Category: Faith

Children, Church, and God

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One of the joys of vacation Bible school (VBS) is watching what the kids take away from the week. Having such an intense daily experience where the kids get to “do church” and learn about God outside of the ways they normally do truly does affect their lives. My kids, for instance, have been singing the songs from the week around the clock. I hear my daughter singing to herself as she lies in her bed at night, and even my barely verbal toddler has got the “na na na” chorus down. These songs, these ideas, these themes are part of their life now even if they don’t fully grasp their meaning.

As an adult who knows that she will never fully understand her own faith or the ways God works in the world, I get that the kids will only partially understand what they are singing or what they are learning. But they are internalizing these ideas in a loving and safe environment. That is how God is working in their lives in the moment.

Of course, that partial understanding can be amusing at times as well. As my daughter sang a VBS song about dancing and singing for her king, I asked her who her king was. She gave me a weird look and after thinking for a moment said her brother’s name. She explained that he was the person she liked to dance and sing with so he must be her king. We had a nice little chat about God being the king of kings, but I was moved that at the age of 5 she grasped the joy and exuberance of worship that song suggests far better than most of us.

God is working in these kids’ lives — often in ways we don’t plan or expect. Creating the space for them to experience God is, for me, at the heart of what it means to serve children. And often in helping create that space, the children in turn teach me something and draw me closer to God.

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Forgiveness, Fear, and the Mosque at Ground Zero

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I’ve become used to seeing images of protests on the news recently. While a few years ago these were displayed as sure signs of anti-American sentiments, they are now a mainstay on the nightly news. Hardly a day goes by without seeing some sign calling Obama a Muslim socialist or demanding that the government not take away Medicare in order to pay for socialized heath care. But it was seriously disturbing to see the images from New York City yesterday of the protest of the Muslim center going in two blocks from the site of Ground Zero. The planned center is being built in an old Burlington Coat factory building and will include a fitness center, community meeting rooms and a mosque. Basically it’s the neighborhood YMCA with that weird contemporary church plant meeting in the yoga room on Saturday nights. But it’s Muslim and therefore has drawn out the haters.

islam911The organization Stop Islamization of America, a self-proclaimed human rights group, organized the protest on Sunday. This group’s mission is to ensure the preservation of freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to make the United States compliant with Shari’a [Islamic law]. After reading about this group and seeing some of the photos Samir Salmanovic posted from the event as he stood in solidarity with Muslims (including the one here), I couldn’t help but reflect on the tendency in this country for us to fear and hate the other.

It is an odd balance American’s strike between forgiveness and hate. On one hand we become obsessed with stories of extreme forgiveness. The Amish women who chose to forgive and love the families of the man who killed their children so captured our attention the story was even turned into a movie. We prize such extreme acts of love almost to the point of fetishizing them, and yet when the offenders are too different from us we cling to our hatred. I remember listening to my grandfather’s tales of World War 2 and first realizing this strange tension between forgiveness and prejudice. He fought on the German front as a naval officer, he was part of the D-Day invasion, ferried Patton across the Rhine River, and had his best friend blown away in the foxhole next to him. Year later as a man of German descent himself, he had easily forgiven the Germans for the war and yet still spoke with extreme contempt about the Japanese. Forgiving those like us is easy; extending mercy to those who are other is where our fear often strangles our compassion.

This fear of the other prevents us from seeing the world clearly. Our belief in our own rightness clouds how we see the other. During my time at Wheaton College there was much debate about changing the school’s mascot from that of Crusader. While it was eventually changed to the Wheaton Thunder, many people could not understand why there was any reason to change it at all. They thought it was preposterous that any person (especially Muslims and Jews) would be offended by the image or judge modern day Christians by the past actions of historical Crusaders. Yet, even in the church we daily judge Muslims by the actions of a few of its members. So while we applaud the Amish women for their acts of forgiveness, the fear and hatred sparked by the events of 9/11 still inform the average American’s opinion of Muslims. So to the protesters, the building of a Muslim center and mosque so near the site of Ground Zero is just another act of violence – a threat to American supremacy. There is no forgiveness of the terrorists and the grudge against them is extended to all Muslims.

