Thinking Through the Ascension

Below is my homily for the Ascension, but first, a word: it is perhaps obvious to say, but a sermon which meditates on the ineffable quality of the Ascension is, itself, hard to put into words. "Beloved people of God, we cannot explain this. So let me now explain how we can't explain." Sunday comes too soon.

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Grace to you, and Peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Risen and Ascended One. Alleluia and amen.

Last summer, while I was working in the Smoky Mountains, I spent the night on top of Mt. LeConte. It's the third highest peak in the national park and a difficult, steep five miles to the summit. Once up there, I had an amazing view of the surrounding mountains and breath-taking places from which to watch the sunset and sunrise. While watching the sunset from a hidden ledge that only a few people (including my guide) knew about, I was excited to get back down the mountain and record the experience in my journal. The more I tried to write, though, the more I found my words failing me. I don't have the vocabulary to fully express the majesty of what that sunset. The way the sun hovered at the horizon, catching the clouds around it on fire, and the sky's slow fade from blue to the deepest purple, will forever be indescribable.

Comprehending the major Christian feast days is eerily similar. Words fail to do full justice to what is happening. Sure, we can understand birth and death. Christmas and Good Friday make sense. Easter? Well, we can sort of cognitively grasp what's happening. A heart can stop and then start again. We know that these are only partial understandings, but at least we have a starting point, right? Theology can take root in biology, at least in our minds. Much like the majesty of sunsets and mountains, we have scientific language available. I know that the sunset on Mt. LeConte was a function of slow geological movement, atmospheric distortion of light, and the rotation of the earth. All of this is true, but it fails to account for the full, sublime beauty of these events.

Just so, we miss the point when we limit our understanding of theology to that which can be understood scientifically. Christmas is about the full incarnation of God as Man, not reproductive health. Good Friday is about God's self-sacrifice, not just the cessation of biological function. Easter is about so much more than a heart beating again. This season isn't about divine defibrilation but an entirely new way of being alive, a new way of being, and a new creation.

And then we get to the mystical feasts. If we have trouble with understanding the more common place events in the life of Christ, how much more confused are we by those unique events which fall completely outside of human experience? We become even more lost. We lack a point of comparison. The Transfiguration, Ascension and Pentecost? Not even the most theoretical of physicist can provide insight into those.

No, we need a poet, not a scientist.

Instead,we end up with an idea of these great feasts that is overly reductionistic. We try to make sense of that which is wholly other. The Ascension becomes little more than Christ flying around like Superman. And then we really start to think about it. So, he ascended...to where? How exactly does one get to heaven? Second star on the right, straight on till morning? No, that's Neverland. Where's Jesus? Where's Heaven?

This question never really bothered me until I tried to think about it. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. Ok, cool. But...then I tried to put the Ascension into words. How did he get there? He ascended and, what, just kept going up? How far “up” does one have to go to get to the Kingdom of Heaven?

In The Truman Show, Jim Carry's character sets sail on a local body of water and eventually tears a whole in the fabric of his small little world. While the metaphor is certainly an apt way of thinking about Christ's life, and the image of tearing the fabric of this world is a beautiful expression of divine revelation, that's not what happens during the Ascension. What we read in today's Gospel was not Jesus going up and up and up until he burst out the side of the universe. We can't reduce the Ascension to such a literal interpretation.

These questions used to have answers. In the ancient way of understanding the cosmos, Heaven had a very definite physical location in space. The Ptolemaic cosmologists had an answer for this. Heaven is the outer-most sphere, just past the seven planets. It was obtainable in a physical way. But, from where I sit, as the first human-made objects leave the outermost parts of the solar system, they haven't hit any angels yet. Such a blunt view of heaven doesn't work well with how we think about the universe and our place in it. We can't reduce the Ascension to archaic astrophysics.

Where does this leave us? Did Jesus go up to space and disappear into another realm? No, we can't reduce the Ascension to divine teleportation.

