Tag: christianity

Reading the Magnificat During Lent

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I’m taking a class on the Gospel of Luke this semester and one of my assignments is to engage in an ongoing spiritual practice related to that particular Gospel. So for the entire semester I am reading the Magnificat daily. It’s a passage that I’ve been drawn to in recent years, but it has been particularly illuminating to be dwelling on it during Lent this year since it is typically confined to the Advent season. Somehow the triumphal language of the justice that God has already accomplished fits with the modern treatment of Advent as a celebratory season. But Lent is a season of penance which puts an entirely different spin on the text.

I’ve been intrigued to discover as I study Luke this time that the language in the Magnificat of the mighty being brought down from their thrones and the lowly uplifted is a recurring motif throughout the book. John the Baptist changes the scripture he quotes from Isaiah to talk about every valley being filled and every hill and mountains made low. Jesus always comes down from the mountain to preach on a plain, and Luke even has the Beatitudes delivered on a plain instead of a mount. God is at work making all things level – bringing down those who prosper now and uplifting those who suffer now. A message that we sometimes can accept at Christmas with its reminder that the Savior of the world was laid in a lowly manger. But in Lent it is far more unsettling.

This is a season of penance and sacrifice, but often only of the personal kind. We give up pleasures or habits for the sake of drawing ourselves closer to God. For many the discipline of such sacrifice is simply a means of reorienting their worship and devotion to God so as to strengthen that commitment overall. The discipline prepares one for deeper relationship with God. But as John proclaimed, preparing the way of the Lord involves bringing down and lifting up. And as Mary asserts, one magnifies the Lord because God has and is in the process of continuing to bring down and lift up. But how often do our Lenten practices participate in this sort of leveling out?

Pietism that relies solely on personal sacrifices that affect us and us alone can serve to draw us emotionally closer to God, but our faith is not something that concerns just us. We exist as a body and as members of the body of Christ the disciplines we engage in should always work towards the good of that body. While being personally closer to God might serve the good of the body in some ways, it is rare that Lenten practices are conceived in such a way. The recent popularity if the images included here attest that at least in popular perception Lent has nothing to do with working for the good of others, of righting relationships that are unbalanced, but is instead merely a selfish (and therefore) pointless practice.

What if our acts of repentance and confession instead served to care for the body as a whole? What if we confessed the ways we have uplifted the mighty (ourselves included) and brought down the lowly? What if our penance and sacrifice involved reversing that imbalance and preparing the way of the Lord by leveling out those relationships? Yes, it is far more difficult to sacrifice a position of privilege and power than it is to give up chocolate or coffee for a few weeks, but it seems to far better reflect the ways God has called us to worship and follow after him. Sacrifice just for the sake of ourselves misses the point. The reminder to bring down and uplift pushes us beyond ourselves to acts of love, repentance, and worship that serve the entire body and not just our particular part.

So while Magnificat is not normally a Lenten text, my meditation on it this year is teaching me that perhaps it should be.

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Paul, Women, and New Creation

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As I mentioned last week, I’m am excited to be part of the blog tour for Daniel Kirk’s latest book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? Drop by the blog tour website to read others’ contributions to the tour as they interact with various chapters in the book (and don’t forget to enter the contest to win a free copy of the book!). As luck would have it (or perhaps because I’m the only woman participating in the tour), I was asked to engage with Chapter 6 “Women in the Story of God.”

In my experience, the number one reason people have issues with Paul is because of the passages regarding women’s roles in his letters. A few select passages seemingly calling for women to submit to men and to be silent in church are enough for many to jettison Paul from the canon. As some read Paul (or at least have had Paul imposed upon them), he seems to be denying the very humanity and dignity of women – something that Jesus never did. With such an interpretation as a given, it’s difficult for many to figure out what to do with Paul. There are of course those that use such an interpretation of Paul to demean and oppress women. Some believing that they have no right to question that interpretation accept it and yet keep Paul at a distance, like a creepy relative that they would prefer not to show up at family gatherings. Others outright reject Paul, claiming that such a patriarchal attitude nullifies any right his words have to speak into our world today. Some accept Paul, but insist that his words restricting women must have been added by some later scribe. In light of all that, it’s easy to see how it’s hard to love Paul.

