Perceptions from a Pewboy

I had a very interesting lunch meeting yesterday with some Western Pennsylvania pastors. Much of our conversation revolved around the merits, drawbacks, and challenges of a burgeoning phenomenon in ecclesiastical circles called the “cyber” or “internet” or “online” church. No matter which nomenclature is utilized, the reality at the heart of this phenomenon is the formation of a Christocentric cyber-community, the members of which engage in an online practice of the disciplines of worship, Bible study, prayer, and spiritual formation.

It is incumbent upon the church, I believe, to think carefully about the theological issues surrounding cyberspatial ministry, some of which are these:

1. INCARNATION: It might be said that a cyber church struggles to manifest fully the incarnational nature of the church’s gospel. The essence of our kerygma, after all, is a Word made flesh, an eternal God who became fully corporeal in the person of Jesus. Such an Incarnation reveals to us the eagerness of God to redeem our corporeality in such a way that we might experience our humanness (our “in the flesh-ness”) in an entirely new way.

The danger of the cyber church is that it is less incarnational than it is cyber-spatial. Gone in the cyber church are the nuances of the flesh, the gentleness of a touch or a held hand, and the intimacy of shared breathing (all of which are a portion of the corporeality that Jesus came to redeem).

Therefore, in a cyber church, incarnation has to be redefined, reframed, and re-imaged. While certainly not flesh-oriented in the literal sense, it might be said that cyberspace is the “new flesh” of postmodernity—a new flesh in which corpuscles are replaced by bytes, in which breathing is replaced by browsing, and in which the beat of a heart is replaced by the pulsations of a modem.

We would do well not to become cynical about the matter of redefining incarnational community. In many ways, the church has been about the business of such redefinition for years. Our homebound church members, for example, who cannot be physically present for corporate worship, must experience incarnation differently—through televised worship, through tapes or CDs, and through the brief and intermittent visits of pastors and laypersons. The fact that such homebound (or hospitalized or institutionalized) persons have been part of the church’s ministry for centuries is clear evidence of the fact that the church has a long history of helping people to redefine incarnational community. It may very well be that cyber church ministry is merely the most recent expression of that redefinition.

It is also worth noting that, according to the leadership in many internet faith communities, the members of such communities soon begin to express a strong and urgent desire to meet face to face. Although these meetings occur more frequently in coffee shops and restaurants than they do in church buildings, I cannot help but imagine the dynamism and synergy generated by the capacity to put faces on the souls with whom one has connected in cyberspace.

2. SACRAMENTAL LIFE: It might also be said that a cyber church runs the risk of diminishing the church’s sacramental identity and integrity. How, after all, can a cyber church member receive the bread and cup of the Lord’s Supper? And how can he or she draw near to the water of Baptism and give expression to the congregation’s vows of support to the newly baptized?

These questions cannot be taken lightly, especially given the centrality of the sacraments in the church’s ministry and mission. However, these sacramental issues may not prove to be insurmountable for a cyber congregation. If incarnational community can be reframed in cyberspace, perhaps the experience of Baptism and Eucharist can be reframed as well.

What might it look like, for example, for the bread and cup to be consecrated through cyberspatial blessing? Could Eucharist take on an even deeper meaning if a family or an individual had to prepare their own elements (and become their own communion stewards)? And could the water of Baptism flow even more profoundly into a human heart if it were drawn from a kitchen sink, consecrated from a cyberspatial distance, and “witnessed” by an online congregation? Or what about those coffee house face to face meetings that I referenced in the preceding paragraphs? Might those gatherings be an opportunity for a uniquely interactive and multi-sensory experience of the church’s sacramental life?

Please do not think that I am raising or answering these sacramental questions in a cavalier fashion. I am simply illuminating the possibility that an online worshiper might have something in common with the Ethiopian eunuch in the 8th chapter of Acts, who dared to say, “Look, there is water. What is to keep me from being baptized?” It may be that, like the Ethiopian eunuch, online worshipers are finding their sacramental water in new places.

