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soul - ache - ideas, sounds and images between the already and the not-yet

on what a U2 song says about your theology

When I told Jen about the idea for this post she laughed. Out Loud. In real-time, not just eponymous computer characters. In between her laugher I said "But do you think it's a good idea?" and her exact words were "In a U2 nerdy kind of way, yes."


I beg of you people--for one post only U2 nerds, unite! (an even if you're not, give it a shot anyway)

Last week sometime I was facebook stalking, reading the ubiquitous "25 things" lists of friends, neighbors and acquaintances. I gave pause when I ran across one (#20 on the list, to be exact) that cited "Where the Streets Have No Name" as the greatest rock and roll song ever. 

I disagreed, as did my aunt. We represent a small but committed constituency who boldly affirm that "With or Without You" is, in fact, the greatest rock and roll song of all time.

What I was unprepared for was the feedback I would receive when I stated my belief on my own list. It was quickly met with critique from a good friend who vehemently contended that "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was, in fact, the greatest rock and roll song of all time.

**********For those few non-die-hard U2 fans that actually still be reading this, let me state clearly that I have severely limited the catalogue to what I maintain (as do most critics) is their finest album--1987's The Joshua Tree. There are hundreds of other songs that could be suggested--"Bad", "Yahweh", "Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own", "40", "Until the End of the World"--the list goes on For the sake of the non-nerd, casual U2 listener, I've severely limited the conversation to these, also by virtue of their direct use in the debate above.********

What occurred to me yesterday while driving is that each of these songs says something about humanity's current state and the the state at which humanity can one day hope/long to be. (Stay with me here). What I would like to suggest is that this debate really goes to the core of how we view the world, not just what we're drawn to sonically. In the same way that melody and meter, drums and bass have to resonate within us, lyrics must in some way speak to the greater truths that are just beyond our words. If it were anything less than music, the subjectivity of these lyrics can be ridiculed by some as being too vague, too esoteric--too many possible layers of meaning. But as a song, the lyrics do for the soul what the music does for the ear--taking you on a limitless journey into what you know in your soul to be real.

If this can be affirmed, then I would like to suggest that these three songs suggest an innate theological tendency that unconsciously is exposed by which one we favor. I've included the songs in their entirety and the titles will take you to links of the lyrics if you need to make your own decision.

The irony of all of this is that these three tracks lead off The Joshua Tree  and I am convinced that there is a reason for this. I believe that the first two songs illustrate various ends of the same tension--a tension maintained in the third track. In the interest of objectivity, I will address them in their original track order.

The "Not-Yet":
Where the Streets Have No Name 

Where The Streets Have No Name by U2  
(download)


There are conflicting stories regarding the origin and meaning of Where the Streets Have No Name. Some claim Bono wrote it after his time spent in Ethiopia as he tried to reconcile the horrors of malnutrition with the joy made manifest in the faces of the children dying there. Others have claimed that it is an ode to heaven--a place with no signposts or streets named after dead politicians--a place where the prophetic witness dares to dream of one great river, one great light, one blessed community. From the Edge's soaring arpeggio intro to the organic swell of the synth organ, the song is less notes and more metaphysical state--there is a transcendence that is palpable, taking the listener to a state in which all things can be hoped, believed, and dreamed.

And the lyrics hardly disappoint. There is the admission of what is currently happening--"building and burning down love" (which 21 years later is still an apt summary of every human act) but there is the awareness of something greater--high on a mystical desert-plain.

Where the Streets Have No Name represents the hope of what will be--and it does it in a way that suggests it is already here--so real, so viable, that it can actually be known--but still it must be "gone to"--it is somewhere away from here. It is the eternity born in our hearts. This track, simply put, leaves us longing for what will be and those that prize it hold that same hope.

The "Already":
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2  
(download)


If we were on the desert plain in the first track, then it has vanished before our eyes like a mirage in the second. Every generation since has called I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For "their" anthem--which testifies to the universality of the Wanderlust  we feel shut up in our bones. Moreover, it speaks to a certain spiritual hunger that can be nourished but never satisfied. In this track, words are not enough, experiences insufficient. Even the "Kingdom Come" ushered in in Where the Streets Have No Name is here maintained as a belief, but saccharine--what looked real left an aftertaste that belied it's exterior.

Remarkably, the tempo is upbeat and driving--and the track doesn't really end, rather it fades into the ether of silence. The meaning seems to be in the searching itself--a reality grounded in the present state of things, not longing for what can and will be.

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For provides the ultimate bait and switch--the conclusion is in the title itself. Moreover, any temptation to think the titular conflict would be resolved in three and a half minutes is exposed as naivete. There is only the droning refrain "But I still... haven't found... what I'm looking for..."And we're left with little more than an ellipsis. Those I know who prize this song do so out of the often new-found freedom of not having to have it all figured out. It is the anthem for perseverance when all around is unraveling--not because of a future hope, but because the journey alone is worth the wounds inflicted.

The "Already-Not-Yet":
With or Without You 

With Or Without You by U2  
(download)


"God or girl?" Most music critics fall into the trap of endlessly debating Bono's intention in the lyrics here. The answer is "yes"--inconsolable longing knows no source--the ache is almost always the same. What's unique about this ache is how visceral it is--this isn't dull ache of forlorn love or wistful thinking while parted by distance. And yet there is, at least in the refrain, a sense in which "you give yourself away" is neither good nor bad, as expressed in the most basic line "I can't live with or without you."

