The Character of a Priest

It is this familiarity with the face of humanity and this fidelity in prayer that equips us for the most demanding aspect of the interpreter's task. We can't uncover the face of Christ in people unless we have the habit of real attention to human faces in all their diversity – but also the habit of familiarity with the face of Christ. How do we recognise him, let alone help others to do so, if we are not spending time with that face, in the study of Scripture and in adoration and silence? Faithful and persistent looking into the face of Jesus is the essential condition for connecting people with each other; without that, all we can offer is human goodwill, human shrinking from the cost of conflict, our own limited skills of sympathy and listening. But if we try to remain familiar with Jesus, we believe that our listening and mediating has a sacramental dimension, mostly imperceptible to us, but real and energising. We are allowing some fuller reality in to the situation, the reality in whose climate we live: the priestly mediation of Christ.

- Rowan Williams, 2004

The Storm Has Passed Over

As many of you saw on the news last night, we had quite a storm in Atlanta (Mayor Franklin confirmed this morning that it was indeed a tornado). Downtown took the worst of it, with office buildings, cars, and sporting arenas alike all taking a good bit of damage. A loft complex in Cabbagetown collapsed, but thankfully everyone has been accounted for. Fortunately, I have checked with my friends who live in the most dangerous area and everyone seems to be fine.
I didn't completely avoid the storm, however. I went out to eat in Grant Park last night with two friends and the storm swept through at just about the time we were leaving. Almost immediately after we left Six Feet Under, the restaurant's power went out. The lights also went out on most of Memorial Drive, which it made it particularly difficult to see.
Unfortunately, the darkness, the wind, and the rain prevented me from seeing a downed street sign with twisted metal lying in the middle of Memorial. I hit the sign, but fortunately didn't do too much damage to my car, just a dent and some scraping on the right side. I did manage to dodge another sign on my way home.
My few hundred dollar scratch isn't too bad, but the experience was definitely scary. A man who was already on the sidewalk came and checked to make sure we were OK. I told him we were, and he asked if we could call 911 with his address, and we did. I was so rattled by my own accident, that I didn't even ask if he was OK. I assume he was since he was out checking on us, but I wish I would have been more aware of him to ask a simple question.
It is unfortunately the case that most of the time we are preoccupied with our own crises and situations that we too easily can ignore those of other people, even if they are right in our face. Next time, I pray that I will stop, look, and see.

How Not to Speak of God

Peter Rollins in his book, How Not to Speak of God, reminds us that it is just as important to avoid saying the wrong things about God as it is figuring out how to say the right ones. This is of course a huge challenge, and one that few, if any, of us have figured out.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help thinking about Rollins' book after dinner on Friday night. I was at a dinner for a Christian organization when a lady blurted out, "I don't know why God made poor people, maybe it was so we could know him better." In sum: God made people poor in order to reveal himself to rich Christians.

After I fainted and had to be taken to the emergency room, I regained enough composure to reflect on the event. This woman is a dedicated Christian who clearly does not mean what she said. The way she is living her life and her dedication to helping those in poverty repudiate her spoken theology that poor people exist for rich people. That being said, speaking in this way about God is problematic for countless reasons. But before I cast this woman out of the kingdom, I think we must also admit that we have all been in her shoes, speaking about God in ways that if we actually thought about it would repulse us at one time or another. I certainly know I have.

One of the many benefits of theological education is that it forces you, at least sometimes, to think about how we speak of God. We are reading and talking and singing and reflecting about God so much in such a concentrated experience that how we speak of God is always near the front of our minds. Although we still put our feet in our mouths (me more than most), the tendency is decreased because of our constant reflection on God.

It seems to me that one of the great thrusts of Christian education in our churches and in our communities should focus on providing our people a vocabulary with which to speak and think about God. Not only the words, but the grammar in order to speak with confidence and credibility in the world. A non-Christian at dinner Friday night would (and should) have been repulsed at hearing this discussion of God. For a God who creates poor people to suffer for the purpose of bringing rich people closer to this God is not a God worth worshiping.

