Tonight I went for a run.  My knees started hurting years ago, but lately I’ve been taking glucosamine and going small distances to start with, and slowly I’m building stamina.  Typically I wear my iPod and listen to Nas and Kanye and 2Pac, and Rufus Wainwright and the Bee Gees (I know).  As I came to the final stretch of my run – the last half mile or so – I took out the ear buds and slowed to a walk.  It wasn’t quite dark at 8:45, so orange and purple still hung in the sky.  It already smells like summer on these warm spring nights, and the temperature was still near 70.

I realized suddenly that for the first time in maybe a year, I could remember myself.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing.  Since middle school I’ve been jogging through the neighborhood, huffing and puffing on warm summer nights, hearing crickets, smelling mowed lawns and barbecue smoke, and dreaming dreams.  High school, college, after college…Those runs were a part of me and a part of my hopes, as I pushed myself to my own limits night after night.  Nostalgia can be a longing for the past, which takes us nowhere, or it can be a memory of ourselves and who we have always been, which leads us toward deeper integration.

Tonight nostalgia snapped me awake, as if a part of me had been hibernating.  I saw myself.

“Ah!  There I am!”

Do you see yourself?  I’m thankful I took out the earbuds and turned off the iPod.  It’s hard to hear anything through such self-inflicted racket…

Reflection #1 {Mary Magdalene}

The first way into Easter that resonates with me is the story of a garden and a woman who experiences the risen Christ. There are three things in the story that I think are especially significant. The first is Mary’s action of turning, the second is that she mistakes Jesus for the gardener, and the third is what happens when he calls her name.

She comes to Easter faith through actions of turning toward something – first, pain and suffering as she seeks the body of the one she loves, persisting in the search, unwilling to disown the pain. Later, she will turn toward the face of the one she seeks, mistaking him for the gardener. Which is perhaps, not a mistake at all.

The God of the Christian faith has always been rooted in earthiness. The first time humanity experienced the Divine was in a garden. In spite of being revered as a spiritual savior, the ministry of Jesus was profoundly connected with the earth and the body: think of all the parables referencing seeds and harvest, vineyards and weeds, rains and sunsets, sheep and birds. He told stories of the beauty of the wildflowers, and mourned the death of sparrows. Christianity is an earthy faith, and it was no coincidence that Mary turned, and thought she saw the gardener.

Mary turned toward Life and the Living One, but not without struggle, not without the grief and agony of watching her teacher die, crucified on a cross. Like Mary, our ‘turning toward’ God will not be free of struggle.

Part of the reason Mary doesn’t recognize the living one when she first turns toward him is because she was looking for a dead man, and corpses don’t stand outside of their tombs. She doesn’t recognize Jesus until he speaks her name.

Each of us will probably walk alongside Mary someday, on the road to bury Jesus. It’s what happens on a spiritual journey – at some point, the Jesus we thought we knew disappears and something new emerges.

But if we can let Jesus die, if we can face the darkness of the tomb, then we can let the resurrected Jesus come to us. We can give up our preconceived notion of who he is, and the fear of not knowing what we’ll find in the tomb.

Who is Jesus, really? What does he look like in our lives? Probably less like we would expect a resurrected Christ to look, and more like a gardener.

“In conjunction with the rhythm method of birth control, it is possible to use anal sex as an option.”[1]

“Jesus Christ commands you to [perform oral sex on your husband]….What I would say to you as well, ladies, I probably shouldn’t, that most of your husbands wake up in the morning with an erection, and so rather than setting the alarm, if this was the way that you helped to awaken them, they would have a great day. Amen? I’m actually saying these things. Some of you are sitting here going, “Is this happening? Is this really happening?” Yes it is. [Laughter from audience.]…And he says that, “Your vagina is a garden.” It has wonderful smells and it has wonderful tastes. It’s a garden. . . . He talks about how much he loves her vagina. Many women feel awkward about this. The husband needs to tell the wife, “It’s beautiful. It tastes well. It smells well. You keep yourself well. I enjoy it. It’s a garden to me.”[2]

————–
[1] Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together by Mark and Grace Driscoll, p 186

[2] Mark Driscoll – “Sex, a Study of the Good Bits from Song of Solomon” preached in Edinburgh, Scotland on a Sunday morning [at a 12:00 service] on November 18, 2007 http://www.destinyedinburgh.com/Sermons/Sex,_a_study_of_the_good_bits_from_Song_of_Solomon.aspx

[3]John MacArthur, The Rape of Solomon’s Song Part 1, Apr 14, 2009 http://media.sermonaudio.com/mediapdf/417091244255.pdf

*      *      *

In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re – like – saying?

Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
- and – (you know what I’m saying)’s – have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?

Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences—so‐called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true,
okay,
as opposed to other things that are, like, totally, you know, not (?) —have been infected by a totally hip and tragically cool interrogative tone?

