Mary says to the Angel – May it be unto me as you have said. 

Mary is not the first woman to fill a central role in the story of Jesus. Any quick perusal of Jesus' genealogy reveals a list of "scandalous" women from Israel's history - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah's Wife (Bathsheba), and finally Mary. It is odd that they are mentioned in this context, odder still that their "scandal" is not painted over. Women are not silent in the narrative of Jesus.

But does Paul claw all of that back?

1 Cor 14: 34-35, seems to be about women not speaking in the Church. Few Churches act out the simplest reading of these verses, which is that women should remain absolutely silent in Church. That doesn’t just mean preaching or teaching; that means praying, singing, doing children’s time, reading announcements, saying hello, etc…Even those who believe that women shouldn’t preach or teach have given up this most basic reading. So already we have some interpretation happening.

And we need interpretation, because it seems impossible that Paul is actually saying that women must remain totally silent in the Church. In 1 Corinthians 11:4-5 Paul assumes that women will be praying and prophesying in the Church. In other letters Paul commends various women as prophets, deacons, even apostles (eg. Rom 16:1-12; Phil. 4:2-3). And in Acts 2:17-18 it is announced that sons and daughters, male and female servants will prophecy.  All believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit can prophesy, and the context for this prophecy is the building up of the Church. In fact, if women are not allowed to speak at all in the Church assembly, then it must mean that the rest of 1 Corinthians 12-14 – which instructs believers on how to build up the Church with their Spirit-given gifts - must apply only to the male members of the Body of Christ!  

Some have suggested that women were allowed to prophesy and pray, but not to teach, preach, or weigh the prophecies of others. But this passage is not about preaching and teaching at all, and Paul does not limit the gift of discernment (nor any other gift) to men alone. And prophecy was designed at least in part to teach everyone (1 Cor 14:31), so women who were prophesying were teaching. So it seems the verses in front of us cannot mean that all women should never talk in Church. What do we do with these verses, then?

Problem is, we simply don’t know, aside from educated guesses, what was going on in Corinth at this time that caused Paul to give the corrections he did. One popular notion is that the men and women were split up into different rooms or sections for their Church meetings, and that the women were idly chatting too much and interfering with the worship of the men. But this probably wasn’t the way the home churches were set up, and verse 35 shows us that the women in the Church in Corinth weren’t idly chatting; they wanted to learn. This, Paul agrees, is a good thing, just as speaking in tongues is a good thing. But asking questions in the middle of the meeting, as it appears the women in Corinth were doing, was not a good thing. It caused disruption and confusion just as speaking in tongues in a disorderly and unintelligible way caused disorder and confusion.

But why then were women told to not ask questions in this context, and not men? One strong possibility:  If the women in Corinth were asking questions during the time that Scripture was being taught, as seems likely, then they were probably causing offense by doing so. Questions were normal in public lectures, but they were asked in an orderly way, and it was considered rude to ask irrelevant questions, or questions that could be answered on your own time through your own study. And 2000 years ago, women were far more likely to be uneducated or unfamiliar with public lectures, so they were far more likely to be asking irrelevant or inappropriate questions while the Scripture was being taught. This was shameful and scandalous in the culture that the Corinthian Church wanted to reach with the gospel. 

Thus, goes the argument, the Corinthian women’s silence, in this particular case and time, would be loving and God-honouring to the rest of the Body. The women here were being asked to submit, as the Law required, to the needs of Church peace. Remember, this whole section of Paul's letter was about love for the Body, and helping those outside the Church understand what was going on. The emphasis is on taking down any barriers for understanding.

But shouldn’t the Church be in favour of changing unequal and unjust situations? Well, Paul was still in favour of women learning more by asking questions. So he points out that there was another venue in which they could ask questions and learn what they wanted to know: asking their husbands at home, who were probably more educated than they were. This is the most progressive program for the education of women at the time! When we read this instruction from a 21st century Western mindset, it seems dismissive. "Go ask you husband!" But we have to learn not to do that with ancient writings. Far from belittling the women, this instruction assumes that they can and should learn the things they want to know, and addresses the inequality of Scriptural education between men and women. It asks husbands to take responsibility for ensuring that their wives receive the education they are looking for.  (A modern application of this principle could be ensuring that those who have not had the same educational opportunities as others, regardless of gender, have access to classes in which they can be taught Scriptural basics.) 

The careful conclusion I come to is that these verses are a correction given to the Church in Corinth. There is a message here for us, but the letter is not written to us. I therefore believe that this passage does not prohibit women from speaking in the Church today. The passage does not address preaching or teaching, and the cultural situation that made it necessary for the women in Corinth to save their questions for their husbands at home no longer exists. This interpretation does leave open the possibility that there may be cultures in the world today that are similar to that of Corinth, and in which women might still cause scandal by asking questions in the Church. But it insists, as Paul did, that Christian men in those cultures work towards resolving any inequalities in education the women face, so that they can participate more fully in Church gatherings. The Church must work to change those cultures from the inside out, and it must not simply be content to adopt the prevailing culture.

I also believe this passage does not prevent women from exercising any role or gift in the body, as we see women in these roles and using these gifts in other parts of Scripture, and as we receive Paul’s instruction from this passage that “all may prophesy…so that all may learn and all be encouraged.”  The case-specific instruction given here fleshes out the same principle that underlies all regulation of Christian worship: act in love towards one another, and do not cause confusion or disruption in worship, so that all within the Church can understand and be built up, and all outside the Church can hear the message of the Gospel. The Scriptural principle to which we are called here is order and peace in worship, not the silence of women.

