Recognizing Complexity is Not Enough: Further Reflections on Ferguson

Recognizing Complexity is Not Enough: Further Reflections on Ferguson

A sneak peak at my Rector's article for the Eagle: the Newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette, Indiana

As I write this, a certain degree of calm has come to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.  The Governor has told the National Guard troops that had taken up positions to withdraw, and the State Police Captain in charge of the police response said this morning that things were much, much more peaceful.  Attorney General Eric Holder was in Ferguson meeting with the family of Michael Brown, the young man whose death sparked outrage in the community, and many others. 

This week, I heard a report from NPR on the situation in Ferguson.  The reporter was interviewing people in the street.  A man, who identified himself as Bubba, told NPR’s Frank Morris:

You know what happens when you back a dog in the corner. He's going to act out, and he's going to bite you aggressively. You can't treat people like animals. Treat people how you want to be treated. That's the golden rule, I thought. So if they don't want to honor the golden rule, well, then the result is going to be the actions that you see.

[The entire report can be found HERE.]

This situation has been on my mind a great deal lately.  On Sunday, August 17^th, I preached about the circumstances of Michael Brown’s death and the necessity of a loving, grace-filled response on the part of the Church and of individual Christians.  The Gospel for that Sunday was from Matthew.  In the story, Jesus and the disciples travel to the area near the towns of Tyre and Sidon, an area north of the Galilee on the Mediterranean coast.  The circumstances are complicated, but it is important to know that for them, this is enemy territory.  While there, Jesus is approached by a “Canaanite woman” who shouts after him “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”  Jesus, however, ignores her, and his disciples want Jesus to send her away.  Jesus finally remarks that he has been sent only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But, the woman shows a substantial amount of bravado, kneels before Jesus, and says, “Lord, help me.”  This is the critical moment in the story.  What will Jesus do (and, if he is our example, how must we respond)? 

If you know the story, you know that Jesus, well, he calls her a dog: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  It isn’t the response we expect.  It isn’t the response we might hope for.  It isn’t what we’ve come to expect from Jesus.   As I said in my sermon that Sunday, it’s a complicated story.  There are lots of hard questions that need to be answered: theological, cultural, text-critical, linguistic, historical, etc.  The troubling questions have to do with Jesus’ response.  Why does Jesus seem so disinterested in this woman and her daughter? Why do their needs seem so unimportant to him?  Why does he seem so callous?  Maybe Jesus is playing along with her, teasing her.  Some folks have suggested that the Greek word for “dog” here is a term of endearment—she’s a “little puppy”.  But this all seems wrong.  What’s going on here?

The woman is undaunted by Jesus’ response.  After all, her child’s life is at stake here.  “Yes, Lord,” she says, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

I couldn’t help but think of the Canaanite woman when I heard the interview with Bubba.  He’s been treated like a dog, and so, like the Canaanite woman in our Gospel story, he co-opts the language and owns it.  “You want to treat me like a dog?  Then why are you surprised when I bite?”

In the story of the Canaanite woman, Jesus finally heals the woman’s daughter because of her faith.  Well, that’s too simple.  He heals the woman’s daughter because she pushed back, because she would not let him off the hook.  He heals her daughter because she demanded that she be treated as a human being and as a person worthy of respect and love.  She demanded that God’s kingdom be expanded to include her daughter and her. 

Many African-Americans in Ferguson and others besides have shown their faith.  They have pushed back; they have not let the rest of us off the hook.  They have demanded that Michael Brown receive justice, that African-Americans be treated as human beings worthy of respect and love.  In the language of faith, they have demanded that God’s Kingdom be expanded to include them. 

In my sermon, I went on to say:

I want to stand here in church this morning and I want to be a good Episcopalian.  I want to be a good pastor.  I want to be reasonable and measured.   After all, outrage, really isn’t our thing.  I want to say to you, “it’s complicated.”  Because it is.  The death of Mike Brown is complicated.  The police response in Ferguson is complicated.  The history of race and racism in this country is complicated. 

But the simple fact is that saying “it’s complicated”, especially if those of us who are white simply leave it at that, is a noxious, sinful form of white privilege. 

Recognizing complexity is not enough.  We have to respond.  As people of faith, we must be people of prayer and action.  We must pray for calm and peace, but we must also demand justice (justice, not witch hunts, but real, honest-to-goodness justice).  We must seek reconciliation. 

As the rector of St. John’s, I call on each of you to pray for peace and calm in Ferguson, in Lafayette, in West Lafayette, and in the streets of every city.  I call on you to demand justice—in particular, justice for Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, Amadou Diallo, and more.  I call on you to remember the difficult work of living into God’s Kingdom: a kingdom where we respect the dignity of every human being, and seek to serve Christ in every person.  For some of us, this means owning up to our racial prejudice and our privilege in a society filled with racial injustice.  For some of us, it will mean educating ourselves about the history of racism in this country and especially of the way that history has been experienced by people of color.  For every one of us, it will mean asking God to fill us with grace and love. 

