Embarking

Songs at Night 2

I mentioned in my previous post that I used to sing to my daughter at night.  Well, I’ve changed songs a couple times.  Only a couple of times.  For awhile, I sang an old spiritual called “Give Me Jesus.”  In the midst of a pretty crazy time in our lives recently with much upheaval for our whole family, I was singing the song to her as she lay in bed:

            In the morning when I rise

            In the morning when I rise

            In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.

            Give me Jesus, give me Jesus.

            You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.

Suddenly, she interrupted me…

“Daddy, is that song true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, is it true, you know, about the world and about Jesus.”

“Yes, it is.”

Isn’t it amazing, that in the midst of the chaos of life, the wisdom of a child can cut through the confusion and bring clarity?

I used to sing to my daughter at night.  Then I sang to my oldest son.  Now I sing to my youngest son as I put him to sleep.  But I have to tell you how it all started.  My wife loves to sing.  In fact, she has a song for everything.  So, during the day and at night, my wife would always sing to our daughter.  I don’t know how old she was, but I think she was only about a year old.  I was walking by her room as my wife was putting her to sleep, and I heard her singing “Jesus loves me.”  I thought that was pretty cool.  You know, sing her a little ditty right before laying her down to sleep.  Then, only a week or so later I was walking by the room as my wife was putting her to sleep again.  Now, you have to understand that my daughter could barely talk at this point.  She was just forming words.  But as I stood by the door, I could hear her start to sing with my wife, forming words into song that she couldn’t even understand.  The words of that song have never meant more to me than in that moment, hearing a 1 year old singing sweetly and softly in her mother’s arms, “Jesus wubs me, ‘dis I know, for the Bi-bo tews me so.  Witto ones to him bewong.  Dey are weak, but he is stwong.  Yes, Jesus wubs me.  Yes, Jesus wubs me.”  I knew that truth for me, and for her more in that moment than ever before.  And of course, as I stood at the door and listened, I did what any good father at this point would do – I cried tears of joy.

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the course corrections that some people are advocating for in cultural shifts of the last couple of decades is a move away from reliance upon the philosophical foundationalism (or strong foundationalism) of modernism that has moved from playing a supporting position to Christian theology to something more center-stage.  In this move away from the “God of metaphysics” and a reliance on objective principles to what some would say is a more biblical approach to the Trinitarian personhood of God rather than the principles of God causes a lot of concern… not to mention confusion and misunderstanding.  Those advocating a “postmodern approach” to scripture can often be attacked by virture alone of the use of the word postmodern.  Or those, like myself, who use the word “deconstruction” to talk about more clearly understanding the cultural, historical, and philosophical influences on our understandings of Scripture so that we can possibly discover more clearly the revealed Word of God sometimes are misunderstood becuase of the fears attached to the philosophical history of deconstruction.  I’m trying to speak into this issue a little bit in order to help provide - possibly - a little clarity that we are not easily labelled as relativists, liberals, or post-Christians.  It’s simply not true. 

I’ve advocated earlier for some different understandings of truth that are more personally grounded.  Not personally in the relative sense, but personal in the Trinitarian sense in which we seek to know God in three persons as He is self-revelatory through his written, spoken, and incarnated Word.  A few weeks ago, when I was reading a book on culture studies (which I might comment on later), I read this quote from Calvin’s Institutes 1.7.4 [I have not yet looked up the reference, so I hope it's right]:

…the testimony of the Spirit is superior to reason, for as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.  The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convinces us that they faithfully deliver the message with which they were divinely entrusted.

I’ll say it again:  The Spirit leads us into all truth.  God is relational.  He apprehends us by interacting with us.  We do not apprehend Him by acknowledging, believing, or assenting to philosophical categories, truths, or principles about Him.  Principles, categories, and even the traditional “omni’s” are helpful to understanding God, but we need to be careful that we do not replace God himself in Three Persons with our philosophical, psychological, or otherwise categorical understanding of Him.

