Baptist Pharisees and the Nones (1 of 3)

     When I taught Mathematics at a very conservative classical school in Madison, MS, I was constantly being reminded that our mission as a faculty was to nurture disciples rather than create little Pharisees. The struggle was between the imposition of context-less rules to be followed in the name of Christian decency and the desire for every student to submit to the living Spirit of God in daily life.
     I'm pleased to say that at least some of our students survived that daily struggle and ended their studies as well-adjusted young men and women who could actually think and act in accordance with the Spirit without marching to the beat of the hyper-conservative social teaching of the school. Many, however, became the very legalistic, Pharisaical people we didn't want them to become. They demonstrated haughtiness, were caustically judgmental, and saw every action taken by the "world" as an affront to their pre-determined worldview and Christian sensibilities.
     Although the issues related to running a Christian school, let alone one that pretends to be a classical school, are much broader and deeper than a single desire to make better disciples, the local congregation is, at its heart, concerned with recruiting, shaping, and sending disciples into the world. The temptation to make Pharisees rather than disciples is as strong and real in the local congregation as it is in any school.
    What do I mean by "Pharisees?" Certainly the local church is not forming people to adhere to the ancient customs of the Jewish religio-political faction known as the Pharisees. This group played in constant opposition to Jesus and the disciples following him. The Pharisees churned out in churches today are not reverting to a Jewish hyper-legalism; instead the disciples we create today carry the attitudes and character of 1st-century Pharisees while wrapped in the trappings of Evangelical Christianity.
     I would like this brief essay to serve as the beginning of a three-part posting on the nature of discipleship in Baptist life, especially in the South. The remainder of this post will be a review of the work that sparked my interest in the subject, then to entries to follow on the nature of the local church's discipleship programs and my own vision of a new (and old) framework of disciple making, respectively.

Review of "Defeating Pharisaism" by Gary Tyra
Tyra, Gary. Defeating Pharisaism. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Paternoster, 2009.

     Tyra, a Pentecostal minister and professor of Biblical and Practical Theology, has noticed that Evangelical churches have abandoned the principles of disciple-making that he believes to be the historical, authentic methods in favor of something else. The loss of effective discipling strategies has left a vacuum in the church that has been filled with what Tyra calls a modern-day "pharisaism." It is not that the church has intentionally turned to programs, strategies or ministries that form legalistic, separatist disciples; rather the local church has opted for less-demanding and less-transformative discipleship ministries that leave the people of the congregation largely to their own spiritual devices.
     Tyra identifies several characteristics that define the modern (as well as the ancient) Pharisee:

Legalism is the belief that our righteousness before God is earned rather than received as a gift. Dogmatism refers to an arrogant, stubborn assertion of opinion of belief. Sociological pugilism is a tendency toward being confrontational, combative, adversarial, and hostile in the way one relates to those not a part of the in-group or clique. Judgmentalism is a willingness to criticize and condemn those who approach the religious life differently than we do. Separatism is the felt need to separate ourselves from anyone who does not practice a piety similar to our own...Trivialism is the tendency to focus on minor, relatively unimportant issues while ignoring the truly consequential ones. Hypocrisy is saying one thing while consciously doing another, pretending to be more spiritually mature than we really are (5). 

     Tyra's list of characteristics common to ancient and modern pharisaism is broad, but there is a weakness in his use of legalism. While the modern pharisee certainly uses the Bible in such a way as to be legalistic, and while it is most certainly true that Evangelicals in the South especially have crafted a culture around the legalistic, literalistic interpretation of the Scriptures, Tyra must more clearly parse the differences between the ancient and modern understanding of righteousness and "earning" God's favor. One thing that Evangelicalism has done well since the Reformation has been to teach that salvation is a gift of God not earned, but rather freely given and accepted. When Tyra connects the legalistic interpretation of the Torah popular among the ancient Pharisees with the modern legalistic interpretation of the Scriptures something important gets lost.
     Tyra himself points out that "Some Pharisees tended to believe that a right relationship with God could be achieved and maintained by mere human effort and by isolating themselves from everyone who did not share their commitment to ritual purity" (48). This legalism was motivated by a desire to not offend God in any way, thus avoiding another occupation and exile in a specific, Temple-based religion context. The modern "Christian Pharisee" has no such illusions of works-based salvation or righteousness. Instead, Tyra claims that "the legalism of the Christian Pharisee ironically produces spiritual insecurity rather than peace and joy and spiritual fatigue rather than a divine sense of empowerment" (67). The very real legalism of the modern Christian Pharisee is not a parallel to the ancient Pharisaical belief that there is a direct correlation between the purity of Israel and God's blessings and judgements upon the same.

