Mako Fujimura @ Duke Divinity School

NT Wright/Andy Crouch/Rob Bell at Duke Divinity School

Here's the agenda:


Friday, Oct 8 | 3:30-5
Goodson Chapel


Revelation and Christian Hope: Political Implications of the Revelation to John
(with C. Kavin Rowe)


Monday, Oct 11 | 11-12:30; 2-3
Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:

Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Tuesday, Oct 12 | 9-10:30

Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:

Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Tuesday, Oct 12 | 2-3:15

Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:

Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Hickman Lecture

review: Megafaun/Fight the Big Bull/Sharon van Etten/Justin Vernon live @ Hayti Heritage Center

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 27, 2010.

We settled into the back pew of Saint Joseph’s AME Zion on a Friday night quite aware that we were in what used to be used as explicitly sacred space.  What I’m not sure we immediately realized, but understood soon enough was that we were there for some sort of revival.

Walking into an empty sanctuary, my eyes sweepingly moved from the elaborate crown molding and ceiling installation to the old balcony hanging close and low enough for the preacher to receive some of the overflow: either rote, fanned air or spontaneous, dripping Hallelujahs! They panned down to the anachronistic contraptions cluttering the stage and the wires pouring into each and every of the 46 channels of the house soundboard.  Then they wandered around what, on this occasion, is  a congregation made up of hipsters, no more or less distracting than the usual Sunday gang, though with get-up constituted of rimmed glasses, beards, and half-sleeve tats rather than pin-striped suits and ornate hats.  An odd “Who’s Who.” Notably, but not exhaustively, filled with Mountain Goats and Rosebuds.  A vast array of the NC Triangle’s best, looking oddly out of place, not because of the ecclesial surroundings, but rather because of their bizarre idleness.  A Friday-night sabbatical.

Finally, hosts/cogs/chief kids-in-the-candy-store, members of avante-folk group Megafaun, took the stage to an anticipatory applause and then sheer, holy silence.  The intro song was a fitting tone-setter for the night.  Armed with a washboard and empty hands made for clapping, the Cook brothers and Joe Westerlund interpreted the old Green Sally Up for new ears.  That was to be a theme for the night: interpretation.  Alluded to and matched only by the other pervading theme: collaboration.  Mumbling, self-deprecating, and assuredly sober, de facto emcee Brad Cook mentioned of the set of songs taken from the box set of Americana standards and obscurities compiled by Alan Lomax, “We found these songs together.  We want to share them with you together.  Here’s how we interpret them.”

As the night wound on, the backing band, Fight The Big Bull, from Richmond VA, not only textured what the Cooks had in mind, but created an entirely new world.  And praise the Lord that they did, because this realm featured some truly special moments and characters.  We saw Bon Iver front man, Justin Vernon (just “Vern” that night…) transfigured before our eyes: from brooding cabin-fevered freak-folker to bolo-tied, Most-Reverend-Al-Green, tambourine man in numbers like Calvary and I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.  We witnessed guest Sharon Van Etten offering her sweetly eerie take on the onomatopoetic nursery rhymes of Almeda Riddle, reminiscent of Natalie Merchant's handling of Woody Guthrie’s set on the Mermaid Avenue discs.  She pulled and tugged at her black slip dress until the bawdy Coll Water Blues slid throughout the late summer evening.  The two combined for a Book of Revelation recounting in Tribulations that yowled truthful tales of dragons and blood baths in a familiar David Rawlings/Gillian Welch idiom.

The climax of the night was one the cool crowd seemed not ready or fully equipped to embrace.  What grew to a critical mass of thirteen musicians on stage at one time lead the “congregation” in shape-note singing and evoked claps, stomps, hallelujahs, and aisle-dancing.  Between the band’s extensive brass section, lead by a spectacular muted-trumpet and the singular percussive madness of Westerlund’s seemingly bottomless box of noisemaking accoutrements, unwarned, Mardi Gras (or maybe Pentecost) fell upon Durham, North Carolina.

But, just when our tongues were loosed, it was over.  They were gone.  Or so it seemed, until a last-gasp encore yielded a choired reprise of another group of “Northerners attempting a song about the South”: Robbie Robertson’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

Though, perhaps the most touching moments of the night weren’t the ethereal or transportive performance moments (which were bestowed in spades), but rather the also abundant, candidly earnest glances and smirks between the players; telling in their incredulity and unadulterated joy.  They spoke of a certain danger (“is this happening?”), but more so of surging delight (“this is really happening!”).

I am thankful to have taken all of this in: the sacred intimacy furnished by the hardwood pews to the blessed verity of the sounds that swept through the aisles and filtered up to the balcony.

jamming: Megafaun, Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, & Fight the Big Bull live @ Hayti Heritage Center

As part of Duke Performances' Sanctified series, these acts will perform shape note tunes over 3 nights this weekend at Hayti (formerly known as St. Joseph's AME Church) in Durham.  Rach and I are going out Friday night.  If you can get a hold of a ticket, especially a $5 Duke ticket, I'd try to be there.

Megafaun Daytrotter Session.

Bon Iver Daytrotter Session.

SVE Daytrotter Session.

jamming: Luego/Brett Harris live @ Forever Duke Block Party

worlds collide for me: work. school. friends. church. rock.

processing: Summer 2010 Reading (I)

For The Beauty of the Church

Ed. David Taylor

Since meeting a popular songwriter we hosted in college and being told to check out Steve Turner's Imagine, I've maintained a detached interest in the merger of theology and the arts.  As my theological mind has expanded, so too has my appetite for this intersection.  Duke's (by way of Austin, TX) David Taylor writes and edits this wonderful volume replete with talented and interesting authors and a panoply of perspectives.  Besides Peterson, who can hardly do wrong by me, I was surprised, edified and provoked by John Witvliet Worship piece (I look forward to thinking about original songwriting & worship with some amazing songwriters in our community) and especially Jeremy Begbie's musing on Art and Eschatology.  I highly recommend this to anyone who's ever even considered the role of art in the life of the Church.

Practice Resurrection

Eugene Peterson

The capstone to his prolific Spiritual Theology series, Peterson embarks on a thorough and serious treatment of growing up, being the Church, and living in terms of the resurrection existence Christ inaugurated, as articulated by the letter to the Ephesians.  I really appreciated how constructive this work was.  While providing harsh and prophetic criticism towards the failed and unfaithful ways we North American Christians attempt to build, progress, and grow, the tone and timbre of the whole matches the exciting, creative, and counterintuitive character of the great biblical letter it explicates.

Resident Aliens

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon

About halfway through this book I really began to resent whoever chose our entrance reading requirements a couple years ago for Duke.  While Dean Well's Power and Passion was somewhat helpful, I can't really think of something else that could provide such a succinct and challenging primer to how things are thought and done at Duke than Prof. Hauerwas' and Bishop Willimon's landmark book.  I might have spoken louder, earlier, and more often in some precepts had I tackled this one prior to the summer before my final two semesters.  Spanning ecclesial ethics, the dangers of no-holds-barred modernism, and introing a Yoderian, post-Constantinian vision, these two master communicators also realize the importance of both eschatology and worship for the life of the Church in the world.  This work begs to be engaged with and achieves the provocation the cover advertises.

