A Tale of Two Stories

I've been back in class for little more than a week, and I've already submitted close to twenty pages of written work - hence my quietness here. Things won't slow down much until probably next week, when I'm past the bulk of my assignments for the current course. I'll squeeze in posting when I get the chance, but things will probably remain light for the next week or so.

I did want to throw out some thoughts on the whole intelligent design debate, which just came to a head in my home state of Pennsylvania. Normally, I'd leave this sort of thing alone; it should be quite obvious that there are enough deeper issues surrounding cases like these that it's never really just about what happens in the classroom. I've been thinking about this, though, in light of a different concern, one that's informed by NT Wright's discussion of worldview in NTPG. Wright talks about the role that story plays in shaping our worldview and about the way in which story provides what in essence becomes the grid through which we interpret our experiences.

An example is probably helpful here. Americans have a set of stories that we tell also, stories of how we began as a nation, how we became who we are, stories of freedom and independence and triumphing over insurmountable odds. Those stories shape the basis for the way that we view reality. Others tell stories about us as well, stories that aren't so kind (but that deserve our hearing), stories about imperialism and oppression and might-makes-right. The worlds created by these two different sets of stories might, for example, determine whether one thinks of 9/11 as the work of "terrorists" or "martyrs". This is a fairly large oversimplification, but hopefully it gives some idea of what I mean when I talk about story forming the grid through which we view reality.

Back to intelligent design. This debate, really, has nothing at all to do with whether evolution happened. This is far more about the stories that we tell, stories of origins and beginnings and purpose and destiny. Both sides are fighting over the validity of their particular stories - and the validity of the stories that others tell. Neither side is really interested in a discussion of "what really happened". Unfortunately, both sides believe that's what this is about - as though we simply work with uninterpreted facts that don't adhere to a story for context and meaning.

I think what troubles me about this whole topic more than anything is that I have a nagging suspicion that there's another story that's being missed here. Is the story that we tell really all about how old this rock is that we call home, about whether our distant ancestors walked upright and dressed in this season's hottest fig leaves? Or is it more about why things are broken, why we search for transcendence, why we fail to live at peace, why we have inexplicable hope through suffering? We tell stories, not just for entertainment, but for meaning. The problem with engaging in the debate in the way in which some have chosen is that, in the argument over the facts, the meaning is ignored, all to prove a point about one particular view of scripture - about how to read the story in the first place. It's ironic, almost enough so to be painful. The story tells about brokenness, and we watch the meaning play itself out in the debate over the story itself.

Blog Tag

Todd tagged me with this meme:

The explosion of the blog world in the last year has led to countless quality blogs being started, but sometimes it is hard to find them amongst all the other blog muck. Because there are so many quality blogs out there, I though I would try to start a meme to send some eyeballs toward those unknown bloggers. So, share a blog you think more people should read, and then tag 5 others (who hopefully read your blog!) to do the same.

This is a tough one, because I could probably list a couple dozen sites here. I'll give a few that I consistently find to have quality stuff, with the disclaimer that omission isn't meant to indicate a lesser opinion of anyone's work.

Dang, I'm such a wimp.

Anyway - Blogs Everyone Should Read™

Ross Daws - Ross so often achieves that elusive mix of creative imagery and theological substance that I envy admire. Always worth reading.
Today at the Mission - My pseudonymous friend [rhymes with kerouac] writes about his experiences working in a homeless shelter. You cannot read his stuff without encountering Jesus.
So I Go - Jeff posted the first essay of his "perpetual novel" in the comments of one of my posts about a year ago, almost to the day if I remember correctly. I don't think anyone ended up reading my post, because his essay was so phenomenal.
Todd Littleton - I met Todd at the etrek course at Biblical last fall. Todd's blog is always well-written, thoughtful, and substantive.
Bob Robinson - Bob's site is a great mix of link and think. But his think is especially good; at the moment, he's doing a series on postmodernity that is well worth a read.

I'm going to cheat and tag the guys I listed. Personally, I like to read what the folks I'm reading like to read. (I think you all drop by from time to time... ;)

Breaking Fast

You know that feeling when you step back into your house after being away for an extended period of time? That's sort of how I feel. It was a good week - I'm glad I took it. For a full week, I didn't log onto the site, didn't check my counter, and didn't visit my reader (bloglines) at all. Well, maybe once or twice ;). But perspective is good, the blogosphere got along quite nicely without me, and I feel somewhat less compulsive about the whole thing, so I suppose it was time well spent, or not spent as the case may be.

I'm woefully behind on my daily blog reading - the list to the right, by the way, is always current and reflective of what I'm actually reading, even if I comment sparsely. It's not as extensive as some, but it's still a full plate for me; at this point, it will probably take a bit of time to get caught up. As far as this humble blog goes, Ross tagged me with a meme that I'll try to post in the next few days. I have a few books that I've been wanting to comment on, and I've been wanting to get back into some more creative pieces of late, something that I've done far too little of in recent weeks. I had wanted to get in on Steve's group blog through Foster's Celebration of Discipline, but I may have to forego that seeing the syllabus for my class that just began.

At any rate - it's good to be back.