It's tempting to call it a power ballad, but that would be to dismiss the landscape laid down by the percussive bass and snare. The guitar could be an afterthought, but instead it commands a spirit of wavering between two extremes--always in pairs, shifting from one extreme (with) to another (without). Even the "end" of the song--the point at which the bass line fades out, reemerges with a flurry of delayed guitar arpeggios--the dyad of debate has given way to all out inner war--the tensions remain and then, as in the previous tracks, fade in to the ether of radio silence. We as listeners are left only with the tension.

With or Without You represents, musically at least, every tension that the human heart can hold--real vs. unreal (be it God or love), suffering vs. pleasure, peace vs. calm, sanity vs. insanity, longing vs. being. It is the veritable sonic expression of what New Testament scholars call "the already-not-yet-ness" of the kingdom of God.

I know where I'm at in the spectrum, how about you?*


*please feel free to list your own favorite that may not be on this list and why it's specific to your understanding of faith

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Filed under  //   already-not yet   facebook   theology   U2  
Posted February 6, 2009
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on the fallacy of the false dilemma (and how we all do it anyway)

For the last few weeks I've been teaching a class called Critical Thinking at one of Shorter's Adult Education campuses. It's an interdisciplinary class, so apparently I'm credentialed to teach it, and the modest amount of philosophy experience I've had seems to meet with the basic use of logic and forms.

There are a lot of things I've enjoyed about this class--it forces me to force other people to think (really think--like make-your-head-hurt-like-a-Dairy-Queen-induced-brain-freeze think.) It's allowed me to play devil's advocate A LOT--which is something I relish in the classroom. It's also forced me to consider logical fallacies that flow around us like the sea.

They are omnipresent--radiating from the speakers of televisions and talk radios, water-cooler banter and lunch-hour conversations. All around are arguments, that, albeit passionate and well-intentioned, do meet the standards of logic and are easily dismissed (including the one you're reading right now.)

In the last week or so, I have become particularly attuned to one such fallacy--so much so that I gave it an easter egg link in yesterday's blog, but as it has repeatedly resurfaced like a bobber with a trout on the line, I thought it merited its own post.

The fallacy of the false dilemma  is better known as the "either/or" fallacy. Simply put, it is an argument which claims only two options--for/against, black/white, pro/con--the list goes on ad infinitum. 

It turns out there are many reasons to believe these things are true. Dyads are common in nature and in science--where there ceases to be life, there is death, and so on. The problem occurs when an individual asserts that something can be one thing only, always. This suggests an implicit dichotomy where nothing else matters--only which side of the issue one has chosen.

And this effects everything. One can be either poor or rich, pro______ or against_________. 

On the heels of my take "on faith and economics" yesterday came word that Senator Tom Daschle was removing his name from consideration of a Cabinet appointment due to his failure to report and pay certain taxes as well as a lucrative side-income from speaking to various health lobbyists. One cannot, by common opinion, argue the cause of the poor and marginalized while taking measures to preserve a lifestyle of luxury.

On the faith side of the spectrum, much has been made of former President of National Association of Evangelicals Ted Haggard's untimely "fall from grace." The one-time crusader against rights for homosexuals hasrecently confessed to an innate attraction to men . Haggard has been affixed with the scarlet "H" of hypocrisy worn by Swaggart and Bakker, Ainsley and Alamo, and a thousand others before them.

I do not mean to dismiss these failures as inconsequential, but I would suggest that the false dilemma so quickly wielded in judgment is, as its name would suggest, a fallacy which we prize at our own peril.

Martin Luther famously apprised the human condition as "simul justus et peccator"--"at the same time, righteous and a sinner". For Luther, this paradox in which we live perpetually sinful-yet-grace-imbued righteous lives was a matter not of doing, but of being. The question was not tied to action but to essence. Human beings, for Luther, were, to stretch Heiko Oberman's biography of Luther a bit, perpetually between God and Devil. For Luther, this is where we live and move and have our being--between the sinful and the righteous.

Our political rhetoric seeks to stratify us by association with certain patterns of voting and belief. Red and Blue are the colors of the political palette and there is little room for shades of purple to dot the landscape.

The reason we know the fallacy of the false dilemma is because we live in the ether of the gray. 

U2 has a new album coming out, brashly titled "No Line on the Horizon" . They have chosen for the cover a photograph by the prestigious Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto from a collection entitled seascapes. After looking over the collection, I was somewhat surprised they chose Boden Sea over Sugimoto's Ligurian Sea, Saviore, 1982, pictured above. One shows an indistinct, fuzzy-but-still-there line between ocean and sky, but theLiguran Sea shows only a gray gradient--like a fog that blurs the blue-black water and the gray-white air.

There are all sorts of things that seduce us into false dilemmas, whether it's the theological inconsistencies of another ordained minister or the narrowing circle of acceptable belief within the Georgia Baptist Convention.  

To fall for the fallacy of the false dilemma is to reckon ourselves as "one or the other"--it means we are then, only, always sinner or only, always saint. 

It belies our God-given ability to think, create and adapt. 

It pigeonholes us into unnecessary categories that mechanize the gift of humanity.

It reduces our intricately woven selves into pull-cord marionettes.

But most of all, when we fall for the fallacy of the false dilemma (even this one), we risk missing the creative potential God has imbued us with.

We risk missing the joy of having our minds changed.

We risk missing out on celebrating a moment of Divine enlightenment with our neighbor.

We risk thinking that we've got things nailed down when we're still grasping at Mystery.

We risk exchanging the holy gift of wonder for the eroding sand of right-ness.

