Concord: Evolve. Don't Change

The following is an article that appears today in the February 2012 issue of Luther Seminary’s Concord theological journal. To check out the entire issue head on over to http://www2.luthersem.edu/concord/.

Evolve. Don’t Change

            “Pardon me, but that’s bulls---” said my internship supervisor, responding to a colleague’s claim that worship is the ideal space for evangelization. Actually, I misquoted him. I doubt he said “Pardon me.” The idea that worship is the time or space for intentional evangelism was, to my supervisor, blasphemy of the highest order. He believed that worship is a time to gather together in the promise that God is present in the bread and the wine and in the word proclaimed, and any intention for it otherwise is bologna. I want to suggest that this is true but insufficient. What we need is more than good theology of worship; we need to understand the evolution of worship and to put to death the language of “change.” Allow me to explain.

            The church has always had tension between welcoming those on the margins and maintaining established practices. This is the fundamental challenge in multi-ethnic, multi-class, multi-generational ministry settings (which, to my mind, covers every setting there is): those things that have deep meaning to one group of people have no meaning to another. How then shall we worship together?

            It’s easy to say that the older generation needs to change—that they need to be willing to give way to a younger group of people with fresh ideas of how to do worship, that the old music needs to go and finally that they need to relax their grip on all those things we have come to consider traditional. Yet, this solution only encourages division, spawning worthless nomenclature such as traditional and contemporary.

            In a place like the Twin Cities it’s well and good to have different churches offering different forms of worship. Mercy Seat can coexist quite nicely alongside Mt. Olivet. Yet, much of the church lives in places where different worship equates to division in the community that is unwanted and often painful. In small-town America there are already far too many things that pull people apart from one another. Worship should not be another of these. Thankfully, in some ways we have no choice. Attendance numbers and pastoral sanity often require a single service, a single time to come together to worship God, to break the bread and drink the wine and to re-member (that is, become members again) the body of Christ.

            The pertinent questions regarding worship in Hallock, Minnesota are the same questions everywhere in small communities: How do we faithfully gather together when so many of us have so many different spiritual needs? How do we allow space for the Holy Spirit to work in a broad way without watering down the message? These are our struggles, and adequate answers are usually lacking. I’ve visited enough churches in my twenty-five years to know that most are doing a poor job of generating answers.

            So maybe that’s the point; maybe there are no good answers. Maybe the congregations that are alive and vibrant haven’t so much figured out the magical formula to do the most effective worship, but have learned to live the questions. Every Sunday is an opportunity to look around and ask one another, “I’m here because worship means something to me. Does it mean the same thing to you?”

            If we ask the question, then we have to admit the possibility that someone could say, “No,” in which case we should resist the urge to fix them. We are not the Borg, assimilating the ones who do not give in to the purported superiority of our liturgical model. Instead, we are the body of Christ in desperate need of members at the margins. Members with different spiritual needs require us to step back and ask ourselves, “Are we doing this for the glory of God, for our own fulfillment, or because we see our church like a sports team and affiliation matters more than salvation?”

            I think the latter is the underlying philosophy of many—perhaps most—worship practices. If you’re a sports fan, you have undoubtedly heard fans deriding other fans of the same team for “jumping on the bandwagon” or, in other words, cheering only when their team is winning. Likewise, we have people in the church who have acquired a sense of ownership after having devoted themselves even when it seemed like a lost cause. Now, they are quick to turn on the bandwagon followers—i.e. the folks who haven’t been so sure about church—and they have denied them a voice. Yet, for a healthy congregation (or, for that matter, a healthy fan base) we need the participation of both. We need the margins as much as we need the center, and the center has to be willing to move; not flip inside-out, mind you, but it cannot be set in one place. Culture and practice evolve through time. The center has to shift with the times or else the margins will disappear.