The Prodigal God

Tim Keller

I was really excited to dig into this one.  The final parable in the Luke 15 series has always been one of my favorites to read, preach, and re-evaluate.  This fall at Gathering Church, we're looking to focus on Keller's take.  His dealing stuck me as a bit unique, devoting a lot of space to the consideration of the older brother in the story (and going on to portray Jesus as True Elder Brother), going as far as to interpret him as but one of a couple of Lost Sons in the story.  I liked the accessibility and intrigue created by this.  It seems it will be a great entry point for those without a ton of study and small group experience as well as those, who know the story well.  It also made me go back to last summer's read: Volf's Exclusion and Embrace, to re-visit his brilliant exegesis of the characters within this keystone parable.  One main gripe I have is the  over-villianization of the Pharisee character in the story.  While I don't deny the teeth the the story has towards that crowd, the NPP-reader and Mel Gibson critic in me cringes at the careless portrayal of Jews as the epitome of flagrant unfaith.  All this said, I'll return back to Prodigal God (no spoiler alert: prodigal means extravagant, excessive) quite a bit more as a resource.

Deep Church

Jim Belcher
Anyone looking for some sort of positive assessment of the messy tangle encountering evangelical(-ish) church-life to come, should pick this one up.  Belcher offers an accessible and erudite survey of the landscape and painstakingly critiques and offers a way forward (which he, following CS Lewis coins the deep church).  This "third way," for him, is rarely a synthesis of the other two poles, though Belcher possesses all the charity, skill, and machinery to form such syntheses.  Belcher instead looks and, more often than not, finds a true new way.  This way of Orthodoxy and Engagement, truth and warmth, set-apartness and engagement must be the way forward and the type of leaders needed for such a grand endeavor must be committed to ecumenism, creativity, and generosity.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It accurately mapped and widely conversed un order to generate a gravitational vision around the Triune God in community.  Well done.

preaching: Re-imagining the E-Word: Confession, Cost, & Community (Ps 32)

Here is the final installment of preaching class preaching.  We were given an assortment of Lectionary passages for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time.  I chose to re-evaluate Evangelism in light of David's maskil of Psalm 32.  Let me know what you think.

 

  Re-imagining the E-Word: Confession, Cost, & Community by cebreslin

Ethics & Baseball.

As far as I can tell, Sam Wells' schema translates over to baseball as such:

Universal Ethics.

I don't even think I need to define who "we" is to go ahead and say, "We all hate the yankees."  These guys represent everything that's wrong with the MLB.  Big money, no empathy for the little guy, no creativity or theo-athletic imagination.  These guys are definately about decisions and not people, particularly in the off-season and around trade deadlines.

Subversive Ethics.

Bent on stickin' it to the Man (the Man's name is George Steinbrenner).  Billy Beane is the Gustavo Gutiérrez of beisbol.  Joe Morgan brings his categorical imperative to every AL West game he broadcasts.  Supreme Billy-Ball hater.  You really wanna root for them, but they don't do you any favors not having made the playoffs since 2006, trading anyone and everyone who could help them, and playing in the Pacific time zone.

Ecclesial Ethics.

Likable underdog.  Well-loved around the hallowed halls of DDS.  In some ways doomed to failure, but relying on some sense of eschatological divine justice.  Hauerwas, shockingly a Cubbie fan, once even likened cheering for the boys from the North Side to pacifism, "This commitment [becoming a Cubs fan] came at the same time I was convinced by John Howard Yoder that I had to become a pacifist.  I like to think being a Cubs fan and being a pacifist are closely linked- namely, both commitments teach you that life is not about winning."  God indeed has given them everything they need, except a pennant.

Sympathy for the Devils

I must first disclaim that I am a Duke graduate student.  I was a bit excited about this past Monday’s victory.  

I enjoy the buzz.  The excitement.  The idea that I am, in some small way part of something big, special, victorious.

I didn’t grow up a Duke fan, but was sort of grafted in, if you will.  I didn’t go to Indy for the game.  I didn’t even go to Cameron to watch with the blue huddled masses.  I watched at my house, with some friends.  These friends, by and large, were (temporary) Butler supporters (aka Carolina fans).

How quickly have I forgotten my black and white Floridian upbringing: Seminoles=Good, Gators=BAD.  

