Becoming Goliath: Underdogs and the career arc of King David

Scripture: 2 Samuel 12:1-25

            On Friday I had planned on spending the day putting together thoughts for today’s sermon when I had an unexpected cat-sickness-related detour to Grand Forks that took most of the day. Stranded in the “big city” with no computer, Bible, or anything with which to actually “work” on a sermon, I made my way to Target to pick up a notebook, a pen, and also a Bible. When it came time to find the Bible I meandered into the book section of the Target store, which feels like it shrinks every time I’m there, slowly being eaten away, as it is, by the electronics. Today you can practically buy more different versions of Grand Theft Auto than you can books of any title from a given Target store—I’m only slightly exaggerating.

            So, when I found myself in the two aisles of books at Target I was at least thankful that they did have Bibles—two of them; both King James versions, of course—but next to these a couple of other books caught my eye. First was a book called Jesus>Heaven that I was vaguely familiar with but thought it might be mildly appropriate for Sunday sermon material, and then there was another book by Malcolm Gladwell that had very little to do with religion but, I can only assume because Target doesn’t actually care where they shelve books, it was placed right next to these other religious titles with its own title of David and Goliath. The subtitle reads: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. OK, I thought, I’ve got what I need. Which was a funny thought because I honestly didn’t even realize at first that this David of David-and-Goliath-fame is the same David from today’s reading. There is such a stark contrast between the David of youth and the adult David that you too can be largely excused if you don’t remember at first that this David who looked down on Bathsheba was the David who slew a giant. So when I left Target I did so with a notebook, a pen, a book that only vaguely had anything to do with religion, and no Bible, but I had this realization that the David story was maybe exactly what I needed.

            It was a reminder of who David was that I needed in order to get to the David we see in this reading today. I needed to remember that this King David who acts reprehensibly, without scruples or any kind of remorse, was once the underdog—was once the model of purity and devotion to God.

            I had to check myself and ask honestly, “What does this mean?” What do we do with this David. And that was a perfect launching pad for today’s sermon.

Individual purpose? Meet the body of Christ.

Scripture: Genesis 12:1-9

            When I was in high school the big thing in the world of pop Christianity was Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life. In some ways, that book branded what it means to be a Christian in the 21^st century with its emphasis on God’s purpose for your life. Warren tapped into something that resonates deeply with our culture, something that leads more people than ever to consider Jeremiah 29:11 as one of their favorite Bible verses, “So I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper… and a future with hope.” Purpose. That’s what we’re looking for. A purpose and a plan.

            At around the same time that The Purpose-Driven Life was becoming a best-seller, The Matrix Reloaded was hitting theaters. The Matrix movies might not seem to have much to do with The Purpose-Driven Life, being as they were about a computer-driven world, virtual reality, and the like, but at its core The Matrix is a story about fate and purpose. And in The Matrix Reloaded we get this great line from one of my favorite actors, Hugo Weaving, who plays Agent Smith and says, “We're not here because we're free. We're here because we're not free. There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist. It is purpose that created us. Purpose that pulls us. That guides us. That drives us. It is purpose that defines us. Purpose that binds us… We're here to take from you what you tried to take from us. Purpose.”

            I’m a child of the 90s and so you sometimes run the risk of getting all sorts of references from my youth, but I think I’m right in believing that this obsession with purpose is not limited to one generation. In fact, I find people of all ages concerned with this question in different ways. Young people who don’t know what they want to be in life. Middle-aged folks who feel like they haven’t accomplished enough. Older folks who have lost that sense that they are productive members of society. Finding our purpose is sometimes a challenge.

Why Ruth? ... Not a moral but a genealogy

Scripture: Ruth 4

            For the last week, Kate, Natalie and I have spent time with both sides of our family, and, because we have fairly typical families, family time is both good and it has its moments. Families are great and fun, and they also magnify all of our issues, meaning that family time can be the most relaxing and most stressful time all at once. But no matter how messed up some of our families are we can all take solace that at least our family systems are not like they were in ancient Israel. Or maybe some of us think that still might be an improvement in which case… oy.

As much as we remember the story of Ruth for being a nice tale of Ruth’s faithfulness to her mother-in-law, it’s hard to miss that that faithfulness is necessary because of societal structures where women were treated as property. This story, like so many from the Bible, is timeless in a sense—its morals play as well today as they did three thousand years ago—but it’s also a story with elements of a particular time and culture that we would find unacceptable today. Each generation changes. Every new set of children brings a new sense of what is right. From one generation to another those changes can be significant, but over the course of centuries those changes can make for a cultural sea change. We like to think that we are enlightened, but give it a generation or two and they’ll look back at us as uncultured, and give it a century more and we’ll be considered next to barbarians. This is why it is so important that we do not worship cultural things that change but instead we worship a God who does not.