We know that this is not the character of God, for the character of God is one who gives to all of us in our poverty and who promises to give to us the riches of the kingdom, which are not always material, just in case you are reading Creflo. How can we teach one another how to speak credibly of God? How have we learned to speak of God and what would help us? I know I need help in my God-talk. Do any of my three readers have any ideas?

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts

Mama said there’d be days like this. There’d be days like this, mama said, mama said. But what Mama didn’t say was that there would be texts like this.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it seems like there are always passages of Scripture that apply so much better to other people than they do to me. Like when I’m driving down Ponce de Leon and a rich person in their Mercedes or Hummer with a don’t worry about the car my treasure’s in heaven bumper sticker, it takes all I have to not ask if I can tell them a little story about a Rich Young Ruler. Or when another believer wears their Jesus on their sleeve, all I want to do is tell them a little something about praying in secret. And I could be wrong, but I imagine that there are some of you here today who can think of a passage or two of that you might like me to pay more careful attention to. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.

The difficult part about this story that we know so well is that it is not pointed at other people. Quite the opposite actually – this is tale that is pointed straight at us, at you and at me. I stand before you as a proud member of this community of scholarship. We are students and teachers and support personnel who are dedicated to becoming a community of excellence. Among us are students and teachers who excel at connecting theology with life. Our community is littered with artists of all kinds – preachers and poets, hip-hop and high church, musicians and mimes. In short, we are smart. We are talented. Our faculty is among the best in the world. We are the best and the brightest. There is very little that we can’t do. Don’t believe us? Just ask us, we’ll tell you.

The problem, my dear friends, is that in our text this morning, gifts and graces, are not what is held up as important. It is neither talent nor ability, acumen or expertise that qualifies David to be king. It seems that people like us are exactly the ones Samuel was looking for when he was sent to find the new king. He was impressed with the size and good looks of Eliad. This one has the makings of someone who could lead us. Surely this is the one. Next! Six more brothers made the walk and six more brothers went by without being anointed as the new king; six more times the answer was the same. Next!

Exasperated and ready to be done with it, Samuel asked Jesse if there was another brother, somewhere else. There was, Jesse said, but he was with the sheep. They sent for the child, and waited for him. Well, you know the story. David, the unlikely one with beautiful eyes but more importantly the heart that God was looking for, is anointed as king. The ultimate outsider becomes the insider, a lesson for all of us in Christian leadership. It is what is inside, the heart, that matters. What distinguishes David from the previous king, Saul, is his willingness to obey God, hence obedience is essence of the divinely approved heart. It is through the least among us that the Gospel comes in power.

These are all nice conclusions, but I don’t think any of them lead us to the heart of the story, actually. These words are all fine and good, but they miss the primary word within the story. They don’t get just who is in charge.

That’s because the primary actor in this scene is not Samuel. His choice would have been Eliab, but that choice didn’t get made. The primary actor isn’t David, even though he is the one who has the heart that meets the divine standard. Really, David doesn’t do anything besides go where he is told and passively receive an anointing. The primary actor, the one who is in charge in this story and all the stories, from start to finish, is God. It is God who tells Samuel to go to Bethlehem. It is God who tells Samuel to go pick a king. It is God who tells Samuel to pick David as king. It is not David who snatches God’s spirit for himself, but it is God who bestows his Spirit on the little boy.

As we follow David’s story from this point on, it becomes clear that it is not David’s gifts or skill that are the cause of his success. The military skill of a small boy is certainly not equal to a giant Philistine warrior with a proven track record. The political cunning of the new king should not equal the expertise of an experienced king. The source of David’s success is none other than the living God. When God declares his covenant with David, God reminds us how David has risen to power and whose work it really has been – God took David from the pasture, God removed David’s enemies from his path and it will be God who will make his name great and who will establish an eternal kingdom through David. It is not David who has made the covenant, but is the covenant making God who has made David.
This is not just the story of David. This is how God works. God transformed Moses from a stammering idiot into a leader who threw off the yoke of the most powerful empire in the world. It wasn’t the word of the people that brought down that wall in Jericho, it was the word of God. Time would fail me to mention all accomplished by Jesus, God with us. And the Apostle Paul put it this way: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, coining the ultimate Christian motivational phrase.

