This is the missional church, simply explained. I love it. (from mshedden)

I want to add to the reflections offered by Rozko, Hiestand, Sternke, Hart, Briggs, Fitch, Chandler, and others on the Ecclesia National Gathering.  They have already offered great summaries, but I want to add my impression.  My over all impression is that while disappointed with the church, most there had yet become cynical.

It seemed that this group of people actually still loved the church even though we had all been wounded by the people in it; this group of people still worshiped though we have all been manipulated by music and technique; this group of people still preached even though we had all been merely talked at; this group still prayed even though we’ve all felt the abandoned silence; this group still sought the Spirit even though we have all been burned by those with a ‘word’.  And I could go on.

But for the most part, from what I can tell so far, the people in Ecclesia have not adjusted to what they lack or lost, but are still striving for what they hope.  Certainly we hope for what we lack, but when the lacking dominates, hope is always tinged by cynicism and ironic distance.  At some level with cynicism you begin to sneer at actual belief and practice.  Here’s an example.  Once, at another emerging/missional conference, a woman was asked (on the spot I believe) to lead a concluding prayer-slash-prayer for a meal.  She stood up and stumbled through the Aaronic blessing (equal parts uncertain of herself and how it might be received).  I felt bad for her, but more for the group because she was evidently effected by the pressure of the group and by not knowing whether people actually still prayed in this group.  The conference was so busy deconstructing everything that a cynicism toward actual belief was creeping in.  When I saw that I thought to myself, “I’m done with this.  If people can’t still pray without embarrassment then what is the point.”

But gladly, I didn’t get a whiff of that at Ecclesia, and it’s not like a fair share of the people there didn’t have reason to be cynical.  Because of all this I’m very exited for the future of Ecclesia Network, and look forward to being a part of it for a long time to come.

The life of a grad student…(saw this over at faith and theology)

I’ve seen a Dying Eye
Run round and round a Room—
In serach of Something—as it seemed—
Then Cloudier become—
And then—obscure with Fog—
And then—be soldered down
Without disclosing what it be
‘Twere blessed to have seen—

(#547, Emily Dickinson)

I haven’t died yet; but I’ve died thousands of times.  Sometimes to addictions.  Sometimes to fears.  Most often to pride.  It seems that my pride has more than nine lives, so I have to keep dying to it.  Sometimes I die to dreams that I have dreamed for myself, or others.  I have had to die to the image that I keep of myself, that I attempt to hold before others.

But with each death something is discovered, found, seen.  But it is often hard to explain to those who have yet to died.  As Dickinson says, what the dying Eye can see we cannot see unless we too do die.

Lent is this practice of dying.  And with it come glimpses of life.

It has become somewhat fashionable again to claim that Paul ruined the Gospel of Jesus by making it all bloody and such, for getting that Christ came proclaiming the Kingdom of God, not some atonement theory (yes, I’m referring to the Brian McLaren’s new book).

Well, this afternoon I came across this and thought it worth of spreading around.  It is from Albert Schweitzer‘s “The Mysticism of St. Paul.”

The inner character [of Paul's thought] is determined by the fact that Paul has thought out his concpetion of redemption through Christ within the sphere of belief in the Kingdom of God.  In Paul’s mysticism the death of Jesus has its significance for the believers, not in itself, but as the event in which the realisation of the Kingdom of God begins. For him, believers are redeemed by entering already, thorugh the union with Christ, by means of a mystical dying and rising again with Him…, this state being that which they are to possess in the Kingdom of God. (p. 380)

Is the alternative “Jesus or Paul” a real alternative, or should the phrase run, for us, “Jesus and Paul”?

