Peace Be With You

(Note: This post was originally written for my church's newsletter.)

“O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…” -Traditional Advent Hymn

“[Jesus said,] Peace I leave with you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” -John 14:27

During Advent this year, our church will be exploring the idea of peace. It seems a fitting theme because in the build up to Christmas we often hear the message “Peace on Earth” in carols and cards echoing the message of the angels that first Christmas night. It is also a time of year where we seem to more acutely desire peace in our lives … and perhaps are more aware of where peace is lacking in our lives. 

There are many things that can steal peace from our lives: worries about the state of the world; disappointment in ourselves; injustice to ourselves or a loved one. And many of us have likely seen/imagined/lived scenarios of doing everything we can to make sure Christmas is peaceful and perfect, only to have the day disappoint.

What is this peace we hunger for this time of year? In English, we typically equate peace with an absence of something, as in we see peace where there is an absence of movement or an absence of violence. From a Biblical perspective, though, peace is something else. In much of the Bible, peace is mentioned using the Hebrew word “shalom.” Shalom expresses not an absence, but a presence, because it indicates a sense of wholeness. If I were to wish “shalom” to another person, I would be saying, “May you be fed and sheltered; may you be loved and may you rest without fear or worry.”

If peace is about presence, then it makes sense that we proclaim peace in Advent and Christmas, which are about anticipating and celebrating the presence of Jesus, the Messiah. Jesus promised to come and “ransom” us from those things that steal peace from us—fear, selfishness, hopelessness—and so we experience peace in those places where we find the presence of the Christ. 

Ultimately, the peace we proclaim in Advent is not based on everything in our lives being right or still, but in the hope that Jesus chose to be present among us and continues to draw near to us and our world. It is a peace that the world cannot give. As the angels told the shepherds where to find Jesus that first Christmas, may we share that peace by pointing towards the places where we find Christ.

“This is my kingdom come.” -Imagine Dragons, “Demons”

Biblical Creativity

The way we learn to read the Bible is wrong.

Wait, let me go back a bit...  I was thinking this week about the topic of creativity and education. There have been many articles (like this one), speeches (like this), etc. in recent years bemoaning the loss of creativity in the American population and many place the fault at the feet of our education system. I'm not going to dive into why that is (educational theory, standardized testing, and core requirements are complex topics I can't speak to with any authority), but suffice it to say, (a) I believe creativity is an important part of education and (b) much of my own education was built on teaching facts more than encouraging creative thought. For many of my classes, the implicit idea was that every question had one correct answer and I was to memorize and regurgitate that answer on command.

What struck me this past week was that much of my Sunday school education was identical to my secular education. For every Bible story, there was one answer as to what it meant, such as "The Parable of the Good Samaritan means be nice to others." Ideas were often dealt with in absolutes like always, never, sacred, and evil.

The problem is that the more I read the Bible, the less those prove to be true. Very rarely does a text mean just one thing. Depending on my mood, my current situation in life, or what I watched on TV last night, I can often come up with many lessons from a single text. For example, I generally preach using the texts appointed by the Revised Common Lectionary, which uses the same texts every three years. I've gone back to read old sermons from three or six years ago and found I've preached radically different sermons on the same text (though still sound and meaningful). I've used Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd...") to preach comfort in grief, loving our enemies, and God's relentless pursuit of us. (Or try reading Jewish Talmud or Midrash! I read a Midrash on Genesis once where the rabbi offered dozens of ideas as to why the first letter of the Bible is bet [Hebrew for B]. Sounds strange, but it was fascinating.)

If we are taught from an early age that those possibilities are wrong, that reading the Bible is about finding short, pat answers to complicated life questions, then the Bible loses its vibrancy. This book hasn't stuck around for thousands of years because it was a well organized how-to manual; it has been important because it records stories and poems about complicated people who had complicated relationships with a complicated God and we've continued to say, "Hey! I can relate to that."

What if we treated Sunday school not as a way to get kids to memorize facts about God, but invited them to explore the stories? What if we taught kids to use the Bible to find good questions, not just answers? What if we all approached the stories asking, "Where do I fit in this story? How is this about me?" (One excellent model is Godly Play, which you can see in action here.)

The opposite result is what I saw once when I was leading a Bible study with some high schoolers and I asked them an open ended question that was something like, "What do you think Jesus meant when he said that?" I honestly don't remember the exact question I asked, but I do remember the response. After about 10 uncomfortable seconds of silence, one of the students said, "Can't you just tell us the answer?" The thing is that I wasn't looking for "the" answer. It was (meant to be) an open-ended question: "What do you think?" But the students had learned that there was one answer and their fear of being wrong was stronger than their interest in the story.

If we can't read the Bible with a supple and open mind, it becomes a solid, stale block. Like a tree, faith grows better in soft soil than in set concrete.

“As if there wasn’t anything to say about the justice and the mystery.” -Jars of Clay, “Good Monsters”

The Theology of Intelligent Design (But Not the One You're Thinking Of)

I saw this video online the other day and (because I'm a pastor) I immediately thought about it in terms of the church.

I should probably say that I find the field of design fascinating (I blame my college roommate who was an art/design major). While I don't consider myself a design expert, what I've come to understand and appreciate is that design isn't just about what something looks like, but how someone uses and experiences the product. Good design makes someone want to use the product and feel good while using it. Some of the best design solutions may even go unnoticed because they work so intuitively that we don't even think about how to use it.

So when I watched this, I started thinking, "How could the principles of good design help improve the church?"

Now whenever I use the word "church" in the same sentence with words like "business," "marketing," or "design," I see many Christians get a panicked look in their eyes that says, "He wants to turn the church into a shopping mall! It'll be Six Flags over Jesus!" So let me be clear, I do not think Jesus is a fully customizable pick-your-own-religion kit to be sold. The Gospel challenges and changes us, not the other way around.

However, as Mark Parker says in the video, "Good design is a part of any brand realizing its full potential." And unless I missed the memo where suffering and disease all ended, then the Church has not realized its full potential. Yet it seems like many Christians are so insistent on not being a "business" that we almost take pride in our buildings being hard to navigate and our worship services being confusing for visitors.

My point in appealing to good design isn't to offer a one-size-fits-all packaged idea to "fix" any church. My point is to raise a question. Parker says that design is "creating products and services that really excite and delight the consumer." So if Jesus is the bread of life and living water that quenches all thirst, shouldn't that be shared in a way that "excites and delights"? Shouldn't that naturally be something we want to use and feel good while using?

I have often experienced faith as a beautiful, mysterious, and endlessly fascinating thing that keeps drawing me back and deeper. But I know that some find their initial experience with faith/religion/church is quite the opposite and therefore miss glimpsing the "full potential" of the Church that "excites and delights" those of us who love her. So how do we pay attention to the design of church so that it feels more like "Double Rainbow Across the Sky" and less like Dana Carvey as the Church Lady?

“Be part of the miracles you see in every hour.” -10,000 Maniacs, "These Are Days"