Easter Hope

In a recent book, The Eyes of the Heart, Frederick Buechner recounts the last conversation he ever had with his younger brother, Jamie, before the latter succumbed to cancer. They said goodbye on the telephone, each knowing it would be their last conversation, and as they were about to hang up, Buechner said to his brother: “I have a feeling we’ve not seen the last of each other.”

Our contemporary culture (both secular and religious) tends to deal with death through denial (flowers, embalming, “They’re not really dead if we keep them alive in our hearts”). Christians, however, don’t deny death; they defy it! In the face of the final foe, Christians dare to hope that “we’ve not seen the last of each other,” and that even when it comes to death, God gets the last word.

In the church year the time between Easter and Pentecost is known as Eastertide, a time when Christians reflect on the resurrection, Christ's and ours. "We've not seen the last of each other." When Christians say "Easter" that's what we mean. We Christians do not believe that some divine “spark” in Jesus was insulated from the destructive powers of death and thereby spared the ravages of mortality (the common pagan notion). Rather, we believe that Jesus died (If you ever doubted that before, Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ should have convinced you), and God brought him back again! That’s the Christian hope; not that “some things never really die,” but that God brings dead things back to life again.

And what is the image of hope in the Bible? A desert. And in the desert a stump, just a dead old stump of a tree. And from out of the side of the stump comes one little green shoot. And the word goes out: “The shoot from the stump of Jesse will save the world.”

“I have a feeling that we’ve not seen the last of each other,” he said. Some might call that wishful thinking. I call it hope, Christian hope, Easter hope, the kind of hope that believes in a God Who brings dead things to life again. The kind of hope that can see you through whatever dust and debris and death has settled over your soul right now. The kind of hope that comes only from “God knows where.”

The Purpose-Driven Church

I’m going to say something that is at once the most obvious and most neglected truth about the purpose of the church out there today; namely, that you cannot decide what the church ought to be doing until there is fundamental clarity about what the church is. But in my observation, there is anything but “clarity” about the purpose of the church. Everywhere you turn, in every book you read, someone is offering a new “bag of tricks” to save the church from extinction in a postmodern, post-Christian world. [I wish I had a nickel for every time over the past 2,000 years someone proclaimed the church “extinct!”] When you actually analyze them, however, they fall into two categories.

The first is what I would call “Church as the Vanguard of the Consumer Culture.” The mottos of the consumer culture are well known: “The customer’s always right” and “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Perhaps the best I’ve heard is the Chase Bank Card commercial in which a man lusts for a new flat-panel television and goes to a big box store to shop for one. It is not accidental that as he shops for his television in the big box store, the venue has a “sanctuary” feel about it, and a choir swells in the background with anthem-like strains: “I want it all; I want it all; I want it all; I want it now!” In such a consumer culture, some in the church have “gotten it” and have adapted their mission and strategy to the culture and its values and have re-invented “church” as sort of a “pious Wal-Mart” competing with the big box “superstore” down the street and giving the customer whatever the customer wants to keep him happy and attending. It actually can get kind of silly - if the customer wants a “low-impact aerobic worship service,” then of course we have to start one.

The second is what I call “Church as Harbinger of Human Hubris.” This is the idea that man, individually or collectively, has within his own resources the power to “fix” the world and turn it into the kingdom of heaven here and now. This is church as “Social Service Organization.” If we can just get people to cooperate and work together and vote the right way, we can bring about the kingdom of heaven right here, right now.

The problem with both of these approaches is that they deny the fundamentally eschatological (read “other worldly”) character of the church as described by Jesus in the gospels; namely, that the church is not here to pander to the world on the one hand, or to “fix” it on the other. The church is rather the Vanguard of the Kingdom of God, in the world, but not of it. That is to say, the church of Jesus Christ is a community of people who’ve caught sight of and been captured by a vision of another world he called “the kingdom of God,” a world that is not only different from this world in vision and values, but is in almost every way that matters competitive with it (see John 17:14-16).

Now, of course, those who argue for the purpose of the church as capitulating to the culture will criticize this perspective as being too “escapist” and “other worldly,” but that criticism is bogus. Until either death or Christ’s return takes us out of this world, we’re in the world; there is no “escaping” it. The question is not whether the church will be “in the world” or “out of the world;” the question is whether the church will be the church “in the world,” or will it instead be some “knock off” masquerading as the church of Jesus Christ.

And so, if Jesus is to be our guide as to the nature and character of his church, then its purpose is clear: “Go into the world and make disciples by baptizing them and teaching them,” is how he put it (Matt. 28:19-20). That the church has an essentially eschatological character is seen in the promise that follows the purpose: “And I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”

But how do we get that kind of church in this kind of culture? It starts I think with pastors who are more motivated by a biblical vision of church than the latest church growth gimmick or mandate from whatever ecclesiocracy they happen to serve. It takes courage these days to stand before a congregation and say: “We’re in the disciple-making business, and that’s measured more by lives changed and disciplines owned and values embraced than by buildings built or bucks banked or heads counted.” A retired pastor friend who speaks with both perspective and passion about the church says that the biggest challenge facing the church today is what he calls “undiscipled disciples,” people who think they're disciples because they go to church or small group, but whose lives evince none of the disciplines (intellectual, emotional, ethical, spiritual, financial, volitional) characteristic of a disciple of Jesus Christ. They are folk who have been “inoculated” with just enough Christianity to keep them from “taking” the real thing. But if you’re only interested in the short run, that’ll do! It takes tremendous courage for a pastor to plant his life in the middle of a congregation and say: “I won’t let you off; I won’t let you go until all of us attain the ‘measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’” If you don’t have a pastor like that, get one!

