Now, This Is a Funny Announcement…

We get a lot of bulletins in the office here. And occasionally we leaf through them to get ideas or see what other churches are doing with printed media. We got a good laugh out of this announcement today:

“THE POLISHING BRASS RAILS COMMITTEE AND OTHER WILLING POLISHERS, please meet in the sanctuary for a brief planning meeting after the worship service.”

You need a committee to polish brass rails? And what could they possibly be planning? Who falls into the category of “willing polishers?”

That reminds me of a great quote I heard a couple of months ago: “What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.”

I’ll be thinking about this for days…

How Can I Know the Will of God?, Part 2

Okay, so now that we’ve covered sovereign will and individual will, let’s explore God’s moral will and how God’s individual plan for us relates to that moral will. This is the part you’ve been waiting for, people!

For each person, what really counts with God is his moral will. Though God can guide you towards a job that is a good fit for you, you won’t be out of his “will” if you choose another job. I actually know a person that chose one job over another because their favorite Christian song was on the radio when they received a call-back from an employer. Honestly, that just makes Christians sound like crazy people! One job over another really doesn’t have that much spiritual significance. God can bless you in either one. What God really cares about is how you treat the people at that job and if you respect those in authority. What about which college to attend? If you’re not sure, pick the one you think is right for you. But above all, let your life reflect the goodness of God while you’re there. Should I go to Africa? Well, if you don’t sense God telling you “no,” and you have a passion to do that, then go. But if you choose to go, allow the compassion of Jesus to consume you as you minister to other people groups. No matter what choice you make, adhere to God’s moral will.

And here’s the best example of all - marriage. Who should you marry? Sorry, that’s not in the Bible, people. It’s your choice (but at least make sure that person wants to marry you, too ). What is in the Bible is how you should treat that spouse once you marry them. Moreover, knowing it’s your choice to marry your spouse places the responsibility for your marriage where it belongs: upon you and your spouse. God may help steer you towards a spouse that “clicks” with you, but you are responsible for making that marriage successful. But what about your “soul-mate,” that “one perfect person”? Don’t you think that enough divorces have occurred by now that everybody is married to the wrong person anyway? Your “soul-mate” is the one to whom you’re married right now. Treat them like they are and your marriage will drastically improve.

Here are the questions everybody is afraid to answer. Ready? Say you make a decision that is not popular with Christians who think they already know what’s best for you. Did you “hear” wrong if other people disagree or if things don’t go according to plan? Not necessarily. Just because things get difficult doesn’t mean you have chosen incorrectly. It just means things are difficult. Jesus had a rough time, too, you know. Nor does abundant blessing mean that you “heard from God” anymore than someone else. There are plenty of people who are successful despite their ungodly lifestyle. Most of all, just because you feel God leading you to do something sacrificial doesn’t mean that other Christians will not take advantage of your generosity. You can bet they will. But, since when does their self-centeredness make your decision wrong? You must decide that doing the right thing won’t change when other people see differently.

Can God “speak” to you deep inside so that you feel that he is leading you in a particular direction? Sure. But that doesn’t happen all the time. If you are unsure about what to do, then make the choice that reflects these timeless biblical truths: love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself, lay down your life for others, and if there’s a sacrifice to be made, don’t wait for someone else to “step up” - make it yourself.

Lastly, as a “charismatic” Christian, I believe God can break in with divine revelation. This is his primary means in helping you make decisions. In contrast to some Christian theology, I believe God would rather speak to your heart than use natural circumstances any day. But we have to be listening. And “fleecing” (like Gideon) is always a bad idea.  Does that mean that a personal prophecy should guide your decisions? No, but it can serve as a spring board – a call to investigate your options for the future.

Don’t be afraid of the idea that God wants to speak to you. After all, he does love you, you know. He doesn’t want to make all your decisions for you. He wants to walk with you through the decisions you make. When fear of acting outside of God’s will paralyzes you from making life decisions, it may be time to reconsider your view of God’s will. Don’t let fear of “missing God” keep you in a state of indecision. Move forward with life, knowing that God’s ultimate will (desire, intention) for you is to be in relationship with him.

