For whatever reason, Mark Driscoll and his crew are planning to invade Canada, sometime in October. And why not? With our loose moral values, socialist agenda, and belief that women are to be considered persons, the time may just be ripe to remind men to Act Like Men.

And so they’re doing what men do – they’re holding a conference. Bless them. In response, some friends at Eucharist Church and The Story in Southern Ontario started toying with the idea of holding a parallel “Don’t Act Like Men” event around the corner from Driscoll’s conference in Hamilton Ontario. For some reason, this gets people riled up (more on that later).

But for now, check out this great TED Talk from Tony Porter deconstructing the Man Box. My friend Michelle from REED put me onto it. You can be sure no clips from this will make it into any of Driscoll’s promo videos.

For more on this topic, check out some other recent posts:

• (Dis)functionally Complementarian
• Beyond Egalitarian
• God Hates Feminism
• The Battered Bride of Christ

(a meditation presented at Wine Before Beer, May 21, 2013)

What is it about God and fire?
You may remember Moses and God
and the bush with the lights in it.
The bush on fire,
that never burns up.
Fire and not fire.
Burning and not consuming.
Out of the fire God issues to Moses
an invitation and command:
Go, lead my people out of their slavery.
And Moses begins a journey to gather a people for God,
to lead them out of Egypt,
to lead them in the wilderness,
to feed them and comfort them.
Moses learned that you want to be careful with fire.
You never know what passion it might ignite in you,
what command it will give you,
what fire it will light in your belly.

Or you may remember God
and that pillar of fire shining forth in the night.
In the desert the Israelites wandered,
freed slaves with no direction home,
except for Gods leading
in pillar of cloud by day
and pillar of fire by night.
Fire, in the desert.
In the dry desert.
Fire.
Fire and not fire.
Burning and not consuming.
Protecting and leading them.
From slavery to freedom.
From despair to hope.
From anxiety to trust.
The wanderers in the wilderness learned
that you want to be careful with fire.
You never know where it might lead you.

You may also remember
that fire wasn’t always for comfort.
Years later came the fires of invasion,
the torches of the enemy,
the smoldering ruins of a nation defeated.
There were some that said God was in this fire, too.
The fire that was fire.
Burning and consuming.
The purging fire of judgement.
All they held dear destroyed;
thrown back again on their God.
No gold or silver,
fine clothes or shoes,
weapons or houses,
no carved gods or temples.
All that kept them from God, now destroyed by fire.
The Israelites learned that you want to be careful with fire.
It can purge far too quickly.
That ring of fire.

So what was God thinking,
as the followers of Jesus sat in that upstairs room, waiting?
What was God thinking, sending those tongues, as of fire.
Fire and not fire.
Burning and not consuming.
Tongues of fire, resting on each of them.
What did it mean?
Why send fire?
Why send the Holy Spirit in fire?

Was God thinking of that first moment with Moses,
of a command to go and bring freedom to the enslaved,
a command to gather a people
who would follow and worship him?
To feed that people in the desert
and teach them the ways of God?
Did the tongues of fire ignite a passion
to go and gather,
worship and follow,
feed and set free?
Is that what the Spirit is for?

Or was God thinking of that long road to freedom,
tirelessly giving light in the darkness,
providing protection from all that lurked in the night.
Were the tongues of fire
a sign of God’s leading and protection,
no matter how difficult the road and how rocky the way?
Is that what the Spirit is for?

Or was God thinking of how fire had purged the people,
burned off their idolatry and sin,
left them raw and needy before their God?
Were the tongues of fire
a sign that God would purge
of all unfaithfulness?
Was the Spirit coming to make all things new?
Is that what the Spirit is for?

A passion was ignited at Pentecost,
a passion for the way of Jesus.
A promise was given at Pentecost,
a promise of comfort in the darkness,
a promise of hope in despair.
And a new thing began at Pentecost,
the beginning of painful renewal
in the image of God.

And so we remember the fire.
We remember God’s passionate call to us. Amen
We remember the steady flame
of comfort and hope God provides for us.
And we remember that no matter how painful our journey,
God is tenderly shaping us into something new.

.

