Given the texts for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Max Lindeman’s essay is appropriate reading: Mummies, Miracles and Dry, Dry Bones.
Mummies, Miracles and Dry, Dry Bones
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Category Archives: random tidbits
Reading, Writing, and the Practice of Ministry
I finally got around to reading Jason Byassee’s marvelous essay on reading, writing, and theological education. Drawing on sources as diverse as Basil the Great and Annie Dillard, he reminds us of the importance of both reading and writing to ministry. I especially appreciated his observation that much of what we do in ministry is writing, whether emails, sermons, newsletter articles (in my case, this blog). Much of that is done on the fly. Certainly I rarely take the kind of time I should with my writing. Perhaps that’s why I like to blog. I throw something out there, almost never glancing back except to check grammar and spelling in a superficial manner.
But he says something I find true–that one hasn’t really read something until forced to write about it. I followed that advice when I was teaching. It’s another reason I like to blog. There’s a lot I want to comment on when I read, and I gave up the marginal note long ago.
His essay put me in mind of another piece I came across in the past couple of weeks–Fred Schmidt’s piece on the future of seminary education. I share many of his concerns and wonder about what theological education might look like in thirty or fifty years. It’s outrageously expensive and inefficient. Still, looking back twenty-five years after I received my M.Div, and with twenty years separating that degree from my ordination, I’m reminded regularly both of what I learned in Divinity School, and how appropriate my field education setting was for my current position. On the other hand, other than the seminar on preaching I took with Koester and Gomes that I mentioned a few weeks back, and the work in Greek and New Testament, there’s very little from those three years, other than a trained mind, that serves me. In the end, much of it is about reading and writing.
Chad Holtz lost more than hell… he lost his job
Chad Holtz, about whom I blogged a couple of weeks ago concerning his views on hell, has lost his job in a United Methodist Church. A news article about it is here. He writes about what’s happening to him on his blog, Dancing on Saturday.
It’s a shocking development, especially given he wasn’t working in a Baptist church, but in a United Methodist congregation. Apparently, it’s hard to get rid of a Methodist pastor once they’ve been ordained and attained the status of elder, but since Holtz is still a Divinity student, it was relatively easy to get rid of him.
Ironic, given what the founder of the Methodists had to say:
The requirement for salvation is such a divine conviction of God and the things of God . . . as even in its infant state, enables every one that possesses it to fear God and work righteousness. And whosoever, in every nation, believes thus far, the Apostle declares is accepted.” -John Wesley, “On Faith”
My prayers are with him in this time.
Doubt and Certainty
Mark Vernon writes in The Guardian today:
Doubt in relation to religion is almost mandatory in public life, whereas doubt in relation to politics is almost forbidden.
He is talking about the situation in the UK, of course, but what he says is of interest to me, especially given two issues I’ve been following in my blog–the debate over Rob Bell and universalism and the protests in Madison.
Vernon asks:
If God is not to be a tyrant, but is to allow us a degree of autonomy, must God not introduce a corresponding degree of doubt and uncertainty into human experience?
It’s an excellent question. Certainty, whether in politics or religion, tends to heighten conflict and cause suffering.
Rob Bell and Universalism
There’s been quite the dust-up among Evangelicals about Rob Bell’s new book, in which, according to HarperOne’s marketing, “With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly optimistic—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins…”
Here’s Christianity Today’s take on the controversy.
Rob Bell, for those who don’t know, is pastor of Mars Hill Church, and has produced a wildly popular video series, entitled NOOMA. The series was used for a time by a group at my former parish. Many of those in attendance found him inspiring. Maggie Dawn judges his genius in his ability to communicate rather than in the depth of his theology.
As Dawn points out, universalism is not particularly rare in the History of Christianity, nor even among evangelicals or conservatives. As examples, she cites no less an orthodox figure than C.S. Lewis. It’s an issue that continues to fascinate people, just as it continues to rouse the ire of many. In part that’s because the notion of a loving God who condemns people to hell for eternity seems an oxymoron and is an issue which for many thinking people lies at the center of their discomfort with Christianity.
