The End is the Beginning: A People of Vocation

Previous posts in this series can be found here, here, here, and here.

God calls Abram in Genesis 12 and inaugurates a new era in history. Much ink has been spilled on this particular topic, but permit me to add my own small take: the call of Abram isn't something to be read in isolation from the previous 11 chapters, but rather as a continuation of them. In other words, God's call of Abram is a creational act, through and through - or, more specifically, perhaps we should call it an act of re-creation, a glimmer of the new amid the old.

What is really happening in the call of Abram is nothing less than God's reinstitution of his creation project that has become derailed. This is important, because what we need to recognize here is that God isn't about scrapping the mess and starting over. The creation project has become deeply and foundationally broken, but God remains committed to it, determined to see it to his desired end. And he intends to do this, not by starting a new thing as over against the old, but rather by bringing the new right smack-dab in the middle of the old, so that in the end the old will be subsumed in the new. Some time later, one of Abram's descendants will describe this sort of activity in terms of yeast and mustard seeds - but we're not there yet. In fact, this is a puzzling bit of news, as Abram is an old man without children.

The themes of creation are rich in the Abram narrative, if we know how to look for them. Perhaps the most significant is the theme of giving fullness to that which is empty - God fills the void of creation in Genesis 1, and God fills a similar void in Abram and Sarai's life by providing a child. This leads to a twofold promise in relation to the land - Abram's descendants will rule it and fill it, a microcosm of the vocational call of the image of God granted to the man and woman in Genesis 1. New creation begins here, with the institution of the people of Israel and the assignment of a vocation to them. We significantly misstate the point of Genesis 1-11 when we read it to discover how God went about the task of creation. This has little to do with creation in a general sense. Genesis 1-11 is included in our text specifically to tell us who the people of God are and what their task is to be. Genesis 1 is about Abram more than it is about Adam.

And yet, we are left with Adam's legacy - remember the statement in Genesis 5? Adam had a son in his image. Abram is as much a child of Adam as he is a child of God - the fundamental flaw that has endangered the creation project to this point in the narrative has yet to be resolved. The rest of the Old Testament is about the conflict between these two realities, image and curse - and at the end of the narrative, we find that Abram's descendants are cast from the land in an event that is strangely reminiscent of another exiling, long before, in a garden somewhere in the same neighborhood.

The End is the Beginning: Frustration of Vocation

Previous posts in this series can be found here, here, and here.

When I last picked up this topic, I described my understanding of the image of God in humanity as a vocation to which we are called, specifically that of furthering and completing the creation project begun by God in Genesis 1 by ordering and filling the earth. I also described my understanding of the curse as the distortion of that vocation, reflected in the aspects of the curse that were given to the man and the woman - the man was cursed with enmity between him and the earth, frustrating the task of ordering creation, while the woman was cursed with hardship in childbirth, frustrating the task of filling creation. Further, the man and the woman were set at odds with each other, with man dominating the woman instead of reflecting the joint image-bearing task that was given them in Genesis 1.

Image, you see, is a communal task. It isn't something that you bear and that I bear, but rather something that we, together, bear as we participate with God in his creation project. Or, put differently, you and I are each created in the image of God - but we reflect that image as a whole, as a people, as a community. That is, I think, the lesson of Genesis 1. In contrast to the kings of Babylon and Egypt who were said to be the image of the gods, the Hebrew scriptures describe it as something that we all share and that is distorted when we do not recognize it in one another.

This, however, is exactly what happens in Genesis 4-11. We see humanity caught between image and curse, attempting to order and fill the earth yet harming, enslaving, and killing one another. This is a difficult set of chapters for us to read because the events described clash significantly with our modern sensibilities - and for good reason! They describe what happens when the image of God is frustrated and the divine task is abandoned. The flood story is one of the most troubling texts in the whole of the Christian canon, if we will be honest. But I think what the narrative is meant to portray is the intensity with which God will guard his creation project. I think that what we take away from such a story is that the project is in serious jeopardy. Regardless of how one approaches the question of the sovereignty of God, what is in my view undeniable is that in the narrative God is forced to take drastic action - that's what the logic of the story tells us. Things are devolving quickly.

I think it fascinating that this particular section ends where it does, with the narrative of Babel. It's an odd sort of tale that doesn't strike many chords with contemporary readers - but I think it's a powerful climax that drives home the question of how God will respond. Middleton writes in The Liberating Image that what God is opposing in this story is a sort of proto-Babylonian empire that subjugates other peoples and conscripts them into massive imperial building projects. In his view, the single language of the story isn't some idyllic time when everyone spoke the same language - in fact, chapter 10 describes the various people-groups as developing their own languages as a natural progression of their spreading out and filling the earth. However, it was common for a conquering nation to impose its own language on conquered peoples to facilitate their labor. What the narrative of Genesis 11 represents, then, is the actions of an empire whose intention is to "make a name" for itself in opposition to the purposes of God. It will accomplish this task through oppression and conquest, using means such as forced labor and imposition of a common language to unite the conquered peoples for massive building projects. God's intervention in this project results in the cessation of building, the return to many languages, and the dispersion of people across the land - in short, the return to God's purposes for humanity.

God intervenes numerous times in the first eleven chapters of the story to protect his creation project - but he is about to move in a whole new way. Next, we'll look at Abram's call from the perspective of the divine vocation and the imago dei.

Technorati Tags: narrative, new creation

The End is the Beginning: Distortion of Vocation

If it is fair to connect vocation with creational intent, as I discussed in my previous post, then I think it also makes sense to look at Genesis 3 from the same vantage point. Genesis 3 is a fascinating chapter in the Christian scriptures, not least because of how little it really tells us. Read the chapter carefully, and you might catch that a lot of what is commonly assumed to be going on in the chapter is in fact an interpretive veneer that we lay over the actual text. Take, for example, the identity of the serpent - I've only once heard it postulated that the serpent could represent something or someone other than a personal malevolent entity known as Satan, and yet nowhere in the entire canon is that connection made. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad reading - but it isn't in the text. It has to come from somewhere else.

Likewise, we often assume a set of meanings in relation to the curse. Most of these meanings are based on later elements in the story, or even on popular theologies that are somehow read back into the text. For example, it's common in evangelical theology to speak of the curse as "separation" from God. But again, that's not in the text, or at least it's not described in terms of curse. The man and the woman are expelled from the garden, implying separation. But that's not the curse. That happens later, so that the problem will not be compounded by the man and woman continuing to eat from the tree of life and thus living forever in their cursed state. (Go ahead, read it - I'll wait. ;) The curse is all about vocation in Genesis 3.

