A Blessed Interruption

It had been a long day today. It was dinner time, and I still had a sermon for Sunday to begin work on, prep work for a Bible study tomorrow evening, and some details to iron out for the screening of At the End of Slavery. So, I walked down to Pizza Amier, ordered dinner, and headed over to the Upper Room office. As I ate my dinner, I started to ’set up shop’ to begin working with the Hebrew text of Jonah 3 (my text for this Sunday). Then came an interruption.

Two Upper Room folks came through the door. It was time for the prayer meeting. I had forgotten about that. My plans for a quiet, productive evening in my office were thwarted… by prayer. Soon, there were five of us sitting in a circle sharing life together. Since this group was the initiative of others in Upper Room, I intentionally tried to remain quiet. As the five of us prayed together though, I began to realize that this was one of the most spiritually intimate experiences I’ve had since starting work on the Upper Room.

I felt blessed by this interruption. Not only because it slowed me down in the midst of a busy day. But also because it made me realize that the Upper Room is growing beyond me and beyond Chris. This group is meeting to pray on their own initiative, whether Chris or I are there or not. It’s a blessing to know that even if I stop, the community at the Upper Room will continue to develop. A great end to a long day.

Haiti, Pat Robertson, and Our Need to Lament

I’ve been hesitant to write and post this, partly because I’ve been busy with other projects, and mostly because I didn’t want to take peoples thoughts and energies on Haiti away from the still-much-needed relief work. (See my earlier post for opportunities to give if you haven’t already.) That being said, I’ve been mulling a lot over the way people generally responded to Pat Robertson’s comments.

I first learned about Robertson’s comments about Haiti when signing on to Twitter and realizing that his name was a “trending topic.” (If you don’t speak Twitter, a ‘trending topic’ is a name, word or phrase that a lot of people are mentioning in their tweets at that moment.) When I first saw Robertson’s name on the list, my first thought was, “He must have died.” It’s not typical that televangelists “trend” in the world of Twitter. Then I started reading what people were ‘tweeting’ about him. To sum up the comments in one word, they were *angry.* It didn’t take long for me to realize he had said something about the earthquake in Haiti comparable to comments he and other fundamentalist Christians have made about the Sept. 11 attacks or Hurricane Katrina. I began to panic a bit inside, knowing how detrimental comments like these are for Christian witness.

Wanting to see things for myself, I went to YouTube and watched the video of Robertson’s comments. After watching it, my panic turned to confusion. I couldn’t understand why people were reacting as they were. Here are some of my thoughts about Robertson’s comments, and the response of the media and general public.

I think it’s interesting that as some people summarized his comments, they accused him of attributing the earthquake to God, who was supposedly responding wrathfully against devil-worshipping Haitians. If you listen carefully to Robertson’s comments, that’s not what he said. He explained this story about the Haitian deal with the devil during the slave rebellion, and said that since then Haiti has been a country marked by poverty and suffering. He never said that suffering was the work of God. As I heard him say this, I assumed he was implying that the devil was the cause of these things.

Regardless of whether or not the “pact with the devil” is historical, Robertson didn’t make the story up himself. I know a number of people who have served as missionaries in Haiti, and I’ve heard them tell some form of this story  on more than one occasion. The story circulates among a lot of Christian groups in Haiti. However, Robertson left out a detail of the story, and this omission is what I found most offensive about his comments. As the story goes, the Haitians made a deal with the devil because the devil was the enemy of the European Christians who were enslaving them and of their God. If there’s any accuracy to Robertson’s opinion, if it’s true that Haitians today are suffering because of a sin committed by their ancestors, then Robertson should have made the comments in a spirit of confession, because Haitians made this “pact” in response to the sinful acts of oppression made against them by Robertson’s, and our, ancestors.

