In our time planning for worship last week, we spent quite a while discussing Mark 3, particularly verse 29. Here is the whole section in context:

²³ So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? ²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. ²⁶ And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. ²⁷ In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. ²⁸ Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.

I am not going to get into the long debate about what exactly it means to "blaspheme the Holy Spirit." We did not reach in conclusions in our meeting, but it helped to discuss it together with friends. So first things first, if and when you get to a piece of scripture that is just baffling, find someone else to talk to about it. Bonus if the people you dialogue with are different than you. Find a young kid or a war veteran or a person in prison or an artist or a lawyer. The fancy word for this kind of reading is "dislocated exegesis." But how to read scripture is not the main point of this post. And if you want my thoughts on blaspheming the Holy Spirit, here you go- I find it helpful to remember that this entire set of verses is said to be some sort of parable. And from what I know about parables, they hide just as much as they reveal. They function on multiple levels, and it is hard to build systematic theologies around them. Also, it is important to remember who Jesus is addressing. It is the teachers of the law, the religious elite who are in view. This is why it is slightly amusing when I see the way that this verse about blaspheming the Holy Spirit has been taken up in Atheistic apologetics.  

I have never been too disturbed by the New Atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc) or their project to disprove the existence of God. I know it would seem that PhD holders who have made it their mission to prove the un-existence of God may seem troubling, but it just isn't. I take them about as serious as I do the well-meaning Christian scholars who try to prove the existence of God. Both roads are a dead end. Both use the tools of the scientific rationalism to solve a problem given to us my scientific rationalism. It is a circular argument, and not worth our time as we seek to understand the faith we proclaim. It is the cart leading the horse. It is a dead end.

Which brings us to the main part of this post (How was that for an intro?). On Richard Dawkins's website for Reason and Science, he has extended a challenge to people. Here are his words:

Called "The Blasphemy Challenge," this campaign encourages participants to commit what Christian doctrine calls the only unforgivable sin — blasphemy against the Holy Spirit…Participants who videotape their blasphemy and upload it to YouTube will receive a free DVD of the hit documentary THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE, which normally sells for $24.98… More than 160 participants have already blasphemed the Holy Spirit and earned free DVDs during the pre-launch phase of the Blasphemy Challenge. Their videos can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7D6338FA4A19B4C3

While anyone can participate in The Blasphemy Challenge, the Rational Response Squad is focused on reaching a young demographic. To publicize The Blasphemy Challenge to young people, today the Rational Response Squad begins an online advertising campaign focused on 25 sites popular with teens such as Xanga, Friendster, Boy Scout Trail, Tiger Beat, Teen Magazine, YM, CosmoGirl! and Seventeen.

The videos I viewed are nothing surprising. But it all reminded me that at the heart of the New Atheism is another religion, not the repudiation of all religions. Their focused campaign looks just like the corresponding Christian campaigns to convince non-christians that there is a God who can be proved to exist. It is all a dead end.

Jesus is speaking in parables to the religious leaders. Those who take on the blasphemy challenge are simply misappropriating an insider warning.

One last word from Juan Luis Segundo on Mark 3:29,

The blasphemy resulting in bad apologetics will always be pardonable…What is not pardonable is using theology to turn real human liberation into something odious. The real sin against the Holy Spirit is refusing to recognize, with "theological" joy, some concrete liberation that is taking place before one's very own eyes.

Amen.

This Sunday we will gather around the bread and the cup of the Lord's Table. At that time, there will be a spoken liturgy calling us to remember what these elements represent. In a baptist prayer book (a contradiction in title), there is a liturgy meant to bring forward the deeper reality of remembering. It is more helpful to think of remembering as re-membering, or that which joins back together. It is the undoing of dismemberment. 

I thought of the image of re-membering as I thought of all of my friends and family at the Gathering Church. Because of the nature of life in the Triangle, we are all quite separated from one another. Put pins in a map for each member and the distance between some of us would be obvious. Most of you I only see on Sunday mornings. Our physical distance dismembers us. But it is not just that. 

Our hectic schedules dismember us.

Our preference in basketball team dismembers us.

Our differences–age, race, income, politics–dismember us. 

Sadly even our religion can dismember us.

For all of the ways that this life tears us apart, I am thankful for the gift of the bread and cup, where Jesus re-members us as we remember him. 

I am plagued with a stiffness in public singing, mainly public worship. It is not from lack of exposure to other options. I have spent enough time around spirit-filled charismatics and my friends in the Black Church to know what is possible. I just wonder if it is possible for me. On Sunday mornings I look around and realize that I am not probably alone in my paralysis. 

