How I "won" a triathlon... and then didn't

Now, firstly I have big news: Kate is pregnant. I feel like I’m obligated to say that before writing anything else because it is, well, big news. But since I’ve also known about it for awhile it’s breaking news to you and not so much to me, so you’ll have to excuse me for writing about something other than my unbridled joy at becoming a father. Don’t get me wrong, we’re excited. I just have other things happening, too!

Add to that the awesome day of youth activities we had in church today, culminating with three baptisms, and things are just awesome (that's double the awesome, y'all!). Today's service is the happy reason I am not posting a sermon this week (because our youth talked, which is frankly better for all of us anyway). So that, too, was exceptional and at some point I’ll probably write more.

But if you clicked on this post because it said “triathlon” all of that is neither here nor there. So, onward!

My "old man" face. Patented.

Babylon and the importance of community in the digital age

Scripture: Revelation 18:1-3, 21-24

    One of the most frequently used metaphors in the Bible for the kingdom of God is the “city on a hill.” The city on a hill metaphor resonated with people in the Middle East because it recalled the city of Jerusalem, which was built upon a hill, and the “New Jerusalem” which the book of Revelation tells us will be the centerpiece of the reign of God on earth. But to understand why Jerusalem matters so much requires going beyond the important events that happened there. Of course Jerusalem is an incredibly important historical city because of the temple and Jesus’ triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, the crucifixion and the resurrection, but this vision of the city on a hill looks well beyond the past into a future that is bigger than geography and history. The New Jerusalem is a place where God promises to build a community open on all sides where all peoples will worship as one. It is a city on a hill in the sense that it is both a vision of a future and a reality just out of our reach.

    But if we’re honest with ourselves this is a really tough metaphor for us to get, and it’s not only because Hallock, Minnesota looks nothing like Jerusalem. Part of the trouble stems from the strange idea of what a “city of God” will look like. Not everybody likes the idea of a “city” to begin with because of the crushing congestion, the politics and the sheer overwhelming speed of life, so the idea of the zenith of creation culminating with God creating one big city may not exactly be our preferred vision of the afterlife. And that’s OK, because the New Jerusalem—and everything it represents—could just as easily be called a community.

The Bible: Absolute or Conceptual... or can both be faithful?

First off, I should probably begin by saying this will be nowhere near comprehensive. For a comprehensive reading on the topic of the Bible start with reading the actual thing (crazy, I know) and then move on to everything that has been written about it in the last 2000 years. That should tide you through lunchtime.

The astounding thing I suppose is that Christians still haven't got this whole Bible thing figured out, or at the very least we absolutely do not agree on it. Take this tweet:

Now, let me begin by saying I love that Rachel Held Evans retweeted this without comment. She just put it out there for us to decide. Evans has been in the news lately because of a piece she did for CNN on "Why millenials are leaving the church." Check out the article. It was good, if not exactly earth-shattering. What has been more interesting has been the response: Mainline Protestants hypocritically tooting their horns at the evangelical exodus from the church, others who have engaged Evans' speculation thoughtfully and on point, and then things like the above from within evangelical circles calling out Evans for being unbiblical--or something to that effect.

The end of the world and fleeing from death: The one with Will Smith fighting aliens, Voldemort and angels pouring out bowls of wrath

Scripture: Revelation 15:1-8

In this summer of reading through Revelation, I would be remiss if I didn’t take one Sunday to talk about the end of the world. And not just new creation, which we’ll get to by the end of the book, but the actual end of the world—you know, the Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Pullman fighting off aliens kind of end of the world, or the Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on an asteroid kind of end of the world. Hollywood gets these visions of the end of the world, but probably already many of you have no idea what I’m talking about, so… back to Revelation!

The book of Revelation gives us several visions of the end of the world—in fact, it probably offers too many visions to give us an accurate, unified impression of it—but there are some general themes. Firstly, there are going to be some disastrous events. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise, because whether it’s global warming, nuclear winter, meteors, aliens or angels pouring out bowls of wrath, most ways that we imagine Armageddon are not very pleasant. Secondly, these disastrous events are going to unfold in quick succession. Again, this is something Hollywood has figured out for us. Every movie about the end of the world seems to take place within a matter of days from start to finish.

And lastly, this whole end of the world business? We aren’t going to like it.