Whenever I see comments like “God hates feminism,” I cringe. I cringe, because hidden behind these statements I hear privilege and power. What I also hear, scratching the surface, is fear and woundedness embedded in cycles of violence. Some of that violence has been perpetuated in families, modelling particular ways of relating. Some of that violence has also been modeled by the church.

What first jumps to mind is the image of an abusive husband, lording power over his partner. Perhaps he does this because it’s all he’s ever known. It was modeled for him. At church. At home. Throughout his culture. When I hear vitriolic insanity spit scathingly at women from the pulpit, or I see its effects on the women I know, I both wince and wonder:

1) What is your experience of God? Is it loving? Is it abusive?
2) What is your experience of human relationships? Is it loving? Is it abusive?

Starting with the story of an abusive god who continually browbeats, intimidates and abuses his bride, where else are you going to end up? What else are you going to do but perpetuate the cycle of violence in your own relationships?

Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Saviour. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. - Ephesians 5:22-24

If you, the husband, read Ephesians 5 with an abusive god ominously looming in the background, how then will you live? Will you treat your wife with mutuality and respect? Will you treat her as bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh? Together, are you one? Or are you one over and against the other? Will you, like your overbearing, violent god wait for the first opportunity to catch her in some act that doesn’t live up to your impossible standards?

Is she the Proverbs 31 woman you were promised? And how do you respond when she doesn’t live up?

In her book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans shares an email from Ahava, an Orthodox Jewish woman who pushes back on the impossible standards of Proverbs 31:

Here’s the thing: Christians seem to think because all the Bible is inspired, all of it should be taken literally. Jews don’t do this. Even though we take the Torah literally (all 613 commandments!) the rest is seen differently, as a way of understanding Our Creator, rather than direct commands.

Take Proverbs 31, for example. I get called an eshet chayil (a valorous woman) all the time. Make your own challah instead of buying? Eshet chayil!  Work to earn some extra money for the family? Eshet chayil! Make balloon animals for the kids at shul? Eshet chayil! 

Every week at the Shabbat table, my husband sings the Proverbs 31 poem to me. It’s special, because I know that no matter what I do or don’t do, he praises me for blessing the family with my energy and creativity. All women can do that in their own way. I bet you do as well. 

Held Evans goes on to say:

Sure enough, in Jewish culture it is not the women who memorize Proverbs 31, but the men. Husbands commit each line of the poem to memory, so they can recite it to their wives at the Sabbath meal, usually in song.

In the Christian scriptures, from beginning to end, we hear the story of a God of grace and mercy who gives self-sacrificially. This is the same God who repeatedly renews covenant with a people who continually demonstrate infidelity in big and small things. Time and again, God’s people break covenant. Time and again, God re-enters relationship with them.

But the entire scriptural narrative is not sweetness and light. God’s relationship to God’s people is not cut and dry positive. There’s this thing called the flood, for example. And later on, there’s the story of the prophet Hosea:

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, ‘Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.’ – Hosea 1:1-2

If the way in which God relates to God’s people is as to a whore, how do we square that with the eshet chayil of Proverbs 31? And how does it intersect with an understanding of prostitution not rooted in personal choice, but systemic oppression?

Sometimes I struggle with how or if to filter the comments on this site. When lurkers come out of the woodwork looking to pick a fight, I’m not sure I want to do that. There’s enough nonsense out there – and yet how do you remain open to criticism and conversation in the midst of it? As I shared in my previous post, I do want to learn from those whose perspective I don’t understand. And yet, I find myself deeply resistant to posting comments when I hear words like these:

Where do you even start with this? How does it advance the conversation?

How do you respond when you suspect that comments such as these start with values rooted in an oppressive patriarchal system, rather than a liberating gospel? What do you do when you suspect that the god in question is either idol or ideology, a projection of oppressive values rooted in systems of power and control?

And how do you respond when you hear Gospel in a different way? How do you respond if you find yourself grasping for (even while falling short of) the covenantal promise of the Biblical narrative? How do you respond if you understand the gospel story in light of God’s grace and mercy rather than damnation and punishment?

