Happy Good Friday?

I really do love this time of year. As the weather begins to warm up and hues of green start to return to the world I always get a boost of encouragement to get work done. It may be when I'm most productive. Which is good news for me, since this week is also Holy Week, the final days of Lent, which, I think, is the busiest time of year for clergy. That busyness may be a little self-induced, but for many this is a time of intense spiritual discipline.

This year we'll be worshiping on both Thursday and Friday leading up to Easter, and we're going to worship in new ways. Part of that means that I am building a cross for our Good Friday service. Something has struck me as I've worked in planning and building such an object. In some sense this is a spiritual discipline, connecting to the labor of love that God pours out on creation, both in the way of a "carpenter" and in the significance of God's action on the cross.
However, it is also very much an odd juxtaposition of emotions, much in the same way that Good Friday is.
As a "spiritual but not religious" friend of mine once asked:

"Happy Good Friday?"

Happy Good Friday about sums it up. As I make the first cuts in the wood beams, I am reminded that this is both a symbol of God's love for the universe and also an instrument of torture and death. Those are two realities that don't fit together. They never were really meant to. When I think about what happened on Friday, on Golgotha two thousand years ago, I realize that the cross isn't God making good out of a bad situation. It is the goodness of God destroying the futility of evil. Jesus' crucifixion was an attempt to do away with something holy, but what is revealed on Sunday is that in the worst of human actions, evil sows seeds against itself. At just the moment when the prosecution rests its case against humanity and all possible hope seems lost, the judge throws the book at the prosecution.

As I put the final nails in to secure the beams, I do so with the realization that I have just created a replica of something on which real people have bled and died. I do so with the realization that what I have now built is the same thing that many have built out of reverence and many for evil. I do so knowing the very real human cost that such a thing represents, and millions of people who were and are "crucified" in some form or another in our world. Ultimately I do so with the knowledge that this cross represents the power of God over the evil in our world. Over hatred and violence, oppression and demonization. Over the power of sin and death.

"The power of God over the power of sin and death."

On Friday we will gather at the foot of this cross and lay our burdens down before it. Because, in Jesus, God has taken all of the worst things we could possibly come up with and subverted them, undermined our worst intentions to make something good and whole and beautiful.
On Friday we will morn and we will repent.
But what makes Friday "Good" is that the story does not end on the cross, or in the tomb. What makes Friday "Good" is that Sunday comes, a new day dawns for all of creation and we hear the first words of the day: "Do not be afraid."

Cracked Cisterns

"For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water." Jeremiah 2:13

Nabatean cistern north of Makhtesh Ramon, southern Israel. Photo by Wilson44691

For those not familiar with water collection in the desert, a cistern gathers rain water so that it can be stored and used later. This water, because it is stored, is stagnate and prone to becoming polluted, which is not to say that the water wouldn't do the job of keeping someone alive, but there is better water to be had. A cistern also requires a great deal of work to maintain. In the arid climate of the middle east, cisterns are dug into the ground, created through many hours of intense and costly labor. Once the rain water is collected, people have to travel to the cistern and draw water from it, often having to carry the water for miles.

Portuguese cistern El Jadida in Morocco.
This image was originally posted to Flickr by Axel Rouvin

Cisterns are/were such an essential part of living in the desert that in some places, cisterns were built in extravagant fashion.









Cisterns are difficult to build, hard to maintain, prone to failure, contain stagnate water, but are necessary to the survival in the desert. Living water, on the other hand, is water that is mobile, flowing, free. Living water is also less likely to contain pollution as the water moves any contamination further downstream. There is no cost of labor or goods to capture flowing water, but it is quite rare in the desert. This contrast points us to the absurdity of the people to whom God is speaking in Jeremiah. Given the choice between a cistern and a source of living water, the choice should be living water every time. But the accusation that God levies against the people is that they have chosen a cracked cistern, a broken cistern, one that cannot hold water, cannot sustain life and will always run dry, over the guarantee of free flowing water.

It sounds like a stupid thing to do, but we do it quite often, maybe without even realizing it. This passage from Jeremiah connects back with a saying in v.5 "Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me, and went after nothing, and became nothing themselves?" The temptation when interpreting this passage is to make a claim similar to "you are what you eat." If that were the case then the temptation to go after "nothing" or things that are "worthless" would be fairly easy to avoid. Anybody who has played facebook games knows this pattern resides in our hearts. We spend hours toiling over, and worrying about, empty promises, worthless actions and fruitless farming. What makes these actions of nothing so contagious is their promise of something more at every go. They are a moving target, something that continually draws us out for more, but never fills us up.

