William A. Walker III

Pastor, Professor, Theologian, Spiritual Director

Category: Church and World (Page 1 of 4)

John 1 Sermon: The Incarnation and Empathy

Good morning, Christ Church! Happy Ninth Day of Christmas, and Happy new year! It is 2022, and that is kind of amazing. 

My five year old son Liam is really into figuring how old people are. It’s kind of like his way of ranking himself and others among everyone else. So of course one day in the car he asks me, while we’re driving to preschool, “Daddy, is God the oldest person in the world?” And I say, “yes bud, God is the oldest, because God has always existed.” To which Liam responds, during Advent since we’ve been talking about Christmas, “but not Jesus, right, because Jesus was born, so he’s not the oldest?” I have a terminal degree in theology, but I was not fully prepared for that conversation 🙂

But I replied with something like, “well, you’re right, Jesus was born, but he also existed before his birth actually.” Liam goes, “What? That doesn’t make any sense, Daddy.” 

And I said, yeah, it’s a little mysterious and can be confusing, but that’s what we believe, and that’s what we’re told in the Bible. I went on to make some other attempts at explaining how to understand the incarnation, that I think were unsuccessful, and within minutes I’m pretty sure Liam was bored and on to the next topic, like cars, whales, how far Antartica is, etc.

But this really struck me, because it is mysterious, and can be hard to believe if we’re honest about it. The incarnation is a strange doctrine — it’s a very bold claim, and yet it stands at the very center of our faith. Indeed, arguably, everything about Christianity hinges upon it:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him not any thing made that was made.” — John 1:1-3

And this is not the only place in the New Testament where we see this. Much the same thing is stated by Paul in Colossians, which is thought to be written several decades earlier than the Gospel of John: 

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. — Col 1:15-17

In modern times, even for the past couple hundred years, more and more people have doubted this claim or judged it untenable. Or, more recently, the belief might be tolerated, but only if it’s not held exclusively. I can Jesus is God, you can believe that someone else is God, no one is God, we’re all God — anything you want! — as long as it doesn’t infringe upon our individual rights to pursue truth and believe as we are led. 

And increasingly, today, even if we could make a persuasive argument for the incarnation — and I believe we can, by faith, believe reasonably in Jesus’s divinity — it’s not blind faith, in other words, and it’s very clear from the historical record that the earliest Christians recognized Jesus’s divinity and worshipped him — but even if we can build a case for this, that they were right to believe this, I’m not sure that’s enough to lead anyone to relationship with God or to want to be a Christian.

And I think Jesus’s own life bears this out as well. He doesn’t merely go around telling people he’s God incarnate, right? He doesn’t deny it, and at times he does proclaim it! But what is he mainly doing? It seems that Jesus is primarily concerned with showing people who God is and what it would mean if he really is the Son of God, if he really is, the second person of the Trinity, a full member of the Godhead.

So if the Incarnation is true, what does it mean? What’s the significance? And what does it tell us about God? God’s purpose? What does it tell us about us and our purpose? This is what I want to explore this morning.

If Jesus is God, if the incarnation is true, then:

    1. God is with us (John 1:14)
    2. his wisdom will not be recognized or received (John 1:9-11)
    3. the incarnation is God’s ongoing plan for the salvation of the world (John 1:12)

Let’s pray:

O Christ, as we seek greater understanding of and guidance from the mystery of your incarnation, may your way and truth and life become increasingly evident. Guard us from error, and lead us on your everlasting path and light. In your holy name we pray, amen. 

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” — John 1:14

1. So first, if Jesus is God, then God is the great empathizer. God puts himself into our shoes. This is the essence of empathy. 

Studies have been done recently showing that, as a society, empathy is on the decline in the United States. For instance, one study found a steep decline in empathy among young people from 1979 to 2009 (Dr. Sara Konrath et. al., associate professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University, and director of an Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research, https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/empathy-narcissism). This probably isn’t surprising to us having lived through the recent years of political charged and polarized rhetoric around covid, race, and many other things. We’ve seen the empathy deficit on full display. 

Or maybe you’ve heard the phrase used, “compassion fatigue.” This is related, and touches on the same idea. We’re overexposed to the suffering of others, we too are suffering, though, many of us, and it’s overwhelming, overstimulating, we shut down, we shut out, we grow numb. All the more so if we ourselves are struggling just to stay afloat amid the stresses of modern life. 

And empathy is different from mere sympathy. Many of us associate sympathy with empathy or think of them synonymously. But while empathy is a skill that can bring people together and make people feel included, sympathy —sympathy — sympathy is merely feeling sorry for, you might say. It can sometimes lead to compassion or empathy, but more often it actually tends to be patronizing. It’s the kind of feeling that produces short-term charities of exchange.

As one psychologist puts it, “empathy, on the other hand, is a choice, a vulnerable one.”

And I think this vulnerability aspect, which involves giving up some control, is part of why we’re increasingly hesitate to practice empathy. It’s costly to us.

For the past two years, many of us have felt exhausted – like we have no more energy to care. 

But even as we struggle to empathize with others, we experience less empathy extended to us as well. We ourselves need and desire empathy as much as ever, and we’re finding it in short supply. Without experiencing that others know us, or are able to, we’re left feeling alone — at times, despairingly so. It’s a bleak place to be and can lead to feelings of emptiness and despondency.

The writer of Hebrews puts it this way:

15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Hebrews 4:15

In this ultimate act of empathy, Christ enters not only into solidarity with our weaknesses and our experience of temptation, though, but also our suffering. 

Remember that famous Philippians hymn from chapter two of Paul’s letter: 

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! — Phil 2:5-8

So to believe in the incarnation is to also believe that God in Christ has not only entered into our weakness first hand, but also that God has willingly subjected himself to suffering, to victimization from injustice, to misunderstanding, feelings of loneliness, fatigue, even rejection — all of which are emotions and experiences that otherwise put us on the defensive and make us less willing to trust and listen to each other. But in Jesus, these experiences are endured at the deepest level, survived, and overcome. He passes through them, and extends us his compassion on the other side. 

But if Jesus is God, then we have this advocate, this fellow sufferer who understands us, who has walked and is walking with us. The great empathizer.

I recently listened to the audio version of Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, while traveling for a day over Christmas. It was a gift from a parishioner to some of us on staff. And I had read the story before — most of us know it — but to listen to it again afresh this time, for whatever reason, was especially powerful for me. 

I was struck particularly by the journey that Ebeneezer Scrooge goes on in the story, led by the three Christmas Spirits of past, present and future, to show him how he had deviated slowly but surely so far from a place of being able to empathize with the needs of others and specifically the needs of the poor and their children. 

Dickens wrote the story in the context of the early days of the industrial revolution in England, and this was a dark time for many working class folks. Before child labor law, before any kind of regulations on factory workplace conditions, before minimum wage, etc. People were getting sick, lower-class kids were basically slaves, and some were even starving or freezing. 

But Scrooge has lost the ability to care about any of this because of his love for money in his business dealings. Over the course of the story, though, as he is forced to look back at his life and see it from the perspective of others, and to experience again some of his own difficulties

His heart starts to grow warm again, and he experiences a complete transformation. His conversion is to deep, Christlike empathy. When he wakes up from his visit by the spirits, here’s what he says:

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

And this made me wonder what it was exactly that changed Scrooge so dramatically, from someone who despised both Christmas and people, to someone who could love both so passionately?

One answer to that is, is that Scrooge is made to feel again — that is, he empathizes — he has pathos with others. 

The social psychologist, C. Daniel Batson, who has researched empathy for decades, argues that while the term can now refer to multiple concepts, in especially means actually feeling as another does; imagining how one would feel or think in another’s place; feeling distress at another’s suffering; feeling for another’s suffering… close to the word compassion.

Jesus himself is described as having this same kind of feeling and experience in several places in the gospels, where he is moved in his gut with compassion for someone in their suffering. 

One commentator on the story of A Christmas Carol, a friend of Christ Church and professor at Fuller Seminary, Mark Roberts, says this:

“Throughout Ebenezer Scrooge’s momentous night with the three spirits, he frequently felt pain: the pain of having been a lonely boy, the pain of his broken engagement, the pain of suffering children, the pain of his own wasted life. This pain was essential to Scrooge’s transformation in a number of ways. For one thing, it warmed his frozen heart, helping him to feel things had had not felt for ages. Yet pain also caused Scrooge to desire a different life, a life filled with the joys of living.” — Mark D. Roberts

So Scrooge’s transformation is brought about by: 

  • This interruption and breaking into his ordinary experience
  • Revisiting his own pain and truly facing/encountering the pain of others
  • And, it especially comes through his encounter with children in his memories and visions, specifically the child Tiny Tim and the precarious situation of him and his family, the Cratchets 

2. Secondly, though, if Jesus is God, then as the source of all wisdom, through Jesus, the wisdom of God has been made known. But this wisdom was not recognized or received by most.

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. — John 1:9-11

We see this as well in 1 Corinthians:

20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. — 1 Cor. 1:20-25

What Paul describes here is very much still at play in our own time. There are those who, knowingly or unknowingly, reject or don’t recognize Jesus because they expect something or someone else. They’re looking for a different kind of Messiah. They have their own idea of who the Messiah should be. Their own interpretation. To them, just as to many people today, Christ is a stumbling block. 

Or, there are those who, like the Greeks, and because of their worldview, do not expect a Messiah at all. The idea of a Christ is seen as either unnecessary or impossible. This is the view that is most prevalent today. An incarnate God is unnecessary, because sin is not the problem. Ignorance might be, but not sin. 

Or, many people today think God is an unknowable hypothesis, and that the material, physical universe is all there is. There is nothing supernatural, so how could be there be an incarnation…

But even many of those who are open to the supernatural or to God prefer to pursue wisdom for their salvation. This is what the Greeks were most known for. And wisdom is a good thing! But God’s wisdom isn’t the kind of wisdom that we can come to know on our own — through philosophy, science or any other form human reasoning. God’s wisdom is seen as foolishness. 

For all of these groups, the wisdom and way of Christ is foolishness. 

3. And finally, if Jesus is God, then the incarnation is God’s on-going plan for the salvation of the world.

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. — John 1:12

Another way of saying this is the following:

“God became man that man might become God,” church father Athanasius (ca 298–373), On the Incarnation.

Here Athanasius is essentially talking about this ancient Christian theological idea of theosis — God becoming human so that we might become divine. 

And he wasn’t the only or first to say this. St. Irenaeus, two centuries earlier, stated that God had “become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”

Even Augustine, who’s usually associated more with the Western tradition, agreed:

“But he himself that justifies also deifies, for by justifying he makes sons of God. ‘For he has given them power to become the sons of God’ [referring to John 1:12]. If then we have been made sons of god, we have also been made gods.”

Jesus himself says elsewhere, later in the Gospel of John, something very similar:

18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. John 17:18-19

Y’all know that the word sanctify means to make holy, set apart, consecrate — it also means to heal from sin’s adverse effects; to make whole. This is what we long for, and this is what we’re for. It’s also what Jesus came for. 

Most of us, if we have a Protestant and evangelical background, or even by virtue of our Western culture, associate salvation in Christian faith, with the death of Jesus, and maybe even the resurrection of Jesus, but probably not so much the incarnation of Jesus — exception insofar as it led to his death and resurrection. 

Many early Christian leaders and thinkers believed that it was the incarnation itself that was the key to our salvation. That by the incarnation of the eternal logos, Christ, we are rescued from death. 

Some of you are probably familiar with the atonement theory called christus victor, and there’s lots of biblical for this. Where the defeat of death and Satan are chief accomplishments of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. 

The resurrection, then, is simply the natural consequence of what was already accomplished at the birth of Jesus, with God fully taking on human nature while at the same time remaining God. The truth of the two natures unified in one person but not confused, and neither one overcoming the other.

This is not to replace our other understandings of the atonement, but to enrich them and expand upon them for a fuller picture of all that God intends to accomplish through his mission of redemption… 

Some of you may have seen where Google creates a video each year at the end of the year, and they’ve been doing this for about ten years, that highlights and builds a theme around what people have most uniquely searched each year. And for 2021, very appropriately, the theme that emerged is healing.

It’s worth watching the video if you just search for it. There’s some things included of course that we probably wouldn’t all celebrate, but mostly it’s this very moving, heart-warming and raw depiction of the good of much of 2021. And I don’t know if anyone knows this, Youtube comment sections don’t tend to be a very encouraging place to look to get feedback — it can get pretty dark and ugly — but this video has like all positive comments and likes and from different languages from all over the world. It’s pretty amazing. 

But I share this only to make the point that, people are crying out for healing. They long for it, and we’ve collectively felt the need and hunger for it in the past year maybe more than in any year in recent memory. So it’s a beautiful thing in a way to see people acknowledge and enter in together to some brokenness, vulnerability and even hope.  

Jesus says, in some of his final words in the gospel of John:

“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” — John 20:21b

The church as the extension of the incarnation into time and space and the rest of the world throughout history — God’s hands and feet! 

Christ Has No Body,” St. Teresa of Avila

Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
Compassion on this world
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world
Yours are the hands
Yours are the feet
Yours are the eyes
You are His body
Christ has no body now on earth but yours

Now, it’s possible to take this idea too far, and we have to careful not to do so. We are not Christ — we are sinners still, and we fail often to be the body, to be the hands and feet of Christ to the world. And God is not dependent on us fro accomplishing his mission in the world. 

Still, there’s something real and very true about the church as the continuation of the embodiment, that is, the incarnation, of God’s love through Christ and by the power of Holy Spirit, alive and expanding in the world and participation in God’s mission. 

We are called to be empathizers with others! Embodiers of deep wisdom. Extending the incarnation and witnessing to God’s work of salvation through Christ. This is our mission. May it be so. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Called to Culture Making

Genesis 1

26 Then God said, “Let us make man[h] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Matthew 13:31-33

31 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

[The video of this worship service and sermon can be found here.]

Good morning, Christ Church! Today is the first Sunday in a series that Fr. Cliff introduced last week on living “for the sake of others and being a church “for the sake of others.”

We do this through our vocation, through proclamation (locally and globally), demonstration (personal and social holiness), in our locations — in the neighborhoods and communities and workplaces in which we find ourselves.  

And this week, we’re talking about how we live for the sake of others vocationally — through our work and through our common, every day life. 

Let me pray. Oh God, may we hear your Word this morning amid these many words, and may the light of your truth and your call on us to be part of renewal for creation shine through and be made clear, our Rock and Redeemer. Amen. 

Writing about this first passage we heard today from Genesis 1, Christian apologist Nancy Pearcey puts it this way in her book Total Truth:

“In Genesis, God gives what we might call the first job description: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” The first phrase, “be fruitful and multiply,” means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, “subdue the earth,” means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music. This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells gus that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations — nothing less.” — Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth

Notice in this quote, she uses the phrase “cultural mandate” to describe all of these things — both in terms of what we do with the social world we live, and how we steward the natural world. The Hebrew word translated “subdue” in verse 28 (Hebrew kabash) can be understood to mean, “make the earth useful for the benefit and enjoyment of human beings.” 