Instead, we are forced to face a discomforting truth: we don't understand. We can't understand. It is too far afield from anything we have ever known. We think of theology as “faith seeking understanding,” but we fall short. There is nearly 2,000 years of theological tradition urging us to make sense out of what we believe, but we simply can't. We don't have the vocabulary to fully express the majesty of the Ascension. Instead, we should look east and turn to our Orthodox brothers and sisters. Orthodox theology offers a much-needed break from the over-bearing scholastic bent of theology; it invites the Church to dwell on the mysteries of the faith, to enjoy the unknown, and to celebrate the unknowable.

In rejoicing in the mystery, we can turn then to the altar with confidence. We can give thanks for God's own gifts of bread and wine and trust that the Risen and Ascended Christ is truly present in this sacred meal. Even though He is seated at the right hand of the Father, Christ is in the Holy Eucharist – in a very real way. And when we offer theses gifts back to God, we too are lifted up. In Christ's Ascension, we see the fulfillment of Creation being joined to the Kingdom of God. A human enters eternity, just God entered time. Just so, when we celebrate the Eucharist, we are, in some very small way, joined to eternity. Heaven and earth unite. Our prayer joins with the Christians who came before us and those who will come after us. The Church – past, present, and future, here in Decatur and all across the world, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, on earth and in heaven, wherever that may be, the whole Church – ascends to the Kingdom of God. Just for a moment. Christ becomes present in midst of the Church. Heaven becomes present on Earth. The Church becomes present in the midst of the Triune God. It's a mystery.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.

The Difference Between Interpreting and Picking (and Other Thoughts on Dawkins on NPR)

Today, I listened to Richard Dawkins on NPR during an episode of To the Best of our Knowledge entitled "Atheism & Its Critics".
Linkage!

The program opened with a discussion on faith. See my thoughts here.

One of the fundamental allegations Richard Dawkins levels against Christianity is that we (we being believers) pick and choose what we will accept as true from the Bible - Cafeteria Chrisitans, to borrow an old term. But I disagree with him on this. There is a fundamental difference between interpreting what you read and choosing what you read. Yes, some Christians avoid the more troubling part of the Bible. But many of the most sincere Christians are the same ones who take what they read and truly struggle with it. Yes, it bothers me to read about the mass killings committed in the Old Testament. But I have not rejected these stories. Instead, I have taken them as how the ancient Israelites saw God - as a god who loves his people and wants to protect them. Which is one of the recurring themes of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. On the other hand, if an atheist is to go through and reject the teachings of love in the Bible - to say that these are present in all cultures and therefore not relevant to the Bible - and focus purely on the violent stories of the Tanakh, then that might just qualify as "picking and choosing".

Of course, Dawkins also has a fundamental misunderstanding of the sacrifice of Christ, claiming the crucifixion is a bloody sacrifice of an innocent man to satisfy God for the sins of Adam, a man who never existed. To this, I say he's half - no, a quarter - of the way there. Yes, the crucifixion was a bloody sacrifice of an innocent man. But it was also a self-sacrifice - God himself dying for our sins. And that's the point we should take - the love inherent in the self-sacrifice, not the gruesomeness of the act. Secondly, and one of the largest misunderstandings Dawkisn makes is to assume that the crucifixion was about Original Sin. And while this may be up to debate among theologians*, by no means should it be taken as the belief of all Christians. It is my belief that Christ died for the sins of all people, not for Original Sin.

"I am in favor of goodness," says Dawkins. He claims that he stands against the claim that you don't need religion to be good. To this, I say, define "good". If "good" is doing good things - feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and such - then yes, you can be good without religion. If "good" means never doing bad, if it means living a perfect utilitarian lifestyle - always causing more utility than harm - then we're in trouble. Because nobody can ever be good in this sense.

Oh, and if you get a chance, read what Brad Hirschfield has to say - "faith without fanaticism."

Rock on.

