Perceptions from a Pewboy

Have you ever felt particularly scattered and diffused in your pilgrimage? I’m having one of those weeks. Or months. Or years!

In my diffusion, I have found myself hearkening back to a song that I once wrote entitled “The Place Beneath.” Originally written as a love song for my wife, the song has become something broader than that. It has become, for my heart, a reference to the Holy Spirit’s capacity to regather and rejoin the scattered pieces of our lives and relocate us to that redemptive and holistic place that exists beneath the surface level of our scattered living.

Here art the lyrics at the heart of that song:

There’s a place beneath the nuance of our daily conversation
It’s a place that undergirds the words of our communication
It’s the place where all facades are cast aside without a fear
And never is a soul more known than when encountered here

It’s the place beneath the niceness of our everyday politeness
And the place where humble hearts do join in genuine contriteness
It is there God does anoint the weary soul with healing grace
And brings the rhythms of our life into a reverent pace

If you start to feel less real amidst the chaos and the clatter
Hold me in your arms a while and we’ll remember things that matter
If you start to sense confusion where discernment used to be
Our embrace leads to the place beneath where things are plain to see

To the place beneath, the place beneath
You and I will share something lovely there
In the place that lies beneath

If you are at all scattered or hyperactively diffused these days, I am offering a prayer for you even as I type these words. My prayer is that you will find your way to that “place beneath” to which the Holy Spirit is always eager to lead us. Beyond that, my prayer is that you will experience there the refreshment, the rejuvenation, and the redemptive silence that are often difficult to find in the “place above.”

On Tuesday night, Bishop Thomas Bickerton spent the evening with a gathering of pastors and laypersons from the Washington District. During that gathering, the bishop referenced Acts 11:1-18 in a way that I thought was significant. I have been pondering that portion of Scripture ever since.

Think for just a moment about how frequently we teach our children about the distinction between that which is clean and that which is dirty. I can still hear my mother’s voice:

“Eric, don’t put that quarter near your mouth. It’s dirty; you don’t know where it’s been.”

“Eric, don’t put that pen in your mouth. It’s dirty; you don’t know where it’s been.”

On Easter Sunday, just a couple of weeks ago, I ate a jelly bean that had fallen onto the floor. My mom immediately rendered her familiar refrain: “Eric, don’t eat that jellybean. It was on the floor. It’s dirty!”

I proceeded, of course, to explain to my mother the scientific intricacies of the five-second rule, which maintains that the jellybean only gets dirty if it stays on the ground for more than five seconds. And I was way faster than that! So down the hatch it went.

Much of our conceptualization of the world, I believe, is dependent upon what we define as being clean and what we define as being dirty. Such definitions will often dictate how it is that we compartmentalize the human pilgrimage and how it is that we will evaluate the people who are making that pilgrimage.

There is nothing new about the distinction between clean and unclean. In fact, throughout the biblical story, people of faith adhered to some very strict laws concerning the boundaries between that which was considered to be clean and that which was considered to be unclean. The people looked upon those laws as being the God-given means by which to organize the people of God, in such a way that the people of God would remain distinct from the rest of the world. Therefore, in the Old Testament, certain animals were labeled unclean and could not be consumed as food. In fact, animals labeled unclean were not even to be touched. Certain conditions and illnesses were also labeled unclean. As a result, people who found themselves struggling with those conditions and illnesses were separated from the rest of the community in an effort to preserve the cleanness of the rest of the community.

Perhaps the most substantive distinction of all, however, was the distinction that the Jewish people made between those who were Jewish and those who were not Jewish. As history continued to unfold, all of those who were not Jewish by birth were considered Gentiles, which is a word that literally means “from the same family, race, or clan.” The Jewish people utilized the word “gentile” to describe everybody in the world who was not Jewish. There were Jewish people and there was everybody else—Gentiles.

By the time of the New Testament, with some exception, the Jewish people considered all Gentiles to be unclean in the human sociological network. Jewish people, therefore, were not to spend time with Gentiles. They were not to establish friendships with Gentiles. They were not to break bread with them. They were not to visit in their houses. Gentiles were unclean, and there was no five-second rule.