Yet I’ve generally found all those approaches to be lacking. Having to choose between rejecting the reality of the biblical context or rejecting the Bible because of the reality of the biblical context both seemed too limiting for me.

So I appreciate the approach Kirk offers in his book. In situating Paul within the context of the larger narrative of scripture, he begins by addressing how women are treated in the text beyond the traditional “clobber-women-into-submission” passages. What he reveals is a world where patriarchy is the norm and yet women are find opportunities to serve in all areas of the church. From the scriptural evidence of what women were in truth doing in the church, Kirk argues that the controversial passages have both at times been interpreted wrongly and yet give testimony to the ambiguity present in scripture. He states, “As for Scripture, it not only sows seeds of equality whose flowers never fully bloom on its pages; it also continues to reflect and, at times, affirm the inequalities endemic to its ancient cultural context.” (118). In short, the Bible contains both stories of women leading churches, preaching and prophesying, and embracing greater dignity in the church than their culture ever bestowed upon them as well as statements supporting the gender hierarchies of the time. Kirk concludes that to argue that the Bible is either fully egalitarian or fully patriarchal is to ignore its cultural situation.

But although that cultural context might be messy and not reflect fully what we might want to find in Scripture, Kirk argues that what is most important is to remember that we are part of the ongoing narrative of God’s story. He writes that this narrative “is as dramatic and sweeping a gospel narrative as one could hope for. … Paul’s narrative of salvation is nothing less than the proclamation and embodiment here and now of the coming dominion of God” (50). So therefore, “because it is a story of cosmic transformation, the story has to be embodied and lived” (51). To proclaim the dominion of God is to live in its ways here and now – to testify to its transforming power. The gospel gives “glimpses of a new creation that has no hierarchical distinction between male and female. It is not a vision that is worked out consistently in the first-century culture in which the New Testament writings grew-up, but it is one that fits within the plot of a story that turns all social hierarchies on their head as God comes to rule the world through a crucified Messiah” (137) Instead of giving sin power by letting the patriarchy of that time keep us from living out the redemptive nature of new creation now, Kirk calls us to instead embrace Christ’s redemptive work and turn upside-down the controlling hierarchies of this world.

I greatly appreciate this take on Paul that affirms both the reality of his context and the reality of what women were doing in the early church. Placing myself within a continuing narrative witnessing to new creation makes far more sense to me than just rejecting Paul because he isn’t who I would like for him to be. I do wish though that Kirk had explored whether he thought it would have been appropriate for women to live into that narrative of New Creation in periods in history where it might have caused the surrounded cultures to be offended. Should women’s dignity, worth, and equality be affirmed because such things are true or only when affirming them would not give offense within a particular culture? I get that Paul may have imposed restrictions on women so that they wouldn’t offend the culture, but I am left wondering in this interpretation at what point one should simply embrace New Creation in spite of the culture that does not understand the light shining in the darkness?

I found myself most troubled in this chapter when immediately after arguing that we should embrace Christ’s redemptive power by affirming an egalitarian position on gender, Kirk jumped straight to the most common argument used to temper the radical assertion of equality. He is quick to say that real Christ-like egalitarianism is not therefore a call for women to seek out positions of leadership in the church as to be called to Christ is to accept the hard life of submission and servant hood. While I wouldn’t argue that following Christ does involve a servant’s heart, this is an argument that has been used over and over as simply a backhanded way of asserting patriarchy in the name of equality. I honestly don’t think Kirk intended to do so here, but I do wonder if he was unaware of how this argument has been used to give lip-service to egalitarianism while ensuring nothing really changes in the male-dominated church.

