Author: winncollier

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Advent, the Fourth Week

This weekend, we had 36 hours of snow and snow and snow. The boys have some nice sled runs carved down the hill behind our house, and Seth even took to riding his snowboard style (pretty well, I must say).

But now we are here, this morning where the pinkish-orange sky rises above Carter’s Mountain and the fiery sun comes to take back more of the whiteness that covers everything. We are here, in the final week of Advent. And I want to touch on one idea that has been hovering with me for some time.

As we all know and as most of us have grown accustomed to saying often, indeed, greed is a problem. Indeed, rampant, thoughtless consumerism plagues us. Yes, we ought resist the lust for more! more! more!

Still…

The very heart of the Good News is reckless generosity. The gospel is immensely powerful, reality-shattering, because it declares a truth so extravagant that it borders on the absurd: God, Creator and Ruler of all, came to us…to us. And came as a squalling, helpless baby…a baby. This moment Bruno Forte describes as the impossible occasion “when the Whole, the All, offers itself to us in the fragment, when the Infinite makes itself little.” Extravagance unbounded.

When the angel came to Mary, he offered a gift, to her and to the world. A gift beyond our wildest dreams. A gift we could never have arranged for on our own. And God gives this gift still…now. This Christmas, in honor of and in the spirit of the Great Gift, I’ll be giving gifts too. I want to give more of my time, myself, my attention and words and prayers and hugs. But also, I’ll be giving two boys a few gifts that are unnecessary, things that make them laugh and jump up and down and run around the room like someone lit a fire to their tail. And I’ll be giving a gift or two to Miska (though less than I’d like this year), gifts that tell her that she is loved and desired and that if I had a kingdom to give away, it would all be hers.

Because I know a King who does have a Kingdom, and we see what he did…

_____

And I want to give another gift away here, too. This will be our final drawing, so jump in. Scot McKnight has written a wonderful little introduction to the Church’s practices on prayer, Praying with the Church. Here, McKnight offers an overview of the various traditions on prayer and guides us into our own rhythms for following Jesus via prayer. As last week’s book, I think this will be a helpful resource for the new year.

So, leave a comment and a way to contact you – and you will be in the drawing. Per the usual, the deadline is Tuesday night at midnight. Check back here to see if you’ve won.

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Advent, the Third Week

We know that there are three comings of the Lord. The third lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are visible. In the first coming, he was seen on earth, dwelling among men; he himself testifies that they saw him and hated him. In the final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God, and they will look on him who they pierced. The intermediate coming is a hidden one, in it only the elect see the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved. In his first coming our Lord came in our flesh and our weakness; in this middle coming he comes in spirit and power; in the final coming he will be seen in glory and majesty. {St. Bernard of Clairvaux}

Life and mystery, pain and joy, something opening and something closing – do you sense the action all around us? This Advent, we are waiting, but this is an active waiting. The anticipation builds. Like violin strings stretched taut, we crane our neck to see what might be coming. We’ve had enough of the muck, enough of the fear or self-pity or selfishness, enough death. We want life. We want death to go, and we want so much for life to come.

And though Jesus is a thousand things, he is this first of all: Life.

Bernard of Clairvaux reminds us that Jesus has come, and indeed, one day Jesus will come again. But Jesus is appearing (adventing) now. God, in Jesus and by the Spirit, is appearing now, all over the place. God appears in a friendship you thought was dead and done. God appears in the child who says, “Daddy, let’s pray for the poor people.” God appears in the form of new courage and fresh hope. God appears when we say we are sorry. God appears when we laugh. Peer deep in the faces you pass. Open your eyes and drink in the sounds and lights and words and smells swirling around you – Life is breaking in. Jesus is appearing.

___

This week’s Advent gift will be one of my favorite Eugene Peterson titles, his classic A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. This will be a wonderful read for a new beginning in January, a fresh opportunity to see God appearing.

So, if you want to be in the drawing, post a comment and make sure I have a way to contact you – or check back on Wednesday.

