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and insightful quotes is a direct affront to the church planting industrial complex, “The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.”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.

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.

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.

In the Old Testament, few gods other than YHWH (the name of the Israelite God) warrant mention.  The Old Testament witness is univocal in its condemnation of idolatry but usually these alt-deities are lumped into categories, “gods” or “idols.”  However, there are a few pagan objects of worship that warrant mention by name because of their particular allure to the covenant people.  Among those specifically referenced are Baal, the chief god of Canaanite cult, Asherah, the mother goddess of Canaanite and Babylonian origin, and Molech, a Canaanite god notorious for commanding human sacrifice.^[1]Mentioned by name in Lev. 18:21; 20:2-5; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:10; Isa. 57:9; Jer. 32:35   The nation of Israel was not like our own consumerist culture looking for the flashiest spiritual fads or the latest most “relevant” message to allow a person to be their best self.  Rather, these deities were much like the political parties of the ancient world.  The idols named in the Old Testament came with promises attached to them.  Deities promised fertility, harvests, victory in battle, all it required was the devotion of the worshipper.  For the most part, these idols were a part of a pantheon of divinity and thus did not require the sole devotion of its members.  YHWH seems to be unique in this regard.  The OT writers go to great lengths to display differences between the way of YHWH, the way of holiness, justice, and mercy with the way of the idols, who seek to divert Israel’s gaze away from YHWH and are powerless to bring about blessing of provision they promise. The psalmist in Ps. 106 reflects:

35 but they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did. 36 They served their idols, which became a snare to them. 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; 38 they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood. 39 Thus they became unclean by their acts, and prostituted themselves in their doings.

The psalmist describes his own heritage of faith, a history of idolaters.   Often in the course of its idolatry, the nation of Israel does not explicitly give up on faith in YHWH.   They simply try to mix it with faith in idols.  While YHWH forbids any image trying to capture the essence of who he is, the pagan cults allowed for gods that you can see.  There is something alluring about an idol, about a god you can hold in your hand, a god that promises to get things done for you no matter the cost.  YHWH demanded unflinching, singular devotion but the pagan idols let you have your religion a la carte—a little YHWH, a little fertility goddess.  It’s all very pragmatic.

We live in a bleeding world.  On the whole, America in 2018 is violent, hostile, embittered, and divided.  Schools, concerts, and churches have all become shooting galleries of horror and devastation.^[2]I write this in wake of the horrible devastation in Parkland but unfortunately, I know this content will be evergreen, not needing one event as its referent  I am not sure if a world in the throes of sin and idolatry can evince itself as anything other.  But here’s my fear.  When I survey the world that is hostile to God—the world that in John 3:16, God loves so much that he gives his Son for them— and the world of the white evangelical church in America.^[3]I think it is important, in this instance, to distinguish this particular segment of the larger evangelical church as the majority of our Black, Latino-American, Asian-American and Native American … Continue reading, I do not see the kind of difference I would expect. What I see, instead, is a church that is trying to combine a small understanding of devotion to God with fervent devotion to political entities and thus both literally and figuratively is sacrificing its sons and daughters at the altar of the idols.  The church, in not modeling the peaceful way of Jesus is aiding and abetting the proliferation of weapons of indiscriminate murder in America.  In large part, the white evangelical church has blindly supported a political agenda that, in the face of heinous acts of mass murder, essentially shrugs and says, “the blood that was shed is the price of upholding the 2nd Amendment.”  Sounds a lot like sacrifice, does it not?

The loss of life is unspeakable, but as horrible as that result it, it is not the only consequence. Not only do the lives of the innocent suffer but future generations face the consequences of our lack of faithfulness.  The white evangelical church in America is shrinking^[4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/15/white-christian-america-is-dying/?utm_term=.9aa7d1395c5f because it has forsaken its witness in the face of political pragmatism.  It remains to be seen what effect that this will have on the wider church in America.  I tend to think a new kind of evangelicalism will rise from the ashes, led by minority leaders and female voices that are already emerging, but that hope does not stopping me from  lamenting over the church of my own cultural heritage, weeping because we do not know the things that make for peace.

The church, in not modeling the peaceful way of Jesus, is aiding and abetting the proliferation of weapons of indiscriminate murder in America.

It is possible to be love America and to love Jesus.  But we can only learn to love America rightly by loving Jesus fully.   Anything less than the God revealed in Jesus is an idol.  Both God and the idols demand sacrifice.  There will be blood. Will we continue to sacrifice the blood of the innocent to our idols of political relevance or will we cling to the blood of Jesus shed on behalf of the world to make peace?  Will we give up our American rights and embrace our God-given mission of peace and mercy?   Either we will sacrifice the blood of the innocent and our witness along with it or we will offer our bodies as living sacrifices, burning with the love and beauty of our God.

When you think about it, the claims of the covenant people of the Old Testament are not even slightly absurd. At no time in its history was Israel the dominant power in its region.  Rarely did the nation enjoy peace and autonomy.  Mostly, the nation was being squeezed like a vice by forces from Egypt (the south) and forces from Assyria, Babylon, or Persia (the north). And yet there is insistence that the children of Abraham lie at the center of the story of the world and that Zion, the City of David, is the geographic center of the world. The promise to Abraham was always a universal one, weaving the disparate strands of the tribes and nations of the world into one unified cord. If the God of Israel, YHWH, was trying distinguish the nation of Israel among the nations of the world he certainly had an interesting way of doing it. Surely, Israel, constantly fighting for its life, might suggest an alternative plan.

And yet the Lord will not short-circuit the process. He has called a people, a people to be a nation of priests, a people to be witnesses to his salvation and loving kindness, a people to be formed and shaped by his passion and words, a people which would form the very tabernacle of his presence. He knows this people will only be able to fulfill these tasks in fits and starts. He knows that there will be pain, confusion, betrayal, and injustice. If he wanted to accomplish a certain task, he should be fired for his severe lapse in judgment and inefficiency to execute his vision but the way the Lord goes about things suggest he may have something entirely different in mind.

