I am Larry David: Gay Marriage and “Julia” Ad edition

I am so tired of talking about gay marriage.  Maybe it’s the crowds I surf, maybe I am a pretentious elitist with the luxury of thinking about such issues critically, maybe it’s the denominational identity I have chosen, maybe it’s the denominational heritage I have been forced out of and later abandoned myself.  But I’m so tired of the conversation.  So here I go again on it.

I was in Washington, DC, at the Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity conference when President Obama announced his safe and disengenuous endorsement of gay marriage as a response to the North Carolina amendment passed just hours before.  There was an air of excitement around the conference, who were getting texts and tweets trickling in about the news on their $300 iPhones, and a few talks in the conference were on such radical ideas as acknowledging that gay people are in your community, and if they dare to show up in your church for some reason, you should welcome their children, etc.  Instead of peeing myself with excitement or sweating on the upper lip as these Reformed mainlers and wannabe hipster emergents were doing at the conference, I do what I always do, which is listen to the crazy people who host right-wing radio to hear what the Other Side is thinking, and the immediate response was “President Obama is making a non-issue an issue.  President Obama is using this issue as a smokescreen to avoid talking about his record.”  Is this really the best conservatives can come up with, to claim that the President keeps bringing the issue up while celebrating their own legislation being passed in North Carolina?

In the last couple of months I have been in some fairly involved conversations with church based or faith based groups about gay marriage.  People don’t believe me when I say that I am honestly tired of talking about it.  Folks think I have something to hide about it by just being tired of talking about it.  Yet here I am, to repeat, talking about it more.

Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity: On the Ground

We’re heading into the last day of what has been a fairly intense conference here in Washington, DC.  The best word that I really have is “intense,” in that nearly every moment is being used in some way, and there is a lot of discussion, networking, resourcing, etc.  An interesting mix of folks are present:  academics, pastors, laypeople, c.e./r.e. directors, interested outsiders.  All faith traditions are present; I had lunch with German Methodists and spoke to Unitarian Universalists on my way out of lunch.  We are all here to talk about the future of children’s and youth ministry in the so-called “emergent”/”emergence”/”missional” ministry contexts; realizing that the faith formation of younger folks has been neglected in this conversation.

My presentation went really well, and people keep coming up to me to tell me how much they liked my talk on The Synaptic Gospel, which is gratifying because it is this audience who I intended to reach in the book.  The conference bookstore ran out of copies of the book

I am Larry David: Good Friday, Weddings, “Is Interim Ministry Biblical?” Edition

My spouse always says to me, “You are Larry David” because of the weird situations in which I often find myself personally, academically, professionally, ethically, vocationally, and pastorally.  I’ve decided to share some of these experiences. 

My Good Friday began with a phone call from a bride for a wedding a couple weeks from now calling to ask me to lower my wedding fee because they found someone willing to officiate their ceremony–using my liturgy, of course–for much less than my typical fee.  This isn’t the first, or even the fifth time, this has happened, it’s kind of common, and I always immediately ask who the other minister is and then remind the beautiful bride that in most cases these ministers who find brides and try to underbid their pastors aren’t legally able to sign wedding licences in Pennsylvania. 

Easter Sunday Sermon: “Bad Easter Sermon!”

This Easter Sunday I am modifying the lectionary a little bit, preaching on Mark 4:1-20, 14:22-31, 16:1-8, and Acts 10:34-43.   I got the idea for the sermon from a commentary that I read a few weeks ago (Unbinding the Gospel of Mark) that connected some of the Lenten lectionary readings to the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from a question posed by the great folks at the Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, and currently reading and teaching Peter Rollins’ book, Insurrection.  This is a first draft, I’d love to hear your suggestions.  Thanks.

Jesus tells the parable of the sower and the seed, a story we’ve surely heard before, telling of the gardener who planted seeds on a pathway, and on rocks, and on rich soil.  As one might expect, the seeds on the pathway were eaten by the birds, and the seeds on the rocks sprouted up quickly, but, as Jesus says, because they “had no depth of soil,” the plants withered away when the sun scorched down upon them.  The other seeds on good soil sprouted and brought forth grain, increasing thirty, and sixty, and one hundredfold.

