(wr)ekklesia

One of my goals this year is to be more intentional about reading. So I am putting together a reading list for 2012. I’m starting off with one book (or a couple of books by the same author) each month, although there will undoubtedly be more as new books come up that peak my interest. This list simply represents my bare minimum.

I’m also trying to diversify. While the bulk of my reading will be theological or church-related, I’m also picking two books on science (Hawking and Greene). I want to read two dealing with history (or biographies) and two pieces of fiction. This is where I need your help. I would love to hear your thoughts on interesting works of history/biography you’ve read, and some suggestions on fiction. I’m leaning toward Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs as one of my history/biographies and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley for my fiction, though I’m open to suggestions, especially if something has really impacted you.

So check out my list below, and please, add your thoughts.

Shane Hipps – Flickering Pixels and The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture

Tony Jones – The Church Is Flat

Chris Seay – The Gospel According to Lost

Stephen Hawking – A Brief History of Time

Brian Greene – The Elegant Universe

Richard Rohr – Falling Upward and Everything Belongs

N.T. Wright – Scripture and the Authority of God and After You Believe

N.T. Wright – Simply Jesus and How God Became King

I’m still working through Peter Rollins’ phenomenal new book Insurrection, and last night I was once again stopped dead in my tracks. In a section titled “Changing the System by Ignoring It,” Rollins talks about how Mother Teresa worked to bring about transformation and healing in the midst of the oppressive caste system in India. He writes:

“[Mother Teresa] no more protested against the caste system in Calcutta than she affirmed it. She simply lived in a different reality. She lived as though it did not exist, helping all who came to her regardless of their social class. This act of living the not-yet state of equality as if it already existed in the now is the truly political act, an act that directly confronts unjust systems by ignoring them and living into a different reality” (pg. 150).

This got me thinking about the whole idea of “already, not yet.” As a Presbyterian versed in Reformed theology, I was taught to think of the Kingdom of God in terms of “already, not yet.” The Kingdom has already come among us in Jesus, but it has not yet been fully established on the earth. There’s a sense in which we’re living in the Kingdom, but the evil and sin that we see around us every day point to the fact that we’re still waiting for something more.

What I see Rollins doing here is turning that completely around. Instead of “already, not yet,” Rollins is saying, “not yet, but already.” The Kingdom of God is not yet here in all its fullness, but there are some people who are already living in it.

The reason this is such an important distinction is because I think that sometimes we (subconsciously) use the notion of “already, not yet” as an excuse. “Yeah, the Kingdom of God has already come among us in Jesus, giving me the power to do God’s will in my life, but it’s not yet fully here, so that’s why I don’t always do it.” It’s like we’re making excuses for our inaction and sin by waiting for something more to happen. Almost like we’re blaming Jesus for not doing a good enough job the first time around. “I wish this thing about the world or my life would change, but there’s still sin in the world, so what can you do?”

When we approach it from the standpoint of “not yet, but already,” something very different happens. We’re not excusing the sin and brokenness of the world, and we’re certainly not ignoring it. We’re saying instead, “Yeah, things may suck sometimes, but you know what? I don’t care. I’m going to live like the Kingdom of God is already here in all its fullness.” Rather than using sin as an excuse, it strives to overcome sin. It embraces the full magnitude of crucifixion and resurrection, rather than waiting for something else to happen. It says, “I have the power to live out God’s will in this world, and come hell or high water, I’m going to do it!”

“Already, but not yet” is passive. “Not yet, but already” is active.

It makes me think of flight attendants. A few weeks ago, I was flying into Omaha from St. Louis, and about 30 minutes out of Omaha, the flight attendant came on the intercom to announce that we were getting ready to land. She told us what the weather was going to be like. And she ended the announcement by saying, “Welcome to Omaha.” We weren’t even there yet. We were still 30 minutes away. But she told us what it was going to be like. We were all on the same plane, so how could she welcome us there?! We were not yet there, but she was acting like she already was.

Isn’t that one of our biggest challenges as followers of Jesus? To think, speak, and act in ways that show others what the Kingdom of God is going to be like. To live in ways that say, “I know we’re not there yet. But here’s a little glimpse of what it’s going to be like. Welcome to the Kingdom of God.” Or as Shane Claiborne says, “We believe so much that another world is possible, that we can’t help but live in it now.”

I started reading Peter Rollins’ new book Insurrection a few days ago, and this afternoon I had to stop. Not because I disagree with him (I don’t), and not because the book is immensely challenging (it is). And not because he’s a raging Irish heretic (he is, but in the absolute best sense of the word). I had to stop reading because what he says on pages 106-108 is the most hauntingly brilliant analysis of the Church in North America that I have ever heard, and I can’t stop reading it over and over and over:

…we seek to avoid facing up to the possibilities that life is finite, our activities are meaningless, and our lives are more dark and selfish than the image we have of ourselves. We avoid each of these through various distractions, a religious notion of God, and carefully crafted false stories of who we are.

