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Text of the page (random words):
l america it took me a while to get over the initial sense that i was at a christian conference i couldn t help but scan the crowds for goatees and fanny packs and while the stereotypical christian conference elements were there the fanny packs were touting things like organic local harvest bread and the goatees were spewing fiery declarations that equal rights around sexual orientation should be understood as a justice issue in line with racial discrimination and gender inequality we wandered around the campgrounds together meeting new friends and running into old having our minds stretched and prodded by the likes of irish theologian peter rollins and episcopal priest paul fromberg conveniently enough peter and paul were my two favorite presenters of the weekend totally a coincidence collectively though not together they explored ideas about christology the eucharist belief and doubt what does it mean when we say things as part of a ritual that we actually don t agree with or believe if god is love what is god not are we simply trying to seduce a god who is revealed to be a fake when the temple curtain is ripped in two and if so what implications does that have for our worship my mind is taken to the fifth chapter of amos 21 i hate i despise your festivals and i take no delight in your solemn assemblies 22 even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings i will not accept them and the offerings of well being of your fatted animals i will not look upon 23 take away from me the noise of your songs i will not listen to the melody of your harps 24 but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream if god will not be seduced but rather is love this text seems like it has a lot to teach us like it has a lot to teach me this is the beginning i process my experiences at the pace of a three toed sloth and those questions are the ones i have been sitting with along with bazan s lyrical genius and to tell you the truth i m left with doubt upon climbing into bed last night it felt as if the existential prosecutors had planned an ambush under my sheets as i listened to david question god over and over i started or rather continued to question god i even believed that this was all a farce a human need that we fulfill by creating god in our brains that real enlightenment ceases to need the self motivating creation that we mistakenly name the creator this doubt will upset people it will not be exciting for my committee on preparation for ministry to read it will make my mother and father sad it will discredit peter paul and david in the eyes of much of the church this doubt really terrifies me and this doubt really is me and it really is you believe it or doubt it you can t have one without the other in my opinion this is why the wild goose festival is critical to our future as practitioners of christian spirituality because if true faith in the god of israel who is the god of all people and all things is going to continue it must continue amidst great doubts indeed faith can only be true if it is holding hands with doubt may we never be ashamed of our doubts a great thank you to the appropriately named peter paul and david and to the rest of the crew of people who made the 1st annual wild goose festival a reality in such a way that our true reality was laid naked before our very eyes may we never again be ashamed of our nakedness grace peace love faith hope and doubt to all posted in musings uncategorized tags belief christian spirituality church doubt love theology wild goose sermon romans 5 15 6 2 may 3 2011 leave a comment posted in uncategorized the wonder of salvation april 22 2011 leave a comment then he said jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom he replied truly i tell you today you will be with me in paradise luke 23 42 43 there is this really beautiful thing about the stories and letters and poems in this book but i don t find the beauty at its purest in intense academic study and i don t find beauty by reading the bible like a newspaper trying to extract from its pages without bias every detail of every story no what is beautiful about this book are often its holes the questions that simply refuse to be answered in the text and whether we want to or not whether we think that it is heretical or not this book simply does not allow us to engage it without the use of our imagination without the use of these two words that open so many doors i wonder and here in luke s telling of the story of the cross i wonder what the next line of dialogue would have been what did the criminal think how might he have responded here we have this menace to society who is literally in the process of being executed for crimes against humanity i know you ve all probably experienced this before it s as if once he had crossed the threshold of opening his mouth more ended up coming out of it than he had intended to actually say it is only after the other criminal has begun hurling insults at jesus that the co crucified finds the courage to speak the criminal s first words are spoken to the other thief in defense of jesus do you not fear god we have been condemned justly we are getting what we deserve but this man has done nothing wrong and then i imagine he turns his head or maybe he doesn t maybe he s too ashamed of himself even to look jesus in the eyes in either case our nameless criminal has opened the floodgates and out come the words that i doubt he had intended to speak but once he had started addressing the crucified king more intimately than anyone else ever does in any of the gospel stories simply calling by his first name jesus remember me not get me down from here not jesus save me because certainly that would be too much to ask for a sinner such as he was remember me when you come into your kingdom and then this dying condemned criminal receives the grace of becoming the last human being to whom our lord speaks before giving up his spirit wonder at these words with the condemned truly i tell you today you will be with me in paradise the text simply moves on here as if there was no response given maybe he was awestruck maybe luke just chose to leave it out or maybe upon hearing jesus word the criminal actually died we don t know its not in here but something had to have happened think about what he had just heard from jesus himself his wheels had to be spinning we read it now and can t figure out what jesus meant and we re not hanging on a cross waiting to die wondering at our fate or maybe we are jesus are you really talking to me i a condemned criminal will be in paradise that s too much i don t deserve it and i wasn t asking for charity i couldn t what is it like is today really today but its simply not there it is a hole and luke isn t stupid it is a hole on purpose because when jesus talks about salvation which is what jesus is doing here with his very last breaths the only appropriate response is wonder you can t describe it what is paradise i don t know but i know its good jesus didn t explain it he just promised it and in that promise of salvation the criminal receives the invitation and the freedom to wonder and when you are hanging on a cross waiting to die maybe the best thing that anyone could do for you is to take your mind on a field trip to paradise i wonder what it s going to look like and smell like and feel like and taste like i wonder