Now, in a new place, with new people I couldn’t understand the static between these two Triangle rivals.  My thinking went, “Well, UNC’s out, might as well ‘root for the home team/ACC team/etc’?!”  I forgot how absurd this is for ardent sports fans, myself included, how rooting for one team necessarily excludes the other.  But also how great it feels when your rival complements you or roots you on, despite your history.

But I’ve seen exceptions to the hard-and-fast fandom: a through-and-through Tarheel admitting some respect for Coach K when he pulled the starters early in a blowout.  Even Mark recognizes the intensity, coaching, and teamwork of an under-talented champion. I have no illusions that Carolina will stop referring to my school as Dook, or that Duke will put away their GTHC cheers.  But, I have seen a bit of civility, a bit of reason.  Perhaps even a bit of identification, sympathy, and admiration.

Perhaps, it’s a bit of a stretch, but these are the makings of reconciliation (see 2 Corinthians 5).  Getting your boast under control and having our opinions about others crucified and resurrected.  Then been free to start afresh, to unmask the silly divisions.  Admitting that someone else has done a good job, that they’re worthy, that your former frustration might have been a bit of jealousy, but now can be channeled into sincere, positive words.  This kind of interaction causes us to look at our selves, at the other person/team/group…, and back at ourselves.  When that happens we end up a bit disoriented, a bit confused at why we were so convinced at our difference in the first place.

Sure Duke’s team may be filled with obnoxious little scrappers and Carolina might be a bunch of NBA-bound thoroughbreds, none of that will change anytime soon.  But each side is fooling itself if they think they’re all that different.  They are both excellent.  They each have their strong suits and weaknesses (this year the scales were a bit tilted).  Even in UNC’s down-year, Duke can learn some things from that program: particularly how to win, then not meet up to high expectations, and then how to rebound (I’m sure Harrison Barnes will be helpful at writing this chapter).  And perhaps even in the midst of their worst recent season, Carolina can admire, learn from, or at least respect Duke’s program and season.

Who have you convinced yourself is unlikeable, too different to even bother having your mind changed?  

What weaknesses in yourself cause you to resent others?  

What strengths in others are you jealous of?  

When have you been surprised at someone else’s joy at your joy?

What boasts do you hold onto, even when they are dying or dead?

Visit original post at allgather.org.

Johnny Cash: The Revelator

Resources for presentation given in Dr. Hays' Revelation Exegesis class.

Download the Powerpoint.

Download the Handout.

When The Man Comes Around J.R. Cash  (American/Lost Highway/Columbia 2002) Spoken: And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." And I saw. And behold, a white horse.  There's a man goin' 'round takin' names. An' he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reaching down. When the man comes around.  The hairs on your arm will stand up. At the terror in each sip and in each sup. For you partake of that last offered cup, Or disappear into the potter's ground. When the man comes around.  Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers. One hundred million angels singin'. Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum. Voices callin', voices cryin'. Some are born an' some are dyin'. It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.  And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree. The virgins are all trimming their wicks. The whirlwind is in the thorn tree. It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.  Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom. Then the father hen will call his chickens home. The wise men will bow down before the throne. And at his feet they'll cast their golden crown. When the man comes around.  Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still. Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still. Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still. Listen to the words long written down, When the man comes around.  In measured hundred-weight and penny-pound. When the man comes around.  Spoken: And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts, And I looked and behold: a pale horse. And his name, that sat on him, was Death. And Hell followed with him.

Revelation 6:1-2a “There's a man going 'round taking names (taking names)/He's been taking my fathers name/an' he left my heart in vain/there's a man going 'round taking names” (Leadbelly) Gen 28:12 Jn 1:51 Mt 27:7 Also: Mt 27:9; Jer 19 Mt 24:31 Also: Rev 1:10; 4:1; 8:13 Rev 1:8, 21:6, 22:13 Job 38-40 Mt 25:1-13 Paul’s conversion in Acts 26 Rev 22:11 Rev 16:16 Lk 13:34 Rev 4:10/Rev 7:15/Mt 2:7-12 Rev 4:10 Rev 6:6 Revelation 6:6a, 8

Johnny Cash Playlist

Further Listening: 

American Recordings (I-VI)

Unearthed (Box Set)

Personal File

My Mother’s Hymn Book

Live from Folsom Prison

Further Reading:

Johnny Cash, Man In White (Thomas Nelson, 2008).