I’m also fascinated by the fact that so many people responded toward Robertson with anger and not dismissiveness. Most people thought that his comments were stupid, laughable, and historically inaccurate. Why not just say, “O, silly Pat Robertson.” and move on? I couldn’t help but wonder if people, albeit subconsciously, wanted to be angry. Perhaps some of us even fear that Robertson was partly right, that God did cause the earthquake. I don’t think God did, but I also know that human suffering almost always leads to theodicy questions and fears in peoples hearts. I wonder if Pat’s comments verbalized what some people were fearing, but afraid to say.

Regardless of how accurate Robertson’s take on the earthquake in Haiti is, I think his comments do at least hint at something truthful that most of us have not talked about. I think that there is a spiritual reality behind the earthquake in Haiti, just as I think that there is a spiritual reality behind any human suffering, whether it be an earthquake in Haiti, genocide in Darfur, or a crucifixion on Golgotha 2000 years ago. However, having read the book of Job, I also know that this spiritual reality is a mystery that we can’t fully understand and certainly can’t reduce to pat answers (no pun intended).

I think this spiritual reality is the reason Scripture includes the Psalms of lament. The anger expressed toward Pat Robertson was appropriate anger, but I don’t think it was expressed in the right direction. The psalms of lament teach us that honest emotions – anger, fear, mourning, confusion – can be expressed toward God, and they provide words to articulate that. What if, rather than expressing anger toward another human being, it was taken to God through prayer, such as Psalm 60? The psalm begins:

O God, you have rejected us, broken our defenses; you have been angry; oh, restore us. You have made the land to quake; you have torn it open; repair its breaches, for it totters….

I think the Christian community needs to recover the use of Psalms such as this, especially in times of suffering. The psalms of lament don’t provide answers to the difficult questions that are inevitably in our minds when exposed to suffering, nor do they assuage the difficult emotions in our hearts. They do, however, give us a language to express these questions and emotions to our God, and it’s only in that context that we’ll find healing.

Opportunities for Giving to and Praying for Haiti

I want to take a moment to highlight two opportunities to participate in providing relief for those in Haiti:

First, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is considered one of the finest, and most financially responsible, relief organizations in America. You can give directly to their relief efforts by clicking here.

Second, there are some great prayer resources available. InterVarsity’s sister movement in Haiti - Groupe Biblique de Ecoles et Universités d’Haïti (GBEUH) – is posting updates to their website regularly. To give financially to the student ministry in Haiti, click here. Also, World Vision’s ACT:S network has prayer vigil materials available here.

Two Urbana Videos You Should Watch

I finally figured out how to post videos from Urbana directly to my blog. (Yes, I’m a bit technologically challenge.)

I could easily post 20 Urbana videos that I thought were helpful, but that would just be overwhelming. You can check out all of the Urbana videos and talks here. Here are the two talks from Urbana that had the largest impact on me:

Oscar Muriu on Money and Power

Oscar Muriu is the pastor of Nairobi Chapel in Kenya. Oscar’s talk at Urbana was prophetic. To say I enjoyed this talk would be a lie. Being freshly convicted of ways in which I”m failing to be Christ-like is simply not enjoyable. I think ever every Christian in the West, especially pastors and missionaries, need to hear Oscar’s words. What I took from this talk was the conviction to think of the incarnation less in terms of similarity and more in terms of humility. Oscar points out that the significance of Christ’s incarnation is in the giving up of his status and privilege, and calls the Church to the same attitude.

Sunder Krisnan on Prayer

What I took from Sunder’s talk is that I pray like a wimp. The example’s he gives of praying out of time spent in Scripture is both inspiring and challenging.

Looking back: My Top 10 Posts of the Past Year

For those of you unfamiliar with WordPress, it has a feature for its users called “blog stats.” Basically, it just tells you how many hits your blog gets, and how people find your blog (links clicked and search terms). A part of the feature I like to look at a lot is the “Top Posts and Pages” section. It basically just tells you which of your blog posts are receiving the most traffic. Since it’s the start of a new year, I thought it would be fun to see which of my posts received the most hits in the past year. So, without any further adieu  here are my top 10 posts of 2009.

10: Reflections on Praying the Rosary (Kind Of…)

I wrote this post this past summer after spending a week praying the rosary daily… kind of. As I mentioned then, I substituted the “Hail Mary…”s for the Jesus Prayer. I’m really glad I wrote this post, because the experience of praying the rosary was one of the most significant spiritual experiences for me in 2009, and it’s good to be able to go back and read what I found helpful. I also just recently had a friend tell me that he had read this post and found it helpful too, so much so that he now uses prayer beads on a regular basis. Being told that served as a good reminder that our own spiritual practices can serve to bless others as well.

9: Prayer: How Specific Should Our Prayers Be?

This was a post I wrote in September as a part of a series of posts on prayer. I wrote it in a time when I was convicted that I needed to pray to God with more specific requests. What I find most interesting about rereading this post now is that this conviction was God beginning a work in me that he’s continued through the year. Most recently at Urbana in hear the talk by Sunder Krishnan.

8: An Optimistic Skepticism: My Take On the Manhattan Declaration

This post was written late in 2009 – in December. But it got a ton of hits when I first posted it, mostly from friends/followers on Facebook and Twitter clicking the link in my status update. It hasn’t been long since I wrote this post, but I’m still skeptical about this document and have not signed it, and have less and less desire to do so. Frankly, signing a declaration like this just seems wimpy. The writers of the document begin by claiming a great heritage of faithful saints who acted radically and counter-culturally in the past. Ironically, they chose not to mention in that heritage Christians who met in councils and drafted and signed documents…

7: The Witness of Tipping

I wrote this post back in November, but I can’t remember clearly what motivated me to write it. I think I just had a random conversation with someone about the subject. At any rate, this post didn’t receive to many hits at first, but then about a month later a food service blog that gets a lot of traffic published a post on tipping, and mine was listed as a “related post.” The most significant thing about this post is that a comment from my friend Lindsay made on it inspired me to write another post that just happens to be #6 on the list…

6: The Gospel According to the Joneses: Christianity and the Middle Class

This post has the distinction of also be the post the generated the most comments on my blog this year, especially if you include the comments posted on the feed in my Facebook profile. I’m also personally proud of the title of this post. I personally think it would make a great book title, and the topic is certainly provocative enough to generate a book on the subject. At any rate, the comments that the post generated made me realize that I probably wrote this way too quickly, as the comments pointed out some stuff I hadn’t thought of. But that’s the beauty of the blogosphere.

5: Lifting Hands in Worship

I posted this back in October while reading from Patrick Henry Reardon’s, Christ in the Psalms. It actually has no original content; it’s just a quote from Reardon that I found helpful. It keeps getting a lot of hits, though, through search engines. Apparently a lot of people want to know why Christians lift their hands!

4: How Presbyterian Should Presbyterian Campus Ministry Be?

I wrote this post as a part of Presbyterian “Bloggers Unite” day that our Moderator, Bruce Reyes-Chow put together, which is probably why it received so many hits. The assigned topic for the day was Presbyterian College Ministry, a somewhat difficult topic for me because I’ve never participated in such a ministry in college, and don’t think that denominational-emphasis is helpful in college ministry.

3: The Homosexuality Debate: Are We Completely Missing the Point?

I wrote this post over a year and a half ago in June of 2008, but it continues to get a lot of hits, mainly through search engines. I wrote it around the time of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly, and still firmly believe what I wrote then. Our denomination won’t come to any united conclusions about homosexuality (or abortion, or any other controversial issue) until we first come to united conclusions on biblical authority and theological method.

2: Worship Styles: What Dance is the Church Teaching?

I wrote this back in June after having two great worship experiences in two settings I’m not used to: a conservative Reformed church that sings only Psalms acapella, and a Roman Catholic church. This post also generated a lot of comments, but I think it also disappoints a lot of people who read it. The reason it’s gotten so many hits is because search engines list it as a result when people search for things like “dancing in worship.” Unfortunately, this post has nothing to say about that, and only uses dance as an analogy.