Psalm 20 is a corporate psalm offered on behalf of the king of Israel. As we hinted at above, the king of Israel often entered battle with a smaller military budget, technological disadvantages, and troop shortages. And still the psalmist insists, “May we shout for joy over your victory, and in the name of our God set up our banners.” Is this just glib optimism from a self-deluded startup—on the modern geopolitical spectrum, this would be like Uzbekistan saying, “Hey Russia, hey China, let’s do this.” Or perhaps this confidence, this triumphalism is not vain nationalism but pointing us towards something larger.

“Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is i the name of the Lord our God. They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright.”^[1]Ps. 20vv6-8

The people of Israel were a people who never washed the sand from the shore of the Red Sea off their feet. Everywhere they went that story followed them, defined them. On that day, outside of Egypt, the question of victory had nothing to do with the inventory of their weaponry or their strategic acumen. In fact, on that day they stood helplessly with their backs against the sea, waiting to be slaughtered by the Egyptians. But the Lord, “answered in the day of trouble.^[2]Ps. 20v1” He split the seas, he made a way. The people, in Psalm 20, sing the past into the present and the future because they know that the question of victory is not what’s in their hands but whose hands they are in. Over the long arc of the history of Israel, we are not simply receiving information about what happened to a certain people long ago. Rather, we are being formed as a people of promise witnessing what happens when we recognize that the story was never about us to begin with. The story is about God, God dwelling near, God promising, God saving, God sustaining. God is not undertaking a project, he is forming a people.

The following is a mixture of good biblical theology, tongue in cheek sarcasm with sports hate unrelated to any other area of Tom Brady’s life, and a petition to God to finally let the Eagles win the Super Bowl. As much my better judgment says I should not assume readers of the internet at large in 2018 cannot distinguish between these things, I know my readers are much more sophisticated than the average Twitter-egg or fake news sharing Facebook user and so will leave it to you to distinguish between that which is fun and that which is true. God doesn’t care about football, he cares about every person he has made in his image, he cares about widows, orphans, the poor. He cares about justice and beauty, goodness and truth.

Dear Lord:

Throughout the Scriptures, humans—let’s be honest, it’s mostly men—have often convinced themselves that they, in fact, were god. The thing that makes that forbidden fruit so alluring is that the serpent promises Adam and Eve that eating it will make them “like god” (Gen. 3). In Gen. 11, humanity is united in its attempt to sit on the throne of God, building a siege tower to assail the heavens. Pharaoh’s heart is not hardened to show that every act of human will is merely an expression of the fiat of God, or as some theologies argue that God “hardens whom he will harden” suggests that there is an in-group and out-group when it comes to grace. No, Pharoah’s heart is hardened because he claims to be a deity on earth, the god of Egypt in the flesh, and YHWH, the God of Israel, is showing how me makes other so-called gods his playthings. Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel’s account, becomes a raving lunatic, eating grass like some sort of bovine creature with hair growing all over his body (Daniel 4) because he did not grasp that the Lord is the world’s only sovereign. In the New Testament, Herod Agrippa is hailed by his subjects as speaking with “‘the voice of a god, and not of a mortal” (Acts 4v22) and is immediately struck down by God and given to the worms for food (Acts 12vv22-23).

The lesson is simple. Don’t pretend to be god, be humble, know your place.

And then there’s Tom Brady. Tom Brady with his Disney-prince chin, his puppy dog eyes, his 7 PM bedtime, his avocado ice cream, his ability to manipulate the players from the other teams—John Kasay mysteriously kicking out of bounds, Russell Wilson throwing the ball at the one yard line, Matt Ryan taking a ten yard sack when a field goal would have sealed the game, the referees—what the h is the tuck rule?!— not to mention his ability to manipulate the air pressure in footballs and to work a video camera. Couple those things with his five Super Bowl Rings, his super model wife, and his millions of dollars and we can conclude two things. First, Tom Brady, by all worldly standards, is winning at life. Second, Tom Brady needs a reckoning.

Consider, Lord, your servants Carson and Nick. Two homely looking guys from different parts of the heartland, who just want to love Jesus, love their families, visit sick kids in the hospital, and win football games. Carson, who quotes Hillsong (your fourth favorite artist behind U2, Chance, and Bob Dylan) lyrics on his Twitter feed and who has been a part of sparking a good old fashioned revival right in the Eagles locker room. Now he is injured, walking with a limp (like Jacob no less), forced to humbly and courageously support his backup, and brother in Christ, Nick. Nick, looking like a slightly more athletic Napoleon Dynamite, who was left for dead as a viable NFL starter (for longer than three days), jettisoned to the Rams—the St. Louis version, not the LA version, I mean come on Lord, you’ve met Cardinals fans before—brought back as an afterthought to hold a clipboard suddenly elevated into the spotlight again after Tom Brady put out a hit on Carson Wentz’s knee. The first thing he said after having a better performance than Tom Brady in the championship round?  You guessed it, “Glory to God!”

And despite all odds we are here. Good vs. Evil. Eagles vs. Patriots. Tom Brady, a black magic, cool beanie-wearing vampire who wants to live forever vs. Nick Foles, a humble disciple of Jesus who wants to help this sweet old man depart in peace because his ” eyes have seen thy salvation.” Will not the Lord of all the earth do right? Will not we finally see Tom Brady reduced to this again?

Liberate us from the iron clutches of his dimples and perfect teeth. May the Eagles win, so that the world will know there is justice and goodness still. Fly Eagles Fly.

Even youths will faint and be weary;  and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.