holy uncertainty

This is a bonus post since I've been away for so long.

In the last year I've had to make a significant number of choices and decide how to respond to God's call in a number of ways. This constant discernment process, which I am sure I'll never leave, has granted me much occasion to reflect upon certainty. More than anything else in the past year I've wanted to be certain of everything. Here's a sample of what I'm talking about: I've wanted (and still want) to be certain about stuff in my personal life like where to go to seminary, whether Pippi and I are making the right choice in getting married at this point, choosing the right classes, joining the right justice organizations. I want certainty in bigger vocational questions like whether I'm called to ministry that especially focuses on urban ministry, emergent church, justice and social work, new testament studies and a subsequent professorship, or all of these, and if all of these then what in the world does that look like? Should I do CPE where I am? Should I join the CML cohort? I want certainty in huge theological questions like what faith means, what the role of justice is in salvation and what salvation is, how God relates to us. Can we know God's metaphysical attributes? Who cares about the Trinity? What in the world happened on the cross and why does it matter? These questions are NOT easily cleared up upon consultation of Scripture, tradition, reason, or church teaching.

In short, and I think if you have made it this far in the post this will be obvious, I spend a lot of time being uncertain. And I'm willing to bet that I'm not alone. Think about it. What can you say about your life with 100% certainty? I've thought about this a lot lately.

Then

Recently

It HIT me-

It is here that I most often meet God. In my frailty and my uncertainty God is most clearly witnessed to. It is in this state of uncertainty that I am reminded of the vainity, the absurdity, and the transient nature of life of which Qoheleth writes in Ecclesiastes. It is because I am not certain about anything that I trust, have faith in God. This place of uncertainty, where I question my very existence and God's very existence is holy ground. I meet the God who welcomes questioning and who takes me seriously enough to listen to my questions and respond in a diverse number of ways from aha moments to suggestions from friends to God's very Word.

This is spectacularly witnessed in the call of Moses. Moses is on holy ground and Moses is uncertain. The unlikely liberator has shown a passion for justice and God's imagined future by the time of his call in the Exodus narrative. But by the time the call rolls around, he is uncertain about so much: whether God has the right person, whether the Hebrews or Pharaoh will listen to him, whether God's future will ever be a reality. In his uncertainty he questions and God takes his questions seriously. As my Pentateuch teacher points out, "God will move with Moses, even adapting original divine plans in view of Moses' considerations. God's way into the future is thus not directed solely by the divine word and will (Fretheim, Exodus, 53)." Moses is uncertain. God meets him in this uncertainty and even changes God's own mind for the human agent. Our uncertainty is not something to flee from but something to embrace. We are called to struggle with God and our uncertainty is occasion to do so. God has blessed us with this discomfort so that we can meet and grow in relationship with God. Uncertainty is truly holy.

life since we last talked

Happy Spring! What an amazing time here in MN. The resurrection is given whole new meaning when one survives a Minnesota winter and is greeted by the new life of a warm spring day. I know I'm being rather sappy but who couldn't be in this weather. It is even getting to the point where the night is comfortable. Wow! Every year I know it's coming, but every year spring takes me by surprise.

We are just past the midpoint of the semester and things are really picking up! Coming right off a week of pretty intense midterm paper writing, many of us are already looking toward finals. So much to do! Student council just finished our Bread for the World letter writing campaign this last Friday. It went quite well. The subject this year is the Earned Income Tax Credit, and it really needs our support. I sincerely recommend checking out the link above and writing a quick letter. God's vision for the world needs YOU!!!

Student Council's next big project is a screening of This Palestinian Life, a film documenting life in occupied (even if it is technically legal) Palestine. The screening will be followed by a discussion which will be incredible. Between Student Council, work, and school I'm being kept pretty busy, but my attention also has to be given to CPE, church, and the wedding. Seminary is certainly a busy time. Last week was our first Clinical Pastoral Education training. I'll be interning as a chaplain at Advocate Good Shepherd hospital in Barrington, IL. The hospital is big and beautiful, and I am really looking forward to the summer there. Developing pastoral care skills is definitely something that I'm excited about. Not to mention the opportunity to process all of this summer's happenings in a group setting. What with the wedding and everything else, I'll definitely benefit from the group. At church I am looking forward to our Earth Day celebration next weekend. We'll be volunteering at Minehaha falls! We've also got the March of Dimes coming up and we're going to hear author and emergent church mover and shaker Brian McLaren speak this coming Thursday! In other news, the wedding is coming along nicely. We're just finishing ordering invitations, and we pretty much have all the other important stuff done. Woohoo! Personally, I'm ready to be married and in Mexico! I think this is pretty much all that's going on...oh, wait. I forgot, I'm also in the process of applying to become a part of Luther's Congregation and Missional Leadership cohort. This will provide me with the tools to be able to pursue mission-focused calls even right out of seminary. In my opinion all calls are necessarily mission-focused, but I want to be sure that I am intentional about this focus. I'll talk more about this in my next post.

