The Great Divine Cleanup of the World

I have been, among other things, both a minister and a chemist.  As an analytical chemist I had occasion to present technical papers at professional meetings, where I would describe a newly developed analytical procedure precisely.  The object was to define the procedure unambiguously and systematically, so other labs could reproduce it exactly.  Good preaching however, is nothing like that.  Good preaching is about saying one thing, but meaning another.  'Jesus is the Lamb of God' does not mean 'Mary had a little lamb'.  Lamb of God is of course a metaphor that points to a different and unspoken reality.  One could have long and (sometimes) scholarly discussions about just what 'Lamb of God' means.  But ultimately the meaning remains unspoken.  Good preaching is the art of the unspoken.  Only biblical literalists think they can scientifically define the metaphor, when in fact literalism destroys and perverts it.  Literalism tragically overlooks the deeper meaning metaphor points to, while arguing about the scientific accuracy of surface meaning.

Lamb of God is a relatively simple metaphor.  Some metaphors are much 'bigger'.  Some are so big that we can live our whole life in them.  We use science to manipulate things, manipulate our environment as we please.  But we don't live in science.  We live in metaphor.  And ultimately we can't explain the metaphor we live in.  A large percentage of people would say that when we die, we go to heaven.  Others would say we lie waiting in the earth until the Lord returns at the end of the world.  Still others would talk of purgatory.  These aren't identical metaphors that lend themselves to being harmonized in a literal way.  But in general they point to a reality beyond themselves that doesn't differ too much.  They all point to getting beyond this life, to a better life.  They all point to escaping an imperfect world for something more perfect.  They all deemphasize the importance of now, and focus clearly on the glories of later.

Jesus' parables are masterful metaphor, common stories of the everyday world which you think know all about, only to find out at the punch line that the 'kingdom' Jesus was pointing too was an entirely unanticipated reality.  Paul too used metaphor extensively.  That is why they both are such powerful religious figures.  Religion lives in metaphor.  Myth is culturally accepted metaphor.  Parable is the subversive questioning of accepted myth.  They are mirror images.

The thing is though, that both Jesus' parables and Paul's metaphors emphasize the importance of now, and go all fuzzy on the glories of later.  Consider the parable of the lost coin.  Did Jesus say the kingdom of God is like . . . waiting at a train station . . . or like hastily sweeping the floor?  The parable is not about waiting for the future; it is about jumping into action.  Paul constantly used metaphors, especially coming back to the resurrection metaphor over and over again.  But the metaphor as Paul used it was different from the metaphor as we use it.  The General Resurrection was a 1st century Judean metaphor concerned with God's remaking the present world faithfully, rather than about our leaving the present world as a reward.

Paul was a Pharisee.  And a Pharisee's understanding of the General Resurrection was that it symbolized God's justice for this world.  Israel always had more than its fair share of martyrs, but especially so in the several centuries preceding Paul's time.  Ancient Israel never talked about an afterlife, despite the fact that Egypt was located right next door, until those martyrs began piling up.  How could God be just, and the martyrs die?  The Pharisaic idea of a General Resurrection came from a sense of the justice of God, not from a desired future for us.  Western Church art depicts Jesus nimbly emerging from the tomb all alone.  Eastern Church art still retains the more Judean idea of Jesus emerging from the tomb in the company of a host of Old Testament and New Testament martyrs, with the Gates of Hell smashed below his feet.  The creed's 'decent into hell' was to rescue the martyrs. 

To point to what the General Resurrection symbolized, J. D. Crossan coined the phrase, 'The Great Divine Cleanup of the World'.  For Paul, the General Resurrection, the Divine Cleanup, had already begun, and Jesus was the 'first fruits'. The Cleanup is not in the distant future, after death, or in the imminent future . . . soon.  It has already begun, and we already live in it.  So live accordingly!  Now!  When Paul talks about the 'people who get it right', as he does in all his letters, and especially in Romans, he has in mind the people who trust that God actually is in process of cleanup, who trust to the point of collaborating with God on the project, who form little communities that together work on the cleanup.  And also for Paul, the 'people who get it wrong' are the people who trust in their religious traditions instead.  'Jews' then have become 'the churched' now.  'Gentiles' then have become 'the unchurched' now.

When one talks about the 500 Year Garage Sale, about why mainline churches are declining, about how the Reformation church can renew itself for the next 500 years, Jesus' parables of the kingdom, and Paul's metaphor of the General Resurrection matter.  A post Garage Sale church could end up with people selling every possession, waiting breathlessly for some eagerly anticipated great event to occur, maybe on a cleverly forecast date.  A post Garage Sale church could end up with people waiting at a train station, sleepily singing hymns that have lost their umpf, to pass the time.  Or a post Garage Sale church could be collaborating with God's Divine Cleanup, now.  Which one sounds like life to you?  Metaphors matter.

Are Titles Important? Sometimes More Than You Think!



Ara Pacis - Altar of Peace

To celebrate retirement, I rationalized I needed a large flat screen, to better appreciate the intricacies of the line blocking when my grandson and I watch the Packers play the Bears.  Lenore, on the other hand, decided her retirement treat would be to see the glories of Rome.  Go figure!  So shortly we will be touring museums, and wandering through the Sistine Chapel.  (She decided to take me along.)  Now as luck would have it, the Vatican is just across the Tiber from the ruins of Caesar Augustus’ mausoleum, and his Altar of Peace.  And just a little farther on is the forum Augustus built, with the ruins of its temple of Mars Avenger.  So my plan for the trip is to soak up as much as I can of the spirit of Augustus.  Not because I am that interested in ancient history, but because in a very real sense Augustus was Paul’s sparring partner.

Temple of Mars Avenger

Augustus in Paul’s letters?  Yup.  We imagine Paul’s letters as abstract and eternal religious truths.  Rome would have understood them as high treason, an attack on the culture of empire.  So where in the letter does Paul mention Augustus?  Where is the political conflict?  Everywhere!  Our ears just aren’t attuned to it, since we are not Romans.  Basically Paul and the early Jesus movement stole all the titles of Caesar, and applied them to Jesus instead.  The obvious conclusion is they didn’t much like empire.  Consider just the first sentence of 1 Thessalonians, Paul’s version of a normal first century salutation.  'Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to those in Thessalonica who are called together by God our Creator and Benefactor and our lord Jesus, God’s Anointed:  divine favor and peace to you.'

In an economic system dependent on patrons doling out favors to clients, Caesar was the greatest giver of benefactions.  Rome was Washington lobbyists writ large, and then even extoled as the virtuous way to run a kingdom.  To say, as Paul did, that God is our benefactor is to insult Caesar.  And insulting Caesar had consequences.  Consider that it was obligatory at a banquet for friends, to offer a wine toast to Caesar after the meal.  That puts ‘he took the wine cup after the meal and said, This cup means the new covenant. . .’  in a whole different light, doesn’t it?  Wouldn’t that make for a different kind of liturgical renewal! 

Paul called Jesus lord, when lord is a title of Caesar.  Jesus is singled out as God’s Anointed – the Christ, the chosen one.  But Caesar was the one chosen by the Gods to save the empire when it was about to crumble under the weight of a long bloody civil war.  If Jesus was anointed, chosen, then Caesar wasn’t?  Paul invokes God’s divine favor and peace.  But for Rome favor came from Caesar.  And Caesar was the prince of peace, because of his victories which ended the empire’s civil war.  Augustus built that exquisite Altar of Peace, now on display next to his mausoleum, specifically to impress upon Romans that he was the one who made Rome peaceful.  Peace through victory on land and sea was the Roman mantra.  And the Temple of Mars Avenger was Augustus’ nod to the God of War.  Of course, Augustus would say, empires are made peaceful by war.  How else?

And all that in just the opening sentence of formal greeting of 1 Thessalonians.  There is much more in the rest of the letter, if you are sensitive and looking for it.  Caesar was divine.  It was chiseled in stone billboards all over the empire.  Augustus was the ‘son’ of the divine Julius Caesar, whose assent to the heavens was proclaimed on Roman coins.  Paul and early Jesus followers stole the titles of Caesar, the one who ruled from the Palatine Hill in Rome, and bestowed those titles on the executed criminal from the Nazareth Ridge in Galilee.

So if you want to host a quiet social evening for a small group of friends, good heavens, don’t invite Paul.  That old religion and politics don’t mix line would never work with him.  Paul was a political animal, not an abstract philosopher of eternal truth. 

The other thing that jumps out in 1 Thessalonians is that Paul was more than just a talker.  He was a social activist.  Think about it.  He formed little communities of opposition, little groups who refused to toast Caesar when they met together, specifically in the capitals of Empire.  It wasn’t only that Paul was against empire.  He had a vision of an alternative empire, lived here and now in the communities he was forming.  The Thessalonians were singled out for lavish praise, specifically because they lived out that vision of alternative empire here and now.  'And so you became imitators of us and of the lord . . . Therefore, you have become, in turn, a model for all those in Macedonia and Greece  . . . your trust in God is so widely known that we don’t need to mention it.'  And the rest of the letter is basically Paul’s attempt to encourage the Thessalonians to even more fully model life together in the alternative empire.