That is why the Jewish people are so angry with Peter in the 11th chapter of Acts. Peter had been taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, and the Jewish Christians were not at all pleased with his indiscriminate evangelism. He had been engaging in the inappropriate intimacy of breaking bread with gentiles, spending time with them, talking about Jesus with them. When Peter arrives at Jerusalem, the Jewish people who had come to faith in Christ begin to criticize him. “Why are you eating with those unclean people,” they say to him. “Jesus was sent for the Jewish people, not for the Gentiles. Jesus lived among the clean, not the unclean.”

Peter explains himself by telling the people about an unsettling vision that he had recently been given by God. In his vision, he saw a large sheet coming down from heaven. In the sheet were a number of animals—reptiles, birds, four-footed beasts of prey—all of which would have been considered unclean by the Jewish people, including Peter. In the vision, Peter hears a voice from heaven telling him to get up, to kill some of those animals, and to consume the meat as part of his dinner.

Peter responds to the voice in the way that any faithful Jew would have responded: “No,” he says, “I will not kill those animals because those animals are unclean. And nothing unclean has ever entered my mouth.” The voice from heaven then says this to Peter: “What I have made clean, you must not call profane.” What I have made clean, in other words, you must not treat as being unclean.

I describe that vision as an unsettling one because of the way in which it contradicts the Jewish distinction between clean and unclean food—a distinction with which the Jewish people had been living for centuries. Here is the voice of God telling Peter that all of those laws and rules concerning clean and unclean, although they might have served the purpose of galvanizing the Jewish community, were nevertheless not what God ultimately intended for the world

The vision that Peter had, obviously, was not simply about animals and food. It was about people. More specifically, it was about Gentile people. That vision was God’s way of communicating to Peter that Jesus Christ had ushered in a new kingdom and a new way of looking at the world. The words that God speaks in the vision are these, “Peter, I have created these animals to be clean,” but the deeper meaning of God’s words is this: “Peter, I have created these Gentile people to be clean. Who are you to call unclean what I have created to be clean.”

Peter’s vision makes clear to us that the Lordship of Jesus Christ has broken down the walls that we are so eager to create between human souls. The Lordship of Jesus Christ has eradicated the artificial distinctions that we so often create between those we label clean and those we label unclean. In short, the Lordship of Jesus Christ has transformed the world in such a way that we are now able to look upon everyone that we encounter as a precious soul that God created to be clean.

If we really believed that, how would it change the way we treat people? How would it change the way we evaluate people and the way we minister to people? How would it change the way we think about the church and its mission? Where would we be willing to go and what would we be willing to do for the sake of Jesus Christ if we really believed in our heart that everyone we encounter is a precious soul that God created to be clean?

Last night, while listening to satellite radio in the car, I experienced a voice from our culture that spoke to my heart in a way that compelled me to listen.

That voice belongs to a singer/songwriter by the name of Brett Dennen, whose distinctive musicianship and evocative lyrics have inspired many to compare him to Bob Dylan (much to Dennen’s consternation). Although Dennen distances himself from all “organized religions,” his songs bear witness to a noteworthy spiritual attentiveness and a unique capacity to discern the eternal in the everyday.

For his third and most recent studio album, “Hope for the Hopeless,” Dennen wrote and recorded a song entitled “Heaven,” the lyrics of which are a prophetic critique of the church’s proclivity for focusing its eschatology almost exclusively on the “there and then” and thereby losing sight of the urgency of the “here and now:”

You must lose all earthly possession

Leave behind your weapon

You cannot buy your salvation

There is no pot of gold

Heaven. Heaven. 

What the hell is heaven?

Is there a home for the homeless?

Is there hope for the hopeless?