Johnny Cash, Cash: The Autobiography (HarperOne, 2003).

Antonino D’Ambrosio, A Heartbeat & A Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (Nation Books, 2009).

Leigh H. Edwards, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Indiana University Press, 2009).

Michael Streissguth, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Da Capo Press, 2005).

Steve Turner, The Man Called Cash (Thomas Nelson, 2005).

Dave Urbanski, The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash (Relevant Books, 2003).

Further Viewing:

Gospel Road (1973)

Walk the Line (2005)

The Johnny Cash Show: 1969-1971 (2007)

screening: Spoken Word, Preaching Visuals, & Prophetic Jesterdom

Topics from today's preaching class:

Spoken word poetry as embodying and unleashing the Word.

Anis Mojgani performs Shake the Dust at HEAVY AND LIGHT. from To Write Love on Her Arms. on Vimeo.

Using visual media to deliver and enhance the message.

Lump (Rob Bell - Nooma)

Using humor/satire/fable as a subversive, prophetic, surprising alternative.

mewithoutYou - The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie from David Bell on Vimeo.

preaching: The Shape & Sound of Resurrection (Mal 4)

Here is my second sermon for preaching class.  My first sermon started Lent, this one concludes Lent and anticipates Easter.  I went for it a little by using music (the Welcome Wagon's rendition of the preaching text).  I also tried to improve my delivery, there's still much work to be done.  I had fun with this one.  Let me know what worked and what can be improved, I'd love feedback...

The Shape & Sound of Resurrection (Mal 4) by cebreslin

Congrats Duke!

Kinda cool that Rach and I are now tied for Grad School B-ball victories during or post-graduation.  Great season and a great finale!  Butler was worthy and scrappy.  Had my mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial all not gone into this school over the past two and next one years, I probably would have been going for them.

Rach's first game in Cameron this year:

rach's first game in cameron from chris breslin on Vimeo.

Now on to the pep ralley, class, and working to defend our Campus Intramural Softball Crown!

"Forgiveness is the Final Form of Love."

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." -Reinhold Niebuhr

About this time of the year last year I went and watched a film about forgiveness (actually in the same room that we’ll remember Christ’s sacrifice and forgiveness next week!).  As We Forgive is all about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide that took place, ironically enough, during Holy Week in 1994.

If you’re unfamiliar with the history of this recent atrocity- neighborhoods, churches, communities, and, in some cases, families were ripped apart by mass-scale bloodshed.  The film focuses on putting the pieces back together.  Forgiving (but, certainly not forgetting).  Moving on.  Together.

Perhaps the strongest part of this film was its concreteness. It’s easy to get hypothetical about this sort of thing.  We tend to boil these topics down to some far-fetched example where it eventually seems fair not to forgive.  (“If my spouse ______, there’s no way I could ever forgive him/her.”)  In a lot of ways, that seems to be a cop-out.  If we imagine a situation, where forgiving is unimaginable, then all of the sudden its okay for us not to forgive something petty.  What if, as Christians, we lived as if forgiveness was not only imaginable, not only possible, but normal?

By normal, I don’t mean average or easy.  Everyone knows what a crazy thing it is to forgive.  Everyone knows what it feels like to be wronged.  By normal, I mean our default.  What we do.  How we live.  Together.

How is this possible?  Where does this vision come from?