In love and service,

Bradley+  

"It's Complicated": a sermon on the Canaanite Woman, Michael Brown, and White Privilege

"It's Complicated": a sermon on the Canaanite Woman, Michael Brown, and White Privilege

delivered at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette, Indiana 

on Sunday, August 17th, 2014

Today we have this complicated Gospel story.  It’s complicated because it first involves Jesus arguing with a group of Pharisees and Scribes about the nature and priority of Jewish purity laws.  “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person,” Jesus tells his disciples, “but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

Then Jesus goes on to explain that it is the words and actions that flow from our hearts, which really defile a person—it is the words and actions that flow out of our hearts, which really make us “unclean” in the sense Jesus has in mind.

Then Jesus and the disciples leave the area and travel to the area near the towns of Tyre and Sidon, an area north of the Galilee on the Mediterranean coast.  The geography is almost always important in biblical retelling of the stories.  This is enemy territory.

While there, Jesus is approached by a “Canaanite woman” who shouts after him “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”  Jesus, however, ignores her, and his disciples want Jesus to send her away.  Jesus finally remarks—is it to her or does he just make this known—that he has been sent only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But, the woman shows a substantial amount of bravado, kneels before Jesus, and says, “Lord, help me.”  And Jesus, well, he calls her a dog.  “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But undaunted, she says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Finally, Jesus relents—or was he just playing along the whole time?—“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

This is such a complicated story.  There are so many hard questions that have to be asked.  First off, why does Jesus seem so disinterested in this woman and her daughter? Why do their needs seem so unimportant to him?  Why does he seem so callous?  And then, why does he change his mind?  There are so many issues—theological, cultural, text-critical, linguistic, historical—that have to be answered in order to get at a reasonable answer.  Maybe this is major shift in Jesus’ thinking—now the Messiah’s mission is for the gentiles, too.  Maybe this says something about Jesus’ humanity—Jesus really is callous and disinterested, but the woman’s faith engages his compassion and makes him change his mind.  Maybe, as someone suggested, the same Spirit that drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan has now led him to cross these rigid cultural, ethnic, and religious boundaries.  Maybe the story says something about the gender politics of Jesus’ day, helping us to see, as Paul says, that in Christ, there is “no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus.”  There’s perhaps the most important question of all, theologically speaking, which has to do with this woman’s faith.  What is faith?  What is it about her faith that elicits this response from Jesus?  And then there’s all the stuff about the daughter being healed in absentia, about demon possession, and all of that.  Phew!  You see, it’s all really complicated.

All of this seems hugely important, too.  But I have been stuck on one strange detail of the story.  And it really isn’t about Jesus or about the healing or about purity laws or any of that.  It isn’t about whether Jesus was callous or just playing along.  It wasn't really about Jesus calling the woman a dog or about her persistence and faith.  The thing that I’m stuck on is the fact that Matthew refers to this woman as a “Canaanite.”  This story in Matthew is the one and only time this word is used in the entire New Testament.  The story is, well again, it’s complicated…but this description of the woman is anachronistic.  The Canaanites where the people who lived in the land of Canaan, the land promised by God to Abraham when he left his home in Ur and to the Israelites when they came out of Egypt.  The books of Joshua and Judges tell the story of the Israelite invasion of the land and the destruction of many of the Canaanite cities.  They are bloody, bloody stories filled with both small-scale and large-scale violence.  Ask the youth group—that’s part of what we talked about during VBS.

But describing this woman as a Canaanite is entirely anachronistic.  Those stories—the stories of Joshua and Judges took place well over one thousand years before Jesus’ encounter with this woman.  It would be as if I told you about meeting a Soviet or a Prussian or an Ottoman Turk.  My wife—who’s from Ohio—used to go to Alabama for the summer to stay with cousins.  They would call her a Yankee and remind her that the South would rise again.  She had no idea what they were talking about.  Because of the history—a history we know from Israelite Scripture, from the stories of the initial winners of that invasion of Canaan—perhaps this would be more akin to a story of meeting a member of a Native American tribe that no longer existed.  After all, from one perspective at least, the invasion of Canaan looked like a Holy War, like genocide.

Frankly, I’m stuck on this part of the story because of this week’s events in Ferguson, Missouri.  I’ve watched the news and read the papers and read blogs and read about Mike Brown, the young, unarmed man who was killed by a police officer earlier in the week.  I’ve seen the video that apparently shows him robbing a convenient store and videos of the looting that followed.  I’ve seen the many photos of the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets and training sniper rifles on peaceful protesters.  I’ve seen the pictures of African-American women and men with their hands up and pictures of little kids holding signs that read “Don’t shoot”.  I’ve read some of the outrage from friends and colleagues, and it has made me deeply, deeply sad.

And I want to stand here in church this morning and I want to be a good Episcopalian.  I want to be a good pastor.  I want to be reasonable and measured.   After all, outrage, really isn’t our thing.  I want to say to you, “it’s complicated.”  Because it is.  The death of Mike Brown is a complicated story.  The police response in Ferguson is complicated.  The history of race and racism in this country is complicated.

