The Little Friar

We inherit quite a bit of our theology-in-practice from the songs we sing. I was talking last night with a friend about the nature of "contemporary worship" vs. "traditional worship".  Some folks claim that "contemporary worship" is really the only way the Church can go forward in training up disciples in the 21st century.  That "traditional worship" (by which is normally meant the liturgical depth and breath of Christian faith as it's spanned the centuries and globe) is dry and meaningless. Fred Edie has said elsewhere that a theological diet of "contemporary worship" is akin to a diet of Doritos and Mountain Dew.  Tastes great, but it's not filling in the long run, nor is it even healthy.  I think he's right. But the metaphor I use is taken from Bonhoeffer's Discipleship .  Bonhoeffer articulated the difference between "costly grace" and "cheap grace".  To quote Bonhoeffer at length: Cheap grac...

Over the past few weeks, Americans have been faced with a dialogue about race yet again.  What's more, we're missing the opportunity to reflect on the ways in which our very real racism is having very real effects on our selves and our culture. And for Christians I blame the sin of self-deception. The Bible clearly warns against self-deception.  Take, for example: The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17.9). The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, 'Who can bring me down to the ground?' (Obadiah 1.3). If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself (Galatians 6.3).  In the past, warnings about self-deception were everywhere.  Nowadays, though, it's faded from view -- particularly in our Christian communities. Christians worry about a great many vices but we rarely warn against self-...

I still lament Saturday's verdict. But, even as I lament, I pray for my neighbors. The deceased Trayvon Martin and his family, George Zimmerman and his family, the prosecution, the defense, the judge and jury -- they are all our neighbors.  If we take Jesus seriously .  Those with whom we disagree, get frustrated with, or harbor anger against -- they're still our neighbors. Our enemies, in fact, are our neighbors. This is why Jesus insisted we show mercy toward our neighbors.  No one's excluded. So what am I to do with the anger about the verdict.  Maybe this helps: Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?  Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?  You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder.  And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.  You do not have, because you do not ask (James 4.1-2). So what question should we ask? The one th...

I've owned an iPhone now since last October.  It was a gift from Kendra for my birthday. Since then, it's become apparent to her -- and more and more to myself -- that I may bloody well be addicted to the device. It's possible that I have an actual psychological addiction to Facebook.  The sort of thinking that leads me to perpetual page refreshing seems eerily akin to the behavior of rats who want another seratonin shot and keep pumping that pedal.  In some ways, Web 2.0 is a tool -- that will suck out my soul if I let it.  It allows me a way to be "friends" without actually being friendly -- a key temptation for an introvert such as myself.  Then there's the added problem of apps -- stimulation vs. sensitivity.  Our culture is addicted to stimulation (Kurt Cobaine's "here we are now, entertain me").  However, the more stimulated one gets, on movies, gadgets , music, etc. the less sensitive they become.   Something, spiritually sp...

A couple of days ago, I made the argument that Jesus's response to Peter about forgiving "seventy times seven" was a reference to the Jubilee.  More specifically, the Jubilee of Jubilees. I'd like to extend that analysis by connecting Jesus's instruction on forgiveness to the very first reference of "seventy times seven" or "seventy seven" in the bible -- Lamech's Song of the Sword. The Song comes after the sin of Cain and Cain's exile.  From there the descendents of Cain are named and among them is Lamech.  In the middle of this, without any real context, Lamech gives what has been called the Song of the Sword (Genesis 4.23-24): Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times." Again, we don't know any of the background here.  We don...

One of the most protracted arguments that's taken place throughout Christendom over the past century has been the place of women in the Church.  When it comes to egalitarian gender roles in the church most people go to Galatians 3.28, "there is no longer any male or female".  That text is huge for me, but the one I regularly go to is this one: But Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them.  But among you it will be different.  Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20.25-28). I find a lot about the gender roles debates to be distracting and off-topic.  What does it mean to be a man or a woman?  What are our proper "gender r...

Sometimes, it all boils down to something very simple.  For me, it's sin and mercy . Over the past 24 or so hours, I've had reason to feel lots of things -- particularly at the way in which certain folks have been sinfully treating me for some time.  And responding with mercy. Jesus constantly preached mercy .  It sounds like an abstract theological principle, but I'm clinging to it, afloat in what is an overwhelming sea of human sin. What's more, this overwhelming sea of human sin is inexplicable.  Whenever I try to explain the stupidity, vanity, meanness, thoughtlessness, shallowness, duplicitousness and self-absorption of myself and others I am, more and more often, using this shorthand assessment:  "It's just sin". Which makes me sound like a Christian fundamentalist.  But language matters , so let me try to parse how I mean this statement. "It's just sin" isn't meant out of rage or judgmentalism.  Instead, I use it out of pi...