     Tyra's use of the ancient Pharisees as the antagonists in Matthew's gospel is excellent, and is backed up by sound scholarship and his own research. By assuming the tension between the disciples of Jesus and the adherents to the strict code of conduct of the Pharisees, Tyra has reinforced the "historical model" hypothesis of Michael Wilkins (see his "The Concept of Disciple in Matthew's Gospel"). If the disciples are held up as the struggling-to-understand followers of a new Way, the Pharisees are portrayed as an anti-model, a foil of the disciples in every way.
     Herein there is another distinction that must be made. The Pharisees that are caricatured in Matthew's gospel are not functioning from within the Jesus camp. Inasmuch as the disciples acted in legalistic, separatistic ways while they followed Jesus they could be considered the first "modern" Pharisees. The people within modern Evangelical churches who are acting in Pharisaical ways are doing so from within the Jesus camp, most of whom would readily testify to their own personal encounter with the risen Christ as the starting point for much of what they believe. While Tyra does a sound job of contrasting the "crowds" with the Pharisees, the inclusion of the Twelve and any mention of those moving closer to the Jesus Way are absent. We are left to believe that the option was either the Pharisaical interpretation of Judaism or a seat among the crowds following Jesus and hearing his teachings. It would have been more appropriate to at least connect the pharisaical tendencies among the first disciples with those patterns of life found in authentic Pharisees rather than relying on the "good guys/ bad guys" contrast between the teachers of the Law and the crowds.

     After the thick chapters on the Sermon on the Mount, its place within Matthew's cannon, and the nature of Matthew's gospel in total, Tyra attempts to demonstrate how discipleship needs to be transformed into something more authentic in the local church. By the time I arrived at these chapters, I was worked into a froth of agreement and excitement, ready for the author to make bold statements about the dearth of biblical and theological knowledge among the laity in our churches, and especially for him to lay the blame for such erosion at the feet of our modern, business-oriented approach to making disciples.

He blew it.

     Tyra introduces the third section of Defeating Pharisaism, the section most aimed at application and the modern Evangelical congregation, this way:

During the heyday of the church growth movement, when churches were encouraged to imitate the structures and practices of successful secular corporations, we pastors were advised to continually ask ourselves two key questions: (1) What business are we in? and (2) How's business? Some excesses surely occurred; and it is appropriate, I believe, for pastors to rethink the goal of trying to run their churches as if they were just another enterprise dotting the commercial landscape. And yet it also seems to me that, aside from the "business" rhetoric utilized, these two questions - the questions of purpose and efficiency - remain valid...Throughout this book I have been insisting that a careful reading of the first Gospel reveals that Jesus took the "business" of disciple-making very seriously and that leaders of contemporary evangelical churches should do likewise (193-194). 

     The church growth movement is in no small way the cause of the swelling numbers of shallow disciples in Evangelical churches. By emphasizing growth rather than depth the pastors who have come before my generation have bequeathed congregations that have no identity other than their own self-sustenance and no missional desire other than the one that brings more people in the door and feeds the cycle of growth anew. Further, the "business rhetoric" used in the local congregation is antithetical to the case for slow, personal, deep discipleship Tyra made in previous chapters. The inclusion of "business" in the disciple-making paradigm that Tyra present in later chapters does not fit. At no point does the author mention the business of making disciples that in any way relates to the 20th century numbers game that became the ethos of Evangelical ministry. It appears that the inclusion of this language, even in the third section's introduction, is a poorly-chosen addition to the otherwise masterful argument Tyra makes in modeling the local church's disciple-making strategy on the Sermon on the Mount.

     I was disappointed by the inclusion of the church growth language in the application section of Defeating Pharisaism, but not so much that I discounted what is otherwise an excellent work for the scholarly pastor who is looking for a way to embrace the ancient/future desires among our Evangelical congregants to do deeper in their discipleship and spiritual formation.
     I recommend pastors in Southern Evangelical churches read Defeating Pharisaism. Tyra's analysis of the Sermon on the Mount makes the work well worth the read, and if a pastor can apply such thinking to the practice of making disciples in their local congregation, then all the better. Tyra's primary recommendation for the re-invigoration of disciple-making is that "what is ultimately needed is not simply a specific disciple-making experience (no matter how powerful) but a disciple-making environment - an ethos that makes it easy for authentic Christianity to thrive while choking the life out of any Christian Pharisaism present in the congregation (220). Tyra's is not a call to a new "discipleship training" program or an adult RAs or GAs; it is a call to make the nature of the congregation one that makes deeply faithful disciples who increasingly walk with God and demonstrate a love for others. The rest of the church's ministries surely hang on our ability to foster such an environment.

