Bad Movie...Good Line

Just finished watching a really bad movie called "All the Pretty Horses" with Matt Damon as a Texan cowboy who tries to find himself in Mexico and eventually ends up back in Texas after a series of very unfortunate events.

The movie was not good, but one of the final lines redeemed it a little for me,

"Lacey once asked me if I thought God looks out for people. I guess he does. I say he's just about got to. I don't believe we'd make it a day otherwise."

Birthday Grace

I remember going out to dinner when I was a kid for my father's birthday and not understanding why he wouldn't want everyone to sing to him and give him a free dessert, but now I understand. I am 29 and it makes complete sense. I don't want anyone to make a big deal or sing happy birthday. I don't mind people giving me stuff, but I would prefer it without the whole birthday thing.

Why do I care if people celebrate me being another year older? I am not sure, but my hunch is that I don't like being cheered on for something I had nothing to do with. I didn't do anything to get a year older, I didn't do anything to deserve presents or a cake or a special dinner and so I don't want to make a big thing out of it.

This clicked for me and I realized that I don't like my birthday for the same reason I struggle with grace. I don't like the idea of something for nothing. I don't like to be celebrated without accomplishment. The world has convinced me that I need to earn everything that comes to me, yet the gospel, along with everyone wishing me a happy birthday, screams out in celebration for me simply exisiting. Not for anything I have done or am doing, just simply for me being me because I am loved.

A Foot Washing on a Thursday

I cannot remember ever attending a traditional Maunday Thursday service before serving at ours yesterday. I have been to a number of seder dinners and informal gatherings, but never a service in a church with the foot washing up front among people that don't all know each other intimately.

It was a powerful experience. That shouldn't be surprising, but it was. I was blown away by the meaning and depth of that simple experience. I have always prided myself at being very open and okay with being vulnerable or exposed, even around people I don't know too well. Nevertheless, last night I was intimidated by the exposure of having your feet washed by someone you don't know that well.

It was beautiful and incredible and when it was combined with the powerful display of the stripping of the altar I melted. Thank you Lord for loving me. For giving your son for a slave like me.

Out of my Cold, Dead Hand...Munitions and Freedom

I heard a story on NPR last night about a nationwide ammunition shortage. Part of this shortage can be linked to how much is being sent overseas to fight two wars, but there was a more curious reason given by a gun store owner.

Dury, the man being interviewed, claimed that fear from President Obama's liberal and "socialist" agenda is bringing people in droves to gun stores as they stockpile weapons and munitions. Dury said that his sales have gone up 40 or 50% since the day of his election. He can barely keep anything in stock because people are buying new weapons and lifetime supplies of ammunition for them out of fear of possible restrictions and taxes from the current administration (one of the people he sold a case of ammunition was a 79 year old woman who wanted to stock up for her AK-47...I have no idea how much a "lifetime supply" of ammo is for an AK-47).

When asked how sales were the day he was interviewed, the store owner replied that it was, "an average post-Obama day."

These kinds of stories catch my attention because they emphasize the impotence of the law to accomplish what it desires, that even a fear of possible restriction sends people running for the gun racks. There is a certain irony that the desire to legislate a reduction in the number of guns and bullets circulating in America leads directly to the opposite effect. The reality that under President Bush, a gun toting Texan, there were actually fewer weapons in circulation and less of a motivation to stockpile them.

I have rarely, if ever, observed obligation or restriction succeed in establishing a "lawful" environment. This example is only one of many situations where the law has utterly failed to do what it has set out to do (and by law I mean not just legal realities, but any obligation or restriction placed on us by another).

In my short experience in this world I have only found one thing that accomplishes what it sets out to do and that is grace that flows naturally from love. The one-way kind of perfect love that comes from God.