It has to be God.  It has to be how He treats us.  It must be how Jesus teaches and practices this radical forgiveness.  We’re in bad shape trying to come up with this kind of thing on our own.  We’ve learned (and taught) plenty of ways to get around forgiving others, even when we claim God’s forgiveness for ourselves.  The movie portrayed this.  It showed folks sitting down with the people who killed their loved ones and finding a way to live together.  It showed the God-kind of forgiveness.  The kind of living that is both free and costly. 

Free, because we’ve already been infinitely outspent.  Costly, because it requires us to lay down our pride, cop-outs, and hypotheticals and deal with the messiness of hurt and healing.

I pray that as we remember God’s forgiveness through Christ’s faithfulness, we consider places in our lives that need forgiving and people who we need to forgive.  Prepare us, Lord, for the cost of this forgiveness.  We thank you for your free forgiveness that we live in.  Amen.

Original Post at allgather.org.

Confession: of Light, Mirrors, Basins & Towels

We want our confessions to take place in the dark.

We want dark confessional booths with screens between us and our confessor, whether that confessor is our God, our priest, our friends, our spouse, or ourselves.  We want anonymity.  We want our faces to be digitally obscured and our voices to be scrambled.  And then, only then, might we freely confess our shortcomings, sins, failures, and regrets.

This doesn’t fit well with the image of walking in light and fellowship with one another found in 1 John 1.  The picture we get there is not solitary and dark, but rather communal and light.  Transparent and open.  Free and unbound.

I recently had the opportunity to bodily engage with and reflect upon this kind of confession.  This past month, there has been an art exhibit up in Durham, fittingly titled The Confessional.  The artist (Carole Baker) was inspired by the story of the woman caught in adultery and facing execution (John 8).  When Jesus encounters the woman and her accusers he disarms the situation by causing everyone present to reflect on their own sin.

There is no longer an accused and accuser.  There is no longer condemnation and judgment, but rather truth and mercy.  The dark/light divide has been broken down and Jesus has shed light on the whole scene.

The exhibit features a cumbersome, room-sized wooden crate.  Stepping inside this “confessional booth,” you are surprised.  Rather than darkness and privacy there are mirror-lined walls, a pile of stones, and the unavoidable scripture text, “Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone," (Jn 8:7).  Immediately you are forced to look yourself in the eyes.  You see yourself from many angles.  There are no shadows or corners where you can hide.  It may sound creepy, but it became soothing.  Cathartic.  Sure there was a moment of startled unease, seeing yourself, again and again, with all your frowns and blemishes.  But then there was a freedom, a comfort, and a curiosity.

The next phase of the exhibit was a sparse room with white walls.  The only items in the room were a chair, a pitcher, a basin, and a towel.  After confronting myself in the mirrored room, I was very convinced that the chair was not for me.  

The towel, pitcher, and basin were.  

Only by confronting and confessing my selfishness, am I able to embrace my identity as a servant.

I pray that we, as a community, recognize confession as a practice where we can move from darkness to light, loneliness to fellowship, and selfishness to service.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

(1 John 1:7)

Visit the original post at allgather.org.

preaching: To Be A Good Note-taker (Rev 10)

Here is my first sermon for preaching class. It is Lenten-themed and inspired by my study in Revelation this semester and enjoyment of Eugene Peterson's insights (Reversed Thunder, Eat This Book). I would appreciate any comments, feedback, and constructive criticism as I seek to hone this daunting and beautiful craft of preaching.

To Be A Good Note-taker (Rev 10) by cebreslin

processing: Preaching, Praying & Paying Attention

The other day in preaching class we explored the link between preaching, praying, & paying attention. We heard from this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver (The Summer Day) which she manages to move from pondering the psalm-like wonder of created-ness to the child-like fascination with a particular bug and a particular fleck of sugar. I wish I had a more immediate link in my brain and worship between praying, paying minute attention, and falling on my face, "idle and blessed." Let this be the case with "this one wild and precious life." Amen.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is is you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

processing: Preaching Class Day 1

We opened Chuck Campbell's preaching class with this John Coltrane footage and a discussion on how preaching and jazz share many attributes (tradition, inspiration, community, discipline, creativity, imagination, fundamentals, freedom, improvisation, practice, play...).