The danger, of course, is that sacramental celebration in cyberspace might become far more individualistic than communal. But, then again, we are speaking of the reframed and re-imaged community of an online congregation. Could it be that, in such a context, people could actually be just as sacramentally attentive and connected as they are in a church sanctuary (albeit in an entirely different manner)?

3. MEMBERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILITY: What about the covenantal promises of membership in a cyber church and accountability to those promises? Can one support a church through prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness in the context of a cyber congregation? And where is the discipline of accountability to those promises when there is not the tangibility of other disciples sitting, singing, and living around us?

It would be arrogant and unnecessarily dismissive of me to assume the absence of accountability in a cyber church, especially given this testimony of an online worshiper that I read about an hour ago:

In the institutional church, there would be times when I would miss church because of work or sickness, and nobody asked me why I wasn’t there…Nobody ever asked me if I were growing in my prayer life or involving myself in ministry or fasting or reading the Bible…But here at cyber church, people ask me about those things every day. I can’t always see their faces, but I’ve moved deeply into their lives, and they’ve moved just as deeply into mine. (an open forum response by ‘Carolyn,’ who lives in Seattle and who joined a cyber church 13 months ago)

In light of Carolyn’s testimony, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that a cyber congregation stands a chance of incarnating a more vibrant form of accountability than can be found in some of our more traditional congregations. This possibility becomes all the more real when one considers the fact that the online conversations reported by many cyber churches are actually far more probing and personal in their content than many of the conversations that occur in church lobbies.

4. MOTIVATION: Perhaps the most compelling danger in cyber church ministry has to do with the motive behind one’s connection to such a ministry. Do people become part of a cyber church in order to deepen their discipleship in the freshness of a new way of doing church? Or do people join a cyber church because of the way in which it lowers the bar concerning one’s investment in community?

The first motivation has potential for becoming something redemptive. The second motivation merely fosters the misguided notion that discipleship has more do with catering to one’s personal proclivities than it does with subordinating one’s life to the Lordship of Jesus.

The issue of motivation is a difficult one to regulate. How many people, after all, join a traditional congregation because they find it less demanding or more artistically pleasing than the church down the street? In that regard, it may be that the cyber church is in the same boat as every other church. It may be, in other words, that all churches (online and offline) share the common struggle of resisting the temptation to lower the bar of our obedience to the calling of Jesus and our commitment to the life of discipleship.

Do I have concerns about the continued development of online churches? Yes, I do. But, if I might be completely forthright, they are no more significant or prohibitive than the concerns I have about ALL churches. Every one of our churches, for example, is faced with the struggle of being vibrantly incarnational, reverently sacramental, and accountably communal in a world that demands authenticity at every turn. In that regard, cyber churches merely represent a new setting in which to engage in the redemptive struggle that all churches face.

The deciding factor for me is that cyberspace is a highly powerful and influential realm in contemporary culture, entered into regularly by searching souls who suddenly find themselves exposed to a wide variety of narratives. Some of those narratives are gracious, others are hateful; some are relational, others are violent; some are loving, others are pornographic. Interestingly, cyberspace makes room for all of them, much like the human community itself.

Given such a complex array of narratives, my sense is that the church cannot afford NOT to be meaningfully and redemptively present within the “walls” of cyberspace. If we were to remove the church’s voice from that vastly diverse community, we would, in effect, cyberspatially silence the narrative of Jesus and his Way, thereby withholding—or at least compartmentalizing—the Story that we believe defines and illuminates all other stories.

In addition, if we were to refuse to acknowledge cyberspace as a mission field, we would close the cyber-door on a number of online seekers who rely upon the internet as the primary resource in their personal search for truth and who will never find their way into a traditional sanctuary.

In the church’s ministry, we must never become utilitarian at the expense of our theological integrity. By the same token, we must never become so idolatrous about our polity and structure that we dismiss a new way of being church simply because it is unconventional (even though it might be theologically defendable, practically viable, and evangelically effective).