I wonder if I was told along the way that the freedom of expression in worship was dangerous, or at least distracting to those around me. Maybe it was when I was a kid cutting up in Church. Maybe I sang too loud on one verse or clapped during a slow song, only to be scolded by a well-meaning adult out to keep the peace. 

If you watch the children on a Sunday morning during worship at the Gathering, you will see some of what I mean. Left to their own imaginations, it is common to see one or two wander out into the aisle and tap out a clumsy rhythm. Or maybe it is the little voices that yell in affirmation when a song was particularly powerful, while the rest of us cross our hands in our lap and wait to be told what to do next. These kids seem out of control, but perhaps that is the point.

I can't help but think that all those kids are on to something I may have forgotten. There is a foolish abandon within kids that leaks out in our public spaces we have worked hard to order and contain. And it reminds me that there is freedom in letting go. 

Jesus said, "From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise."

So friends, may we find our feet and arms and lips and hips in tune with the foolish abandon of those little prophets in our midst as they lead us in praise to the Lord. 

I cannot read the Bible well without other people involved. I picked Curt's brain (he is a Hebrew Bible student, and has spent a ton of time in Mark's Gospel) throughout the week as I prepared my message for Sunday. Corrie (my wife) and I are always bouncing scripture around the room, seeing where things land once we've asked some hard questions and shared insights. If you only read the Bible alone, find a friend (or enemy) and read it again together. We are so accustomed to a static and typed text that we forget Scripture is primarily oral. The Gospels would have originated as shared stories about Jesus as experienced in the lives of those first followers. The tales of Moses and the wilderness wanderings would become bedtime stories for little Hebrew children captive in Babylon. This is part of the reason we take time every week to read the scriptures out loud. The scriptures are dynamic and alive. 

After worship on Sunday I met a fellow who posed an awesome question. He was responding to the redefinition of "fishers of men" I played with in the sermon. If you missed it, here is the broad picture I painted: While many of us have always assumed that "fishers of men" meant a call to be super-evangelists, the image is more nuanced and loaded than that. We read Jeremiah 16:16-18, Ezekiel 29:4, and Amos 4:2. The phrase is transformed when read along with these Hebrew scriptures. "Fisher of men" may actually have a much more ominous tone, where these first followers are given a prophetic role to censure the powers of their day. They were being called to fish-hook those waging war against the kingdom project of Jesus. When I first came across this redefinition, it was kind of unsettling. What was Jesus calling me to if this is the image he used?

Well, after worship, this fellow found me in the hall, and in the middle of the chaos that is the post-worship shuffle, he asked, "What was the worm? What did Jesus use for bait?" As soon as I thought I was done with these verses in Mark, this guy had blown it wide open again. It has been said that trying to probe the depths of Scripture is like trying to drain the ocean with a spoon.

I did not have an answer for him, but I have not stopped thinking about it since he asked it. I hope he and I can sit down again in the future and share how we have struggled with the scriptures. Maybe "struggle" has a harsh tone. A better word may be "play." We are invited to dive into the scriptures, to explore, to dance in them, to interrogate them, to toss them back and forth. But this process is always richer with others. So find a friend or two and have some fun. 

As I prepare for this Sunday, where we will look at Mark 1:21-39, I am finding it hard to keep my feet on solid ground. The text is bubbling with creative tension. 

Have you ever been in a situation where you just knew something was going to happen, someone was going to blow up? Maybe it is was a wedding, or a business meeting, or a class on some divisive topic. Everyone in the room waits with bated breath until the inevitable happens. The tension turns into outright conflict and no one is able to ignore it anymore.

The scene in the synagogue is a little bit like that. For 20 verses Mark's Gospel has piled symbol on top of symbol until the narrative can no longer bear the burden of it all. 

Here is the question moving forward: Is Jesus simply healing people who are sick or mentally disturbed? If so, then why did the authorities want to kill him?

These "miracle" stories are about much more than meets the eye.  The implication of Jesus' actions carry meaning far beyond the simple act of exorcism or healing. 

God, gives us eyes that see and ears that hear what you are doing in the world through Jesus the Messiah. Give us courage to follow. Amen.

For my generation, draft cards are the stuff of myths. I am sure they existed, but I have never seen one, except maybe in a museum. But in this country's not-too-distant past, draft cards were an important social marker. It meant the government had deemed you a worthy warrior. In the heat of the Vietnam War, some Christians decided that they would not be named "warrior" by the State, and burned their draft cards as a symbolic act. The burning card became their initiation into another social order, one marked by nonviolent dissent.