It has been with much excitement and a little bit of obsession that I have been following the presidential nominating process. (My first two clicks in the morning are politico.com, and realclearpolitics.com.) One of our great messianic temptations as Americans is the picking of a president in which every four years we choose a new savior. But more than two hundred years of elections have taught us, that in terms of American salvation, the promises are always much grander than the broken government that follows. And while we all can and should get excited over our respective candidates, salvation is not coming to our towns wrapped in American flags and under political banners - whether they are accompanied by a Straight Talk Express, Thirty Five Years of Experience or Change We Can Believe In. That’s because despite the many talents of the politicians, and they are many, the problems and pitfalls are always much greater than gifts of our new leaders. Despite their abilities, human power and potential just aren’t quite enough.

The problems of David’s day were just as large. The disappointment of Saul’s kingship had resulted in a fractured Israel and a disloyal king who was taking on the one who was the source of his power. It is not an indictment of God that the God of Israel intervened. That God picked a leader was merely a divine recognition of the severity of the situation. Because only God would do. We see in David that left on his own that this boy king just as often got in his own way as he worked for good. If you have any doubt, read a little story about Uriah and his wife. The difficulties presented by a divided people and a disloyal king couldn’t be fixed by even the best personal skills and human abilities. It took a God willing to work with and through a chosen human to bring about an eternal kingdom and a household of God.

This old story with its ancient rituals has plenty to say to those of us called in a technological age. Despite all our gifts and all our talents, the prospect of doing ministry in God’s service is daunting, and I don’t know about you, but I think it has become even more so in the last three years. The problems that confront men and women of faith are just as difficult as those that stared at David in his first appointment. Conservative and liberals do battle over every possible issue, self-righteousness reigns, justice seems anywhere but immanent and idols of all stripes seem to be winning the fight.

As I reflect on the ministry that I have done over the years, I am simply amazed at the work God has done in spite of me. My career is filled with incoherent sermons, inadequate answers to tough questions, and patterns of pastoral care that would make Karen Scheib cringe. How I could be a leader in a church called to work for justice, to reconcile and make new, to make disciples of Jesus Christ and further the mission of God is beyond me. Actually in spite of our gifts, we can’t help but hear the voices. Your sin is too great; you’ll never be good enough. You don’t have enough faith yourself, how could you ever nurture anyone else’s? But those aren’t the voices of truth. No my friends, those words smell of smoke.

To borrow the words of John Newton: I am a great sinner, but oh Christ is a great savior. I don’t know what Bible you’ve been reading, but the one I read tells of a God who overcomes our inadequacies to make us co-workers and co-heirs in bringing forth the kingdom. It tells me about how God calls a young man from the womb and appoints him a prophet to the nations. About how God appoints prophets and truth-tellers, disguised as wives and mothers, tricksters and hookers, to do God’s bidding. Isaiah reveals a servant who has been commissioned to make universal justice the way of the whole wide world. We are the recipients of the grace which comes when God joins flesh in Jesus that makes all of our ministry possible. And through the power of the Spirit, disciples and deviants, miscreants and martyrs left us more than a Creed; but a living witness that whispers our names and calls us forward.

The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’ ²Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.’ And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you, and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.” ³Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.’ ⁴Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, ‘Do you come peaceably?’ ⁵He said, ‘Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.’^{* 7}But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ ⁸Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ ⁹Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ ¹⁰Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The Lord has not chosen any of these.’ ¹¹Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ ¹²He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.’ ¹³Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

The Audacity of Hope

On a cold New England Night, the impossible happened. Two people left for dead, one this summer and one last week, rose from their respective political graves. Over the summer the question facing John McCain wasn’t whether he could ride an early victory to the Republican nomination, but whether his campaign could manage enough cash to survive the summer. The one-time frontrunner had become an afterthought, crushed by a conservative wave of enthusiasm for a Northeastern governor, a 9/11-made mayor, a lawyer-turned-actor-turned Senator-turned actor-turned candidate again, and another boy from Hope.

