Put Away the Hand Baskets

During the 1930-31 academic year, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was studying at Union Theological Seminary as a Sloan Fellow. While he wasn’t impressed with the state of American theology at the time, that isn’t to say it wasn’t a profitable year. Life in dormitories probably impacted how the underground seminary at Finkenwalde was developed. Hearing African-American preaching in Harlem convinced him all was not lost in American religion. Negro spirituals had a huge impact on him – and ultimately students at Finkenwalde for whom he would play recordings when he returned to Germany.

His friendship with a French student studying at Union also had profound impact. Jean Lasserre gained Bonhoeffer’s respect, though there were areas in which they disagreed. Among the areas where Lasserre challenged Bonhoeffer was in his understanding of the nature of the church. From Lasserre’s view, the real question was “Do we believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, or do we believe in the eternal mission of France?” Lasserre would say to Bonhoeffer, “One can’t be a Christian and a nationalists at the same time.” (See Metaxas, page 111, Roark, page 16, 17)

From Bonhoeffer’s worldview, this question would cause him to think about whether or not the church in Germany was about Germany or the gospel. His subsequent engagement and leadership in the Confessing Church, the seminary at Finklewalde, his role in the ecumenical movement insisting that the “German Church” was not really church, and a host of other issues make it clear that Bonhoeffer came to distinguish “church” from “nation.”

While our current worldview is far less dangerous than was Bonhoeffer’s, I think his life and ministry might provide a place to stop, take a deep breath, and have a conversation about this very topic. Is our faith rooted in the body of Christ, called to renew and restore the universe to its God-intended purposes, or is it in the American political system working exactly like we believe it should?

This is probably too simplistic an explanation, but it seems reasonable to me to observe that as Hitler and his goons began to restore German pride, nationalism, and economy – the German Church became more and more willing to wink at his atrocious actions. To put that in the language of Lasserre’s question, the German Church had more faith in the eternal mission of Germany than it did in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It went to bed with dogs and woke up infested with fleas. 

Bonhoeffer would use the rest of his far too short life fighting against such perversion of the Christian gospel. Despite another opportunity to go back to Union and teach, his conscious wouldn’t let him stay in New York, and in less than two months – in July 1939 – he set sail for home because, as he wrote in a letter to his friend Reinhold Niebuhr, “I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.” When you read about Bonhoeffer’s life there is no question that his faith was that the church, following the gospel of Jesus Christ, would be the hope for Germany’s reconstruction.

Despite the horrific moments that surrounded him, Bonhoeffer never pulls the old “hell in a hand basket” routine. In Ethics, he says, “The night is not yet over, but already the dawn is breaking.” (page 17)  Later in that same section, he says “Only the form of Jesus Christ confronts the world and defeats it. And it is from this form alone that there comes the formation of a new world, a world which is reconciled with God.”

Smarter people than I will have to make the legal judgments about President Obama’s executive order about immigration. When MSNBC sounds like the Messiah has come and Fox News makes you think of Paul’s man of lawlessness, you can be pretty sure it is probably a little more complicated than either side would have you think!

Here’s what I am smart enough to understand. First, I never discount the privilege of where I was born, politically speaking. To be a citizen of the United States has made my desire to follow Jesus much easier – and quite frankly likely – than had I been born in Iraq, for example. So I’m not some weird leftist who doesn’t get the blessing of the place of my birth. I ought to be thankful for that more often than Thanksgiving week by the way.

Second, my ancestors arrived in Charleston, South Carolina (and other east coast cities) before there was a United States, so I’m not all that fond of having a monarch instead of an elected leader. I am equally interested in having elected officials who understand that the nature of government like the one we have can never succeed when one side or both sides of an issue operate on a “my way or the high way” approach to governance. If the goal is to point fingers of blame at those who have created this immigration nightmare, we don’t have enough fingers!

Third, no matter how this current hullabaloo gets resolved, the nature of the transforming power of the Christian gospel will not be diminished – unless we continue to think the world is going to hell in a hand basket and use that as an excuse to not be Jesus to the world – immigrants and all!

So, please, put the hand baskets away for now. Our faith must be in the mission of Jesus, not the mission of the United States.