Flip back a few pages to the end of Genesis 1. The man and woman have been given their divine task - to jointly image God and to participate in the creation project by ruling and filling the Earth. This is exactly what is twisted in Genesis 3. The divine vocation that was given to humanity is now frustrated; the creation project is in jeopardy. The curse on the man is mirrored by a curse on the ground - instead of ruling and subduing the earth, the man will now have to fight and struggle with the earth just to be able to eat. The curse on the woman is likewise reflective of the divine task - instead of filling the earth, childbirth will now be painful and costly. And, instead of jointly imaging God, the man will exercise authority over the woman, another corruption of the creational intent. Finally, in the end, both will die, returning to the dust from which they have been made, in what seems the final triumph of "uncreation".

We stand now at the point of driving conflict in the scriptural narrative. On the one hand, God holds forth his creation project, in which humanity is to serve as his chief representatives. On the other, humanity has rejected our own vocation and set ourselves in opposition to God's purposes, rather than in cooperation with them. This conflict echoes through the rest of the narrative. Every movement in the story from this point will be a move towards one of these two poles. And God now has a new task in the narrative - how will he rescue his creation project from those who have screwed it up so badly? And what will become of these humans, who were to serve in a pivotal role in that project?

Technorati Tags: narrative, new creation

The End is the Beginning: Purity of Vocation

Vocation might seem like an odd connection to make when talking about (towards?) New Creation. It might seem even more so in relation to Genesis 1 - but that's where I want to begin. I'm going to sketch out a rough outline, starting here, and hopefully pull some themes to the fore that I think are largely ignored in contemporary western Christianity. As to what that will tell us about our place in the narrative - well, we shall see when we get there.

Those of you who (like me) grew up in or are currently a part of churches that lean towards the conservafundagelical will no doubt recognize the take on Genesis 1 that looks at the narrative as a description of how God created the world. There are different ways of navigating that, of course - literal six-day view or theistic evolution or days represent ages or whatever - but the perspective boils down to the understanding of the text as basically answering the question how. I've come to believe that there is really very little of that question in play at all in Genesis 1, and the parts that do talk about how aren't saying at all what we've come to believe. I think that Genesis 1 is basically talking about two themes: vocation and power. And those themes, I think, are intertwined, so that the questions that the text is answering focus on things like: who are we? What is our role or task in the world?

Those questions, you must understand, were also asked by others in the ancient world, others who had a particular motivation for having them answered in a particular way. When the text speaks of the image of God, it is using royal language - both the Babylonian and Egyptian empires used that language of their kings in connection with their right to rule. The logic goes something like this: You were created to serve the gods. The king is the living representative (image) of those gods. Therefore, whatever service you owe to the gods is due the king as their representative. So get back to work!

Genesis 1 is a text that, I believe, contains a powerful polemic against such language. God is portrayed, not as a harsh taskmaster, but as a gracious deity who invites Creation to "Be!" Humanity, both male and female, is portrayed as being created in His image - as His divine representatives on earth. All of us. We are tasked with a divine vocation - to finish the Creation project by ordering and filling the earth, taking up where God left off. I've written more extensively on this here; I owe much of my current understanding to Richard Middleton's excellent book The Liberating Image.

The point here is that, if New Creation represents the reinvigoration and reestablishment of God's original creational intent, then we have to recognize that this wasn't a country club existence, hanging out by the pool and getting free lunch. This was an invitation to service and work, to participate in the act of creation itself! It was an opportunity to become a partner with God by representing Him in the created world. And it was not an invitation to choose to exercise power over one another, but rather to partner with one another as well as with God.

Whatever New Creation will be, I have to believe that it will reflect this picture: an existence of active service, cooperation, and partnership with God and each other, bringing His creational intent into being.

Technorati Tags: imago dei, narrative, new creation, image

The End is the Beginning

I'm struck by several things that I think are related in American Christianity: first, we have no real theology of hope, and in fact we barely can speak in the language of hope; second, we have no real theology of vocation, and we struggle with a sort of neo-Platonic dualism that separates the physical and spiritual; and third, our soteriology is oriented towards escape, and is often little more than a description of what we are saved from, instead of being an articulation of that to which we are called. And I think that these particular struggles of ours are rooted in a particular way of understanding eternity, an understanding that at the end of the age we will be rescued to an atemporal, spiritual existence where we will live in eternal bliss, a sort of uber-retirement of leisure and rest, if you will.

The more that I think about this, the more that I believe "retirement" is exactly how a lot of folks picture what eternity is supposed to be about. In other words, I've worked my tail off, thank you very much, so now I get to kick back, play golf, and enjoy ten percent off at Denny's. And, since it's heaven, there will probably be a bit of singing involved or some such. But this is really a fairly bizarre sort of notion, and profoundly unbiblical - the closest that we come to something like this is the concept of the Sabbath-rest of God, which has absolutely nothing to do with leisure or relaxation. In fact, the scriptures present a picture of a God who is always at work, always participating in the world and taking delight in what he has made. The scriptures begin with a picture of God at work, doing the stuff of creation and finding great joy in the task. The scriptures likewise end with a picture of a God who is still at work, reigning in the great City over the New Creation, from which the river and the tree of life bring healing to the nations. And there is a very strong sense that this is a vibrant and active city, where kings and nations come and go freely, doing whatever it is that a hand unburdened by the curse will find to do.

What we see, then, in the end is what we find at the beginning: God is about the task of creation, ordering and filling the earth, and his representatives are about this same task, working alongside to bring his vision to life. All of the stuff in the middle, the stuff of this present age in which you and I find ourselves, is about how that task became frustrated and about how we abandoned our divine vocation, choosing instead to craft our own smaller stories and to forge our own meaning and purpose in defiance of the one that had been granted us. All of God's movements of redemption are about reclaiming that initial purpose, about restoring all things so that they are once again very good, in the sense that they reflect exactly what it is that God had in mind when he made them. The end is the beginning, in the sense that it is original intent reclaimed and restored. And so, to understand the end, we must begin at the beginning.

Technorati Tags: narrative, new creation

Scriptural Dissonance: Incarnation

I wasn't certain that I wanted to tackle this one next, but I've been reading something that's prodding my thoughts in a particular direction, and having begun to ponder it I think it works out to be a nice logical progression in any case. The tension of which I'm speaking is, of course, the humanity and divinity of Christ. I've chosen the word "incarnation" for my title, however, because that particular term encapsulates something of the essence of the struggle. In this one term we have the holding together of two ideas that seem contradictory and become in their joining scandalous, an offense, something bold and subversive and perhaps rather nonsensical if it weren't for the fact that it is true.

