Unraveling racism – Naming our Samaritans and traveling our Jericho road

Posted in Culture, Multi-ethnic Church by Matt Marino

Good Samaritan Center Slides.005 copy

(A sermon. 7/10/16)

What a week.

You may be wondering: Will the church address the events in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis, and Dallas? Will we go there? Spoiler alert: Yes.

Although I successfully resisted the urge to engage in Facebook activism, I cannot avoid last week’s events from the pulpit – we have to “go there” because at this moment in America our problems are simply outside of the realm of mere secular solutions. We have a spiritual sickness, so the church has to talk about it.

Everyone has a perspective. Here’s mine: First, I have strong admiration for the police. Police officers risk their lives every time they put on the shield. I played high school basketball with the Phoenix Chief of Police. Even as a kid he was smart, tough, level headed and fair. I have friends who work difficult beats. I have friends in vice and friends on SWAT. A friend renting our home in Phoenix starts the police academy next month. I love, respect, and appreciate every officer I know personally. And I respect and appreciate the job police officers do to protect us all every day.

And…I also did urban ministry in Phoenix’s I-17 corridor. As “the white guy” on our church staff, I know a dozen people who have been “sweat” – stopped for things like tail lights being out when they weren’t. I have friends who spent the night in jail for non-offenses that would raise your eyebrows. Our preacher, Dijuahn, in an incident eerily similar to Philando Castille’s, was shot multiple times by an officer who panicked when Dijuahn told him he was carrying a gun. Dijuahn lived, though. He did nine years in prison for the officer’s mistake. So I have experienced both sides of this tension. If there were easy answers we’d have found them already.

How do we begin to unravel this mess we are in? Luke 10:25-37 is a good place to start.

Look at how a well-meaning religious person can be part of the problem…

v25 And behold, a lawyer (an expert in the first 5 books of the Old Testament – “the law”) stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” “Eternal life” in the first century was not a ticket to heaven, but was rather viewed as a quality of life here and now that would simply never end. This lawyer starts with the right question: “How do I have the life I was meant to have? How do I have that quality of life that only comes from God?” He starts in the right place:

1) He has the right question.

v26 “Jesus says to him, ‘What is written in the Law? How do you read it?’ Jesus asks.” v27 The lawyer quotes the summary of the Law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Not only does this lawyer know the right question,

2) He has the right source of authority: the scriptures-God’s revealed truth. And,

3) He has the right answer: love.

And (Jesus) said to him, v28 “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” Jesus confirms that Loving God and loving your neighbor as a result of your first love, love for God, is life-giving.

And here it gets interesting: v29 “But he…desiring to justify himself… (The human default is the desire to “justify” ourselves, to try to prove to God how lucky he is to have us on his team.) V29 he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (It is difficult to even read the question without an attitude. The man is trying to figure out how little he can do. He is trying to lower the bar on love.)

So our man has the right question, the right source of truth, and the right answer. Unfortunately, he also gets a few things wrong… He has:

1) The wrong motive (v25) “to put Jesus to the test.” And now,

2) The wrong method (v29)“to justify himself,” and,

3) The wrong attitude (v29) “Who exactly is my neighbor?”

Unfortunately, half-right in the Christian life usually leaves us with a life that is all-wrong.

And have you noticed that when we are half-wrong we are usually 100% convinced we are all-right?

Breaking through our self-deception

When someone was self-deceived in the bible, Jesus would often sneak around their internal defenses with a story. He does that in Luke 11:

v30 “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho… I have been on the road to Jericho. I was nervous. It’s a rocky downhill descending 3500 feet in elevation, an 18-mile ambush opportunity. If this were a Western movie, the road to Jericho is where the stagecoach would get held up.

“A man fell among robbers, who strip and beat him, leaving him half dead.” (all quite predictable) v31 “A priest comes along. He saw him and passed by on the other side.” v32 “Likewise a Levite,” (who assisted priests, ie. A person active at the church.) “when he came to the place and saw him, he too passed by on the other side.” That is what smart people do. The bleeding guy is probably a set up. Be safe: walk by on the other side. And now, just when you would expect a nice Jewish layperson, Jesus throws the curveball…

v33 “But a Samaritan…” A SAMARITAN! Jews and Samaritans helping one another? Simply unthinkable. Samaritans were the remnants of lower class Jews not considered important enough for the Assyrians to exile when they had conquered Israel eight centuries earlier. Then they intermarried with the invading Assyrians and Babylonians. The Samaritan/Jewish thing was a racial, cultural, tribal, religious, and class conflict beyond our experience.

Yet it is the Samaritan who… “came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. v34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine” (oil speeds healing. alcohol is antiseptic.) “he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. v35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ v36 And then Jesus asks the obvious: “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”

Don’t be the well-meaning religious person who inadvertently becomes part of the problem. Ask yourself: #whoismyneighbor? #whatisyourjerichoroad?

It is on the road to Jericho where fear, security, and realism butt up against faith, hope, and love.

It is on the road to Jericho where we confront our fears and our prejudices – where I decide if I will do what is smart and safe or what someone else needs me to do.

It is on the Road to Jericho where love is put to the test.

I wonder…at what point did the lawyer who had it half-right realize that his motives, methods, and attitude where all-wrong?

I wonder…at what point on our Jericho road you and I will confront our Samaritans?

What should we do when we, like the lawyer, begin to realize, that for all we have right in life, we still lack that quality of overwhelming, overflowing joy that Jesus spoke of?

What you should do depends on where you are. First, do you know Jesus Christ? Have you allowed him to be your justifier, or are you still looking for life on your own? If so, the hard to hear truth is this: There is only one source of eternal life, only one who justifies – Jesus. There is only one truly Good Samaritan. Only one, who, having compassion, crossed out of his way, all the way from heaven in fact, to us. One Great Samaritan, who, as unlikely as it sounds, binds up our broken hearts, who takes us, battered and bruised by life and pours the wine of his presence and the oil of his calling upon us…who takes us to his own home, at great personal cost, and keeps returning by placing his Spirit permanently within us when we place our trust in him. So, if you do not yet know Jesus Christ, come to him this morning by faith. Surrender your life to his healing, uplifting, love-giving presence. Because otherwise you will, ultimately, serve the world from pain.

Have you already experienced the touch of the master’s hand? If that is you, I implore you, courageously seek, name, and turn from your fears. Acknowledge your Jericho Road and name your “Samaritans,” the “other” in your heart. Our nation’s hope is not to be found in justice but in love. And love and fear never occupy the same space. Why is this so important? Because,

when 13% of America is convinced that it is open season on them, it is a fail for 100% of us.

Only those filled and led by love, freed from the grip fear, can hope to overcome four centuries of earned distrust. So I ask you, who are your Samaritans?