But the simple fact is that saying “it’s complicated”, especially if we are white and simply leave it at that, is a noxious form of white privilege.

Pointing out that some people were looting shops in Ferguson before the police began firing tear gas is  a noxious form of white privilege.

Fixating on Mike Brown as a “thug” or on the videos from the convenient store is a noxious form of white privilege.

Talking about “black-on-black crime” while watching the situation in Ferguson unfold is a noxious form of white privilege.

It is a noxious privilege for me to sit back, from a distance, and say “it’s complicated” every time Mike Brown or Trayvon Martin or Eric Garner or Renisha McBride or Amadou Diallo gets killed by the police or by other armed vigilantes.

It is a noxious privilege for me as a parent of white children to sit back, from a distance, and say “it’s complicated” because my children have so much less to fear.

The death of Mike Brown and the statistics and the stories and the experience of African-Americans all over this country make it clear to me, it is a noxious privilege for me to stand here and say “it’s complicated”.

And I say to you sisters and brothers, if we scoff at this, if we are white, have only white children or grandchildren, and yet refuse to see how we benefit from this noxious white privilege, we must repent.  We must turn around.  We must recognize the truth because only the truth will set us free.  Only the truth can help reconcile us.  Only the truth can save us.  To my white sisters and brothers, I say that we must listen to the experiences of our African-American friends and colleagues.

And we will learn, of course, that it’s complicated.  But we will also see that it’s outrageous, unjust, demonic. We will learn that it is evil.

Sisters and brothers, we can look at today’s Gospel and see quickly that the theological, cultural, text-critical, linguistic, and historical issues are complicated.  But that doesn’t change the fact that Jesus and his disciples are inclined to ignore and dismiss the woman in this story.  And it doesn’t change the fact that

Matthew, in retelling the story, has the gall to use the ancient name of the defeated enemy, the anachronistic and loaded term “Canaanite.”  Perhaps this is a story of Jesus changing his mind or perhaps he’s joking with her.  In the tit-for-tat he’s helping his disciples see how the Kingdom’s mission is to be expanded to all the nations.  Perhaps this story is Matthew’s way of reconciling the different views of the early Church, of reconciling the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians.  Perhaps his use of the term “Canaanite” is intentional and calculated.

It’s complicated.  But something about the story, something about this woman’s circumstances is also outrageous, unjust, demonic.  It is evil.

And perhaps we should hear outrage in the woman’s voice—this person who is marginalized by her ethnicity, her religion, her gender, and by other things besides.  I don’t want to muddy the waters, but the claims of privilege extend to
male privilege, hetero-normative privilege, to Christian privilege in America.  The claims of privilege extend to the modern state of Israel where the death toll is Gaza is nearly 30 times that on the Israeli side.  Maybe we can imagine this woman holding a sign that reads “Lord, have mercy” or “Even the dogs” or “Don’t shoot” or “End the Occupation”.  Either way, she demanded to be recognized.  She demanded that her daughter be healed.  She demanded to be brought into the reach of God’s kingdom.

And here we see the bigger picture.  We see the Kingdom’s demands, sisters and brothers.  Love and justice and reconciliation.

And no doubt, it is complicated.

But in the end, it is right and just, filled with the Holy Spirit and shining with the grace of God.

Amen.

The Harrowing of Hell and the Easter Moment

In the Orthodox Church, the resurrection of Christ, the anastasis, is often depicted with Christ standing victorious over the gates of hell.  The gates are literally blown off of their hinges, showing the faithful that hell no longer has any power over them.  You can see the instruments of torture used by the demonic forces are themselves broken and scattered.  Only the Satan—the embodiment of death and wickedness—is left bound in hell.  The icon also shows Christ flanked by Moses, King David, and other patriarchs of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Jesus himself is seen hauling Adam and Eve out of their graves.  He is forcing the reconciliation of the first two humans, the two humans whose disobedience prefigured the rest of creation spiraling out of control.  Notice, too, that Jesus is not inviting them out of their graves.  He is hauling them, pulling them, yanking them out. 

This understanding of the resurrection gets its  meaning from the ancient belief that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead on Holy Saturday—the day before the resurrection—and freed those who were captive there.  The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, calls his descent into hell “the last phase of Jesus' messianic mission,” during which he “opened heaven's gates for the just who had gone before him.”* This is known as the "harrowing of hell."

This little known belief is common to Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and mainline Protestants.  In the Nicene Creed, for instance, Christians say that Jesus “suffered death and was buried”.  Jesus suffered death, which in the Ancient world, would have meant that he went to the place of the dead—Sheol, the pit, Hades, or hell.  The contemporary versions of the Apostles’ Creed and the Baptismal Covenant make this somewhat more explicit—Jesus “descended to the dead.”  But in the traditional language, Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried” and “He descended into hell” before rising again on the third day.  The traditional language is a much more accurate translation of the Latin: “he descended ad inferna.”

