Guess I need to get beyond the afterglow of Ken Medema... and move on. (Though, I admit, I'm on a crusade to have him return to Strawbridge... Maybe the Fall?)
One last story, though, before I move on... Kind of a "good night" story... you know, for "putting Ken to bed"...
Among the most remarkable things one experiences at a Ken Medema concert is his asking for stories from the audience... and then taking what he hears and composing a rich and meaningful composition and song. (Very much the same thing he did with my sermon in the previous post.)
Found the attached audio line from a time when Ken was at the Pacific School of Religion and set it to a picture in the following video. Yes, not much of a video. But, then, Ken's gift is not so much what he conveys for our physical sight as much as what he paints for our mental, emotional and spiritual vision...
A dream realized: not just getting to meet Ken Medema, but having him engage one of my messages in song.
For those who don't know Ken, his is the amazing gift (among many) of hearing a message and then being able to compose (on the spot) a musical response -- kind of the Wayne Brady thing (from "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" fame). But, in Medema's case, there's an amazing instrumental composition... and very profound spirituality and theology.
And so, mine was the joy of not only getting to meet Ken (someone I have admired from a distance for over 20 years now) but also getting to collaborate with him.
First, there's the video that preceded the message...
And then, there's my sermon and his response (which begins around the 28:00 mark)...Truly, as several kidded me, Ken's "second sermon" was, by far, the best!
Ralph Mather (a member of the Crockett congregation I once served) shared the story of how, while he was growing up, he and a group of his friends would tease an old Civil War veteren.Illiterate, but too proud to admit it. Ralph and his friends would occasionally throw a book his way to see what he “thought” about it. Pride had him always coming up with some kind of commentary.
On one occasion they threw a Bible the old man's way. Day's later, they asked him what he thought of it.
"Oh, that old book," the man exclaimed. "It's just like all the rest: in the end, they get married and live happy ever after."
"In the end, they get married and live happy ever after": no better a summary could be given to the book of Revelation and the Sacred Romance which is the Gospel.
Sadly, though, we lost our claim on this great ending... and its claim on us... "The reason we have such a hard time resisting our other lovers and living from the heart is we think that this is as good as it gets... At a heart level, most of us have our doubts about the next chapter." (John Eldredge)
Yes, we got to learn a way to keep the story ever before us. In that vein, I love the story which Phil Barnhart tells about the little boy reading a suspenseful western: One night a father saw a light beneath the door of his son's bedroom. Wondering what his son was doing at such a late hour, he went to the door and heard the boy saying, "ifyou only knew what I know. If you only knew what I know." The next day the boy told his father what was happening. The boy was reading a wild west thriller and had gotten toward the middle of the book where the plot was getting thicker and darker and the hero was being outrageously abused and disgraced. The villain, winning at every turn was gloating over his triumph. When the boy couldn't stand it any longer, he turned to the last page to see how the story was going to turn out. There he saw the hero gloriously vindicated and the villain suitably punished. He went back to the middle of the story. But now, instead of agonizing, he was rejoicing in the midst of the dark plot because he knew the outcome in advance: "If you only knew what I know! If you only knew what I know!" (Phil Bamhart, quoted by Rev. Tim Bruester, FUMC, Georgetown, TX)
Oh, yes, we’ve got to keep the end before us…We’ve got to find a way to tell our souls and the world around us – over and over again: “If you only knew what I knew!”… to tell our souls over and over again:"I am a child of eternity."…
Of course, it is not that easy.It’s a matter of daily rising up to this recollection…
Deeply, am I moved by George MacDonald when he prays for us all:
Sometimes I wake, and lo, I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity.
Oh, thou who knowest! Save thy child forlorn.
—Geo. MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul
Yes, it is not that easy… And, for such reasons, we’ll need to take a good, long and hard look at what the Ancients of our faith have called the “Means of Grace” – Holy Habits which help us to recollect… and be re-collected by the truths of this Sacred Romance.(Coming this Summer!)
But forgetting is only a part of our problem.There’s the equal danger that comes from “belittling” Heaven as our Soul’s destination – sterilizing and domesticating it to the end that it does not capture our hearts and yearnings and desires.(And what is it that we’ve said before?If Heaven does not take your breath away, something else will!)