My wife has gotten into watching the seemingly unending number of shows about the paranormal on TV. They're interesting shows if you enjoy hearing the occasional ghost story, but we noticed a trend with many of the shows. For so many of the people who claim to be afflicted with paranormal activity, their experiences seem to stem from their own troubles or inability to relinquish their anxieties and fears about the world. There was one episode where a mother and daughter claimed to have had a traumatic ghost experience. For a while they had come to believe that they were being haunted. One night their paranormal activity escalated when they were awoken in the middle of the night by a loud banging noise and footsteps on the floor above them. They were so terrified by the sounds that they cowered in their beds, unable to move for the fear of the paranormal. The next morning, as the daylight flooded their windows, they walked upstairs to investigate. What they found was a broken window, their stuff flung all over the room and several items missing. They presented this story as an encounter with ghosts that were trying to scare them out of their home. The host of the show then worked to "rid" the house of the spirits, through some ritual and prayer.
What this mother/daughter team experienced looked a lot less like "ghosts" and a lot more like a break in. The problem was that they were so caught up in looking for something that wasn't there to explain their pain, that when something really did happen, they had no meaningful way of dealing with it. They had been trying to draw water from a cracked cistern, so that every bump in the night became a ghost, which only reinforced the "presence" of ghosts in their lives.

I have a friend who is an alcoholic. They have been sober for many years now, but when they were drinking, they would go to AA meetings and leave after a few minutes, frustrated that something didn't immediately happen to them. When they got frustrated, they would drink. When they drank, they would get frustrated with their drinking. The whole time they knew that drinking wouldn't solve their drunkenness, but they also did not know what else to do about it. Every time they reached for a bottle, they reached for a cracked cistern, frustrated that the water it contained was polluted, but they were also blinded by the pollution so that they couldn't see the living water that was always readily available for them.

When we, as people of faith, turn to cracked cisterns we neither worship a real God, nor worship with our real selves.1 We worship nothingness, our frustration, our anxiety, the holes that are missing in our lives. When we worship the nothingness we think that one more click, one more bump, one more drink might prove to be real, thirst quenching, life. This text from Jeremiah is God calling us out, out of our nothingness into something meaningful, into worship of the living God, from whom flows living water, even, most surprisingly, amid the deserts and the wildernesses of our lives.



Skinner, Prophecy & Religion, p.71

A New Spirit

"They came to Capernaum, and on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and began to teach. The people were spellbound by the teaching, because Jesus taught with an authority that was unlike their religious scholars. Suddenly a person with an unclean spirit appeared in their synagogue. It shrieked, 'What do you want from us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are the Holy One of God!' Jesus rebuked the spirit sharply: 'Be quiet! Come out of that person!' At that the unclean spirit convulsed the possessed one violently, and with a loud shriek it came out. All who looked on were amazed. They began to ask one another, 'What is this? A new teaching, and with such authority! This person even gives orders to unclean spirits and they obey!' Immediately news of Jesus spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee." - Mark 1:21-28

There is something about exorcism that has fascinated people for thousands of years. 
When I was growing up the one movie that my mother insisted that my brother and I never see was the 1973 film The Exorcist because it scared her so much. 
There have been plenty of exorcism themed films to come out since the original especially over the past decade.
To many of my friends, who were not very religious, one of the first questions that was on their mind after they find out that I was pursuing a life of ministry was “does this mean you’ll be doing exorcisms?” 
And really, that’s not an unfair question, 
especially when the first “work” that Jesus does in Mark’s Gospel is an exorcism. 
So if Christians are supposed to follow in the example of Christ, it makes sense that exorcism is something that I would do. 
However, as with most things, there are some stark differences between what's going on in our text and what pop culture has to say about exorcism.
Right before this passage in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is finding disciples and telling them he will make them fishers of men.
Now the first thing that Jesus does after recruiting his first disciples is take them to a town called Capernaum along the shores of Galilee. This is probably a town that the disciples are familiar with. 
And Jesus, being the disciple's Rabbi, brings them to worship on the Sabbath. 
The text says that Jesus showed up in the synagogue to teach.
In order for Jesus to be able to teach in the synagogue he has to be recognized as a Rabbi by more than the disciples, but by the community. 
We know from the Gospel of Luke that Jesus spent some time in the temple in Jerusalem studying under the Rabbis. So perhaps the people in Capernaum already know this and recognize Jesus as someone who has authority as Rabbi. 
At the very least it's clear that Jesus already has some authority to be able to stand up and teach. 


