I just finished classes for the day/week (I don't have classes on Friday or Monday) and I was back here in my apartment and had one of those awesome moments where the Spirit just falls on you in a special way, where you are completely just blown away in the goodness of the Holy Spirit and he just is pouring in and out of you. I wasn't really doing anything special, in fact, I was just fixing dinner and came back to my computer to put up an AIM away message and it just happened, it was completely unexpected, but it was so good. All this to say, that as the Holy Spirit was ministering to me I felt prompted to write something. I guess you could call it a poem or something akin to a poem, or maybe you could call it a short hymn because the substance is very similar to the Christ Hymns in the New Testament. I don't write stuff like this often, in fact the last time I wrote anything like this was 9/24/05 and the last time I wrote something like this in the Spirit was 8/3/05. The quickest place I could go to write it down was in an away message window, so if you happen to read it here and there, I'm sorry for being redundant. So here it is, I post not to share 'my art' or to show you what 'I've done' but to share what the Spirit seemed to be breathing into me. I hope that it ministers to you and helps you exalt Christ.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Maran atha we cry aloud - Come Lord Jesus!!
We truly long for you like a bride waiting for her groom.
You are the preincarnate One, true God of true God,
made flesh to suffer and die, a bloody sacrifice for the redemption of humanity.
You were exalted to the right hand of the Father and intercede for us now, your beloved!
You are truly worthy to be praised! You are the very wisdom of God, the glorious Son,
worthy to be exalted with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and forevermore! Amen.
- BH 4/27/06
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Thursday, April 27, 2006
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Flee to the Eucharist!
Is one of my favorite quotes by Robert Webber. I love the imagery and the power of thinking about fleeing to the cup and the bread to meet Christ and to partake in his suffering and death.
Today at our weekly mid-week Eucharist chapel I had an unusual experience concerning 'fleeing to the Eucharist.'
As a sound person I am use to getting neglected during most services and especially during communion. I rarely get served and usually end up having to serve myself after the service is over. Well today, like many others, i was forgotten and I planned on going to partake in the sacrament after the service was over. Well, just as I was walking down the stairs someone came and took all the bread and one of the cups away. So I had to hastily walk (cause i didn't want to make a huge scene) after her to get the Eucharist.
I just thought this was a funny story, especially when I remember Webber's quote. It turns out sometimes you have to literally flee after the Eucharist, as well as flee to it.
Today at our weekly mid-week Eucharist chapel I had an unusual experience concerning 'fleeing to the Eucharist.'
As a sound person I am use to getting neglected during most services and especially during communion. I rarely get served and usually end up having to serve myself after the service is over. Well today, like many others, i was forgotten and I planned on going to partake in the sacrament after the service was over. Well, just as I was walking down the stairs someone came and took all the bread and one of the cups away. So I had to hastily walk (cause i didn't want to make a huge scene) after her to get the Eucharist.
I just thought this was a funny story, especially when I remember Webber's quote. It turns out sometimes you have to literally flee after the Eucharist, as well as flee to it.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
On Easter
So Becca asked me to post some thoughts on Easter (cf. The comments under the "Beaux Arts Ball" post) and I really don't feel like I have anything profound to write about. So I hope I don't disappoint anyone with the lack of profound insights but here are some of my thoughts ranging from Easter and the events surrounding Easter.
As weird as it may seem, I'm actually sort of sad that lent is over. I know, it's weird, a time of mourning and fasting a time where the church has traditionally (mainly the Catholics and not the Orthodox or Protestants) prohibited the use of "Hallelujah" - you wouldn't think I'd be sad about this time ending. Especially with the fact that Lent ends on my favorite Church holy-days of all time - Easter Sunday. Don't get me wrong, I love the joyful time of living in Eastertide (the season after Easter and before Pentecost) I love Easter, and I don't particularly enjoy fasting, but I still am sort of sad that Great and Holy Lent is over. There is something very special about traveling through life in those 40 days of intense concentration and humility. There is something unique about living out 40 days in a mystical desert. Maybe it's that I learned a lot during this Lent, maybe it's that I like the somber feel of it, I'm not really sure, but I do know that I am torn between the joy of Eastertide and the ache of Lent. I think that's why both of these are so essential to our church calendar (something a majority of Protestantism has completely neglected).
Easter was great though. Although I spent a lot of the weekend on the road, driving back home and then back to KY, it was good to get home and visit family and friends. It was interesting being back in a protestant church, but I don't think I could have picked a better situation. I love my home pastor and I don't know if I've ever met a better pastor than he. I only wish that he would have came to Port while I was still a full-time attender there. It was definitely different, but good to be back. I also find it hard to sit in a pew on a Sunday like Easter Sunday. There is so much joy and so much energy just flowing through me it was all I could do just to remain silent and sit in the pew. I so badly wanted to just get up and start preaching. This isn't to say that Pastor Beckley did a bad job, on the contrary, he did an excellent job as always, but there is so much I want to convey that it still pains my heart to be silent in church - especially in a protestant church. I think it pains me more in a protestant church because I know that I can serve there. In the Orthodox Church I attend I know from the outset that I have no authority and it would be wrong for me to speak as one with authority to these people so it doesn't really burn within me as much there, but when I go to a protestant church I just want to shout it out.
I don't want to critique Pastor Beckley because as I said his sermon was heartfelt and truly a word from the Lord, but I feel like the things that were running through my heart and mind were not conveyed how I would convey them. This is probably just a difference in personalities, but either way it gives me a small opportunity to pontificate here.
What my heart wanted to scream was along these lines although these are admittedly very raw ideas that would need some polishing. And this "list" is by no means meant to symbolize any of my thoughts of Pastor Beckley's sermon.
Although the Church does a good job at celebrating Easter I feel we do a poor job of internalizing Easter. I wanted to scream and shout at the top of my lungs, I wanted to convey the truth that Easter is not just the rising of Christ. Easter is the beginning of the end of time. The pinnacle of human history happened that Easter Sunday 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ conquered death and with that he initiated the final age of the world. His resurrection does not just mark the start of a movement, but truly was (as the gospel writers indicate) the highest point of all human history. This is it! This is all we could ever hope for and imagine. God enfleshed conquering death, conquering sin! I wish I could convey the excitement that fills my heart as I meditate on this and write these words. I am just baffled every year at how the Church can just go about her Easter 'celebration' in such a nonchalant way. This is the essence of everything we are and hope to be. We live in this reality. We worship because of this event. We can have hope in life and amidst death because of this glorious act. I can't even describe the joy and excitement in my heart. That's why I want to scream and shout. I want to help people to realize what this means for them, for the church, for humanity. This isn't just something that happened and is over. This is a living reality! Christ did not rise (completed past tense) but "he is risen" (past action that continues through to the present). So many Christian's treat Easter with no excitement, no joy and no holy fear and trembling. It's like we pass the same judgment on the celebration of Easter that Pope Benedict (I think it was Benedict or maybe John Paul) said of Mel Gibson's Passion - "it is was it is." How can we live in such apathy toward the highest holy day of the year? "It just baffles me" (and yes that was a Madden reference). My heart is warmed every time I think on these things. I don't understand it and it brings me to the verge of tears - both of sadness and frustration. Sadness because of the state of the church and frustration because I don't know how, as a future minister, to convey this joy to people. How can we do it? How can we help people to realize that this is it! This is our life-long curriculum. We are called to live and to learn in the shadow of the cross and the empty tomb everyday of our Christian lives.
This life-long learning about how to live in the reality of Easter is why it is so vitally important for us to remember that every Sunday, every Sunday of the year is like a mini-Easter. This is why the ancient Christians decided that we should meet on Sunday rather than the Sabbath (Saturday). They knew that Easter was the center of life and thus every week we meet and celebrate the resurrection as a community of faith. We learn the curriculum of the resurrection every Sunday, or at least that's what Church is supposed to be. [This could be a launching point for some of my anti-church growth/seeker church sentiments but we'll save that for another day, but feel free to insert them yourselves.] We are people of the resurrection, that is our identity, and that is how we ought to define ourselves. Is it any wonder that the early believers greeted one another with the statement "he is risen" and the response "he is risen indeed." This didn't start as a Easter Sunday ritual, it started as an everyday ritual to identify believers. We are identified by the resurrection! This is who we are and thus it should effect every ounce of our being - especially the way we remember the resurrection.
So I guess I had more thoughts on Easter than I realized, they're more just out of the normal "Easter meditations" box.
~ Ben
As weird as it may seem, I'm actually sort of sad that lent is over. I know, it's weird, a time of mourning and fasting a time where the church has traditionally (mainly the Catholics and not the Orthodox or Protestants) prohibited the use of "Hallelujah" - you wouldn't think I'd be sad about this time ending. Especially with the fact that Lent ends on my favorite Church holy-days of all time - Easter Sunday. Don't get me wrong, I love the joyful time of living in Eastertide (the season after Easter and before Pentecost) I love Easter, and I don't particularly enjoy fasting, but I still am sort of sad that Great and Holy Lent is over. There is something very special about traveling through life in those 40 days of intense concentration and humility. There is something unique about living out 40 days in a mystical desert. Maybe it's that I learned a lot during this Lent, maybe it's that I like the somber feel of it, I'm not really sure, but I do know that I am torn between the joy of Eastertide and the ache of Lent. I think that's why both of these are so essential to our church calendar (something a majority of Protestantism has completely neglected).