I, like many of the Muslims involved, understand the need to tread carefully here. Even in working for peace and reconciliation one has to be aware of how one’s actions might offend people who have been previously hurt. This is why Wheaton eventually did change its mascot, out of a desire to promote love and healing instead of reopening old wounds. But it is pure fear of the other that is sparking some to say just having Muslims near Ground Zero is offensive. It is heartbreaking knowing that many of the protesters are there claiming to represent Jesus while they scream their message of hate. This isn’t just about protesting political ideas, but a demonstration of our bondage to sin. The images of the protest hurt as they mock everything the faith I follow claims to uphold. As I wait to see how this current drama unfolds, I can’t help but wonder what it will take for American Christians to move from just fetishizing forgiveness to actually letting mercy and compassion for all rule our hearts.

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After Pentecost

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What type of spirituality can it be when one can feel good in one’s spirit but still be a white racist, a sexist, a heterosexist, or an ignorer of the poor? Spirituality should make us feel so good that we cannot stand seeing the sins of the world. We would then be so filled with the Spirit that we would seek to change the world.” – Dwight Hopkins in Opting for the Margins

When I read that quote recently my first reaction was that in my experience the very opposite has been true. Apart from being the place where we are so filled with the Spirit that we have no choice but to spend our energy on creating a better world, it is actually in the church where I hear the most excuses as to why Christians shouldn’t get involved. It’s really a strange thing to think about. On one hand, it’s hard to argue with the sentiment expressed in this quote. If we are truly filled with the Spirit we will care so deeply about the things God cares about that we couldn’t help but devote ourselves to seeking to serve. In practicality, it is of course harder. I know I often fail miserably at the whole “devote my life to creating a better world” thing. But I at least do my best, or know that I should be doing more.

What really confuses me though are the Christians who find any excuse to not work for a better world. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “but Jesus said the poor will always be with us” used as a reason why Christians shouldn’t care for the poor and suffering. It’s not that the phrase is even used as comfort to those who feel like their efforts are not doing enough. It’s straight out used as a God-given reason to do nothing. And not just do nothing, but often to actively oppose or resist other Christians who are trying to do something. And it’s usually followed by some sermonette about how the poor are poor because of their own sinful choices. I even heard a pastor pray once after Katrina hit New Orleans for God to help the people there even though they don’t deserve it because they are such sinners.

Now, of course, it’s trendy in the church to label any sort of work that helps the poor as socialism. I read an article recently that said Christians who supported health care for all were in fact breaking the 8th Commandment. By saying that all people regardless of income level deserve basic health care we are stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Apparently the only time that’s acceptable is when it is in blockbuster form and includes lots of scenes of gratuitous violence. But in the day to day, “when I was hungry and you fed me, when I was sick and you took care of me” has been spun as actually being anti-Christian.

Far from being so filled with the Spirit that we want to act like Jesus and love our neighbor, Christians today are finding whatever way they can to twist the words of Jesus to mean the exact opposite. It’s hard to love our neighbors. It takes sacrifice. It takes empathy. It takes repentance of our own sins. It is a lot easier to simple pretend that Jesus said something else instead. Why care for the poor when it is easier to continue to make money off of their oppression and call it prosperity and blessing? Why be filled with the Spirit when the status quo is so much more attractive? Why listen to Jesus when the pundits just make so much more sense?

It is nice to have our Pentecost Sunday and marvel in the pyrotechnics of the event. It’s great to talk with longing about amazing church growth where thousands join in one day. But after Pentecost – then what? Does the body of Christ really want to be filled with the Spirit and see the world through the Spirit’s eyes? Are we ready for that? Or is it just easier to give lip-service to the event, re-interpret Jesus for our own benefit, and do nothing?

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Faith Journeys and Testimonies

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I was filling out an application recently and was asked to write a short statement on my “personal faith pilgrimage.” I grew up in the Christian world, and so have had to write out my testimony dozens of times. But this wasn’t asking for my testimony, but for the story of my faith pilgrimage. On one hand it might be easy to assume that they are one and the same, but the difference in terminology between “faith pilgrimage” and “testimony” intrigued me and got me thinking about how even how the question gets asked influences how our story gets told. I realized that not just my story itself, but how I tell my faith story has changed over the years.