We risk gaining the whole world and losing our souls.

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Filed under  //   false dilemma fallacy   hiroshi sugimoto   martin luther   simul justus et peccator   U2  
Posted February 4, 2009
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on economics and faith

I am not an economist, nor am I the son of an economist. I am an outsider to the financial world who hears terms like "bail-out", "Ponzi scheme" and 'Keynesian economics" and runs to the internet like fifth-graders looking at the dioramas at a Natural History museum. I also confess a general disdain for operations that are inherently mathematical in nature. Algebraic functions work fine, but you go into calculus or geometrical charts and I'm screwed. 


Inasmuch as I don't understand these things, I find my greatest intolerance is ignorance--first in others and secondarily (as I am made aware of it) within myself. So I am trying to make sense of some of this, and I'm fumbling through it. More specifically, I'm trying to figure out how faith plays into the whole thing--to say Jesus was a socialist or capitalist is to, in a very real sense, miss the point and risk a false dilemma. Jesus was, and is, infinitely more than either of these things, but it is much more difficult to make direct application to our current crisis.

Last Friday NPR ran a piece jointly produced with This American Life  that introduced me to the ribald figure of John Maynard Keynes--a British economist from the earlier 20th century. It turns out that Keynes disliked Americans intensely and speculated that the illegitimate child of the British Empire wasn't smart enough to implement his economic system. Much could be said about Keynesianism and what I learned from that radio segment, but for all intents and purposes, the principle is relatively simple: 
  • The simplest way to stimulate the economy is through investing government funds into the economy directly. This way jobs are created, infrastructure is strengthened/created and the financial system is stabilized.
In the 1980's most economists rejected Keynes and saw interest rates as a stabilizing force in the economy. The competing ideal was that consumer spending was the sign of economic confidence. As confidence went down, the interest rate could be rolled back by the Federal Reserve and people would/could borrow more with less interest--which works, at least until the rate is absolute 0--which it hit in mid-December of last year.

Keynes is suddenly once again en vogue as evidenced in the President's speech at the Democratic National Convention last August:
 ...give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.  In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own.  Out of work?  Tough luck.  No health care?  The market will fix it.  Born into poverty?  Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots.  You're on your own.

Many have (and will) dismiss the now-President-then-candidate Obama's words as pablum or political soapboxing to rally the Democratic base--but what if we dispelled our cynicism for a minute?

This morning one of the featured headlines on CNN.com read "What GOP Leaders Deem Wasteful in Senate Stimulus Bill:". I clicked the link with what I thought were pretty good expectations of what I would find--cuts to education, technology, infrastructure repair, new energy and health-care initiatives. I was shocked at the extent of the proposed "revisions." Lest I be accused of piece-mealing it, here's the list in it's entirety:


• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.
• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.
• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).
• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.
• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.
• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.
• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.
• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.
• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.
• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.
• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.
• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.
• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.
• $850 million for Amtrak.
• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.
• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.
• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

It's tempting to go line by line and discuss how legitimate or heinous each of these cuts are (even more so to think that many of these are actually viewed by someone as "pork"). I'll try to fight that temptation for now, but the alternative suggestion from the GOP are increased tax breaks for the American consumer. I think there are myriad flaws with this plan, but again, I'm no economist.

I am, however, a person of faith--more specifically, a minister--someone who is supposed to model faith, question faith, and be able to talk to others about issues related to faith. I've been at a bit of a loss in our current economic crisis--I don't know what to tell the worker who was just laid-off and what little I do know seems cheap and trite--like well-intentioned cliches at a funeral.

What I can say is that I know what we've been called to, and, by negation, what we've been called away from. Walter Brueggemann, a noted scholar of the Old Testament (or "Hebrew Bible" as it is more aptly known), has written brilliantly to this end. I stumbled upon the article from another blog that quoted him and as much as the writer inside me says "Don't quote the same section!", I cannot help myself. 

Brueggemann says: 
It is futile, from a biblical perspective, to engage in disputes about modern theoretical labels such as "socialism" or "capitalism." The Bible does not linger over such labels, but insists that every available instrument of well-being—government, charity, private sector—must be mobilized in order to mediate the resources of the community for the sake of the common good.

We have been called to mobilize forces for the building of the Kingdom. 

A Kingdom does not consist of vigilante cowboys, furiously clamoring for bootstraps only to realize they were repossessed by Wall Street.

A Kingdom does not consist of "Me generation" yuppies (or later iterations) vituperatively arguing for individualism and autonomy.

A Kingdom cannot stand while it's citizens hoard material goods and reject the King's claim to limitless bounty.

A Kingdom cannot stand when it has exchanged promise for credit.

I recognize these are generalizations and I am not without sin here. What I feel in the crisis of this day--what I want to believe we all feel--is a sense of loss with every layoff. That we are grieving with those known and unknown who are struggling to see hope and purpose in the midst of pain. And it is in the middle of that community that we catch a glimpse of the eternity born in our hearts--that we are more than a nation or even a civilization--that we are citizens of yet another Kingdom that calls us to live out those principles within our current land.

Before God and in the example of Christ, we are to live out a faith that considers neighbor over kin, need above greed and everyone over self. 

When we do so we cease to glamorize rugged individualism as we move in step with the Spirit as the Beloved Community.

When we care for one another more than we care for ourselves we find riches that cannot be measured in currency or in goods--where tides of love meet welcome shores of gratitude.