How Can I Know the Will of God?, Part 1

My wife and I have made some tough decisions in the past few years – some that have affected much about the way we live and also challenged our understanding of the “will of God.” It’s been a learning experience, so I thought that I would share a few insights we’ve gleaned. Of course, our understanding is based on our personal experiences and may be different than yours…and that’s fine. As always, feel free to disagree, but at least take a hard look at why you may disagree.

Preachers traditionally talk about three different types of divine will: the sovereign, the moral, and the individual will of God. The sovereign will is usually seen as God’s hidden agenda that quietly guides history and world events. This idea is brought up when large scale events like natural disaster or spiritual revival occur. But Christians also talk about the hidden will of God in daily events as well…after all, “God works in mysterious ways.” So, many Christians also see God’s sovereign will as meticulous and detailed within the things they cannot explain. The moral will involves moral guidelines in the Bible and the Christian’s mandate to follow them. Verses like “Love your neighbor” and “do unto others…” apply here. Finally, then there’s the one everybody is obsessed with – God’s perfect will for each individual. Most Christians assume there is a highly detailed list of things God requires of us as believers. Part of the Christian walk is to “figure out” what God wants us to do with our life: Who should I marry? Should I go to the mission field? What college should I attend? And on and on they go.

The problem with all of this is found in the definition of “will.” I believe rather than some mechanistic, overly-structured, predetermined set of events, the biblical definition of will involves God’s desire for all of humanity, not just a few. That’s where the idea of “election” comes from. As we all know from politics, if you elect someone to do something specifically, they still have free will to change their mind and do something different. You hope that they won’t…but the potential always exists. God desires (wills) the best for our planet, however, our stubbornness and rebellion often side-track his good intentions. But his desire to have us near to him never changes.

So here is what I have come to understand as God’s overall sovereign will. As I stated here I am more Wesleyan in my theology and leave as much room as possible for free will to affect life in hopes of defending the goodness of God’s character. So, I see God as having a sovereign will but it includes broad, general goals like bringing creation to consummation and revealing himself through the work of Jesus Christ. God has cast a “net” around his creation, but it is a very wide net. Most importantly, God’s sovereign will is seen in the character of Jesus and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.  

For example, many Christians I have talked to explain the Holocaust as some form of God’s preordained, sovereign will. Yet, the tragedies of that time are somehow counteracted by a secret divine will that allowed “good” to come out of heartache. If that’s so, then answer this question: since when is the death of one life worth the salvation of another, much less millions of people? I just don’t buy that line of reasoning. Don’t you think God’s “will” would be for good to occur without tragedy? If that’s the case, then though there is a general sovereign will, there are a  lot of decisions humans make that fall outside of God’s intentions and wishes for them. These decisions are the ones that create disharmony, war, and tragedy in our world. The Bible is full of such examples: God’s disapproval of Israel electing a king, God’s remorse over Adam and Eve’s choice, Abraham’s bargaining with God over Sodom and Gomorrah.

So what about individual will? Well, that’s what drives most people crazy in life. Verses like Jeremiah 29:11 are thrown around in this category. And yeah, God has a “plan” for you…and here it is: to come to know him deeply and intimately, to accept Christ as the foundation of your faith, live a life that conforms to his Word, and live daily in his presence empowered by the Holy Spirit. Those are his “thoughts of peace and hope” toward you, the same as everyone else! What about all the other “life decisions” like which car to buy and who to date? Well, they’re not in the Bible for a reason. You have been given a life to live in honor of the King. Go live it in the way you think is most pleasing to him. God is happy to let you make decisions. He then works within the structure of your personal decisions to bring about good in your life. We may not be intelligent enough to do this ourselves, but God is easily resourceful and intelligent enough to work within the complexities of this world.

I’ll blog some more about individual and moral will in the next day or so…

Jesus and Me at 33

Most folks believe Jesus entered his ministry days around age thirty and was crucified around age 33. I (regretfully) turned 33 in September. Other than the normal depressing thoughts associated with getting older, I have been thinking lately about how young Jesus was. He was a very young man. We live in a society where someone can make an impact in their thirties but most folks don’t consider you “seasoned” until your forties. Executive level jobs are normally held for those in their forties and fifties.

