Don't bother me. I'm a-huntin' pie.

Advent 1

For most of us, the first Sunday of Advent is a bit like fidning an old, favourite movie on the TV. We know the story, we know the characters, and we know how it ends. If we’re really familiar with it, we unconsciously mouth the famous lines or begin smiling just before that great joke or tearing up at the moment the lovers meet for the first time.

We can probably all name them. For me, they could be an old film noir, The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca or The Third Man. Or, they could be a newer comedy like Waiting for Guffman or Best in Show. Or something romantic, like About a Boy or a film that calls on our better angels, like To Kill a Mockingbird.

If we’re really lucky, we find it on a snowday, when we can lay around the house in our socks and flannel pajamas, wrapping ourselves in our duvets on the sofa, making our tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with a fire in the fireplace. And if we’re really lucky, Momma makes hot chocolate, with those little marshmallows floating on the top

Soft. Warm. Comfortable. I mean, the word ‘candle’ itself seems to some up what we most identify with Advent. Soft purple or blue. Warm light casting out the darkness. All of the images are of babes wrapped in swaddling clothes. Or, at the very least, getting those swaddling clothes out of the attic.

And it’s all true. The remarkable thing about Advent, is that it is at once a time of immense anticipation, immense uncertainty. And yet, in the midst of all that uncertainty, there is a sense of overwhelming ease and joy.

The ultimate duvet-day movie is a 1983 film called A Christmas Story, a film that bears the tagline A Tribute to the Original, Traditional, One-Hundred-Percent, Red-Blooded, Two-Fisted, All-American Christmas...". So popular is this movie, that a cable channel back home shows A Christmas Story for 24 hours on Christmas day. It tells the tale of Ralphie Parker, age nine, who wants a BB gun for Christmas (specifically, "an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and 'this thing' which tells time") and will go to any lengths to get it despite the numerous adult admonitions, especially those of his mother, of "you'll shoot your eye out." Over the course of the film, Ralphie hides a Red Ryder advertisement in his mother's Look magazine, fibs about the spotting of grizzly bears in the neighborhood, blurts his desire outright, writes an essay on the subject, and asks an impatient Santa just as the department store closes.

From beginning to end, we know that, come Christmas morning, somewhere in the pile of wrapping paper and boxes is an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass inthe stock and this thing which tells time. And, of course, it’s there. And, of course, the first thing Ralphie does is take it outside, shoot a metal sign, only to have the BB ricochet and break his glasses, thus confirming everyone’s admonition that he’d ‘shoot his eye out.’

We like it because know it. We like it because we know what’s going to happen. We like it because we’ve seen it all before. We repeat familiar phrases like ‘You’ll shoot your eye out’ and ‘It’s a major award!’ and ‘I triple dog dare you!’ And yet, we still share that sense of anticipation with Ralphie. The knowing and not knowing.

You don’t know the day or the hour, but when it does happen, you’ll know it. Because war stops. God judges all things. The perfect law is established.

He’s not a safe lion, but he is good, says Mr. Beaver. A very unsafe, a very good lion.
Unsafely Good. We don’t like that. We want it either unsafe and bad, so we know to stay away, or safe and good, so we can completely trust.

Comfortably uncertain. We don’t like that either. When things are certain, we’re comfortable. I get up at the same time. I have the same thing for breakfast (toast and strawberry jam). I drive the same route to work. I park in the same place. Comfortable, because it’s certain. And when that comfortable certain breaks down, well, we’re in a world of hurt.

Two months ago I took a group of students to Alton Towers. There’s this one ride that has to be seen to be believed. Oblivion, it’s called. Essentially, you’re put in this weird standy-seaty thing, strapped down, taken 65 feet into the air, slowly tipped forward, and then plummeted down a vertical drop. I have since discovered that Oblivion holds the dubious distinction of having the highest rated ‘terror-factor’ of any roller coaster in the world.