Out of sheer curiosity, I went through the archives on my computer and read through testimonies I had written in the past. These were my faith stories as I had written them to apply to Wheaton College Grad School, to work at a Baptist church, and to serve as a church-planter (and no, I will not be posting them here). Each of these focused on two main events in my life – when at the age of three I prayed to ask Jesus to come into my heart and my decision at age 12 to “make my faith my own.” Other themes – feeling the need to tell others about Jesus and the rollercoaster emotions of feeling close to Jesus – supported these two primary events. That decision of where I was going when I died and my choice to stay in the church were what I knew those reading my story wanted to hear – they were what I believed to be the most important moments in my faith history.

But these days I find it uncomfortable to be asked to tell of the moment I became a Christian. I don’t believe that some magical transaction occurred on Oct. 17, 1981 as I sat on my dad’s lap and repeated a few words after him. Before that moment I had believed like any child in what I had been told about Jesus, saying that prayer was simply part of my formative journey as a believer. Similarly, I no longer talk about my faith in terms of certainty regarding where I will go when I die. I was recently told that a local church in its membership interviews asks the question “if you died tonight how certain are you of where you will go?” The response they are looking for to allow people to continue in the membership process is “100% certain I will go to heaven.” Those that reply otherwise are unknowingly streamed into a Christianity 101 class instead of the membership class. My response to this (even ignoring the whole question of if we go to heaven or if as the Bible says are resurrected to the new earth) is to ask what is the role of faith if certainty is what is required. These terms of “moments of decision” and “certainty” are no longer part of my lexicon as I tell my faith story.

These days my testimony is less an argument written to prove to others that I have jumped through the right hoops it takes to be a Christian, and more of a travel narrative of my faith pilgrimage. My story has changed, my narrative style has changed, and even what I call it has changed. I know I have not arrived at anything, I value faith far more than certainty, and what I believe is no more important than how I live out that belief. My story encompasses those changes and embraces my questions and doubts as simply being an authentic part of my journey as opposed to evidence that could be used against me in determining if I am in or out. I am still on this journey, even as I tell of its twists and turns. What I learn along the way and terrain I am traversing at the moment as I follow Jesus matter just as much as any particular moment along the way. My story has become more of an epic adventure as opposed to a persuasive essay.

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Militias, the Church, and Christians

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I’ve been told that I am obviously not a Christian because I watch movies. Because I believe women can be pastors. Because I don’t take Mass in a Catholic church. Because I’ve read Brian McLaren and N.T. Wright. Because I voted for Obama. Because I am not a Calvinist. I’ve had friends who have been told that they are obviously not Christians because they have tattoos, because they are Gay, and because they don’t go to church every Sunday.

KICKASSGiven the fine tradition in the church of adding such litmus tests to the Gospel, I found it fascinating to hear from diverse sources last week that the Hutaree militia (a self-described Christian group) obviously could not be Christian. I find the group disgusting and disturbed, but the question of if they are Christians haunted me. I understand the tendency to get defensive and want to distance ourselves from groups like this. No Christian wants people like these to define us to the world. But at the same time I’m hesitant to proclaim from on high that they obviously aren’t Christian.

These were people who had a literalistic dogma based faith. They believed their faith rested on their belief in and confession of a certain list of doctrines, especially Dispensational views of the end times. They believed in the literal interpretation of scripture. They believed that their lives should be committed to moral living and opposed to sin. As they state on their website, “We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren’t. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming.” To that end they hated the government, especially our current government, and decided that violence was the best way to uphold their moral convictions. Sure, I think they are messed up, but my issue is, if I say that they are not Christians, then I have to say the same regarding other so-called Christians who believed in similar ways (like anyone who participated in the religiously violent American Revolution or English Civil War). In fact, if this group isn’t Christian, then most American Christians today can be written off as “obviously not Christian.”

On one hand, I don’t think following Jesus really has much to do at all with affirming a set doctrine, a literal interpretation of scripture, a public confession of Jesus, a life of culturally defined morality, and church sanctioned violence. But that is the message that you will hear in countless churches on any given Sunday. Seriously, how far removed are armed guards in churches and pro-military rallies in churches from the ideals of this militia? They all use violence to impose their worldview upon others. Which Jesus explicitly forbid his followers to do. Jarred McKenna at the God’s Politics’ blog affirms the dichotomy of Jesus and violence when he refers to the association of the term “Christian” with “militia” as shameful, and wonders how Christianity ever came to be associated with something so anti-Jesus. The Hutaree group may have promoted a somewhat culturally taboo form of that violence, but other Christians will defend the “God-ordained” need for and their right to violence regularly. I truly don’t see much of Jesus in this civil religion of most U.S. churches today, but even so, I am uneasy saying they just aren’t real Christians.

