The Sistine Chapel inspires wonder, beauty, and praise to tens of thousands of pilgrims each year.  Michelangelo, masterfully relates a mosaic of biblical stories evoking the grandeur of God and the remarkable, God-given ability to create given to the pinnacle of creation, woman and man.   Still, centuries later, people flock to the Vatican City to look up and to behold something of the mystery that is the relationship between the divine and humanity.

Julius II, by no means a saint, commissioned Michelangelo to paint the chapel in the early 1500’s.^[1]It was partially in response to Julius II’s military campaigns and his sale of indulgences that Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the door at Wittenberg.  The Medieval church, for all of its monumental shortcomings, widely patronized great artistic works ranging from paintings, to sculptures, to architecture.  The power players who commissioned these works, from popes like Julius II to the famous Medici family of Florence may have had mixed motivations for why they funded these artists and their projects but the reality is, because of their willingness to make something beautiful, something masterful, the world has been enriched.  Because of the audacious vision of patron and artist alike, their stories are still being told and the work that they partnered to create still leaves our world in awe.

The church for most of Western history was the primary benefactor of beauty.  As a church planter, one of my most challenging initial tasks is to fund the vision that God has given me.  Undertaking this work, I have been blessed to reconnect with so many people who have had a profound impact on my life.  I have been overwhelmed with the graciousness shown to me, the encouragement, the belief expressed in things like money and prayers.  As I’m knee-deep in this all-encompassing reality, I have begun to see the task differently.  I am sincerely not trying to get people to pay my bills, I am inviting them into the creative artistry of our creative God. If anything, the radical generosity and belief shown in me makes me work so much harder and makes me so much more conscience of stewarding these gifts well. Like David famously, saw the figure of his David statue in the stone long before he liberated him from his rocky prison, I see the beauty and transformation in the lives of individuals whose names I may not even know yet.  I see not inviting people to pay for a build but to patron a community, like the Sistine chapel, a mosaic of stories, the convergence of heaven and earth, the mystery of God embraced anew.   In short, we are not funding a church, we are funding a work of art, crafted by the Spirit of God.

The Sistine chapel will evoke something of the grandeur of God in humanity as long as it remains.  If we think the great works of art of our world are beautiful, and they are, think about the glory of a human soul, renewed and restored by the glory of God that we will able to see fully in eternity.^[2]C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce captures exactly this concept so simply and yet so brilliantly.  When we as the church, fund new churches, we are funding the artwork of the master craftsman (Eph. 2v10).  We are investing our resources in the Spirit of God to inhabit local spaces and to transform lives.  When God changes a life through our local churches, he builds monuments that will stand for all of eternity.   Funding churches is patronizing the architect of our souls to build a temple, a luminescent structure for all of eternity, of living stones.^[3]1 Peter 2v5.

Recently, I have talked to a lot of people in my sphere about the coverage of church planting in a conversation between Ira Glass and Eric Mennel on This American Life. I have been grateful that the podcast has sparked a lot of interest in my friends who don’t consider themselves Jesus followers in what we are doing planting a church. As a church planter, in the early stages of planting Ecclesia, a missional community in central New Jersey, any time I can talk to somebody about Jesus and church, I will take it a hundred times out of a hundred. But what I have also seen is that the coverage of church planting has left people feeling uneasy.^[1]This American Life aggregates a longer podcast series called Startup where Eric Mennel documents the work of Watson Jones and AJ Smith at Restoration Church in Philadelphia.I want to address a couple of the items that stood out to me and wrestle honestly with the tension of trying to build something from scratch without losing the soul of what a church that follows Jesus is: a community of worship and mission, shaped by the love of Jesus to announce the Gospel of restoration, salvation, and justice to its immediate context.

Just A Christian Copy of The Tech World?

The angle that the conversation surrounding church plants takes is that evangelical church planters are simply adapting the philosophies of the the tech industry. In the Podcast, Eric Mennel (of the Startup Podcast) states, “What the Christian world is trying to do is use the tools of Silicon Valley to create startups.” The hosts point out that there are conferences, seminars, and books all designed to help people take their vision from nothing to a fully functioning, self-sustaining operation. This is partially true and Mennel really focuses on this angle with AJ Smith. In Episode 3 of the Startup podcast, Mennel uses the framing question, “Does what makes you a good entrepreneur make you a bad Christian?” I can speak for many a planter and pastor when I say I have felt this tension in my own ministry. The pastor I have been shaped most by in my ministry is a man named Eugene Peterson. One of Peterson’s many powerful and insightful quotes is a direct affront to the church planting industrial complex, “The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.” This quote and the theology behind it has had a profound impact on my own vision and leadership. Part of leading with integrity, for me, is a congruence between ways and means. But full disclosure, I have also read a lot of books this year like Scaling Up, The Culture Code, and even Patrick Lencioni’s The Better Pastor that is a sort of parable illustrating a local parish priest awakening to better management practices available to him.

