Tasting Life Twice

Archive for the category “Uncategorized”

08 Nov 2005

Bono on Evangelicals

The November 3rd issue of Rolling Stones magazine has a lengthy interview of Bono, lead singer of U2. When asked what he thought of the evangelical movement in the United States, Bono, writes:
“I’m wary of faith outside of actions. I’m wary of religiosity that ignores the wider world. In 2001, only seven percent of evangelicals polled felt it incumbent upon themselves to respond to the AIDS emergency. This appalled me. I asked for meetings with as many church leaders as would have them with me. I used my background in the Scriptures to speak to them about the so-called leprosy of our age and how I felt Christ would respond to it. And they had better get to it quickly, or they would be very much on the other side of what God was doing in the world.
Amazingly, they did respond. I couldn’t believe it. It almost ruined it for me because I love giving out about the church and Christianity. But they actually came through: Jesse Helms, you know, publicly repents for the way he thinks about AIDS.
I’ve started to see this community as a real resource in America. I have described them as “narrow-minded idealists”. If you can widen the aperture of that idealism, these people want to change the world. They want their lives to have meaning.”

Posted in Uncategorized
17 Sep 2005

The Next Coldplay

A recent article in Parade Magazine identified Coldplay as the next U2, a supergroup who looks to have staying power in the music industry. Who might be the next Coldplay? The article identified Keane (“Your Eyes Open”, “We Might as Well Be Strangers”, “Everybody’s Changing”). Then, the article listed some up and comers who have a similiar sound to Coldplay and Keane. Keep your ear out for Blue Merle (“Burning in the Sun”, “If I Could”) and The Perishers (“Trouble Sleeping”)

Posted in Uncategorized
17 Sep 2005

Kurt Warner’s Bible Quiz


On the occasion of Kurt Warner’s game against his former team, let me tell you about a Bible quiz he gave to some of the children in our church.
A few years ago I took a vanload of children on a trip to the St. Louis Rams training camp in Macomb, Illinois. I had already received a tip from my niece that Kurt Warner, the Rams quarterback at the time, liked to sign Romans 11:36 next to his name. So I practiced the children on that verse before arriving in Macomb.
Jeremy, who must have been eight at the time, saw that Kurt had indeed signed Romans 11:36 next to his autograph. So Jeremy told him, “I know what that verse says.”
“No way. You don’t know what that verse says, do you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Let me hear it.” he said.
“For from Him and to Him and through Him are all things. To God alone be the glory.” Jeremy answered.
Warner was impressed. Then he asked, “Well, how about this one? Does anyone know Matthew 6:33?”
The younger children shook their head indicating they were at a loss.
Zach, a 11 year old, came through in the clutch. He answered: “Isn’t that the one that says, ‘Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you?”
“Man, that’s it. You got it!” Warner responded.
“OK. I’m sure you guys can’t get this one. Do any of you know Philippians 4:13?”
Just then, the security guy who kept the line moving told us, “OK, you kids need to move on. We have a long line behind you.”
Warner said, “Hey, I had to give these kids a test. They said they knew their Bible verses and they passed the test.”

Posted in Uncategorized
16 Sep 2005

A Faint Image of the Beatific Vision




Psalm 27:4 One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD.
Here is a faint image of the beatific vision. It shows a young boy who, for many long months, secretly burned in his heart to look upon the beauty of Snow White. And then, at last, the moment arrived. The picture book fairy tale came alive in the wonder of seeing the object of adoration face to face.
All of our present enjoyments, all of our present glimpses of the sublime dimly reveal the Real Face of beauty.

Posted in Uncategorized
30 Aug 2005

Thoughts on Pastoral Ministry

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is turning in a magnificent performance this year. His team has been decimated by injuries to key players and still, somehow, he has managed to win games with the people he has played. The other day he was quoted as saying:
“All of us learn that you play the game according to the people that you have,” La Russa said. “You may be a guy who loves to manufacture, but if you have a bunch of power guys who are slow, you may just sit back and watch them pop it. If you have a bunch of guys who are line-drive types who handle the bat well, you’d be crazy not to adjust.
“When you miss Rolen, Sanders, and Walker, who is not in there every day, that’s a lot of thump. The guys replacing them are not thumpers. So we’re moving guys. We’re not going to sit there and cluster four or five base hits, with a couple in the gap for doubles and a home run. So roll the dice.”
There is wisdom here for pastoral leaders. Too often, we treat the kingdom of Jesus like a franchise gone global. We ignore the local conditions where we serve. Rather than preaching to the people in front of us with their own names and histories and stories we preach to the people who are not even there. We preach to an idealized congregation. We minister to a fantasy.
This can happen in all sorts of ways. I give you but one example. A pastor of a rural congregation started pastoring a small church in the middle of farm country. He was determined to make something happen. He read up on church growth literature. He drank deeply from all things labeled Willow Creek on the bottle. He noticed what was happening in megachurches across the country – great programs, attention-getting services, large crowds of people. He contrasted this reality with his own desperate situation. And then he made the fateful move. He decided his small, older congregation in rural America, made up of farmers and day laborers, needed to be more like the Willow Creek church. He removed the pulpit. Took off the tie. Started sitting on a barstool and talking with the congregation. Imported a praise band of people who didnt even attend the church. Added video clips and musical drama to his messages.
It is true that churches need to change from time to time and sacred cows need to be butchered every now and then. And a minister need not wear a tie to minister the gospel of Christ. Thats not the point. This is the point. Pleasantville in the rural south is not a suburb in Chicago. For the God who loves pizzazz, it is ok for one congregation to have a distinct culture and personality than that of another church. And it honors the creativity of the Holy Spirit when pastors pay attention the actual people and stories that make up their respective congregations.