Hillary Clinton’s problems were more recent in timing and focused in scope. National polls had favored Clinton by almost thirty points in the summer and pundits had begun planning her coronation to the Democratic nomination. But then Barack Obama happened, and after Obama won the Iowa Caucuses last week, polls in New Hampshire had Obama with a 10-point lead on Tuesday – the day of the primary. It was so bad for Clinton that the machine-like Hillary almost cried during a lunch at a New Hampshire diner. On Tuesday afternoon, pundits and prognosticators weren’t speculating about Bill’s role in a second Clinton administration, but whether Hillary’s campaign was finished less than two weeks into the nominating process.

But just a few hours later, the experts were singing a whole different tune. The Washington Post declared Hillary, “The Comeback Kid”, the same title her husband earned after rallying in New Hampshire 16 years earlier, after she defeated Obama by almost eight thousand votes.[1] At the same time Hillary was announcing she was back, McCain supporters were chanting that the Mac was back after he defeated Mitt Romney by more than thirteen thousand votes. A beaming McCain told his chanting throng, “We sure showed ‘em what a comeback looked like.”[2]

But as improbable as McCain and Clinton’s new status were to conceive, their new prominent political standings pale in comparison with the new things declared in the 42^nd chapter of Isaiah. This chapter is one of the controversial servant passages in Isaiah – in which Christians have tended to identify God’s servant as Jesus while others have insisted the servant is Cyrus, the Persian King, still others the people, and still others the most prominent cultural savior of the day. While the identity of the servant is a matter of great significance, even more important is what Isaiah announces the servant will accomplish.

The prophet’s good news is that God’s servant will not rest until the whole earth is covered with justice. The word justice is mentioned three times in the first four verses of this passage alone, when the servant’s purpose is put forth. Verse 1: God’s spirit has been put on the servant so he will bring justice to the nations. Verse3: The servant will faithfully bring forth justice in that he will not make his voice heard in the street or break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick. Verse 4: The servant will not grow faint or be crushed until justice has been established in the earth. The message is striking: God’s servant will not rest until justice is the way of this whole wide world. And God will not execute justice in the traditional way – through violence and raw force. With neither sharp swords nor smart bombs will justice come forth. A candle on the cusp of being snuffed out will survive the servant’s work, and a bruised reed - a plant that can easily be broken - will also not be crushed by this servant. This servant cares for the weak and the vulnerable to the highest degree.

The word justice can and has sometimes served as a catch-all term used to justify whatever a person or a particular group wants. A person’s definition of justice often depends on their particular social and economic location. The definitions of justice we might hear in South Atlanta are probably a little different that those we would hear in Buckhead and different than those we might hear in Baghdad. Some Christian ethicists have tended to roughly define justice as a state where each person gets what they are due. But the definition Isaiah is using is not a catch-all term that anyone can manipulate and it goes far beyond the vague notion of justice as getting your due. Justice in this case is not getting what you deserve, but according to Walter Brueggeman, who used to teach Old Testament a few miles away in Decatur, God’s justice as revealed through the law of Moses and in the pronouncement of the God’s prophets is a complete reordering of society so that the most weak and the most vulnerable among us can live with dignity.[3]

We desperately crave this divine justice. And here’s the thing: Universal justice means this justice with dignity isn’t coming only to Jerusalem but stretches all the way to Jonesboro Road and everywhere in between. We will see this day of the Lord when men and women don’t have to degrade themselves by selling their bodies just to pay the rent. When children half my age aren’t being recruited to peddle poison and push drugs. When God’s children of all ages won’t ever again have to choose between broccoli and blood pressure medicine.

Isaiah won’t let us simply wait on this day of the Lord. God speaks through the prophet to tell the people that it is through Israel that God will bring forth this justice. It is through Israel, a people who have been conquered and are living in exile. There might not be a more powerless group of people on the planet! Justice will come through the agency of the people who follow and pledge allegiance to the one true God, Yahweh, the God of Isaac and Abraham and Jacob and Ruth and Naomi and Isaiah and Jeremiah. The vocation of those, both then and now, who pledge allegiance to the God revealed in the Scriptures, is to bring forth justice, to “open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon.” Our vocation, the divine calling that each of us has received from the God of Israel, is as a body of believers, to bring forth justice, to release our brothers and sisters from captivity and blindness in whatever forms they exist.

