The Parable of the Sea

The Parable Of The Sea from Adam Haas on Vimeo.

God is calling us to do less.

Recently, a good friend and spiritual guide, Mark Love, has used his blog to explore a new metrics for determining the health of churches that are leaving the attractional model and the promise of megachurch for a more missional approach. Numbers of conversions, baptisms, and contribution can be helpful to some degree but are not the most reliable or revealing barometers of whether a church is healthy and thriving in God's will and Spirit, especially in a post-christian culture. 

His first three metrics were great: 1. Diversity, 2. Openly Seeking Partners in God's mission, 3. Open Dialogue on Tough Issues. To be honest, these three even made me feel good. I think most of that had to do with me seeing that the church that I help lead has been making wonderful strides on these three points in the last two years. Even if I didn't feel we had accomplished these fully, I did feel affirmed that we were on the right path toward being the church that God has called and gifted us to be. 

But then, on Tuesday, he posted his fourth metric: Simplicity.

Is your congregation--and its members--intentionally pursuing simplicity? My hunch is you're not. My hunch is that church, for a lot of your members, is just another place in our cultural landscape where people are being asked to do more.   

I think the absolute spiritual challenge of our age is related to simplicity. Taking intentional steps to slow down and pare down are crucial for paying attention to God. And there's no other place where people are going to be asked to do that. Not at their work, not in their kids' lives, not in the media they consume. Church has to be the place where that happens. 

Happy feelings = gone. #RealTalk: Mark Love is a buzzkill. (I love you, Mark!)

Not only was I challenged by his call to simplicity, I actually commented on his blog some feelings of just how challenging this has been to put into practice. I mentioned how I had been trying to create just this influence among our church leadership, and had met ideological agreement followed by practical opposition. We all thought it sounded like a great idea, but we couldn't do it--wouldn't do it. I was perplexed at the time, but had several other things keeping me busy so I let it go for a while. Then the blog post convicted me. And then, I received this honest email from one of my close friends on the leadership team at our church who had also read the blog on Simplicity:

Do you know what he's talking about?  I mean, I understand what he's saying but I don't have a clue how to do what he's suggesting.  If I don't understand it, I can't do it and if I can't do it, I can't model it for anyone else - FAILURE!!!!    HELP!!!!!

I must admit that I need to simplify - I'm tired out, burned out and ready to try something else - I just don't know what that looks like b/c I've been on this treadmill so long - its the only thing I know.  But I also know that its not the right thing or the only thing - I just don't know what the other thing is.  I do know that what we are doing now doesn't look a whole lot like anything Jesus ever did.

Bingo. Did I mention already that Mark Love is a buzzkill? I might make shirts that say this.  

I know they'd sell.

Seriously, though. I feel exactly like my friend. I struggle with how busy we make ourselves and how we seem to be just another voice complicit in our culture's frenetic race to actually run ourselves to death. Sabbath is such a foreign concept that instead of embracing it's (non)practice as a part of the rhythm of life, we generally study those parts of scripture and satisfy our selves by discussing the technical timing of it in the Jewish way of counting days--apparently, by making this point, we can say we have not out-rightly ignored it.  

But simplicity is hard--especially on the communal level. Maybe your church is different from mine, but our church calendar is super-full. We have so many events and offerings on our calendar that we can't even get out of our own way. 

Often, we have so many events in the same weekend (or even on the same day!) that we struggle to fill all the necessary volunteer spots needed to pull them off. And that is what we do most often--pull them off. We rarely do something so well that we celebrate it as a complete victory; rather, we usually get to the end of an event breathing a sigh of relief, slouching exhausted against the office hallway walls, giving tired high fives for surviving and pulling it off. 

Deep down, I think we feel the weight to justify our existence to the world (but more likely to our members and ourselves), so we keep ministry efforts happening around the clock. We feel guilty for the days when the building sits empty or unused. Oh, we know that less is more (which is also  true about presentation slides, fellow preachers... but that is another blog post). And we know that by doing less we can do it more faithfully and with greater impact and effect. And we know that by doing less we can relieve our volunteer corps from feeling so over-worked and burnt out. 

