I was prowling the stacks at my local library and, judging this book by its cover, took home The Body in the Bookcase, “A Faith Fairchild Mystery” by Katherine Hall Page. I picked it because the nosey sleuth is a minister’s wife. I had two questions going into this mystery.
Will it entertain me as a murder mystery?
What bearing will the Christian connection have to the story?
The answer to the first question is yes, it was pretty good. The mystery played out well. It was in the world of antique dealing and I like the way she resolved it. A delightful subtext through it was the sleuth’s business. She is a caterer and Ms. Page interweaves that in the story telling. Then she gives an appendix with some of the very tasty sounding recipes.
The Christian connection was by way of back story. Ms. Page has an excellent feel for the life of a minister’s wife and there are some eerily accurate portrayals of some of the more colorful characters you might find in a congregation. But it stays in the background. For example, her husband is working on his sermon, she sets him up with a snack and sneaks out to go sleuthing. At that point, she becomes another amateur detective.
There is no faith-based reflection of how murder is bad or how a Christian might pursue criminals (whether in a professional or amateur capacity). I don’t even remember a prayer for help when she got herself into a tight spot.
But this is one in a series. There might be more Christianity represented in other books. Regardless, I will read more of them.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
A “Post-Racial” Society: Vision for the Christian Nation
I picked up this term listening to NPR. A quick google search produced a lot more results. It is the idea of living in a world where we are beyond racial differences. Most of the discussion seems to be whether we are entering that new place with the potential election of Senator Obama as President this fall.
So, here is an awkward conversation, a white pastor talking about race. I won’t be so naïve as to say that I am not racist. There is racism in my makeup, I haven’t met anybody who, with sufficient honest conversation, does not have this most blatant and particularly American sinfulness.
My personal work on racism is to confess it when it comes out of my mouth and be aware of it in the sin life that still tries to drag me down.
And as a person of the ‘white’ color, a “European-American”, I don’t think any meaningful discussion on race can begin without personal confession.
A post-racial society needs to be theologically considered under the idea of the “already-not yet” mystery of the Christian Nation when we consider it as a synonym for the Kingdom of God. We can already work at it, but it not yet finished, and will not be until sin itself is finished.
So if post-racial is, to use the political terms of the upcoming conventions, a plank in the platform of what it means to be a Christian Nation, the best measure for achieving it comes from Martin Luther King’s famous words that people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.
So, here is an awkward conversation, a white pastor talking about race. I won’t be so naïve as to say that I am not racist. There is racism in my makeup, I haven’t met anybody who, with sufficient honest conversation, does not have this most blatant and particularly American sinfulness.
My personal work on racism is to confess it when it comes out of my mouth and be aware of it in the sin life that still tries to drag me down.
And as a person of the ‘white’ color, a “European-American”, I don’t think any meaningful discussion on race can begin without personal confession.
A post-racial society needs to be theologically considered under the idea of the “already-not yet” mystery of the Christian Nation when we consider it as a synonym for the Kingdom of God. We can already work at it, but it not yet finished, and will not be until sin itself is finished.
So if post-racial is, to use the political terms of the upcoming conventions, a plank in the platform of what it means to be a Christian Nation, the best measure for achieving it comes from Martin Luther King’s famous words that people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Pop Culture Review: Monster Ark
The Sci. Fi. Channel has taken on the book of Genesis.
According to this, Noah had two arks, and the one for this movie was the “Monster Ark”. First, they find a hidden chamber at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Second, it has the ‘complete’ manuscript of Genesis. Third, it plays off Genesis 6:4, an obscure reference to something called the Nephilim. Fourth, it says Noah had a second ark, one with a monster of the Nephilim era that could bring back darkness to the earth.
The verse goes, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God and the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.”