The ramifications of all of this were first pointed out to me by Jeffrey Lee, the Episcopal Bishop of Chicago, but they can be found in many places (see Rob Bell's Love Wins, for instance).  The ramifications for each of us and for all of creation are enormous.  Hell cannot prevail.  The demonic forces that claim power over our lives are powerless.  Death has lost its sting.  We are now free to live reconciled to God and to one another.  We are now free to live into the world that is to come, the re-creation, the world that is not only pronounced good, but is now perfected in Christ. The gates of hell are wide open.  No one need go there ever again.  Death is swallowed up in death.  No one need choose death any more.  Ultimately, we have nothing to fear.  

And yet we know all too well that is not what happens.  For many of us, we cannot help but live in a hell of our own creating.  And worse yet, we cannot help creating hell for others.  For many of us we cannot help but choose death, again for ourselves and, worse yet, for our neighbors.  For many of us, fear and anguish, anger and violence rule the day.  We refuse to leave our tombs.  We refuse to abandon death.  We refuse to acknowledge that the stone has been rolled away from the tomb.  We refuse to accept that the gates of hell have been blown off of their hinges and that the weapons of the enemy are broken and scattered.  We refuse to leave Satan—our accuser—bound and gagged where he belongs.  We have nothing to fear.  But we still cannot get out of the grave. 

For many of us, our addictions to drugs, to alcohol, to power, to wealth, to our own smug sense of self-worth is too great.  Our commitment to the party line or to the “prevailing wisdom” of our side is too gripping.  The abusive relationships and bad choices are too attractive.  We are too caught up in ideas like “might makes right” or “the more we buy the more we save” or “do whatever feels good”.  Racism, homophobia, and other forms of hatred shape too much of our identities.  We are too conditioned to shoot first and ask questions later, to fear young black men like Trayvon Martin, or to scapegoat others.  We are too quick to turn on those who wrong us.  Perhaps worst of all—is this not the core failing of the human condition—we are too fascinated by ourselves and too indifferent to the needs of others.   

We are simply unable to let go of the things that lead to death.  We are simply unable to give up the things that create hell for ourselves and for others.  Somehow, inexplicably, we are too afraid to leave the gates, to be pulled out of our graves, to begin living resurrected lives.

Mark’s Gospel interestingly enough does not include a resurrection appearance of Jesus, at least in the original manuscripts that we have.  There are two additional endings to Mark: a short one that says Jesus sent out the disciples after his resurrection and a longer one that tells of detailed appearances to his disciples and others.  But in the oldest manuscripts that we have, we read that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to the tomb.  When they encounter a young man there, they flee in “terror and amazement” and they said “nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  They have come face-to-face with resurrection and they are terrified of it.  Life has overcome death and they cannot speak of it.  The gates of hell are blown off the hinges and they have nothing to say.  The ancient curse broken, the enemy defeated and yet fear overtakes them.

Of course we know from other sources that those women must have told someone.  They must have overcome their fear and spread the news.  They must have realized that they now had a choice.  They could now choose resurrection, they could choose life, they could choose to leave their own tombs of sorrow and grief and anger and violence because the stone had been rolled away.  Perhaps, after they fled, Jesus grabbed them by the hand and pulled them into his risen life.  Perhaps, before they had told anyone, Jesus hauled them up and brought them face-to-face with resurrection.

My sisters and brothers the anastasis, the resurrection of Christ, announces to us that hell’s gates are wide open.  It announces to us that the demonic forces that claim power over our lives are powerless.  Death has lost its sting.  We are now free to live reconciled to God and to one another.  We are now free to live into the world that is to come, the re-creation, the world that is not only pronounced good, but is now perfected in Christ.  These are the enormous ramifications of the Easter moment.

*Quoted in Daniel Burke, “What Did Jesus Do on Holy Saturday?”  The Huffington Post.  7 April 2012.  <www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/03/jesus-holy-saturday_n_1398224.html>

THEOLOGYPUBYOungstown

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First meeting, Wednesday, September 12th, 5pm

@ University Pizza (U-Pie), 133 Lincoln Ave. YOtown!

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A variety 12-pack to provoke political discussion

I am an unabashed liberal/progressive.  I am a registered independent (I think, but in Ohio it doesn't matter), but I admit that I usually vote Democratic or (leftist) third-party.  I voted for Nader.  I voted for Bill Bradley before that.  I don't think I voted for Kucinich, but I may have at some point.  For the sake of identity politics, I want to be clear where I'm coming from.

BUT, I absolutely hate the polarization of our political system.  I gave up watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report a few years ago for Lent and didn't go back for 6 months.  It was nice not feeling like "the other side" was stupid at least for a little while.

I recently read a book about borderline personality disorder called I Hate You, Don't Leave Me.  Great book.  But one of the most important "eye-openers" in the book was about our borderline culture.  Everything is black and white, right and wrong, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat.  There is no room for disagreement.  There is no room for gray areas.  There is no room for "we just don't see eye-to-eye on this one."  Either you're on my side or you're pure evil.  Either Barack Obama is Hitler, or he's the Messiah.  Either Romney will "unchain" Wall Street and re-enslave all African-Americans in this country (or whatever Vice-President Biden meant by that quip), or he'll give us all golden parachutes (well, except the moochers).