We know we need to simplify, but none of us want to be responsible for it. As a leader who is "responsible" for how "my" church is doing, one of the hardest things to believe and embrace is this: 

Our church needs to do LESS.

The truth is that a lot of people in our pews and in our leaderships at many of our churches equate simplicity with laziness and complacency. Let me give you an example: 

I am responsible for the adult ministries at our church. I was recently questioned by several shepherds as to why the empty-nesters group does not have events and projects like the other lifestages (families with children, families with teens, college/young married, etc.). It was not aggressive or overly critical, but I did take a small amount of heat for not having stuff on the calendar. My response was that there is already too much on the calendar, and my group was busy being every other event's volunteer staff. I explained that any event on the calendar requires planning, resources, and volunteers to make it happen. We don't have any extra time, resources, or volunteers for any more stuff on the calendar. They seemed to get it somewhat, but they still wondered why my ministry was the only one not actively "doing something." 

Now imagine being the youth minister or children's minister at a church like ours. What would be the backlash if they trim back their calendar of events? Can't you hear it: "Why don't you care about our teens? Now they only have one night with God and six out with their friends each week." Or, "I remember when we tried to get our kids to love being at church... now it seems like you hardly want anything to do with them." "Shouldn't someone be doing something to reach our community?" Is it fair to open our ministry leaders up to this kind of unfair criticism? 

Being the ministry leader that opts for simplicity is often the same thing as being the ministry leader who is labeled lazy or a quitter or not passionate enough. Who wants that reputation? So we keep the treadmill going. We keep packing our calendar. We keep tripping over ourselves. And we keep bemoaning that our disciples do not embrace volunteering as eagerly as the more faithful disciples of back when things were better. 

God forgive us. God save us... from ourselves. 

The King Is Coming

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

The promises are over a thousand years old, and all of the prophecies have led to this moment. But the words have been misunderstood at best, and forgotten at worst. The world hustles busily and noisily along, and the hardly anyone notices as it happens. A child is born in a stable in a nowhere backward town that only Micah could have noted and no one could have remembered. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

He heals the sick, he gives sight to the blind, he makes the lame walk… and they ask: could it be him? He proclaims the good news of a new kingdom that is already here, but not yet fully arrived, but he speaks in parables and stories… and they ask: isn’t there something different about the way this rabbi speaks? He preaches with authority, but lives in humility; he fights sin, but lives in radical peace; he casts out demons, but welcomes sinners; he comforts the afflicted, and he afflicts the comfortable… and they ask: by what authority does he do these things? Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

A handful of disciples spread their coats on the ground before him, wave palm branches at him, and sing a song or two of deliverance. But as he approaches the temple, it is empty. No welcoming party, no glorious fulfillment, no pregnant expectation… just empty. He takes a short look around, and then he leaves. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

But this time people are watching. They watch as my Jesus is beaten and whipped. They watch as my Jesus carries his cross through the streets. They watch as he is insulted, spit upon, and reviled. They watch as he collapses under the weight of the cross. They watch as he is led up the hill of Golgotha. They watch as he is nailed to the cross and lifted up in shame and agony. They watch and they curse him as he blesses and forgives them. They watch as the world chokes the life from the only one who can save them from death. They watch as he is called a king, and they spit at the name. They watch as he dies. They watch as his side is pierced. They fear when the earth shakes, the sun hides its face, and the curtain of the temple is torn in two. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

They had run—scared for their lives they scattered like sheep without a shepherd. They had hid—fearing that they would meet the same fate as their master. They had given up—the one they had followed was dead, the hope they had shared was nailed to a tree and thrown in a tomb. They had watched God die. What else was there but despair? As Sabbath ended, the women went to provide a proper burial for their master. But he was not there. The stone was rolled away. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

The disciples watched as he returned to his heavenly throne, and they spent their lives—every remaining year, month, day, hour, second, breath—proclaiming his glory and salvation only to be executed and exiled every one. They preached it in every town, they wrote it down for all to read, and they passed down the stories as faithfully as they could. And yet, the world is once again hustling busily and noisily along. And it will be a day just like this one when it happens—because my Jesus is coming soon. Will you be ready to behold the King?