And there's a lot that could be said about what Jesus does with that. 


The Gospel writer makes a huge point out of the authority of Jesus in this teaching moment. 
Now, I could say that the sole purpose behind this authority is for us, the readers, to understand Jesus as the Christ.
Which I think is entirely valid, but if we're reading through the Gospel of Mark like a narrative, 
like it was written, 
then we already know of Jesus' relationship to God when the heavens part at his baptism. 
One of the themes that the Gospel writer Mark is all about is this idea of who is in the know and who isn't. 
Who understands what's going on and who doesn't.
Some would say that the question that Mark keeps asking us is: "do you get it?"
But there is also something else going on in our text today.
The way that the Gospel writer has written this story is what some commentators call bracketing.
Mark uses bracketing to 
1) make a claim, 
2) interject some information and 
3) come back to that claim to show how the interjected information supports the claim.
In our text bracketing is used to give us the idea is that the person with an unclean spirit is meant to appear while Jesus is teaching.
So the crowd's reaction is not only to the words that Jesus speaks, but also to the effects that they have.


So lets look at our story again. 


Jesus and a couple disciples come to worship, 
Jesus gets up to preach, 
but Jesus isn't some ordinary preacher. 
When he speaks to the text, 
the people recognize something, 
they hear something that they haven't gotten from any of the scribes, or religious authorities who have worshiped with them before. 
Then in the middle of Jesus' teaching, 
there comes this person with an unclean spirit. 
Jesus uses his authority to call out the unclean spirit and the people are amazed.
 The idea of an unclean spirit tells us something a little different than we're used to hearing when we think about exorcism.
A central practice in Jewish faith in the first century is the notion of purity. 
Ritual purity, 
Spiritual purity,
Physical purity.
Being pure, is the lens through which the scriptures have been interpreted for the people with whom Jesus is worshiping, and the lens through which they interpret what and who is socially acceptable.
So for someone to have an unclean spirit, means that they would be entirely unaccepted.
The fact that this person is even in the synagogue would come as shock.
Due to the bracketed story telling that Mark is engaged in, it would be safe to say that this person is already among the worshipers.
No one really seems to acknowledge that there's an unclean spirit among them until the truth comes out.
If all of this has been to prove to the people that Jesus is the Christ, then their affliction seems like little more than God using them. 
Why should anyone be burdened with an unclean spirit?
Why should anyone be rejected based on purity?


I was in Ghana in 2008 as a part of a team that had been working with a group of women who had been rejected from their community because they carried HIV/AIDS. 
Many of them had been abandoned by their husbands and families, or were too ashamed to return home. 
At that time Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for over 70% of the world's total HIV/AIDS population. 
But in many countries, the stigma and lack of education can be far worse than even the terrible stuff that happens here in the States. 
They came together after their leader Hagar was left in the hospital by her family and Hagar began to notice that there were a lot of other women in her same situation. 
So Hagar brought them together and formed a group that they called "Women Living Positively with HIV/AIDS." 
They started out as a support group, they would survive as long as they could. 
But, as their group began to grow it became increasingly apparent that there was more they could do. 
So they reached out to my home church. 
They didn't want to just survive, they wanted to live. 
Eventually they got the idea to start up a business to generate revenue so they could buy medicine and provide for each other. 
They had pooled what little money they had and began working. 
They created fabrics and clothing, and they changed their name to First United Women because no one would buy their product if they were associated with HIV/AIDS. 
In order to keep the business running, they were going to need more funding then what they had. 
Part of the reason my group was there was to help facilitate a series of micro-loans and to provide a market in the states for them to sell more of their product. 
On the second to last night that we were in Ghana, we had invited our new business partners to celebrate with us at the small hotel we had been staying at in Kumasi. 
We got the music going, 
people were dancing, 
playing games, 
we had this big dinner, 
and other people began to notice. 
Some of the other folks staying at the hotel came out and began to party with us. 
Then the hotel staff slowly took up the invitation to join in. 
At the end of the night, after the First United Women had left, 
some of the staff approached our pastor and asked who all of those women were. 
They were asking because they had had a pretty good time and thought that they had made some new friends. 
So our pastor told them, and the look the staff had was utter confusion. 
Someone said "But they looked so... alive."