Think of if this way for a moment:  my best friend could go to a psychotherapist.  That psychotherapist along with a doctor and maybe even a metaphsycian could tell me a lot about what it means to be human, what my friend’s characteristics are, how his brain tends to function, and even give me a diagnosis based on the DSM IV.  I can learn a lot about my friend that way.  But are those diagnoses a correct description of my friend?  Are they exhaustive?  Do they replace what I learn and even experience of him when I sit down with him for coffee or listen to the pain or joy he might currently be experiencing?  And even what  I learn in that interaction, as I give language and thought to it, I will not have discovered the objective truth about my friend.  I will have learned some basic things that have truth value about him, but do not constitute his being or his truth in being.

Relationship with God takes faith in the leading and guiding of the Spirit as God reveals himself personally to us in ways that defy categories, that blow our minds, that overwhelm our spirits, and that cause our hearts to leap with excitement.  Objective truth categories can never do that.  Believing the truth - consenting to objectively true principles - does not even lead us to salvation.  Remember, even the demons believe and shudder, as James tells us.  Knowing what is objectively true isn’t bad (if we can know it), in fact it’s very helpful.   It’s just way less than enough, less important than trusting and obeying the One self-revealing God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The God of metaphysics is a a construction of the modern philosophical age of enlightenment - not of the Scriptures.   The God of the Scriptures is a living, powerful, and interactive Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

I spent the week last week at a Camp on Lake Michigan called Camp Geneva.  It’s actually where my wife and I met, and where we held our wedding reception.  I’ve been going out there each year to be a chaplain.  My kids get to experience camp, and I get to give back to camp a little bit.

Well, it’s a great week.  The week I’m there is  the 4th to 6th grade all week.  Now, I love these kids, but precisely because of their age, it requires some thinking in a good part of the brain - the child “translation” side.  This age group is filled with questions and curiosity and they’re really beginning to try to make sense of the world. 

Half way through the week, a counselor came to me with her cabin and asked if they could spend some time with me asking questions.  “No problem,” I said.  Well, that’s what I thought.  It was so much fun - for an hour we sat and just talked about everything you can think of from what will we be like in heaven to what are ghosts to how could Jesus really be God if he was also human to whether or not God spoke every language?  We talked about whether we’d know people in heaven and whether babies who died would always be babies in heaven.  (These kids were fascinated with the afterlife.)  They wanted to know if people could hear us from heaven so that we could pray to them after they died, whether we would become angels, and how God sees kids with disabilities.  Later in the week, another counselor asked if I’d do the same thing with her cabin.  It was a pure blast.

I wish at that point I had Jim’s book Gum, Geckos, and God  available (see previous post) or had already read it because he promises to look at some of these things in conversation with his kids in the book.  I’m excited to read this and rethink conversations I’ve had with my son Isaac about what I call our heavenly “super-bodies” and what God looks like and my daughter Aliya’s concerns about how on earth (literally) it’s possible for Jesus to come back to life (faith is amazing).

I’m participating in a blog tour for Gum, Geckos, and God.  The stop here will be on August 4th and following.  Basically, I’m going to ask Jim some questions on the book, and he’ll respond, and you can join in.

Setting:  Walmart bathroom; 3 year old in one stall, 5 year old two down – so they’re yelling.

3 year old:  [Singing Jesus Loves Me modified]  Jesus doesn’t love me; Jesus doesn’t love me. 

5 year old:  That’s not right.  Jesus loves you.  He always does.

3 year old:  I don’t like Jesus.  He won’t let me touch these blue walls, so I don’t like him. [Pauses]  Jesus, it’s me!  I’m sorry Jesus.  Jesus, it’s me!  I’m on da toilet!!” [Now to mommy] I just talked to Jesus, mommy.  Just for a minute.  He’s upstairs.

5 year old:  Jesus isn’t upstairs, he’s in the sky.

3 year old:  Not in the blue sky.

5 year old:  Yes he is.

3 year old:  In the blue sky!?

5 year old [yelling]: YES!!

3 year old:  How does he fly?

5 year old:  He doesn’t.

3 year old:  The angels fly.

5 year old:  Yes they do.

3 year old:  With their wings.

(And it went on… but who can ever re-create these things?)