Very strange moment for me today. After the Holiness Meeting, a friend and I went to meet a man named Bobby who is running a new type of Pharmacy in the DTES.

The Pharmacies in the DTES have kind of a bad name, as there has been some corruption uncovered as of late. This particular pharmacy is different, in that it is linked to an in-depth mental heath study, and aims to address the entire person, rather than just their methadone needs. Bobby said:

"30% of the people we have surveyed in this neighbourhood are addicted to Heroin. 73% of the people we have surveyed have various mental health issues, many of them stacked one on top of the other. Yet Pharmacies are so quick to dispense methadone, and reluctant or unable to address these underlying issues."

Another thing that struck me was his observance that there is a "spiritual" side of his clients which is not being addressed by pharmacology, law enforcement, or psychiatric care. This seems like a whole new way of thinking in the health care field, but of course it is an ancient understanding that human beings are not just bodies and chemicals.

The strangest thing about the whole meeting, however, was that this new Pharmacy is located in the old 614 apartments on Main Street. It was very bizarre going up to the top floor where we used to have dinners, watch movies, run cell groups, and where countless 614 people used to live. They still have the same landlord, and are still encountering the exact same problems we did. Their main reception area is where the old ZOO shop used to be. (I did not ask if any of them have gone up to the roof to screen movies, water plants, or shoot bb guns.)

I believe we left a spiritual heritage in that place, and are now being invited back in to offer spiritual care to people who are at their lowest ebb. It is beautiful, and also hilarious to anyone who spent anytime there.

I'm seeing calls for creative thinking about our world. Popular Sci Fi writer Ursula Le Guin is asking other authors to imagine alternatives to capitalism that might work.

I think we are so deeply immersed in this way of living and thinking that it is next to impossible to imagine a different way. I recall asking a group of our students once to imagine a different way of making a car than by an assembly line. They couldn't do it. They could not even conceive of a time when things weren't made piece-meal, in a factory, in bulk, for mass production and consumption. The very notion that a thing could be made whole, by one expertly skilled person, as a unique thing, that would last possibly even for a lifetime, was utterly foreign.

This is not terribly surprising, as the idea of our current society is reinforced by all the power of consumerism and marketing, which reaches ably into our homes, our schools, our churches. It is almost the perfect storm of mass persuasion, and thus, control. Thomas Merton, writing in the 60's, said that in a society "organised for profit and for marketing...there's no real freedom. You're free to choose gimmicks, your brand of TV, your make of new car. But you're not free not to have a car."

Living alternatively is exhausting, because it requires constant vigilance against the fully deployed forces of the World.

Community is essential in this venture. Having relationships that are patterned not on commercial value but on the recognition of human dignity is one important weapon in our arsenal.

Another weapon is prayer. Abba Agathon said that prayer is "warfare to the last breath." I agree. Prayer is a totally non-commercial pursuit that is - or at least can be - outside the control of the powers around us. Prayer is stillness and silence and Other-directedness in a world of movement and noise and self-centeredness.

So before we start imaging new ways of living, maybe we ought to grab hold of an old practice of being, and let the depth of immersion into the life of God be the source of any creativity.

Yesterday I was speaking with my friends in a treatment program about the meaning of Advent. Advent is a season of hopeful expectation and preparation for the coming (and returning) of Jesus into the world.

The whole season affirms that God is not tragically absent, but mysteriously present.

We talked about what that means for the life of the Church, and gave some examples of what this incarnation could and does look like in everyday life:

• It is a prayer room in a youth drop in centre, where decidedly non-Churched kids encounter God experientially through art, music, relationship, and presence.

• It is a Salvation Army officer starting up a cigarette in a dingy room for a dying man who hasn't the breath in his lungs to get it going himself.

• It is a woman deemed "crazy" by society offering hospitality and protection to a man being escorted by security out of an upscale area of Vancouver.

• It is a member of a congregation offering to shower and clothe a man who regularly soils himself in the middle of a Sunday Holiness Meeting.

During the break after I spoke, I noticed there was a man outside the treatment centre - a man well known to myself and to others in the program - who was slumped by the doors, dangerously inebriated. A couple of the guys in the program immediately went to him, ministered gently to him, offered him care and support, and evidenced the beautifully present love of Jesus to him in a desperate moment. It could hardly have been more - and less - of a Christmas moment if we had orchestrated it.

I love it when we speak about Jesus, develop our theories and ideas and arguments about him, and then he shows up to affirm but also to dramatically enact more exactly and materially who he is and what he really desires from his children. And I love it when his children respond.

I am currently reading Kathleen Norris' "Acedia and Me", a marvelous book on the ancient sin or "bad thought" of acedia.

Acedia is something of an untranslatable word, but includes the idea of spiritual apathy, sloth, listlessness, malaise, despair. It is connected to, but also differentiated from, the medical diagnosis of depression. I, along with Norris and others, believe acedia to be the fundamental sin or demon of our age and culture.

Alasdair MacIntyre has this very profound word:

"Our present age is perhaps no more evil than a number of preceding periods...it is evil in one special way at least, namely the extent to which we have obliterated...[our] consciousness of evil. This becomes strikingly apparent in the contemporary modes of instant indignation and denunciation. It is marvelous how often the self-proclaimed defenders of the right and the good do not seem to have noticed [in themselves] the vices of pomposity...exaggeration and self-righteousness....it was left to our time for what had been an eccentric vice...to become a dominant social mode."

