reflecting: Mark 6:53-56

Amidst all the commotion of Jesus walking on water (and rightfully so, I mean he WALKED ON WATER!), we may have totally skipped over the healing in Gennesaret that Mark records afterwards.

This little episode shows the crowd’s immediate (a great Markan word) recognition of Jesus and how they flock to him for healing.  What ensues is the oddest kind of mayhem.  Jesus gets rushed by all sorts of people, misfits and outcasts, wherever he goes.  If they can but “touch the hem of his garment they’ll be made whole.”  This is the same desperation we saw in the interruption in Chapter 5 (Mark 5:21-43) as Jesus was en route to Jairus’ dead daughter.

I’ll go ahead and out myself…I’ve probably been to hundreds of concerts and, Lord willing, will go to many more yet, but the first concert I ever attended was at the Daytona Beach Ocean Center in 1992.  Two as yet unknown acts, TLC & Boyz II Men, opened for MC Hammer’s 2 Legit 2 Quit tour.  My best friend in third grade and me rushed out of our seats, leaving his chaperone mom in her seat, desperate to try and get a hand on those famous parachute pants as Hammer moved freely about the arena flaunting his brilliant new wireless microphone headset technology.  We elbowed and vied, only to get boxed-out by some screaming girls, who needless to say, hit their growth spurt before we did.

All joking aside though, I’m indicted by the fact that my most diligent attempt to get to somebody in a crowd, that I can remember, was not, and tends not to be, me getting to Jesus.  In these gospel stories, I’m most struck by how Jesus is the obvious hope for these people’s hopelessness.  

This is not obvious to me most of the time.  

I go through most of my days trying either to ignore the hopeless moments or areas of my life, drowning them out with shear busy-ness, or attempting to solve my own problems so that I don’t have to go through the hassle of having Jesus heal me.

Jesus, make me desperate for the healing that I need and that you offer.  

Show me the ways I clutch at other things and people that aren’t you and can’t do what you can do.  

Let me recognize you immediately in my life and in the lives of others who are hurting.  

Amen

A bit better musical accompaniment to Mark 6:53-56.

preaching: You Give Them Something to Eat

Sermon text: Mark 6:30-44

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

reflecting: Mark 6:30-44

Have you ever seen one of those “hoarder shows” on TV?  

They’re kind of fascinating, but they’re also kind of upsetting.  

Reality television is largely a case-in-point that truth, or at least “real life,” is stranger than fiction.  When I was watching, I was about to totally disengage with the lives on the screen, till a behavioral psychologist came on.  It seems that these professionals’ main role is to get to the bottom of some fundamental problem of “enough-ness” in their patient.

I can connect with this issue.  The old man on the program hoarded because, in his estimation, there was a good chance that at some point there just was not going to be enough.  He held onto things and food and memories because he didn’t believe that the future will be so kind to him.  

The sad irony was that this holding onto resulted in him being threatened with losing his home because it was dangerous, losing his relationships because he had alienated the people closest to him, and losing his own possessions because of rust, corrosion and rot.

Sunday we’ll explore a famous passage in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 6:30-44), but common to all four accounts, about Jesus feeding more than 5.000 people with just 5 loaves and 2 fish.  Sounds suspicious given the lack of “enough-ness” in Jesus’ camp.

We get the privilege of not only hearing the good news about how Jesus manages this, but we also get to participate in a meal of communion together, remembering another dramatic moment when Jesus fed his disciples with bread.  Look forward to seeing you then.

reflecting: Mark 4:21-34

This Sunday we'll continue on in chapter 4 of Mark's Gospel.  This chapter is laden with stories and teachings by Jesus on the Kingdom of God.  I can't help but remember, when I read this chapter of farmers and mustard seeds, when I was called on to preach one of my first sermons to a rural North Carolinian congregation two years ago.  It was pretty intimidating to drive to work everyday that summer past fields and barns and then try to explicate how the Kingdom of God is like something that they knew far more intimately about than I do.  

But maybe that's the point.

The Kingdom of God is like a seed, even like a mustard seed.  Small, but when nourished and come to fruition, yielding great and surprising things.  Mysterious at its core.  We rely on seeds and their fruit everyday (ie "our daily bread"), but can we really explain them, can we totally domesticate or control them, or do we, at some point just have to sit back and relish in the mysterious bounty and sustenance they provide us?