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Advent, the Second Week

This is the irrational season when love blooms bright and wild. / Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child. {Madeleine L’Engle}

I believe that if something (anything) is going to happen, I’d best push and pry to make it so. I take comfort in my rightness, in my well-formed opinions, in knowing when to speak or even when to shut my mouth – but always me knowing (correctly, precisely) the when for either. I think what all this truly means is that I love illusions. I love the bewitching notion that I have a firm grip on the steering wheel of my life, my identity, whatever will come of me – if only I manage better, twist harder, figure another puzzle out.

And then there is Advent.

Was there anything:
~Mary could do to have the Son of God formed in her womb?
~the Roman Empire could do to stop this rival King from arriving?
~Israel could to do to hasten the coming of the Redeemer?
Is there anything, really, that I can do to manage all my chaos?

Doesn’t it seem insanity: to take inventory of all that must be done – all that needs to be tended to, fought for, worked out – and just simply wait? Madeleine was certainly right. In every way, this is a most “irrational season.”

No matter how many ways we turn it, we won’t be able to make sense of God appearing as a fragile, helpless baby. The logic of divinity taking shape in humility will not emerge from any formula or theorem I’m familiar with. With John the Baptist, God speaks from the wilderness, the fringes. With a Cross and Resurrection, God speaks the preposterous and the unimaginable. With his arrival in a filthy manger in the womb of a teenage girl, God holds out the improbably, the ludicrous – and asks us to wait. And believe.

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Last week’s Advent gift (a copy of Touching Wonder) went to Dayna Schoonmaker. Hope you are enjoying it, Dayna.

This week, our gift is super yummy. One of our new Charlottesville friends, Lisa Procter, makes the most delectable scones – and she sells her hand crafted mixes at Queen of Puddings. So, leave a comment here by midnight Tuesday night – and we will have another drawing (managed by the security firm of Wyatt and Seth). The winner will receive a scone mix of your choice. ***Please make sure I have a way to contact you – or check back on Wednesday where I will leave a comment naming the winner.

And I must add, these scones would make wonderful Christmas gifts. They taste fabulous – and the boxes they are packaged in are beautiful. You don’t even need to wrap them. We bought a couple for the boy’s teachers as Christmas gifts (I really hope I didn’t just ruin a surprise).

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Advent, the First Week

I stood at the front of the church in Little Rock, Arkansas that Saturday morning, September 20th, 1997. I was breathing heavily, sweating a bit. For three and a half years (long years, Miska would say), we dated. Finally, I got my act together, strapped on my courage and asked Miska if she would take a big leap with me. And now it was happening. I had been waiting so long. She had been waiting so long. The pipe organ swelled with Pachelbel’s Canon in D, the two grand wooden entry doors at the back opened, and…

I have a friend who’s had a truly treacherous past few years. His world came unglued, and the life he has now is nothing he would have imagined. Pain of every sort has stretched his body and mind in unthinkable directions. He has cried. He has almost given up. He has cried some more. But in it all, he has prayed. And waited. He has waited so long. In recent months, glimmers of a new day have trickled in through all the broken pieces. He sits poised, wondering – might there be a hint of life again – waiting, and…

As Advent began yesterday, we stepped into God’s dramatic pause, God’s long and… Advent means “appearing,” and in these weeks, we wait for the celebration of God’s appearing – and we remember that the whole of our lives are in fact a waiting for God’s movement, God’s healing, God’s appearing. In this time, we learn that little of true value comes quickly. Ruin may bear down swiftly, like the wind; but redemption is a long, long work. This is not to say that God lumbers along, turtle-like – just ask Pharaoh who was chasing down Israel in the Red Sea or blind Bartimaeus who longed to be healed whether or not God ever moves immediately, with haste.

However, even when God demonstrates his agility, it is not because God has a sudden whim. God’s prompt, decisive movement rides freely out of the long, long story he has been writing. Pharaoh caught the brunt force, like a hammer dropping, of a God who had been redeeming his people ever since a disaster in a Garden. Bartimaeus first saw the color of the sky and the color of his skin on the day Jesus touched him by the roadside – but God had loved Bartimaeus from his mother’s womb. And Israel, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, cried out, “Hosanna! Son of David!” For hundreds of years, God’s people had waited for the Rescuer to come, the “Son of David.” Now, the crowd gathered, the prophet Jesus made his way into the city – could it be?

