Transforming Theology Blog Tour - The Holy and the Story - Particularity, Dialogue, and the Kingdom / Harvey Cox, The Future of Faith. Chs 2 and 3

AAR is coming up, and I hope you are looking forward to the Transforming Theology session at AAR this year. Stay tuned; I will be posting video from the session.

Thus far I've only worked through the first six chapters of The Future of Faith. But even only a third of the way into the text, I have a number of questions and reflections on Cox' project. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book and to continue the conversation with me and with others on the blog tour.

Jan 25, 2009 - The Kingdom of God Is Near

First Presbyterian Church of DuPage - The Five O’Clock
Mk 1.14-34 - “The Kingdom of God Is Near”

Now after John was handed over, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the good news of God. He said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Now we’re in it. We talked last week about how Mark was letting us in on the secret, laying it all out in front of us, explaining who Jesus really is. He showed us first in his title--The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God. He showed us in the way he described John the Baptizer. He showed us through what happened after Jesus was baptized--the sky splitting apart, the Holy Spirit anointing him, God declaring, “You are my beloved Son, in you I take great delight.” But now Jesus comes back from down South where John was preaching by the river, he comes back form forty days in the desert, now he comes back proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God, the new world set right that God brings, is just now arriving--and we’re plunged into confusion. The light’s go out. We’re left with all sort of people--normal people, rich people, farmers and fishermen, beggars, prostitutes, and political power mongers--all debating and misunderstanding who Jesus is, what his message is about.

Last week I told you to hold on tightly to the clear, mountaintop glimpse of who Jesus is as we spend the next few months walking through the sometimes frantic, sometimes monotonous, sometimes lonely, sometimes harried, sometimes anonymous world where Mark tells the rest of hist story, the world that we live in.

“The time is fulfilled! The kingdom of God is just about to arrive!” Jesus announces. In fact, in a lot of ways it’s arriving right now, in Jesus, through what he does, what he says. But it’s not here all the way. We can even see that in our day. This world does not look like--does not feel like--the new world, the good world that God brings. And this is part of Mark’s and Jesus’ point. The new world cannot really begin until Jesus is handed over to the authorities, before he dies, before he is raised into the new life of God’s new world. The new world, God’s kingdom, is here and yet a lot of it is, even still, just about to arrive.
But what I’m saying here is too theological, too abstract. Jesus doesn’t come to meet us in our theology; we don’t live the new life of God’s world in our doctrinal statements. He meets us while we’re washing dishes after potluck, while we’re chasing down a rambunctious son or daughter, while we’re inputting number into a computer at work or trying to appease a cranky customer, while we’re having an awkward long distance phone conversation with a parent, when we crawl into bed and wish we weren’t quite so alone. God’s kingdom--the new world, God’s new life--is something that we need to find in our every day lives.

But what does it look like? We all know there are too many counterfeits out there! We tend to water it down to a “God is in all things,” to a hunt for the warm fuzzies or the silver lining. Or else we fixate on one part of it, turning “Love your neighbor as yourself” into a baptism for our failing attempts at world peace, or our unapologetic defense of our way of life. Sometimes we turn the promise of eternal life into a raspy-voice, finger-pointing tirade about hellfire and brimstone. But as much as I read the stories about Jesus in the New Testament, I never see him going around Galilee peddling tickets to heaven, his message was never about a washing machine in every home, a laptop for every child, or two cars in every garage. And he certainly never gave his support to the Roman government’s “peace”--their pax romana enforced by a military garrison in every major city, heavy taxes to house and feed their “peacekeepers,” and just enough entertainment--gladiators, festival days--to keep the poor too distracted to revolt. But if none of these are the new life Jesus brings, what is it? What does God’s kingdom look like?

Dec 7, 2008 - Our Hope Is Peace

First Presbyterian Church of DuPage - The Five O’Clock
Ps 85.7-13--”Our Hope is Peace”

Last week we talked about how the world is broken and how we are broken. We prayed to God about the specific ways we need him to come and save us. We confessed to him the ways in which our hearts are set against his kingdom coming. We called these actions and attitudes what they really are: sin. We repented. We admitted to God that we have been wrong and that we want to be different now, that we want to watch and wait and live like his kingdom is really coming right here into our lives.

As part of saying all this, we took little slips of black paper and wrote on one sided the ways we feel the world’s brokenness. On the other side, we wrote ways we have sinned, how we have added to the brokenness of the world. And then we folded them up and tucked them into the branches of this tree. That was all last week. If you weren’t here and want to put your confession on the tree, catch me or Cindy after the service.

This week, I want to talk about hope. Specifically, about what we hope, the content of our hope. Two Advent candles are burning tonight. The first one, the one we first lit last week, is the Hope Candle. The second one we just lit tonight is the Peace Candle. We keep both burning tonight because hope and peace are all tied up together. Our hope is a big part of what it means for us to be Christians. But for what do we hope? Are we just looking to wake up to a better day tomorrow? Or maybe a lucky lotto ticket tucked in our Christmas stocking and exactly what we want wrapped up underneath the Christmas tree? As Christians, as Jesus-followers, we hope for peace.