            This is where the rubber meets the road for worship, whether in Hallock, Minnesota or on the campus of Luther Seminary. Those with a controlling stake have to be willing to evolve. We throw around the word “change” too much and it evokes all kinds of negative emotions, and this is in part because it is the wrong word. Change suggests something that we do. What we need is evolution, a process beyond our control marshaled over by God and not by us. Evolution teaches us two things: 1. we are not in control, and 2. new life requires death. Things will slowly die out of favor—evolution does not happen overnight—but the best way to honor how we have worshiped in the past is not to try to live it over again. Instead, the best way to honor the past is to understand that the present relies on the past like a pyramid whose capstone cannot stand without those that have been laid before. Worship is like this, and when it is at its best it remembers its past without attempting to revive it.

Concord: A Big Ol' Ecumenundrum

 

Published in the Concord, 13 April 2011

A couple of months ago, I asked my friend, Jenny, to write for the Concord because we were in need of an ecumenical voice. Together we mocked the term, disparaging the idea that only our non-ELCA Lutheran students can be considered inter-denominational. My confusion was such that I later turned to my personal expert in all things seminary and life, Krista Lind, for an answer. Surely she would be able to tell me why we haven’t come up with a better term for those brave folks around here who are outside of the Lutheran clique. Sadly, she reported, that Jenny is an ecumenical student simply because nobody has come up with a better term for her.

Have no fear! I thought, I will solve this big ecumenundrum! I descended into the Bockman Conclave for many a month, but I am happy to report that the white smoke is pouring out of the chimney and for once it isn’t from the hookah! After pouring through the Oxford English Dictionary, dwelling in many potential words, and testing a few out on my non-Lutheran friends, I found that one rose above all others.

It was so simple, so unexpected. The reason for my success in this endeavor in which so many before me have failed could only be attributed to their understandable need to think forward. Yes, it was tempting to make a new word—perhaps meterolutheranal, transfordenominational or congremissional. Or there was the possibility of redefining an already existing word—aha! We could call them “misdirected” students! Lastly, there was some hope for acronyms: Students Probing Our Religious Kinks (SPORKs) or Anonymous Protestants, Potential Lutherans, and Evangelical Strangers (APPLES) were obvious candidates.

But in the end, those proved insufficient. What I really needed was some genuine backward thinking. I found it finally in the word: “catholic.” How brilliant! (I hear you saying) Next time, I see Jenny I can tell her that she might consider herself non-denominational, but here at the seminary she is catholic to us—little “c,” of course! And Dr. Hess? Well, she’s a catholic professor who also happens to be Catholic.

Now, you might find yourself saying that this creates the same problem as the dreaded “e” term; surely, Lutherans are also catholic! True, but whereas “ecumenical” refers to a movement toward unity, “catholic” refers to a state of being; it is naming the unity we have as Christians.

Much of this article has been in jest—clearly, calling our students “catholic” would be more a distraction than it is worth—but I do wonder what would happen if we used terminology that named a reality, rather than words designed for movement. Or I guess we could always call them SPORKs.

People of Dirt

Published in the Concord, 16 March 2011

If the theme behind this issue is confusing the blame is mine but I’m not going to apologize. We are a people who don’t understand what ‘place’ means, and the only way I can imagine talking about it is holistically. Rural and urban, district and state, domain and environment are all words that try to describe where we are at and the area around us, but none of them gives meaning to that place. None of them speaks the reality of relationship between its constituent parts.

This starts with the term ‘environment’—perhaps the stupidest word in common practice in the English language. ‘Environment’ is defined commonly as one’s surroundings or something along similarly simplistic lines. This leads politicians and activists to talk about ‘using’ it or ‘saving’ it, as if the environment were something outside of us to be exploited or protected. Smoke in the air enters our lungs; wildflowers, deer, pine trees, and every other living thing inevitably come back to us in calories, whether directly or indirectly through the digestion of plants and animals along the way. The idea that we are completely distinct from the creatures around us is not only nonsense, it is border-line heretical. Paul says in Romans 8 that creation is “subjected to futility” but awaits redemption—just like us, because it is us.