What Pearcy is saying here is, yes we are called to be colaborers and coworkers with God, but because of our divine image-bearing status, we are also called to be co-creators with God, the original Creator. Co-makers. Co-cultivaters. Another way to put it is to say, we are called to be culture makers. We are called to the work of culture making. 

Now this term already probably needs some clarification. Because when we hear the word “culture” in the context of Christianity, it immediately raises big question about maybe the culture wars, and politics, and secular culture vs. evangelical or Christian subculture, the Religious Right, the moral majority, etc. 

Ok, and what we’re talking about today isn’t completely unrelated to all of that. But it’s different. Culture making here isn’t so much in reference to culture in the macro, “culture war” sense of the term. We’re more so talking about culture at micro level and in the way we actually shape it.

We do get shaped by culture ourselves too, and I’ll so more about that, but as individuals, we can shape culture, and that’s the kind of culture we’re talking about today. 

And there are some really technical, abstract academic definitions of culture out there as well.  But I want to use a definition that goes something like this — and this isn’t original to me, is more like I’m weaving together a few different sources here, including conversations with people at Christ Church:

“Culture is what we do with the natural world. It’s what we make of material things, and the meaning and purpose that is given to them in the process.”

As early as Genesis 4, we see three big areas of vocation and culture-making arise from the descendants of Cain:

20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. 22 Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. 

Now, it isn’t immediately clear why these three great crafts or trades are listed here, and the commentaries I’ve consulted don’t all agree, but it’s still significant and seems safe to at minimum say that Genesis is giving an account of the origin of human culture to some degree here. So we can identity at least three major cultural and vocational domains here:

  1. Food (agriculture and livestock)
  2. Industry (craftsmanship, tools and handiwork)
  3. The Arts (music)

There are of course many other categories of culture, work and vocation that emerge throughout Scripture and civilization, but I’m going to take these three as representative and reflect just a bit on each one.

So first, Food:

One of the best illustrations or examples that I’ve heard Crouch and others give to explain what culture can be seen in the difference between an egg and an omelet. The egg is a product of nature, right — comes from the chicken. It’s the raw material of a biological process. But what do we do with eggs? We cook them. And in the case of an omelet, we cook them in a very particular way. 

No other creator, other than a human being, would be creative and skilled enough with tools and culinary arts to do this, I don’t think. 

Food in general, for this matter, how it’s prepared, with what ingredients and recipes, even the presentation fo the food itself has significance leaves all kinds of room for creative possibility and variety and taste. But it doesn’t stop with the omelet! It’s what the omelet or any other prepared food further enables:

In his book, Culture Care, Makoto Fujimura, says that 

[Culture Care] leads to generative work and a generative culture. We turn wheat into bread—and bread into community. We turn grapes into wine—and wine into occasions for joyful [celebration]. We turn minerals into paints—and paints into works that lift the heart or stir the spirit. We turn ideas and experiences into imaginative worlds for sheer enjoyment and to expand the scope of our empathy.

The Faith & Art ministry at Christ Church in its monthly gathering a couple years ago actually read this book together, and I got to be part of that as I was just coming on staff at Christ Church. And this is one of the quotes that I highlighted when I first read it. Culture care, and culture making, is simply, the kind of attention we give, and the significance we assign to what we do by how we do it. 

Secondly, there is industry:

This work of culture care touches on every arena of our lives. It’s especially important in the business world and in organizational leadership. Executives, managers and supervisors all want to know how to create a culture in their work environments that brings the best out of their employees and serves their company or institutional mission. 

There’s a video that I watched recently that touched on this, and we’ll share it on our Instagram page later today. It’s an interview with one of our own parishioners, Emily Padula, in a film series produced by another member of Christ Church as well. And in this clip, Emily talks about her role as an executive of a large hospital and how she handles that leadership and management responsibility. She talks about how people that she oversees are affected by the culture that she as a leader cultivates… [watch it here.]

Tomorrow is Labor Day, and most of us, myself included, probably don’t plan to give too much thought to the significance of it. But the holiday itself, and day off that many of us will get, is the result of painstaking efforts by those who’ve gone before us who usually weren’t the leaders, executives or managers. Rather, they were the laborers, the employees of manufacturing plant, teachers, farm workers, machine operators, groundskeepers, technicians, service industry professionals and the like. 

These blue collar, working class folks — many of them women, some of them immigrants and even children — were the advocates and organizers who gave us the 40-hour work week, required overtime pay, weekends off, restrictions on child labor, protection against various kinds of exploitation and unsafe working conditions. Their demonstration and activism, particular at the turn of the 20th Century and thereafter, had long-lasting. Culture-making influence. Not from the top-down, but the bottom-up, as a grassroots movement that changed the tide of public opinion, and thereby, law and policy and finally, culture. 

And what is more, this change wasn’t easily achieved. It wasn’t given away. Those with power didn’t just say, oh yeah sure  🙂 We’d love to pay you more for less work!

And we all know, not every culture is good or even neutral. In fact, most of the time, even the best culture is compromised and marred by sin. And some culture is downright unhealthy and even toxic. 

Just going back to the beginning of Genesis — two chapters after our passage for today in Genesis 3, and we hear the story of how humans get to this point. 

One way of understanding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Even is this very question about culture making: What kind of culture will human beings make? How will we lead and organize structure and systems of society? How will we run companies? Will we trust and follow and submit to wise and holy God whose character perfectly distinguishes good and evil, or will we try to grasp and discern that difference, that knowledge of good and evil for ourselves, and attempt to live autonomously — by our own rules? 

Alright, now we come to the third category of the Arts, and specifically music as an example:

One of the most prominent human expressions of culture that we can all appreciate and relate to is music. And Christians have had an interesting relationship with music over time. There was a time in certain periods of church history where singing wasn’t allowed or considered part of worship — or there have been big debates of whether instruments should be allowed, and which ones…

I grew up in the Baptist church and, while I didn’t really experience this kind of prohibition first hand, I definitely heard the jokes about Baptists and not allowing dancing. Or, I still remember when I got my hands on DC Talk’s Jesus Freak album. If you didn’t grow up in the 90s or if you weren’t part of evangelical Christian culture in the US at that time then you might know what I’m talking about, and that’s ok. But DC Talk the band, had a way, especially with their song Jesus Freak in particular, of sounding a lot like some of big rock bands at the time — maybe most notably, Nirvana. And I can remember my mom having some discomfort with me listening to this Jesus Freak song because it sounded so much like “Smells like Teen Spirit.” 

Because music is powerful; music is intoxicating. It can take hold of us in such a strong way. It penetrates to the core of our emotional being. It tugs at our hearts and desires. And so what we do with music is tremendously important, because it’s such a culture-making, culture-shaping force. 

This summer, the Christ Church staff read a book together by one of the canon theologians of our diocese, Esau McCauley. It was called Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. And there’s a particular passage from the book toward the beginning where McCauley talks about the culture of his own upbringing and youth, and the struggle between the good and the bad influences the cultures had on him:

“I knew the Lord and the culture. Both engaged in an endless battle for my affections. I loved hip hop because sometimes it felt as if only the rappers truly understood what it was like to experience . . . Black life in the South . . . But I also loved my mother’s Gospel music because it filled me with hope, and it connected me to something old and immovable. If hip hop tended toward nihilism and utilitarian ethics (the game is the game so we do what we must to survive), then my mother’s music, rooted in biblical texts and ideas, offered a vision of something bigger and wider. The struggle I speak of is not merely between two genres of music . . . I am speaking of the ways in which the Christian tradition fights for and makes room for hope in a world that tempts us toward despair.”

Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley

McCaulley says, “I know the Lord and the culture. Both engaged in an endless battle for my affections.” Notice the language of “affections.” And the title of Emily’s video clip I mentioned a moment ago was “Affected by Culture.” 

The use of the word affections here alludes to the way that culture taps into our deepest longings. This is what culture-making is about and why its a key part of living out our vocations and being a church for the sake of others. There’s a battle going on for our hearts, for our desires. 

McCauley states at the end of the quote: “I am speaking of the ways in which the Christian tradition fights for and makes room for hope in a world that tempts us toward despair.”

So while again we’re not talking about the culture wars, there is still a fight to speak of that’s going on in the vocation that Christians have to culture making. It’s a fight  for our allegiance. What is it we love and are chasing after most? What are we worshipping? Our cultural artifacts, how we do things, and what we make, points to that.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 in the Old Testament is known by its first Hebrew words as the Shema Israel, and for the purpose of understanding the practice and art of culture-making all the better, I want to read it because it bears testimony to how much the Hebrew people had to fight to make their love of the one God real in their lives:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

As Andy Crouch puts it,

“Here we find all the essential elements of enduring culture: artifacts and patterns of life, external discussion and internal reflection, personal commitment and multigenerational transmission. This text, as taught by Jesus, also gives us the best compact definition…of what it is to be a human person. A person is a complex interrelation of heart, soul, mind, and strength, designed for love. We combine heart (not just emotion in the modern sentimental sense, but the Hebrew sense of affective will—choices made to achieve one’s desire), soul (the capacity for depth or fullness of self), mind (the capacity for cognition and reflection), and strength (the capacity for embodied action). This heart-soul-mind-strength reality of personhood is at its best when it is oriented toward loving God and, as Jesus emphasizes, loving neighbor. To care for culture, then, is to care for those cultural patterns, artifacts, and institutions that most fully allow human persons to express their love for God and neighbor. — Andy Crouch

As Christians, we must make culture — Because culture is getting made all the time around us, and it will make us. So we have to proactively make it. And again, this is not a fear-based instruction. And this isn’t about what’s happening in secular, post-modern culture at large, as much as it is about what’s happening in your daily life, in your environments, your neighborhoods, communities, workplaces, homes, and in our church. Culture is constantly working to bend our hearts in a certain direction, so we must attend to that, and we must cultivate that toward God.  

Turning now to a few final, practical points, let’s look briefly at the gospel passage for today: 

Matthew 13:31-33

31 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

I feel that the work of culture making can seem a little bit overwhelming at times. Just thinking about all the inundation we receive on a regular basis, from media, from pressures at work and in the home — just messages, forces that are vying for our attention and battling for hearts.  

But Jesus is giving us a mustard seed strategy. Not a grandiose, top-down, grasp for power or control — not a culture war. The Creator of the cosmos can handle the really big stuff. We start with the mustard seeds. We start small — in the language of Deuteronomy, we bind, we fix, we write! 

You know, maybe not a coffee cup or a t-shirt necessarily with a verse on it. We’ve done that before. And you know, it’s ok. But how else can we make culture or fasten ourselves to cultural practices that bend our hearts toward the love of God and others? We’re creative, we’re imaginative! Maybe take a minute today or this week and come up with some things. Because everything has culture.

Your home, your neighborhood, your conversations with friends, your school if you’re in school, your workplace of course even your emails and your social media presence has a culture to it! And our church has a culture. 

And we don’t have to be CEO’s to make culture. You don’t have to be especially creative or artistically gifted. You also don’t have to have significant social influence or a big public platform.

And, you don’t have to make culture alone. In fact, you shouldn’t! We need community in this effort. Small groups have culture and make culture. Just into one at Christ Church.

The Fuller Formation Cohort starts in two weeks. This is the last week to sign up. We talk about vocation and culture making in very small groups — 3-5 people — it’s deep, mustard seed work, where you get challenged by people who are different from you and have your best interest in mine, and where you are blessed, encouraged and in commissioned in your vocation and how to integrate your faith with the rest of your life. 

And lastly, we’re not alone in this because the Spirit of Christ goes before us in the task of culture making, most of all!  He releases us from the guilt and power of sin by restoring us to our true humanity, or divine image-bearing status. He takes us back to our original intent and gives us a new heart in the process. A heart for co-creating and co-making with God. Co-cultivating. 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Let’s pray. 

A Theology of Globalization

This is a presentation I gave recently for Church of the Cross here in Austin as part of their “Theology of…” series this Spring.

I’ve also included a kind note from Nick Comiskey, Associate Rector at COTC, that went out to the congregation before the event below.

One of my last pre-pandemic memories took place at Hill House, the Christian study center at UT. I crammed into a small, enclosed room (remember those days?) with under and post-graduate students to hear a lecture by Dr. William (“Bill”) Walker. Bill’s talk was on theology and the drug war. He started with an explanation of the drug war itself with ample illustrations from popculture (my love language). Things got really interesting, however, when Bill explored how the Christian understanding of salvation might relate to the rampant violence and impunity occurring on both sides of the border throughout the conflict.

He asked hard questions: What good news does the Christian faith offer to people suffering as a result of the drug war? How can communities of faith in Texas love their southern neighbors with sensitivity and courage?

Three aspects of Bill’s talk left a deep impression on me. First, the tone. Bill started by acknowledging that part of what it means to be a Christian and reflect on social crises like the drug war is to acknowledge the Church’s imperfect attempts (or outright refusals) to advance God’s justice and righteousness in society. His voice was chastened and prayerful, not triumphant.

Second, he was hopeful. Beginning with the premise that Christians have theological reasons for attending to the voices on the margins of society, he maintained that the kingdom of God is a source of transcendent ant material hope. Despite the checkered history of the Church, the Christian faith offers resources to imagine and work for the righting of the world’s wrongs.

Finally, he discussed very practical ways for local congregations to join God’s work of justice and reconciliation.

As the staff discussed potential speakers for our Theology Of…Christian education series this spring, Bill immediately came to mind. I am especially pleased how the first two offerings – the Theology of Globalization in January and the Theology of Immigiration in February – cohere. I am praying God uses these presentations to increase our neighborliness and hope.

Speaking Event in Austin on March 5th – A Theology of the Drug War

The Great Commission, the Great Commandment, and the Trinity

[I preached a version of this sermon on June 16, 2019 at Christ Church of Austin. The audio for it can be found here.]

Good morning Christ Church! It’s great to get to share with you today for the first time since starting in my new role as the Director of Vocation on staff – and also to be part of this sermon series on witness, which is a big part of how I think we need to understand our common vocation as Christians and the calling to be witnesses. It’s also Trinity Sunday, so I get to say something not only about our commissioned witness as a church, but also about how God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, goes before us and sends us into the world to make disciples – goes before you, and sends you, into the world to make disciples, wherever you live, work, and play, and through how you live, work and play.

Right away when many of us hear just the phrase, Great Commission, I know there are probably immediate connotations of global missions. Going– right, going – usually gets the emphasis, to the nations (i.e., cross-culturally), to tell people about Jesus, to proclaim the gospel, to those who haven’t heard – or just to those who, for whatever reason, have not believed the good news. And this is not necessarily bad, but it has limitations and can prevent us from understanding and appreciating the real emphasis of this instruction from Jesus.