Accounting in the Church

“Accounting in the Church” Year B, Proper 16 August 26, 2012 Madison Chapel, Madison, Mississippi When I worked in the Math Lab at Mclennan Community College in Waco my primary task was to receive any student who needed help with their mathematics courses, tutor them, and encourage them along in their class. We would assist students from the very lowest of the remedial classes all the way up through those senior-level electives in statistics, calculus, and analysis. Occasionally, though, I’d have to turn away a student. Not because they we “unhelpable,” but because they mistakenly came to the Math Lab asking for help with accounting. I would gently point out to them that, unfortunately, accounting is way too hard for a mathematician, and that they would have to consult their instructor for help. I did try to learn accounting, at least enough to help those few wayward students who wandered into the lab. Unfortunately, I was no match for the vocabulary of that discipline and left Accounting where I left Art Appreciation, Psychology, and an unfortunate Bowling elective. One word from accounting stuck with me, though, and it came to mind when I was reading over today’s lectionary passages – shrinkage. This, while not a highly technical term, aptly describes what Jesus encountered when he made the harsh pronouncement we previously read. You see, shrinkage is the “slack” used in a company’s plan to absorb a loss. It’s the jar of pickles that gets dropped on aisle three, or the t-shirt that walks out the front door in a customer’s purse, or the side of beef that’s left unsold because not enough people ordered the special. Jeffery Weiss makes a broader connection with the term shrinkage. He says, “depending on your theology, shrinkage is either a bean-counter’s way of acknowledging the universal nature of Murphy’s Law, or a reflection of the essential Fallen nature of the world. In other words, shrinkage may be reduced but not avoided.” In the not-for-profit life of the local congregation such a concern is unnecessary. We do not live in the same world as a grocery chain or department store that must plan each year for such eventualities. Rather, if something unexpectedly breaks or “walks off” the church relies on insurance or charity to meet the newfound need. Beyond the use of shrinkage as an accounting principle, I find that shrinkage is an appropriate and necessary concept in aiding our understanding of the church. We, as the church, have become so allergic to the idea of shrinkage among our congregations that we have transformed the Gospel and our very identities as Christians into a non-offensive, neutral, harmless message. As a pastor I have a need to be liked and accepted that is slightly more acute than average. I want people to find me approachable, wise, intelligent, well-spoken, tenderhearted, a competent pulpiteer, and a good leader. I want people to like me enough to join my congregation and commit to my ideas of ministry because, after all, they’re great ideas! When a family choses to leave the church I serve, for whatever reason, then, there are feelings of failure, loss, and disappointment. I’ve mourned the loss of families to transfers, deployments, petty arguments, and fiery business meetings, even when those families were the root cause of strife and heartache in the congregation. For too long, I fear, the church has been more interested in numbers that we can compare than in the authentic formation of disciples. It is much easier, especially in a culture like ours, to learn how to fit in with the predominant “Christian” culture, to develop our own quirks, find our own niche, sell our own gimmick, and develop our own style than to hear the hard words of Jesus and live them out. Look at the divisive scene that Jesus creates in our John passage. Let’s not sugar-coat what Jesus is instructing his disciples to do – he is commanding them to commit cannibalism! Yes, I’m aware that we can clean up this offensive command through metaphor or through a connection to the transubstantiation theory of the Eucharist, but we must be aware that the people hearing Jesus speak did no such thing – they are scandalized by this instruction. I found one perspective on this shocking pronouncement particularly interesting. Consider the perception of cannibalism to the Greco-Roman and Hellenized Jewish community (after all, Jesus is speaking in Capernaum): all those races, nationalities, and cultures that were not “roman” were considered to be cannibalistic barbarians. In fact, Albert Harrill has done excellent work in demonstrating that anyone acting too wild, too un-civilized was described in terms of cannibalism. These “outsiders” lacked the most basic human capacity to understand that eating another’s flesh was abominable. Jesus, then, is saying that whoever would follow him, whoever would have him “abide” within him must take on the nature of the most un-civilized, the most un-roman, the most un-Jewish, the most “Otherness” possible. They must become a band of outsiders whose allegiance is to the One who came from the Father. We know from this side of the Cross that cannibalism has never been either the nature or the essence of the relationship a believer has with Christ. What we still have yet to grasp is that there is a strain of scandal, of shock in the Gospel that will ultimately drive many away. Jesus, with this one pronouncement, loses many of his disciples. So harsh is this teaching that he wonders if the Apostles will leave him, too. We must take seriously this overarching theme of "enduring" and "falling away." John contrasts the perishable manna that the Jewish ancestors ate in the wilderness, along with the flesh of the quail supplied at twilight, with the enduring food and drink of Jesus' flesh and blood. Jesus tells his hearers not simply "to believe" but to endure: "Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” The emphasis on endurance identifies these people with Jesus, the "true vine" of which Christians are branches. We can see that John uses symbols and metaphors throughout his gospel precisely to offend his Jewish audience. Jesus in our passage not only apparently condones something prohibited in the Torah (cannibalism and the drinking of blood), but also brazenly applies the concepts of living water, being lifted up, being the manna from heaven, and ascending to the Father to himself. It’s no wonder that polite religious society wanted him dead! How hard, then, must we look to see that the theme of John 6, and really of the entire gospel, is one of separation and alienation? There is something schismatic about Jesus – there is something very sword-like in the gospel. We could even say that this cannibalistic passage works in an anti-missionary way - to steer outsiders away from the community and to encourage unworthy insiders to leave. It seems, then, that there is something segregationist in the Gospel. Those who want to follow the great Teacher or the Moral Exemplar cannot stomach the offensive and disgusting commitments that Jesus demands. Only those who have understood Jesus to be the Holy one of God, the one who possesses the eternal words of life stay in spite of their discomfort. What if we preached this Gospel? How would the church look if the invitation at the end of millions of services this morning was an invitation to be rejected by the culture in which we find our comfort and identity? What if it was a rejection of the Promised Land that we have fought and bled for? The trouble is that we identify too much with the way of life in America as the Kingdom of God. We have transitioned, especially here in the South, into a maintenance mentality that reduces the church to the preservation of the well-behaved Christian morality in the newest generation of Mississippians. Consider the father who took me to task via email over comments I preached at an ordination service – that perhaps the best and brightest of our children and youth should not be directed toward medical school, law school, or an engineering program, but rather toward a career of service in the public sector, toward non-profit ministry, or even (gasp!) to missions. It is fine to follow a Jesus that wants to help us avoid eternal torment in a Miltonian hell – it is something else entirely to let our children be outcasts in society because the follow the Holy One of God. I believe that if the church is going to be the church in the 21st century then it will inevitably shrink. This is one of the toughest things a pastor can realize – that the model of bigger churches and impressive sanctuaries, bigger memberships, coffee houses and bookstores, children’s ministries consulted by Disney, and all the rest are going to be outmoded by the harsh truths of Jesus. That kind of shrinkage would likely cost a pastor her job, or a music minister his choir. That sounds like the end. Of course, we could just keep preaching the less-confrontational gospel, the one that only cares about the eternal condition of those in the pews. We could keep on calling the maintenance phase of the church “discipleship” and pat one another on the head saying “there, there.” We could send our people across international lines on “mission trips” that look strangely like Christian tourism. We could continue to stake out our own little Kingdoms and defend them against our brothers more vehemently than we seek the lost and wounded. We could do all that. But somewhere I fear that someone is keeping account of how faithfully we follow even the harshest of Christ’s instructions. I fear that we must hear, as from on high, choose this day what your will preach, what you will teach, and what sort of disciples you will make. I pray we choose to stay.