Worst of all, Christianity has become little more than an ideological support of these strategies. The result is a Christianity that (1) offers us various activities to help divert our attention from anxiety, (2) affirms a religious notion of God, and (3) confirms that we are what we say we believe. The life of faith is thus reduced to a crutch, and the Crucifixion becomes nothing more than a mythology we pay lip service to.

The Church in its currently existing form is then an institution that helps us to cover over our anxiety and encourages us to think that faith is lived out in singing songs, engaging in certain rituals, and believing certain things. The Church thus ends up helping us maintain psychological equilibrium and integrate into society as it presently stands rather than throwing us off balance and being a catalyst for the transformation of society.

But what is truly revolutionary about Christianity is the way that it frees us from the power of the religious, Gnostic, God. In our experience of the Crucifixion, we fully confront the anxiety of death, meaninglessness, and guilt that the Church so often attempts to protect us from. A confrontation that must happen if we are to ever enter into the new life described in the Gospels as Resurrection. For Resurrection life is not some turning away from the experience of death that we find in the event of Crucifixion but rather describes a way of living in its very midst and finding there a way of truly affirming life.

Seriously, go buy this book.

It’s September, so that must mean it’s time to start talking about Christmas!

I wasn’t entirely out of sorts when I saw Christmas decorations on display in a store where I was shopping the other day. Pastors live by this strange calendar where we have to think months ahead of the folks in our congregations. While everyone else is still on summer break, we’re already planning for Advent/Christmas. So while part of me laments the commercialization of the incarnation, another part of me says, “Yeah, we need to order bulletin covers, set the date for the children/choir programs, and plan out the preaching schedule.”

But something is different this year. For the first time in six years (and only the second time in seventeen years), Christmas Day is on a Sunday. So it’s only a matter of time until we start hearing the arguments over whether or not to have worship on Christmas morning.

Some churches will say, “Of course we’ll have worship on Christmas! What better reason to worship than the birth of Christ!” Other churches will say, “No, we’re having multiple gatherings on Christmas Eve, and that’s just too much to ask of our pastors/music leaders/volunteers. Besides, most people in our church want to be home with their families.” Then some people will accuse those churches of selling out to the commercialization of Christmas and saying that being at home with your family is more important than worshipping God.

I’ll be honest. I have two kids (age 3 and 18 months), and I want to be with them on Christmas morning. We have two gatherings on Christmas Eve (7 and 11 PM), and I won’t get home until after midnight. I really don’t want to rush off to lead worship on only a few hours of sleep and miss out on experiencing a day of my children’s sheer joy. I don’t think I would be at my best for God or the church, because my mind would be exhausted and elsewhere. And I really don’t want to say to our music leaders at midnight, “Okay, see you in a few hours,” after all the incredibly hard work they have put in through Advent and Christmas Eve, especially when they want to be with their families, too! I am not ashamed to say that I will be suggesting that our church not have worship on Christmas morning.

But here’s the reason I’m writing this. I think that in all of these debates about worship on Christmas morning, we’re missing something really important. People say, “Churches should have worship on Christmas morning precisely because it’s a Sunday, and because it’s the birth of Jesus! If you don’t have worship, you’re just selling out to this idea of a cultural Christmas over a Christian Christmas.” I say to that, “Do you have worship on Christmas when it’s on a Tuesday? Or a Monday? Is the only reason we’re supposed to worship on Christmas because it’s a Sunday, and that’s ‘what you do on Sundays?’” There are plenty of churches that have worship gatherings on Christmas morning regardless of what day of the week it’s on. I say bravo to them. But for a lot of other Christians, the only reason we’re talking about this is because of this Christendom mindset that worship is something that happens on Sunday, and even worse, that worship is something that only happens in a church building.

So people in your church want to be at home with their families on Christmas? Why not encourage them to worship together as a family at home? Why not give your leaders a much needed day of Sabbath? Why not use this as an opportunity to show them that worship is something that can happen any time, any place, and that they don’t need a pastor to do it for them? This Christmas, give your church a gift…empower them to worship God as a family (or with a group of friends)! I guarantee you it will draw them closer together and make their Christmas even more meaningful. You’re not selling out to anything. You’re building up the Body of Christ. If you want to guide them through it, send out something like this:

Order of Worship
Light a candle and gather around it.

Call to worship:
Leader: The true light, which enlightens everyone, has come into the world!
Response: O come, let us adore him!

