This Sunday is Epiphany Sunday. I don't use the word "epiphany" often because it is obscure to most people. It means "revealing," and it is an important part of your Christmas observance. The season is not over until we have Epiphany. The story is in Matthew 2:1-12.
The "revealing" is of Jesus to the Wise Men, or Magi, who seek him out. These visitors are not Jews. They are foreign magicians or astrologers. They have been tipped off to an extraordinary cosmic event, and they travel great distance to see it for themselves. Their importance to the story is that they are outsiders. God is revealing something to outsiders.
God's revelation, which came to the insiders, is also for the outsiders. Jesus is for everybody! It is a simple idea but try living by it. You quickly find that churches are usually communities of insiders. It is nice to be an insider, and once you are, you tend to hold on to it for yourself. Churches are largely ineffective because they behave like insiders, and have forgotten how to welcome people from outside the circle. Being an insider will turn your faith very flat.
The arrival of this Jesus-who-is-for-everybody brought consequences. King Herod responded to the search of the Magi by killing all the babies in Bethlehem to make sure of eliminating the little one who might be a threat to his own position. To escape Herod's wrath the family of baby Jesus fled to Egypt, living there as aliens. Jesus is a threat to insiders everywhere.
For much of the last 1,500 years of Western culture the Christian church has had insider status. The USA thought of itself as a Christian country. Our churches, Protestant and Catholic, were sanctioned and blessed by secular culture (as long as we did not mess with it too much). We are no longer in that position. Churches are in staggering decline in membership, atttendance, and financial strength. An entire generation is finding no meaning at all in traditional religious practice. Megachurches notwithstanding, the church cannot be called a prominent force in American culture anymore. This relatively new development (unfolding over the last fifty years) has left us insiders grasping for identity and purpose.
The message of Jesus remains powerful even as the church weakens. What has happened? It is the first century all over again. We are now aliens, not insiders. We are like Jesus' family, living as immigrants in a culture that is not ours. We can lament, or we can realize that this is how God really operates. Living as aliens in this culture, we can reach out in God's unfathomable love to all people without regard for privilege, status, or power.
Epiphany is a good time to be reminded that we are a Jesus-is-for-everybody people. The gospel is not a national, racial, ethnic, social, economic, or ideological thing. God's revelation of Jesus to "the Gentiles" is a sign of radical love and inclusion of all people everywhere. Anything we do that does not show that is a failure of Christmas spirit.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
A painful passage
Being a graduate of the University of Florida and a passionate fan of the Gators, I have been following with great interest the story of Urban Meyer. Meyer resigned his position as Head Football Coach at UF a few days ago, then rescinded the resignation in favor of an indefinite leave of absence. At a press conference on Sunday, he talked of some health issues that are behind this decision but he declined to identify the issues. He spoke more freely about faith, family, and priorities in his life. Many people found this a little confusing, given the passion with which Meyer approaches his job.
Urban Meyer is a phenomenally successful man. At the end of 2009, he has the best winning percentage of any coach in Southeastern Conference history (he is only 45 years old). He has won two national football championships in five years, and makes one of the highest salaries in the profession. What, short of a major illness, could provoke a man like that to want to quit?
Based on what I heard in the press conference, I wonder if this very successful man has entered the same dark passage that so many men have had to endure. It comes on in middle age (usually after age 35) and strikes particularly hard at those men who are smart, driven, competitive, and perfectionist. It takes the form of fatigue, depression, and physical symptoms. It is baffling because there are seldom any apparent reasons for it. Money, status, and fame lose their attraction. The ordinary prescriptions of vacations, hobbies, or activities don't work. It is a spiritual crisis. Each man in his own way has to find what God wants him to know about himself, his world, and his calling. It is the gateway to the rest of a man's life.
These things are seldom talked about openly. Shame attaches itself to the subject, and as a result too many men wander into this passage with no warning and with no guidance. A man can behave in very destructive ways during this passage. Much suffering could be resolved if men could be more open and supportive of each other during these times. When we don't talk about it, it remains a dangerous threat rather than a spiritual passage.
I wish Urban Meyer well, regardless of what his problems are. I hope that his public admission of pain will be an opportunity for men to see and acknowledge the importance of a spiritual center to life.