Let me suggest that it isn't nearly that simple.  Let me suggest that both Obama and Romney are a complicated mix of self-interest, political pandering, and honest-to-goodness "I think this is the way it out to be."  Maybe I'm naive (it's happened before), but I'm just sure that they each think they're trying to take the country in the right direction, AND they are trying to placate their political bases, AND they are trying to be elected (or re-elected) to the most powerful job in the world.  

So with that in mind, let me also suggest Magic Hat's variety 12-pack, which is designed, we are told, "to provoke political discussion."  After all, Obama's beer summit with Biden, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., and police Sgt. James Crowley was political genius.  Did it solve race relations in America?  No.  Did it end racial profiling as we know it?  No.  But it got a couple of guys--who had done and said some over-the-top stuff in the heat of the moment--to sit down, have a beer and talk it out.  Now isn't that much better?  Instead of sticking a mic in their faces and letting them go after each other in public, he got them to sit down and do some real work, some real soul-searching.  What if Boehner and Obama did that to hash out the debt-ceiling debate?  What if the President, Paul Ryan, and members of the Congressional Budget Office sat down over a beer before they went on Fox News or the Daily Show?  What if they all just chilled the hell out, cracked jokes about their mothers-in-law, got to know each other as friends, and then tried to work together?  I believe beer can make that happen.  
   

God bless America.  God bless beer.

Still not the best beer commercial every made, but up there....  

"Because nothing sells like old footage of people who had it way worse than you do."

Newcastle - No Bollocks

Am I emergent enough? -- Part 2

A second (and, I think, better) test of whether a Christian is "emergent enough" comes from the book Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be by Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck, and David Wells.  These guys don't like something about emerging Christianity (okay, several things, like emerging Christians' tolerance for doctrinal liberalism, etc.).  But their test is pretty good (and kinda funny).  Here are some of my favorite questions:

You might be an emergent Christian if:

1.  you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church)...
Johnny Cash, yes.  Not usually in church.  Have been pushing for more bluegrass in church.

2.  use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos... 
No....  But Family Guy, yes.

I'm blogging right now...

3.  drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings....
OMG, they're watching me. 


4.  and always use a Mac...
No, but I do have an iPhone and an iPad.  I also came form Chicago where every Episcopal priest had a Mac except me.


5.  your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, N. T. Wright, Stan Grenz, Dallas Willard, Brennan Manning, Jim Wallis, Frederick Buechner, David Bosch, John Howard Yoder, Wendell Berry, Nancy Murphy, John Franke, Walter Winks and Lesslie Newbigin (not to mention McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D. A. Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem...
There's a lot of names in that list, some of whom I have no knowledge.  But Lesslie Newbigin is my absolute favorite and I also like McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, N.T. Wright, Walter Wink....  So....


6.  your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu; if you don’t like George W. Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage....
Yep!  Except that gay marriage is a big concern because I'm for it. 


7.  you talk about the myth of redemptive violence and the myth of certainty...
Indeed.  I mentioned this to Bishop Jeffrey Lee (the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Chicago), who was a little shocked that this might be a sticking point for someone...


8.  you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant...
Perhaps you can now see where their critique is going.


9.  you search for truth but aren't sure it can be found...
Guilty.


10.  if you’ve ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths...
Now they're getting snarky.


11. you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naive, and rigid...
Definitely.


12. you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic...
Oh, no you di'n't.  


13.  you want to be the church and not just go to church...
Want it?  I long for it.  I crave it.


14.  you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business and no one may be there anyway...
Yeah, I believe love wins.


15.  you believe salvation has a little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its Maker...
Gosh, sounds like Paul, John of Patmos, John 1, Revelation....

16. you believe following Jesus is not believing the right things but living the right way...
Sounds like Matthew 25 and a million other things in Scripture.


17.  it really bugs you when people talk about going to heaven instead of heaven coming to us...
Oh that pesky Revelation 21....

Am I crazy?  Is this all so wrong?

(Taken form http://www.challies.com/quotes/quote-you-might-be-emergent-if)

Am I emergent enough?

I definitely think of myself as an emergent Christian somewhere along the lines of the "new Christians" or "missional Christians" that Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle, Tony Jones, et al. are talking about.  I'm all about new ways of framing and asking old questions about the Christian faith.  (N.B., I happen to think that many of the "old" answers still apply.  The Gospel is still the Gospel after all.  Yet, it is incarnate in a new world, a new culture, a new framework.)

I might even prefer to talk about myself as an "emerging Christian" along the lines of the way philosophers of mind talk about consciousness as an emerging quality.  Unconscious cells--or whatever--interacting in a particular way give rise to consciousness.  Consciousness, some of them argue, is an emerging quality.  Non-living things--chemicals, DNA, whatever--interacting in a particular way give rise to life.  Life, is an emerging quality.


I am an individual human being whose thoughts, experiences, good intentions, sins, brokenness, faults, good deeds, misunderstandings, ignorance--and the like--interact in a particular way and--through the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit--give rise a Christian.  Thus, as a Christian, I am an emerging Christian.  My faith, my commitment to God's Kingdom, is an emerging quality.  On my best days, a Christian--a follower of Christ--emerges out of this hot mess....