This happened a few years ago when my now 8 year old was 5 and my now 5 year old was 3.  I was reminded of this when I read the first few lines of a new book by an old friend (well, he’s not old… we were just friends while I was in college and he getting his doctorate) called Gum, Geckos, and God.  It’s a book about God, theology, and questions that James S. Spiegel wrote from conversations with his kids and interaction with his philosophical mind.

I’m going to tell you some more about it in the next post or two, along with maybe one or two kid stories… but first a little about its author, James S. Spiegel (click to read his bio).  Jim is a Philosophy professor at Taylor University, a wonderful thinker, and a mean basketball player (at least he used to be).  You can read the official bio, which you should do… but I’m going to write a few other rememberances.  Jim and I played in a band back in college days, and I was often inspired by Jim’s wit and his intelligence.  I remember playing with him at the Michigan State Student Union, at a local bar, at a retreat, and at our church.  I remember Jim getting mad at me for some bad decisions I was making with some friends who were a negative influence.  Jim is a thinker and a lover.  He loves God and he loves his family and he loves his friends.  Jim also loves music, philosophy, and certain sports and TV shows.  

Honestly, I haven’t seen Jim since a buddy of ours got married several years back, but I have fond memories of jamming late into the night to the strange mix of Cranberries and Classic Rock.  I’ve only started the book, but I’ll be participating in a Blog Tour, and I hope you’ll not only read along, but get the book.   It’s funny, helpful, and serious all at the same time.  If you have kids, you’ll certainly recognize some of the great theological questions of 5 year olds from your own experience and Jim takes the deep philosophical and theological issues to bear and tries to put them into concepts that even a child can understand.  What a concept.

On his blog, Peter Enns has been sharing portions of a paper he delivered to the faculty at Westminster Theological Seminary in response to his book, Incarnation and Inspiration that got him into trouble and now into suspension.  In a recent post on the authority and cultural expressions of Scripture, first speaks of the mixing of Jesus divinity and humanity in his person.  Enns says that these are “essential” to who Jesus is, and that the combination is important.  I would be wrong to try to pit the humanity against the divinity or to raise one above the other.  Interesting, I was just relistening to a podcast recently by Seattle’s Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Seattle  entitled “The Supremacy of Christ and the Church in a Postmodern World.”  Driscoll was making a similar argument, accusing the Emergents of raising the immanence and incarnation of Jesus too high and accusing the New Reformers of raising the transcendence and exalted Jesus too much.  In any case, Enns argues that the authority of Scripture comes from its divine origin, in other words - in God’s words, but that it is encased unescapably in humanity, or cultural expression.  Here is a short passage from his post:

What I argue in I&I is that Scripture works in an analogous (not identical) way. Scripture is God’s word because it is of divine origin. That is the locus of authority, and no discussion of its humanity in any way compromises that authority. What a study of Scripture’s humanity does do is help us see the manner in which the divine author speaks authoritatively into particular ancient cultures. How this authoritative Scripture translates to different times and places, in both its timeless affirmations and contextualized particularity is (I trust this is not too reductionistic) the task of theological study. It is my firm experience, however, that evangelical lay readers, those to whom the book is addressed, are not accustomed to understanding the nature of Scripture this way.

This is one of the issues that I find so fascinating about how we understand Scripture, and one that I’ve mentioned in various ways here on my blog.  One of the ways it has been raised among some like myself is how much we can “purge” the human side, the cultural side, and get to pure propositional truths.  Again, don’t read what I’m not saying, and from what I’m reading of Enns, he’s not saying either but being accused of.  I’m not saying there isn’t truth, or objective truth for that matter or that God’s truth isn’t propositional in any way.  What I am saying is that our access too it is always enculturated, always incarnated, always spoken through word and cultural and interpretation from God into human cultures and persons.  God communicates, he doesn’t philosophize.  God relates, speaks, and loves rather than providing pure platonic visions of himself.  God is God, “I am who I am” and not philosophical categories and platonic idealism or Kantian pure reason.  God is interactional and in his divine goodness has chosen to speak, act, and even come incarnationally.