But it’s a tough call. If a Christian is a person who follows Christ, I assume that implies that person follows the disciplines Jesus demands of his followers. Jesus himself tells us the only people who are his true followers are those who when “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matt 25). And in Isaiah (1 and 58) we even read that God detests our worship gatherings, ignores our acts of piety, wearies of our songs and rituals, and turns his head from our prayers unless we are seeking justice, treating our workers rightly, giving shelter to the immigrant and homeless, and helping the oppressed. By these biblical standards I think I could count on one hand the number of people I know who can actually be called Christian. In fact many Christians I know actively work against things like helping immigrants, providing healthcare to the sick, and making sure all people have food to eat (or they are advised to run away from churches that do such things).

As Brian McLaren points out in reference to this militia incident, a faith that promotes violence and ignores Jesus misses the point. Jesus instead “provides us a living alternative to the confining [violent] narrative in which our world and our religions live, move, and have their being too much of the time” Too many of our churches have succumbed to the siren calls of this world – replacing following Jesus with sets of doctrines, cultural rules, nationalism, and sanctified violence. This militia group simply took that proclivity to its natural end. That sort of religion has nothing to do with being a Christ-follower. But at the same time, as McLaren points out, Jesus looks at those who do violence (to others and to him) and says “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

So I can only be left with grace. When even the most pietistic and committed “Christians” don’t actually look like Christ-followers, it seems like all we can really have is grace. Grace is bigger than our pointing fingers. And it extends far beyond out trivial additions to the Gospel. For if there is no grace for this messed-up system we call the church, then God help us all.

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Preparing for Lent

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The point of Lent is not denial.

But for a long time I thought it was. Everything I heard about Lent revolved around the acts of self-denial. It was all about what object or habit one would give up and how hard it was to deny oneself of that thing. Of course that denial was meant to help one think about God and Christ’s sacrifice, but in truth the focus was always on the act of denial itself. The question always is, “what are you giving up for Lent?” as if that is what the season is about.

On one hand it’s understandable that we miss the point of Lent. In our religious traditions rituals and legalism are far easier to promote, understand, and implement than spirituality and faith. We can grasp rules. It is far easier to tell kids to obey rules than to explain to them why they should desire to act rightly. They then end up following the rules simply because the rules exist. When it comes to Lent we often do the same – denying ourselves something for the sake of denial. We give up chocolate or Facebook thinking that act of denial is the purpose of Lent. And we end up missing the point.

But Lent isn’t about denial, it is about transformation. It is the season in which we prepare to encounter Christ’s sacrifice by endeavoring to become more Christ like ourselves. Transformation is about letting ourselves be filled with God’s presence so that we can be shaped by God’s grace. Our acts of kenosis – denying ourselves in order to empty ourselves enough to allow God to fill us – are means to an end. They are disciplines that prepare us to be transformed. We deny ourselves so that we can be reborn as new creations – to live more fully as the Kingdom citizens God desires us to be.

So I am very tentative in choosing what disciplines I will follow during Lent to open myself up to God’s transforming power. I’ve discovered that for me personally, legalistic denial for the sake of denial often achieves the opposite purpose. Giving up coffee doesn’t make me a better follower of Christ, it just makes me more irritable and more of a bitch. Giving up Facebook doesn’t help me build community in the body of Christ; it simply helps me as a detached introverted person creep further into my shell. Those disciplines don’t assist me in emptying myself in order to let God in; they simply fill me with more of me.

I’ve come to learn that in order to become more fully the person God wants me to be, I instead need to make sacrifices that actually allow me to achieve those ends. Often those sacrifices are less about personal denial, and more about following disciplines that encourage me to love others more. In the past I’ve attempted to eat more ethically or shop fairly – which of course required discipline and sacrifice on my part (and a bit of denial as well), but the outcome of these outwardly focused changes was far more personally transformative than if I had just eliminated something from my life for forty days.

So for me the question for Lent is not “what am I giving up?” but instead “what can I do to allow God to transform me this season?” The answers to those questions might be the same for some people, for me changing the question shifted how I observed Lent. Whatever the case, I think it is important to understand what the ultimate purpose is behind why we engage in certain disciplines unless we miss their very point.