Can We Still be Wise?

“Can We Still Be Wise?” Year B, Proper 15 August 19, 2012 Madison Chapel, Madison, Mississippi My wife used to wear a t-shirt when we were in college that depicted a cartoon roller-skate whizzing across the shirt with the words “I roll with the wise” emblazoned below. She would joke that she wore it when she knew she was going on a date with me. What is more interesting (and funny) is that I haven’t seen that shirt since we got married. Perhaps getting to know me gave her cause to find some person who needed a t-shirt more than she did. Yes, Christian generosity must be the reason. Wisdom doesn’t count in our culture. It has no part of the current currency of information, commodity, and personality. Wisdom is too slow to be of any use in America, and, for that matter, in the church. Wisdom is for old people who have the time to not make decisions; our churches trade on information that changes with the next data set and the next methodology and strategy. Where has wisdom gone? And, for that matter, what is the biblical image of wisdom? After all, Paul encourages us to be wise, to not be time-wasters and drunkards. The entire message of Proverbs, which includes wisdom herself personified and calling out to the simple, is to be wise rather than foolish. What is wisdom, and how can it be understood in a world where information is the quick commodity of life? Let us try to put a finger on wisdom. I find wisdom to be more than the apocryphal “knowledge rightly applied to experience.” Beyond this rather vague and generic frame, let us understand that wisdom has an attitudinal or emotional as well as an intellectual component. Wisdom is a configuration of soul; it is moral character. And fostering moral character, it is no overstatement to say, is at all times the greatest goal of education. It is the goal of the “phreneo Christou,” the mind of Christ to which Paul urges his churches, it is the fulfillment of the moral codes and virtue lists we read and memorize. It is at once the ability to resist temptation and the understanding of why that resistance is eternally necessary. Wisdom is, then, shorthand for the goal of the faithfully formed disciple. The church is not the only place where wisdom may be heard, but it is certainly a primary source of that wisdom. The Scriptures testify that the fear of the Lord is the beginning and culmination of wisdom. The church must, then, be that place where wisdom is proclaimed, but also more than proclaimed. The church must be that place where wisdom is embodied, enacted, and sought in community. Hear the words of Proverbs about what Lady Wisdom has done: she has set up a great house, spread a great table, and is out in the busy metropolitan streets hawking a dinner party, a salon, a seminar around her kitchen table for the edification and education of anyone willing to come. That sounds too familiar… The Common Lectionary has cut us off from the great contest going on in these chapters of Proverbs. Over and against the call of Wisdom to the simple to enter into a challenging, long-term, yet ultimately satisfying relationship, Lady Folly calls from just across the street. She, too, is holding a dinner party, and though seductive, her party will offer no life, no wisdom, no meaning. Hers is a dinner party for the hook-up culture, for the thrill seekers, for the work-hard-play-hard friends of mine. It is a party of folly, that relaxing word that reminds us of betting the coin toss in an NFL game or playing croquet. Folly is easier on the spirit, it seems. Cheap jokes and silly stories entice us. Folly often looks pretty good. The wine is stronger, the music louder. We are supposed to choose the less-fun path of wisdom. Paul points to drunkenness, the very point of Lady Folly’s dinner party, as the mark of time wasting among the believers. There is room to broaden drunkenness and its pointless and senseless waste of time to other ways we waste ourselves in meaninglessness. Wisdom is applied here to the living of our days. Time is not featured as some cosmic catchall which we simply fill up by living so long. Rather, time is an ingredient in human life, standing in need of redemption as much as any other aspect of human being. "Making the most of the time" is a call to consider our lifetimes a time of salvation, to make the task of being formed into the likeness of Christ a lifelong pursuit that has no room for the drunkenness of folly. We are urged to wisdom, filling ourselves not with wine but with Spirit, with Christ, with God. The Pentecost church was taken for a bunch of drunkards. To be brimful in this way is the better part of wisdom. To be drawn into singing, psalms, hymns, spirituals, thanksgiving, glad worship is no ignorance, no waste. For the fullness of Spirit is properly experienced only in community. Where drunkenness, or any other selfish diversion for that matter—even a religious one—tends to isolate, take away, or destroy family and community, the church is encouraged in another direction. This is the course of wisdom as the church always tries to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Yes, we can be drunk of church. We hear “make the most of the time” and imagine a week crammed full of programs, trips, classes, and meetings to maximize our involvement in the Kingdom. But this tendency, which, in my opinion, is a devilish corruption of the mission of the church to make people whole by making them thinner of soul and more separated from the world they are called to heal, it is much safer than actually living wisely and being the church. It is easier to be a teetotaler than to be a mature believer who understands the wisdom of self-control. It is easier to be an extremist and to draw clear boundaries than to live in the messy compromises that wisdom calls us to. Notice that the invitation of Lady Wisdom is to the simple, the senseless, and the immature: hardly the crowd we want on a steering committee. We lose control of the church when we start inviting these sorts of people to come and be formed by the Spirit, to come and sit around the table that Wisdom has set. There’s no telling just what we will learn of these simpletons when we are forced to sit in extended conversation with them around the bread and wine of the Church. Oh what a beautiful image! The master sending out the servants to the alleys and streets inviting the dumb, the foolish, the simple-minded to a feast where they can be honored as human beings and presented a spread of food that truly feeds – it is as though we continue to hear that theme throughout the whole of Scripture. Jesus has said that he is that bread which sustains unto eternal life. He is the wine that wells up within us in new blood as sons and daughters of God. But the table we are called to is not simply the act of taking and eating or drinking; it is the sitting with the other in dialogue and relationship and learning to live wisely in a world allergic to such slow work. We have been convinced that to make the most of time means to get more done in each hour, in each minute. We have been sold a vision of life that says sitting with strangers and being slowly formed into the likeness of our God is not as valuable as quickly scheduling another meeting or service or seminar. It is a waste of time to sit at this table. The food has taken too long to prepare, the service a little too slow, the conversation a little too pointed and personal. But the smells! But the scene of vegetables piled high on the Lord’s buffet, of the meats slowly roasting over a Holy Fire, of brother and sister serving one another out of the love and fellowship that is as much a mark of the true church as the stripes on Christ’s back. Can we still be wise? Sure. It is not enough to say that we need to slow down and breathe occasionally. It is not enough to say that we should resist the information-as-commodity culture we live in; such is the air we breathe. Living wisely is not just about time. It is about the intentional formation into the likeness of Christ to which we as individuals and as the church corporate must submit. Such a formation will involve Scripture, history, and a healthy dose of patience with one another. For the classroom of the wise is really a kitchen; our laboratory a dining room. The curriculum is people learning to love one another and to mutually submit to one another and to the Lord Jesus Christ. We must learn to present the Feast of the Lord in such a way that it is more than an invitation to memorialize the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ; we must learn to present our very existence as the church as a feast of fellowship, of embrace, and of the continual reformation of our lives into the nature of Jesus Christ. Even our finest culinary artists will not match God's creation in perfection, completion, and stability. Those are the traits of Wisdom's house, God's earth. But with bread and with wine, with soup and an open table, we begin to sense the wonder of the creative act that is Holy Wisdom, in the person of a woman, whose kitchen is filled with good things and whose home is a place of welcome. "Come and eat," she proclaims. "Come to Wisdom's feast."

The Promise Part I

The Promise Part I
An Exploration into the Wilderness of Faith
A Sermon Delivered at Madison Chapel
March 4, 2012


It’s funny which struggles are the hardest during Lent. Lesley and I have, for the last six years, given up several things recommended by the church fathers and taken on extra focus on prayer and family devotion. This year, expecting our first child, we’ve decided to forego her dietary restrictions so as to not jeopardize her nutrition. I have tried to maintain the Lenten obligations that I have in years past – no red meat, no alcohol, and no celebrations – wrongly assuming that doing so would be harder because I would be alone in these restrictions.
These “usual” restrictions have been difficult so far, but no more so than last year. I do not really believe that hunger was the real struggle for Jesus in the wilderness, either. We see from the Gospels that the real struggle was one of authority, where Jesus was confronted with being obedient to the will of his Father over his own desires time and again. He could have supplied bread for himself; he could have supplied bread for every person on earth. However, submitting to the authority of the Father he denied himself and “took up the cross” of hunger and struggle.
In this Lenten season I, too, am struggling with authority. Now I’m not in the wilderness alone and deciding whether or not some pebbles would make good croutons; I’m struggling through a different sort of temptation. I am more and more convinced that my own discipleship and my own theology has become more important than the very Spirit of God that I pray dwells within me. In short, I feel the need to rethink the way I do Church.
What should a church be? Not necessarily THE Church, that is, the collection of believers, the Body of all those confessing that Jesus is Lord, but rather my church. What is the true vision of the faithful followers of Jesus Christ meeting for work and worship to teach and learn? This Lenten season has convinced me of one thing, at least: my ecclesial heritage is as much of a handicap as it is a helpmate.
I am well aware of the theological and ecclesial blood that has been spilled in the last century of Baptist life in the South. The Premillenialism of Frank Norris in the ‘20s, the Genesis controversy of the ‘60s, and the Broadman Commentary publication of the 70’s all fed into what happened to what was until then the cooperative fellowship among similarly-believing Baptists around here, namely the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. Walter Shurden has adroitly documented how all of this played out at the convention level over the last thirty years, and I am indebted to him for helping me catch up.
I say that I had to catch up because I was, by the grace of God and the stern determinism of my Pastor/father, shielded from the fray at the First Baptist Church of Saint Francisville, Louisiana. When I went to Truett seminary, I confess that I couldn’t figure out why everyone was so…angry. I later learned that many of my professors had been disenfranchised or outright fired in the fundamentalist takeover, and that Baylor (and thereby a new seminary) had resisted the movement and had become something different.
“Something different.” There’s a terrifying idea in the life and times of Baptists in Mississippi. There are thousands upon thousands of people in churches all around us this morning who simply do church the way they do out of habit and ignorance, or maybe out of fear. You see, doing anything differently might be a little too much like following Jesus into the wilderness. It might be a little too “unsafe” to think that we could not be defined by what convention we aren’t or what polity we don’t have or what we don’t believe about women or about the Bible. What is unsafe is the God who shows up out of the blue and takes people to a new, dangerous country. Let us look at one such event and how it might help us find a place to rest in the wilderness.
The Lectionary has placed before us the story of God’s original covenant with Abraham, a promise that Paul would later interpret as the first formal act of faith in the community of God’s people. When presented with God’s in-breaking of a new reality Abraham was confronted with some very stark realities that didn’t seem to have alternatives: God was promising a child to the old man and his barren wife, and more than that, this son would be the progenitor of an eventual inheritance of nations. Who could blame Abraham for doubting this new God? Here was his wrinkled reflection and track record of frustration with getting Sarah pregnant – after all, there was Ishmael…. But God singled out this relationship, this woman, this man, this time, this child, this family, this generation…it was Sarah or nothing; it was faith that this newly-revealed God would follow through on this promise.
Paul uses this moment in the Scriptures to combat the status-quo of his own generation. He was one of those who had been thrown out of the seminaries and pulpits of his day because he had encountered the undeniable truth that God was not going to sit idly by and let the static Law with its layers of interpretive chains produce generation after generation of people who missed the point. Paul was one of those exiled, pressured, and excluded because of his encounter with Jesus Christ. Paul has seen something even beyond this transforming encounter – he has seen the inclusion of the Gentiles in the family of faith. Surely this can’t be right – surely the people of God will maintain the racial, ethnic, and religious boundaries that had existed since Sinai! Scandal upon scandal – the same God who had reckoned Abraham’s steps out in faith as righteousness was now opening the door to all peoples.
Paul talks of this revelation, saying “for this reason it depends of faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham…In the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” There’s the key – it is God who completely changes the paradigm. It is God who can pull off the creatio ex nihilo of Abraham’s journey, of the inclusion of the Gentiles into the family of faith, and, I believe, the life of a church.
Mark Forman has argued that Paul’s use of the Abraham story in Romans 4 is intended to offer comfort to the Christians living under the counter-narrative of Roman rule. He sees the Christians living under Caesar as a community in exile, as though they were an outpost of Christian conviction surrounded by the religious status quo that thought they were just a little too progressive. Just as Caesar made promises of peace, hope, and stability, the Christians knew that God’s promises in Christ Jesus were far beyond whatever Rome could offer. Paul, Forman argues, reminded the believers that the promise to Abraham, namely that he would “inherit the world,” was “to evoke the issue of which groups of people have a share in the world to come, and in doing so he invites his audience to critique the current social, economic and political situation and by implication to reflect on the causes of the disparities which exist. For Paul to use the language of inheritance is to refuse to allow the imperial narrative to be the only story by which the Roman Christians are shaped.”
Was it to be the world that Rome created that determined the lives of Christians? No. Was it to be the rules of apparent barren-ness that would determine the future for Abraham and Sarah? Certainly not.
I would dare ask, in this season Lent, when we are driven into the wilderness to be tempted, and tried, and pushed, who are we going to be? Who will define this congregation? What function of the Body will this little congregation perform?
I suspect that in our community, and beyond it in our region, there are scores of people who are waiting for a church to be something different, something revelatory, something prophetic, something poetic, something damaged, something healed. I believe that there are people like me, who, after having been driven into the wilderness where there is more doubt than compact certainty, are waiting for some glad someone to come along and say “yes, I’ve wept by those waters before. Let me sit with you.”
But the momentum is so strong to see church the way it has been in this area for so long. The ossification of doctrine and worship leaves churches and believers as brittle and wooden as the pews they sit in. Someone needs to be the church of the God who can say to Old Man Abraham, “trust me.” Some church needs to extend the bandaged hand of the faithful to those who have been crushed by the crosses they take up daily.
This is not a call to arms, but a call to mature, sober evaluation of God’s leading on a group of people. I think that Brian McLaren has rightly argued that the nature of the church is not monolithic – we do not need to all return to the first century paradigm, nor do we need to all be Catholic or Baptist. Rather, the diversity among congregations allows for people to find a faith community that allows them the best environment for growth and exploration of the Faith. He says of the “new” kind of local congregation, “it is a space in which human beings, formed in Christlike love, cooperate with the Spirit and one another to express that love in word and deed, art, and action.
In the little village of Le Chambon, France, a local congregational minister decided to resist the Nazi pogrom against the Jews by actively sheltering Jewish refugees in the town. His vision of the church was a community that helped, that made a difference that resisted evil with good. Philip Hallie, who recounted the amazing story of these villagers, says of that pastor, “[He] gave his aggressive ethic to them [the villagers] by giving them himself. Aside from the distinction between good and evil, between helping and hurting, the fundamental distinction of that ethic is between giving things and giving oneself. When you give somebody a thing without giving yourself, you degrade both parties by making the receiver utterly passive and by making yourself a benefactor standing there to receive thanks – and even sometimes obedience – as repayment. But when you give yourself, nobody is degraded – in fact, both parties are elevated by a shared joy. When you give yourself, the things you are giving become…fruitful. What you give creates new, vigorous life, instead of arrogance on the one hand and passivity on the other.”
How much we need such a church, one that gives of itself and expects nothing, not even doctrinal fidelity in return. The life of the church our community needs is one that welcomes the messes of life and consistently offers the hope of Christ Jesus through word and deed. I believe that there are people in churches and neighborhoods all around us that are waiting to exhale, to question, to seek and to find. The church Mississippi needs is not another “plant” in a new community, but rather a congregation that is honest about its need for God’s constant interaction and revelation. It is a church that looks at the world to which it has been called, that ultimate wilderness of trial, and with the eyes of a withered old man says, “Let’s go.”
So here I sit in Lent. It turns out that the struggle in my soul isn’t about how hungry for steak I am, or how much I could really use a beer when I get done teaching 7th graders how to do algebra. The real struggle is how I am going to be faithful to the God that is so much bigger than the church will let him be. My struggle is about just how much I can trust this new and constantly-being-revealed God that’s been there the whole time. I wonder just how far he can take me.