Dancing with and revealing the First United Women did the same thing for some of the hotel staff, as the exorcism did for the community in Capernaum. 
The problem is not with the person with the unclean spirit.
Jesus continually challenges the religious authorities who would claim that sickness and possessions are the fault and punishment of the sick and possessed.
I don't believe that, Jesus doesn't believe that.
What Jesus is doing is speaking truth to power.
By removing the unclean spirit Jesus frees the community to see one another in a new light.
Suddenly purity is less important if there is someone with the authority of God who can say that the impure is now pure.
In the understanding of the religious leaders, only the clean could come to God.
However, by the example of Jesus, God comes to the "unclean," bringing them into wholeness and life.


There is a commentary that looks at the sociological understanding of what Jesus has done here.
They say that in an honor & shame society, the shared information about one's status would be the basis upon which an individual would be judged.
So there are two big changes that happen in our text.
One is that Jesus of Nazareth, is elevated in status to someone who teaches with unique authority, the authority of God.
The other is that the person who was possessed, 
has been restored to their community.
I think there's also a third change that happens.
When Jesus removes the unclean spirit, he reveals the brokenness of the community.
The community, in coming to recognize the depth to which God desires for us to be whole,
to go out and be in the presence of the "unclean,"
to touch someone who is sick,
to love someone who doesn't look like you,
or think like you do,
the community becomes open to a new Spirit, to the new thing that God is doing.

When one of the hotel staff in Ghana had the revelation that the women he had met was alive,
God was at work,
calling out the "unclean spirit" and revealing the depths of God's love, that even a woman with HIV/AIDS can have life, 
be whole,
be worthy of love.
The work that Jesus is involved in with this exorcism is exactly that same work.
Jesus is calling out the unclean revealing to the Capernaum community that even the person they've tried to ignore can have life,
be whole,
be worthy of love.
And most importantly,
when they get that,
when we get that,
we become open to what the Spirit of God can do,
and we're made whole as well.
And if that is what exorcism is all about,
then I guess I would do that too.

The Things God is Terrible At (And Why That’s Good News for Us.) Part 1

As I was listening to the sermon in church the other Sunday, I was moved by the absolute truth of the mercy and grace that God gives. The scripture came from the Gospel of Matthew 13:1-8, 18-23; The parable of the sower. This parable is not new to me and the connection between unbelievable grace and God was certainly not new. But this is sort of how the sermon went and where my thoughts have gone:

The parable of the sower has a farmer sowing seed in a field. Some of the seed falls onto good soil, some falls onto rocky soil, some falls onto the path, and some more falls into some thorny bushes.  

Once the seeds mature and start to grow, the type of soil they’ve been sown into affects their growth. 

The seed on the path is immediately eaten by birds. 

The seed in the thorny bushes grows a little but is choked out by the thorns. 

The seed in the rocky soil begins to grow but the roots can’t dig in and they die. 

The seed in the good soil grows up good and strong. 

The thing about parables is that they always have some sort of hook. There is something not quite right in a parable and that is meant to challenge the listener’s outlook. In the Gospels, the disciples are often left scratching their heads at the parables Jesus tells. However, that does not mean that their content was completely foreign to the audience, just the connection between the story and God. 

So in this parable, the disciples convince Jesus to reveal to them the true meaning behind it.

Jesus explains that God is the farmer sowing seeds.

The plants are people who hear the message about God.

The types of soil are their faith.

But the thing to note about this parable is not really about the fate of the seeds. 

Anybody who has done any farming would automatically know that seeds sown into anything but good soil don’t really have great odds at making it as a fully grown plant.

That fact comes as no surprise to the people to whom Jesus is speaking. 

What does come off as a bit shocking is the farmer’s actions.

This is our hook.

This is where we learn something about the nature of God.

This is where the audience discovers that God is a terrible farmer.

Now wait a minute.

That can’t be right.

Isn’t there some philosophical quandary about God and a rock so large that God couldn’t lift it, to help us demonstrate that the only real limits on God are the ones God chooses?

So how can God be terrible at something?

Well lets think about this parable.

Like I said, ANYONE who has ever farmed before would know not to throw seeds willy-nilly.

And here we inexplicably find God seeming to care for his seed like a happily careless child.

God doesn’t really seem concerned with growth models, harvest quotas, or the statistical advantages of the good soil.

God just throws caution to the wind and sows seed into every patch of soil around.

Now that is absolutely crazy.

That makes no sense.

Those numbers don’t add up, those odds are terrible.

Farmer God wastes energy, time and resources caring for seeds that have almost no chance of maturing.

And here’s the absolutely wonderful thing about God.

God isn’t us.

God doesn’t care about numbers,

or quotas

or growth models

or rates of efficiency.

God cares about creation,

for the chance of life,

for the beauty in overcoming the odds,

for the least of these.

When it comes to giving people a chance to be in relationship with God, God throws caution to the wind and sows like a careless child.

God doesn’t care where you’re coming from, what circumstances you’ve grown up in, the pressures of the world that surround you.

God loves you where you are.

God gives you a chance to grow.

God wants you to grow and mature.

God wants everyone to grow.

But here’s the thing.

Not everybody is in good soil.

Not everybody is ready.

But God knows that without the chance, 

Without that seed being sown in the rocky soil, 

No one would grow there anyway. 

So this was the central point of the sermon: What if we gave out the kind of grace that God gives out?

What if we threw caution to the wind and stopped caring about the right people to come along in order for us to show God’s grace and love?

What if we looked at everybody as a child of God,

A God that gives grace.

A God that sows seed like a child.

This all got me thinking, what else is God really terrible at?

Because odds are,

Whatever God is terrible at,

Is really good for us.

Critiquing Rob Bell

“In Bell’s theology, God is love, a love that never burns hot with anger and a love that cannot distinguish or discriminate. “Jesus’ story,” Bell says, “is first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us. It is a stunning, beautiful, expansive love and it is for everybody, everywhere” (vii). Therefore, he reasons, “we cannot claim him to be ours any more than he’s anybody else’s” (152). This is tragic. It’s as if Bell wants every earthly father to love every child in the world in the exact same way. If you rob a father of his unique, specific, not-for-everyone love, you rob the children of their greatest treasure. It reminds me of the T-shirt, “Jesus Loves You. Then Again He Loves Everybody.” There’s no good news in announcing that God loves everyone in the same way just because he wants to. The good news is that in love God sent his Son to live for our lives and die for our deaths, suffering the God-forsakenness we deserved so that we might call God our God and we who trust in Christ might be his children. The sad irony is that while Bell would very much like us to know the love of God, he has taken away the very thing in which God’s love is chiefly known: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).” (16)

This is exactly the argument that Bell is writing against. You can take issue with his exegesis, you can take issue with his understanding of heaven and hell, and you can even take issue with how he portrays sin. All of that I understand and there is room to develop discussion around those issues. However, this argument, this belief, is incredible to me.

The above paragraph comes from Kevin DeYoung, out of East Lansing. He is writing an exhaustive critique of Love Wins from the perspective of “Evangelicals.” Kevin writes in his critique, that “Bell’s god is a small god, so bound by notions of radical free will that I wonder how Bell can be so confident God’s love will melt the hardest heart.” (17) 

DeYoung says that “Bell’s god” is small.

“Bell’s god” is bound.

And yet here I am reading this critique and the point that really sticks for me, is what he says right before that, that God CAN NOT love everyone. God is INCAPABLE of loving everyone. God HAS NOT THE HEART to care for everyone.

He says that “There’s no good news in announcing that God loves everyone in the same way just because he wants to.” 

That isn’t Good News?

That isn’t The Good News?

I guess I’m a little confused at this point. This is the part where DeYoung is ramping up to show how Bell’s view of the Cross and of God are perverted and weak. 

And the message I get is that God CAN’T.

Not only is God INCAPABLE here, but the message seems to be that Christians SHOULD NOT share.

After all, if the message of salvation in Christ was spread to the entire world, and accepted by the entire world, then God would be INCAPABLE of loving all the Christians.

So the Good News of Christ is that we can horde our faith.

We can hide out from the world.

God’s love is ours.

Not theirs.

This is what is disheartening to me. When I hear Christians proclaim like a spoiled child that God is not available, even for all who would wish to receive God.

I recommend that you read both Bell’s book and the critique by DeYoung, because they both have good points within them. What I have written here is not an exhaustive critique of any writing. 

I’m just pointing out where I see someone missing the point.

Here's a link to DeYoung's critique, courtesy of the GospelCoalition: Love Wins Review