Churches in particular value age as a factor in determining wisdom. Elder boards are full of people in their forties and fifties. Why do we value age in that way? Well, for one, people in their forties and above have had plenty of time to “calm down.” Their children have worn them out and they’ve stayed put in a job for at least a decade. If they have stayed married to one person, they’ve put in around twenty years. They make major decisions a little slower and are prone to weigh all the consequences of their actions. They have had time to “sift” through life and see what really matters. They’ve also had the chance to “prove” themselves to others as worthy of responsibility.

Jesus did none of that. He didn’t wait on anyone for anything. He launched into aggressive ministry without the consent of or regard for his rabbinical peers. And by today’s standards, Jesus’s ministry of healing and demonic deliverance would’ve been seen as a that of a crackpot revivalist, praying on the weak minds of the underclasses and undereducated. He would’ve been considered way too young to wield that type of spiritual authority. What’s more, Jesus’s ministry was supported by contributions, a large amount of which came from women: a gender class with its own issues of persecution and representation at that time.

Though that may be shocking to think about, what really makes me wonder most is: what was Jesus’s mindset? Not what he said, but what he thought that no one ever heard. Granted, he’s the Son of God. Sure, that’s obvious. But his thought patterns (if he was fully divine and fully human) must have at least somewhat reflected that of every 33 year old man. And though Hebrew culture at that time was very different than ours today, Jesus was still a guy.

I started thinking about this in light of my own behavior at age 33. Though I have moments of maturity…I honestly try not to have too many of those. I think there’s still a lot of “my twenties” in me at 33. I still act immature. I still have a lot of energy. I still don’t like people telling me what to do all the time. I still shout at the TV when my favorite football team scores a touchdown. In other words, I’m spunky. And I imagine Jesus was, too. I’ve calmed down a lot from previous years. I’m working on getting to a decade of marriage. That’ll calm you down. My kids wear me out – I occasionally find myself begging them to go to sleep. And what energy I have left, I have the illustrious distinction of allowing church work to take the last of it.

Jesus didn’t have a wife. Jesus didn’t have kids. He was a carpenter – and most scholars see that as more than woodworking. Jesus worked a brawny, scrappy construction job and probably walked up the road five miles to Sepphoris everyday to do it. Jesus was wiry and energetic – he’d stay up at night to pray while everyone else went to sleep. He said highly inappropriate things - stuff about eating flesh and drinking blood. He called religious people older than him rude and critical names, made fun of local lawyers, dismissed the rhetoric of the local politicians, and told incredibly outlandish stories. And then he’d pray for everyone that needed physical healing. He was young, fiery, intense, and, to some, intimidating.

But I think that’s part of the reason he could make it all the way to the cross. Beth and I were talking the other day about your twenties and early thirties. It’s like God “hardwires” you to be crazy enough at that time in life to push forward with having multiple children, finishing education, marrying someone, and working your way up the corporate ladder. And in your thirties, you still think it’d be cool to be in a rock band in your spare time!  At no other time in life do you have that level of energy to simultaneously sustain that much activity at once. It’s insane. Yet, I think that’s part of the reason Jesus ministered on earth at such a young, unacceptable age. It took a certain level of youth and intensity to be the Son of God.

I guess I’m saying that I find solace in that. Older people thought Jesus was an “upstart.” If he can wrestle with his youthfulness and meet the needs of his followers, then God can use me too. In many ways, Jesus lived the life of every person in their early thirties. Hopefully, 33 will be better to me than it was to him… 

I Like Atheists

I came across an atheist site the other day and read for a while. Most of what I saw was standard atheist fare. But I perked up when a well-meaning Christian on the site asked the others for proof from the Bible that God wasn’t perfect. The atheists happily obliged with several answers, two of which interested me.