How do you respond if you reject this so-called good news rooted in infanticide and patriarchal domination? How do you respond if, instead, you subscribe to a Gospel that rejects and prophetically undermines the notion of redemptive violence and oppressive domination?

This is what mystifies me. Because I crave to hear, and to hear again the stories of the covenant-making God who enters into deep, mutual relationship with humanity and all of creation. I long to be consumed by just such a story, a story that this world can barely hint at or mimic. I desire, on my better days, to be swept up in the story of a God who entered into a risky-at-best relationship with humanity, against all the odds, and against the best advice to choose a covenant people.

What kind of story is this? Is it the story of the complementarians? The egalitarians? Or is it, perhaps, the story of the God who calls us into deep mutual relationship, a God who calls us to be one?

In my last post, responding to John Piper’s dehumanizing view of women, I mused about the benefits of subjecting myself to the authority of women for the next year. As I thought about what was in some ways a throwaway statement, the idea started to take shape and grab hold of me. The reality is that so much of what I read – especially theology – is written by men. And that has to change.

So I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m starting again. And to begin, I’ve picked up a copy of Rachel Held Evans‘ “Year of Biblical Womanhood.” I figure, if I’m to find out what it means to submit myself to female authority, I should start with the way in which one woman experienced that year of Biblical Womanhood, and then figure out a direction from there. I’ve been meaning to pick up Rachel’s book for some time, but this seems like as good a time as any.

I don’t know if this means I’ll end up calling my wife Master (Mistress?) or that I’ll end up sewing beauty queen sashes. What it does mean is that I’m going to start to see and hear the bible as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of a woman. And that’s a vital lens if I’m ever going to understand how this gospel is good news not just for whiteish, middle-classish, straightish men, but for women too. There are obviously a lot more perspective out there than this, but this seems like a very good start as I try to listen to perspectives beyond my own. 

And while I can never fully understand – while I will never be able to fully embody biblical womanhood – I do have the opportunity to shut up and listen. I don’t need to wear women’s clothing (according to some, that might be abhorrent to the Lord, afterall), but I do need to listen, and learn, and then engage. And this engagement should lead on the path that Christine Smith identifies as weeping, confession and then resistance.

To redress the wrongs that men have continually done towards women in the church (and far, far beyond) requires these three movements. It requires us to be moved, to admit our complicity, and then to move forward in a new direction.

That’s not always easy. Especially for us whiteish, middle-classish straightish men. What will we do to change? A part of that resistance is to listen. Another part is to speak up when women are being marginalized.

Last fall, I was one member of an eight-week learning cohort talking about prostitution and trafficking in the city of Vancouver. One of two men in a classroom, filled with bright, incisive women, I struggled. I struggled to know what I could say or contribute to a conversation about women’s bodies (first mistake: assuming that the conversation about prostitution is only about women and their bodies).

It hadn’t yet registered that the conversation was about so much more. It hadn’t yet registered that the conversation was about Principalities and Powers. It hadn’t yet registered that the conversation was about Systemic Injustice. It hadn’t yet registered that the conversation was about patriarchy and the reality of male violence against women. And it hadn’t yet registered that as a part of that system, we all have a role to play in resisting the system’s exploitation.

John Piper’s comments and that whole line of scriptural interpretation affirm patriarchy and male violence against women by reducing women to their instrumental value:

Your role in church is determined by men.

Your role in marriage is only in relationship to your husband and other powerful men like your pastor.

You are subject to the same kinds of power, abuse and violence that is exercised by those other Johns who think it’s perfectly fine to buy women, and the pimps who do the selling.

If what St. Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians is true – that we are all members of one body – then the harming of one member of that body harms us. It will do us no good to drone on and say “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it,” if we repeatedly insist on self-harm. In Christ we are all members of one body. What makes us think we can harm one part of our body without harming another? What makes us think that we can ignore or cut off or enslave one part of our body and still be whole? 

In the end, the Good News is not about being “egalitarian” rather than “complementarian.” Rather, the Good News is that in Christ we are one.

In light of John Piper’s most recent bout of asinine, vitriolic insanity, I’m considering exclusively subjecting myself to the authority of women for the next year. Maybe longer.