They chased too many possibilities. Here is a sample. Indiana Jones is ripped off for a mysterious map room, a ‘brotherhood’ designed to protect the secret of the scroll, of the ark, and of Noah’s burial place, but no Nazis. The sacred/secular debate takes the form of two scientists leading this expedition, one being a ‘believer’ and the other being a ‘secularist’. Modern politics are taken on when the ark is supposed to be lying in the middle of war-torn Iraq. In line with all my favorite Sci. Fi. movies, it becomes a protracted bug hunt with a heroic ending-and the possibility of a sequel.
Unfortunately, the movie itself was really bad. Here is a gathering of some of the clichéd reviews of bad cable movies: The dialogue was stilted, the characters were lame, the CGI monster was particularly bad, there were some obvious errors of continuity, and they even resurrected an actress that I have not seen in some years (Renee O’Connor from ‘Xena, Warrior Princess’). And Tommy Lister, known as Tiny, gets every clichéd line from a major (or is it a sergeant-major) Marine that I have ever seen. It was so bad, I liked it. The theological debates that the premise should have generated were as scattered as the rest of the movie.
According to this, Noah had two arks, and the one for this movie was the “Monster Ark”. First, they find a hidden chamber at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Second, it has the ‘complete’ manuscript of Genesis. Third, it plays off Genesis 6:4, an obscure reference to something called the Nephilim. Fourth, it says Noah had a second ark, one with a monster of the Nephilim era that could bring back darkness to the earth.
The verse goes, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God and the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.”
They chased too many possibilities. Here is a sample. Indiana Jones is ripped off for a mysterious map room, a ‘brotherhood’ designed to protect the secret of the scroll, of the ark, and of Noah’s burial place, but no Nazis. The sacred/secular debate takes the form of two scientists leading this expedition, one being a ‘believer’ and the other being a ‘secularist’. Modern politics are taken on when the ark is supposed to be lying in the middle of war-torn Iraq. In line with all my favorite Sci. Fi. movies, it becomes a protracted bug hunt with a heroic ending-and the possibility of a sequel.
Unfortunately, the movie itself was really bad. Here is a gathering of some of the clichéd reviews of bad cable movies: The dialogue was stilted, the characters were lame, the CGI monster was particularly bad, there were some obvious errors of continuity, and they even resurrected an actress that I have not seen in some years (Renee O’Connor from ‘Xena, Warrior Princess’). And Tommy Lister, known as Tiny, gets every clichéd line from a major (or is it a sergeant-major) Marine that I have ever seen. It was so bad, I liked it. The theological debates that the premise should have generated were as scattered as the rest of the movie.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
A negative hallmark of a Nation defined by its Religion?
Every nation marked by a specific religious identity as a certain level of intolerance built in. The stereotype is the Arab nation governed by religious law. But Christians still exhibit this behavior.
The United Kingdom is still ‘governed’ by the Church of England. A selection of their bishops still sit in the upper chamber of Parliament, the House of Lords, even though their role has been limited over time.
When Russia emerged from the Iron Curtain, there was a protest from the Russian Orthodox Church against the influx of western evangelical church planters coming into their country, transgressing on their ‘spiritual geography’.
There exists within the churches the remnants of the Inquisitions that marked the Middle Ages and Reformation periods of the church with so much blood. In the Roman Catholic Church, there still exists the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In my own Presbyterian denomination, there exists the Permanent Judicial Council. These ecclesial courts no longer use temporal authorities to enforce their decisions. We no longer kill people for heresy or wrong belief, but we did.
I do not wish to speak of the Muslim world, because that is not my cultural heritage, except to speak to one set of news reports that just came out. Turkey is the exception that proves the rule. The Supreme Court came close to throwing out the ruling AK Party because their religious views were in conflict with the principle of secular governing that exists there. Turkey is arguably the only nation with a 90% plus Muslim population that does not have Islamic practice at its political center-and that is because of the military.