So reforming churches Paul’s way has nothing to do with finding a wiz bang new minister.   It has more to do with modeling an alternative society, a society of justice and sharing, rather than of power and accumulation.  No raping of the earth now, and then escape to heaven later.  I really am looking forward to walking where Augustus walked, thinking quietly about the different kinds of empire people build.  That and the Packers/Bears game too. 

Why is My Church Shrinking?

We lived in the same house for 25 years.  When we moved in 2000, it was time to unload some of the stuff weighing us down, so we had a garage sale.  As the moving van headed to the new house, it wasn’t just our collection of stuff that had considerably lightened.  In some real sense, what we kept and what we left behind has influenced our life paths going forward.  Or perhaps we moved partly because we felt the need to change the path of our lives.  Or both.  In any case, it is kind of liberating from time to time, to think about what you really need to keep, and what, from a past life, is just taking up space in the attic.

Churches are professional hoarders.  If you look deeply enough, behind the liturgy, behind the culture, behind the theology, behind the architecture, behind the beliefs and hopes, you will see a random collection of 2000 years of ‘stuff’.  Some of us like to bless it all, and call it Remembering the Tradition.  If we flip the coin though, the dark side of tradition is the recent TV show Hoarders.  Hoarding is when all the stuff clogs life, when the stuff loses all relevance to what I really need to do after breakfast this morning.

Hoarders are of course dysfunctional, and perhaps shouldn’t be taken advantage of on TV.  Letting go is hard, because not just the ‘stuff’ is going, but pieces of past lives too.  Hoarders need much more than a dumpster.  They need to be in touch with the essentials of their own lives, with what really makes them human.

Churches are professional hoarders.  One wonders, can we stop endlessly rearranging the stacks of stuff cluttering the metaphorical hallways and stairways of our community, and get back to the essentials of life together?  The premise of The 500 Year Garage Sale is that declining mainline churches desperately need to go back to the essentials.  And to go back to the essential core of what is important for life together, is to go back to St. Paul.

So now you are cringing.  Paul is archaic.  Paul is from a different world.  Paul’s religious world view doesn’t relate to today.  If you have every tried to read him, you quickly gave up because it is difficult to follow his abstractions and wooden language.  All true.  But it is also true that if you read Letter from Birmingham Jail without any knowledge whatsoever of Dr. King or the civil rights issues of the ‘60s, you would be equally mystified.  You need a readable translation, and you need a minimum amount of background information to understand the man in his context.  The same is true of Paul.

A group of us are together trying to ‘go back to St. Paul’.  We are rereading all of Paul’s authentic letters to groups of Jesus followers, in the hope and expectation that we will learn enough about community back then, to figure out what is essential for ‘doing church’ today.  We want to free ourselves from 2000 years of baggage, lighten the load, and visualize our small role in the re-formation of mainline Protestantism.  As we read and discuss, I want to share some of what we learn about Paul, and what I think this means for reforming the church in our time.

We started our group with some brief information about how to properly read Paul in his context.

Step 1.  Forget everything you learned about Paul from the Book of Acts, which forms probably 95% of everyone’s  image of Paul.  Why?  Because Acts was written in about 120CE, a century after Jesus, and more than a generation after Paul.   Acts is an epic story of how the Jesus movement transitioned from Galilee and especially from Jerusalem, to Rome as the center of the known world.  Acts is definitely not historical detail.  The only accurate and firm historical knowledge of Paul and his communities comes from Paul’s own letters.  Where the letters and Acts conflict, which is often, the letters take precedence. 

Step 2.   Not all letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament were actually written by Paul.  According to best current scholarship, the authentic letters of Paul are 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and Romans.  2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews were not written by Paul, and to varying degrees actually were even not in harmony with Paul’s thinking.  These later non-Pauline letters tended to tone down Paul’s understanding of Jesus in order to make the later Jesus movement more culturally acceptable to Roman society.

Step 3.  Get a good translation in order to make Paul understandable.   Translations can either stick very closely to the original Greek word order, and therefore be wooden and difficult to understand in English.  Or they can be very free form, and sacrifice accuracy for readability.  The translation we are using, The Authentic Letters of Paul, is exceptional in that it sticks to the sense of the Greek text in an accurate, scholarly way, but still is surprisingly readable.  Here is a video link to one of the translators, talking about the translation process.