1: The Lord is a Warrior

I wrote this post back in the summer of 2008, but it still received more hits in 2009 than anything that I actually posted this year. In fact, in 2009 alone it received nearly 4,000 hits, which is huge for my measly blog that probably averages no more that 25 hits a day. The post is just a brief reflection I had while reading the story of Samson in Judges, but that has nothing to do with why it’s received so many hits. The only reason this post is so popular is that I included a picture of the WWF wrestler The Ultimate Warrior. And now if you do an image search for The Ultimate Warrior, my this blog post is one of the first results you’ll find. You’d be surprised how many people look for pictures of him.

Incarnational Mission: Thoughts on Urbana Days 1&2

Love does not reach from afar. It demands incarnation.

- Ruth Padilla

Jesus specializes in surprising people once they truly seek him.

- Ramez Atallah

Much of the first two days of Urbana has been spent thinking and talking about the incarnation of Christ and its implication for Christian mission. We’ve focused our times in Scripture (both through the expository teaching of Ramez Atallah and manuscript study) in John 1. Here are some thoughts I’ve had from today:

It seems to me that there’s a tension between being incarnational ourselves as missional Christians and allowing Jesus to be incarnational, and that tension should be there. I think this is what Ramez was talking about when he referred to the incarnation as ‘means, message, and model.’ On the one hand, we are called to be incarnational. As Greg Jao interviewed OMF’s new director Patrick Fung, he mentioned the examples of missionaries like Hudson Taylor dressing as the people dressed, speaking their language, and seeking to live in solidarity with the people. Likewise, the quote above from Ruth Padilla points out that Christian love cannot be expressed from a distance. Christian love must go beyond sending money to other side of the world with no personal connection. It must go beyond short term mission vacations. Love must be expressed through long-term relationships marked by submission and solidarity.

At the same time, there are limits to how incarnational a Chrisitan can be. If I were to be a missionary to China, I as a white male can only be so incarnational. I could learn and speak Chinese, eat Chinese food, understand Chinese history and culture, and so on. But at the end of the day, I’ll still be a White male and take with me my own cultural heritage and ethnic identity. Unlike the Son of God, who became a Jewish male, I can’t become a Chinese male or female. This is, I think, where the other end of the tension comes into play.

The incarnation of Christ does not only provides a model for mission, but also implies a goal for mission. The incarnation means that it is ultimately not the missionary whom the unbeliever needs to encounter in their culture, but rather Christ. We saw this in the second half of John 1. After Andrew becomes convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, he doesn’t merely try to convince Peter of the same, but instead invites Peter to come and see Jesus for himself (John 1:42). The quote above from Ramez, and the stories he told, served as a good reminder that Jesus still desires to encounter people today and reveal himself to them. Richard Allen Farmer also touched on this in his seminar are missional worship. Inviting our friends to worship is a form of evangelism; we’re inviting them to come and encounter Jesus for themselves.

There’s a sense in which taking the incarnation seriously means getting out of the way. Just as his first followers did, Christ calls us simply to invite those we know to “come and see” for themselves.

My First Christmas Eve Sermon: Peace Begins With Christ

Merry Second Day of Christmas! Two nights ago, I preached my first Christmas Eve sermon. The title is Peace Begins With Christ. The Texts are Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-20. The text is below, though when I preached it I added a paragraph or two spontaneously, and those aren’t included here. Soon, though, the audio recording will be posted on the audio page of our church website – www.pghupperroom.com.

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

It was Christmas Eve in 1914. World War 1 had begun that year when Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. That Christmas Eve, British troops and German troops were stationed on opposing sides along the Western Front. Between the two sides was a “no man’s land” that was littered with dead bodies from both sides. The Pope, Benedict XV, had been pleading with national leaders for a truce, at least for Christmas. The British commanders were unwilling to stop the war, though. But that Christmas Eve along the Western Front something happened.

