The Little Friar

When we eat food we take something from outside out body and incorporate it into our body.  What was once something distinct from our body becomes a part of it.  However, the Eucharist meal does something very weird and backwards. "Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf" (1 Cor 10.17).  When Christians share in the Eucharist we eat bread and, of course, it becomes a part of our bodies.  But in the process, the bread -- the body of Christ -- also consumes us.  By partaking of the body of Christ we are united to that body and are constituted as part of it. That is, to say the least, very strange!

The practice of biblical Sabbath is, as Walter Brueggemann has suggested , a resistance to the principalities and powers of the world.  If you give up on the capitalistic and consumerist "rat race", in order to nurture the physical and psychological resources to fuel further resistance , making us increasingly available for both community and prophetic ministry, I guarantee you'll get noticed in our culture. Because you'll feel the shame involved in not keeping up.  Make no doubt about it, Sabbath is spiritual warfare.  With the rise of capitalism our culture has been infected by what Alain de Botton has called "status anxiety".  Which is to say, shame is the fuel of capitalism.   Capitalism feeds off of this neurotic anxiety, using fear to create wealth and abundance but leaving us physically exhausted, psychologically broken and spiritually depleted.  Which is why we call it the "rat race". Conservative Christians like to think tha...

It Was Me All Along:  A Memoir is unlike any other weight loss book I've ever seen.  While most are quick to get to the weight loss victory, Mitchell has given us a book free of weight shaming or condemnation.  It doesn't take the quick road to victory.  Instead, she has given us a story of suffering and survival, of coping and coming to grips, accepting being "the fat girl" and then making lasting changes.  Being fat is really misunderstood in our culture.  A person's size might be more of an indication of deeper problems and is a cloak of protection as it was for Andie.  "I built walls around myself with bricks of cake, using frosting as a mortar" (p. 68).  Just like in food writing, often food is the conduit through which to talk about deeper truths.  Unlike alcohol, food addiction isn't something one can abstain from consuming entirely. And it's here that Mitchell's story will mirror so many others.  Weight often accompani...

John Maxwell's Leadership Handbook:  26 Critical Lessons Every Leader Needs is a collection, as the title suggests, of 26 "lessons", or short chapters.  But beware, these chapters are not for quick reading.  These lessons demand methodical study for any leader. And what they contain is ever-practical advice regarding leadership.  Having the knowledge is great, but wisdom is to be found in the application of what you read.  That's particularly true here. Maxwell suggests that leaders read one chapter each week.  And experienced leaders should take two weeks for each read.  I think that's fine advice. Maxwell hammers home some major points for leaders to know and understand as you go through this leadership-improvement process.  I'll leave those to readers, but as a foretaste, some ideas from his Introduction:  (1) leadership is the willingness to put oneself at risk, (2) leadership is being dissatisfied with the current reality, (3) ...

Being from East Tennessee, I'm a sucker for a good story, complete with the drama of clans.  So I'll begin with a quote from the Didache :  "There are two ways: a way of life and a way of death, and the difference between these two ways is great".  I was asked today what makes Scripture, Scripture , particularly in light of the well-intentioned criticisms that I make about the so-called violence of the Old Testament.  What I outlined when asked was what I call a "kerygmatic hermeneutic", or otherwise called "the hermeneutics of life". Here's what I mean. A "kerygmatic hermeneutic" is one that begins with the confession that Jesus is "Lord and Christ" (Acts 2.36).  Only when we've made that confession do we then begin to read the Law, Prophets, Writings, and even the rest of the New Testament.  The confession -- the kerygma , or proclamation, as Peter and Paul and the rest call it -- is fundamental.  It comes first....

As I sit this morning, gazing out the office window, I realize how significant the confession of our faith:  "I believe in God:  The Father, almighty creator of heaven and earth".  That confession was perhaps the first as a child to explode my theological imagination.  I mean, think about it, that's perhaps the most radical of theological claims to emerge out of the Old Testament and find its confirmation in Jesus' own teaching. I realized this yesterday when preaching the graciousness of God.  I'll spare you the details of the sermon, but in looking yet again at Jonah, I realized just how big a confession it is to claim that God is the "maker of all that is, seen and unseen". Once Israel began to see YHWH as the Covenant God who creates everything, there's a destabilization of various theological arrangements and settlements.  God is not simply some tribal god, and hence a god who works against the attempts to capture and tame God. At the ...

