Monthly Archives: January 2011

Epiphany B.C.

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On Sundays I reflect on the Church calendar as a way to abide in a different time line; to offer my inner most being to the triune God be formed and renewed  into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Last week I wrote about the Kingdom of God and how Jesus Christ is revealed in the poor. This week’s post focuses around the idea that Epiphany is first imagined in human history not in the Gospels, but in the Prophets of the Old Testament.

I am about a month behind on my yearly Bible reading plan for 2010. Since I have had more ‘free time’ between semesters, I have been reading big chunks from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Revelation, and the Gospels. I have found that the Prophets (particularly Isaiah) can give us ‘glimpses’ or a ‘preview’ of the Epiphany events recorded in the Gospels. Jesus and the early church drew upon the imagery, language, and actualized the motifs, promises, and prophetic declarations of some of these OT Prophets.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. In the Gospel according to Luke (ch. 4) we find Jesus returning from his desert temptation with the Devil, filled with the Holy Spirit he began to teach in the synagogues. This is the  account of one of his ‘teachings’ in Luke 4:16-19:

When he [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim they year of the Lord’s favor.”

The portion of the Isaiah scroll that Jesus read is form Isaiah 61 verses 1-2. If you read the scroll a little further you will find the writer of Isaiah 61 making prophetic declarations and promises from the Lord. If these promises sound too great to us on this side of Easter, then imagine if you both heard and saw the promises of Isiah 61 fulfilled in your neighbor’s son:

“And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In order for us to more deeply understand how Jesus Christ is revealed as God in the Gospels during this season of Epiphany, we need to the 20/20 vision of Pentecost (the Holy Spirit) to see Jesus as the fulfillment of what the prophets longed for. Without God’s grace to see and hear we are like those Jesus spoke to in parables, ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ Or we respond to the Epiphany of Christ with skepticism:

“All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “is not this Joseph’s son?” … And Jesus said, “truly i tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

How do we respond to Jesus fulfilling Isaiah?

Bumper Sticker Theology: A New Blog Series

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You know the vehicle. The one with the Jesus Fish emblem (guilty), the family emblem, Apple icon (again, guilty), or the “NOBAMA”, “COEXIST”, “Proud to be an American”,  ”Bush is a Weapon of Mass Destruction” bumper stickers. You know the vehicle. You know the bumper stickers.  You know the people… YOU may be one of the them.

In the new blog series “Bumper Sticker Theology”, I will be considering some of the inherent and attributed theology, ideology, presuppositions, meanings, and reasons for some of our favorite bumper stickers or emblems. I am well aware that the symbols,  slogans, and metaphors that are plastered on our vehicles are powerful literary and visual weapons with a nearly inexhaustible arsenal of meanings. This is why this series will be so much fun!

I am hoping to begin conversations around these “common mobile billboards” in order to tease out the variety of meanings they may or may not convey. The chief end of this blog series (for those who contribute, read, and engage in it) will be a stronger “metaphysical reflex” to examine those forces of culture (like bumper stickers) that passively shape reality.

For Christians this blog series can be an exercise to work out the muscles that are required to live out Colossians 2:8:

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”

So, what are some of your favorite bumper stickers? What are some bumper stickers that we can explore together?

The Epiphany of The Kingdom of God

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Sunday is the day of the week that I reflect on a theme from the current church season we find ourselves in. Currently that season is “Epiphany.”

Epiphany is a season when the Church reflects on how Jesus is revealed as God in the Gospels. Usually this means looking to such occurrences as Jesus’ Baptism, the visit of the Magi, or the miracle accounts like the Wedding of Cana. If Epiphany is truly a season where we remember the ways in which Christ is said to be revealed as God, then what about Christ’s mysterious connection with the poor?  The words of Matthew 25 pierce my heart each time I read them:

Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you invited me into your home.”- Matthew 25:34-35

Do we see Christ in the materially, emotionally, or spiritually poor? Is there any sort of Epiphany that happens when we see a brother or sister in need? Do we even see them … let alone recognized the breath of God in them? Do we see past the cultural scripts that blind us? Do we even see the need for those who struggle with depression, loneliness, or alcohol addiction to be loved as Christ?

Are we even capable of being wounded by the poverty of this age?

“Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: Who can take away suffering without entering it?” - Henri Nouwen

Have you ever hugged a homeless meth-head? Did your heart ever break for the prostitutes on the streets corners? Are you wounded for those who make pornography … and those who watch it? Have you ever taken interest in a “goth” teenager who struggles with suicide? If so… good for you… but … have you ever seen Christ in them?

