to know it, learning it like a new job or a best friend.  So this year begins (actually it's begun already) the book of Luke.


My thoughts so far begin at the end.  Though we just had Christmas, what has been on my mind has been the Resurrection narrative.  I'm haunted by the tail end of the earthly ministry of the most interesting Man that ever lived. We get, in these last few pages, a look at what must have been the most startling, unbelievable, eye-opening, paradigm-shattering event in the lives of his young followers.  Jesus of Nazareth lives, though he was killed, executed only days before.


Let me start by saying this.  In the presence of the Risen Lord, it would have been nearly impossible for a disciple to want to talk about their joblessness, or the rising cost of health care.  The text says they stood their gawking, "with joy and amazement."  At a time like that, it would have been patently absurd for Thomas, having touched the hands and side of the Savior to have turned around and said, "you know guys, we really ought to try and think positive, because our thought life is going to affect how we behave."  In fact, Thomas may not have been able to take his eyes off of Jesus, standing their radiant with the New Creation.  If he could say anything after picking his jaw up off the floor, it probably would have been something like "He lives! He LIVES!"  There were the disciples, coming off a couple days of fresh grief, listless, unsure of what to do next, afraid of being hunted down, and probably weighed down by some serious guilt.  And there was Jesus, the world's True Light, untouched by sin and death, opening the Prophets to them, showing them how the Kingdom has come, and telling them that though he was about to leave once again, he would be with them until the end of the age.


Each time he shows up, it is completely surprising.  And each time he shows up, he says a few words, and then vanishes, just as unexpectedly.  I think there's something to be said about this, but I'm not sure I'm qualified to verbalize it yet.  This is Resurrection we're talking about.  This is not normative humanity as we been conditioned to see it, but it's also not transcendence above humanity- it's True Humanity.  He's real, he's eating fish, but he's coming and going as he pleases.  He's showing them their doubts are unfounded.  He's directing the future of the Church.  He is now absorbing all the glory and honor that creation has to give.  He's telling them that he's won. 


In the last portion of Luke we get a portrait of the eschatological Kingdom, coming forth from the tomb, going among the people, and then seeming to disappear, yet staying present.  Jesus rises, Jesus presents a never-before-seen humanity to the disciples, and then Jesus leaves.  Yet he doesn't leave.  He's still in the flesh.  He's still "here." At the end of Luke we get a brilliant picture of  eschatology- that which is so expected and hoped for in the future that it actually becomes real now, only to let us know that the "real" thing is still yet to come.   Like an uncle we dearly love that is coming to visit after a long absence.  Though we know it'll be today, we're not sure of the exact time of his arrival, and so the preparation grips us- the cooking of a meal and the selecting of just the music for the occasion.  And the expectation overwhelms us- the joy of imagining his face at our door, his voice greeting us joyfully.  The remembering of things he said and did in times past.  These things take hold of us so tightly that it's hard to remember that he's still not here yet.  Because he...well, he is here. Isn't he?

Pastors and Presence, and a Bonhoeffer Quote

There's been some good back and forth lately about the nature of pastoring, with different models being proffered, and some discussion over which type of pastor is needed at this moment.  Mark Galli got things rolling with this.  Tod Bolsinger argued against more chaplains, in favor of a new kind of missionary-leader. Then Chaplain Mike wrote in praise of the chaplain pastor.

Certainly not my area of expertise, but my two cents is, this is not like personality types.  Many are going to say that if a guy has the gifts and persona to grow a huge church, then that's what he should do, and the tasks of meeting with everyday people-- to know them and shepherd them-- can be secondary.  This is not going to cut it.  To this idea, in happy contrast for the little people, stands the very word "pastor." A pastor pastors, or else he's not a pastor, it would seem.  Jesus' "big" work was interrupted many times by the "small" work of individual attention, of paradigm shifting for the everyday people.  This can't be over-simplified as one particular task, but one thing it's not is carelessness for the sheep, or de-personalization of the work at hand.  One pastor I know recently said he doesn't want his church to get bigger than will allow him to know everyone personally. This warmed my heart.