When I was a senior in college, I was experiencing a revitalization of my faith in many ways. I was still very young and immature with a lot of growing up to do, but it was nonetheless a season of growth, passion and learning. One of the catalyzing events of this growth period for me was a mission trip that I went on to Juarez, Mexico, over Spring Break. And I know it might not sound like a very big sacrifice, but going on a mission trip for Spring Break when you’re a senior in college, at least if you were me, was already a significant change. I could have gone on a beach trip with some of my best friends. Whitney and I were dating at the time, and her family had invited me on a ski trip over that same Spring Break. I originally said yes, and then I actually backed out to go on this mission trip. I’m not sure how we ever got past that, but I guess we did!

All that to say, I was zealous for Christ and really just wanted an adventure. The idea of going to this border down and to some of the roughest areas of it to preach the gospel had been completely romanticized in my mind and captured my heart, so I was all in. I had studied abroad in Spain and was studying Spanish in college, so I was asked to be a translator for one of our teams on the trip, which I didn’t think sounded so bad. Little did I know, this also meant that I would be asked not only to translate but to preach – and preach in Spanish. Through a megaphone, on a street corner, in the Plaza Mayor – the public square in the city of downtown Juarez. No big deal. I was just that guy…

And unsurprisingly, the gospel for me and my church at that time was primarily about the forgiveness of sins, rather than also involving the redemption and restoration of all things, the coming of the Kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven, etc. My gospel was too small, in other words. There was a big hole in it, to use Richard Stearns’ language.

Interestingly, these two men came up to our group after I spoke and seemed curious about us – which I thought was a good thing – but I quickly figured out that they didn’t want to talk about anything I had said to them. They wanted to know if we knew what it was like to live in Juarez. They were wondering if we had heard about the escalating drug-trade related crime and violence. They started talking about La Linea, the Border, and immigration, unemployment, poverty, and the growth of low wage factory jobs since the inception of NAFTA. I understood that all of these things were unjust and legitimate problems, but what I didn’t understand then was what they had to do with what I just told them about Jesus!

So, I couldn’t make the connection between the gospel and what they were going through, and I didn’t have anything to say them about  God’s will for their situation.I didn’t yet realize how the gospel was good news for them in the midst of all of those things, and so I missed an opportunity. And I’ve never forgotten it.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:16-20

One of the things I think we have to do first to get a better understanding of discipleship and the Great Commission than I had when I went to Juarez, is to make sure we know what a disciple is. I like the way Robert Mulholland defines it, and I’m paraphrasing a bit, but he says:

A disciple is someone in the process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others – Robert Mulholland, Invitation to the Spiritual Journey

This is a good summary statement, I think. And I especially appreciate his emphasis on the transformation dimension of discipleship rather than just the behavior. And then also that he extends its purpose beyond that of the individual. I would maybe just want to add one more definition. And I’m taking this from Dallas Willard. This one’s in the first person.

As a disciple, I am learning from Jesus how to lead my life in the Kingdom of God as he would lead my life if he were me. – Dallas Willard

That is to say, if Christ lived when and where you lived, did what you do, had the same relationships as you, and so on. And the reason I believe it’s important to add this additional clause, is because sometimes we can feel overwhelmed and discouraged by the famous Christians we know. Famous preachers and theologians, maybe, or just all the amazing things Jesus himself did, or Paul or Peter in Acts, or whoever.

But we’re actually not called to be those people or do exactly what they did – not even exactly what Jesus did! Which makes sense if you think about it, right? Jesus had a very unique mission that we can’t repeat. And yet, there’s something about how Jesus did what he did that can surely be translated into any situation and into any particular person’s life and calling – any particular person’s vocation.

And then of course, most importantly, by looking at Jesus’s own teachings themselves, we know that the process of becoming like Jesus occurs by way of obeying what Jesus commanded (v. 20). This is the “how” of our formation into his image and likeness. As we learn and practice what Jesus instructed us to do, our desires themselves will be increasingly disciplined by God’s desires themselves so that what we want what God wants,  by nature – not just by doing what he said to do. The result is inner transformation rather than merely outward conformity.

So what did Jesus command? Well, of course, there’s a lot that he taught, but I do think it can be succinctly captured in just a couple of sentences. When asked what the greatest commandment is by a lawyer, Jesus replied in Matthew 22:

37 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’38 This is the first and greatest commandment.39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” – Matthew 22:37-40

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love another.” – John 13:35

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” – John 8:31

This is sometimes called the Great Commandment, and the passage we heard today is known as the Great Commission.What I want to suggest to you is that the Great Commission can only be properly understood in the light of the Great Commandment. Commenting on the relationship between the Great Commission and Great Commandment, the 20thCentury Anglican priest and theologian John Stott says this:

What is the relation between the two? Some of us behave as if we thought them identical so that if we share the gospel with somebody we consider have completed our responsibility to love that person. But no. The Great Commission neither explains, not exhausts, nor supersedes the Great Commandment. What it does is add to the requirement of neighbor-love and neighbor-service a new and urgent Christian dimension.” – John Stott, Mission: Rethinking Vocation

And in case the Great Commandment isn’t clear, we have the Good Samaritan parable in Luke to help us with the question who counts as our “neighbor.”And basically Jesus’s answer to that question is everyone – everyone, but particularly those who we don’t like or who would even consider our enemies.

The Jews at this time were still living under Gentile imperial rule with the Romans lording over them and oppressing them in all kinds of ways. Jesus was essentially commanding them to love their enemies when he said this. Earlier in the gospel of Matthew, even Jesus seemed to have a concern first and foremost for the people of Israel, but now that’s all changing. Jesus is telling them to go and love and serve and teach their enemies to love God and love others.

Now, Overall, you could say the Great Commission and this work of witnessing to the gospel and to Christ has tended to be interpreted in one of two ways:

  1. Discipleship has been reduced to conversion, or in the worst cases, even  coercion and violence. In other words, the Great Commission replaces the Great Commandment.
  2. The Great Commission is entirely optional or gets replaced by merely the Great Commandment: “Preach the gospel. When necessary, use words.”

For much of Protestant history in the West – not all, but much – the Great Commission has been confused with a command to make converts rather than disciples. So much so that, in some cases, Christians have used whatever necessary violent and coercive force. I’m speaking here of Western imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and military conquest…. This is to say, making people Christian or “like us” was put before the Great commandment to love them the way Jesus has loved us. Or the commandment was completely ignored. Anytime we put the Great Commission before the Great Commandment, we’re in serious trouble. Chronicling a fairly comprehensive history of Christian mission the West in the last few centuries, missiologist David Bosch observes that

“A not-so-subtle shift occurred in the original love motive; compassion and solidarity were replaced by pity and condescension.” – Bosch, Transforming Mission

“When sending becomes the overwhelming focus, the reconciling deeds of the kingdom are diminished or lost.” – Michael Stroope, Transcending Mission (my world Christianity professor in seminary!)

And again, I do not mean to suggest that this is the whole story of our missionary history as Anglicans and Protestants, but it is part of our story, and we still have name it, own it and continue to repent from it– even if you yourself don’t feel like you’re responsible or guilty of it. That’s part of being members of church, is that we have a corporate and collective identity, and therefore, corporate and collective confession and repentance – sometimes even for things that happened a long time ago.

However, we should also be encouraged that, by and large, Christianity is no longer a white, Western European or predominately North American religion — if it ever even really was. No, and we’ll get to talk about this in a few weeks with Philip Jenkins from Baylor at the “Mind Matters” Wednesday series, which just started this last week. And what we’ll see that the majority world, which is not us, has long been learning how to do Christianity and be Christians – live out the Great Commission – on their own and not on European or North American terms. So the Spirit is on the move in the world in genuinely indigenous gospel expressions that will take your breath away, and ways that don’t look very much like how we assume they would or should.