The book in question is Frost's Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. I have a confession to make, and I hope this doesn't mean that I can't sit with the cool kids at lunch anymore - I'm about fifty pages in and, so far, I'm not really into it. I like the points that he's making, but I find myself in serious disagreement with how he gets there. My biggest complaint thus far has been his take on the creeds:

Sadly, the early church was quick to move beyond the very earthy, actional description of Jesus in the Gospels to a much more ontological one in the creeds...The later Nicene Creed, composed in the early fourth century, while containing many of the same elements found in the Old Roman Creed, reads more like a philosophical formula than a summary of a story. Jesus Christ is "...light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father." The later Athanasian Creed is an even more striking example of the move toward doctrinally oriented conceptions of the faith. When the earliest witnesses to the Christ event sought to describe what they saw, they rarely took such a philosophical stance. They speak in very practical, plain language about what Jesus did and said. And this affects the way that they saw mission. If the gospel is about a real man, eating, drinking, teaching, crucified, buried, resurrected, it locates the message in action. When we see Jesus as light from light, true God from true God, it dramatically changes our spirituality. Jesus becomes one to be worshipped, examined, reflected upon. The earlier creeds, however, present a lifestyle to be followed. (p. 30)

Now, let it first be said that I really want to like this book - I've had such high hopes for it after Shaping. But this discussion is wrong on so many levels that I'm not sure where to begin. Well, I suppose what immediately leaps out at me is that this is just a sloppy argument. For one thing, Frost hasn't given any credence to the thought that perhaps the creeds are an excellent example of contextual theology, framed in a way that is completely appropriate to the fourth century world in which they were constructed. To take a swipe at them for not being narratival seems, well, petty. But that's besides the point. The big concern is that Frost is in fact dealing with the substance of a heresy which the early church knew all too well. In fact, by the time Nicea rolled around, it was old hat - it was called Docetism, and it was confronted by the likes of John, Ignatius, and Polycarp. It was, put succinctly, the belief that Jesus only appeared to be human, but was not so in fact. 1 John begins with a text that begins to sound rather philosophical as it goes along (contra Frost's dictum): That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. The early church had, by the time of Nicea, already rejected an approach that would suggest that Jesus was less than fully human.

However, we would do well to pay attention to the conflict that generated the Nicene Creed. It is, in some sense, docetism's opposite; it's known as Arianism, and it was one of the most significant struggles that the church faced in its first five hundred years. To put it succinctly, Arianism taught that Jesus was something less than fully God, that he was created by God and that there was a time before he existed. While this on the surface seems a small thing, in reality it has the potential to radically reorient the way in which we read the Story. If Jesus was not "true God of true God", as the Creed states (and as the Arians denied), then what of the incarnation? What of the subversive, scandalous text that is the Gospel? What of the God who humbles himself, takes on the form of a servant, and becomes the "ordinary human" that Frost champions?

Please don't misread me - I'm not suggesting in any way that Frost is espousing Arianism or that he's denying the incarnation. However, I do want to suggest that we need to think somewhat more carefully on the importance of the Creeds and treasure them for what they are - the church's reflection of how the Story is to be read, not as a substitute for the Story itself. And in this instance, I think, the Church has gotten it right, even if those of us who are a part of her tend to teeter from one side to another: belief in the tension between humanity and divinity in the person of Christ is what makes us Christian. Tension, that is, in how we understand the incarnation, not in the person of Christ himself - let me be clear! I agree with Frost in that the Church has often drifted towards a functional docetism while denying its substance - we have acted as though Jesus' earthy, human life was of less importance than the meaning of his death and resurrection. But let us not make the corresponding mistake of not reflecting deeply, thoroughly, and, yes, worshipfully on what it means that God himself has walked among us, and we have seen his glory.

Technorati Tags: Frost, incarnation, scripture, Exiles

Scriptural Dissonance: Power and Freedom

I've been reading through The Silmarillion again of late; actually, I try to read each of Tolkien's major works at least once a year, and of them, I think this one is my favorite. It's certainly the most challenging - I confess that I tried to get through it three times before I was finally successful. But it rewards the careful reader, and I've found that its complexity is what creates its beauty and depth.

Tolkien is a fascinating author, not least because he deals with significant themes but does so indirectly. If you're familiar with Lord of the Rings, for example, think of the way in which the One Ring is described. What is most interesting is that Tolkien never comes out and states what it is that the Ring does. It's powerful, so much so that if the Enemy were to retrieve it his victory would be assured - but it also corrupts the wielder, so that any who attempt to use its power for good would result in themselves being twisted and tainted. But what does it do, exactly?

Tolkien gives us hints and suggestions, ones that the careful reader can note. And I think that evil, in Tolkien's world, is embodied by power used in domination. This is vaguely what the Ring does - it grants power according to one's stature, according to Gandalf, and the wielder must train his or her will in the domination of others. In the Silmarillion, Morgoth's evil was of similar character, only greater - and this is to be expected, for Morgoth was the one whom Sauron served.

This leads me to something on which I've been reflecting for some time. I've been wrestling with how to approach this topic; I believe again that here are two themes which stand in tension in the biblical text, but this particular dichotomy is easily the most controversial. I've titled this post Power and Freedom, but I'm not certain that captures the heart of the matter. Still, it serves as a beginning, perhaps. In short, the question that I have is this: does God always get what He wants?

The Christian tradition has always held to the view that God is sovereign, that He is all-powerful and that He rules the cosmos as its heavenly King. He is the creator, the One who gave the universe its beginning; He is the sustainer, the One that continues to give the universe its life; and He is the redeemer, the One who will eventually restore all things to their intended purpose and being. Isaiah, speaking in God's stead, has this to say: "I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please." God has the power to accomplish what He chooses to accomplish - this, it would seem, settles the matter.

Or does it? Another theme, I think, winds its way through the narrative, one that perhaps brings an, "And yet..." to the telling. God, at the very beginning of the story, chooses to delegate his authority to humans, who use that authority in ways that seem at odds with God's own purposes. The authority graciously given is quickly turned to domination of others. The challenge that this presents is obvious: did God intend this use of His delegated authority? Does He get His way in this, or not?

On the one hand, we have the picture of a God who has the ability to see that His every whim is done. On the other, we see a God who does not act as though He is happy with what transpires. We see a God who grieves, a God who weeps, One who cries out for those He loves to be faithful and to stop chasing after others. We see a God who certainly acts as though something has gone awry. And most of all we see God revealed in the person of Christ - a King who loves His enemies, who rejects military might as His way, who welcomes all and sundry, who stands silently before His accusers and who suffers rejection and betrayal and torture and murder at the hands of an apostate religious aristocracy and a brutal dictator interested only in maintaining his own position and power.