I would sum this up as the ministry of presence, and it's central to the yearning of Advent, and the celebration of Christmas.  Being there is the Way of Jesus, of the Incarnation.  The awareness of Jesus' here-ness is what changes us, and this is accomplished by his Coming.  That's what the Kingdom announcement is all about. For myself, this is a very attractive alternative to the subject I've been haunted by in the last few posts.

Bonhoeffer, in no uncertain terms, makes the issue's weight quite clear (can't he ever just lighten up?) through Matthew 9-10.  The last paragraph has much to say about this:

The Savior looks with compassion on his people, the people of God.  he could not rest satisfied with the few who had heard his call and followed. He shrank from the idea of forming an exclusive little coterie with his disciples. Unlike the founders of the great religions, he had no desire to withdraw them from the vulgar crowd and initiate them into an esoteric system of religion and ethics.  He had come, he had worked and suffered for the sake of all his people...  

Where is the good shepherd they needed so badly? What good was it when the scribes herded the people into the schools, when the devotees of the law sternly condemned sinners without lifting a finger to help them? What use were all these orthodox preachers and expounders of the Word, when they were not filled by boundless pity and compassion for God's maltreated and injured people?  What they need is good shepherds, good "pastors."  "Feed my lambs" was the last charge Jesus gave to Peter.  The Good Shepherd protects his sheep against the wolf, and instead of fleeing he gives his life for the sheep.  He knows them all by name and loves them.  He knows their distress and their weakness.  He heals the wounded, gives drink to the thirsty, sets upright the falling, and leads them gently, not sternly, to pasture.  He leads them on the right way.  He seeks the one lost sheep, and brings it back to the fold.... 

No man dare presume to come forward and offer himself [as a laborer for the harvest] on his own initiative, not even the disciples themselves.  Their duty is to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers at the right moment, for the time is ripe...

They are not left free to choose their own methods or adopt their own conception of their task.  Their work is to be Christ-work, and therefore they are absolutely dependent on the will of Jesus.  Happy are they whose duty is fixed by such a precept, and who are therefore free from the tyranny of their own ideas and calculations. 

This Stuff Needs to Get Out

I was going to write another whole post on the subject of the last two posts, but I'll just throw out some quotations I've run across. From the New Reformation Press, a Lutheran blog:

I can’t imagine being on a never ending treadmill of “maintaining my salvation through my own constant active efforts to be better than the sinful guy I was yesterday”!

You can say that again.

Michael Horton wrote a recent Christianity today article, on why Jesus as a historically separate person from ourselves remains the substance of Christianity, and not some hazy, ill-defined "Jesus-power" inside of the believer, leading us by our own reason and moral conviction.  Jesus as Incarnation, that which we celebrate this season, marginalizes our constant need to resort to inwardly focused spiritual adjustment programs in the service of what we've deemed as sanctification:

Our inner self is not the playground of "spirit," but the haunted plains on which we build our towers of Babel. In other words, our hearts are idol factories, in bondage to sin and spin. 

The mistake we make is that "now that I'm born again, my heart is corrected, so I can go ahead and whip all that sin in my life."  Epic fail.  The heart is still a "haunted plain," and while the Spirit takes ground on it gradually, it's safe to assume that your default position is idolatry, that only death will free you, and that you can't be trusted to "work for your sanctification" as many assume. The end result of this is not some worm theology, it's joy in who Jesus is and what he's done. 

Here's what Gerharde Forde says about this:

Talk about sanctification is dangerous. It is too seductive for the old being... 

The result of this kind of thinking is generally disastrous. We are driven to make an entirely false distinction between justification and sanctification in order to save the investment the old being has in the moral system. Justification is a kind of obligatory religious preliminary which is rendered largely ineffective while we talk about getting on with the truly “serious” business of becoming “sanctified” according to some moral scheme or other. We become the actors in sanctification. This is entirely false. According to Scripture, God is always the acting subject, even in sanctification.