We love because he first loved us

Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21

            Sometimes we need to step back for a moment and admire how stunning some bits of scripture are. “We love because he first loved us,” writes John, which is a nice little Christian Hallmark card waiting to be made, but he goes on: “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” I am utterly floored by that scripture not because I don’t believe it, but because it’s the kind of thing that I honestly don’t expect to find in the Bible. Usually, the Bible focuses on elements of faith and then treats acts of love as a response to that faith—and so it is in that little diddy in verse 19: “We love because he first loved us.” But to take it one step further and say that our love of God is proven in our love of our brothers and sisters—not in the strength of our faith—is so dang practical; it makes my job easy because I don’t even need to make that small leap. It means that a Christian who does not demonstrate love for her neighbor is an oxymoron.

            And what does that love look like? Well, according to John “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” Love can’t be compelled—this is not a case of God saying “love your neighbor or else.” If you feel that this is a command of the law then you’ve already missed the point, because the kind of love that God loves is love that has no ounce of self in it. You don’t love because you’re going to get something out of it, and you don’t love because it’s the right thing to do; you love because God loves us, and the only way to experience God is to pass it on.

Why this youth trip meant more to me

For all I write I'm usually not very personal. This is mostly by design. I mean, I never much cared for pastors who preached all about their own lives, and I'm not much into self-promotion on the blog. There is a danger in not talking about myself--at a certain point I lose my humanity and become a thinking-head, a writing-automaton. It's posts like this that will hopefully keep me from becoming that. This is going to be more personal than most, and for that I do not apologize in the slightest.

This year marked my third mission trip/service trip/cultural immersion/whatever you want to call what we do with our high school youth each summer (personally I prefer service trip, generally, though this year was more of a cultural immersion). And this year was different than every other year--as it tends to be. Some parts were rough; some parts were great. We persevered and had what I would consider a great trip.

But the reason this trip meant more to me than years' past had little to do with what we actually did. It had far more to do with the relationships built over the course of three years, and (maybe more importantly) it had everything to do with the roller coaster ride I've been on professionally since Natalie was born. Things have been fine at home, but my time and energy has been sapped, and we have had a string of rather serious events in the life of our parish since I returned to the job in April. A change of secretary was tough, especially given the circumstances, then a spate of deaths, including a suicide of a man with a young family and a murder involving family of our congregation were tougher. Finally, in the last month we've lost a couple members who lived good long lives, but, frankly, they always made me happy to visit and, selfishly, I was very sad to see them go.

Almost like falling in love: On service and comfort

Scripture: 1 John 1:1-4

            I’m going to say something radical that you might not believe, but it’s my goal by the end of this sermon that you may not only say “OK, that’s kind of true.” I want more than that. I want this to change you, because it is that important.
            What I want to say is this: “Comfort is the enemy of the meaningful life.”

            OK, that might not be completely radical. You can probably see that there’s at least some truth in that. If you grew up playing sports (or if you play sports still) you know that your success in athletics has a lot to do with how well you the push the boundaries of your comfort in training. If you’ve ever been self-employed or started a business you know how vulnerable, and yet immensely purposeful and gratifying, that can be. If you’ve ever fallen in love you know how scary and uncomfortable that is.

            So, if comfort is our goal, it makes sense to avoid sports, challenging work, and relationships. 

            But for reasons of our own we choose the pain of training, the risk of investment, the possibility of unrequited love, and the messiness of failed relationships. The things that we value the most—the things we talk about around the dinner table—are the very things that are most difficult. Every great story we read—every heartwarming example we have—testifies that life is better when we are impassioned for what is good and true in the world. That is why we serve—it’s a reflection of God’s coming into the world—to serve, not to be served. “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” We spend a good deal of energy telling you about the good news that is the incarnation, but we are often confusing when it comes to what that good news actually looks like today. We are freed not to comfort but to servitude. Nothing shows this better than falling in love, and nothing  shows it better in the church than serving in uncomfortable places. The two actually go hand in hand. When we serve, we love.

Diet Doom and Gloom: The first commandment with a side of hope.