Power is, after all, the problem here. Power God has - power enough to see His will accomplished. But His use of power is puzzling. Instead of keeping it, He seems to be most interested in giving it away. We see power wielded not in domination of others, but in selfless service and sacrifice. We see the greatest of all becoming the servant of all. We see power revealed, not in strength, but in weakness.

We dare not - dare not - resolve this tension. To waver towards a God who is all-powerful and uses that power to always get what He wants is to miss the self-giving One revealed in the person of Christ. It is to instead establish a deity who is little more than a cosmic overlord, who cannot be moved by compassion or by love. On the other hand, to resolve in favor of a God who abdicates that power reveals a God who is no longer God at all, who cannot redeem and who cannot establish justice and mercy and peace as He has promised to do. To live in that tension is to open, perhaps, a new way of thinking about power, about how we in turn should wield it who are formed in His image and carry still His delegated authority. That power remains His, and we shall one day have to give account for how we have served as its stewards.

Technorati Tags: power, scripture, freedom, theology

Scriptural Dissonance: Image and Curse

I think there is a fine argument to be made that the problem of the human condition is the problem that occupies the central place in the narrative of scripture. N.T. Wright has this to say in his book Evil and the Justice of God:

In fact - and this is crucial, I think, for understanding the Old Testament as a whole - what the Bible gives us is both much less and much more than a "progressive revelation," a steady unfolding of who God is. The Old Testament isn't written in order simply to "tell us about God" in the abstract. It isn't designed primarily to provide information, to satisfy the inquiring mind. It's written to tell the story of what God has done, is doing, and will do about evil...we must grasp at the outset that the underlying narrative logic of the whole Old Testament assumes that this is what it's about. (p. 45-46)

I think there is something to be said for reading scripture through the logic of narrative. In other words, I think that while a lot of folks would agree with that statement in principle, we still read the text like it's either the New York Times or Aesop's Fables, depending on one's particular theological bent. Narrative - I make much of narrative in my thoughts here, primarily because I believe it's critical to understand narrative in order to understand scripture. Narrative is driven by conflict. Without conflict, there is no narrative, no story. And, similarly, unless one understands what, exactly, the conflict is all about, one will miss the point of the narrative. And the conflict in scripture is framed in terms of image and curse - miss this, and I think you miss the point of the whole tale.

Scripture is, after all, more than just the story of God - it's specifically the story of God and people. It's about how we were created with the purpose of representing God's authority but squandered that vocation, receiving instead the curse. Believe what you will about whether the Genesis account is mythic or historical or something else entirely - the bottom line is that without this particular underpinning, this conflict that sits at the heart of everything that comes after, nothing else in the book will make sense in quite the right way. You might be able to make sense of it, but it will be the wrong kind of sense, and will ultimately hinder your efforts to understand what it is that the text is really saying.

The conflict is this: human beings are created in the image of God, established as his representatives, gifted with his authority and tasked with completing his creative project of filling and ordering the earth that began in the very first chapter of the book. We, each of us, have dignity, honor, a creative calling, and a divine vocation to fulfill - we are, in short, Good. Human beings are also laboring under the curse, cast out of the garden, our divine vocation frustrated, our relationships fractured, and we are unable to do anything about it. We, each of us, are also Evil. As Wright states so eloquently, the line between good and evil runs through the center of each of us - it isn't that this one is good, while that one over there is evil; it is that we all, each of us, live in the tension between image and curse - a tension that cannot be resolved in this present age.

In fact, to resolve this tension is to destroy the story. It is to twist it and rearrange it until it is no longer recognizable. To resolve the tension in favor of curse over image - to say that the curse has utterly destroyed the imago dei or that there is no vestige of good left in humanity - is to leave one without a theology that can recognize human dignity. It is an understanding that is unable to explain any act of good on the part of those outside of one's theological tradition - in fact, such an approach is forced to call any act of generosity, of heroism, of selfless courage, of justice, of mercy, or of reconciliation that is done outside of that tradition an evil act done by evil people. I'd go so far as to suggest that it removes the element of tragedy from the story almost entirely. On the other hand, to resolve the tension in favor of image over curse - to deny the fallen condition in which we find ourselves - is to leave one without a theology that can explain human evil. It cannot, I think, explain such things as genocide or war or poverty or injustice or abuse or exploitation or any of a thousand ways that we routinely violate the sanctity and dignity of human life. I'd go so far as to suggest that it leaves the story, ultimately, without a point or a resolution.

This, then, is the first theme that I would like to suggest that plays in dissonance throughout the scriptures. In fact, this dissonance lies at the heart of the melody and is central to the score. And perhaps I telegraph a bit too much of my direction here, but let me share one last thought: the purpose of dissonance in music is to create the desire for and expectation of resolution. Perhaps something of what it means to live in this tension is to allow it to fuel such desire and expectation in us as well.

Technorati Tags: image of God, imago dei, narrative, scripture

Worship in a Storied World (p. 2)

I mentioned in the comments on my last post that I had an interesting experience this weekend as well. I attended my parents' church, which is a large Pentecostal church in rural Pennsylvania. For the record, I don't have anything in particular against Pentecostal or Charismatic churches - I consider myself something of a post-charismatic myself, to borrow a term from RobbyMac. And this is a fairly typical evangelical church, from what I can tell - I doubt that what I experienced would be much different from what many folks from any number of traditions experience on any given Sunday. At any rate - as I mentioned late last week, I've been mulling over this question of worship for what's now over a week. I openly admit that it's a bad, bad idea to go into a worship gathering already pondering what the experience will be like - it's distracting, and it makes it darn near impossible to actually participate in the worship gathering yourself. I don't recommend it. Still, it did highlight for me again some of the concerns that I had last week, about getting lost in the whole "personal" aspect of the gospel, while missing the cosmic thrust of the Story.

My friend Kristi suggested the following in the comments on the last post:

yes, modern worship songs are in part a result of the American/Western Evangelical church's focus on a gospel consisting solely of a personal salvation message, but also a result of a postmodern generation in search of relationship. Lasting relationships, that is. Our generation longs for commitment and dependibility, and darn it if "Jesus-as-my-girl/[boy]friend" doesn't resonate with that longing.