As many feminist scholars have argued, to accuse women of the sin of self-seeking pride when they attempt to use their God-given gifts leads to many women burying those gifts lest they fall into sin. They are bullied into passivity under the guise of humility. That is not what it means though to follow Christ and live into the telos of who God created us to be. Centuries though of being told that unless we submit and let men dominate us we are sinning and not being sufficiently Christ-like are difficult to overcome. The last thing women need to hear more of is that we are sinning or living in the ways of the world when we choose to accept God’s call to use the gifts God has given us.

We still live in a world marred by the oppressive ways of patriarchy. The dominion of God where there is no male or female is not yet fully realized, although we are called to live as if it is. Perhaps we still need gender specific instructions for how to live in these ways. To men, yes, counter years of living in unChrist-like ways by telling them to be servants and to not pursue positions of power in the church. But, to women, don’t reinforce the idea that they are sining by living into their gifts. Encourage them instead to reject the ways of the world by accepting their gifts and having no fear in using them to serve Christ. I don’t believe that Daniel Kirk was trying to reinforce gender hierarchies by bringing up this standard caution regarding egalitarianism, but I would be remiss to not mention what the warning can imply for women. We are still living into this narrative that affirms the breaking in of the reign of God in the here and now, and so I do greatly appreciate this book’s helpful way of realistically dealing with often unsettling texts. Even as the New Creation is yet unfolding, so it seems is our ability to figure out how to best embrace Christ’s redemption in our lives.

Although I would have liked this chapter to offer more constructive suggestions for navigating gender in the New Creation, I appreciate the ways in which it reframes the conversation regarding Paul and women. For those of us who have never felt comfortable with the options given to us for how we should handle Paul, it proposes an affirming yet realistic engagement that allows both Scripture and the transformative redemptive power of Christ to co-exist as part of the narrative of God’s people.

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Anti-American Christian

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I’ll admit, I follow a few celebrities on Twitter – especially the writers and actors of my favorite sci-fi shows. If I didn’t love Firefly/Serenity and Chuck, I probably wouldn’t be following Adam Baldwin (@adamsbaldwin) – pictured here at Austin ComicCon. At the same time it’s sickly fascinating to read his extreme right-wing hate speech on a regular basis. I’m still not for sure if his Twitter persona is an extension of his characters or if he simply plays himself in his shows – as his gun-loving Ronald-Reagan-obsessed characters mirror what he posts on Twitter. So whether or not his tweets are caricature or the real deal, they serve as my reminder of the extremes of individualistic nationalism that stands in direct contrast to the ways of the Kingdom of God.

A few days ago, he posted the following Tweet –

anti -American Blog! | RT @washingtonpost “Why do we overlook civilians killed in American wars?” – http://wapo.st/xhLko2 ~ #FreedomIsNotFree

At first it pissed me off. What sort of people are we if it is considered not only unpatriotic but actually anti-American to care about the innocent people our country kills? Are the deaths of children on their way to school or of a mother in the marketplace really simply the cost of the freedoms we enjoy? To not expect them to pay that cost or to even mention that they are paying that cost, is therefore a betrayal of our country? Who are we that anyone would argue that such things define our national identity?

But as I considered the idea of national identity, I realized that the very notion of rooting one’s identity in one’s nation requires that the nation be valued before all else. If who one is at their core is a citizen of the United States (as opposed to say a Christian), then defending and protecting the manifest desires of the nation must form a person’s core identity as well. What is right (what is ethical) is therefore what serves the nation no matter who it harms or uses. Freedom, defined as the nation always getting what it wants when it wants, is of course not free as anyone who stands in the way of the nation’s ascendency must pay.

As a pure philosophy, it holds together and I respect the right of others to hold to that philosophy. The problem is of course when that religion of nationalism is sold as the right and true path for Christians. Few people would admit to rooting their identity in the nation or placing the needs of the nation at the forefront of their lives. But if they are told that in doing so they are actually serving God, then they easily jump on that bandwagon. In this way to care about the death of innocents or to question why others must pay for our expensive lifestyles is not just un-American it is unchristian. But as Walter Brueggemann has written, nations and empires “lack both patience and tolerance toward those whose ultimate loyalty belongs to someone or something other than the empire itself.” The clever way to deal with such impatience is to turn the worship of that other thing into worship of the empire. So if the nation can get those that claim to worship God to actually worship the nation in the name of God, then there is no conflict of interest. It’s idolatry of course, but it keeps the peace as it serves the nation.