We closed with this charge from

William Stringfellow's Keepers of the Word:

In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word.

Amidst babble, speak the Truth.

Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood

Of death with the truth and potency

And efficacy of the Word of God.

Know the Word.

Teach the Word.

Nurture the Word.

Preach the Word.

Defend the Word.

Incarnate the Word.

Do the Word.

Live the Word.

And more than that, in the Word of God,

Expose death and all death’s works and wiles.

Rebuke lies.

Cast out demons.

Exorcise.

Cleanse the possessed.

Raise those who are dead, in mind and bodies.

It's going to be a good semester.

American Christianity Notebook Reflection

I pledged not to post, but already completed this assignment. We were asked to prayerfully consider our notes from the first part of this course over reading week and write a 500 word reflection of what God is saying through the course material:

As an American and a Christian, I am woefully predisposed to personally identify with the material we have encountered this semester in this American Christianity course. After prayerfully browsing the motley gamut of characters in my notes: Puritans, Anglicans, Mormons, Clerical Economists, New Lights, Abolitionists, Domestic types, and Missionaries, I see me. I see my shortfalls and my poor readings and dealings. I see my victories and where I was both a right hearer and right doer. I see where I have distortingly merged my piety with the surrounding culture. I also see where the Gospel has redeemed that culture and proven wiser and more pure than my piety. I see cautionary tales of triumphalism, fundamentalism, racism, classism (insert –ism here: ____). I have also seen the growth of a national “experiment” to such a point that it has forgotten that experiments typically thrive on their awareness of their past failures. It is with all this in mind that I humbly reflect on this semester’s exploration of my own heritage as both an American and a Christian.

Throughout my notes, the Bible repeatedly availed itself as perhaps the most controversial and duplicitously used document in the history of our country. By recounting the showdown between staunch slaveholders and ardent abolitionists, based heartily on opposing interpretations of the Bible, that I become aware of my own blind spots for the Gospel’s implications for race and justice here and now. In viewing images of exalted printing presses, I become aware of my confusion between media and message, and my tendency to elevate what I read on a page above the active work of a living God. Far from suggesting that Scripture lacks authority or importance, it has instead become all the more pressing for that crucial authority and utmost significance to be rightly received. God has certainly revealed my own myopic tendencies in the American Church’s (in all its varieties) historical array of ungainly biblical interpretation.

As I leaf through, I hold fast to what these questionable biblical hermeneutics of yore have to bear on my life, but I still catch myself throwing stones from my glass house of piety. I consistently question the purity of these Christians’ motives. As Separatists themselves, how could the Puritans be so quick to alienate opposing Christians in New England? Why did democratization of the State and Church mirror each other so closely during the Great Awakening, despite their functional separation? How does the Church forget its own lessons of caution so fast? Sitting in this class and paging through the notes, echoes, to some extent, my study and devotional reading of Israel’s salvation history in the Old Testament. No matter how many times I read and recognize my ancestors’ failings, and marvel at their enduring ability to veer toward unfaith and perversion, at some level I too own that tendency. As Cotton Mather defined it, “History is a story of events, with praise and blame.” Instead of seeing these as merely unforgivable gaffs or disembodied events, I am learning to critically (and self-critically) engage American Christianity’s history as a narrative of my own triumphs and collapses, writ large.

praying: Virtues of Fear & Hate

God of Light,

Shine in our darkness

that we may see that this world,

for all its distortion by sin,

is still your world.

Give us the virtue of courage

to fear rightly that which

we should rightly fear.

Give us the virtue of love

that we might rightly hate

that which is hateful.

Give us the virtue of prudence

that we might know

what to fear and hate.

For this task we pray

that we might learn to trust one another,

as we are incapable of being faithful alone.

Amen.