5th Sundays

My congregation uses the four 5th Sundays each year to do very unique worship that is children-oriented, lively and engaging. Besides the great benefits to the kids, the congregation gets the benefit of participating in non-traditional worship. I personally love the challenge to stretch my creativity and imagination to come up with a very unique worship service. Its a whole lot of work, time, energy, and thought but well worth everything put into it.

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Render Unto Caesar...

In Mark 12:13-17, Jesus is put to the test by the Pharisees and Herodians by these questions: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?" Jesus then takes a denarius (one day's wage-- the sum of money one gets for giving his body to work for a whole day) and asks, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" Jesus then says, "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

This text often gets quoted in our modern day by Christians wishing to make a case for obedience to the government. However, such an interpretation is to miss the larger point of what Christ was teaching. Jesus uses a particualr type of Aristotlian argument and rhetoric here-- everyone in that day knew that whatever bears the image of someoe belongs to that one. Knowing his audience, Jesus also knew that the people believed themselves to be made in the image of God. What Jesus does with his words is deliver a stinging critique on our lives... although we are made in the image of God, we are giving ourselves daily in the work of Caesar. For that daily work to the empire, Caesar gives us his coin for a day's wage. If we are giving ourselves to Caesar in the first place, then why not give him his money back.

Jesus subversively is telling the crowd, why do you work for Caesar and his empire? Why do you work for his economy? Why are you participating in the world of Caesar?

In other passages, Jesus helps the people imagine a different world wehre everyone has their own vineyards and where everyone is invited to the banquet table and where everyone is given the same day's wage for their service to God. The parables are these new imaginations and dreams for the future. Jesus imagines an alternative world with an alternative vision for economy, commondity, and community.

If we work for the empire and recieve its wages, then we must pay its taxes. But Jesus is asking, "Why are you working for Caesar in the first place? You bear the image of God, not Caesar's!"

The Truth of God

This is a quote from Debra Dean Murphy in her book Teaching That Transforms: Worship as the Heart of Christian Education (a book I highly recommend and am reading again since two years ago):

The truth of God-- what catechesis seeks to impart-- is not a thing to be grasped but a way of life to be embodied. This way of life-- living true to the cruciform pattern of Jesus' own life-- is a doxological practice, learned over time in the worshipping body gathered regularly for prayer and praise.

Small Government, Military, and Colonialism

By and large, many conservative "believe" in having a smaller federal governement. This, of course, is stretching the use of the word "believe."

When you look at spending, the Republican party since 1980 has added more money to federal deficit. The federal government expanded under Reagan and G.W. Bush than at any other time in the past 60 years. Still, just about any conservative you meet will talk about how they value a smaller federal government, spending limit, etc.



Of course, the military, which is where a lot of this deficit came from, is not considered as a part of this "big government." Although the military ultimately answers to the Big Chief and the Pentagon commanders and the Department of Defense are the biggest expenditures of the executive branch of the government, most conservatives do not consider the military as part of an expanded federal government.

However, in the eyes of the globe, this is precisely how the American federal government is expanding, and how "big brother" finds his way into everyone's lives. In fact, our reach is so far and has so much influence over trade policies, interational disputes, etc. that many call our government imperialistic. Although we are not technically colonized other nations in the classical sense, it seems that we have in many ways colonized many, many places on the globe.



Many citizens here in the United States will speak about how great of a country we have, sing the virtues of the USA, and talk about patriotism and spreading democracy. They will speak about a grand history of liberation, wealth, and freedom. However, when put under the microscope, such ideas seem to be distorted. In its history, this land never belonged to "us." In fact, the whole land from Atlantic to Pacific was inhabited by Native Americans tribes. We took the land and kept taking the land even up through the 20th century.


