o1mnikent

If the eschaton were a sandwich, this would be it:
I’m spending a few weeks at home in Lynden, Washington, where, among other things (reading, writing, preaching [!], watching Friends, going camping, etc.) I am on a quest for the perfect sandwich. Why? Mostly because I lack the resources (breads, meats, cheeses) and the time for such a project in Michigan. What you see here, dear reader, is my lunch from yesterday. That’s sharp cheddar, chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and dijon, all between two slices of the finest freshly-baked marble-rye bread.

And…

We postmoderns know that meaning has something to do with context. So allow me to elaborate for a bit on the context. But first, scroll up.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I’d like to point out in the picture the rhododendron bushes, the official state flower of Washington. I’d also like to point out the evergreen trees in the background. Evergreen trees, much like our ascended Christ, do not die. All green, all the time. Also in the background you will see rows of raspberry bushes. If Whatcom County – my county – were its own nation, it would be the seventh largest raspberry producer in the world. Now, looking above the sandwich to the sky, I’d also like to point out the clouds and rain, which is the official state weather.

God created stuff, and that stuff was good. Time for enjoyment.

One of the questions in my pastoral theology exam asked me to agree or disagree with the following statement and provide Biblical grounds for my answer. Here’s the statement:

“Women are at some disadvantage in terms of their own gender-related self-definition in that Jesus was a man on earth, not a woman. Jesus modeled the person and behavior of a Christian man: we don’t have such a model in Christian femininity.”

This was my response, which, in addition to answering the assigned question, also conveniently points out flaws in one of John Eldredge’s major premises in Wild At Heart. (The italicized portions indicate a paraphrase or a direct borrowing from a recent insightful email conversation I had with Matt and Bethany.)

I disagree with the above statement because such gender distinction, among other things, wrongly assumes God’s preference for a particular gender and assumes that God is somehow bound by gender. It also assumes not God’s original intent for creation, but rather accepts the effects of the Fall – separation and disunity – as normative and even as ideal. However, as Reformed Christians, we uphold the notion that creation is good and that God’s original intentions for creation were destroyed by the Fall but are slowly being restored until the final inbreaking of the kingdom of heaven, God’s new creation, and a return to Eden. We see glimpses of this redemption all around us, through God’s providence and calling in our lives, but most explicitly through the person and work of Jesus Christ, characterizd by compassion and redemption. One of the most significant characteristics of this good creation is that God intended harmony, peace, and unity. This was God’s will for the garden, God’s will for Adam, and remains God’s will for all of creation. Sin did destroy the possibility that we could bring about restoration and redemption on our own, but it did not succeed in destroying God’s initial will or intent for creation or salvation.

The chief characteristic of the Fall, then, was separation – separation between humanity and God and between human beings themselves, including the scar of sin on gender distinction. God created two genders, but sin twisted the harmony between them. We – human beings – are created in God’s image – both genders, male and female. This means that that gender is not a characteristic of our essences, our souls, or the most basic things that make us human – that some deep and essential part of who we are is female or male. Our essence is not gender-bound, but human. It’s true that there are things about male-ness and female-ness that affect the way we are, including the physical aspects that affect the way we experience sexuality and the ways we relate to our bodies and the various social and cultural norms that are inherent to being engendered beings. But these aspects of gender are more culturally and socially conditioned than they are intrinsic to our basic identity as humans and our status as image-bearers of God.

At the same time, it would be a mistake and a grave pastoral oversight to disregard gender or sexuality altogether. God made us with boy-parts and girl-parts and boy-socialization and girl-socialization for a reason, and we should embrace the gifts and watch for the pitfalls that come with that. But it is dangerous to start saying that those things are at the core of who we are, because the things God calls us to in life are mostly gender neutral. Additionally, having a strict gender binary is problematic in and of itself, because not everyone, including homosexuals and bisexuals, fits a strict gender binary, and what we have in common is much more significant than our differences.

Furthermore, using Jesus as a model for male-ness twists God’s condescension to creation into ill-informed gender prescription. What is important is not that God became a man, but that God became a human and that God experienced the falleness of creation, the weight of sin, and revealed redemption, hope, and the kingdom of God. None of this is gender-relevant, except that Jesus provided a model for the restoration, peace, and unity that was lost in the Fall but will eventually be restored, including the unity between humanity and God, between male and female. Our task as Christians and as pastors is working toward this goal driven by hope, not perpetuating false notions of gender established by the Fall and driven by sin. [For more on this, see this article in Perspectives by Jamie Smith and Mark Mulder and this response and counter-response.]