The exact order of things are different depending on which historian you hear from and which diaries and letters those historians read. But things went something like this. The German troops began to celebrate Christmas Eve by decorating the trees around them with candles. The British saw the Germans’ Christmas trees, and the British began to sing Christmas carols. The Germans heard, and began singing carols back. Eventually each side sang Silent Night to the other. And the Christmas Eve celebrations led to a cease-fire.

The two sides began to shout Christmas greetings to one another, and eventually the cease-fire escalated to an all-out truce between the two sides. Some of the German troops traveled half-way into the “no-man’s-land” between the two sides, and some of the British troops went out to meet them, and the groups exchanged Christmas gifts with one another of military insignia, chocolates, cigarettes, and whatever else they had on them. The truce continued into Christmas day.  Groups of British soldiers met with groups of German soldiers for games of soccer. German soldiers helped British troops recover and bury their fallen comrades, and British troops did the same for the Germans. Along some parts of the Western Front, the “Great Christmas Truce of 1914” (as it’s now known) lasted past New Years Day.

There’s something about Christmas that increases our desire for peace. The carols we sing, the candlelight…. the ambiance invokes a longing for peace. Christmas songs on the radio express this longing for peace. Even beyond the traditional Christmas carols that make it on the radio, you can also hear John Lennon and Yoko Ono singing “War is Over if you want it.” You can hear Bing Crosby singing a duet version of Little Drummer Boy with David Bowie, in which David sings “Peace on earth, can it be.” Even the completely banal song “Here Comes Santa Claus” includes the lines “Peace on earth will come to all, If we just follow the light, So let’s give thanks to the Lord above ‘Cause Santa Claus comes tonight.” (What Santa Claus coming down ‘Santa Claus Lane’ and giving toys to children has to do w/ peace on earth I’m not entirely certain…)

This desire for peace goes back to the first Christmas. We just read the story of the angels coming to the shepherds. The angels conclude their announcement to the shepherds by singing “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

And the longing for peace goes back to the prophecy we just read from Isaiah. The Messiah will be called, among other titles, “Prince of Peace.” And, “of the increase of his government and of his peace there will be no end.”

At the time when Isaiah first gave this prophecy, there was a longing for peace among the Jews. The condition that Isaiah uses at the beginning of this passage was an apt description – “People walking in darkness”; “People dwelling in the shadow of death.” (The phrase of “shadow of death” – it’s the same that appears in Psalm 23 – is a phrase that in Hebrew means “deep darkness.” It’s the kind of darkness that’s so pitch black you can’t even see your hand in front of you. You can’t see where you are, and you don’t know which direction to take your next step.)

That’s the situation Judah was in, they didn’t know what to do next. They were surrounded by stronger nations, the strongest of them was Assyria. So, they decided it was in their best interest to work a treaty w/ Assyria, so they formed a covenant with the Assyrians. The problem was that the Assyrians demanded that the covenant include the Jews accepting the idols that Assyrians worshipped. So the Jews were left with a choice, relative safety through a political allegiance, or faithfulness to YHWH.

The situation led them into captivity and oppression. The situation left them asking questions like, “Is our God truly Sovereign over history if the godless nations are stronger than God’s nation? What is the role of God’s people in the world? Does divine judgment mean divine rejection? What does it mean to trust God? Are the Assyrian idols stronger than God and therefore superior to him?”

We know this darkness. We know this longing for peace. We’re still in a world plagued by war that leads to a cynicism that peace could ever exist. Yesterday, I was sitting in Te Cafe writing this sermon, and WYEP was on, and the DJ played the John Lennon song I just mentioned. After the song, the DJ said, “That was John Lennon and Yoko Ono with ‘War is Over’… or… at least we wish.”

In our personal lives we experience a sense of darkness and uncertainty. In my own life this past year, I’ve been coming to terms with my singleness, and not knowing where a r/ship will come from or if it will come. Others in our community are preparing for marriage, and (if they’re honest) have no idea what to expect. Others are preparing to become parents for the first time. Others are facing career decisions. Some of us may be facing financial hardship. All of these things can lead us to a sense of darkness and uncertainty that leaves us longing for a sense of personal peace.