“The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.”

There is a tension here to be certain. But here’s the thing. I have seen that to grow as a leader is not simply becoming more spiritual, praying more, reading Scripture more. Pete Scazzero, in his Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast, talks about how he would often hide away in those activities when faced with some of the truly difficult, uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing aspects of leading. And believe me, I would read the Bible and pray all day rather than face another day of fundraising. And that would be an abdication of my God-given call to lead my church. For pastors, we are naturally lovers of people, we want to partner with God to see individuals, neighborhoods, and whole cities transformed by the love of Jesus. We love talking about the Scriptures and praying with people. But with that responsibility comes a burden to lead people. To suggest that pastors have nothing to learn from the world of business and technology is not just foolish, its arrogant. It also suggests to those that we serve and lead from those fields that their everyday world is somehow unredeemable, a vocation altogether removed from the life of the church. I think there is a humility and an affirming of the business world that happens when churches and their leaders listen and ask questions. Certainly, as John encourages his recipients, we must “test the spirits” (1 John 4) but there is much wisdom to be found outside the church. We are right to seek it, to form it to the shape of the crucified Jesus, and to learn and grow from it.

The Heart Of Church Planting

The assertion that the Christian startup world is just copying the tech startup world ignores two of the fundamental realities of church planting and church in general: relationships and contextualization. I find it interesting that the This American Life, and the Startup podcast, to a large extent ignores the relational elements of Watson Jones and AJ Smith’s work. They fall into the same trap that many Christians fall into, focusing only on Sunday morning as the fruit of the ministry. But what are Watson and AJ doing Monday-Saturday? They are incarnating the neighborhood, they are walking the streets praying for people, they are interacting with business owners, listening to neighbors. In short, they are loving the place that they live. They are learning the rhythms of that part of Philadelphia, reading the culture to see where the needs of their community and the power of the Gospel meet. I will be participating in one of the Incubators, hosted by Tim Keller’s City To City (referenced in the pod). And the whole focus of the program is not how to build a thriving organization, its how to be shaped by the Gospel in such a way that your city thrives because your church is there. 

A brief aside. Glass and Mennel are right to point out that church planting organizations often focus on booming suburbs or gentrifying neighborhoods where income is plentiful, population is increasing, and the soil seems right for mega-church growth. There are two ways to look at this, one decidedly more cynical than the other. First the slightly shadier version of events, its been shown that churches grow rapidly in predominately white, emerging suburbs so if your prone to think that church is all about money, well you may be onto something at times. Second, its a numbers game. Right now upwards of 90 people a day are moving to expanding urban centers like Austin, TX, Charleston, SC, and Nashville, TN. You would be right to presume that church planting organizations and planters are working hard to plant in those areas and if you look at it from a strictly altruistic perspective, it makes sense. Churches that are interested in planting are all about the maximum number of people hearing and responding to the Gospel; therefore they are going to the places where the most people are. There are certainly significant layers to this sort of perspective on planting, as church planting, like gentrification, often ignores the historic shape of a neighborhood instead crafting in the image of the newest residents.

The denomination I am a part of, the Evangelical Covenant Church, along with many other incredible, historic expressions of the Christian faith aren’t chasing the latest, hippest locales. They are seeking planters that love a place enough to listen to its hurts, to know its pain, to know its longings and who want to help the people there see the power and beauty of Jesus’ love. We are planting in a semi-urban area that is not gentrifying and is not gaining population. It is among the counties with the highest income disparities in the country and is a place where over 170,000 people identify with “no religion.” We are not doing this to be the newest, coolest church in a trendy area. There is nothing trendy about Ewing, NJ! We are planting here because we can partner with several other churches already here that are doing faithful Gospel-centered ministry and can be an expression of the Kingdom of God here in a place that we love.

One thing I did really enjoy about the Startup podcast is that it casts church planting and really, leadership, in its true light. Leadership is not flashy or remarkable. Leadership is suffering. I commend Watson and AJ both for their incredible vulnerability during this series. Eric Mennell is dead-on when he tells Ira Glass about Watson and AJ’s work, “At some point no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, either people come or don’t.” 99% of the church planters I have met are just people who love Jesus, love the people of a certain city, and are perhaps just crazy enough to think they can start something that will help those people find that same Jesus they found. They are not people who are trying to get rich, they have signed up for a path with incredible uncertainty from a career and financial security standpoint in the hopes of seeing the love of Jesus taking root in their neighborhoods. If you are skeptical that churches are just like other organizations, focused simply on the bottom line, the church has certainly earned your cynicism. Hopefully, This American Life, didn’t simply confirm all your suspicions but raised some questions. If so, your local church planter in bars, coffee shops, and walking the streets praying for you, would be happy to tell you more about their church, and even more happy to listen to your story and tell you about Jesus.