Paul Preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and of Jesus as the Coming messiah in the form which it must necessarily take in consequence of hte death of Jesus having already occurred, and of the assigning to this death of the significance of the initial event of the Coming of the Kingdom.  In the mystical redemption-doctrine of Paul the Primiteive-Christian faith discharges the task it had been set of bringing the belief in the expected kingdom, and the redemption which goes with the Kingdom, into logical connection with the belief that Jesus who had died was the Coming Messiah. (p. 390)

Schweitzer connects the death of Christ with the eschatological atonement through which the Kingdom of God comes.  Anyway, it just seemed like coming from a non-evangelical, German scholar, that at least we should be a little more thoughtful about how Paul and Jesus relate to each other, not assume a corruption or disjunction too quickly between the two.

Well, back to studying…

BREAKING NEWS: The 9 Marks of the church, a ministry of Mark Devers is really a front for a clandestine organization devoted receiving to the 9 Stigmata of Christ. While the 9 Marks ministry has received much attention of late, it seems to be based in a serious misunderstanding.  The 9 “biblical” marks of the church are coded references to the 9 wounds of Christ received during his Holy Passion, which this group seeks to experience in their own bodies.  Polemics against liberalism, the emerging or missional church, and bland evangelicalism are really pleas for everyone to experience for themselves the 9 Stigmata as a way of overcome the wounds of ecclesial divisions.

The 9 wounds of Christ to which this order is devoted are the wound on Christ’s back, the two nail holes in Christ’s feet, the two in Christ’s hands, the wound from the crown of thorns, Christ’s pierced sides, the wound of a broken heart, and a ninth secret wound, known only to those in the order.

A high ranking official in this secret order leaked this information because she (yes, she!) feels the message has not be received properly.  In the hope of overcoming the wound of church division by devoting themselves exclusively to the 9 Wounds of Christ, this order actually desire to connect with the emerging, missional, liberal, and ecumenical dialogues so that all might experience the 9 Wounds of Christ from themselves, because as we know, “by his wounds we are healed.”

___

But in all seriousness, the church has been divided enough.  Let us remember the broken body of Christ, torn apart again at each Eucharist, so that we might be united.  As Thomas à Kempis says, “If you can not soar up as high as Christ sitting on his throne, behold him hanging on his cross.  Rest in Christ’s Passion and live willingly in his wounds.”  And as the old poem, Anima Christi, says,

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds hide me.

(The woodcut print at the top of the post is by Sigmund Grimm, Augsburg, Germany, 1520.)

At least that is often what happens, isn’t it?  Most people want community, until it starts to actually happen.  Most people want to feel welcomed, have a place to belong and fit in, and they want the pastors to visit them when they are sick, or help out with finances when times are tight.  But people generally don’t want to test their convictions in a community, the don’t want to submit their discernments to a community, or let the community be a mirror by which to see themselves as they really are, beyond the self-protective delusions in which we all engage.

But when a serious dispute arises, all that wonderful talk of community disappears and people just want to kill each other, at least in their hearts, but usually also in their words, and actions (although hopefully not extending to physical harm, but I’m sure it sometimes does!).  When conflict arise we stop submitting our discernments, we stop testing our conviction, we begin to feel justified and pious, and often always attempt to bring in the pastoral cavalry, the Authorities, to make a judgment on our behalf.  Has anyone else experiences this?

But Jesus leads us into a new community, a community of reconciliation where there aren’t just winners and losers in a conflict, where there aren’t merely those who are right and those who are wrong, but where restoration of relationships can occur.  In Matthew 18 Jesus give us a process for church reconciliation, not a process of church discipline. And in this process the ecclesial authorities come in last.  This process is what John Howard Yoder calls “reconciling dialogue” where each person commits to continue talking to each other (“just between the two of you”).  If that doesn’t work, then broaden the conversation with a mediator (“so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’”).  If that doesn’t resolve the dispute, the offense, the sin, then bring it to the “town-hall meeting” (the meaning of ecclesia, not “called out ones”), so that it, the community, can decide (“binding and loosing”) the issue.  And the entire purpose is the reconciliation of those involved, not the public shaming of sinners, or an example for youth about the consequence of sin!