We appeal to our government to do the job that the Church has not--to care for one another as community--and though it's methods are imperfect, we welcome any who would help us strive toward caring for one another--to putting their needs above ours--to all those who would see in friend and stranger the very image of God.


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Filed under  //   autonomy   community   economics   faith   individualism   keynesian   kingdom   NPR  
Posted February 3, 2009
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on cotton, peanuts and renaissance (or "a tale of two [southern] cities")

     
Click here to download:
on_cotton_peanuts_and_renaissa.zip (174 KB)

I was sitting in my car outside the grocery store last Monday listening to NPR when I heard a profile on the small town of Blakely, Georgia. Blakely has been at the center of concerns surrounding a salmonella outbreak from a factory in Blakely responsible for preparing peanut butter, paste, and other products. All Things Considered decided to interview the mayor of the small south Georgia town, Ric Hall. You can sense in the interview a palpable dissonance between rural America and Michele Norris' urban radio studio, particularly when she asks if the peanut features prominently in signs and public displays.

When Mayor Hall responds that there is, in fact, a peanut monument just outside of City Hall, it seems laughable--like something that would be noted in a travelogue of bizarre American landmarks. As I listened closer though, I realized that though I am every bit Georgian, I, too, was missing something in my dismissal of this lament from the rural South. Mayor Hall explains that the peanut was the crop that saved most of South Georgia. When the boll weevil was devastating cotton crops from Texas to South Carolina in the first half of the last century, the peanut became the saving grace of over half the agriculture of the South. So much so, that it merited a monument on the town square--a testament to the ingenuity of a people willing to diversify in the face of immense crisis.

The wonders of Wikipedia yield a comparable statue in Enterprise, Alabama. There, a statue stands large and Romanesque, as an everlasting witness to the boll weevil himself. Instead of building a monument to the cure, Enterprise celebrated the cause of the disease, because it forced farmers to diversify crops and, in so doing, brought tremendous agricultural prosperity to the city.

In Blakely the Peanut Corporation of America was shutting down, laying off the 50 or so workers who based their livelihood on the plant. Last week alone, over 100,000 men and women across America met similar fates. In the midst of recession, burgeoning unemployment and a shrinking GDP, the question might rightly be "What will our next monuments be built to?" Or, as the statue of Enterprise might suggest "Where will our ingenuity take us next?"

The sin of our times is believing that we've gone beyond repair--that things are so dire that they simply cannot be reconciled. The cotton crops in Alabama and South Georgia had weathered slavery, indentured servitude, sharecroppers, and finally industrialization. Still, a tiny non-native insect managed to destroy the livelihood of a few million Americans--but it didn't. Not only that, but the human spirit was such that it could recognize a plague of biblical proportions as a blessing--something to shake us out of our comfortability and force us to find ways to spur on creativity and innovation.

I don't know what the next monument in Blakely will be--it might be an automotive assembly robot, a wind turbine for renewable energy, or maybe a silicon chip to some aspect of technology. There is a great deal of attention being paid to the crisis of our time, and monuments remind us that this is neither the first nor the last time we have encountered such hardships. 

What we have seen in the greed and excess of our times exposes the shadow side of our ingenuity. The creative capacity God has given to humanity for the building up of the Beloved Community has been relegated to pursuing our own vices and comforts with no regard for neighbor. There is an American tendency to perceive this as a quest for the common good but we know it as the basic commerce policy of the Kingdom of God.

As we lose jobs and look for answers, watch 401(k)s crash and markets tumble, may we continue to build the Kingdom in intangible ways.

May our innovation lead to actions of sacred peace.

May our drive be directed only toward that which is good for the many, and not just the one.

May we embrace this crisis and erect monuments to it.

May it remind us that we are more than what we produce

that million dollar office renovations yield nothing to the Kingdom of God,
that we follow a Savior who had no place to lay his head
that the Kingdom comes not in earthen structures but in earthen vessels committed to a new vision of what humanity can be
that, in the midst of all manner of strife and chaos, we cannot help but hope.

 

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Filed under  //   AL   blakely   boll weevil   economy   enterprise   GA   kingdom   NPR   peanuts  
Posted February 2, 2009
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on the life of madeliene brown lyon

Many of you know that my paternal Grandmother passed away last week. She had been in declining health for a month or so, but it was still relatively sudden. Grandma had struggled with Alzheimers over the past 2-3 years but we were fortunate to have her with us for most of that time and losses showed up more as confusions of facts rather than wholesale memory loss. My dad asked me to do the sermon for the funeral. I tried as best I could to do her justice, but it's so hard to boil a life down to a few minutes. I also hoped to do something a little more than the "she's with Jesus now" sermons that always come off as cheap and even petulant. I don't know if I got there or not, but I think it was true to her, so I felt alright about that. 


Inside our living room, tucked behind a chair is a wrapped gift—the lone reminder of the Christmas season we celebrated one month ago. There is a blouse inside, one Jen picked out for Grandma. It was difficult to know what to get a 79 year-old woman who has most everything she needs. With Grandma Lyon though, shirts and sweaters were normally a safe bet.

 

I've spent a lot of time over the past few days trying to process the passing of Frances Madeleine Brown Lyon. I've spent more time then I should thinking about that gift and it seems to me that that unopened present represents a tension that we hold.

 

These tensions are everywhere. They're all around us even at this very moment.

 

It's the tension I felt as I held Grandma's hand at the hospital and weeping into the phone I heard my wife remind me that she was exchanging my hand for Grandad's.

 

It is the tension we feel as we move from the present tense to the past tense in the stories we share about her.