We are outraged and offended and self-righteously engaged in our social media clicktivism, from all sides of the political spectrum, but not necessarily engaged in anything concrete or real. We are quite satisfied in our judgement of others, quite smug about our socio-political positions, but quite safe from actually having to bear any of the consequences of the opinions we spout.

"Liking" is not caring.

And we don't care, and this is a temptation, a diversion, a thought that can lead to a pattern of life, even a passion, if we continue to feed into it. We fool ourselves into thinking we have cared about something, and we communicate that we really care about something, but really we don't, and certainly don't live as if we do.

I know that it seems awfully cliche to say this, but the answer is prayer. Stillness and prayer. Avoiding the easy path to feeling like we have done something, and choosing to be still and listen and obey.

This is difficult. The moment we stop, we will think of all kinds of other things we could be doing, and want to do them. Anything to avoid the terror of encountering ourselves, from staring into the scary void of existence denuded of our distractions and self-delusions. Trusting that we are known and loved and set free by God, and operating out of that security.

"But now thus says the LORD, who created you; O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name;
You are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned,
Nor shall the flame scorch you.
For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."
Isaiah 43:1-3

This is a beautiful video of a father reassuring his son that they do not have to leave France as a result of the terrorists.

Look, in any kind of firefight, guns beat flowers and candles. We all know this. So this video can seem a little naive, and probably leaves a lot of people scoffing at the stupidity of those who believe there are other ways to peace than through the barrel of a gun, or the sights of a bomber.

I might believe the same, except that I remember the story of Christian Fuhrer, a pastor in East Berlin. He spoke at a 24-7 Prayer gathering we had in Dresden, and told of how hundreds of thousands of people brought down the Berlin Wall, and reunified Germany, through the faithful use of prayers, hymns, and candles.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/christian-f-hrer-leipzig-pastor-whose-peace-prayers-rallied-resistance-to-communism-in-the-run-up-to-9593219.html

He is an example of one who did not let fear or impossibility define him, or his faith, or his God. He believed that candles and songs and prayers could overcome Empires, and he was right.

This does not mean that it will always "work". People die. Faithful people die. Good people die. Flowers do not always protect against guns (but neither do guns and bombs and drones and landmines).

Let us remember that there are worse things than death, certainly for Christians. Unfaithfulness is one of those worse things. Denying Christ. Disregarding his commands. These are worse.

I really like this painting by David Hayward, entitled "RefuJesus".

Jesus was a refugee, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, taken as a child out of his birthplace to a neighbouring country. This country, Egypt, had a history of being somewhat unwelcome to Jesus' people. But it was considered safer than staying at home, where madmen were visiting violence upon his fellow children.

In certain, very biblical ways, Jesus is still a refugee. How we treat the most vulnerable is how we treat Jesus. How we fail to treat them is how we fail to treat Jesus.

Even if we see certain refugees as our enemies - even if they ARE our enemies - we still have a Christian mandate for how to treat them.

I do not suggest that this mandate is operative upon the State. The State is not Christian. It is, however, operative upon Christians. We should be fighting to be first in line to open our doors, our tables, our homes, to welcome Jesus. And we should be calling the State at least to justice. In Canada, certainly, most of us are of immigrant if not refugee stock. Fair play is fair play.

I sincerely hope this is a live conversation happening in all North American Churches these days.

And as an aside, if you are one of the folks saying that we should be taking care of our own homeless/mentally ill/veterans etc...before we take care of refugees (and we should be taking care of them as well), well, then you'd better be looking to befriend and bring those folk in as well.

Here is some difficult, but strangely encouraging, truth:

"As Christians are in the banal situations of ordinary life, of the global mediocrity of society, of everyday problems of no great interest, of constant diversion, faith burns low, makes no great responses, expresses nothing, produces no exemplary conduct. The banal and the everyday are the worst destroyers, because they express tepidity. Nevertheless, among 'sociological Christians' there still remains an element of truth, the smoking flax that is not quenched (Isaiah), little faith that still persists (Revelation). Hence when the moment of decision comes, the moment of the back to the wall, of radical proof, of the tempest, then there is always the possibility that the wick will flare up and set the whole alight again, just as there is the possibility that it will go out altogether. I would say that traditional and superstitious believers can give birth all at once to confessors of the faith, to martyrs, to people who know that in a crisis Christians may be summoned to be such in the full sense."

(Ellul, "The Subversion of Christianity", p.205)

Lord, bring us more and more to the moments of decision. Re-ignite the flame of your life in our lives.

But beware before praying that prayer. Do not ask lightly to be burned. The banal and the everyday, the constant diversion - this is comfortable. This is nice. This is manageable.

The back against the wall, the radical proof, the tempest - pretty much the definition of uncomfortable. Not nice. Unmanageable.

I think this is why where and how we choose to live is not really spiritually neutral. One of the 12 marks of New Monasticism is the "relocation to the abandoned places of the empire", not just because this is good missional ground, but because these are liminal places where moments of decision abound, and are obvious. Moments of decision abound everywhere, of course, but are much easier to disguise or ignore when you are surrounded by a pervasive and shallow culture of distraction, consumerism, and comfort.

The modern, comfortable Church imagines that the norm should be living in "regular" neighbourhoods, and only those with a special and heroic calling should think about heading to "irregular" mission grounds. I believe the opposite is true. Discipleship and fellowship should most normally be happening in neglected places, in "despised" neighbourhoods, in tempestuous environments. Because these are the best places to encounter and receive the Kingdom of God, and be grown and nurtured in the true and radical confession of faith. Then, those who are specially called and carefully discipled can go out to the wildernesses - to the suburbs, the malls, the gated communities - where they can sound a wake-up call to those who are sleeping.