I look forward to meeting this Sunday to learn more about, to participate in, and to continue to imagine this mysterious Kingdom of God with you.  I thank God that his kingdom resists mine, or ours, or really anybody's attempts to control it.  I thank God for the mysterious, manna-like provision with which He keeps us and pray for the faith and patience and awe to really appreciate a loving God that works that way.  Finally, I pray that I get used to that kind of Kingdom, which looks and feels so different from any kingdom I would imagine on my own or try to make for myself.

Here is the manuscript for the sermon given (sorry there's no audio, but if you were there you'd understand why there is no audio!)

reflecting: Mark 4:1-20

This Sunday we dive back into the story that we put on “pause” since Holy Week.  We fittingly pick up Mark’s Gospel in chapter 4.  I say that it is fitting because the setting of this passage that features Jesus teaching is a lake.  This setting is especially familiar as we spent last Sunday at Camp Chestnut Ridge celebrating the baptisms of Steve, Tanner, and Mike.  We can imagine ourselves on the shore of Jesus’ lake because we’ve so recently worshipped by the lake.

We’re involved.  We’re invited to participate.

Beyond the mere setting, we’re also invited by Jesus’ teaching itself.  Jesus teaches by the lake, but hardly as some sort of professor.  Rather than lecture, he tells stories in parables.  Jesus uses these parables to involve us.  To invite us into the story.  To do the imaginative work of figuring where we are in the story.

To form us rather than just to inform us.  To leave us affected.

So when we read and hear Mark 4:1-20 this week, jump into the story.  Imagine the scene he paints with a sower sowing seeds that either die or flourish and bear fruit.  Let this simple agricultural story put the question to yourselves and your life.

What kind of soil does God’s Word land on in you?

What are the thorns in your life?

Where are you shallow?  Where are your roots weak?

Where are you bearing fruit and how is that fruit blessing people?

reflecting: Mark 3:7-21

This Sunday, we continue to follow Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ ministry (Mark 3:7-21). Fresh off the heals of Jesus’ surprising encounters with the Pharisees and the crowds where he gives a fresh vision of the Sabbath, wineskins, and what it means to be in the presence of Christ (in short: the feasting and celebration that belongs to a wedding!), we find a bit of a summary of what’s been happening. 

Crowds. 

Impure Spirits. 

Different levels of recognition. 

And a sort of expansion and contraction. 

By that I mean, the withdrawing of Jesus before the crowding around him; the gathering of his disciples before the sending of them to preach and drive out demons. This might seem exhausting. We know what it’s like to be busy, over-extended, scattered. 

But it is Jesus, who brings us together. That brings us to Himself, in order to send us back out to involve others in this dynamic life with God. It is Jesus who also has the discipline to retreat to a quiet place, to narrow everything down to communion with his Father, before re-igniting His hectic life of being “for” others. 

This retreat and mission, contraction and expansion, receiving and giving, reminds me of something that Paul leads with in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 1:3-5): 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 

As we gather this Sunday, I invite you to come to the Fount, the source of comfort, refreshment, forgiveness, and life-abundance, that you may share in these gifts, be recharged, and be (as John Jay mentions) re-membered for the purpose of offering that the power, love, friendship, and resurrection-hope to others who are hurting in our families, communities, and world. I pray that we all might find time and space to be with Him, that He might then send us out.

Mako Fujimura @ Duke Divinity School

reflecting: Mark 1:12-13/Luke 4:1-13

As we’ve previously seen in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ coming marks the beginning of a reign.  The names and lingo surrounding Jesus are regal and politically charged (“gospel,” “Anointed One,” “Son of God”).  And we all know that the whole point of having a king is to concentrate authority in one place.  In short, Jesus comes onto the scene and anyone (or thing) who has had dominion is threatened to have that power toppled.

In a world with violent political unrest in the headlines on a daily basis (Egypt, could be Haiti next…), we assume what it means for Jesus to do this.  When the “heavens are torn open” we might imagine some sort of theme music being cued, fanfare, etc.  But then, almost inexplicably, the Spirit leads Jesus into the dessert.

The writer of Mark’s gospel briefly alludes to this, but leaves the details out.  However, we can supplement our understanding with Luke’s account.  In chapter 4 in Luke, he narrates the three temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness.  These temptations and how Jesus meets them show what his kingdom and Kingship are going to be about: not just the ends but also the means.  In doing so they assault the ways we might be accustomed to think.  They show us a clear picture of who’s the real King and who’s not.