Jesus then explains that the seeds on the path had a good thing going but they spoiled it by not nurturing the presence of God and the burgeoning life within them.  The seeds on the rocks and thorns respond to the word of God with joy, but the joy did not endure and they quickly withered away, Jesus teaches that they hear the Good News, but are drawn instead to the things of this world, they desire the saccharine joy of faith but choke on the sweet candy of feel-good religion.  And, of course, those with good contexts around them bear good fruit and prosper.

Now, on Easter morning we then hear the story of the missing body of Jesus in the tomb, the man in white instructs the women to find the disciples, and the man in white singles out that they should find Peter in particular.  I would like to ask:  Why is Peter so central to the story of the resurrection?

Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity

I’m really excited to be presenting a workshop on The Synaptic Gospel at “Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity” this May in Washington, DC, because the speaker list looks great.  Further, at least in the world of religious education, there’s a buzz going around about this confernce being a unique gathering that could be a game-changer for a sub-discipline of practical theology that is being systematically axed from seminaries and is sorely in need of some new vitality.

Here’s the conference agenda…

Bishop McFadden, Birth Control, and the Purity Rites of the Sado-Sublime

While deciding what to preach on this Sunday, I was thinking about going off-lectionary and preaching about the Ark of the Covenant’s adventures with the idol of Dagon (“That Dagonne Dagon!” was the working title).  But then I began to consider some of the Girardian implications of this Sunday’s lectionary text, Jesus’ “cleansing of the temple,” especially within the context of Jesus’ curse of the fig tree in Mark, in light of the recent chatter about birth control.

Thandeka to Preach This Sunday

Thandeka, from her website.

 

Thandeka, author of Learning to be White and The Embodied Self, will be the guest preacher at my church, Zion “Goshert’s” United Church of Christ, in Lebanon, PA, this coming Sunday, Jan. 22, at 10 AM.  If you’re in the area, stop by.

The Synaptic Gospel: Published!

The Synaptic Gospel habituating in my basement work area.

I am pleased to report that The Synaptic Gospel is published and I have now seen the finished product.  Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered the book.

The book is an attempt to force a conversation between phenomenology and affect neuroscience to re-think religious communities’ practical paradigms for worship and religious education.  Thinkers engaged along the way include Husserl, Stein, Panksepp, Csikszentmihalyi, and others.

Piety and theology

Jeremy Ridenour sent me a link to this post by Kait Dugan, which fulfills what is apparently a ritual requirement of all theology bloggers who don’t blog at AUFS: declaring that personal faith and piety is required to be a theologian. Specifically, she asks whether theology might be different from other disciplines:

Do the rules and procedures change when the object of inquiry is God? What are we doing here if they don’t? What does it mean that the object of inquiry is one that summons us to obedience, faithfulness, and worship? When the object is actually our Lord?

To which I would respond: How do you know all those things? What if God isn’t really like that? What if it’s unworthy of God to assume he demands something like obedience and worship? What if it’s harmful to us to idolize a being that would make such demands? Such questions are necessary if theology is to be a critical intellectual pursuit, and it strikes me as a lot more likely that those questions will be raised if people who aren’t concerned about maintaining their good standing in existing religious institutions are part of the conversation.

Miscarriage: a Christian interpretation (Feast of Holy Innocents, 2011)

One element of the wonder, miracle, and mystery of Christmas lies in its tragedy.  Advent ends every year with churches’ Christmas Eve services, often by singing “Silent Night” by candlelight.  Christmas Day, obviously, marks the birth of Christ in a manger; December 26^th is traditionally the feast of the martyr, St. Stephen; December 27^th is the feast of St. John the Evangelist, an important day for Freemasons like myself and is the commemoration of the martyrdom believed to be described in Acts 12.  December 27^th is also my spouse and my wedding anniversary.

December 28^th is the feast of the Holy Innocents in most Western Christian traditions.  The day holds special meaning for me because of the two miscarriages we experienced in between the birth of our two children.

The first one caught us by surprise, primarily because we had absolutely no complications with our first pregnancy, in fact, our son, Christian was born just a few hours before the predicted date of his birth.  The second pregnancy terminated very early.  We were, of course, devastated, but the reality of it hit us when the local hospital asked us what funeral arrangements we would like to have for “the products of conception.”