Okay, that's the serious reflection.  But Christian Piatt (one of my favorite bloggers), compiled a checklist of "you might be emergent if..." questions.  Here's my shot.


1.  The list of Christian bloggers you follow has more than five women with three names.
I don't follower too many bloggers.  But of the two women bloggers I follow, both of them have three names.


2.  The words “substitutionary atonement” cause reflexive sighs or eye rolls for you.
Yes.


3.  You find you always use your fingers to make little air quotes when you use words like ‘salvation’ or ‘sin.’
Sort of.  I'll take a half-point on that one.


4.  Wild Goose is your new annual pilgrimage destination.
No, but I am intrigued.  Alas, my "pilgrimage" site is usually just a bar.


5.  You identify yourself as some hybrid of multiple denominational names, perhaps with a “-mergent” thrown on the end for good measure.
I am a member of Anglimergent, so....


6.  You commonly use phrases like “some of my best friends are atheists,” or “that reminds me of what Zizek said about…”
I don't know about "commonly", but I have quoted Zizek 4 or 5 times in the last year, and I lots of friends who are atheists.


7.  You know what “The Event” is.
Is that the show on NBC?


8.  You can’t read an article by or about Mark Driscoll or John Piper without wanting to hurl your fair-trade soy latte at your MacBook.
I don't drink soy latte's or have a Macbook (yet), but yes....


9.  You consider the fact that you’re a Christian to be more than a bit ironic.
Very yes.


10.  You find yourself quoting Derrida in regular conversation.
No, not so much.  But I think I play with his ideas more often than not.


11.  You can fill in these names: ______ Pagitt;    Nadia Bolz ______;    _____ Caputo;   _____ Rollins (no, not the guy from Black Flag).
Doug
Weber
John
Peter (although Henry's cool, too)

This is NOT a recent photo.

12.  You have a bald head, facial hair and hipster glasses.
Uh....  And I wear black t-shirts so often that when I wore a red t-shirt recently (on the 4th of July), my kids asked me about it.


13.  You prefer “faith community” over “congregation,” “gathering” instead of “worship” and you always hesitate self-consciously before using the word “church.”
No.  Definitely no.  I'm big on capital-"C" Church.  The Church is Christ's hand and heart in the world.  I spend a lot of time deconstructing (Derrida!?!) the word Church and trying to move away from Church-as-institution.  So in some ways, I think this is an unfair question.


14.  You cringe when God language (or any language about pretty much anything) is not gender-inclusive or gender-neutral.
A little.  I have served traditional, Anglican/Episcopalian congregations (whoops), so this is usually a ditch to die in.  I do use gender-neutral language, but not very often.


15.  You use the words “authentic,” “context,” “ecclesial” or “metaphoric” more than two dozen times in an average day.
Probably.

16.  You say things like “I don’t really preach any more…”
No, but I'm working on that....


17.  You consider calling someone a “post-” something or “post-post-” something is a compliment.
Yeah, probably.


18.  You answer every question with either another set of questions or a series of deep, reflective sighs.
Definitely.  


19.  Something just doesn't feel right unless you’re boycotting something.
I'm not a big boycott kinda guy.  I don't even drink fair-trade coffee usually.  I figure I should.  Maybe the question should be amended to, "I feel guilty about not boycotting, etc."  Then, yes.


20.  You have any idea what “postcolonial hermeneutics” means.
Yep.  I not because I have a Ph.D. in philosophy.  Never heard of that kind of stuff until seminary.  So there. 


(From http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christianpiatt/2012/03/you-might-be-an-emergent-christian-if/)
----


I think I scored pretty high.  

GOAL!!!!!

So I bought Judah a soccer ball and a goal.  I'm teaching him to play (even though I have never played a match in my life).  But one thing I do know, how to celebrate a goal.  And I've passed that on to my boy....

Harpoon Summer Ale

I discovered Harpoon's Summer Ale last year and continue enjoying it.  Harpoon's website says that the Summer Ale is 

Kolsch style ale....  [I]t is straw gold in color and light bodied. The flavor is mild.  The hopping levels provide a crisp, dry finish that make this beer particularly refreshing. 

The best thing about Harpoon?  Their slogan...


Love Life.  Love Beer.  Harpoon.


I have been enjoying several "summer" beers this year.  I am still most find of Breckenridge Brewery's Summer Ale (an American style wheat ale, it's not as fruity or 'wheaty' as the Belgian stuff).  Apparently, "refreshing" and "crisp" are the words I'm looking for while I'm grilling out or teaching my youngest to play soccer.  GOAL!!!

'Slow, agonizing death' Or 'Is anyone doing anything?'

Another interesting post from the Crusty Old Dean, this time he's having a go at the Episcopal Church's next budget: It's All Over But the Shouting: Annotated Budget.  