So I realized that it is not so much the words of Adam Baldwin’s tweets that upset me so much, but that they echo the idolatry I hear on the lips of so many professed Christians (and, yes, before you accuse me of partisanship, liberal Christians can be trapped in idolatry as well). More and more therefore I want to embrace the anti-American label. I appreciate my country and am grateful to live here (and don’t foolishly believe anywhere else would be better). I also desire to embrace the call Jeremiah gave to the Israelites to seek the peace and prosperity of the land of their exile. But if being American means finding my identity in the nation and situating my ethics in my loyalty to it, then as a Christian I have no choice but to be anti-American. My ethics must be based on “blessed are the poor and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” instead of “We’re #1” and “freedom (for us) isn’t free.” So thank you, Adam Baldwin/Jayne/John Casey for reminding me of my identity and what it means to give my allegiance solely to the Kingdom of God.

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Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? – Blog Tour

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So I’m honored to be part of the blog tour for Daniel Kirk’s latest book Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? The premise of the book intrigued me – for those of us in the postmodern era who admittedly have issues with Paul (as he’s been presented to us at least), the book explores if we have any other options than to just deal with that unease or abandon Paul altogether. It’s a question I wrestle with and so far have been dissatisfied with the ways I’ve seen it answered. So I was grateful to be sent this book and given the opportunity to interact with it. I’m officially blogging on Chapter 6 – “Women in the story of God” for the blog tour (look for that next Monday), but there were a few ideas that I wanted to bring up about it at the start of the online discussion.

I’m a fan of Daniel Kirk’s writing. After meeting him at the 2009 Emergent Theological Conversation, I’ve enjoyed following him online. He is one of the few academics that Tweets about all aspects of life – from theological questions to what he’s making his family for breakfast. As a good postmodern who values authenticity, that’s something I admire. I like the questions he asks and his way of presenting possible answers. I don’t always agree with him, but I always respect how he engages in the conversation – which also sums up my reaction to his book. There are places in the book where I have quibbles (and a few outright objections), but on the whole I appreciate his overall vision that Paul is presenting a narrative theology of how the identity of the people of God gets formed which very much holds together with both the story of Israel and Jesus’ teachings.

Growing up as an evangelical, I received heavy doses of Paul (and little of Jesus), but the Paul I received was a Paul who was both quick to criticize and dismiss his Jewish roots and offer the hope of escaping this world soon by shuffling off the despised mortal flesh. But once I started paying attention to the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus, this Paul no longer made sense. I was one of those that the book suggests needs “a healthy deconstruction of their understanding of Paul” (5). And this book does that and does it well. In rescuing Paul from his forced isolation by demonstrating how he contributes to the ongoing narrative of God working to redeem the world, it transforms the often uncomfortable dogmatic statements and rules into vital (albeit often contextual) parts of that story.

What I appreciated most was how Kirk interpreted Paul’s writings on the hope of the resurrection. He straightforwardly demonstrates that this hope has nothing to do with escape from or rejection of creation, but instead is all about living into the new creation. This hope means that the kingdom of God is now and that Jesus is reigning over it putting it in order. As Kirk writes, what this means is that “The kingdom of God is at hand in the undoing of all the sin and death and brokenness and disorder that mar the very good world of God” (39). The advice that Paul gives in his letters is not about perfecting oneself so that one day one might be worthy of heaven, but practical advice for how the community of God lives in the kingdom here and now as part of God’s work restoring creation.