Scripture: Exodus 19:1-6, 20:1-3

            As the week was winding down, and I still hadn’t gotten to thinking about a sermon on the 1^st commandment, I had this realization: I really don’t need to preach because Martin Luther already explained the 1^st commandment in his small catechism. Maybe some of you even remember this: “You shall have no other Gods. What does this mean? We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Boom, end of sermon. Sure, it’s short but what more is there to add? Better still, this was a moderately cheery message for what can often seem like the doom and gloom of the law that we feel while reading the commandments. But then I figured, “Well, maybe a one line isn’t quite enough." So I went big (literally) and turned to the Large Catechism--that bastion of all things Lutheran that even pastors rarely crack open.

            And I started reading… and reading… and reading… and about four thousand words later I thought, “You know, maybe an hour long sermon isn’t a great idea either.” So, we’re going to have a sermon today that lasts somewhere between five seconds and an hour, which is kind of the trouble with the first commandment. On the one hand, it’s so clear that it hardly needs an explanation; on the other hand, it impacts basically everything we believe because it is the basis for our relationship with God. Have no other Gods before me. That’s pretty central to our faith.

Busy: The four-letter word for the church of the 21st century

Scripture: Philippians 1:1-18

            It was only a little over a week ago that we were finishing up our week-long Hunger Ride bicycle pilgrimage across northwestern Minnesota, but in that short time since I have had a good deal of time to reflect. Actually, the great thing about riding a bike for a good chunk of the day is that there is a lot of time to reflect even in the middle of it, and, time and again, the thing I took away from this ride was how much I needed to open my eyes to the world around me—to look beyond the surface of my narrow life and see the people who I mostly try to avoid. Open your eyes, I thought again and again.

            The same principle of opening our eyes applies to many different facets of life—how we read the Bible, for one. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with Philippians 1 today, because, you know, it’s Paul rambling on in introductory fashion and I didn’t expect to find anything earth-shattering in the introduction to a book. This scripture didn’t jive with what I felt called to talk about, and, honestly, my eyes glazed over every time I read it. I was failing at keeping my eyes open even as that was the message I wanted to share with you.

            Finally, as the week wore on I turned to a commentary on this Phillipians passage and I realized how naïve I was being. Paul was in prison when he wrote Philippians—it’s right there in verses 12-14, let me read it again because I missed it at first: “I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ; and most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear.” In the back of my mind I knew that Paul wrote some of his letters from prison cells all over Asia Minor, but again this was just background noise; it didn’t hit home until I read a bit about what those prisons looked like. Ancient prisons were essentially holes in the ground meant for short-term stays, which meant the guards did not bring food or water, and so, the prisoners were completely at the mercy of the local people to bring them something to eat and drink to keep them alive. Suddenly, my mind jumped to Jesus in Matthew 25, saying, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Mt 25:35-36). 
            And then I realized that I was set to preach on this passage from Philippians less than a week after an eye-opening experience about the pervasiveness of hunger and even still I did not see that this was written by a man thankful for meager rations in a time of need; a man completely dependent on the charity of neighbors, who were, by the way, helping out an unapologetic criminal. This goes beyond hunger; it condemns all of us who live in bubbles, unaware of the world around us. It condemned me when I self-righteously assumed I understood what Paul was saying without imagining where he sat writing these words.

Bike tour, church, and the collision of passion

            And we’re off! Well, almost. On May 8^th I’ll be heading to Turtle River, Minnesota and the start of a week-long bicycle ride across the NW Minnesota Synod of the ELCA to bring attention and raise money for hunger-related causes. It’s been quite the undertaking already. There was route planning and lodging and meals. Then there were the events along the way. We’ll be having concerts, a film screening in a local theater, a hunger simulation, programs on Indian Reservations and local schools, roundtables with local governmental and church leaders, a mini bike tour of Bemidji, visits to food shelves, and worship services all along the way.

            In short, this has been a lot of work even before turning over the first pedal. But it’s also been the best kind of work because it’s been people who are passionate, finding the intersection of things they believe in. In all, we’ve had around 100 people in on planning local events, and many more on the various moving parts of putting the whole picture together.

            For me, it is an important reminder that when we find things that we are passionate about the work doesn’t feel like work. I’ve seen that in the Cornerstone Food Pantry closer to home. The amount of hours that have gone into making that a success and the continuous resources that go into it are difficult to fathom, but it’s where peoples’ passions lie. Nobody complains because there is nothing they’d rather be doing.