            This isn’t some smarmy, spiritual piece on the theology of nature, but—I believe—a deeply practical one. Most people—myself included—are as much aliens where we are now as any new immigrant to this country. We mostly don’t know the hands that produce our food. We buy things in the store made in China, Indonesia or Mexico because they are cheap. “Free market” economics treats the earth as a resource rather than a place where we live, benefitting corporations who produce more and cheaper products over local businesses who understand the features and limitations of a place. These days, family farmers are some of the few who understand the inestimable value of caring for the land. For them the land is not a political cause but a necessity for the continuation of livelihoods and life itself.

As the family farm dies before our eyes, the rest of us are only a degree of separation away from the same fate. This is more a religious issue than a political one. Politics will always seek to justify itself, but Christianity is grounded quite literally in the ground. ‘Adam’ is from the Hebrew for ground or dirt or plot of land, and when he and Eve are sent from the Garden of Eden it is with the directive to cultivate the ground from which he was taken (Gen 3:23). As we have distanced ourselves from toiling in the soil we have lost our identity as people of the dirt. So when we pass the Mississippi River we might remark on its muddy water as an aesthetic deficiency, but we rarely consider the top soil erosion that gives the water that tint or our implicit guilt in it. To fail to acknowledge the dirt is to forget who we are.

This is also as much an urban issue as it is rural. Not everybody can work directly with the earth, but just because our vocations now take us to places quite distant from the land does not mean we are excused from knowing our origins. Cities, in spite of their confluence of people, often lack essential elements of community. Instead of being self-sustaining, their people rely on external services. Cities are places with specialists instead of generalists, places that expect and indeed require a level of specificity to an individual’s vocation that separates us from one another. To be a specialist (for example, a pastor) is to rely on a chain of individuals, stretching back to the farmer who grows her food, the craftsman who builds her home, the automaker, mechanic, and gas station owner who build, tune and fuel her car, the stylist who cuts her hair, etc. These dependencies are largely without deep connection because each individual vocation, though dependent on one another, is involved only in a small part of life, which is more and more disconnected from the place where she lives.

I can state my belief no more clearly than this: the specialist way of life is insufficient for deeper meaning. Young people are leaving the mainline churches not because we are too traditional or too modern. We are leaving because we see what our parents and grandparents do not—that we are no longer grounded. We are leaving for churches with little theological depth, churches that cater to specialists. Instead of building community these churches offer entertainment; they are more like a sports team than a religious institution. And this is happening in settings big and small; urban, suburban, and rural.

It is a strong word of judgment against mainline churches that we offer less community than an evangelical tradition focused on individual salvation. Nonetheless, we have the opportunity now to reaffirm the centrality of place, and only in this way recreate the possibility for a healthy community. If we stop caring about our place—which is to say the people, the land, and all living things therein—we might as well give up on theological depth.

To value place means to take back the word ‘salvation’ from the evangelical traditions and expose its narrow view of individualism as a lie. Salvation is about health—both in the present and future—and health is never an individual state.  As Wendell Berry writes, “Community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction of terms.” The smallest unit of salvation is not individual salvation; the smallest (and only) unit of salvation is Jesus Christ (I am indebted Adam Morton for this insight). It’s time for our churches to say that Jesus Christ came for ‘you’, in the knowledge that ‘you’ are not just an individual—you are a part of a community embedded in a location. You are a person of the dirt. Stop pretending like you’re not.

The BCS: Making the Candidacy Process Look Simple and Logical Since 1998

After this column, the registrar might have to go back and give me a big ‘F’ in Reading the Audiences. I am writing a sports-related column for seminarians who think that a touchdown has something to do with Jesus floating down from heaven and coming to a skidding stop in a Bethlehem manger. So, like any good pastor I’m going to use analogies that you can understand. The BCS (Bowl Championship Series) is the college football equivalent of the ELCA candidacy process, except your committee members are ESPN commentators, the bishops are computers, and you are a small college that cannot control its own destiny even if you follow all the rules and win all your games.

