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The Gospel of Luke… Intro

Before we jump into the text proper, a few introductory words might prove helpful. Let’s do this in a question/answer format.

Who wrote The Gospel According to Luke?

Seems easy enough, right? Church tradition has identified Luke as the author, so in my mind it would take some conclusive evidence to demonstrate otherwise. One argument for Luke’s authorship of the gospel goes something like this. It is pretty much universally accepted that whoever wrote Luke also wrote Acts. The “we/us” passage of Acts indicate that whoever wrote Luke/Acts was one of Paul’s partners in ministry who travelled with him. According to Colossians, 2 Timothy, and Philemon, Luke was someone who was known to Paul and co-labored with him on a regular basis. So while neither church tradition nor the textual evidence is strong enough on their own to establish Luke as the author, both pieces taken together make a fairly strong case.

When was The Gospel of Luke written?

If Luke is the author, then the latest the gospel could have been written is the early 80’s when it is believed that Luke died. A fairly even-handed guess would be sometime between the mid-60’s (after the final events recorded in Acts) and before the early-80’s. The question that drives some of the speculation is whether the destruction of Jerusalem is predicted by Jesus in Luke or is it a Lucan literary device to refer to something that has already happened. Confusing, I know. Don’t lose sleep over it.

Why was this gospel written?

This may be the most important thing to understand as we follow Jesus through the pages of Luke. If Luke did co-labor with Paul in his missionary endeavors, presumably that would have taken them well beyond the borders of the Jewish world and deep into Gentile territory. As they presented Jesus the Messiah as the rightful Lord and Savior of every tribe, tongue, and nation, questions along the following lines were sure to follow… “How has it come to pass that a failed Jewish revolutionary has come to be revered as the universal Lord over all the world?” It is a fair enough question, and one that Luke takes a stab at answering. As we go through the gospel, we’ll be sure to stop along the way and see how Luke seeks to answer this question.

I’m also going to throw in a map. I like maps. I think they are helpful. One of the things a map does is to serve as a reminder that the events that Luke records aren’t just stories that sort of float around out in space. No, the story Luke tells happened in a real time and a real place.

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The Gospel of Luke… starting now

Today, at church, we started a new series on the Gospel of Luke. I got us started, and my enthusiasm for sharing all that I know and love about the gospels may have got the better of me. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. I pretty sure that people left today thinking, “that guy knows a lot about Jesus,” but not necessarily having tons of helpful things to grab hold of. Not that I think having “helpful things to grab hold of” was the intent of any of the gospel writers, which was in fact one of the points I was making. I think you get the idea.

So in my very limited ability, I tried to convey that there is so much to know and understand about who Jesus is in the gospels. The problem is that I may have tried to share all of that in one 30+ minute message. My text was mostly chapter 4 of Luke, and it really could should have been at least three different sermons.

Which brings me to why I’m here. I was pretty excited about everything that I had to say today, but sometimes EVERYTHING isn’t the best thing. You know… too much of a good thing.

So, instead of ambushing unsuspecting church-goers with more than they bargained for, I’m going to move a good bit of my discussion to here. I’m doing this for a few reasons.

First, as I’ve already said, I need an outlet. I’ll be studying Luke with the church and a couple different small groups. But I’ll enjoy having a place to say all that I’d like to say that, frankly, most people aren’t all that interested in.

Second, while looking for resources geared towards helping people study Luke on their own, I was fairly disappointed with the quality of what’s available for free online. I don’t want to denigrate the work that people have done to explain this gospel, but it just seems like they weren’t asking, “What is going to be helpful for people who are trying to make sense of Luke as they are sitting in front of their computer.” I’m absolutely certain that my efforts will suffer from the same deficiencies, but it won’t be from a lack of trying.

And third, I am hopeful that those who are studying Luke this summer and have questions will feel free to ask away. Church services generally don’t allow for that sort of interaction, nor would it be entirely helpful. Even if we made the opportunity available, people don’t ask the questions they have; either because they feel dumb asking or they think others will judge them for saying off-the-wall stuff. Hopefully, this can be a place where neither of these things get in the way of some good interaction.