To sum it up, here are three ‘P’s.  The purpose/product of Matt. 18 is the reconciliation of one to another when there has been an offense.  And this reconciliation is lived as peace in love for each other and God.  But this product of peace, of a loved unity-in-diversity cannot come about through the pronouncements of various leaders or authorities regarding the disputed matter.  Pastors can’t just jump into a dispute and pronounce the virtues of tolerance, of diversity, of loving acceptance at the beginning because these can only truly be a result. So instead of making pronouncement for/against the people involved, which inevitable creates a class of victimized losers and righteous winners, we must all commit to the process of reconciling dialogue, submitting fully to this Christ-ordained process so that we can become a real community which lives into and between all the diversity, differences, annoyances, and blessings of each other.  So the product of reconciliation can’t be short-circuited by authoritarian pronouncements, but must enter into the Spirit directed process of where care and clarification can occur.

So can we just stop killing each other and/or stop playing the victim, and get to the work Christ has put before us?

Things still to cover:

1) In more concrete terms, what is this reconciliation we are after?
2) How does this not turn into a tyranny of the community (group think)?
3) How does the larger community of God relate to a local community?
4) What about 1 Cor. 8, 10, and Rom. 14?

One can never look directly at one’s own body.  All we see are fragmented parts, disconnected limbs, but never the whole.  We only come to understand our bodies, and therefore ourselves, as a whole units, as a totality, through other bodies, even if reflected in a mirror.  Jacques Lacan speaks our need to find mirrors, our need to see idealized reflection of ourselves, to show us that we really are not just these disconnected limbs, that we really are not just broken, fragmented people, and without the “mirror stage” the process of subjectivity and the production of an ego is halted.  It is only through other people that we imagine ourselves to be whole, and only through other people can we know our own bodies.

It is the same for the church.  We can’t directly gaze at the unity of the church, the unity of the body of Christ.  We can only see it through others, through the discernment of everyone.  The body of Christ is not something available to be pointed out, “Hey.  There’s the body over there!”  And things are complicated because this body is not merely a physical body gazed at indirectly, but a social, even spiritual body, requiring more than sight. We need spiritual insight linked to the practices of confession, repentance, forgiveness, speaking truth in love, humility, compassion, and mercy.  Isn’t this what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 11 when he speaks of discerning the body of Christ at the Table?  That we must discern the unity of Christ in/through others as we discern his body at the Table?

But I’m not just saying something banal like, “It takes a community to know yourself.”  That is patently true.  But Lacan’s points is also that is takes a community to utterly misrecognize yourself, as you project on to it your hopes and dreams, and what you think you are as you lie to yourself about yourself.  But the true body of Christ is always broken, it is never whole, and we can never claim to be whole until we follow Christ to the cross (the above image of Christ on the cross is interestingly called “Tree of Life”).

So, can you see your body?  The body of Christ?  Are you even looking in the right place?  Are you finding unity as a defense against something else, or are you finding unity in the broken body of Christ?

I’m coming home to WordPress for the first time.  I finally moved out of my blogspot location, having blogged off and on there since 2003.   But I decided to keep the same name, “for the time being.”

When I originally decided to start blogging I was visiting a friend on an Indian Reservation in Zuni, MN, who had a book on the coffee table by Annie Dillard titled For The Time Being, and I thought it would be the perfect name to express the provisional nature of thought, that all things are passing, that nothing should be held too tightly (or just about nothing). So for me, as a missional/emergent/wishing-to-be-more-and-more-radical pastor and theologian, striving to participate in the mystery of Christ in the world for the world, to claim that these thoughts are “for the time being” seemed most appropriate, contextualized for a post-christian, post-modern, post-industrial, blah, blah, blah…world.

Beyond that, the title contains the words “time” and “being” which triggers all sorts of philosophical associations in me, beginning principally with Martin Heidegger’s epic Being and Time, which was very influential in my philosophical journey, even if I have now moved significantly beyond it (if that is possible…).  But more broadly, the questions of metaphysics, of temporality, of the materiality of both, and how it all interacts in the revelation of Christ and our lives are all themes.