Being Jesus . . . Our Call From God

People living in the Greater Valley Area, home to both Point University and the Chattahoochee Fuller Center for Housing had the opportunity this past week to witness something pretty amazing. For Point, what we have been calling Impact Day became Impact Week. For the Fuller Center, the largest number of volunteers in its history worked all week in the name of Christ, answering God’s call to His people to be Jesus to the world around us. Spring Road Christian Church also played a major role in Impact Week, providing leadership in ways that made the 400+ volunteers manageable! 

By late Friday afternoon, 61 homes in the Lanett, Alabama mill village had been improved and the place simply looks better. We mowed lawns, trimmed shrubbery and trees, raked up leaves, picked up trash, edged overgrown curbs, painted, repaired, and who knows what else. The long-term impact of Impact Week is known only by God, but the immediate and observable impact is that homes look better and Point students, faculty, and staff had the opportunity to make a difference in a neighborhood long-since left behind by the mills that once were the staple of the Greater Valley Area.

Years ago I read a little book by William Robinson titled The Biblical Doctrine of the Church. Robinson believed that the church is, when all is said and done, truly the body of Christ sent to the world to do for those around us what Jesus did for Israel. John 20:21 – As the Father has sent me, so send I you – was more than just another verse of Scripture.

In describing the nature of the church, Robinson says, “She (the church) is in the world to redeem it. Her position is not one of privilege, but of responsibility. That she is described as ‘leaven’ means that she is a hidden explosive force, for leaven in its operation is both unseen and explosive.” (pages 118, 199) Two places immediately come to mind when I think about where the “leaven” was hidden last week. One is in the lives of people who, at least for some, might have experienced for the first time in their memories what it means to be on the receiving end of “being Jesus to the world.” The other is in the hearts of students, faculty, and staff whose lives might have been changed by being Jesus to others, and they may not even realize it yet. That’s what I think of as “the time bomb” nature of the Christian gospel.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s  Life Together, while writing about what he calls “the ministry of serving,” he says, “Only where hands are not too good for deeds of love and mercy in everyday helpfulness can the mouth joyfully and convincingly proclaim the message of God’s love and mercy.” (page 100) Last week over 400 pairs of hands found a way not to be “too good for deeds of love and mercy.” And again, I remind myself that only God is able to fully know and measure the impact those deeds of love and mercy will have in eternity.

One of the great things I observed last week – in addition to so many people from Point and the Fuller Center, Spring Road Christian, and other places serving – was that you could see people in the neighborhood whose houses weren’t on the list for our service outside doing some clean up kind of work. They were, along with all of us, taking care of creation, the world God Himself declared to be “very good” as He finished His work of creating the universe.

I have no idea how many different faith groups were represented among the volunteers for last week’s Impact Week. But I do know that when people who follow Jesus decide to work together in the name of Jesus, God blesses those endeavors. It seems to me that the less sectarian we are, the more He blesses. That confirms my long-held idea that if you and I believe the truth about Jesus, then everything else in life can be worked out around His name.

Thank God for Impact Week. Thank God for Kasey Bodine, Mary Susan Underwood, Chris Beirne, and Donna Phillips who did a lot of the leg work on the Point side of things. Thank God for Kim Roberts from the Fuller Center – she made it all happen in ways that are remarkable. Thank God for house captains, tool providers, and other leaders, many of whom were from Spring Road Christian Church. Thank God for a part of the world called the Greater Valley Area, where opportunities to be Jesus to the world abound.

Mark Driscoll and the Gospel

I don’t know Mark Driscoll. I’ve never met him. I think I might have listened to a sermon or two of his on a podcast. I haven’t read his books because I tend to read at a different place that he has targeted in his writings.

I have read lots about him. Some of it appears to be true – it comes from his own confessional statements about his past. No doubt some of it is not true – not sure one human being could actually manage to do all that some have said he has done.

Theologically, he and I are not on the same page on more than a few issues, though I do think he believes pretty much the same thing about Jesus that I believe. If that’s true, then in order to be consistent with what I’ve been saying in class for a hundred or so years, I have to think “everything else can be worked on.”

I’m guessing that his personality and mine would clash pretty seriously if we had to work together, but have a hard time seeing that as mortal sin. Some of his tactics – especially those that involve saying pretty harsh things in the context of anonymous internet posts – are offensive to me. He often seems prone to treat very complex issues in very simplistic ways and that doesn’t appeal to me. Issues of gender and sexuality are way more complicated than I think he thinks. We would probably disagree on which word in the phrase “servant leadership” is most important. 