I’ve had my share of “Samaritans” – people I have feared over my life. Since my dad was the realtor for the Phoenix Suns, I grew up in a uniquely multi-ethnic environment for a middle class kid. But I had lots of other “Samaritans.” Lots of roads I avoided. Mine were communists, illegal aliens, and gang members.God has stripped those one by one as I watched people from those groups experience the mercy of God and the same life-change that I experienced. They became friends. It is amazing the way “perfect love casts out fear. (1 Jn 4:18)

This week we had Baton Rouge, Minneapolis, and Dallas. Not morally equivalent acts, yet acts that will always be connected in our consciousness. In the wake of the horror you may be tempted to retreat to slogans or party lines. Or, alternately, to take a silent detour through “nice,” and avoid traveling the Jericho Road altogether.

Church, refuse the easy way. Don’t allow the dangers of the Jericho Road to cause you to question, “Who is my neighbor?” What Jesus taught is simple: If they are breathing, they’re your neighbor.

Here are a few small simple neighborly things you can do: 1) Smile and say, “hi.” 2) Build friendships outside of your ethnic and social group. 3) Ask people outside of your group to tell you how their experiences. Listen (without judging or attempting to correct their impressions).

Because If they are breathing, they’re your neighbor. So, Christian, don’t lower the bar on love. Or, as Jesus told the lawyer, “You go, and do likewise.”

And as you go remember, “love” is still the right answer.

You will be tempted to go driven by the heart breaking needs you see around you. As counterintuitive as it seems, resist that urge. Because if you allow the world’s need and your desire for justice to drive you, you will end up bitter and broken. Anger is a parasite that cares not on whom it feasts.

So go. But go centered in the deep and wise love of God. Go loving God’s world with the overflow of God’s love in your life. G0 with the hope that the one whose love is redeeming you can redeem them. Go in the majesty and power of the one described by an anonymous second century disciple of John who explained the transforming love of Jesus to Marcus Aurelius’ tutor Diognetus like this….and I quote:

But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us…the one love of God…took on Him the burden of our iniquities, and gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for those who are mortal.

For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!

Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life, and having now revealed the Savior who is able to save even those ones which it was [formerly] impossible to save, by both these facts He desires to lead us to trust in His kindness, (and) to esteem Him our Nourisher, Father, Teacher, Counsellor, Healer, our Wisdom, Light, Honour, Glory, Power, and Life.

(Chapter 9, Epistle from Mathetes to Diognetus)

Amen.

(If you would like to listen to the version preached it is here: http://www.sjd.org/sermon/07-10-16-contemporary-sermon-by-the-rev-matt-marino/

24Jun2016

No. You don’t want your uncle Jimmy to get ordained online to do your wedding.

Posted in Culture, Leadership, Millennials by Matt Marino

white-wedding-1

It is trendy to have someone you know buy an online ordination and do your wedding ceremony. Every year I have multiple (otherwise solid) Christians contact me to ask where and how to find the “least weird” way to be ordained. Here is my response:

It is an honor to be asked, and good on you for wanting to make it as right as possible. Unfortunately, what you are asking just isn’t. Would you ask a teacher help you get a “less weird” online teaching certificate? Or a doctor to help you get a “less weird” online medical license? Getting ordained through Billy Bob’s Online Church of the Twenty-Buck Blessing may seem like a good idea, but it overlooks the training and experience needed to do a wedding well. A teacher does more than pull off classroom management as a one-time substitute, and a doctor more than demonstrate mastery of the tongue depressor in a routine visit. In the same way, a pastor does much more than simply read a wedding service.

Your friend will be putting someone who has never done a wedding in charge of the single most expensive and important party of their life. Will they also be asking a friend who takes nice Instagram pics to be photographer? A minister is air-traffic control. They make all of the many parts and people move in coordination. Brides are under a lot of stress. They do not need a rookie at the helm.

More than that, a non-ordained friend doing the ceremony is a bad setup for the marriage. Marriage is a sacred act originating in the mind of God. Marriage is tough. It needs God’s participation to have more than a Powerball player’s chance of making it after you scratch the ink off and see what resides below the surface of each of us. There are important roles in a wedding a friend can handle, but when it comes to making the vows, you want to have every bit of oomph possible behind those promises. You want a couple, even ones without faith involvement, to say, “I promised God and God’s representative in front of all of my friends and family in that church that I will love this girl/boy no matter how bad a time I am having of it. I’d better make good on this!”

Do them a favor, ask them to find someone duly ordained. Probably not what you wanted to hear. 🙂

Matt

Usually my friends then respond with: That’s a lot to think about, but my niece/friend/neighbor is really important to me. I’m the only Christian they know and being connected to a church isn’t a priority for them. I think this is a great opportunity for me to ask some good, tough questions to her and her fiancé. Don’t you?

I love your heart. You don’t want an online ordination.

You are wise to see your friends’ need for preparation. Marriage preparation from someone who is in a good marriage, like yours, is a good thing. But why not also connect them with someone who has helped lots of marriages? Good churches typically do a 4-6 session pre-marital course. Your friendship gives you traction to say, “Trust us, you want one more person involved: a real pastor…with their experience, preparation program, and the encouragement of other couples who will also be making new marriages work. All of that will be really helpful!”

On top of that, encourage them to try a church. You and I have both experienced the support and perspective that faith and a multi-generational church community has been in keeping the wheels from coming off our marriages when they might have otherwise.

Matt

The friend then generally responds with some version of: “Matt, you really don’t get the situation here. Our friend doesn’t going to church and they aren’t going to. She wants ME to do it and I want to do it because I love them.”

I have learned to have this part of the conversation in person because it looks so snarky in writing:

I have been at this a long time. I actually do know what is going on. 99 couples out of 100 come to clergy and ask for a “great wedding.” The fact that you think you are their best option for that, friend, reveals their need for an actual pastor. It feels good to be asked, and it feels good to give someone what they want. But that doesn’t really help them. Pastors do not to acquiesce to people’s whims and wants, but move naive couples off of the dime of “great wedding” to “great marriage.” The first is a one-off. The second is a lifetime.

I am not saying, “Let a friend down.” I am saying be a great friend: Give them a third party – one who can say things important for their life together, but hard for them to hear. Then you and your wife are free to take the role of wise old married friend confirming the ancient wisdom offered by that pastor.

Many have been burned by the church and ministers, or, not knowing or distrusting the church, have failed to engage. But, to bring this full circle, bad ministers and bad churches do not invalidate the help provided by good ones any more than being harmed by bad public school teachers or bad doctors invalidates teaching or medicine. Don’t fall into the trap of reinforcing the perception of irrelevance of some of the most potentially helpful relationships in their marriage: a church and qualified, called, experienced clergy. Make their circle larger: Include a real church and a real pastor.

Matt

Ordination is not a piece of paper.

Ordination is a long process that begins when the community sees someone’s calling. A person confirms that call through a period of prayer and community discernment. Then the person endure rigorous preparation that typically culminates in a 3-year Masters of Divinity degree program. After seeing the faithfulness of the person in their faith journey, service, and spiritual preparation, then the church ordains them, setting them apart and asking God to make them, by His grace, up to the task of leading God’s people.