Not too long ago my friend Ben and I were having one of those discussions you have when you’re in graduate school and have too much time on your hands. One afternoon we were despairing at all the problems we saw, particularly in our classmates. One after another with problems too many to count and seemingly too big to solve, wonderful people devoured by their personal and societal demons. He looked at me, his eyes full of severity and passion, and said it – “There’s just not enough band-aids to go around.” As much as we both might have wanted to, we were powerless to spring these people from their debilitating captivity. Or so we thought.

Ben and I were operating with the framework of former things in mind, but in this text God speaks through Isaiah of wondrous new things. The new thing that God is declaring to the prophet beforehand is that this universal dignity will be come to pass. The servant, whose purpose is to bring forth universal justice, will succeed. Justice and dignity will ring from Mesopotamia to Metropolitan Avenue. The people, whose vocation is to open the eyes that are blind and bring out prisoners of dungeons, will succeed. The dignity that will be brought into being through the people who declare their allegiance to the one God of Israel is guaranteed to succeed. Talk about the audacity of hope.

Its success is not dependent on the financial or political capabilities of the people. Its success does not rest on the abilities of people to organize grassroots and community support. Its success is ultimately not dependent on the people’s gifts and resources. The people’s work for justice will succeed not because of the people’ strength but because of the strength of God. God - the Lord who created the heavens, the Lord who spread out the earth, the Lord who gives breath to the people, has guaranteed this success. God has called the people in righteousness with the express purpose of giving sight to the blind and liberating the prisoners. God would not use us to accomplish a task that cannot be accomplished. And if God can create the earth from chaos and sustain our lives at every second of every minute of every day, then we know, that even when this task looks impossible, God can accomplish it.

One of the most hopeless situations imaginable must have been Africans living under apartheid in South Africa. For years the white majority had violated, tortured and subjected the Africans to all kinds of oppression and relief appeared nowhere in sight. Desmond Tutu knew and had experienced many of the horrors. He had been thrown in jail for trying to end this horrible system.

Jim Wallis, who many of you know as the editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, tells the story of hearing Tutu preach in Cape Town one night during the movement. As Tutu stepped up to the preach, you couldn’t help but notice that hundreds of police had surrounded the church and even more surrounded the back walls of the church, prepared to take notes and record Tutu’s sermon. Tutu pointed his finger at the police trying to intimidate him and the crowd, and then told the truth. “You are powerful. You are very powerful, but you are not gods and I serve a God that cannot be mocked. So since, you’ve already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side.”[4]

The power of injustice is pretty small really when compared to the power of God. The injustice that is all around us is no different than the injustice the prophet Isaiah saw all around him. In chapter 41, immediately preceding our text, God speaks through the prophet and challenges all the people about the Gods they are serving. The kings, the alliances, the riches and the hosts of other Gods that the people are putting their trust in. The final verse of chapter 41 puts it this way: “No, they are all a delusion; their works are nothing, their images are an empty wind.”

The idols that bring forth injustice today are making the same claims for ultimacy that those idols did. Selfishness and violence and insecurity that give us the drugs and the despair, the homelessness and the helplessness are no less powerful than the perceived power of those policemen staring down Tutu. But while they too are full of power, they also aren’t gods. And we serve a God that won’t be mocked and a God who won’t rest until every idol is defeated and who won’t quit until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

---

[1] Balz, Dan. “With Echoes of Clinton ’92, Another Comeback Kid”, The Washington Post. Jan. 9, 2008, A8.

[2] McCain, John. “Remarks by John McCain on New Hampshire Primary Victory”, Jan. 8, 2008. http://www.johnmccain.com.

[3] Brueggeman, Walter. Isaiah 40-66: Westminster Bible Companion. 42.