No more male theologians. No more male bloggers. There’s too many of us anyhow. We’re always going on about something, and it’s all-too-often through the lens of a dominant, patriarchal culture.

Some of us, oh we apologise for it.

We apologise for the fact that we’re whiteish, middle-classish straightish men. And then we get back to the business of being the whiteish, middle-classish straightish men who, from time to time think about women.

We get back to the business of being the whiteish, middle-classish straightish men, who from time to time read Rachel Held Evans, or Julie Clawson, or maybe tune into Jamie the Very Worst Missionary for kicks. We might respect church-planting pioneers like Karen Ward or Nadia Bolz-Weber, for what they’re doing. Just don’t ask us to go hear them speak, or change who we read. Don’t ask us to learn from them.

Let me get back to my Tom Wright and Walter Brueggemann. Sit me down with Wendell Berry or Brian McLaren or Shane Claiborne. You know, the heavyweights. Oh sure, there are some of us enlightened egalitarian dudes out there. And we’ll react negatively against Piper’s statements, not least because he’s an easy target.

The two questions I’m left with go something like this: Have we changed? Are we willing to do so?

If change means more than making a little noise and milking it for a few blog posts, I don’t know what I’ll do. Because really, in the end, I want to go back to reading the good old boys. What women are doing good theology these days anyhow?

And who the hell is Ellen Davis?

A note to all of the whiteish, middle-classish, straightish egalitarianish males out there: it’s time to come clean.

As much as we rail against Piper, many of us, when it comes to our “teachability” are functionally complementarians. Take a snapshot of your bookshelf or blogroll. What’s the ratio of male to female authorship?

The patriarchy has a deep coercive hold on you too.

Let’s talk about two bills that have been before the Parliament of Canada.

Today, the Federal government passed Bill S-7 which amends the Criminal Code to give the state escalated powers to hold people without charge if they are suspected of conspiring towards a terrorist act. That the bill was pushed into the House this week is, of course, just a tad cynical. I mean, who would want to limit the state’s power to combat terrorism in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing last week, and the arrest this week of two men accused of conspiring a terrorist attack on a Via train.

A mural of murdered Salvadoran Environmentalist Marcelo Rivera, who opposed Pacific Rim’s mining efforts in San Isidro, El Salvador.

Now consider another piece of proposed legislation. Liberal MP John McKay put forward Bill C-300 a couple of years back: “The Corporate Accountability of Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations in Developing Countries Act.” This bill would have imposed sanctions on Canadian mining companies when they engaged in unethical behaviour in other countries. This bill was defeated in the Fall of 2010, and I simply note in passing that then Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, made a point of not being in the House for that important vote.

Bill C-300 wanted to find a way to insist that Canadian businesses who engaged in environmentally destructive mining, unsafe and oppressive working conditions, and even murder, would be somehow held accountable in Canada.

Let’s be clear about something here. Both of these Acts are about protection. The one that passed was about limiting personal liberties in order to protect Canadian citizens and society. The one that was defeated was about limiting certain corporate liberties in order to protect citizens, society and the environment of other nations.

I guess that it doesn’t take rocket science to see why one was passed and the other did not.

That gets me to thinking about another matter of protection. Today a building housing a number of clothing factories collapsed in Bangladesh. At least 87 people have died, and the number will undoubtedly increase. Those people were working, as are thousands upon thousands of other Bangladeshi workers, in dangerous conditions. It was a fire last November that killed more than a hundred garment workers, and now it is a building collapse.

We know who those folks were working for. They were producing clothes at a cheap price for international clothing companies, including Canadian ones. They were working for us.

Now, I don’t need to ask anyone about which news stories will get top billing in Canada or the United States this week. Of course, the Bangladesh tragedy will be reported, but not with the extent or intensity of either the Boston Marathon bombing, or the Via train conspiracy. I mean, that’s natural, right? These are “our” people who were attacked in Boston. They were “our” people who were allegedly targeted in the Via conspiracy. I mean, these are clearly closer to home for most of us. Unless, of course, you are Bangladeshi.

Unless, of course, you simply do the math.

But is that even fair? I mean, is it fair to even compare the deaths of those bystanders in Boston, attacked in a cold-hearted and cowardly way, to the deaths of Bangladeshi garment workers?