God is still who he is.  He is still the King and the authority.  What he says goes.  What he wants, will be.  There is no other name under haven by which we can be saved.  But let us be careful not to turn scripture - or God for that matter - into pure philosophical Kantian metaphysics.  We need to find a way to accept the way God has communicated with us - not through theological treatise, but through narrative of his relationship with his people - and then figure out how it speaks to us today, and what God really intends and who he is.  That’s much harder work than black and white propositions, I know, but that’s the work.  Driscoll is right (although I don’t like saying that) that we need to balance the transcendent and immanent God as he is.

Ok, this is getting way too long for what it’s worth.

Anyway… so the guy wakes up startled.  I - as nonchalantly as I can - ask him what he’s doing here.  “Sleeping.”  He says.  Well, that makes sense.  So I ask why he’s sleeping here.  Turns out, he just got out of rehab, and in Ann Arbor to get back into the shelter, you have to be out of rehab and clean for 30 days, or something like that.  He’d been out, but had no place to go, yet.  He was 29, a nice guy, and I felt like we could be friends.  I asked him how he got in here, and he said that it was really cold outside, and he happened to try the back door and it was open.  Made sense to me.  We talked for awhile about his journey and what he had learned and how he was now trying to get straight and get a job. 

Then came an awkward silence.  He asked if I wanted him to leave.  I supposed that would have been the right thing to do in terms of my job, but ringing in my ears were the words of Jesus: when you welcomed one of these, you welcomed me.  What would Jesus really do?  So, I told him to sit tight, and that I was going to think about it while I cleaned up the pump and water and I’d get back with him.  I came up awhile later and told him to move downstairs where there was heat and I let him stay the night.  I asked him to leave in the morning quietly and if I could help him in any way to get ahold of me.

I never saw him again, but he did send me an Easter card thanking me for a warm night’s stay and good conversation.  He got a job and was getting back on his feet, and by that time… was 6 months without a drink.

Buildings can often be a pain and can hinder or help us in ministry in a lot of ways.  The church is the people, and not the building, but this was one night when this building and all of its awards served Jesus by providing a warm night’s stay to a wanderer out in the cold.  And it also made me rethink what buildings are for, what Jesus would really do, and has deeply affected my understanding of the place of the church in the world.  Once [chance] encounter late into the night because of a flooded basement.  Only God can orchestrate that.

Oh… and during all of this long conversation I forgot to call my wife, and since I was gone a lot longer than she anticipated and she was worried about someone being in the church, well… nevermind.

So I arrive at the church sometime after midnight.  I’m just going to run in, unplug the pump, and head home.

URC has these large doors as an entrance… probably 12 foot high.  I work my key in the lock, open the large doors, and lock the door behind me.  Why?  Because it’s after midnight, and truth be told, my wife’s words haunt me a little bit.  I step into the small foyer that at this time of night is a little eery.  The foyer was built to have the feel of an outdoor patio with a brick floower, a skylight in the ceiling, and thin vertical windows letting in the surreal night light from the moon.  I didn’t turn on the light, because I could see faintly enough and didn’t want to draw attenion that I was in the church this late at night.  I’m usually comfortable and not afraid of the dark, and I had actually been in the church many times at night. 

So, I step into the foyer.   The stairs to the basement are on my right.  For whatever reason, I glance to the left, which is the direction of the sanctuary, stairs up to the balcony, and an old couch.  As my eyes adjust to the faint darkness, I think I see something.  Or someone.  Yes, sure enough, there is something or someone on the couch!  Now, my heart begins to race and the words my wife had spoken 20 minutes before came rushing back into my head, “It’s after midnight.  What if someone is in there?” and my retort about how ridiculous that was.

I carefully walk over to the lump on the couch.  My words sound so loud in the quiet of the night church, “Hello?”  Nothing.  “Hello.”  The person is sleeping.  I reach down to wake him or her up with a slight touch and shake.  Of course, he jumps with a startle, and I jump because of the built up anxiety. 

So it’s after midnight and I’m standing in the dark in the church with a startled stranger.

Fall 2003… a Saturday in late November.  We had a work-project around the church that we would generally have two or three times a year to clean up leaves, plant new plants or dig up old ones, clean, paint, cut down branches, etc.   If you look at the picture on the last post, you’ll see what looks like a railing at the bottom of the building.  That was about 4 foot high (which gives you a scope of the size of the building). On the other side of that railing was a stairway leading down to the basement.  On of our members was down there that day and cleaned out a bunch of leaves that had collected and had been clogging a  drain.  Little did we know that in a huge down-pour a few weeks later those drains would - for the first time in awhile - send a large amount of water down under the church and into the sump hole where there were two sump-pumps to pump out the water.  The problem was, those sump pumps were both frozen up and not pumping at all.  So… the water began to rise and before we knew it, the basement was flooding with water. 

I happened to have a large water pump sitting in my garage at the time, so I called my friend Nate, and he and hooked it up to a hose and began draining the water up and outside.  We left for the day, letting the pump do it’s long labor of love. 

Bedtime - midnight that night.  I’m climbing into bed, and suddenly I realize that the pump is still pumping!  I figure that by now, the water will be drained down, the pump would be sucking air, and could potentially burn up, ruining my pump.  I share this with my wife, telling her I need to head back to church.  Not happy, of course, because this would mean her tossing and turning until I returned, she says, “It’s after midnight.  What if someone is in there?”  Of course I immediately responded about how ridiculous and paranoid that was and how no one could get in the church, etc. and that I would be fine.  I didn’t know then what a friend often says to me now, “I’ve heard the Holy Spirit speaking, and he sounds very much like my wife.”

I got dressed, jumped in my car, and drove off to church. 

To be continued…

From January 1, 1999 to August 31, 2005 I served as, first Campus Minister, and later Senior Pastor of a church in Ann Arbor called University Reformed Church.  This church began in 1958/59 with a part time missionary as pastor across the street from the campus of the University of Michigan.  The building was constructed in the early ’60’s by famous architect Gunnar Birkerts and won a major architectural award then, and again later in 2004 won the Michigan AIA 25 Year Award.  (Here is a pretty cool 3D imaging of the building from which the photo on this page is from.)  The interesting thing about the building was that though it was an award winning building, and quite a feat in many ways (like the fact that the entire building is poured cement), it had a few design issues that caused some ongoing “practical” difficulties (skylights in the 60’s, drainage issues, heating).  It was also a very modernistic design architecturally with clean straight lines, stark white walls, vaulted ceilings, and a 4.5 second echo - great for a capello singing.  (I had a conversation with Gunnar at the awards, and he had a very interesting theological take on the architecture of the building - mirroring some of the tiered roof structure of Dutch architecture, and maintaining perfect symetry and beautiful clean, straight lines to represent the intricacies of the Dutch Reformed Theological tradition among other things. Truth be told, I had a love-hate relationship with the building.  Sometimes it felt like people worshipped it for its architecture and placed the “church” as facility above “church” as gathered people of God.  One of the questions I’ve often asked is about the relative value of church buildings.  For most churches, the building costs a tremendous amount - more than staff, ministry, and missions combined.  I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off finding alternative ways of worshipping/ gathering and creative partnerships with local businesses, community centers, etc and using the finances that facilities cost for more missional work.  That is, unless the building itself can become a kind of community center (look for my upcoming post on Cultural Engagement: from Temple to Synagogue).  The current church in which I work has a wonderful facility.  I also have a love-hate relationship with this building.  The debt-load is large.  The ongoing repairs create a virtual sucking sound that promises to be increasingly loud.  We’re moving towards missional community center philosophically, and that’s good.  But buildings tend to more about us, for us, to make us feel somehow like we’ve arrived in the community, and yet often they sit empty 6 days of out of the week and merely wall us off from our surroundings. 

Recently, the University Reformed Church building was sold to another church (Harvest Mission Community Church) while URC the church is going to live and function differently, starting off in the Michigan Union where the church actually began.  Is it getting back to its roots?  Could this be a redo/ restart?  Will they build a building again?  Should they?  Those are good questions, and as the former pastor, it’s not my role to answer them anymore.  Just to ponder them and offer the questions.

In my next post, I’m going to write a true story as a tribute to University Reformed Church - the building.