*Though I can't think of any groups that hold this belief. Perhaps someone can provide an example.

Jean Valjean, my brother...

...you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."

So spoke Bishoph Myriel to Jean Valijean, and this after Jean had robbed the bishop.

Likewise, Kinetic Church in North Carolina was robbed. And by robbed, I don't mean a thief made off with the church silverware. They lost almost everything. And their response? They tried to get the thief's attention with billboards and then released a video on YouTube offering the thief a chance to go get lunch with the pastor.

Really. You can watch the video.


I...am in awe. I see this video and I see Christ, on the cross, saying, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."
I see this video and I see Christ saying, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
I see this video, and above all else, I see Christ. I see his Church. I see what true belief really looks like.

And I pray that if I ever find myself in such a situation, that through the grace of God alone, I am able to put forth a response such as this.

Rock on.

Tip o' th' Hat: Stuff Christians Like

In What Do You Have Faith?

I have previously written on proponents of fundamental atheism who argue that religion is inherently a bad thing. Part of their argument depends on faith: If we can will ourselves to have faith in a god that cannot be proven, this faith can be used and/or manipulated to drive us to commit horrible atrocities.

To this, I say that their basic premise is correct: Faith in the divine can be manipulated, and it has been in the past.

But does this mean that the problem is the faith or the manipulator? And what does the manipulator have faith in?

The Crusades are a dark, dark period in the history of the Church. Especially for Catholics. And they were fought over faith - faith in Christianity and the Church, faith in the Pope, faith in God. Many of the soldiers had faith that they were doing the right thing - delivering the Holy Land from Muslim conquerors. But what did the leaders have faith in? I would suggest they had faith in the money they could earn by capturing artifacts and royalty, faith in the ransom they would be paid, faith in the power they could gain by controlling the land, faith in themselves. This same theme pops up in many acts of religious violence: the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the sale of Indulgences, the wars of the Reformation, the White Power movement, the Wahhabi extremist movement, the Lord's Resistance Army, and many more.

Likewise, let's look at the Khmer Rouge, the perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide. What did the soldiers have faith in? I would imagine that they had faith in the world they were fighting for, faith in the Revolution and the liberation of the workers, faith in Pol Pot. This faith in a cause, leader, and higher power - the same faith held by the Crusaders, though placed in a different cause - Communism, not Christianity - a different leader - Pol Pot, not the Pope - and a different higher power - the Government, not God - manifest itself in the same way. That is to say, it lead to violence and genocide, to the loss of life, and the murder of the innocent. And why did it reach this level? Because Pol Pot had faith as well. Faith that he would be rewarded for his trouble, faith that he could take power, faith in himself. And like the violence committed by those who have faith in God, those who have faith in humans and ideas have the same theme: the purges of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Kim Il-Sung, the genocide in Nazi Germany, the race-fueled violence in the Sudan, Rwanda, and South Africa, the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, and many more.

Faith can be dangerous. It must be taken with a grain of salt. Faith in most things can be manipulated. Believers in both God and Freedom must take into consideration what they are being told. They must think about the end results; they must think about whether or not their leader has faith in the cause or faith in the power delivered by the cause.

But faith can also offer hope of a better world. It can offer more than skepticism and rationality ever will. Faith has brought freedom, charity, love. Faith has brought peace. Faith has brought as much good as it has bad. And it is not worth abandoning.

Rock on.

In Honor of Dr. King

Today, I sit in the middle of a three-day weekend and enjoy the comfort of my apartment, coffee included. Ok, that's a lie. I didn't finish the post on time, so now I'm outside of the three-day weekend. But I still have my coffee by my side. But anyway, it seems to be this way every year - I enjoy this early-January vacation and sleep in on Monday. I dare to say almost every kid in America shares this same view of the weekend.