If you are looking for this kind of fiery discipleship, consider a year at the War College.

www.thewarcollege.com

I want to use this tiny platform today to highlight Beirut. ISIL has claimed responsibility for two/three suicide bombings that killed 43 people and wounded another 200 in a Shia area of southern Beirut. The bombs were set off in a busy commercial district, at a time when people were getting off work and families were gathering together. One of the bombs was detonated at the gates of a school. The reason for the bombings seems to be that the area is a Hezbollah stronghold, and Hezbollah has been active in the fight against ISIS/ISIL in Syria. Friday was a day of mourning in Lebanon.

Mentioning these terrorist bombings in Beirut at this time in no way diminishes the suffering of Paris, just as #prayingforparis is not a slam against the pain of Beirut.

But there is an unequal level of interest in the two situations.

It is always shocking to us when violence "comes home." It disrupts our comfort, our generally optimistic, and perhaps myopic, view of reality. We think we are safe. Really, if we get right down to it, we think we are immortal. Until we are confronted by fear, violence, sickness, accident, pain. And then we remember, as every human has ever had to remember, that death is. But we want to put that moment of realisation off as long as possible.

This is difficult for the privileged class of the Western world. We have lived our lives in active denial of this reality, to the point where looking old is one of our society's most embarrassing faux pas. We don't want to look at old, because it reminds us of where we are headed. And when we hear of violent, hateful acts occurring in places that feel like home, that remind us of us, we get real scared. Then angry. Then accusatory. Then violent. Because our illusion has been shattered and we feel threatened, not so much by terrorists as by terror, the terror of an interruption in our "good life", the stark reminder that death is a comin' to us all.

What does that have to do with Beirut?

The reason we don't get shocked about violence in Beirut, the reason we don't change our facebook avatars to reflect Lebanon's colours, is because we expect violence there. This is normalised in our minds, and violence is "appropriate" in that context. We almost can't think of places like Beirut without thinking about violence. Thus, nothing is interrupted in our lives by an act of horrific violence "over there," because we can't even really understand it as an interruption in their lives. They aren't real to us, they are pictures on tv screen of people living lives we can't bring ourselves to imagine. They are already so "other" that their deaths don't really adjust our perception of reality. This is normal.

Understand, please, that I am not speaking of anyone's actual reality in Beirut. I also do not believe that the typical Western view of life in Beirut is in any way accurate. I certainly do not claim to speak on anyone's behalf in that context. I am speaking of how I understand the general perception of such tragedies from the perspective of Western culture, something I do know a little about. Attacks on Paris and places like it make us mad and afraid. Attacks on Beirut and places like it make us sigh, make us resigned to such violence, make us re-confirm our suspicions about "places like that," "people like that". Not for everyone, to be sure. But for enough that it can start to affect things like refugee and immigration policies.

One of the editors of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France has urged people not to #prayforparis, arguing that we don't need more religion. This betrays a misunderstanding - perhaps a justifiable one, to be sure - of the nature of prayer. I am praying for Paris, and in so doing am seeking the Father's heart for his children. I want to be able to mourn well and to be moved to whatever action I can take. Prayer enable me to do this, and I find this quite natural with regards to France. So please, do #prayforparis.

But also #prayforbeirut. Pray for the Father's heart over his beloved children. Over families that are mourning, schools that have been devastated, businesses that are missing friends and employees today, refugee camps filled with wise and caring and hopeful people who have fled terror and violence only to have it visited upon them or near them yet again in a new and unfamiliar land. People who are also now being blamed for this kind of violence in other parts of the world.

And #prayforyourownheart. Pray that it would be available to those you have previously seen only as "the other".

Sorry to be on a David Ramirez kick, but his concert last night, at a packed and noisy Railway Club in Vancouver, was captivating.

They say that Johnny Cash's discography could be separated into three categories: Love, God, and Murder. The same is true of Ramirez' songs. I love finding an artist who is able to sing of heartache and heart-joy with beauty and grace.

One of my favourite of his lyrics, and there are many, says:

"Well I can't come to Church cause of my dirty mouth
I wasn't invited to the party, I'm too f#cking devout
I'm always walking the line
Between cocaine and communion wine
You know I'm dead either way
So what's all the fuss about?"

"Hold On"

There's the tension we live in. Not welcome to be honest in the Church, and not welcome to be holy in the world. Not able to hold these two together, for some strange reason, and not able to find a true communion in either place. The Church isn't exactly saying "Come in, be you, be with us, let's be one together." And none of the pursuits of the flesh are doing the trick either.

Can we create space, maybe at our tables, for both honesty and holiness? Can we actually share a communion that matters?

The concept of "values" is one that I find very troubling. I remember someone I trust saying once that the word "value" itself was not a Christian word or idea at all, but came from Nietzsche. I retained this information without any context or understanding, until I started reading more philosophy for myself.

I now believe that the very concept of "our values" is inimical to Christian faith. The term and concept of "values" very much has its roots in a materialistic, atheistic worldview espoused by Nietzsche, and largely blindly accepted by our Western Culture, the Church included. The idea that something has value because we value it removes the idea that there are things inherently Good and True as a result of the Creator's making and caring. Something's worth, truth and goodness cannot be determined or prioritised by our opinions on the matter.

A connected problem here is that if we can "value" something or someone - that is, we can give them value - it also means that we can "de-value" them - we can remove their value.