Along this very lines, Peter Kreeft writes: “Our pictures of Heaven simply do not move us; they arc not moving pictures. It is this aesthetic failure rather than intellectual or moral failures in our pictures of Heaven and of God that threatens faith most potently today. Our pictures of Heaven are dull, platitudinous and syrupy; therefore, so is our faith, our hope, and our love of Heaven ... It doesn't matter whether it's a dull lie or a dull truth. Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith, just as indifference, not hate, is the strongest enemy of love. (Peter Kreeft, Everything You Wanted to Know About Heaven)
Beloved, it is one thing for us to rehearse the story and its end… over and over again.But, it is still another, equally grand thing to make sure we are recalling how breath-taking it all is… how ‘so worth it’ it all is!
And here, words and art totally fail in conveying the awesomeness of Heaven… and its ability to fulfill our every longing and yearning… without ever becoming boring!
I like the way Goerge MacDonald put it, writing to the daughter that he would soon lose to tuberulosis: "I do live expecting great things in the life that is ripening for me and all mine--when we shall have all the universe for our own, and be good merry helpful children in the great house of our Father. Then, darling, you and I and all will have the grand liberty wherewith Christ makes free--opening his hand to send us out like white doves to range the universe." (The Heart of George MacDonald, from JD, p. 123)
Sending us out like “white doves to range the universe!”Wow, now there’s an inkling of eternity that stirs my soul… an inkling that carries me beyond the fear, as Eldredge put it at one of his Conferences, that Heaven is no more than an eternal worship service!(To quote him: “something in my heart says, "For how long? " I mean a 100,000 years? A couple 100,000years? I mean I like worship, maybe as much as the next guy. But, forever ever? Heaven is an unending church service? That sounds like Hell to me... Church is fine, but it doesn 't take your breath away. A weekend in Hawaii beats it hands down!")
“Inklings” of heaven, then, are about all we get.A glimpse here, a stirring there.But, they are enough for me—enough for me to believe that these shadows, these tips of the icebergs we see can not begin to declare the greater depth and glory which goes beyond the comprehension of mind and heart and soul.
I almost cringe here to have just talked about icebergs and to turn to the film clip I have chosen, from Titanic.Admittedly, I have mixed feelings about this blockbuster.On the one hand, I have always been a little, if not a lot, disturbed that Hollywood made so much money off of such a terrible tragedy.Of course, there is a great romance embedded in it – just one more reflections of that “Sacred Romance” we’ve been talking about: lovers, adversaries, arrows,…But, perhaps most stirring, most compelling for me, is that ending… a glimpse, an inkling of reunion and beauty and intimacy…
Inklings…Shadows… Glimpses…Huantings…It’s all we have.It’s all we’re given.It’s all this world can ever offer.
Most times, they are enough…(And, those times when they aren’t? I wait.)
Inklings… What was it that Paul said about such treasures as Heaven… and Eternal Life?Something along the lines of “eye not seeing nor ear hearing nor heart conceiving what God has in store for those that love him!?”
Inklings…Isn’t that the gist of what Lewis was saying when he wrote of this world's existence as but the “shadowlands” of a higher existence in God...nothing but the title page of a story in which “every chapter is better than the one that went before." (cf., C.S. Lewis, LW&W in Chronicles)
Yes, Inklings…Yes, we can only begin to imagine…
Closing Prayer (from Macdonald, Diary of An Old Soul):
“Life is what happens where you’re busy making other plans.”Yeah, right!But what about when you’re sick – neither busy nor living!??!?!
Okay, so here, on the other side of some kind of bug, is the plan…It’s a plan that I was actually going to convey during worship through this last week’s teaching handout (see banner, above):
1) conclude “Sacred Romance” (SR) series this last weekend (2/15)with message on “Living on Heaven’s Shores”
2) defer what was originally slated to be the last message in the SR series on how we can and should live as “Resident Aliens” (that is, how we can live as those in this world but not of it)... defer it until this Summer when we talk about “The ‘Means of Grace’ [prayer, Bible study, etc] as the Means of Keeping It All Alive”
3) commence Lenten series on “Emotionally Healthy Church” this coming Sunday the 22nd (while Ken Medema is with us)… with a keynote question of “do you really want to get well?”
Your head spinning, too?Or, is it just the vestiges of this bug?
With the [now additional] adjustment that this last Sunday’s conclusion now needs to become a blog posting (coming soon!), I am pretty well thinking that’s what we’re going to do…
At least, that’s the plan… and I’m sticking to it… provided I don’t get sick… and provided there’s not a hurricane… and provided Jesus doesn’t come bustin’ in any moment… (Maranatha!) and provided…
Just got back from preaching at a “Homecoming/Revival” service at a congregation I formerly served in Highlands…
So good to catch up and reminisce.