But something just doesn't quite add up - I have always understood why Reverend King was so important. Being the son of a pastor, I have understood the importance and beauty of his speeches, which oft draw from the biblical imagery of the Old Testament prophets and the teachings of Christ. Being the son of a soldier, I have seen and understood the importance of racial equality and the beauty of diverse communities. It's just that for some reason, I have never been able to fully appreciate the day. And as I said earlier, I think I speak for every kid and student in the US - as evidenced by the "MLK Day Blow-Out Parties" being held around Athens tomorrow. As well as the fact that everybody I know spent the day either catching up on homework or goofing off.

In our educational system's push to teach about Dr. King, we learn about his childhood, a few of his marches, and the "I Have a Dream" speech. Almost to a point where we are "emotionally dead" (I beg your forgiveness for such a cliché) to the speech itself and can no longer fully appreciate what Rev. King was talking about. This is not to say the youth of my generation don't care about desegregation (though I wonder if we realize how important it really is). Instead, I'm saying that the "watered-down" version of King's life we receive nearly destroys the full impact of the break - King was involved in a lot more than just civil rights, and his involvement in civil rights went a lot further than some speeches and marches. I can remember from school, the explanations was something like this, "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the leader of the African-American civil rights movement in the 1960s. He is best known for his non-violence and the "I Have a Dream" speech." The end. What of his motivation? In a world where violence was the problem and some claimed that violence was the answer, why was Dr. King a pacifist?

But instead of actually looking at the life of Rev. King with the attention it deserves, the five-minute version has reduced the break to nothing but another Saturday. Which is likely the reason that I spent most of Monday covered in green paint (don't ask) and most of my friends were catching up on homework. But shouldn't a remembrance of Rev. King be something more than another day out of class? Around the nation, there are protests and rallies, memorial services, and the like., but the crowd is composed of mostly older people.

I'm thinking of something on a grander scale - something to make Dr. King's vision more than just a dream. Next year, instead of sleeping in or posting a late blog post (two days and counting...), let's change the world. Let's bring King's message to those who are still poor and down-trodden. Let's work together, black, white, or otherwise, for Brother Martin's dream.

Let's take his Dream to the homeless shelters and the soup kitchens. Let's take his Dream to the youth-outreach programs and inner-city playgrounds. Let's take his Dream to Tent City of Athens and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

"Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics —will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Rock on.

Hold Fast Hope

The first week of Advent is upon us and on Sunday, we lit the Hope candle in our Advent wreath at church. With the expectation of gifts and feasts less than a month away, now is a good, no, the best time to examine what we are hoping for this Advent and Christmas season.

I hope for good grades in all of my classes.
I hope for safe travel for my friends, family, and self.
I hope for good books and CDs this Christmas.
I hope for good food on Christmas day (Mom. Dad. Audrey. You three know what to do.)
And I'm willing to bet that most college students agree with me. But these hopes last only until the New Year. Then it's the same old grind of hoping for canceled classes and fun times.

What about the stuff that really matters, though? What do we hope for, or better yet, what should we be hopping for?
Advent is the time of looking forward to the coming of Christ our King, Immanuel, "God with us". We look for the Virgin who is with Child as a sign of our deliverance, for to us a Child will be born, a Son will be given. We hope for the birth of our Salvation, the very Word of God. But we look to more than that. We look to the Kingdom of God to be established. We listen for the voice calling in the wilderness, calling for the children of God to be found and delivered. We hope that "the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy," (Isaiah 35:5-6). We look for the great light to guide us out of the darkness, that the light of dawn be seen in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. We hope that our world will be turned upside down (for more on the upside-down nature of Christ, see Mitch Lewis' comparison to Yellowstone).

We hope for a time when the children of Uganda are able to attend school and live without fear of rebel soldiers. We hope for a time when the people of Darfur can return home and be no longer persecuted. We hope for a time when no person is allowed to go hungry. We hope for a time when the sex-slaves in Atlanta are free and healed. We hope for a time when the North Koreans are no longer oppressed. We hope for a time when Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland can turn aside from hundreds of years of tension. We hope for a time when the full power of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, is recognized and embraced throughout the world.