I agree with her assessment - I agree that what's attractive about a personal, spiritual, eternal gospel for many, many folks is the prospect of spending eternity in relational bliss, finding meaning and connectedness in a divine relationship that will always endure. And there's nothing wrong with that - that is a good thing. But it's myopic. I wonder, though, if what we're really after isn't relationship at all. Or let's frame it slightly differently - those of us who identify with the emerging church talk a lot about community, and I hear a lot of folks talking about how people are looking for a sense of community and belonging in our current context. But I'm not sure that's really it, on either level. I think what many folks want - to be honest, what I often find myself wanting - are the trappings of community and relationship without all that cumbersome baggage. I want the benefits, but I don't want to pay the dues. I want commitment and dependability - meaning, I want someone (or Someone) to be committed and dependable for me. But don't ask me to commit. That's a pain in the tail.

So I was mentioning the worship gathering at my folks' church on Sunday. It was a fairly typical evangelical-type worship set, lots of songs about how I love Jesus a whole lot, and how He loves me too. Fortunately, no Jesus-is-my-girlfriend songs - there's something to be said for that, I suppose. Then they started singing some songs about how, one day, Jesus is going to come back and take us home to be with Him, and won't it be just swell? And the sermon talked about how God can meet all of our needs, and how miracles don't exhaust God's bank or something like that, and how God wants to give miracles to people today, because He loves them a whole lot. And then folks came up to pray that God would give them the miracle that they need. And then we went to lunch.

And the thing that bugged me about the whole thing wasn't that it was wrong. I mean, I don't think there was a single thing in the whole service with which I'd really take issue, theologically speaking. Even the miracle stuff, even though it sounded a bit hokey, a bit like a televangelist, was ok - I do believe that God still works miracles, and there wasn't any sort of peddling of God's power like you see on TV, so I think that was just a tragedy of language being coopted by snake oil salesmen, so that now when anyone says "miracle" what people hear is something more like "send cash to the address at the bottom of the screen".

What I didn't like about it was that it was...small. The whole gathering felt like the Story wasn't much of a story. It was as if the narrative world of our grand tradition was collapsing in on itself, until it was a sad, pale, hollow shell of a thing. It wasn't the Story of God's redemption of all creation. It wasn't about the triumph of mercy and justice and the restoration of shalom. It wasn't even about God's formation of a new people, a new community in whom His redemptive work can be displayed. It was about how Jesus loves me - which isn't wrong, not at all. But it needs the context of the grand Story of God's redemptive purposes to make it meaningful and beautiful.

Physicists talk about black holes, about massive stars that, at the end, are defeated by gravity, so that they collapse and form an object so dense that not even light can escape. I wonder if that's what we've become - little black holes, all crushed in on ourselves, with no light to be seen because it can't escape the tragic collapse of our narrative world.

Technorati Tags: worship, narrative, story

Worship in a Storied World

One of my more interesting experiences at the retreat I attended last weekend was unexpected. It was actually a small thing, in a sense, but I haven't stopped thinking about it. The format of the retreat centered on several group sessions that were comprised of a lecture preceded by a short time of singing. One of the sessions included the song Draw Me Close, which is practically a classic among some branches of evangelicalism (for what that's worth). I've heard this song probably hundreds of times now and, while I don't find it particularly worshipful, I've never really been bothered by it until this weekend. What happened? About a minute into the song, something clicked in my brain, something entirely unexpected and completely irreversible. I heard the words being sung by Peter Cetera, backed by mid-eighties era Chicago. It was profoundly disturbing on so many levels, not least because it was completely plausible.

So what to do with such a disturbing image? I've been pondering the question of worship all week - what it is, what it isn't, and what makes something a good example of it. And I'm fairly certain that Jesus-is-my-girlfriend sort of worship isn't really cutting it. Lots of folks have offered better and more nuanced critiques of current worship than I, so I won't dwell on this point. But I think it's fair to ask what else we should expect when the gospel is reduced to a spiritual, personal, otherworldly sort of message. What other form would it take? Doctrinal statements set to music, perhaps? Equally bad, I'd suggest. Neither engages the sort of worship that we find pictured for us in the biblical narrative.

For context, let's consider Exodus 13, which tells of the institution of the Passover tradition among the people of Israel. God in this text tells of the purpose of the celebration, and in the process I think gives us a picture of what it is that worship does for us as a community:

On that day tell your son, `I do this because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.' This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that the law of the LORD is to be on your lips. For the LORD brought you out of Egypt with his mighty hand. You must keep this ordinance at the appointed time year after year.

Take note here of what is happening. This is a fascinating description of the worship tradition of the people of Israel, centered on their most important feast of the year. The Passover experience was absolutely not about a personal experience or encounter with the divine - although it would certainly engage each individual who participated in it. It was also absolutely not about articulating abstract doctrinal statements - although it certainly formed the basis for much of the belief system of the Israelites. So, in other words, while those two elements are in play, they're not the primary purpose. The worship tradition here is much more about serving as the memory of the community. It's about telling the story of what God has done, of how He has acted on behalf of His people within the pages of history. It also, by extension, calls attention to how He will continue to act in the present and future. In fact, the Psalms often present this in the framework of, "Remember your people, Lord, whom you brought out of Egypt."

Worship, then, is story telling. It is about shaping our imaginations by continuing to tell the Story of God, about calling each other to remember it and inhabit it, and encouraging us to find our collective place within that Story. It's about learning to trust what God will do because of what He has already done, and about remembering and telling that Story together as a community.

Technorati Tags: worship, narrative, story

The Heart of the Story

We had an interesting discussion in class on Saturday about the primary narrative. Our prof listed two statements, both of which Christian theology would consider to be true, pretty much across the board. The question that was asked, though, was this: which of these is the primary statement or, put another way, which more truly describes our present existence?

• Human beings are created in the image of God. Since the fall, the image has been defaced - but not erased.
• Human beings are fallen creatures. Now, depraved in nature and rebellious in action, the human reflection of the Divine image has been seriously tarnished.

I have to be honest, I don't like the question. The point that he was making was that various traditions tend to emphasize one of these over the other. My thought is that both must be held in tension. It seems to me that failing to do so, that emphasizing one of these over the other, leads to serious distortions in the way that we approach our faith.

Take, for example, an emphasis on the image of God over against a recognition of our sinfulness. This approach can do much to explain great beauty in the world. It can help to explain why we are moved at stories of selflessness, or why we enjoy good art as opposed to bad, or why we tend towards a little virtue called hope. But, I wonder, can it explain the retched atrocities that we are capable of? Can it explain Darfur, or globalization, or slavery, or why children on playgrounds everywhere need no lessons in cruelty?

