Again-and-Again-and-Again (Preached Version)

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."

In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"

Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." John 3:1-8

We are a storytelling people and many of the stories we tell are tales of origin. We are interested in our past--which means not just what we've experienced, but what those before us experienced. We tell these tales of personal and corporate past so we can better understand our current selves, an understanding based in weaving together the tales of the past with stories of future possibilities. Is it any wonder we are obsessed with knowing where people are from or where they are going? The tales of past are the roots of our identification--who we are--while the stories of possibility are how we want to identify ourselves and others.

Creation and "Beginninglessnes"

Let's talk about our corporate religious origins, so we can better understand our place today, and where we want to go from here.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. Genesis 1:1-5

Let me be honest with you. I have a hard time conceiving of "the beginning." I can handle thinking about God being involved in starting what we know as existence. But what happened before then? Who created God? Who created what created God? Who created what created that which created God? I would ask more questions if I were grammatically advanced enough to construct more sentences like that.

I was watching Escape from the Planet of the Apes recently and I heard a story I find very apropos. A man shows a painting of a landscape.

He says the painter noticed something missing in his painting, though: the artist painting the picture. So the artist painted another picture of the landscape that included the artist painting the landscape. But the artist again noticed something missing, and it was still the artist painting the artist painting the landscape. So he painted a third picture ...

and a fourth picture ...

and so on going to infinity.

When I think about the beginning in Genesis, I think about this infinite regression, about God having to constantly paint pictures in which God is painting the picture. And if God is always re-painting, has God ever been not painting? Is God still painting?

Somebody once asked St. Augustine a similar question: "What was God doing before God created time?" Augustine deigned God was preparing hells for people who ask such silly questions. Funny answer, but not helpful. God must have been doing something before "the beginning" in question. God must have been creating things other than the heavens and earth--you know, preparing things for future creations. Like, before God could speak something into creation, God had to create language and give language the ability to create things. And after creating language, God have to give words meanings.

In effect, before God could say:

God had to say, "let the word "let" mean "to allow." Of course, God wouldn't be speaking English and maybe not even Hebrew. Regardless, even before that sentence, God had to step back and would need to define every word used in that definition. And before that ...

well, you get the point: infinite regression, Planet of the Apes, a beginning before the beginning. We keep having to step back and see another picture of God drawing the picture.

In trying to figure out where something like language actually began, you'll turn up about as much as you will trying to delineate North Carolina geography. At our East, we have the flat coast. Further towards the middle, we find the piedmont, and the mountains are in the west. The mountains are distinct from our coast, but you couldn't draw a line where one started and the other ended.

Likewise language doesn't exactly have a beginning; it was not created--whatever that implies. And beginninglessness makes it difficult for us to understand our past and our origins, because we're used to everything having a beginning.

And if language doesn't have a beginning and God used language to create, then we don't have a beginning either, which makes sense in its nonsensicalness. Let me explain.

I was born, but birth wasn't my beginning. Before birth, I developed in the womb. Before development I was conceived. Before conception in the body, I was conceived of in my mother's mind, who told me she always wanted two kids (me being her second). And before she could even conceive of me, all kinds of environmental, psychological, and relational influences interacted with the woman who is now my mother, just like it did with my father. And they had to be born and conceived, too. I am not just a product of my time and my parents and their time; I am also a product of my parents' parents and their time, and so on and so forth (or, so back) until we reach the origins of humanity and then the origins of the earth and then we're talking about the beginning and language and the beginning before the beginning. So, although each of us was born, we have no starting point other than God--our Alpha and Omega (Rev. 21:6).

The Blessing of Babel

To better understand the significance of beginninglessness for our present, let's look at the story of language's development according to Genesis.

Even without a proper starting point, the story continues today--it has a past, present, and future. As the story goes, Yahweh once saw a bunch of people all speaking one language. They were building a tower in order to make a name for themselves. They wanted to be unified, and God said they could do anything, since they all spoke the same language.

I can't help but wonder if Yahweh was a little sarcastic when expressing worry about those people and their tower. Could they really do anything just because they could speak the same language? I've never known language to be perfect. I speak the same language as a lot of people, but I still misunderstand them often. Any of you in any sort of relationship know exactly what I'm talking about, how one word or sentence can mean something completely different to the person who hears you. Even before language had been officially "confused," it was still confusing.

On the one hand, we definitely communicate more effectively with people who speak the same language we do. On the other hand, I still hear a hint of sarcasm when Yahweh talks about descending to the people, or rather, condescending to them.

In Genesis 11:7, God says, "come, let us go down, and confuse their
language, so they will not understand one another's speech." And after that condescension, Yahweh makes language something new: "Let people use different words to mean the same thing and similar words to mean different things," which is basically how language worked anyways, but Yahweh magnified the confusion by creating "new" languages.

If you've been listening, you'll notice I just said Yahweh created languages, even though, earlier, I said language could not be created. I could distinguish between a language and language in general, which would be a fine distinction. But here's what really matters: God took what the people were speaking--(uncreated) language--and made it new, in effect, the story says God created or "recreated" language at Babel.

And this whole "new language thing,"not such a bad idea, actually. Yahweh blessed humanity at Babel. Just think of all the positive consequences of heaven condescending to the tower: new literature, poetry and philosophy; the beauty and wonder of translation; and a new pursuit of community amidst differences.