Because the King is coming.

                                                                                                                                      

This meditation was given on Palm Sunday 2013 at the Rochester Church of Christ. 

A Story Worth Telling

Every night, my son and I have a ritual. We brush our teeth and get in our pajamas. We sing a song, then we say a prayer. And then I tell him a story. 

For a while he wanted the stories to be fancy and sprawling in scope including everything from dragons and knights to talking animals and of course potty humor (he is a five year old boy, after all). but lately he has wanted the stories to be "real." He asks for stories of relatives and friends, or historical people like presidents and national heroes. Being a history major, I am glad to oblige--after all, these are easier to recall than the adventures of Walter the Brave and Heroic but Occasionally Flatulent Hippopotamus. As a matter of fact, the real stories allow me the best opportunities to talk about things that actually matter most. The real stories are stories worth telling. 

This has never been more true than last evening. 

Last night at bedtime, Cooper and I went through our routine and settled into bed for a story. Seeing as how we had the day off from school because of it, I decided that I wanted him to know about who Martin Luther King, Jr. was and why he was important. 

We wrestled for the first few minutes just getting Cooper to say his name correctly--it does have quite a few syllables to it, not to mention a suffix. After finally getting it right a couple of times, I actually started the story.

Inexplicably, Cooper listened more closely than usual as I explained that he stood for what was right even when people around him got mad, and that he said that we should treat everyone fairly and rightly regardless of what they look like, and that he chose to love the people who hated him and even hurt him, and that his voice was not silenced even when he was killed. 

I will never forget when Cooper said, "He was a lot like Jesus." 

I was so proud, "Yes he was. He was very important. You know that you are important too. And I hope you are always a lot like Jesus. Good night, baby boy. I love you."  

I left the room as he recited the name over and over to remember it: Martin Luther King, Jr. I am glad he knows that name. 

Short Album Review: Muse, The 2nd Law

All in all this album is a big step backward for a band that has been on the leading edge musically and lyrically in rock music for the last few years. At times this album sounds way overproduced in all the wrong ways, especially in the some-record-suit-told-them-what-to-sound-like way. Sometimes it sounds like Muse trying to sound like U2--at best, this sounds listenable but is untrue to who they are. At other times it sounds like Muse trying to do '80s influenced pop-rock (think INXS gone wrong). At its worst moments it sounds like Muse fronted by Neil Diamond (yes, I know that was mean). Matt Bellamy has a great voice and is only 34, but in this recording his voice sounds past its prime often, especially in the lower registers. Lastly, they should not have let two songs be sung by others in the band. That made them sound like an average band.

The only time this album rings true is when the band employs their penchant for overly-dramatic operatic musicality with dystopian lyrics alongside an extraordinarily well-fitting dub step influence. It is the only natural next step/progression musically on the entire album. Sadly this only happens two times on the album, once as a cameo in a song and most perfectly (and fully) in "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable"--the best song on the album hands down.

While it is okay at best, the album is a real disappointment given how incredible the last three albums have been for the power trio of agnostic anarchists. Sometimes I wish they would go back to sounding like Radiohead.

The Dark Knight of the Soul - Theolgoical Engagment with the Dark Knight Trilogy

[SPOILER ALERT   ***DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY AND WANT TO DO SO WITHOUT KNOWING THE CHARACTERS AND STORY LINES THAT ARE CENTRAL TO THE PLOT.***]

Many thought-provoking and engaging pieces have been written exploring the social ramifications of Christopher Nolan's Batman films in terms of political commentary and engagement with American politics, and especially the war on terror. I will leave the political commentary to the experts, but I do want to engage the theological undertones of the movies.

One of the most powerful elements to the narrative construction of the Dark Knight trilogy is the way in which the story engages and wrestles with questions about human nature itself. While there are plenty of explosions and action scenes, the real genius of the movies is not the fantastic special effects, talented casts, or the superb fight choreography and chase scenes. The conflict in the story is not so much about controlling the buildings of Gotham, the money of Gotham, or even the politics of Gotham, so much as it is a battle for the soul of Gotham.

