faithasawayoflife

meditation for reformation and all saints

Read David C. Steinmetz's brief and profound note on "what saints teach us" in the recent Christian Century (October 30 issue, not up as of today). It is wise in the ways only senior scholars can be--smart, complex, simple, chastened, and reflective.  I wrote to thank him for the article, conscious of how often I think of such and don't write to say thanks.  Do you?  If not, try it.  A good "All Saints" discipline!
Anon,
Chris

stewardship letter

Our church asked me to write a letter to the congregation--a reflection on possessions and giving--as part of our fall program.  I was grateful for the opportunity to think through my convictions on the subject in such a short space, and I realized how much I have been influenced by my friend and colleague Mirosalv Volf.  If you have read Free of Charge, you'll hear echoes of it here.  But we also both are deeply shaped by Martin Luther and his interpretation of St. Paul as a way of understanding the Christian life.  So that common ground makes for good conversation on such issues. Here's the letter, and as I said to the members of the congregation, I say to you: let me know your thoughts!
+anon.

October 19, 2007

Dear friends,

I invite you to save this letter till you have a moment to sit in quiet, perhaps early in the morning with a steaming cup of coffee or tea, or perhaps at night curled up with a blanket in your favorite comfy chair.  Why not read this now, standing wherever it is you open mail?  Because it is intended to be a meditation, a spiritual reflection, and such writing is best read with leisure, rather than at a rush.   Not that the writing is so good!  Not at all—but the importance of the substance is what deserves our pause, me in the writing, and you in the reading.  Thank you for your care in advance.

Our stewardship committee asked me to write a reflection letter on how Christian faith relates to possessions, and to giving.  These are my thoughts, oriented around a couple of core convictions.  I hope you’ll be provoked to reflect on your own core convictions, and if you do, I hope you’ll share them with me.  Because I understand these ideas to be those of our tradition, I use plural pronouns, but it is, in the end, my personal testimony to this common way of life we share.

Our lives are not our own.  Such a conviction is counter-intuitive in the face of the American ideal that my life, and by extension my stuff, belongs to me.  The American dream promises that if we work hard and play by the rules, we’ll have a chance to have our little piece of heaven on earth.   The pursuit of happiness is not, in fact, a Christian virtue.  As the singer Bob Dylan once put it, “happy is a yuppie word.” Our tradition is full of warnings for those who merely pursue ‘happiness’ (Luke 12:13-21).  Jesus promises the life that really is life, life abundant, but not happiness (John 10:10).

We are, in the archaic language of the Bible, enslaved either to sin or to Jesus Christ.  Such language is not our typical everyday framing of the issue.  But the 16th century reformers used the image of humans as horses, either ridden by the devil or by Christ.  They did not, in other words, believe as many do today in freedom of the will.  Rather they were concerned with the question of the bondage of the will.  As with Jesus and Paul, they asked not if we were free or slaves, but which master we serve. (Luke 16:13; Romans 7:15)

In baptism, we are claimed as God’s beloved.  We die to sin and rise to life ‘in Christ.’  Such baptismal claiming has two senses.  God has claimed us for good.  Yet while we live, we struggle to die to sin and open ourselves to the life Christ desires to live through us.  “It is not I who live,” says Paul, “but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)

Our lives, then, are Christ’s (and Christs).  Because God has graciously judged our sin, forgiven us in mercy, and offered us new life ‘in Christ’ our lives belong to him.  Our lives take on the shape of his life, becoming if you will ‘little Christs’ in the world.  We are, all of us, his body.  The shape of Christ’s life could be described in many ways, but I am most drawn to a poetic summary in Philippians (2:5-8) that likely served as an early church hymn:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
      taking on the form of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!

I take this to mean that those things that are “mine” are not mine but rather belong to those who don’t have them and need them.  Everything I am and have is a gift from God and nothing is for me alone, as an individual, but for those in need of that very thing I have been given.  I love the interpretation Martin Luther gives of this passage. He doesn’t pull any punches.

“If there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift of God.  But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ.  And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself.  Thus my learning is not my own; it belongs to the unlearned and it is a debt I own to them.  My wisdom belongs to the foolish, my power to the oppressed.  Thus my wealth belongs to the poor, my righteousness to the sinners.  For these are the forms of God which we must empty ourselves, in order that forms of a servant may be in us (Phil. 2:6).”

Stewardship, then, is the gift and task of living ‘in Christ’.  It is a life of joy and of suffering.  It is a communal life, full of being blessed in order to be a blessing.  It encompasses everything.  Living thus is not simple; we need each other, in other words, and we know that in our bones.   