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I’m a heretic, so what?

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So I finally got around to reading Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol. My point here isn’t to comment about the book – it was entertaining, I wasn’t expecting more. What I found intriguing through are the ways he managed to weave in comments directed at the people who freaked out about The Da Vinci Code. At various points in the book, he had Robert Langdon comment about the sorts of people who aren’t capable of seeing the world from another’s perspective and who cause trouble for those who think differently from them. It was cute, and not a very subtle response, but given the way he has been demonized, it had to be addressed.

I had read The Da Vinci Code before it got really popular (I was on a “intellectual thriller” reading kick at the time). A year or so later I heard the pastor at the church I worked at talking about an upcoming Sunday School series he was leading about how evil the book was. He was shocked to hear that I had actually read the book, since he had not and had no plans to read it (even as he taught a class about it). I soon learned that his was the typical response of many evangelical Americans. When confronted with an idea that is outside the way they had been taught to see the world, they engaged fight or flight – denounce the work as evil or protect themselves from being exposed to its ideas.

Hence Dan Brown’s asides in The Lost Symbol.

I don’t agree with all of Brown’s ideas in The Da Vinci Code or The Lost Symbol (that’s not my point here), but I appreciate how he started a conversation around topics that might otherwise remain hidden. There is truth in the fact that the church is driven by ideology. The Bible we have today was shaped by opinions of factions in the church. Systems of patriarchy marred the name of Mary Magdalene by suggesting then upholding as doctrine that she was a prostitute. With the way Bible history is taught (or isn’t) in churches and schools today, this side of the story gets forgotten as embarrassing history to the point that basic biblical scholarship is labeled shocking heresy by the average Christian. Whether or not one agrees with Brown’s ideas, he at least helped some people ask if perhaps their way of viewing the world isn’t the only way.

It’s when we are willing to think about our beliefs in those ways that we truly learn. Granted we might end up believing as we always have, or we might tweak our beliefs a little, or change them entirely. And while I understand the people that instinctually engage with fight or flight when presented with anything other, what I don’t understand are the people who go through the charade of pretending to engage with other ideas only to reassert their original belief because they feel like they have to. I read a book recently that did just that. It claimed to be a fresh new perspective for evangelicals on a controversial topic, and while it did a great job deconstructing why a new perspective is needed, in the end it simply reiterated the same old traditional answer. In that evangelical tradition only one answer on the topic is acceptable, and so instead of actually allowing the intellectual wrestling to actually inform his perspective, the author ignored everything he had written about and parroted back the one acceptable answer. It made no sense. It wasn’t intellectually honest. But it kept the author (and publisher) safe within the box of their tradition. It wasn’t about truth, it was about allegiance.

So that’s why I am beginning to care less and less about being labeled a heretic. The term has nothing to do with truth (as much as they accuse us postmodern of abandoning truth). It has everything to do with toeing the line of a particular tradition. Call it what you will – “orthodoxy” “historic Christianity” “biblical Christianity” – all it is is the box that you feel comfortable in and pledge allegiance to. People who look, think, and act like you are in and everyone else is out. And while I fully acknowledge the need for community and tradition and admit I have allegiances, when that box becomes a shield to defend against ever learning anything new or entering a conversation in order to grow, then I have no use for the box. So while I love and appreciate (to varying degrees) The Apostles’ Creed, Augustine, Martin Luther, Calvin, Barth, and McLaren, I’m not going to exchange my faith in the living transforming God in order to cement myself in their camps. I may be a heretical Barthian or C.S. Lewisian, but since that really isn’t the point of my faith, I no longer really care.

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The Parable of the Good Princess

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My seminars at Urbana focused on the idea that mission isn’t something that we hope to do in the future, but that it has to be part of how we are living right now. Too often students believe that someday they will enter the missions field, and when (for whatever reason) that doesn’t end up happening, they give up on the idea of serving God. I knew I used to think that way and when missions agencies told us to “wait awhile then reapply,” that life option got pushed further and further away. It took a long period of transformation to realize I had it all wrong and that mission should simply be an integral part of my daily life. To set up that idea, I started my seminars by telling the following story, inspired by both Pete Rollins’ parables (but nowhere near as good) and my preschooler’s obsession with princesses. It’s a bit cheezy, and not exactly subtle, but it reflects a bit of my story at least.