Urban Meyer is a phenomenally successful man. At the end of 2009, he has the best winning percentage of any coach in Southeastern Conference history (he is only 45 years old). He has won two national football championships in five years, and makes one of the highest salaries in the profession. What, short of a major illness, could provoke a man like that to want to quit?
Based on what I heard in the press conference, I wonder if this very successful man has entered the same dark passage that so many men have had to endure. It comes on in middle age (usually after age 35) and strikes particularly hard at those men who are smart, driven, competitive, and perfectionist. It takes the form of fatigue, depression, and physical symptoms. It is baffling because there are seldom any apparent reasons for it. Money, status, and fame lose their attraction. The ordinary prescriptions of vacations, hobbies, or activities don't work. It is a spiritual crisis. Each man in his own way has to find what God wants him to know about himself, his world, and his calling. It is the gateway to the rest of a man's life.
These things are seldom talked about openly. Shame attaches itself to the subject, and as a result too many men wander into this passage with no warning and with no guidance. A man can behave in very destructive ways during this passage. Much suffering could be resolved if men could be more open and supportive of each other during these times. When we don't talk about it, it remains a dangerous threat rather than a spiritual passage.
I wish Urban Meyer well, regardless of what his problems are. I hope that his public admission of pain will be an opportunity for men to see and acknowledge the importance of a spiritual center to life.
Monday, December 28, 2009
So What?
Yesterday's daily lectionary text included a verse I have always found important. Colossians 1:13 says "For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son (NASB). This text uses rescue as a metaphor for salvation, which adds an element of urgency to faith. The idea of faith as having been rescued from danger is often missing in Presbyterian churches. We need to revive it in order to recover some vitality for the missional church.
"The Domain of Darkness" sounds like a fundamentalist vision of culture, which is why I shied away from this for many years. The NRSV translates the phrase as "the power of darkness," but I think the concept of dominion is a more accurate description of what we are up against. Walter Wink's foundational work on spiritual powers, and Brian McLaren's recent book Everything Must Change call upon us to think of ourselves as living in an empire, a dominion system that seeks to define and control us for its own ends. This system is so pervasive that is unnoticed. It looks "normal." No one wins in the dominion system; in the end, even the most successful and powerful people are beaten by it.
It takes something disruptive to open your eyes to the domain of darkness. It takes something decisive to force you into an alternative way of being. We could call that disruption "conversion." We can conceive of it as being transferred into the Kingdom of God.
The great story of Christmas is the ultimate disruption of the dominion system. It is the story of God's insertion of God's own self into human history and society. It happened in the most subversive of ways, and it embraces the harshest of human circumstance. The story we celebrate at Christmas becomes the narrative by which we live in this world. No longer are we to be dominated by anything other than God's vision for how our world is to be.
Later this week the Christmas decorations will start coming down. For our culture, Christmas is over. For those of us who have been rescued, the reality of it goes on. It is our way.
"The Domain of Darkness" sounds like a fundamentalist vision of culture, which is why I shied away from this for many years. The NRSV translates the phrase as "the power of darkness," but I think the concept of dominion is a more accurate description of what we are up against. Walter Wink's foundational work on spiritual powers, and Brian McLaren's recent book Everything Must Change call upon us to think of ourselves as living in an empire, a dominion system that seeks to define and control us for its own ends. This system is so pervasive that is unnoticed. It looks "normal." No one wins in the dominion system; in the end, even the most successful and powerful people are beaten by it.
It takes something disruptive to open your eyes to the domain of darkness. It takes something decisive to force you into an alternative way of being. We could call that disruption "conversion." We can conceive of it as being transferred into the Kingdom of God.
The great story of Christmas is the ultimate disruption of the dominion system. It is the story of God's insertion of God's own self into human history and society. It happened in the most subversive of ways, and it embraces the harshest of human circumstance. The story we celebrate at Christmas becomes the narrative by which we live in this world. No longer are we to be dominated by anything other than God's vision for how our world is to be.
Later this week the Christmas decorations will start coming down. For our culture, Christmas is over. For those of us who have been rescued, the reality of it goes on. It is our way.
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