Richard Thomas, the Director of Communications for the Anglican Diocese of Oxford, recently offered these words concerning the development of “i-church,” an online Christian community initiated by the Anglican Church:

It should be no surprise to discover that there are some people, maybe more than a few, who want to be part of a Christian community, to commit themselves to one another in prayer, in learning, and in social action, without the hassle and clutter of participation in the local parish church. We could, of course, simply respond by saying that the Church is, above all things, a sacramental community where meeting together is of the essence of what we are.

But if that were the sum of our response, we would merely add to the number of people that we fail to reach, and increase the number of people that we alienate because we want them to be other than what they are.

Although Richard Thomas’ comments are helpful, I am also interested in your thoughts and reflections. Help me to think theologically about the reality of online church—a phenomenon that is already making its way into the Western Pennsylvania church.

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.’ (Luke 6:20-26)

This is a portion of Jesus’ teaching that has come to be called “the Beatitudes.” The word “beatitude” is a derivative of a Latin word that means “blessing,” or, more specifically, “extreme and abundant blessing.” The word “beatitude” became connected to this scripture because, in it, Jesus utilizes the vocabulary of blessing: “BLESSED are you who are poor…”

Of course, what makes this portion of Scripture so unsettling and even scandalous is who it is that Jesus describes as being blessed.

I suspect that the world in which Jesus lived was similar to our world in the matter of defining blessedness. Our ideas of blessedness tend to be formed and driven by a network of presuppositions emerging from what might be called our common sense. Common sense, for example, tells us that it is unpleasant to be poor. Therefore, we quickly arrive at the common sense conclusion that being blessed means a enjoying a condition of wealth and privilege.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to be hungry. Therefore, we quickly formulate the common sense idea that being blessed means having every one of our appetites satisfied the moment they demand to be satisfied.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to weep, or to be hated or reviled because of our faith. Therefore, we quickly manufacture the conviction that blessedness must mean the opposite of such unpleasant realities.

The result of such thinking, of course, is a popular definition of blessedness that I would suspect was the same in Jesus’ day as it is in ours. Blessedness equals wealth and privilege. Blessedness equals a condition that is comfortable and happy and unchallenged.

It is precisely these notions that Jesus challenges in the Beatitudes, and he does so by shattering the people’s presuppositions concerning who is truly blessed in the kingdom of God. Is it the wealthy folks who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are wealthy, but blessed are the poor.”

“What?! Wait a minute, Jesus! That goes against what we know to be the economics of blessedness!”

Is it the well-fed who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact , woe to you whose stomachs are full now, but blessed are the hungry.”

“What?! Back up, Jesus! You had us, then you lost us!”

Is it the happy and the laughing who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are laughing now, but blessed are those who weep.”

“OK, now you’ve gone too far!”

Is it the comfortable and the safe and the well-protected who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are well-treated now, but blessed are those who are hated and reviled for my sake.”

“Jesus, you’re turning everything upside down!”

Therein, I suppose, is the nature of the Kingdom that God inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is a Kingdom in which everything is turned upside down (or, more appropriately, right side up). The kingdom of God, to put it another way, is Jesus Christ, shaking up the world and transfiguring the way things are done and conceptualized, in such a way that the world begins to reflect more vibrantly the heart of the One who created it.

If the Beatitudes tell us anything, they tell us that it is impossible to live in the kingdom of God without being reborn into a new way of living and a new way of looking at the world. In the kingdom of the world, the poor, the hungry, and the persecuted are ignored or, at best, pitied. But in the kingdom of God, they are the blessed ones.

Please do not misunderstand the nature of Jesus’ teaching in the Beatitudes. He is not glorifying poverty or human brokenness. He understands, far better than we do, the pain and the heartbreak of these conditions. But perhaps Jesus’ point is that, in the kingdom of God, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken are blessed in a very particular sense precisely because they know how desperate and needy they are.

