A Question I Heard Often . . .

. . . back when I used to hang around churches. WHAT IF you're scheduled to work on Sunday? And the question this implies: Is the old Sabbath still in effect today for Christians? My answer usually goes something like this: I don't think so (read this to find a good reason). But you are indeed to reserve and guard the time for the gathering of the assembly, which, in God's wisdom and since God raised Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week, happens to be Sunday (and it's no small fact that the church eventually confirmed this day too). The day itself isn't sacred. The time and space set aside for the gathering of the elect is. This is why Christ's disciples "need corporate worship to keep them strong" (as commonly expressed)....

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A Holy Calling

A PREACHER ONCE PARAPHRASED a bygone theologian as a challenge to the congregation: “To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of sub-Saharan Africa from the problem of malaria.” He went on: “The very fact that we have pause here is an indication of the influence of relativistic thinking among us.” On the one hand, this point needs to be heard—a church who thinks the primary concern of Christianity is to make the world a better place suffers form short-sightedness. But it also perpetuates a false dilemma. No doubt, for those churches who allow the message of the good news of Jesus Christ to be overshadowed by social action, the fact that top priority must always be given to the conversion of...

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The Orthodox Church of the West

THE MORE VOCAL I am about my Anglo-Catholic leanings, the more frequently I hear the following question: "What do you think about the Ordinariate?" The short answer is much and not too much. On November 4, 2009, in Rome at St. Peter's, on the Memorial of Charles Borromeo (is the significance of this fact due to his being venerated earlier in England than in other parts of the world?), Pope Benedict XVI presented the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus. Briefly, it provides a canonical structure within the Roman Catholic Church that "enables former Anglicans to maintain some degree of corporate identity and autonomy with regard to the bishops of the geographical dioceses of the Catholic Church while preserving elements of their distinctive...

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Status Symbol Land

FEAR—especially the fear of losing control—serves as the impetus for an awful lot of art. It also, of course, serves as the catalyst for an unhealthy dose of insomnia, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and death (either of the silent or walking variety). Motivated by Alan Noble's "Why Christians Should Read Disturbing, Dark, and Secular Fiction," I thought that since I have read and am now again reading a good bit of it that I'd do well to put some thoughts down on a piece that I've read recently. (This is a bit like pulling the winner out of a hat; I'm working through an anthology of American short stories and there are too many from which to choose. I decided against O'Connor's terrifyingly bizarre "Good Country People" because (1) she's not...

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Open Wound Now Sacred?

NOT THAT I EVER stop thinking about this particular subject, but perhaps a recent revelation precipitated my hitting "publish" on this post. Perhaps. A couple of months ago I laid out a way of making sense of the church as it is in actuality (as opposed to its ideal), labeling it “Open Wound Ecclesiology.” Bryan Cross responded to it in his way, which is to say, both unsurprisingly and formidably. I regret not to have responded in kind, though I was going back-and-forth on this matter over at Called to Communion at the time (and much of what appears below appeared in some form over there). What follows is an attempt to further clarify this “Open Wound Ecclesiology,” while answering some of the challenges Mr. Cross put forth in my combox....

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Check, Please

The empty tumbler tumbled onto the floor, Accentuating the saturninity of the scene. His lecture lowered, only now through clenched teeth; Her eyebrow raised and curled, unbroken yet abashed. *Produced as a result of Judith Baumel's poetry exercise "Anglo-Saxon Lines" in The Practice of Poet...

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When the Ice Melts

© Chema Madoz THE LAST TIME I ever thought about touching that deadly rock happened while sitting in an apartment without furniture, watching a group of addicts huddled in the center of the "dying" room, like scavengers hovering over a carcass, snarling at each other to pass the pipe, to not take so big a hit the next time. That memory haunts me still. Nothing smells or tastes like crack cocaine. I don't type this lightly. In fact, it's a horrific and embarrassing thing to admit. I don't do so merely to bring attention to myself. I do so because at times I smell it and taste it—not as if I'm tempted to partake in that particular activity, but because it still trips me out. Like a shadowy ghoul perched on my shoulder, I'm reminded of sensory...

