The Little Friar

One of the pastoral tasks I'm called upon to perform on behalf of the Church, with a certain degree of regularity, are weddings.  And, inevitably, since I'm a minister, that means preaching  at weddings.  That act leaves open a question:  What to say? Here are a few notes for a "general" sermon on marriage.  1.  Why  get married in a church when you can do it at a fashionable hotel, an atmospheric castle, or a sunny beach abroad? 2.  Because the rumor of "God" persists, even in our post-Christian culture.   While celebrity is now regarded as a career option, wealth a vocation, and cosmetic surgery the fountain of youth, nevertheless, in the wake of this ubiquitous cultural banality, some silly people will go on asking, "Is that it?" -- and sense that no, it isn't, sense that there's something more, often because in times of great joy or deep trauma -- at the birth of a child (or grandchild) perhaps, so outrageously loved, or after a dreadfu...

From the Baptismal Rite from  The Book of Common Prayer : Question:  Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Answer: I renounce them.  Question: Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?  Answer: I renounce them.  Question: Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? Answer: I renounce them. We don't talk a lot about renunciation in Christianity.  Conservative Christians talk a lot about "being forgiven" but they don't talk a lot about renunciation.  Progressive Christians talk a lot about "justice" but they don't talk a lot about renunciation. The Latin root of the word renunciation means "to protest against".  The contemporary definition of renunciation means "the formal rejection of something".  Synonyms of renunciation are:  Abstention from, refraining from, going without, giving up, eschewal of, repudiat...

I spent the latter part of my childhood in a home where my parents were quite accustomed to "swearing" -- using "blue" words to get across their very colorful ideas.  In seminary, I studied with Stanley Hauerwas.  Stan, as the many who know him, is the son of a Texas bricklayer, who's also a theological ethicist.  Stan's language is usually shocking, precisely because he swears.  I don't swear.  What's more, I intentionally discipline my speech from swearing.  Because I follow Jesus, nonviolence is inherent in being a Christian.  Such nonviolence also tempers my temper and disciplines my speech.  There are two ways I think about this issue -- using swear words.   First, there's a list of words I just won't ever use.  Then, there's a list of words that may be used in context.  That makes it easy to go through life thinking about what I'm saying.  Using God's name disrespectfully is obviously off the appropriate list.  But t...

To be human is to be contingent . This comes first because it's ontologically obvious to me, as well as deeply problematic (read the Existentialists).  One way or another, we all know  we're not necessary, that our lives are hardly made by "our choice".  Whether life is a fast ball we're thrown or a slider into home plate largely depends on our faith -- the trust we place on the world outside ourselves.  That's the difference between a Kierkegaard and a Camus.  Because we live with the knowledge of our contingency.  Me?  I think we're gifts of God -- each and every one of us -- who are meant to live as gifts in the lives of others, doing all the things gifts do (like bringing smiles to faces, hopeful expectation, joyful exasperation, etc.).  We act like we're self-made, self-cause, indispensable, independent, as though our non-existence is inconceivable.  It isn't.  We act, in other words, like God; which is why we are, at our hearts and...

Outline for a book on dogmatics: "Father!":  The whole of Jesus' life, together with his death, is expressed in that one word. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the Father's reply:  "Son!" The breath by which these words are uttered is the Spirit. The Holy Trinity is the occurrence of this discourse, the history enacted in these utterances. The creation is the free and surprising opening-up of space and time by this divine discourse. The Church is the community enfolded in this discourse, swept up in the breath of these utterances. The final consummation is the animation of all creatures by the breath of this discourse. All Christian speech and action therefore begin and end with the same word:  "Father!"

Know you know: " If one were to describe the whole orthodox apologetic effort in one single sentence, but also with categorical precision, one might say that it has the intent to make  Christianity plausible .  To this one might add that, if it were to succeed, then this effort would have the ironical fate that precisely upon the day of triumph it would have lost everything and entirely quashed Christianity ...  To make Christianity plausible is the same as to misinterpret it" (Soren Kierkegaard, Book on Adler ).

I've been attempting over the past few days to lay out what unapologetic preaching looks like.   Let me turn to that event most discussed (as Evidence That Demands a Verdict  in building The Case for Christ ):  The Resurrection of Jesus.  Is this event something we can prove  either  historically (e.g. Pannenberg, NT Wright) or probabilistically (e.g. Richard Swinburne) or scientifically (e.g. various nutty apologists)?  In my view, such proof is neither possible nor even a good thing.  Resurrection isn't a natural or historical possibility, but it is precisely a contradiction  of the whole order of the possible.  It's not one event alongside other events within world-history, but it is the  end  and  boundary  of history as such.  I'm not talking here about all that silly Deism stuff that insists the universe is Newtonian and therefore a closed system.  "Divine intervention", as most readers here know is a...

Or, why it's wicked to solve the problem of evil.  Or, what to preach about doom, gloom and the cross.  Nowhere does apologetics get more off course than when theologians and philosophers attempt theodicy , trying to solve the "problem of evil".  Let me lay out today, as part of my continuing exploration of what unapologetic  preaching looks like, why that's the case.  My thesis is this:  Any  biblical theodicy (defence of God in the face of manifest evil and suffering) must at some point be eschatological , that is, it must refer to the future for which Christians hope.  Let me clarify.  I begin with three biblical characters who each acutely faced the problem of evil in their experience, not simply as an intellectual puzzle.  Joseph, for being an arrogant prat to his brothers, is sold into slavery.  Twenty years later, he ends up being in the position to take revenge and humiliate, enslave or kill them.  Apart from a little t...

A couple of years ago, I had a sustained discussion with a "Jesus myther" on Facebook.  The "Jesus Myth Movement", for those unfamiliar, is a modern movement among skeptics and critics that Jesus wasn't a historical figure; instead, he had been created, whole-cloth, from older a syncretic amalgamation of older religious traditions in the ancient world.  According to "Jesus Mythers", Jesus is a myth.  I tried, at the time, setting out all the historical reasons that argument is problematic.   So today I'm not recreating that argument.  Instead, I want to demonstrate what a non-foundationalist, unapologetic preaching of Jesus looks like.  Let me do that by addressing two primary arguments I hear a lot.  First:  " I don't think there is a good reason to believe in Jesus as the Christ because the accounts of him are historically non-convincing for two reasons (a) these are not his accounts but accounts of him from flawed men ..." This com...

Preaching, I wrote recently, is done "without apology".   Someone reading that couple of paragraphs rightly asked, "So what do you think about Christian apologetics?" For those of you unfamiliar with it, Christian apologetics  is the task of mounting a rationally convincing argument in defense of ( apologia  in Greek means "a defense offered at court") the Christian faith.  I think that's a misbegotten enterprise at best.  But, on my more snarky days, I think it's crap.  I have no room for a foundationalist, rhetorically-convincing logical argument that someone convinces our culture in a compelling way to rethink Christianity.  Which is an odd  position for a Christian theologian and pastor to take.  So, over the course of the next couple of days, let me lay out why I think thus.  Today, I want to talk about the hollowness of apologetics as a whole.  I believe the Christian message is concerned with  truth  -- and tha...