A Word from Bishop Marshall

Here is part of a statement released by Bishop Paul Marshall (Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem). I feel it is a good statement from the often silent moderate part of our Church:

As a Church we are increasingly a laughing-stock. Not because we welcome lesbian and gay people, and carry on social ministries that enact the sacrifice of Christ on a corporate basis, and certainly not because of our latitude and the conversation it engenders. We are a laughing stock because we do not consistently proclaim a solid core, words as simple as “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” yet “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”

Increasingly it seems that the Cross has become foolishness in the Church, and our former hallmark teaching of the Incarnation is seldom heard, and less seldom heard to matter. If our embarrassment is going to end, the voices of bishops as clear, traditional, and powerful evangelists need to be raised in the churches and in the market place. Many bishops find a number of techniques that come from the social sciences useful in their ministries, and have significant investment in Eastern meditation—their qualification to be bishops, however, is as the chief confessors of the creeds and presidents at the sacraments. They are to be unambiguously ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through them.

Our Dying Ecclesiology

I have been thinking a lot about church and talking to people who don't go to church. I hear comments like, "Churches are just full of hypocrites," and "I haven't found a church that works for me." These are comments I hear all the time from people who have given up on church and I have to say that it makes me want to give up on church too.

I am wondering if what people are describing is going to church and feeling judged by people who are no different than them. I notice that our churches have incorporated moralism into their DNA in a way that only focuses on part of the law. The sense of hypocrisy comes because churches have eschewed the whole law for a smaller set of "house rules" that everyone has subconsciously agreed to. These "house rules" are simple enough for the in-crowd to follow, but exclude a majority of people who walk through the door.

This is how pharaseeism works out in our churches today. We pick and choose from the law and create not a place for sinners to find comfort and rest, but a place for those who are not-gay, not-liberal, not-conservative, not-divorced, or not-sleeping around. Those who call it home find their own way of putting on the right face and everyone else just goes away angered by the hypocritical institutional church and when it turns out that one of their number is not living up to code, they are shamed until they leave too.

The church becomes a place for similar sinners as opposed to forgiven saints. We no longer need to be forgiven, we only need to continue living up to the local law. Our self-righteousness reigns. In fact, we reject no one more completely than the very savior who tries to tell us we are not righteous by our own merit and that we need help. How else does the Son of God who came and died for us end up becoming simply a "good moral teacher." Moses was a good moral teacher, Jesus was the savior of the world.

The church has to maintain the whole law because everyone who enters must stand condemned together and thus be in need of the same grace. Anything less than the whole law simply excludes some and makes room for others who can live up to some small set of rules. It is the whole law that crushes all equally. Everyone, from Hitler to Mother Teresa, stands in total violation of the whole law. It is inescapable in its crushing totality.

Church can either be a place where we find comfort, grace, and the word of forgiveness and adoption in the death and resurrection of Jesus or it can be a place that reduces the law to an "achievable" level that excludes all but the Pharisees and Scribes who are deluded into thinking they measure up.

Theology of the Body for Beginners: Legalism to LIberty

Since I was first introduced to Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body as disseminated by Christopher West a few years ago, I have been a big proponent of his teaching on sex and the body. 

It is a shame how little of the Pope's teaching has spread through the Protestant church.  I guess I should not be too surprised considering the immense distrust of all things Roman in most Protestant circles.  If Protestants are honest with themselves, they must admit that we desperately need help when it comes to issues of sexuality and the body.  We have such a poor foundation for these issues.  The entire spectrum of Protestant theology is vapid. From the meager traditional teaching, "'don't have sex before marriage," to the more progressive teaching that seems to have even less to offer, we are floundering in our efforts to communicate solid and encouraging teaching on the body to our children.

To this end, I would like to recommend Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners. It is solid and accessible.  There is plenty you will disagree with, but at least it will give you something to work with, which is more than most of us have. 

The following quote from his introductory chapter sums it all up for me, "[Pope John Paul II's teaching] is a message of sexual healing and redemption, not condemnation. With this compassionate approach-the Gospel approach-John Paul shifts the discussion of sexual morality from legalism to liberty. The legalist asks, "How far can I go before I break the law?" Instead, the Pope asks, "What's the truth about sex that sets me free to love?"

This is the premise of the Pope's extensive theology of the body and I commend it to everyone. It is time to break down some of the walls between the Protestant and Roman traditions.  We have a lot to learn from one another.

Theology of Grace

Here are some brief thoughts concerning a theology of grace over what I have found to be the more commonly accepted theology of grace and law (law being what we are required to do as Christians).  

As I have come to understand it, the scriptures and the tradition of the Church speak to a theology of grace alone by faith alone and this grace and this faith come to us through the mediation of Jesus Christ alone.

