The Little Friar

Several years ago now, I was asked to pray a prayer as part of a community service for Memorial Day.  Standing on the county courthouse steps, in front of that county's war memorial, I mourned the dead and prayed for peace.  I confessed the sins that lead to the deaths of so many.  Once I'd finished praying, someone read the line from John's Gospel (15.13):  "Greater love has no man than this".  I'm always moved when I stand at war memorials.  And yet the awe I feel when I stand at any  war memorial is just as quickly disturbed by another realization:   The brilliant Great War poet Wilfred Owen, in "Dulce Et Decorum Est",  bitterly called it "the old lie" (the translation is "It is sweet and right / To die for your country").  Nor should it be overlooked that Owen took his famous line from an ode by Horace, the Latin poet, the Laureate of Rome -- Rome, the great pagan empire and war machine, one of whose procurators, known as Pont...

I'm thinking this morning about my preaching.  I was asked recently how I'd characterize how I preach.   It's strange, I think, that I never thought about it.  I'm not sure I've ever put into words what it is I do when I stand to preach, not in some existential  way.  I've had plenty to say about preaching generally.  I've taught others to preach, I've evaluated the preaching of young ordinands, and I've sat in humble submission listening to scores of other words.  But what I do and think when I preach?  Not so much.  I've seen and heard lots of folks talk about their preaching.  " I want help in making connection with my listeners, relating the gospel to their everyday lives."  "I want to preach sermons which really hit my people where they live."  And, looking back, I'm sure I felt that way once upon a time.  I know my earliest preaching was in a similar vein.  I wanted to address the culture; I had a lot to s...

Justin Holcomb's Know the Heretics  is a book for every student and pastor's bookshelves.  In a world where the notion of heresy  is equated with any theological difference, Holcomb breathes life into the dusty word and dispels all the misunderstandings.  According to Holcomb, heresy is a "weighty charge" that deserves serious attention in the Church's thinking, precisely because heresy's root is in sloppy biblical reading and exegesis.  This short book introduces readers to the various controversies that have threatened the Church throughout its history.  He gives attention to how each heresy is a mis reading of the biblical witness, and therefore highlights the dangers each heresy poses for the Christian's life and witness.  Whether it's a mis reading of the Law, or a mis reading of the nature of the Triune God, Holcomb has given us a gift -- a gift of thinking again about the spiritual health of the Church that is orthodoxy.  It's tempting to b...

As a college and seminary student, the Old Testament, precisely because it spoke in such earthy tones about salvation, played a pivotal role in shaping my theological vision.  And it was Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah who were most influential in forming my Christian life.  When I took "Old Testament Theology" with Dr Biddle, now Professor of Old Testament at Baptist Seminary in Richmond, that I encountered how to read these texts with depth and how to form a Christian theological vision with them.   And I was shocked with what I read.  Nothing like Luther's polarizing "law" vs. "gospel".  Instead, these prophets spoke words of judgment and loving-kindness from God.  I think the OT is a little used resource, at least in a close reading of the texts themselves, because these texts are often made to serve theological purposes they were never designed to.   Particularly when it comes to describing the nature of God, which seems to me to be the foundational issu...

Occasionally I'm drawn into those Facebook discussions about complicated matters.  My goal is always to discuss the complications openly, to allow the complexities of the biblical account to be what they are -- complex.  While I do think there's a unity to the message of the Bible's diversity, I don't think that unity is about morals.  That would make the Bible about us, we humans.  No, when the Bible speaks with a unified voice, it speaks about God -- a strange, new word that brings together the divine and the human.  That strange, new word is  Jesus . Often discussions about complicated texts will bring in folks who make a claim:  Their particular position is biblical , and therefore "Christian", in a way that mine obviously (to them, at least) is unbiblical  and therefore, by implication, unChristian.  Take homosexuality, for example.   This isn't a post about what I think.  (That's for another day.)  It's about how we Chris...

Robert Crosby's The One Jesus Loves: Grace Is Unconditionally Given, Intimacy Must Be Relentlessly Pursued  is a book meant to refresh and nurture Christian growth.  In a world riddled with those who follow Jesus from the fringes as well as from the heart of faith, Crosby weaves a reading of the Gospel that takes us through the "six relationship circles" that formed around Jesus:  The Crowds of the curious; the 5000 needy; the 70 who worked miracles; the 12 who followed; the 3 who watched and celebrated; and the beloved one who sat with him at the table.  For Crosby, those who desire intimacy with Jesus proceed through those same circles.  And, while intimacy with Jesus is the gift of grace, that same intimacy -- as is true in any relationship -- must be fostered and nurtured in order to deepen.  The book is easy enough to read.  Crosby is a masterful writer whose pastoral heart flows from pen to paper.  None of the 40 chapters is over a few pages...

