Festival of Homiletics 3

OMG.  Can I say that?  Dare I say it?  Today's journey at the Festival of Homiletics was a roller coaster ride to say the least. It was mind blowing, faith stretching, presupposition threatening and other stuff I just don't have words for at the moment.  I know, a preacher out of words - not a good sign.  But in fact it is a very good sign, a sign that something is at work.  Something is ruminating, something is waiting to be revealed.  I just don't know what it is yet.

 

The day began with a sermon and then a lecture from Brian McLaren, the father of the Emerging Church (or Emergent Church, depending on who you ask) Movement.  One of his first works was "A New Kind of Christian," a radical rethinking of the faith.  His sermon was titled "The Life You Save May Be Your Own."  He began with the statement that we are in the midst of a global crisis in religious identity.  Religion, he argues, is an engine of violence, that it functions to strengthen "us" through hostility to "the other."  That we have learned to create outsiders to fear in order to feel secure in ourselves.  In so doing we drive away people of peace (who may or may not be religious) from religious affiliation.  This is, he argues, the result of only telling a part of the story.  Meaning, we select portions of the biblical text to describe God in less than whole ways.  In the Jacob and Esau story, we only tell of God's choosing Jacob even while in the womb of his mother, and God becomes a puppet master who works things out to His pleasure.  Or we tell only the stealing of the blessing from blind old Isaac, and God becomes a puppet who is manipulated by deceit and then locked into specific patterns by words over which God is powerless to change.  Or we can tell the whole story and then ask ourselves where is God revealed?  Is it only in the places where God is named, or is it in the narrative flow that brings Jacob full circle to reconciliation with Esau who is more righteous and who reveals, says Genesis, the face of God to his brother Jacob.  What stories are we telling?  Who God are we presenting?  Are we perpetuating a broken or flawed image of God by only telling pieces of the story, or do we tell stories of God revealed in the other, the stranger, the alien, the very one we want to reject?  Do we tell stories of reconciliation and peace?

 

Brian's lecture which quickly followed the act of worship, was titled "Light Fires, Issue Permission Slips, and Invite Others into the Interpretive Community."  Not just a title, but an outline of the talk.  There is way too much to distill, but one quote that stuck with me actually came from his friend Rob Bell who told preachers that "you have to smoke what you're selling."  To which Brian muttered, if you understood that ... you must be from Colorado.  But the point is that the first fire you have to light is your own. (Or as I heard it from Bill Easum: Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First." Brian quoted Proverbs 4:23 which in the NIV reads "Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life."  Light fires.  Give permission slips.  Followers of Jesus are to give permission to be happy, permission to enjoy life, permission to dance.  For too we have been a part of a pacing religion - back and forth, wringing our hands, muttering "what are we going to do about ..."  Instead of being a dancing religion that rejoices in community, in creation, in God.  And we can't dance on our own, any more than we can heal the brokenness of the world on our own.  So, we invite others to work alongside us, even to help us understand the problem, to see ourselves through the eyes of the other.  Our task, he says, is to begin to interpret together what the Christian faith will mean and be and do when Christendom and its structures fall.  What's next?, he asks.

 

Which frankly was the theme of the day.  Brian was followed by a young man named Peter Rollins.  Peter is an Irishman with that culture's sense of humor and boundless energy.  I walked with some others who came out of his lecture in the morning with their heads spinning, as was mine, but not because I didn't understand him - my head was spinning because I did understand him.  I told my colleagues that they need to understand the Irish approach to conversation.  It felt like, they argued that he would wander off topic and lose us.  True, I said, they wander, but then they circle around and come up behind you again.  Just when you thought he lost you, then he finds you again.  Peter talked of the Evangelism Project that he was a part of.  Except instead of one group going out to change another group, he said in this project, they were sent out not to convert, but to relate, and then to ask the question, "what do you see in me that might help me be a better Christian?"  It would work with Republicans and Democrats.  We aren't going to change the other and they aren't likely to change us, but if we ask them to help us be better at what we are trying to do, then understanding might break out, and dialogue might begin.  He spoke about ideology and how it is more than an idea, but becomes a part of a the structure of a culture.  Racism is less about individual opinions about race and more about the structures that are bent in the direction of one and against another.  He said that the Christians were being subversive when they refused to treat Caesar as a god.  It wasn't the belief that was a problem, Rollins argued that no one believed Caesar was god, but they pretended to believe.  The Christians refused to play the game and it upset the structure of Roman society.  We are called to be subversive in our culture, to not play the game of racism, of economic value, or of narrow views of beauty.  But to do it indirectly, winsomely.  To tell better stories.

 

His sermon in the worship after lunch began with an Irish Blessing, but not the usual one, it was blessing of all the dualities of this life and how those - what we would normally call good and bad, or broken and whole - all bring blessing into our lives.  He said it is human to create scapegoats, and we think that our problems are in the scapegoat, if only we could get rid of them (whoever they are) everything would be good.  But the scapegoat is not the problem, the scapegoat is the solution, Rollins suggests.  By hating, by pointing fingers, by rallying around a common enemy, we've created the unity we seek.  But it is a broken unity, it is a diminished community.  Instead, the church is the place that reveals that the other that you hate is the instrument of your salvation.  Like Esau for Jacob - things are flowing together.

 

The final lecture of the day was David Lose again, this time his title was Jonah, the Whale and the Homiletics of Abundance.  Lose's argument was that Jonah is a story of scarcity, and he was a prophet of scarcity.  There is only so much grace to go around, so that if some are blessed others must be damned, it is how it works.  But God works on a different scale, a theology of Abundance.  Jonah, you might know, is the only biblical book that ends with a question: Jonah 4:11  "And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"  Jonah's answer was not, you should not.  How do we answer?  David Lose connected this dichotomy (Scarcity vs Abundance) to marketing strategies that are called Inadequacy Marketing and Empowerment Marketing.  In the former the message is you don't have enough, you aren't safe enough, you aren't attractive enough - based on greed, fear and insecurity.  In the latter the message is you are enough, you have enough and you can - based on love, contentment and possibility.  While marketers are still trying to sell something and therefore it is good to be wise, the methodology is something to learn from.  The dominant word in the Christian story is abundance _ I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.  And therefore sin is not an action we perform or a failing within us, it is whatever keeps us from God's abundant life.  Grace is God's empowerment to abundant life.  We live in an ear of conflicting messages how do we deal with them?  Lose suggests we learn from Classical Greek myth.  Remember the Sirens?  The Sirens were creatures who song was so appealing that it drew sailors to their doom since they sang among the rocks that would wreck the boats.  And Greek story gives us too ways to deal with the Sirens.  Odysseus is the first, he plugged the ears of all the sailors and lashed himself to the mast so he couldn't move.  Avoidance, keep the tv out of the house, close your eyes to the lure of the marketers and for those strong enough, an act of will that keeps you from following to your destruction.  But there is another way, Orpheus.  Orpheus was brought along on a cruise near the Sirens, and when they began to sing and the sailors turned toward the rocks, Orpheus stood in the bow and unstrapped his harp and played a better song. How do we counter the broken songs, and broken stories that might pull us to our doom, tell a better story and we sing a better song.

 

Which his how the day ended, with a concert of Gospel music with all the best from Minnesota - what Gospel music in Minnesota.  Child, it was glorious  Praise be to God.