When Churches use this kind of language, it reinforces our culture's emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual (not simply the freedom of the individual) and our own ability to give value.  I would suggest, following philosopher George Grant, that it is nearer the truth to ask what Good we are to conform to (or even better, how we are to be conformed to Christ), rather than what meanings or truths we value. (Linked here is a brief explanation of Grant's take on the matter).

https://curlewriver.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/george-grant-the-good-vs-values/

I don't make this suggestion expecting for it to be adopted. I understand fully that our culture is comfortable with the language of values, and does not understand the language of conforming to the Good. We are generally losing, or have lost, the ability to think about ethical and justice matters in ways that are not utterly influenced by Western, atheistic philosophy. We even associate the idea of "values" with Christian principles, because we have bought so fully into the modern (and now post-modern) emphasis on the individual as god. Whereas this used to exist solely in the realm of academia, it has now of course entered every aspect of popular culture, and really every area of modern life.

My hope rather is that small communities of witness would be fostered and nurtured, communities that consider the source of the truth they believe, and hold onto convictions forged in the fires of relationship with God and obedience to his Word, rather than opinions created out of the agreement of everyone in the room at the time or the prevailing winds of culture.

One of my favourite singer-songwriters, David Ramirez, is playing at the Railway Club in Vancouver tonight, and a number of us are going to see him.

I first came across his music at a prayer retreat on Bowen Island. At a communal prayer meeting we listened to this song, "Find the Light" which I had never heard before. It is a beautiful meditation on what the singer "wishes" over someone, wishes that include things needed but not things wanted; old life with a young heart; joy mixed with pain; an open mind that still discerns; ears to listen and control over the tongue; and most of all love. The chorus affirms that even in the darkness, the light may be found.

It reminded me a ton of the wisdom in the biblical book of James, and seemed such a departure from the sickly sweet sentimentality of most modern music.

I started playing and singing that song for the guys in the treatment program at Harbour Light on Wednesday mornings, and it went over really well. So I was thrilled when he came to town and my friend Melina and I got to see him. I talked with him after the show (his shows are still pretty small, at least in this neck of the woods) and told him the impact his song was making on guys going through some pretty heavy stuff.

He said, "Wait, you're playing my song for guys in treatment? Like, guys dealing with alcohol and drugs and stuff?"

"Yeah."

"Whoa. That's really bad-ass that you're doing that."

Here's that song, Find The Light:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjLLVuzhwUQ

I love it when we are praying in the park in the morning - this morning was a beautiful, crisp, sunlit morning with birds singing and a troubadour playing guitar on the bench nearby - and we look up from our intercessions to notice someone else has joined us.

Just quietly. Sitting on the cement block behind us. Head bowed in genuine, deep asking. Shy, nervous, unsure of your welcome, yet there and seeking.

I don't know what drew you to this small moment of prayer. I don't know what pain or need you harbour, if any, as you would not say. I don't know if you are saint, sinner, or angel unawares.

But I treasure your presence. You accompany us. Your prayer is added to ours, and lifts ours up together, boldly, impossibly, to the Father, the Creator.

Thank you for praying with us this morning.

Why does discipleship matter so much?

We do not receive the salvation of God just to go to heaven. We receive the life of God in us - the very life of Jesus through his Spirit - so that we might slowly, surely, be conformed into the image of Jesus.

This is discipleship. Yes, we are changed when the Spirit enters us. Yes, we are a new creation. Yes, we are dubbed "righteous." But that creation is not static. We have been given a citizenship, and now we learn what it means to live that out.

This is discipleship.

It is why discipleship is so important, but also why the WAY we do discipleship is so important. Bad discipleship is worse than no discipleship at all.

Much of our Christian discipleship seems to be about protecting young people from the world. This is wrong-headed. The world should be seeking ways to protect itself from discipled young people!

When we take people out of contextual life - out of Church, out of real-life scenarios, out of neighbourhoods - and sequester them in all-Christian-context bubbles and sub-cultures, then we are not really doing the work of discipleship. Discipleship happens in the world, or it does not happen.

Discipleship happens when people gather with those who are unlike them, maybe even those who they have been taught to avoid, those they have learned to think of as the "other" or even the "enemy". In those gatherings, we learn to love. But this is not romantic or heroic. This is not easy. It is not always safe. We learn to love people who still really bother us, who still mess up, who are still incomprehensible to us, who come from wholly different cultural assumptions than us. We learn to love people - in practice, in real life -  who do not look, smell, talk or think like us. That sounds cool, but it is only cool for awhile. This is the way Holy Spirit grew his Church in Acts. Comfort was not a high priority.

Discipleship is hard.

And so we tend to choose the lesser options, the easier options, the controllable options, the "safe" options. But in so doing, are we not in danger of creating disciples who are lesser, easier, controllable, and safe? Does that sound like Jesus?

Discipleship is learning to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses. This does not happen in isolation, in carefully vetted environments, in Christian "safe zones". This happens when Jesus sends us out like lambs among lions, and we learn to trust God or go home.

I have often heard it said: "We are stardust."

This is to place us firmly in the order of created (or natural, or material) things. And this we are. We are, incontrovertibly, made of the same stuff as stars.

This is meant both to humble us, and to make us wonder at the interconnectedness of things. Perhaps, in the absence of the Divine, we are to look at the stars and marvel that we are one in substance with such distant, beautiful and powerful entities.

I don't need to be a materialist to appreciate the glory of the stars, nor to shiver at our common heritage.

But we should remember that we are not the only things that are made up of cosmic dust.