For those unfamiliar the BCS is the way that the powers that be determine who gets to play for the National Championship. It is two human polls and a compilation of six computer rankings designed by professional math geeks, football wonks, and some people who—not a little surprisingly—don’t know anything about either. In essence, the BCS is a model of human sinfulness. It takes the gospel of football and dilutes it with biased commentary, hour-long ESPN specials dedicated to computer formulas, and more non sequiturs per Craig James opinion piece than should be allowable under FCC regulations. What the BCS is really about is taking away the influence of actual football games and putting it in the hands of talk-show style personalities who debate which teams are deserving of their rankings week in and week out. In what other sport can you win every game in a season and never get to play for a championship? Maybe croquet, I don’t know.

Why then doesn’t college football institute a playoff system to include all the undefeated teams, as well as the best of the one and two-loss teams?

That would make a lot of sense in a gospel-driven football system, but Satan is poking his head out around the corner in the guise of television networks, corporate partners, and Ohio State University presidents. Losing the BCS might lose them money, but that is debatable. The real reason they won’t give up the BCS is because it gives them power. That is the root of human sinfulness—power over the lowly.

Since the beginning of time, sports have offered prime examples of the meek rising above adversity and defeating seemingly superior opponents. Even if you are a seminary nerd you have probably heard of the movie Hoosiers, the Springboks of South Africa winning the Rugby World Cup in the shadow of Apartheid, or the U.S. Miracle on Ice victory over the Soviets (God have mercy on your soul if you aren’t aware of the last). The history of sports is marked by David defeating Goliath. That is, up until the advent of the BCS.

No longer can we enjoy watching a game on a Saturday afternoon without being subjected to substance-less hype about who so-and-so projects to be the best teams in the country. If you turn off the volume you’ll still see the graphics, though admittedly you will not have to listen to commentators pretend to understand what all the math means. I’ve even heard that ESPN is marketing a new braille BCS ticker for the blind to keep up on the latest rankings—I made that part up but don’t put it past them. If there’s a market, count on the BCS to wring every last penny out of it with no respect either for the student or athlete part of student-athlete.

I can think of only two small bits of comfort for those of us unfortunate enough to even remotely care about college football. The first is that it makes the rest of our lives seem somewhat logical and functional. Seriously, next time you start to question the career path that God is leading you on, thank your lucky stars that it has nothing to do with the BCS. In fact, it removes that sin from your conscience completely by taking all your weekends for the rest of your life. That, my friends, is a blessing. And secondly—and most importantly—we here in Minnesota who call ourselves Gopher fans will never need to worry about the letters B-C-S. That’s not a projection—it’s a guarantee.

The Death of Death: A reflection on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”

(1 Cor. 15:26; Deathly Hallows, Ch. 16)

           

Warning:  Contains spoilers regarding the Harry Potter series.

             There’s a pause in the battle of Hogwarts while Voldemort waits in the Forbidden Forest and the survivors of the siege gather together. The reality of a broken world has never been more obvious, characters we have grown to love are dead, and it’s against this backdrop that Harry Potter begins a walk. Invisible under the cloak his father left him, he exits out the shattered front doors and across the grounds, passing through a scene of death and dying.  Harry moves inexorably toward Voldemort, accompanied by the ghostly images of those who had gone before—his mother, his father, his godfather, and his teacher.  He walks toward death, knowing that the only way to be finally victorious is give up his life. As Dumbledore will soon tell him in the surreal scene at King’s Cross, Harry is the “true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.”

            I never would have thought when first opening Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that what would follow seven books later was a profound meditation on death. Against all odds, J.K. Rowling hits at the heart of our mortality without appealing to vague, de-theologized accounts of the afterlife that so pervade popular fiction. She does not diminish death by suggesting it’s all going to be right in the end but instead places it in the context of an ultimate victory. Death is not avoided; it is defeated.  This is a story that sets out to show the difference between the one who runs from death—Voldemort (“flees from death” in French)—and Harry, who walks toward death in the knowledge that love wins.  He realizes that this world is a broken one in which all manner of tragedy may befall those he loves. Ultimate victory is achieved not in holding on to life but in the death of death.