In John 18-19,  Jesus is apparently on trial before Pontius Pilate.  But John, in a brilliant stroke of narrative weaving demonstrates that it is Pilate and the whole system of imperial politics that actually stand in the docket.  As the trial progresses, the reader is privy to the internal struggle of Pilate.  He suspects Jesus of nothing but innocence and he knows that he should set him free.  In fact, he tries, really hard.  He offers to release Jesus in accordance with custom, he tries to accommodate their desires by having Jesus ruthlessly whipped, all the while maintaining that he finds no case against him.  But the fervor of the crowd only grows.  After whipping Jesus within an inch of his life, he parades him before the vitriolic throng in a purple robe and a crown of thorns.  “Here is your king,” he mockingly announces, all the while completely unwitting to the prophetic weight of his words.  And the crowd responds exactly the way we would expect sinful humanity to respond when confronted with perfect, unflinching love:  Crucify him!

Pilate sees the stakes clearly now.  He is caught between his conscience and the political fallout.  And make no mistake, for Pilate, if he can’t keep this situation under control, there will be hell to pay.  If he handles this poorly, a delegation from Jerusalem will set out for Rome to complain to the emperor about Pilate.  Pilate could lose what little prestige he has or worse ^[1]in 37 AD, Pilate is tried in Rome for the unwarranted murder of Samaritan pilgrims. Knowing he has to get himself out of the middle of this no-win situation, he tries to release Jesus.  But the crowd has him and they know it:

“If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.”

Throughout the course of this election cycle, many well-intentioned Christians feel like they have been pulled in two different directions. Maybe you have heard statements like this during the past year:  “If you vote this way or for that person, you’re not being faithful to God.”  Much like Pilate, American Christians seem caught between two uncompromising realities.  But maybe there is more to it.  You see, Pilate’s problem was not that he had to choose between his conscience and the political ramifications.  Pilate’s problem, like the conundrum facing many Christians in this election, was that he had the options reduced for him to a formulaic binary.  It’s either A or B.  Left or Right.  Free him or crucify him.

For instance, many American Christians feel as though they have to choose between the lesser of two evils.  On one side, well-meaning individuals will say that they simply cannot vote for a person who is “pro-choice” all the while ignoring the fact that the opponent is an openly racist, neo-fascist who has been accused of sexual assault on multiple accounts and who has asked the joint chiefs why we don’t use nuclear weapons on our enemies and so, in my humble opinion, can in no way can be classified as “pro-life” simply by spouting empty promises about overturning Roe v. Wade.

Many, upon reading that above statement will feel as they have me pegged.  Just a know-nothing millennial who has been blinded by the liberal media and doesn’t understand how things work in the real world.  If you read the above condemnation as an endorsement of the candidate from the other side, you are falling into the exact dichotomy that I am trying to help the Church reject.   It’s exactly at this intersection that I want to make my plea to Christians from every end of the political spectrum:   do not be conformed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of your minds and be able to discern the will of God(Rom. 12:2).  When the world presents us with two bad options, we don’t, like Pilate, choose pragmatism over principle.  We don’t wash our hands and go against every ounce of our conscience because “sometimes you put your Christian values on pause to get work done” (actual quote from Ben Carson). No, in the face of absurdity A and absurdity B, we respond as Jesus did before Pilate:  we witness to the Kingdom that is not of this world and when any political party tries to co-opt our faith for their cause, perhaps silence or suffering are our best recourse.

Politics are ambiguous, plain and simple.  Whether you vote Left, Right, or simply “no thanks,” it is highly likely you are being asked to compromise the values of the Kingdom (Matt. 5:3-11 for instance) in some way because America is not the Kingdom.  So what’s the Christian to do?  First, we do not allow our decisions to be made for us.  This is what happened to Pilate and its what’s happening to many white, evangelical Christians along the lines of the abortion debate.  Saying one candidate is pro-choice and one is pro-life is reductionist and may help you sleep at night but is not a conclusion with any basis in reality. Second, we are people who confess our own sins.  The ambiguity of politics should humble us not allow us to demonize those who think differently.  You may wonder how anybody who claims to be a Christian could vote for a “pro-choice” candidate and miss the possibility that your Christian sisters and brothers of color are asking how anybody who claims to be a Christian could vote for a racist.