            I wish we could be this passionate about everything else we do. It’s tough. I mean, nobody gets as excited for a church council meeting as we do for a bike tour meeting or a food pantry shift and I don’t expect that to be the case. But I wonder if what we do as church shouldn’t be feeding the same kinds of passions. This is no knock on people (least of all those who are already serving!); it’s a knock on the church’s ability to address the serious needs and desires of human beings.

Matching people to passions

These days I’m spending a lot of time working on a bike tour we’re calling “The Hunger Ride: Feeding People—Feeding Souls.” It will be a week-long trek across 225 miles of northwestern Minnesota on our way to Moorhead, raising money and awareness for hunger-related causes along the way. I bring this up here as more than mere advertisement, because what I’ve realized in the planning of this project has been fairly startling, and I think it applies to how we work as Christ’s body in the church.

As things have come together, I find myself marveling at all the people involved in this project—leadership groups, week-long riders, the synod hunger table, local business people, local cycling enthusiasts, food shelf directors, musicians, movie theater owners, pastors, and many, many church representatives—and I still can’t quite believe the groundswell of support we’ve had for a project that I at first considered ambitious but probably not all that practical. Now I see how wrong I was. All because we found people passionate about what we were doing and their passion meant we had to twist no arms, make no phone calls begging for support, and time and again when we got together with a group or an individual involved in the planning we found them better prepared than we would have dreamed. People have owned the project, and it’s been amazing to watch.

I don’t think there’s anything magical about a bike tour for world hunger. What makes it special is that it taps into things that people are already passionate about. It has given them an avenue to envision something greater and the particulars to make it happen. I contrast that with the way that we normally work together as a church and it’s night and day. Normally, we have a few menial tasks that we beg and plead people to do. Can you usher? Will you read a lesson? Will you count offering? Can you bring buns on Sunday? Will you serve on the council? It’s not like these are particularly hard jobs, but without a vision that people are passionate about they will always feel just like chores. Chores aren’t a bad thing, but without ownership of the larger picture they will feel menial and discourage further participation, and that’s where many people are in our churches today.

Fun things make Lutherans anxious: Miracles, enjoyment, and the purpose that holds it all together

 Scripture: John 2:1-11

            The wedding at Cana is something that Lutherans don’t much care for, because it is something that sounds potentially fun, and we are nothing if not deeply suspicious about anything that might be fun.

            I figured that was a nice, stereotypical half-truth to get your attention, so I’ll get back to that in a minute, but first I’m going to take a detour to confirmation class last Wednesday. Our discussion topic with the 9^th graders was miracles.
            I asked, "What is a miracle?" But I didn’t anticipate at all what they were going to say. Their answers were very interesting. They said a miracle is something “meaningful”; something with a “purpose” behind it; something “good.” I was expecting a definition of miracles that had something to do with impossibility—that they would say that miracles are things that cannot be explained or things that violate the laws of nature. But, whether they knew it or not, they actually saw through the question to the part that really matters. It’s not the possibility or impossibility of miracles that makes them significant but the meaning behind them. This gives me a good deal of hope, because when Jesus does something miraculous in John’s Gospel it is not called a miracle. Every healing and raising of the dead, every feeding or walking on water are just called “signs”—semeion is the word in Greek. They are events that point to something greater.

            A miracle is a thing with a purpose behind it, something meaningful, and good. It’s unlikelihood (or impossibility) is really only something that magnifies the meaning of it. What matters is the purpose.

"What are we looking for?" Turns out it's probably Jesus

Scripture: John 1:35-51

            Last week I spent some time on John’s use of questions, specifically the question “What is truth?” Today, we get another completely loaded question—this was kind of John’s thing—and that question is “What are you looking for?”

            Isn’t this a question we could ask any one of us? What are we looking for? We all have expectations about what we’re getting when we go to church. Maybe we come to be spiritually fed; maybe we come out of a sense of duty; maybe we come because our parents make us; and maybe we come because it’s 30 degrees below zero and it seems like a warm place to be. I suppose there are probably as many reasons why we come as there are people in the church. All of us are looking for something slightly different.

            But there are even more people not here—people who have other things happening on Sunday mornings, people with work, who have busy lives, people who want nothing to do with organized religion; or, on days like today, people who have a little more sense than most of you. What are they looking for?

