The ONE thing...

"Anyone who takes away from a [wo]man the tools that are essential to support every day life is taking away the life itself."

Hans Walter Wolff

in Anthropology of the Old Testament

A couple of weeks ago, I preached a sermon on Leviticus 13 - the chapter that includes laws about how to deal with infectious diseases in the camp of the Israelites.  The conclusion we came to that week is somewhat obvious, but important nonetheless - God cares about more than just "souls" or "spirits." God cares about physical bodies - both my own physical body and the physical bodies of those around me.  The next logical step, of course, is that if God cares about bodies then so should I and so should we as followers of Christ.

Ever since I preached that sermon, I have been unable to stop thinking about the implications.  Arguably the biggest problem facing our world is poverty - the obscene number of people who cannot provide even the basics of life to themselves or their family.  It has given rise to a number of questions in my contemplative moments.

1. To what extent am I complicit in the abject poverty of such persons - both here in Oklahoma City and all over the world?  Notice that I'm not asking whether I am complicit or not - it seems unavoidable to me that, for no other reason than my conspicuous (over)consumption, I have and continue to contribute to global poverty.

2. How can I stop being a contributor and start becoming an advocate?  This has got to stop being abstract thinking and move into the realm of actual life and behavior change.

3. Why should I have a nice warm coat while the homeless guy begging on the corner shivers in the icy weather?  After all, I have a warm house and a warm car, he has nothing.

I don't know why, but I keep getting more and more obsessed with this issue.  Further, it's more than just a "thinking obsession," it has moved into the realm of the splangchna.  That's a fancy Greek word that means, basically, "guts" - as in stomach, intestines, that sort of thing.  In the Greek, it is often the word that is translated in English as "compassion."  This poverty thing is something more and more that I am feeling in my guts - as in that unexplainable feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you that whatever causes that feeling is not only important but something you have the power to affect.

I can't get rid of that feeling, and I'm not even sure that I want to.

More Thoughts on Confession

I have been doing a lot of reading lately in church history - particularly the early formation of monastic communities in the third and fourth centuries.  This reading has led me to more thinking in the last couple of days about this idea of confession.

One of the more common objections protestants have to the idea of confession is that it is not a biblical doctrine - that we do not need a priest to forgive our sins because Christ himself has become, as the book of Hebrews teaches, our high priest.  And of course, that is a valid objection - at least to the stereotypical contemporary Roman Catholic understanding of confession.

The more I read of the early church Fathers and their history, though, the more a different picture of confession begins to emerge.  The idea for the earliest monks was that the teaching of Scripture that we should confess our sins one to another needed to be taken seriously.  However, many of these early monastics were not ordained and even resisted ordination in the Catholic church and thus could not adhere to a mode of confession that required a priest.

Instead, what I am discovering is that, for the most part, these early Christ followers believed it was imperative that each believer develop a close relationship with someone who is more spiritually mature and experienced.  It was to this more experienced brother or sister that many of these early monastics would "confess," and one of the primary purposes of the confession was for the more mature brother to help the inexperienced brother determine what was sin and what was not.

How many of us would benefit from such a relationship? I daresay all of us would.  The practice of confession has been much maligned by us protestants, most of the time with good reason.  However, we could certainly do with a renaissance of accountable relationships in our churches!

The Death of Confession...

As I was checking msnbc.com yesterday for some news - something I compulsively do about 10 times per day, I ran across the following story - which talks about the efforts of the Catholic church to combat the shrinking number of parishioners who are going to confession.

I have two thoughts about this story and its implications for the church - both Catholic and otherwise.  First, this trend of people not participating in confession should not be surprising. Few people would deny that, over the last few years, we have seen an erosion of the concept of "wrong" in our culture.  The "true for you but not for me" idea has led to a hands off, laissez-faire approach to morality in which nothing is truly out of bounds unless it breaks the law, and even then its debatable.  

Given that climate, is it all that surprising that confession is decreasing?  After all, if I have done nothing that is "wrong," then I have nothing to confess.  I think the shrinking confession is a symptom not necessarily of a decreased piety but of a misunderstanding of the fundamental-to-faith concept of sin.

Which leads me to my second observation - this is a bad thing for ALL churches.  Without understanding my own sinfulness, I cannot recognize my own need for forgiveness and thus will not turn to Christ.  Without sin, there is no salvation - though that sounds extreme, it is nonetheless true, just as the maxim, "without pain, there could be no pleasure" is true.  

More than anything else, the erosion and deconstruction of sin worries me.  I'm not worried about postmodernism or post-post-modernism or whatever comes next.  I'm not worried about new historical and scientific discoveries.  But I most certainly AM worried about sin.  And I have no idea how to deal with it.

An Anti-Building Polemic

One of the things that has long bothered me about many churches is the whole building boom. For most of my life now, the mentality seems to have been, "Well, we feel a little crowded on Sunday mornings in our one service, so it's time to build a brand spanking new church with a sanctuary so big we'll never be able to fill it and with all the bells and whistles."  And so some church ends up overextending itself financially to build some ridiculously ostentatious monstrosity.