Blog Fast

I'm going to take a week off from the blog. Actually, I've basically already started, but I wanted to put a quick note up to let everyone know I'll be back next week. Andrew Jones mentioned a few days ago about taking a blog fast to "purge our addiction to readership, hits and traffic," something that I'm sure nobody else struggles with ;). On top of that, I'm also trying to navigate where this thing is going. I haven't written a creative piece in far too long, and I think my writing is getting increasingly, well, abstract for lack of a better way to put it. I need to take a break to breathe some life back into my writing. At any rate, I'll be back next week.

A Generous Orthodoxy Conference

Looks like I'll be attending the Generous Orthodoxy conference in DC. It would be fun to connect with anyone from the blogosphere who's planning on attending - drop me an email or leave a comment if you're going to be there.

Preaching, Worship, and Community

Scot and Brad have another excellent post related to Preaching Re-imagined, and I want to play off some of their ideas with a few thoughts of my own about preaching, worship, and community. Brad says this: "What is perhaps missing in this whole dialogue is a discussion of liturgy and why the sermon is most often a speaching event. I would argue that the whole collective worship experience of the church is in a sense the dialogue that Doug yearns for. The sermon is but one small part of that dialogue."

I want to step back for a minute and think about the role of worship in the formation of a community. One of the things that I think is important to this conversation, as Brad noted, is the overarching reason or reasons why we gather for worship in community in the first place. I think the default answer is that worship is our right and fitting response to God, to His goodness, holiness, mercy, grace, and love. And that is certainly true, but it doesn't get to the question of why we gather for worship, and why worship as a communal act is a central part of the praxis of God's people in scripture. In truth, we are called to glorify God in all things, so there is some sense that to define worship in this way is to beg the question because it fails to give context to the communal aspect of worship. I think that in this sense communal worship is at least as much about shaping the imaginations of the participants as it is about anything else - the opportunity to be immersed in and shaped by the story of God, to inhabit the symbols of that story, and to engage in shared practices that reenact that story in the context of the community.

Imagine yourself a part of the nation of Israel during the time of the first temple. Your regular worship practices were specifically structured as a continual reenactment of the story of God's dealings with Israel. Your week was marked off by observance of Sabbath, reinforcing the Creation story and placing you within it. Several times a year, you would journey to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles - all feasts that provided a yearly recital of the story and immersed the people in it. Once a year, you would participate in the sacred assembly on the Day of Atonement, when your sins would be sent into the wilderness on the back of a goat. Story, symbol, praxis, to borrow from NT Wright, all came together to shape your identity as a member of God's people.

So where does the sermon enter into this picture? Although the forms have changed dramatically, I think it fair to say that worship should still serve to shape our imaginations as the people of God. The sermon in Christian practice typically serves as the point in worship at which God's story as embodied in scripture most openly intersects with our stories. Clearly that should happen in all parts of the gathering - but there is something special about our gathering around the story to remember it, to treasure it, to discuss it and be formed by it. The sermon tells the story of God, and it also tells the story of the community.

Here is where I find Doug's approach helpful - a sermon that doesn't give voice to God's story can't be formative in any beneficial sense. But, I'd argue, neither can one that fails to give voice to the story of the community. Navigating that intersection - what Doug calls implication - requires the one giving the sermon to be fluent in both.

The Big Question

The big question, I suppose, that I quickly encounter in reading Preaching Re-imagined is something that I think too often goes unasked: why do we preach? What is "preaching" anyway? Doug approaches this from the angle of spiritual formation and community life. Preaching needs to be re-imagined because, as-is, it's not effective in helping people to become better followers of Christ, and, on some level, it allows them to hand over responsibility for their growth to another person who is only too often willing to shoulder the load. Other traditions take a different approach to preaching. Particularly in some of the Reformed understandings of the role of preaching, there is this sense of the sermon as almost sacramental, almost mystical in its purpose. In this understanding, the sermon is merely the vehicle for God's transformational power to be at work in the people. The preacher's responsibility begins and ends with the content of the message - success is declaring the word of God faithfully. It then becomes God's responsibility to transform people through the vehicle of the spoken word - which seems to me to obviate the need for the preacher to be concerned with the effectiveness of the sermon.

Scot McKnight and Brad Boydston discussed this question of "why" on Scot's blog. As I mentioned there, this sacramental treatment is the approach to preaching that terrifies me - the thought that something mystical happens through the vehicle of the sermon that can't happen in other ways. It makes me extremely uncomfortable. There is so much of the self - and I speak as one who has regularly been given the privilege of preaching - in the sermon that I simply can't fathom putting it on the same level as those acts more normally considered sacraments. On top of that, it seems that the question of the effectiveness of the sermon as a tool for spiritual formation isn't even in play.

The interesting thing about the whole conversation is that what is described in the New Testament as "preaching" seems to bear only the faintest of resemblances to what happens in most congregations on a given Sunday. No, strike that - it bears no resemblance whatsoever. Take a read through the New Testament and reference all of the places where preaching is discussed and you'll see that what's actually in play isn't a question of form at all - preaching refers specifically in the NT to the proclamation of the gospel, and more often than not it's a public proclamation, not something that happens in the context of the local assembly (although that certainly happens as well).

Here's the problem, then, in crafting something of a theology of preaching: it's almost the wrong question, because preaching from a biblical standpoint is something different entirely than what we do, which Doug calls "speaching". What often results is that we import the concept of the sermon into the texts that describe this public proclamation of the gospel and think we've proven something, when in fact it's apples and oranges. One is concerned with content and audience, and the other is a question of form.