 

It is the tension that her legal name has been said and written more times then she ever would have wanted—She always hated the name "Frances."

 

It is the tension that we feel in knowing that even as John Coy Lyon and Madeline Brown Lyon have left this earth their names yet live in their grandchildren.

 

It is the tension we feel gathered in a reception room, trading stories, equal parts tears and laughter.

 

It is the tension between what is seen and what is unseen—a mystery so great that we meet it with awe and wonder.

 

It is the tension between the life and vitality we knew and the body that lies before us.

 

The writer of Ecclesiastes knew something about tension. The same author who famously wrote "There is a time and season unto everything, a time to be born and a time to die." also reminded us of the Great Tension—"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

 

Because in the tensions, we confess that we cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

 

We confess that we cannot fathom the realities of our own mortality and the eternity born in our hearts.

 

We confess that we cannot begin to give words to being absent in the body, but present with the Lord.

 

We confess that we cannot help but waver between faith and doubt, seen and unseen.

 

We confess that we live, as she did—in between the hope of heaven and doing our best to bring heaven to earth.

 

There is no life in this room left untouched by Madeliene Brown Lyon. Whether it was teaching Sunday School or sneaking lipstick, playing piano at a wedding or answering the phone at Elizabeth Baptist Church, caring for Granddad or providing an endless supply of Little Debbie Snacks, she was a woman who gave her life in service to others.

 

At these times it's tempting to run to Scripture to find a foothold-a foundation to sooth our sorrow and dispel our unbelief. Most often those efforts yield temporary results as grief lingers in the shadows.

 

I find Scripture most comforting when it puts words to something I can't—when it reminds me that there are others who have wrestled with the goodness of God in the face of great loss and have providentially shared their story.

I find light for our path in Paul's Second letter to the church at Corinth, Chapter 4:

 

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. 12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

 

13It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken."[b]With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, 14because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. 15All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

 

16Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

 

Paul understood the tension between the earthen vessel of this mortal body and the eternity in our hearts. He found ways to speak to people who were grieving, fearful—who saw in the death of others their own mortality and all the questions that come with it. He does not solve the tension but names it.

 

"Death is at work within us, but life is at work in you."

 

"What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

 

"We are being given over to death, that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our physical body."

 

Playing off Paul's words, Karl Barth once said "The goal of human life is not death, but resurrection."

 

And we are left with the great tension—that although Grandma no longer lives with us, she yet lives.

 

That unopened present in my living room was a gift—a simple gift to be offered at a time when gifts are traditionally exchanged.

 

We give gifts out of generosity, not entitlement. We give gifts with joy and no expectation of reciprocity.

 

We give gifts to convey the love that we share. We give gifts because we have been seized by the power of a great affection.

 

And so we celebrate the gift of life we know in Madeliene Brown Lyon. We make no demands for more time, for one last moment.

 

We celebrate a life well lived—a life that modeled Christ—a life given in service to others.

 

We confess that all life is gift—that her life was, to her and to us, a gift.

 

We share in tears and in laughter the gift that we knew and as we do we impart that sacred gift to others.

 

May we share stories and tell tales.

 

May we see in her one who understood the tension and who, in keeping with Scripture, believed all things, hoped all things—who knew that love for God and love for neighbor never, never fails

 

May we set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts, even as she.

 

May we be given to embracing one another even as she embraced us.

 

May we celebrate the gift of life known as Madeliene Brown Lyon.

 

May we long for eternity as we long for the sun to rise.

 

May we live lives of gratitude to the One who gave her life and, even now, bestows on us that same gift.

 

For this gift, and so many others, may we have only gratitude, hold only hope, act only in love.

 

For a life lived in service to others, may our confession always resound.

 

"Thanks be to God."

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Posted January 28, 2009
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on the inauguration and moving from west to east (or the 45 1/2 year march)

The passing of my grandmother and Jen's surgery last week prevented me from writing about arguably the most historic event of my lifetime--the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. It's a staggering moment for our nation, as the President's own self-deprecating wit suggested on the Tonight Show during the campaign--"Nobody with a name like mine should ever run for office."

There are a hundred different ways to look at this event, and, a week later, I'm still debating whether or not the thoughts that ran through my head that day have yet to be expressed in the ever-flowing stream of media coverage. In truth, I don't think they have, or at least I haven't found them with the help of Google, so here goes nothing and please let me know if I'm ripping somebody off unknowingly.

   
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On August 28, 1963 somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 men, women, children and elderly converged on Washington D.C. in an historic march for "jobs, justice, and peace." Though the march centered around the creation and consideration of persons of all races for employment, the lasting contribution has been the March's incalculable effect on the creation and passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, given from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, under the perpetual gaze of the man who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a marbleized Lincoln hewn from the quarries of Tate, Georgia--20 miles from where I sit writing this post.

Martin famously declared the plight of the African-American and though that phrase postdates him, the rights of black persons as Americans rings loud and clear:

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The message was clear--the promissory note laid forth in the Emancipation Proclamation had been marked "insufficient funds." On that fateful August day in 1963 Martin and the voice of a million others demanded payment. 

To be clear, Martin's dream was hardly fulfilled then, even as it has only partially been fulfilled now. Though great strides have been made, racism and bigotry are still upon us, and we do well to wonder whether or not the table of Dr. King's dream would in 2008 include space for the Arab, the Muslim, the Gay, the Lesbian.