We hope for peace. But not just any peace. We are not like an exasperated old man shouting for some peace and quiet. We aren’t like a harried mom, driving kids to school, to sports, wishing for just a moment’s peace. Sometimes we may want these kinds of peace, but that is not the peace Jesus leads us to hope for. In the ancient song we read tonight, Psalm 85, the songwriter expresses the kind of hope we have in Jesus.

Nov 23, 2008 - Why Are We Thankful

This begins a standing tradition of posting my weekly sermons to this blog. Some may be pretty decent, some may be lousy, some may be full of typos (though I try to be pretty conscientious).  I welcome your thoughts and feedback.  Here's installment #1:

November 23, 2008
First Presbyterian Church of DuPage 8 am

1 Thes 5.16-18 -- “Why are we thankful?”

In four days it will be Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving begins one of my favorite times of year: the get-togethers with family, the waiting and reflection of Advent, and the excitement of picking out or handmaking just the right gift for everyone on our list. And then the hush and wonder of Christmas itself. It’s a beautiful time of year, even with the snow.

But very often the experience itself fails to live up to the hype and expectation. The expected snowfall turns to sleet, happy times with family and old friends ends up feeling awkward and estranged, we mistakenly give all of our friends and family socks and fruitcake for presents. More seriously, this season is often a time of heartache, loneliness, and loss. The cold brings with it pneumonia, the flu, funerals. At this time of year we’re haunted by the memories of those who are not with us. It’s difficult.

So my question this morning is, Why should we be thankful during this season? Do we call Thursday Thanksgiving simply because it makes us feel good to have a day off, a big dinner, and a chance to watch some football? Even more importantly, why should we be thankful at all? We see the world falling apart around us. We see ourselves falling apart, outside and in. Why should we be thankful?

In 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 16 through 18, Paul gives a command that places us right in the middle of these questions. Turn there with me and follow along as I read his words.
[16] Rejoice always! [17] Constantly pray! [18] In everything give thanks! For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

The Way Things Work

For as-of-yet-undisclosed reasons, I find myself contemplating what a functioning church might look like. Functioning is an important word in this sentence. You see, I tend to think of churches primarily in terms of the way they function, the way they work.

Our neighborhood church meets at the most important intersection of our lives. It is the place where the gospel is planted within us, where it begins to green and come to life and send up shoots toward the glorious Son, to grow in the baptismal waters of the Spirit, to feed on the true food of scripture, the place where the gospel cracks the concrete of our hardened souls and the place where it twists and contorts our twisted and contorted forms into the image of Jesus, God’s Son.

To state this with a little more precision: the church down on the corner (or in the storefront, in the strip mall, in the cornfields, etc.) works to change deceived, abused, self-hating, self-absorbed persons into the promise and the presence of the God’s kingdom. Too often we understand our local churches as collections, like baseball cards or Beatles albums: a church is a congregation of individuals whom God has saved. This ignores too much of scripture. If we hold the church to be a benign society of believers, we make static something God founded as dynamic, we make dead something the Spirit breathed life into, something Christ died to bring to life.

I don’t foresee much opposition to the claim that many of us first heard the good news in a church. I certainly did, Sunday after Sunday in what was then the little Bozeman storefront of Fellowship Baptist. Nor will many disagree that some people first hear the gospel somewhere else–at an evangelistic rally, a Good News Club, from a friend, over coffee. But like my sometimes-hero Karl Rahner said, regardless of where we are when we hear it, the gospel relentlessly seeks its fullest expression in the church (the Roman Catholic Church, if one is a good Rahnerian!).

At heart, this post is really a segue to the same old discussion of “what is the Gospel?” that often crops up on this blog. If the gospel meets us as individuals, then it will not matter where and with whom we live our lives. We could be Christ-followers just as well chained in a cubicle as meeting with a cell church. But if the gospel addresses us as persons (as it indeed and thankfully does!), then how can we resist as it blossoms into the most important elements of our personhood, our relationships?

I believe that the gospel Jesus proclaimed (and that we are called to proclaim) is about the coming near of God’s kingdom. I cannot open scripture without finding that coming near concerns our present, personal relationships. The gospel is not “spiritual” (note the quotes), it is not theological, it is not something we accept in our hearts and not in our hands. It is something as real as crying babies, as everyday as money, as concrete as stale bread.

And if this is the gospel, then what can our churches be but the places where we live as if we’re living in the real, concrete, everyday kingdom of God? Church is the place where we shed our false gospels of abstraction, of feelings and of doctrines, and begin to truly live in Christ. Our shabby local churches are the places where the gospel begins to push through our soiled exteriors to grow us up into the people of God.