As Pilate tries one more time to wiggle his way out of crucifying Jesus, he asks the crowd, “Shall I crucify your king?”  The crowd responds, “We have no king but Caesar.”  The binaries are unflinching.  The reductionist rhetoric does not bend, it grind us down into bureaucrats merely following orders.

But there is a third way.

It’s not a way that leads to political power or economic security.  It’s not a way that insulates us from pain or danger.   It is the way of Jesus.  It’s the way of the cross.  The way of confronting evil and injustice with suffering and perfect love.  The way of reconciliation.  The way of bearing witness to a kingdom that is not of this world.  I pray that the American church will rise above the fray, especially the rhetoric that suggests that the fate of the free world somehow rests on this election.  Empires rise and fall, the Kingdom of God will stand forever.  I pray that we will renew our minds to reject the talk-radio rancor and seek what it means to love our enemies or at least those who think differently.  I pray that we will allow our hearts to be washed and not simply wash our hands.  Grace and peace.

I cried today. Honestly, the reason why feels thoroughly foolish and hypocritical. If I were truly integral in my faith in Jesus, the one who welcomes the outcast, the lonely, the refugee, and the little children, I would cry everyday at the things that happen in our world. But I cried today not because of the plight of an ever-growing number of the Syrian diaspora, or because my own government is both ignoring United States citizens in Puerto Rico and separating families at the southern border in an act that is both cruel and demonic. No, today I cried because Anthony Bourdain decided to end his life.

Just last night my wife and I were watching as Bourdain shared a cold beer and some spicy noodles with Barack Obama at a hole in the wall in Hanoi. Parts Unknown became for Courtney and I, a periscope to a world beyond, a no-cost way to satisfy our own curiosity and wanderlust in the decidedly grounded stage of life that is having three young kids. I find myself always attracted to people like Bourdain—grumpy, smarmy, and cynical and yet radically compassionate, humble, and wise. I would assume from the show that Bourdain and I share  different worldviews but I also know, if we could sit down to a cold beer in a sweaty taqueria in Guatemala, we would find ourselves not all too dissimilar.

Bourdain said in a previous episode of Parts Unknown that he spent over 200 days a year traveling, exploring, and filming for his show. Christian thinker Mark Sayers in his book, The Road Trip That Saved The World, illuminates the Jack Kerouac-saturated world that we all live in. For Kerouac, life was not a destination, to be rooted was to be restricted, repressed. For Kerouac, and for subsequent generations of people, life is a journey. Sayers writes:

So why do we choose to view life as a journey? How did Kerouac’s image of the road become so applicable to how we live and think? Well, modern life is a confusing business. The culture of home, in which everyone subscribed to one worldview, has disappeared. Now, every moment of our lives we are faced with countless decisions.^[1]p. 39

The chains of a mundane existence could only be broken “on the road.” Bourdain lived his life as a disciple of Kerouac—complete with an accompanying battle with addictive substances. For many of us, we may forsake the drugs but embrace Kerouac’s ideals. Travel, adventure, freedom, youth. We live an Instagram-filtered life of which Bourdain is the prototype, the veritable “Most Interesting Man In The World”. Perhaps one last time, in his grievous pain, he is beckoning us to a different perspective, saying, “Pay attention, things may not be as they appear.”

I would not presume to know anything about Bourdain’s life other than what he revealed to us on camera.  From everything I have read, it seems that he was a man who had quite a lot going for him: a beautiful daughter, an exciting, fulfilling career, and a great reputation as a friend and advocate. Much will certainly be written on how we should never seek our satisfaction in those things. Whatever his demons were, I simply want to offer a prayer for a man who inspired me to want to live more gratefully in the individual moments of my life, to seek to be delightfully surprised while well outside my comfort zones, and to just shut up and try new things. I pray that Anthony, maybe for the first time, would know what it means to be home.

Anthony Bourdain was a luminary in the modern world, somebody who not only reminded us that life is a journey but that to journey requires humility, a readiness to ask questions, to ask a question, take a big bite of something delicious, and listen. And in living out the modern ideals of freedom and exploration in a way that most of us could only dream (which is why we so readily lived vicariously through him), Bourdain gave us all a quite unexpected gift. I pray that just as he gave so many of us a lens to see places that we would never otherwise see that his life and death would illuminate the world that we see everyday, in all its mundane glory, in a fresh way. He showed us that though our passports may not be stamped full of exotic locales, the most beautiful and interesting things about life truly are universally local. Whenever we share a good meal, cold drinks, laughter and curiosity, we share our lives. We share what it means to be human in the truest sense of the word. Most of all we share a glimpse of what Jesus wants to offer every person. What  it means for us to be at rest, what it means when our striving ceases, what it means to be home.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Rest in peace, brother Anthony.