Rock on.
Post Script: The post is named after "Hold Fast Hope" on Thrice's album, Vheissu.

Blue Like Miller

My Intro to Religious Thought teacher is, in essence, the embodiment of post-modern philosophy. Raised as a conservative Methodist, he majored in Religion as an undergrad, and, as all Religion majors, realized that Christianity is not as simple as it seems. And, as all young adults coming to that this realization, faced the accompanying crisis of faith. After all, if you can accept that most of Genesis is exaggeration (at best, and this is not to mention all of the other things you learn about the Bible in school) and not notice an impact in your faith, something is probably very wrong with you. Studying those like Nietzsche and coming to the realization that you cannot prove what you believe tends to do that to you. Post-modernism is, really, the philosophy of rejection. All our lives are stories, and nobody's story can be correct.

It is into this time that we see (and need) a post-modern response to a post-modern philosophy. Whether or not they claim to be a part of the Emergent movement or not, authors like Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, and Rob Bell provide this response. And most popular among them (at least among the youth group masses) is Donald Miller. I'll admit, his books are probably among my favorite. You laugh, wonder, think, grow angry, and hopefully, learn. Christianity Today's review of Miller (not his books, but the man himself) says Miller is "often described as 'irreverent' or 'bohemian'". Which means one thing: he fits in with the rest of the world born after 1970.

Though the article focuses, in the beginning, on Miller's current aging-yet-relevant style of being (the author mentions that he is starting to have those mid-age moments, meeting a friend and asking, "Hey, how's your wife feeling these days?"), it later goes on to discuss this new trend of the Christian experience as a whole. Quoting one fan, we read, "I love Blue Like Jazz because it's, like, a Christian book, but it doesn't make you feel bad about yourself." Which means one thing (well, several, but I'll focus on this one): Nietzsche was wrong when he said that guilt is inherent in Christianity. Instead, Miller would probably argue, and I will agree, that Christianity is a post-modern religion. It's about our stories. God's story about how much he loves humanity, humanity's story about how we are trying to get back to God, and our own stories about how we relate to God and humanity. Miller is quoted as saying, "The chief role of a Christian is to tell a better story."

And, as the article points out, this is how Miller writes. Blue Like Jazz is the story of Miller going through life and learning. Searching for God Knows What is a collection of essays drawing from stories - his story of developing his own sense of evangelism, realizing that the world is fallen and needs God's help, and thinking about the role of the Church. In fact, Miller has one book that is really just one long story punctuated with moments of philosophical clarity; Through Painted Deserts is about how Miller discovered Portland.

As the masses start to wake up and smell the stories, they will need leaders, or at the very least, influences. Whether or not he wants to be, Don Miller has taken that position.

So, what's your story?

Rock on.

What Does Easter Mean to You?

A question presented to my crash group yesterday: What does Easter mean?

The obvious answer is, "Well, Christ was resurrected."
Ok. That's cool. Why is that important? It means that through him, we have victory over death and sin. But we're still going to die. All you're saying is that when we do die, we get to come back. So what does the Resurrection mean for us today? What application does it have in the present? And taking this as far as my group did, it ends up asking, "Why are you a Christian?"

What's scary is that while thinking about this, I couldn't come up with an answer. I mean, in Christ we are given grace and hope and a relationship with God. But many people aren't interested in that. They can just put off worrying about the future (most do it anyways) and not worry about God at all. Come on, that's something for philosophy professors to do, not average students.

So what is the practical application of the Resurrection? Hope - it can easily be replaced by apathy. A relationship with God - God only makes people feel guilty. Salvation - that's not until after I die; I don't have to think about that for a while.

I am, of course, playing devil's advocate. Like most things pertaining to faith, the meaning of the Resurrection is personal. Extremely personal. But something that every person should think about.

Rock on.