Sing verse one of “O Come, All Ye Faithful”

Prayer: Living God, we celebrate today that you are not a God who is far away from us. You came near to us in Jesus so that you could live life with us, experience the things that we experience, and draw us close to you. Come among us again, in new ways today. Be born in us, so that we might be born in you. We celebrate that you are near, then, now, and always. Help us to keep you at the center of this day. Amen.

Read Matthew 1:18-25 or Luke 2:1-20

Sing verse one of “Joy to the World”

Leader: May the light of Christ shine in our home today and always! And may the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us, now and forever. Amen.

See how easy that is? I just thought that up. It took about five minutes. You could take an afternoon and do something a whole lot better. Do something like that, send it out to your church, and encourage them to take a moment on Christmas morning to remember why they’re celebrating. Help them own the worship of God for themselves. This is not a war between the sacred and the secular. It’s an opportunity to help people discover the holy space in their lives where the sacred and the secular intersect. Or maybe even that there is no secular…everything can be sacred…it just depends on what you do with it.

Chad Holtz had a great post over at “Dancing on Saturday” yesterday. A few of the things that really jumped out and drew me in:

“…the space between heaven and hell has little to do with what we believe but everything to do with how we live.”

“There was a time when what one believed and how one lived were one and the same.  Mind, heart, body and soul were congruent.  As the modern world emerged on the heels of the Enlightenment, the mind trumped all else.  Belief became something separate from action while also becoming the instrument of salvation or damnation alone.  Faith alone would save us, and faith was conveniently divorced from body.”

“Rather than ask a person what or in whom they believe perhaps we should ask each other, ‘How do we live?’”

At issue here, as it has been throughout the 2,000 year history of Christianity, is orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice). And I think Chad both nails it and misses it at the same time.

I absolutely love Chad’s description of the split between belief and practice, how there was a time when “mind, heart, body, and soul were congruent.” I think there absolutely was a time when that was the case, and that time was for the 33 years that God dwelled among us in Jesus. It is only in Jesus that we have truly seen mind, heart, body, and soul truly functioning as one, in perfect harmony with one another. Ever since then, for 2,000 years, we have been divorcing faith from the body, severing belief from practice in one form or another.

For 2,000 years the pendulum of emphasis has swung from orthodoxy to orthopraxy, and each pendulum swing is a reaction to the swing before it. For a while we emphasize that orthodoxy is what matters. Then we (over)react to that emphasis on orthodoxy by suggesting that orthopraxy is where God is truly found.

So, yes, I would agree with Chad in that there was a time of harmony between belief and practice, and that ever since that time we have (over)emphasized one of the other. I just don’t think that the way to rediscover that balance is by swinging the pendulum in the exact opposite direction, which is what I see Chad doing here. (Side note: I understand that swing, because I have been doing it myself for the past few years. This post is as much a critique of my own approach as it is of anyone else’s. Chad simply evoked these thoughts in me, which is something that Chad does very well, and one of the reasons I love reading him.) Chad says:

“Rather than ask a person what or in whom they believe perhaps we should ask each other, ‘How do we live?’  Is it possible that our beliefs come on the heels of our actions instead of the other way around?”

In other words, rather than focus on belief, we need to focus on practice. My question (to Chad, myself, and the church) is, “Why can’t we focus on both?” If we saw that harmony and oneness existing in Jesus, and we strive to follow him, then shouldn’t we strive for that same harmony between our belief and our practice? Why do we need to emphasize one over the other, as if the two are in competition with each other?

I believe that faith is about balance. Balancing our time. Balancing our resources. Balancing body and soul. Balancing divinity and humanity. Balancing belief and practice. Richard Rohr writes in The Naked Now:

“[Jesus'] teachings invariably sought to create balance both within and without. Their concern was usually to seek some kind of equilibrium, inner harmony, or peace, which took many different forms and emphases. In general, they thought that balance brought one to divine union more than moral perfection did.”

That “moral perfection” can pertain to the perfection of our actions and the perfection of our beliefs. But where true perfection lies is in the balance between the two.

Think of it this way. Belief and practice are not found on a spectrum, but in a circle.

What we believe fuels what we do, and what we do fuels what we believe. It’s an endless cycle. One is not more “right” than the other. It’s just a matter of where you want to jump into the cycle and start the dance. Some people start with right belief, and that leads them to right practice. Some people start with right practice, and that leads them to right belief. But they both matter. They are both equally essential.

So what makes you a Christian, your beliefs or your actions? Is it how you believe or how you live? The answer that the church has to rediscover today is BOTH. And when we rediscover that balance, we will rediscover the One who is balance.