Architecture as Evangelism

In a few weeks I will be returning to Israel with about thirty or so people in tow where I will once again guide, lecture, and sermonize at biblical sites and places Where Jesus Walked.

Every time I lead this excursion (I've lost count) I take people to churches, ancient churches usually constructed over places important to faith. Usually those churches take the architectural form of a basilica. Deriving from the Greek basilikos, meaning “royal,” the early Christian basilica reflects the time when Christianity defeated the Roman persecution by (Are you ready for this?) converting the Emperor himself (Constantine). Then, adding inspiration to injury, the church took over the Emperor’s palace architecture and adapted it to the service of Christ and His Kingdom.

That strikes me as odd, living as I do in postmodern America. You see, today it’s more often the other way ‘round; namely, Constantine converts Christianity. In today’s consumer-driven, user-defined church, the culture does all the talking and the church does all the listening. “The customer’s always right” is the real mission statement of many churches these days, and the consumer church it seems is eager and willing to adapt and accommodate to whatever culture wishes (or demands) in order to win its approval and curry its favor.

But it was not always so. The architecture of our spiritual ancestors reflected their conviction that though they were “in the world,” they were never to be “of it,” and even the architecture of the church said so. The church’s shape was always cruciform, both literally and figuratively Christ’s Body. The “head” of the cross (apse) was where the altar stood. It always does. The arms (transept) reached out to the world, ready to receive the nails they knew would come. The body (nave) was where the church gathered, always remembering that the church, if it is the Church, is the Body of Christ.

Out in front of the nave was a rectangular porch called the narthex (Greek for “casket”). It was here that the curious and the cautious gathered and listened in on the goings on in this “other world” called “The Kingdom of God.” They could not enter the nave (Christ’s Body) until they were ready to submit to the discipline and demands of the Body, to live (literally, to escape the “casket” and come alive) according to the “rules of the House,” an entry that demanded a cold, wet bath Christians called “baptism.”

An interesting ritual, this baptism. They stripped them naked as the day they were born, threw them into a pool of water, half drowning them, and coming up out of the bath, they gave them a new, white resurrection robe. Then the priest led them through the narthex to the door of the nave, knocked on the door, and when it opened, led them into Christ’s Body where they gathered with brothers and sisters and received the body and blood of Christ, their first communion.

It was how the earliest Christians did evangelism. They invited the cautious and the curious to stand out in the narthex until they were willing to come inside - literally and figuratively - and become part of the Body of Christ.

Kind of makes the invitation "Come to church!" take on a whole new meaning, doesn't it!

Through the Wardrobe with C. S. Lewis

A lot of people got their first introduction to C. S. Lewis over Christmas a few years ago when their kids dragged them to see the movie The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The film was based on the first of seven books penned by Lewis in a children's series called The Chronicles of Narnia. In the story four children travel through a magical wardrobe to emerge in the strange and mystical land of Narnia where animals speak and the world is locked in a perpetual Christmas-less winter while awaiting Spring that seems destined never to come. The second in the series, Prince Caspian, comes out May 16 when, no doubt, children will drag their parents back to the theatres for the second installment.

My own introduction to Lewis, however, goes back to my college days in the 70's when I studied English. A professor, knowing I was headed for seminary, suggested that I read Lewis as a model for the minister's primary task of helping people to make sense of faith in their day-to-day lives. I devoured his writings voraciously, and he became for me a life-long conversation partner with whom to discuss the “big issues.” Lewis’ writings have not only stood the test of time, but he himself has become for me, save Jesus of Nazareth, the single most important spiritual influence on my life.

And I’m not alone in this. This Oxford and Cambridge professor, though he died in 1963 (November 22nd to be exact, the same day JFK was assassinated), continues to be for many a significant voice well into the 21st century. His writings are more popular now than they were when he was alive. His non-fiction writings are for the most part all apologetic in character; that is, they are aimed at making Christianity credible to a thinking public. The most popular among them, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Four Loves, continue to draw countless readers into a conversation about life, faith, what it means to believe in God, and what it means to be a “mere Christian.”

Why is Lewis so popular among serious persons who want to think deeply about the “big issues” of life? Well, those who have found Lewis to be a reliable guide into these subjects will have to answer for themselves, but my own experience with Lewis points up three things that he just does better than anyone else.

First, he may have the finest mind I’ve ever encountered. His commitment to careful and correct thinking (logic) is relentless and unremitting. He will not abide sloppy thinking, and he will anticipate and expose it wherever he finds it. That is to say, if you’re not “into thinking,” don’t read Lewis. If, on the other hand, you want carefully argued reasons for believing what you believe, Lewis will gladly guide you.