[4] Wallis, Jim. God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it.

Isaiah 42:1-9

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations. ²
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street; ³a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice. ⁴
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching. ⁵Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it: ⁶
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,^*
a light to the nations, ⁷ to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness. ⁸
I am the Lord, that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to idols. ⁹
See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare; before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.

"Fools Be Gone - Matt. 25:1-13"

I don’t often preach on the bus, if by preaching you mean talking about Jesus or the Bible. Rant maybe, but preach – nah, that’s just not how I roll. But a while back, I actually found myself trying to explain the Parable of the Ten Maidens on the bus. In my attempt to save a little money during the school year, I park my car at the mall and ride the bus to school. As I was making small talk on the bus one morning, I found myself explaining to a doctoral student in anthropology that this parable was tormenting me. (Why a tale about ten maidens is tormenting to a single man is another story for another time.)

Well about two hours later we ended up on the same bus again - I in the front and her in the back. As we were waiting for the bus to leave, she shouted: “So what’s this parable all about anyway?” In front of a cadre of Emory students, I then explained my take on the parable, with its five wise maidens and five foolish ones, the lamps, the sleep, the groom and all of it - my exegetical and homiletical brilliance on display for the whole bus to see. My new friend was, well, unimpressed. “Don’t you think the parable should be more actual? I mean, five wise and five foolish - it should probably be more like nine foolish and one wise.” The parable itself was foolish, she said. I felt her pain.

If John Dominic Crossan is right and parable does subvert the world, this little tale in the Gospel of Matthew is certainly a parable. Those of you who know me can say without a doubt that it’s a rarity when I think of myself as foolish. I actually like to think of myself as quite wise. But after wrestling with this text, flip-flopping more times than I can remember about how to preach it, I felt foolish. The anthropologist said the parable was foolish. The preacher felt foolish. Foolishness was all around. In that case, maybe this parable simply confirmed the world.

That’s because foolishness appears, at least to me, to be all around. A sex-obsessed society has left deep scars in its wake: fatherless children, marriages destroyed, the devastation of HIV, waves of women and men with needs and desires unfulfilled and unmet. It’s not just sex, though. An ever increasing percentage of American children are overweight and out of shape. Stories and faces of anorexia, bulimia and devastating eating disorders haunt us. We can too easily name friends and families ravaged by the terrors of alcohol and drug abuse.

We live in a world wrecked by war and on a planet victimized by violence. We know a world where deep inequalities rooted in selfishness leave very few with far too much and way too many with far too little. We might like to keep foolishness out in the world and wisdom in the church, but unfortunately we know all too well that there’s plenty of folly inside our sanctuaries too. Newspaper scoops and television gotchas have exposed that power plays of folly abound in our churches, whether it be the high-profile abuse scandals or government sponsored inquiries into the finances of prosperity-peddling preachers.

About a year ago I heard James Forbes preach in Atlanta. Forbes, the pastor of the Riverside Church in New York, finished his sermon with a rap, proclaiming that there was, “No time for foolishness.” It’s no surprise since the tragic stories I mentioned earlier scream not for foolishness, but wisdom. We want and desperately need to banish all this foolishness from our lives, our communities and our churches, and for good reason. We need to forsake our folly for the good path, but we can’t do it. Preachers try to shame individuals and congregations to leave their foolishness behind. It’s still here. Christians of both political stripes engage in lobbying to end foolishness through legislative fiat. It’s still here. And don’t think that if one of those preachers being investigated by Congress is found in the wrong, somebody won’t get fired – we’ve tried to get rid of foolishness by getting rid of people for years. It’s hopeless – its still here and we can’t get rid of it.

When we hear Christian talk of foolishness and wisdom, Paul looms large, and wisdom can sometimes get a bad wrap. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, Paul writes. But Matthew is a different story. Matthew is drawing on the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, like Psalms and Proverbs - staples of the faith. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs tells us. Wisdom is not what prevents us from experiencing God, Matthew might say, but wisdom is what points us towards God; to understanding justice, righteousness, and the good path.

