Archives for September 2018

Butts in seats. The Lord may require you to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with him, but the church requires your butt in a seat. Some of my time is spent inviting people, likely via text, to participate in something that requires them to show up. In our world today, that is unique. Most of what the world asks of us is to like, swipe, or view. The best organizations have figured out how to avoid the expectation of getting people to actually show up. The church isn’t amongst these. Well, I suppose some churches have taken on the task that our culture has put before us. Some churches have chosen to compete with the trends of our time. God bless their efforts.

This dynamic isn’t new. The church has always had to take an inventory of the tides and figure out how they will chose to navigate the waters. Paul had to address meat sacrificed to idols. The Reformers had to figure out the separation of church and state. We have our own issues to address. Do we try to get people to show up or do we avoid the ask all together?

Someone told me the church can receive, reject, or redeem what culture has to offer. I think there are a lot of benefits to receiving the cultural trend of ministering to people with technology; phones, video games, etc. In fact, I think some people who have social anxieties or particular diagnoses benefit from ministers who have been creative enough to incarnate virtual spaces. I think others have simply rejected the cultural trends. I understand the benefit of avoiding competition with devices that welcome our dwindling attention spans by the second. Some have chosen to attempt the route of redemption. All of the responses have the potential to be faithful for any given community in any given place.

However we choose to engage culture, we must remember that the Christian faith requires all of us, individually and communally. The communion table welcomes all of Jesus. Paul names every christian as a part of the body. Our butts matter, so does Jesus’ for that matter. How have you shown up in your faith lately? If you are a person of faith, how do you know right now?

Blessings,

Josh

I have been thinking a lot lately about… Seamus Heaney. Some of you may know him? A Nobel-Prize winning poet hailing from Northern Ireland, Heaney was one of the most prolific and lauded poets of the 20^th Century. I vividly remember studying his poetry for the first time as an undergrad at Sewanee and feeling captivated by his masterful use of gritty, gripping language.

Why has he been on my mind lately? Well, not only was the fifth anniversary of his passing last week, but I have also spent the past month immersed in his revolutionary translation of the ancient epic, Beowulf, with a most eager 11th grade student whom I tutor each Wednesday.

Do you know the feeling when you are in the midst of engaging in something that feels bigger and far more powerful than yourself? Perhaps it’s when you are playing an instrument or running the trails or delivering a presentation at work or watching your child succeed for the first time in a new skill you taught her. When I teach literature, especially the literature of a beloved author, I feel naturally swept up in a cloud of exhilaration, as if I am a mere element of something far greater than any one of the gathered parts. I believe this feeling must be an example of God’s graciousness. When we pursue and give life to our inborn interests and talents, this must be an act of gratitude to God’s goodness for the unique gifts He bestows upon each of us.

I confess, Seamus Heaney also holds a particular place in my heart because I had the distinct honor of meeting him after sitting for hours on the edge of my seat in an old barn outside Middlebury, VT, where he delivered a lecture to my graduate school class. At one point in this lecture, he recited (off the cuff and in his thick, gravely Irish accent) one of his most famous poems entitled “Digging.”* If there is something more beautiful in this world than listening to someone bare his soul or share his deepest truths to others, then I cannot name it. So goes my treasured memory of hearing Heaney recite his poem. The truth of one’s deepest being rings differently in the ears and tugs more fervently at the heart. In that cramped, over-heated Vermont barn on that long past summer night, I was witnessing an old master lost in the cloud of his God-given art. And I will remember it always.

As I have spent my past several Wednesdays teaching Heaney’s work and delighting in my student’s budding passion for his words, I am reminded of Apostle Peter’s encouraging words from 1 Peter 4:10: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

What gifts will you use to lift up your family or friend or community today? Is it your gift of empathy? Of administration? Of healing? Of humor? Of leadership? Of parenting? How will you intentionally connect today to those skills God has embedded inside you, so that you may push yourself and others closer to living out the glory of God’s kingdom? May we each work toward moments of mutual transcendence, when God’s gifts and our willingness to be conduits of His grace allow us to be swept up and bonded together as something bigger, far better than the summation of our individual parts.

*There is no video of Heaney spontaneously reciting “Digging” on the night I describe in 2005 at the Bread Loaf School of English, but for reference, here is a clip from Villanova University in 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNRkPU1LSUg