I love Baker Mayfield. He led the University of Oklahoma’s football team with an infectious flair and joy that filled every Sooner fan with pride and belief. And now he has the chance to do the same for the most beleaguered and tortured franchise in all of sports: the Cleveland Browns. I am fascinated by the theater of it all. Is Baker physically gifted enough to play at that level? Is it possible that the first player ever to be selected first in the NFL draft after being a walk-on in college—not once, but twice—can channel his singular charisma turn into collective belief for a whole city?

I am so excited for what happens next.

But I can’t watch.

The reason is simple. I can’t watch because too many of my black pastor friends are saying “no more” to a league that, with its latest ruling on player conduct during the national anthem, demonstrated yet again that it is perfectly willing to conflate political agendas with its bottomline. If you’re going to come back at me with a.) “its completely understandable for employers to deter employees from demonstrating while on the clock” (totally fair) or b.) “they are disrespecting the flag” (they aren’t) or even c.) “the policy is almost exactly the same as the NBA’s” (it is), just trust me I have thought about these explanations. Prior to kickoff, the NFL holds elaborate patriotic demonstrations, with liturgies of solemnity exceeding most Sunday morning church services. The NFL gladly stages their players and coaches as altar boys escorting that most sacred object, a football field-sized American flag (itself a violation of flag code) and even more gladly cashes the check that comes with football being America’s game. But what they didn’t realize was, many of these men are very smart, disciplined, compassionate men. They saw not only that there is a pattern of  violence directed specifically at black men by police; they also saw, like good biblical prophets, that the flag and the anthem were symbols that could be megaphones for the resistance.

And, from the NFL’s perspective, things have gotten out hand. I was at Lincoln Financial Field for an Eagles home game this past year when Malcolm Jenkins stood, fist raised, as Chris Long placed his hand on his back. Jenkins’ courage, the power of that one defiant hand, brought me instantly to tears. The only response of those in power to that kind of truth-telling is to write laws, to tell the marginalized “shut up and dribble,” or to label to them “animals” or “sons of bitches.”

My friends have walked away, far more courageously and far earlier than I was willing.^[1]The information available on CTE and the players who have retired prematurely along with issues of domestic violence related to football are also major factors in this discussion.You don’t have to agree with my reasons, you really don’t. In fact likely most of my black friends will still be watching come September rooting for teams that are inferior to the Philadelphia Eagles.  One of the most influential pastors for me is Dr. Derwin Gray,  himself a black man, former NFL player and a huge supporter of the league. And many of the same players I am writing to praise for their courage would say, “Don’t stop watching, this is our platform!” But as for me, I am trying to actually listen to people of color in our country and to not patronize businesses who profit from their work while disregarding their concerns. And there are a growing number of black pastors saying, “Why are we supporting a business that is predominately staffed by black players yet completely tone-def to what they stand (or kneel) for?”

For once, I am going to use not only my words but my privilege to stand alongside them. Its a microscopically small gesture, even less significant than Chris Long putting his hand on Malcolm Jenkins’ back. You don’t have to agree with me, I will not be ending our Sunday morning gatherings at church by telling people not to go home and watch the NFL or constantly reminding my friends that I am not watching this season.  I will miss tuning into the NFL after a long day of ministry and will certainly cheer on Baker Mayfield’s inevitable success from afar, but my sisters and brothers are worth infinitely more than entertainment.

Read Psalm 25

Psalm 25 is an exercise in contrast. David is struggling, burdened by the consequences of his sin. The gravity of his guilt is like a millstone around his neck. He cries out :

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart, and bring me out of my distress. Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.^[1]vv. 16-18

The consequences of his decisions have laid a heavy burden upon him. Crushed under the weight of his guilt, unable to move, David remembers another way. He considers the ways of the Lord:

Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.  Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O LORD!  Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.  He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.  All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.^[2]vv.6-10

Maybe you have been here. Stuck, heavy-laden by the accumulation of your own sin. It’s an impossible place to be in. Walking through the world feels like you are walking on the ocean floor with intense pressure compressing your very soul. And its here at the moment when our soul feels the heaviest that its actually the lightest. David says:

To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

Lifting our souls to God from the depths is not like Atlas lifting the world. In lifting our souls to God we find that the Lord is not a pallbearer struggling to hoist our unwieldy, oaken casket.  Rather, his mercy makes our struggles as light as a feather. He does not downplay our rebellions or make them out to be somehow less than they are. Rather, he exhausts them by taking the weight upon his shoulders, thus emptying sin of all its weight. We can lift our souls to the Lord when we can’t even lift one foot in front of the other because he has made known to us his ways, and his way is easy and his burden is light.