The hungry Jesus is challenged to make bread from stones.  Something he no doubt could have easily done.  He resists this temptation, because, while his kingship will meet needs in the most complete and sweeping way possible, drawing from a bottomless supply of resources, he will not turn the stuff of creation into a commodity.  Eugene Peterson mentions in his brilliant book The Jesus Way: “ The devil wants us to [give into this temptation]: follow Jesus but then use Jesus to fulfill needs, first our own and then the needs of all the hungry people around us.”  King Jesus won’t do it.  Instead he’ll go hungry.  He’ll suffer in order to bring his kingdom into being.

The second temptation is to throw Himself off the highest point so that a band of angels may catch him.  The devil challenges Jesus to dazzle.  To show off a bit.  To compensate for the, up until this point, anti-heroic shape his kingship is taking.  Jesus resists.  He will not be used as a “hedge against boredom.”  He will not be just another thrill to be sought, or cause to be rallied for.  Jesus’ kingdom campaign doesn’t need pyrotechnics or viral advertising.

The final temptation leveled against Jesus is to be co-opted.  The devil offers Jesus something he already has: authority.  Jesus resists.  He knows what he has and who he is.  He knows he doesn’t have to “sell-out” in order to “make it.”  He trusts his Father to accomplish his mission.  Perhaps “the devil wants us to use Jesus in the same way.  Use Jesus to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our governments as efficiently and properly as we can, but with no love or forgiveness.”

Jesus, by establishing his Kingship in the wilderness, a Kingship that withstands these worldly, by-the-book measures, really exposes other kings (lowercase “k”); exposes them in the sense that they can’t rule like he can, nor are they willing to.  The very trials the devil put to Jesus, which he withstood, are the very trials we pray against in the Lord’s Prayer.  Because we know they’re tempting, but we also know who the Real King is.

I can’t help it, I’m a Disney-phile, but perhaps if coming out of the baptismal waters and heading towards the wilderness Jesus had a theme-song, it might have sounded a bit like one from the 1973 animated Robin Hood.

Living in an England ruled by Phony King John in a phony way, Robin Hood exposes him for who he is, a fake unfit to wear the crown or receive the people’s trust and obeisance.  Jesus not only announces this, but is the alternative: the real King pronouncing a “pox on the phony kings” who do things in phony ways.

reflecting: Mark 1:9-13

When the heavens above Jesus open in Mark 1:10, we are treated to a glimpse, a momentary peek, into the dynamic life of the Triune God.  Christians throughout the ages have come to know and describe their God as both three-in-one and one-in-three; one God in three Persons.  Thinking about this can wrack our brains, but it can also ignite our imaginations…  This means that our God lives in love and unity: with Himself.  That each Person of his being is distinct, but vitally connected, inextricable from the other Two.  That the God of the bible is a Community of Love in and of Himself.

When the bible says that God is love (1 John 4:8), it means that God’s very being is love and that this love happens within Himself.  God can love and dance (the best way early theologians knew how to describe this playful dynamic) without creation or without us.  So when the heavens are “torn open,” when the Spirit hovers over the baptismal waters and descends upon Jesus as a Dove (think Genesis 1:2 or maybe Genesis 8:6-12), when the Father commends Jesus as His Beloved Son (ie John 3:16), it is as if we are standing on sidewalk looking through a lit window to see the fullness of God residing.  This sets the table for the rest of Mark’s good news.

The wonder of Mark’s gospel, the reason he’s so intense, urgent and sometimes even impatient, is that he’s talking about God coming onto the human scene in a decisive and powerful way.  Jesus bursts into the world not as a mere Messiah (though that would satisfy plenty of expectations in itself), or not as a messenger bearing a good word for people to accept (after all that was sort of John the Baptist’s job), but as the very image (Colossians 1:15) of the God who creates, redeems, and loves, not because he has to but because that’s who He is and that’s what He does.