I have been reading a commentary on Mark by Ched Myers, and in it he sees Jesus' baptism a "renunciation of the old order." It cut against the regulated systems of redemption put into place by the religious leaders of the day. Being baptized in the Jordan by the wild-man John was against standard protocol. Myers says that Jesus' baptism is similar to the draft card burnings duringVietnam, which inducted people into the antiwar movement. He justifies this reading with what happens in Mark 1:12-13. Immediately after Jesus' baptism, he collides with the ruler of the world-order, Satan. His baptism somehow marks him for apocalyptic conflict.

I am not sure how to process this perspective, but I am captivated by it. Often baptism seems like such a quaint and safe activity. On the surface, it does not appear to cost much for those in a tolerant society like America. The comparison to draft card burning teases out the implications of an inducting rite that removes people from on order into another.

For the 16th century Anabaptists, no analogy would be needed. They thought that the Church had become so intertwined with the State that the only way out was to be re-baptized (which is where they get their name). This willful refusal to participate in the State's legitimating religious rites made them a targe for persecution. The Powers of their day would not tolerate dissent from their social order, so they killed them. 

All of this reminds me of just how dangerous it can be to follow in this Jesus' steps.

This week is marked "joy" on the advent calendar. Joy is such a weird concept, so hard to define.

Is joy the feeling you get when everything is in its right place, nobody is sick, and the bank account is full? Is joy circumstantial?  Where is the hinge on which joy swings?

This Sunday we will look at Isaiah 35, a joyous passage in the middle of turmoil. The preceding 34 chapters have been full of war and rumors of war, of unholy alliances with whoever happens to have the biggest army and sexiest gods, of stumbling and falling left and right. After chapter 35 is exile. Homelessness. Temple destroyed. All of the strong and young carted off to another land with another god. A wilderness between home and Babylon. So if Isaiah 35 is concerned with joy, it has to be a joy that recognizes the reality of wars and homelessness. 

Isaiah's joy is "joy in the midst of…"

This type of joy seems appropriate in the advent season. After all, with all of the holiday frolicking, it is easy to pretend that the heart does not break a million times a day. Spending time with family is often a reminder that those who have died are no longer at the table this season. Or being forced to share a table with people you tried so hard to escape is often an exercise in survival. For all of the good cheer, there is a hidden despair lurking. Yet we are supposed to be a joyful people.

Our joy cannot be the shallow happiness of the world, numb to the sadness that is always around the corner.

Our joy has to recognize that Babylon is not home, even when its bread and circus feel so good.

Our joy has to pass through the cross to the empty tomb. There is no way around it.

Our path is straight into the darkness with a flicker of light upon our tongue, whispering about another kind of world bursting forth in the midst of this sad one. 

Our hope is wrapped in rags and stuffed in a dusty manger.

This Friday we will begin a season of Advent waiting by meditating on Luke 1:5-25. This passage is the first bit of narrative in Luke’s Gospel. It colors the rest of what is to follow. As we ready our heart and lives for the coming of the Messiah, let’s remember that this Good News threatens the competing stories all around us.

By the time most of you all read this post, Black Friday will be upon us. No one needs reminding what this day is all about, but some things are worth repeating. This is the day when retailers stoke in us an anxiety that can only be satiated by shopping before the sun comes up. This is the day when rational people are driven to trample fellow brothers and sisters for a half-price-whatever. Before the Church can get a word in, this is the way the season is welcomed into our lives. It is a competing narrative.

On Sunday we will do something radical. We will patiently wait for God. We will inhabit a story about an old barren Jewish couple, and how God begins to turn the world upside-down.

This is a dangerous story. It was threatening to the Powers at the turn of the century. Think about King Herod killing all those babies to get to this child-king, this Jewish Messiah. The Gospel writers are treasonous with their words about peace on earth through this little baby, because peace was already on earth. Caesar had brought peace through victory, peace through the sword, peace through war. Pax Romana.

This story is still dangerous today. It still disrupts our lives, or does it?

Can we truly say that we offer any disruption to this season? What happens when the Church becomes captive to sentimentality, unable to embrace the implications of Mary and Joseph’s boy? We argue over the spelling of Christmas, the fear of the term “holiday tree,” or who gets to play the Virgin Mary in this year’s Live Nativity. We celebrate exactly like everyone else, only we say we do it for God. We claim to know the reason for the season. What happens when our voice joins the rest of the noise?

The anxiety, the busyness, the buying?

What happens when we fall silent?