Many of us, after all, live in the illusion of being in control. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken understand daily their need for salvation and deliverance. Many of us live in the illusion of self-reliance, believing that we have no need for a savior. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised and the broken are often fully and eagerly prepared to receive the salvation and wholeness that the kingdom of God makes possible. Many of us have become so dull and desensitized in our places of privilege that we might not even recognize the kingdom when it is right in front of us. By contrast, a desperate, persecuted, and needy soul is often far more attentive and available to the nuances of God’s grace.

After all is said that can be said about the Beatitudes, perhaps Jesus is telling us that the poor and broken have something on us. They have the potential to be more receptive to God’s transformational power than we are, because, quite simply, God is all that they have. For many of us, God is nothing more than a weekend hobby that we accommodate whenever it fits into our busy schedule. In that sense, the poor and the broken may very well be more abundantly blessed than we are simply because they have a greater potential for living in the abundant joy and hope that always accompany a heartfelt reliance on God.

It is most certainly true that we tend to sentimentalize the Beatitudes in our contemporary churches. We tend to put them on church banners. “Isn’t that nice? Jesus is saying something sweet about poor and weeping people.” But the Beatitudes are not to be sentimentalized. Quite the contrary, in fact. We would do well to tremble a bit as we read them. They announce nothing less than the world-altering reality of the Kingdom of God. And none of the other radical teachings of Jesus (like the urgency of loving our enemies and taking up our cross) will make any sense to us unless we first embrace the foundational truth that the Beatitudes make clear—the truth that Jesus is ushering in a new world order.

I have recently become enamored of the music of Regina Spektor, a Russian-born, New York-educated singer/songwriter, whose lyrics are refreshingly evocative and whose musical style calls to mind the artistic eclecticism of Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell. Interestingly, when asked to name her primary influences, Spektor is quick to mention The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, Radiohead, Tom Waits, and Frederic Chopin. Spektor’s songs reflect the diverse musicianship represented by this list of artists.

Yesterday, while driving home from a week of holy conferencing in Grove City, Pennsylvania, I spent some time listening to “The Spectrum,” which is one of my favorite channels on satellite radio. It was during that drive home that “The Spectrum” introduced me to one of Regina Spektor’s most recent songs. Entitled “Laughing With,” the song is the most starkly theological portion of popular art that I have encountered in a long time. If you have a few minutes, give a listen to “Laughing With” here.

The song borrows its sentiment from the old adage, “there are no atheists in foxholes,” but gives to the sentiment new poetic expression—the kind of poetic expression that makes clear that some of our “foxholes” are deeply familiar and immensely personal:

No one laughs at God in a hospital.
No one laughs at God in a war.
No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor.
No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests.
No one’s laughing at God when it’s gotten real late and their kid’s not back from that party yet.

No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake.
No one’s laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they’re mistaken.
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say ‘We’ve got some bad new, sir.’
No one’s laughing at God when there’s a famine, fire or flood.

Spektor, who is Jewish by birth and who has never publicized a personal adherence to a particular creed or set of doctrines, seems to be reminding her audience that there are moments in the human pilgrimage in which one’s mortality (or the mortality of those one loves) becomes so unsettlingly and terrifyingly clear that, at least for a moment or two, cynicism about the possibility of the Divine gives way to a desperate—and perhaps even unarticulated—reverence and hope for that which is beyond us.

In my own ministry, I have found this to be true on a number of different occasions. I have been frequently surprised, for example, by self-desribed “agnostics” or “atheists” in hospital beds who have grabbed my hand tightly and called upon me to pray for them just before their open-heart surgery or in the recent aftermath of their cancer diagnosis. I have stood in funeral homes with seemingly hardened cynics whose hearts suddenly became soft enough to acknowledge the possibility that death somehow bears witness to the reality of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life.

Please don’t misunderstand my point. I am not suggesting that all moments of life-threatening crisis lead to sudden conversion. In fact, in many of those moments, I have heard people curse God for what they perceived to be God’s absence or cruelty. But Spektor is right about this much: Irrespective of one’s theological persuasion, none of the people in life-threatening crisis whom I have encountered were laughing at God in those moments. None of them were reducing God to a theological debate or a casual afterthought. In moments of tearful mortality, it seems that God has a way of becoming very serious business.