So we have to love people before we proclaim the gospel, before we teach them to obey what Jesus commanded, and before we baptize them. And this is what was wrong with my own attempt to preach to the people Juarez, Mexico. I didn’t know them. I didn’t know their culture, their political and economic reality, their context, their aspirations, their struggles. And so while I wanted to love them, maybe, I didn’t know how, and they couldn’t receive my love or God’s love.

Just to add another layer to this: Being able to love someone take even more than simply knowing them well. We also have to allow ourselves to share in the burdens that they’re carrying. This is what incarnational or embodied witness is all about. And this why the way Jesus loves us is so effective. Because he steps into our shoes. He suffers, he cries, he mourns, and he hungers, he’s betrayed – he’s in solidarity with the human condition. I definitely was not in solidarity with the Juarez condition. This is why good missionaries, real missionaries, spend years and years, learning, inculturating themselves, and getting to deeply know a place before they have much influence.

But if historically as Christians in the West we have tended to confuse discipleship with making converts or even just Western cultural imperialism, then today I’d say we’re equally in danger of the opposite problem today. Many of us are keenly aware of the mistakes of our past and our completely discredited witness in the public sphere because of so many bad examples of Christianity at the popular level and in the most extreme cases. And because of this, we’re timid. We’re insecure, we lack boldness, confidence and maybe conviction to sense the urgency any longer of the Great Commission.

And I want to make just two observations about this: one is that, I think Protestants have done a pretty good job of understanding that the gospel gives us direct access to God without the mediation of a priest or a church or any institution or good works. We know this, at least in principle. We certainly teach it, and growing up Baptist, I definitely learned that the priesthood of all believers was a big deal.

What hasn’t sunk in as much, and I fault clergy like myself and ministers for this more than anyone else, is the Great Commission of all believersNot the priesthood of all believers, but the Great Commission of all believers. What I mean by that is, God’s blessing through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit for everyone to be a minister of the gospel wherever they are and whatever they do. This is not primarily the job of gifted preachers or evangelists or theologians. No, it’s actually your job more than it is even mine.

It seems that for a long time the pastors and church leaders have given the impression to their congregations that your work, and your jobs, and your vocations, your resources, and your callings exist to support this institution and my calling and ministry, our calling and ministry, as clergy, priests and pastors. That’s exactly not the case.

Instead, what I what I want to tell you is that my ministry as a priest, and as someone who is employed by this church, exists to support, equip and serve you in your ministry as disciple-makers where you live work and play– so that you can better love God and love others in the places God calls you to be.

What is more, to say that my ministry, and the staff at Christ Church’s ministry, exists to support your ministry, is not to say that you we’re trying to just get you to do stuff around here in this building and with our mission trips and Sunday morning volunteering and small groups and all that. Sure, that’s all good, and I hope you do those things. But here’s what it really means:

Christ Church exists to enable you to be disciple-makers, ambassadors, salt and light, witnesses – that’s our word – witnesses – where you spend most of your time and most of your day. In your work places, in your homes, in your neighborhoods. And not because – and this is crucial – not because those things, your work places, your homes and your neighbors are just means to the end of evangelism and discipleship. No. We exist to help you be witnesses in those places because God cares about those very places. This is where God is already at work, bringing forth the kingdom, going before you, to prepare people to hear, to receive, to respond and to know the love of God that is our in Christ.

It’s the stuff of your work and your day that God wants to redeem. Your very home and neighborhood and company, and this city — the arts and the sciences, music, politics – all of it. All of it belongs to God. All if it is being invited to participate in the Triune life of God community of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So the commandment to love God and others isn’t just a call for obedience because God said. It’s offered as an invitation in response to what God has already accomplished and done for us. This makes a big difference in how we understand what love is, I think.

You know, the Trinity has only become more powerful in the last Century as an analogy for how we’re supposed to live. One of the things we’ve discovered about the physical world in the past 100 years is that it’s not primarily made up of material or matter, but rather that more than anything else, the universe and the earth is part of one enormous field of energy and particles in dynamic relationship to each other – which is not unlike some of our best Trinitarian theology.

Augustine is famous for describing the Holy Spirit as essentially the loving relationship between the Father and Son. It’s so strong and so dynamic, that it’s actually best understood as a third member of the Trinity altogether, coequal with the Father and the Son. And this love is where we’re invited to live. When we live out the Great Comission, we’re getting ourselves caught up in the Triune flow of giving and receiving.

And over time, theologians throughout Church history begin to describe this relationship between the three persons of the Trinity as one of perfect and total giving and receiving between each member all at once! It’s this complete image of each of the persons, being fully known and fully loved by each other despite their different functions. Their nature is common, but their roles are distinct.

So when we’re sent, we’re not sent out on our own to carry the weight of the world. Christ and the Spirit go before us already doing that. We just get to be part of it. How freeing and how empowering is that?

Our own culture context and moment makes this more difficult, but the best and most common way that we’re going to be able to train people in Christian living is by loving them unconditionally, earning their trust, and listening for when and how the Holy Spirit might be creating an opportunity to articulate the reason for the hope that we have – and then continuing to build relationships that foster transformative learning in how to follow Jesus more fully and faithfully.

One of the marks of the first Christians, who were a minority group in a Greco-Roman, pagan world, was a posture of both peace and urgency when it came to their witness. They knew that the Holy Spirit was the one who was actually going to transform people’s hearts. That’s not our job. At the same time, that doesn’t exempt us from communicating and witnessing to our faith in Christ in a way that connects and resonates with people around us.

In John, Jesus shows the disciples his pierced hands and feet and then says to them: “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent me, I also send you” (John 20:21). So what’s really essential is the wounds and sacrifice. Our going and being sent is simply the natural byproduct of God doing this for us. We already want to do it if we’ve really come to know the love of God. We can’t help but do it. It compels us. It leads us into the ministry of the Trinity, and the ministry of making disciples, Monday through Saturday, where the Spirit is already drawing people into God’s love and into relationship with Christ. Let’s pray.

Life Update: A New Job in Austin

Many who know me are already aware of this most recent development in my life, but I wanted to take some time to elaborate on another professional transition in my life that is especially exciting. As of this past month, Whitney, Liam and Roy and I have moved back to Austin, which is where Whitney and I met and have spent much of our lives. It is home to many of our extended family members and to many more lifelong friends. This by itself makes the change particularly meaningful. Baylor University and Truett Seminary will always be in my life, and we are already missing Waco — which, by the way, was a cool and desirable place to live long before Chip and Joanna said so! I intend to continue teaching at Baylor part-time as a lecturer in theology and ethics, both at Truett on occasion and in the business school, just as I have done for the past two years.

Apart from our history and long-term relationships in Austin, I also feel uniquely suited for my new professional role at Christ Church as their Director of Vocation. We have defined vocation as the way someone is specifically called, shaped and gifted to love God and others in a particular season of life and work. In this job, I will be overseeing an area of the church’s ministry where whole-life discipleship and mission intersect, which we’re calling vocational formation. I find this focus intriguing and fitting for several reasons…

My doctoral research and writing was in philosophy of religion, but more specifically theology, ethics and society, or what in some circles gets called political theology. This just means that I’m interested in exploring the relationship between the Church and the world and how Christians understand God’s mission in the public sphere — socially, culturally and politically — and our responsibility and participation in that mission.