Brennen does not claim to be a Christ-follower and rejects a christocentric conceptualization of salvation. In fact, Brennen seems to hold some degree of disdain for what he perceives to be the “myth misconceptions” and theological “codes” of traditional Christian soteriology:

Throw away your myth misconceptions.
There ain`t no walls around heaven

There are no codes you gotta know to get in

No minutemen or border patrol

And yet, although he distances himself from the church’s doctrine, Brennen nevertheless gives poetic and, I believe, important artistic expression to one of Christianity’s most frequent prayers: specifically, the prayer for God’s kingdom to come “on earth, as it is in heaven.” According to Brennen, the church would do well to spend less time speculating about the mysteries of the afterlife and more time building a “home for the homeless” and a “hope for the hopeless,” thereby incarnating a portion heaven in the midst of current human brokenness.

I am not suggesting for a moment that Dennen’s truncated soteriology is somehow commendable. Nor am I advocating his downplaying of Jesus Christ as an expendable “code.” (In the worldview of a Christ-follower, after all, Jesus is not a code, but the Way, the Truth, and the Life.)

Still, as I listened to the song for the very first time last night, I found myself deeply moved by Brennen’s vision of a heaven in which our idolatry for institutions gives way to a network of redeemed and peaceful relationships:

Heaven ain`t got no prisons

No government no business

No banks or politicians

No armies and no police

Castles and cathedrals crumble

Pyramids and pipelines tumble

The failure keeps you humble

Leads us closer to peace

In a strange sort of way, Brennan’s “Heaven” reminds me that the eternal life that I have found in Jesus Christ is not something that I have to die physically to experience. Rather, eternal life in Christ begins today, right now. It is the life of embracing the homeless and the hopeless. It is the life of holding on loosely to earthly possessions and tangible institutions. In short, eternal life in Christ is the heaven on earth that foreshadows the new heaven and new earth that we will one day experience.

Have you ever noticed how much of our culture’s music, and literature, and cinema revolves around the issue of reconciliation or potential reconciliation?

That word, reconciliation, is an important word. It is a derivative of a Latin word which means a bringing together of parties that had been alienated or separated.

The Beatles made a musical career out of the subject. Early on, it was “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which illuminates what is perhaps the most common human symbol for reconciliation—the holding of hands.

Then came songs like “Help:”

When I was younger so much younger than today
I never needed anybody’s help in any way
But now those days are gone and I’m not so self-assured
Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Opened up the doors to what? Reconciliation, of course—the condition of being rejoined to those human souls from whom we have allowed ourselves become alienated.

Or how about “Yesterday:”

Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say
I said, something wrong, now I long for yesterday

What is that song but a nostalgic yearning to be reconciled—specifically, a yeaning to be reconciled to a past from which the singer feels strangely alienated. Am I pushing it too far when I say that the yearning of “Yesterday” is a yearning for that “long and winding road that leads to your door?” And what is behind that door? The most important thing of all: reconciliation with a loved one.

The Beatles, you see, made a musical career out of the subjects of reconciliation and potential reconciliation. But they are not alone in that regard. Artists have been addressing the issue of reconciliation for a long time.

Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” has survived the test of time because of the way in which it makes possible a reconciliation of two lovers and then distorts that reconciliation through a tragic miscommunication and misunderstanding. Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” focuses on the painful absence of reconciliation between the races and the social classes. The entire “Star Wars” narrative is built upon Anakin Skywalker’s journey toward reconciliation with his true self and Luke Skywalker’s desperation to be reconciled to his wayward father. And do we really believe that “Titanic” would have made nearly 2 billion dollars worldwide if it had only been a movie about a sinking ship?! What made the movie so compelling to watch was the relationship between Jack and Rose and the way in which that relationship moved from awkwardness to love to alienation to reconciliation.

The themes of reconciliation and potential reconciliation seem to be somewhere close to the heart of human artistic expression, and one might ask why that is. Why is it that the themes of reconciliation and potential reconciliation are so vastly prevalent in our music and in our literature and in our cinema? I’m not sure I have a definitive answer to that question, but I do have a hunch. My hunch is that the themes of reconciliation and potential reconciliation are as popular as they are because all of us have a sense that we are living in some kind of an alienated condition.