I like atheists. They are usually good people. And many of the questions they pose concerning Christianity are valid. I have had some of the same questions and have aggressively searched for good answers to them. But in the end, religion requires faith. Even if I could “prove” ninety-nine percent of Christianity to a person, they would still have to believe in one percent. That one percent is whopper though – it encompasses things like the existence of God and the problem of evil.

Most atheist writings I’ve seen are deeply concerned with the character of God. What makes God worth following? Good question. I have found that most atheists are not full atheists. Actually, some would like to believe in deity. But most atheists reject a particular view of God. They see him as controlling of all events, yet unwilling to take responsibility when bad things happen or refuse to alleviate human suffering. Any “educational” lesson humans could derive from a God ordained disaster is immediately swallowed up by the horror of death, famine, disease, etc. Is the death of thousands worth any morality lesson? Honestly, I don’t blame them for rejecting that view of God. That’s not what I’ve come to understand about God anyway.

I have chosen to answer two objections of God given in response to the Christian on that site. The first is biblical and the second philosophical. These answers are out there for anyone to read. Unfortunately most atheists are too busy reading very angry books by Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris that reinforce their predetermined assumptions. And we know everything in those books is “spin-free,” right? Christians often do the same, refusing to interact with people who disagree with them and reading only Christian material for the sake of “strengthening their faith.” But our books aren’t spin-free either.

Response #1: God is not good because Jesus cursed the fig tree (Mark 11).

The gospel of Mark doesn’t tell us why Jesus did this. And it does seem kind of mean – what did that fig tree do to him anyway? Mark says that Jesus looked at the tree and only found leaves. What Jesus actually saw is that there were no taqsh on the fig tree. No what? Taqsh - the Palestinian word for little nodules that appear on a fig tree in early Spring, six weeks before the real figs start to grow. When Jesus saw only leaves (no taqsh), he knew the tree would never bear fruit again. It was barren and taking up ground where a perfectly good fig tree might bear fruit to feed the people. So Jesus cursed it, not because he was being rude or showing off to his friends, but because he was being eco-friendly. Jesus, the environmentalist. How about that? The misunderstanding occurs when people don’t look for the context that informs the biblical passage. How many more of those do you think we might have missed?

Response #2: God is not good/violent because Jesus got angry at the merchants in the temple (Matthew 21).

This response philosophically assumes certain things about God, mainly that a God who gets angry can’t be perfect. God must be free of all passion since passion denotes weakness. If you believe that, you’re not worshipping the God of the Bible, you’re more into what the Peripatetics and the Stoics were into. Atheists often assume (because Christians who don’t any different have told them so) that the Judeo-Christian God is calm, serene, and unaffected by the actions of human beings. The big fancy word for this is impassibility. People who believe this way allegorize the passages in the Bible where God gets angry, changes his mind, and expresses distress over the actions of humans. Unfortunately, to do this (and everyone from Tertullian to Luther has) is to cheapen the biblical view of God. Jesus was angry because the merchants were exploiting the worship of the Jews for money – people made in God’s image. That made him very angry and he did something about it. If anything, by acting out of emotional response similar to that recorded in the OT prophets, anger supports the divinity of Jesus, not dismisses it. And that’s the reason God is so great – he cares enough about you to get angry over injustice.

I’m not against atheism in the least. Most of them (not all – those who have made atheism their religion) are open to honest discussion as to why God does the things he does. They’re inquisitive and honest and authentic in their search. Christians should run to dialogue with them. If they ask something you don’t know, please don’t tell them they are going to hell. Go look it up and answer their question! They are on a journey…just like you.

Ah, First Sermons….

Any time you begin work at a new church, your first sermon can help or hurt tremendously. For me, it will be my first significant interaction with the majority of the congregation in a public forum. At larger churches, first sermons almost act as an interview since most of them have never spoken with you for 20-30 minutes. And first impressions mean everything. The staff at TFUMC are already giving me a bad time for exactly this reason. My boss-lady sent this to me on email last night…

 

Such a supportive group…

I must say that I’m a little anxious about it all. I’m preaching on a great passage: John 21 9-17 where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. So, for all your theo-bloggers and friends out there: got any good advice on this passage or a particular thing in the text that stands out to you? Don’t send me stuff from the New Interpreter’s Bible or anything – but I am interested in your personal reflections.