This is a difficult teaching for most people because we desire so much to retain some control over our lives.  Once we accept the grace of God through Jesus, we feel the need to go out and do something more.  No matter how much we hear about free grace, we cannot help but insist that there is more to be done.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Eph 2:8-10, italics mine)

This is from the Epistle reading for the Fourth Sunday in Lent.  It is clear in just these few verses (and I promise you will find this same message throughout the whole of scripture) that our salvation and righteousness have nothing to do with us, but solely by the free gift of God, that even our good works after we receive this gift are not of ourselves, but prepared by God for us to live into them. Who we are as Christians has nothing to do with what we do and everything to do with what God has already done. 

It is hard for us to receive things freely.  Even gifts are most often exchanged and rarely given expecting nothing in return. We are much better and paying for what we get, even when it comes to gifts.  Just think about how you felt the last time someone offered to buy your coffee or lunch when you were out.  What is your first inclination?  I know mine is always about buying their coffee or lunch the next time, in other words, to repay them.  We don’t even think about it.  Our instinct is always to repay and we are flustered by our inability to repay God. This leads us to work and work toward living a “good Christian life,” which does not exist.

In this life, there is only the “Christian life,” and it is neither “good” nor “bad.” The message of the gospel is that despite our best efforts to be bad, God declares us good. We were unable to live up to the standards of God before faith in God and it is the same after that faith is given to us.  Christians remain helpless to live up to the standards of God, but despite our efforts God saw fit to have mercy on us, to declare us saints while we were still sinners.  Thanks be to God!

"Taken"

Any man reading this post should run, don't walk, to go see "Taken."  It was the most satisfying movie I have seen in a long, long time.

"Taken" stars Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, a retired CIA operative whose daughter is kidnapped into forced prostitution.  The stage is set in the first 10 minutes and the rest of the movie is Liam Neeson wrecking people with cold and merciless efficiency.  At every turn are pimps, henchmen, kidnappers, bodyguards, and men who bid on women "certified 100% pure" at auction for unscrupulous purposes and Mills is there to obliterate them.

This in itself, while unassailably cool, would not be post-worthy if it were not for my excitement every time one of the offenders got wasted.  Every time Mills tortures a lead from one of the antagonists, every time he shoots someone without warning to extract information, every time he leaves someone in agony in his righteous pursuit for his beloved, I was putting up the horns in victory.

I could pretend that my emotions were driven by a heightened sense of justice and righteousness (being a priest and all), but that would be a complete lie.  I know myself well enough to know that it was not a sense of justice, but the "satisfaction" of revenge that riveted me at the movies last night.

I hear people talk about justice all the time: our president and political leaders, clergy in the pulpit, my friends at the bar, and protesters on street corners, but I am not convinced any of us actually have a sense of justice, true justice.  I am even starting to believe that there is no such thing in this world, that any system of justice humans have created, no matter how developed, is at best only playing at justice.  

If a stalker kills a young woman in the street there can be no justice for that situation.  His death does not serve justice, but revenge.  The young woman is never coming back and that pain will never go away.  

Even the idea of "social justice" is a myth.  Ask a young boy in a war-torn African village, as you hand him food and supplies, what he is experiencing and his response will never be justice. There is no justice for a starving boy no matter how much food, aid, and medication you bring from rich, white America.

Our world talks a lot about justice, but what we cry out for is blood and gore, revenge and misery, anything that will dull the pain of living in a broken world.  The crowds cried out for Jesus' blood on the cross out of the insanity of sin, not out of a sense of justice.  "Justice" is the sugar coating we put on our blood lust.  "Justice" is what we hope will fill in the hole in our broken and battered hearts.  

I know it is so for me.  I am terrified by the part of me that leaps with a dark joy when I watch movies like "Taken." I pretend it is really justice that I am seeking. That I am driven by my attempt to right the wrong I see all around me. But I am the source of that wrong and my justice, my good work, is filth.

It is only compassion, and not an attempt at justice that will move to heal a broken world.  Jesus came and died for us.  This is the only act in all of history where actual Justice was served and it was in the most unjust way imaginable.  Jesus came that we might know compassion and mercy, love and hope, joy and peace, not justice...never justice.