I appreciate this eschatological interpretation of Paul’s narrative theology that values the present as much as it does the future. It is hard to love the world enough to desire its transformation (as Jesus and the Old Testament prophets did) if one simply desires to escape it someday. But as the book argues, Paul is presenting a vision for how people continue in the way of Jesus and live transformativly in the present. And this is possible because “new creation is not simply something that we look forward to; it is something in which we already participate. The culmination of the story is exerting a sort of backward force, such that the future, by power of the life-giving Spirit, is intruding on the present and transforming it” (47). As one who has had Paul imposed on me as apology for why I shouldn’t care about seeking justice in the world, this rescuing of Paul from his escapist captivity is refreshing. For those who have been uneasy with the Paul they were taught (who seemed to have little to do with the Jesus they love) and who respect the Bible too much to simply reject Paul’s writing, this returning of Paul to the larger narrative context of scripture is a blessing making the book well worth the read. I will be engaging specifically the books’ perspective on Paul’s writings on women next week where I will address a few of my minor concerns with the book, but I wanted to highlight here the book’s exceedingly helpful presentation of Paul in light of the rest of scripture. I encourage readers to follow the blog tour and engage in the conversation as it unfolds.

Be sure to stop by the Blog Tour Hub for a chance to win a free copy of the book!

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Halfway Out of the Dark

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“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact mid-point, everybody stops and turns and hugs. As if to say, “Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.” Back on Earth we call this Christmas. Or the Winter Solstice.” – Doctor Who, A Christmas Carol

Christmas. Halfway out of the dark. This is my new favorite definition of Christmas. On one hand it connects the celebration of the birth of Christ to the natural patterns of the world – an affirmation of the physical that mind/body dualistic Christianity has attempted to hide in embarrassment. But it is also an affirmation of the paradoxical space that Advent calls us to live into.

The light shines in the darkness but the darkness does not understand it. In fact even those that claim to follow the light, keep the light at a safe distance as they wrap themselves in darkness. The coming of light into the world, the birth of the incarnate God, is for some simply a reminder of a far off promise. The light will eventually shine someday chasing away all shadows, but for now we must put up with the darkness as we dream about the light. The darkness doesn’t understand that the light has already broken into the world, not simply as a tantalizing glimpse of the future, but as an illuminating hope shining in the now.

I recently heard a women from Cuba share about how waiting for this light, this promised hope someday, is the only thing that people there have to help them make it through the day. Then she added how blessed she felt that the government is now not only allowing Bibles to be distributed and evangelical churches to gather so that people can have access to this comforting hope, but that the Cuban government is funding such things. The communist government knows the power of light. To allow it as an ever-receding hope in the future turns it into the subduing opium that they need. To allow light into the present would be dangerous, for light can’t help but chase away darkness. So of course they pour money into systems that convince people that liberating hope is only something for the sweet by-and-by. It allows the darkness to thrive.

The darkness always resists the light. If it can convince us that all we should do is perform half-hearted incantations to the idea of light while we ourselves shove the advent of light off into the future, then the darkness will have won. We distract ourselves with complaining about a so-called “war on Christmas” while it is our own theology that hides the light under a bushel. We shrug at the poverty, oppression, and injustice of the darkness as we mumble about God imposing his kingdom someday all the while hoping that the darkness continues to hide our involvement in those very injustices.

Someday, yes, the light will shine in its full brightness. The Kingdom will come in full and the darkness will be no more. But the paradox of Advent is that this light has already broken-in; the light might not be fully apparent yet but we are halfway there. The light is not just to come; it has arrived and is there to help us see. So to await the advent of the ultimate illumination means to live in the light in the now. It means having hope that the shadows of injustice and oppression can be chased away. It means not letting ourselves be subdued into reconciling ourselves with the darkness. It means not simply talking about the light or defending an impotent idea of light, but seeking it out, basking in it, and taking it to where illumination is needed. It means remembering that Christmas is situated at the turning of the seasons, at the time when light always returns and the darkness never ultimately triumphs.

Darkness abounds, but light is shining in and we are halfway out of the dark. That is the meaning of Christmas.

