I wanted to choose a text not in the lectionary, and Mark 16 is an obvious and problematic choice for a number of reasons.  I’d like your feedback:

• How do we treat texts like Mark 16:15-18?  Its pseudepigraphal nature leads us to question its value – is it worthwhile at all?
• If so, what do we do with this kind of exhortation?  How do we weigh it against the rest of Mark?
• What does the Great Commission mean to the liberal/progressive church?
• What do we do with Evangelism?

Comments welcome,

Peter

So John Piper said something offensive about women!  My friend Rachel Held Evans contributed a nice piece on her blog (http://rachelheldevans.com/john-piper-masculine-christianity) that invites response to his theological misogyny.

But first I have to ask: “Are we surprised?” After all, John Piper is the guy who said, “farewell, Rob Bell,” when Love Wins came out denouncing popular Evangelical concepts of hell. There, Piper made a clear statement: you’re not a part of my religion if you don’t share my view of eternal damnation… let me be the first to show you the door. Not particularly gracious.

And on the weekend the ELCA Lutheran Church voted, back in 2009 to ordain LGBTQ ministers, lightening happened to strike an ELCA church. It was Piper who “brilliantly” connected the dots, attributing the lightening to God’s wrath over the controversial vote.  Because YHWH and Zeus are the same old white guy.

I’ve said before that John Piper is sort of the “Emperor” to Mark Driscoll’s “Darth Vader.” I haven’t seen the blue lightening coming out of his hands, but I don’t underestimate the power of the Dark Side: little more than a decade ago, I was making the same ugly arguments about women and hell and queers.

Photo Courtesy of Bobby Ray Hurd

Not anymore.

So on Tuesday of this week at a Christian conference, John Piper said (after an uninspired and unoriginal rant), “I conclude that God has given Christianity a masculine feel…”

… It’s got a HEMI.

But talking about masculinity makes me nervous for a number of reasons.  First, despite an early strain of fundamentalism, I’ve never been a particularly macho guy. Christian Youth Culture was always awkward for me growing up because I wasn’t an athlete, and so many church activities focused around athletics.  I did theatre, and took ballet classes in high school and college – that didn’t help.  Second, I have always been emotional.  I’m the guy crying in the theater at romantic comedies (not my wife).  Damn you, Diane Keaton, you’re just so good… And Third, I have gay friends – where does John Piper’s definition of masculinity fit for them?  What about my female friends – particularly my lesbian friends, who have their own unique and often painful experiences with gender roles?

It isn’t legitimate to talk about gender in a theoretical vacuum, which is what Biblical literalism is: a vacuum-theology – without history, culture or context.

The Bible doesn’t make things easy for us, to be sure.  In Romans 16 and Galatians 3, Paul seems sold on the affirmation and equality of women.  He’s practically egalitarian!  But let’s not pretend Paul doesn’t say all sorts of problematic things about women keeping silent and covering their heads (1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 3).  We can say, “context, context, context” all we want (and we should), but these are frustratingly contradictory teachings.  And our canon seems full of them!

So what do you do when faced with contradictory statements?  Conservative Christians tend to take the most patriarchal, oppressive stance – a surprising choice given Christianity’s supposed foundation on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Nonetheless, it’s important to recognize and admit that right or wrong, it is indeed a choice being made. There are opposing statements in the biblical text – which ones will we follow?  Which ones will you follow?  As Chuck Colson asked: “how now shall we live?”

I choose freedom.

These days I attend a church with a female senior pastor, and my wife is the associate pastor.  Both preach, and both move me to tears regularly (like I said before…) with the power and eloquence of their messages.  Both are gifted in leadership and pastoral care.  Yet it feels like only yesterday that I was sitting across from a close friend in my undergrad college dining hall, arguing with her about women’s roles in the church.  ”Women aren’t inferior, they just have different roles.”  Complimentarianism at its purest form.  I couldn’t imagine attending a church with a woman pastor, much less being married to one! But that’s the beautiful thing about the Holy Spirit — slowly, gently, graciously, she can change us…

I guess it’s ironic, as I remember her words to me just before we got married: “Peter, I’m not going to be a pastor’s wife.”  Ha!  How the tables turn…

Jen wasn’t saying she wouldn’t support me in ministry if that’s how I felt led, or that I couldn’t be a pastor – after all, for those of you who remember, we rescheduled our wedding day so I could take my first class at George Fox Seminary, guest lectured by Brian D. McLaren.  That’s not exactly a lack of support  (it was years later that she enrolled in seminary, herself).  Rather, she wasn’t interested in playing the traditional, highly-gendered “role” of pastor’s wife… I guess that must mean wearing an apron, baking cookies, smiling politely and looking pious-and-pretty while standing behind her husband.  And I’m glad she didn’t want that role.  I confess, there was a time in my life — 10+ years ago, to be sure — where I probably was looking for something like that.  I feel ashamed of it now.

