Category: Through a Glass Darkly

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Good Bishop Wright

Last April, I had the opportunity to sit down for a conversation with N.T. Wright. I promised to write about the experience, and I have no idea why it has taken ten months. Even though our conversation is old news, I still wanted to share a bit about this man I have come to admire.

For those unfamiliar, Wright is the Bishop of Durham in the Anglican communion. I’m sure that some of my interest in Wright must be connected to my respect for Anglican theology and narrative (which has had an enormous influence on me, but that is for another day…). However, I‘ve stuck with him because he invites me into the broad, sweeping, dangerous gospel narrative in ways that stir my heart, move me toward repentance and (at the risk of sounding cheeky) simply take my breath away.

Wright has this uncanny way of being a provocateur while simultaneously holding us to the oldest truths. Wright embodies an imaginative fidelity (and the beautiful thing is that neither fidelity or imagination suffer – a difficult feat). I think of Wright as a faithful poetic theologian, and for me, that’s about as high praise as I know how to give a religious thinker.

Bishop Wright made first waves with his Biblical history trilogy (The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God). These mammoth volumes are not for the faint of heart, hefty reads. They were critical, timely pieces – dealing with questions raised about the historical Jesus. Since those treatises, waves continue. Current controversy surrounds his views on justification (for instance: he says Wright is dangerous; Wright says his critics aren’t listening well). We’ll see how it all plays out, but Wright’s impact on me has been primarily in other veins (though I imagine he might well say it’s all interdependent – and I think he’d probably be right).

I’ve appreciated (even if not always agreed with) so much of Wright’s thinking and writing. However, when I got my hands on Surprised by Hope, it went into deeper places, putting words to some of my truest hopes. So, on so many levels, I was excited when Wright was heading to Atlanta and I was able to arrange an interview for a piece that eventually landed at PreachingToday.com.

I arrived early at Wright’s hotel, the Four Seasons on 14th Street. Wright arrived exactly on time (punctuality is a British virtue, after all), and we made our way to the lounge. Nursing a raspy throat, he ordered tea (English breakfast, of course) with honey and lemon. And there I found myself in Nirvana, knee deep in theological conversation with a guy who has the kind of accent that makes every conversation seem more interesting, more important. I declare I was born on the wrong side of the pond.

We chatted about resurrection, about death and life, about hope, about the stunning vision (and promise) of God’s recreation. At the end, I saved 5 minutes for personal questions. One of the questions had to do with my pull toward the Anglican communion, complicated by the reality that there are a few concerns that would most likely prohibit me from being able to be ordained (at least for now). “Could you be Presbyterian?” he asked, only half-jokingly. I loved the humility and openness and graciousness that came from this man whose life is immersed in a particular tradition (I mean, his official title, after all, is: The Right Reverend Father in God, Nicholas Thomas Wright, by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of Durham) but who sees the wide vistas.

We all need guides, faithful voices who can point out the signposts, help us ask the questions, and encourage us to ask better questions, to hope for better answers. I’m thankful to Bishop Wright for being one such guide.

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The Government Shall Be Upon His Shoulders

This morning, I was in Washington DC, spending half a day with my good friend, Doug Mikkelsen, an Army chaplain (the Guard) who had been called to duty to provide support for the inauguration. It was stimulating to walk amid this epicenter of history and power. The city still buzzed with energy and excitement (yes, hope). Streets were still closed, bleachers still out along the parade route. In front of the Capitol, thousands and thousands of chairs still sat. Litter and porta potties everywhere. Vendors hawking Obama/Biden wares.

I welcome hope, whenever and however it comes. I wish President Obama well. More than that, I pray for it. And I believe that President Obama has a unique opportunity – if he will take it – to move our country toward a third way, past some of the polarization that has gripped our political psyche for the past two decades.

However, I must be quick to say that I don’t believe – not for one moment – that the deep healing our world needs can ever be found in a man or a government of men. We can do much good in this world (and we ought – by God, we ought). However, we can never do enough. History stands littered with the cycles of human peace and violence. For every shining moment, a shameful page offers a dark balance. Hear our human story: hear a recurring saga of promise and disappointment, achievement and disaster, peace and savagery.

Some will say that this is the invetible path forward, that we will keep trying and will (hopefully) one day get it right. I wish it were so, but I don’t believe it. I believe we keep self-destructing because something is wildly amiss, something we simply can not fix. Something has gone tragically awry within us – and we need One to heal us, One to return us to our intended design. Might our unflagging hopes hint to us that something is deeply good and true about us? And might our persistent failures to grasp and maintain this hope hint to us that we are simply lost and will never – on our own – find our way?