A cursory reading of Matthew’s Tale of Ten Maidens doesn’t appear to give us much hope, or wisdom either. There’s no way around it - Jesus is telling us a parable about eschatological judgment, a statement about who will be in, who will be out, and the difference between the two. From chapter 21 when Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna in the Highest to chapter 26 when the wheels of the crucifixion are set in motion, Jesus is preparing his disciples for life after he is gone. By the time we get to our parable, the emphasis of his teaching is clear – Jesus wants us to know how to live and how to be prepared for the coming of the Kingdom.

Our parable is a warning: be prepared for the long haul. In the parable, only the wise and their lamps are allowed into the wedding banquet, the foolish are left alone in the dark. The bridegroom, who we are to take as Jesus, gets rid of foolishness by getting rid of the foolish. The foolish arrive late to the party, and are told, “I never knew you.” Many commentators have speculated that Matthew wants his reader to interpret the lamps as faithful discipleship, and that those who lived faithfully throughout their lives could be welcomed into the Kingdom.[1] Johnny-come-lately Christians trying to cheat the system need not apply. “I never knew you,” the bridegroom says. Those of us who look in the mirror and see more fool than wise aren’t left with much hope by this reading.

However, despite the parable’s context and original intent, I don’t think this is the only word that God has in it. For if this parable is to be Gospel - if it is to be good news - then it can’t only be a word of judgment and blood-curdling fear. And Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of Heaven is not a tale of despair but one of shocking good news. What if the five foolish and the five wise don’t represent separate individuals, but different parts of our lives; equal parts wise and equal parts foolish? What if Jesus is telling us that the eschatological feast is not one in which some deemed wise will make it while some deemed foolish will be left outside? What if the good news of this parable is that the darkness, the foolishness that prevents us from sharing God’s marvelous light with the world, is what is left behind in this eschatological vision of the kingdom? That at God’s banquet, only the best of us, only the wisdom that leads to righteousness will be present; our folly will be out of sight, out of mind?

This might reek of a liberal trying to avoid judgment, but I don’t think it is. This reading of the parable leads us to one of the core elements of the Christian life –sanctification. The foolish maidens aren’t allowed into the wedding banquet because foolishness itself isn’t allowed in. Only wisdom that leads to righteousness is. The good news of this parable is the good news of the Christian life – that God is never done with us, that God is continually pruning the foolish away and replacing what is gone with Godly wisdom so it is possible for us to enter the banquet. It is in this process of sanctification that God is actively refining us so that we look less like sinful human beings and more like Jesus.

Fortunately, God is not passively watching to see if this happens and judging us if we don’t make it, but is working with us, molding us and shaping us to reflect divine wisdom instead of sinful folly. The point of the Christian life is the sanctification that leads to holiness and a life modeled after the God we know to be revealed in Jesus Christ. And it is Gospel that God provides the sanctifying grace to help make it happen.

We know, deep down, that this is true. We can each look back at some of the foolishness in our lives that has been replaced by divine wisdom as God has worked within us. Some of the sins that once owned us – and we could all recite a laundry list of them – no longer define us. We can look back at the people we were when we first knew Christ and see where foolishness has left the building, and divine wisdom has moved in.

Hillary is a friend of mine, who throughout the course of her life, has been riddled by doubt. For much of her life, Hillary confronted her demons by drinking alcohol, lots and lots of alcohol. A friend recalls a day-long drive to a meeting when they had to stop three times on the trip, not for lunch or gas, but so Hillary could buy more beer, which she would then put away in the car. Well, not surprisingly, all this came crashing down on her, and after an alcohol-induced altercation at work, Hillary had to leave her job.

This isn’t the end of the story, however. Forced to enter rehab, Hillary examined her life and vowed to leave the alcohol behind. Sober for five years, she attends weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and preaches a message of hope for those wanting to live a life without as she calls it, “the booze”. At a dinner over the summer, Hillary announced that her alcohol-induced public disgrace was the best thing that ever happened to her. Her foolishness behind her, she no longer is trying to numb the pain but is celebrating the new life God has given her.