Jeremiah 29:11 and the Challenge of Faith for the Twitter Generation

Scripture: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

            “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” I have to be careful whenever I say anything about this verse because my wife has it tattooed around her ankle, but she’s in Alexandria, so... here we go! She’s not alone in liking this either. Jeremiah 29:11 has been called the most popular biblical verse of my generation (I should probably explain at this point that I’m going to refer to my generation as the “millennial” generation because that’s become the cool thing to do; and I’m not sure yet if this is a compliment or a derogatory term, so for now I’ll go with it). Anyway, more than one stuffy commentator has noted with a kind of sweeping generalization that members of the millennial generation claim Jeremiah 29:11 as a personal motto because we are selfish and entitled, believing in a God who is out to serve us, and because, you know, we’re snotty kids who haven’t figured out what the real world is like. Basically, Jeremiah 29:11 has become the rallying point for theologians who want to paint a negative picture of America’s Christian youth.

            Like most stereotypes there’s a grain of truth in this. All of us pass the Bible through the lens of our own life experience. So, when a person’s life experience to this point covers only years in school, including perhaps bullying, struggling to find the right social group, discovering who you are against the backdrop of who others expect you to be, and never living up to the standards set by your parents, your friends, your church… in other words when life basically looks like forces outside of your control telling you what to do and be, it is awfully attractive to look for a promise that another force outside of your control has good plans for your life. If you want to understand why millennials love Jeremiah 29:11, you need to start by understanding what it means to be a teenager. Mostly, it’s rough.

Eli: A priest in need of the cross

Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-21

            There are worse fates in life than to be born a pastor’s kid, but then again there are many better fates, too. I’m not one—a pastor’s kid—but I’ve seen them firsthand, and since I’m kind of going to have one myself soon I’ve been thinking about this some lately. Pastor’s kids, by no fault of their own, are held to an entirely different standards from other children; this is true of police kids and teacher’s kids, too, to different degrees. Because of this, these kids either rise up to that standard to become good, but often sheltered, children; or they fail to rise up to that standard and go the other way, doing pretty much anything they can to distance themselves from that responsibility unfairly entrusted to them.

            This is not a new problem. Eli, the priest in today’s scripture, has two of the worst pastor’s kids you can imagine. The two of them were doing the B.C. equivalent of spray painting the sanctuary, smoking behind the bleachers, and stealing mom and dad’s car. They went the “other” way, and for it Eli and his family are cursed.

This is basically a parent’s worst nightmare.

We all find different things in life challenging: Moses' calling, our calling

Scripture: Exodus 4:10-17

            In Nadia Bolz-Weber’s new book, Pastrix, she tells a story of her time as a down-and-out alcoholic comic in Denver like this: “When I was working as a comic, normal noncomic people would often say, ‘Wow, I don’t know how you can get up in front of all those people with just a microphone.’ To which I would reply, ‘Wow, I don’t know how you can balance your checkbook and get up for work each day.’ We all find different things challenging in life. Speaking in front of hundreds of people was far less challenging for me than scheduling dental appointments.”

            We all find different things challenging in life. There’s a lot of wisdom in that short sentence. I can resonate with that quite a lot. It’s not that I don’t find this whole preaching thing a challenge some of the time, but compared to, I don’t know, tending a garden or changing oil or cooking dinner I’ll take preaching most any day. Some of you would prefer those things to preaching—I don’t know why. I’m clearly normal; all of you are clearly strange… or maybe we are all challenged by different things.

"For I know the plans I have for you"--Revelation, Jeremiah, and the telos of all things

Scripture: Revelation 22:8-21

            “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says God, “The first and the last, the arkhay and the telos.” Since I know all of you are experts in Ancient Greek I won’t spend too much time on this but, for my sake, let’s review exactly what that means. God is the Alpha and the Omega—already we’re using Greek terms here. The Greek alphabet runs from Alpha to Omega, like our A to Z. God is also the first and the last, and finally the beginning and the end—the arkhay and the telos. At first blush it seems like those words are just repetitive. If God is the first and the last then clearly God is also the beginning and the end. Silly Greek-speakers, English must just be a more efficient language.

            But actually the two words here—arkhay and telos—are far more interesting than that. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, into what is called the Septuagint, the first words in Genesis 1 were “En arkhay ayn ho logos.”[1] In the beginning was the word. About two thousand pages later, give or take whatever kind of Bible you’re reading, God is professed to be both in the beginning—the arkhay—and in the end—the telos. The word telos conveys both a final destination and a purpose. So, the telos of creation is not just the end of the world but its ultimate purpose as well. We have no word in English that can give us the same depth of meaning of telos, which is a shame because it means that our language does not allow us the same ability to see an end as definitively purposeful. It means it is hard for us to understand that God is not only the creator of the world, and God is not only the one who will bring about its end, but God is also the telos—the purpose and end for all life.

