Book Review: “Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” by N.T. Wright

Easter is the biggest celebration on the Christian calendar.  But what exactly are we celebrating?  More specifically, what are the concrete ways in which the resurrection actually matters in this world here and now?   This is a question that N.T. Wright addresses head on in his book “Surprised by Hope”, and he does so with such precision and eloquence that one cannot help but to reconsider what they think they know about Easter.

The main objections Wright has with how Easter is currently understood (esp. in the contemporary West) is how the church treats Easter either as a guarantee that believers will go to heaven when they die OR as an inner subjective reality unrelated to a real physical event.  Easter as understood in the early church and in the New Testament is neither of these things, in fact, not even close.  Both adopt a pseudo-Gnostic and Platonic worldview wed not to biblical precedent but to the dualism of Greek philosophy and the ‘modern’ West.  Dualism separates the spiritual from the physical and this is precisely what the event of resurrection deconstructs.  It is because Jesus Christ rose from the dead that the physical and spiritual are wed in such a way that it points us forward to a time where God intends heaven and earth to collide as one.  The bible calls this “new creation”.

This isn’t bad news for people who believe in heaven, its just that heaven isn’t the point and never was.  At least not heaven in the sense of a sweet, bye-and-bye, pie-in-the-sky.  New Creation is the point, when heaven meets earth, all things are set right, and God by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead raises all people bodily for judgment and the renewal of all things.  Wright understands that words like “judgement” and “bodily resurrection” can sound off-putting and mythological to the ‘modern’ West, but he exposes our attachment to false categories and illogical reasoning.  Judgment is a necessary ingredient to justice: a world set right, a world where God rights all wrongs, heals all hurt, and releases the weak from tyrannical and unjust oppression.  Bodily resurrection, no matter how fanciful and ‘out-there’ this may sound, is precisely the hope of all Judeo-Christian belief, that death is defeated not simply from a spiritual or disembodied point of view but from a physical and bodily point of view.  A disembodied life in ‘heaven’ is incomplete.   A new world, just and true, populated by physical bodies (albeit, transformed physicality) is the vision of Scripture.  And Jesus’ resurrection, Easter Sunday, is the signpost, the promise-maker that this day is not just a hopeful possibility… it is our destiny.

This, of course, raises all sorts of questions about specific Bible passages (like the ‘paradise’ spoken of on the cross) and theologies (Wright takes Rapture Theology to task with no apologies), as well as questions related to the how, when, and so what.  Wright doesn’t pretend to know how or when, he simply points out that the physical resurrection of Jesus points us forward to a new world that stirs a hope within us for the here and now (he also addresses disembodied life after death in a way that really knocks around our categories).  The ‘so what?’ is that God’s people, the church, and all those touched by resurrection hope can become now what God intends all creation to become – new, whole, transformed, missional.

More importantly, Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t simply tell a story about what will happen some day, far and away, but what is happening now.  When he rose from the dead, it was the dawn of a new day, a day when new creation was inaugurated.  A just, true, and whole world isn’t just something that is going to happen (although we do look forward to the ‘day’ of complete and radical renewal) … it is already happening, peaking out like the light that emerges before sunrise.

The ‘new day’ that dawned that first Easter means that you and me can involve ourselves in the stuff of new creation right now.  And because it’s new ‘creation’ (heaven meeting earth) and not just a spiritual, immaterial quasi-paradise, like harp-playing-cloud-dwelling-chubby-angels might suggest (how most people think of heaven), everything we do in the here and now matters.  Politics, education, family, church, business, relationships, and yes, the healing and wholeness of our inner selves is all the stuff of new creation.  All the stuff that has possibility even now of being touched by the new reality Jesus’ resurrection introduces.