In the first film, Batman Begins, we encounter Bruce Wayne who is plagued by his anger and guilt over the murder of his parents when he was a child. Perhaps the most telling testimony to how great this film gets is that it more than recovers from the fact that the man who killed them is actually named Joe Chill. Wanting to rid the world of injustice like his own, Wayne eventually travels to China where after some strange turns of events he is welcomed into the League of Shadows which is lead by Henri Ducard and Ra's al Ghul. Being trained to fight "600" attackers, Wayne is developed into a powerful vigilante. It is only once he is inducted into the League of Shadows that he learns that the group intends to destroy his home town of Gotham city because of its corruption. In fact, they say later that they originally try to destroy Gotham financially by creating a broad gap between the wealthy and the poor (their plans to destroy the fabric of society by creating disparate classism were overcome by wealthy families such as the Waynes' charitable and civic minded giving and sharing--yeah... political commentary may be involved in that). With this having failed, the League then decides to destroy the city the old fashioned way--by physically killing them with poison. Unwilling to allow Gotham to be destroyed, Wayne declares that Gotham still has good people in it.

To protect the city of Gotham, destroy the drug trafficking of the organized crime bosses, defeat the League of Shadows, and protect his love interest, Rachel, Wayne creates the Batman alter ego. In one of the most intriguing lines theologically, Rachel tells Wayne who has made a fool of himself publicly, "It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you." After Batman saves Rachel later, she asks who he is under the mask and he repeats the lines to her again, "It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you."

The League of Shadows is an objective force of "justice" that arbitrarily determines who is wicked and who is not--who should be destroyed and who should not. The League of Shadows sees nothing wrong with executing the entire population because they deem the entire population to be corrupt. Notice that the League of Shadows believes they are good because of who they are underneath, and cannot conceive of how their own actions reveal who they are--the villains. Batman, on the other hand, protects the people of Gotham because there are good people there. Yet, Gotham is a hive of criminal activity, a hotbed of organized crime, and full of not-so-innocent people. They need the Batman so much that even Rachel recognizes Bruce can't be Bruce until the Batman is no longer needed. For now though, there indeed is a battle for Gotham's soul.

This becomes particularly evident in the second film, The Dark Knight, which was seen as much darker than the first film. In particular, people were shocked by the darkness of the main villain of the second film, the Joker. The Joker is a maniac who takes over the organized crime of the city through chaos. Interestingly, he repeatedly frustrates the organized crime bosses of Gotham because he sees their crime as inconsequential and shortsighted. Unlike them, the Joker is not out for money or even power really. Rather, his particular motive seems to be making a philosophical point about human nature. The Joker wants to prove that the difference between good people and bad people is actually an illusion propped up by the niceties and structures of modern society. He surmises that when chaos undoes these structures every person reveals themselves to be selfish, self-serving and evil. In a chaotic environment, people stop trying to the good thing. In theological terms, the Joker espouses a profound total depravity. Thanks to socially conditioned structures, people put up the facade of doing good, but instinctively will do evil when these structures are removed.

Perhaps the best example of this in the film is in the scene toward the end of the film when two ferries have been packed full of people escaping from Gotham--one boat is filled with "innocent" civilians, while the other is filled with convicted prisoners. Each boat is loaded with explosives, but the detonator to each boat is held by the people in the other boat. The Joker threatens them that both boats will be blown up at midnight if one has not already blown the other up. He then leaves them about 25 minutes to decide what they will do with the lives of the folks in the other boat. Will self-preservation force them to willfully and knowingly eradicate the lives of the passengers on the other boat?