The Hero We Need, Not the Hero We Deserve: Jesus and the Dark Knight

Text: Luke 19:41-48

          One of the great things about reading the Bible in an orderly fashion, as we’ve been doing now for almost a year, is that you begin to see how stories connect in ways you may never have realized. For instance, you’re probably all pretty familiar with the Palm Sunday story. Jesus comes to Jerusalem, people wave palm branches and shout praises at him. That is the yearly ritual. It’s our intro-to-Holy-Week-Jesus-party. Everybody’s going to be there: Jesus, the donkey, some disciples, people waving Palm branches; it’s going to be a blast. However, I should warn you that since we’re reading more than just the Hosannas and the branches, this party might not turn out quite like you would want. You see, Jesus isn’t doing anything particularly royal in Jerusalem. He’s not making some nice gesture for his big supporters, and he’s not having a campaign fundraiser with $10,000 plates. Instead, Jesus is going to do what Jesus does. He foretells the destruction of Jerusalem (just wait about forty years) and then he heads over to the temple to throw some of the wealthy out. You can imagine, that was unexpected for the gathering throngs of supporters. His speech was heavy on the judgment and his actions didn’t seem to curry any favor with the wealthy elite. What kind of politician was this Jesus anyway?

Faith, science, academic cred, and other things keeping us from learning from one another

Occasionally, I touch on the dialogue, discussion, and debate surrounding science and faith, but that probably underscores how much time I spend thinking about it. It really is at the crux of what I enjoy reading and pondering on long, cold Minnesota days. This has come across in a couple of my posts in the last year--most notably on the subject of monarchs and the questions of how versus why and in a piece on the my confirmation students' polarization on the question of scripture and evolution--but I have written far more on other subjects during that time, and I suppose it's mostly because I have a hard time putting words to the problem. The language available to discuss the relationship between faith and science is narrow and generally unhelpful, so I continue to ponder how it is that we go on from here.

from http://www.universetoday.com/74724/where-are-stars-born/

However, there comes a point when one must say something in an attempt to approach some kind of more expansive truth. So this is my newest attempt, borne out of a confirmation discussion I will be having with our ninth-graders today. This is neither comprehensive nor final; it is only a drop in the ocean of a question that is many-layered and breeds more contempt between parties than is necessary or prudent. I still believe that people of faith and people of science need each other in this messed-up world--even if their respective philosophies do not. Here's why:

The Internet and the "Devil's Work" of Abstraction

Today I was reading from a collection of Wendell Berry's essays when I came across two paragraphs that left me both vindicated and convicted. What I read so perfectly applied to everything that I have lately been pondering as our little corner of northwestern Minnesota has seen the harvest ending and Thanksgiving looming. I should say that I felt the hypocrisy in this post from the very start, and so I promise to get to that before this is over. Firstly, however, I give you what I read: Wendell Berry on the characteristics of the failed hero of modern industrialism:

"This would-be heroism is guilty of two evils that are prerequisite to its very identity: hubris and abstraction. The industrial hero supposes that 'mine own mind hath saved me'--and moreover that it may save the world. Implicit in this is the assumption that one's mind is one's own, and that it may choose its own place in the order of things; one usurps divine authority, and thus, in classic style, becomes the author of results that one can neither foresee nor control. And because this mind is understood only as a cause, its primary works are necessarily abstract. We should remind ourselves that materialism in the sense of love of material things is not in itself an evil. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, God too loves material things; He invented them. The Devil's work is abstraction--not the love of material things, but the love of their quantities...It is not the lover of material things but the abstractionist who defends long-term damage for short-term gain, or who calculates the 'acceptability' of industrial damage to ecological or human health, or who counts dead bodies on the battlefield." (from "The Gift of Good Land," 1979)

Wendell Berry (image from Wikipedia)

If you skimmed the quote go back and read it again. Then stop for a minute and think about what he is saying and how in the last thirty-three years abstractionism has penetrated the very fibers of our lives. Many of us who have grown up with the internet as next-to-kin have lived in a world where "The Matrix" is not just a fascinating idea for a movie but part of the genesis of our digital lives. We don't just do Facebook or tweet to the realm of Twitter; we have online identities. We share our lives digitally to such an extent that many of us are more comfortable online than in day-to-day dealings with other human beings. I recognize this in myself from time to time--even if I abhor it.

Let me step back for a minute.

A couple of days ago I heard a comment from an atheist that the worst of all careers is a pastor, who, by definition, does not contribute anything to society. Anybody thinking of attending seminary, he suggested, should instead become a mechanic or a pilot or a nurse or an engineer. Of course, I think this person is wrong... and yet... there is a grain of truth in what he says. Many pastors end up in their own theological worlds and don't actually produce anything. For the last few days, therefore, I have been on my own personal hunt for the good I do on a day-to-day basis.

This morning I was preaching and offering communion at worship services at the nursing home in town when I was finally struck by the absurdity of that person's comment. Here I was offering something that was profoundly necessary for these elderly and enfeebled people--people who didn't care if I had a great sermon or a horrible one, people who didn't mind if I stuttered or spoke with clarity; all that mattered was that I was there. I had left the world of abstraction in my office, and I found myself in a place where presence is the only qualification for good work. My success in the nursing home is purely dependent on how present I am. And lest you think that is hardly a unique vocation, I ask: What is my purpose for visiting the elderly? It is theological and pastoral; it is part and parcel of the call. It is by no means the only things I do with others for the sake of the betterment of the world, but it is perhaps the simplest and most honest. A nurse can be a loving servant to the elderly (and believe me, they are!), but a pastor is still capable of bringing something unique that the nurse cannot--a purpose for their life that is bigger than the walls in which they are confined.

You see, that atheist commentator was right to the extent that it applies to Berry's insight; the Devil's work is abstraction. If my work were only to think thoughts about God then, yes, I would be doing nothing for the common good. If my thoughts weren't borne out in actions then my life would be meaningless. This could be leveled as an critique of academia--and, Lord knows, it has been!--but in truth the best professors are teachers who seek to impart what are often abstract ideas into the day-to-day material lives of their students. They are training their students for a physical world, and in-so-doing entering into it with them.

But now, I fear I must return to the place where I will prove myself a hypocrite. On the internet we are able to share ideas in real-time across wide reaches of the world, but the abstract often stays there. We argue endlessly about ideas; we treat our online world as if it is a product of our own making; we become online gods, smiting those who question our omniscience with a single mouse-click. All the while we find ourselves doing the Devil's work, feeding the insatiable monster of abstraction. This blog post could be just that.

But I hope not.

Instead, I have a different hope, but it will take your help to accomplish. I hope that you go out and do something; that you get off the internet and into the lives of people you love and people you don't yet know that you love. I hope that you treat the internet as a tool in the service of doing rather than a place where you can be. Just as C.S. Lewis reminds us that material things are not, in themselves, bad, so too is the internet a creation capable of being good, but it runs the acute risk of abstracting everything that gives our lives meaning and purpose. Don't let it do it. That is the Devil's work. And it can happen to pastors and students, politicians and business people. Our lives are not our own, so we had better start attending to what we are doing with them.

I'm off to visit our new food shelf. How about you?

The problem with "This is all part of God's plan"

Text: Exodus 3:1-12

"O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

I changed it up this week—the prayer, that is. This prayer, taken from the Evening Vespers service in the ELW, may as well have been Moses’ prayer. It’s also one of my favorites. The path before us is always only dimly lit. At my ordination last October, a professor mine preached on Psalm 119, which famously says “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” and he posited that the lamps that were around in the time of the Psalmist were really pretty weak things. We’re not talking 100 watt halogen bulbs; more like a candle wick only capable of penetrating a foot or two into the darkness.

That is the irony of the burning bush. Light imagery in the Bible so often has to do with knowledge of the future, and yet the burning bush offers only an end destination with no map to get there. It does not light Moses’ path; it just tells him the end result. God does not outline how Moses is going to deliver Israel from Egypt; he just tells Moses he needs him to do it.

If you’re a planner this would be a problem. Kate, my wife, would have a serious problem with these kinds of instructions. She’s a planner. She wants to know how things are going to go down to the finest detail. She needs to know dates, times, contact info; she makes packing lists, shopping lists, to-do lists, cleaning lists, cooking lists. I’m thinking Kate would not like to be summoned to a burning bush that tells her the end result without a map of how to get there. Come to think of it, I don’t think many of us would. Even I would have an issue with this call--and I am anything but a planner. But this is exactly how God calls us most of the time. We are not given all the information. We are not told how we should act or what we should do. All we are told is the end of the story. Whatever you believe is the simplest synthesis of the Christian faith—you are saved by grace through faith, or Christ has died for your sins, or love wins, or whatever answer you would give to that question—that promise gives direction to your life.  