On the other hand, an emphasis on our depravity has no difficulty explaining these things. But it, I think, struggles in the other direction. It doesn't explain any of a thousand acts of selflessness in which people of all stripes participate every day. It doesn't explain loyalty, or deep friendship, or any other thing that we would prize that comes with deep costs and at times only tangible benefits.

The Story in which we participate, I'd argue, is one in which both of these premises are true. Human beings are created in the image of God; human beings are completely sinful. That is the essence of the primary narrative, I think. But one thing I would say: pushed to choose, I would have to say that, of the two, I hold the first to be of greater priority. Why? Because Christian hope is, I think, at its core the desire for a restoration to the-way-things-ought-to-be. In the end, we believe that sin, that evil, that depravity and rebellion do not have the final word - hope and a new creation do.

What does this have to do with contextual theology? I'd suggest that, at its core, contextual theology is an attempt to align our stories with the Story. The challenge that we face is that we, generally speaking, have difficulty in holding things in tension. We tend to want things to resolve, to come to completion, to be nice and neat and tidy. But our Story isn't like that. It's messy and challenging and full of tension, particularly between the now and the yet-to-come. But if we miss or ignore one of these pieces, then we're telling a story that's incomplete - and that's not the gospel, I'd suggest.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, story

Elements of Story: Redemption (p. 3)

This is a challenging reflection to write. I've come to that part of the story where the tale comes crashing in on itself, where redemption seems farthest off, when the days of Abraham and Moses seem like ancient history that will never come again. I'm speaking of the failure of the people of God to keep the covenant, and the curses that the covenant itself brings upon them. Moses presents the terms to the people in Deuteronomy 28. Take a moment to read it; read it again, and let the awful weight of the words sink into your soul. You can hear over and over the themes of the curse revisited on the people, should they turn away from God.

And, of course, we know the story. Even if you've never read it, the tale is as predictable as a sunset and as inexorable as taxes. The people fail to keep the covenant. As a professor of mine is fond of saying, the point of the Old Testament narrative is that the fall of Jerusalem was inevitable.

Exile is the word that we commonly use to describe the situation in which the people of God find themselves at the end of this plot thread. The narrative has come full circle. The end of Genesis 3 found the man and woman cast from the garden. The end of 2 Kings 25 finds the nation of Israel cast from the land. Exile is the condition in which the curse has triumphed. It is the result of being cut off from the blessing of God. It is the strongest metaphor that the biblical narrative uses - metaphor in the sense that the physical circumstances of the people are only a manifestation of what has already been present spiritually, as any cursory reading of the prophets will reveal.

Exile is a metaphor that we should learn to inhabit. The nation of Israel never recovered. NT Wright, among others, argues that, even after returning from Babylon, the people still considered themselves exiles. They would spend the rest of their days as a nation attempting to navigate an existence in exile, never truly succeeding. And, in some sense, their struggle is the same as ours. We, too, are in exile, far from home and suffering under the weight of the curse.

But, fortunately, exile is not the final word. If you turn your head just so, if you listen very closely and carefully, you can begin to make out another word, a note, a melody, a line of poetry, a whispered prayer that encapsulates our hope and our need.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear...

Elements of Story: Redemption (p. 2)

I have to be honest - I thought I had written myself into a corner here. I wasn't sure I could carry through this reflection building on the theme of negating the curse. I wanted to head towards Moses next, and there I got stuck. How does Moses fit into this picture? Torah seemed an obvious place, but although the themes of land and children certainly play out in the Law, it would be difficult and, I'd argue, somewhat manipulative to construct a view of Torah with those themes in mind. Torah deals with those topics in the context of the covenant community - handling them properly is a consequence of being the people of God, but I'd find it difficult to argue that there's something foundational about those things in the Law. I was stumped.

But then I remembered that I was thinking of Torah too narrowly. Torah includes the written codes, most certainly, but it also contains lots of narrative. And that's when it clicked - the themes are present, and strongly so, in the narrative of Moses itself. More correctly, the next defining act of redemption that we find is truly archetypal - the Exodus story. I turned to Exodus 1, and the themes of curse and redemption exploded off the page.

Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them...So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.

God's blessing of Abraham had begun to bear fruit - so much fruit, in fact, that the ruler of Egypt began to get somewhat nervous. Soon, he decided to take matters into his own hands by killing the children. And, of course, we know the story - Pharaoh as an agent of the curse cannot defeat the blessing of God. A boy that escapes the soldiers of Pharaoh comes instead to live in Pharaoh's household. Eventually, he brings the judgment of God and the deliverance of Israel.

Here we have the elements of the curse conspiring to destroy the people of God - forced labor (recalling Adam), death of the children (recalling Eve), in a land not their own (recalling expulsion from the Garden). Here we also have the blessing of God acting to redeem His people - an increase in numbers, freedom from toil and slavery, and the journey to a land of their own. And, in the end, the promise of another prophet yet to come, one who, like Moses, would free his people from the curse...

Elements of Story: Redemption (p. 1)

I thought perhaps to continue my earlier series on the biblical narrative as a meditation during Advent. I am not, by tradition, one who practices much in the way of observance of the Christian year, but I'd like to at least begin to think along those lines. This is my hesitant first step, more a meditative act than anything else, but perhaps it will be of worth to someone else.

I posted here previously on my thoughts about the conflict in the story. This, I think, is critical to understanding redemption. Redemption, to me, is God's answer to the conflict. What this means is that we must understand the shape of that redemption through the shape of the conflict. For me, this means that redemption ultimately is relational. It means that, certainly, God's actions in redemption are about restoration of humanity's relationship with Himself. It also means, though, that redemption is about humanity's relationships with one another, and with the rest of creation as well.

God's redemptive acts begin to unfold with the story of Abraham. I think what strikes me as I read the narrative is that Abraham really doesn't bring much to the table. I mean, let's face it - eighty year old nomads aren't the best source of land or descendants, but that's exactly what God promises. On top of that, everything Abraham tries to do to help the process along, so to speak, turns into something of a disaster.

But let's think for a moment about what shape this redemptive act has started to take on. The twofold curse that fell on the man and woman dealt with land and children. God's redemptive act towards Abraham promises two things - land and children. At this point, our eyebrows should raise just a bit, and we should begin asking ourselves, "What exactly is God up to here, anyway?"

Abraham is only the beginning of the story. As the story goes (and as the author of Hebrews reminds us), Abraham never saw the fulfillment of the promise. The tale has just begun; not even Abraham could, at this point, know what's coming down the road.