Well, no. It isn’t fair to compare deaths. Death is death. And death on the streets of Boston or on a Via train or in a garment factory is a tragedy, no matter which way you look at it.

And yet … I’m left with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

You see, I didn’t conspire to engage in any terrorist attack on anyone, but for some reason, I’ve got this feeling that I’m complicit in those deaths in Bangladesh. I’ve got this sinking feeling that a global market in clothing that places people in such situations of risk for the sake of the ever changing styles in the shops at a mall in Canada, somehow borders on economic terrorism.

Economic terrorism. Let’s define that as any economic policies and practices that place people in an oppressive situation, exploits their poverty, and creates conditions that are a threat to their lives. Economic terrorism. Economic practices and structures that kill people. Let’s call that economic terrorism.

And now lets come back to the two Bills. The one that passed and the one that didn’t.

Bill S-7 passed because a majority government wants to protect Canadian citizens and society and is prepared to limit the legal rights of people to do so.

Bill C-300 was defeated because a minority parliament did not think it important enough to protect the citizens of other countries by limiting some of the rights and protections of Canadian mining corporations.

So how about a Bill to protect the rights and lives of garment workers around the world? How about an anti-terrorism Bill that will limit the liberties of Canadian corporations like Loblaw (which owns Joe Fresh, one of the brands produced at that factory in Bangladesh) in order to protect the lives of the folks who make our clothes for us?

If you want to legislate against terrorism (and I think we should), then how about environmental terrorism and economic terrorism?

Just asking.

(On Sunday, April 21, the Wine Before Breakfast band led a service at the Church of the Redeemer. The songs they played were “The River,” “We are alive,” “My Father’s House,” “Hungry Heart,” “Rocky Ground,” “If I should fall behind,” “Land of Hope and Dreams,” and “The Promised Land.” The texts for the evening were John 10.22-30 and Revelation 7.9-17. This is the sermon from that service.)

The time was ripe for the question,
and the suspense was unbearable.

This wasn’t the kind of thing that you played around with.
This wasn’t the time to be elusive.

While some asked the question to confirm their worse suspicions,
for others the question arose from their deepest hopes.

“Give it to us straight,
don’t mess around with us,
if you are the Messiah,
then tell us so plainly.”

The time was ripe for the question,
and the suspense was unbearable.

I mean, hadn’t he just awakened such hopes
with all of his talk about sheep and shepherds?

“I am the good shepherd,” he had just proclaimed,
stunning the people with the double audacity of it all.
Audacious for a Jewish man to employ those two words in this way,
­– “I am” –
and audacious with its reference to the deepest Messianic hopes
– the hope for a shepherd leader who would feed the flock,
protect the sheep and bring them home.

So, given that kind of talk,
the time was ripe for the question.

But it was also the right day for such a question.
The time was ripe, even on the calendar.

It was at the time of the Festival of the Dedication.
It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple.

It was the Festival of the Dedication.

The festival that recalled the desecration of the Temple
under Antiochus Epiphanies some two hundred years earlier.
The festival that marked the re-hallowing of that desecrated altar.
The festival that attempted to repair the damage,
to make holy what was now profane,
to put life back together again.

The festival that attempted to restore the promise,
to restore the hope,
to restore the very story of their lives.

So here is Jesus, on this day of all days,
standing in “Herod’s” temple,
with all the ambiguity that this place now carried;
in the face of the disappointment of Israel;
in the midst of a promise left unfulfilled;
before a people longing for a shepherd,
longing for fulfillment,
longing for their dreams to be realized,
indeed, longing for the Messiah,
and the time was ripe for such a question:

“If you are the Messiah,
then tell us so plainly.”

The question seems so simple.
It seems like it demands a simple yes or no answer.

And everything – literally everything! – hangs on it.
This is a question of life and death.
This is a question of hope or despair.
This is a question of dreams or nightmares.
This is a question of promise fulfilled or promise denied.

“If you are the Messiah,
then tell us so plainly.”

And we’ll never catch the intensity of this question,
the deep pathos and longing that the question carries,
if we don’t get the depth of disappointment,
and the terrible sting of disillusionment,
that lies behind the asking.