Mark documents this baptism scene in such a way that braces us for a HUGE perspective on the events of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection that further unfold who God is, what God has done, and what God can be about for us now!

reflecting: Mark 1:1-8

As I start to read Mark in preparation for a lengthy sermon series at the Gathering Church, I’m arrested by the opening scene.  Mark cuts right to the chase, not softening us up with any genealogies or birth (/pre-Creation) narratives.  Mark’s “beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God” is only prefaced by a messenger.  Preconceived by the prophet Isaiah and actualized by a strange bird named John.  John, preparing.  John, pointing.  John (as we find in the evangelist John’s gospel), decreasing that Christ may increase.  I can’t help but recall Karl Barth’s comment on this scene as visually portrayed in the center panel of Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece (which a print hung above Barth’s desk for more than fifty years).  He offers in Church Dogmatics, “…one might recall John the Baptist in Grünewald’s Crucifixion, especially his prodigious index finger.  Could anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely?”  What a challenge!  What a vocation!  To  prepare.  To point.  To decrease that Christ may increase!

Come Holy Spirit!  

Let us remember our baptisms that we may live into this life of witness to which we are called.  

Let us point to Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.

Amen.

preaching: Advent I: Hope

Sermon text: Isaiah 2:1-5

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

Download a Reading Plan and Devotional here: http://www.allgather.org/advent/.

Check out the upcoming 'Christmas Nights' record here: http://www.allgather.bandcamp.com/.

preaching: Coming Home (Prodigal God Wk 6: Luke 15)

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

My Goggles and The Two Lost Sons

Originally posted at the Gathering Church.

It’s crazy what being thoroughly immersed in Scripture can do for you, or should I say do to you.  John Calvin famously equated Scripture to being the eyeglasses by which the Christian is able to see the world.  My fuzzy logic then follows that the deeper and more immersed you are in Scripture, as we’ve been and will continue to be in Luke 15’s Parable of The Two Lost Sons, the thicker your spectacles will get.

I’m not bragging when I say that 3 solid weeks in, I feel like I’m wearing those nerdy coke bottle glasses.  I say this not because I’m a particularly good or dedicated reader or that I feel at all like I’ve got this parable pegged, but because, the more I’ve wrestled with this text and the more I’ve forced myself to come at it honestly the more God has surprised me.

As I’ve tried to put myself in the world of the parable, I’ve come to wonder about how each of the characters (Father, Prodigal, & Elder Brother) thought of themselves.  If they were introducing themselves at a cocktail party, what might they say? 

“I’m such-and-such and I’m so-and-so’s Father,” might be the reply of the Father.  And as far as I can tell, this reply is the only identity that doesn’t change throughout the story.  The younger brother tries with all his might to un-son himself and to un-brother himself.  And we find later on the Elder tries to do the same.  How is it that despite the fact that the family is being torn apart, the Father’s seems rock solid?  Why does what the Younger Brother do bother the Big Bro so much?  Why isn’t the Younger Brother content with just being in the family and having what he is related to who his Father is?  Why does he try and go it on his own?

Here’s where those bizarre new scripture shades come in for me.

So I was watching Survivor on tv (nice segue, right?!)…  This season features famed college and NFL football coach Jimmy Johnson along with other folks of various backgrounds, most of which were leaders in their contexts.  Insert someone with a bit of self-assurance, fame, and confidence and all but a few of them took him as a threat immediately.  It was bizarre.  Jimmy seemed content to be there for the experience, he certainly doesn’t need the cash, and in no way was an advantage written into the game for him.  Why did everyone care?  Why were they threatened by someone having fun?  Someone more interested in fishing, giving pep talks, and calling to wildlife than in game-play and outwitting his opponents?

It made me wonder what ways I try to make up my own identity (like the Prodigal), not being content with what and where I am?

It made me wonder what ways, when my identity gets pulled out from under me (like the Elder), that I start flailing and trying to take others down with me?

It made me want my identity to be grounded in the kind of confidence that Jimmy exhibited (certainly in a small and imperfect way) on the island.  It made me look back to Luke’s parable with more admiration for the love of that Father, whose love was so solid that neither being abandoned and un-Fathered or being doubted and pestered could budge.

Mostly it made me want to live into the steady-love of God in a more assured way.  In a way that grounds me and in a way that sends me out as an imitator.

What have you been seeing through the lenses of this parable?

screening: fpn's "35 Seconds- Short Stories from Haiti"

My documenteur friend and his co-conspirators went down to Haiti a few months ago to bring back some stories from the folks drastically and tragically affected by the earthquake.  The result is this 13 min. doc about the 35 seconds of crisis: literally the fault-line between normal and the rest of their lives.  Amidst some heartbreakingly beautiful photography and music, there  are some surprising accounts (in Creole, subtitled in English) of just what went through some folks' heads when their world came crashing down and glimmers of hope for a people and a country rebuilding from the rubble.

http://www.fleshprofitsnothing.com/

http://erichires.com/

http://nathanblewis.com/

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.

jamming: Jakob Dylan- Women & Country

Perhaps the other duo of unmentionables, besides religion and politics, is women and country.  Or maybe Dylan, like his dad did so expertly before him, shows how these things are the most mentionable,  the unmistakable currency with which we deal, like it or not.  It is both women & country root us to the stuff of our lives: conflict, loyalty, relationship, hardship, violence, love and lust.