"Holiness hype" is the lemon juice in the eye of a Gospel conversation.  If there's anything that's going to kill joy and awe over the gospel, it's being told that there's a danger that we're going to backslide if we don't tie up all the moral loose ends in our life, and that it won't happen without our devotion and effort.  This can be subtle.  A simple shift in emphasis.  Think about this the next time you're in one of these conversations.  See how quickly it degenerates from Jesus Christ, the Risen and exalted King, into talk about us and our faith or our progress.  What would happen if, every time someone decided to move the subject from "Jesus is amazing" to "how we can fix ourselves and our faith," we pointed it out and brought it back to Jesus.  One could become unpopular very quickly.  But ever since I've begun to notice these subtle, uncalled-for shifts, it's been like sand grating into my eyeball.  Hopefully, this won't be too painful...

Spiritual Progress & The Sanctification Mistake. Aka "Grace is wonderful and all, but what about becoming holy?"

Gotta admit, the Mockingbird blog really has some fine content. 


There's a piece today on The Rhetoric of Progress.  It's a good follow-up to my last quotation from Tullian Tchividjian's book Jesus + Nothing = Everything.   It covers a theme I gravitate towards, partly because it's where I've come to recently, and also because I know several people that are affected by this rhetoric, some pretty seriously. On some level I suppose, it's what affects all of us.  I've certainly made the sanctification mistake a time or two, and will probably make it again, it rings true to me that "rhetoric of Christian progress" is largely based on mythology.  Meaning that when we begin to talk about our "progress in whatever," we are very noticeably talking about...ourselves!  And that's the exact opposite of what sanctified people do, most of the time.  But when we are engulfed in the sanctification mistake, Jesus is a footnote in our lives, and our personal holiness is far more interesting than his.


Here's a section from Mockingbird piece:

The logic underlying the rhetoric is the same across traditions even if the actual words are not.  Evangelicals speak in a progress rhetoric equally well-developed and theologically imprecise.  They talk of “going deeper” and “growing stronger,” of “godly living” and “taking the next step,” of deriding “spectator Christians” and urging people to “get connected.”  Some Reform-minded Christians, guarding against the impression that the disciple’s works contribute to progress, speak of “growing in faith” or “deepening one’s understanding of faith.”  Yet they simultaneously emphasize the importance of intentionality and obedience, which pours an unintended meaning into their phrases of choice.

One way that unintended meaning speaks to us, my friends, is through our conditioning by a consumer culture and the Christian celebrity-mania that drives much of public ministry.  Preachers, speakers, singers, revivalists.  The American Idol complex awaits the progress Christian- "I'm constantly on a stage, and I'm being measured by my performance."  (And naturally, the guys we watch doing this, the guys who make a living onstage, are used to looking pretty good. They're trained to do so.)  "When I 'get there' I'll look and feel just like [insert Christian pop icon here]."  And we have a mind-boggling array of "ministries" that will assist us in the worship of progress, using any means possible.  


But then we do something that Awesome Preacher Guy would never do, and it becomes painfully clear that we haven't made it.  Yeah, God might approve of me and all, but I should still try to put my faith into practice, and people are supposed to be able see the fruit.  Back to square one. 


Those of us who are far more hip than this may word things differently, and present a more nuanced me-centrism, but the principle is the same. I'm the point, God's looking at me, and it's important that I at least try to be good.  Define being good as you please.  Line up all the requisite principles, methods, and imperatives that make it sound "not legalistic."  The ringing voice of the Father that said "This is my Son with whom I am ever delighted," now seeks to say the same thing about me, though he may not if he finds a problem.  Or even if he does, my church friends might not.  The notion is that the "Christian ideal" we're running after is basically characterized as a position or responsibility we fulfill (or ought to) and that part of that responsibility is dwelling on our personal progress.