We might not describe it that way very often. We might not even know the right words with which to articulate it. But my hunch is that every single one of us, somewhere in the depths of our soul, has a sense that we are living in an alienated condition—a condition in which we are somehow separated from something or someone important. In the midst of that condition, all of us are somehow yearning for reconciliation. We are yearning, in other words, to be brought back together with that important person or thing from whom or from which we are separated.

As a result, when we encounter the theme of reconciliation or potential reconciliation in a song or in a book or in a movie, it seems perfectly natural to us. Because all of us, in one way or another, are alienated from something or someone and are yearning for the kind of reconciliation that will bring us back home so that we might be in right relationship with the person or thing from whom or from which we are separated.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul addresses what must surely be considered the separation that undergirds all other separations and the alienation that undergirds all other alienations. I am speaking, of course, of humankind’s alienation from God, and humankind’s separation from right relationship with God, both of which are resultant of the reality of human sin and relentless rebellion against God’s design:

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)

It is indeed compelling that Paul, in his eagerness to emphasize the severity of our alienation from God, does not hesitate to use the imagery of two adversarial parties—“enemies,” in fact. It is Paul’s stark reminder to us that, because of our sin and our fondness for it, we find ourselves on the wrong side of a spiritual chasm that we, on our own, are not able to bridge.

The good news—no, the remarkable news—that we are given in this scripture, is that God, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, has provided the means of reconciliation that we could not provide. The language of Scripture is this: while we were enemies (in other words, God didn’t wait until we had our act together), we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.

Please do not count on me to explain all of this to you in scientific detail. I can’t. God’s methodology concerning the cross travels well beyond the boundaries of my comprehension. But, somehow—and, by the way, I have become greatly enamored of that word “somehow” in my own personal theology of the cross—SOMEHOW, when Christ suffered and died on the cross, God was mystically and redemptively at work in that happening, transforming it into an occasion of radical reconciliation between a perfectly holy God and an alienated humankind. SOMEHOW, because Jesus was who he was, he gathered into himself on the cross everything that was keeping us away from God, thereby delivering us from the burden of sin; thereby incarnating for us the unfathomable love of God; and thereby making possible the reconciled relationship with God that we, on our own merits, could never generate.

When Paul tells us that “we have been reconciled to God by the death of his Son,” he is placing before us a concept that, in many ways, serves as a theological common denominator in atonement theology. No matter what theory of the atonement we embrace, we ultimately find ourselves bumping up against the biblical truth of a God who stubbornly refuses to allow the reality of sin to separate us from a relationship with the One who breathed life into our lungs, the One who will settle for nothing less than intimacy with us.

On this Good Friday, I am meditating upon the cross and the reconciliation that it represents. As I look upon the cross, I cannot help but think of the God that it reveals to us: A God who traveled “the long and winding road” to human flesh in order to bring to humankind the radical “help” that we so desperately needed, thereby communicating to us how deeply he wants to hold our hand and how abundantly he wants to restore us to the “yesterday” of a reconciled relationship.

Here’s a copy of what has long been considered the best photo ever taken of an unidentified flying object (UFO):

Here’s the thing: This photo was taken moments before my birth, during the afternoon of April 2, 1966.

Coincidence? You be the judge.

To be honest with you, it would go a long way toward explaining my peculiar misanthropy (not to mention my nagging fondness for both “Star Trek” and “Star Wars”) if I could claim that my origins were extraterrestrial in nature!

Have you ever participated in a worship service that incorporated the ministry of Christian clowning?

Christian clowning, of course, is the practice of adorning oneself in the traditional garb of a clown, complete with the wig, the make up, and the funny clothes. What makes it “Christian” clowning, however, is that these clowns conduct some sort of a worship event. Often, they will pull out some unsuspecting members of the congregation in order to conduct a skit or dramatization that highlights the Gospel message in a way that is simultaneously funny and poignant. In that sense, Christian clowning can be quite an effective liturgical resource. Because, as people are laughing at these ridiculous clowns, they are also hearing—or overhearing—the good news of Jesus in a way that is new and fresh and creative.