Then there is the problem of slavery and racism. Up until the early 1970s, blatant disrimination was rampant. Even now, passive forms of discrimination still function towards African-Americans. Then there is the issue of immigrants-- legal and illegal. At some point, "we" began thinking that this land belonged to "us." Although a majority of Americans claim to be Christian, this idea of the land belonging to "us" seems to be very anti-biblical-- especially since "we" took the land from the Native Americans.



Put these things together with dozens of botched military activities, economic programs, and international policies, and what you get is not a benevolent nation with great actions of compassion and justice. Instead, you have a nation that was founded on killing and stealing, who has oppressed an entire skin color of people, and who still govern out of fear from the "other." Indeed, perhaps we should be afraid of the other. Eye for an eye seems to be the ideology of the day. We took, stole, manipulated, oppressed, and killed. Perhaps, we will reap what we sowed. Perhaps, we sowed in unrighteousness and will reap more unrighteousness.



To be sure, there is another side of the story shared here. There are plenty of good deeds, good policies, and good people trying to do good in the world-- in the past and now in the present. However, the story that I have shared is rarely shared (in my opinion of course). Perhaps some will feel that "we need to focus on the positive." This is just a stunt of words to prevent us from taking a sobering look at the oppressive policies and manipulative actions being done today.



I am always amazed at how we are willing to be 100s of billions of dollars in debt for a war on the other side of the world, but we would be unwilling to spend $500 billion in deficit on education. I can hear someone saying right now, "Well, we should not be in deficit for any reason-- military or education." That same person will scream, shout, and send a letter to his congressman when a "liberal" suggests spending that much on education, but will call it patriotic when we shoot a smart bomb that destroys an entire neighborhood halfway around the world.



I'm tired... very tired of the rhetoric and contradictions. I'm tired of people who call themselves Christians who sanction or at least turn a blind eye to "collateral damage" (a nice phrase for murdering innocent people!!!). I'm tired of Christians who believe in a large military apparatus that literally is in every region of the globe-- this is far beyond national security. I'm tired of Christians who say they believe in stewardship who continue to elect officials who wasted money in deficit spending. I'm tired of Christians who say they are pro-life and yet advocate for larger military budgets. The United States has committed the very worst atrocity in the history of the planet-- two nuclear bombs dropped on two cities full of innocent people-- including many, many children!!!



And yet, I will be the one who is questioned for writing this post. American Christians from the evangelical tradition question my faith-- in fact many don't even question... they believe that I am really not one. The first Christians sacrificed their lives without weapons in hand-- that is the true sacrifice. Just as Jesus told Peter, "he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." It's time for us to listen to Jesus. We must be Christians who live in America rather than American Christians. And in the end, this will actually make for a better America. The best way to be patriotic is to be Christian because it will make our communities better places which will in turn make a better nation which will in turn create a better world.

Pendulums, Converts, and Robust Faith

Growing up in a fundamentalist, evangelical Baptist congregation in rural Indiana, my congregation had a constant in-flow of "new converts" from liberal, mainline Protestant congregations and from the Roman Catholic Church. These new members would hear the message of individual repentence and the hope of being "saved." Often, these converts were middle-aged adults who had stopped going to church after high school. They would talk very negatively about their past church experiences as dead ritual, as places that produced a lot of guilt, and as places that believed you "work your way to heaven."

As an adult, I have found so many people like myself who grew up in a fundamentalist, evangelical, conservative background who have "converted" to these more liturgical based denominations-- often liberal Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox. We long for a worship that does not depend on me and my experience and what I can get out of church/God. We want a faith that is about the community and world rather than the individual. We long for rituals that will create space for worship, and we want a faith that seeks to do God's will here on Earth just as it is in heaven. These former evangelicals, including myself, often talk negatively about our conservative backgrounds.

In some ways, these two groups represent two seperate faiths. But I always believe they were meant to be one faith that is balanced. Each strand by itself is a fallacy. Together they make up the truth of the Christian faith. God wants to change me, convert me, and save me. God also is greatly concerned with communities, social justice, the ritual of worship. God cannot be bound by ritual and thus speaks openly and newly to us. We cannot just have such a casual relationship either, thus we have orders of worship that story us in the ways and nature of God. I have the hope of being changed because I am part of a greater community. That community as a chance of being renewed and becoming God's kingdom because God has changed me.