But even with all these new blessings, I bet it was easy to scorn the blessing of Babel. I can imagine it would be easy for these post-Babel persons to think about how nice it was in the good ol' days when everyone spoke the same language, even though we know they weren't always understood. New things come with pros and cons. It's often easiest to think of the pros when you're reflecting on the past and the cons when you're in the middle of experiencing.

As with language's beginninglessness, so with us. When we are reborn, we face wonderful grace and new troubles. Amidst the new troubles, it is hard not to look back and think how nice it used to be, despite the current grace.

No Turning Back

With some understanding of beginninglessness and rebirth, let me tell another story from our religious past so we can think more about handling the newness of rebirth, cutting the metaphorical umbilical cord.

As the story goes, Lot is told to take his family and flee from a horrible place before it is destroyed. Just so happens that horrible place was their home, Sodom. Horrible or not, it was their home. How can you just up and flee your home? They didn't have time to pack, get a U-haul, and say goodbye to people; they didn't move, they fled. Sure, most of the people in town just did some pretty horrible things, but I'm sure there were other things to make the sweetness of leaving a little bitter. You know, the dog loved the backyard; there was a pretty good library; Lot's job paid pretty well and had nice benefits.

But Lot and his family were asked to leave immediately without looking back. To leave their home and all their possessions. To start afresh somewhere new, with no real direction, just a command to flee and start over, somehow. A fresh start. A rebirth.

Lot's wife looked back and then became a pillar of salt.

Lot pled to remain near his home, so he wouldn't have to go too far away. His request was granted and he settled his remaining, non-mineral family members in a nearby, small town.

We can't completely relate to Lot's story. We've never been in his or his family's shoes, thank God. But, I've had a very literal call to leave home and start new somewhere else. I've had that one a few times, actually, and I am already interacting with that call concerning the next few years of my life. When negotiating that first call, I learned to understand Lot's desire not to go far. My request wasn't granted, though, and I ended up on the coast of Florida. The weather certainly made the leaving a little bit better. After that move and again after my move to Boiling Springs, I quickly understood Lot's wife. I still look back and wonder what could have been had I gone to college in Maine or if I became a lobster-fisherman like my dad.

In a sense, part of my story is the story of Lot and his wife. Because of my experience, I can understand some reluctance when asked to leave, some not wanting to go so far away, some looking back. I'm sure some of you can relate to Lot's family similarly, or perhaps in a different way if you moved around a lot as a child.

But even if you've never gone far from home, you can still relate to Lot's family. You could be like my dad, who has always lived in Friendship, ME--over 50 years in the same small town. God doesn't ask all of us to leave home in the same way, but eventually we are asked to leave. Eventually, we become different than we used to be, leaving a metaphorical home. For my dad, he turned from a life of anger and alcohol--a life he learned in part from his father and the town that reared him--he turned from that life to the Christ he saw and loved in my mother.

Lot's story is my dad's story. It is my story. It is your story. It is our story. We are all asked to leave home somehow. To be recreated. Reborn. Made new.

No turning back.

All things considered, I think Lot's wife made a better decision than Lot. Lot apparently didn't look back. Lot said he wanted to go little Zoar, because he was old and Zoar was close and small. I figure he wanted to go to a small place for reasons other than proximity. I bet he figured it wouldn't have the problems big cities like Sodom and Gomorah would have. Small towns don't have any problems, right?

In a small town, Lot would have a great opportunity to be the same person he was in Sodom, just in a different place. A new setting doesn't mean a new person. A new setting doesn't guarantee a new beginning. Lot's new groove could soon turn into the same ol' groove. Lot would take new wine and put it into an old wineskin. He would attempt rebirth the way Nicodemus understood it: by climbing back into his mother's womb.

Given the choice between Lot and Lot's unfortunately anonymous wife, I'll choose the pillar of salt. We can read Lot's wife in light of other stories, stories of rebirth and stories that ask us to be the salt of the earth. Let's learn from Lot's wife not to look back, but, friends, to believe the Good News: in Jesus Christ we are forgiven. She looked back and her old self died. Her newness became salt. And when our old selves die we are resurrected. We continue as the salt of the earth--born again to preserve this life in the face of death and adversity, to preserve this life for all, to become God's tools for assuaging the groaning of this earth and for making all things new--to witness and be involved in the transformation from this life to the next.

Making All Things New

Now we can start weaving the tales of our past with stories of our future possibilities--where oldness meets newness in the present.

In Revelation, we read: "Behold, I am making all things new" (21:5). That proclamation is a persistent prophecy. It is true even after it has been fulfilled. God isn't going to make everything new and then stop. So, after you've been born again, you are still a part of all things and, hence, you will be made new again.

And again.

And again.

After we receive this newness, after being "recreated," being born again--whatever you want to call it--it will happen again. We can't rightly flee damnation by living in Zoar. Our newness does not mesh with our oldness. We can't put the new wine into the old wineskin. We can't get find a way back in the womb.

We can't orchestrate our own new beginnings, because we can only comprehend our beginning at birth. God understands infinite regression, and can continually give us new beginnings. And God does just that: makes us new again-and-again-and-again.

Since this is true for all of us, we learn something great from our corporate origin. It is a truth I love to express in the words of a fabulous group of four young men: "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." Similar to the mysterious unity of the trinity, we are all one (cf. John 17:22-23)--whether we like it or not. And friends, believe you me, we do not like to recognize our unity, because it means we are Nazis and Jews, the doers and receivers of genocide, the rich and poor, the prostitute, the drug dealer, the homosexual, the straight, the raped child who hasn't eaten for weeks, and the pedophile grown fat from meat and wine. We are the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. And we are also the people who refuse food, drink, friendship, clothes, comfort, and support to those who need it (cf. Matthew 25). And with this knowledge, we discover that as long as one human suffers, we all suffer. We share pain, whether we completely feel and realize it or not.

Fortunately, we have Yahweh who works with us to eliminate this suffering by making new things around us and in us. We all become new in different ways and to different degrees. Sometimes God works little things in us and sometimes we are made completely and utterly new.

In becoming new, we leave our idols and never turn back to them. We put everything on the altar: mother, father, brother, sister, child, cousin, job, spouse, safety, romance, friendship, church, ministry, home, comfort--everything. If any go to follow Jesus, but they don't hate their father and mother, and they don't hate their spouse and children, and they don't hate their brothers and sisters, and they don't hate providing for their children, and they don't hate taking the kids to soccer practice, and they don't hate Sunday-morning services and Wednesday-night suppers, and, yea, they don't hate their own lives, then they can neither be a disciple of Christ, nor a child of God (cf. Luke 14:26).

Sometimes we only need a willingness. Other times the knife must down (cf. Genesis 22)

I recommend really thinking about this sort of sacrificial newness. Seriously. We all might benefit from sitting down to talk with just God, or perhaps God and a small, intimate community. Maybe in your Sunday school class. Maybe with your family. Maybe with your family and another family. Maybe over coffee with a close friend or two. I bet we could all use some deep, creative reflection that immediately actualizes itself in action. And as we reflect and act, God will make us new, so new that we will barely recognize our past self when we look back, die to self, and turn into a pillar of salt for the earth. Just think, in a few weeks, we'll have to start re-introducing ourselves to people in church, because we'll be unrecognizable and really, really salty.

Ah, but newness is painful, because it includes death. So friends, believe the bad news: in Jesus Christ, life won't be easy. But compared to staying the same, the new yoke of Christ is easy. The burden of death and rebirth is lighter than the burden of life in spite of death. It is better for the grave, water, and the spirit to be the womb for your new birth, because the other option is, well ... you know.

Weaving Tales of the Past with Stories of the Future

Sometimes we camp out in little towns after we are made new. Maybe we camp there because we can't handle the newness and we pretend to start afresh. Maybe we camp there because we want the comfort and protection of the womb. Maybe we camp there not because we aren't looking back, but because we never actually looked fully forward, like Lot. We take our newness, but hide it in old wineskins

And sometimes we look back. Maybe we look back longingly, like when I think about Maine. This sort of looking back is understandable, but it has never been beneficial for me.

And when we're near our best, maybe we look back because what we were somehow influences what we are and what we will become. At some point, we must look back to accept our past, learn from it, and share the story. We have holy roots in the past and we cannot sacrifice them, however painful they might be.

Benediction

Today, friends, Easter is behind us and we remember being crucified and resurrected with Christ. Let us now look forward to Pentecost, ready for tongues of fire to descend upon us. Ready to leave here filled with the Spirit and made new.

Again-and-again-and-again.

Again-and-again-and-again

Again-and-again-and-again

Creation and "Beginninglessnes"

How many of you have always lived in the same state? What about the same county? How about same town? Same house? What about people who moved from just one or two states over? From further away? Anyone move from a different country? How many people have "foreign" ancestors?

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live" (Didion) and many of those stories are tales of origin. We are interested in our past--which means not just what we experienced, but what those before us experienced. We weave these tales of personal and corporate past together with stories of possibility and future. Is it any wonder we are obsessed with knowing where people are from or where they are going? The tales of past are the roots of our identification--who we are--while the stories of possibility are how we want to identify ourselves and others--the wings that carry us forward.

Let's start with corporate origins, specifically our tales of Judeo-Christian origins. If we better understand our past, I think we can better understand our present, and where we want to go in the future.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. (Genesis 1:1-5)

Can I be honest with you? Listen, I have a hard time conceiving of "in the beginning." I can handle thinking about God being involved in starting existence. But, what happened before then? What about the Big Bang? Who God created? Who created what created God? What was before the Big Bang?

I recently watched Return to the Planet of the Apes. I don't completely understand how this conversation fit in the movie, but I think it will fit well here. A man shows a painting of a landscape. He says that the painter noticed something missing in his painting, viz., the artist painting the picture. So the artist painted another picture of the landscape that included the artist painting the landscape. But the artist again noticed something missing: it was still the artist painting the artist painting the landscape. So he painted a third picture and a fourth picture and so on going to infinity.

When I think about the beginning in Genesis, I think about infinite regress, about God having to constantly paint pictures in which God is painting the picture. And if God is always re-painting, has God ever been not painting? How could God relax on the seventh day? Is God still painting?

Somebody once asked St. Augustine, "what was God doing before this 'beginning'?" Augustine figured God was preparing hells for people who ask such questions. I don't buy Augustine's answer. I figure God must have been doing things before the beginning--and I think we're specifically talking about the beginning of the human story.

Before the beginning, God must have been doing other things, creating things other than the heavens and earth--you know, preparing things for future creations. Before God could speak something into creation, God had to create the ability to speak and the concept of speech. Before God could create effective speech, God had to create the ability to receive and give communication. Before communication, something needed to be communicated, which God had to create. In creating language, God had to create words and meaning. God had to give language the ability to create things. God had to keep stepping back and paint the Godself into the picture.

In effect, before God could say, "let there be light," God had to say, "let the word or words I am about to speak in some language mean "let there be." But before that sentence, God had to step back and would need to define every word used in that definition. And before that ... well, you get the point: infinite regression. Language doesn't so much have a beginning, which is completely illogical, because everything has to start. Yet, beginninglessness is also the only logical conclusion as searching for a beginning would cause us to regress to infinity. Language doesn't exactly start; it was not created and has no beginning--whatever that implies. And this beginninglessness, this infinite regression makes it hard for us to understand our past and our origins, because we can't find a concrete beginning.

The Blessing of Babel

But even without a proper starting point, the story "begins" in Genesis and continues today. Take language for example, as the story goes, Yahweh once saw a bunch of people all speaking one language. They were building a tower in order to make a name for themselves. They wanted to be unified and they could work together easily, since they spoke the same language. And the tower would be only the beginning.

I can't help but wonder if Yahweh was a little sarcastic when expressing worry about those people. Could they really do anything just because they could speak the same language? I've never known language to be perfect. I speak the same language as a lot of people I misunderstand. Any of you in any sort of relationship know exactly what I'm talking about, how one word or sentence can mean something completely different to the person who hears you. We all speak the "same" language, we still haven't built a tower to heaven, because we have too many communication problems. Still I certainly understand other English speakers better than I understand people who speak, say, French, Portuguese, or Mandarin.

But still, I hear a hint of sarcasm when Yahweh doesn't just descend to the people and their tower, but condescends to them, saying, "come, let us go down, and confuse their language, so they will not understand one another's speech." I can't help but chuckle, because language doesn't need any help to be confusing. Their language might not have been officially "confused," but communication was already confusing.

After the condescension, Yahweh makes language something new: "Let people use different words to mean the same thing and similar words to mean different things," which is basically how language works anyways, but Yahweh magnified the confusion by creating "new" languages.

If you've been listening, you'll notice I just said Yahweh created languages, even though, earlier, I said language could not be created. I could distinguish between a language and language in general, which would be a fine distinction. But here's what really matters: God took what the people were speaking--(uncreated) language--and made it new.

And ultimately, God gave the people what they wanted. They got a name for themselves: Babel, a word that sounds sort of like the Hebrew word for "confusion"; but it also looks like the words "father" and "god" stuck together. Although we know the tower as a time of confusion, the name seems to remember the people in their relationship to their Father-God. Not a bad way to be remembered, eh?

Sounds like maybe they got a little more than just a name, too, which doesn't surprise me. This whole different languages thing? Not such a bad thing. The language you speak shapes your whole life. You've probably heard Greek has three different words we translate as "love." For the Greeks, there was no such thing as love; there was agape, philia, and eros. We often miss the distinction and are afraid to tell people we love them--especially guys. But we also have something on the Greeks, because we realize the great similarities between agape, philia, and eros, because we take all those ideas and just call them love. Without translation, perhaps we would always miss what the Greeks knew. How bland would our interpretation of the Bible be if we couldn't think about how different love can be and how similar love can be in spite of the differences?

Truly, Yahweh blessed humanity at Babel. No longer were they working on silly towers to reach heaven. Instead, they gained a little bit of heaven on earth as they learned more about life by learning from each other, beginning with language diversity, which symbolized greater, personal diversity. Their tower never reached heaven, but heaven came down to their tower when Yahweh condescended. And God graced humanity with a little bit of the kingdom: a rebirth of language, a new display of differences, and a new pursuit of community amidst differences.

Amidst the newness, I bet it was easy to scorn the blessing of Babel. I can imagine it would be easy for these post-Babel persons to think about how nice it was in the good ol' days when everyone spoke the same language, even though we know they weren't always understood. New things come with pros and cons. It is hard not to look back and think how nice it used to be when we face the new adversities that necessarily accompany grace.

No Turning Back

As another story goes, Yahweh tells Lot and his family to flee a horrible before it is destroyed. Just so happens that horrible place was their home, Sodom. Horrible or not, it was their home. How can you just up and flee your home? They didn't have time to pack, get a U-haul and say goodbye to people. They didn't move, they fled. Sure, most of the people in town just did some pretty horrible things, but I'm sure there were other things to make the leaving a little bitter. You know, the dog loved the backyard; there was a pretty good library; your job paid pretty well and had nice benefits. How can you run away without some sense of loss, some feeling of regret--without hesitating or looking back?

But Lot and his family were asked to run sans looking back. To leave their home and all their possessions. To start afresh, somewhere new, with no real direction, just a command to flee and start over, somehow. A fresh start. A rebirth. A time--nay, an opportunity to recreate themselves.

Lot's wife looked back and then became a pillar of salt.

Lot settled his remaining, non-mineral family in a nearby, small town.

I can't completely relate to Lot's wife's story, but I don't blame her in the least. I've never been in her shoes, thank God. But, I've had a very literal call to leave home and start new somewhere else. I've had that one a few times, actually, and expect to hear it again in a few years. I didn't flee like Lot, but leaving home is hard.

My mother lived in New England most of her life, except for a few important years in the Philippines, and my father has never lived outside of Friendship, ME. Most of my childhood friends had similar stories. We all lived in small towns and even when people left, they didn't go far, and they generally came back. Oh, sure, a troublemaker or crazy might go far away. But a bright, church-going, young man like myself? They didn't go far. When I picked up my call to move from the coast of Maine to the coast of Florida, I don't think everyone understood. A lot of them still don't understand. After my next move from South Florida to the piedmont of North Carolina, I think I've made one too many moves for people to even keep up with where I've gone. In a sense, part of my story is the story of Lot and his family. Because of my experience, I can understand some reluctance when asked to leave.

I'm sure some of you can relate to Lot's family similarly. But you can relate to Lot's family even if you're like my dad and have never moved outside of town. God doesn't ask all of us to leave home in the same way, but eventually we are asked to leave. Eventually, we become different than we used to be. My dad turned from a life of anger and alcohol--a life he learned in part from his father and the town that reared him--turned from that life to the Christ he saw and loved in my mother.

Lot's story is his story, too. It is your story--our story. We are all asked to leave home somehow. To be recreated. Reborn. Confused. Made new.

"No turning back. No turning back."

In the end, I think Lot's wife made a better decision than Lot. Lot apparently didn't look back. Instead he asked if a small town could be spared so Lot wouldn't have to go too far. He was old, after all. His request was granted and he settled in the small town of Zoar. He said he wanted to go there, because it was close, but I figure he wanted to go to a small place for other reasons, too. Probably because he figured it wouldn't have the problems big cities like Sodom and Gomorah would have. Small towns don't have any problems, right?

In a small town, Lot would have a great opportunity to be the same person he was, just in a different place. A new setting doesn't mean a new person. Lot's new groove could soon turn into the same ol' groove. Lot would take new wine and put it into an old wineskin. He would attempt rebirth by climbing back into his mother's womb. Ew.

Given the choice between Lot and Lot's unfortunately anonymous wife, I'll choose the pillar of salt. Granted, if we only had that story, I wouldn't pick the seasoning, but we have more stories. We have stories of rebirth and stories that ask us to be the salt of the earth. Let's learn from Lot's wife not to look back, but, friends, to believe the Good News: in Jesus Christ we are forgiven. She looked back and her old self died. Her newness became salt. And when our old selves die we are resurrected. We continue as the salt of the earth--born again to preserve this life in the face of death and adversity, to preserve this life for all, to become God's tools for assuaging the groaning of this earth and for making all things new--to witness and be involved in the transformation from this life to the next.

Making All Things New

In Revelation, we read: "Behold, I am making all things new" (21:5) That proclamation is a persistent prophecy. It is true even after everything has been made new. God isn't going to make everything new and then stop. So, after you've been born again, you are still a part of all things and, hence, you will be made new again.

And again.

And again.

Now we can start weaving the tales of our past with stories of our future possibilities--where oldness meets newness and where our roots cause our growth.

After we receive this newness, after being "recreated," after being born again--after whatever you want to call it, it will happen again. We can't rightly flee damnation by living in Zoar. Our newness does not mesh with our oldness. We can't put the new wine into the old wineskin. We can't get find a way back in the womb. (Ew.)

God always works creatively. Our God is a creator God. Not everything has a first creation, like language--and maybe nothing does--but God just keeps on making it new. We, like language, have no beginning and are continually recreated. At least, I have no beginning point. I was born, for sure, but I began before I was born. Before birth, I developed in the womb. Before development I was conceived. Before conception in the body, I was conceived of in my mother's mind, who told me she always wanted two kids (me being her second). And before she could even conceive of me, all kinds of environmental, psychological, and relational influences interacted with the beautiful woman who is now my mother. The same happened with the rugged man who is my father. And they had to be born and conceived, too. I am not just a product of my time or my parents' time; I am also a product of my parents' parents and their time, and so on and so forth (or, so back) toward infinite regression.

We could trace this line back to discussions of the origins of humanity, and then discussions about the origins of the earth. Eventually we would be at the beginning of today's sermon, talking about creation and language, where we would find out that language was never created. And I would correlate language with each of us. Although each of us were born, there is no starting point for us other than God--our Alpha and Omega (Rev. 21:6). And since God is eternal, our finite nature extends back towards infinity. God is our beginning: Yahweh who has always been working to create us. And God is our ending, too, which means we will never end, but rather be made new again-and-again-and-again.

With the same beginning and the same ending, we learn a great truth from our tales of origin, a truth I love to express in the words of a fabulous group of four young men: "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." Similar to the mysterious unity of the trinity, we are all one (cf. John 17:21)--whether we like it or not. And friends, believe you me, we do not like to recognize our unity, because it means we are Nazis and Jews, the doers and receivers of genocide, the rich and poor, the prostitute, the drug dealer, the queer, the straight, the raped child who hasn't eaten for weeks, and the pedophile grown fat from meat and wine. We are the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. And we are also the people who refuse food, drink, friendship, clothes, comfort, and support to those who need it. And with this knowledge, we discover that as long as one human suffers, we all suffer. We share pain, whether we completely feel and realize it or not.

Fortunately, we have Yahweh who works with us to eliminate this suffering by making new things around us and in us. Sometimes God works little things in us and sometimes we are made completely and utterly new. Sometimes we camp out in little towns after we are made new. Maybe we camp there because we can't handle the newness and we pretend to start afresh. Maybe we camp there because we want the comfort and protection of the womb. (Ew.) Maybe we camp there not because we aren't looking back, but because we never actually looked fully forward, like Lot. We take our newness, but hide it.

And sometimes we look back. Maybe we look back longingly, wanting what we had left like the Hebrews who, amidst their freedom, wanted to become slaves again in Egypt. This sort of looking back is understandable, but not beneficial.

And when we're near our best, maybe we look back because what we were somehow influences what we are and what we will become. At some point, we must look back to accept our past, learn from it, and share the story. We have holy roots in the past and we cannot sacrifice them, however painful they might be.

Weaving Tales of the Past with Stories of the Future

As the story goes, God asked Abram and Sara to leave their home in Ur and go somewhere else--away from their family and from everything they knew (nobody said anything about looking back in this story). Then God made some promises to Abram and changed his and his wife's names. Specifically, Yahweh promised Abraham and Sarah a son, even though one or both of them were infertile. After their first son, they were told their promised son was not their beloved Ishmael. And even though they were as old as dirt, Sarah gave birth to Isaac. I cannot imagine how painful that blessing must have been.

God had a habit of creating painful newness with those two. One example specifically is quite the troublesome Bible passage: "Oh, God said to Abraham, "kill me a son. / Abe says, 'man, you must be puttin' me on," / God say, 'no.' Abe say, 'what?'" [-- The word of folk rock. Thanks be to Dylan. --] With ol' Abe, I say "what?" too. I don't know what this story meant for Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. I imagine it harmed Isaac's relationship with his parents, Sarah probably made Abraham sleep on the couch for a long time, and Abraham, well, he'll always look like a knight of faith to me, even amidst his insanity.

Regardless of what the story meant for them, it means something else for us, based on its inclusion in the narrative of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. The story asks us to leave other gods and follow Yahweh. Although Yahweh commanded child sacrifice in this story, God also prevented it. This story is key for us to realize God is wholly different than any other god. In this story, we are asked to leave other gods and understandings of God in order to follow Yahweh. I imagine following, interacting with, and worshipping a new god is quite the instance of rebirth.

We all become new in different ways, but I think we could all use the sort of rebirth Abraham had (God forbid it ever happens in the way ol' Abe experienced it). We all worship false gods and do service to our own, unquestioned ideas of what is right, moral, and good. Abraham not only left the gods of his people in Ur, but also, in Genesis 22, Abraham stops serving some of his own understandings of God, for good or ill.

Let's learn from Abraham to put everything on the line, to leave our idols and never turn back to them, to put everything on the altar: mother, father, brother, sister, child, cousin, job, spouse, safety, romance, friendship, church, ministry, home, comfort--everything. If any go to follow Jesus, but they don't hate their father and mother, and they don't hate their spouse and children, and they don't hate their brothers and sisters, and they don't hate providing for their children, and they don't hate taking the kids to soccer practice, and they don't hate Sunday-morning services and Wednesday-night suppers, and, yea, they don't hate their own lives, then they cannot be a disciple of Christ, they cannot be a Christian, they cannot be a child of God. And they will never become new.

Sometimes we only need a willingness. Other times the knife will come down.

I recommend really thinking about this sort of sacrificial newness. Seriously. We all might benefit from sitting down to talk with just God, or perhaps God and a small, intimate community. Maybe in your Sunday school class. Maybe with your family. Maybe with your family and another family. Maybe over coffee with a close friend or two. I bet we could all use some deep, creative reflection that immediately actualizes itself in action. And as we reflect and act, God will make us new, so new that we will barely recognize our past self when we look back, die to self, and turn into a pillar of salt for the earth. Just think, in a few weeks, we'll have to start re-introducing ourselves to people in church, because we'll be unrecognizable and really, really salty.

Ah, but newness is painful, because it includes death. So friends, believe the bad news: in Jesus Christ, life won't be easy. But compared to staying the same, the new yoke of Christ is easy. The burden of death and rebirth is lighter than the burden of life in spite of death. It is better for the grave, water, and the spirit to be the womb for your new birth, because the other option is, well ... ew.

Traveling Backwards and Making Connections

I'm positive it was hard for Abraham to bind Isaac, put him on the altar, and raise the knife in the air. But Abraham and Sarah could only have avoided that experience had he stayed in Ur and ignored the call of Yahweh. And life in Ur would have been worse than life with Yahweh, even though it included a pregnancy when pregnancy shouldn't happen and the binding of your son for sacrifice.

I'm positive it was hard for people to communicate after their tongues were confused. They couldn't work together, because they misunderstood each other more than they had before. But they eventually developed philosophy and poetry in these languages. They eventually translated. Life with a tower that reached to heaven would have yielded quite the angst when the people never found Yahweh in the clouds, and the name they made for themselves would not have been a favorable one. Life with Yahweh meant the beauty of translation, the awareness of miscommunication, and heaven coming to earth--Yahweh walking among us.

I don't understand the groaning and pains of creation: earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, melting polar ice caps, fires, gale-force winds, global warming, greenhouse gases, wars, and rumors of war. I've been told these things are signs of the time, birth pains, even. You see, creation, too, is going to be born again. Language will be born again. Humanity will be born again. You will be born again. I will be born again.

Life without Yahweh would be no life at all. Since Yahweh is eternal and has no beginning or end, there really is no option for creation to have life with or without Yahweh. If the universe was never actually "created," then Yahweh intervened and made it new, made it what it is today. If language was never actually "created," then Yahweh stepped in and just made it new, making many languages. No one ever asked for the newness, Yahweh just did it.

And you never asked to come into this life. And although you were born, you don't exactly have a starting point, because your beginning is Yahweh, who has no beginning. We are not eternal like Yahweh, but because God lives, we live. Newness isn't really an option. The question is whether or not we'll stop in as many small towns as we can, delaying our journey to the kingdom; or whether we'll look back, die, and turn into a pillar of salt to make the journey better for others before continuing on our way. Fortunately, there will be plenty of opportunities for those and many other options.

Today, death and oldness are behind us. Easter, my friends, is behind us. We were crucified and resurrected with Christ. Let us now look forward to Pentecost, ready for tongues of fire to descend upon us. Ready to be filled with the Spirit and made new.

Again-and-again-and-again.

Authoring: Musings from the Gym

I'm currently reading Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. Today I realized I had the bare minimum to become a writer: I'm not normal in any sense of the word. Moreover, I'm emotionally and mentally unstable, which is good news for someone who wants to be an author. Of course, authors recognize "normality" doesn't exist. It is a farce, a tool of the bourgeois, which is why literature is a method many use to stick it to the man.

After I got done with my cardio, I put the book down and went over to the weight machines to work my muscles. As long as I work my muscles, I don't have to worry about my weight. Since muscle weighs more than fat, I can constantly tell myself any increase in numbers comes from gaining muscle, not fat.

Bird by Bird is about writing. Anne Lamott has taught some writing classes in the past and has put a lot of her advice into a book that carries her wit, humor, and personal life with it. Even in didactic prose, she manages to speak with a beautiful and laid-back voice and tone many people miss in their day-to-day life.

After reading about fiction-writing for 35 minutes, I sat down at a machine I use to work my chest. At this particular gym, the chest machine sits you opposite a large mirror, almost forcing you to watch yourself workout. I don't like to watch myself to much of anything, let alone struggle to push a few bars connected to weights.

Still in a fiction-author mindset, I started to describe what I saw in the mirror, imagining myself not as myself, but as a fictional character in a book. Since I'm not always terribly creative, I imagined the fictional me as a person who just read 35 minutes of Anne Lamott in the gym, a person who then sat down to use a machine that works his chest muscles, a person who then saw himself in the mirror and started to describe himself as a fictional character in a book.

As I am writing right now, I realize I didn't do what Anne Lamott suggested. She described imagining and describing the whole picture in a very imaginative way. Had I listened to her, I would have mentioned the girl behind me using one of those "ab balls." She was doing some sort of sit-up with the ball between her ankles. When I was distracted from my description I looked at her image in the mirror and thought about how I don't know how to do those exercises, but want to. And then I remembered reading some article on-line that gave me different ab exercises to do. I do the bicycle exercise, because that particular website said it was the best exercise for your abs.

Instead of looking at her or anything else in the mirror, I looked at my t-shirt. For some reason, I am interested in looking at the sweat patterns on my t-shirt. I'm positive my sweat doesn't randomly soak different parts of my shirt, but it often looks pretty random. Sometimes it reminds me of those Rorshcach things. You know, the inkblots psychiatrists show crazy people, asking, "Hmm, tell me what you see here." I thought about how I am crazy enough that a doctor should probably have a wealth of information if they showed me such inkblots.

Of course, I promptly began to see something in the sweat on my shirt. I didn't do very well. Then again, I don't know psychology (or is it psychiatry? I don't know either), so I don't know if I did a good job or not.

I thought maybe I could make out the fat legs of a kid, swinging his or her legs over the side of a wharf. The legs were mostly extended and I was looking from beneath the wharf, at an angle. Then I noticed the kid must have a few oddly placed claws on his feet. I figured the child must be a chubby little monster, like the kind you find in hiding under a bed. But, the monster image couldn't take into account the little blob of sweat where my belly protrudes.

So, maybe I saw a close up of someone's dreadlocks, hanging over a table where the person with the dreadlocks was lying. The little blob would be part of one of the dreadlocks falling to the ground after being cut.

I wanted to see a butterfly or a dog, like in Alan Moore's The Watchmen. I didn't.

I never thought about what meaning I could attach to what I saw. I knew I could think of something, though. In the narrative in my head, I skipped the doctor's interpretation of what I saw in my Rorshach sweat. I just assumed it happened and started to think about how much nonsense my analysis was. I don't know psychiatry (or is it psychology?). Instead of analyzing anything intentionally, I was making things up. Sometimes I wonder if analysis and interpretation are anything more than making things up, anyways.

And then I remembered I'm not a novelist, a poet, or a short-storyist (is there a word for a person who writes short stories?). But, that fact doesn't mean I'm not an author. I still author--I create. I just happen to create through reading and interpreting what other people "write." And in my interpretation, I take what they say and do and use it to mean something else. Some people might argue I make it mean whatever I want, but, like a fictional character in a fictional story, what I interpret has a mind of its own. I don't make it mean whatever I want, it means and as I try to mold it to what I want, it becomes something else. I create, but creation has never really been about ex nihilo. Creation is about taking what is and working with it--cooperation--to make it something new. Creation is communal and cooperative--isn't that part of the mystery of the trinity?

Then, as I was walking home from the gym, I started to think about how some people want to write to be understood. I share this desire, but it isn't why I write or my main goal in writing. I want to write something so beautiful that people need to talk about in order to appreciate it and understand it. In their conversation, they end up finding two different meanings from what I said, which are two different meanings from what I meant. And even if they never discover what I meant, then I will have achieved what I wanted: beauty, which is truth.

Sacred Rain

I grabbed my cup of coffee and my bag with paperwork, a book, and my laptop. I left my apartment only to find it raining hard outside. I didn't have far to walk, just to my car. It wasn't the thought of getting cold and wet that made me pause. I can't exactly say what made me hesitate leaving. I am tempted to say it was the beauty of the moment or the joy that surprised me in a way only C. S. Lewis can describe--both instances of the Spirit, very apropos as we approach Pentecost. Truth is, I don't know what caught me up in that moment, but I know I found a change of plans when I saw the rain, and it was welcome.

I sat my coffee cup down on the cement porch and leaned my bag against the wooden rocking chair as I pulled it closer to the building and further from the awning's edge. I sat in the chair and was only splattered with cold rain water every now and then.

I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text message to one of my staff members. My ears filled with a glorious harmony as the sound of my text messaging countered the melodious pattering of the rain in the trees, the metal awning, the sidewalk, and puddles. Every now and then cars driving by would provide harmony as they splashed water from one place on the road to another. It was a wonderful blend of human and nonhuman noises.

I looked up from my phone and my eyes were caught by light dancing on a pool of water across the street, jiggling with the falling of more rain drops. By now the rain had eased some. When I first saw it, it fell with force, as if for a purpose. Now it had changed to the sort of rain that feels nice on your face--small drops falling so lightly. The two different experiences of rain were so different I wonder if is even right to call them both rain.

My eyes turned to the trees once frosted in blooms of pink and white. Today they are fully clothed in a green that hides the bare brownness of their branches and the barren black of the power lines that invade their space. Or is it the trees that invade the power lines' space? The trees are young, perhaps the power lines were there before the landscaper planted the dogwoods.

Was I invading the trees' space? I sat across the street from them, gazing at their maturing beauty--sat on the porch of Royster Hall, once Royster Memorial Hospital. I wonder what was there before? Sisters of the trees across the street, perhaps? Were they gazing back at me in bitter remembrance of the day their sisters fell, the day humans came and changed the natural look of nature?

And what exactly is nature or natural? Beavers build dams, birds build nests, mice dig holes. If all these are natural, why do we so often consider streets, buildings, power lines, cities, cell phones, and computers--technology in general--as unnatural? Nonhuman nature certainly has a beauty that human-influenced nature does not have. And vice versa.

Yet, I still lamented some of the more human parts of nature while I sat, rocking, enjoying the rain and the shelter from the rain. I lamented my desire to describe what I was experiencing. I didn't want to search for words to fit the moment, I wanted to soak in the moment. And even if I found the words, where would I write them? I couldn't possibly remember them long enough to write them all down. I couldn't get out my computer, because the battery was dead. I could have gone inside to plug in the computer, but I decided it was worth losing the expression of the moment in order to spend more time in it--more time to lose, since that one event, I assumed, would eventually seep out of my memory, would no longer be special, would cease to exist.

The moment entered me and welled inside. I was so taken by it that my eyes almost joined the skies.

Eventually I could stand it no longer. I pulled out my pen and a paper to take notes, notes that eventually prompted this piece.

"Christian" Education: Jerusalm v. Athens

Education is a murky subject when the word “Christian” precedes it as an adjective. I’m not a big fan of separating Jerusalem and Athens. I understand the two are different, but when we compare and contrast them, we find they are extremely similar. In fact, I think they are not two things we should seek to join. Rather, they are two examples of the same thing: institutions or movements of faith and reason. How unfortunate, then, when I replace Jerusalem and Athens with Tertullian’s next infamous binary: the Church and the Academy. Those institutions are very different today than when Tertullian referenced them, for the Church birthed its own academy (perhaps from relations with the academy of which Tertullian spoke) that grew up and separated from it, as children are wont to do. With the Church and its separate academy in place, division emerges amidst the people involved in one, the other, and both.

Introduce any “Christian education” into this divisive mix and you have at least three groups seeking some sort of education based on their idea of Christian. Those three groups are those who attend the local church; those who attend the local church and have or are going to an academy, “Christian” or otherwise, and want to blend or merge the church and academy; and those who associate with and promote the academy over against the local church.

After some reading for class, I realized I mistrust the church's role in education. But I shouldn't have to. People don't go to the church for education. We go for community, for programs, for a positive environment for our kids (lol), and sometimes we even go for worship. We hardly even go for education when we attend Sunday school.

Education implies involvement and dedication. You surely can learn a lot at church and in Sunday school when everyone brings their experiences and thoughts to the table. But, sometimes we need to go outside ourselves and study. If people are dedicated to studying, then we can really engage each other in Sunday school. Sunday school could be a place for education and free thought, not indoctrination (concerning indoctrination, be on the lookout for a forthcoming blog: Inevitable Indoctrination).

Sure, Sunday school and church allow for some free thought. But in my reading, a group of writers determined missions education was only successful when a certain response was elicited from the education. I don't think education should have a predetermined response. In the text I read, "true missions education is a continuous action culminating in a missions lifestyle" (Terry). I think true missions education would lead in the students making their own decisions about missions, as with any type of education.

I mistrust the local church as much as I mistrust the academy. However unfortunate, the academy generally has the upper hand regarding education and theory, whereas the church generally has the upper hand in praxis. This unbalance leads to an ivory tower for the academy, and a local church that indoctrinates (and, hence, promotes) instead of educates. This unbalance creates an imbalance within the church itself, which is why I am hesitant with the church. The church’s internal imbalance is of power, a power where the church interprets itself as a leader, not a servant.

For example, Bosch says the church idealy “engages and challenges the world” (385). What about love? I am not against being involved in “God’s mission” per se (whatever that means), but when that involvement becomes leadership instead of service, then I question the conception of “God’s mission,” at the very least. Call it “God’s mission” or just call it the “Christian life” or “Christian journey” (cf. Bosch 472), I think we—the church, the academy, followers of Christ—should love and serve God, humanity, and all creation. And as far as I can tell, Jesus served people in this life before he tried to influence someone’s eternity, if he tried to influence their eternity (cf. Snyder qtd. in Bosch 378).