Indeed, the question remains a matter of mere historical curiousity,
perhaps even a dead question,
if we don’t find ourselves asking it
out of a similar place of disappointment
and disillusionment.

Bruce Springsteen gets it.

He gets the pathos,
he gets the disappointment,
he gets the disillusionment.

The Boss speaks with such authority
not just because of the artistic power of his music,
and not just because the E-Street band has such an unparalleled chemistry,
but because he writes out of that place of disappointment, disillusionment,
and maybe even desecration
of a land, of a people, of a dream.

Springsteen is born in the USA,
and so he chronicles the disappointment of the American dream;
he writes from the place of a dream that has proven to be a lie,
where everything important has vanished into air;
he writes from a place of incurable hope and longing
that will come down to the river,
though he knows the river is dry;
he writes songs for when the bottom has dropped out,
where you once had faith but now there’s only doubt,
for when you pray for guidance and you are met with silence.

And while some will act like they don’t remember
and others like they don’t care,
Springsteen will counter both this amnesia and this numbness
with songs that will tell the stories and awaken memories,
of working class kids getting married too young
and struggling to make a go of it,
of factory workers fueling the American economy
while experiencing a slow and violent death within themselves,
of railroad union workers shot down by the company men,
of little African American girls murdered
when a Birmingham church is bombed,
of Mexican laborers who don’t make it across that desert
to the land of hope and dreams;
and with songs that will cut through the numbness with passion
by naming the disappointment,
refusing to cover up the lies,
blowing away the false dreams that tear us apart,
keeping hope alive in the face of death,
and envisioning a new day dawning,
against the evidence,
in the face of the deception,
in radical reversals,
and, yes, in the spirit of Jesus.

So Springsteen helps us to ask the same question as those folks
on the day of Dedication, in the temple, so long ago:

“If you are the Messiah,
then tell us so plainly.”

In the face of our disappointments,
in the face of the failed promises
in the face of the deceitful dreams,
in the face of our exile,
in the face of our national identity crisis,
in the face of a discredited mythology
in the face of our stolen hope,

“If you are the Messiah,
then tell us so plainly.”

Don’t mess with us on this one,
don’t set us up for another fall,
don’t play with our deepest longings and hopes,
this is life and death stuff for us,
so tell us plainly,
are you the Messiah?

And Jesus replies, so what do you see, and who do you hear?
He just won’t go down the path of a simple ‘yes or no’ answer.

Take a look.
Open your eyes.
Do you see what I am doing?
Have you got vision to see beyond the lies,
beyond the failures,
beyond the media spin,
beyond the rhetoric of the status quo?

Am I the shepherd that you are waiting for?
Well, my sheep can see what’s going on.
And my sheep hear my voice.

There is a recognition here.
Somehow through the cacophony,
through the noise of the bombs,
through the top forty trash,
through the sound of industry,
through lies,
my sheep have ears to hear,
and they hear my voice.

And those who hear my voice,
are those who I know.

I know them by name,
I know them with the love of the great shepherd.

They hear me, I know them, and because they hear and are known,
they follow me.
So get on board little children.

Am I the Messiah?
Well listen closely,
follow me,
and you’ll find out.

But it’s hard to hear, isn’t it?
It’s hard to catch a sense of the meaning through the noise,
the noise all around us,
and the noise the drowns out so much deep within us.

And I guess that’s why we need poets and artists,
story tellers and songwriters.

I guess that’s why we need someone like Bruce Springsteen in our lives.

The Boss isn’t the Messiah,
but I think that he’s got his ears open to Jesus.

The Boss isn’t the answer,
but he’s got all the right questions,

and he has that unique kind of vision that points to the answer.

You see, maybe you didn’t really know how deeply hungry you were,
but Springsteen singing “everybody’s got a hungry heart”
occasioned the awakening of those deep, deep hunger pangs.