Stasis-- A Follow-up To "Christian Porn"

Many today feel that "worship" must always be ecstatic-- thus they equate this with an emotionally transcendent experience-- essentially a passionate rush. Christians often live off of these quick fixes from Sunday to Sunday. Some are so addicted that they bounce from worship service to worship service throughout the week seeking to find a place to get one more hit from this sweet drug.

"Ecstatic" and "ecstasy" come from the words "ek" (out, outside of) and "stasis" (balance, motionless, inactivity). Ecstasy is an imbalance (do not immediately consider this as negative!), it is motion, and it is activity. Essentially, it is something beyond the norm.

In some ways, worship is always outside the normal parameters. When we enter into worship (not necessarily speaking about a corporate worship service) and give our bodies as a spiritual act of service/worship, this brings us into a spiritually formative space. As such, it is outside of the average Americans daily routine.

Nevertheless, I do think worship for the Christian person and faith community is to become stasis-- the normal state of existence. To follow some prayerful rhythm throughout my day, week, and year. Prayerbooks are beginning to become popular again. I have fallen in love with using one over the past couple of years. At first, they were something very ecstatic. Now, its getting closer to stasis-- a daily rhythm that is becoming my daily rhythm and balance.

The Psalms form the "meaty" section of most ancient and contemporary prayerbooks. Being exposed to it and the often ancient prayers that accompany these Psalms has changed the way I enter and consider prayer. It makes me think about my world differently, gives me an expanded imagination for my adoration and intercessions, and challenges me to consider myself and what I speak before God differently.

A great example of this is Psalm 10 where it starts, "Why do you stand so far off, O LORD?" and in then lists off all of the things the wicked are doing in the world. In verse 12 is a call out to God, "Rise up." It is not my normal way to incite God in such a way. However, the Psalm scripts me to do so. By going down this path, I'm able to reach the destination at the end of Psalm 10: "The Lord is Sovereign.... The Lord will hear the desire of the humble." Several things happen in such a prayer. 1) A realization that I need God to do something about the evil in the world. 2) A realization of what evil looks like (things I tend to overlook on a daily basis: persecution of the poor, covetous cursing, wicked arrogance, murdering of the innocent, ambushing in the public square, etc). 3) When I get upset and want to use violent means to end the wickedness I see, I must humble myself and seek the face of God. He is the only one who is sovereign. And he hears the cry of the humble rather than the sword of the warrior.

Christian Porn

I came across a friend's blog post this morning about worship music. The following is my comment:
"An entire generation of Christians has grown up under the idea that worship is 1) music, 2) professional quality, and 3) ecstatic every time. Worship music becomes porn... immediate release, transcendence, and ecstasy. God seeks obedience (true worship) more than temple rituals. What continues to occur throughout history is that the rituals/liturgy gets substituted as the end rather than a means. Liturgy is intended to create a space. Instead it becomes our idols of wood and stone."

I love our liturgies. I think that we have a lot to learn from the ancient traditions and rituals. Finding a way to reincorporate these dusty relics is a very important task of our time. I would say that the liturgy instructs us and forms our imaginations in the Christian narrative. However, I wonder what narrative the instant gratification culture of contemporary liturgies is generating. My problem is not with change or new (you all know that I love things to always be in flux). But I do have a problem with the storytellers. Even the use of so much "I" language in worship worries me. What happened to "we" language in worship? "This is the air I breathe." I like the idea and message of the song, don't get me wrong. But I wonder why it, and most other modern songs, have such an individualist focus to them. I worry about the professionalism in the "worship department." I worry about having too much high quality, too much technology, too much stage.... I could keep going. As my friend said in his post, it is time that we get rid of the music for a season and just read the Psalms-- the ultimate worship book!