And…

Each Monday, we will gather here for a short reflection on Advent, as our way of entering God’s dramatic pause, God’s and… Do join us. And join in.

___

Also, each Monday, I would like to offer an Advent gift – my way of celebrating this time with you and my way of saying “thank you” for reading. This week, I am eager to give away (and tell you about) my friend John Blase’s book Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas. Christmas books can represent the very worst of the religious publishing industry. Not this book. John is a true storyteller, and his fresh narrative, lively imagination and literary artistry provide a wonderful Advent companion.

If you leave a comment, your name will be thrown in for the drawing for a free copy. You have until midnight on Tuesday, drawing Wednesday morning. If you don’t win, I have two suggestions: (1) buy John’s book – a good gift idea, by the way, and (2) come back next week to for the next gift.

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Cafes and Public Spaces

It is almost as if every great civilization in the world had taken a brief time-out from trying to kill one another to brainstorm what a perfect public space should look like. {Michael Idov}

A friend, Andrew Albers, passed along this Wall Street Journal story this morning. It hit a few chords for me.

I should offer this caveat: I take major issue with Idov’s jab at caramel frappuccinos (my favorite is actually java chip light), and slight issue with his side-swiping of laptoppers (I get his point, but there are virtues in working in public space, I think – though I wouldn’t want my coffee-haunts to become consumed with the solitary and the utilitarian).

Getting beyond those squabbles, I’m enchanted by Idov’s hopeful recasting of coffeehouses back to their original place as open, civic spaces where ideas and friendships and the latest news (along with a revolution or two) were on the daily menu. I mean, I’d love for one of my regular shops (here or here) to be a place like the one Idov mentioned, “where a sword fight once erupted over the correct pronunciation of a Greek word.” In fact, I think next week I may just sneak in a blade or musket and see if I can’t get one of the other regulars riled up (and I have just the word – only an hour or so ago Miska corrected my pronunciation of repartee. It’s French, not Greek, but it will do).

I love to write in cafes. My first book Restless Faith was written almost entirely in the Pendleton Cafe and Coffee Company. Chunks of my last two books, numerous articles and more than a few sermons have found their voice between sips of an Americano (hot shots, little room for cream). Some writers head to the secluded cabin to write. Usually, I head to the coffee shop on Main. The coffee shop is where I have meetings, where I meet new people, where I run into friends and where I learn new bits about what is happening in our town.

Still, I read Idov’s description – and I think he is on to something. I think our coffee house cultures often lack the same level of engagement as the older spaces, the expectation that you will meet and know others, the idea of the cafe as a civic space of ideas and shared communal practices. He says, “We’ve also used [the cafe] to balkanize ourselves…cafés here tend to draw specific crowds: a hipster café, a mom café, a student café…we use our coffeehouses to separate ourselves into tribes.” Whenever that is the case, it’s a shame.

Someday, I would love to help form (or participate in) a public space of the older sort, a place where I would read the paper, talk about the issues, write, expect to see old friends, welcome in new friends, share a sense of civic identity – and maybe even start a revolution or two. I have a measure of this now, but I want more.

I also wonder if it might be possible for the church to foster this sort of place (a guy can dream, can’t he?). We should be the first ones to carve out this kind of public space, but unfortunately, if anyone has balkanized itself…but I digress…

What might space like this look like for you? Do you have it now?

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Augustine and The City of God

Last night, I turned the last page on St. Augustine’s City of God, all 1182 pages. Whew.

Augustine and I go way back – he had me write the forward for one of his books. I was happy to oblige, anything for a church father. So I was eager to read his central defining work (with Confessions running a close second).

The City of God is beefy. If you plan to go in, you best take provisions and gear, you’re going to be on the trail for a while. I won’t offer a full-scale review, partly because I need some space to process the experience and Augustine’s sense of things – and partly because a proper review of City of God (COG) requires a level of energy I can’t seem to muster.