As if I’m saying, don’t think I’m a nerd just ‘cuz I’ve, like, noticed this, okay?
 I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions?
 I’m just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty?
…
What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest? You know?
Or do we have, like, nothin’ to say?

Has society become so, like, totally, like, whatever!
That we’ve become the most aggressively inarticulate culture
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

So I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you:
To speak with conviction.

To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply
“QUESTION AUTHORITY.”
You have to speak with it, too.
(Taylor Mali)

*            *            *

I didn’t write that.  It’s from Taylor Mali, slam poet and middle school teacher.

So… What do you think about that?

To be honest, I have mixed feelings.  It’s difficult to talk about “authority” and “conviction” today, isn’t it?  Folks speaking with conviction and authority have done a lot of damage.  I have personally spoken with conviction… and been terribly wrong.  And done real damage…

Especially for the progressive church, these words seem to imply a narrowly defined brand of certainty few of us have.

But the poem here reveals a reality in the world around us: some of us are comfortable with questions and ambiguity, but many others – like the poet himself – need a more… substantive thesis. Is that something we can offer, or do we quietly allow those people to gravitate toward bigger banners, and louder advertisers who have no qualms about “speaking with authority,” whether they’re right or wrong?

Today’s Scripture reading is excluded from the Lectionary, probably with good reason: few contemporary scholars or theologians believe it actually belongs in the Canon – certainly it did not appear in the earliest manuscripts.  Theologian and activist Ched Meyers suggests that the reason we find this second half of Mark 16 in the Canon at all is because  many in the early church could not reconcile Mark’s ambiguous original ending – in verse 8 – with the rest of the Gospels.

Mark 16:8 reads, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James, and Salome, encountered the man dressed in white, sitting in Jesus’ tomb.  He told them not to be afraid.  He told them to tell the other disciples what they’d seen.  But they didn’t.  They fled and said nothing, “for they were afraid.”

While preparing for this sermon, a friend told me, “I wouldn’t preach on that.  I don’t like the theology.”

But I’m curious about what we do, then, with Mark 16:15-20.

15

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.

16

The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.

17

And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;

18

they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

19

So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

20

And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.

Some of this text is unique to Mark, but most of it can be found elsewhere.  It echoes Matthew’s story of the Great Commission.  Bits of Luke and John are there too.  The snake handling?  Well, I’ve attended churches that take this as a literal exhortation (have fun with that), but in Acts 28 Paul is building a fire after surviving shipwreck, and a viper attaches itself to his arm.  Coolly, almost casually, Paul shakes the snake off and survives again, unharmed.

This isn’t new stuff we’re reading.  The early church is being reminded of what it has already heard, probably because Mark didn’t “close the deal.”  Someone redacting the text wants to remind us: “it can’t end with a question!  There has to be a victory!”  In contemporary language: “make your pitch!”

Now, I actually like the verse 8 ending: they were afraid.  They were silent… would they tell anyone later?  Would they overcome their fear?  We know that somehow, the story got out, that’s why we’re here this morning… but the humanness – the ambiguity – of verse 8 shows us more often as we are.  Without the triumphalism and fanfare.

Does there need to be a sales pitch?

A conservative pastor online writes: “Liberal churches do not believe in evangelism. Liberals believe the world is already saved, even though it may not know it, so they do not think they need to evangelize.”

I don’t want to speak for any of you, but I’m a liberal. Do we believe that?  Do we believe this world doesn’t need saving?

I don’t know any liberal Christian who thinks victims of sex trafficking don’t need saving.

I don’t know any liberal Christian who thinks refugees from Syria, Somalia, and Sudan don’t need saving.

One of the problems is that we have allowed ourselves to be defined by others – and by what we’re not.  Conservative Evangelicals say, “Liberals don’t believe hell is real,” and we let it lay because we’re not concerned about God’s wrath.  But we neglect to articulate what hell is.  Hell is Rwanda, 1994, or it may be something as personal and intimate as addiction… or the mundane-yet-crippling loneliness of living without any “Good News.”  So I guess I do think we all need saving – and I think we’re all in various stages of being saved… or being marginalized,  overlooked, forgotten… Evangelicals call this being “lost.”  Yes, I believe in the Great Commission of taking God’s love and hope to the whole world.  No, I don’t need to force my beliefs, or handle snakes, to do that…

Still, when asked whether I’m a Christian or not, I find myself wanting to say, “Yes, but…!”

“Yes, but I’m not that kind of Christian.”

“Yes, but I’m not a homophobe.”

“Yes, but I don’t believe Scripture is inerrant.”

What’s the problem here?  I’ve allowed my Christian identity to be defined by what I’m not, rather than what I am.

So folks say: “Liberal churches don’t believe in evangelism.”