I pray that President Obama will be an agent of justice in this world, but I also resist the notion that any woman or man (or nation or league of nations) will ever be able to bear the burden of making us right again. Only God can do that.

Bishop Wright put it about as well as I’ve heard it during his Christmas message:

We have of course just witnessed a kind of secular version of Isaiah 9. The election of Barack Obama has been hailed with wild delight around the world. …The whole world was hungry for hope, and now Obama, who is indeed brilliant, charming, shrewd and very capable, is being told that the government of the world is upon his shoulders, and we expect him to solve its problems. Poor man: no ordinary mortal can bear that burden. Nor should we ask it of him. The irrational joy and hope at his election only shows the extent to which other hopes have failed, making us snatch too eagerly at sudden fresh signs. And that can only be because we have forgotten the Christmas message, or have neutered it, have rendered it toothless, as though the shoulder of the child born this night was simply a shoulder for individuals to lean on rather than the shoulder to take the weight of the world’s government.

P.S. I know that about eight months ago I said I would tell a bit about my interview with N.T. Wright. And I will, I promise I will. But not today.

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A Remedy All Divine

We are in Christmas week. I love how these celebrations come to us – not as days – but as seasons, stretches of time where we discover an invitation to live in the moments. Will we live? Will I live? I’ve felt much joy and laughter these days, but I’ve also felt fear, more than is necessary (is any necessary?). Jesus has come. Jesus is here. Hope is here. Live.

Enough of fears and doubts, poor earth, and you poor trembling children of men! Your deepest ground for fear is taken away by him who comes as the Prince of Peace! Fear not! A remedy that is all divine is provided for your malady, whatsoever it may be. {Theodore Christlieb}

Until the New Year,
Winn

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Fourth Week of Advent

Our time of waiting nears its end*. Hopes now acute, we lean forward with expectant joy toward the day of Jesus’ nativity. Are you embracing those around you? Are you listening for signs of redemption? Are you prayerful and repentant? Are you making good use of your waiting?

We can discover much in the waiting. This is one discovery we make: the incarnation reveals to us, along with much else, the truth that Jesus is with us, in the real world, amid our laughter and tears, in our dark and in our light. Jesus truly is with us.

The Christmas story is familiar to everyone. Christmas cards and other modern renditions give us glimpses of a flawless Mary in pristine wrinkle-free clothing, a steady and unperturbed Joseph in an equally immaculate robe, a cheerful stable with clean straw and friendly animals…. Luke’s version is different: Mary isn’t even officially married to Joseph yet she’s pregnant; they have to travel…a distance of forty miles throughout the Samaritan and Judean hills; she gives birth…and has to lay her firstborn infant not in a cradle, but a feeding trough…. If we put ourselves into this situation, we sense pretty quickly it is no glittering Christmas card. It is real life…. {Dallas Willard}

*of course, I refer to this season of Advent waiting. We still yearn with all of creation for our full redemption.

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Third Week of Advent

This is the week of joy. Joy arrives as a gift. Joy bends our way, catching us by surprise. Joy is a kind grace we could never manufacture on our own (at least not any deeply meaningful, sustainable measure of joy).

And yet – joy is not for the faint of heart. It requires courage to be open to joy, courage to receive something so beautiful, something that stirs us so profoundly it causes our soul to tremble. Joy offers a goodness we can not control. We can not guard ourselves from the hope it stirs. We must simply receive.

The refrain (from Psalm 40;4) for today’s midday prayers was most appropriate: Happy are they who trust in the Lord! (and I do love that exclamation point: !) Let’s allow this refrain to be our refrain.

When our soul is lonely
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!

When our family appears in tatters
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!

When our heart and hope have lost their center
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!

When love seems a distant memory
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!

When we are selfish and proud and small
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!

When we see the evil surrounding us
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!

For the hungry, the abandoned, the abused, the forgotten
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!

May joys be yours today, because God has come in Jesus. And God is coming again. Discover your joy.

To encourage your celebration of joy, I suggest snagging this excellent folksy Christmas album from the band Sojourn. The album is Advent Songs. And you can download it for free (by telling 5 friends about it) at NoiseTrade.

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Second Week of Advent

God is coming!
All the element we swim in, this existence, Echoes ahead the advent.
God is coming! Can’t you feel it?
{Walter Wangerin, Jr}

Can you feel it? Can you?

Advent, waiting for redemption, is an exercise in hope. Hope can be a tricky thing though. Hope has a number of enemies. Here’s the enemy I’ve been most aware of lately: cynicism. Cynicism smirks when others smile. Cynicism holds back when others open up. Cynicism pulls you into darkness whenever your spirit craves the light.