So ideally, this will end up being a combination of commentary and online Bible study. We’ll see.

There are, however, a few obstacles with doing what I plan to do here.

1) While I know more than your average person about the Bible, I fall a far cry short of anything resembling a Biblical scholar. I’ll try to do decent research for what I put together, but please take it all with a grain of salt. I’m just a guy who loves studying the Bible, but probably gets it wrong about as often as I get it right.

2) I have a day job. It is called “being a pastor.” And while there should be more time for stuff like this, the days fill quickly. I’ll try to be fairly consistent, but we’ll see.

3) The first two obstacles pale in comparison with #3. I am about to be out of town for the better part of a month. And where I’m heading, internet access is going to be sketchy at best and more likely non-existent for long stretches of time. I’ll just need to get creative about how this gets done.

Ok, as you can see, this little project is going to require a lot of grace. However, with all that out on the table, I’m looking forward to diving in. My hope is that this really will be a resource for anyone who would study The Gospel of Luke (whether this summer or in the future). And be it known, the question that will drive the conversation day after day, at least for me, will be “What is it that Luke actually intended to communicate?”

I, for one, think this is an important question to ask. You might, as well.

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Scripture and the Authority of God by N.T. Wright

I’m thinking of renaming the blog “Four for Friday,” because that’s about all I’m able to make time for these days. So I’m sneaking a quick one in just before Friday to try to maintain some blog-cred.

Another alternate name could be “N.T. Wright Fan-Boy,” since that’s about the only other thing I talk about around here. A friend of mine was reading Wright’s Scripture and the Authority of God and asked if I had read it. Much to both our surprise, I hadn’t. He said he was finding it challenging and would love hear my thoughts on it. Never needing much of any encouragement to read more Wright, I promptly ordered it and dove right in. As chance would have it, I finished it up this past weekend, a day or so before this same friend tied the knot.

As you might suspect, the book is good. Really good. Wright successfully (IMHO) navigates between the warring conservative and liberal advocates in the “Battle for the Bible.” One group of Christians argues for a kind of inerrancy that the Bible doesn’t really seem to affirm about itself. While the other group writes off the Bible simply a man-produced piece of literature and therefore no more authoritative than “Chicken Soup for the Soul” or “Harry Potter” or Oprah or whatever.

Or as Wright says it himself…

Much of what has been written about the Bible in the last two hundred years has either been following through the Enlightenment’s program, or reacting to it, or negotiating some kind of halfway house in between.

So many good thoughts and not really anytime to unpack them, so I’ll just fire away a few more memorable quotes and let the chips fall where they may.

On how the Word is authoritative…

The apostolic writings, like the ‘word’ which they now wrote down, were not simply about the coming of God’s Kingdom into all the world; they were, and were designed to be, part of the means whereby that happened, and whereby those through whom it happened could themselves be transformed into Christ’s likeness.

On role that “religious experience” should play in constructing truth…

We could put it like this. ‘Experience’ is what grows by itself in the garden. ‘Authority’ is what happens when the gardener wants to affirm the goodness of the genuine flowers and vegetables by uprooting the weeds in order to let beauty and fruitfulness triumph over chaos, thorns, and thistles. An over-authoritarian church, paying no attention to experience, solves the  problem by paving the garden with concrete. An over-experiential church solves the (real or imagined) problem of concrete (rigid and ‘judgmental’ forms of faith) by letting anything and everything grow unchecked, sometimes labeling concrete as ‘law’ and so celebrating any and every weed as ‘grace.’

Ok, there’s more – always more – but that’s enough to try and wrap one’s brain around for one day. Oh, one other thing. Scot McKnight also recently wrote a bit about the book. Lot’s more interaction over there.

See you tomorrow with some insanely great music in hand.

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Always Wright

Don’t get flustered. I realize it is Friday (our very last according to some). I will be getting around to our beloved Four for Friday a little later today.