As a way of speaking where I am in my own ministry… and as a way of speaking about the real paradox the Church faces in this age of “Post-Christendom,” as many are calling it – this age in which the Church and the Gospel are not the nucleus around which our culture revolves; I shared a most compelling image that was first presented to me by Emergent Church guru, Brian McLaren.
The image comes in the wake of torrential rains associated with the landfall of Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998.Rainfall of between 75 and100 inches of rain in just a few days time was enough to trigger major mudslides and to significantly alter maps of the region.Rainfall and erosion were enough, for example, to change the course of the river flowing through a state capital, Choluteca.(See picture, below.)The result: a once useful bridge which spanned the river (and connected two communities) was now useless—serving mostly as an object of curiosity for locals and tourists.
Comments McLaren: “Change is happening constantly.But when a lot of change is concentrated in a short amount of time, structures that used to serve become tourist attractions.And, the maps that used to accurately reflect reality don’t reflect reality anymore.And then you have to start adventuring off the map.”
The implications for the Church are obvious to me: living in an era of unprecedented change, the “geography” of our culture has changed.If the church is to remain an effective agent of God in bridging humans and God (as well as the members of the human community), we are going to have to acknowledge the shifts; to accept that some features of the old “map” are no longer relevant; to admit that the bridge may need to be moved or changed; and to affirm that more than we are attached to any specific bridge (no matter how effective it’s been in the past), we are committed to bridge-building that is relevant to current conditions!In other words, we’ll need to find ways to make the timeless Gospel relevant to a new day and age—without compromising the essential qualities and principles of that Gospel!To fail to do so is to set ourselves up as objects of curiosity for future generations much like the cathedrals of Europe.(Or, as Methodist Pastor and Consultant, Bill Easum suggests: if it does not engage in the necessary work of responsibly engaging the emerging culture, the United Methodist Church is on the fast track to becoming, say, the Shakers of the next generation.[Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Shakers.No, the “problem” with the Shakers, if we must use that word “problem,” is that they are almost extinct and they exist, in the minds of most, more as an object of curiosity than as a functional “bridge” — effectively connecting human with human… and “outsiders” with God.])
Effective bridges, you see, are not only true and faithful in concept but are also seatedat the “right” places —touching ground at precise points of existing need and dislocation.
Ultimately, as I shared with my friends in Highland, we have a choice of moving the bridge, of becoming flexible according to the sentiments of a new age… or we can remain locked in place with the conviction that “if they really want God, they’ll do things our way.”
Frankly, I am very discontent to sit around and hope that they’ll finally see things our way and come to us.Frankly, I believe (and I believe Jesus and Paul and the Saints believe) that, so long as you don’t compromise the Gospel and its timeless principles and laws of life, there is nothing we should not change in style and method to reach those outside for Christ!
Like Highlands, you need to know that’s what makes me “tick.”That is, I believe, what must be at the heart of congregations and disciples yearning to be fully alive in and faithful to the Christ!
Ken Bailey (referenced below) speaks of the danger in reading and studying the Bible of "the obscurity of the familiar" -- that is, our missing a the truth of a passage because we are too familiar with it... so familiar that we have blinders on.
Scouring the internet, I wanted to find some fresh expressions of the Parable of the Prodigal Son -- all in the hopes of our seeing it anew.
eprodigals.com is a great place to visit -- unpacking the teachings of Rev. Ken Bailey (a Presbyterian pastor who has spent the majority of his years in the Middle East, a reknown Biblical scholar well respected for his insights into Christ and his first century culture). For the ways it conveys the parable with some respect for it's Middle Eastern roots and for the ways it conveys the scandal of a father running... and the outrage of a village for a father scorned, I find the following video most insightful. (Don't neglect, by the way, the insights to be found by going to eprodigals.com!)
More contemporary is "Prodigal Sons," a contemporary rendering of the parable about two sons trying to manipulate their father to achieve their own selfish ends. It's one of several parables available for viewing (and worth watching) at ModernParable.com:
Frustrating to me is that I can not find any link for you to listen to Christian Rap Artist, Prodigal Son... and his song entitled "Prodigal Son." His music is acclaimed as "Holy Hip-Hop." For those willing to get out of the box, it may be worth the 99 cents for the download from itunes...
I'll keep looking...
As you find a video or article that gives you a fresh insight into or exerience of the Prodigal, I'd love to hear about it!