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The Insatiable Hunger (a brief character sketch)

Benjamin hadn’t done anything extraordinary. In fact, he avoided most opportunities that remotely smacked of doing something that could conceivably produce an extraordinary thing. The young women that considered him cute mistook his silence as strength. Those closer to him thought him simply odd. Those closest to him knew he was just scared. Fear marked Benjamin’s life. He recoiled from falling leaves. He would turn around and walk the other way to evade almost-chance encounters with folks he neither cared for or didn’t trust, which was just about everybody. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he’d wake up shaking. Uncontrollably shaking. Too many Xanax became the only remedy. But too many Xanax led to that sneaking suspicion that everything...

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A Faith of Whose Own?

AS A TWO kingdomite, of the Pannenberg persuasion, I always begin reading “Christ & Culture” books with a sigh and some hesitation. Jonathan Merritt's A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars was no exception. First, though, I'll warrant that I'm not representative of the target audience of this book, for the following three reasons: (1) I've read my fair share of academic "Christ & Culture" books; (2) I'm in my late 30s (and thus a cynical, disengaged and barely Christian genXer); and (3) I am not southern (though I am intimately familiar with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Royal Ambassadors, Living Christmas Trees, 4th of July Sunday extravaganzas, as well as Freddy Gage crusades). But enough about me. This...

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Free Is Not Cheap

The ovens of Buchenwald | © Chris Donato WHEN JESUS PREDICTED his death to the disciples (Matt 16:21), it surprised them. The Messiah wasn’t supposed to die—especially at the hands of the pagan Roman empire. In another sense, however, it wasn’t all that surprising. Prophets like Jesus, Jeremiah, or John the Baptist often met with less than happy endings. In this case, it’s equally surprising that he pushed on toward Jerusalem. But such was the cost of discipleship. Jesus understood well that his messianic work of establishing God’s kingdom entailed more than preaching and eating with unclean sinners. It included suffering and death, and, of course, vindication through resurrection. Upon these final acts, the whole battle hinged....

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Confirmation & Stuff

OVER AT JESUS CREED, Scot McKnight posted about a "note from a pastor in a denomination that baptizes infants and then proceeds to catechism and confirmation, but this pastor has his doubts." (There are some good thoughts/advice in the comments section over at JC, btw.) I too responded in the combox, but this issue is one that's near to my heart, having taught such classes for a few years, which teaching challenged me more than any other to date (whoever said "if you can't explain it to children, you don't understand it well enough," was right in my opinion). The discussion can easily turn into a perspectives match on why—or not—baptism is efficacious (covenantally binding and enabling grace), essential, and preferably paedo- to following...

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Church of the Open Wound

A COLLEAGUE recently brought my attention to this portion of Jürgen Moltmann's The Trinity and the Kingdom (p. 49): God and suffering belong together, just as in this life the cry for God and the suffering experienced in pain belong together. The question about God and the question about suffering are a joint, a common question. And they only find a common answer. Either that, or neither of them finds a satisfactory answer at all. No one can answer the theodicy question in this world, and no one can get rid of it. Life in this world means living with this open question, and seeking the future in which the desire for God will be fulfilled, suffering will be overcome, and what has been lost will be restored. The question of theodicy is not a...

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Yet More Perspectives on the Sabbath

Scott Oakland of ReformedCast called me on Monday for a live podcast revolving around the book Perspectives on the Sabbath. The time flew by, but I do think this was one of my more articulate presentations. I could be totally wrong on that score (I know one thing, participating in radio/podcast interviews are quick lessons in humility—the boring, monotone sound of my own voice; the fumbling diction; incorrect facts; sticking my foot in my mouth, etc.). Why not listen for yoursel...

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Dominical (& Ecclesiastical) View of the Sabbath

ON PAGE NINE of Perspectives on the Sabbath, I outlined the four views ensconced in the book. As a final note, I wrote that "Roman Catholics, traditional Anglicans, and the Orthodox, while maintaining a much stronger magisterial and thus 'dominical' view of this matter, exegetically fall somewhere in between Arand [the Lutheran] and Pipa [the puritan sabbatarian]." Truth be told, I had wanted the Lutheran position position to fill this gap, but, as it turned out, Arand ended up being a little too close to Blomberg. Had I known, I would've also invited an Anglo-Catholic, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox thinker to contribute (while retaining Arand's important discussion in the mix as a mediating position between the aforementioned group...

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