More Thoughts on Story

Scott asked a few questions on my last post that I thought perhaps would be best addressed through a post of its own. Scott asked, "Does conflict create story? I think you're probably right, but If so, what happens in paradise/paradise regained - is there an absence of story in the sweet bye and bye? Or in our discussion of life as simply story do we lose some of the complex richness of life?"

As for the thoughts on paradise, I'm going to default on that one - I have some specific thoughts there that I want to make in a later post. But I thought the second question should probably be picked up here; it's a fair one that undergirds some of what I'm trying to think through in this series of posts. First, a point of clarification is perhaps in order - I'm not so much reflecting on life as story so much as on scripture as story, so I think in some ways the metaphor only stretches so far. On the other hand, I'm also reflecting on thinking through our own lives in the context of the grand Story, so the question is certainly a fair one. What's the overlap, and what does it mean then to think of our lives in this way?

This is something of a complex question, to be honest, because I think this is one of those metaphors that's almost blurring the lines between image and reality. There is a sense in which we live our lives in the context of stories. There is a plot that we follow, in some sense, a part that we play and parts that we assign to others to play. For example, if I interpret the plot of my story to be struggle and my part in that plot as that of the underdog, I might assign others the roles of antagonists who are trying to dominate me. My life then plays out in the story that I've constructed, and I (perhaps) leave a trail of broken relationships in my wake as I overcome the obstacles that others present. I think that's a fair statement to make without devolving into psychobabble (but, as I mentioned, it's still only a metaphor - I don't think anyone cognitively goes down this path, just that it's one way of describing how we approach life).

So the question then becomes, on some level, what is the plot, anyway? And that's where I think our story and the grand Story start to overlap. The plot, I'd argue, is that we are created beings, created by a good God and declared good at the moment of creation. We were granted a place and purpose in the order of things, in unity with God and each other. But that unity, that place and purpose, have become twisted and broken, a condition that we've taken to calling sin. The plot is defined around this condition, this conflict - the question that the rest of the Story attempts to answer is the one created by the conflict. What does a good God do about sin in His good creation? The answer, I think, is about redemption. Which leads me to the next question:

"Also, as a digression strictly into story perhaps, what comes of story without the risk of the heroes' failure? Or is that strictly a matter of perspective (present struggles v. hope of glory), or does our hope of glory overrule the possibility of 'Christian tragedy'?"

The answer to this, I'd argue, depends on how one defines "redemption". And that's where we'll turn next.

Elements of Story: Conflict

Story doesn't happen without conflict. As I briefly mentioned in my last post, imagine a story like this:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And He created humans in His own image. And they all lived happily ever after."

That, of course, would be the world's dullest story. Although high school literature students might rejoice in its simple plot and straightforward characters, it would probably sell rather poorly. We love a story with conflict - in fact, conflict is absolutely essential to any story at all worth the telling, so much so that the story can't exist without it. And, of course, our Story is no different; conflict enters before we even get a chance to get acquainted with the main characters.

Genesis 3, of course, is the narrative to which I'm referring - The Fall, as it's most commonly known. And here, again, I think that too often we import the wrong questions into the story, again hoping to learn about who and when when what is at stake is why and how. We even bring Paul into the mess, reading certain parts of his interpretation back into the Story as though they belong, when what is really happening is that we haven't understood Paul. But more on that in a moment.

Here, again, I think it matters little how you answer the who and when questions. This story, more than any other, is about us, about how we as people are not functioning as designed, about why we are broken and why life doesn't seem to work. It is about naming the brokenness for what it is and showing how our very identities have been warped and twisted by this thing that we call sin.

I think it no accident that the curse that falls upon humanity strikes at two areas central to who we are as people: vocation and relationships. For a moment, let's set aside the gender connection, because the narrative, I think, suggests some ambiguity as to exactly how the curse struck the man and the woman. The man loses his purpose, his delegated authority over the ground - where before there was ease, now he will find resistance. The woman loses somewhat her ability to create life - now that very life-gift can bring death as well. Man and woman, both are struck in similar ways; the man in bringing life from the ground, the woman in bringing life from her body. And the connection between the two was severed as well, and for the first time in the narrative we read of dominion and authority of one person over another, symbolized in the name given and received - for what else is power but the ability to name, to define another's identity?

The plot threads begin to twist and twine together. Brokenness, and another of which we have yet to speak - redemption.

Elements of Story: Beginnings

A few weeks ago I posted a few thoughts about competing stories and the struggle for control over the meaning of our beginnings. I want to revisit that part of the story and perhaps approach it from a different angle. I think that the same thing that has happened to the end of the story has happened to the beginning; in other words, what should be an integral part of the plot has become something of a battleground that, for many of us, is often something of an embarrassment rather than something true and beautiful and mysterious. Frankly, I think that many of us in twenty first century first world Christianity would feel just a bit more at ease if the first eleven and the last twenty two chapters of the story somehow fell out of the book. That, I think, is unfortunate - a great tragedy, not only for us, but for the Story itself, because both beginning and end have something amazing to offer. The end, as I mentioned before, offers meaning and direction, hope and destiny, things of which we are too often in short supply. The beginning, on the other hand, offers something different.

We who have grown up with the typical questions and answers of the first few chapters of Genesis have, I think, a difficult time framing the narrative in other ways. We have been trained to read the story with the questions of what and when foremost in our minds. For some of us, that means trying our damnedest to prove that Darwin kicked puppies and ate children; for others, that means trying to figure out a way to pack six days into seven billion years or so. Neither objective, to be quite honest, interests me anymore. I've come to terms with those voices a long time ago, and rather than ask those questions of the text, I'm far more interested in what I think it's really trying to tell us - not what and when, but rather why and how. And frankly, if we can't figure out what the story says about those, it honestly doesn't matter how we answer the first two - we still miss the point.

Setting is incredibly important to story. In some sense, everything that plays out in a narrative depends on the context provided by the setting. The meaning behind the statement, "The Chiefs killed the Cowboys," for example, depends entirely on whether the setting is nineteenth century American west or twenty first century NFL. The beginning of Genesis provides us something of a setting in which the entire story is grounded, and begins to sketch out the direction that the story will follow.

What does infinite joy look like? I think it looks like the laughter of a Creator God over His good creation. "Good", I think, is a word that fails to capture what's going on in the creation account. It's so...plain. It's something of a tired word that fails to evoke wonder and astonishment. I've heard it said that what we see in Genesis 1 is the divine "WOW!" It's an amazement of Godly proportions. Imagine your best Christmas gift as a child, or your first kiss, or the birth of your children - then imagine that sense of wonder experienced by an infinite God. This is what we see happening in the beginning.