True, not everything is perfect, in fact, in the last century we have witnessed atrocity (hell on earth) time and time again.  But theodicy (the problem of evil) doesn’t negate inaugurated eschatology (God’s new world breaking in here and now).  The new world may be a hidden reality, and people, by turning their backs on a just and true God and inaugurating their own selfish and twisted projects, may go on stirring up hell; but God’s goodness, mercy, and transforming grace are still ever-present.  There are places in time, matter, and space where we may indeed experience a glimpse of new creation – a place where the curtain between heaven and earth seems thin.

Further, those ‘thin’ times and places can be pursued, brought about by those who have been kissed and enlivened by God’s Spirit, as they work (and it is work) for justice, mercy, wholeness, and healing in a dark world.  This is Wright’s message and application: that  though the darkness can seem thick, the dawn has broken, the resurrection of Jesus is the light of the world.  And we, through faith, hope, and love can turn toward the darkness with the courage and stamina of people awaiting the renewal of all things, empowered by the Spirit, seeing today in a completely new light.  That is the message of Easter.

7 Questions Good Friday Asks the Church

For one to two hours on Good Friday, millions of worshippers across the globe gather to experience the liturgy of the Stations of the Cross – each one a gospel passion narrative scene that invites pause, contemplation, and response.

Within a beautiful sanctuary, stained glass windows allowing daylight to to create kaleidoscope patterns on the dark wood walls and pews, I sat, listened, sang, and reflected.  It occurred to me that several questions emerge when we’re allowed to sit with this ancient, provocative story long enough to feel its weight and consider its message.  I must say, these aren’t the only questions or even the best questions that emerge after such reflection, but they are questions that I believe the contemporary Western church must answer.  And they aren’t easy.

 

The Postmodern Question (John 18:33-38)

“What is truth?” Pilate asks a bound Jesus in response to his statement, “for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth”.  For a long time, the church has preached and acted as though it has had a commodity on truth, but in a postmodern, post-Christian, pluralistic society this attitude is antiquated in the public sphere.  Christian theology, also, has always recognized its limitations to approaching questions of ultimate truth, however, this hasn’t always been the praxis of the local church.  So what is truth?  It certainly isn’t simply propositional, as modernism assumed.  Is it relational?  Is it accessible?  Is there a difference between the truth of science and the truth of religion?   These are huge questions concerning our philosophical commitments as a society and as a church and ones that need to be explored if the church is to really engage the postmodern world.

The Gender Question (Mark 15:40-41)

Mark makes no apologies for noting that while the 12 disciples had run, scattered, and denied to save their own skin, the female disciples of Jesus were present at the crucifixion.  It’s a detail that is often overlooked, the fact that woman, in both the passion narratives and the resurrection narratives, are featured so prominently.  In conservative circles, there is an interpretive bias toward viewing woman in leadership through the lens of Paul’s practices to specific contexts in Corinth and Ephesus, while neglecting to hear the testimony of the gospel writers and Paul when he addresses Rome.  On the other hand, in liberal circles, people flat out ignore or de-canonize significant texts that when interpreted with context in mind, could be valuable resources for helping the church understand how to carefully navigate the question of gender in a way that honors both equality and difference.  The gospel writers are radical and revolutionary for featuring woman as the primary witnesses of the crucifixion and the first evangelists of the resurrection.  So how can the church honor woman in ways that highlight their contribution as spiritual leaders while still acknowledging their gender-related uniqueness?

The Economic Question (John 19:23-24)

The Roman soldiers divided and cast lots for Jesus’ clothing and tunic though just a few scenes earlier they were openly mocking him and his so-called royal status.  John mentions that this is in fulfillment of a reality portrayed in the Psalms.  Flash forward to today, the Western church uses the majority of its resources to finance its own agenda including its buildings, payrolls, programs, and stuff.   This creates a major moral strain in light of the growing awareness concerning global inequality and the hells on earth created as a result.  Granted, the Roman soldiers were pagans who were crassly mismanaging the garb of the true King, an irony we cannot overlook.   But neither can we overlook how the resources of the church are leveraged despite the fact that, theologically, the church is to reflect the equality of new creation.   How will the church leverage its resources to promote God’s justice on earth as it is in heaven?  Its a question she cannot afford to neglect.