Step 4.  Read Paul’s authentic letters for yourself, in the order given in Step 2, which is probably the historical order in which they were written.  Remember that when Paul was writing in the 50’s, the gospels didn’t yet exist – they hadn’t been written yet.  (Mark, the earliest, was composed some time in the later 60’s.)  Most important of all, form your own sense of Paul’s intent.  Resist the temptation to think that the ‘experts’ know more than you.

Following these 4 steps, our adult discussion group is working its way through Paul’s letters.  We think from each of the letters we learn something useful about reforming how church is typically done in the 21^st century.  Paul can lead us to rethink 500 years of Protestantism.  Next:  what we think we learned from 1 Thessalonians.

The Reformation Has Run Its Course

It is commonplace to say that mainline churches are declining.  Probably there are some declining churches out there that still think they are unique, the only ones declining.  But we are becoming increasingly aware that this is a general and widespread trend.  The ELCA is typical of Protestant denominations.  National and Synod infrastructure and staff have experienced substantial reductions recently, due in part to controversial social positions, in part to income shortfalls related to the recession, but in reality, mostly due to the fact that the Reformation has simply run its course.  And local churches pretty much know the organizational structure is experiencing decline, as well as many individual churches.

Let me say that again.  The Reformation has run its course.  I thought that would be a pretty controversial thing to say in a typical Lutheran church, but I have been running versions of that sentence past numbers of people in my local church for a couple of months now.  And so far I haven't gotten much of a negative reaction from anyone.  It even seems to sort of resonate.  'Yeah, what's your point' would be typical.

It may be that members in the pews are out in front of church leadership on this point.  My sense is that at national and synod levels, the gut feeling is, how can Protestantism be ‘saved’, despite all the financial and membership declines.  Somehow Protestantism is facing its great challenge, and the task at hand is to rise to the occasion, despite reduced resources, and restore the movement to its former glory.  Try harder.  Dig deeper.  Be more creative.  Maybe even pray more.  Fix it!

If I were an administrator at the national or synod levels of a denomination, having to work through the pain of the present downsizing, I probably would tend to feel the 'fix it' sentiment eating at me too.  But I think it would be healthier to just accept the fact that the Reformation has run its course.  It has reached its natural end.  It wasn't a bad thing.  It wasn't wrong and misguided.  It has kept us going for 500 years, and impacted countless lives.  But it is over.  We should be clear and up front about it.  Time for what Phyllis Tickle calls the 500 year garage sale, and what many recognize as a repeating cycle of religious upheaval at about 500 year intervals, even extending well back into ancient Israel.

Now, saying 'it’s over' is a big hill to climb.  It seems like just giving up, failing those who have gone before.  But what 'it's over' it really does is open a door that needs to be opened.  Until you can say 'it's over', you are not free to say 'what's next'?  But when you can live with 'it's over', then 'what's next' becomes . . . logical.  Thank you Spock.  It becomes the obvious question on which to focus.

A lot of us are at 'what next', phase one.  Forget about theology and deep meaning.  Just let the old metaphors and symbols alone.  But do something relevant.  We can still be Protestants in theory and culture, but just add something relevant and contemporary to attract people.  In the mid-sixties I was involved with a community youth organization as a ministry of a Lutheran church.  At the time the Jimi Hendrix song 'Purple Haze' was all the rage, so the kids decided to call their new storefront hangout The Purple Haze.  By divine providence, or maybe just chance, there was a small pottery in the community manufacturing toilets, and there were a lot of defective ceramic rejects sitting out in a field.  We were able to acquire and use them as seating in The Purple Haze.  We spray painted them all purple.  It was cool.  And we had some meaningful conversations sitting around tables together enthroned on purple.

My point though, is that while purple toilet seats were appealing to a certain youthful demographic at that time and place in the mid-sixties, they probably weren't ever going to be the impetus to a new Reformation, something that would carry us all through the next 500 years.  We do need relevance.  We need, desperately, to appeal to new faces.  We need fun, and meaning, and creativity.  We need all that, but built on a new foundation.  Faith.  Grace.  The Authority of the Written Word.  It is that old Protestant foundation that needs to be revisited first.  It is faith, and grace, and the source of our authority, that need to be rethought, not just the frills that give body and expression to that core meaning.

There are many churches today that are all about perfecting the frills.  But they are trying to build on the old core.  Though mainline churches might envy their growth and success, at the bottom are a lot of purple toilet seats and not much else.  How can we get beyond purple seats, and get to 'what next', phase 2?  How can we dare to tinker with the foundation?  We can dare because faith, and grace, and the source of authority are simply out of whack today.  They have been perverted into religious gimmicks to manipulate people. 