It is one thing to provide a service and yet another thing entirely to act in holy love towards another. Service keeps an “it” an “it” ; however, holy love turns an “it” into a “Thou.” We are called to more than just being a  ”service provider” for the materially, emotionally, spiritually poor: dropping spare change in the Salvation Army box outside of Walmart, or sending a check to the Red-Cross for each “natural disaster”, or institutionalizing the emotionally afflicted. Any atheist, humanist, or progressive liberal can care for “the least of these” … but only the Church as Christ’s body can embrace them as Christ. We are called to see God in them, to practice hospitality, and above all to love them sacrificially.

We beseech thee, Master, to be our helper and protector. Save the afflicted among us; have mercy on the lowly; raise up the fallen; appear to the needy; heal the ungodly; restore the wanderers of thy people; feed the hungry; ransom our prisoners; raise up the sick; comfort the faint-hearted. - Clement I (99 C.E.)

Journey Through Middle Earth: A LOTR Event

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A few friends and I have been plotting for some time to sit down together and watch the ENTIRE the Lord of the Rings movie (extended edition, naturally) in one day. Well, that day is today!

Collaborating with my friend Gabe, his wife Mary and my wife we are putting on a Traveling Lord of the Rings Party! We’re going to start in the shire (Wilmore) at my hobbit hole at the end of bohicket road. We have coney stew (white chili), lembas bread, and other delicacies from the shire (my wife made LOTR cut-out cookies last night). I have all my LOTR gear (mostly books, i’m not THAT nerdy) out on display for discussion. Since most of the folks who are attending are seminary students, I’m hoping for some discussion on Tolkien’s cosmology (creation and structuring) of Middle Earth, theodicy (why there is evil in Middle Earth), and perhaps even just war … and you thought Lord of the Rings couldn’t get nerdier : ) Oh, just wait…

So this is a “traveling fellowship.” We begin in the shire in my hobbit hole  watching The Fellowship of the Ring and Part I of  The Two Towers. Then we travel through Rohan (Jessamine station road area where the horse ranches are) into the realm of Gondor (Nicholasville) to Gabe’s fortress Minas Tirith where we will watch Part II of The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renenwed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”

The Epiphany of Theophany: Remembering Christ’s Baptism

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It is during the church season of Ephiphany that the Orthodox Church celebrates the baptism of Jesus during an annual feast called Theophany. The overarching theme of the season of Epiphany is Jesus manifesting himself as God (the English word, epiphany is translated from a Greek word for manifestation).

The original meaning of the word “Theophany” describes an appearance of a god to humanity. During  Theophany, we remember the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism and how God’s presence was manifest in Christ and further accentuated by a dove (Holy Spirit) and a voice from heaven (Father). 

After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” – Matthew 3:16-17

So what? I’m not Orthodox! (neither am I)

Baptism, by-and-large, has been mistranslated by a rugged American individualism into a ritual of an individual’s testimony of belief in Christ instead of a person being a partaker of Christ’s baptism and death (my friend Drew has  really been unpacking our participation in Christ’s baptism from Romans 6 in his blog). The feast of Theophany reminds us of why our baptism matters. It assures us of the Trinitarian testimony of Jesus’ own baptism. It reminds us that we are baptized into a community of believers, the body of Christ. It is fitting that Theophany is a feast, because Christ’s baptism led to the cross and our baptism leads to the the table of Holy Communion.

As Thomas A Kempis puts it in his poem, O Love, How Deep:

O Love, how deep, how broad, how high,
It fills the heart with ecstasy,
that God, the Son of God, should take
our mortal form for mortal’s sake.

For us he was baptized, and bore
his holy fast, and hungered sore;
for us tempation sharp he knew,
for us the tempter overthrew.

For us he rose from death again;
for us he went on high to reign;
for us he sent his Spirit here,
to guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.

To him whose boundless love has won
salvation for us through his Son,
to God the Father, glory be
both now and through eternity.

Poetry, Order, Chaos and the Creative Universe

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What are your thoughts? Are you from the creative or non-creative  universe?

I consider myself a resident in the “creative universe”; however, in this creative universe the things that I imagine and don’t want to throw out are organized much like a wild forest or a fractal. I agree with Malcolm that we must embrace the “messiness” that comes with creative writing – following paths to who knows what end, but in my creative universe these paths are connected.