But first, I wanted to drop some wisdom on the reading masses. It is no secret that I have a man-crush on N.T. Wright. I don’t think he knows everything… but pretty close to it. Anyway as chance would have it, I came across two articles written by him. Both well worth reading.

The first is a piece he wrote on “The Rapture” nearly ten years ago that someone thought fitting to resurrect in light of our pending doom.

The second is a lengthier more recent article written on Bible translation. It seems that 2011 is going to be an interesting year in the world of Bible translations. The venerable King James Version is celebrating it’s 400th year anniversary. The NIV is getting a fresh update. And Wright himself is offering up his own translation of the New Testament. This article is well worth reading every word. I can’t begin to unpack every issue he touches on, but there are many. Here’s a taste…

Translations must be concerned with accuracy, but there are at least two sorts of accuracy. The first sort, which a good Lexicon will assist, is the technical accuracy of making sure that every possible nuance of every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph has been rendered into the new language.

But there is a second sort of accuracy, perhaps deeper than this: the accuracy of flavour and feel. It is possible, in translation as in life, to gain the whole world and lose your own soul – to render everything with a wooden, clunky, lifeless “accuracy” from which the one thing that really matters has somehow escaped, producing a gilded cage from which the precious bird has flown.

You really should read the whole article.

If any of this sparks an interest in getting more into the mind of one of the world’s foremost New Testament scholars, as always I recommend starting here…

Readable and Insightful

So good. Really.

Alright folks, now time to crank out some Four for Friday. I will resist the urge to theme it around the end of the world.

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favorite spot (continued)

I left off a few days ago talking about my favorite spot… within the pages of a really good book. At least one person took issue with my “spot” not being a more substantial location. Like I said at the outset, I felt like the question was vague enough for whatever creative license a person felt inclined to exercise. So maybe my spot is really an activity. My activity might end up being a spot. No need to split hairs.

Plus, as I sometimes have to point out, I do whatever I want around here.

Like write about boring theology books. Which brings me back to my recent favorite “spot”. Here it is…


Thrilling, I know.

You might be tempted to jump to at least two conclusions about this book based on the cover and title alone.

First, you might think that what you will find on the inside is some pretty heady stuff. And you would be right. As usual, I make no apologies for books written on a college (or perhaps in this case graduate school) reading-level. It is ok to every now and then read books that are a little ahead of us. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are good. Or that they are even “right”. It does mean we’ll need to work a bit more. And that’s ok. There’s a reason that the Harry Potter series was a best-selling phenomenon, and that this one, well… isn’t.

One could also be lead to believe that because of the above statements that the book is cold and lifeless. On that count, you would be dead wrong. This book spans the gamut… How we engage culture? What does it mean for the Spirit to speak through the text? The importance of community? How our destiny informs our present? Of course, it does so in an attempt to answer the question suggested in the sub-title.

“How does one engage in doing theology in a post-modern world?”

I can tell that you aren’t sold. Let come at it a different way.

Have you ever been suspicious of the certainty that some religious people/institutions/organizations exhibit when it comes to explaining “truth?”

If you answered “yes” (and let’s be honest, you most likely did), then that “certainty” with which you have a problem is what this book calls foundationalism. And that “suspicion” of yours more or less demonstrates that you are most decidedly a “post-modern” person… whatever that is.

I can see we are getting nowhere fast, so let’s wrap up with a few choice quotes…

“Disengagement from the objectified world formed the foundation for the modernist ideal – namely, individual autonomy – understood as the ability to choose one’s own purposes from within oneself apart from the controlling influence of natural and social forces and hence to create one’s own identity or self.”

And…

“The contemporary acknowledgment of the relationality of personal identity suggests that the divine image is a shared, communal reality. It implies that the image of God is fully present only in relationships, that is, in ‘community’… the doctrine of the Trinity asserts, throughout all eternity God is ‘community’ … According to the New Testament, the focus of this image-bearing function is humans-in-relationship but, more specifically, the church as the foretaste of the new humanity … Only in community can we truly show what God is like, for God is the community of love, the eternal relational dynamic enjoyed by the three persons of the Trinity.”