Missing the Presence

Missing the Presence
Funeral sermon delivered for Miss Callie Tullos
Waco, Texas
January 11, 2012


Dear friends, there is not enough time and there are not enough words to bring comfort into this place. I am more than honored to be given the charge of saying something of meaning into the deep darkness that has befallen our community. We must first cast ourselves into the arms of god, whose great love compels him to receive us and comfort us in our hurt if we will but be embraced in his loving kindness. Just as Jonathan had to part with his beloved friend David, saying "tomorrow is the feast of the new moon. You'll be missed because your place at the table will be empty," so will Callie be missed at every gathering, in every class, and at every holiday. This absence is great, but the embrace of our God is greater. There is more love and mercy in God than there is sorrow in man.
What can we say about our beloved Callie Belle? It seems shallow to speak of her beauty, though she was so beautiful. It seems callous to speak of her joy and effervescence, as we are as far from joy today as we can be. No, if anything we should think of her faith, the faith that made her beauty more stunning, her joy complete, and her life worth celebrating.
Within the great, wide diversity of the Christian family the Celtic believers stand out unique in their passionate spirituality and devotion to the Lord. These believers visit what they call "thin places," places where they find the veil separating our world from the divine to be as frail as a spider's web, like the lace between the groom and is bride in those moments before they are wed. At these thin places believers experience glimmers and flashes of the divine love and joy, driving them to celebrate and share in the Lord's love and joy in this world.
I think if Callie as a movable "thin place." Who, after but a moment in her presence could not detect the Divine Presence that wells up to joy and love in her and in those she meets? How long did it take you to recognize that this young woman was a poorly disguised window into something heavenly?
Our congregation in Riesel noticed. Every week that Callie worshipped with us was a week the sermon was a little more poignant, the hymns a little more poetic, the presence more potent. One of the best times I had with Callie was when she helped chaperone a children's ministry trip to Six Flags. She was never above "the least of these" or too busy for a day of play with little boys and girls who loved her. She was willing to share that "thin place" with the rest of us.
Cheryl, I hope you know how much of a minister Callie was to me and our community while you were hospitalized. Never before and not since have I encountered such fierce and unrelenting faith in one so young. From that first day when you were admitted to the shopping trips and spa days that marked your latest recovery Callie never broke faith in God's ability to heal you and to restore you. Every Facebook post, every text, and every smile on her lips testified that she knew something the rest of us just couldn't see yet. She had a glimpse of God's love and joy that came from within and beyond her. It was her calling and ministry to me and to so many others that our Redeemer was never so far away.

We reflect on the promise of God, that he will one day remove death from life, that old enemy being swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection. We wait for every tear to be wiped from our eyes and our mourning to end and out pain to cease. We wait for consolation, for joy, for the tender hand of our god to cradle the back of our head and tell us for the last time, "there there." We wait for the day when the last hopeful words of the Old Testament, spoken through the Prophet Malachi, will be real to us: "They shall be mine, says the Lord of Hosts, my treasured possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them."
Surely we can hope in this. Surely there is, in the midst of this thick darkness the light of hope. For surely God will act - he has claimed what was his, Callie, his treasured possession.

Missing the Presence

Missing the Presence
Funeral sermon delivered for Miss Callie Tullos
Waco, Texas
January 11, 2012


Dear friends, there is not enough time and there are not enough words to bring comfort into this place. I am more than honored to be given the charge of saying something of meaning into the deep darkness that has befallen our community. We must first cast ourselves into the arms of god, whose great love compels him to receive us and comfort us in our hurt if we will but be embraced in his loving kindness. Just as Jonathan had to part with his beloved friend David, saying "tomorrow is the feast of the new moon. You'll be missed because your place at the table will be empty," so will Callie be missed at every gathering, in every class, and at every holiday. This absence is great, but the embrace of our God is greater. There is more love and mercy in God than there is sorrow in man.
What can we say about our beloved Callie Belle? It seems shallow to speak of her beauty, though she was so beautiful. It seems callous to speak of her joy and effervescence, as we are as far from joy today as we can be. No, if anything we should think of her faith, the faith that made her beauty more stunning, her joy complete, and her life worth celebrating.
Within the great, wide diversity of the Christian family the Celtic believers stand out unique in their passionate spirituality and devotion to the Lord. These believers visit what they call "thin places," places where they find the veil separating our world from the divine to be as frail as a spider's web, like the lace between the groom and is bride in those moments before they are wed. At these thin places believers experience glimmers and flashes of the divine love and joy, driving them to celebrate and share in the Lord's love and joy in this world.
I think if Callie as a movable "thin place." Who, after but a moment in her presence could not detect the Divine Presence that wells up to joy and love in her and in those she meets? How long did it take you to recognize that this young woman was a poorly disguised window into something heavenly?
Our congregation in Riesel noticed. Every week that Callie worshipped with us was a week the sermon was a little more poignant, the hymns a little more poetic, the presence more potent. One of the best times I had with Callie was when she helped chaperone a children's ministry trip to Six Flags. She was never above "the least of these" or too busy for a day of play with little boys and girls who loved her. She was willing to share that "thin place" with the rest of us.
Cheryl, I hope you know how much of a minister Callie was to me and our community while you were hospitalized. Never before and not since have I encountered such fierce and unrelenting faith in one so young. From that first day when you were admitted to the shopping trips and spa days that marked your latest recovery Callie never broke faith in God's ability to heal you and to restore you. Every Facebook post, every text, and every smile on her lips testified that she knew something the rest of us just couldn't see yet. She had a glimpse of God's love and joy that came from within and beyond her. It was her calling and ministry to me and to so many others that our Redeemer was never so far away.

We reflect on the promise of God, that he will one day remove death from life, that old enemy being swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection. We wait for every tear to be wiped from our eyes and our mourning to end and out pain to cease. We wait for consolation, for joy, for the tender hand of our god to cradle the back of our head and tell us for the last time, "there there." We wait for the day when the last hopeful words of the Old Testament, spoken through the Prophet Malachi, will be real to us: "They shall be mine, says the Lord of Hosts, my treasured possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them."
Surely we can hope in this. Surely there is, in the midst of this thick darkness the light of hope. For surely God will act - he has claimed what was his, Callie, his treasured possession.