Essentially, Augustine offered a comprehensive vision of the two competing cities, the City of God and the City of Man. These two cities offer us the two orders of society, or realms of human loyalty. I almost said human reality just there, but I think Augustine would take umbrage with that. For him – and this was one of my favorite themes in COG – there is only one reality. Everything else is a non-reality, unreal. So good and evil are not two somewhat equal forces competing for power in the world. Rather, what is real (God, good, the Kingdom of Light) is, through redemption, overwhelming all that is unreal (Satan, evil, the Kingdom of Darkness).

Emerging from the accusation (amid the rubble of Rome) that Christianity – and its opposition to traditional Roman religion/gods – brought down the Empire, Augustine gave a sweeping vision of God’s purposes for the world and how these purposes set the stage for the outworking of human history. He wrote, not primarily as an academic but as a churchman, one who wanted to spur all who would listen on to their “final good” – that place where, whenever we arrive at it, “each [of us] are made happy.”

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts (which I must admit, feels a bit unjust, like bumper-sticker Augustine)

Moreover, if God, by Whom all things were made, is wisdom, as the divine authority and truth have shown, then the true philosopher is a lover of God.

He is the fount of our blessedness, and He is the goal of all our desires…

For our good…is nothing other than to cling to Him…

[I]n comparison with the Creator’s knowledge, the knowledge of the creature is like a kind of evening light. But when our knowledge is directed to the praise and love of the Creator, it dawns and is made morning; and night never falls while the Creator is not forsaken by the creature’s love…And, indeed, the knowledge which created things have of themselves is, so to speak, shadowy until they see themselves in the light of God’s wisdom and, as it were, in relation to the art by which they were made…they know themselves better in God than in themselves…In Him, therefore, they have, as it were, a daylight knowledge, whereas in themselves, they have a twilight knowledge…

In some cases, therefore, there can exist things which are wholly good; but there can never be things which are wholly evil.

The soul, then, draws life from God when it lives well…

For the good make use of this world in order to enjoy God; but the evil, by contrast, wish to make use of God in order to enjoy this world. By striving after more, man is diminished.

[T]he holier a man is, and the fuller of holy desire, so much more abundant is his weeping when he prays.

And a few of the questions I ponder as I walk away from Augustine for a bit (the same age-old debates here, nothing insightful or new):

To what extent was Augustine influenced by versions of Platonism, even as he critiqued Platonism on many fronts? Was his division between soul and body still overdone?

What exactly is the nature of happiness redemption offers in this world (not the world to come)?

In what ways (other than procreation) is orgasmic sexuality good, rightly pleasurable to the senses? To me, Augustine seems to say that any physical enjoyment of sexual acts are inherently results of our inferior fallen state. Could Augustine give more space to the good of sensual pleasure or even to the higher ideal of sex as sacrament?

Why does Augustine seem to go to such great lengths to absolve central Biblical characters from their wrongdoing (humanity even)? And could he achieve the “more spiritual” reading he desires (in some cases) without running quite so roughshod over the Scriptural narrative actually sitting before us?

And finally (cliche though it is): Augustine, what was your deal with women???

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She Would Always Come

We went to Wyatt and Seth’s school tonight for the Reading Cafe. Wyatt’s teacher, Mr. Bow (who is a rock star in Wyatt’s eyes – and not far behind that with Miska and me), had each kid record a poem they had written. When I heard Wyatt’s voice, well, I don’t think I can describe it.

The last paragraph tells a million stories. Wyatt has struggled much with fear, particularly this past year. We’ve been with him, held him, slept by his bed (and in his bed – and him by our bed) many nights. We’ve gotten frustrated, reached – and been pushed over (far over) – our limit, yelled more than we should.

But there it was in print, that last line – “She would always come.” You wonder if your kids ever know how much they are loved, if they have any idea of the tenacity of your devotion for them and your commitment to all things good for them. You wonder if they know that they can relax in this world because our heart is on guard for them, all the time, every moment. Miska choked down a few tears tonight, listening in on the gift Wyatt gave her (and us).

“I guess he gets it,” Miska said. I guess he does.

Burning Silver and Gold

My mom told me I was born in the night
When I was walking up the wall
Her blood was my blood and
Her food was my food.
I was soaking in the sweet dreams,
Sleeping in the hospital.
The next morning
I was an inch taller and
I was growing…

My eyes were a burning silver and gold.

The next night I had a nightmare,
I called, “Mamma.”
She would always come.

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Brokenness, the Genesis Project and a Table

Two weeks ago, I shared words from Barth that say better than I could the joy and the terror I find in preaching. Here are words from Henri Nouwen that say, again better than me, what has become a core conviction about leading and loving in God’s community:

I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.

Actually, I should say that on my best days, I believe this. Other days (most days, probably), I run from these words. I’m fairly addicted to people thinking I have my trash together. I like to have the answers. I like to be right. I like to be the leader everyone wants to listen to. I want to have the good ideas. I want to work out my own problems. And that soul-draining, mask-wearing way will kill a person, let me tell you.

I’ve found a small company of friends who help me to remember the truth: that what I have to offer really has very little to do with me. They help me believe in the good news that my story is not the ultimate story. A few of these friends work with me in a little grass roots collective known as the Genesis Project. I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned it here, but there you go – another little bit about my life. GP, as we insiders call it (and you’re welcome to be an insider too), has a good story, but ultimately it has grown out of friendships and a shared belief that we are a mess, that we need mercy and grace – and that Jesus meets us in community. Our official line, because every organization is supposed to have such a thing, is this: “the genesis project is a collection of friends with a heart for providing soul care for the leaders of developing churches.”

We are friends who, due to our own stories, are keenly aware of the soul-draining realities of vocational ministry – and particularly the version known as “church planting.” And we hope to spread our friendship around a bit (to spread the love, in other words).

So, I am eager to announce the Genesis Project’s spring gathering, The Table. This small communal experience is designed for those leading new churches who are intimately connected with their own brokenness and need for grace – and who desire for Jesus to speak into these places among a community of friends.

The applications are now available online, and we will receive them until January 15th. The Genesis Project is funding this gathering, and it will be offered as a gift. Space is extremely limited, but if all goes as we hope, we will host others in the future.

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Questioning the Sermon

As pastors, if you won’t let God use you to make a new world, through faithful words, then all you can do is service the old one. And that’s no fun. {Walter Brueggemann}

Taking my cue from the Good Bishop Annie, I think it would be a shame indeed to offer trivial sermons about trivial things. The Bible tells a most outrageous story. If it’s true, as I happen to believe it is, then our reality has been redefined; we need new eyes to see our life (and the entire cosmos) in new ways; and – perhaps best of all – hope has truly come, in Jesus.

This means that whenever I go to my work of wading into Scripture’s deep waters, my task is to immerse myself in the Story, to let it up close so that the text’s questions become my questions, so that the characters’ fears and worries and awe find their way into my bones. My aim for the Sunday sermon is not to dumb the text down to a few bullet-points and a poem but rather to open a door where our community can encounter the possibility of a world-made-new.

As I begin to get words on paper for Sunday’s homily, then, I need to wrestle with whether or not my words have any life to them, whether they are faithful to the Story, whether the words have any chance of helping people grapple with God-alive. Here are a few of the sorts of questions I ask to help me discern if I’m meandering in something like the right direction:

Are these words soaked in the Biblical narrative?

Will these words kindle holy imagination?

Will these words give space for sacred discontent, all the while pointing toward redemption and joy?

Do these words tend to our true questions, the deep questions?

Do these words yield to the gospel’s tensions and mysteries?

Will these words ask us to obey, rather than to merely listen?

Do these words live in the here and now, in the world as it actually is?

Do these words find their life and breath from the Living Word, Jesus – and from the Spirit?

Will these words announce – with grace and with boldness – Jesus as Lord over all?

There are more questions – and better ones, I’m sure – but these are a start.

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