For some, this might sound more than a little familiar. I may have shared a thought or two along these lines last Sunday.

But to get to the goods, one occasionally has to work through slightly denser material. Like this…

“The Christian tradition is comprised of the historical attempts by the Christian community to explicate and translate faithfully the first-order language, symbols, and practices of the Christian faith, arising from the interaction among community, text, and culture, into the various social and cultural contexts in which that community has been situated.”

Well, there’s more. So very much more. But at this point, I would recommend that you just take it up and read it for yourself.

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn’t share that this book was given to me nearly ten years ago by a student in the youth ministry I helped lead in Seattle. So Jeff, a heartfelt ‘thanks’ goes to you for putting such a wonderful book into my hands. It has been a breath of fresh air.

P.S.S. Stan Grenz (one of the authors) unexpectedly passed away a few years back. Nevertheless, he was fairly prolific and managed to write more than a few books during his lifetime.  If the two or three that I’ve read are any indication of the quality of the others, I imagine that they are all good.

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my favorite spot

A week or so ago, my good friend Bobby threw out “One Big Question”…

Where is your favorite spot,

what is your favorite activity to seek God?

Like the faithful blog companion that I am, I’ve been meaning to follow through with a response, but I knew that my answer would have to be a blog post of its own. In fact, it will probably end up being two… or three… or maybe four posts, because as I read it more than one question is being asked. That’s how I took it anyway, and judging from the other folks’ responses people did whatever the heck they wanted with the question(s).

Speaking of what the others had to say, many of the things mentioned certainly would have been on my list as well. Meals with friends. Alone with a cup of coffee. Praying with others. And yes, even empty school parking lots.

Yet my favorite spot is found between the pages of a book. As I’ve explained elsewhere, it isn’t just any old book that will do. No, my preference is for the sort of book that “makes demands of me.” And the kind of demanding books that I appreciate most are the ones that plumb the depths of who God is or what he has done and is doing in the world. Or books about His people are and what they are to do in the world.

True confessions time… I said that I wouldn’t discuss a certain book here, but if you want my most honest response to it, here goes…

I thought it was boring.

I know it was meant to be all controversial and revolutionary and all that. But it just didn’t do much for me. It wasn’t that I was bothered by what he was saying. There were tons of things he said that I thought were fine things to say. And a few that were not. My main problem was that it just wasn’t all that interesting… for me.

Now, the guy who wrote it isn’t uninteresting. I’ve heard his preaching and he is far from boring. In fact, entertaining is his long suit. And yet, sadly our culture has gotten so muddled in its thinking that we have confused being engaging with being right. Something stated with enough rhetorical flair or with “authenticity” is passed off as truth, while writing that explains complicated truths with precision doesn’t tend to be very well-received. It is the old form over content dilemma. Naturally, one would love to have both. But having both is very, very rare.

I understand that what constitutes a “good read” is a fairly subjective thing. I am regularly reminded that the books I find most engaging would cause others to fall asleep two paragraphs in. None of that changes the fact that the “love” book joins the long list of books in the pop theology category.

These are the sorts of books that show a surface level understanding of the Scriptures, almost no appreciation for the history of theology, a lack of awareness of the interpretive tradition in which they are situated, or that they stand within an interpretive tradition at all.

Therefore, I find it refreshing whenever I come across a book that is so clearly not that. And over the past few weeks, just such a book has afforded me this pleasure. But since I’m drawing perilously near my self-imposed post length limit, sharing about this “life-giving” book will have to wait.

Instead, I’ll let my old friend C.S. Lewis wrap-up how I feel about my “favorite spot.”

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await others.  I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

C. S. Lewis, quoted in R. L. Green and W. Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (New York, 1974), page 115. (HT: Ray Ortlund)

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This is my body

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them.