Not that that would’ve stopped me. Oh know, in my naivete or lack of judgement or sheer stupidity, I decided that Oblivion must be ridden, not once, but three times. It’s a great ride.
Some of you might have noticed that I’m, how do we put it, broad across the beam. I assure you it’s nothing but relaxed muscle, but it did pose a minor difficulty in getting the restraint to completely fasten the very last time we rode the ride. The workers got the seatbelt together, pulled and tugged on it, but not once did I hear it go click.

And as we left the station and start moving up the hill to the top of the ride, my mind kicks into overtime. ‘I didn’t hear it click. It’s not fastened. What happens if it pops out now? Will they stop the ride? They have to? But what if they’re not looking? Can I really make it to the catwalk while this thing is moving? What happens if it pops open while we’re dangling face down 65 feet into the air? I’ll fall to the ground! I’m going to die!!’

But then, it occurred to me that really, if I was going to go at the ripe old age of 26, then this, doing something I love, being surrounded by people I love, this is the way to go. At the very least, the headlines were going to be good. And while I still clutched and pulled the restraint down, while I still supported myself on the feet rail, I knew that if this was how I went, I was comfortable with that. Comfortable uncertainty.

That feeling, particularly in the few seconds of dangling over the drop, is not one I relish feeling again, but I don’t think comfort and certainty are two things that Jesus wants us to hold together. It’s not the way Jesus wants us to live. Comfortable and certain seems to be a sign of the end, and a bad sign at that.

I think it has something to do with the human insistence to re-shape God in our own terms. If we’re partying and drinking and giving and taking in marriage and whatnot, living as if we know that nothing bad is going to happen tomorrow, then there’s an idea that God is doing likewise. A happy-go-lucky God. A God that just ain’t bothered.

That’s utter nonsense, of course. Isaiah makes it pretty clear that God is bothered. He’s bothered by injustice, and he’s bothered by war. And when we act like, well, when we act like he’s not looking because he’s too busy down at the heavenly nightclub...

At that point, Jesus seems to be saying, we’re just asking for it.

An unsafe, Good king. That’s the essence of Jesus. That’s the essence of who Christ is. Good, because he loves without conditions, without rules about who’s in and who’s out, without restraint. Unsafe, because that very love shapes us and turns us and calls us into lovers without condition, without rules and without restraint. Unsafe, because ultimately, that kind of love gets you killed.

And that’s how we’re supposed to live. Unsafe, but Good. Comfortable, but uncertain. Holding in tension the great paradox of Advent: that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and just beyond our grasp.

The Battle of Britain

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.

It was a normal April morning. The students and teachers were preparing for the day ahead of them. Nothing seemed too much out of the ordinary.

A normal day. In a normal school. In normal America.

The normalacy was broken at 11:19 a.m. when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed to the teeth, opened fire on their school classmates. At Columbine High School that morning, 13 students and one teacher were murdered in less than hour. And two troubled students had taken their own lives. 15 deaths. 13 murders. And a nation of wounded souls.

That summer of 1940 in Britain began as anything but normal. Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France all under Nazi domination. 300,000 British troops evacuated from Dunkirk. And they had to know it was coming. They had to know what to expect; what was just on the horizon, literally and figuratively. The might of the Nazi blitzkrieg, the awesome fury of the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht and the SS was about to be turned on an island just a few miles away. The war had come the Britian’s doorstep.

In the aftermath of the Columbine massacre, fingers pointed everywhere, in a desperate attempt to find any reason, any cause for the terrible events of that April. Violent video games and movies, ‘goth culture,’ the easy access of firearms and parent’s irresponsibility all received their fair, and unfair, share of blame. But as the investigations unfolded, a combination of long-term bullying and social exclusion combined with a history of depression, had become the primary causes for Eric and Dylan’s decision to murder.

I was a 17-year-old student at the time of the Columbine massacre. I remember that day vividly, and there is seldom a day goes by that, in someway, my mind recalls some detail from that morning. As youthworker and school chaplain, I wonder how the history of those 15 people would be changed if someone, somewhere, decided to stand up to the bullies and the people who drove Eric and Dylan to murder in the months and years prior to that April morning. Which ones would be doctors and lawyers, the authors and the accountants. The teachers and priests and youth workers? Which ones would be mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts? What would have happened if someone had said, “No. Not in my school.”

I’ve seen the pictures, and no doubt you have as well, of a victorious Hitler and Goering peering into the periscope on the French coast, and spying the cliffs of Dover. There is greed in those eyes. A hunger on the lips. More land. More victims. More death to inflict. And it is in those eyes that those few, those happy few, those band of brothers stood up to the jackbooted bullies of Berlin and said, No. Not here.

While my country was jitterbugging and recovering from economic depression, you stood firm. Evil was turned away from the coast. Because you said No. Not here. A single word, ‘No,’ defied dictators and defeated militarists. War and death turned away. Evil defeated. And never, in the history of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few.

Clauswitz, the great Prussian philosopher of war, was wrong. War is not the extension of politics by other means. It is a clash, albeit the penultimate clash, between truth and lies. The lies of Nazism, of racial superiority and fascism, that summer of 1940 with the truth of human equality, the radical notion that ‘all people are created equal’ and have rights and dignity that no human institution can take away.

Truth must be fought for. Lies must be conquered. There is no other option.

In Britian today, we are faced a new and terrible enemy. Homegrown. Living in our homes, broadcast on our televisions, and taught in our schools. It is an ideology of cynical materialism. I am the only thing that matters. My comfort, my happiness, and no others. There is no such thing as a society, or a community, or anything beyond my grasp. I have no responsibility beyond making myself satisfied. If John Donne wrote ‘Send not to find for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,’ the poets of this lie says ‘Send not to find for whom the bell tolls, because you can’t be bothered to care.’

If the Nazis threatened us with the loss of our souls, this enemy claims we have no souls to lose. The enemy no longer stares at us through periscopes on the other side of the Channel. It is in our hearts, in our lives, in our own daily life. And it must be fought, it must be defeated.

When we fight for peace, when we fight for truth and justice, we fight with the Ressurection on our side. When we look around and we see the state the world is in, when we look around and see genocide in Darfur, bombings in Iraq, we have no option but fight against it. We know, one day, it will all end. War and death will be defeated. Peace and life will be the victors. Because we know that Jesus came back to life.

There’s no reason whatsoever, no excuse, for any of us to be afraid. Stand up for what you know is right. Stand against what you know is wrong. Fight the little battles. Fight against the bullies. Fight against the people who disrupt our communities by their behaviour, by their drugs and their violence. Stand up, with your feet on the ground, fists unclenched and say, “What you are doing is wrong. And no matter what you say or do I shall not be moved. I shall not be shaken. Because the LORD is always before me.”

Don’t expect it to be easy. You will suffer for taking the path of the Gospel, for taking the path of peace. Don’t forget, Nelson Mandela spent 20 years in prison for speaking out against apartheid. Gandhi and Dr. King were assassinated. But Remember the fallen, and the living, of the Battle of Britian. Remember the price they paid. Remember that Gandhi and Dr. King and the lone rebel are all standing with you. Remember that peace and justice and truth destroys war, persecution and lies Remember that life always conquers death. Remember the resurrection, and I will stand with you.

Because this is where the Gospel saves us. Offer yourselves as ‘living sacrifices’ writes Saint Paul. Greater love has no man than he who lays down his life for his brother says Christ. It’s this love, this desire to be a living sacrifice for our brothers and sisters that we remember today. That thin blue line, the fighter pilots, the radar operators, the mechanics and drivers, the Women’s Air Corp members, from the lowliest to the mightest Air Marshal, proved their love for their country, for their fellow brothers and sisters, by putting their selves, their souls and their bodies on the line to say, “No. Not here.”

Cadets, listen to me very carefully. If you listen to nothing else I say today, please listen to this: These men, these women are your heros. Forget the Beckhams. Forget Louis Hamilton. Forget all the sport stars, the rock stars, the TV presenters and every other celebrity that flounces on the pages of Hello and Star. Make your lives meaningful. Follow their example. Live a life that says, I am a living sacrifice. I believe in something beyond myself, beyond my paycheck, beyond my immediate needs and gratification. These are the values of the heroes of the Battle of Britian. Make them your values. Live, so that looking back, you can say, ‘This, my entire life, was my finest hour.’

The cynical materialism of our day will be defeated. It will be defeated by individuals, standing up and saying, “No. No more.” It will be to you, to your generation that this challenge will be given. It starts now. It starts with you. Make the decision, make the dedication now. Take your stand along side these heroes of 1940.

In the years following the deaths at Columbine High School, I wish I could say that somewhere, there has been a resurgence of the kind of love Christ calls us to. And usually, I can’t. Until I ran across this article. A student at a US high school strolled into the first day of class wearing a pink shirt. Within minutes, the student was surrounded by 10 or more other students, calling him horrid names, and threatening to beat him up. But the next day, after word of the encounter spread the school, those 10 bullies came to school and discovered a shock. Two students, David Shepherd and Travis Price, ahd purchased 75 pink t-shirts, and gave them out for free. The bullies came into the building, only to be confronted with an ocean of pink-shirted students, standing in solidarity with their peer. According to one report I read, one of the bullies became so enraged that he began throwing a chair around the cafeteria. All because David and Travis said ‘I’ve stood around for too long and I wanted to do something.’

Today, as we remember and celebrate the victory of the Battle of Britian, let us rededicate ourselves to the love that inspires living sacrifices, and to Him from whom that love comes.

Amen

Kiss My Left Behind

From the Left Behind:Eternal Forces game faq:

Does the violence depicted in the game run contrary to Jesus’ message on “love your enemy”?

Absolutely not. Christians are quite clearly taught to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies. It is equally true that no one should forfeit their lives to an aggressor who is bent on inflicting death. Forgiveness does not require absolute defenselessness.

Unless you're Jesus, who was apparently just joking in the Garden of Gethsemene. Would someone please find a teaching of Christ that says that violence in the face of 'an agressor who is bent on inflicting death' is OK? Or did Jesus sin by not defending himself agin' the high priests, Herod and Pilate?

But wait, there's more:

Apparent contradictions on behalf of Christians are often the result of them placing greater importance on the message, than in caring for others. LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces is a game which provides great entertainment while encouraging fascinating discussions about matters of eternal importance

S'cuse me. My head just exploded. Too much irony.

Pilgrimage '07: A Conversation

As we were walking from Canterbury Cathedral to our hostel after walking 21 miles in two days, I had this conversation with one of the young men from my school:

"You know that mass we had at the Cathedral?" he says.

"Yes, but it wasn't a mass; it was prayers and a talk."

"Yeah, whatever. I didn't agree with it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what Anne said about Jesus dying for us all. That's just belief."

"And?"

"And belief can be wrong."

"Maybe. But there's a difference between belief and faith."

"No there isn't!"

"I think so. I believe I'm walking the correct way to the hostel. Its testable. Either we wind up at the hostel or we don't. Faith is different than that."

"What do you mean?"

"Faith changes the way we see the world. It changes the way we see people and the way that we treat them. That's not a tree, it's an expression of God in a strange way, in the way that the tree supports birds' nests and shelter and shade. The homeless person isn't a bum, he's someone in need that I need to help. That's faith. It's not testable, because it's not something that exists in the same way a chair exists. It exists and is testable only in people putting faith in to action, making their faith real."

Pause.

"I don't have faith," he says.

"Faith is a gift."

"I've not been given it."

I stop. He stops.

"If you haven't been given faith, you wouldn't have been asking me questions for the past year."

We walk to the hostel in silence.

Uppity Women Run for the Hills

The Southern Baptist Convention: Salvation by gender roles since 1979.

Halo 3: Iris ARG

It's unfortunate that this has happened. But it was inevitable.

I've been sucked into an ARG.

Specifically, the Iris ARG for the pending Halo3 release. Go here to get caught up. Go here, click media, then Iris for the fan toolkit. Go here and here for forums (the second is the Bungie forum, which requires you to register, log in, and join the CompoundIntelligence group in order to read the postings).

Comments:
The discussion on Server 03 seems to be settling around this pic, the equation embeded in it, and the filename (801snpow). If you flip the filename upside down and reverse it, you get 'modus 108'. The equation is a part of the Schrodinger Equation, and 'modus' is likewise a mathematical term. Earlier server clues led to IP addresses, and the groupthink suggests that the equation leads to the new IP address to unlock Server 04.

I'm not so sure.

First, I'm not sure that Bungie would include solving quantum wave functions as part of clue. That seems a bit too specialized and over the heads of most people to the point of silliness. It's not that I wouldn't put it past 'em, and part of the fun of ARGs is watching people who know more than you figure it out.

The 'modus 108' would seem to be the mega-clue, but, googling it would yield nothing but Halo forums and Renault Moduses (Renault Modi?).

Thoughts appreciated. Make sure you look at all the downloads from Server 03, so as not to miss something.

The Gospel According to Ron Popeil... Is Wrong.

Ron Popeil is an American inventor. I think. To be frank about it, I’ve never really figured out exactly what he does, except that when I was in university, and I was “studying” late into the night, commercials for Ron’s products would jump on to the screen with the frequency of… Well, a university student staying up waaay too late on a school night. He would stand there in the TV, white shirt, tie, and kitchen apron hawking his latest item. It didn’t matter precisely what he was selling, because the pitch was always the same. The product was always something the Ron had invented and was going to make our lives instantly better. Our communities would blossom again. Deepest winter would turn into brightest spring. For only 4 easy payments of 43.99, children would laugh again, bands would play in the park, and young lovers would frolic through the forest.

I am not making any of this up. Here is an actual sales pitch for the Chop-O-Matic:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to show you the greatest kitchen appliance ever made... All your onions chop to perfection without shedding a single tear."

The greatest kitchen appliance, Ron? Aren’t we forgetting fire? Or the sharp knife? Or the refrigerator?

There was the vegomatic food slicer. The dial-a-slicer that came with the promise that you could slice a tomato so thin it would have only one side. The Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler, which did exactly that: scrambled an egg inside its shell. The automatic pasta maker and rotisserie (two different machines, mind you, but I’m sure Ron is working on a way to blend the two). GLH-9 Hair in a Can Spray. Whatever it was, it came with the promise of a lifetime guarantee, and the tantalizing question “… And how much would you pay now…” followed with Ron giving away some other product, usually a set of steak knives.

I could go on and on, but I’d have to say that my favorite Ron Popeil invention was The Cap Snaffler. I have no idea what a Cap Snaffler is. I have no idea what a cap snaffler does. I wouldn’t begin to hazard a guess. I did an internet search in an attempt to find a picture of what astonishing marvels this device would have in store for me, but, alas, despite finding pictures of diamonds, a Bugatti Veyron, and, intriguingly, John Prescott, I am unable to show you precisely what a Cap Snaffler is. Or what it does. But Ron promises me, in a way that only Ron can, that the Cap Snaffler Snaffles caps of any size jug, bottle or jar...and it really really works.

It is with no small amount of comfort to my own mental well-being that I can say this to you: Jesus does not take marketing directions from Ron Popeil. In fact, it seems Jesus slept through his marketing classes at Hebrew school.

There’s no hard sell. No promises of purchasing the greatest religion in history or making beef jerky or shoestring potatoes or shoestring carrots or shoestring anything for that matter. “But wait… There’s more!” isn’t in Jesus’s skill set.

It’s all quite simple. Go to someone’s house. Say peace. If you’re welcomed, be polite and eat what’s in front of you. Be nice. Things my momma taught me.

And if you’re not welcomed, don’t be nasty. Just leave.

But no matter what, make sure they know about the Kingdom.

We have a tendancy to get all dithered about the marketing of the Kingdom about evangelizing. The Church is dying, we say. Something should be done! Should we do Programme This or Programme That to draw people to Church. Let’s change our music or our liturgy or use chocolate digestives and squash for Communion. Long before I was born, there was a now infamous church in Knoxville who’s new mission initiative on changing the carpet. Of course, a sizable minority didn’t want the carpet to change. So, in absence of any other sensible alternative, the church split. There now exists two churches, less than a mile from each other, on the same road. One claims to be “The Real Church…” The other is The Original Church.

Of course, this was all correctly motivated. The congregation had identified a problem that they felt was preventing proper evangelism. They attempted to fix it. And disaster ensued.

I don’t want to be arguing for a reactionary conservatism when it comes to evangelism, but I do think more often than not, we have a tendency to go around arguing talking more about marketing than we do the actual product.

Some of the 72 that Jesus sends out come back and are really enthused that demons and spirits are under their control, none of which really impresses him. After all, people controlling demons and spirits aren’t really that an impressive to someone who was around when Satan fell from heaven.

The marketing isn’t the message, Jesus says. That’s not the point. And when we confuse the marketing with the message, we’re in for some deep problems.

Saturday Night Live is a sketch show, a bit like Little Britain or The Catherine Tate Show. It started in 1976, and in the first series had one of the first major breakthrough sketches. IT was a spoof of Ron Popeil and the Veg-O-Matic. It consisted of a manic salesman in Ron Popeil moustache, white shirt, tie, apron and regular kitchen blender with a sticker that read “Bass-O-Matic 76.” Yes, you heard that right. Bass, as in the fish, o-matic. It was simple. Catch a bass. Drop the whole thing into the Bass-o-matic… Scales, bones, head, tail… All of it. And turn it on. Voila. A liquidy, pulped bass, just the way you like it. A pleased customer said, “Wow, that's terrific bass!” Ron took it well, and he said in a TV biography that he thought it was funny. But when Ron dies, the Bass-O-Matic sketch will no doubt be played along side the Veg-o-Matic, as if to say, “Tsk. How silly.”

When the message gets obscured because of marketing, we open the Gospel, the most precious thing we have, open to parody. We look foolish, and not in a good, ‘Fools for Christ’ kind of way. And I believe that at some point, we’ll all have to take responsibility for that. I said earlier that I like the cap snaffler, even if I didn’t know what it does or what it is. At the end of the day, do we really want people in our community to say, “I like this Jesus, but I don’t know what he is or what he does.”

It’s time, in a word, to go back to first principles… Why do we want to bring people to Church? Is it because we need new money to maintain expensive, millennium-old buildings? Are we drawing people to the Church because we think our club is better than the club across the road? Or is it because we believe that what we believe and preach with the thoughts of our hearts and the words of our mouth really is Good News? If we really believe that what we do on a Sunday morning is important, if we really believe that the Gospel heals the sick and brings the dead to life, then at some point, the marketing should fall away. The message of Christ stands not because we produce great leaflets, but because it’s true, because it heals us, because it gives us new life.

Do we really want to know how to evangelize? Is that really what we’re asking for? It’s a dangerous question; it means taking responsibility and saying that success or failure doesn’t depend on the programme, or because of the presence or non-presence of clergy or because the carpet is the wrong color. It’s dangerous because it means setting aside conversation and discussion about structures and governance, as important as those things are, for something greater. It means setting aside our own thoughts and our own wishes and our own desires for the greater glory of God. It means realizing that, yes, we can, as it were, control demons and spirits, but that it pales in comparison to the God that was there when it all began. And most importantly, it means stepping out into an unknown world of faith, where we can say that the Gospel is Good News not because we know it to be true, but that the Gospel is Good News because we believe it to be Good.

The Gospel doesn’t need gimmicks. It doesn’t need new carpeting. It doesn’t need a free set of steak knives to go along with it. It doesn’t need someone on the TV telling us we can have eternal life for 4 easy payments of $34.99. IT doesn’t need us going “but wait… There’s more!” or “Jesus saves you from any kind of sin, wrongdeed or skulldugerry… And it really really works.” It needs you and it needs me and all of us doing the simple things. Things so simple it’s actually quite scary. Speak peace to everyone we meet. Be polite. Eat what’s put on the plate in front of you… Even if it’s broccoli. Make sure they know about the Kingdom. Make sure they know it’s near. Make sure that everything that goes pear shaped in this world is about to get turned around, reset to the way it’s supposed to be. Make sure they know that death isn’t permanent, that there’s life at the end of it. Make sure they know that their broken bodies, their broken souls are healed and alive in Christ. Make sure they know that God loves them.

And it really, really works.