Theologians are notorious (and not in a good way) for thinking new thoughts.  Rather than thinking on my own about prayer, I thought I'd cobble together some of the Church's best wisdom on prayer.  I haven't tried to track down source references, but I can if anyone is interested.  Two rules from John Chapman:  " Two rules for praying: 'First:  pray as you can, and don't try to pray as you can't.  And second:  the less you pray, the worse it goes.'" The essence of prayer from John Climacus:  "Hunger is the stuff of prayer." The spiritual methods of prayer from Thomas Merton:  " Concerning the influence of scientific method on monasticism:  'The idea was that if you set up the right conditions, a kind of laboratory for prayer, and if you carried out the experiment according to instructions, you would get the desired result.  This concept has by now evolved into the simple pharmacology of contemplation:  you take the right pill a...

Of all the sins, there are some the Christian community most tolerates.  This one is on that tolerable list.   Some months ago, I cared enough about a friend to confront her judgmentalism (Matthew 18 only matters and is possible in a context of care, outside that it's just judgmentalism).  Her critical spirit and condemning attitude was pervading nearly everything -- as judgmentalism will do.  It had even led her to believe this this judgmental spirit was a "discerning spirit", as if she could see others as God sees them.  So I warned her.  That's dangerously close to blasphemy -- assuming our judgments are God's judgments.  It is a dangerous spiritual path for Christians to walk, I said.  And she responded by instantly severing our friendship.  I was judging her, she said, and she had no room for judgmental people.   We haven't spoken in months.  Today, as I prayed for her and her family, I thought of Paul's admonitions in 1 Corith...

In response to that oft-leveled criticism about my writing, I offer Barth's own take on this issue.  We theologians usually hear that our writing should be simple, and address some general audience.  In his Commentary on Romans , Barth writes: Those who urge us to shake off theology itself and to think -- and more particularly to speak and write -- only what is immediately intelligible to the general public seem to me to be suffering from a kind of hysteria and to be entirely without discernment [ halte ich für eine durchaus hysterische und unbesonnene Ansicht ].  Is it not preferable that those who venture to speak in public, or to write for the public, should first themselves seek a better understanding of their topic?  ...  I do not want readers of this book to be under any illusions.  They must expect nothing but theology.  If, in spite of this warning, it should stray into the hands of non-theologians -- some of whom I know will u...

Making Marriage Simple , by co-authors and therapists Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, is a delight to read! It contains much of the advice I've said to countless couples in pre-martial and martial counseling for the past 17 years.  That advice, admittedly, isn't advice you regularly hear from other books making the marriage improvement rounds.  "Incompatibility is grounds for marriage."  "Conflict is growth trying to happen."  "Negativity is invisible abuse."  But the advice in the book is forged out of years of counseling couples and working together as a team toward their own healthy marriage. Bathed in that deep wisdom, this book is a simple, what I call "bathtub" reading.  Sit back and relax.  The style is flowing, even if the advice will cause you to bolt up on occasion.  I particularly enjoyed the artwork.  It helps convince me -- this is a book for every couple! Our culture is steeped in bad relationship wisdom.  Divo...

Genesis 22 has always been a tough biblical story for me.  Commonly, in Christian circles, referred to as "the sacrifice of Isaac", I found the story rightly horrorifying.  That God would demand  that a father sacrifice his son.  Even if it's just a test.  The request alone seems cruel and inhumane.   So what to do with Genesis 22? In his Fear and Trembling , Kierkegaard wanted to understand that same anxiety experienced by Abraham -- and by extension, me, the reader -- in the story.  The sorts of "infinite resignation" expressed in Abraham's hope, Kierkegaard said, is the very heart of religious faith.  " There comes a moment in a person's life when immediacy is ripe, so to speak, and when the spirit requires a higher form, when it wants to lay hold of itself as spirit.  As immediate spirit, a person is bound up with all the earthly life, and now spirit wants to gather itself together out of this dispersion, so to speak, and to transfigure i...

Speaking about death  and dying  is a problem for Christians these days.  "What a way to go" is a phrase I heard several times yesterday.  And it seems odd to me.  Death is all around us.  Not that we don't try to beat it -- by ignoring it.  We do.  We belittle it.  We joke about death.  Like WC Fields, we'd love to find "a loophole" to the Great Judgment and Equalizer that is death.  But there isn't.  I know why we Christians do it.  Because we're what I call " practical atheists ".   We joke about death.  Some of the funniest stories I've ever heard are funeral anecdotes recounted by the drivers of hearses on the way to and from the funeral home.  People have  always  joked about death, because people have always  feared  death, and jokes and laughter are a way of whistling in the dark on the way to Hamlet's "undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns".  But thing...