quick update

Hi all. What a busy time. Between homework (which I obsessively do all of-probably not healthy), applying for scholarships, figuring out CPE, planning the wedding, student council, church, work, and all the little stuff in between, life can get pretty overwhelming. But, this is exactly what I signed up for. It is a good and refreshing busy. Yet, I know that the call to be a sabbath person is the call to take time to remember that it is not in these actions that I am a child of God, but in simply being and in faith. In all of the busyness, I am learning a few things. First, I am learning time and time again that a person must be able to say no! This is so important. Second, it is ok to ask for help. This is especially good for ministry in the priesthood of all believers. I have no right to take on all the work myself but am called to ask people to take responsibility too! What a beautiful thing to be in partnership rather than kingship! Third, I am learning that I am not in control. It doesn't matter how much I prepare for many of these things, somethings will go wrong. Now, I am sure that these are messages that will have to be drilled into my stubborn type-a head again and again, but it is good when I feel like I grasp them.

The weather is turning warm. Minnesota is beautiful this time of year. It is like swampland right now. Wonderful. The smell of the saturated ground captures me as I walk to class in our little picturesque neighborhood. Though it is in the middle of lent right now, this is certainly a resurrection time for the world. I think people who don't experience midwestern winters don't really get good theology. We must be driven to despair-to the cross-to know God and to experience God's promises. Just when we are despairing the most, the winter leaves and there is a new creation. I hope all is well.

swamped

This is the point in the semester when life really begins to overwhelm. Midterms are fast approaching. The wedding is only 5.5 months away. Taxes are due, along with financial aid information. Student council is trying to do a bread for the world letter writing campaign. The list goes on and on. It is in times like these that I need sabbath practices. I don't mean this in the sense that I need to find time to be lazy. When life gets this way, it is completely important to remember, as Walter Brueggemann points out in his commentary on Genesis, that the world is God's and its turning or survival does not solely rely on our activity. If God is confident enough in the world's order to rest, then we can certainly do the same. Now, we certainly are given responsibility for the well-being of the world, so taking all our time for rest is not what we were created for. Still, know that we are loved for the simple fact that we are human. What we do and how we act matters. In fact, we are acting the most like humans when we fulfill our responsibilities to each other. Yet, this does not merit love, or singularly define us as human. Work is only part of the definition.

I think to years ago when I was in the practice of meditating as I watched water collect on leaves after rain. I know, weird hippie, right? Anyway, the centering thought that I used was that the water and the plant are not doing anything to earn their status as part of creation, not doing anything to earn God's favor, not doing anything to be anymore beautiful than they already are. Simply by existing, they are doing their job. The natural life of a plant and of rain is all it needs to do. By being, they are fulfilling their responsibility to the world. We are called to this sort of rest. The kind of rest that honors our being. As humans, we are also called back again after the rest into the responsibilities of our vocation. God has given the world into our care, so we can't alway rest.

listening across lines of faith

The argument for faith is spectacularly personal. People on the outside easily attack this, calling it delusional thinking or brainwashing. We want to fit in, so we do whatever we need to. Yet, it is my experience that community is the only argument for faith. It is in community that faith grows and in community that we meet God who is, Godself, community. Being drawn into faith is never a matter of considering facts, but is born out of what I will call seduction. Participation in the body of Christ is seductive. One is drawn into faith if that one’s participation in the body resonates with that person. It is not the stuff of rationality. The theologian Peter Rollins describes this paradigm of faith in his book How (Not) to Speak of God. He likens it to family life. We are first born into a family and are accepted (hopefully). Thus, we first belong. We then start to imitate the behavioral patterns as displayed by the family, so we behave in a similar fashion. Finally, it may be the case that some of us begin to pick up the beliefs of our parents. This is the point where orthodoxy finally arrives. In the end we believe. It is the same with faith. People of faith first belong, then behave, and finally believe. The page number escapes me right now and I do not own the book.