Bible Verses They Never Taught You in Sunday School…

I’ve been interested in gender descriptions of God lately. Of course, the buzz about “The Shack” has made this a hot topic again. Talking about this may freak some of you out. Not everybody wants to talk about God outside of male imagery. I personally think of God as father, mother, husband, wife, brother, and sister. He represents all those relationships to me and I respond to him within all of those as well. And though male imagery for God may be most dominant in our culture, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s biblically accurate.

For those who only see God as embodying male qualities and only sanctioning male authority, let me ask you a few questions. Jesus chose only men to be his disciples, right? That’s should settle it. But Jesus also only directly picked disciples of Jewish descent. So does that mean the church should only appoint Jews to positions of authority? No, the rest of the NT clearly states that Gentiles get in on the whole salvation thing, too. He’s another question: if biblical allegories for God such as “fire” or ”rock” or “tower” are meant to be representative of his nature, why don’t we literally pray “Dear Rock” or “Dear Tower Almighty?” We don’t because we haven’t been conditioned to do so. But it’s just as accurate as our prayers opening with “Dear Father” and that we have been conditioned to pray. Better yet, God describes himself as both a mistress and a slave owner in Psalm 123:2. For those who say, “If Jesus wanted us to call God ‘Mother,’ then he would’ve said so!”, does that mean it’s okay to call God “mistress” and believe that slavery is an action God condones? Things just aren’t that simple, are they? The reality is that all of those metaphors (includung father) are attempts to describe various aspects of God’s nature and cast anthropomorphic form around a genderless God.

So, is there biblical imagery that describes God in feminine terms? Sure. Here’s some:

In Psalm 70:5, God is described as our “helper,” (ezer) the exact same word used to describe Eve. The word actually doesn’t have feminine connotations, and is used to describe God 16 times in the OT. Now, there’s no problem if we respect the Hebrew meaning of the word which describes a helper who serves from an equal or divine position and never an inferior or subordiante one. Of course, if we translated it accurately, the game is up and women know the Bible sees them as equal to men.

Genesis 3:21 describes God as a seamstress, a domestic function primarily ascribed to females. Jesus breaks these cultural barriers as well. He washes feet and serves companions (female or slave “jobs” in first-century Judaism) and tells overworked women (like Martha) to take a break and rest her feet.

The Bible describes God as having a womb and giving birth in Jeremiah 31:20, Isaiah 42:14, and Isaiah 46:3-4. Paul describes the cosmic womb of God in Acts 17:28: “In God, we live and move and have our being.” Job 38:8-9 and 28-29 describes God as father, giving birth, and the womb of God all in the same chapter.

We constantly overlook the feminine imagery Jesus describes with Nicodemus in John 3:3-7: “You must be born from above.” Jesus uses feminine imagery of birth again in John 16:21-22 and then turns around and prays to “Father” in the garden before his crucifixion.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the nursing mother passages. Isaiah 49:15 and Numbers 11:11-14. Though scholars are still debating, El Shaddai may mean the God of many breasts! God describes himself as a comforting mother in Isaiah 66:12-13. Hosea 11:1-9 says Gods loves us as a mother lifts an infant to her cheek.

And the greatest mixed metaphor for God in the Bible? The distinction goes to Deuteronomy 32:18:

“You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; 
you forgot the God who gave you birth.”

Ah, what a beautiful, beautiful image of a God who supplies every need and refuses gender categorization.

Which God Do You Worship?

I was thinking about something the other day. I love the parable of the prodigal son and refer to it a lot when I teach. But I had never thought of it like this until the other day.

We all have images of God in our heads. Some are passed through the grid of our parental upbringing or maybe through our understanding of American culture. I think the parable of the prodigal son addresses that. Jesus is telling a story that contrasts his view of the Father with the images of God that the Pharisees had erected for the Jewish people. Jesus’s image of God specifically contradicts two forms of God we see in the actions of the younger and older sons.