            When we reach the end of the story what should have been evident all along smacks us in the face: the whole Harry Potter adventure has been a theological reflection on death and loss.  Never does a character pray, never do we hear about the cross, never does Rowling say the words ‘justification,’ ‘righteousness’ or ‘salvation’ and yet it is all there, wrapped up in the sacrifice Lily Potter made for her son to set the whole journey in motion. On the Potters’ gravestone is that at once melancholy and wonderful phrase from 1 Corinthians: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”  When Harry falls he finds the reality that matters most is not death but resurrection. And lest you think this is not a Christian resurrection consider what it is that saves Harry. His goodness? His worthiness? His knowledge of magic? None of these. It was the sacrifice of those who had gone before, especially his mother’s death for him.  Death died with Lily Potter just as death died on the cross.

While Rowling’s story may defy easy allegorization the overtones of the crucifixion are ever-present.  Death died in Godric’s Hollow just as in Golgotha, and only because of that can Harry walk toward Voldemort with his head held high, knowing that he faces not an end but just what Dumbledore told him six years earlier—“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

The first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows opens in theaters nationwide on November 19.

Concord Poll Question: What do you believe will happen to you after death?

For the November issue:

Poll here:  What do you believe will happen to you after death?

Concord: What in God's Name is "Christian Music"?

It happened in a conversation that I semi-intruded upon, as I am wont to do late at night in Bockman Hall (the reader beware lest your next remarks grace these pages): A fellow seminary student and camp friend bemoaned the lack of good Christian bands. He was feeling nostalgic for the days of Audio Adrenaline, the Newsboys, and other equally trendy groups of the early 2000s. It is so hard to find good Christian music these days, he whined. OK, whined might be too harsh of a word, we’ll go with ‘cried.’

I’m being a tad facetious I think, but I have to wonder what makes a particular group a “Christian band” in the first place, and what in God’s name is this thing called “Christian music”? It’s not as obvious as it sounds; at least I think it’s worth five hundred words or so. WE might devise some simple criteria: Do the lyrics mention Jesus? If yes, then it’s Christian. Or: Do the bands play at churches and Christian music festivals? If yes, then they’re Christian.
Fair enough, but a level deeper it gets messy. There are some artists whose lyrics evolve over time, and there are others who never mention a word about God but whose spirituality is oozing out of every turn of phrase. When does a band become a Christian band: is it on the date of conversion from their heathen past, the first time they get played on Air1? Is it when they first mention Jesus in an album, or something else?

Music is an expression of poetry that reflects the yearning of its poets. Generally this means that artists are going to lyricize those things that truly matter in their lives: God, love, family, getting down and dirty in the club. OK, perhaps not all lyrics are deep. Still, I think we need to be careful stamping music with the Christian insignia not primarily for who gets into the Christian music club but for who is left out. The rapper variously known as Puff Daddy, P Diddy or just Diddy has performed all sorts of meaningless dribble over the years, but he has also had some moments that strike me as bordering on profound in a way that many intentionally Christian artists do not. Take the song “By Faith” recorded for Katrina relief in which Diddy raps:

Forgive my sins, I have the fame
But, for you, I'll trade it all in
It's not about dough, 'cause when you call me
I can't take that when I go
When my vision's blurred, you make it clear
When I need to listen, you make me hear
I permeate all hate
Bless you for blessing me
You got my faith

Let’s not ignore the Gospel because of the package in which it’s delivered. When we get stuck on categorizing artists we miss the power in those things that don’t fit into our boxes. If you think the only music that is worshipful is found on the local Christian radio station or in your favorite hymnal allow me to widen your world. Your favorite music, whatever it may be, can bring you into the presence of the divine. Not all of us resonate with the same melodies or beats, but we all resonate with something. Find your resonance, and don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t “Christian” music. Christ can speak to you through whatever means he chooses, whether Amy Grant or 50 Cent.