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The Call to Mourn on Thanksgiving

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For the 1970 annual reenactment of the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock – a festive tourist attraction complete with costumes, prayers, and parade – the organizers wanted to highlight the relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe since it was the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival. To do so, the organizers invited the current leader of the Wampanoag, Frank James, to deliver a speech for the occasion. James wrote his speech based on the Pilgrims’ account of their first year in the area which included how they had opened Native graves in search of treasure, forcefully took food from Native tribes, and then captured and sold Native Americans as slaves. Although his speech’s theme was on reconciliation it was rejected for being too inflammatory. Rejected from the official Thanksgiving celebration, James instead delivered his speech on a nearby hill, establishing the first National Day of Mourning. Every year since a group has gathered there for a National Day of Mourning – committing to gather as long as there are injustices in our nation that need to be mourned. At times the gathering has been met with armed police, state troopers, and pepper spray, but since 1998 the gathering has been permitted to assemble as long as it doesn’t interfere with the official Thanksgiving celebration.

Not just in November, but every week, Christians around the world gather for official Thanksgiving celebrations. Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, is a celebration of praise and thankfulness to God situated in the memory of a death. When we gather, we hear the story of what happened on the night Jesus was betrayed and partake in the broken body and shed blood, for we believe that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Our process of giving thanks involves the retelling of a sacrifice – a confession of acts done on our behalf. To do so in remembrance implies that the past, however painful and uncomfortable, cannot be forgotten. We gather not only to give thanks and praise, but to remember the events of the story that we find ourselves in.

Participating in this ritual of thanksgiving and remembrance shapes us. We in the church not only partake symbolically of the body of Christ, we are the body of Christ which believes that sharing the bread and the cup represents the communion we have as a body. We are not individuals who happen to gather once a week, but integral parts of a body that depend on each other in order to function. We remember the sacrifice of Jesus by caring for each other’s needs – living sacrificially for one another as part of that act of remembrance and thanksgiving. Within that communion many of us pray as part of our very act of thanksgiving words of confession and repentance for what we have done and what we have left undone, including our failure to love our neighbors as ourselves. Those aren’t (or shouldn’t be) just perfunctory words; for to enter into thanksgiving involves placing ourselves in community and not only confessing the ways we have failed to remember the sacrifice of Christ as part of that community, but repenting of those ways by seeking reconciliation instead.

Thanking God for all God has done for us without acknowledging the parts of our body that are in pain or even the ways we have caused harm to that very body is to fail to remember Christ’s sacrifice. The first Thanksgiving is not just a tale of blessing (if it is even that at all), it is also a tale of the failure to love our neighbors – a failure that gets perpetuated every year mourning and reconciliation are avoided in the name of a celebration. Participating in Eucharist, in thanksgiving, involves acknowledging that because of Christ our lives are intricately bound up in each others’. We rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn because we are all one body. There should not have to be a separate National Day of Mourning to call us to repentance for the injustices caused by things done and left undone. Pleas for the confession of our failure to love our neighbor should not be silenced for being too inflammatory or met with armed police for getting in the way of official celebration. Thanksgiving for the body of Christ should by its very nature involve mourning as well as celebration and confession as well as praise.

The Thanksgiving table is also the Eucharist table where we can partake only in lived remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice.

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Emerging Christianity, Soularize, and the Future

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I spent this past week hanging out with the awesome folk at Soularize 2011 – a three-day learning party in (not so) sunny San Diego. This year’s Soularize marked both its tenth anniversary as well as its final chapter. Ten years ago the first Soularize (put on by Spencer Burke of TheOoze.com) was hosted by none other than Mark Driscoll at his Mars Hill church in Seattle. That fact right there is evidence that a lot has changed in this past decade. But a lot more has changed since then, the world has shifted and along with it this emerging conversation.

Ten years ago I had never heard of the emerging church. Oh, I was reading postmodern philosophy and asking all sorts of questions that were getting me in trouble, but I had no idea that there were other Christians discussing these sorts of ideas. I had just finished my first round of grad-school having studied Intercultural Studies and Missions at Wheaton College. I often had made my classmates (and a few of my professors) uncomfortable by asking why missions concepts like contextualization of the Gospel, socio-linguistic relativity, and intercultural difference could not also be applied to our own American culture. If it was okay to have the Gospel make sense culturally in some third world country, why couldn’t it make sense to all people in the United States?