The first class I taught at Baylor was in the Interdisciplinary Core program and was entitled “Examined Life.” As suggested by the title, the main purpose of the class was for first-year students at Baylor to begin to discover what the “good life” looks like — intellectually, emotionally, socially, physically and spiritually. This was a team-taught course in the Honors College with several other faculty members, and I was one of the instructors in the social dimension. Discerning one’s calling and vocation was a big theme throughout the course, as well as learning about important social issues and wellness practices for flourishing in college and appreciating the significance of a liberal arts education.

This past year, I’ve been teaching another course at Baylor as well called Christian Ethics Applied to Business, in which I’ve been drawing significantly on some of the work done by Seattle Pacific University’s Center for Integrity in Business. In addition, I became a certified spiritual director last month and just stepped down from my position as the Assistant Director of Spiritual Formation at Truett Seminary. This was a two-year training program and learning environment for me to grow in and practice the art of listening to and accompanying others as they seek God’s will for their lives and work in the church as well as the world.

Finally, while I’ve been a pastoral minister in a congregational setting before, most extensively at Saint Peter’s in Charleston, I have not been actively functioning in this capacity since 2017. And yet, I haven’t been able to let go of a sense of calling to local church leadership. Dayspring Baptist Church has been our community and place of worship for these past two years. I think it’s a model Christian congregation for how to integrate contemplative, liturgical and sacramental life together in a way that still flows outward and engages the community. For some reason, though, I’ve continued to be drawn to the Anglican world and the mission of the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others in which I am ordained, and of which Christ Church of Austin is a part.

In sum, I saw where this new opportunity had the potential to bring together three major streams that I have been swimming in for several years now: Christian theological and social ethics, spiritual formation/direction and ministry in the local church. As Director of Vocation, I will occasionally teach, preach and serve as a priest, but my primary responsibility is to educate, equip and mobilize Christ Church members for aligning their daily life and work with God’s purposes — whether in the marketplace, at home, in healthcare, entertainment, science, education, the neighborhood, the arts, or government and politics. This is a big job that requires a whole community to accomplish it. Thankfully, the church is already well on their way, and I just get to join them. If your’e in the Austin area or ever visiting and want to learn more, let me know!

1 Corinthians 1:10-17: “Unity through the Gospel”

This message was preached and recorded at Truett Seminary’s chapel service on January 29, 2019.

10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11 My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”

13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 1 Corinthians 1:10-17

I was recently thinking back, in light of the sadness of his death earlier this month, on Lamin Sanneh’s visit to Truett in 2009 to deliver the Parchman Lectures. He spoke then as he often did about and as he’d also famously written about the power of the gospel throughout history to bring so many different kinds of people together in so many different cultures and parts of the world to worship the same God. There’s simply not been any other religious movement quite like it.

I was taking a class on religious pluralism with Paul Sands that same semester, and Sanneh visited our class to talk about precisely this unparalleled capacity of Christianity over the centuries to somehow incarnate and inculturate itself, in a genuine indigenous fashion, in such a wide variety of social, linguistic and even religious contexts. (Now, it didn’t always spread this way. Sometimes it was caught up in colonialism and other sinful, distorted versions of Christendom’s exploitative and militant conquest — but not necessarily, and at its best, it wasn’t! And in this respect, the gospel has functioned as incomprehensibly unifying force.

In the passage you heard read a moment ago, Paul speaks to this and insists that the Corinthians be unified perfectly, in mind and thought. I read this this last week in the daily office, and I find it to be one of the most at once compelling and perplexing expectations placed upon the church, so that’s what I’m reflecting on this morning.

It’s compelling because, who could deny the attractiveness and allure of what Sanneh emphasizes in his work? — How Christianity through the power of the Holy Spirit unlike any other movement, unites without diminishing difference. It’s a beautiful thing, church unity, even intended by God to be a reflection of the unity and in diversity of the Trinity itself! That we in with all our differences might be one in Christ.

But unity for Christians is also perplexing because despite the power that the gospel potentially gives us to be unified, we are in so many ways anything but. I think I first noticed this even if at a very superficial level at a very young age, hearing I don’t know how many bad jokes from the pulpit promising to dismiss us in time to beat the Methodists to Luby’s.

Of course, I don’t think denominational diversity and difference is all bad. And not every difference is a division. I myself am something of a denominational mutt in this regard, and yet I wouldn’t say that I feel very divided about it.

I belong to a Baptist church, and I grew up in a Baptist church, but in between, I attended Bible churches; I received my own sense of calling into vocational ministry in a charismatic community church. I served as a youth pastor in a Methodist congregation, and later taught at a Catholic University before finally getting ordained among the Anglicans. Just don’t tell them that neither of my kids have been baptized yet!

And my story isn’t all that unique – at least insofar as it represents the broader phenomenon we’re seeing of more and more Christians in North America drawing on each other’s respective streams and traditions, emphasizing what we have in common, worrying a little less about what makes us different.

Of course, it’s only appropriate if not inevitable that we do this in a post-Christendom age in which, for those of us committed to the gospel, we can hardly afford to trouble ourselves with non-essential differences.

At the same time that there can be good in our diversity, though, we also know the dark side – that much of it is not mere diversity or difference, but indeed, actual division and the result of ugly and even violent conflicts and war in our past.

And so far I’ve really only been referring to one kind of diversitydivision, one kind of difference, namely, denominational, which is actually a fairly narrow category. We know that if we really want to talk about division in the church, we’re going to have to be ready to talk about race, class, age, gender, and so on.

Now, historically, human beings have most effectively been unified by clan and common enemy. And sociologically speaking, this is still very much the case. So in many ways we should expect people to be most unified precisely around what they are divided about and around who and what they oppose.

You can scarcely find a better example of this than in our own government right now and the U.S. political climate in general. In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion,social-psychologist Jonathan Haidt says it this way, and I think he describes the nature of human reasoning pretty well in this:

“[W]hen a group of people make something sacred, the members[]lose the ability to think clearly about it…Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second…We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play…[Our political and religious] reason[ings] are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog…You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments…” though I’m sure we’ll die trying!

It would be nice if Christians were an exception to this. But I think we all know that we are not. I would still suggest, though, that Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 1, is that it is the power of the cross and the Lordship of Christ that enables this unity in thought and mind that he is calling for, and that when gospel and lordship of Jesus Christ is what ultimately brings us together, no division should be able to remain.

Now, the church in Corinth appears to be facing this same universal and timeless human problem, or disease we might even call it. And Paul diagnoses the disease, calling it schisma.

Schisma is not a mere disagreement about something. Schisma is relational division felt deeplyin the culture and between significant segments of a collective, of a community. In the context of human relationship, schisma between people leaves an open wound, that without proper treatment, can infect the whole body and become a hardened, ugly and disabling feature.

The schisma that Paul is addressing in Corinth, however – and this is important – does not appear to be doctrinal in nature. If it were, it is likely that Paul would have said so or given some indication of this, for he doesn’t hesitate to do so elsewhere. And that Paul speaks well of Apollos, for instance, only a few chapters later, wouldn’t make sense if Paul thought Apollos was a false teacher.

But even if they weren’t divided over doctrine as such, that they were divided is still theologically significant. For doesn’t it means that, for some of the Corinthians, something, had become as important or more so than the gospel itself? Were not some groups claiming higher status than others, because of who they were following? Vying for greater privilege, maybe, and power and influence in the community?

Now, all that Paul mentions about the schism is that it has something to do with factions formed around certain leaders, whether because of who had baptized them, eloquent speech, or something else, and regardless of whether the leaders intended to form factions. Some say, “I follow,” or “I am of” Apollos, Cephas (no evidence Peter had ever been to Corinth), Paul or just even “Christ.” Those who say “We are of Christ” are especially difficult to identify, positively or negatively, but regardless, Paul objects to any grounds for the existence of such factions, however many there were.