Mark 14:22-24

Contained in these few brief words, we have Jesus’ institution of an ordinance that would persevere throughout Christian history. Over the centuries, the way the faithful have understood this holy communion has changed. But very few would question its importance as a central ritual that has sustained countless believers across space and time.

And it is an eating event.

I believe that is significant. That Jesus would choose to establish a church practice for time immemorial that is an eating act necessarily assumes that food and spirituality are connected. I chose Mark’s version of the Lord’s Supper because it is in all likelihood the earliest gospel account. And as a result, this recounting of the sacred meal is the least elaborated on. The wording is urgent and terse. “Take it, this is my body.”

Jesus could have chosen any number of ritualistic acts as a means for remembering his sacrifice. He could have told us to lay on our backs in cruciform fashion for a prescribed period of time. He could have commanded us to weekly say out loud, “I remember Jesus’ death and resurrection,” five times. Really fast. He could have even had us sit cross-legged and simply meditate on the glorious truth of Jesus’ atoning death.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he chose to connect our remembrance of his covenant-establishing death and resurrection to the simple act of eating and drinking. Bread and wine. This very earthy, mundane, natural action – eating – is the sacrament that is present at the gathering of the worshiping community. Some less frequently than others. But even infrequently observed it is (or can be) an incredibly powerful spiritual event. It is a holy act. It is a sacrament.

According to Wikipedia, a sacrament is defined as “a rite in which God is uniquely active,” or “a tangible symbol which represents an intangible reality.” This Holy Meal is something that the Church through Jesus’ command is suppose to observe in order to remind us of specific Christian truths. Namely, that in Christ, God has lavished his grace on us, and that clothed in the faith(fulness) of Christ we are loved and forgiven.

However, without taking away one ounce from the sacredness and uniqueness of the Lord’s Supper, every supper contains sacramental potential. For something to be sacramental (as opposed to Sacrament), it simply needs to be an action that reminds us of some truth about God. And from that perspective, all of life begins to open up with sacramental possibilities. The mundane is transformed into something that orients us towards the divine. Anything. A shower can remind us of being washed clean by God’s mercy. Observing a mountain sunset becomes an opportunity to reflect on the grandeur of God. Conversation with a friend can remind us that God reveals himself. He communicates. He speaks. Sex… well, the list goes on.

But we are talking about food here, so let’s be clear. The Lord’s Supper is sacrament. Supper is sacramental. That is to say that each meal becomes an opportunity to reflect on God’s gracious provision for us. The variety of food we enjoy reminds us that God’s creativity is limitless. Meals geared towards celebration draw attention to the shear joy of the Lord. And as we’ve seen before… meals both reflect and draw us into community.

My friends, I hope you’ll forgive a verse taken only very slightly out of context as I admonish you with the words of Paul…

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10:31

For more sage insight into the significance of the Eucharist, check HERE and HERE.

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Some of the truth? Or all of it?

So little time and sooo much that I’d like to talk about. I know that I still owe you, my faithful reader, a post or two on Food and the Bible. I plan to get around to it, because it is pretty much going to be the linchpin post for establishing the spirituality of food. So you have that to look forward to.

Then there is the whole Rob Bell controversy. My plan was to let it pass without comment. But it looks like people on either side are getting all hot and bothered over it/him, and that maybe it isn’t going to pass as quickly as I’d expected hoped. At this point, I’m pretty committed to reading the book. More out of a sense of pastoral responsibility than any real interest in what he has to say. Rob is a great communicator, but he isn’t really a first-rate theologian (p.s. I am neither a great communicator nor a first-rate theologian). Anyway, while I plan to read the book, I’m equally committed to not purchasing it. So as you can see, I have something of a problem.

My commitment to not buying the book doesn’t stem from a belief that it is heresy. I’d have to read the book to even begin to form an opinion. Rather, as I’ve shared in the past, I have an abnormal distaste for all things hyped. And brother Rob’s book certainly falls in that category. Who knows? Maybe I’ll stick with my ignore-it-until-it-goes-away plan.

