A New Song

"O, sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth." (Psalm 96:1)

For the first time the other day, I was struck by the hope and power of this verse. Perhaps I had never really read the "new" part. Perhaps I've become so accustomed to the image of the earth singing praises to God, that its revolutionary sting has been numbed. The fact is though, that I think we sing the same old songs an awful lot. Even our most ardent attempts to sing something new tends to have a very familiar rhythm, beat, and melody.
This is one of the struggles we face when we hear the gospel, when we trust in the truth it offers, when we see ourselves and our neighbors in the fresh light that it casts. "How can we who died to sin, go on living in it?" Paul cries (Rom 6:2). How, once we've experienced the sweetness of new life in Christ, can we return to the now bitter taste of the past? How, once we've heard truth, can we return to what we now see as lies? Even Paul knew just how easily this happens: "for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Rom 7:19).
Those old familiar songs provide us with the temporary comfort we seek to get us through a difficult day; they allow us to sing words that we know we can live out (if for no other reason than the fact that we have to try desperately not to); our old songs welcome us back with open arms, enveloping us like a warm blanket.
But we soon recognize that that blanket is full of fleas. It's once soft fibers turn sharp as barbed wire. The tune we once loved is dissonant and painful. It's comfort indeed, is temporary.

My grandmother was a piano teacher. Somehow it always seemed, that when she was at our house, it was time for me to practice. Rather than practice though, I preferred to display my mastery of "Chopsticks," that most familiar tune that everyone who can't play piano knows at least part of. Few tunes are more irritating to piano teachers. Every ten-year-old child who walks through their doors sits on the bench and promptly begins to bang it out. It nearly sent my poor grandmother through the roof. With the first notes, she would be at the piano-room door rebuking me. Comparatively, my butchery of Chopin was transcendent next to my mastery of Chopsticks.
My grandmother knew that even the most preliminary muddling through something new, something more challenging, something inevitably more beautiful was of greater value than the familiar, the simplistic, the ultimately irritating. I've started to see her point.

Something important lies within the seemingly duplicitous points that Paul makes. Once we can play--even once we have heard--Chopin, how can we go back to Chopsticks? But isn't it fun to bang that old song out once more? I often waiver between these two places . The Psalmist reminds us however, that we are called not to return to the easy comfort of old songs, but to strive to belt out a new one. We are called to stop going back to the songs that keep us mired in apathy, keep us bound by self-imposed limitations, the songs that hurt the ears of those around us and stop their feet from dancing. Instead, learn the new song. Play and sing the song that expands possibilities. Join the song that inspires instead of limits. Let the earth sing the song that frees all people to dance, to leap, to love. Let the earth sing the song that Jesus sings, a song of radical newness, of abundant life.

Who's In?

Recently, I have been talking with a friend at my church about salvation (broadly speaking). Sometimes I find it difficult to address this issue and its salient points in ways that don't reveal the esoteric language and insulated nature of life as a seminarian. Tonight, we're watching a movie at church called "The Fourth Wise Man," which I have not seen, but which I have been told questions the stringent boundaries which the church has often put on salvation. (Essentially, a Zoroastrian lives out the life that Jesus calls all people to in the gospels--in particular Matthew, I believe--and thus the question is raised as to his salvation, given that his faith is not specifically in Christ, but he lives a Christlike life, so far as is possible. Again, I haven't seen this movie yet, so I apologize for any inaccuracies in my synopsis).

I have been asked to speak briefly after the movie. I think that the following is what I intend to say. It's surely incomplete, but hopefully it will entice conversation. Beforehand, I will read I John 1:1-4.

Many people have found reason to argue that faith in Christ, according to Christian doctrine, is the only way to get to Heaven, the only way to be saved, based on Scripture. But such a claim is a rather risky one for Christians to make. And it’s risky not because it is necessarily untrue, but because such a claim can allow us to separate ourselves from those who are not “saved,” from those who by our measures, won’t get into Heaven. It is easy to get Jesus’ claim that he is “the way, the truth and the life” confused with “Christianity (or the Church) is the way, the truth and the life.” Rarely, I think, are out thoughts and actions subtle enough to make this distinction and live within it’s light.

Regardless, we must remember that the Church, whose responsibility it is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, is not evidence of our salvation, but a response to the grace through which we understand, experience and know our salvation. When we recognize this, we recognize first, that God reveals Godself to us, that God seeks and finds us, that God desires a relationship with us before we even begin to understand this—let alone how it is possible. In turn we can come to understand that we are not, as Christians, somehow moving towards God, or closer to God than others, or have a greater claim to God, but that God has come eternally to us. In God’s freedom, God has chosen to bind himself in loving relationship to all of creation, in and through the Cross event, the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And this is the joy we proclaim.

