“[Jesus] is performing God’s love, God’s purpose, without a break, without a false note, without a stumble; yet he is never other than himself, with all that makes him distinctly human taken up with this creative work. If we look at great musicians, we see both the intensity of the struggle and the strength of the joy that goes with it. Whatever is happening, these performers are not becoming less human, less distinctive. In the fullness of their skill and their joy, another is made present. So with Jesus; this is a human life and a human will whose power and joy is the performance of who God is and what God wants, the performance of the Word of God. When the early Christians insisted that we could not imagine sin in Jesus, they were not saying something negative but something positive; there is nothing in this performance that blocks out the composer. And when they insisted that there was no ‘gap’ in Jesus’ humanity where God fitted in, they were insisting that this was the performance of one work only–the humanity of the performer is most full and real in the performance.”

There has been a lot of hub-bub since last month’s news
about the Episcopal church and their appointing openly gay bishops (see here
and here). Many people have taken sides on “the issue” each tugging at the
Bible in support of their own opinion. As long as it remains in the abstract as
“an issue” it is easy to either promote or dismiss; especially from the pulpit.

The old adage still rings true, “what the preacher harps on
the most, he struggles with most.” It wasn’t until the other night that I began
to see the underbelly of coming down hard on “the issues”, or as some preachers
like to frame it up as, “preaching the whole counsel of God.” The other night,
I watched on HBO a documentary called “The Trials of Ted Haggard.” This was a
short but potent film about the following 18 months after his scandal. The
camera follows Ted and his family around in a U-Haul as they struggle to earn a
living after being exiled from the state of Colorado, not by the state
government, but rather by the mega-church he preached at. The documentary
quoted a church elder wishing that Haggard “would just disappear.”

Last January, Oprah brought both Ted and his family on her
show to show her audience “where are they now”:

For the whole show go here

Now Haggard sells health insurance and is banned from the ministry.
Rightfully so, some might say. If your pastor was doing drugs and was employing
a male prostitute, then you’d most likely not want him leading your
congregation. But while watching this documentary, it dawned on me that Ted’s
Church was only following through with the anti-gay protocol that they had
received from the pulpit. They were practicing what he was preaching—and made
him disappear. But what was astonishing
was that his family didn’t bail on him. The faithful witness to Christ by
Ted’s wife gives me hope about the Church.

In the Oprah clip, Ted mentions that he had believed the
wrong “ideal” about himself which he couldn’t work out. I wonder how much the
Church must take responsibility for this man’s fall from grace because they
enabled a situation where Haggard could not be redeemed or find a way out. He
was on a pedestal receiving pastor-worship which only pushed him farther away
from being able to come to grips with his problems. Since he was a pastor, he
was sacred, not like us humans. So when he revealed that he wasn’t sacred, it
was a shock and this forced people to gather around him as a sacrifice to be
offered in the name of the holy one. He had to be thrown outside the gates,
left to fend for himself.

After watching this, I asked myself, what is the Church for?
Does the Church exist in the world in order to maintain the moral high ground
for a small circle of humanity which is made up of popes, priests, and pastors?
If so, what about everybody else? It seems like in situations like these, that
people get thrown under the bus in the name of ‘coming down hard on’ what they
think is sin. This only pushes people out of the church and into the crumbling
health insurance business.

I think Jesus said something about pointing out splinters in
other people’s eyes while ignoring the large plank in our own eye. The Church
must come to grips with two things: 1) that theology matters; it does, people
act and make decisions on how they perceive who God is in Jesus Christ. 2) the
Gospel is not ammo for the Church to fire at this hell-bent world, but it is in
fact the Church’s worst enemy.

So whether that puts you on one side of an issue, or the
other, that will continue to be debated. But it brought up questions for me
about how well Evangelicals can handle their own medicine when they condemn
others. It’s one thing to say all you want about “the issue” but when it comes
to one of your own people, how Christ-like are your reactions?

Tomorrow, April & I are headed up north for a 16 hour drive to visit my dad and Katie. We won’t brave the trip in one day, but I will be away from the blog for awhile. In the meantime, here are some articles worth reading:

Bill Cavanaugh on the economic faithfulness of the Church (audio)

advice for writers

book review of Letty Russell’s Just Hospitality [someone could buy me this as a gift... hint hint]

N.T. Wright project

Rowan Williams and the Anglican Controversy

Sex in Public – Debra Dean Murphy

Reading for Ministry

book review, In the Beginning was the Meal [someone could buy me this as a gift as well]

Last night, April & I went to see Wicked the musical. It has been in Tulsa for the summer and April has been waiting to see it for a very long time. I found the production to be very good. The sets were intricate, the costumes elaborate, and the voices were impressive.

However, what I thought was seriously lacking was the writing. The lyrics were lame as well as the story. The musical is based on the book, which I haven’t read. So I don’t know if the bad writing is transposed by the musical or if the source of it all is the book.

The overall success of this musical for me was because it piggy-backs on a larger, better story. The musical was a kind of parallel story of the original to which it tips it’s hat at different places in the story. And it is this that keeps people coming in droves. Including myself and my beautiful wife.

Continuing on the same ‘theatre’ theme, we’ve also seen a movie recently called, Synedoche, New York. For those of you who liked the movie Adaptation, this is the same sort of whackyness. I hate to tell very much about this film, but it is definitely worth picking up and seeing!

It’s been about a month since I’ve posted on this blog. I haven’t been writing in my journal at all either.

This means that either my life is just too busy or boring.

In the meantime, check out the latest blurb about bob dylan doin’ a xmas album!