And yet, as Spektor reminds us in the rest of the song, people of faith have a proclivity for “laughing” at God in a different way—by transforming the Gospel into a self-serving formula or by making the Holy Other into little more than a means to our personal ends:

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke.
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they’re about to choke.
God can be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way.
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha

When I heard these lyrics yesterday, I found myself suddenly convicted of the myriad of moments in which I have, in essence, laughed at the holiness of God, mocking the very One who breathed life into the universe and life into my lungs.

Case in point, yesterday morning, I had the honor of being present for a Service of Ordination in which I sang hymns of praise as passionately as I could, prayed with conviction, stood with ordinands who offered themselves to the covenant of ministry, and opened my heart to the proclamation of God’s countercultural Word. In those moments of worship, I felt an intimacy with the presence of God that I wanted to preserve for ever.

Less than two hours later, as I drove home, I found myself deliberately creating in my thoughts a disparaging laundry list of all the things about the time of conferencing that did not suit my personal taste. It was a list that led me down a highly critical road against some of my brothers and sisters in Christ. In the privacy of my thoughts, I was quick to denigrate them for all that they did or didn’t do, for all that they said or didn’t say. As you might imagine, none of the criticism was constructive, since the people against whom I was offering it were not present to receive it or offer their perspective.

In less than two hours, I had moved from reverence to mockery. In less than 120 minutes, I had left behind the intimacy with the Divine that I had experienced in the ordination service and returned to the comfortable sin of unbridled negativity and disparagement of others.

I am not certain of how to describe the specifics of how such a transition happens so quickly. But, metaphorically speaking, such a journey is tantamount to the kind of unholy laughter at the Divine that Regina Spektor describes. In a sense, by moving so quickly to unbridled negativity in the aftermath of the ordination service, I was, to borrow Spektor’s poetry, crafting my own “God-themed joke,” in which my brothers and sisters were the punchline. I was reducing God into a comedic “Houdini” who appears whenever I feel like being reverent but who disappears whenever I want to be less than reverent.

So, in a strange way, Regina Spektor’s “Laughing With” brought me back to a spirit of reverence and holy awe, thereby making clear the fact that Jesus Christ is creatively at work, even in the artistry of people who may not yet be willing to acknowledge that it is Christ who inspires them.

My prayer is that, when I am tempted to trivialize or mock the Divine, my thoughts will be drawn to those moments all around me in which no one appears to be laughing. Because, after all, in the words of Regina Spektor,

No one’s laughing at God when they’ve lost all they got and they don’t know what for.
No one laughs at God on the day they realize that the last sight they’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes.
No one’s laughing at God when they’re saying their goodbyes.

Have you ever been bothered by someone’s extravagance? Allow me to make that question even more specific. Have you ever been bothered by the way in which someone’s extravagance interferes with the accomplishing of your pre-established agenda?

It is an interesting word, extravagant. It is a derivative of two Latin words: “extra” which means, literally, “outside;” and “vagari” which means “to wander.” Extravagant, then, means wandering outside, or, more specifically, wandering outside of what is normal. Traveling beyond what is expected. Doing something that takes us outside of the typical routine.

Based upon that definition, have you ever been bothered by the way in which someone’s extravagance (i.e., someone’s willingness to wander outside or beyond what is normal) interferes with the accomplishing of your pre-established agenda?

When I was a small child, my mother always allowed me to put the family’s envelope in the offering plate during Sunday morning worship. In fact, beyond allowing me to do it, she expected me to do it. I think that she saw it as an opportunity to teach her son something about the urgency of investing in the church’s ministry.

One day, when I was 5 or 6, I looked closely at the envelope as the offering plate came around. For some reason, on this particular day, the mathematics and the economics of that envelope began to make cognitive sense to me. My mind, by that point in time, had developed to such an extent that I was able to realize how large an amount of money was in that envelope. (My parents have always been faithful and generous givers to the church’s ministry.)