While it has been unfortunately advocated that all is fair in love and war, Dylan ventures into the complicated homeland where love can be warfare, and war the result of disordered affection.

This record bridges Dylan’s barebones, Rick Rubin-produced Seeing Things with T-Bone Burnett’s intense production from the Krauss/Plant Raising Sand record.  Alongside Neko Case (New Pornographers), Kelly Hogan, and a throbbing, consistent upright bass, Dylan finds conveys the lonely forsakenness of exile in tracks like Everybody’s Hurting and Holy Roller’s for Love.  The opener sounds the most optimistic note, a combination campfire sing-along and unconvinced praise chorus.

Dylan weaves a masterful soundtrack for troubled times, giving voice to the difficulties while sounding a call to band together:

We hold our ground.

We don’t kneel

If we go down, 

We go down on our own shields.

Sure, we may be inside of a “bottomless well,” these might be dire straits and we may in fact go down, but it’ll be together and it’ll be fighting.  But, this fighting is not the scrappy, desperate fighting of the blaze-of-glory patriot, but the convinced loyalty of a lover.  All this dejection in relationship and citizenship forges a new identity.  After all “faith is believing what you see ain’t so,” and a crazy world good at making extremists.  Dylan crafts hymns for this new persona, these holy rollers.

These are the ones who understand women and country best.  Because they are willing to sacrifice, unwilling to be party to the deception and destruction.  Underneath the mellow, chugging sounds, lies a zealous, subversive record of true protest songs.

jamming: Mumford and Sons- Sigh No More

Of this raucously honest debut offering from Britain's Marcus Mumford & Co., one UK reviewer remarks:

"What's missing here, apart from an antidotal dose of Dawkinism, is a modicum of self-restraint. Sigh No More is so earnest it weeps holy water, from theatrical drum rolls to jiggedy banjo riffs to trumpeting fanfares that are too bloody obvious to swallow. Pomp and pop are common bedfellows — but with Jesus squeezed between them, three's too many for your average proverbial duvet."

To say I disagree might be both too simple and too mild.

Mumford and gang's consecrated tears flood the record with the gorgeous fusion of transparent self-criticism and burly assurance that the Avetts have long patented. If England doesn't know what to do with this sort of thing, we'll take their export in this case.

From the opening Sigh No More to the closer (perhaps the strongest track on the album) After the Storm, the album breathes hope, transparency, and surprise (see Roll Away Your Stone). The odd thing about this hope is that it is indeed incarnated in "jiggity banjo riffs and trumpeting fanfares." Perhaps more complicated and possibly unpalatable to some audiences is that this hope also manifests within the desperation of a string of self-flagelating F-bombs in Little Lion Man. It is only in the recognition of this despair and the accompanying realization that to come out of such a "Cave" might actually require walking on one's hands in order to see how things actually are and need to be.

In this way this disc is brilliant and disorienting. Perhaps the final brilliance comes from the fact that we are left re-oriented. Pointed towards something or at least shown glimpses at the joy and peace and grace available.

"Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free"
-Awake My Soul

preaching: Interrupting Our Story: God's Covenantal M.O. (Gen 12)

I had the chance and privilege yesterday to preach at the Gathering Church in Mark's stead.  Because we're in the middle of a sermon series considering the Christian life and mapping where we are with God, combined with this great season we're entering filled with weddings and baptisms and new starts: I found it only fitting to take a crack at communicating how God does things in the midst of all this and what that means for us.  If we're trying to walk with God and be conformed to the likeness of Christ, we better take consider how God operates so that we can appreciate it and imitate it.

It was a blast to plan and prepare the service.  Brett Harris & Co. lent their wonderful talents to a beautiful set of hymns and spiritual songs that preached, better than I could ever hope to, God's covenantal faithfulness to us throughout history.

Here's a link to the podcast on iTunes.

As always, I'd love and appreciate any feedback.

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

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?

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