This is the beauty of poetry for me. You can begin with just playing. I never really know what form, structure, words, rhyme, or length my poetry will be. I embrace the chaos of the creation process, but given time for the process to work its course, I discover order in the chaos.

W.W.K.D. & The King Of Our Own Creation

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W.W.K.D.? I became captivated by this acronym on a small cardboard sign held by a hippy-looking old man  at the Freedom March for Martin Luther King day this morning in downtown Lexington, KY. WHAT WOULD KING DO? I looked around a lot this morning and thoroughly enjoyed the festivities, songs, marching, and presentation afterward (Daniel Beaty’s EMERGENCY was ironic, hilarious, and poetic), but… WHAT WOULD KING DO?

More to the point, “What version of Martin Luther King are we remembering today?” At times I have to agree with Dr. Cornell West about our modern view of King, “You see a lot of chit-chat about Martin every year and Martin has been so domesticated and tamed and defamed, you know, what we call the Santa Clausification of the brother.” (you can watch the entire West interview on PBS here). By “Santa Clausification” West is referring to how Rev. King has been repackaged as a nice old man who gives us positive and inspiring speeches, presents, and … a holiday.

What about remembering the Martin Luther King who the F.B.I once said was, “The most dangerous man in America?” Or what about King’s declaration against the Vietnam war? King was so dangerous because he wasn’t motivated by the usual factors: political office, money, power, ect. King was motivated by the Love of Christ that would not relent because “injustice anywhere was a threat to justice everywhere.”

No … an assassination and  cover-up plot couldn’t stop King’s message. But I’ll tell you what could (I’ll give you a hint… it’s what slowed the Church down). It is lethargy, apathy, and memorialism. What are we marching for these days in America? Or more importantly, What AREN’T we marching for? Why are we so silent? Why has MLK day been hijacked by neo-liberalism and forgotten by the Church? Why don’t we remember King by living as lovers of justice?
What Would King Do?

Blogging Through The Church Calendar

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Part of the content of the prayers from my wife and I lately have been concerning spiritual formation in our family. We have been imagining what it looks like to pray, worship, read Scripture, and fast together as a family instead of as individuals.

One solution that can ground us in patterns of formation would be to observe the liturgical calendar of the historical church. This means more than just putting up a Christmas tree and going on easter egg hunts. The church calendar provides structure to our prayers, scripture reading, and spiritual disciplines. So what does this have to do with blogging?

The application of the church year to family spiritual formation inspired me to apply it to my writing. There are four reasons that I have for structuring some of my blog posts around the church year:

1. It commits me to blogging at least once a week.
2. It aligns me with the historical church.
3. It reorients me to an alternative timeline of being.
4. It expands my creativity.

My tentative plan is to dedicate the Lord’s Day (the 8th day) to blogging on the great themes that the church calendar provides. For instance, this coming week is the second week of Epiphany and the feast of Theophany that celebrates the baptism of Jesus, so my writing will be focused around the concept of “theophany.” By dedicating at least one day to blogging through the church year, I am also holding myself accountable to cease from the business of the week and to abide in the rhythm of the church.

Blogging the church year connects me to the examples and stories of the Christian saints that have gone before me, the key movements and developments found in the Holy Scriptures, and with the broader global church. The church year invites me and you to abide in a different timeline that is structured around the revelation of the triune God in history. Writing once a week on the themes and movements of the church year also expands my creativity by inviting me to venture outside of the ordinary themes of my blog into the extraordinary reality of the triune God.

So check back to my blog (at least) each Sunday for posts that are inspired by our journey through the church year.

The Deeper Journery

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By: M. Robert Mulholland Jr. (Ph.D., Harvard)

Article written by: rm Kocak

“The world will not believe in Christ because of our sound theology, our correct creed, our well-defined dogma, our rigorous religiosity. The world will believe when it sees Christlikeness  manifested in our life. The world will know that God has sent Christ not simply because we pronounce it to be so, but when they see Christlikeness lived out in their midst in our lives in the world.”

- The Deeper Journey, pg. 16.

With tears in my eyes, I emotionally navigated my way through Dr. Mulholland’s book, The Deeper Journey. I had flashbacks as I read through the book of sitting in Dr. Mulholland’s office (I was a former student of his),  hearing him praying over me and explaining a lot of the concepts laid out in this book. The Deeper Journey is Mulholland’s second book on spiritual formation. In his first book on spiritual formation, Invitation to a Journey, Mulholland laid out a general roadmap, but in The Deeper Journey he articulates the contours, definitions, and realities of that roadmap. Reading this book was very timely for me in my personal journey of wholeness in Christ as I have been searching for a job upon graduation from seminary. The book is also the first book read from my 2011 booklist.