This is a question I found myself asking again this morning.  I preached a sermon that found me asking whether I owed God an apology.  Now that I've had the afternoon to stop and think how I might answer that question, I've come up with a few ideas: Exegetical insight -- the "I didn't know I didn't know that" moment   Theological depth -- people want to talk about God, not what the preacher did last week   Liturgical awareness -- always keeping in view the place of the sermon in the life of the Church Connection -- relevance and resonance   Passion and persuasion -- help me feel the joy of the Gospel Exegetical insight I read two texts this morning.  On most other Sundays, we read three texts and respond with a psalm.  Congregations assume we do that for a reason.  The preacher's first task, I think, is to make that reason clear.  That's not done by recapitulating what they just heard ("In today's reading Jesus is ...") u...

Hi Qi, "Jesus Calling the Fisherman" For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken. How long will you assail a person, will you batter your victim, all of you, as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence? Their only plan is to bring down a person of prominence. They take pleasure in falsehood; they bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. Selah For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Selah Those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath. Put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes on robbery; i...

There are doubtless other ways of understanding our Lord's words, Why ask me about the good?  No one is good but the one God (Matt 19:17).  Provided however they do not favor belief that the Son's substance, by which he is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:3), is of a lesser goodness than the Father's, and are not otherwise at odds with sound doctrine, we may cheerfully use not merely one interpretation but as many as can be found.   For the more ways we open up of avoiding the traps of heretics, the more effectively can they be convinced of their errors. -- Augustine, De Trinitate I.31

Shepherding God's Flock:  Biblical Leadership in the New Testament and Beyond is a collection of essays intended to "take a step back and to consider what the Scriptures teach about leadership".  The recurring theme -- that of the pastor as shepherd -- aims to demonstrate what the biblical notion of church leadership looks like.  So the ultimate goal and rationale for Shepherding God's Flock is both a justification and a guide for a specific view of leadership in the local church. Benjamin L. Merkle and Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament scholars at Southeastern and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, respectively, grant up front that this work is written by contributors who are confessional Baptists, and thus "are convinced that the Baptist understanding of church government comports with the Scriptures".  With that in mind, the first four chapters highlight the biblical notions of "elder" and "shepherd" in an attempt to offe...

For this week's "Ask Me Anything": Does the Bible really affirm the ordination of women? This is honestly a difficult argument to make, because several biblical passages seem to argue against it.  Then again, that Gentile believers may be righteous apart from observing the Law of Moses was an even more difficult argument to make, since many more biblical passages (including some in the New Testament) seem to argue against that.  However, the first generations of Christians made it.  A difficult line of reasoning may still be the right one. Of all the New Testament's writers, it is Paul (and those who may have written in his name) who is most directly responsible for both the limitations the Church has put on the participation of women in leadership and liturgy, and the insights through which those limitations have increasingly been removed. Some Christians believe Paul must be sidelined or overturned in order for women to be ordained.  In some ci...

Ernst Wiechert's Tidings is a novel that's not for the faint-of-heart.  But it's also a genuine treasure that deserves a place among some of the great books of twentieth-century literature. The novel depicts Baron Amadeus von Liljercons, who works as one of the best literary portraits of a nation's conscience -- in this case, Germany during and immediately following Nazism.  At the end of the War, the Baron returns home from a concentration camp, to his former estate, only to discover its occupation by American soldiers. Wiechert served five months in 1938 in Buchenwald, and the Baron's difficulties in adjusting to a life of freedom in a shepherd's hut, are undoubtedly related.  It's the world that the Baron returns to -- that Wiechart himself returned to -- that is the real genius of Tidings .  The guilt and reconciliation that are the heart of the story make this one of the best narratives of what a genuine Christian theology of forgiveness might ...

Easter Stories:  Classic Tales for the Holy Season is a collection of short stories for all ages. All of the stories in this collection share the rich Christian imagery of life through death.  In a world that co-opts Easter for stories of the Easter Bunny and painted eggs, Easter Stories contains the best collection of stories for Lent and Easter imagery that I've ever read.  Included here are short stories from CS Lewis, Leo Tolstoy, Clarence Jordan, Selma Lagerlof, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Goudge, Maxim Gorky, Ruth Sawyer, Walter Wangerin, among others.  My favorite of the collection is from Andre Tocme, "How Donkeys Got the Spirit of Contradiction". The book opens with a poem written by Jane Tyson Clement, "Carol of Hope".  It sets the tone for the book.  And the original woodcuts by Lisa Toth make this a collection for younger ages, too. Easter Stories is a book for families, to read and share year after year.  It a real treasure for Chris...