There have been innumerable conversations on whether or not the election of President Obama signifies the fulfillment of Dr. King's vision, or merely another payment in a lengthy installment plan of equality. Some have argued Obama's political pedigree belies the revolutionary role of the prophet King while others (notably the prominent African-American scholar Henry Louis-Gates Jr.  ) see it as another key event in the ongoing march to freedom.

I am ill-equipped to assume a position in that lengthy conversation, so I can only offer an outsider's perspective. As Jen and I watched the inauguration at a local sports bar, I couldn't help but be struck by the images of folks gathered on the National Mall--that 1.9 mile long, 100 yard wide strip of land that connects the Capitol, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

I couldn't help but think of the steps of the Capitol, laid by slaves, and the improbable make-up of the man who stood there to take the Oath of Office.

But most of all I couldn't stop thinking about how long it took to walk almost two miles.

45 years, 5 months and 23 days. 

To walk 1.9 miles--from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

As Jen and I were listening to NPR on the way back to work we heard them interview a history teacher and veteran civil rights worker who attended the March on Washington.

"It was exciting to turn from the West to the East--the West is--has always been--that symbol of hope and possibility--the idea that there was always something more out there. But to look East and to see it come to fruition is really something that I can't put into words."

In forty-five and almost one-half years, we've almost gotten there. And maybe "almost" is the key word. Everyone from Jesse Jackson to Colin Powell has said that if Dr. King were alive to see this day he would most assuredly have rejoiced, and promptly taken President Obama by the sleeve and said "Now we've got to work some things out."

Inequality prevails, school systems and neighborhoods remain segregated by race and socio-economic standing.

One out of every three African-American men is in prison or under judicial constraint, a tragic fact born out in the overwhelming prosecution rate of young African-American men when compared to Caucasian men of the same age facing the same charges.

Though guaranteed legal rights as citizens, ethnic minorities such as Mexicans and Muslims face bigotry and racial profiling similar in scope to African-Americans in the 1960's.

We have undoubtedly come far--even if it's only at a clip of half-a-mile per decade--but there is still aways to go.

As Americans we are on the move, but how much more as Christian Americans? 

We march as Dr. King did--not to the Capitol or the White House, not to the halls of justice, nor to the ivory towers of academia. We are marching to Zion.

We are marching towards the Kingdom of equality--where love for God and love for neighbor know no limit.

We march with and for those who "might not make it with us" but who have seen the Promised Land.

We march a slow and grueling walk toward a Kingdom well beyond these native shores.

We march on to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus first laid hold of us--that we might all be known not as children of men, but as sons and daughters of God, members of one Holy family.

Sing Down by Kyle Matthews  
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Filed under  //   human rights   martin luther king jr.   obama  
Posted January 27, 2009
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on conversion and culture (in Africa and corporate America)

There's an article by Matthew Parris in the UK's Times Online that has been making the blog rounds for the past couple or weeks. The title is "As an Atheist, I truly believe Africa need God" . I hadn't yet posted about it here because I hadn't really settled in to think about all the implications Parris puts forward, though it does play into a bit of the previous post with all the little stick figures. Toward the end of the article, Parris offers this insight:

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Parris identifies what I affirm Luther reclaimed--that the priesthood of the believer allows for unmitigated access to the goodness of God. This conversion experience is a transformative event in the life of the Christian. It changes you in ways you cannot begin to put words to.

Today as I re-read the article, fully expecting to go into greater detail about the relationship between personal conversion and piety and it's residual effect on skeptics and unbelievers, I realized there was something deeper going on. Sure, there are ways in which Parris articulates something akin to Paul's explanation on Mars Hill, but the bigger story for me may be the similarity between his understanding of the influence of the African tribe and the predominant  model of success in America.

Parris says of the traditional tribal model: 

I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the "big man" and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.


Though it is often exaggerated, the American "worker bee" corporate model is not dissimilar. This perceived weight is portrayed in all forms of culture, from the landmark 1927 film Metropolis (which, though German, got it's greatest reception as portraying American Industrialism) to the British and American versions of The Office  that mock the eccentricities of the cubicle-landscape. The box-office hit Wanted (which I foolishly thought would be a decent movie) is the odyssey of a worker drone turned-assassin-turned-target-turned-back to everyday life. The final scene of the film is the featured character detailing the last six weeks and then staring at the camera saying "What the (expletive) are you doing?" The message is abundantly clear--even if you have to go right back to that office, at least you were an assassin, got the girl, lived a crazy life and took control of your destiny. The individualism is as rugged (if not coarser) than John Wayne could have ever dreamed.

I get that it may seem disingenuous to claim direct comparisons with the African tribal mindset, but for all of America's swagger and rhetoric, for all the marketing and pandering to rugged individualism, the majority of employed persons work pedestrian jobs and can often feel like a cog in someone else's wheel, or, as art reminds us, just one more "brick in the wall." Something clearly has to give in this equation, whether it's the perpetual hypnosis of Peter Gibbons in Office Space or the psychotic break of Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down or the widely perceived nobility of Chris McCandless' journey from mind-numbing corporate work to the wilderness in Into the Wild , there is a fascination with the fantasy of what would happen if someone just had enough.

Though McCandless' story was tragically true, most of the stories that get screen time are fantasies, but by their popularity they clearly reflect thoughts and ideas dreamed by hundreds of thousands of employees. My point is not that all people break, but precisely that they don't--there is a need for some kind of coping mechanism--something that brings life and vitality to their work--something that tells a person "you are NOT a machine."