Consider this portion of poetry from Daniel Berrigan:

"These are the coldiron embers of Lucifer:
these are the arrogant stars pushed out of heaven.
Then give him a handful of stars: heap stars at his feet.
These are the nails."

If we are stardust, so are the implements of torture and death that crucified Jesus. This reminds me that the Universe, in spite of scientific rationalism, is not neutral. It contains passion. It contains love. It contains hate. Both are implacable.

My body, and Jesus' body, were both formed out of the dust of the Universe. My body may use dust that has been formed into other shapes to mete horrific violence upon my fellow people. Nails made of iron from the heart of stars pierced the feet of the one who fashioned the stars and named them.

There is a moment in Jesus' life when he is accused of being possessed by the devil.

This is disturbing. It means that it is possible for people to look the incarnated Holy One in the face and be so far off the mark that they see Satan instead of God.

I don't really think janitors or construction workers make that kind of mistake. What I mean is, it takes a special kind of mindset to be able to identify pure Good as Evil, and vice versa. It was the religious scribes from Jerusalem who came to this erroneous conclusion. It always seems to be people who ought to know better, people who are consumed with the life of the mind and the spirit, people who have been set up as leaders of others, who get these things so far wrong.

(Earlier in the story Jesus' own family think he has lost his mind, but perhaps they can be a little forgiven here. There's was not a discernment based in theory, but in practical observation. Jesus was acting in a way that was going to - and did - get him killed. From a certain point of view, this suggests that one has lost one's mind).

What do we do with this? What do we do when the intelligentsia of our culture seem to be promoting as good that which seems to be evil, and decrying as evil that which seems to be good? It can be awfully tempting to agree, not least because an honest humility should lead us to accept that we might be wrong about this stuff.

Prayer seems like such a prosaic answer. But it really is the...I was going to say "the safeguard", but I don't believe it is at all safe. Maybe we really do have to risk it all with the following of Jesus. His own family thought he was nuts! The religious authorities thought he was demonic! His actions led him to a horrible death, and most of his followers followed suit!

Maybe the scribes from Jerusalem were onto something. This guy represented such a jarring departure from the way of their world that the only category they had for it was "demonic". Maybe if we were actually living the life Jesus prescribes we would be more often subject to the same type of accusation. Maybe this is all a little bit more radical than we originally thought.

A poet once said that

"Love is a dog from hell."

I think he got the location completely wrong. But if anyone thinks I am trying to soften the blow by evoking the hound of heaven, they clearly have never been pursued by holy fire.

It isn't pleasant. It isn't meant to be.

That same poet elsewhere described love as an early fog, a mist that goes away with the morning sun.

Sure. Our love can be like that. And maybe a hell-hound will give up the chase after awhile.

But God as a bloodhound is relentless. He is the kind of hunting dog that you will lose in the woods because of his ferocious dedication to treeing the prey.

God's love is not the fog that dissipates with the sun. It IS the sun.

There is a location near our neighbourhood which used to be part of our neighbourhood. The Woodwards building, adjacent to our old prayer space and the old Crosswalk shelter. It now sits on a gentrified block of expensive grocery stores and hipster coffee shops. A lost block.

Inside the Woodwards building is a large atrium with a basketball court, a spiraling staircase, and a lone piano. Vancouver puts pianos out in various place, encouraging passersby to fill the streets and public places with music.

I play a little keys.

So on our prayer walk tonight, needing to stop by London Drugs anyways for something, Cherie and I went to the Woodwards. She purchased; I played.

Beside the piano was a man who, in earlier times, almost certainly would have been sitting in our Recreate Coffee space across the street on a cold, wet night like tonight. And almost just as certainly he would have been sleeping that night in one of the bunks of the Crosswalk shelter, now gone these past three years.

As I sat down to play, he began to clap and cheer and rock where he sat. "Yes!" he cried. "Please, play beautiful music!"

Hoping to oblige, I began to play the songs I knew by heart, which are not many. And I began to sing, quietly. Amazing grace. Come as you are. Hope for the hopeless. Earth has no sorrow that heaven can't heal. I know a fount.

Each time I rested, he cried, "Please! Play one more!"

When I had finally exhausted my supply of songs, he called Cherie and I over to him.

"How did you know?!" he asked. "How did you find me?!"

What do you mean?

"Just last night I got really sick, got robbed, got kicked out of my shelter. I'm homeless, and can't get into UGM until nine tonight, and have to be out at six tomorrow morning. I'm so scared! But you found me, and sang to me."

We spoke to him of love, and peace, and Jesus, and places he could go that were safe, that could be long-term. We prayed with him.

"Oh, how did you find me?!"

God is love.

"Oh, God IS love! He showed you where to find me. Oh, he knew what I needed tonight!"

This is not the first time this has happened at that lonely piano, in that space that used to be part of our neighbourhood. Maybe it can still be part of our neighbourhood. Maybe I'll head back to that piano, every now and again.

Tom Waits, that strange, poetic, cookie-monster and Heath-Ledger-Joker inspiring minstrel, says this:

"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."

(You can get this on a t-shirt now.)

It reminds me of a quote from Soren Kierkegaard:

‘What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music… And people flock around the poet and say: “Sing again soon” – that is, “May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”’

Or the famous Hemingway quote:

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

This all sounds very morose and depressing. Should we not speak and write and sing of life? To be sure, we should. Yet there is a process to this. Look at the Psalms. There is more lament in the Psalms than praise. They are, at times, unrelenting and overwhelming, if we cease to read them through our happy-clappy spiritual lenses. 