In ordination, the community of faith, below, around, and above invests in a person’s training, and then asks them to, as Eugene Peterson said, “Lash themselves to the mast of Word and Sacrament” on that communities’ behalf. Ordained people pledge to be the one whom, when the storms of life come, the community can count on. They pledge to be there when we are married, when our children are born, when they own their faith, and when we are ill and when we go and meet our maker…and every week in between. It is a sacred covenant between God, the ordained, and a community. Because of our relationship with our clergy: we have an awareness of the sacrifices they have made, and knowing that they literally risk their supper if they offend us, we trust that the occasional hard things they say and we don’t want to hear deserve a listen.

Googling an ordination makes a mockery of that process, real pastors, and the communities that call them. And it doesn’t help the people getting married.

Buying an ordination does two things well: It gives pastors lots of complements from people whose last wedding was officiated at by a bogusly ordained friend, and it feeds a side of the one buying it that really doesn’t need feeding.

Photo from: wedding photo

6Jun2016

Spiritual but not religious: Code for “trendy yet not helpful”

Posted in Culture, Millennials by Matt Marino

religion-is-nonsense

I recently walked the final leg of the El Camino de Santiago in Spain.[1] Before leaving I was in a coffee house having a conversation about the trip. A guy behind me asked, “Why Spain?” My response, “It’s a spiritual thing.” Today a lot of people, particularly millennials, care about “spirituality.” 250,000 people walked The Camino in 2015. More will this year. My coffeehouse acquaintance, reflecting the cultural trendiness of “spirituality” said predictably, “I’m curious about that, after all, I’m spiritual but not religious.” To be “spiritual but not religious” is all the rage. Everyone wants “spiritual,” but many desperately reject “religious.” The question is “What do people mean by, “not religious“?

My friend Michael, a really smart priest in Dallas jokes, “‘Spiritual but not religious’ is code for ‘too lazy to get out of bed on Sunday.’” But I don’t think that’s it exactly. After all, millennials seem to be fine with ritual: We watched 2000 people a day crowd the pilgrim masses at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. So while my coffee house acquaintance and many others seek “a personal experience of the divine,” and are also willing to check out a religious service, they are most definitely not running out and joining a church. So, if “religious” doesn’t mean, “I don’t like ritual” or “I’m too lazy to get up on Sunday,” what does it mean?

What is “not religious”?

In the very least, “not religious” means “I don’t see value in joining a faith community.” Perhaps this is because the churches they know are engaged in social causes they don’t like. Or because it is too narrow…or too broad (“everyone is too similar,” or “no-one is like me”). The cynical might say millennials are like Goldilocks – impossible to please. My snarky reply is that the body of Christ has done church by focus group and now doesn’t like it when the masses return the favor.

The second thing “not religious” seems to mean is “I want to do my spiritual life on my own terms.” It is to this group I appeal: Doing your spiritual life on your own is ultimately empty.

Look for example in Luke chapter 7. The first ten verses give us the story of a Roman centurion whose favorite servant is dying. Hearing that Jesus is on his way to town, he sends the town’s Jewish religious leaders with whom he is on good terms to request that Jesus heal his servant. Jesus turns and heads toward his home. The centurion, realizing that a rabbi visiting the home of a gentile becomes ceremonially unclean, sends a second set of friends to tell Jesus, “Lord, do not trouble yourself. I am not worthy” for you to be in my house, “therefore I did not presume to come to you.” He finally says, “You don’t even need to come. Just send the word to heal, and I trust that it will be done. After all, I am under authority too.” Jesus sends the word and the servant is healed. Then it says, “Jesus marveled at his faith.” He then turns to the crowd and, in one of the very few instances of Jesus interacting with a non-Jew, holds the gentile military occupier up as the example of “spiritual.”

What makes the Centurion Jesus’ model for “spiritual”?

First, notice that the man calls Jesus “Lord” (master). Every single one of the the bible’s 66 books uses the word “lord.” It appears nearly 8000 times in the Bible. (For comparison the word “love” is used about 800 times.) As a title for Jesus, “lord” emphasizes his authority, his rule over the whole world. Unlike most religious leaders, the centurion calls Jesus, “Lord.” Let that punch land for a moment: the leader of the most powerful military the world had ever seen calls Jesus, “the one with authority.” Whereas the religious leaders treated Jesus as a colleague, the truly spiritual defer to Jesus as Lord.

Jesus calls that deference “faith.” Faith in the bible is the opposite of sin. Soren Kierkegaard, father of existential philosophy, in a little book called The Sickness Unto Death said, “Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God….Faith is: the self, in being itself and wanting to be itself, grounded transparently in God.” Sin, regardless of what you may have learned in Sunday School, is not “doing bad things.” Sin is more subtle and much more dangerous: It is seeking our identity apart from God. While its’ antithesis, faith, is finding our identity in God. Faith, finding our identity in the God revealed in scripture and lived out in community, is why being truly “spiritual” always involves being “religious” as well.

Why do we need a defined faith and a defined faith community?

Simply because they bring us into our created purpose: Finding our identity in Christ as we humbly, confidently surrender to the one rightly called, “Lord.” And having to express that faith by surrendering to other troublesome humans in the community of faith.

The world, my friends, has realized the vacuousness of life without God. “Spirituality” is an acknowledgement of our unavoidable religious nature. “Spirituality without religion,” though, is an attempt to be nourished through a steady diet of dessert. It is the idolatry of the almighty self. The repeated more than reflected upon millennial mantra of “I’m spiritual but not religious,” reminds me of the six junior high girls I once saw walking through the mall wearing matching red “Dare to be Different!” T-shirts. Convinced they were saying something unique and profound, they failed to see the irony.

Whose fault is this?

Whenever those outside the Christian faith fail to connect there are two dynamics at work: Humanities’ own sin nature (“There is none who seeks God, no not one.” Rom. 3:10-11), and the church’s communication and demonstration of the faith. Unfortunately, instead of showing the way of faith as joyful surrender, popular Christianity has too often attempted to make faith palatable – serving up healthy doses of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called, “Cheap grace.” Too often the evangelical church has dropped surrender for wish-fulfillment. Conservative churches have often settled for a message of self-help: “seven steps to…(fill in the blank) – diminishing God to one who exists to meet our desires.

While the conservative church has lowered God, the progressive church, on the other hand, has tended to elevate humanity. The progressive church removes the need for redemption by purging our documents of the words of surrender: Father, king, Lord…if a symbol might be deemed “oppressive” or “problematic,” it is not to be understood in its’ redeemed context, but struck from our hymnals, prayer books, and bibles. But God is not known either by shrinking him or elevating us. God is known through faith in the triune one who joined us and became “obedient to death, even death on a cross.⁹Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

In the 1970’s there was a movie called “The Stepford Wives.” In it, a newcomer to an idyllic NYC suburb notices that the wives are unbelievably beautiful and docile. It turns out that the husbands have been eliminating their wives and replacing them with lifelike robots who behave according to the husbands wishes. “Spiritual but not religious” is code for “I want God on my terms.” “Spiritual but not religious” creates a Stepford God who comes on command and exists as a cosmic Jeanie in a bottle or as a dysfunctional parent who wants to be your buddy but won’t give you the discipline your heart craves. And, by the way,”spiritual but not religious” is a natural result of American Protestantism’s uncritical embrace of individualism and rationalism. It is Protestant Christianity that insisted that the world is not a magical and sacramental place and that the almighty self does not need the church to mediate God’s presence. How is “spiritual but not religious” not the ultimate natural byproduct of the Reformation?