There are a few political hot coals in this country that could rapidly become the fire of intolerance if we ever truly embraced being a “Christian Nation”. Things like Roe V. Wade, Prayer in School, the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Separation of Church and State, and Faith-Based Initiatives would all get spun very differently if we moved away from our intentionally secular foundations.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Christian Nation Versus the Kingdom of God
One of the first associations I made in my own thinking over this political and theological language was the biblical language of Kingdom of God. If we are going to talk about a Christian Nation, are we going to talk about a historical occurrence or a biblical application?
Kingdom of God is all things in heaven and the in-breaking of God’s work into this world ruled by sin. There is a lovely paradox in theological thinking about the “already-not yet”, the idea that the Kingdom is already here but it is not yet fulfilled. That lends itself to the New Testament descriptions of the imminent return of our Lord Jesus when the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled.
Of course, in an American political debate, we could not use the terminology of Scripture concerning a Kingdom. We are not a monarchy. In fact, we were established specifically not to be a monarchy. In addition, we owe a great debt of gratitude to George Washington, who set the traditions of the Presidency, that this nation did not become a monarchy in its first generations.
And we dare not use language directly ascribing authority to God. We are not a theocracy, we are a democracy. Being a Christian Nation lays off the direct reference to the divine. It also gets us out of the real mess of trying to figure out who would speak for God if were a Nation of God as opposed to a Christian nation. There are a lot of pastors and others out there who, I suspect, would be glad for the job.
No, Christian Nation and Kingdom of God must be separated from each other. The Kingdom of God went from being an Old Testament political experiment in Israel to becoming a trans-natural acknowledgement of the authority of our Lord.
Kingdom of God is all things in heaven and the in-breaking of God’s work into this world ruled by sin. There is a lovely paradox in theological thinking about the “already-not yet”, the idea that the Kingdom is already here but it is not yet fulfilled. That lends itself to the New Testament descriptions of the imminent return of our Lord Jesus when the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled.
Of course, in an American political debate, we could not use the terminology of Scripture concerning a Kingdom. We are not a monarchy. In fact, we were established specifically not to be a monarchy. In addition, we owe a great debt of gratitude to George Washington, who set the traditions of the Presidency, that this nation did not become a monarchy in its first generations.
And we dare not use language directly ascribing authority to God. We are not a theocracy, we are a democracy. Being a Christian Nation lays off the direct reference to the divine. It also gets us out of the real mess of trying to figure out who would speak for God if were a Nation of God as opposed to a Christian nation. There are a lot of pastors and others out there who, I suspect, would be glad for the job.
No, Christian Nation and Kingdom of God must be separated from each other. The Kingdom of God went from being an Old Testament political experiment in Israel to becoming a trans-natural acknowledgement of the authority of our Lord.
Monday, August 4, 2008
A Sermon on Abraham and being a "Christian Nation"
Genesis 17: 1-8 Sermon
Have you heard the debate about whether or not we are a “Christian Nation”? Senator Obama started the fight, citing the great diversity of religions in this country make us not exclusively a Christian Nation, but a Christian nation, a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and so on. Senator McCain shot back that we are specifically a Christian nation, citing the way our founding fathers set up this country. The political debate is trying to shape our very relationship with God. But to understand our relationship with God, we have to understand that we are in covenant with God.
Presidential elections are a lot like biblical covenant making. I was listening to election coverage this week and they were talking about each party building their party platforms, the positions and stands and goals that they will bring to the electorate at their conventions. Senators McCain and Obama build on this. Both want our votes.
They promise us things in exchange for our votes. And they spend a lot of time ridiculing the promises of their opponents and promoting their own promises. The model of the covenant, the contract we make at an election, is not just implicit in the form of an election; it is also explicit in the rhetoric.
But election campaigns aside, I think the church should be deciding whether we are a Christian nation or not, not the politicians. But to be a Christian, much less a Christian nation, demands that we are in covenant with Christ, in covenant with God, that we have a relationship with the Almighty. We have to understand that covenant. Presidential politics is a vague copy of this much more fundamental relationship we are called to.