Lift Your Soul

Are you weary? Are you heavy laden? Does each day feel like you carry the weight of the world? Lift your soul to the God of your salvation. Wait on him.

If you were to turn on the news, there is very little in the way of observable data that would suggest that an all-powerful, all-loving God currently presides over the world as its one true sovereign.  Leave the events that the news details aside, would a loving God really suffer the inanity that floods the airwaves of the 24/7 news programs?    If we were to accept the notion that there was some integrating force to the disparate, chaotic nonsense that saturates the front pages of every news website, it would seem any thoughtful person would conclude that this ruler is quite terrible at the business of actually governing the world.  And yet, in the biblical narrative, almost hidden between the astounding resurrection of Christ at the end of each gospel account and the birth of the church in Acts 2 is an event that gives clarity and shape to both events, an event largely ignored by the western Church:  the ascension of Jesus.

Yes, the biblical claim is that Jesus sits at the right hand of God almighty, enthroned as the world’s true Lord reigning right now.  So what on earth is he doing up there?  What does it mean for Jesus to be Lord in the here and now?  First, let’s examine some distortions of this claim.  The Epicureans were the descendants of the philosopher Epicurus.  Although this perspective later came to be associated with wanton pleasure-seeking, Epicurus did not promote this sort of behavior.  Epicurus merely taught that the gods, whomever they are, exist in eternal bliss and are unaffected and disinterested in the affairs of mortals.  His legacy found its most influential expression in the Enlightenment in what was referred to as deism, essentially that God was an eternal watchmaker that built the timepiece, put the battery in it and left it to function however it would.  Thomas Jefferson famously claimed to be an Epicurean.   In a letter written late in his life to William Short, he wrote:

Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. – Thomas Jefferson, October, 1819

Notice, for Jefferson it is Epicurus who tells us how to govern ourselves, Jesus is just a nice add-on.  Separation of church and state, if you will.  As NT Wright often points out this is the fundamental assumption of the Enlightenment that God is the ruler of heaven and he stays up there and leaves the governance of the earth to humans.  Jesus is Lord thus implies the dualism that Jesus is Lord of the heavenly realm but can hardly be bothered with intervention in the earthly sphere.

The second distortion of the claim Jesus is Lord touches less upon politics and more upon theodicy and providence.  The Stoics, a philosophical school which gained prominence in the early centuries of the common era Roman Empire, share a lot of similar convictions to Christians.  There are even apocryphal letters, fabrications of later history, between Seneca and Paul. For the Stoics, for women and men to allow their emotions and impulses to govern their behavior is the height of vice and results not in freedom but the debasement of what it means to be human.  The stoics believed that the world was initially constructed out of divine matter (Gk. pneuma meaning “spirit”) and that eventually the world would be dissolved by the deity into primeval fire.  For the stoics, all of existence was an expression of the divine will, they were pantheists for whom the divine operated in every occurrence of nature and human interaction, and thus everything truly happened “for a reason.”

For Jesus to be “Lord” in the biblical sense did not entail either of these trajectories.  He was neither the Lord of heaven alone and subsequent absent landlord of earth nor the micromanager of the cosmos.  Jesus’ lordship like, it seems, all of the most hallowed and beautiful Christian claims is a paradox.  A paradox of distance and nearness.  In the distortions of Epicureanism and Stoicism we see an overemphasis upon one element of the truth but the Gospel continually shows itself capable of holding seemingly disparate parts in concert together.  Jesus’ lordship is one of distance, transcendence.  His resurrection has affirmed him as the world’s true Lord, the king of kings to which all earthly authorities will give accounting for their stewardship over their peoples and resources.  Paul describes this present reality in Ephesians 1:

20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Jesus is enthroned, he is the one to whom all owe allegiance.  But he is not simply ruling elsewhere.  I think the temptation here is to think of Jesus’ reign in terms of some of our cultural stories like Tolkien’s Return of the King where the deposed sovereign works to reoccupy their rightful throne that is currently subsumed by dark forces.  For the biblical timeline, Jesus has already done the work of deposing evil on the cross, by absorbing the full weight of sin and death and exhausting their powers.  The ascension is Jesus’ sabbath rest after recreating the world, he sits down at the right hand of the Father and beckons the whole world to enter into his rest.  Jesus is risen and reigning, resting in the completion of his fulfillment of all righteousness.  Right now.