And into this darkness, a light shines. Into this context of confusion and longing for peace, God shows up. Isaiah says that God has given the people joy. And the source of joy is peace. Isaiah describes yokes being destroyed. The Assyrians had a cruel practice of placing heavy yokes on their vassals and captives for no other purpose than to humiliate them. Isaiah says that the Messiah brings an end to such oppression. He describes an end of war, as soldiers burn and destroy even their boots and battle garments, let alone their weapons. That’s how complete this peace is. It’s not merely a “cease-fire” or a stop to violence, it’s the military essentially saying, “Well, that’s it” and destroying their uniforms.

It’s this end of oppression and beginning of peace that’s the heart of the Christian gospel. Christ redeems us from that which burdens us; whether it be personal sin or emptiness or social injustices.  Christ longs for us to experience the grace of forgiveness and redemption.

Chris and I meet weekly to pray together and to intentionally share with one another what God is doing in our lives. In those times together, there have been times when each of us has confessed sins to the other. And what I appreciate about confessing to Chris (and what I try to do when he confesses to me) is that the first words out of his mouth are almost always, “You’re forgiven.” That’s an experience of grace and of freedom from any guilt I feel, and I wouldn’t have that experience if I didn’t confess.

This is why in every one of our worship services here at Upper Room we take time for confession of our sin. When we come into God’s presence in worship, God longs for our encounter w/ Him to be an experience of grace, and to open ourselves up to the possibility of grace, we have to make our sin and guilt known.

And these personal experiences of grace are what will lead to the type of peace described in this passage from Isaiah. Personal experiences of redemption lead to justice. Imagine what would happen if Joseph Kony of the LRA – the group that’s kidnapping children in central Africa and turning them into mercenaries – imagine if Joseph Kony encountered Jesus and was driven to confession that led to an experience of grace. Imagine the peace that could come. (This doesn’t mean that knowing Jesus immediately solves all of our problems. Remember that the Germans and Brits at war in World War 1 were both predominantly Christian nations. But, the great truce of 1914 probably also would not have been possible if one or both sides was not Christian…)

This is the heart of the gospel. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, gives us peace through the forgiveness of our sins and peace from oppression.

Then, in this passage, and in the story of Christmas, there is this great paradox. This passage says that God is among his people, that his people are going to rejoice at his coming because he’s going to bring peace and salvation from oppression, it describes the coming of a great king who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. That his government/dominion will have no end to it’s increasing. And what’s at the center of this:

A Child is born. In something has vulnerable and helpless as a baby, Isaiah sees the guarantee of God’s sovereignty and God’s might.

This is a strange king. First off it says that the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. That’s uncommon. Usually if a government is increasing it means that there is no peace. In our world, “peace” usually means that no governments are increasing. Usually, if your saving people from oppression, your exercising violence on the oppressor.

God, though, is going to end oppression, increase his dominion and bring peace, by coming into the world as a baby.

And this, is the great lesson we learn from Christ. This is the light we’re given in the darkness – the darkness of our own personal uncertainties and the darkness we experience as a people longing for peace in a world of violence. The light for our path that God gives us in our darkness is the way of humbling ourselves and giving ourselves away.

There’s no greater example of someone giving themself away than the Son of God leaving his throne and coming as a baby, and eventually dying a criminal’s death.

Yet this is the way that leads to peace. Christ coming as a baby brought a stop to gunfire in 1914. The way to peace for us is giving ourselves away in humbleness.

Amen.

Augustine, Genesis and Feeding the Hungry

A few weeks ago, I finished “rereading” St. Augustine’s The Confessions. I put “rereading” in quotations because it was really only the first 3/4 or so that I had read before. It was my third time reading the first portion, which I like to call “the ultimate diary.” In the final quarter or so of The Confessions which was new to me, Augustine meditates on the opening of Genesis.

