Imagination, Not Intellect

At the advice of some of my preacher friends I have been reading a very funny book by Christopher Moore called Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. There have actually been a couple of times that I’ve been reading along and laughed. Out loud. For a long time.

One of those parts of the book is when the disciples are waiting out on a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee:
We assumed he would be swimming or rowing out in one of the small boats, but when he finally came down to the shore the multitude was still following him, and he just kept walking, right across the surface of the water toward the boat. The crowd stopped at the shore and cheered. Even we were astounded by this new miracle, and we sat in the boat with our mouths hanging open as Joshua [Jesus] approached.
“What?” he said. “What? What? What?”
“Master, you’re walking on the water,” said Peter.
“I just ate,” Joshua [Jesus] said. “You can’t go into the water for an hour after you eat. You could get a cramp. What, none of you guys have mothers?”

I can understand how some people might think imagining Jesus as human is a little sacrilegious, but isn’t that what Christmas is all about? Hey! Isn’t that what our faith is all about?

Christopher Moore must agree, as the entire book is full of clever vignettes like the one above. He’s not a theologian but I think in the process of writing this book he may have accidently become one. This I concluded when I read the comments of Moore’s character Maggie (Mary Magdalene to you orthodox types). Here she is defending the bumbling attempts of the first disciples:
Faith isn’t an act of intelligence; it’s an act of imagination. Every time you give them a new metaphor for the kingdom they see the metaphor, a mustard seed, a field, a garden, a vineyard, it’s like pointing something out to a cat–the cat looks at your finger, not at what you’re pointing at. They don’t need to understand it, they only need to believe, and they do. They imagine the kingdom as they need it to be, they don’t need to grasp it, it’s there already, they can let it be. Imagination, not intellect.

Maybe part of the work of Advent is approaching all of this like Christopher Moore does, with wild, crazy, unbridled imagination.

To Be a Star

My relationship with the media is rocky at best. This is usually not the fault of whichever reporter is interviewing me; rather, it’s the fault of my own inability to thoughtfully choose my words rather than trying to wax eloquent off the cuff. Since I talk for a living you would think I would have that down by now . . . such is not the case. They did not teach us about these things in seminary.

With practice, though, the situation seems to be improving. My latest brush with the media was an interview for an article in the Washington Examiner published today.

Reporter Andrea Useem called me earlier this week to talk about Advent and what the season means for our congregation. Andrea was great to talk with; I enjoyed trying to fill her in on the fact that many Baptists do not celebrate liturgical seasons like Advent–since we come from the “free church” tradition we have often eschewed practices of the “institutional” church. But in recent years there has been a move toward rediscovering the meaning in these ancient Christian practices.

This is my third Advent at Calvary, which is what I tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to communicate to Andrea. I can’t take credit (or responsibility, as the case may be) for introducing the practice of Advent at Calvary. In actuality Calvary has been celebrating Advent for years. But, in the Baptist world, there are many congregations that do not celebrate Advent, so I think this is something that makes Calvary special.

Assessing this interview I guess that overall I dodged a bullet again–nothing overly stupid seems to have been attributed to me this time. Maybe rather than sighing with relief I should start looking for a media advisor?

Family Album

In my opinion . . . if you are grappling with a biblical text week in and week out, trying to articulate some truth for a community of listeners, well, there’s no way to avoid talking about the details of your life. Some colleagues of mine maintain that all folks want to hear in sermons are literary references and historical allusions, but I learn things about God most of all in my day to day life. And since I have the microphone for twenty minutes once a week, well, anyone listening to me will hear about it.

This time of year I always think (though I try hard not to talk too excessively) about when my children were born. As the years creep by the memories are fading, but there’s something about a new life intersecting yours that turns everything upsidedown, that totally changes the way you look at the world.

And, to be perfectly honest, there are just some things you can never forget no matter how hard you try.

I am really THERE with Mary, you know what I mean? Maybe when all this angel stuff first happened she thought it might be a great idea to have a baby, but I always wonder if she held that screaming baby in her arms and thought to herself, “What have I done?”

If Mary was anything like me, she did just that.

The arrival of each one of my children completely rocked my world in every way imaginable. Not only was I completely exhausted for a total of about 7 years straight, but I suddenly found myself learning all sorts of things: which mothers to avoid on the playground (no refined sugar for the first five years? Whatever!), how to fit a double stroller through the checkout aisle at WalMart (not possible), what happens to a sippy cup that is stored under the car seat for six months (believe me, you don’t want to know) . . . .