Or maybe the doubt and disappointment was leaving you numb with despair,
but then you heard the Boss singing that on
this train,
dreams will not be thwarted,
this train,
faith will be rewarded,
this train,
hear the steel wheels singing,
this train
bells of freedom ringin’
this train,
carries broken-hearted,
this train,
thieves and sweet souls departed,
and somehow, in that song, your faith was renewed,
somehow, the very power of the song gave you hope,
somehow, you knew that the song was for you,
somehow … somehow … as the Boss and the E-Street band were singing
you heard Jesus saying,
I give eternal life, and you will never perish,
No one will snatch you from my hand.
No one will snatch you from my hand.

And somehow, as Springsteen sings,
Rise up shepherd, rise up
your flock has roamed far from the hills
stars have faded, the sky is still
sun’s in the heavens and a new day is dawning
somehow, you can actually see that new day,
you can taste it,
you can feel the warmth of it,
you can begin to imagine anew.

And who knows, you just might get a glimpse of the martyrs standing around the throne
shouting as loud as a Springsteen concert,
“We are alive,
our souls and spirits rise,
to carry the fire and light the spark,
to fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.

We are alive because
salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll catch a vision in which
we will be hungry no more, though everybody has a hungry heart,
we will thirst no more, even though the river is dry,
the sun will no longer strike dead Central American sisters and brothers
striving for El Norte.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll catch a vision of the promised land fulfilled,
because the Lamb who was slain will be our shepherd,
he will guide us to the waters of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

No one will snatch us away,
and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Every tear from our eyes.

Except, maybe, the tears that well up when we hear those words.
Except, maybe, the tears that well up when we catch that vision.
Except, maybe, the tears that well up when we listen to a Bruce Springsteen song.

The time was ripe for such a question.
The time is always ripe.

Back during my first year of seminary, I sat in the back row most classes. This should not, of course, be surprising, as I have been found seated at the back of most classrooms for most of my life. As an introvert, this was a great place from which to take everything in before deciding whether or not to speak.

By everything, I don’t simply mean the professor’s brilliant lecture. This bird’s eye view also afforded me the opportunity to observe the ways in which people responded to the professor, the material, and with each another.

Throughout that first year at Wycliffe College, I sat predominantly at the back of the classroom, and in most classes next to the same student. He was studying to become a priest. I had no idea why I was there. Divine will? Exploration? Youthful rebellion?

Over the weeks and months we spent together in that room, my neighbour became increasingly more agitated. He would mutter under his breath, and then lean over to tell me why this latest quip from the professor was heretical. We’d end up whispering back and forth heatedly until one day we were shushed (shushed!) by the young woman in front of us.

Theology is a contact sport. You can’t take it lying down (or sitting silently) as was proven by our constant back-and-forth.

Wycliffe College doesn’t exactly push the bounds of the liberal extreme. And yet, it appeared to be too much for my neighbour to bear. It was painfully obvious that his time in that space was causing no small amount of distress. What manifested as anger – towards me, the professors and other students – was, I believe, rooted in deep and profound fear.

Even as the anger grew, I remember thinking that one day this theological house of cards was going to fall. But who would be there to pick up the pieces?

This takes me back to Tim Keller’s words – words that started off this whole stream of posts two short weeks ago:

You’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door.’”

As we explored in previous posts (A Lifetime of Habits and Idolatry & The Crisis of Being), this particular statement is indicative of a larger challenge. Keller’s statement triggers a question about the way we believe, and our potential array of responses when our understanding of and response to scripture is challenged.

My neighbour was caught up in a difficult situation. His way of reading the Bible was rubbing up against other ways of reading the same scripture. To say that there was friction would be an understatement. Looking back on it now, I have this strong sense that the anger was a defensive mechanism protecting his carefully constructed faith from the assault he was experiencing.

If your only option is to kick your faith out the door, and if you fear that such a response condemns you to an eternity in hell, you ought to be worried. This is serious stuff. There are legitimate reasons for the fear to creep in.

To this day, fear and worry still surface from time to time when my faith, understanding, belief and actions no longer line up with the way I once read scripture. I have this lingering suspicion and latent fear that something is horribly wrong. A fear that I might be throwing my life away, that my evolving faith will invoke God’s wrath. I pray it won’t. Most days, I believe it won’t. But then there are the days where I find myself a little more on edge.