So as I sit in the pew with my wife at the pulpit, wearing her white vestments, I feel a deep sense of pride and awe at her natural abilities.  But I confess, narcissist that I am, to struggling a bit with what it means for my own identity.  I’m used to being the center of attention, damn it! I’m scheduled to guest-preach in a month or so — my first time at this church.  At prior churches we’ve attended, I was always the go-to for guest-preaching, and now I imagine what Jen must have felt like, not being asked, and having the natural gifts that she does.  I took a lot for granted.  I suppose I took her for granted.

When Jen first began attending George Fox, it was three years after I started there, so she was “Peter’s wife” for awhile, but as a full time student, she quickly developed relationships and a sense of community I could not with my half-time, evenings-only status.  For the last three years, I have learned what it means to be “Jen’s husband,” and it’s been both humbling and (I think) truly healthy for me.  In the same way, I’m learning to swallow my sometimes massive pride and help out with children’s ministry at church, teaching Sunday School or selling bags of coffee beans before the service.  It isn’t glamorous, but these may be exactly the lessons I’ve needed for a very long time.

If I can accommodate NOT being the center of attention, and truly integrate some kind of servanthood or humility or loving support into my psyche, this “metamorphosis” will be the best thing that could happen to me.  Because sooner or later, every “small town celebrity” ends up wondering why they didn’t “make it big.”

I’ve told you before: I once wanted to be a famous actor.  I got a gig in a Lifetime Original Movie in college.  Did I tell you that?  Then I wanted to be a famous writer.  I made friends with Leonard Sweet.  Did I tell you that?

But I still work a full time job, and I still live in small-town Oregon, and I like this life.  There’s something stepping out of the “limelight” (or off of the pulpit) has to teach me, and I think it’s very good.  And in those rare occasions when I do step back up to offer a guest-sermon, or get an article published, I pray I don’t find my identity there.

When I first started this blog back in late 2004, it was one of two blogs, simultaneous with one called “WorldSpeak,” where I wrote about encounters with Christianity’s various manifestations in popular and often secular culture. By 2008, I found I couldn’t maintain two blogs at once, so I let WorldSpeak die and focused on EmergingChristian. In 2010 I hit 500 posts, which was a big feat after a fairly slow start.

But life happens: seminary and full time work and… perhaps disappointment: in years past I encountered too many “would-be mentors” who seemed to care about not only my development as a writer and provocateur, but as a disciple of Christ and as a young friend open to guidance.  But instead, time after time, when I couldn’t jump through the hoops to meet their professional or ministry needs, they seemed to fade quickly away.  Maybe it’s selfish to expect mentorship to be about my own development, and I’ve got no qualms about hard work, but it’s disappointing to encounter too many people who seemed interested in me, who were perhaps more focused on fulfilling their own endeavors through me.  But maybe I’m just a narcissist.  I don’t think I feel upset about it anymore, although it’s taken me several years to work out… but I have a nagging sense of disappointment, and a lot more cynicism than I started with.  I have some great friends in the industry now who remain huge encouragements, and who continue to help me find opportunities to get my writing out there, but real genuine mentorship?  Is it out there?  I don’t know.  Maybe that’s just an inhumanly tall order…

The other difficult aspect of continuing a long-term blog is finding fresh material.  Perhaps it’s simply chronic writer’s block, but I can’t help feeling like my last few dozen posts have rehashed the same ideas, or the same rants, or the same political/social observations.

The reality is, I don’t want a new kind of Christianity.  A few months ago I joined the United Church of Christ, and I love the combination of mainline liturgy and old-school liberalism.  I don’t want the church to be more “hip.”  Worrying about being “hip” is what got us into all this attractional, pop-Evangelical trouble in the first place.  If winning people over is our modus operandi, instead of doing what we’re deeply convicted is true and right, we’re bound to sell out again and again.

What’s all this mean for this website?

I’m not giving up on the blog — I’m not going to stop blogging.  But there are so many reasons why my priorities are changing, and my passions for “transforming the church” have hit a different kind of wall.  I still feel passionate, but I’m not so arrogant as to think I’m smart enough to “re-dream” a brand new way of “being the church.”  I just want us to be a better old kind of church.

And Keith Olbermann weighs in…

Awesome follow up from Jesus Christ:

All over our U.S. the porches were dying.
The porch swing and the rocking chair moved to the village dump.
The floorboards trembled, and the steps creaked.
For a couple of decades a new light burned in the parlor,
the family sitting there silent in front of the box,
voices and music squawking mysteriously from far places
into the dim-lit room.  Conversation was hushed.