And, in addition to all of those things, I also learned things like: I cannot control the world; the choices I make have powerful and lasting consequences; that new life is a mysterious and wonderful gift. And through the bleary, sleep deprived eyes of new parenthood, I had these overwhelming times when I could just look into the face of this tiny baby in front of me and know that the love I felt at that moment was bigger than anything I had ever felt before (aren’t they adorable? Humor me, please).

Every year around this time it occurs to me that God must have known all of those things when God decided to come on down to live among us–as a newborn baby.

I understand from my friends who are not parents that sometimes it gets a little tedious to hear friends (the pastor) go on an on about their kids, but this is one time out of the year that it seems appropriate. See, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve never been a parent; at Christmas all of us know what it’s like to have our lives completely changed by the coming of a baby.

Ugly Never Wins

I fully admit I was prepared not to like it.

The thing is, my personal history with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe goes back all the way to early memories of hearing my mother read the story aloud. Over the years it has taken on even more meaning as I’ve read the book myself, then read all seven of the Chronicles (starting with The Magician’s Nephew, my favorite of them all), then read them again–aloud–to my own kids.

Just thinking of how Hollywood has butchered some of my other favorite books, I went into the movie theater yesterday cringing in preparation for disappointment.

To my shock and amazement, I left the theater happy with the movie and perhaps I might even say . . . moved. Truth be told, I am not one who finds spiritual moments in the movie theater in general. But, upon reflection I’ve determined that I think it might all be related to being right in the middle of Advent. All this talk about incarnation, God come to earth, well, it makes me want to work a little harder to try to imagine what divine intersecting human might really be like. C.S. Lewis was trying to imagine that, of course, when he wrote The Chronicles. Many view them as thinly veiled allegory of the Christian story. You know, Aslan is Christ, Narnia is the world (but why did the bad guy have to be a girl, I want to know?).

If you read The Chronicles through the lens of faith you will note throughout every book pivotal moments, gems of dialog and narrative that describe some of the very essential experiences of Christian life. One of them done very well in the movie was (WARNING! Don’t read any further if you don’t already know the story . . . ) the scene when Aslan comes back to life. The scene was very powerful; I came home and hunted down the exact text in the book:

At that moment they heard from behind them a loud
noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s
plate…. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran
down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice from behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad…. “But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer. “It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

It’s all so very dramatic–the stone table cracking and the somber pronouncements about old magic. I can take or leave all of that. What really got to me was the reminder that the love of God is a love that will go to any lengths to welcome me in–even God becoming human to show us what true love is all about.

I was so moved, in fact, that I turned to my friend (who is from a different faith tradition); I was curious about her response to the movie.

Funny, she didn’t seem as choked up as I was. When asked for her thoughts on the movie she said pretty matter-of-factly that after gazing for an hour and forty minutes at the most bizarre creatures Hollywood has ever invented–horrid creatures who populated the evil army of the White Witch–she figured that the moral of this story was most-assuredly: “ugly never wins“.

Oh, well, so much for profundity. Sometimes the greatest truths are so obvious we completely miss them.

If you see the movie I’d love to know what you think. In the meantime, welcome the thought that God’s love for us is what inspired incarnation–God come to earth.

And, of course, remember one of the greatest universal truths ever–that is, of course: ugly never wins.

Drumbeat

The writer of the middle part of Isaiah spent a lot of time trying to get the Israelites to live with the expectation that their exile in Babylon would be coming to an end very soon. Remember? Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God! (Isaiah 40:9)

Okay, so we’re not living in exile in Babylon, but sometimes around this time of year it feels like the pressure of the season might consume us. Who has time to think with expectation about the coming of God?

Taking a hint from the prophet Isaiah, here at Calvary we’ve been trying to think of some ways to build a sense of expectation for God’s coming . . . to our lives, to this world. Last Sunday in worship we did that with the participation of Farafina Kan, an incredible African drumming group. I met some members of Farafina Kan at the Walk for the Homeless a few weeks ago, when a group from Calvary spent a Saturday morning walking together. I expect some worshippers were surprised by the drums, but there was really no way you could sit through that incredible drumming without your heartbeat picking up at least a little bit.

I hope the image of the drumbeat makes your heart fill with anticipation for the coming of God, but if not, at the very least make a mental note to catch Farafina Kan in concert sometime soon!

Conversations

This blog is an invitation into the world that I see from behind the pulpit at Calvary Baptist Church in downtown Washington, D.C. We’re a congregation in the middle of a neighborhood in transition. Our faith adventure as a community is full of transition, too. We’re growing and re-exploring what faith means in a place where faithful people have been worshipping God since the 1860s.

The people and experiences I encounter here at Calvary often give birth to conversations that change me. And, that’s the nature of the faith journey from behind this pulpit. I need companions on this great adventure–we need each other. So . . . welcome to the conversation.