Instead, I’d like to pursue the question posed in the title. Does one teach truth in small bites? Carefully measured out? Or do you turn on the fire hydrant and flood folks with it?

I was on deck yesterday to teach out of Luke 4:1-13 (The Temptation of Jesus), and I was faced with this very dilemma. Last night wasn’t an isolated event. I regularly wrestle with this question. Do I teach all the truth contained in the passage (or I should say “all the truth that I have access to,” because only a very arrogant person would say that they have a handle on all the truth) or do I just stick to one or two familiar points from which I can get some sturdy “applications” for my listener.

Usually, I err on the side of caution. I work with the “less is more” theory. Namely, that a person is more likely to get something good from what I share if I’ll focus on a main idea or two. That way, they can get get a pretty good handle on a few things rather than the deluge of information that I’d like to rain down on them. Well last night, for better or worse, I went with option B.

Luke 4:1-13 is a fascinating passage that can be read on at least two levels. There is the common reading in which we are to take Jesus’ example of resisting the devil’s schemes and apply that to our lives in like manner. Use God’s word to combat temptation. Don’t compromise your single-hearted worship of God… and so on. I hope I’m not sounding too dismissive. I really do think this is a valid reading. But approaching the passage in this way doesn’t get at all the truth that is there. And more importantly, I don’t think it gets at the main truth that I believe is fairly front and center.

Like a good movie, there is the storyline and there is the underlying message. Focusing on the storyline in this case misses the message. Most of us have repeatedly been taught to engage this passage in the manner I’ve just outlined above. But in doing so we run the risk of missing out on what was most certainly the message Luke/Jesus was trying to get across.

The underlying message surrounds issues of “son-ship.” Both the passage itself and the preceding verses are filled with “son” language. And so there are a series of questions lying just below the surface of the text. Who is Jesus? Who is God’s son? Who is Jesus the son of? What does it mean to be God’s son?

But those aren’t the only questions on the table either. What any Jewish reader would have recognized as blatantly obvious are the connections between Jesus’ story and their nation’s his-story. Obvious to them. Not so much to us. Largely because we are unfamiliar with their story. But a group of high school students were able to see it, so I have faith in you as well.

[Jesus] was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted.
Luke 4:1-3

Do the words “wilderness” and “forty” stand out in any way? Anyone remember a group of people who wandered around a wilderness for a forty length of time?

How about the temptations themselves? The first one was to change a stone to bread. Anyone remember a bread in the wilderness episode. I believe they called it manna back then.

Or temptation number 2… Worshiping someone other than God himself. That’s idolatry. And that’s also what was taking place when Moses came down from Mount Sinai and found Aaron and the lot acting a fool with a golden calf.

Then there is temptation number 3… not quite as clear cut, but as I read it, the devil is casting doubt on God’s goodness. He is tempting Jesus to believe that God wouldn’t come through for him if he were throw himself off the highpoint of the temple. The whole reason the Israelites found themselves wandering the wilderness for forty years was due to failure to believe the same thing about God at a crucial moment. Kadesh Barnea. Look it up.

And if some thick-headed young Jew was still missing the point, the two-by-four to the head would that all of Jesus scriptural responses to the devil were from Deuteronomy. And not just random proof-texts, but verses from a fairly isolated section (Deuteronomy 6-8). All verses that have the wilderness wandering as their backdrop.

“So what?” you ask. All fine and well, but what’s the point?

The point is that Jesus recapitulates the story of Israel. Or maybe more accurately, he is re-framing the story of Israel around himself. By re-enacting key elements of Israel’s history, claims are being made about who he is and what his mission is. Namely, while Israel failed at being “the son of God” (cf. Exodus 4:22 and Hosea 11:1), Jesus breaks onto the scene and he is and will be the faithful son.

Jesus… the faithful son. The faithful one. Sounds like a contemporary Christian song.