The book is shaped by the movement that Mulholland suggests in spiritual formation: from the false self (our self-referenced mode of being) and religious false self  into lives hid in Christ (a Christ-centered mode of being). The outline of Mulholland’s book looks like this:

  1. Introduction (Ch1)
  2. The False Self
    1. Into the Jungle: The False Self (Ch2)
  3. The Religious False self
    1. The Idol in the box: The Religious False Self (Ch3)
  4. The Transition
    1. Hidden with Christ in God: The False Self and the Christ Self (Ch 4)
  5. Our Life Hid in Christ:
    1. Abandoning the False Self (Ch5)
    2. Putting on the New Nature (Ch6)
    3. Principles of the Deeper Life (Ch7)

Mulholland’s book is not just for the closet mystic, but is written to be applied by all those in the body of Christ desiring to grow into maturity. Mulholland speaks plainly in his writing: exegeting (interpreting) Scripture (Mulholland is a N.T. Professor), quoting Christian mystics (his favorites include Thomas Merton and Thomas Kelly), and giving examples from his own life.

THE BIG IDEA

“When God enters into our false self, it is the sacrament of God’s presence, another image of the cross. God comes into the core of our self-referenced being. God comes to bring light into our darkness, cleansing into our sin, life into our deadness, healing into our brokeness, liberation into our bondage; to nurture us there into wholeness in the very image of God. But to open that door is to acknowledge our false self and to allow God to come in, knowing that when the love of God encounters the false self, it is always a cruciform encounter for God and for us.”

- The Deeper Journey, pg. 80.

The offering of ourselves to the cruciform love of Christ transforms our entire being into one that is Christ and others-referenced. I remember sitting in a chair as Dr. Mulholland explained this concept to me for the first time. I was questioning why I remained so selfish, prideful, and full of sin despite having Christ at the core of my being. His explanation is that precisely because Christ is at the core of my being that the false ways of being that I had reflexively developed in my life each need to be encountered with God’s presence. These false patterns and ways should not avoided or ignored like the traditions that see personal holiness in forensic terms, but these false patterns in us should be encountered, transformed, and replaced. This concept put simply is sanctification.

little IDEA #1

“For those of us on an intentional spiritual journey, our awareness of the deadly and debilitating nature of the religious false self is essential. Rigorous religious practices, devoted discipleship, sacrificial service, deeper devotional activities may do nothing more than turn a nominally religious false self into a fanatically religious false self.”

- The Deeper Journey, pg. 48.

Do you ever wonder how people can claim to be a Christian, but live lives lacking in christ-likeness? Do you ever wonder why some people love to pray in front of people at church, point out flaws in others, and love to talk about theology, but appear to have little love for God or people in their daily lives? This is what happens when the false self (self-referenced mode of being) becomes religious. It’s not that the religious false-self doesn’t believe in God, but it is a God they can control, reason with, and protect. The religious false self presumes, “Because we are religious, that everything is fine in our relationship with God (47).” The tendency of the religious false-self is to be so busy at being “in the world for God” that they forget to “be in God for the world.”

Little IDEA #2

“Detachment is the discipline of removing our roots from the soils and offering those roots to God. Such detachment is difficult and painful. Detachment is the ongoing process of disconnecting our false self from all  our life-support systems (or, in reality, its death-support systems.). Our false-self will resist such detachment with unbelievable power. We will even become fanatically religious as along as we don’t have to lose our self.”

- The Deeper Journey, pg. 111.

Detachment was always a spiritual practice that was cloaked in confusion for me. It always appeared, as the name suggests, a separation from the pain, hardship, and trials of this world. It sounded almost gnostic (rejection of the material world for the spiritual). Mulholland articulates detachment differently, clearly stating that it is a separation from false identities and agendas that have come to shape our identity in a false way. Detachment is a re-appropriation of our wrongly invested love.

THE TAKE HOME

Don’t let the title of this book deter you from reading it. “The Deeper Journey” is not a path only for religious professionals (few of which would ever see the need for such a journey), the educated elites, or the spiritual mystics. This journey is one we all need to take if we want to grow into the fullness of Christ. Mulholland’s book is a tool, resource, and road map that offers language, navigation, and encouragement on that journey.