Second, Lewis has an uncanny knack for knowing just the right example, model, or illustration to help you understand what appears at first sight to be a hopelessly complex idea. For example, in explaining how salvation is both God’s gift to us and our work to do, Lewis quips, “God is easy to please but hard to satisfy.” Then, he goes on to say that every parent joyously celebrates their baby’s first stumbling efforts in learning to walk. But that same parent will never be satisfied until their child can stride confidently across the room. In the same way, he says, God welcomes our most meager stumbling efforts to be the persons he created us to be, but will never be satisfied until we in fact become the persons he created us to be.

Finally, Lewis is a passionate writer. He believes what he’s saying, and it comes through. Agree with him, or disagree with him, but you will not read Lewis with indifference. He draws you in with careful reasoning and homey illustrations, and then, before you realize what’s happened, you're hooked. That passion is in the service of his belief that God has really broken in and broken through to our world and revealed himself to us. That not everyone is aware of it is more a function of our closed-off, two-dimensional thinking than the credibility of God’s self-revelation. But for those who have the courage to “part the wardrobe” with Lewis, a mystical and magical world awaits through which Lewis is all too happy to act as guide.

Wright is Wrong

What I’m about to say requires two caveats lest I be misunderstood, or worse, misrepresented. First, I have no intention, or interest for that matter, of endorsing anybody for president, for two reasons really: (1) nobody cares, (2) nobody’s business. That said, I do want to comment on the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s (Senator Obama’s pastor) highly publicized statements made in sermons over the past few years, not so much as to his politics as his theology, which for Dr. Wright seem to be the same. And that’s what troubles me. In theological terms, the particular constellation of ideas that Dr. Wright espouses in his sermons typically goes by the name “liberation theology.” Simply put, liberation theology understands the Christian doctrine of “salvation” exclusively in terms of “justice” – social justice, economic justice, gender justice, racial justice, environmental justice, etc. The means of creating this “justice” is power; more specifically, a power shift – taking the power away from those who have it and giving it to those who don’t thereby putting the power in the hands of the “right people,” rather than the “wrong people,” thus creating “justice.” I think you know my policy on “power” (see my blog “Pagan Power”).

What I want to comment on is the reductionism at work in all these theologies that wants to reduce the New Testament concept of the “Kingdom of God” to achieving justice (in whatever form) in this world. Anyone who takes the New Testament seriously cannot escape the fact (though some, like Marcus Borg, try) that when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God he meant “another world” that was breaking in and breaking through into this world, but which should never be confused with this world. (If that needs to be defended to you, you need to spend more time reading “the words in red”!) Jesus’ disciples, then and now, are those who have caught sight of and been captured by this “other world” he called the “Kingdom of God,” and even though they are yet in this world, they are no longer “of” it. As Will Willimon and Stan Hauerwas termed it in their groundbreaking book some years back, the Church is a “colony” of the Kingdom of God, and Christians are “Resident Aliens,” in the world but not “of” it. What that means, among other things, is that Christians can never again feel “at home” in this world because we believe that this world as we know it is doomed and that another world called the “Kingdom of God” is already dawning which will not so much “fix” this world as replace it with a whole new one, at first attitudinally, and eventually (in God’s good time) actually. Therefore, any theology of the Kingdom of God, the Church, and the Christian life that reduces the agenda to “fixing” this world is reductionistic and wrong-headed.

Now the second caveat: That doesn’t mean that Christians don’t have a stake in “justice” issues. Of course we do! Christians, because we’re Christians, must be concerned with social justice and economic justice and gender justice and racial justice and environmental justice, etc. But not because we believe that if we can achieve these things we will, thereby, have brought about the Kingdom of God. Rather we work for these things solely because we’re Christians and that’s what Christians do.

I love the story Jesus told in Matthew 25 about the “Sheep and the Goats.” He said that at the final judgment it will be like a shepherd dividing sheep from goats ¬– sheep on the right, goats on the left (no sublimated political message intended). And the criteria for judgment? “I was hungry and you fed me (or didn’t feed me); I was thirsty and you gave me to drink (or you didn’t), etc.” What strikes me in this story is the fact, usually overlooked, that neither the redeemed nor the damned knew they were redeemed or damned. They were merely being what they were. “When did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or in prison, etc. and we didn’t (or did) help you?” When you stand in the Dock, faking and feigning won’t get it, and it’s too late for reformation – you are what you are. Find a stray cat, bring him into your house, bathe him, feed him, give him a name (call him “George”) and after a while you start to feel as though George is a member of the family, not really a cat anymore at all. But bring a mouse in the house and put it in front of George and you’ll find out what a cat is every time. Jesus says, “Put an injustice in front of a Christian and you’ll find out what a Christian is, or isn’t, every time.” Of course Christians are concerned about justice. We’re Christians, for heaven’s sake!

But notice, the purpose of feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, etc. was not to “eliminate poverty in our lifetime” or “to redistribute the wealth” or “to bring about the Kingdom of God by means of establishing social justice;” rather, the redeemed feed the hungry and visit the sick and help the poor because that’s who they are; that’s what “redeemed” do.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.