In the light of this good news, as it is revealed to us in Scripture we recognize our freedom from the things that separate us from God, that keep us living as though we are not saved, as though the incarnation of the living God whom we know, love and worship, does not matter. We recognize the worthiness of Christ as the focus and foundation of our faith. What we do not find in Scripture is our right to decide who’s in and who’s out—only that Christ came because all creation is loved beyond our capacity to understand and we are called to live lives that reflect this radical truth.

The Crosses We Wear

I've recently started wearing a cross, more as a reminder to myself of what I want to live for, than any attempt to outwardly display my faith. It's a simple cross: stainless steel, small, and I like it. I always thought that Protestants were more inclined towards empty crosses as symbols, because we want to point more directly to the resurrection than to the crucifixion of Christ (not that you can have one without the other, but it seems somehow more hopeful to celebrate an empty cross). I assumed that this was equally the case for the crosses some of us wear around our necks.
I heard recently though, that--at least in terms of the crosses we wear--I'm at least partly wrong. Though I think I'll still hold on to my original assumption, it has certainly been expanded. What I've learned (from a professor who was talking to another professor, who specializes in religious symbols and iconography at Trinity College, Toronto School of Theology), is that when we wear empty crosses, we become the body on the cross. That's pretty heavy.
It's heavy, but helpful. Helpful, because it reminds me that we have been, through faith, "united in a death like his, [and] will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is free from sin." (Rom. 6:5-7) Though I try often to live as though Christ didn't die to offer me this freedom, that I haven't died to sin, though I often look longingly to that old master, the cross around my neck reminds me that I am freed from the slavery that keeps me from being free for God.
However, while this has been an expanding revelation for me, it has made me awfully sad for those who wear a cross simply as jewelry, as a fashion statement, as an ironic or passing glance at a faith they don't profess. I wonder at the crosses onto which they are climbing--presumably without recognizing it. I wonder if in fact, they are simply clinging to, climbing onto, the slavery and death of this world. It strikes me as a painful possibility.
Or perhaps, even the most ironic sporting of a cross, even the most flagrant abuse of the central symbol of Christian faith, is at least an accidental recognition of the power and promise of the Cross. Regardless, I have started to see such distasteful appropriation as a reminder that Christ died for all--not just for those of us who know, who have experienced and tasted the freedom that God longs for us. The sick--which we all are, to one degree or another--are the ones who need the doctor. So, if in the pain and horror of crucifixion, the humiliation and cruelty of death on a cross, God shows us, or rather becomes for us, the way to freedom, to truth, to life, it may be possible that in the unwitting--or otherwise--misuse of crosses can stand as a significant symbol for all sin, which was destroyed at the Cross and replaced by the grace we all need.

In Christ Alone

I wonder what that would be like. Soren Kiekegaard wrote about the risk of getting too close to the Bible, the risk of actually living according to the new testament: "'My God,' you will say,'If I do that my whole life will be ruined! How would I ever get on in the world.'" He suggests that this is the danger of Biblical (and probably theological) study. We sit and talk an awful lot. The difficulty for most of us is that the paradigm of the gospel and the paradigm that we consist in have very little overlap. So it becomes virtually impossible sometimes to do much more than speculate--though we (I) occasionally proclaim some righteous indignation at the state of things.
In a worship service we offered yesterday we sang the song 'In Christ Alone.' It's a beautiful song and falls nicely in my vocal range, but I wonder if we don't take a pretty significant risk in singing it. Kind of like praying for God's kingdom to come--we'd better be careful what we ask for. "In Christ alone, my hope is found" sounds great (it's nice to have hope taken care of), but what would we look like if that were true? I don't think I need to list here all the ways in which I fail to hope in Christ alone. But, suffice it to say, I have some backup plans!

Nevertheless, as I move towards the possibility of surrendering to my God, I have begun to wonder what I am so uptight about. Although from the outside allowing God to be God, seems a bit crazy, the freedom of knowing that worth and purpose are not tied up in the things we do, but in the things God has done is a strangely and wonderfully disorienting thing. The world is suddenly not so complicated--not simple mind you, and definitely not easy, but not so concerned about the silliness that we put ourselves through, for the sake of our security, for the sake of our sense of value, for the chance to individuate. That I don't have to overcome you, or look out for number one, is a freedom from violence, anger, jealousy, hatred etc. etc. It is the freedom to love, to live life to its fullest, to engage the world instead of trying to hoard it up in a special box that only I have the key to.

I'm not there yet, but I'm pretty sure it's just over that hill. Fortunately, my God walks with me, so we'll find out together. (Luke 24:13-35).