Christmas Meditation

Here is a Christmas Meditation by one of my favorite preachers, Will Willimon. He has a blog entitled "A Peculiar Prophet".

Christmas Meditation
Throughout the churches of North Alabama United Methodism, we are preparing to celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation. The proclamation that God became flesh and moved in with us (John 1) is one of the most distinctive affirmations of the Christian faith, perhaps the most distinctive. Comparison with other accounts of who God is and what God does is instructive.

In Islam, at least from my amateurish reading of the Koran, there is this constant distancing of God apparently as a means of honoring God. The view of God that emerges in the Koran is noble and exalted, but God is clearly at some remove from the world. God is as absolute, as majestic as God can get. You would have to know the Christmas story to know why that’s a problem.

Christians don’t know that God is sovereign, noble, exalted, absolute, high and lifted up. We know that God is in the world, with us, for us, Immanuel. Jesus is a prophet, but prophets, even the most truthful and courageous of them, cannot save. When we see God next to us, stooped toward us, in the muck and mire with us in order to have us, that’s what we call sovereign, noble, and exalted.

A story: A man died. He had not lived the most worthy of lives, to tell the truth. In fact, he was somewhat of a scoundrel. He therefore found himself in Hell, after his departure from this life.

His friends, concerned about his sad, though well-deserved fate, went down to Hell, and moved by the man’s misery, rattled those iron gates, calling out to whomever might be listening, “Let him out! Let him out!"

Alas, their entreaties accomplished nothing. The great iron doors remained locked shut.

Distinguished dignitaries were summoned, powerful people, academics, intellectuals, prominent personalities. All of them stood at the gates and put forth various reasons why the man should be let out of his place of lonely torment. Some said that due process had not been followed in the man’s eternal sentence. Others appealed to Satan’s sense of fairplay and compassion.

The great iron gates refused to move.

In desperation, the man’s pastor was summoned. The pastor came down to the gates of hell, fully vested as if he were to lead a Sunday service.“Let him out! He was not such a bad chap after all. Once he contributed to the church building fund and twice he served meals at a soup kitchen for the homeless. Let him out!”

Still, the gates of Hell stood fast.

Then, after all the friends and well wishers finally departed in dejection, the man’s aged mother appeared at the gates of Hell. She stood there, stooped and weak, only able to whisper softly, in maternal love, “Let me in.

And immediately the great gates of Hell swung open and the condemned man was free.

Something akin to that great miracle happened for us on a starry night at Bethlehem.

William H. Willimon

A Theology of MySpace

In a previous post, I brought up the issue of "land" and how the need to feel rooted and to have a place to belong is a deep human longing. One of the ways this need to have a place manifests itself is in the MySpace phenomenon. Though MySpace is not actually land or a place, it is virtual land or virtual place. It provides people with a place in which they can feel "at home". Some people can be described as "living" in MySpace. This is why decorating one's MySpace is important. I also think that MySpace provides a forum for self-assertion. It allows us to say "This is me - deal with it!". We constantly feel like we have to cover-up what we are feeling and who we are, and MySpace offers us a safer way to expose ourselves so that we need not forever hide.

I'm not interested in making judgments as to whether MySpace is good or bad, but I do want us to start understanding why MySpace is so important to so many people.

So my basic question is: What does MySpace provide for us?

I challenge you to think deeply about this issue and not just tell me whether it's "sweet" or it "sucks", etc. I look forward to your comments.

Hauerwas on the Sacrifices of War

Here is a lecture given by Stanley Hauerwas concerning war. I've listened to it over three times now and every time I listen to it I hear something profound I hadn't heard before. For those of you who have never heard Hauerwas lecture (which is probably all of you except Cory & Bob), let me warn you that you have to listen carefully and will probably have to continually back up and listen to certain sentences again.

This lecture is incredibly profound, even if you don't agree with his pacifism. His explanation of how war functions in our society and how we would feel less complete without war is what I found the most enlightening. The biggest sacrifice we make in war is not our unwillingness to die, but rather our general unwillingness to kill. Sacrificing our normal unwillingness to kill is what war calls of soldiers - and this is a sacrifice that often significantly distorts the one who has to make it.

This lecture is worth listening to - even though you may want to shut it off after the first couple of minutes. And once again, I'm not sharing this to convert you to pacifism, but rather to help us think more deeply about war - and to remind us how war is inescapably tragic.

Here's the link: Hauerwas lecture