Eberhard Arnold's Why We Live in Community is a fascinating book.  Arnold himself was a German pastor who founded the Buderhof Community.  This little book, one of his many writings, addresses what we might now call an intentional Christian community .  Arnold's vision is far more radical than one we might find in the contemporary American church.  That's because Arnold takes the early Christian commitment to becoming "pilgrims in a strange land" seriously.  That vision sees the Church as the "family of God", and bases that vision on a close reading of Acts 2 and 4.  For Arnold, the relationships and connections to others name the Christian faith at its most essential nature.  And those connections then reframe how we view possessions, among other things. The question that kept coming back to mind as I read Arnold -- and Thomas Merton's later reflections on Arnold -- is quite simple:  Why don't we live in such communities now? Is the id...

I arrived, yesterday afternoon, home, finding a note on our door.  The note had been left by the property manager for the apartment complex in which we live.  The note was to schedule a meeting to recertify our lease for the coming year. In the note, that meeting had been scheduled for 12 noon -- on the day of the note . Obviously, we weren't home when the note was left yesterday morning, sometime after 8.  And the note wasn't found until 4 pm. So, I proceeded to the office to register a complaint. Now, mind you, this isn't the first time I've lodged a complaint against this particular property manager.  After multiple emails and phone calls, I gave up just yesterday morning (before I got the note, in case you were wondering) in another matter.  I'd been asking to meet with the property manager and the district supervisor, in order to resolve some concerns.  That meeting was never scheduled -- we had to follow "the chain of command", I'd been...

Pornography is a multibillion dollar industry in America.  And since the 1970s it has become increasingly more abusive, exploitative, and demeaning toward women. This trend, and the fact that more and more men are becoming addicted to porn's dehumanizing and violent content, is a key thermometer about what is happening to the American moral imagination. Is porn the soul of America? As porn has gone mainstream, ushered two decades ago into middle-class living rooms and dens with VCRs and now available on the Internet, it has devolved into an open fusion of physical abuse and sex of extreme violence, horrible acts of degradation against women with an increasingly twisted eroticism.  Porn has always primarily involved the eroticization of unlimited male power, but today it also involves the expression of male power through the physical abuse, even torture, of women. Porn reflects the endemic cruelty of our society.  This is a society that does not blink ...

This past weekend, I attended an event from one of those quite-popular Christian teen rallies.  The music from City Harmonic was amazing.  I'm not normally a fan of contemporary Christian music, because so much of it contains lyrics that tend to be emotional more than faithful.  But not City Harmonic. It was the preaching that left me jarred, though. There are lots of Baptists and evangelicals in east Tennessee.  Because of that, I've grown accustomed to attending religious events and listening to the standard evangelical appeal to respond to the Gospel.  Specifically, if you want to respond to Jesus, you're expected to pray for forgiveness, invite Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior, and prepare for a life with him in heaven.  There seems to be a nearly-obligatory question:  "If you died tonight, do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether you'd go to heaven?" And that question nearly always -- no, if I'm honest, it always ! -...

Last night, I received this question for "Ask Me Anything".  Serendipituous, too, that I was going to write on something like this anyway, after last night at Resurrection. First, the question: Why did you choose Christianity?  Why choose a religion at all?  Isn't religion just a cop-out?  How can the Christian God be thought of as "good"? Vulnerable Christians in our current intellectual climate often hear these.  First, and most directly:  I didn't choose Christianity; Christianity persuaded me.  Nor did I choose it as "a religion".  I don't believe it's helpful to see Christianity as "a religion".  It was only recently that people began to see Christianity as "a religion" anyway.  "Religions" in this culture are more like the pagan religions of the Roman Empire than the Christian faith that refused to take its place among them as one option among others. Christians see everything in the co...

I'm thinking a lot about forgiveness lately.  I'll spare you the details, but this passage, from John 20, keeps coming back to mind: On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"  After he said this, he showed them his hands and side.  The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you!  As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."  And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven ". My Catholic brothers and sisters don't squirm when they read that.  But I do. I squirm because Jesus' audience here isn't just a few rag-tag group of disciples gathered around him.  No, his audience is wide.  As wide as the Ch...