For hundreds of thousands of Americans (and most of the ones sitting in church with me on Sunday) this is the role of faith in their daily lives. It grounds them and gives depth and breadth and vitality to their everyday experiences. It is among these most faithful followers of Jesus that Scriptures are never quoted to win an argument around the watercooler, nor are expense reports questioned--they are people who have put into practice the very thing Parris describes of the Aid workers he encountered in Malawi:

But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. "Privately" because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.


Parris is articulating the lost art of witness. Not witness-ing as such--not rabid evangelism that markets faith like vacuum cleaners--but "martyria" witness. The kind of thing John's gospel speaks of in this weeks lectionary reading--the kind of thing that one's entire life testifies to.

Whether our liberation is from the tyrannical rule of an oppressive regime or tribe or from the slow-death of being evaluated solely in terms of production, it is the way in which we carry out those tasks that our claim to liberation is proven true or false.

I would want to think if Parris followed me around he would see the same evidence of faith he saw in the kindness and diligence of the Aid workers in Malawi, but I tend to think otherwise. Perhaps the greater reality is not to rage against the machine but to consistently embody the shalom that my kips confess but my actions so often belie. 

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Posted January 16, 2009
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on discipleship and church (s)hopping (or recovering the priesthood of the believer)

Yesterday Jen and I were trying to brainstorm and re-think the way we approach ministry a bit. It's tempting to fall into patterns of competition--the idea of finding a church "brand" and using that brand to attract the kinds of folks we want to minister/serve with. There are a hundred things wrong with that approach, but there is the cold, hard reality that the most basic level of marketing is, in fact, necessary,


I received yet another e-mail today to remind me of the "one-day early-bird sale" for a conference featuring two of the countries more prominent pastors/leadership gurus. For teh bargain price of $95 I could be privy to the keys to the mega-community church kingdom. My cynicism is showing here a bit, but I have to be honest and say my offering of a "family church where everybody knows your name" is as crafted and technically indebted to "Cheers" as the gurus are to John Maxwell.

What I hadn't thought about until today is the implications of this on genuine discipleship. I decided to dust off some Bonhoeffer for the teenage crowd tonight and wound up with a somewhat similar presentation to what I posted last week. It's again, incomplete and precise, overly generalizing and overly nit-picky, but I thought it was worth throwing out there for thought, comment, or at least stirring the pot a bit.

The only other foreword is Jen's from our drive-time conversation last night 
"We're raising a generation of church consumers, not disciples of Jesus."

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Posted January 14, 2009
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on dinner parties and guest lists (or "guess who's coming to dinner?")

   
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Thanks to the wonders of NPR's This I Believe series my commute to pick Jen up from work was spent hanging on every word from Jim Haynes Paris-by-way-of-Louisiana mouth.


 If you have time, you should read the whole story, but I'll give a quick-read. Jim is an ex-pat who has, for the last thirty years, dared to feed anyone who so chose to join him for dinner. Conservative estimates place his total dinner guests at over 100,000 people. He says simply, yet profoundly:

"People from all corners of the world come to break bread together, to meet, to talk, connect and often become friends. All ages, nationalities, races, professions gather here, and since there is no organized seating, the opportunity for mingling couldn't be better. I love the randomness. I believe in introducing people to people."

My first thought was how bad I wish Jen and I could grab a ticket to Paris, just to see the variety and complexity--to count ourselves as part of a great tradition of cultivating love for neighbor. I know--there's nothing about love in the quote above--he gets to that a bit later.

"Tolerance can lead to respect and, finally, to love."

The image of the open table is so captivating--so inviting--it makes me covet a spot at that table, with the full intention of knowing no-one, but being absolutely certain that would not be the case when the meal was over.

Jesus sat around a lot of tables, and while Jim Haynes isn't Jesus, he's hit upon an image of the Gospel that  the church and time forgot. The power of an open table--with no requirement of dress or class--merely the invitation to "come and dine."

When we took our second trip to Bulgaria last summer we were filling in for a team that had to cancel at the last minute. We threw back-to-school parties in orphanages, complete with pizza, junk food, soft drinks--all the stuff that causes obesity and tooth decay here, but is a rare treat there. We knew we needed to tell a bible story, but we couldn't decide. We eventually went with Jesus' story of the Great banquet in Luke's gospel. There's all sorts of hermeneutical layers to it, but it couldn't have been more simple.

The kids colored their die-cut construction paper selves, then, one-by-one, ran and glued them to a poster of an open table, with plenty of food and only Jesus and all the other dinner guests who had decided to sit at the table(see picture 2). You had to fight back tears as young and old, autistic and mentally ill, staff and residents, missionaries and suburbanites visioned themselves seated at God's great banquet. All had their fill, and each one enjoyed the company of the other.

I want to rediscover the art of the long meal.

I want the gospel to be as wide and ranging as an open invitation to Sunday dinner.

I want to sit at the table with anyone else who would join me.

I want every swallow of drink, every morsel savored to be a reminder of the communion God gave us in Christ and with one another.

I want every laugh uttered, every smile exchanged, every story told to breathe the silent blessing of God's abundant goodness.

God Is Good by Enter The Worship Circle  
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Posted January 13, 2009
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on seeing Jesus in our own image (or Mark Driscoll, Messiah, and me)

I already wasn't a real big fan of Mark Driscoll and then I read this. I decided to post it on Facebook to some considerable feedback, equally funny and inappropriate, and strangely, almost exclusively male. I have struggled with how to respond to the Jesus he presents--I like to think of it as the Cage Fighter Jesus. 