Noting the "the pain, distress, confusion, and lack of trust in our governance that this process has created", Dean Ferguson says that he is

past asking for any semblance of accountability for mistakes made, or for putting any kind of procedures in place to make sure past errors can be corrected.  As predicted in a previous post, there will be absolutely no accountability of any kind for anything that has happened thus far.  

I confess that I haven't thought much about TEC's governance or about the national church's budget in my brief time as a priest.  I am way too worried about my local ministry to be bothered.  Hell, I find worrying about the structures and processes in my local congregation so "painful, distressing, confusing, and distrustful" (to paraphrase the Dean), that I don't feel like looking for more trouble.  But I am becoming more and more convinced that the Church as I know it is working solely in survival mode and/or is in some kind of a death spiral.  When we focus on administration, buildings, and maintaining programs that merely keep those of us already here around (otherwise, they would have been reaching out to people all along, right?), what else is happening?


I am frustrated....  I desperately want to focus on being a missionary priest in a culture that no longer takes Christianity seriously.  Sad thing is, I need that paycheck and a pension (oh, and the health insurance, can't forget the health insurance).  And I really don't know if the Presiding Bishop (who I met and liked immensely) or any of the others in charge at 815 (that is, the Episcopal Church Center at 815 Second Ave., New York) are doing well by the Episcopal Church or not.  Unfortunately, the slow, agonizing death of the United Methodist Church sounds all too familiar (and my friends in the ELCA, the PCUSA, and elsewhere report the same story).  What is 815 or General Convention doing to empower the local dioceses and congregations to live out our mission?  Anything?  Anything at all?

And some numbers....

While there's a good deal of analysis to be done with all of this, here are some numbers from a fellow TEC clergy person: "A Time to be Pruned."

The problems in TEC (and most likely in your Church, too)

The Crusty Old Dean (the Very Rev. Dr. Tom Ferguson, Dean of Bexley Hall, Columbus, OH or COD) says it better than I can.  


We are the less than 1%
-In this post, Dean Ferguson explains briefly why TEC is shedding members and sketches his "Marshall Plan for rebuilding the church".


Guns, Germs, and The Episcopal Church: Manifesto for Radical Change
-In this post, Dean Ferguson describes what may be the most fundamental problem for TEC.  Based on the work of Jared Diamond, Ferguson points out that:

So one problem is taking the blips, the anomalies, to be normative.  COD is convinced that the Episcopal Church has, in a way, done something similar.  We have taken the period from 1950-1990 (give or take a few years) as somehow a normative and determinative time period -- what it means to be the Episcopal Church is what occurred during this period -- when, in fact, it was a blip, an anomaly.  

But it may be too late.  And even worse, we realize that all teh folks and all the structures who need to get it together are a part of "blip-think":

COD finds himself thinking that restructuring is so 2011.  The past few months have convinced him that one the one hand the scope of change we are looking at in the next 50 years is so profound, and, on the other hand, how utterly incapable governing structures currently are at shaping a discussion about what is needed....
Collapse, my friends.  That's what's coming. 

The worst part, and the part that makes those of us at God and a Beer take long looks in the mirror, the COD suggests that TEC:

End parishes as clubs for members with a chaplain to minister to them, set up as Ponzi schemes for committees, which sees recruitment as getting people to serve on committees.  Would many of the towns where our Episcopal churches are located even notice, or care, if they were to close?  How many of our parishes function solely as clubs for the gathered?  How many dioceses have 10%, 15%, 20%, of their parishes on diocesan support?  How many dioceses are struggling to function?  We have to change not only the diocesan structure, but fundamentally reshape what it means to be a parish and a diocese.

[Sigh]


How do we really become a missional church?


This is why it's "God and a Beer".  After reading this stuff, we need both God and a beer.

"Bring your own beverage, just make sure it's cold."

"Stick it in the fridge, stick in the fridge stick it in the fridge."

Many of us are realizing....

Here at "God and a beer", we are nothing if not lazy.  But we are planning on doing some work here.  I promise.


I am going to spend the afternoon finishing the Teaching of the 12 by Tony Jones.  I have a few things to say about this interesting book, which is the complete text of the ancient Christian text known as the Didache ("the Teaching") with commentary.  After that, and remember dear reader that this is purely an exercise for my own edification, I am going to work through a lengthy critical review of Lesslie Newbigin's Foolishness to the Greeks.  I think Newbigin's book may provide the frame for most of this blog.  Well, that and beer.


But before I get to that, I want to share a handful of posts that have come to my attention.  Each of these posts relate to the struggles of the Episcopal Church ("TEC"), but much of it applies to all mainline Christian churches.  If you want my honest opinion (and, if you don't, you can look at research by the Barna Group, by Diana Butler-Bass, or lots of other places), I think this is true for most of the current institutional incarnations of the Church in the "West" today.  I have heard this statistic a number of times and from various places, but even the growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States (about 1% per year) is misleading.  The huge number of immigrants to the United States (coming mostly from Spanish-speaking, Roman Catholic countries) is offsetting and thus hiding the large number of people fleeing their parishes.  Whatever the reasons, and they are legion (pun-intended), denominations and local congregations are struggling.  And that at the tunnel is a train.