It is not until the final six Psalms that we reach a place of unreserved praise. It is almost as if we have to walk through the full gamut of pain and sorrow before we reach a place where we can celebrate without hesitation.

It is almost as if a crucifixion has to precede a resurrection. 

So we should learn to admit terrible things, to sigh our personal and collective anguish, to open veins, allowing space in our lives and communities for others to do so as well. Doing this as honestly and as beautifully as we can allows people to join their terror and anguish and bleeding to ours.

Again from Tom Waits: "The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering." (also available on a t-shirt, apparently)

So let us say and write and sing terrible things - the death of Jesus is a terrible, terrible thing - with all the skill and wonder we can muster. But let us always remember, and remind, that after the night of sorrow, joy comes in the morning. The Psalms, after all, end with the words, "Praise the Lord!"

Sitting and praying here in the War Room (our community 24-7 Prayer room), and considering all of the things that are not sufficient to satisfy my soul. There are so many, and I have tried to quench the longings of my soul with so many of them.

This song by Dustin Kensrue helpfully illustrates the vast array of options that are simply "not enough":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeRSlQlPkpo&list=RDEM24AId8uIg3FTzmtYW9oodA

There is something so utterly beautiful about praying - that most hope-filled, rebellious activity that seems at the same time pointless and frustrating to the powers of our world, because they can never understand it nor stop it - praying with only a few, in the rain, in the midst of a neighbourhood ravaged by pain and threatened with displacement.

We faithful, ridiculous four, soaked by mist, shivering slightly in the still-temperate Vancouver autumn, can never shift this park, let alone this community, or this city. We are naive. We are spitting into the wind. We are screaming into a tornado. Our little prayers and our off-key songs sung with cracking, early-morning male voices are nothing compared to the lust for dope, the lust for property, the disregard for life that characterises this place.

It is so beautiful, this hopeless hope.

At the end we always pray the Our Father, sing the doxology, and then hug one another. We have to. It is a last note of innocent defiance to the world, the enemy, the devil. "You will not dishearten us! See? We will hug! Try and stop that!" Why would Satan even want to? And yet he should, because those hugs spell his doom.

It is so silly, to even think that way.

And it is so wonderful.

Here's one of the more counter-cultural things of which I am fairly convicted:

Who we choose to neighbour with, to pray with, to worship with, to fellowship with - these are not spiritually neutral decisions. Most often, we choose the path of greatest comfort and least challenge, and then justify it theologically or emotionally.

I have heard so many people talk about "finding a home" in one place or another, and I am genuinely happy that they find places of comfort. The trouble is, invariably, these found homes tend to be more excellent at meeting tailored emotional and social needs than at creating environments for spiritual challenge and growth.

Emotional and social needs should be met. But is this the primary function of Church? Is it not rather to enable one another to follow Jesus, the one who spoke of denying ourselves daily and picking up our cross? Is it possible that we have supplanted his command with our demands?

I confess (and this truly is a confession) I have little energy for trying to meet emotional and social needs, particularly of those in privilege. I know we should have the kinds of conversations and relationships that help people confront, address, and find healing in and through their pain, no matter what it is. We should be places and people of deep welcome. But what if our welcome, even our pain, becomes exclusive? What if the conversations we have are so centered around the particular pain of our own social groupings, that those who are "other" than us, who have experienced a wholly different kind of pain, cannot gain access? What if they become unwelcome because they are distracting from our own desire to be comforted?

When our pain and our need become exclusive and paramount, we can lose touch with the radically inclusive suffering and healing of Jesus. Jesus told his disciples that they were to be his witness in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. They were fine with Jerusalem and Judea, but wanted nothing to do with Samaria and the ends of the earth. Those were "others". Their experience was entirely different, and almost entirely unwelcome. They had found a home with one another, and were, seemingly, relatively comfortable. And then the Spirit drove them out of Jerusalem through the ravagings of Saul, and they were forced to confront the problem of converts among Ethiopians, Samaritans, Romans, etc...

They were not really at home in these environments. Paul certainly wasn't. But they were commanded to make home in these places, to receive strange hospitality, to call one another brother and sister, to give up their privileges and rights in order to make space for people they previously would have crossed the street (or the countryside) to avoid. They were told to humble themselves, to not think highly of themselves, to become servants (and not in some modern missionary concept of servanthood where we still essentially maintain the client-service provider power dynamics). They therefore had to rely on the Holy Spirit to be their comforter, because their worldly circumstances were not actually very comfortable or comforting.

Being comforted is important. But we are meant to receive this comfort primarily from the Spirit of God, who seems to have some specific intentions for what his Church is meant to be. In particular, we are meant to learn the comfort of God in the midst of a new, strange family that looks very different than the expectations of the world.

Listen to Jacques Ellul, on Grace:

"Grace. Do you think it is acceptable? To learn that we are the recipients of grace. It does not depend on me; I can do nothing. 'It is not of him that wills or runs.' Grace is odious to us. There is nothing pleasurable in finding out that we are like people condemned by nature to whom a kind of prince generously grants life for no apparent reason, for no realistic motive that we can understand. It is all so arbitrary: I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and merciful to whom I will be merciful. How can we seize or force or restrain God? No sacrifice, ceremony, rite or prayer can earn grace, precisely because it is purely and totally gracious and gratuitous. Am I happy about this? Not at all, for the whole principle of gift and counter-gift, of exchanging presents, is punctured by gratuitous, prevenient, sanctifying grace. If we are to believe the specialists, this mechanism of gift and counter-gift is truly decisive in human relationships and human 'nature.' Grace, then, is totally unacceptable from this standpoint."