Cage-Fighter Jesus doesn't take any crap from anybody--Pharisees, smart-mouthed disciples--even demons run from him. Cage-Fighter Jesus is "a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg a sword in his hand and a commitment to make people bleed. That is the guy I can worship." by Driscoll's own words.

I don't like Cage-fighter Jesus because I don't think that's the whole picture of Jesus. I'm tempted to pick apart Driscoll bit-by-bit as others have, but a good friend talked me out of it. Because, as my wife the social worker always says, "What's really going on here?" or, to use the words of someone else "This is really about that." 

It seems to me that the trap Driscoll fell into is one we all can fall into--trying to picture Christ and having a hard time refraining from ascribing characteristics to him that you like about yourself, or like the better, stronger, faster, prettier more improved version of you. That tattooed prize-fighter looks a lot like Driscoll would want to esteem himself and I have to put myself under the microscope too. Yesterday I was thinking about this and wondering what aspects I assign to Jesus from my own sense of self and it dawned on me that a Jesus who is shorter than me would be hard to imagine. I'm 6'5" and while I wouldn't wish my obesity on the Savior, looking down at a Mediterranean man of average height for his day, he couldn't have been much more than 5'7" or so. It would be a little weird looking down at my Messiah. The superfluities of physical stature aside, I would esteem him as smart, compassionate--much slower with the tongue (or pen) than I am.

I remember reading a little book by N.T. Wright from 15 years ago called Who Was Jesus? He's written more clearly and expansively in other books, but he used an image at the very beginning of the book that I've never forgotten, mostly because it was so vivid and true.

"Think of a Victorian drawing room, hung with faded portraits. they stare down at you; respectable, aloof, worthy, a bit faded. The frames are heavy, gilt-edged, cracked here and there. Now imagine a man, with wild hair and flashing eyes, bursting into the room. He rushes round, tearing the portraits from the walls as though in a frenzy. He smashes the glass in the frames and tramples on teh paintings with his dirty boots. Then, when the walls are bare, he takes from inside his coat a single sheet of paper. On it we see, drawn in rough black crayon, a stark outline of a figure, not unlike himself, with a  wild, visionary face. It is the sort of figure to which people are either instinctively drawn or from which they instinctively recoil. He slaps it in the middle on the main wall of the room, so that it hangs by the nail where the chief old portrait had been."

Wright goes on to finish the analogy by saying the man is Albert Schweitzer, the (in)famous author of  The Quest for the Historical Jesus and the one chiefly responsible for giving humanity permission to risk blasphemy in re-imagining Jesus, even when he bears striking resemblance tot he beholder. 

Ever since Schweitzer, we could easily put Driscoll, my (or any other person's name) in his place. The Jesus we picture often is an portrait of the  qualities we wish we had. Or, as Jen put it so clearly yesterday "We want to be conformed to the image of Christ but then form Christ into our idealized self."

And these competing Jesuses are all around us.

Maybe you, like me, regretted spending the $3.99 pay-per-view fee to watch Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby but it was worth it for this one conversation.



Brian McLaren uses the clip in his presentation "Which Jesus?" for his Everything Must Change tour and I think he's right--it raises all sorts of questions about our most basic portraits and assumptions of Jesus. (If you have a minute, check it out. The last 3 slides are worth the jump!)

And then there's the pictures of Jesus through history--the ones that hang in the Victorian library and that, once ripped down, magically reappear like items in a video game. But which history? Post-Constantinian Christianity gave a standard, pasty-white, almost uniformly bearded Jesus, but China, Ethiopia and the Caribbean picture him quite differently. When we read the Gospels, we tend to ask ourselves "How do we read Jesus differently in this text then we have before?" Perhaps the same question has to asked when we confront other views of Jesus--What things do we find in them to be true and what things should be rejected?

                                           
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As difficult as it may be to be an art critic of my own hand-painted Jesus portrait, it is the idea of Jesus which pushes me to find it lacking. As exhaustive and varied as the images are above, they are still dim reflections of the hopes of some, not all, of humanity.

Yesterday as my friend and I were talking we mentioned the view expressed by someone else who was torn between two competing images. Commenting on the tension of an "either/or" he suggested a "both/and"--a Jesus of the "third way". 

I replied too quickly and said "That's good! You should write that down!" and before the words got all the way out he added--"but Christ is the Way, not the third way--so it can't be a substitute, one image for another--Christ has to be in all and through all." 

Swapping images is like building a better mouse trap or trading baseball cards. I like the Liberating Christ of South America, but I'm also drawn to the Good Shepherd. I hate the Cage-fighter Christ, but I l have to admit, the "Che-like Christ" appeals to my inner revolutionary. I see the suffering of the Caribbean Christ who was forced to wear shackles and implements of torture for the perceived betterment of a people, not unlike the slaves that populated those tiny islands. I like the forensic computer generated model because it appeals to my sense of what's true, though I know who Jesus was had little to do his nose or jaw-line. I love Caravaggio, but his chubby pasty Jesus looks a little too Bacchus-like for me.

A great artist and former professor from college paints beautiful oil paintings. The colors are rich and vivid, Rembrandt like in his use of light and shadows. He only paints one face--his own. His argument is that it's the only one he really knows, that he can really study.

I have to remind myself when I go to painting Jesus that I may be going at it all backwards. 

I have to remember that in the face of Jesus there is joy and sorrow, pain and laughter.

I have to re-think what Jesus actually would do, not just what other paintings say.

I have to let that search renew me, even when it means tearing down all the old pictures.

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Posted January 12, 2009
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