I'm an Episcopalian.  In the circles where I run day to day, that's as odd as seeing a Night Parrot .  Not exactly extinct, but certainly close to it. I'm an Episcopalian, who has a very odd relationship with his tradition. There it is.  Once I qualify the sentence, you can begin to see why I'm not quite extinct, "but certainly close to it". I'm asked, on occasion, if I can just simply join the Methodists. Well, turns out it's not that simple. When the gospel doesn't matter Christians tend to default to the dominant language of the American culture:  Consumerism.  That is, people think about church in relation to their likes and dislikes.  They like peanut butter and they don't like cauliflower.  They prefer vanilla ice cream and they don't prefer rocky road. In my circles, you hear a lot of this in relation to the worship service and the preaching.  Basically expressing likes and dislikes about what happens on Sunday morn...

Many think that in Jesus's first sermon he compares his life and ministry to the year of Jubilee. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.  He stood up to read,and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.  Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." (Luke 4.16-19). Again, some think that the reference here in Isaiah to the "acceptable year of the Lord" -- where the oppressed are set free and freedom is proclaimed to the prisoners -- is an allusion to the year of Jubilee described in Leviticus 25. The Jubilee was to be the Sabbath year of Sabbath years.  Every seven days the Israelites were to cel...

A few months ago, as Kendra was evaluating her options for returning to school, we began working with an admissions person from a university which shall go unnamed.  According to that person, one particular form necessary for completing an admission folder.  Form completed and returned.  Four times.  And after several frustrating phone calls, being pitched from person to person, a resolution comes. That, my friends, is a tale of how the demonic works in our world. Bureaucratic structures love to dehumanize us. One of the demonic forces in modern life is how we are increasingly interacting with each other through bureaucratic systems.  When I find myself yelling at the person in front of me it is very likely that I'm not really mad at this particular person.  Rather, I'm yelling at an agent of the system.  An agent who, after work is over, will go home to his or her family for dinner.  And maybe he will stop off at a liquor store to get...

Over the past weeks , I've attempted to make a case for my position on spiritual warfare -- particularly for recovering a theology of "the principalities and powers" and therefore articulating a theology of revolt.  So, let me summarize that argument and make a few observations. First, a summary: God is love.  This means that God is weak in the world, not exerting top down power over the world (there's no such thing as omnipotence , and it's a good thing, too).  Thus, love exists among a plurality of antagonistic powers, forces of violence and dehumanization, forces we'd call "satanic" in that they are manifestations of anti-love (and, thus, in the Christian imagination anti-Christ). Creating outposts of love in the world -- making the Kingdom of God come to earth as it is in heaven -- thus involves constant, daily struggle, a spiritual battle and war that is both moral and political, social and individual. And critical to keep in mind ...

Bonhoeffer's account of Christian pacifism has always been convincing to me, grounded as it is in the Sermon on the Mount .  If I weren't a disciple of Jesus, such nonviolent resistance probably wouldn't be very convincing. So it was a surprise to me to hear one of those radio preachers (I didn't catch a name, but I know he was a local preacher) speaking about the "myth of Jesus' nonviolence".  According to that preacher, Jesus never practiced nor encouraged others to practice any form of pacifism. That made me wonder:  Why is it that drawing on actual biblical material is unconvincing? The more I draw upon biblical instruction and source in talking about nonviolence, the less palatable it seems to become.  It's as though in so speaking, one by no means builds bridges of understanding.  Instead, it's more like putting up a wall, brick by brick. That seems odd to me. It's okay to talk "politics".  There's at least some na...

I want to turn to Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity".  After having spent a good deal of my own academic career with Bonhoeffer, he's become an important theological mentor.  And this phrase, unfortunately, is often misunderstood.  Pardon this rather long post, placed beneath the fold, but it's been ruminating in my head for some time. Upon their publication in 1951-1952 Bonhoeffer's letters have stimulated a great deal of speculation, commentary, and head scratching -- particularly in reference to his notion about "religionless Christianity". Some were disturbed (then and now) by what seemed to be a liberal turn in Bonhoeffer's thinking.  It bothered people like Karl Barth that Bonhoeffer seemed to be saying things that sounded like Tillich and Bultmann . For many, it was hard to reconcile the "liberal" Bonhoeffer of the Letters and Papers from Prison with the "orthodox" Bonhoeffer of The Cost of Discipleship ...

Today is July 4th.  Doubtless we'll see so much flag-waving, fireworks-displaying, hot-dog-eating patriotism.  Today, I want to take a different perspective. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, after spending time as a student in the United States, wrote that American Protestantism is "Protestantism without Reformation".  What he meant by that is, Americans find a happy synthesis between their faith in God, their political ideology, and their commonsense moral reasoning.  For US, faith in God is indistinguishable from faith in country. July 4th says that we love to celebrate grand gestures.  All those great events filled with admirable courage.  Even while we gloss over the savage violence and cold exercises of power.  That's because the history of memory is always written by the victors.  To quote WH Auden's coda from his poem, " Archaeology ": From Archaeology one moral, at least, may be drawn, to wit, that all our school text-books lie. What t...