The Heaven Question (Luke 23:39-43)

 

The Historical Question

 

The Mystery Question

Theological Reflections: Confirmation Retreat 2012 (Pt 2)

“Ministry is the unexpected messiness of well planned mission.”  If that’s true, then an evaluation of the mission strategy and a reflection of the messiness is needed, ideally within an interpretive community.  The mission strategy for our confirmation retreat involves these four central components: Christian teaching, worship, team-building, and play.  The intention or purpose is that these adolescents confirm their belief in Christ and the church as rooted in their participation in the sacrament of Baptism at their birth.  The messiness, of course, is where the real spiritual battle is, but the strategy of mission is vital and deserves critical reflection.  A word, then, about each of these components.

Over the course of our 44 hour retreat we have six planned sessions where Christian teaching takes place.  One of the strengths of our teaching format is the variety of teachers we involve: our Senior Pastor, our Pastor of Discipleship, and our two youth directors (self included).  This expresses our theological commitment to expressing the Gospel through diverse means; in this case, diverse voices.  Another strength of our teaching is the way those teaching sessions flow within the overall time frame of the retreat.  One session is the night we arrive, three the following morning through lunch, one the last evening, and one during the final morning.  We engage three central topics during the retreat over the course of these six sessions: the identity of Christ, the meaning of Baptism, and the meaning of Holy Communion.  Our choices in topics have their strengths: they are consistent with the overall confirmation experience and they direct our teaching energies toward our purpose.

I am a firm believer in a few teaching axioms.  One is “Less is more”, which means, negatively, that if you are attempting to accomplish too much in a teaching you actually accomplish less then you would had you focused your attention on little.  This holds especially true when teaching adolescents, but should be recognized across the board.  Its amazing to me, considering their respective tasks, how little the gospel writers pack into their respective stories about the person of Christ.  Mark goes through three years of the most important events in Christian history in 16 chapters.  Of course, we realize upon examination that Mark’s brief, terse, action-oriented writing style is formulated and arranged by a means so loaded and thoughtful that we can spend hours unpacking the significance of a single event.  Likewise, in my mind, our Christian teaching should be formulated and arranged so that it is loaded yet brief (in terms of time), simple (in terms of its focus), and action-oriented (in terms of its application).

Of our three teaching topics, our greatest focus over the weekend in on the identity of Christ.  We pinpoint Peter’s confession of Jesus’ anointed status (Messiah) in Mark 8 as a Scriptural marker in our processing the identity of Christ.  Exegetically, this helps narrow our field of teaching.  Still, though focused on a particular text, this Christocentric theme over the weekend gets blurred or even overpowered by our personal narratives (faith stories) that we share with our confirmands.  More intentionally connecting our stories to the text we are teaching might be one way we streamline our teaching and actually say more.

I believe the single-most valuable step we could implement in our plan of action toward teaching is collaboration beforehand.  A few of the questions that didn’t get explicitly answered over the weekend were: how do all these topics (baptism, holy communion, identity of Christ) connect?  How do our personal narratives influence how our chosen text (Mark 8:27-33) gets interpreted and interprets us (dialectically)?  How does the identity of Jesus and our participation in the sacraments propel us to Christian action in our world at large?

Then, of course, there is the messiness of our own stories as we share them, messiness that cannot be taught as much as caught.  Messiness that reveals our mysticism and our theology (for better or worse).  Even more, there is the messiness that leaks out during the retreat that reveals our character, our attitudes, and our personal application of the reality of Christ and sacrament.  This is the messiness that teaches or subverts our teaching plan over the weekend.