That covenant we have with Jesus is bound up in the words God uses to review God’s covenant promise to Abram. He says, “I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless.” Abram needs a reminder. The first time God came to him was twenty four years earlier, when he was seventy five. Now he is ninety nine. Time catches up with all of us.
Our responsibility in the covenant, because Abram’s covenant still informs us, is to walk before God and be blameless. Jesus allows us to do that, but we will get to that point in a moment. God goes on to outline God’s side of the covenant. First, Abram’s descendants will not just be numerous, but exceedingly numerous. And it won’t just be one nation, but it will be a multitude of nations, and not just a multitude of nations, but a multitude of kings will come from his progeny as well.
This event was so monumental that Abram’s name was changed. He was Abram, which means exalted ancestor, and he becomes Abraham, which you can see in footnote ‘h’ means “ancestor of a multitude”. And the crowning glory is that God will be in covenant with each generation to eternity. All this will take place in the Land of Canaan, the land promised in the covenant.
We cannot fulfill either part of our side of the covenant. We have not walked before God since Adam and Eve committed Original Sin. And because of that sin, we cannot be blameless. By ourselves. But we can fulfill our side of the covenant in Jesus.
Jesus’ death and resurrection have made us blameless before God by the gift of God’s grace, if we call on him and surrender ourselves to Jesus as our Lord and Savior. In that surrender, we will be converted, we will be born again, we will become Children of God, heirs with Jesus, the oldest child of God, to God’s glory and eternal wonder.
And it is by grace that we can walk before our God, forgiven when we sin, taught by the words and deeds of Jesus recorded in the Bible as to how we should behave, and indwelt by the Spirit that will continually bring us closer to our God.
And when we do that, God will make us numerous as Abram’s descendants, we have become many nations, we have given rise to many kings and other leaders of great power. The Christian faith is the largest religion on the planet. But more important then any of that, God has been with us through each generation.
And just before ascending into heaven, in Acts 1 verse 6, 7, and 8, Jesus spread the Promised Land to encompass the whole world when he told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Well brothers and sisters, we are at the ends of the earth and we share the covenant that God laid before Abraham. And we are living in a nation where the Presidential election is shaped with the language of a covenant between ‘we the people’ and the leaders we will elect. And they debate in front of us whether we are in fact a ‘Christian nation’.
So how do we answer that question as the church? Well, we who know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, who are members of the invisible church that stretches to the hearts of all who truly believe, we are children of the covenant, we are part of the multitude of nations promised to Abraham, we are part of the Christian nation.
But in that context, the Christian nation is a nation of all Christians everywhere. What about the question of America? Are we, as the nation of the United States of America, a Christian nation? How do we respond to the political rhetoric? How do we respond to the questions the media continues to ask?
I think the media idea of being a ‘Christian nation’ is a political one, edged to win votes. Our founding fathers were Christians, and Senator McCain is right, their faith informed the creation of the US, but they set up this nation as secular in outlook to end the religious wars that were still being fought in Europe 250 years after the Reformation. Our nation is majority Christian, but we are tolerant of, we welcome other faiths and we will imprison fellow Christians who would impede their ability to worship in their own way. Senator Obama is right recognizing that there is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, all intertwined in what this country is.
Let us recall that we are children of living God, living in covenant with God, walking blameless before God because of the grace given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, indwelt with the Holy Spirit to live as God wants us to, and called to carry that faith to the rest of the world.
Amen
Have you heard the debate about whether or not we are a “Christian Nation”? Senator Obama started the fight, citing the great diversity of religions in this country make us not exclusively a Christian Nation, but a Christian nation, a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and so on. Senator McCain shot back that we are specifically a Christian nation, citing the way our founding fathers set up this country. The political debate is trying to shape our very relationship with God. But to understand our relationship with God, we have to understand that we are in covenant with God.
Presidential elections are a lot like biblical covenant making. I was listening to election coverage this week and they were talking about each party building their party platforms, the positions and stands and goals that they will bring to the electorate at their conventions. Senators McCain and Obama build on this. Both want our votes.