Cynicism and Hope are mortal enemies. So, then, this makes cynicism and advent mortal enemies. Where is advent asking you to hope? I’m really asking…where?

For me advent, is asking me to hope in the that God is forming something strong and beautiful in me, even if I feel weak and pretty much a wreck. Cynicism offers the constant sly whisper that all I will ever be is what I am. Advent tells me different.

What about you?

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First Week of Advent

Advent is upon us. And yet this means that what is upon us is…waiting.

We wait. We hope. We listen to quiet sounds and simple words. We see more clearly the needs of others. We see more clearly our own broken places. And we open our heart to what the gospel promises: God has come and will come again. And, on those plain words, everything hinges, absolutely everything.

In Advent Waiting, we remember that Mary marveled at the mystery of a baby come. We remember that Sara laughed at the ridiculous promise. We remember that ever-mumbling and ever-forgetful Israel simply didn’t believe that Moses would come back down from the mountain, that God would give them water and meat, that they were better off in the wilderness than in Egypt even if (especially if) all they had was God. We remember that we have doubted and struggled and laughed and wrestled … and believed. Indeed, we have believed – halting and feeble at times but, yes, we have believed. And we believe sill. This Advent, we believe. And we wait.

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent. {Dietrich Bonhoeffer}

I hope to post at least one Advent peace each week. Join me for the journey.

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All You Need to Know

My old nemesis doubt has snarled at me yet again in recent days. I’m not surprised; we’re naturally floundering a bit as we make our way in this new place, feeling the geographic disconnection from the deep friendships that have sustained us over the past years. There’s more reasons, I know (tiredness, the necessary process of wrestling with new questions and contexts, etc. etc.). The bottom line, though, is that I have just felt that numbing, vague hollowing of my soul.

My first response in seasons of doubt is to rev the intellectual engines. Find an answer. Scratch around for more proofs. Connect with a philosophical voice that calms my anxious heart. There’s a place for bending the mind, absolutely. Ignorance is not our friend. However, I’ve peddled around those circles enough to know that they just keep going round and round and round. For me, hope is not found in a rational repose but in an inflamed heart. Eleven years ago, when I foolishly freaked out about whether or not I should marry Miska, my doubt and fear was not, at its core, a matter of proofs and logic. It was a matter of desire. What did I want? What did my heart beat for? It’s the same here. As a friend recently told me, “All you need to know is what you love.”

My doubts (in this season at least) aren’t signals that I need to better wrestle with my questions. Rather, my doubts make their way from a heart that has not surrendered to love. I find hope in Mother Theresa’s words (who said if she would ever be declared a saint, it would have to be as a “saint of darkness”): “My key to heaven is that I loved Jesus in the night.”

In the night, I loved. Not just in the day. Not just amid the answer. But I loved Jesus, in the night. That is my hope, my prayer.

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Villification and the Way of Jesus

More often than not, I find my Christian brothers and sisters uncritically embracing the ways and means practiced by the high-profile men and women who lead large corporations, congregations, nations and causes, people who show us how to make money, win wars, manage people, sell products, manipulate emotions, and who then write books or give lectures telling us how we can do what they are doing. But these ways and means more often than not violate the ways of Jesus. {Eugene Peterson}

With our move to Charlottesville, our book club has fallen behind. However, Eugene Peterson’s The Jesus Way refuses to be ignored. A couple years ago, I heard Eugene give a lecture based on one of the themes he develops in this book, the observation that Jesus lived in stark contrast to all prevailing societal modus operandis of his day, both to the way of the Pharisees (the way of religious rigidity) and to the way of Herod (the way of power). It wasn’t only the message of these groups that Jesus resisted – it was just as much their way, the manner in which they pushed their message. The cliche has truth: the medium is our message.

However, dominant church culture has bowed at the feet of pragmatism. If it works (however that is defined), then by all means, do it. With this conviction, we baptize commercialism and individualism and every manner of gimmicky shlop in the name of Jesus. Art becomes merely propoganda. Friendship and justice and hospitality become merely bait. The Gospel is made subservient to a political philosophy or a theological grid or a historical prejudice.

At odds with all this message stands the crucified and resurrected Jesus. Jesus does not offer merely a message or an agenda or a bullet-point list of cultural ills to eradicate. Jesus offers himself, God made flesh. Jesus offers his words and his actions and his friendships and his conversations and his pains and his love. Jesus is the truth, absolutely. Jesus is the life, thank God. But Jesus is also the way, the how, the manner. It is simply a perversion of Jesus’ message if we assume that message to be codified only by theological assertions. Jesus’ message is himself, the son of God, come to save us.