posted in uncategorized what draws us together april 6 2011 leave a comment i was driving up to buckhead today to meet with a friend of mine who was in town from california for a few days i used to work for scott at a presbyterian church out there and since then we have developed a great friendship even if it is somewhat infrequent often as i drive i look around at the buildings surrounding my car i m more intrigued by architecture than i am knowledgeable concerning it and today received a bit of a revelation in my gazing as i pulled up to the red light there was large brick church building to my left that looked like it was probably one of those churches that fills up with stuffy rich people every sunday i located the church sign and this is about to get confessional my attitude toward the people who in my mind inhabit the pews was immediately set baptist i don t know what it is about that word maybe it s the people i knew in high school who were associated with that word but in my head i had quickly decided that those were christians who really didn t get it i told you this was getting confessional i figured that they were probably close minded elitist insensitive old people along with all their brainwashed children then i shifted my gaze from the sign back to the building itself there on the wall facing my car were five stained glass windows with five different scenes jesus at the table with his disciples jesus in gethsemane jesus carrying his cross up the hill jesus on that same cross jesus alive and outside of the tomb and i was suddenly made aware of my ironic sinfulness i am close minded i am elitist i am exclusivist i am certainly going to teach my children what i believe to be right but our reality is that no matter how fractured we may appear as a body we are unified in our depravity and more importantly we are unified in christ at the table where we are undeservingly invited to dine with jesus as well as with other disciples who deny and betray our savior we are unified in christ on the cross where even thieves are promised paradise and mockers are prayed for and forgiven we are unified in christ in the resurrection where we find hope in jesus as the first fruits of god s plan for all of creation and even though we are splintered we are unified in christ as members of the holy catholic church because it is christ who established the church my friend scott works for a church that stands on the other side of a fight within our denomination as matter of fact most everyone who has had a significant impact on my spiritual development is on the other side of this fight and yet they are my brothers and sisters and mothers we are one family and i am united to each one of them not by our shared rightness but by our shared lord and table i am thankful for the baptist church and for its windows for my baptist classmates and professors who have allowed me to begin redeeming my ideas of that title for my brothers and sisters and mothers of all expressions of faith who share in the ongoing work of christ in our world i m certain that we will continue to fight but i hope that we can hold one another to identifying first as family loving and respecting one another in the name of christ who was given without prejudice for the redemption of all posted in musings stories so good it needs a warning label march 24 2011 leave a comment romans 5 15 6 2 but the free gift is not like the trespass for if the many died through adam s sin much more surely have the grace of god and the free gift in the grace of the one man jesus christ abounded for the many and the free gift is not like the effect of adam s sin for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification if because of adam s trespass death exercised dominion through that one man much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousnes s exercise dominion in life through the one man jesus christ therefore just as one man s trespass led to condemnation for all so one man s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all for just as by the one man s disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man s obedience the many will be made righteous but law came in with the result that sin multiplied but where sin increased grace abounded all the more so that just as sin exercised dominion in death so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through jesus christ our lord what then are we to say should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound by no means how can we who died to sin go on living in it this is the word of the lord thanks be to god february 26 a video is uploaded to youtube that same day a blog is written in response to the video on february 27 a well known and respected pastor tweets 15 characters a link to the blog that was a responding to the video and by the end of february 28th the quickly penned blog had received over 250 000 unique page views and yes i was one of them and so the fight had begun countless blogs and tweets and facebook posts and sermons were written about the church s soteriological doctrines and because this is a seminary i can use the word soteriological in a sermon and you all now know if you hadn t already figured it out that the video that set this whole firestorm off was rob bell s promo video for his new book love wins a book about heaven hell and the fate of every person who ever lived the blog called bell a heretic and the tweet bid him farewell presumably from the church universal or from what is getting called orthodoxy in america these days either way he was out of something according to someone what is orthodoxy anyways is it a term that only applies to doctrine or does it apply to behavior as well is it always clearly defined in a way that any given statement of belief can be declared right or wrong black or white in or out is it something that needs to be defended with a sword with fences or both does it need to be defended at all and who get s to stake out the plot and build the fence who gets to wield the sword in this example when a new book questioned a popularly held doctrine of hell we got to hear from or read a number of people who unashamedly answered these questions from a firmly rooted position inside their fence some of them indeed clutching their weapons of choice now we ve got a newly declared heretic we ve got all kinds of articles about the importance of hell and we ve got at least one really confused seminarian even if we do want to say that rob bell is a sinner for his thoughts questions and teaching i thought that where sin increased grace abounded all the more i thought we were supposed to ask questions i thought we were supposed to wrestle with god and explore the free gift of new life in christ it seems instead like much of our church has responded to one man s probing and questioning and wrestling not with justification and life but with anger and with fear we don t denounce someone s teaching or throw someone out unless we think that they are a threat and the church has been doing it sincebefore there was a church and maybe we ve been right to cast certain people out at certain times when he was sleeping with his father s wife or when they believed that the holy spirit descended from the father but not from the son or when she served communion that one time before she was ordained or blah blah blah i really don t know when we ve been right...
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