Do Traditional Churches Still Have a Place?

A friend and I were exploring this topic yesterday. I was in a particularly negative mood yesterday and my friend was upbeat but realistic. He said something like this, "I'm not sure if 10 years from now if these places [referring to traditional churches] will still be around in the same way they are today."

I have pondered this question many times over the past decade. Two reasons exist for this: 1) The growing clarity that these churches are out of sync with a non-Christian culture; 2) I'm completely in love with the worship in many of these churches. I took my youth group to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco two weeks ago... wow! Such a beautiful building that hosts many prayer services each day, spiritual seekers walking the labyrinths, and pilgrims interested in a church that loves all types of people. Last spring, I took my group to Chicago. While there, we visited Fourth Presbyterian (right across from the water tower on the magnificent mile). It's an old building with amazing art, sculptures, windows, pipe organ, and vast architecture. While there, the choir was practicing for their Easter worship services.... I thought I was in heaven or at least in Boondock Saints (you know the scene at the beginning where they receive their "call").

Thus, I return to my question about these churches having a place. I find their worship to be so very inspirational, yet they are so out of touch with wider society. Not that I see all that they do as grand either. Traditional churches often waste tons of money on their traditional trappings. They have an amazing tradition and liturgical resources, yet lack the creativity to improvise on it. They tend to put the majority of their resources into corporate worship services rather than seeing worship as a broader idea encompassing all of life (this is often very true of contemporary mega-churches as well). So ask, "Do traditional churches still have a [significant] place? Do they have a role to play?"

Non-Biblical Communion

About a week ago, Dave Dack posted on the subject of communion. He had a conversation with a friend in regards to the frequency of having communion. James, a friend of mine posted a great comment to the post: "Communion is a time for us to put aside lesser allegiances for the sake of the kingdom. "

This got me thinking about my own ideas of communion. First, I should note that I think the Eucharist should be the center of our worship together. However, in saying that I know that a strong biblical argument can't be made for such a notion. Nevertheless, I do not think you can make any strong biblical argument for our modern practices of communion-- tiny manufactured bread bits, Welch's Grape Juice in tiny cups, and a table where no one actually eats. Even those who use wine like Jesus did and real loaves of bread are selling the whole act short.

Thus, I think that we practice communion in a non-biblical way-- notice I didn't say unbiblical or anti-biblical. Communion is obviously some sort of meal or bread break during the day (this is possibly where we get our phrase "take a break" from-- it was actually a time to break bread). Jesus took an everyday ritual of Jewish society-- the breaking of bread at every occasion-- and infused it with new significance. In this way, the breaking of bread was a common experience for any outsider to the Christian faith and yet had a very distinct and peculiar ritual attached to it regarding Jesus Christ. It would be common during the 1st century to take the bread and say a blessing of some sort... such as "We thank Caesar for providing this bread to us on this day." To remember Jesus Christ instead was a very radical act. Also, the act of Christian communion was always one where your neighbors were invited to partake with you... in this way the Christian breaking of bread was about extending friendship and hospitality beyond the Christian community, while also serving an important function of feeding the poor.

If you travel to the world, you will find many cultures that have such hospitality and breaking of bread practices. Back in college, I traveled to Costa Rica. Everyday around 3:30pm, everything would stop (and I mean everything) so that people could take a break. At that break would be bread. If we were walking down the road when this occurred, random strangers would invite us into their homes and share their bread with us.

This is somewhat congruent with what is going on in Luke 10 when Jesus sends out the 70 to various towns. They would come to a door and give the standard Hebrew greeting "Shalom." If the greeting was returned (i.e. an invite was given to them to come in-- this was the command to be hospitable given in the OT), they went in. If it was not received, then judgment was supposed to be declared.

All of this taken together, I would say that communion must be at least be a true breaking of bread, if not a meal. However, we need to find a complimentary ritual in our own day for it to take on the significance that it did in the first century. Is there a common thing most people do in our culture regarding food?

Worship Made To Order OR An Ordered Worship

"I don't like the worship at that church."
"My husband and I are shopping for a church. What style of worship does your church have? "We are looking for a place with a great band and worship leader."
"When my friends and I were in college, we would often leave [the service] after the worship was over."
"I'm looking for a place where I can feel connected with God and worship in my own way."
"I'm just not getting anything from the worship here anymore."

These are all fairly typical statements made in Christian circles today regarding the church and its "worship." I often hear my friends saying similar things, and even I-- who am grounded in a deep theological understanding of worship-- find myself wondering about such things. However, all of these statements reflect the fact that something has gone terribly wrong in our churches. Worship has become the production of a few performers on stage providing a concert for a crowd of people who are seeking to transcend their mundance lives, a cathartic experience that makes the self feel better because the emotional stress (and perhaps guilt) of the prior week has been purged. Such an experience allows us to re-enter the fray and frenzy of our madly paced lives where we serve the empire and its gods. Let me put it even more bluntly-- what often passes for worship today is nothing more than an idolatrous celebration/ceremony that continues to hold up the general attitudes, values, and actions of a way of life that is anti-Christian. We have become a generation of spiritual consumers, shopping for the best product that makes us feel good and different. When the ancients danced, sang, and sacrificed bulls to Baal, they felt exactly the same way.

We live in an age where worship is made to order-- like my burger at Red Robin. It is very tasty. Of course, some people prefer a different burger place or they don't even like Red Robin or burgers. These people seek a different product elsewhere. This makes a lot of sense when it comes to food (although I have a hunch that even our eating/food experiences have somehow changed from the idea of the land, meal, community, hospitilatiy and conversation that are suppose to be eating); however, worship is not something that should be custom-made for the individual. First and foremost, Christian worship is not suppose to be an individualistic experience-- it is primarily corporate and the worship I do in solitary is to flow out of and connect to the worship of the whole body of Christ.

Although worship should not be customized to the individual, it should be an ordered experience. The word that describes this best is "ordo." It is a latin word used to describe the how-to of worship-- the experience of the church gathered together and the daily life of the Body of Christ in the world. What does ordered worship look like? First, it is scripted by the Christian year. The Christian year represents an alternative shaping of time. The new year begins approximately 35 days prior to the secular calendar that is used in the western world. It celebrates a period of time known as Advent (which culminates in Epiphany not Christmas), then proceeds to a time called Lent, then Easter, then Pentecost. The time in between these periods is called Ordinary Time-- and even in this ordinary time there are special celebrations and rhythms. Second, this alternative time has specific rituals and liturgical practices that are supposed to accompany it. Third, the whole of Christian time is scripted by the daily office of prayer (prayers, meditations, and scriptures) and the lectionary. Fourth, simple everday tasks such as eating together is scripted by this "ordo." Finally, our weekly gatherings are to have a certain structure and process. Our life together is supposed to be ordered-- it orders me, it orders us. Rather than me customizing it, it seeks to customize me. Rather than me demanding something from it, it demands something from me. Rather than me trying to create this experience, this experience seeks to create me.

Finally, I do want to add that this "ordo" is not just some old, rigid thing. It is constantly being improvised on. It is very much like playing a piano. You can't play it anyway that you want. There is a simple order to it. Each key has its own notes and in order to play it rightly you must learn the scales. Once these have been mastered, you can play the grandest music that you wish within the confines of the piano itself. The same is true with the ordo. It must first be learned, made to be a part of your fingers. Once your fingers have been ordered by it, you will be able to improvise and make a wonderful sound with your life. However, most of what passes for "worship" today is like the child who doesn't know how to play bangin on the piano-- it's cute but it's not music. The kid enjoys doing it, but its doesn't qualify as playing the piano.