Here is the bottom line.  Whatever we have that our congregation needs already belongs to it.  We give our presence, our attention and prayer and singing, as we gather for worship.  That is primary.  Along with our presence in worship we give our money.  As much as we can give will be put to good use in support of program and staff and mission.  We give our distinctive skills in service of our common life, teaching, singing, sorting, counting, stuffing, serving, welcoming, ushering, justice-making, listening, sorrow-bearing, and so many others.  When we know we have it, we seek a way, a place, where it is needed.  And sometimes, the community knows we have it and calls us to give it up for the sake of a common need.  There is a divine economy in this, and it is driven not by selfish desire but holy giving, out of an abundance we ourselves did not earn but received out of the open hand of God. 

May stewardship be the flourishing of this divine economy of holy giving and receiving, and may it be a sign to all the world of the God who, for our sake, took the form of a servant.

Peace to you,

Chris Scharen 

Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (3)

Jonathan VanAntwerpen over at The Immanent Frame, a blog sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, focuses on issues of "secularism, religion and the public sphere".  Currently the blog highlights Charles Taylor's new book A Secular Age and includes posts from Charles Taylor, Robert Bellah, Jose Casanova, and Wendy Brown, among others.  Brown offered the best two sentence description of what A Secular Age does:

" Taylor refounds secularism as a way of being, feeling, thinking and knowing that is as nonoptional in the contemporary West as a polytheist world view was for the ancient Greeks. He gives us, in short, the first erudite phenomenology of secularism through a story of the historical construction of secular subjectivity."

Brown's critiques, and Taylor's reply are worth a look.

Check out this important new blog.  It is rare that the intellectual giants of our time blog.

Anon,
Chris

Faith as a Way of Life (the book) on Amazon!

Well, it is always interesting to see how these things work.  I was looking up book availability for my course in the Spring on Amazon (you know, is the book in print, in paper back, reasonably priced, etc.) and I thought I'd see if they list my new book written partly in this blog and through the project I've been leading here at Yale.  And sure enough, although I've heard nothing from the publisher (Eerdmans) and they have nothing on their website, Amazon has the book listed complete with a cover all designed that I've never seen!  Oh,well.  I guess I like it.  Stock photography showing a road and bridge.  So a "way" I guess.  I sort of like the way they've laid out the type on the cover, however, and so on first glance I'm please.  People think authors have a say in this and perhaps famous ones do, like my boss Miroslav, whose new book The End of Memory (also with Eerdmans) has a cover picture that I helped him choose from about 12 options.  I'm honored and very excited to have Miroslav write the foreward for the book.

I also learned, to my interest, that the final manuscript is a tight 128 pages and will cost $15 list price but $10.20 from Amazon.  It will be released May 15.  That feels along way off at the moment!

Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (2)

I began reading Taylor's magisterial book a few weeks ago (see here) and our staff at the Center is now beginning to read and talk about the book together.  In preparation for that I gave everyone a short article reviewing Taylor's views on secularization that concludes with an interview with Taylor.  I love the genre of interview as a way into the thoughts of major intellectuals.  It is fun to see them speaking, as it were, off the cuff, and to get the brief answer rather than the long footnoted answer.  To get it for yourself, click here: Download 05Lombo.pdf.

As a Lutheran I'm particularly interested in the way the whole leveling effect of the Reformation had in paving the way for the transition to a society that, on the one hand, breaks Christendom  and frees faith from a kind of official role governing society (Christendom, Taylor says, is the period in the west from Constantine through the 18th century and he thinks it "was kind of the wrong road."  Which he quickly qualifies by saying "That is, of course, an absurdly oversimple way of putting it . . ."  See why I love interviews?  The NOT absurdly oversimple way of putting it takes 900 pages, and we need that version, too, but I love the "kind of the wrong road" answer, too), and on the other hand, makes of faith an individual experience and in the process erodes the traditional communal sense of Christian faith--the Pauline idea of the body of Christ, and being made one with the body also had to do with the will--not my individual 'taste' orienting my will but giving over my will to 'Christ who lives in me' (Galatians 2:19-20)

+anon

Halo 3 in Church and other items on faith in the NYT

Yesterday,  I had the wonderful and rare opportunity to sit on the back deck, sipping coffee, watching the chickens and reading the paper.  We only subscribe to Saturday-Sunday, but that is usually more than I can read in a week.  There were a string of faith-related items that struck my attention, and I highlight them here  for the sake of seeing what cumulative sense they make of how faith interacts with culture.  These stories set side by side make a parable about faithfulness today.  No commentary, just parable.  For those who have ears to hear . . . 

1. Sunday Magazine, p. 20 "Jesus Christ Superhero."  Story details the rise of the company one2believe and their bible action figures which are a blockbuster in mainstream stores like Wal-Mart and Target.  Most popular?  Jesus, who according to sales projections will be sold out well before Christmas.  But they also have  "spirit warriors" like Samson who can take on any commercial bad-guy--the website even has a video of Samson wopping Goliath, an entirely consistent bending of the Biblical witness to serve their marketing agenda. 

2. Sunday front page, "Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Game at Church."  The story details the trend among churches to host gaming nights to play the wildly popular Microsoft X-Box game, Halo 3.  The game, released two weeks ago, has already earned in excess of 300 million.  Youth leaders just say their trying to be relevant to the 'young male' demographic.  Critics, including some Elders and Senior Pastors, worry that the game's violent themes are inappropriate.  Says one youth playing at the game night at Colorado Community Church, "It's just fun blowing people up."

3. Saturday, International section, p. A3.  "Christian Split in Lebanon Raises Specter of Civil War."  The story describes the growing conflict between Christians in Lebanon.  Increasingly Christian youth are signing up for militant factions and retreating to the rural hills for militia training.  Says one young man, "When the war begins, I'll be the first one in it."  He was, at the time of the interview, in Shadow Tattoo, getting a cross etched into his shoulder.  "I want everyone to know I am a Christian and I am ready to fight."

4.  Saturday, Front page. "One Story at a Time, a Priest Reveals Ukrainian Jews' Fate." This French priest has, through what seems like providential grace, become some strange combination of confessor and historian uncovering the stories from the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine where estimates suggest as many as one and a half million Jews were systematically killed.  While in Europe, the killing factories such as Auschwitz-Birkenau left a sort of historical record, a place, in Ukraine this was not the case --trenches were dug, Jews shot, and the site covered over.  Now, in large part because of the singular work of Fr. Patrick Desbois, the stories and sites are emerging.   Says Fr. Desbois, "I have to use simple words and listen to these horrors--without any judgment.  I cannot react to the horrors that pour out.  If I react, the stories will stop."  He has videotaped more than 700 interviews with witnesses and bystanders .

+anon,
Chris

Yale U2 Eucharist, U2's Walk On, and the Saffron Revolution

This sermon, written for the U2 Eucharist I had the priviledge of helping to plan and lead, says lots about where my heart and mind are these days.  It was an amazing service, in part because of the creative leadership of many people, partly the fact of so clearly focusing on global poverty, and our mixture of global music for parts of the liturgy (hymn of praise, sanctus) and appropriately chosen U2 songs (mostly sung by a live band).   We produce a very powerful color worship bulletin since the chapel is not conducive to projected images which are so often part of these sorts of service.  Anyhow, here is what I said.  We took up an offering for the Global Fund (offerings are not usually done at YDS) and raised over $1200 dollars. 

Marquand Chapel
Yale Divinity School
September 28, 2007
Texts: Amos 6:1-7, Psalm 40, Luke 16:19-31
Title: Crossing the Great Chasm

Chasma mega, says the Greek text.  It couldn’t be clearer, even for someone whose Greek skills are rusty as the old hammer I left out by the garage last winter.  As Luke’s gospel narrates this tale of Jesus, the rich man did not just “pass away” after a “long and fulfilled life.”  As you can see from the beautiful 1000-year-old illustration I passed out, the rich man went to hell, and is tormented there.   He cries out for mercy from Father Abraham in heaven, who is holding and comforting the beggar Lazarus. “You enjoyed life, and now you are suffering” Abraham tells him.  “Lazarus suffered and now is receiving comfort.  Besides that, have you not noticed the Chasma mega, the huge chasm, gaping between us?”  “No one,” Abraham says, “can cross, not even if they wanted.”  I unfortunately cannot find a way to identify with Lazarus.  I am, like it or not, more like the rich man than anyone else in the story.  But, to quote a favorite line from Monty Python, I’m not dead yet.  I want to overcome the chasm; I want to listen to the thundering of Moses and the Prophets before it is too late.

But how?  How to bridge the chasm?

Perhaps individual action is a way.  Our family has intentionally sponsored a child through Save the Children.  Her name is Rose Delesani, and she lives with her family in Milambe, Malawi.  We write back and forth, although infrequently.  We pray for her daily.  Whenever my kids sell a dozen eggs (yes, we have 7 chickens in the back yard), we put the four dollars in a jar on top of the fridge “for Rose.”   Statistics hardly tell the story that needs telling; yet in their starkness they point to a chasm between us.

Malawi:                                                                        USA:
Life expectancy: 40                                                     Life expectancy: 77.6
Per capita income less than 2 dollars a day         Per capita income $ 37.500
25% of children under 5 malnourished                >2.5 percent of children malnourished
HIV/AIDS infection rate: 15%                                 HIV/AIDS infection rate: .3%

It is in one sense laughable, our sponsorship of Rose.  We give out of our overwhelming abundance.  We live in a very nice home in Westville, have all we need with extra to spare, and we give out of our extra. Through giving that extra, we trick ourselves into self-congratulatory justification of our relative wealth.  What about a God who is like the widow who put her last coin in the offering?  What of Jesus whose commitment to overturning the powers of this world cost him his very life? 

Our closing song today, titled “Walk On,” points us deeper as we try to find a way to bridge the chasm.It is a song that directly connects to the Burmese “Saffron” revolution that has been growing over the last weeks.

In March 2000 U2 shared the Dublin “Freedom of the City” award with a Burmese academic named Aung San Suu Kyi.  The band had not heard of her, but found out that she had left her academic position and her family in Oxford to return to challenge the military junta running her country.  As the leader of the opposition party in Burma, she won the presidency in an election in 1990 and was promptly arrested.  She has been under some form of house arrest ever since, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership of nonviolent struggle.  In the last weeks, sparked by unbearable oppression and growing starvation among the people, Buddhist monks and nuns have led daily street protests in a powerful witness.  Despite the current repression of this protest, the witness goes on.

“Walk On” begins with evoking the cost of love—“love is not the easy thing.”  The song, while on one level dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi as tireless campaigner for peace, one who “will only fly for freedom,” as the lyric says, is on another level an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 3:9ff.  U2’s lead singer, Bono, comments about the lyric:

“There’s a passage in Corinthians that uses the image of a house going through a fire, and it seems to suggest that when, in death, we eventually face judgment (or inspection, as one translation puts it) all that is made of straw and wood will be burned away, only the eternal things will survive.  . . .  So at the end of the song, there is a litany of ambitions and achievements.  “You’ve got to leave it behind/ All that you fashion/ All that you make/ All that you build/ All that you break/ All that you measure/ All that you steal/ All this you can leave behind.”  It is a mantra, really, a bonfire of vanities, and you can throw anything you want on the fire.  Whatever it is that you want more than love, it has to go.  That’s a really interesting question to ask: What are the things you want more than love?"  [U2 By U2]

This jailed peace activist, and these Buddhist monks and nuns filling the streets day after day praying for peace and justice, teach us about what it is to let go of those things that will not endure. They teach us, I think, about how to follow Christ. 

Which brings us back to the parable of the rich man.  His ambitions and achievements, though they brought him much delight in this life, had to be left behind.  They did not endure.  Christ, however, teaches us something about living out of a broken heart.  It is not in avoiding but entering into Christ’s broken body, given and poured out for the sake of the world, that we bridge the chasm.  It is not in saving our lives, our pleasures, our loves, but in giving them away that we find our way towards God’s own reconciling work.

Martin Luther offers a challenging description of this paradoxical logic.  He said:

“If there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift of God.  But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ.  And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself.  Thus my learning is not my own; it belongs to the unlearned and it is a debt I own to them.  My wisdom belongs to the foolish, my power to the oppressed.  Thus my wealth belongs to the poor, my righteousness to the sinners.  For these are the forms of God which we must empty ourselves, in order that forms of a servant may be in us (Phil. 2:6).” [1518 Galatians Commentary, LW27]

Christ first bridged the chasm that divides not through his might but by embodying the weak power of love, being broken open for the sake of the reconciling work of God.  Such weak power undoes my effort to give out of my abundance in an effort to justify my abundance.  Such weak power undoes our intentions to manage our dis-ease over global poverty and injustice, pulling us from a connection to Rose into the global development work of Save the Children into the activist involvement with Save the Children’s partner, the ONE campaign to make poverty history.  While we meant only to let our hearts bleed ever so slightly, the cracks widen and we find ourselves called, compelled, and empowered to rise up together, with ONE voice to say NO to violence, to hunger, to unnecessary poverty and disease, and to say YES to peace, to economic justice and opportunity for all, to the work of healing and reconciliation.   

We can’t make it over the chasm ourselves.  In Christ, we have a way already and that way is through the heart that breaks open and pours itself out in love.  That is not ours to do alone, but to do together, in and through the power of the One whose own great love is broken and poured out for us and for all.   Amen.