But this was the era when “purpose driven” churches were cutting edge and where in a post-9/11 flag-draped America, homogeneity trumped authenticity. Facebook and Twitter were still years away, so it was a lot harder to discover that you weren’t the only one asking the crazy questions. Even so, it was early in 2002 when someone recommended to my husband and me that we might enjoy reading a book by this guy Brian McLaren. As others have often mentioned, what I discovered in A New Kind of Christian wasn’t completely new, but more of an affirmation that there were others exploring the same sorts of questions about faith as I was. And knowing that one is not alone holds a special power. Knowing that I didn’t have to ignore those nagging questions or divorce my intellect from my faith saved my faith. Instead of a hollow and confining static system, it had been transformed into a living reality.

Knowing that there were others out there meant I had to find them – which is where The Ooze enters in. I found that community online, and more specifically its message boards. I created a profile with a fake name (MaraJade) and a false avatar and jumped in with both feet. Over the next few years the evolution of my faith played out on those boards. I eventually added my real name as virtual friendships morphed into physical ones, but it was there that I began to re-imagine theology, and church, and what it even meant to be a Christian. While it was not always the safest place to explore such questions in a public forum, it was the only place where such dialogue could even occur. It is amusing now to think as The Ooze shuts down that all these old conversations, these snapshots of a faith in transition, will now be archived at Fuller Seminary. I pity the sociologist of religion who will sift through them someday for her dissertation.

But as the conversation grew, territories were claimed and lines began to be drawn. Certain groups declared that there was a range of acceptable questions (generally permitting the re-imagining of worship practices but not theological stances) and they (loudly) denounced the rest of us. Others set up camp as either for the Ooze or for Emergent Village – competing for publishing contracts, conference speaking spots, and (of course) advertising dollars. Those of us involved in both observed that tension and felt like we were being made to choose sides. Looking back, it seems so silly that in a conversation about deconstructing the systems of modernism in favor of re-imaging a wholistic and healthy way to be the church such petty fights would ever be waged, but I guess that is the way of man (and I intentionally used the masculine there). For me the conversation was holy in whatever guise it took.

I never made it to a Soularize until this year and I regret that. But there was still something intriguing to enter into that space ten years on and discover where the past decade has taken the conversation. In a struggling economy the trappings of financial success have long since lost the power to sway the conversation. Petty differences have given way to collaboration as those who believe that re-imagining church for a postmodern world is more than just the latest trend to follow. The angst of needing to constantly deconstruct where we all have been has mellowed into a loosely held space where dreams and critique coexist. The urgency to fix the world has passed while the passion to hope for a better world remains.

In short, the emerging conversation I encountered at Soularize this year was one of hope. While it might not burn as brightly as it once did, a bonfire requires too much empty energy to sustain itself. What we have left is a smoldering movement – not in the negative sense of having been reduced to ashes, but of the sort of long-burning coals that warm homes and bake bread. And there are still new people joining the conversation – asking their own questions and desperately attempting to cling to their faith in meaningful ways. But how they enter in looks different now that there are those of us who have matured in this conversation for the past ten years or more there to welcome them in.

Groups like Soularize and The Ooze may be winding down, but that is because the conversation has shifted. We no longer just need space for questions; we need space to build as well. Learning parties are no longer just about questions, they are also about formulating responses with our lives. I am grateful for this last Soularize for serving as a transition in that shift. And I am looking forward to what lies ahead.