Now, if we could just find something that rhymes with “recapitulate” or “Deuteronomy.”

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Ode to Food

Ok, so I spoke with my blog consultant the other day and asked what he thought Square Pegs could use more of. He suggested some posts in which I air my half-baked ideas about whatever. I’m not entirely convinced that’s what the world needs, but I’m going to give it a go.

Starting today, I’m going to begin a series of posts on food. Before you jump to conclusions, this isn’t going to be a foods-I-like sort of thing. Rather, I hope over a few posts to develop something akin to a “Theology of Food.”

Here at the outset, let me go ahead and state the obvious. The Bible doesn’t really have lots to say about this subject. Unless of course you read the Jewish Scriptures (or Old Testament for us patronizing Christians) which might lead you to believe that God is obsessed with food. What you can eat. What you can’t. When you can. When you can’t. You get the idea. God seemed to care about what people did and didn’t eat… to say the least.

Then Jesus comes onto the scene and appears to sweep away all that gastronomic preoccupation with one statement…

“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) Mark 7:18-19

Ok, so there it is. The whole food thing doesn’t matter anymore. Eat whatever you like, whenever you like. End of story. God doesn’t care.

And yet, I’ll be writing from a deeply held conviction that our (when I say “our,” I’ll be speaking from the point of view of a North American) relationship with food is depraved. Or to say it another way, how we “do” food is fundamentally flawed. Despite that belief, most of what I’ll be outlining here is theology by inference and not so much explicitly stated.

I’m about done for today, but let me finish laying my cards on the table.

  • I have a food problem. I don’t worship food, but I may think about it more often than I should. I have strong opinions about the sorts of foods a person should and shouldn’t eat. Which means that I probably have a judgmental spirit when it comes to eating. That is wrong. I hope to steer clear of “foodie-ness.”
  • I work with students (middle and high school – and some college) and can say that I’m repeatedly appalled at what passes for food for these guys and gals. They have absolutely no idea what constitutes “real” food and what doesn’t. Apparently, a plate of chips is deemed an acceptable meal. So bear in mind, my reflections may be colored by years of youth ministry cynicism.
  • “How” and “what” we eat is not the gospel. I believe there are gospel issues and wisdom issues. How we do food falls into the latter category. While I think “gospel” should create a longing for wisdom living, it is important not to confuse the two.

Alright folks, prepare to be enlightened.



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Observing Lent in 2011?

A year ago, I was all geared up for Lent. I’m not entirely sure why, but for whatever reason, I was “feeling” it. The idea of celebrating Lent was sort of novel, and I was gung-ho to help people plumb the depths of falling into the rhythms of the Christian calendar.

Today was a much different story. I was sitting in a meeting and one of my beloved co-workers kindly reminded all of us that Lent was a few short weeks away. The indifference in the room was palpable. The enthusiasm of last year was a distant memory. No one said it, but it was like we were all thinking, “Yeah, we did that last year. What’s new?”

And the response of the Christian calendar is in many respects, “nothing.” We live in a culture that is obsessed with novelty and newness. I am already salivating over an iPhone that I haven’t even seen yet that is rumored to be released sometime this summer. And so something about entering into a Lenten observance this year feels like last year’s iPhone… obsolete.

But I’m coming to realize that this is precisely the beauty of Lent. It enters into one’s life this year (and every year) as an intrusion. My mind is on other things and Lent inconveniently shows up to remind me that I am in need again this year of creating space in my life to reflect on Jesus’ abundant life, sacrificial death, and life-giving resurrection.

So for these reasons – and more – I’ll be entering into the Lenten season in much the same way as I did last year. In fact, I’m going to read the very same resource that I did a year ago. It was good. It was thought-provoking. And I’ve forgotten almost all of it. Which is I guess is the point of Lent. That things forgotten are brought to the forefront again.

Here’s what I’ll be reading, as well as some other options.

So, three weeks from tomorrow, Lent will begin. And I will begin again to come to terms with all the truths that are so easily forgotten. How about you?