What do you think my initial reaction was to my recognition of my parents’ substantive offering? Do you think that it was a joyful and supportive reaction? Do you think it was “Wow, Mom and Dad, God bless you for your generosity to the church and God bless you for raising your son to understand about the centrality of generosity in the life of discipleship to Jesus Christ!”

Not quite.

Rather, my initial reaction as a five or six year old boy was something like this: “What a stupid idea to put this much money into an offering plate! Do you know how many comic books this money could buy? Do you know how many GI Joe accessories this money could provide? Do you know far this money would go in the purchasing of the Atari Pong Game?”

I essentially thought to myself that day, “Mom and Dad, I don’t like the fact that you are giving away this amount of money because I have some very clear ideas about how this amount of money could be used in the enhancement of your son’s life.”

It may have been the first time in my life that I resented what I perceived to be my parents’ extravagance. Extravagance was probably not even a word in my vocabulary at that point. But I knew that my parents willingness to put that amount of money into an offering plate every week represented an effort to go outside of what I perceived to be reasonable. And, on that morning, I resented it.

It reminds me of Judas’ reaction to Mary’s eagerness to anoint the feet of Jesus with expensive perfume—an act of extravagant adoration described in the 12th chapter of John’s Gospel (John 12:1-8). Do you remember Judas’ complaint in that moment? It was something like this: “What’s the meaning of this?! We could have sold that perfume for a lot of money, all of which might have been used to minister to the poor.”

Judas, you see, is eminently practical in his view of ministry and seems to have the best of intentions. He sees Mary’s behavior as needlessly extreme, especially given the practical needs of the poor, and he resents Mary’s extravagance. He resents it, much as I resented the extravagance of my parents’ Sunday morning offering envelope.

“Hey, Mom and Dad, this money could be used to take care of your family, what are you doing putting it into an offering plate?”

“Hey Mary, that perfume could be sold to feed the poor, what are you doing it pouring it onto the feet of Jesus?”

Jesus graciously accepted Mary’s extravagance as an act of worship, but Judas attempted to prevent it. Jesus seemed to sense Mary’s eagerness to go beyond what was normative in order to render an expression of adoration that was as dramatic as it was doxological. But Judas was not pleased with the offering because it did not align with his preconceived agenda.

The pondering of that biblical moment makes me wonder how frequently I talk myself out of extravagance in my personal discipleship. How frequently do I allow myself to become so idolatrous about the practical that I forget about the sweetness of doing something prodigious— something out of the ordinary, something practically wasteful—in my adoration of God.

From 1984 until 1990, my father was the district superintendent of the Johnstown District of the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference. During a portion of those six years, Johnstown led the entire nation in unemployment. (Some of you remember those years and how difficult they were around these parts.)

But here’s the interesting thing: During that same period of time (1984-1990) the Johnstown District frequently led the entire conference in the percentage of its mission share giving. (The mission share is an amount of money that the local church offers to the general church for is ministry around the world.)

Did you get that? In the mid 1980’s, when Johnstown led the entire nation in unemployment, the Johnstown District offered, by percentage, more money to the ministry of the church than any other district in Western PA.

I once asked my father how he explained this inconsistency. “I don’t,” he said. “because it defies logical explanation.”

“All I know,” he said, “is that not even a troubled economy can prevent God’s people from wanting to be extravagant in their generosity.”

That was the first time that I had ever heard the word extravagant in connection with the church’s ministry. And the context for that extravagance was a hurting city in Western Pennsylvania called Johnstown, where many were unemployed, but where the Holy Spirit was still inspiring an uncommon generosity.

Here’s the point, I suppose: The extravagant generosity of those who have been transformed by Jesus Christ is not at all dictated by the condition of the economy. Rather, the extravagant generosity of those who have been transformed by Jesus Christ is dictated by the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in the depths of a human soul.

These days, I find myself praying for a spirit of extravagance in my discipleship. If I may borrow the biblical metaphor, I am praying my way into the kind of discipleship that will inspire me on occasion to anoint the feet of my Savior with the sweet perfume of spontaneous and profligate generosity. Does that sound right to you?