So this is my new blogging home, and so far I quite like it.  I’m sure I’ll be tinkering around more, adding features and such, but hopefully it is the content more than merely the form that draws us along as we are drawn along by the Spirit in this world, which is all we have for the time being.

So a couple days ago J.R. Briggs offered some good tips on reading well. It spurred some good conversation.

Well, I’m currently working on my comp. questions for at Marquette, and I thought that some of you all would be interested in what I have to read for my tests. So today, is my bibliography on Contemporary Pauline Theology with special reference to the Philippians Hymn. I would highly recommend the short book by Stendahl to see where the “New Perspective on Paul” came from and where N.T. Wright got everything (well, kinda).

Pauline Interpretation

F. C. Baur, Paul, Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Epistles and Teachings (Reprint; Peabody: Henrickson, 2003), part 3.

Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, trans. William Montgomery (New York: Seabury, 1968), 1-40, 52-140, 334-396.

Rudolf Bultmann, The Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (2 Vols.; New York: Scribner, 1951-55), 187-345.

Ernst Käsemann, “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 168-82.

____________Justification and Salvation History in the Epistle to the Romans,” in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 60-78.

Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)

E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 431-557.

James D. G. Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul,” in idem, The New Perspective on Paul: Collected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 99-120

————–“The Theology of Galatians: The Issue of Covenantal Nomism,” in Jouette M. Bassler, ed., Pauline Theology Volume 1: Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 125-46

James D. G. Dunn, “The Narrative Approach to Paul: Whose Story?” in Bruce W. Longenecker, ed., Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2002), 217-30.

James D. G. Dunn, “Once More, Pistou Christou,” in E. E. Johnson and David Hay, eds., Pauline Theology Volume IV: Looking Back, Pressing On, 249-271

J. Louis Martyn, “Events in Galatia,” in Jouette M. Bassler, ed., Pauline Theology Volume 1: Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 160-79

Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), 1-85, 228-260.

Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1- 4:11 (2nd Ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), xxi-lii.

Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 1-33.

Francis Watson, “Is There a Story in These Texts?” in Bruce W. Longenecker, ed., Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2002), 231-39.

Richard B. Hays, “Pistou Christou and Pauline Christology,” in E. E. Johnson and David Hay, eds., Pauline Theology Volume IV: Looking Back, Pressing On, 35-60.

Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 1-29.

Mark Seifrid, “The Narrative of Scripture and Justification by Faith: A Fresh Response to N. T. Wright,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 72 (2008), 19-44.

Richard Horsley, ed., Paul and Politics (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2000), 160-83.

Philippians Hymn

Bauckham, Richard. God crucified : monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Carlisle : Paternoster Press, 1998), 51-61.

Dunn, James D.G. Christology in the making : a New Testament inquiry into the origins of the doctrine of the incarnation (Philadelphia : Westminster Press, c1980), 98-125.

Fowl, Stephen E. Philippians (Grand Rapids, Mich. : Eerdmans Pub. Co., c2005).

Heen, Erik M. “Phil 2:6-11 and Resistance to Local Timocratic Rule: Isa theo and the Cult of the Emperor in the East.” In Paul and the Roman Imperial Order, ed. by Richard A. Horsley, pp. 125-53. (Harrisburg: Trinity, 2004).

Gorman, Michael J. Inhabiting the cruciform God : kenosis, justification, and theosis in Paul’s narrative soteriology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), 9-39.

Keesmaat, Sylvia. “Crucified Lord or Conquering Saviour: Whose Story of Salvation?” Horizons in Biblical Theology, 26 (2004), 69-93.

Martin, Ralph P. A hymn of Christ : Philippians 2:5-11 in recent interpretation & in the setting of early Christian worship (Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press, c1997).

Martin, Ralph P. and Brian J. Dodd, eds. Where Christology began : essays on Philippians 2 (Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press, c1998).

Oakes, Peter. Philippians : from people to letter (Cambridge, UK ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Wright, N.T. The climax of the covenant : Christ and the law in Pauline theology (Edinburgh, Scotland : T & T Clark, 1991), 56-98.