I found it somewhat hard to understand Augustine for this final portion, mainly because his method of interpreting Scripture (allegory) is so different from how I’ve interpreted. I’m still not certain how Augustine gets from God creating the ‘vault of heaven’ (i.e. sky) to the authority of Scripture. And God creating the sea creatures and birds being a lesson on the sacraments is still not something I see intuitively in Genesis 1. Nevertheless, one piece of Augustine’s interpretation really jumped out at me.

In the midst of meditating on God assigning the fruit of the earth as food for living creatures, Augustine concludes that the fruit of  the earth allegorically represents acts of mercy that come from the “fertile soil” of a persons faithfulness. Augustine then thinks of the acts of mercy Christians in Macedonia showed to the apostle Paul, and the lack of mercy other Christians showed Paul on the day of his trial, according to 2 Tim 4:16. Augustine says that these latter Christians owed the fruit of mercy to Paul simply on the grounds that Paul was a living creature, and that it was God’s will for every living creature to eat the fruit of the earth.

Even if we don’t follow the allegorical jump that Augustine makes in interpreting the creation accounts of Genesis, his interpretation still shows an important ethical imperative implicit in Genesis 1 that we often miss. God commands the first humans and every living creature to eat from the trees of the garden. God desires people to eat. Hunger is not a part of  God’s original created order.

I’ve often heard people criticize conservative evangelicals who defend creationionism but then fail to take seriously, and at times even argue against, the call to environmental stewardship that should logically follow. It’s true that affirming that God is the creator of the earth should lead Christians to care for the environment. However, I don’t recall anyone pointing out that a faithful reading of Genesis 1 leads us to feed the hungry. The implication: tolerating hunger in our world is not only a failure to follow the teaching of Jesus and the example of the early church, but it is also a denial that God is creator.

**As we approach Christmas, a time when when we celebrate God entering his creation in the incarnation of the Son (and a time when most of us eat far more than we need to), consider taking steps to fight hunger in our world. World Vision has a great gift catalog that enables you to buy farm animals for villages in the developing world (as well as other means of meeting basic needs). If you’re in Pittsburgh (or if you just like Pittsburgh!) and are looking for a more local opportunity, East End Cooperative Ministry gives the opportunity to purchase meals for the elderly, homeless, and vulnerable. **

An Optimistic Skepticism: My Take On the Manhattan Declaration

In late September, a group of Christian leaders from the Evangelical Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of the Church gathered in Manhattan and drafted a document now called the Manhattan Declaration. The document was released a couple weeks ago on November 20, signed by a number of Christian leaders representing all three of the branches of the Church. The Declaration is a call to Christians and non-Christians to join the signers in affirming and defending three “fundamental truths.”

1. the sanctity of human life.

2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Since it’s release in November, the Declaration’s website has invited other Christians to sign the declaration. As of my writing this, the document has been signed by more than 208,000 Christians. I’m not one of them…. yet.

When I read the Manhattan Declaration, there was much that I found commendable, but I also thought that too much went unsaid, and I remain skeptical of its effectiveness.

First, I appreciate the emphasis on unity among Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox voices. The signers from all three branches claim a common heritage. The Declaration begins:

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

The Declaration then goes on to give concrete examples of this common tradition. It recalls Christians in the Roman Empire rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps and remaining in cities to tend to the sick and dying rather than fleeing, like many did. It celebrates the role monasteries played in preserving literature and art, the role of Christians like John Wesley and William Wilberforce in ending the slave trade in England, and the Christian women who headed up the suffrage movement in America. It even celebrates the Christians who participated in the Civil Rights marches of 50s and 60s (something many evangelicals are less-quick to stand in solidarity with). I think this is easily the best part of the Manhattan Declaration, as it highlights some of the greatest examples of faithfulness and commitment to justice in the Church’s history.

The Manhattan Declaration also very evidently seeks to be honest, thorough, and compassionate. Even as the document celebrates faithful Christians through the ages, it also acknowledges “the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages.” When speaking of issues of life, the Declaration doesn’t only address abortion and euthanasia, but also says that genocide, human trafficking, exploitation of laborers, and innocent victims of war are all symptoms of the sam problem. When speaking of homosexuality, the Declaration says,

“We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter.” (emphasis my own)

In spite of its strong points, I’m still skeptical for a number of reasons.