Theological Reflections: Confirmation Retreat 2012 (Pt 1)

As I took a stroll along the paved path, admiring the green rolling hills and crisp sunshine wetting them with gentle rays, I thought of a quote I once read (albeit roughly), “Ministry is the unexpected messiness of well planned mission.”   That quote became a reference point for me while at Walker Creek Ranch in Marin County, CA during our Confirmation weekend.  The  ranch itself is a glorious location for a small retreat with its lack of cell phone service, its noticeable efforts to promote environmental sustainability, and its various plain but day-light drenched meeting rooms.  The ranch staff were helpful, friendly, and overall unseen except when you needed them most: meal time.  The meals were unusually nutritious and quite delectable.

The quote, however, is really about a plan of action on the part of our youth staff and pastor of discipleship to create space for intentional Christian formation / transformation on behalf of our 9th grade Confirmation class.  And this plan of action, however ‘well-planned’ it may have been, is simply the framework for an otherwise unpredictable weekend – the dynamics of a community of people, adolescent and adult, coming together on retreat.   The unpredictability is what gives this retreat, and every retreat, its unique messiness.   Its a messiness that is both positive and negative, divine and demonic, but nonetheless profoundly human.  That is the power of a retreat, a power that cannot be underestimated.  Powerful transformation or hurt can happen in 48 hours of well planned mission.

There were times where our plan was seamless and clean.  Take, for instance, this morning’s worship service, which required our community of adolescents and adults to construct and perform a Sunday morning liturgy all within a span of about two hours.  All the elements are there, prepared for us, but it’s up to us to create the ‘sacred space’ that leads us all to an intentional encounter with God.  It is quite meaningful to engage a project like this alongside adolescents.  The service was sometimes loose and silly and other times heavy with spiritual insight.  Specifically, our reading, reflection, and discussion around a piece called “A letter from the Father” was soaked with profundity – a fine example of a reflective, Christian community.   As I think back to that space, created in an otherwise plain yet day-drenched room, tea light candles flickering around the elements of communion, faces turned toward each other in a semi-circle of comfortable presence, I remember experiencing something mystical, something other, weighed down as it was by the power of the dynamics of the community and my position in the community.

Those dynamics, as I said above, are messy and unexpected.  I’m still trying to process most of them; interactions involving competition, laughter, rebuke, play, confrontation, tender discussion, and retreat banter (banter covering the spectrum of youthful randomness, that child-like ridiculousness that can only arise out of a youth retreat: supermarket freezer aisle, serves you right mr. poopy pants (a la Quelf), “he got served as sausage the next morning”, “I was having a food-eating competition and you just lost”).  Anyone who has ever been on a youth retreat knows.

A critical reflection of our retreat reveals the ways in which the messiness exposed my own messiness and that of others; times when individuals in our community, self included, leaked both the Spirit of God and a spirit of self-preservation, envy, strife, and rigid carelessness.  Some of those are difficult memories to both process and determine a further plan of action.  Some are desolation.  An important reminder for me is that God is in all of those events and memories, both the desolation and the consolation, doing what God does: calling, exposing, and reforming.   My interaction with a leader this very morning is the most difficult for me personally.  My remembering a potentially perceived roughness when correcting a 9th grade girl is another.

There are two main elements of the retreat experience that I am evaluating.  There is the plan, which I could say much about, some celebratory, some constructive.  Then there was the messiness, with which much needs to be processed, ideally alongside the other adults on the trip.  The unexpected messiness is where the real battle is, where the transforming God and the rebellious human spirit collide in dramatic fashion with spiritually-loaded ramifications.  The well planned mission is the framework for that messiness, providing it resources, energy, and diversity.  It is within such frameworks that the messiness becomes a divine mosaic.    Some of it is beautiful, some ugly.  That is the reality of ministry.

A time to dance?

As I reflect on all that is being said on the death of Osama Bin Laden, I end up feeling a bit lost.  It can’t be justice, can it?  As if this guy’s death somehow vindicates the deaths of thousands of people both in the US and in Afghanistan?  It can’t simply be anti-Christian either.  Does Jesus’ call to love our enemies apply  to the government under which the people of God find themselves?