All this seems timely to me. You might have noticed we are in an election year. Why do politics often bring out the worst in us? I’ve already written about the shameful smeer campain on Obama. Unfortunately (but certainly not surprisingly), it has not slowed. I continue to receive forwards and video links and alarming emails with lots of exclamation marks and capitals. A small bit of it centers on policy, fair enough. Most of it, however, maligns character, distorts positions and uses fear as a prime weapon. The Christian response is clear: none of that is the way of Jesus.

The past few weeks, I have been just as apalled at the vile and venom that has been spewed at Sarah Palin. Again, debate on policy and questions of experience are fair game. But the relentless attack on her family, the cruel mockery and elitist jabs at her rural home are, in my opinion, despicable. Of course, it bears repeating: none of this is the way of Jesus.

Personally, I am disgusted by the villification. I know that both parties have their own blame to bear. And of course both sides will claim the other side fired first (sounds eerily like Russia and Georgia). But when we begin to view the other as our mortal enemy, one who we must crush at all costs, we have truly lost our way.

I return, then, to the subversive way of Jesus. I discover that if I proclaim to be a Jesus-person, then my entire life sits under his authority: not only what I believe – but how I believe, not only what I say – but how I say it, not only the vote I cast – but the way I live toward those who cast their vote differently. As Eugene said, “Once we start paying attention to Jesus’ ways, it doesn’t take us long to realize that following Jesus is radically different from following anyone else.”

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The Bible Said So

My interpretation of Scripture is not the same as the interpretation of Scripture. Sometimes it is (I certainly hope). Sometime it isn’t (and no, I don’t know where – if I did, I’d change).

Recently, Irving Bible Church made what was for them a monumental decision. After eighteen months of prayer, theological discussions and consultations with three theologians from various perspectives on the issues of a woman’s service in the church, the church elders invited a woman to preach on a Sunday to the entire congregation. This was a pretty big deal, given their historic alignment with a movement that has long held rigid lines on such issues.

Personally, I applaud their decision. However, that is not why I write. Really, it isn’t. I mention this story because it touched on one of my growing concerns about the way the game gets played in many of these theological squabbles. Rather than making a commitment to thinking clearly with or acting charitably toward those differing from us, we often make rash judgments and illogical leaps. We do not really listen. We do not trust that the truth can stand on its own two feet, with no need for our knee-jerk and emotive rhetoric or our appeal to fear (particularly of the “slippery slope” kind). And when we come with that unhealthy posture, when we think we must defend our position at all costs, we say things that simply don’t hold water.

One example was the response of a well-known pastor in an interview with the Dallas Morning News: “If the Bible is not true and authoritative on the roles of men and women, then maybe the Bible will not be finally true on premarital sex, the homosexual issue, adultery or any other moral issue.”

Did you catch that? If the Bible is not true and authoritative… The accusation (and assumption) here is that this church has gone into the heretical territory of distrust in the Bible’s authority. Why? On what basis? Reading the offending church’s story, the elders’ never asked whether or not the Bible was “true and authoritative.” Rather, driven by their conviction in Scripture’s authority, they felt compelled to ask whether or not they had gotten Scripture right. However, the ideologue among us simply can not conceive of such a possibility: if you go against my interpretation (what I clearly understand the Bible to say), then obviously you are going against the Bible.

Such a posture is untrue, spurious and unchristian. We ought know better.

I know the church the pastor who made this accusation leads. There are many places where they have interpreted various passages to mean something other than what their most literal reading would suggest. This church does not demand women to wear head coverings in worship, even though the plainest reading of Paul suggests it is necessary. The church does not believe the communion bread and wine literally is Jesus’ body and blood (even though Jesus said, “This is my body. This is my blood.”) However, when another church wrestles with the text and interprets some of the restrictions on women to be related to context (like head coverings) or in need of wider Scriptural reflection (like the eucharist elements), then suddenly they do not believe in the authority of the Bible. Nonsense.

Again, my point is not about this particular issue of women’s service in the church. One can piece together strong textual arguments for both sides. I simply hope that in our disagreements we can remember at least these two things:

[1] the Bible and my interpretation of the Bible are not inherently the same thing

[2] we should listen well and live charitably with our brothers and sisters – that might actually stun our neighbors who have grown accustomed to Christian dogfights being played out around every theological battleground

We can debate and disagree and even get irritated when things get a little fiery. We can have strong convictions (and should on those things we deeply care about). But the truth resides best in those who don’t feel the need to defend it by means unworthy of the Jesus who is the truth.

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