Additionally, God is not bound to a particular gender. Even to call God “Father” is not entirely accurate, albeit the most specific language the church has conceived. Reducing God’s intentions for creation, fall, redemption, and consummation and reducing the work of Christ to something gender-based can lead to very dangerous conclusions, many of which reinforce not only truisms of God but also the same cultural systems that perpetuate sexual abuse, oppression of women, chauvinism, and an array of other things that are (again) a result of the Fall, not a result of God’s original intent for creation or God’s will for any of us.

The pastoral implications of this are many. First, the church must come to recognize that male experience is not normative. Second, when listening to women, males must suspend judgment; women need to have and to hear their own voices. When a woman comes for pastoral care; she needs a listening ear. Males who interrupt with advice or a solution deny women the chance to know and understand themselves. Third, as mentioned earlier, the problem may not lie in her, but in the broader cultural system, which might manifest itself in a marriage, extended family, or society. The job of the pastor, then, is not only to address the relevant problem of the particular moment, but also work to undo dangerous cultural conceptions of gender that perpetuate the kinds of problems – perhaps such as the one at hand. Fourth, masculinity and femininity are not mutually exclusive qualities; we all have both. Fifth, the church and clergy – especially male clergy – must acknowledge the consequences of sexism and apologize for the oppression and abuse. Seeking forgiveness is perhaps the most important component of pastoral care of women.

Enough of this upper-level-low crap. It’s slowly being gobbled up and pushed eastward right now by a giant mass of cold air (well, comparatively) that’s forcing warm air to rise. That’s because cold air is heavy. And this mass of heavy, dense, dry, cold air is slowly spilling south. Large amounts of warm air – in fact all of the warm air over Lake Michigan, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and southern Ontario is slowly being forced upward over it. And as that happens, the warm air cools, and we all know that colder air can’t hold as much moisture. The result? Lots of static, lots of quickly rising hot air, lots of quickly falling cold air. A little after 4:00 this afternoon, the action will hit Grand Rapids. You’ll feel the gust of cold air right before the storm hits – just like pouring water onto a flat surface: the cold air drops and then spreads out. So grab your umbrella and your lightning rod and watch the show. (And for those flying today, on behalf of our beloved atmosphere, I offer my sincere apologies.)

For awhile now – actually since January of 2004 when I first met Craig Barnes – I’ve been pondering the meaning of place – the physical presence we indwell, our communities, and our embodiment within our context (and, in a strange way, striving to copy the incarnation of Christ). And I’ve posted about it here from time to time in the past year, most recently when I heard Kathleen Blanxo calling New Orleaneans to not simply return* to New Orleans and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, but rather to recover a richer sense of place. Not buildings, not economic infrastructure, but place.

I recently moved to an interesting area of Grand Rapids. I’ve lived near where I do now for the past three years – this past year a half mile to the east and the year before that a half mile to the south – but I now find myself perched near, for lack of a better term, the “ghetto”. One street over to the north and one street over to the west, the neighborhood changes radically, crime increases, and property values plummet.

I recently decided to investigate the history of my neighborhood and the history of Grand Rapids. I learned a bit more about a few things I already knew – redlining, for example, and the race issues that culminated in riots in 1967 and still exist today. But I learned a lot that I didn’t know, too. I discovered the history of Garfield Park, about a group of women who prevented the city from widening Eastern Avenue through Alger Heights. I learned about the history of Paris Township, about an old railway grade that ran from Eastern Ave to East Grand Rapids, and crossed Kalamazoo Ave near the Shell Station. I learned that my neighborhood was thrown together during World War II when supplies were scarce, and was probably developed when some farmer sold his plat of land to the city of Grand Rapids in order to make a quick buck – maybe for his family while he was fighting in Europe or on the Pacific front.

All that to say, I’m less convinced that it’s good, healthy, or responsible to continually be searching for home. Being settled is not a bad thing, even if being settled in Grand Rapids is not my ideal scenario. Until I’ve found home, learning the history of my neighborhood and my community – and then placing myself within that history – is important.

