faithasawayoflife

Go--no, run--to hear Otis Taylor tonight

I went to the Dakota Jazz Club last night to hear the great bluesman Otis Taylor. At the 9:30 show, the place was only 1/3 full, but they played an awesome set.  We sat right in the front, and for my money, as a budding bass player, in the best seats just in front of Cassie Taylor, Otis' daughter and bass player in his band.  If you can, please, don't miss this amazing band.  He closed with his amazing song Walk on the Water from his new release Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs.  Read a bit about him in this NPR spot.

Anon, and peace,

Chris

Kings of Leon--Running Away From God

KOL are playing a nearly sold-out show at the Target Center in Minneapolis Monday night. While I won't be there, I like them a lot and have written about them after a show in New Haven a couple years ago. I've seen them live twice, which is a lot for me since I don't go to live shows much. I've only seen U2 twice, for heaven's sake!  Anyway, if you go to a KOL show, let me know how you like it.  Here's the start of my post from a couple years ago, with a link if you have to go read it all.

Last night I saw them play at Toad’s Place, a famous venue here in New Haven. Lots of the great bands (and lots of so-so bands, too) have played here–including U2 in their early years. I saw KOL in 2005 when they opened for U2 on the Vertigo tour. I’d never heard of them and at the time didn’t know any of their songs. I was impressed by their energy, though, and by their tight pants (read my report on that concert here). According to Jared Followill, the bassist, “I mean [U2] called us KFC instead of KOL ’cause we have chicken legs. But in a funny, cool way. They’re the nicest guys.” I mused at the time about what the influence would be given the maturity of U2 as a band, as spiritual men, and on the road with this young band also with spiritual roots but exploring the tensions of faith and the life-style of rock n’ roll fame. As the story goes, the influence was low-key, and likely more powerful as a result. They showed, rather than told or scolded. KOL, for those who don’t know, grew up traveling with a father who preached revivials in the United Pentecostal Church but after troubles with drinking and finallly a divorce, left the ministry. The experience was dramatic for the boys. This from the Rolling Stone interview:

“Everything changed for the three brothers in 1997, when their mother and father divorced — an even bigger taboo in the Pentecostal community than in the Christian world at large — and Leon left the ministry. (Though some have reported that Leon was defrocked, the boys say he resigned on his own because ‘he knew it was time.’) ‘Our parents’ divorce shattered the whole mirage of this perfect little existence the outside world couldn’t touch and couldn’t pollute,’ Nathan says. ‘We realized that our dad, the greatest man we ever knew, in our eyes, was only human. And so are we. People are gonna fuck up. They’re gonna want to experiment with drugs, have premarital sex. This whole new world was open to us’.”

This, you might say, was their introduction to the “broken hallelujah.”  Read the rest here.

Anon and peace,

Chris

These are a few of my favorite blogs: Dot Earth

I decided to start a feature on my blog where I share blogs I read and recommend.  Today's feature, Dot Earth, is from the New York Times and features journalist Andrew Revkin.  The gist of the blog is this: By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, Revkin has surveyed literally hundreds of news sources and environmental blogs to come up with a regular set of provocative stories.  The story below seems very applicable to congregations who, dominated by the "mega-church" model of church growth might want to come up with new measures of church growth that related to, in the phrase of Nick Wolterstorff in his new book on justice, 'doing well and well-doing'.  Or whatever, but you get the point. Our American and capitalist fixation on short-term growth in money and numbers is in many ways a dysfunctional and destructive way of measuring growth.

Anon and peace,

Chris

September 15, 2009, 10:59 am A Nobelist Joins Those Pursuing Well-Being Over Growth

By Andrew C. Revkin

A Nobel laureate,  Joseph E. Stiglitz, has joined the circle of economists convinced that the world needs  new ways of measuring progress as  human numbers and appetites butt up against the planet’s limits and old economic models have  hit some speed bumps. In  The Financial Times yesterday, Dr. Stiglitz, who teaches at Columbia University, outlined the results of  a study he and other economists conducted for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France providing advice on a basket of measurements that might better reflect whether a country is advancing the quality of lives while not diminishing the environment.  Mr. Sarkozy embraced the findings and called on France’s econometric bureaucracy to shift how it assesses progress and on world leaders and international institutions to do the same.

Bazan's fidelity of betrayal

Peter Rollins' provocative book, The Fidelity of Betrayal, asks hard questions about the 'necessity' of Judas' betrayal of Jesus and our own need to betray kinds of understandings of God in order to be vulnerable again to God's coming into our lives afresh. Such betrayal can, however, be utterly traumatic, feeling if our faith is dying and nothing is there in its place. This is part of the reason I find David Bazan's story so compelling, and so necessary for the more fragile faith (Charles Taylor) that we live today. Check out this ABC interview that, as often happens, shows the reporter as more wooden about religious matters and Bazan as deeper and more complex. However, as you can see from the above video, it is clearly also the fact that Bazan iis a very good song writer and musician. From his new album, Curse Your Branches, I especially like the last song, In Stitches. The lyric goes: My body bangs and twitches As brown liquor whets my tongue My fingers find the stitches Firmly back and forth they run I need no other memory Of the bits of me I left When all this lethal drinking Is to hopefully forget about you I might as well admit it Like I even have a choice The crew have killed the captain But they still can hear his voice A shadow on the water A whisper in the wind On long walks with my daughter Who is lately full of questions about you About you When Job asked you the question, You responded, "Who are you To challenge your Creator?" Well if that one part is true, It makes you sound defensive Like you had not thought it through enough to have an answer or you might have bit off more than you could chew The singing on "about you" is finally high and wailing, as if his whole being reaches out for the reality of God he cant quite comprehend or find and yet feels coming to him through a shadow and a whisper and a walk with his daughter. And the last first is part of a earthy conversation with God that we so rarely dare to have but makes me laugh out loud, as we do when we realize how small certain portrayals of God seem when we have eyes to see it. Here he is singing a great version of In Stitches:

Hinlicky's challenge to the ELCA after the vote

In Paul Hinlicky's "post-mortem"on the ELCA churchwide assembly calling for 'separation, not divorce'  I realize more clearly that ever that we progressive theologians in the ELCA have some hard work to do. It ought to have been done better long ago but alas, it must be done now. What work do I mean? He writes:

"There are good Christians, good people, and good theologians who have sided with the religious Left in this controversy. I am sorry that I have not been able to persuade them of their error. That is my failure and the failure of my side. The people I am talking about believe that they can steer the religious Left back to some form of a “generous Christian orthodoxy.” I wish them well. I hope they succeed and prove me wrong. But I doubt it."

He argues that what is at stake is articulating a foundational theological argument for our actions as a church, an argument that is grounded deeply in Scripture and the Confessions, as well as ecumenical theological conversations on the relevant issues. Only through such an argument can the sort of broad consensus--not just within the ELCA but within the Church catholic--make clear that this is not simply a caving to culture, as those who wish to uphold traditional positions on this might say.  In making the argument that we must have such a broad consensus on the theology of what we're doing, he draws on one of the theologians and church leaders I most respect in the world today--Rowan Williams--writing in response to the Episcopal Church's vote this summer on electing gay bishops.  I don't have the time now, just as I start a really busy semester, to deal adequately even with Paul's post, let alone the larger issues he (and Rowan Williams) raise.  But for starters, I'd say, in order for progressive theologians to make the case that we haven't simply gone wrong, we ought to read and seriously grapple with Paul's just-published book: Paths Not Taken: Fates of Theology from Luther through Leibniz (Eerdmans 2009).  Only reading progressive theologians on the topic is not enough.  Those theologians who will stay with the ELCA but do not agree with its direction offer the rest of us a gift if we choose to take it--exactly the thinking partners we need in seeking to better articulate the 'generous Christian orthodoxy' which might not only persuade them but a broader catholic church as well.  I'll write some posts about Paths Not Taken later this fall as I get time to read it and look forward to hearing from others who might do the same.