His Lordship means transcendence, but to be truly transcendent is to transcend every distance.  He is near.  He is God with us, the one who will never leave us or forsake us, in the heights of heaven or the depths of sheol, he is there.  There is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from his gracious presence.  Jesus’ reign is not that of an  austere demagogue signing executive orders from heaven but the loving shepherd leading and walking alongside his people, even in the valley of the shadow of death, even to the end of the age.

Distance and nearness.  Power and pathos.  As Christians we are called to live out this paradox, as witnesses to the Lordship of Christ, in the worlds that we walk in.  Jesus’ has exercised his sovereignty in emptying himself fully entrusting his life in the hands of the Father.  He has given us his divine Spirit to do the same.  It may seem a tautology but we can live out the Lordship of Jesus because Jesus is Lord.  We enact and embody his power whenever we, together as church communities, embody the alternative Kingdom, when we refuse the pragmatics of party politics and instead bear unique prophetic witness even at great cost to self.  We embody his power when our we receive the grace of his rule and our lives and words announce the resurrection and reign of King Jesus.   We incarnate the nearness of our God when we suffer on behalf of the world.  We find strength, hope, joy, and yes, even resurrection in those places because our God, King Jesus, is with us always.

The rest of Acts bears witness to the Lordship of Jesus.  The mysterious Spirit of God descends upon the people enabling them to live out this Lordship.  They respond not by grasping for power but rather by bearing witness:  praising God, delighting in the words of Scripture and the surprising and beautiful story they tell about Jesus, sharing their stuff, taking care of widows, healing the sick, proclaiming the reality of the resurrection, and bearing prophetic witness to the emissaries of the Roman governor that Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.

Envision the route that you travel to church each week. Maybe you drive past suburban strip malls and dozens of other churches. Perhaps you navigate the subways, hoping not to see a rat playing on the tracks and hurrying past homeless people who somehow managed to survive another night. Now think about the space you meet in to worship. Perhaps you meet in a sleek, refurbished warehouse, maybe you meet in a school cafeteria or someone’s home. Maybe you even meet in a building that was designed for the sole purpose of being a church. Whether you travel by foot, car, or train and whether you meet in a comedy club or a traditional church building there is a striking dissonance that confronts us all as we enter the doors to worship.

The earth is the Lord’s and and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.

This is the claim of Psalm 24. The worshipper, upon entering the temple of Solomon, hears this big opening chord resounding, inviting her to worship. But then she thinks about her journey, even to arrive at the temple. How could all of it, all of the things she has seen, all of the places she traversed, all of the people she crossed paths with—how could it all of it be the Lord’s? It doesn’t add up. Some of it seemed so mundane, some of it so painfully commercial, some of it just plain evil. And then the people. So many people going about their days, so many of them with no thought of God or existence. They belong to the Lord?

The world that we live in and the world of worship seem like two completely different worlds altogether. But there it is right there, the earth is the Lord’s, not some other place, not heaven, this place, this town, this neighborhood, these people.

So how do we begin to reconcile these two worlds? Psalm 24 presents us with a radical reorienting of our imagination and a subsequent way of walking in the world. First, we have to allow our imaginations to be recalibrated. The questions, presented in call-and-response fashion at the end of the psalm are not questions seeking an answer but rhetorical questions inviting remembrance. “Who is the King of glory?” Who is the king that can hold under his reign the world that we just walked through and the world of worship? Who is the king that doesn’t further separate them into secular and sacred but harmonizes them? The answer given is the same answer given to Moses when he asks the blazing bush, who should I say has sent me? The divine name—the Lord. To declare that the Lord is Lord of all of existence is not to exercise blind faith but to shape our imaginations to the mold of the kingdom. Worship is a discipline of seeing that changes the way we view everything.

Second, how do we live in a world such as this? When we walk out of the doors, squinting in the bright sunlight with our minds freshly challenged to see in a new way,does it change anything about how we actually live? The psalmist tell us that the ones who will stand in his holy place are those who “have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.” Many have thought clean hands and pure hearts required avoidance, like Pilate constantly washing his hands of the world. But Jesus shows us that the path towards purity of heart and hand is not avoidance, rather it is incarnation. Clean hands and pure hearts are not the product of avoiding stain from the world. They are hands that bear the scars of Jesus, the one who ascended the hill of the Lord, on behalf of the world. When we as Christians walk the world as he did, in love and in service, we live out of the overflow of the new imaginations shaped in corporate worship. We live out the declaration that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it when we see every corner of our lives “charged with the grandeur of the glory of God.”^[1]Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur. We live out that every person is beckoned by the freedom and love of God when we lift Jesus up and he draws all people to himself.^[2]John 12v32

The psalm invites us, lift up your head, that the King of Glory may come in. In worship we hear the call afresh, lift up your head, see the world as it really is. Stand in the holy place of God’s presence so that you might see all the world is infused with the glory of his Spirit.