We also know that Hillary’s story isn’t the only side of the coin. We look around our world and see that foolishness still abounds. We realize that sometimes my friend on the bus was right, that it seems like there are nine foolish maidens and one wise one in ourselves, in our churches and in our world.

But we know that God is at work, and that God’s word is not one of unbearable fear but of unlimited hope. That’s because the end point of sanctification is not a time when some of our foolishness is gone, while some remains. John’s Revelation claims that we are waiting on a new heaven and a new earth, where sin will be vanquished and the divine wisdom of righteousness will reign. Those victimized by the societal foolishness of war and inequality now have hope that the way it is now is not the way it always shall be. There will be a new heaven and a new earth; this sin-stained creation, with its pain and its tears, its mourning and its crying, is not the last word.

The good news of this parable is nothing less than what Miroslav Volf calls the central Christian hope – that there will be a final and irrevocable reconciliation in which all will be made right.[2] The foolishness that shackles our souls will be gone, replaced by wisdom that will free us to announce and proclaim the glorious light of God’s goodness and new creation. For those mixed up with equal parts wise and equal parts fool, this is very good news indeed.

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[1] Donahue, John. The Gospel in Parable, 103-04

[2] Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation, 110.

I'm Talking About Practice

I don't like Pete Carroll, or at least I didn't use to. Maybe it was that his teams dominated like few college teams have over a three year period. Maybe it was ESPN's hype machine talking too much about USC or maybe it was all those Heisman Trophies the Trojans won. Maybe it was the way Carroll struts and stomps on the sidelines during games, or maybe it was jealousy at the way they owned college football supremacy, snatching it away from programs in my beloved Southeast Conference. For whatever reason, something about the guy just rubbed me the wrong way.

But as I was making my way through the Internet this morning before church, I stumbled across a wonderful profile of USC's coach in the L.A. Times. The opening story of Carroll visiting men and women in some of the roughest neighborhoods and listening grabs your attention, but there was another piece of the story that stuck with me this morning in church.

Carroll has to pass through the USC music building on his way from his office to the practice field, and the sound of wannabe musicians pounding out notes day after day serves as an echo of one of Carroll's central themes.

“One thing I’ve learned, which I was taught a long time ago but didn’t grasp at the time, is the power of practice,” Carroll says. “The discipline that comes from practice, that allows you to transcend the early stages of learning and take you to a point where you’re free floating and totally improvising. Through the discipline, the repetition, you become free.”

I spent four years as a sports reporter, so the idea of a football coach stressing the importance of practice doesn't register as breaking news. However, reading Carroll talk about the routine of practice and the way that discipline can free us piqued my interest.

One of the hardest parts of my time in seminary has been finding ways to practice my faith in the midst of studying. I know practices are all the rage in theological education (thank you Diana Bass and Craig Dykstra), but Carroll's point led me to think about the ideas in a slightly different way.

I attend a school of theology that views itself as progressive, constantly defining itself against conservative or evangelical ways of doing things. Professors have talked about defining spirituality and faith as not as structured or defined as their more conservative brethren often do. For example, prayer is not sitting down and reading the Bible and then talking and listening to God, but prayer can be many different things. Life is prayer.

All this is well and good, but I wonder if we have to get to a certain point for this to take root. Maybe we need a discipline, a practice, that can then free us as we progress in our faith. I have found that as legalistic as it might sound, spending time reading and praying, a "devotional time", is important and can help me nourish the spiritual life that others might find in more broader terms. The discipline, the process of going over something, of doing it again and again, is worthwhile. As Carroll claims, we can only be free, maybe we can only go deeper as we cultivate the routine.

I can't remember the sheer number of times that I have heard coaches proclaim, "you play how you practice." Allen Iverson's protests to the contrary, practice matters. If we practice, if we spend our time cultivating a way of doing something, then we can improvise and maybe move beyond that to something deeper or " better".

I'm hoping to practice. I'm hoping to find a way to practice what I believe, to be trained and formed into patterns that will help me become the person that God has called me to be. Sounds like a good New Year's resolution to me.