The first of these posts is "Where have all the rectors gone" from "Episcopal Journey of Hope" (a blog that I happy to have found).  The author describes a recent meeting of clergy from three dioceses.  Many of these clergy are bi-vocational and serving at very small congregations.

...collectively the three contiguous dioceses represented in our group report information on 124 congregations with 80 (65%) being too small both in membership and dollars to have a rector; they are usually termed “family size” and have average Sunday attendance (ASA) under 50.  Eleven of these congregations have an average Sunday attendance of fewer than 10 persons and twenty-five more congregations have ASA at 20 or less.  God love the people in these tiny congregations for their loyalty and their devotion.  But no rectors here anymore!

Two points of clarification:  A rector is the senior priest/pastor of a church that is financially self-sustaining.  While in many denominations, an average Sunday attendance of 100 would be considered a small church, in the Episcopal Church at least, a parish with an ASA of greater than 100 is usually considered a large church.  My own congregation (with an official ASA of 105 in 2011) is the largest Episcopal Church in the deanery stretching from Warren to Steubenville in Ohio (about 80 miles).  


Again in my deanery, 4 of the 9 churches are self-sustaining and have rectors (well, one is technically a priest-in-charge).  But of the four, only 2 of the churches have full-time rectors.

There are two issues here--and I am intentionally mixing them up.

1. Many parishes are no longer able to fund their ministries without outside (read "Diocesan") support.
2. Many parishes are no longer able to support full-time clergy.  

This raises a whole host of questions.  Are these ministries viable--does the Diocesan support help, hinder, make any discernible difference?  The post goes on to say:

92% of the congregations in these three dioceses are not able to call a rector or can only obtain the services of a rector on a minimum or reduced cost basis. We have always hoped that with the right leadership (priest and bishop) and hard work by the membership, these congregations could grow.  So what has happened under a half a dozen dedicated bishops and scores of committed clergy?  Not one of these congregations has moved up a category in the past 10 years; several have moved down.  At best our strategies are a holding action and not a posture for meaningful growth. 

Simply put, a holding action is no good.  As the number of members in churches decline and as they become older and/or their lives become busier, there is more and more pressure put on church staffs.  But as the members go, so goes the money to pay for the staff.  And, since we live in a consumerist culture, as the programs go, so go the members (especially the coveted "young families").  It's a vicious cycle.  In my own congregation, we are closing in on a time when endowment funds will make up more of our revenue than pledges or "other income."  This is not sustainable.

So as churches become less and less able to remain self-sufficient and/or maintain full-time clergy (not to mention other staff), what chance do they have?  This is not a question of God's work in the world.  The Church is not just the collection of local congregations working in tandem or (worse yet) their national and international structures.  The Church--that mysterious collection of the saints past, present, and future--will continue living out its mission.  But those local congregations and their national and international structures are in trouble.  Serious trouble.

And many of us are realizing that--despite our paychecks and pensions--this trouble may just be the opportunity the Church guided by the Holy Spirit has been waiting for.  Because none of this even begins dealing with the larger questions of the Gospel in our culture.  Ultimately, numbers and dollars are irrelevant to the Gospel.  What about all the folks who see the Gospel as irrelevant to their lives?  What about them?

Next up: wisdom from the Crusty Old Dean.

This is precisely the kind of thing...

I want to talk about on my blog.  Just not tonight.  I have a sermon to write.

Scott McKnight's recent post, "Beyond Atonement Theories".

Not really this blog's first post

Greetings and salutations,

Okay, so I am going to start blogging.  This is more for myself than for anyone else.  I want to get back to writing, and this seems like a good way to get started.

As it is, I am passionate about a number of things.  I am passionately in love with my wife, Katie, and our three beautiful children, Isaiah, Miriam, and Judah.  The kids are rock stars.

I am also passionate about this guy named Jesus and about the myriad ways this Galilean peasant from 2000 years ago has brought me closer and closer to wholeness.  As I get the hang of this, I envision this blog will be a place for me to work out my own Christian apologetic--an apologetic particularly conceived in and for my current city, Youngstown, Ohio.  As I go along, I will try to make sense--again, mostly for myself--of the way the God known to us in Jesus Christ brings salvation to you and to me and to the whole world.  Perhaps more often than not, I will explore the way that God's salvation is made manifest here in Youngstown.  So this blog will include conversations about all sorts of things related to my Christian faith as I live it here in the Yo!  That may include, but will not be limited to, theology, church, history, politics, book reviews, and other such things.

Ultimately, I just want to be one of the guys.

Truth be told, I am also passionate about beer.  And from time to time, I may talk about beer to the exclusion of other things.  I can just imagine which beer I will chose when President Obama invites me to a theology pub in the White House Rose Garden with Silvio Berlusconi and other notables.  If it were today, I'd most likely choose Breckenridge Brewery's SummerBright Ale.  It is like summer in a bottle.  But I digress.

So hold on, sisters and brothers.  It's likely to be a bumpy ride.  And of course, wherever we're going, I highly doubt we'll get there.

God's blessings,
Bradley+