In terms of how I would handle a situation in which I came into discussion about faith with an atheist, I think the encounter would be rather dialogic. I actually relate quite well to atheists. I have many of the same problems with faith that I hear from many of my atheist friends. Faith really makes little sense to me, yet I am compelled to believe. My biggest problem with religion in general is with the violence that has been and is wrought in the name of God. Yet, I see definite redemption in the great good that has been performed in the name of God. The backbone of nearly every successful movement toward justice and ultimate reconciliation has been faith. I firmly hold that religion is a greater instrument for social good than it is for social evil. It is more than the first way we tried to make sense of the world as Hitchens suggested. It changes the very order of the world. Further, like Wilson and Hitchens’ dialogue, my own would not have the final aim of conversion, but of understanding, of broadening worldviews and, perhaps, of changing my own perspectives in light of what I learn from my sister or brother. We must listen to the complaints of atheism and take seriously the cries of people who are affected by our faith as we live it in a very public and shared world.

a passage from an essay

Much like the God that Christians and Jewish people witness to in the Torah, I am learning quite a lot about living in relationship. Through some rather difficult lessons in Genesis’ first eleven chapters, our God learns that to be in relationship, to truly know and love the other in all her or his humanity, costs. God is hurt time and time again. First, by Her new creation’s disobedience, then by a rift in brotherly love, then by the violence of all humanity, then by God’s own reaction to that violence, and finally by humanity’s desire to displace their trust in God and put it in their own self-made security.

Relationships grounded in reality, in freedom, and in love involve suffering. This is compassion, the fertile soil from which relationships sprout. The fruit of these relationships between God and humanity, sisters and brothers within humanity, and between humanity and all of creation is discipleship. Since God, Godself, is relationship and each one of us finds our own identity in relationship it simply follows that discipleship’s own genesis is in the experience of knowing God and the other.

Ultimately, the incarnation, human experience of Jesus, and His own execution at the hands of the Empire and religious authorities exemplify most poignantly God’s compassionate relationship with humanity. God’s experience, in a very real way, is the human experience. The flesh and blood, incarnational ministry of Jesus, the God who suffers, is the example that we disciples in ministry are called to follow here in this time and place.

Ministry, now more than ever, must be intentionally incarnational and relational. Our context is marked by depersonalization, dehumanization, and systemic violence. People complain of community breakdown, nations ignore their own sick and poor while indiscriminately killing thousands for the sake of “security,” and churches and communities built solely upon common affinity diminish the suffering of relationships that opens the doors to compassion.

It is no longer effective or even an appropriate expression of discipleship and mission to simply invite a friend to church on rally Sunday. Mission cannot be contained by church walls or convincing others to align their worldviews and intellectual understanding of God with our own. No, the Church must meet people where they are and truly come to know the other in all of her or his humanity. Jesus did the same in eating with tax collectors and sinners. In the aftermath of Christendom, the Church has the opportunity to re-form itself in dialogue, to be honest about hypocrisy and failure, to be more fully human. Moreover, now is a time to participate in God’s re-creational work.

This relational understanding does not diminish the political task of the Church. As long as there is economic injustice, violence, and oppression, and as long as everyone the world over participates in these ills (either by direct involvement or complicity), the task of the Christian Church is necessarily political. Christians either supports the status quo or challenges the oppression of that same status quo. A church that takes seriously the call to discipleship will be intentional about its political task and will work for justice against the oppressive powers and principalities of the status quo set against God. This occurs both in relational acts of charity that truly get to know the other who is negatively affected by the powers and principalities in the world, and in works of advocacy and justice. Practically, the political task of the church must begin in local communities. The challenge of the pastor is to help the other disciples see how larger systems are at work within their own community. This personalizes oppression and is the only way to invite the congregation to the works of charity and justice to which we are called.

Justification by Coma (Dr. Sundberg)

In light of the distance between this post and the last, I will briefly summarize life in the last few months. Busy.

Last semester ended well. I enjoyed and did well in my classes. Christmas break was very relaxing. I'm sure I saw many of you. There was some drama around the reception hall for Pippi and my wedding. It went bankrupt and we lost our $600 deposit. But we found a new, less expensive place and will be getting hitched on Friday August 13. Friday the 13th. Spooky. Then I took a class for J term in Chicago called the Dimensions and Dynamics of Urban Ministry. We dealt with the pastor's role as prophet, and confronting violence, economic injustice, and racism with the gospel. Through that class I really came to understand how deep my passion is for ministry in the city. I feel so called to see the world and theology from the bottom up and to minister from this place. I got the incredible honor of meeting the kind and intelligent Jeremiah Wright and Father Pflager. If you don't know who they are, google the names, they are two prophets worth knowing.

After the class, I basically watched horror movies for three weeks and got ready for the semester by reading and taking care of administrative stuff. Recently, I was nominated for the FTE's Ministry Fellowship. I am pretty excited about that and will let you know how it goes.

Now I am taking Systematic Theology: Creation and the Triune God, Reformation History, Galatians and Thessalonians, and Pentateuch. A full load, but a fun one. I was going to talk about a new meaning for faith and salvation in our changing world, but I am tired, I'll do this soon.