Added to this conundrum is the dialogue of the scene in which the passengers on the "innocent" civilian boat start to clamor that those convicts had their chance and now they're locked up for good reason. Why should we innocents die protecting the guilty? The convicts on the other hand seem ready to dispense with the civilians--after all, aren't they the morally compromised people? Eventually the "innocent" civilians take a vote which overwhelmingly favors blowing up the prisoners to save themselves. Yet even after counting the votes a voice of dissent speaks softly but clearly, "But we're still here." The prisoners--the guilty ones--had not yet detonated the civilian boat, so how could the "innocent" civilians justify their actions. Meanwhile, a prisoner on the boat of criminals has taken the detonator from the warden and thrown it out the window removing the possibility of saving themselves. By 12:00, neither boat has killed the other, and the Joker has been located and contained by Batman so no harm comes to the boats. But more crushing to the Joker was not losing a fight to Batman, but seeing that his anthropological suppositions failed.

Still, even the Joker is willing to cede this battle, because he is confident that he has won the war. By taking the white knight of virtue--Harvey Dent--and turning him into a villain and killer, he has won the war for the soul of Gotham. Startlingly, although Batman defeats Two-Face (Harvey Dent's criminal persona), even Batman believes that if the city of Gotham is shown Dent's true failings--his compromised virtue--then the city will despair and give up trying to be good. So he supresses the truth about Dent, takes the blame on himself for what has happened, gets rejected by the people of Gotham, and perpetuates a false myth about Dent that eventually carries Gotham's politicians to virtually eradicate organized crime from Gotham's streets. Still, this conclusion to the story reveals that the Joker was more right than the boat incident revealed. Ultimately, only a lie could keep Gotham good--the chaotic truth would undermine their goodness.

The Dark Knight Rises in many ways doubles down on the depravity of the previous film. This film introduces a new villain, Bane. Bane is similar to the Joker in that they are both bad guys, they both care little for personal gain, and they both question the very moorings of social community. But in many ways, Bane's character represents a distinctly different position from that of the Joker. Whereas the Joker wanted to prove that instinctively everyone is evil, Bane's anthropology seems much darker. Bane locates the meaning of being in the ability to freely cause suffering in others.

Bane is an anarchist. His understanding of law is that it oppresses--hence his speech outside the prison calling for the liberation and release of all those convicted by the "Dent Act." In the speech he calls for freedom from a system that monopolizes control of the privileges of justice to the socially and fiscally mobile. Like Joker, he is undressing the social structures that make distinctions between the good and the bad people, but his motive is not to prove that all are bad. His motive is to show that good and bad don't really matter--only freedom matters. Bane believes that anarchy--the right of the people to have no ruler--is the only true form of freedom.

But Bane is no lover of freedom for freedom's sake. He knows full well that the lack of law and order will decimate people and bring out their depravity. Bane has no plan to enable a new, free Gotham where the have-nots share equally with the haves. Bane intends to blow them all up with a nuclear warhead regardless of what they do. You see, Bane's anarchy is not an ideological expression of higher being; rather, as the self-proclaimed true expression of the League of Shadows (trained then exiled by Ra's al Ghul himself) he is showing humanity that it has no right to even exist.

Through the lens of his experience in the pit prison, Bane comes to learn that hope only exists to make the suffering of life more painful. His life inside the pit was taunted by the hope of escape, all he had to do was climb the wall and he was free. But after he was out of the pit, he was not free. His life outside of the pit was entrapped by a new hope that he would become being a part of the League of Shadows. But this hope proved painful too as even after mastering the training Bane was then exiled by his master. For Bane, hope was always a tease, never a reality. Hope was illusory. When he calls the people of Gotham to freedom, it is not to give them liberty, but to give them hope. He gives them hope so that he can destroy them both in mind and body.

Bane locates the meaning of his life in causing suffering in others. An odd comparison could be made the rat Boticelli Remorso in the book The Tale of Despereaux (not the movie, please). Remorso says that the meaning of life is in causing others suffering. Bane may not say it, but he lives it.

And yet, here is where Nolan's trademark complexity and genius is best displayed. In spite of his twisted understanding of hope and suffering, Bane's whole life is in one sense altruistic. He has forever been protecting the one truly innocent thing he had ever seen--the baby girl born in the pit prison. He fought for her protection enabling her escape, and for his altruism he was maimed and disfigured and forced to live in agony behind the mask that would dehumanize him forever--"No one cared who I was until I put on the mask." Now exiled from the League of Shadows, Bane still exists to serve and protect the little girl from the dungeon. It is actually her plan to destroy the city. It is her bomb. She is the daughter of Ra's al Ghul avenging her father by carrying out his plan to destroy the people of Gotham for their corruption and evil. Bane serves her out of devotion to her.