The younger son’s vision of the father is that of a judge. That’s why he prepares his speech on the way home.  Why wait for condemnation to fall when you can go ahead and admit your guilt and declare your unworthiness, right? So that’s what the younger son did. His father came down the road and he immediately launched into his speech where he “pre-judged” himself as unworthy, a failure, and an embarrassment. But that’s not how the father in the parable judged him. He judged him worthy, accepted, and loved. This represents a better understanding of Jewish judgment: one of rescue, relief, and deliverance. I’ve talked about that here. In the Old Testament, a judge rescued God’s people from destruction, not condemned them in a court of law. But the father in this story took it even further: he says that it was “necessary” (v. 32) that they have a party for the younger son. The younger son, who assumed his transgressions would be met with fierceness and anger, was met with dismissal of his self-condemnation, riotous laughter, and dancing in the street. The younger son was dead wrong about who his father truly was.

The older son is little better. He sees his father as a slave owner. Hence his descriptions of working his fingers to the bone and never leaving the farm. It’s also why the older son was so angry about not receiving rewards and honors. He expected to be rewarded for his deeds, like an employee. But the father refutes the view that he’s a slave owner or task master also. He says “My dear child, everything I have is yours.” The father had trouble understanding the dilemma the older son faced. It would be like if you went outside to the garage, looked at your new Lexus, and bemoaned the fact that it wasn’t yours. Or going to your closet full of new clothes and saying, “If only these clothes were mine, I would be so happy.” The point was that the older son wasn’t a slave: he was the son. The father rejects the older son’s view of him as a slave driver as well.

The point? Jesus was telling us not only telling us who the Father was. He was also telling us who the Father wasn’t. He wasn’t the judge or the task master the Pharisees made him out to be. So why did the Pharisees project this image of God? A couple of reasons come to mind. First, it achieved the result they were looking for: compliance, obedience, control, racial exclusivity. Second, they were merely passing down to the population what they needed God to be for themselves. They needed God to be a judge and slave driver to perform. In other words, sometimes it’s easier to hold God at arm’s length and work for him rather than crawl up in his lap. Part of that is because, just like the younger son, we’re not sure God wants us in his lap – even when he says he does. We think God is there to judge us and give us a list of things to do that will please him.

But that’s not the God that either son faced in this parable. The younger son met a smiling Father who ran to meet him, gave him a big hug, restored him, and invited the town to celebrate with him. After insulting his Father publicly, the older son met a gentle Father who used terms of endearment to address him and reminded him that anything and everything he had was his. And that there was no reason to work for something you had been freely given.

That God – that smiling, dancing, laughing, forgiving, entreating, hugging, giving, celebrating God – is the one that delights in every spare moment you give him. Now that’s a God worth worshipping.

Did God Kill My Friend?

I had a friend pass away this past year unexpectedly. The initial shock was overwhelming – I didn’t cry for a couple of days until I overcame the numbness. This guy was older than me and was influential in my understanding of the Christian faith as well as what is appropriate within a ministerial setting and what may not be.  For that reason, I looked up to him alot. Sometimes when people pass away unexpectedly and they were particularly “good” people, you feel like the planet was robbed in some way – like we’re all gonna be worse for his absence and, in many ways, the town I live in will be.

However, in the course of all the eulogies and funeral stuff, there are bound to be people asking questions about why such a saintly man would pass away, someone who seemed to be significantly impacting his community for God. Most people assume that God in his omnicausal deterministic theocentric bliss - if he didn’t cause the tragedy - certainly allowed it for reasons unknown to the rest of us. As a pastor I used to have a sick feeling in my stomach as I attempted to explain why God didn’t save someone’s life. Honestly, theology has not produced any satisfactory answers and any answer I supplied a family member would have logical “holes” that they would discover if they thought long enough about it.