Take K for instance.  K plays in a Christian band, faithfully attends church, reads his Bible, and seeks to have an edifying presence among his brothers.  And he often does.  He's sharp and witty, but he's nearly always aware that he may be violating someone's standard of how far is too far, of some boundary that must not be transgressed.  He'd like to write a novel, but wonders how he could incorporate themes of his faith into it, as a testimony.  He's smart, but he's aware that one can become "too intellectual" and thus walk in what is simply "head knowledge." Deep down, there's a constant question of whether or not his life, his desires, his actions, are lining up with the Christian ideal. This type of scrutiny is commended by his peers as "sanctification."


But these questions don't lead us anywhere that's creatively honest, or faithful to our own story.  They are, quite honestly, a compromise, in that their destination is perpetual self-involvement.  We stand at the edge of our imagination and see it as a vast chasm into which we dare not leap because someone might object to a cuss-word, or call us lazy or something.  We might justify this as a "concern for our weaker brothers," when what would really make the weaker brother strong is seeing our relentless freedom to be human.  But usually the real reason for not offending another with the human reality of our lives is that we're desperately grabbing for the nearest fig-leaf.  We're self-important, it feels good, and it's justifiable under this banner of progress and holiness.


To be gloriously imaginative without a thought as to whether our work is describably "Christian." Or to how it will be received, what will happen to our reputation. Or to be a mess, if that's what we are- to be a mess in a world for which Jesus was crucified and rose.  That would be honesty.  And it would be the groundn on which it's possible to make more of Jesus than ourselves.  The seasons come, the seasons go.  Yet this "progress theology" asserts that "If I'm truly seeking with all my heart, spring will come a month early."  Foolishness.  Utter folly.  Not only folly, but narcissistic folly.


And that narcissism is labelled, as often as not, sanctification.  


I've often heard it said that those words "this is my Son, with who I am delighted," are for us now that we are in Christ.  And that this is the "big secret" to progress in sanctification. Well, they are true, but they're not the key.  They won't get us where we're headed  because in time, this notion will only feed the narcissism that we never wanted to let go of to begin with.  You see, we're still the center of the picture.  No, I'm afraid we must, like John the Baptist, disappear from sight altogether.


What God the Father does is he still looks at Jesus, and still says of him "I am always delighted in my Son. Isn't he amazing? He is the Man I have been waiting for."  That's what he says about Jesus, and will keep saying about him, forever.  

Quote from Tullian's Book

Thank you Tullian Tchividjian, for this clear picture of a common false dichotomy that is so often presented to us. From Jesus + Nothing = Everything (discovered at Mockingbird): 

It’s part of a common misunderstanding in today’s church, which says there are two equal dangers Christians must avoid. On one side of the road is a ditch called “legalism”; on the other is a ditch called “license” or “lawlessness.” Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, on rules. Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace… This dichotomy exposes our failure to understand gospel grace as it really is; it betrays our blindness to all the radical depth and beauty of grace. 

I believe it’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (I call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (“back-door legalism”)… Either way, you’re trying to “save” yourself, which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects. 

When we believe, deep down, that God’s blessing depends on how well we’re behaving, we wither and groan under the heavy burden of self-reliance. In this performancism, we eventually figure out that being the star of our own show actually makes life a tragedy. When life is all about us—what we can do, how we perform—our world becomes small and smothering; we shrink. To have everything riding on ourselves leads to despair not deliverance.

I've said this before, though maybe less clearly.  It's a theological stall-out of disastrous proportions to frame this issue with "two possible mistakes" requiring that we do a balancing act between them.  Jesus is all.  The Cross answers every type of sin you can think of.  There is no other way but grace, and everything is riding on it, or else everything burns to the ground.  No matter what problem we're talking about.