They promise us things in exchange for our votes. And they spend a lot of time ridiculing the promises of their opponents and promoting their own promises. The model of the covenant, the contract we make at an election, is not just implicit in the form of an election; it is also explicit in the rhetoric.
But election campaigns aside, I think the church should be deciding whether we are a Christian nation or not, not the politicians. But to be a Christian, much less a Christian nation, demands that we are in covenant with Christ, in covenant with God, that we have a relationship with the Almighty. We have to understand that covenant. Presidential politics is a vague copy of this much more fundamental relationship we are called to.
That covenant we have with Jesus is bound up in the words God uses to review God’s covenant promise to Abram. He says, “I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless.” Abram needs a reminder. The first time God came to him was twenty four years earlier, when he was seventy five. Now he is ninety nine. Time catches up with all of us.
Our responsibility in the covenant, because Abram’s covenant still informs us, is to walk before God and be blameless. Jesus allows us to do that, but we will get to that point in a moment. God goes on to outline God’s side of the covenant. First, Abram’s descendants will not just be numerous, but exceedingly numerous. And it won’t just be one nation, but it will be a multitude of nations, and not just a multitude of nations, but a multitude of kings will come from his progeny as well.
This event was so monumental that Abram’s name was changed. He was Abram, which means exalted ancestor, and he becomes Abraham, which you can see in footnote ‘h’ means “ancestor of a multitude”. And the crowning glory is that God will be in covenant with each generation to eternity. All this will take place in the Land of Canaan, the land promised in the covenant.
We cannot fulfill either part of our side of the covenant. We have not walked before God since Adam and Eve committed Original Sin. And because of that sin, we cannot be blameless. By ourselves. But we can fulfill our side of the covenant in Jesus.
Jesus’ death and resurrection have made us blameless before God by the gift of God’s grace, if we call on him and surrender ourselves to Jesus as our Lord and Savior. In that surrender, we will be converted, we will be born again, we will become Children of God, heirs with Jesus, the oldest child of God, to God’s glory and eternal wonder.
And it is by grace that we can walk before our God, forgiven when we sin, taught by the words and deeds of Jesus recorded in the Bible as to how we should behave, and indwelt by the Spirit that will continually bring us closer to our God.
And when we do that, God will make us numerous as Abram’s descendants, we have become many nations, we have given rise to many kings and other leaders of great power. The Christian faith is the largest religion on the planet. But more important then any of that, God has been with us through each generation.
And just before ascending into heaven, in Acts 1 verse 6, 7, and 8, Jesus spread the Promised Land to encompass the whole world when he told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Well brothers and sisters, we are at the ends of the earth and we share the covenant that God laid before Abraham. And we are living in a nation where the Presidential election is shaped with the language of a covenant between ‘we the people’ and the leaders we will elect. And they debate in front of us whether we are in fact a ‘Christian nation’.
So how do we answer that question as the church? Well, we who know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, who are members of the invisible church that stretches to the hearts of all who truly believe, we are children of the covenant, we are part of the multitude of nations promised to Abraham, we are part of the Christian nation.
But in that context, the Christian nation is a nation of all Christians everywhere. What about the question of America? Are we, as the nation of the United States of America, a Christian nation? How do we respond to the political rhetoric? How do we respond to the questions the media continues to ask?
I think the media idea of being a ‘Christian nation’ is a political one, edged to win votes. Our founding fathers were Christians, and Senator McCain is right, their faith informed the creation of the US, but they set up this nation as secular in outlook to end the religious wars that were still being fought in Europe 250 years after the Reformation. Our nation is majority Christian, but we are tolerant of, we welcome other faiths and we will imprison fellow Christians who would impede their ability to worship in their own way. Senator Obama is right recognizing that there is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, all intertwined in what this country is.
Let us recall that we are children of living God, living in covenant with God, walking blameless before God because of the grace given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, indwelt with the Holy Spirit to live as God wants us to, and called to carry that faith to the rest of the world.
Amen
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