The Parable of the Good Princess

There once was a beautiful Princess. All over the Kingdom the people proclaimed that never before had there ever been a sweeter child. Her smile warmed even the coldest hearts and her laughter had an infectious quality. Every day her mother and father, the king and queen, would instruct her on what the qualities of a good princess were. Soon she knew these qualities by heart. Good Princesses are kind – they always extend grace to the hurting. Good Princesses are strong –they lead the Kingdom into times of peace and plenty. Good Princesses are fair – directing their people with justice. And Good Princesses are courageous – they do not fear making the hard choices to protect the Kingdom.

And so our young princess grew up hearing these qualities repeated to her day after day and she dreamed of the day when she would live up to these hopes and dreams of her parents. She wanted nothing more than to become a good princess and would talk with whoever would listen about what she would do as a good princess. Her parents were proud of her ambition, and everyone commented that yes, she would be the best princess there ever was.

As the years went on, her desire to be a good princess stayed strong. Princes from neighboring Kingdoms would come to ask her hand in marriage, but she would politely turn them down, saying she was still preparing to be the best princess she could be. “Someday my prince will come,” she would laugh, “but first I must become a good princess.” They would smile and ride away, planning to return in a years time.

As she grew even older, the townspeople who she had charmed with her smiles and laughter remembered her commitment to be a kind and fair princess. They would travel from far away to bring their troubles to her, knowing that a good princess could help them. But as they told her of their plights, she would look at them sadly and apologize, saying, “I’m sorry, I would love to help you, but first I must become a good Princess since those are the sorts of things good Princesses do.” And the townspeople would walk away sad and a bit confused. Soon they stopped coming at all.

As her parents, the King and Queen grew old and infirm, more and more of the official decisions of the Kingdom were presented to the Princess to consider. What treaty to sign with a neighboring kingdom? Where to dig new wells or put in new dams? What merchants were permitted to sell their wares within the walls of the city? But with each decision, the Princess deferred her answer saying, “I wish I knew how to help you, I’m sure I will once I’m a good Princess, but for right now I can’t do anything for you.” And she would walk away repeating to herself the qualities of a good Princess – “good princesses are kind, they are strong, they are fair, they are courageous. Someday, I will be a good Princess.”

With the death of her parents, many expected her to live up to her lifelong training of being a good princess and bless the kingdom not just with her beauty and laughter, but with her leadership. But on the day of her coronation as Queen, she handed back the crown, saying only a good Princess can become a Queen, and she hoped that one day she would be honored and ready to be able to accept such a role.

Inevitably, the Kingdom started to unravel. Petty disputes became bloody conflicts. Crops dried up and food was scarce
because of lack of available water. Merchants took their goods into other Kingdoms. Raiding parties disregarded long ignored treaties as they encroached upon her borders. The poor starved without a kind hand extending them care. And what was once a Kingdom filled with joy, peace, and prosperity became a home of the desperate trying to simply make it through the day. But the Princess barely noticed so intent was she on becoming a good princess. Nor did she notice when the suitors stopped coming, or the treaties stopped being offered. She didn’t notice that her smile no longer warmed the hearts of her people or her laugh spread joy. She just wanted to be a good Princess.

It was as an old woman on her deathbed, that she finally looked at the small group of castle staff gathered around her that she broke down in tears. “All I wanted my whole life was just to be a good Princess,” she cried, “I knew I could be the best Princess there ever was, but now it’s too late, I will never be a good princess.” No one knew what to say to her, and just let her cry and then breathe her last breath. Upon her death, they all just sighed and quietly left the room wishing that she had actually been a good princess.

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Which Jesus?

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baby jesus dollsbaby jesus dollsWhen I first stumbled across this image, I thought it could be a perfect illustration of the commercialism of Christmas. You know, something along the lines of how we have replaced the true meaning of Christmas with crass consumerism. But as I thought about it, I was more struck at how it represents what we in the church so often do to Jesus. We’ve packaged him and turned him into the equivalent of cheap plastic crap that has no greater impact than kitschy home decor. We’ve made Jesus innocuous and safe. Jesus gets reduced to a nice cross necklaces or fish stickers on our car. We sing love songs to Jesus and claim the power of his name without ever taking the time to understand him. This Jesus exists only as a part of the financial transaction of saving us from our sins, as if the point of our existence was to give lip-service to someone so that we can get the goodie in heaven when we die. As I’ve mentioned before, this Jesus is little more than a talisman or fetish. Like the baby in a cheap plastic mass-produced creche, this Jesus is there for adorning our lives when we feel like putting him on display.