The government has a God-appointed job to do (cf. Romans 13:1-4).  God, in his goodness, has given the power to administer justice to the rulers of our world.  And the rulers of this world will be judged accordingly.  What a gargantuan responsibility!?  Its no wonder followers of Jesus are called to pray for such rulers.

Perhaps the government did do the ‘right’ thing in taking down Bin Laden.  Perhaps not.   I think we are fortunate -  the responsibility and power God has given us is different.   We’re not the rulers of our world, even though all of us have a certain degree of power.

And what can really be said about anyone’s death.?  It is a tragedy.  It is a curse.  This much is for sure, the death of one man is not justice.  It doesn’t  tip the scales back in balance.   This is why I’m hoping for God’s justice – God’s righting all wrongs in this world.  (Also, I can honestly say that I hope to amend my ways when I consider God’s justice.  Even though I’m called a saint in the good book, I don’t always act like it).

And the celebration, the parading in the streets, the emotional relief over the internet – this is pure Western egocentrism.   We are quick to criticize and find repulsive the parading of foreigners flashing anti-American messages on their streets, yet we resort to the same antics when our enemy is reportedly dead.  Are we really that different?

Too many of us, and this goes well beyond this event, fail to consider that we are often blinded by our own prejudices.  Further, we also have done violence.  We also have robbed the poor and needy.  We also have enjoyed the all the pleasures this world has to offer on the backs of foreign people’s children.  This is why God’s justice is something to be hoped for and something to sober us up.  There’s no room to celebrate.

And as followers of Jesus – the people of God, the church –  we are not called to make definitive claims about the goodness of a military act.  Nor can we say that the death of anyone, no matter how evil, is an act of justice.  Support our government.  Certainly.  Pray for our government.   Absolutely.  But share in our government’s violent victory?  No.  Remember, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”  It applies to us even now.

Book Review: From Wild Man to Wise Man (Rohr)

Richard Rohr combines insights from his Catholic perspective, psychology, Eastern spirituality, and Greek mythology to speak to the value of a gender-specific journey of spiritual maturity. Rohr bases a gender-specific spiritual journey on Gen 1:27, where the image of God is both male and female.  ”The new humanity is not neuter or unisex… all of which make love impossible”, says Rohr.  There is both sacred feminine and sacred masculine, which are distinctive and yet only complete together.  Rohr complains that Christianity has become overly-femanine: a preoccupation with the inward, relationships, and unclarified feeling.  This, Rohr says, is really a false feminine, because it lacks the possibly of going anyplace new.  Only when the distinctively masculine side of the image of God is recovered can spirituality become whole – both male and female.  Even within the individual self, whatever gender one may be, feminine and masculine dimensions of spirituality must be cultivated, leading to wholeness or holiness.  As Rohr says, ”We eventually need to be loved by both the Divine feminine and the Divine masculine, which is to be fully ‘born again’!”

Rohr critiques the way men operate today, especially in the West, naming it an addictive system.   The system requires that men act, think, and feel in certain ways.  These ways create the illusion of power when in reality, men lack the freedom of real decision-making.  Men’s decisions are typically detached from the household and attached to the white male methods of making money and acquiring a better-than-you status.

Rohr presents a three-fold spiritual pattern of enlightenment, one that initiates boys into “transcendent reality”, a realm untapped in the male conscious because of his psyche’s lingering entrapment in the myth of modernism.   The second stage of this pattern is an in-between space where one must wait, struggle, and seek God while sorting through the complexity of paradox, mystery, and darkness. Rohr compares this stage to the classic initiation rights found in nearly every culture besides the modern West, where boys are required to leave their families and come face to face with the wild, bonding together while navigating unchartered territory and critiquing the system in which they were raised.  When they return from this journey, the boys are considered men and re-join the original system but with fresh perspective new insights.  Rohr sees the Modern West as either uninitiated or trapped in that in-between place, a place he dubs “complex consciousness”.  Such entrapment leaves men to grab for all the power and security they can in the midst of their desert of wandering (to borrow a biblical metaphor).  It is only after the the male embraces the suffering of disappointment and woundedness (think ‘Way of the Cross’) that enlightenment may come.   Rohr puts it like this, “Life will be death, failure, and absurdity, which can lead to renewal, joy and beauty”.  The paschal mystery, then, is not only something to be believed, but something to enter into.