See, I think the broader Christian world needs permission to believe its own conscience.  And we have to give that permission.

Because most of the evangelicals I know don’t hate gays and lesbians – they’ve spent their whole lives being told they have no choice but condemnation:  “If I want to be a Christian, it’s all or nothing.” Package deal.  And now they’re afraid.  Are you and I showing them a different way of being Christian? Or do I just tell them they’re wrong?

Most evangelicals I know actually care about the poor.  But they’re surrounded by a theological system paid for and perpetuated by folks who use “Gospel language,” but care more about power and wealth than “the least of these.”  Are we connecting dots about what exploitation and inequity mean through the lens of the Gospel?

I spend a lot of time with my actor-friend Chris in Portland – and I can’t ever quote him verbatim, because it wouldn’t be appropriate to drop the “f-bomb” that many times, especially from the pulpit.  But Chris spends most of his time hanging out with the most interesting people.  Theatre people.   And he always introduces me as “Walker, the pastor.”  And I’ve stopped getting surprised that every time I’m introduced – at a bar, a restaurant, a party – people immediately latch on to the “Christian thing.”  They’ve got plenty to tell me about Christianity – how it’s hurt them, how angry they feel… how bad their religious childhood was – but they’ve got lots of questions, too.

Questions like, “What do you think about homosexuality?”

“Why are Christians so angry?”

And maybe most importantly, just “Why?”

Why are you a Christian?

And they’re not indicting me.  It’s not hostile.  It’s more… cognitive dissonance – or maybe fascination – that I’m in the midst of a bunch of liberal, gen-X hipsters, and manage to still align myself with a religion identified by James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum.  Because these are the folks most successfully (and tragically) defining Christianity in popular culture.

Why are you a Christian?

I tell them what I live for: hope, equality, grace, peace and love.  They say, “I didn’t know there were churches like this!”  In Portland, Oregon, folks don’t know there are churches like this!

Honestly, in Corvallis, folks don’t know there are churches like this.

UCC minister Yvette Flunder speaks as a lesbian, a black woman, and an unapologetic Pentecostal when she preaches “conviction” from her pulpit in San Francisco.

She says (and I’m not doing her any justice here):

“It’s not good enough for us to get free!

There are thousands of folks who should be in this church right now.  And they’re languishing in churches and institutions and faith based organizations that are beating the hell out of them right now!  And we’ve got a message in our mouths and in our lives, yet some of us are still a little reticent.  A little fearful… to go back to some of the places that we’ve come from, and declare the truth of God…

“The truth of God.”  That’s subjective, isn’t it?

There’s been a huge advertising campaign in Corvallis and Albany and surrounding communities.  There are billboards all over town, on the highway, there are radio ads… they’re advertising rock music, skateboarding, and a message that’s never overtly mentioned until the young people actually show up: “that the most important decision in your life is whether or not you have sex outside of marriage, and if you make the decision today to resist that temptation, to wait for the heterosexual partner God has for you, life is going to be okay…”

And thousands of people have attended this event across the country.

If it were that easy – if God’s purpose for the Incarnation was to teach teenagers to take cold showers, women to remain second-class citizens, and our LGBT sisters and brothers to live in hiding, why didn’t Jesus just say so?

If it were that easy, he could have avoided the cross altogether.

If we – liberal/progressive Christians – don’t speak loud enough to offer a visible alternative to the Rock Concert on the billboards with its bait-and-switch social agenda, folks around us are left with two options: fear-based faith, or rejection of religion entirely.

Today’s text, whether it belongs there or not, reminds us that the world needs to hear us speak.  And folks take desperate measures – and desperate theology – when serious questions are left unanswered.

Yes, some of us are fine with unanswered questions.  I am.  And that’s the beauty of Mark’s theology and prose, where Christ almost hides his identity as he goes about the business of salvation.  But we can’t stay there on principle. We have to speak up for those who need to hear – for those who need permission to believe what 1 John tells us, that “perfect love casts out fear.”

When I visualize a Great Commission for today, for progressives fixed more on hope and liberation than fear and condemnation, I think of a quotation from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’

Why am I a Christian?  Because it’s beautiful.

I’d like to tell you about it if you’re open…

Thanks be to God.

George Fox has also been a community profoundly frustrating for me, as I have seen close LGBT friends and classmates encouraged to hide their identities there, or leave the school entirely.  I want more for my sisters and brothers, and I want more from George Fox Seminary.

The Good News of the Gospel is so much wider and more radical than the Evangelical Church has given credit for.  George Fox is the perfect place for that radical love, inclusiveness and egalitarian spirit to find fullness, as we explore together the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ.
I signed this letter today:

www.onegeorgefox.org

No one’s offered insight/advice for my Mark 16 sermon.

I’ll just have to go it alone.   How sad…

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…