In the next two decades, a window in the box
flashed unbelievable pictures into the room.
Strangers guffawed and howled with laughter.
Shots rang out, people died in front of our eyes.
We learned not to care, drinking Coca-Cola from bottles,
spilling popcorn into the sofa.

A highway came past the house with its deserted porch
and no one noticed.  The children wandered off to rob houses
a few blocks away, not out of need, but simple boredom.
No more family games or read-alouds.

Grandparents sometimes pulled their chairs outside
hoping neighbors would stop in.
They might even drag out an extra chair or two;
Still no one came, not even to borrow something.
But it was hard to talk with the TV at their backs,
the traffic screeching by in front, the rest of the neighborhood
on relief, or in rest homes and reformatories.

The old porch is removed, and the grandparents with it.
So long, friends, neighbors, passersby.

He was decrying racism and anti-Semitism, and had a caller on the show who was blaming “the Jews” for everything wrong in the country, particularly the financial meltdown.  The host ripped into him, citing what was wrong with people like him, telling him that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was trash, and citing several books for him to read to correct his racist ideology.

The man continued with his diatribe, saying, “I went to Occupy Wall Street because I’m angry,” and the host said, “Of course you did,” and cut him off.  I didn’t think much of it, because I assumed he meant he was a rabble-rouser going where he didn’t belong.  The host then talked a bit about economic injustice, everyday Americans facing hardship, and why America is so desperate for change.  He was articulate, intelligent and sympathetic.

Then I noticed something: he made several spiritual-sounding statements.

“I pray you hear me…”

“I believe, my brothers and sisters, that we can make a difference.  But we have to take responsibility.  We have to act…”

I was shocked.  Had I found a liberal/socially progressive Christian radio host?  That’s almost what this sounded like.  ”Thom Hartmann, M.Div” or something.  I glanced at the dial again.  What was I listening to?

He referenced back to the previous caller: “We let callers like that last one on – we let them speak – because we don’t burn books here.  And you need to hear people like that, you need to know they’re out there, because they are DANGEROUS.”

I was nodding my head, ready to put this new station on a pre-saved button.  He had just given one more prayerful exhortation – not preachy, not bible-thumping, but the kind of broad, ecumenical appeal to faith and action I can get behind.  Suddenly, the program went to commercial…

“YOU’RE LISTENING TO GLENN BECK!”

Sweet Lord!?  What have I done?! I swear I almost swerved off the road.

How was I taken so off guard by the poster boy for ultra-right, neo-con, Tea Party fundamentalism?  Therein lies my lesson: I, like so many, underestimate the intelligence, and the capacity for charisma these pundits carry.  It’s a dangerous arrogance (and laziness) on my part.  Watching the current panel of Republican candidates, it’s not hard to understand why.  I see no dynamism, nothing significantly breaking the groupthink mentality.  And I have to confess that 100% of my familiarity with Glenn Beck has been based on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and MSNBC.  It’s no wonder I didn’t recognize his voice.

It also makes me more aware of why good, well-intentioned people keep listening to a man with a worldview like Glenn Beck’s.  They hear daily what I heard for 15 minutes… and it’s not the caricature.  He’s capable of sounding reasonable, thoughtful, even fair-minded and compassionate.  Which makes him all the more dangerous, because then people tolerate him — make allowance for him — when he inserts things like this:

“This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture….I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

And…

“I have been nervous about this interview with you because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. … And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.” –interviewing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim U.S. congressman, Glen Beck’s show on CNN’s Headline News, Nov. 14, 2006

And…

“So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research. … Eugenics. In case you don’t know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. … The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening.”

All that to say, I guess I was a little humbled that this man is more than scary talking points.  He’s capable of something far worse: sounding reasonable.

I was kind of amazed at the organization that seemed to be there, as I walked through the camps – two city blocks separated by a street between them.  A sidewalk dissected each block and created a main pathway between all the tents.  As I walked through with a friend, what we first noticed was that nearly every tent along the path had a sign on it, signaling some specific purpose: free counseling, free medical clinic… there were several tents with whiteboards outside, listing workshop schedules: “5:00pm, The History of Nonviolent Protest.  7:00pm, Capitalism and Corporate Greed.”  There was a tent with signs outside promoting a lecture on white privilege, with literature explaining what white privilege actually meant.  There was a community garden, an artists square with workshop and display area… this was impressive.

There was a man pacing back and forth between people as they passed, yelling: “If you NEED a CIGARETTE, I HAVE a CIGARETTE!  …If you HAVE a CIGARETTE, I NEED a CIGARETTE!”  He had a can with cigarettes in it, and he was simultaneously passing them out, and taking “donations.”

I came across this quotation in the midst of all the Occupy dialogue:

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
- Gandhi