This Jesus always makes an appearance at Christmastime. We fight to win the war on Christmas making sure his name gets mentioned or his image displayed. We are more concerned with chanting his name as our mantra and forcing others to do the same than we are following a real person. But when Jesus is just there as decoration, or reminder of a past transaction, I feel as if we are denying the Incarnation. If the particularities of how Jesus lived and the way of life he called his followers to live are ignored in favor of a generic consumer-ready figurehead, then what was the point of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us? We could just as easily have created an idol that looks pretty and unassuming on the mantle without having to have had God go to all that trouble. Unless the Incarnation prompts us to do something other than create cheap plastic Jesus’s for our own sake then I think we’ve missed the point of the whole thing.

In an interview about my book recently, I was asked why people who are saved and just living out their lives as good Christians should even bother complicating their lives by caring about justice. On one hand answering that question is part of why I wrote Everyday Justice. But at the same time, it amuses me that the faith tradition that taught me to pity and ridicule those that say “I’m a good person, why do I need to follow Jesus?” are now the one’s saying “I’ve said a prayer to Jesus, why should I follow him?” Fully embracing the Incarnation means that we actually let it transform us – not just in some brief moment of salvation but in the entirety of our lives. A flesh and blood incarnate Jesus calls us to follow him in tangible flesh and blood ways. Plastic figures and cheezy slogans are insubstantial next to this incarnate God. This transformation makes us the hands and feet of Jesus in such a way that we can no longer ask why we should bother caring but instead accept that this is the only possible way we can live as true Christ followers. Incarnation isn’t a cheap decoration that adorns the veneer of our lives, it’s earthy and messy and complex and demanding. The incarnate Jesus grabs hold of our lives and wakes us up from our complacency.

Some days I honestly would prefer the mass-produced piece-of-plastic-crap Jesus I can idolize or ignore at whim while believing myself to be a “good Christian.” I don’t want to come face-to-face with the flesh and blood Jesus who demands I serve him in real flesh and blood ways. I fight it. I make excuses. I’m a miserable follower. But having woken up enough to start to see the Incarnate Jesus, I can’t go back to sleep.

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Accepting

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Second Sunday of Advent 2009

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.”

The wait for the Messiah was long. Like a couple struggling with infertility, hoping each month would bring the news that the dream they so desperately desired had finally arrived, the people of Israel had waited for a Messiah to come and change their lives. There were false hopes, but those briefly shining stars burnt themselves out quickly playing the world’s games of violence and power grabs. And so the people waited.

And then when God was ready to send a Messiah that would challenge all expectations, he came to a young girl and asked her to carry his child. And she accepted the task – “May it be to me as you have said.”

The Carmelite theme for this second week of Advent is that of Accepting. Mary had to accept that all of her expectations of the savior coming as a king had to be left behind. She had to accept that she could be facing the wrath of her family and fiancé and the ridicule of the town. She had to accept that she had a vital role to play in the saving of her people. In this upside-down world, a poor young girl is chosen to take the first step forward. The unexpected and inappropriate choice, she pushes that aside and accepts anyway.

So often we want the magic-wand fix. The people wanted God to send a powerful warrior king who would rescue Israel while punishing their oppressors. They had a hard time then accepting a messenger who identified with the oppressed because he was one of them. He wasn’t going to abracadabra their troubles away. No, he expected them to follow his path and do the dirty work of ending that oppression themselves. Instead of longing each day to be rescued out of their situation, they were to embrace it fully enough to change it. The message of this unexpected messiah was similar to that the prophet Jeremiah sent to the exiles living in Babylon –

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:4-7

Be present enough to make a difference – that’s what accepting is all about. Mary chose to accept her task and live into the beautiful mess it would create. The followers of Jesus had to accept that walking alongside and even loving their oppressors was the only way forward. We have to accept the command to settle down in exile in order to ever even begin to change the world.

It’s all about learning to accept.  Accepting the requests that destroy our lives in the best possible ways. Accepting that what we may have been waiting for is not what we really wanted after all. Accepting that our messed-up selves are the ones God is using to reach the world. Accepting God in spite of ourselves.

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