I was first introduced to the ministry of Christian clowning during the summer of 1986 while serving on program staff at Jumonville (one of our United Methodist church camps in western Pennsylvania). It was a junior high athletic camp. The dean of this particular camp wanted to organize a worship service that revolved around the ministry of Christian clowning, and she wanted all of the counselors to participate.

I was reluctant, to say the least. Being somewhat arrogantly narrow in my thinking back then (as college students can tend to be), I came to the quick conclusion that the whole business of Christian clowning sounded frivolous, irreverent, and even foolish. I told the dean that I was not interested in participating in the clown service. She asked me why not.

“Well,” I said, “in the first place, I’m not really sure I believe in it. And, in the second place, I think that dressing up like a clown would make me look like a fool. And I HATE looking like a fool, especially in front of junior high campers!”

The dean chuckled at my response. “Eric,” she said, “don’t you know yet that that’s exactly what you are? Don’t you understand that you’re a fool?!”

I must have blanched at that point. It was the first time that an adult had called me a fool (at least to my face!).

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” she continued. “You’re a fool. Because, eventually, everybody who follows Jesus becomes a fool for his sake. It’s just the way it goes.”

“What do you mean by that,” I asked.

“I don’t have to explain it to you,” she responded, “because, if you live as a Christ-follower long enough, you’ll come to understand it just fine on your own. Eventually, everybody who follows Jesus becomes a fool for his sake.”

Although I did not fully comprehend the meaning of her words, something about them sounded right to me. And so, I put on the make up, the wig, and the funny clothes, and I became a Christian clown.

That was nearly twenty three years ago. And yet, even now, twenty three years later, the words of that camp dean continue to resonate in the deepest chambers of my memory: “Eventually, everybody who follows Jesus becomes a fool for his sake. It’s just the way it goes.”

It occurs to me that that is precisely what the Apostle Paul is attempting to communicate in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25:

For the message about the cross is FOOLISHNESS to those who are perishing…Jews demand signs, and Greeks desire wisdom. But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.

Paul, I think, makes the point vividly clear: Anybody who believes in the saving power of Jesus Christ and anybody who has the audacity to lift high his cross will inevitably become a fool in the eyes of those who adhere to what might be called the conventional wisdom of contemporary culture—a fool, a stumbling block, even a clown.

One would find it difficult to deny that there is indeed a conventional and culturally-reinforced wisdom that surrounds us (insofar as “wisdom” refers to a worldview or an ethos that is philosophically and behaviorally embraced). It is a wisdom that tells us that it is a good and necessary thing to satisfy every one of our appetites the moment it demands to be satisfied. It is a wisdom that tells us that a youth’s commitment to the football team, or the band, or the school musical, or a boyfriend or girlfriend, is far more weighty than his or her commitment to the church’s ministry. It is a wisdom that encourages sexual freedom and experimentation (as long as the appropriate protection is used). It is a wisdom that affirms the hatred of enemies and the urgency of appropriate retaliation. It is a wisdom that permits narcissism, since a healthy dose of narcissism is inseparably linked to consumerism (and consumerism is inseparably linked to a “thriving” economy). It is a wisdom that teaches us that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that any salvation worth having must be earned.

Do you get the point? Like the Christians in first century Corinth to whom Paul wrote, we still find ourselves surrounded by a pagan, popular, attractive wisdom. And the ethics of Jesus still go against the grain of that wisdom, thereby making Jesus a fool in the eyes of those to whom the popular wisdom has become precious. And, if Jesus is a fool, then…well…do I even have to make the point about us?

Perhaps I will simply let the words of Obi Wan Kenobi speak for me: “Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?”

On this April Fool’s Day, I am thanking God for a camp dean who dared to tell me the truth about how things are: “Eventually, everybody who follows Jesus becomes a fool for his sake. It’s just the way it goes.”