A primary argument I have heard in favor of this makes use of the great cathedrals of Europe. After all, look at all the great monuments built back in the medieval era.  We (post)moderns are just trying to "honor God" with our imposing edifices like the medieval Christians did.

Two problems with that line of thinking - one big, one little.  The little one first - I have yet to see a church building constructed in my lifetime that comes anywhere close to the visual power and impact of, say, Chartres Cathedral in France or St. Peter's Basilica.  Not even close.  all the new buildings I've seen are cookie cutter approaches that fail to say, "Hey, contemplate how great God is"; saying, instead, "Hey, look at how rich our church is."

The bigger problem with the "We're just doing what they did in earlier eras of the church" argument is one of purpose.  Medieval Christians did not build cathedrals to make more room for worshippers or because they wanted to update the technology of the church.  The construction of a cathedral often took hundreds of years, so they had to have a larger purpose... and they did.  

Medieval cathedrals were textbooks in stone and mortar, paint and pigment.  Average everyday Christians in medieval communities couldn't read, much less own a Bible.  They couldn't even understand the language of the worship services - mass was conducted in Latin.  So the only avenue for them to learn about God was through the environment in which they worshipped.  If you've ever walked into a gothic style cathedral, you know that there is a powerful sense of the immensity of God and the insignificance of man when you first encounter those vaulted ceilings soaring hundreds of feet above you.  Later churches and cathedrals would add frescoes of biblical scenes - visually depicting important lessons for parishioners.

Now that you know all that, ask yourself how many of these new church buildings are monuments to education and how many are monuments to wealth and poor stewardship.  Yeah, that's why I am becoming more and more aggravated each time I drive by some brand new, multi-million dollar facility that is neither needed nor appropriate.  

When will we realize that our money is better invested in people than pews?

Power of the Past...

If you haven't seen the HBO miniseries John Adams yet, I highly recommend that you do.  For that matter, pick up the book of the same name by David McCullough - on which the miniseries is based.

The book and series both portray incredibly well what it must have been like to be a part of the revolutionary generation.  Often we lionize the people of that generation - Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, etc. - and forget that they too were human beings who had their doubts, worries and concerns.  By no means was independence a sure thing at any point until the revolutionary war was won...and even then it was tenuous.

As the New Year begins, I am re-reading McCullough's book and reminding myself that, whenever I am wont to look back at history and wish I had it so easy, I am not doing justice to the men and women who went through incredible trials during their times.

Perhaps Billy Joel says it best - "The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."

The Bells Keep Ringing...

In the hymnal our church uses, there are a bunch of Christmas hymns.  Some of them, like What Child is This or God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, are familiar and sung frequently.  Others, like Once in David's Royal City, are less familiar.  Then there are few that other people seem to be familiar with and are often on Christmas CDs but that I don't know well at all.  A prime example of this is I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.  I know of it.  I've probably even heard it sung before.  Until I heard Casting Crowns sing it, though, I had never paid attention to the lyrics, which I've copied below:

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, good will to men

I thought how, as the day had come

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along the unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good will to men

And in despair I bowed my head

"There is no peace on earth," I said

"For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep

"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good will to men"

Till, ringing singing, on its way

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good will to men

I don't know why I didn't know this song and haven't sung it before.  Those lyrics - particularly the third and fourth stanzas - capture almost perfectly the whole of Christmas and the purpose of the incarnation.  Christ came in the midst of a world of despair to announce to a people that had not heard his voice for hundreds of years that God was neither dead nor asleep!  Amen.

Crucifix v. Cross

One of the more interesting issues I have encountered during my recent fascination with monastic history has been the reaction of many of the Christians around me to the reproduction of the San Damiano Crucifix icon that I have hanging on my office wall, and to crucifixes in general.

As it turns out, many protestant churches - particularly the evangelical denominations - are not overly fond of crucifixes.  They prefer simple crosses.  Briefly, the difference between the two is that a crucifix, also sometimes called a rood, portrays the cross with Jesus on it - the cross of Good Friday.  The Protestant cross, though, purports to portray the cross of Easter Sunday morning...one without Christ.

In fact, the most common objection I have heard to my crucifix icon is just that, that "Jesus was raised from the dead, so he isn't on the cross anymore."  What that objection fails to understand, though, is that while the empty cross seen in most protestant churches is certainly the cross of Sunday morning, so too is the crucified Jesus portrayed on a crucifix.

The gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus all portray one particular characteristic of the risen Christ.  The risen Christ is still marked by the crucifixion.  Thomas is able to touch the wounds of Jesus.  Christ's hands are not healed and there are still holes in his feet.  His side is still split open from the soldier's spear.  The risen Christ is, paradoxically, still the crucified Christ.  To be sure, the body of the risen Christ is a glorified body, but it is most certainly not a completely healed body.

It is that paradox - that the risen Christ is and will eternally remain the crucified Christ - that a crucifix attempts to represent.  The crucifix on my wall keeps me from falling prey to the temptation to diminish the cross of Good Friday - to succumb to the uncomfortable feeling that a battered, bloody Jesus gives me and just skip right to Easter Sunday.

The fact of the matter is that no symbol - be it a crucifix or an empty cross - completely represents the truth of the gospel and of Jesus the Christ.  Each has something to teach us.