It’s a question that often comes up in my random encounters with people. Sometimes it’s couched in terms of whether adherents of other religions can be saved. Sometimes it’s phrased as I did it above, as a problem in the nature of God. In either case, it is almost always asked by someone who is sincerely struggling with the issue and is seeking guidance or clues on how to begin to think about the question in such a way that helps them make sense of their own experience and deepest values, as well as their experience of God.
When I respond to them, I try to honor their experience, values, as well as their understanding of God and try to explore with them the full implications of belief in a loving God, and what might limit that love.
Revolution U – Otpor, CANVAS, Burma, and the Egypt Revolution – By Tina Rosenberg | Foreign Policy
A few days ago, I posted a link to an interview with Gene Sharp, the theorist of nonviolent direct action. Here’s an article that details how the January 25 revolution in Egypt drew on his ideas, via a group in Serbia. It includes a fascinating look at work between the Serbian group CANVAS and activists in Burma. Here’s the link:
Revolution U – Otpor, CANVAS, Burma, and the Egypt Revolution – By Tina Rosenberg | Foreign Policy.
Reading it offers perspective into what’s happening in Wisconsin, too. I was particularly taken by the important role humor played both in the downfall of Milosevich and in the workshops the Serbians offered in Burma.
Reflecting on the lectionary with a demonstration in the background
The rally at the Capitol against Gov. Walker’s plans to balance the budget is well underway. It’s noisy, well-attended, and there’s no sign of the National Guard (lots of cops though).
Next Sunday’s reading from Leviticus 19 challenges us to think about what sort of society, what kind of justice we should envision. It demands care for the poor, equal justice for rich and poor, and love of one’s neighbor. Christians tend to personalize such demands, when they attend to them at all, turning them into a guide for interpersonal relationships rather than the vision of a just society imagined in Leviticus and elsewhere in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.
We are also in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus reinterprets Torah, in many ways intensifying its demands, for example, turning the call to love one’s neighbor, into a call to love one’s enemy, as well. One might say that he is reimagining the just society to include not just the people of Israel, but all of humanity.
Such clear calls for justice and love challenge us to think clearly about the society in which we live and what God is calling us to be and do.
There’s another rally scheduled for tomorrow at noon, same time as our Wednesday service.
Hating God
A new book by Bernard Schweizer explores this idea. Those who hate God–Schweizer uses the term misotheist–are not atheists. They believe in God, but the God they believe in “is malevolent or at least incompetent, indifferent—in any case not worshipful.” Among this group Schweizer includes biblical figures like Job’s wife, who counseled him to “curse God and die;” William Blake, and Mark Twain. Schweizer goes into greater depth here.
A review on Christianity Today by Jake Meador prompted this rejoinder from Schweizer.
Not having read Schweizer’s book, it’s not clear to me precisely what his argument is. However, it does seem to me that there is a qualitative difference between an atheist and someone whose antipathy to religion or Christianity, or God is rooted in a fundamental sense of a breech of relationship. I’ve encountered any number of people over the years who have lost their faith, but remain deeply engaged with Christianity (or Judaism, for that matter), who expend enormous amounts of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual energy in their efforts to extricate themselves from faith. In other words, like Job’s wife, they curse God, and want to die. The atheists, new or old, seem to be of a different sort. Their intellectual energy continues to be engaged in the project, but on some level, there is no longer any spiritual, or emotional energy engaged. Perhaps I’m splitting hairs here, but it has always seemed to me that someone who can proclaim publicly that they are an atheist has made a profound break with religious sensibility. To take one of Schweizer’s examples of a misotheist–Elie Wiesel has clearly not done that.
Augustine and Alypius watch the Super Bowl
Garry Wills, provocative as always, on the violence of football.
Blood Lust and the Super Bowl by Garry Wills | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books.
The theological significance of grits
I’ve mentioned grits in at least one sermon in the last year, so I suppose I ought to link to this:
Although I would take issue with the appearance of grits on a plate (not to mention Waffle House) as having anything to do with God’s grace; something about the fallenness of creation, perhaps.
I will eat grits, but they should come from Anson Mills.
Preaching Grace on the Square 