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To Occupy, Liberate, and Love

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Although I am late to the game, I have recently started watching through the newer seasons of Doctor Who. The Season 3 episode “Gridlock” has been haunting me since I watched it. In this episode the Doctor and Martha Jones visit New New York in the year 5 Billion and 43 where they find an underground world consisting of one massive traffic jam. In an overpopulated world, underworld families live in small flying cars on a deadly polluted underground highway. It can take years to travel a few miles, and so they exist isolated in their cars as they inch forward through the gridlock. The commuters have hope that the police will one day open more lanes or solve the traffic problems and they then take comfort in the moment by singing nostalgic but meaningless hymns (like “The Old Rugged Cross”) during broadcasted daily reflection moments. The Doctor steps into this world and breaking all established rules of traffic discovers that the overworld has been wiped out leaving the commuters stuck in hopeless and pointless gridlock. He subsequently flings open the doors to the overworld, showing them the way out if they are willing to simply fly themselves out into the light.

The episode is a beautiful incarnation story and has repeatedly popped into my mind as I reflect on the current Occupy Wall Street protests (yes, this is the way my mind works). There is no precise correlation, but I couldn’t help but notice similarities. In our isolated attempts at living the American dream according to the rules the system imposed upon us we know there are problems, but there is a tendency to assume that some authority will somehow eventually fix our problem for us. So we wait patiently, abiding by the rules, taking comfort in our sweet but impotent religious rituals, dying slowly as we come to mistake the rat-race for reality. A few of us might get ahead, moved to the fast lane so to speak, which we take as a sign of hope that the system is working and that one day we might actually arrive. We might talk about freedom, and love, and justice, and mercy as if they are some ideal we can strive towards – a better world we can hope to someday arrive at – but they aren’t reflected in the shape of our everyday lives. That is consumed with inching forward in our individual existence.

So when something like Occupy Wall Street comes along it challenges the status quo. And if our hope is in the fulfillment of the status quo, a challenge to that makes us fearful. What if we lose our place? What if all the time we have spent was wasted? Shouldn’t we just wait for the people in charge to figure it all out and get us all running smoothly again? What is scary to some about the Occupy movement is that instead of giving comfort in the moment or hope in the continued status quo, it is calling for liberation. Perhaps that is not the message of every voice or even of the details, but the collective message is one calling people out to a different way. It is a message that the system is broken, we are hopelessly stuck, and we need to find a way out.

There might not be a TARDIS to incarnate the Doctor into our particular moment, but for the sake of liberation perhaps we are the one we have been waiting for. Liberation is the result of the event of love. Not a vague hope in the idea of love, but the event of love entering into and utterly transforming the tragedy of the status quo. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote about this love,

It is not the interpretation of love as an ideal, a heavenly power or as a commandment, but of love as an event in a loveless, legalistic world: the event of an unconditioned and boundless love which comes to meet man, which takes hold of those who are unloved and forsaken, unrighteous or outside the law, and gives them a new identity, liberates them from the norms of social identifications and from the guardians of social norms and idolatrous images. … [But] Just as the unconditional love of Jesus for the rejected made the Pharisees his enemies and brought him to the cross, so unconditional love also means enmity and persecution in a world in which the life of man is made dependent on particular social norms, conditions and achievements. A love which takes precedence and robs these conditions of their force is folly and scandal in this world.”

The impulse toward freedom, toward liberation, is slowly awakening across the nation. The doors have been thrown open; we now have to choose if we will drive out into the light. The protests are, of course, not perfect. There are the dangers of creating new constraining status quos, of corruption, or simply the re-iteration of the same status quos with new faces at the helm. These are the typical demons that prey upon those embracing the event of liberating love – demons that the guardians of the current status quo are sure to parade about in attempts to scare the timid away from joining the movement towards freedom. But love always involves risk. Freedom from the conditions and gridlock of this world is always tied to the ongoing event of love. Love – that unconditional event that liberates for the shalom of the whole – is not an ideal but that ongoing way of life. It takes work to live into a new identity – to figure out how to live differently. The call to occupy isn’t for a quick fix (which I sincerely hope it doesn’t settle for), but it is instead the call to usher in an entire new way of being that requires us all to drastically change as we enter into the difficult work of liberating love – despite obstacles, despite opposition.

It’s hard to speak of a different way in our world today. Perhaps all I’m doing is just reflecting on a good story here. But maybe it’s a parable, or better yet, a dream. And the world is waking up and sometimes dreams do come true.

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