Whatever the problem was exactly, the division in Corinth for Paul is arguably only a presenting symptom of a bigger problem– the Corinthians do not understand, or they seem to have forgotten, that the cross of Christ undid their ways of defining and valuing themselves and one another! The lesson is not that our differences are really no big deal, but that the reconciling love and power of  the cross is greater than even our biggest differences.

Paul echoes this same sentiment in chapter 12:

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

A few verses later:

12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Now,we this is a place we have to be very careful, though, that appeals to the unity, even in the name of Christ, not blind us to or make excuses for unjust relationships of power among us. I think of those of white folks who want to say to our black brothers and sisters, “we’re with you, let’s be unified, let’s work together” – but we don’t want to give anything up or make a change. We want racial reconciliation to be easy, and we think it should be, because we don’t really believe we have any responsibility. We don’t see our own complicity in it. It’s easy to say “let’s unite!” when you’re not the one who has been disenfranchised.

But Paul is not naive about this. While he doesn’t directly address the subject of racism, he does show a particular concern for members of the body who have been mistreated or overlooked by those in power, and how they are meant to be incorporated in the Church – the poor, the elderly, the widows – anyone of lower social status:

21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it,25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Paradoxically, the unity available to us through the gospel doesn’t come by treating everybody the same. No, it actually means looking out for the vulnerable. Taking care to include and empower those members among us whom the world tends to judge as insignificant. Showing them special honor. Making theirsuffering our suffering. Not in a patronizing way, but through practicing solidarity.

Isn’t this what the gospel says? Doesn’t God say that to us? Your suffering is my suffering. Our sin, Christ becomes that sin for our sake – and even for the sake of unity?

This unity is deep and costly. It is grounded in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ.

Schisma cuts deep, so the healing of it has to go deeper. Only the cross of Christ does this. Why? Because in Christ, God identifies with. God enters into solidarity with. God takes on. Our sinful condition. He takes it on, absorbs it, and then takes it away. Some of the greatest division is caused by betrayal, deceit and infidelity, and yet this is the very thing Christ experiences and enters into.

I recently joined the board for a non-profit organization called Open Table. Some of you may have heard of it. Their model of ministry is to get 8-10 people or so committed for a full year of supporting a person facing some kind of hardship – oftentimes it’s homelessness – partnering with them and building a relationship with them as each table member helps to address one area of need in the person’s life.

Obviously, the person receiving help from the table benefits significantly, but story after story that I hear is primarily about the transformative and unifying community experience of the 8 other table members as they grow closer in relationship with each other and the individual they’re serving. By caring for the weak and vulnerable in their midst, the gospel goes to work and unites them.

Again, some have tried to think about unity apart from Christ. Unity around a political platform or even an entire political philosophy. Others have attempted to establish this kind unity through other commonalities: race or ethnicity. Unity around nationality or social class. Unity around a certain, narrow theological school or sect.

Of course, there can indeed be unity around certain important and even ordained causes. The fight against racism or sexism in this country comes to mind. And there’s no reason why the church can’t get behind this! In fact, the church must get behind these efforts, and such causes can even be unifying, but only when we engage on Christ’s terms. Which is to say, in cruciformity, and founded on the basis of our trust in God’s redemption mercy and forgiveness.

Here I can’t help but think of Martin Luther King Jr.’s eulogy for the three young girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham in 1963, in which hedescribes the potential power released by their death to unify!

History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive.The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city. These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilt blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future.

To say it another way, the treatment for the disease of schisma is the cross of Christ. The cure for schisma is for Christians is to strive for unity that is gospel-shaped, which means surrendering, as Christ did, all ambition for worldly status, power or privilege. And exchanging this ambition for love of the weak and the vulnerable.

In fact, Paul seems to think that the marks of status, such as eloquent, impressive and attractive speech or worship services (we might say today), may actually have the effect of emptying the cross of its power.

And finally, not only does the cross deeply heal and unify us in this way – it also sends us out. For as Paul says, Christ did not send me to baptize (nothing wrong with baptism, of course), but to preach the gospel.

To preach the gospel, moreover, isn’t to ignore the problems of the world. It rather means being sent more fully into them, unleashing the power of the cross to heal, because the gospel is the only cure for the disease of schisma.

At the risk of conflating John and Paul, let me close by reading Jesus’s own prayer in John 17 for unity among his followers and for those who would come to believe in their message:

20 My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Becoming the Church: From Hostility to Harmony (Ephesians 3)

[This is the manuscript for a sermon I preached on July 29, 2018 at Resurrection Church, South Austin.]

Today’s reading, the whole chapter of Ephesians 3, really is one of the most elegant passages in all of Scripture, I think. It’s very moving to read it. And it’s powerful for the church to hear it. So I want to try to help us hear it a little bit more this morning. And there’s a lot here we could talk about — too much to cover in one sermon.

Maybe most famous of all is v. 18, which is a sermon in itself, speaking of how far and high and wide and deep is the love of God in Christ — and that we may know it.

It’s kind of surprising, though, I think, that — when Paul starts to talk about the mystery that is being revealed — what does he say?  That Jews and Gentiles, through the gospel, would be members together, belonging fully and equally to the same body — that this is the mystery! I almost want to say, really? Is that it? That’s the mystery? That Jews and Gentiles? I would have guessed he’d say something like, the mystery is that God became human, took on flesh, was born of a woman and into a humble place…

Read More

Ananias and Sapphira

[I preached the following sermon at Saint Peter’s Church on July 22, 2018 (the audio can be found here). We read from Acts 5:1-12.]

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

10 At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11 Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

This passage today – the Acts reading – it’s not exactly a feel-good story. And I actually had a choice as to whether to use it! But I guess I figured hey, I don’t work here anymore. No big deal if it bombs. Someone else can deal with the fallout, and this is one at least looks interesting and fun!

And can we also laugh about this story a little bit, too? It’s crazy! There’s literally no explanation for either of their deaths. It doesn’t say God killed them, or that Peter did, or that they had heart attacks, or what!

Now, obviously their death is related to their actions and to Peter and the church’s judgment of their actions, but there’s still a lot of mystery around it. James Dunn, one of the leading NT scholars of the 20th Century (1996), describes it as ‘one of the most unnerving episodes in the whole of the New Testament.’

Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion has a chapter that criticizes the Old Testament depiction of God, and then the chapter immediately following it is entitled, “Is the New Testament any Better?” So you can imagine how he might reference this story of the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 to support an argument that the God of Jesus Christ is also unreasonably harsh, vindictive and too easily used to justify violence in his name, and so on.

So unsurprisingly, the intensity and perplexity of this passage has been used against Christians to call into question the credibility of not only the Scriptures, but even the God to which the Scriptures testify.

Read More

Transcending and Including the Reformation: A Tribute

[A version of this post appeared on the Missio Alliance blog on November 7, 2017.]

As Christians, we all have our own journeys to go on. And rarely is the path straight. There is progress and regress. I think it’s safe to say the same has been true for the Church throughout its history. One of the best pieces of advice I got as a graduate student in theology was that, no matter how much I may learn, grow, and change, I should always try to make room for the old versions of myself. I’ve also heard it said this way: what we focus on determines what we miss, and while God is always calling us forward, it’s easy to disdain the good things we used to know.

500 years after the Reformation, how does the Church continue to grow and change while still making room for what has come before?

Read More

Page 1 of 4

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén