the church geek

Sure wish I was at the NO Jazz & Heritage Festival this weekend. I could use a little fix of some good New Orleans music and some Crawfish Monica. At least I can catch some of the tunes at WWOZ.

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I hope I’m just being unfair and that it’s not really true, but it would appear as if only the men have gathered Together for the Gospel. That’s too bad.

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Well, the news cheeseheads have been waiting for since the last regular game of the NFL Season has finally arrived: Favre is returning for yet another year. Not sure how the Packers were able to pull that one off, since the team has not improved much over free agency.

Mom and Dad, who live outside of Milwaukee, have said this has been constantly in the news every day since December, so I’m sure they’re happy that a decision has finally been made.

Sadly, I suspect this is not the last of it; we’ve got next off season for another episode of the “Brett Favre Retirement Soap Opera.” Stay tuned.

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Maggi Dawn writes a few good and wise words about saying no.

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This week (Apr 24-30) is turn off your TV week. This post has some interesting observations on the effects of TV watching.

I personally don’t know how people have any time to watch TV. I barely have enough time to do my job, to keep up with house chores, and to maintain a quality relationship with my wife.

Sadly, my issues with time mean that I’m not able to spend as much quality time as I should maintaining other relationships (with friends and family) or in getting quality exercise. I can only imagine how much worse things would be if I watched as much TV as the average American.

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Wow, it was a busy week last week. Hence, no posts recently.

I spent three days up at Dubuque Seminary attending the Spring Renewal. It was good to re-connect with some of my professors and to see some old classmates, though not as many of them were there as I might have hoped.

There were 2 lecture series. One included talks on Faith and the Arts in Protestantism by William Dyrness. Interesting but disappointing, I had hoped for something a little more oriented toward the emerging church side of things in terms of the use of media in worship, etc. I guess I was looking for something a bit more practical than what was presented.

The other set of lectures was given by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. If you have never heard Dr. Wright preach or lecture you must take time to do so in the future (He is noted as one of the top-10 preachers in the US). He is a dynamic person; uncompromising on speaking out on social issues and deeply rooted in personal faith in Christ. A welcome antidote, in my mind, to the likes of TD Jakes and other ministers in the African-American community.

His talks were on the paradigm shift in theological education. They were mostly oriented toward helping us understand how theological reflection varies within different cultural contexts (i.e. we all come to the scriptures with a particular lens that we read them through). One of his more helpful tidbits was noting that the scriptures were written by people under constant oppression (Egyptian, Bablyonian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman) and that we have got to take that into account in the way we interpret and understand them.

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I leave you today, on this Easter Sunday, with these words of Bishop NT Wright from his new book Simply Christian:

When Jesus rose again God’s whole new creation emerged from the tomb, introducing a world full of new potential and possibilities. Indeed, precisely because part of that new possibility is for human beings themselves to be revived and renewed, the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t leave us as passive, helpless spectators. We find ourselves lifted up, set on our feet, given new breath in our lungs, and commissioned to go and make new creation happen in the world.

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Matt 27:26-31
So he released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

The soldiers stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him to mock him as the “King of the Jews.”

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about the ways we strip Jesus and then dress him up with different clothes. We may not do so to intentionally mock him as the Roman soldiers once did, but in dressing up Jesus to use him for our own means and purposes, we inadvertently end up making a mockery of him.

I’ve been thinking about how we use Jesus to justify war in Iraq, or conversely to say we should never be at war in the first place. Or about the ways we use him to sanctify our wealth and prosperity, or conversely to call others to live simply. Or about how we use him to support “family” values or conversely to say that we should be much more inclusive. I could go on and on with this list.

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Last night I cracked open NT Wright’s new book Simply Christian. It’s engaging, yet simply written.

I’m somewhat surprised that Wright starts his book with a chapter on our innate thirst for justice and righteousness. He concludes that this thirst points us towards God’s action in Jesus Christ to set the world right.

I’m impressed by this chapter because he puts the evangelical faith clearly within the realm of the gospel’s call to work for social justice (using the Christian examples of Bishop Tutu and MLK) without losing the personal dimension of faith in Christ.

The three remaining chapters in Part One deal with three other dimensions built into the structure of this world and our lives that serve to draw us (or point us) toward faith in Christ.

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Mark 15:6-14

Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Then he answered them, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!”

In the evangelical Wesleyan holiness tradition of my youth, I remember my church’s annual liturgical reenactment of the events of Holy Week. Various members of the congregation were involved in the drama of retelling those events.

A surge of emotion would rage through me as I joined in with the others crying out “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Thinking of all my failures of personal piety and holiness, I felt for a moment the weight of all them (even for one still so young!) and their implication in the death of Christ.

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I’ve been hankering for a ride for a little over a month now. I admit that I’m a bit of a fair weather cyclist.  We’ve had a few nice days lately but nothing seemed to worked out with my pastor’s schedule.

Today, I had a few hours between a funeral I conducted late this morning and a wedding reception I’m attending this evening.  So I finally got out for my first ride of the year.

The weather was great (sunny and in the mid 60s) and with some new breathable wind pants and jacket I was riding in comfort.  I also had to wear some ear covering because for me if my ears start to hurt it’s all over.

I’m not an uber-cyclist.  I’m happy if I can get in about 15-20 miles whenever I go out.  Even though I didn’t ride as far as I  usually like, I’m just happy I was able to enjoy a bit of fresh air.

Now I have to get ready for that wedding reception…

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Well Packer fans all around the nation (this cheesehead included) had hoped for some resolution this morning to the Brett Favre retirement soap opera, but sadly we all got yet another “I’ve got no clue about what I’m going to do” response.

Personally I think Favre could probably make it through another year or two, but this public waffling back and forth over the last few years is getting ridiculous and is way too painful to watch. I find the indecisiveness even worse than when an athlete continues to go back out on the field even though they’re clearly beyond their ability to do so.

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This seems like a dangerous claim to make. These signs were posted throughout an improvished neighborhood of Lesotho South Africa to announce the arrival of a crusade by American evangelist Ernest Angley.

You can read some observations from someone on the ground in South Africa here. The author of this post makes some interesting points about the devastating effect that such hopeful promises could have on the residents of this improverished neighborhood in Lesotho.

Apart from the very valid concerns mentioned, I might add that at times I look on with a bit of jealously at someone who has as much faith as Angley to plaster both his face and his message with such great boldness!

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Here’s a report that suggests maybe Jesus walked on ice rather than on water. Kind of reminds of last week’s report in which Harvard scientists found a negative correlation on the effects of prayer for cardiac patients. Not sure what all of this is supposed to prove or disprove, but it does make me wonder if scientists don’t have better things to spend their time studying?

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Yesterday, I went to our local Barnes and Noble. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did end up buying two books I’d been eyeing for the last couple of weeks: Simply Christian by NT Wright and the new Brazos Theological Commentary on Acts (the lectionary readings following Easter are in Acts.)

The total for both books came out to $55.00. But on my drive home I panicked…when I got home I got on the Internet and bought the exact same books with 3 day shipping from Amazon for $38.00. I of course plan on returning the books I bought at B&N later today, but I am a little saddened that I can’t break into them right now.

This experience has led me to reflect about my book buying habits on a couple of different fronts.

I hate the fact that our ‘local,’ though really corporate giant Christian bookstores (Family Christian & Lemstone), don’t carry the types of good theological and well grounded books that I can more easily find at B&N. Now, to be fair they do order what I want when asked but why should I have to wait for what I want especially when I have to pay full price to do so?

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