In Hallock, this is home

I was a little stressed this week. OK, actually a lot. And I couldn't put my finger on it. I assumed it was something to do with returning from a mission trip and trying to catch up on sleep--I'm sure that was part of it. I assumed it also had something to do with catching up on work and the return of general monotony to the routine--that was surely part of it, too. Then, I assumed it was that I had reached my limit of extroversion in the past week--yep, that too. But I think none of those were actually the main reason for my stress.

Yesterday, Kate and I finished painting our living room--finally! As we put things back into place I could absolutely feel the stress lifting from my life. It was weird. There's no reason why the location of furniture should be such a big deal, except IT WAS. I could not focus, could not rest, could not let go of things, until things were as they should be--until, in short, I had a place to call home.

Coming back from Idaho is always a maudlin experience for me. Home is Golden Valley, Minnesota, and home is now Hallock, Minnesota, but home is also the ponderosa pines of northern Idaho, the banks of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and the shores of Shoshone Creek. Of course, it was wildly appropriate and completely random that I was reading Bill Bryson's At Home over the course of the week I was there. Home is weird; it's the intersection of a place and feelings and people and all sorts of things that are harder to put our fingers on. Going off to Idaho reminded me of home out there, but it also strengthened my ties to Hallock back here. It's weird. And beautiful. And I don't get it.

Mission trips and mission at home

Scripture: Revelation 12

            When we think about the Devil and the nature of evil—if we ever do think about these things—we tend to think about terrible temptations, murder and violence, utter depravity and the like. It’s easy for us to see evil at work in big forces outside of our control—things like terrorism and addiction. The nightly news is draped with images of sin and the power of the Devil, but we should certainly remember that these are not the only images of evil in our lives.

            On the bus ride home from our youth’s mission trip in Idaho a couple nights ago I asked a couple of our young people what I should preach on—because, honestly, I didn’t have much clue. What ensued was twenty minutes of deciding how to re-create a heavenly battle scene for all of you complete with fiery swords and flying angels and evil dragons. They had picked out characters and everything. It was a lot of fun, but I decided—perhaps wisely, perhaps foolheartedly—to not act out a heavenly battle on the altar. The youth were understandably disappointed. But that is what this is about, isn’t it? This is the only scene in the traditions of Christianity or Judaism where there is actually a battle in heaven. It is the ultimate, epic, Spielberg-esque prequel to our lives on this planet. Satan, that great deceiver, is defeated dramatically and cast to this earth where he meets first Jesus, against whom his power is useless, and so he is forced to focus on Adam and Eve, forever changing the history of humankind.

            This dragon story is virtually identical to a myth in the Greek tradition about the god, Apollo. Ancient readers would have picked up that John was adapting the Apollo story and using it to point to Jesus. In so doing, the real effect of the dragon and the angels is that it gives an explanation to one of the most troubling effects of life on this earth: it tells us to origins of evil.

            I suppose that upon descending to earth the Devil could have begun to wage a violent war on human beings, but it’s telling that he doesn’t. Instead, the Devil does something far more effective: he whispers in the ears the most tempting of ideas and, slowly, things begin to unravel. The Devil is more interested in silence than a bang. See, there was no headway to be had with Jesus. Satan seemed like an unstoppable force when he landed upon the earth but in Jesus he met something fundamentally good that he could not touch. So he had to settle for the rest of us, causing the earth to quake, famine and war, visible signs of brokenness, and far more.

The Tour and the Church

The following is an article for the Kittson County Enterprise, July 10 edition.

I love the Tour de France. I realize it’s a completely niche sport that not everybody can get into—and that’s fine—but I find it absolutely fascinating. I also remember the first time I watched a cycling race. Honestly, I had no idea what was going on. There were riders out front called the breakaway, something called a peloton (a large group of riders) and the commentators were talking about stages and the general classification and all sorts of things that didn’t make a lot of sense. Then they mentioned the teams. How, I wondered, can a team possibly help one of their riders? It’s not like they could push one another. Was it just moral support? I was lost.

I suspect this is something like what it is to walk into a church for the first time. Most people who grow up attending a particular denomination have an idea of the traditions, customs and signs of worship within that church, but this makes it hard to remember that there are many people outside that church that have no idea why you do things the way you do. Just because they are not part of the in-crowd does not make them inferior or any less valuable in God’s eyes. It’s a dangerous practice for a church to assert their superiority over those on the outside—in fact, I can imagine few ways to be less Christian!