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

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

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/

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

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.

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.

The Priestly Man In Black

After the last couple weeks, mulling over the image of our priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) and having conversations about what it means to be a priest, I’ve come to the conclusion that the word “priest” itself is sensitive and charged. People conjure images of everything from witchdoctors and monks to the Pope and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The word may carry positive connotations or extremely negative ones. Given that this word and the office it represents is so polarizing, how can we expect to minister and serve as priests when often times priests are exactly who people don’t want to be in contact with (contact and connection are after all what we are after here!)?

These men in black serve as our point of reference to what it means to be a priest. But I want to offer another image, the Man In Black, as an illustration of our identity as a holy people, and a royal priesthood belonging to our God. This last Friday marked what would have been Johnny Cash’s 78^th birthday. To celebrate I donned my black t-shirt and sifted through the liner notes of the box set I got for Christmas a few years back. In doing so I was struck by an episode that captured Rick Rubin, Cash’s legendary bearded, Buddhist producer, describing Cash’s spirituality.

When Johnny and June were staying at my house, before dinner he got out a big old Bible and had everybody hold hands and did a prayer. It was fantastic. You felt blessed. Because he comes from such a deep place of faith, that you know it’s real. You don’t have to believe; all you have to believe in is him, and if you believe in him, you go for the ride.

Right when you think that Rubin would dismiss Johnny’s bible-belt piety with an eye-roll, he instead is drawn in, connected to Something. He felt blessed and he went “along for the ride” because it was obvious that Cash was so deeply connected to God.

I pray that we don’t get distracted by our own or other’s preconceptions about priests. I pray instead that our priesthood is surprising. Surprising in its depth and authenticity; undeniable in its reality and genuineness.

I pray that when we encounter those who do not know God, our presence beckons them to go for a ride.

Link to original post:

http://www.allgather.org/2010/03/04/the-priestly-man-in-black

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.

On the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

St Francis once was living at the Convent of the Portiuncula, with Brother Masseo of Marignano, a man of great sanctity and great discernment, who held frequent converse with God; for which reason St Francis loved him much. One day, as St Francis was returning from the forest, where he had been in prayer, the said Brother Masseo, wishing to test the humility of the saint, went forth to meet him exclaiming: “Why after thee? Why after thee?” To which St Francis made answer: “What is this? What meanest thou?” Brother Masseo answered: “I mean, why is it that all the world goeth after thee; why do all men wish to see thee, to hear thee, and to obey thy word? For thou art neither comely nor learned, nor art thou of noble birth. How is it, then, that all the world goeth after thee?” St Francis, hearing these words, rejoiced greatly in spirit, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, remained for a long space with his mind rapt in God; then, coming to himself, he knelt down, returning thanks to God with great fervour of spirit, and addressing Brother Messeo, said to him: “Wouldst thou know why all men come after me? Know that it is because the Lord, who is in heaven, who sees the evil and the good in all places - because, I say, his holy eyes have found among men no one more wicked, more imperfect, or a greater sinner than I am; and to accomplish the wonderful work which he intends to do, he has found no creature more vile than I am on earth; for which reason he has chosen me, to confound all strength, beauty, greatness, noble birth, and all the science of the world, that men may learn that every virtue and every good gift cometh from him, and not from any creature, that none may glory before him; but if any one glory, let him glory in the Lord, to whom belongeth all glory in eternity.” Then Brother Masseo, at such a humble answer, given with so much fervour, was greatly impressed, and learned of a certainty that St Francis was well grounded in humility.

-Chapter X from the Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi