I'm no music critic, but I know what I like. I ferreted out these choices by running through my most played songs on iTunes, but I didn't always choose the albums whose songs got the most number of plays.
1) Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan
Sometimes I think I should have come of age in the sixties, but I'm thankful for the cynical and/or prophetic distance that kept me from becoming a true believer in postwar, anti-establishment romantic idealism. Still, my heart is very much with the man (lowercase m) here, whether it's the pain of lost love ("North Country Girl") or raging protest against the military-industrial complex ("Masters of War"). I only hope that my writing could one day give voice to others' protest against this world but also direct them toward the good news which ultimately provides the basis for a better one.
2) The White Album - The Beatles
I didn't like this at first, as I had just been introduced to the Beatles with the relative thematic unity of Sgt. Pepper's but esp. Abbey Road. However, The White Album has remained that most consistently engaging and entertaining of their corpus (so far). Even if the songs are a scattershot collection, they mix tastefully just as Huck Finn described good food doing in the opening bit of his eponymous adventure.
3) Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
Scott Bowles once pointed out how even this album's busiest parts remain smooth and soothing. The whole thing has an unforced air, Davis's horn lilting jauntily over the ensemble's engaging rhythms.
4) Pan's Labyrinth - Javier Navarette
One of my favorite movies and, by all accounts, favorite scores, Javier Navarette built the score around the bedtime lullaby sung to the young heroine as a frail comfort within a world of terror. That motif, usually played on a rich and lonely cello, is haunting, beautiful and mythical all at once.
5) Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Harmonized pastoral laments and ballads accompanied by an Appalachian ensemble of strings and drums.
6) How the West Was Won - Led Zeppelin
A thrilling, 3-disc live album recorded in Los Angeles in these rock Olympians' heyday, HtW3 shows the band stretching their sound both in terms of live-wire intensity and extensive riffing not common to studio produced tracks. The album opener is an aggressive performance of "Immigrant Song"--the highlight a 25 minute "Whole Lotta Love" doubling as a history of rock and roll. Way hardcore!
7) Thriller - Michael Jackson
At least he deserved the title "King of Pop," if not the right to demand to be called it. Except for "The Girl is Mine" (the dreadful collaboration between Jackson & McCartney) the tracks are infectious and engaging. Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah!
8) St. Elsewhere - Gnarls Barkley (Cee-Lo Green / DJ Danger Mouse)
Hands down, Cee-Lo has an amazing voice. It's powerful, rich, soulful, piercing and full. Combined with Danger Mouse's skilled genre mash-up approach to music (Google "Gray Album"), the two produced a fantastic pop album.
9) Spirited Away - Joe Hisaishi
Joe Hisaishi is Miyazaki's go to composer, and he has an old fashioned sensibility recalling both classical Hollywood as well as Baroque waltzes. He retains a distinct eastern flavor, however, and his sounds here evoke the excitement, playfulness, terror and mystery of the world the heroine finds herself in.
10) Ratatouille - Michael Giacchino
Giacchino has composed the most memorable scores from the last decade, beginning with his big picture debut in The Incredibles, whose brilliant horns-heavy score was catchy and retro and plain awesome. In Ratatouille he combines playful Parisian melodies with rousing orchestral crescendos to highlight both the joys and dramas of artistic fluorishing. I love love love this score. (See also Lost, Star Trek, Up)
11) Grace - Jeff Buckley
A fantastic and moody rock album that shifts wildly from contemplative whispers to Zeppelin-esque jams. It is most remembered for his transcendent cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," but the ethereal" Dream Brother" and love-drunk "Lilac Wine" will stick with you as well. What could have been a long and fruitful art-rock career was cut short by the artist's untimely death by accidental drowning in 1997.
12) The Doors - The Doors
Energetic, loose and passionate. Morrison sells the whole package with his unhinged vocals, jumping off from a mostly restrained musical background ("Back Door Man" would more or less sound like piddling on the organ without his zeal).
13) Dying Star - Jason Upton
This is the only Christian album I've included on this list, as it's not usually specific worship albums that I love but rather the holy God they point me to. However, Upton's Dying Star has stayed with me for years because of its multi-track metanarrative spanning the journey of faith from disillusionment to calling to running to rest to glory.
14) Crash - Dave Matthews Band
I'm not the unabashed fan I once was, but DMB served as my introduction to secular music after being raised on a Christian-only diet for the first 21 years of my life. Crash is their best album--tight, energetic, bawdy and spiritual. My coming of age with music began with them, and my favorite genres can all be found in their mix-up of rock, blues, jazz, folk and world sounds.
15) Viva la Vida - Coldplay
A grand departure from the somewhat bland but highly listen-able ethereal soft rock of X&Y, VLV mixes metaphors and emotions, apparently saying something about God & politics but mostly ending up really fun. "Yes" has some of the dark longing of "I Want You" (Abbey Road) but is counterpointed by the sweet breeziness of "Strawberry Swing." The title track has energy and inventiveness, even if they might have cribbed a major riff from Joe Satriani.
--
Additionally, I just downloaded Cee-Lo's new album, The Ladykiller, and it's fantastic.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
The Holy Spirit
"Theologians have constantly debated about the starting point of theology: Should we start with God and move from him to man and the problems of human life? Or should we start from the other end, with man and his experience, and from there ascend to God? Indeed the two options have been set against each other as 'theology from above' vs. 'theology from below.' But if we take seriously the fact that God in his Holy Spirit dwells with us, working in us and influencing us, it should be easy to discover even in the midst of our own experiences the reality of that God who as our Lord and Master stands above us with all his authority and power. And if it is really God whom we encounter in our experiences, the 'theology from below' which begins with our needs and desire, our troubles and concerns, will suddenly turn in to a 'theology from above' because in all those things it is he who encounters us, the One who is greater than ourselves and our little world. It ought to be possible to know him as One who in our world--his creation--is strange to us, and accordingly learn to hope for the future consummation of his work."
~Eduard Schweizer, The Holy Spirit (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980), 8.
~Eduard Schweizer, The Holy Spirit (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980), 8.
Friday, November 12, 2010
The Lord is My Shelter
The following is a transcript of my homily preached Friday, November 12th during morning prayer at Shepherd's Heart Fellowship in Pittsburgh, PA. The office readings for Friday were as follows: Psalms 88, 91, 92; Joel 2:28-3:8; James 1:16-27; Luke 16:1-9. The homily is based on Psalm 91.
Our Psalm today, Psalm 91, is a famous psalm, known for its promise of God’s protection from harm. Many people have memorized it, recited it, and have been comforted by the reassurance it provides. Men and women in the dire straits of poverty, sickness, war and disaster have been strengthened and encouraged by its images. It paints an awesome picture: God delivers, covers, sends angels, protects and rescues. It is a powerful litany of salvation.
Salvation, we find here, depends on how we relate to God. Only God can save, and we must turn to him in order to know this for ourselves. “You who live in the shelter of the Most High,” begins the psalm, “who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’” So it’s those who live in God’s shelter who know the powerful salvation of God. In ancient times God made a home for himself, the temple, and those who worshiped there and were part of his covenant people received the benefits of his saving power. They knew victory over their enemies, prosperity and the beauty of holy worship.
Jesus came as the living embodiment of God, and replaced the temple as God’s shelter. “The word became flesh and dwelled among us.” Jesus came, and what happened at the cross? The veil of the temple was torn right down the middle. The barrier between men and the holy of holies—God’s shelter—was removed when Jesus died as the final perfect sacrifice for sin. With arms wide open, he invites all who will call on his name to possess the salvation of God. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved… For ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”
Do you live in the shelter of the Most High? Do you know what it means to stand in the presence of God? If you know Jesus, you do. We who confess Jesus as Lord and believe in the power of his resurrection hope and wait for the glorious day when God will judge evil men and rescue his people from the struggles and suffering of this life. We who live in the shelter of the Most High have a promise from God: “He will deliver you… he will cover you… he will command his angels concerning you…”
Yes, we’re waiting for the last day, but today we can believe that God will seek our best for us. It’s not yet fulfilled, but already God is willing and able to watch over and protect us. Sufferings and testings will and do come. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation…” The gospel does not pretend suffering and pain do not exist, but it’s good news precisely because it proclaims salvation from those things! Therefore we’ve got gospel all over the place in Psalm 91, the effects of God’s good and powerful reign extended to his people. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation,” but then he adds, “but be of good cheer—I have overcome the world!”
I am not suggesting that the Christian life is a cake walk. I am not under any delusions that when we follow Christ it’s all sunshine and happy days. But I have seen the Lord move in my life and in the lives of others and I have to say, “You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day.” You will not fear the dark things and people lurking around corners on cold winter nights. You will not fear the weapons carried by thugs and criminals roaming the streets. Because God himself is your fortress! He is your shield and your deliverer! And if he is for you, who can be against you?
I knew, in my teenage years, the terror of uncertainty and doubt. I didn’t believe in God and had no hope in my life. And the Lord spoke to me and pulled me out of the miry pit. He rescued me and gave me the conviction that I need not fear. And he wants to do the same for you. He’s longing to show favor and grace to you.
Who lives in the shelter of the Most High? Who abides in the shadow of the Almighty? The ones who acknowledge and call on Jesus as Lord. That’s not just a one time thing. Not that you become Christian again, but that part of salvation is calling on the name of our Lord over and over again. Jesus! Jesus, save us! The darkness is great, and we are weak! Call on the Lord Jesus and know what it means to say, “The Lord is my fortress.” Call on the Lord Jesus, and he will satisfy you with long life and show you his salvation. Amen.
Our Psalm today, Psalm 91, is a famous psalm, known for its promise of God’s protection from harm. Many people have memorized it, recited it, and have been comforted by the reassurance it provides. Men and women in the dire straits of poverty, sickness, war and disaster have been strengthened and encouraged by its images. It paints an awesome picture: God delivers, covers, sends angels, protects and rescues. It is a powerful litany of salvation.
Salvation, we find here, depends on how we relate to God. Only God can save, and we must turn to him in order to know this for ourselves. “You who live in the shelter of the Most High,” begins the psalm, “who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’” So it’s those who live in God’s shelter who know the powerful salvation of God. In ancient times God made a home for himself, the temple, and those who worshiped there and were part of his covenant people received the benefits of his saving power. They knew victory over their enemies, prosperity and the beauty of holy worship.
Jesus came as the living embodiment of God, and replaced the temple as God’s shelter. “The word became flesh and dwelled among us.” Jesus came, and what happened at the cross? The veil of the temple was torn right down the middle. The barrier between men and the holy of holies—God’s shelter—was removed when Jesus died as the final perfect sacrifice for sin. With arms wide open, he invites all who will call on his name to possess the salvation of God. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved… For ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”
Do you live in the shelter of the Most High? Do you know what it means to stand in the presence of God? If you know Jesus, you do. We who confess Jesus as Lord and believe in the power of his resurrection hope and wait for the glorious day when God will judge evil men and rescue his people from the struggles and suffering of this life. We who live in the shelter of the Most High have a promise from God: “He will deliver you… he will cover you… he will command his angels concerning you…”
Yes, we’re waiting for the last day, but today we can believe that God will seek our best for us. It’s not yet fulfilled, but already God is willing and able to watch over and protect us. Sufferings and testings will and do come. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation…” The gospel does not pretend suffering and pain do not exist, but it’s good news precisely because it proclaims salvation from those things! Therefore we’ve got gospel all over the place in Psalm 91, the effects of God’s good and powerful reign extended to his people. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation,” but then he adds, “but be of good cheer—I have overcome the world!”
I am not suggesting that the Christian life is a cake walk. I am not under any delusions that when we follow Christ it’s all sunshine and happy days. But I have seen the Lord move in my life and in the lives of others and I have to say, “You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day.” You will not fear the dark things and people lurking around corners on cold winter nights. You will not fear the weapons carried by thugs and criminals roaming the streets. Because God himself is your fortress! He is your shield and your deliverer! And if he is for you, who can be against you?
I knew, in my teenage years, the terror of uncertainty and doubt. I didn’t believe in God and had no hope in my life. And the Lord spoke to me and pulled me out of the miry pit. He rescued me and gave me the conviction that I need not fear. And he wants to do the same for you. He’s longing to show favor and grace to you.
Who lives in the shelter of the Most High? Who abides in the shadow of the Almighty? The ones who acknowledge and call on Jesus as Lord. That’s not just a one time thing. Not that you become Christian again, but that part of salvation is calling on the name of our Lord over and over again. Jesus! Jesus, save us! The darkness is great, and we are weak! Call on the Lord Jesus and know what it means to say, “The Lord is my fortress.” Call on the Lord Jesus, and he will satisfy you with long life and show you his salvation. Amen.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Summary/Reflection: Bp. Todd Hunter & Congregations for the Sake of Others
“I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.” ~ Philemon 9
Bishop Hunter’s big success at yesterday’s afternoon lecture at St. Steven’s Church in Sewickley was an act of informed synthesis. Ostensibly, we were there to hear about “Church Planting for the Sake of Others,” but the talk in no way developed that idea as a concise thesis. Don’t misunderstand, Bishop Hunter did address issues of mission and even offer some new ways to think about it, but he delivered information to us scattershot, a shotgun spread of issues ranging from how we tell the Christian story to engaging in an informed way with our culture. Nebulously, however, a coherent big picture for the future of Anglican ecclesiology and mission eventually came into view.
He began with a splash of cold water: evangelical Christianity is on the decline. According to sociologists of religion, he says, we’re bleeding numbers. He chalked this up to the fading currency of dogmatic truth in the post-Christian West, which I’m sure is insightful, but I was wondering about when these sociologists were taking these numbers. If in the aughts (00’s), his interpretation might have overlooked the problem of George W. Bush, who did no small amount of damage to evangelicalism’s reputation.^ He also refused to criticize some “Moral Majority” leaders like Robertson and Falwell—I appreciated his respect for them as people trying to uphold righteousness in a failing culture, but thought he remained too shy of acknowledging great public sins like their 700 Club conversation on September 12, 2001 blaming 9/11 on lesbians and the ACLU.*
The bishop described a familiar cultural situation: most Americans don’t consider Christianity to be our default religion, but rather one of many religious options. Pluralism and tolerance rule public discourse on God. He brought up the New Atheists (Hitchens, Dawkins, etc.) and told us how they’ve changed the tone of atheism from mere dismissal of religion to an outright denunciation of it as morally bankrupt and necessarily damaging. He countered this with statistics about historically steady church attendance and atheism’s lack of popular appeal.
What’s the zeitgeist then? Is it surprising to say that a mushy, post-confidence pluralism prevails, neither outright denying nor outright affirming the existence and/or relevance of God to human life? I’m not sure he spelled it out just this way, but it represents the sum total of his statements on the subject and is, I think, perceptive and relevant. Think of last year’s blockbuster Avatar and the way it’s pantheist-buddhist mystical interconnectedness and call for us to love and defend the weak and the different enriched its otherwise Dances With Wolves in Space plot. I loved the movie, but recognized it as an epic drama of the Obama age: “We’re sorry about Iraq; everything’s connected; there’s something that gives us hope; we’ll use the best technology to show you.”
So what? Bishop Hunter contended that we must recognize this situation as de facto and respond appropriately. “There’s no way into mission apart from reality,” he said. And mission “only happens by understanding and facing reality.” Paul’s Areopagus speech in Acts 17 serves as the model—we make a bridge from their reality (“unknown god”) to ours (“the God who made the world and everything in it”). We don’t preach the gospel by relativizing our story: “It was the particularity of Jehovah that liberated human beings.” Our hardest job, as he puts it, is “lovingly contending” for the uniqueness of Christ. It’s anathema to our culture, yet we can’t shout them into agreement with us. There has to be another way.
“How do we,” he asked, “take the particularity of Jehovah and be his people in this time and place?” In his view, we can neither rely on the strength of dollars or implicit social capital** and must rethink church and mission in terms of loving our neighbor as ourself.*** And that’s where the idea of “Congregations for the Sake of Others” creeps in, as it commends Christians to love people into Christ rather than seeing them as numbers to be secured as the spoils of evangelistic combat. Rather than think of church as one hour a week on Sunday, let’s think of it as all week long, where ambassadors for Christ are living gospel lives among the lost and then bringing them into community and worship on the basis of love.
He commended, almost apologizing for fear of offending Anglican tradition, an instrumentalist view of the church suggesting that Sunday worship is not an end in itself. I guess that’s a sacramental theology debate to be had another day. But he insisted that nothing ought to get in the way of gospel proclamation and gospel living, and that traditions which do need to be reconsidered in light of this imperative. He mediated, however, saying that “Worship was never meant to be in opposition to mission.” There are ways, he said hopefully, of bringing together a robust and historical sacramental theology with an urgent and nimble evangelical mission. He did emphasize that we need a leadership culture that celebrates risk and can deal with failure, the opposite of which is a “paralyzing conservatism.”
Bishop Hunter proposed many things that I, with a strong background in free church evangelicalism, have long been familiar with. In essence, that we need to recapture a biblically Christ-like model of being and doing Church because resting on an institutional legacy does not foster the God-dependence essential to incarnational ministry. His best advice: “Find a reckless abandon to the person and work of the Holy Spirit.” Sounds like the bread and butter of my childhood charismatic evangelicalism—-no surprise since Hunter spent many years with Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Church. His great success yesterday was not in presenting something new, but rather in presenting something ancient: the apostolic witness of Christ’s life and Paul’s commands (esp. Romans 12:1-2) as the ultimate models for church life. Hunter practices what he preaches, as his talk took the particularity of YHWH known in the life and times of Christ and the early church and demonstrated how it speaks to our contemporary American cultural landscape.
*Such jeremiads have tempting parallels in scripture, but they betray a total ignorance of America’s toxic foreign policy towards Muslim countries since World War I.
**Here "social capital" implies a broad cultural assumption that the church and/or bible hold recognizable moral authority.
***For a non-professional historical take on this idea, see Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997). For a biblical take on this idea, see the bible, especially Matthew 22:37-40.
^Addition, 11/13/2010: I should add to this the problematic fallout from 9/11 in general and the cultural polarization which made evangelicalism seem a Christian doppelganger of violent Islamic fundamentalism.
Bishop Hunter’s big success at yesterday’s afternoon lecture at St. Steven’s Church in Sewickley was an act of informed synthesis. Ostensibly, we were there to hear about “Church Planting for the Sake of Others,” but the talk in no way developed that idea as a concise thesis. Don’t misunderstand, Bishop Hunter did address issues of mission and even offer some new ways to think about it, but he delivered information to us scattershot, a shotgun spread of issues ranging from how we tell the Christian story to engaging in an informed way with our culture. Nebulously, however, a coherent big picture for the future of Anglican ecclesiology and mission eventually came into view.
He began with a splash of cold water: evangelical Christianity is on the decline. According to sociologists of religion, he says, we’re bleeding numbers. He chalked this up to the fading currency of dogmatic truth in the post-Christian West, which I’m sure is insightful, but I was wondering about when these sociologists were taking these numbers. If in the aughts (00’s), his interpretation might have overlooked the problem of George W. Bush, who did no small amount of damage to evangelicalism’s reputation.^ He also refused to criticize some “Moral Majority” leaders like Robertson and Falwell—I appreciated his respect for them as people trying to uphold righteousness in a failing culture, but thought he remained too shy of acknowledging great public sins like their 700 Club conversation on September 12, 2001 blaming 9/11 on lesbians and the ACLU.*
The bishop described a familiar cultural situation: most Americans don’t consider Christianity to be our default religion, but rather one of many religious options. Pluralism and tolerance rule public discourse on God. He brought up the New Atheists (Hitchens, Dawkins, etc.) and told us how they’ve changed the tone of atheism from mere dismissal of religion to an outright denunciation of it as morally bankrupt and necessarily damaging. He countered this with statistics about historically steady church attendance and atheism’s lack of popular appeal.
What’s the zeitgeist then? Is it surprising to say that a mushy, post-confidence pluralism prevails, neither outright denying nor outright affirming the existence and/or relevance of God to human life? I’m not sure he spelled it out just this way, but it represents the sum total of his statements on the subject and is, I think, perceptive and relevant. Think of last year’s blockbuster Avatar and the way it’s pantheist-buddhist mystical interconnectedness and call for us to love and defend the weak and the different enriched its otherwise Dances With Wolves in Space plot. I loved the movie, but recognized it as an epic drama of the Obama age: “We’re sorry about Iraq; everything’s connected; there’s something that gives us hope; we’ll use the best technology to show you.”
So what? Bishop Hunter contended that we must recognize this situation as de facto and respond appropriately. “There’s no way into mission apart from reality,” he said. And mission “only happens by understanding and facing reality.” Paul’s Areopagus speech in Acts 17 serves as the model—we make a bridge from their reality (“unknown god”) to ours (“the God who made the world and everything in it”). We don’t preach the gospel by relativizing our story: “It was the particularity of Jehovah that liberated human beings.” Our hardest job, as he puts it, is “lovingly contending” for the uniqueness of Christ. It’s anathema to our culture, yet we can’t shout them into agreement with us. There has to be another way.
“How do we,” he asked, “take the particularity of Jehovah and be his people in this time and place?” In his view, we can neither rely on the strength of dollars or implicit social capital** and must rethink church and mission in terms of loving our neighbor as ourself.*** And that’s where the idea of “Congregations for the Sake of Others” creeps in, as it commends Christians to love people into Christ rather than seeing them as numbers to be secured as the spoils of evangelistic combat. Rather than think of church as one hour a week on Sunday, let’s think of it as all week long, where ambassadors for Christ are living gospel lives among the lost and then bringing them into community and worship on the basis of love.
He commended, almost apologizing for fear of offending Anglican tradition, an instrumentalist view of the church suggesting that Sunday worship is not an end in itself. I guess that’s a sacramental theology debate to be had another day. But he insisted that nothing ought to get in the way of gospel proclamation and gospel living, and that traditions which do need to be reconsidered in light of this imperative. He mediated, however, saying that “Worship was never meant to be in opposition to mission.” There are ways, he said hopefully, of bringing together a robust and historical sacramental theology with an urgent and nimble evangelical mission. He did emphasize that we need a leadership culture that celebrates risk and can deal with failure, the opposite of which is a “paralyzing conservatism.”
Bishop Hunter proposed many things that I, with a strong background in free church evangelicalism, have long been familiar with. In essence, that we need to recapture a biblically Christ-like model of being and doing Church because resting on an institutional legacy does not foster the God-dependence essential to incarnational ministry. His best advice: “Find a reckless abandon to the person and work of the Holy Spirit.” Sounds like the bread and butter of my childhood charismatic evangelicalism—-no surprise since Hunter spent many years with Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Church. His great success yesterday was not in presenting something new, but rather in presenting something ancient: the apostolic witness of Christ’s life and Paul’s commands (esp. Romans 12:1-2) as the ultimate models for church life. Hunter practices what he preaches, as his talk took the particularity of YHWH known in the life and times of Christ and the early church and demonstrated how it speaks to our contemporary American cultural landscape.
*Such jeremiads have tempting parallels in scripture, but they betray a total ignorance of America’s toxic foreign policy towards Muslim countries since World War I.
**Here "social capital" implies a broad cultural assumption that the church and/or bible hold recognizable moral authority.
***For a non-professional historical take on this idea, see Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997). For a biblical take on this idea, see the bible, especially Matthew 22:37-40.
^Addition, 11/13/2010: I should add to this the problematic fallout from 9/11 in general and the cultural polarization which made evangelicalism seem a Christian doppelganger of violent Islamic fundamentalism.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Philemon: The Power of Love
The following is a transcript of my homily preached Thursday, November 4th during Homiletics class at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. The homily is based on the whole book of Philemon. The jokes are intentionally corny--please don't think I consider this homily to double as an outstanding work of comedy.
Philemon begins with a standard Pauline introduction, “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy, etc., etc.” and immediately segues into lavish praise of the main recipient. Paul is thanking God for Philemon, his faith, his love, his reputation for spiritually refreshing others. So, Paul reasons, Philemon ought to be willing to extend this same spirited generosity to Onesimus, Philemon’s runaway slave. Nevermind that running away was punishable by flogging or worse. Nevermind the social normality of treating slaves as property—that nagging question, “What will the slave-holding neighbors think?” Nevermind that Onesimus not only ran away, but also, uh, crossed the Red Sea laden with more than shirt and sandals, if you get my drift. He took the money and ran.
But now Onesimus has converted and repented of his theft. Reconciliation is appropriate, even necessary to make a true gospel witness of this situation. What must Philemon have been thinking? Something like, “Headlines read, ‘Master and thieving-runaway slave reunite peacefully!’” The shame! Yet Paul refrains from commanding Philemon. “I would rather,” he says, “appeal to you on the basis of love.” This basis of love shows itself in several ways.
All you need is love. Love is all you need. You don’t need money, fame, credit cards to ride this train. It’s not just a second class emotion. Love hopes you don’t mind that it put down in words how wonderful life is now you’re in the world. It’s enough to make kings from vagabonds. Can you feel the love—this afternoon? Because love doesn’t want to close it’s eyes, doesn’t want to miss a thing. So pay attention, O Theophilus—my fellow God-lovers—because I’m going to talk about the love tucked away in Philemon, that little discussed book squeezed between the pastoral epistles and Hebrews. Philemon is a book that’s usually far from my mind when I think about instruction on love in the New Testament. But baby, Philemon’s got the love we need, and, maybe, more than enough.
Philemon is a short letter, twenty five verses, written from Paul to the leader of a Colossian house church named Philemon along with a handful of others associated with him. The occasion for the letter is a runaway slave named Onesimus, who has sought asylum through association with the imprisoned Paul and has been converted to Christianity in the process. Paul had that effect on people, it seems. The book of Philemon grants us a rare insight into Paul handling a pastoral situation, a complex one where gospel values and social values are tangled and competing. In the end, we’re given a stunning example of how the gospel works in real life and what it looks like when people live under the authority of the selfless servant king rather than the tyranny of the psycho-socio-economic-political web we call “the world.”
Philemon begins with a standard Pauline introduction, “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy, etc., etc.” and immediately segues into lavish praise of the main recipient. Paul is thanking God for Philemon, his faith, his love, his reputation for spiritually refreshing others. So, Paul reasons, Philemon ought to be willing to extend this same spirited generosity to Onesimus, Philemon’s runaway slave. Nevermind that running away was punishable by flogging or worse. Nevermind the social normality of treating slaves as property—that nagging question, “What will the slave-holding neighbors think?” Nevermind that Onesimus not only ran away, but also, uh, crossed the Red Sea laden with more than shirt and sandals, if you get my drift. He took the money and ran.
But now Onesimus has converted and repented of his theft. Reconciliation is appropriate, even necessary to make a true gospel witness of this situation. What must Philemon have been thinking? Something like, “Headlines read, ‘Master and thieving-runaway slave reunite peacefully!’” The shame! Yet Paul refrains from commanding Philemon. “I would rather,” he says, “appeal to you on the basis of love.” This basis of love shows itself in several ways.
First, I have already mentioned Paul’s gushing praise of Philemon. He clearly respects the man and hopes that he will do the right thing. His refrain from command him to obey only further highlights that trust. Near the end of his petition he pleads with Philemon to do for him what he has done for others: “Let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.” A declaration more than demonstrating Paul’s love and trust for Philemon.
Secondly, Paul clearly loves Onesimus and says as much. He calls the slave “my child” and “my own heart,” emphasizing how useful he is to Paul and how much he wants him to be on the church planting team. He vows to take upon himself whatever debts or crimes Onesimus owes Philemon. He loves him by praise and by purpose—the whole letter is a testament to Paul’s loving concern for the runaway slave.
Finally, the undercurrent of Christ’s love runs through the entirety of this brief correspondence. The letter presumes the power of the gospel as a direct shaping force on each of these lives, and Paul reminds everyone of this by modeling Christ throug his actions. Having been a criminal and slave under the power of the law and without recourse, Paul knows the love and freedom of Christ through the good news of his life, death and resurrection. Now he intercedes on behalf of a criminal and slave without recourse in order that Philemon “might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” And, even though Paul hopes Philemon will respond redemptively, he secures his commitment to Onesimus with what might seem as a threat to Philemon: “Prepare a guest room for me. I’m coming.”
When was the last time you loved people so well that others were inspired to love more? I’m preaching to myself here, too. Our ministry, our lives ought to be marked by sacrificial love inspiring sacrificial love. We’ve been loved by Jesus and so we love him and then others and then they love Jesus and then others. It’s meant to be a glorious and holy cycle of redemption. And when we live this way, we see another small piece of God’s kingdom come to earth. We see another part of this world not dominated by sin and manipulation but rather by the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord. And that’s the power of love. Amen.
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