Too many people wimp out big-time when it comes to holding forth on this glorious truth as it comes under attack. Tullian doesn't seem to pull the punch in this book, as most are inclined to do when speaking of the grace of God in Jesus.  Reminds me of Brennan Manning.  Nice.


Also here's the story of Tullian's trial by fire at Coral Ridge Presbyterian where he succeeded culture war icon James Kennedy as pastor, in which an all-out slander war was waged against him and his family for things like, you know, not preaching politics.  And not wearing a robe.  Church-wrecking things like that.  A true tale of the triumph of the gospel. That's a storm I wouldn't want to weather, brother.

I find it compelling that the phrase "Jesus + Nothing = Everything" seems to have led his church to eliminate the 2 service "contemporary vs. traditional" split, instead of accommodate people's cultural preferences.  Interesting.

Favorite quote from the interview: "There is a fresh I-don't-care-ness that accompanies belief in the gospel."


Maybe I'll go to this conference in February. 

World's Funniest Blogger Alert

Ok. The "Whatever Happened to..." award of the decade goes to:

Brant Hansen.

So out of nowhere, I stumble upon a Frank Viola link to the blog in my Facebook feed.  It leads to Brant Hansen's NEW BLOG, called "Brant's Blog." (Actually, how new is this? How long have you been hiding from us?)  People, this is like Christmas in October.  Brant Hansen, the world's funniest blogger, formerly thought to be extinct, IS STILL BLOGGING!!

Check out his recent commentary of Christian video games.  Rare form, Brant. Rare form.

Sidebar, you just got a lot awesomer.

The Sweep of the Story

Well Scot McKnight, who I come to admire more the more I read, seems to be getting it right these days.  I haven't read his latest book, King Jesus Gospel, but it's a good bet that I will (aside: a book without airbrushed faces, waves crashing on a beach, or someone with their hands raised on the cover = probably a bit more intelligent than the average reader is going to bother with. Hopefully not, though)  The gist of this recent post is the subject of the book:

Now I want to press this harder: the fundamental orientation of the soterian gospel is about the benefits “I” get if I respond. The fundamental orientation of the Story gospel is not about “my” benefits but about Jesus. Embracing the Story gospel brings benefits, to be sure, but we embrace this Story because we embrace Jesus, not because we get something. The entire soterian approach is shaped by benefits.

If the fundamental proclamation is "personal" salvation-- of any kind (sorry, Calvinism vs. Arminianism has never been the issue here)-- than the life that proceeds from that starting point will be notably and sub-Biblically "personal" in its orientation.  Can you say me-centered? When the Gospel is about Jesus, for Jesus, people will only be found looking at their "saved-ness" when the Story happens to take us there, and even when that does happen, there is no chance that it will leave us there, because it's got a Jesus-saturated conclusion that it's driving towards (listen up, John MacArthur).

What does this mean for the practice of the church? I think, and I'm just being arbitrary here, there could be a lot of things to say about this, but I think it means that Christians will have to (re-)discover an interest in history.  In the unfolding story that includes, for the most part, other people's lives that aren't really dependent on our choices at all, and how they as a whole relate to God in Jesus Christ.  And the slack-jawed wonder that provokes. The Gospel, if it belongs to God (as I think McKnight and others are suggesting) is something that we are not to see as locating itself "in" our lives with us at its center.  IOW, for thousands of years the redemptive, salvation sweep of the Trinity's mission in the world has been surging forward under its own power.  That is, the power of God.  Any time you present people with personal choices to "believe" it, or "make it real for your life," or "get from your head into your heart," you may be effectively suggesting that Moses' deliverance from Egypt for instance, or better yet- Jesus' Incarnation, is dependent on your choice to believe God, or to be good, or to order your spiritual practices correctly, or to walk in the Spirit, or whatever. The absurdity of this thinking is humbling, but it's something a lot of people are going to have to come to terms with.

Stick that in your "apply the Bible to your life" pipe and smoke it!