There's something of an invitation here too - creation is given permission to fill with life. Humanity is created in the image of God, and is invited to the head of the table. Notice, also, that there is no sense here of hierarchy, of domination, or of power - just joy and wonder and meaning and purpose.

And it was very good.

But good stories, stories worth telling, cannot begin with Happily Ever After...

Go Read...

Ross's great thoughts on the role that story should play in our communities. Ross, as much as if not more than anyone else I read, is one person who consistently makes me think, "I wish I'd written that."

Elements of Story: Meaning

I thought perhaps it would be helpful to take a step back before we get too far into this project and throw out a few thoughts about how I'm currently approaching scripture. This thought of approaching the text as a grand narrative isn't new for me so much as it is surprising. What I mean by this is that, although it seems a fairly straightforward way of reading scripture, I think we in current first world contexts almost never let this approach impact how we understand scripture. In other words, we read a story and we hear soundbites, fortune-cookie length snippets of text that function as self-contained pieces of meaning. It's sort of like trying to appreciate Monet from six inches away, or like eating butter, flour, sugar, and vanilla and thinking, "What a great cake."

I've been reading an excellent book by Richard Horsley called Jesus and Empire. (Yes, this is what I do for fun; I've lost track of the number of times I've gotten a syllabus only to find I've previously purchased half of the texts for pleasure reading.) This book is a fascinating little volume that covers some of the same ground as Wright's NTPG, but with a concentrated focus on the Roman empire. One of the interesting pieces that Horsley addresses, though, is the way in which first-century Christians would have heard the gospels in the context of a primarily oral culture. Horsley has this to say:

As modern historical analysts and interpreters of ancient "texts", therefore, we must attempt to appreciate meaning as significant communication...All the factors we have considered indicate that meaningful communication is carried or evoked by "texts"/messages that are much larger and more complex than individual sayings. Far from focusing on isolated individual sayings and episodes, therefore, we must focus on...the overall story in Mark, in order to understand not only the whole picture but also the way each component of the overall series or story functioned in and helped constitute the whole picture.

To think of scripture as story is a shift, then, if we allow it to affect the way we understand its implications. What has become important to me of late is not so much what one character says on page 643, but rather the grand moves and sweeps of the plot. Practically speaking, what this means to me is this: meaning for a particular piece of the story is found in its relation to the plot. Sometimes, this means that a text may have deeper implications because of its connection to the larger story. Other times, a text sits in dissonance with the plot - at these points, I want to do two things. The first is to allow the dissonance to remain instead of attempting to force harmony in some misguided attempt to demonstrate a lack of contradiction. The second is to understand the dissonance for what it is and how it points to a future resolution. In this sense, scripture as story is similar in many ways to a symphony. A controlling theme carries through its movements, but sometimes the chords won't resolve easily. But dissonance in a musical score exists for a reason - it creates tension that points towards resolution. What I want to talk through in the next few posts includes both the controlling melody, the plot of the story, and the points of dissonance that long for resolution. That, in turn, will bring us back around to reconsider the ending towards which this whole tale is oriented.

Elements of Story: Telos

I like to read the end of books first. Part of the reason for this is that I, on some level, truly hate suspense. For some folks, that whole element of hanging in the balance and hold your breath sort of feeling that accompanies suspenseful situations gives them a rush or something. Personally, I just get nauseous.

I think it's fitting then, in some sense, to begin our exploration of the Story at the end. Before we're through, we'll jump around quite a bit anyway; the end, though, is probably one of the most frustrating pieces of the Story to understand and tell and live. It's generated more than it's share of controversy, hysteria, and division in recent years. To say that this is problematic is an understatement - the telling of the end of the Story has, in times past, been the source of hope rather than fear. This is what I want to recover, what I think we need to recover if we're to tell a story compelling enough to matter.

The chief problem, I think, is that we don't really know the end of the story, not in the sense that I know the end of the Lord of the Rings, for example. We are at the same time both narrator and participant in the story, and what we've been told of the end isn't exactly like reading tomorrow's news, contrary to what Pat might have to say. What we have to work with are a jumble of poetry and images, some rather disconnected pieces of theological musing, and some vague statements by Christ pointing to some future event or events, from his perspective, that will conclude his work.

This, I think, generates a certain amount of difficulty for us. We know, perhaps instinctively, that there is an end, a telos, towards which this story is heading. I think it also fair to say that this end is extremely important, vital even, to telling the story well and truly. But we find ourselves caught in the suspense of not being able to see with clarity what that end looks like and to articulate it compellingly enough to bring closure to the storyline.

This, perhaps, is by design in some way, but I have to believe that we can do a better job than we've done thus far. Where are we to turn? Perhaps an examination of the rest of the story may bring sufficent resources to bear on the problem to allow us to reach some conclusions without eliminating the suspense. Next up - beginnings.

Speaking the Story

It's not news that the emerging church conversation/movement/community has recently become the focus of some more critical attacks by more of the heavy hitters, so to speak, particularly of the evangelical wing of the church. This is particularly on my mind as I read through tonight some material on a site that Will Samson mentioned early last week. (If you want to know the site, read through Will's recent posts - personally, I'd rather not subject anyone kind enough to read my writing to the disheartening rhetoric that I just read. Your stomach may be stronger than mine.) However, in the interests of being constructive, I'm not really interested in responding in kind - it accomplishes nothing but digging the trenches deeper, and it certainly does not reflect what I believe to be the attitude of Christ (speaking strictly personally, not as a backhanded attack on the author).

I do, however, think that there are some things that we who are involved in the emerging church conversation can do to improve our credibility. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone on the fringes of the conversation, a blog's length away from being a spectator. One in particular is on my mind tonight, having just read Newbigin's Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth over lunch one day this week. Newbigin, borrowing both from Polanyi (who I respect) and Lindbeck (who's on my short list of folks to read), says this:

Before you can use a language in such a way that you are not thinking about the words but about the meaning you want to convey, you first have to learn the language. You have to attend focally to the words before you can get to the point at which you focus on the meaning and only attend in a subsidiary way to the words. You turn from the words to the meaning. I am suggesting therefore (and I think this is in line with what George Lindbeck has suggested) that our use of the Bible is analogous to our use of language. We indwell it rather than looking at it from outside.

How well do we indwell the Scriptures? I think that, no matter your view of Scripture, we should at least be able to agree that the Scriptures are absolutely vital to Christian faith and practice. By this, I am not advocating some naive bibliolatry that is common in some fundamentalist circles. Rather, I am suggesting that, unless we embrace Scripture as our