Jesus Weeps

There are two times that Jesus is recorded weeping in the Scriptures. Once as he stands at the tomb of his good friend Lazarus, lamenting the loss of his friend and face to face with the specter of grave.^[1]I preached a sermon I am particularly proud of on this text here. The second time is found upon his entry to Jerusalem. The last week before he is crucified, Jesus enters the city riding on a colt. The people welcome him as a conquering hero. You see, in their minds the fact that he’s riding a colt is a minor detail. They all have heard about this Jesus, the miracle worker who may even be God’s Messiah, the anointed one who would finally bring about the judgment of God upon the Romans. The people want bloody revolution, they want a fight and here, finally, is one who might be God’s chosen instrument in bringing victory and vindication. Sure, they’d like their king to be on a stallion, standing tall above the crowds on a stately horse, but maybe, they ventured, all he could find was a a colt. For the writers of the gospels, however, Jesus’ chosen vehicle, the colt, is not an ancillary curiosity but expresses the very point of the story. The fact that he is not on a war horse tells us everything about what he says as he stands far off from the city crying over its coming fate:

⁴¹ As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, ⁴² saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.

The Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans

Approximately 40 years from Jesus’ fateful ride into Jerusalem, the war horses will come. Except they won’t be carrying the Messiah, they will be mounted by Roman generals leading legions of Roman soldiers to march upon Jerusalem. The people of Israel will gear up for war thinking this is a battle like the days of old when their own generals went by the names of Joshua and David. In days of old God would speak to the leaders of Israel before the battle, commanding them to be faithful in order to ensure victory. The problem in this instance is that God has already spoken, in fact he came himself to speak, and he what he said to the people staring down the barrel of the Roman gladius is simple, “Run, don’t fight.” But as Jesus foretold, they missed that word and thus they fight. They fight because that’s the only way they can envision conquering. They fight because they think that’s what God wants them to do.

And they lose. They lose everything. Josephus, a Jewish historian on the Roman payroll, records the horrors visited upon the Jewish people because they try to resist the Romans. What he describes is a literal hell on earth. He describes the utter desperation of the city’s inhabitants, dying of starvation, the most chilling tale being that of Mary, a woman who kills, cooks, and eats her own son.^[2]See Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews Like, I said, hell.

Hell On Earth

Hell is the one place in all of the universe where God is absent. In hell, there is no love, hope, justice.  As humans, we have seen the sorts of hells on earth throughout our history due to human hatred. This hatred is fueled by a myopic will to power a completed inability to see the humanity or at least a ready willingness to dismiss it. Hell is the place where nothing new can be imagined —a world that trades eyes for eyes, a world that says the answer to America’s gun problem is more and more guns.

The suggestion that we arm every corner of society to the teeth sounds, to me, like hell: a complete failure of the imagination. If all we can envision in a world fraught with violence is having more people equipped to return fire, we have lost both our minds and our way. For Christians, the notion is particularly absurd. Jesus showed us that the only way to undo violence is to exhaust its power in self-giving love. When Jesus gave his life on the cross, the devil actually thought he had won. The devil, caretaker of hell that he is, is bereft of imagination. The devil colluded with the powers of the world—human sin, religious systems, political empires—to crucify the son of God. But because he was unfamiliar with what C.S. Lewis called “the deep magic”, because he lacked imagination, he could not conceive that in giving his life completely, Jesus was making a show of these powers, disarming them, nailing them to a cross.^[3]Colossians 2v14

Hell is the place where nothing new can be imagined —a world that trades eyes for eyes, a world that says the answer to America’s gun problem is more and more guns.

Imagining A New Day

The Scriptures envision a day where weapons of warfare will be melted down into tools for farming. ^[4]Isaiah 2:4What if every Christian responded like this guy, who though he loves to shoot his gun and would never use it to purposefully hurt anyone, decided to part with it?

Sure we would be more vulnerable in a sense, but well, isn’t that kind of the point of our faith? In embracing weakness, absorbing violence, turning the other cheek, and praying for those who persecute us we are not conquered but conquer through the love of God. As John writes to the church:

For whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.^[5]1 John 5:4

We were in hell, dead in our sins, nothing new was possible until our Savior, in a profound act of imagination, liberated the world not by conquering, not by fighting, not by demanding but by laying down his life. Jesus showed us the only way to peace is a cross. He invites us to imagine our own lives completely shaped by his, carrying our crosses and following him. May we as the church imagine a new way way, grace and peace to you.