Some theologians believe that God is his sovereignty has ordained every single detail of life (including the bad parts) for his mysterious purposes. I know, I know…even writing it down makes it look ridiculous. That viewpoint is quite laughable and never makes any practical sense to anyone.  All it does is make people hate God silently when honestly they probably would fare better by hating him out loud. Peripatetic influence upon Christianity certainly played a large role in defining the attributes of God, but what really strikes me about such a position is that it runs cross-grain to the supposed goodness of God. If God is good, why does he cause or indirectly sanction evil? Others endorse the free-will model yet still believe that God “knows” everything that will occur in the future.  Atheists (for good reason) say, “If God knows about bad stuff but still lets it happen, where’s the love in that?” Good point – I certainly don’t blame them for asking. Process theologians emphasize the dependence of God upon humanity to the point where God is basically helpless in the face of potential tragedy. Obviously that belittles the sovereignty of God, which is not acceptable either.  Open theism attempts to rid Christianity of its Hellenistic presuppositions but still allow God to “be God.” It’s probably the healthiest theodicy available (and the one I most readily subscribe to), but it takes too long to explain to people when they are crying in your office.

So, what do you do? I think the best thing to do is to tell them you don’t know the answer. Because no one really has the answer. Wrangling over compatibilism or levels of omniscience does jack squat for everyday people.  As much as I would like for them to care, they just don’t. I’m finding myself, after seriously studying methods of theodicy, adopting the same position.  There’s something refreshing about saying, “I don’t know.” In the particular case of my friend, there were circumstances of free-will that led to his demise. Why were they not cancelled out by some other natural complexity within temporality? Beats the heck out of me! If God didn’t ordain the event, why didn’t he respond to prayers of loved ones for protection “quick enough” to save his life?  I have no clue. Sometimes, it’s appropriate to say, “It wasn’t the devil, and it wasn’t God, it was (in this case) a traffic accident and that’s all.” In previous years I would have shied away from that comment because I would not have defended God in saying it. As if saying “I don’t know” leaves God exposed in some way. But God really doesn’t need me to defend him, does he? 

All theology (including atheism) is speculative and informed by the personal experiences of the theologian. The theologians who fail to grasp this are the scariest ones. Once you determine that theology doesn’t have to be objective in order to be valid, you’re well on your way to finding answers to some difficult questions. Chances are that in the process, you’ll aggressively pursue God to understand your relationship with him as well. And the answers to questions like, “Did God kill my friend?” lie in a relationship, not in a system.

Death by Communion

I officially served communion for the first time this past Sunday - the first Sunday of each month. Since we have five ministers on staff, one of us rotates. I observed the first time out and I’m glad I did. The contemporary service handles communion similar to how I have administered it before, with intinction as the method – similar to the Baptist and charismatic churches I’ve been apart of. But First Methodist’s traditional service is very much a “high” service, including responsive reading and choral singing before administering the Eucharist. Everyone kneels at the altar and two teams serve about 30 people at a time.

Of course, you want your first communion in any church to be memorable…but not really in the way it was for me today. As I was passing the “blood of Christ” in tiny little plastic cups down the altar, something happened. If you have served communion before, you know that those little plastic cups can settle in the holder to the point where they are difficult to get out. One poor soul couldn’t get his cup out of the holder. So, I stopped mid-pronouncement: “This is the blood of Christ shed…try another one.” He said, “Does it matter which one?” I said, “It’s all the blood of Christ, man.” Yes, I actually said that out loud.

And he did - one that was right in the middle of the tray. This one wasn’t coming out either. So he decided to put some muscle into it…and that tiny plastic cup exploded all over the place. Plastic shards flew. It was hilarious, people. It took all my will power not to start laughing and he did the same. Ahhh, the beauty of serious church services…

I saw him a little later as he was picking up his kids. He was mortified and started apologizing. I said, “Yeah, we had to call an ambulance. One of the older people punctured his esophagus when he accidentally drank one of the plastic shards that landed in his cup. It looked pretty bad for a moment, but I think they have him stabilized by now.” All the color drained out of his face, “Really?” “No, man! Everything’s fine – don’t worry about it!” But for some reason, I don’t think my little joke helped very much.

I guess that brings new meaning to “whoever drinks this cup in an inappropriate/unworthy manner…”