Overcoming the idolatry of the Almighty Self is why the historic church does the things she does when she gathers in worship: In the liturgy we remind our hearts that God is God and we are not. That God is Father and we are not. That God is King and we are not. That Jesus is Lord and we are not.

Jesus calls us to be spiritual and religious; to view our humanity perfectly fulfilled in Christ and our broken idolatrous selves perfectly redeemed by Christ. That can only truly happen in a community of other broken, annoying people.

[1] We did a very small portion. Our iPhones say we walked 150 miles in 10 days. It is fantastic!

Photo from: here

15Apr2016

What’s Really Great About Texas: A Newcomer’s View of the Lone Star State

Posted in Culture by Matt Marino

I had heard the stereotypes of the brash Texan. You know the Hollywood image: boot, big-buckle, wide-brim wearers convinced their state is the center of the universe, the Eden of God’s creation…who on a second beer launch into a soliloquy of Texas possessing a larger, more impressive version of any landmark or feature anywhere else on the planet. Well, after nearly a year of Lone Star living, I tip my Stetson to the stereotype. Most Texans are indeed convinced to the bottom of their Lucchese boots of the unique and unrivaled beauty of the Great State of Texas. State pride is everywhere here: Lone Stars are plastered on everything from automobiles to ice cream machines. Four foot tall five-points festoon the exteriors of suburban homes. There are more state flags in Texas than grains of sand on Gulf Coast beaches. “Don’t mess with Texas” isn’t just a highway anti-littering slogan, it’s a state motto.

What Texans don’t know is that the strength of Texas is not its uninterrupted, “pretty-ish”-on-the-one-right-week-of-the-year topography. Texas has horrible weather and dizzyingly tall high-rises built to look out over nothing more than unending prairies and smog. Texas, while spread over 1/3 of the continent, has less elevation change than any other Western state. Most of Texas is flat. Flat with grass. Flat with trees. Flat with cactus. Flat with thickets. Do you hear the common denominator? Texans will drive three hours from Houston to spend the weekend in hills, something people in the rest of America only need step outside to find. No, the strength of Texas is not Texas.

The strength of Texas is Texans. Somehow the interminable swath of tedious topography known as Texas bred a new type of human, the Texan. The Texan is as unique as the Texas topography they love is not. Texans are faithful, courageous, confident, resourceful, and gracious. Texans are tough on themselves and hospitable to guests. While they may have earned the reputation for being insufferable about their state, they are humble and self-effacing about their own accomplishments. Texans consider strangers family, give the shirt off their back, and show up for your barn raising. Texans bring Texas sheet cakes the size of Rhode Island to church socials and casseroles to sick neighbors. Texans celebrate your gusher and cry with you when your hole was a bust. Texans know how to play: They know about beer and bourbon, football, fishing, and guns. For Texans, rodeo is something you do and give your kids a day off school for, not a road you buy designer goods at retail on. Texans still go to church and mean it when they say, “God bless you.” I was with a group of Texans at a beer tasting on a church retreat. Seriously. A Texas football team was in the playoffs. Football is a spiritual experience for Texans so, naturally (to them), the game was on the television. When the national anthem began, without a word, every man in the room quit talking and tasting, and turned and faced the flag with hat over heart. Really, they do that in Texas.

To the rest of America I say, trust me, you want an invitation to the home of a Texan or a Texan beside you in a dark alley. You want a Texan as your attorney or banker or shoe shine guy. But when Texans talk about “the great beauty” of Texas, folk from the rest of the country wonder if someone has spiked their mint julep with something more hallucinogenic than bourbon.

After nine months in Texas, do I want to go home? Nope. I’ve begun to feel what many Texans say, “I wasn’t born here, but I got here as quickly as I could.” But not because of Texas, because of Texans. Because of Texans, Texas becomes “home” faster than any place on earth. But the next time a Texan wants you to drive two hours to look at a rock or a hill or the fender of a ’61 Impala that got stuck in an embankment, forward this article to them. They still won’t believe that you have no interest at all in their “landmark” at the end of a torturously long country road, but that you are there because you are honored to spend the day with a Texan.

…And I’ll lay odds they invite you to dinner and try to pick up the tab.

11Mar2016

Worship: How Reshaping Desires Redirects Destiny

Posted in Culture, Liturgical Church by Matt Marino

Why are you here? Part two

(In part one I made the case that we all worship and that it is the object of our worship that determines our destiny. In Part two I tell you how to tap into the transformative power of worship and why it works.)

Two kinds of worship: Personal and corporate.

Personal worship is humbly giving God glory and returning God’s love by joyously joining the Triune One’s dance in the interior of our own hearts. We ought to do that. It is the Communion with the Most High in personal worship that gives us songs in the night (Acts 16). But there is another kind of worship: Corporate worship. Corporate worship, which occurs in church, in a group, is an entirely different ballgame. While worship alone with God is about giving God glory and often involves powerful emotions, worshipping corporately is NOT about feelings at all. Worshipping corporately is the way God reshapes our love – the way God remolds us and re-habituates our desires. The way God helps us learn how to let go of the gods of our culture and worship the true and living God. Let me explain:

Our modernist educational system has sold us the incorrect vision that we are primarily thinking creatures (Descartes “I think therefore I am.”). But we experience our lives, not as decisions or commitments, but as story and longing. We experience our lives, not as thoughts, but as feelings. This is why when you had an Algebra test and a huge crush on someone, you had a hard time studying…even when you knew you really needed to focus on Algebra. Descartes was wrong: We are defined and shaped by what we love!

Our futures are determined by our desires. The pattern of historic Christian corporate worship was designed to allow God to remake our desires into God’s desires.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus first words are a question: “What do you want?” Jesus knows that our wants are the well from which our identity flows. That is why Jesus doesn’t ask “What do you think? Or What do you know? He asks “What do you want?”

His last words in John begin with the question: “Do you love me?” The simple truth is that we want what we love. We are first and foremost wanters. We are lovers. We are not defined by what we know or think, but by what we desire. This is why the secret to lasting change in our lives…learning a new instrument, or sport, or a work out plan, isn’t to make up our mind, but to have a greater desire for something that might be. We have to love the image of us dunking a basketball or having ripped abs more than the the social media that distracts us…or the image of being the spouse or parent or employee or leader we admire more than playing Stack on our phones. It is when our desires are reshaped that our destiny is changed.