I’ve often heard that we somehow try to match our own story with the grand story of redemption, of God’s unfolding and revelation to the world. Some might call this a post-modern understanding of Christianity. But I think it’s equally important that we match our own stories with the stories of our communities. We’re not autonomous human beings adrift from place to place. Instead, we’re meant to impact the presence of our context. So learning the facets of the context and the presence is important.

(* – how’s that for a split infinitive!?)

From LarkNews.com:

In the first round, Geoff Parsons and Rick Benson, of Westminster and Calvin seminaries respectively, went first, as scouts had predicted they would. Parsons heads to a struggling mid-sized Methodist church in Memphis, Tenn., which had the top pick this year. Benson was drafted by a mega-church in Casper, Wyo., which had traded two mid-career pastors for a higher pick. Both draftees say they are ready to “help their teams.”

read more…

(A megachurch in Casper, Wyoming?!)

The big news this morning is that the NSA has reportedly acquired the phone numbers of tens of millions of Americans.

Like… the phone book?

excerpted from email correspondence discussing this week’s worship service:

“Just making sure that there aren’t any sacraments or excommunications on Sunday morning that I should incorporate into worship planning…”

Yeah, that’s a tough one.

It was the subject of our discussion in Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching yesterday, after reading an article by Cynthia Gorney (can’t remember the name; it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly last year), who a few years ago also published the book Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars. The article walked through a brief history of the abortion debate, including the language used by pro-lifers and pro-choicers, the vocabulary (e.g. “partial birth” was a term invented for legal papers”), and a range of other issues.

Addressing this issue in church in any way – preaching, education, etc. – gets dicey, because the issue quickly moves from a pastoral issue to a political polemic. “Sanctity of Life Sunday” often becomes pseudonymous with “Republican Sunday”. Thus, preaching against abortion quickly digresses into preaching against Democrats.

Scott Hoezee, our professor, observed that only ten years ago the issue was far less political than it is today, and, in fact, before 1973 (Roe v. Wade), many churches that were conservative theologically had members whose political persuasions were both conservative and liberal politically. Such cases are far rarer today.

Scott also noted that he was once chided for never preaching on abortion. To this, he said,

“When somebody asks you to preach on something or chides you for not preaching on it before, nine out of ten times… this is someone who assumes that nobody in this congregation has had an abortion. It’s preaching to the choir. But nobody ever asked me to preach a sermon on pornography or racism. Is it because somebody thinks it’s a problem worth addressing? Or is it because there’s something else going on?”

Most of the problems we face – individually and communally – are the ones we aren’t aware of. I have heard more sermons that address abortion, yet I have never heard a sermon about racism. Preaching against abortion, in many cases, is a poor pastoral choice. Scott continued:

“Always assume that there’s somebody out there who’s had an abortion, who is gay, who is struggling with pornography. That should shape how you talk about it. If you’re black and white on something – make it the unforgiveable sin – why would anybody come to you for counsel?”

Good pastoral advice for any issue.

Sadly, there are no women in my class and only a handfull of preachers in my denomination who are women. Some in our class thought that abortions result in feelings of guilt, others thought they resulted in feelings of relief, and each feeling requires very different kinds of pastoral care and would influence sermons very differently. Men talking about the effects of abortion is somewhat like (although not completely) men talking about what menstration feels like.

I don’t have a clue.

All this to say, when abortion is only addressed from the pulpit, only addressed polemically, only addressed by men, and only preached to the choir, words evaporate. Pastoral sensitivity – not politics – counts most when we’re talking about lots of dead babies and lots of hurting women and the external factors that perpetuate both.

[For the classis that googles my name and finds this post in a few years when I'm up for ordination: rest assured that I agree completely with the CRC position on abortion ("The church calls believers to show Christian compassion and to offer support to those experiencing unwanted pregnancies as well as to those who have undergone abortions). The absence of pastoral sensitivity in my denomination on this issue is in need of significant correction.]

I always like it when people say things like “I wonder why it hasn’t been warm this April” and I reply “well, you see, the jet has dipped to the south which means that we’re more infrequently in the warm sector of low pressure systems as they pass by. Plus, the cold, dry air from canada usually overrides it…” and by this time they’ve begun walking away and I’m now raising my voice and following them, often at a brisk pace.

That’s the new quarter, folks. Look at those trees. Look at Mount Rainier.

Your doctrine of creation ain’t orthodox unless it includes Washington.