Anon, and peace,

Chris

Desmond Tutu & U2, One and Amazing Grace

Incredible, that's all I have to say, folks. Bono even got his guitar out ;-)

Jesus is for universal healthcare

This post is the flip-side to an angry rant about the evil side of our American health care debate posted earlier today.  Both that, and this post below are inspired by the powerful week I've just had.  So what happened?  Well, I've spent the last week talking with and listening to the teaching of a very gifted South African pastor, Alan Storey. He finished a day of teaching yesterday at Zumbro Lutheran in Rochester, MN, with a powerful sermon on Mark 5. His basic point was that suffering pushes us beyond the ideological boundaries that keep us from one another. Jesus is coming from Gentile territory where he's just healed a lunatic in a graveyard. He crosses the sea to Jewish territory and a religious leader, Jairus, comes pleading for Jesus to lay hands on his dying daughter. He should have shuttered at the impurity of Jesus who kept crossing divides between clean and unclean, outsider and insider, and yet his desperation drove him to seek the power he found in Jesus. On his way, a woman sick for years with what seems like ongoing menstruation reaches out to touch Jesus believing that if she could she would be well. She felt the healing immediately, and when Jesus located her, for he felt what had happened despite the crush of the crowd around him, he blessed here with peace as he sent her freed to a new life healed from her malady. Freed, of course, both physically and socially, since the blood would have made her perpetually unclean, a social outcast.  Then on to Jairus' house where in the meantime the daughter has died. Jesus arrived saying she was just sleeping and the mourners ridiculed him but he called to her and she arose and he asked them to feed her.

Alan's sermon was a brilliant exposition of the text in relation to what he's observed of our health care debate over the past week of his stay in the US. I can't do justice to it, but I recorded it and will post an audio file if I can.  Yet the simple, powerful point he made in relation to the text was that those who were suffering terribly overcame ideology and welcomed the indiscriminate healing of Jesus, who regardless of social status or physical malady reached out in love and compassion to restore and make whole. That is the goal for Christians with regard to health care--that we should live 'as Christ' in our day, seeking to overcome the divide between those who are 'worthy' and those who are 'unworthy' to seek a way for any and all to be restored and made whole.  That's the principle that our debates as Christians then seek to embody in policy and practice.  In so far as we embody this principle we can measure our faithfulness in relation to the risk of love God in Christ has made for us while each of us were mired in sickness and sin.  Lost, I was found. Blind, now I see. 

Anon and peace,

Chris

The real evil in the health care debate

Yesterday thousands of protesters gathered in Washington to protest a lot of things, it seems, but mostly conservatives angry about the size of government and government spending, and so therefore also taxes.  What was most striking to me was the range of offensive posters aimed at smearing President Obama.  Not surprisingly the health care debate came up, too.  I'm supportive of freedom of speech and think creative protests with clever posters and puppets and costumes are a vital part of democracy.  Are there limits, then, to what is acceptable? Judging from yesterday, obviously not in the legal sense--people can say most anything they want, short of violent threats against the president. Examples abounded, from calling Obama the 'long-legged Mack Daddy' to various revivals of the 'Obama as Terrorist' theme we saw present in the long season of elections over the last couple years.  Mostly those range from bad taste to the border of evil (which you might define here as the intentional subjugation of the good to further your own purposes).  What really is evil, however, is the unbelievable strain of critique that has made its ways from the margins into the mainstream equating Obama with Hitler. It is so incredible as to strain the imagination how someone could equate the two with any credibility at all.  As one commentator put it, this is more absurd than it is wrong.  Anyone who has family connections to the Holocaust must be in disbelief to see that horrific memory used to describe a President who wishes to 1) end wars of aggression and revitalize diplomacy; 2) Seek vital public debate and transparency rather than create a secret police state; 3) Give the outcast a way in the door to dignity and a decent life rather than seeking to use violence to create a 'pure' society.  So how did this come about?  Here's a really helpful account tracing the emergence from Lyndon LaRouche's political action committee. The trick is to get people emotionally attached to this issue (Obama is Hitler) so that they don't actually pay attention to the real issues in the debate regarding how best to honor our nation's obligation to assure basic standards of care for all citizens, and to encourage the world by our efforts at a more perfect union. Unfortunately, the media too easily fall into being bated to cover the sensationalism rather than the substance. And we the people buy it.

Here, for the record, is one version of what the President ACTUALLY stands for, and it is a polar opposite of this evil campaign to smear him and bi-partisan efforts at reforming health care. President Obama believes we need people willing to engage in grass-roots education about the real issues, and who are willing to build a conversation about the reasons we cannot wait to create a system that provides access to health care for all, and about what such a system would look like.   It is from the conclusion of his famous "More Perfect Union" speech:

There's one story in particular that I'd like to leave you with today, a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There's a young, 23-year-old woman, a white woman named Ashley Baia, who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She'd been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was 9 years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches -- because that was the cheapest way to eat. That's the mind of a 9 year old. She did this for a year until her mom got better. And so Ashley told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she had joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now, Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and different reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he doesn't bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley." "I'm here because of Ashley." Now, by itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document right here in Philadelphia, that is where perfection begins. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you.

Anon, and peace,

Chris

Why I worry about praying only for 'our' troops . . .

I had some serious spiritual dissonance this week.  On the one had I was reading the introduction to Peter Storey's powerful book about his leadership of the church in South Africa, With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship, in which he writes:

If we are honest, it was a minority witness, even within the denominations that officially opposed apartheid. Most clergy, black and white, some fearing authorities, others fearing their congregations, were silent. Every Sunday, there sermons said everything, and nothing; they could have been preaching anywhere in the world, or nowhere in the world...Why? How could this be? Where did we lose the passionate belief that the Gospel is given so that God's justice and peace might reign on earth as in heaven? How did we manage to so domesticate Jesus--and Moses and Isaiah, Esther and Ruth, Jeremiah and Amos, Elizabeth and Mary, Paul, Peter, John, and James--that their radical demands for counter-living could melt so meekly into our cultural scene and accommodate with such servility to the demands of our Caesars?

On the other hand, I sat through a service in which prayers were prayed for the safety and blessing of our military.  I am NOT opposed to praying for those in the armed services, and especially find it powerful to do so when we know particular people for whom we can pray.  However, to pray in this (unfortunately) generic manner for God to bless our troops too easily conforms to a kind of pagan prayer for the god of American power.  It is our nationalistic fantasy that the God of heaven and earth cares especially for us, and blesses us, rather than holds us accountable for our mixed intentions and actions.  This is especially true when considering that we are a nation of great wealth and power, despite our current economic hard times. If we know God's leaning, it is to side with the poor and suffering, as Scripture says again and again.

In order NOT to be serving the demands of our Caesars with our prayers and piety, as Pr. Storey argues, we must take care to pray for both friends and enemies.  To paraphrase Matt. 5, if all we do is pray for our troops, do we expect that we're getting a special hearing from God who creates and redeems and sustains all creation in Christ? Not likely!  So why don't we pray for our enemies, regularly and without planning in a special way to do it?  And if we don't, in what sense are our prayers the prayers of followers of Jesus and not simply the fond hopes of Americans set before a jingoist god who we fantasize stands ready to bless and protect us.  On a day when our bombs killed scores of people in Afghanistan, this question is not at all hypothetical.

Anon, and peace,
Chris

Alan Storey: God is very, very big

If you want a taste of Alan Storey's powerful preaching, check out his most recent sermon at Cape Town's Central Methodist Mission titled "God is very, very big".  See my post below for more on Alan.
Anon and peace,
Chris