Rohr considers the importance of the metaphor of God as ‘Father’, noting it was this metaphor that arose out of the Hebrew narrative of Exodus and the primary way Jesus related to God.  Rohr doesn’t fail to balance this image with feminine metaphors for God and how the mother figure is equally if not more potent in the spiritual formation of a person’s life.  The “Father wound”, however, is far more prevalent in our world and requires a distinctively male kind of love that involves choosing.  Speaking on the Hebrew story of election and how it relates to God as Abba, Rohr says, “That is a uniquely transformative experience of male love.  It validates us and affirms us deeply, precisely because it is not necessary.”

Rohr expands on the Father wound in all of us, using this as a lens to understand the complexities of the male ego, male sexuality, and male initiation.  The wound, however, can become a sacred wound through the transformative work of God in a person’s life, a gift that involves us the same cycle of death and life that Jesus underwent.   Mechanical atonement theories are inadequate for Rohr, because the cross is primarily a transformation of evil – a means of purifying and carrying evil rather than transmitting it.   This is the way of redemptive love.  Rohr finishes his work by adopting classic images in folklore and mythology in order to understand a male way of being that is holistic and balanced, and identifies a path of wisdom so as to chart the various phases in a man’s life and the typical pitfalls.

Rohr may speak a language that not all Christians are comfortable with, borrowing heavily from the religions of the Eastern world, but regardless of one’s comfort level with inter-religious dialogue, Rohr’s message is vital if the Christian West is to move honestly and passionately into our changing cultural context with all its gender complexity.  His challenge is that men move from the the wild place of complex consciousness to the wisdom of true ‘Grand Fathers”, never leaving behind the simplicity and raw joy of their boyhood.  Grand Fathers are the ones who are able to, ironically, do the task of spiritual mothering (the passing on of the mystical rather than merely the moral and/or informational) for uninitiated males.   Then, and only then, will a new generation of male leadership arise, men who have been properly initiated into the dangerous journey of knowing God by other men who have gone before them.

 

Advent Reflections – A Message for the Wise and the Lowly

Matthew and Luke’s Gospel show a clear differentiation on how the Christ is discovered.  In Matthew, it is the wise, in pursuit of an ancient promise, who seek out the Christ (Mt 2).  In Luke, the promise is not sought out but revealed to Shepherds (Lk 2) – a lowly lot on the societal totem pole.  It is a reminder that the revelation of God is available to all, both to the wise and the lowly.  The truly wise seek God, but the truly lowly have God revealed to them.  For even the Magi, in all their wisdom, find the Christ not in pomp but in vulnerability.  They find not a throne nor a palace, but a manger and a stable.  These Magi kneel before this lowly scene, again, demonstrating that even in all wisdom, the revelation of God in the face of Christ requires that we get off our high horse and posture ourselves before God in vulnerable humility.  I am reminded of what the Apostle Peter would say to a church years after this manger scene, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt you in due time” (1 Pet 5:6).  This is not to diminish human potential, it is rather to say that human potential is deconstructed and transformed as our hearts discover the posture of God in Christ.  This is not to say that we have to know how pitiful we are before we know how great we are.  It is rather to say that if we are made in the image of God, then to recognize ourselves as image-bearers we must seek the face of God in the image of Christ.   As the Magi discovered, using their wisdom to follow a promise, God reveals himself in humility.  And as the Shepherds discovered, in their lowly occupational estate,  there is no place on earth (or within ourselves) that is too lowly for  the chorus of redemptive celebration not to break out.