Posted in Uncategorized
23 Aug 2005

Self-Tying Headphones

Seinfield was great for spotting those things that many of us have experienced but, likely, never discussed with others. For instance, there was that episode when George was complaining about how tight the bed sheets are on a hotel bed. I watched that and thought to myself, hes right. Ive complained about that before. Just not to anyone else. You slide under the covers in a hotel bed and you feel like youre in traction at the hospital.
Heres another one. A friend of mine was complaining about self-tying headphones. Tommy described how he takes his iPod earbuds off, lays them on the desk next to him, the left earbud safely kept away from the right earbud. When he comes back, the headphones are all twisted and knotted like fishing line. Whats up with that? Expressing the solidarity found in a support group, Scott and I shared his pain: I know exactly what you mean! I can’t figure it out either. Tommy then asked if they can come up with self-tying headphones, why cant they make self-tying shoestrings?

Posted in Uncategorized
19 Aug 2005

The Capacity for Wonder

In the New Testament, people frequently respond to the person of Jesus of Nazareth in amazement and wonder. Karl Barth, in his book Evangelical Theology, argues that the theologian must be one who is capable of wonder, and if he lacks this fundamental capacity, he should take up another occupation. Barth writes:
In theological wonder it is a sheer impossibility that he [the theologian] might one day finish his lessons, that the uncommon might become common, that the new might appear old and familiar, that the strange might ever become thoroughly domesticated. If a man could domesticate this wonder, he would not yet have taken the step into theology, or he would already have stepped out of it again. Man is never diminished from the wonder that forms the sound root of theology. The object of theology never encounters a man routinely as does an ordinary object of the world. Instead, it constantly hovers on the edge of his circle of reflection, however large the circle may be.
Evangelical Theology, 65

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09 Aug 2005

Practice Resurrection

I saw a sign in an Irish pub a few weeks ago which said, “St. Patrick’s Day: One day a year; 364 days to practice.”
Forgive the crudity of the illustration. Make the necessary analogical adjustments, of course. But please note a similarity to that which we confess as Christians. The resurrection of Jesus is not simply a past event, which happened to one particular person at a given point in time. The resurrection is not simply a future hope awaiting the people of God on that day when, in the language of the creed, “He shall come again to judge both the living and the dead.” Certainly resurrection happened and will happen. But even now, in this life, it is happening, as the people of God “practice resurrection” (Wendell Berry) in the power of the Spirit to the glory of His name.

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06 Aug 2005

The Church as Sacrament

“The church is not an enclave of refugees from the world; it is the sacrament of God’s presence in the world by the Mystery of the incarnation. It’s not supposed to look as little like the world as possible but as much like the world as it can manage. Otherwise, the world will never be able to recognize, in such a parochial culling of supposedly sinless humanity, anything even vaguely resembling its true face. It will just go on seeing in us the same old unforgiving face that already greets it in the mirror every morning. For the fellowship of the baptized is simply the world in all its sinfulness, dampened by the waters of forgiveness.”
Robert Farrar Capon, The Astonished Heart

Posted in Uncategorized
01 Aug 2005

The Left-Handed Power of God

“There is one effect that cannot be the result of a direct application of force, and that is the maintenance of a relationship between free persons. If my child choose not to cooperate with me, if my wife chooses not to live with me, there is no right-handed power on earth that can make them toe the line of relationship I have chosen to draw in the sand. I can dock my son’s allowance, for example, or chain him to a radiator; or in anger at my wife, I can punch holes in the Sheetrock or beat her senseless with a shovel. In short, I can use any force that comes to hand or mind, and yet I cannot cause either of them, at the core of their being, to stop their wrongs and conform to my right. The only power I have by which to do that is left-handed power which for all practical purposes will be indistinguishable from weakness on my part. It is the power of my patience with them, of my letting their wrong be, even if that costs me my rightness or my life, so that they, for whose reconciliation I long, may live for a better day of their own choosing.
My point here is twofold. The power of God that saves the world was revealed in Jesus as left-handed power; and therefore any power that the church may use in its God-given role as the sacrament of Jesus must also be left-handed. Despite the fact that God’s Old Testament forays into the thicket of fallen human nature were decided right-handed (plagues, might acts, stretched-out-arm exercises, and thunderous threats), and despite Jesus’ occasional use of similar tactics in the Gospels, the final act by which God reconciles the world to himself consists of his simply dropping dead on the cross and shutting up on the subject of sin. He declares the whole power game won by losing, and he invites the world just to believe that absurd proposition.”
Robert Farrar Capon, The Astonished Heart, pp. 62-63

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