Five hundred years ago also was a time when there was a whole lot of misplaced authority floating around.  And illegitimate claims on peoples' lives.  And manipulation of any decent sense of a god.  All for gain and power.  What challenged the whole enterprise then, was a rediscovery and a reinterpretation of Paul and his writings.  The time was right, and Luther rethinking Paul was the spark that ignited the blaze.

The time is right again.  I am trying to suggest that declining mainline churches might have more to gain by rethinking Paul than by painting toilet seats purple, or any other color.  In fact, scholarly studies of Paul are generating a substantial amount of academic interest currently.  And his image is undergoing a radical facelift.  Consider the following.  Paul was not a Christian.  Paul, the political and community organizer.  Paul, the man who advised Jews to stay Jews, and Gentiles to stay Gentiles.  Paul, the man who carried his Jewish, Pharisaic identity faithfully through all his life.  Forget the Paul of the Damascus Road conversion experience.  These are some of the things being said, quite convincingly, about Paul.

Where are we getting such unorthodox ideas about Paul?  Actually from a careful rereading of his letters.  Yes, actually reading what he wrote.  There are a lot of theories about Paul and what he stood for, a whole lot of theologizing from pulpits, but there aren't a whole lot of people who know how to read him, or who take the time to actually read him seriously.  When is the last time you said to yourself, gee, I think I will read one of Paul's letters today?  And not just a 30 second sound bite out of context?

I am facilitating an adult discussion group, 'Not Your Father's Paul', reading Paul again.  The task is a whole lot easier because a refreshing, understandable, yet scholarly translation of Paul's letter has just been published.  And we are rereading Paul together specifically in hopes of renewing, reforming actually, our own particular declining mainline congregation.  What could be more Lutheran?  The publication is titled 'The Authentic Letters of Paul'.

I plan to blog about the general drift of our conversations as the group works its way through Paul's letters.  I will talk about what we think the letters might have to offer declining churches, working through their own present day issues.  The next blog will deal with how to read Paul, which is not as straight forward as you might think.

Tre and the Android

Church people used to communicate primarily face to face.  Even though I grew up with phones (those heavy black things with a spiral cord), there was something in my genes that preferred talking directly to a person when I had a request to make, or a proposal to give.  That is no longer the way it is though.

Late last night one of my grandkids got a new Android phone for his birthday.  This morning before school he had already uploaded a number of Android pictures directly to his Facebook page, feeling quite cool.  Since we are Facebook friends, I saw the pictures, shot back a comment saying, ‘Hey, Tre, more swagger??’  To which he replied, ‘Lil bit’.  And off to interact with who knows how many other teens, all while eating his Wheaties before school.  Maybe humans will evolve towards loss of vocal cords.

Since religion is a social phenomenon more than a private one, church kind of needs social interaction.  But that isn’t going to happen as much anymore centered around give and take during the potluck carry in, intimate conferences in the kitchen, or parking lot meetings.  It is going to be, and already is, much more electronic in nature.  How many video clips have you already seen, of people on cell phones walking into a light post?

They built cathedrals in Europe at city center plazas for a reason.  That was the crossroads where lives intersected, and people communicated.  To do that today, we need to learn to navigate where Tre does, while eating his Wheaties.  Till now, CLC’s dabbling in electronic conversation has been mostly a one way conversation.  We send out email messages with information.  Our web page has been a static post for the world to view.  If there are any responses at all, they usually come in person, at the next Sunday gathering.

We are going to try to ramp it up a bit, folks.  In addition to the weekly email, we are developing several blogs, where CLC can put out content electronically.  New blogs, like this one, will automatically get posted to our CLC Facebook page.  They will show up as thumbnails on the CLC web home page.  But besides content from CLC downward to you, you can respond electronically in the same kind of interactions you can get from a Facebook group.  And it ought to be easy for you to find our blogs and our Facebook page, because going forward there will be links to them in our weekly emails, and on the CLC web home page.  And if you link to them, they will come to you automatically, on your own Facebook page.  Most important, that has the potential for not just CLC member interaction, but interaction with the whole electronic community, (including your grandkids).

Why bother, you might say, not our thing.  Just leave it to the next generation.  No!  Bother!  Even though it goes against your nature.  You cared about communicating with kids in Sunday School 50 years ago.  Well, they aren’t in Sunday School anymore.  So forget about them?  Or, go where you can talk to them.  Or don’t we care anymore?

We are going to provide some substantial electronic tools for communicating with people where they are today.  We are planning some formal content from CLC to input into those tools.  But in the end, it does still come down to you.  We can build the electronic tools to allow you to meet on today’s plaza.  But you are the souls who have to do the social interaction.  Some things never change.  And think of how you will impress your grandkids.