Yet on those days, there is comfort that greets me in the form of my Christian community. There is the comfort that comes from knowing that we’re all struggling to serve the resurrected Christ in our own pathetic, miserable ways. That some days we do well, and other days, we don’t. To know that we have one another, and that we have received the gifts of the spirit. And to know that these gifts include the gift of faith.

There is comfort that comes in knowing that faith is a gift of God’s spirit much more valuable, much more robust than the constructions of certainty and dogma, and the hubris of having God all figured out.

There is comfort in uncertainty because there are others on this same journey. Fellow travellers with similar stories, and fellow travellers with different stories to tell. Their stories, like mine, reveal the faithfulness of God through shadowed valleys and beside still waters alike. And these stories, and my fellow travellers teach me, call me, invite me into God’s greatest gift – the gift of love.

I think what brought it all home for me, wrestling with questions of faith an spiritual gifts, these past days, was a conversation with a friend. Driving into the city together, we were sharing stories of life, and faith with its attendant joys and struggles. It was there that I first voiced much of the wrestling that turned into my previous two posts (Concerning Spiritual Gifts & More Faith Required).

It was during that conversation that I first allowed myself to consider that the gift of faith, if a gift of God’s Spirit, is just that – a gift.

More than that, and in the broader context of 1 Corinthians 12, it started to become apparent (or perhaps a little less hazy?) that what St. Paul is driving at in this passage in particular, is that we all need each other. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the words of the passage repeated to me, but I’m always surprised when something new leaps off the page, leaving me with new insight.

God’s Spirit has bestowed these diverse gifts upon us, in disproportionate measure. This is somehow part of the plan. It’s not about me, it’s not about my self esteem or sense of self-worth. It’s not about how worthy I think I am, or how worthy I think I’m not. In the end, it’s about none of these things. It’s about the gifts of God for the people of God.

Thanks Be To God!

As we continue to meander through Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we hear this:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)

Sitting there in the car with my friend on the way downtown I share that I think this is where infant baptism starts to make sense for me. We were all baptized into one body. All of us. And each of us is made (created!) to drink of one Spirit. I never used to understand the baptism of infants. How could they be baptized? An infant cannot have faith. A child cannot believe. Everything about my anabaptist upbringing was standing in the way.

And yet, reading this passage, I noticed more at play than I ever had before.

First and foremost, the insight that faith is a gift. It is a gift of God’s Spirit. None of us is able to manufacture faith, because faith is pure gift.

Secondly, there’s this thing called the body. A many-membered body with many-membered gifts. To one is given this, to another that, and we need them all. We need each other. Deeply. Profoundly. We need each other. We need each other in our woundedness, in our frailty, in our strength and (perhaps especially) in spite of our pride.

If you’re not experiencing the fullness of the Spirit’s gift of faith right now, that’s okay. It’s fine. Someone else is. We all have gifts of the Spirit, allotted to each one individually, just as the Spirit chooses. To one is given a large measure of faith. To another, a smaller measure or no measure at all.

And finally, if that’s a possibility, then the community’s faith is surely enough for an infant to be baptised and welcomed into…wait for it…the community of faith.

There I was, processing these things out loud, and my friend shared with me: “I get it. I know exactly what you mean.”

It was then that my friend told the story of a family member who had hit rock bottom. Struggle and addiction led to hollowness and defeat. Hollowness and defeat to a loss of faith. What do you do when you’ve hit rock bottom? What do you do when your faith has petered out? What do you do when you can no longer access the gift of faith?

I guess that’s why we have community. When you don’t have anything left, it may just be that the only thing to buoy you is the faith, and hope, and love of the community. As my friend tells the story, in the absence of faith, that community demonstrated great faith. In the absence of love, great love was poured out. In the absence of hope, a perseverant hope doggedly and resiliently carried the day.

“I get it,” my friend said. “I know exactly what you mean.”

If faith is a gift, it is not just a gift to each individual for themselves  If faith is a gift, it is a gift for the common good. A gift to be shared, leant out, and given away when members of your community have no more faith to spare. Even so:

God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. (1 Corinthians 12:24-26)

I suppose that leads me to this: if there’s even a sliver of truth in that statement, then this is truly a remarkable gift.