But today is a sad day and I refuse to join the choruses of those who see his resignation as somehow a victory of sorts. It should break our hearts that an obviously effective communicator and leader is stepping away from the place of service he has occupied for a long time.

I’ve always found Paul’s comments in Philippians 1:15-18 very convicting. Remember, he is writing those words from a prison cell, in Rome most likely, and from my calculations about the timeline of his life, he has been in jail either in Jerusalem, Caesarea, or Rome for about four years. Clearly in Philippians 1 he isn’t sure what the ultimate outcome is going to be. 

Yet he somehow musters the courage of faith to declare that even though some “proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry . . . selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment” he will still rejoice because “Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true, and in that I rejoice.”

Far too many believers, and especially leaders, seem to operate from a “my way or the highway” approach to life. Unless you do ministry like I do, in the same kind of context I do, and aren’t one person bigger than my church in average attendance – then you can’t be “of God.” Please. Where does that come from?

I wonder what would happen if we somehow found the courage to rejoice every time the kingdom of God advances its territorial claim to planet earth and found the compassion to be heartbroken every time someone stumbles. 

Mark Driscoll and I would probably never be close friends. But I refuse to find any joy in the fact that he no longer is the preacher at Mars Hill.

Perhaps we should pray that God would make us a bit more like Paul and whole lot less like those who rejoice (even if privately in our hearts because we’re too afraid to do so openly) when a fellow believer struggles.

It’s About the Grey Matter

Something happened to humans when Adam sinned – and it has mostly to do with corrupting the quality of human thinking that God gave to Adam and Eve when He created them. After the fall, they are still creatures made in God’s image – as are we – but they no longer have the “grey matter power” to live in relationship with self, each other, God, and creation as He intended to be true for humans – and neither do we! The subsequent stories of Cain killing Abel, the flood of Noah story, and the Tower of Babel story all testify to the brutal reality that something happened when sin entered the world. What the Hebrew Scriptures would later describe as shalom was no longer present.

The great prophet Isaiah reminded Israel on behalf of God about this very issue when he said, again on behalf of God, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” And later in that same text, the Lord says, “So shall my Word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:8-11)

Jesus’ conversation with the rich man in the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus includes Abraham saying to the rich man in reply to a question about his brothers, “They have Moses and the prophets.” When the rich man replies “But if someone from the dead were to come . . .” Abraham insists that if they won’t listen to Scripture, they won’t listen to a miraculous word from the grave. (Luke 16:19ff)

Could it really be about the grey matter?

Romans 12:1,2 is perhaps second only to John 3:16 when it comes to memorized passages of Scripture. The phrase we should think about from that text today is “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” What else could Paul mean other than as we use God’s Word, which has “gone out from His mouth” to restore the quality of human thinking that God gave to Adam and Eve at creation, our lives can be transformed. That is the kind of metamorphosis that in nature changes an ugly caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly, and in the kingdom of God, changes a sinner into a saint!

In Colossians Paul talks about this in terms of “letting the peace of Christ rule us,” “the Word of Christ dwell in us richly” and “whatever we do – word or deed – do in the name of Jesus.” (Colossians 3:15-17) In Ephesians, it comes out in the idea of “be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:15-21)

It can’t be either mere culture or mere coincidence that when Jesus first appeared to His disciples in John 20, His first words were “Peace be with you.” (20:19) and a week later when Thomas was with the group, His first words were “Peace be with you.” (20:26) John’s “first day of the week” focus in his testimony about Jesus’ resurrection, along with the last words of Jesus from the cross being “It is finished” (19:30) perhaps point us to the reality that in Jesus, a new creation has entered human history and the ancient concept of shalom was now ours to take up as God’s gift to His creation.

But the gift of peace – self, others, God, and creation – doesn’t appear to be the story line of human history right now. New creation requires a new way of thinking – and that new way of thinking is described by Paul in Romans 12 as “renewing our minds.” When that happens, shalom can become our word and the more we expand the reign of Christ in our world, the more it will become the story line of human history. 

Grey matter seems to be important!