In the corporate worship of historic Christianity we follow a pattern that, over years of repetition, reshapes our desires into God-shaped ones. The pattern of historic worship goes like this: We gather and read God’s word, the Bible. Then we sing the Bible, someone teaches from the Bible. Then we respond to the Good News of Jesus by stating our beliefs in creeds, praying for the world, confessing our sins, accepting God’s forgiveness, and being reconciled to each other in the passing of the peace. Finally, we bring a portion of God’s material blessings and offer them back to God and set them aside with bread and wine, asking God to make them the body and blood of Jesus. In this meal we are reminded of Jesus and his saving acts on our behalf. As Augustine said, “Eat what you are, become what you eat.” “Eat what you are” (the body of Christ), “become what you eat” (the body of Christ). This takes a lifetime of shaping in a community. On many Sundays worship might be, like many of Michael Phelps grueling, lengthy training sessions, going through the motions. But they are motions that groove the pattern of God into our souls like the grooves on an old record album. It is a grinding that uncovers who we were designed to be. It is a polishing that unleashes our inner beauty to the light. It is the repetition that builds strength and makes Phelps perfect stroke a habit.

But, you may ask, “What about when I am in a large group and we are all raising our hands and the hair on the back of my neck stands up?” My answer is that those times when you experience the worship heebie jeebies are mostly a private worship experience you are having in the midst of a group. The corporate rituals are where the transformative magic actually reside. The experience of “wow” is like topping out on a fourteener on a backpacking trip in Colorado. You get to say you did it, but the real distance happened in the valleys, with little ability to see above the trees and monotonously placing one foot in front of the other.

So why are you here? Answer: You were designed to worship. We will, all of us, bow before something. Who will you bow before? We will, all of us, dance with someone. Will you, as the old saying went, “dance with the one that brung you”? Bowing and dancing are grounded in God’s nature as holy yet merciful. Worship is always diminished when we emphasize one aspect of God’s nature at the expense of the other. We can never fully dance without bowing, and although one might bow without joyfully joining the dance, don’t.

So start your training. “It’s what you do in the dark”…what you do over and over when no one is looking, that brings clarity and performance in the race of life. It is engaging in the discipline of trained worship that will “put you in the light.”

Engage in a regular pattern of repetitive worship. Begin unleashing your destiny this Sunday.

*Photo credit: http://www.tripwire.com

9Mar2016

Why are you here?

Posted in Culture, Liturgical Church, Millennials by Matt Marino

Michael Phelps new commercial unlocks the secret of overcoming uncertainty.

I watched Michael Phelps new Under Armour commercial today. A powerful testimony to the value of sacrifice, commitment, and repetition, it shows the most decorated Olympian in history preparing for his final Olympiad this summer in Rio. The tag line: “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.”

I have many meetings with people I refer to as “the uncertain.” Often the person will look up from their coffee or craft beer and say, “I guess the real reason I wanted to meet with you is that I don’t know what I should be doing with my life.” I listen and then politely ask them to back up and ask themselves a prior question, “Why are you here?” My question is generally met with a blank stare. So I gently push the issue, “Really. Why are you here? What were you made to do?” Confusion usually turns to frustration and the stammering of some version of, “I’ve got enough problems without you starting an existential crisis.”

The irony is that they already have the existential crisis. But the willingness to dig deeply enough to get at the root, like my desire to quick-weed my yard in Spring, prevents a true solution to that crisis.

Ultimate questions lurk beneath the question.

“What should I do” can only be answered in light of knowing why we are here, what we were made for.

In another bit of irony, we get at why we are here and what we are for backwards, by starting with what we do. Not our paying job, of course, but we we actually spend our private energy on. (To be clear, in the Christian worldview people are not valued based on human performance, but in the mercy of God based in the performance of Jesus, as seen in his life, death and resurrection for wandering humanity.) But what we spend our time doing points to why we are here and what we are to do.

That thing we do…

What is it we do? Answer: Worship. Uhmm, yes, our secular culture still spends most of its’ time and energy in worship. Worship is a contraction of the old English words “Worth-ship” – that which we value, that which we love, that which we long for. Isn’t most of what you spend your energy on love? We desire. We want. We long. We are worshipping creatures.

In the Old Testament the word that is translated “worship” means to “bow before.” Don’t we all bow before something? The question is, “Are we bowing before the right things?” Young people in American “achiever” culture face tremendous pressure to “bow” – to fit in…look “right,” get to the “right” school, have the “right” friends…act the part. Even among individualistic “meta-narrative rejecting” post-modern males, our “individualism” tends to look pretty uniform. I see a lot of plaid flannel, skinny jeans and untrimmed beards – a grown-up version of the eight junior high girls I once saw in a mall wearing matching “Dare to be different” t-shirts. Sure, we are individuals, as long as you hold to the correct politics and sensitivities of our age. But if what we “value,” what we “worship,” is indistinguishable from our culture, surely we will end up as nothing more than this generation’s shallow sellouts to the outward trappings of our culture’s vision of success.

So we are worshipping creatures, made to worship. And we need to worship beyond ourselves. Redirecting our worship outside of ourselves, at the one who made and redeemed us, gives one a center and a grounding that our culture alone cannot. This is because it is worship rightly directed that fulfills your design, fulfills God’s plan for you. Worshipping God is the first step in identifying what one should do with their life.

Wait a moment: You are telling me that going to church is going to help me figure out a career? Are you daft? But better than questioning my sanity would be the question, “How does one best worship beyond themselves?”

Worship in the Christian worldview has been grounded in a vision of God’s two-fold nature revealed in the Old and New Testaments. God has many more characteristics, but the two foundational ones in historic Christianity have been that God is both perfectly holy and perfectly loving.

Holy yet loving. …Transcendent yet immanent. Awesome and out there, yet intimate and desiring to indwell us by the Holy Spirit. Out of God’s nature comes our need to worship. (Col 1:16, Eph 1:11, 1 Pet 2:9, Is 43:6-7)

God’s holiness reveals God as the grandest being in the universe. A being who spoke the universe into existence. God is a worthy of worship in the glory of God’s being. A being we should bow before.

God’s love: The Greek Orthodox have the idea of “perichoresis” Greek for “rotation.” The idea is that in the Trinity we have the One God in a divine Three-Person dance. God in love and unity, created humanity to invite us into the dance of eternity. “For God so loved the world” that he breathed it into existence. Then, when we had wandered away into sin and death, he “he gave his only begotten son” as “an offering and a sacrifice unto God.” (Eph 5:2)

These two foundations to God’s nature are revealed time and again in Scripture. Yet, much to our shame, the church has had a difficult time holding these two truths in tension.

Up Next: Part 2: How Reshaping Our Desires Redirects Our Destiny

26Dec2015

2016 Christmas Wish for Evangelicals: Drop the War on the War on Christmas

Posted in Culture by Matt Marino

Courtesy Starbucks

In your Christmas clearance shopping I suggest stocking up on a gift we evangelicals could give the world next Christmas: Drop the war on “the war on Christmas.” Lets stop trying to out-Grinch the Grinches.

In the children’s Christmas classic, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” the Grinch was a grouchy, cave-dwelling monster with a heart “two sizes too small.” From his lair on icy Mount Crumpit, the Grinch could hear the merry Who’s preparing for their Christmas festivities in Whoville below. Annoyed, the Grinch decides to stop Christmas from coming. He crudely disguises himself as Santa, and forces Max, his loyal but unloved dog, to drag his sleigh to Whoville, where he steals all of the Who’s Christmas presents, trees, and, as he disappears up the chimneys, even the log for their fires.

Yes, American culture does seem to be taking a hard turn from our Christian Christmas cultural assumptions…

With the “Starbucks war on Christmas” hoax, you might have missed the less spectacular but actual cultural squeeze:

-Brunei mandated jail time for Muslims celebrating Christmas but generously deciding that Christians could celebrate, as long as the decorations were not visible from the street.

–Australian schools outlawed carols. So did VA hospitals in the U.S.

–New Hampshire was added to the list of states whose public schools do not allow the word “Christmas” on printed material or in classrooms.

–A Brooklyn principal outlawed all references to Christmas, stars, and Santa because they might “represent a religious system.” (Santa is religious?)

And how have Christians responded? Grumpiness, lawsuits, and economic boycotts.

Imagine how different the Grinch that Stole Christmas might have been if Whoville had been populated by American evangelicals…

The people of Whoville were in quite a tizzy.

Nativities and carols gone awol, we’d better get busy.

Boycotting and arguing on the news shows,

expressing our outrage until our face glows.

Organizing alternate candidates to run.

And filing our lawsuits, crowdsourcing its’ fund.

The negativity and desperation are not very attractive. But, if we cannot remember the Bible’s encouragement to return good for evil, perhaps we can remember how the inhabitants of Whoville actually responded…

As dawn breaks on Mt. Crumpit, the Grinch is preparing to dump the town’s presents into the abyss. Listening for the Who’s bitter and sorrowful cries, the Grinch is puzzled to hear them, not lamenting, but singing joyful Christmas melodies. It dawns on him that, “maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more” than just presents and feasting. The Grinch’s shrunken heart suddenly grows three sizes larger, and the converted Grinch returns the Who’s presents and is warmly invited to the Who-feast, where he has the honor of carving the Roast Beast.

If only that were the strategy we would adopt!

We cannot fix internal spiritual issues with external political solutions.

Broken systems are the result of broken people. Our political and educational systems are merely windows into who we are as a people. In Phoenix we lived on a corner. And because of how our house was angled, our front window was a magnet that drew the eyes of everyone who drove down Northview Ave. One Advent season, after our impressive Christmas tree had been up several days, I was outside and noticed that I hadn’t put any ornaments on the back side of said tree. How embarrassing – our beautiful tree was grotesquely bare to the street. Now I could’ve painted the window to fake a well-decorated tree or I could pull the decoration boxes back out of the attic and stretch around and fix the tree. Friends, attempts at political solutions to the passing of Christmas from the public sphere is nothing more than painting a phony picture on the front window. The problem isn’t the window. It’s what’s inside. Americans are not celebrating Jesus on the inside. Looking “Christmas” on the outside does not fix that.

People fear the baby because they don’t know the baby.

Church attendance tells us that most Americans simply don’t know the baby as the king of the universe. That he existed before all things. That he was both God and human. That he is the one “by whose stripes we were healed.” That he would die in our stead, to forgive not just our grinchiness but all of our other sins. That Christ alone has the power to bring us peace with God. They don’t know that he left us His Spirit to live within us, his church to support us, and promised us eternity in his grace-filled presence. You need to know that story. You need to let it soak deep so deeply into your bones, to marinade in it so deeply, that God’s love leaks out of you every time you open your mouth…to become a walking song from Whoville wafting into the ears of the Grinches.

It is only the Gospel that makes the bitter joyful, that heals burned over hearts. That reminds us that from God’s forgiveness we offer others forgiveness. Our neighbors will never really see love in the crèche at city hall. They can only see it in you and I. It is God’s forgiveness that gets inside the windows. And the last thing anyone needs, especially today, is a painted on faith.

I had an old youth group kid once who was a pk. And as preacher’s kids go, he was a pretty good one. But he had a bizarre desire to “look more Christian.” He was obsessed with his external “testimony.” I told him, “Quit worrying about looking like a Christian. Just draw close to Jesus and others will see him.” Jesus always shines through the windows.

My encouragement for next Christmas: Return being grouchy and seeking political “wins” today. In your day after Christmas bargain hunting, stock up on the joy of introducing people to Jesus – the great miracle of God with us. Christmas is for giving because, after all, “God so loved the world that he gave…”

25Nov2015

What is truth?

Posted in Culture, Spiritual Encouragement by Matt Marino

Our cultural “believies” and the war against fundamentalism.

Unless you have spent the last two weeks living under a rock you have been stunned by the violence in the name of religion. This is not the first time the news has been bad. And not the first time religion was involved.

In the Christian calendar last Sunday was Christ the King – the one modern day in our liturgical year. Christ the King Sunday was given to us by pope Pius XI at the end of WWI. As hard as it is to imagine, the carnage then was far worse: 18 million died as machine guns, planes, tanks, chemical warfare brought our ability to kill into the modern era. And an ugly truth: the leaders on both sides claimed to follow Christ.

Pius XI called it, “a failure to remember God.” He thought, “the people need to remember that this world does indeed have a king, but that king is not us. The pope set aside the last Sunday of the Christian year as an acknowledgement of the gracious rule of the King of Peace…and to grieve and groan our failure to walk in the way of peace. It is a day to remember and return – sort of a societal Ash Wednesday.

Christ the King is a powerful idea. But there was another response to the Great War: Rather than deepen religious commitment, some philosophers and politicians sought to eliminate it. The results of the attempt to eliminate religion were staggering. The next 70 years saw the atheistic states of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Amin and the Kmer Rouge kill more people than every religious war in history. Somewhere between 110 and 260 million people died at the hands of those seeking to eradicate religion.

Religion proved far more resilient than they imagined, though. 20% of America was still in church last Sunday. China and Africa are in the midst of the fastest extension of Christianity in history. Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are also growing. Social science has acquiesced to a persistent truth: Humans are religious. Maybe you have noticed that the narrative has changed from “God is dead” to “there are too darn many gods.” But a question remains: What do we do when people behave badly and use religion to justify that behavior? Since eradicating religion didn’t work, today another solution is being tried: To relativize and privatize religion.

You may not know it, but this isn’t the first relevatizing’s first rodeo. Pontius Pilate attempted the same strategy 2000 years ago. (John 18:33-38) Hours before being crucified Jesus was delivered to Pilate’s doorstep by religious leaders begging for his execution. Pilate, of the Roman knight class, was governor – the ancient version of being on a military “remote.” Do well and he would retire to a cushy life. Blow it and he would return home in disgrace. The last thing Pilate wanted was a religious squabble getting out of hand. Going inside he asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” (v.33) Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not of this world, that’s why my soldiers aren’t fighting.” (v.36) In other words, Jesus wasn’t breaking Roman laws.

Pilate pressed him, “So you are a king?” (v.37) Pilate wants to worm his way out of the sticky political mess outside. Jesus wants to get into the mess that is Pilate’s interior: “I have come to bear witness to the truth.” “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Even on trial, Jesus is inviting Pilate to himself. Pilate shrugs, and utters the expression forever linked to his name, “What is truth?” (v.38) Then, knowing he is going to condemn an innocent man, Pilate walks out without waiting for an answer.

We all have times when we, like Pilate. don’t want to hear it…times when we want what we want and don’t want others intruding on those wants. Quite the opposite of Christ the King, this is me the king. Comedian Charles CK calls these, “my little believies.” He says, “I have things I believe. I don’t follow them. They just make me feel good about who I am. They are my believies.” “Believies” aren’t new, they’ve been with us since Adam and Eve did what they wanted in the garden. It’s always easier to walk away from truth than to confront where our beliefs lead.

In his book The Reason for God Tim Keller looks at our cultural “believies.” The first “believie”: “There can’t be one true religion.” The claim to exclusivity, we are told, is wrongheaded and dangerous. “After all,” this line of thought goes, “religion is nothing more than a cultural construct – Syrians are Muslim and Americans are Christian because of the culture in which we were raised. The arrogance that arises from the conviction that one has the absolute truth is responsible for the evil in our world.” So, we are told, religion should be condemned and relegated to the purely private sphere of life.

Tim Keller points out, though, that condemning religion is only possible if one holds to some other, some alternate, belief system – and all belief systems require both a “leap of faith” and a perspective of superiority. For the secularist both of these are inherently inconsistent. Keller also argues that privatization is never possible as everyone, no matter what faith or creed, brings a value system into the public discussion.

Now we are hearing a new “believie”: “Religion isn’t the problem. Fundamentalism is.” But be honest, we all have fundamental beliefs. In a pluralistic world the issue isn’t how deeply we hold our beliefs, but where those beliefs lead. Rather than pretending differences do not exist between religions, what if we were honest about them and instead evaluated which set of beliefs lead their believers to be the most loving and receptive toward those with whom they differ? Which set of unavoidably exclusive beliefs lead to humble, peace-loving behavior? Using those criteria, I believe Christianity has much to offer a world in crisis…much more than the secularists solution of relative, culture bound, privatized religion.

How could you possibly trust someone holding the philosophy that truth is relative not to cheat you?

After all how could you possibly trust someone holding the philosophy that truth is relative not to cheat you in business? Not to cheat in your marriage? To finish the job of parenting your children? Oh, a relativist might do all of those things. But there is nothing in their belief system to encourage their dependability. Heck, you can’t even count on the relativist not to crucify the innocent son of God.

The problem with our culture’s believies, is that they leave us with bigger problems than they solve. In contrast to our culture’s “spiritual but not religious” view, the Christian world view teaches:

Truth is Objective (Truth is what is.)

Atheist Bertrand Russell talked about proving a teapot orbiting between earth and Mars.” But my ability to argue the point is irrelevant to that object’s actual existence. Either a teapot is spinning out there or it isn’t. Contrary to the oft repeated myth that truth is relative, Truth is what is, regardless of what I would like it to be.

Truth is Revealed: Truth is difficult to discern. Luckily we were not left on our own at this point. Truth was revealed generally in nature, but specifically in Jesus Christ and God’s word, the scriptures. Truth is what God says it is…not what I or my culture would like it to be.
Truth is Narrow: The only area in which we struggle with the idea that truth is “narrow” is religion. Think about it…

Do you want a chemist with a broad definition of chemistry? Imagine a “broad” chemist bringing you a glass of H2O2: “What is one little extra atom of oxygen among friends?” Unfortunately H2O2 isn’t water. It’s peroxide. Truth is narrow.

Do you want an accountant who has a broad definition of addition? “Who says 2+2 must = 4? Why can’t it equal 3 or 311?” I’m guessing the IRS auditor will not be sympathetic. Why? Because Truth is narrow.

Do you want a pilot with a broad definition of what constitutes a runway? “That airport is really busy today, but the freeway is long and straight. How about we set this 737 down on the Interstate?” Truth is narrow.

Do you want a spouse with a broad definition of love? “This is great Janice. Our love is awesome. Why don’t we share it…You have four sisters. Let’s all get married!” The answer to all of these is, No way! Truth is narrow. And finally…

Truth is not private, it’s Personal. For a Christian, truth is not a what, truth is a who. Christian faith is based in the who of Jesus Christ. God loved humanity so completely and so relentlessly, that having seen our rebellion from before creation, God had a plan in place to redeem our fallen world. It involved his son Jesus Christ personally coming to earth, demonstrating a life of peace and self-sacrifice…A life of love and intimacy with his Father. And a life in which our rebellion and God’s wrath would be satisfied by Jesus’ self-emptying love – his personal replacement for you and I on the cross. And we know it worked because three days later Jesus walked from the tomb, seen by scads of people, and was bodily assumed into the clouds before his stunned follower’s eyes. People, truth is personal – bound irretrievably and irrevocably to God’s love for you, personally, through his son, Jesus Christ.

What is truth?

Jesus told Pilate, “I came to bear witness to the truth.” Jesus Christ said, “The truth will set you free.” And Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Looking at Jesus, his friend John wrote, “To all who receive him. Even to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God.” For Jesus, this is personal. It is about you and I becoming family with God.

What do we do with Truth?

The great need for truth in our day is not to win the argument for absolute truth’s existence, but to walk in humility as children of the True One. What part of the truth of Christ’s kingship over your life bugs you? What do you not want to wait around and hear? Where are you passing the buck or fearing another’s agenda in your life? When you see the news do you fear? Or do you see God’s opportunity to share the love and light of Christ? The world cannot afford for you and I to privatize our faith. If you are the follower of a King whose kingdom is not of this world, despair not – light shines brightest in the darkness. The world most needs light when it is dark outside.

(An adaptation of a sermon. To watch that sermon click the graphic. Sermon starts 17 minutes in.)

31Oct2015

Halloween is awesome

Posted in Culture by Matt Marino

I am an unrepentant fan of Halloween. Oh, I know it is the devil’s day. I know about its pagan roots. I too learned as a new Christian that I am supposed to bring kids to the church for Harvest Festival: the Christian imitation of Halloween.

But every one of my non-Christian neighbors will be in our cul de sac thirty minutes from now, enjoying one another’s company, hanging out, their children laughing and showing off their costumes and drinking hot chocolate together. People drive from miles around to come to my neighborhood because it is a safe place to bring inner-city kids. How unevangelical would it be to pack ourselves into a minivan and drive away on the one night of the year that my unchurched neighbors want to connect? I remember being a twenty-three year old at my first Harvest Festival and saying to my then fiancé Kari, “Here are nearly three hundred terrific people who could be light and salt in their neighborhoods and we are all here instead.”

Frankly, it is a blast to be in my neighborhood, handing out candy to the families who will come to my door, sitting around the fire-pit, bringing young adults from church to my front yard with guitars and djimbes to sing and generally make our yard the center of all the festivities. We will hand out fliers to our church’s Fall Round Up tomorrow afternoon after church – a “Harvest Festival” of sorts, but one specifically not on Halloween. After all, why should the devil have all the fun!

Excuse me, I have to go grab my cassock and sunglasses. I’m going as Neo from the Matrix. Oh, and if you are reading this on your way to the Harvest Festival, turn around. Your neighbors need you!

P.S. Feel free to critique participation in Halloween if you are also not participating in that other pagan holiday, Christmas, with its germanic tribal fertility symbol, the tree.

1Jul2015

What is the church to do in a 5-4 world?

Posted in Culture, Leadership by Matt Marino

A Brave New World supplants the illusion of Christian America

We now know what we have long suspected: America is not and never was “a Christian nation.” We may have put “In God we trust” on our coins and “one nation under God” into our pledge during the red scare, but those were merely the vestigial organs of an America of church attenders familiar with the scriptural imagery of Western civilization. But Western civilization is quickly fading away, swept under the rug of social change in a brave new world of neoliberalism and its deity, the self-identified eros.

Harbor no illusions, neoliberalism is a puritanical and absolutist form of progressivism. It is characterized by “tolerance” – the buzzword of an orthodoxy of the unfettered self. We are watching its fruit as our culture, unmoored from classical ideas of truth, beauty, and dignity, descends into hedonism. Regardless of the rhetoric, in neoliberalism truth is not actually relative. Truth may be a social construct, but it is absolute, and, as in all puritanical schemes, difference of opinion is not “tolerated.”

Artist Theo Eshutu-Brave New World http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/brave/index.html

Perhaps nowhere is neoliberalism on clearer display than in the triennial meeting of my Episcopal Church. For us, the “movement of the Holy Spirit” is determined by popular vote. To oppose the winds of change then is nothing less than to oppose God. The neoliberal “Spirit,” is a “spirit” of triumphalist glory, a big-brother who squashes dissent quickly and quietly. In the deliberations of our bishops yesterday, a small and quiet conservative minority wished to read a statement indicating their disagreement with the redefinition of marriage. They were cut off on parliamentary grounds. Neoliberal tolerance can tolerate no dissent. The vitriol, social shaming, and gloating on my Facebook after the Obergefell ruling stands in stark contrast with the rhetoric of pluralism and classical liberalism we hear so much about. Our delegates heard from a Sunday school teacher shacking up with her boyfriend who has no interest in marriage, then passed a resolution to “continue work studying the growing contemporary reality…that is redefining what many mean by ‘family’ or ‘household.'” This explicitly includes, “those who choose to remain single; unmarried persons in intimate relationships; couples who cohabitate; couples who desire a blessing, etc).” It implicitly includes “listening” to another type of emerging family structure – polyamorous families. I report this, not to be shocking, but because our church takes its establishment roots quite seriously and is generally a reflection of where progressive culture desires to go next. And, as you will have noticed, for culture crusaders addicted to the fight, there is always a next fight…

Time magazine this week posted an article by Mark Oppenheimer arguing for the elimination of church’s tax exempt status. It is spreading through social media like wildfire. The new elite smells blood: it is the last weak pulse of traditional America. Somehow they have forgotten that orphanages, hospitals, universities, literacy, and abolition were all ideas given to the world by that enemy of humanity – Christian thought.

Somehow lost in both the sophomoric euphoria and the licking of wounds is the fact that political solutions simply do not work. We are forty years into our legislative solutions to our race issues, yet those issues are still present. And in this mess Christians are still forgiving and angry nuts are still burning down our places of worship.

How should the church respond to culture shift?

We could keep financing losing political battles. We could keep encouraging ugly rhetoric. We could fight to keep our tax exempt status’ and tax deduction for charitable giving. We could keep trying to support political parties for whom nearly half of my state has disengaged and reregistered as “independent.” We could do what many have chosen to do this week and simply remain silent. We could flip-flop on 2000 years of unbroken Christian tradition and the clear meaning of the words of scripture.

Or…

…we could go back to what the church was good at. Remember, when we were eleven scared dudes hiding out in an upper room? That group had a unique methodology unused since the faith embraced power in the fourth century…

Lessons from the first Christians

First, they gathered in remarkable unity across ethnic, cultural, and social barriers in formational, seeker-insensitive worship services – This may surprise many of my evangelical friends, but there are eucharistic pointers in every NT author. The story of God is taught and formed with remarkable clarity in the format of Word and Sacrament present in Acts and given to us as ancient practice by Justin Martyr in 150 CE. We must form Christians. This is more than sermonizing. It involves enacting and imprinting the story of God on human hearts.

Second, from their deep formation, the ancient Christians moved missionally in service and proclamation into the world. They loved, gave, and proclaimed Jesus’ to the least, last, and lost.

Third, they were annoyingly clear about the exclusive claims of Jesus in a pluralistic world. This made them the target of recurring persecution. A persecution which they generally embraced.

Fourth, they were not worried about their “rights.” They worried about the world’s lostness. We can stop worrying about being persecuted and start embracing and supporting Christians who are actually being persecuted. Embrace the loss of status and prestige! Let us join our African American brothers and sisters in turning the other cheek, blessing those who persecute us, and forgiving the offender.

Fifth, they modeled internal civil discourse (Acts 15). In our churches we can teach the “faith once delivered.” But we can teach it as truths we are being conformed to, rather than using the faith as a bludgeon to beat non-Christians into an eternally irrelevant social-conformity.

Fortuitously, these are exactly the lessons we learn from many of the fastest growing millennial-heavy churches. Millennial-heavy churches (churches with hundreds of millennial generation attenders) tend to be liturgical and artful, with deep biblically-based sermons. They are high on diversity and community. They fearlessly preach on difficult topics with a “hard on me, soft on you” hermeneutic. They actively engage in social action. They tend not to engage in political action. They even seem to have a significant number of young lgbt attendees who respect their authenticity. Or, as one millennial said when she left her mega-church that is moving to gimmicks to drive attendance, “I want to go where the Christianity is what is on display.”

So, church, do not change the “deposit of faith” to make it more “relevant” to the culture. There has never been a time that has not failed to be a losing proposition. There is a reason that the fellowships that change least account for the most of us – Catholicism and Orthodoxy continue to account for 2/3 of the world’s Christians.

The Christian faith is neither the moral improvement program that many conservatives wish for it to be, nor the affirmation of desires that many progressives seem to want to make it. The Christian faith is nothing less than a radical reorienting of the human experiment to a new master. To quote, Abraham Kuyper, “There is not one one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Jesus Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘mine.'”

Or, as our spiritual forebearers said, “Jesus is Lord.”

So let us stop trying to remake a secular society in our own image. Let us instead worry about God’s priorities: “The redemption of the world through our Lord, Jesus Christ.” (BCP, 101)

We have work to do. Politics is not that work.

*Brave New World photo labelled for reuse.

***I should say that I support full protection under the law for lgbt relationships, not because it is the government’s business what adults choose to do, gay or straight, but because adults have children, and children need the protection under the law afforded by the cultural values of monogamy and fidelity. I also see a big difference between what a pluralistic government protects and what the church, as recipients of scriptures and the tradition of the apostles, defines as marriage.