And yet, none of those summations of our faith tell us exactly how to get there; they are at best partial blueprints of how to live right here, right now.

 Moses had no clue what to do. He wanted more information. So he asks for God’s name. It seems like an innocent request—the kind of thing we would like to know—on whose authority does this radical vision come? But the appeal for a name is hardly innocent. To know a name means to have a measure of control. Adam and Eve gain dominion over creation by giving names to all the creatures; now Moses is asking for God’s name not as a matter of clarification but in order to change the playing field. His request is sneaky, which makes God’s response all the more fantastic. My name? says God, “I AM WHO I AM.” In Hebrew: Yahweh, or even better (since the verb tense is not clear): “I will be who I will be."

God is going to be exactly who God will be, and we can do little to change that. God was going to make certain the people of Israel were led out of Egypt no matter Moses’ resistance. For us, God is bringing about salvation regardless of our petty wants and desires. It sounds strange to say it, but God isn’t so interested in the details. At the very least, the details aren’t the point of the story.

We don’t get this. I know, because just about every time something tragic happens I hear the same hollow words. I’m sure you have heard it too. I heard it again this week when a friend of a friend was tragically and senselessly killed. It seems like every time something like this happens somebody—well-meaning and good-hearted as they may be—says the magic words: “This is all part of God’s plan.” I understand the sentiment. We want to be able to say something helpful in a time of helplessness. We want to believe that nothing bad ever happens without a “good” to follow. We long for justice in cases that simply seem unjust, and since we believe in a just God it only follows that this must be part of some divine architecture for the universe. It's just that neither scripture nor experience show us a God who works like that.

Sometimes awful things just happen.

That’s not to say there is not justice for the hurt, joy for the sorrowed, and peace that surpasses the loss we experience in this life. There is. But it’s at the end of the story and not in the middle. God does have a plan but, as with Israel captive in Egypt, it is not the kind of plan that seeks to justify tragic loss as if it being part of God's will makes it better. That should be good news. It frees us from justifying every evil in the world as part of God’s plan; it frees us from defending God whenever anybody experiences loss; it frees us to get about the business of life in a complicated world and to stand alongside those who hurt without feeling the need to give a half-hearted reason for it all. God doesn’t give anybody cancer, but God is redeeming the cancer-sufferer. God does not take the lives of children because heaven needs another angel, but God does give to children the kingdom of God. God does not cause hurt, but God is with us in our suffering.

You see, the burning bush tells us that God does have a plan for us, but it is always bigger than we can figure. Sometimes it doesn’t involve us at all. Moses, for all the work he does in leading the people out of Egypt, never sees the Promised Land. Many of us will never see the fruits of our labor. To the world our lives will look like abject failures. For most of us, nobody is going to write a history of our lives; nobody is going to carve our faces on a mountain.

But, you know, that’s OK.

Our lives are not meant to be remembered. Our lives are meant to discover God, and to know God is not to ask God’s name; to know God is not to have your life planned out ahead of you like a carefully delineated trail map. To know God is to live every day of your life as if you might learn something about God. To know God is to ask yourself how God desires you to work, or how God might wish you to treat your family and friends; and to wonder how God impacts every decision of your lives not because God planned out all those instances and knows what you are going to do but because our lives are more sacred--and just better--with God in them.

Too often we dwell on who God is, what God is, and what we can say about God with certainty. When we find ourselves in that rut we stand like Moses before the burning bush asking, cleverly and all too ignorantly, “God, what is your name?”

I will be what I will be.

Take that, Moses. Take that, preachers and teachers who tell you who and what God is. Take that, books, magazine articles and TV shows debunking the divine. Take that, Confirmation and Sunday School classes. As a teacher of mine once said, “How do you like them apples, Moses?”

I do not know how God is impacting your life. I can’t tell you. All I can hope is that you’re open to seeing it. We believe in one God, and that God is much bigger than our declarations. We believe in one true faith, but that faith is lived by individuals through eyes that see the world in vastly different ways.

The important matter is not who God is but whether we are going to allow God to make any difference in our lives. What is God calling you to be? What is God calling you to do? I don’t care if it’s the voice of a bush lit with fire or quiet deliberations that you feel in your heart. The only way to discover what God would have you be is to live as if the God of the universe is with you now.

Thankfully, God is who God is. He will be what he will be. And he is here with you now and every moment of your lives.

Thanks be to God.