Of course, all of this is somewhat obscured by amazingly fun and visually stunning films. It might be hard to look past the costuming, cars, and explosions... the super-villains, henchmen, and bat -gadgets... but somewhere in the midst of all of this is a narrative raising questions about the very nature of humanity, morality, and being. It raises some wonderful questions, if we are brave enough to try and engage them. I don't know if Batman can save your soul, but there is certainly more here than your typical Hollywood blockbuster milking the cash cow (... I'm looking at you Matrix trilogy). Thanks to Christopher Nolan for writing that actually matters. Thanks to God for movies that actually mean something. That's rare these days.

Jesus and the community of God

I have a friend who occasionally tries to say what he believes in less than 120 seconds. It's his own exercise in reminding himself of what is the point of his faith. I think that this is a healthy exercise. Problem is, this is not an easy task at all. To sit down and try and write to you what Jesus means to the community of God in a blog is somewhat incomplete at best, pretty arrogant at any rate, and probably impossible at worst. Aaron Weiss of the band mewithoutYou states the difficulty best when he exclaims:  

Oh, what am I to think

of what the writing of a thousand lifetimes could not explain

if all the forest trees were pens and all the oceans ink?

I was raised being told I should believe the gospel, and I should obey the gospel. I now live to preach the gospel and equip others to share the gospel. But what is the gospel? 

I had a professor who rightly pointed out that one of the best questions a church can ask itself is: 

What do we have that is so good that it is a shame that people have to live without it?

However you answer that question, that is the "gospel" your church has for the world. 

Some of you might answer that question by saying, "Well... what we have is the good news of salvation." And that is a fine answer, but it leads us directly to another good question: If we are saved, what are we saved from? 

All of this to say: set the clock for 120 seconds... Who is Jesus? 

Ready... Go. 

Yes, I believe that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. Yes, I believe that Jesus lived a sinless life--the model for all of humanity. Yes, I believe that Jesus is the head of the church which is his body. But none of these things is the most pressing story I have to tell about Jesus. 

I believe that in a word, Jesus is LIFE! 

When humans first sinned the final repercussion in Genesis 3 is the introduction of death. Adam and Eve are removed from the Garden of Eden and lose access to the tree of life. From this point forward what has been the story of creation--the story of life--is co-opted by the story of death. 

In Genesis 4, Cain murders his brother... 

In Genesis 5, the genealogy introduces a phrase repeated over and over: "and then he died." 

In Genesis 6, the flood waters drown out life almost entirely. 

In Romans 6:23, Paul says that "the wages of sin is death." In fact, from the Garden forward, death is what sin does. Sin has one trick: death. So strong is the connection and correlation between sin and death that Paul can't help but describe it as a law. (Romans 8:2). 

This is the bad news... death is real, present, and universal. 

So what is the good news? God is the God of life!

The gospel of Jesus is that life wins! The gospel of Jesus is that death has lost its sting and has no more victory. In fact, this is the substance of the preaching of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:22-24). Death cannot reign if Jesus is king. Or consider how Romans 6:23 ends: 

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

 Hear Romans 8:1-2:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 

We believe that Jesus died for us all to take away our sins, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is not simply that Christ died for you. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that Christ is risen and death no longer reigns because the risen Jesus is the king!

When we were removed from the Garden, we lost access to the tree of life. But thank God because through Jesus we have been raised to new life. And it gets even better. Read Revelation 22:1-5 and you find out that in the presence of God in eternity we are reunited with the tree of life.

I love the simplicity of the confession in 1 John 5:11-12:

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

God is the God of life!

 

Christians, if this message does not get us excited, then we can pack up, close up shop, go home, and never bother to come back.  Jesus is the presence of life at work in the world. In Jesus we meet the God of life--and that is good news.