First, when speaking of marriage, the Manhattan Declaration falls short of fully addressing the problem. The document laments the erosion of the dignity of marriage, evidenced by increasing divorce rates, increasing amounts of sexual co-habitation outside of marriage, and an increasing inability to consistently define marriage. It also confesses the Church’s failure to uphold the dignity of marriage within the Christian community. This is only half of the problem, though. Our culture, and even more so the Church, has lost a healthy view of singleness. The reason so many co-habiate or are sexually active before marriage is not only because we’ve failed to uphold the dignity of marriage, but also because we’ve failed to uphold the dignity of singleness. The word “single” or “singleness” isn’t once mentioned in the Manhattan Declaration.

The main source of my skepticism, though, is in the expectations of those who have drafted and signed the declaration. The declaration does a fine job of articulating the three ‘fundamental truths’ and the threats that are challenging them today. It’s less strong in articulating concrete next steps that we’ll take as Christians.

In his book The New Christians, Tony Jones notes that a critique of the liberal church (those Christians on the opposite side of the theological spectrum from the drafters of the Manhattan Declaration) is that they’ve gone from being “revolutionaries” to being “resolutionaries.” In other words, the liberal Christians who fought for social justice at the turn of the 20th century by the century’s end had gained the reputation of addressing justice issues by (un)simply passing resolutions at denominational meetings instead of getting their hands dirty. It seems that the conservative side of the spectrum has gone in the same direction. Paul Louis Metzger has noted this trend in his book Consuming Jesus, as has Tony Campolo in his book Can Mainline Denominations Make a Comeback?.

I hope  that the Christians signing the Manhattan Declaration will take seriously the heritage the Declaration claims for the Church of Christians through the ages tending the sick, serving the poor, and standing in solidarity with the oppressed and outcast. I pray that they’ll take seriously the problems and threats to justice that the declaration identifies, and that their response will go beyond merely signing a document. The Manhattan Declaration will only bear good fruit if it’s followed by concrete actions. May we be found faithful.

Some Wisdom for Ministry from Gregory the Great

I came across this today as I was preparing my sermon for this Sunday. From a homily of Gregory the Great (emphasis my own):

We must all of us strive zealously to make known to the church both the dreadfulness of the coming judgment and the kingdom of heaven’s delight. Those who are not in a position to address a large assembly should instruct individuals, offering instruction in personal talks; they should try to serve those around them through simple encouragement… You who are pastors, consider that you are pasturing God’s flock. We often see a block of salt put out for animals to lick for their well-being. Priests among their people should be like blocks of salt. They should counsel everyone in their flocks in such a way that all those with whom they come in contact may be seasoned with eternal life as if they had been sprinkled with salt. We who preach are not the salt of the earth unless we season the hearts of those who listen to us. We are really preaching to others if we ourselves do what we say, if we are pierced with God’s love, if, since we cannot avoid sin, our tears wash away the stains on our life that come with each new day. We truly feel remorse when we take to heart the lives of our forebears in the faith so that we are diminished in our own eyes. Then do we truly feel remorse, when we attentively examine God’s teachings and adopt for our own use what those we revere themselves used for theirs. And while we are moved to remorse on our own account, let us also take responsibility  for the lives of those entrusted to our care. Our own bitter compunction should not divert us from concern for our neighbor. What good to love and strive to do good for our neighbor and abandon ourselves? We must realize that our passion for justice in the face of another’s evil must never cause us to lose the virtue of gentleness. Priests must not be quick-tempered or rash; they must instead be temperate and thoughtful. We must support those we challenge and challenge those we support. If we neglect this, our work will lack either courage or gentleness. What shall we call the human soul but the food of the Lord? It is created to become nothing less than Christ’s body and to bring about growth to the eternal church. We priests are to season this food. Cease to pray, cease to teach, and the salt loses its taste.