Grace is unacceptable. If you think it isn't, ask any random group of people how they would feel about a predator of children receiving grace and forgiveness. How do you feel about that?

I have known heroin addicts who react in disgust to grace offered to crack addicts, because "those people are human garbage."

Grace offends. Read "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter from Dostoevsky's "Brother's Karamazov". It is one of the best descriptions of the outrage and absurdity of grace.

Grace should not be. It is not philosophically defensible. It upsets all of our systems. We find ourselves constantly in the position of trying to earn it by various means and methods.

Grace cannot be. Yet it is.

What are we going to do with this?

The life of the Church should be weird. That is, when we look around at those we are breaking bread with, praying alongside, worshiping and living with, they probably all should not look and sound and smell exactly as we do.

In the book of Acts the Holy Spirit seems utterly intent on creating a people who hailed from every tribe, nation and tongue. This new type of family was displayed to the world through their common meals, their common economy, their common life, and their common worship. Christ tore down the walls of hostility in his flesh, and it caused a pretty major reaction from the religion and culture around them.

We have spent the last two thousand years very carefully and deliberately rebuilding those walls.

If we look around at our Church community, and think that maybe, given the homogeneity therein, we could have built this community without the help of the Holy Spirit....well maybe we did? Maybe we haven't been listening? Maybe God actually wants his people to gather and live in ways that are very different from the way the world typically gathers and lives? And maybe we don't want to? Because maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense from a marketing and Church growth perspective? Or maybe we're just uncomfortable around people who don't share our backgrounds and assumptions?

A lot of maybes there. But maybe we really need to examine what we are actually a part of when we say we are a part of the Church. And maybe that means more than finding a place where our needs are met, or we are "being fed".

Just some thoughts.

"Be quick to listen...slow to speak...receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." James 1

The implanted word. It requires meekness to receive it, it requires an attitude that is slow to speak, quick to listen. It requires deepest humility.

But think as well about the humble and vulnerable action of God, implanting his word in us. It is a delicate and dangerous pregnancy. He knows what we do with his word. He knows how we abort it, abuse it, pervert it, subvert it, misuse it. This is why it is so important that we listen, that we slow our speech, that we still our anger, that we mature in meekness.

Our privilege and responsibility, much like Mary, is to give birth to the word that has been implanted in us by God. We are to be vessels through which the word is incarnated in the world. But, like Mary, we are never to stop relating to this word, this thing that gets birthed through us. We don't speak the word and then forget about it. We incarnate alongside it. We are the soil in which this word is continually nurtured, out of which this word bears fruit.

It is not enough to preach, or write, or run a Bible study, or play a song. These are only the barest of labour pangs. Giving birth is messy, painful, dangerous. And it commences a life-long love of that (him, her) which is born.

So do not speak (be slow!) unless you are prepared to invest your life in the fruit of that word which is born through you.

"...the true, the beautiful, struggles in winds and spaces, and scarcely, perilously wins."

Daniel Berrigan, "Stars Almost Escape Us"

Something like this lies at the very heart of faith, of life. We fight to believe, sometimes in spite of every evidence, that the true and the beautiful is even there, let alone that it wins.

This is the great sally of Christianity against nihilism. Jacques Ellul argues that it is the very subversion of Christianity that has given birth to the modern nihilistic epidemic. Christianity set itself against every idea of religion, every idea of the sacred, every false meta-idea that brought social cohesion and a sense of meaning and purpose. "No!" it cried. It is Christ, or it is nothing.

And then Christ was subverted, Ellul says, and systematised, and structured, and powered, and politicked, and confined into "holy" spaces and "holy" times accessible only to "holy" people. It doesn't really matter how high or low your Church expression is, we are all subject to this subversion.

And so Christianity, having successfully undermined the things that had given purpose to the world, successfully failed to replace them with the radical freedom and grace announced by Jesus.

And so what is the point? Where is meaning? We have systems of thought now that have dismissed God entirely, dismissed sin entirely, and yet still rely on the notion of good and evil. We can still identify broad and narrow evil in the world, and witness it displayed before us on every available media channel. We are drowning in the news of sin, but we dare not call it such.

And we have lost the hope of salvation in the so-called death of God.

Hence, nihilism.

Christianity may have played a major role in the creation of this modern and post-modern scenario. But at its heart, the Christian message is a defiant NO to nihilism, to death. "And the last enemy to be defeated is death!"

Faith is about life, life and hope and beauty and truth. These are not ideals, not ideas, not theories, not inherent Forms or free-standing realities. These are found in the revelation of Creator into the world, through the flesh of Christ and the Spirit that inhabits the one new people of God.

We are a people who somehow are given permission, and reason, to believe that the true and the beautiful, though they struggle, will win. Have won. Will continue to win.

Some days are more difficult than others.

Some days involve eating seven delectable courses of Italian rustic cuisine whilst nestled in the heart of the Alps.

Other days involve news of marriages failing, personality conflicts, and worrying meetings with upper management.

Still other days are filled with news of friends' relapses or deaths.

It is easy to say that one should just turn to the Lord in these tough days. Well, of course one should. But this is not really helpful advice. It is more bumper-sticker/facebook update Christianity than true discipleship. True discipleship doesn't waste one's time with such banal and easily-offered sympathies.

Sometimes one can only endure, and hope that Christ is sufficient, whether one feels it or not. And in those times, one really needs community to remind them that God is actually good, not just theoretically good.