Easter was great though. Although I spent a lot of the weekend on the road, driving back home and then back to KY, it was good to get home and visit family and friends. It was interesting being back in a protestant church, but I don't think I could have picked a better situation. I love my home pastor and I don't know if I've ever met a better pastor than he. I only wish that he would have came to Port while I was still a full-time attender there. It was definitely different, but good to be back. I also find it hard to sit in a pew on a Sunday like Easter Sunday. There is so much joy and so much energy just flowing through me it was all I could do just to remain silent and sit in the pew. I so badly wanted to just get up and start preaching. This isn't to say that Pastor Beckley did a bad job, on the contrary, he did an excellent job as always, but there is so much I want to convey that it still pains my heart to be silent in church - especially in a protestant church. I think it pains me more in a protestant church because I know that I can serve there. In the Orthodox Church I attend I know from the outset that I have no authority and it would be wrong for me to speak as one with authority to these people so it doesn't really burn within me as much there, but when I go to a protestant church I just want to shout it out.
I don't want to critique Pastor Beckley because as I said his sermon was heartfelt and truly a word from the Lord, but I feel like the things that were running through my heart and mind were not conveyed how I would convey them. This is probably just a difference in personalities, but either way it gives me a small opportunity to pontificate here.
What my heart wanted to scream was along these lines although these are admittedly very raw ideas that would need some polishing. And this "list" is by no means meant to symbolize any of my thoughts of Pastor Beckley's sermon.
Although the Church does a good job at celebrating Easter I feel we do a poor job of internalizing Easter. I wanted to scream and shout at the top of my lungs, I wanted to convey the truth that Easter is not just the rising of Christ. Easter is the beginning of the end of time. The pinnacle of human history happened that Easter Sunday 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ conquered death and with that he initiated the final age of the world. His resurrection does not just mark the start of a movement, but truly was (as the gospel writers indicate) the highest point of all human history. This is it! This is all we could ever hope for and imagine. God enfleshed conquering death, conquering sin! I wish I could convey the excitement that fills my heart as I meditate on this and write these words. I am just baffled every year at how the Church can just go about her Easter 'celebration' in such a nonchalant way. This is the essence of everything we are and hope to be. We live in this reality. We worship because of this event. We can have hope in life and amidst death because of this glorious act. I can't even describe the joy and excitement in my heart. That's why I want to scream and shout. I want to help people to realize what this means for them, for the church, for humanity. This isn't just something that happened and is over. This is a living reality! Christ did not rise (completed past tense) but "he is risen" (past action that continues through to the present). So many Christian's treat Easter with no excitement, no joy and no holy fear and trembling. It's like we pass the same judgment on the celebration of Easter that Pope Benedict (I think it was Benedict or maybe John Paul) said of Mel Gibson's Passion - "it is was it is." How can we live in such apathy toward the highest holy day of the year? "It just baffles me" (and yes that was a Madden reference). My heart is warmed every time I think on these things. I don't understand it and it brings me to the verge of tears - both of sadness and frustration. Sadness because of the state of the church and frustration because I don't know how, as a future minister, to convey this joy to people. How can we do it? How can we help people to realize that this is it! This is our life-long curriculum. We are called to live and to learn in the shadow of the cross and the empty tomb everyday of our Christian lives.
This life-long learning about how to live in the reality of Easter is why it is so vitally important for us to remember that every Sunday, every Sunday of the year is like a mini-Easter. This is why the ancient Christians decided that we should meet on Sunday rather than the Sabbath (Saturday). They knew that Easter was the center of life and thus every week we meet and celebrate the resurrection as a community of faith. We learn the curriculum of the resurrection every Sunday, or at least that's what Church is supposed to be. [This could be a launching point for some of my anti-church growth/seeker church sentiments but we'll save that for another day, but feel free to insert them yourselves.] We are people of the resurrection, that is our identity, and that is how we ought to define ourselves. Is it any wonder that the early believers greeted one another with the statement "he is risen" and the response "he is risen indeed." This didn't start as a Easter Sunday ritual, it started as an everyday ritual to identify believers. We are identified by the resurrection! This is who we are and thus it should effect every ounce of our being - especially the way we remember the resurrection.
So I guess I had more thoughts on Easter than I realized, they're more just out of the normal "Easter meditations" box.
~ Ben
Monday, April 03, 2006
Beaux Arts Ball
On saturday I worked a show in Lexington called the "Beaux Arts Ball" and after talking about it with Eryn I think it has given me a new perspective on postmodernism. To understand that point though I need to do a brief description of the Ball.
The Ball is basically a masquerade rave. The costumes varried quite a bit, a few examples are: tetris blocks, S&M gear, rabbit suits, and stategically placed duct tape. The people were mainly 20-30 something with the few exceptions of older people in their 40s and 50s. The events for my stage were as follows:
8:30-10:30 - 1st DJ
10:30-11:15ish - Drag Show (fashion show with drag queens)
11:20-2:00am - 2nd DJ (with a fashion show at the begining)
To describe the event a little more it was basically a dark room with loud techno music with people "dancing" all over each other. It's hard to describe it without getting really graphic, but lets just say that I saw guys kissing guys, girls kissing girls, and guys kissing girls, I saw people wearing nothing but dog collars and chainlink thongs, and a bunch of other stuff. So the event was truly eclectic, to put it one way.
Ok, hopefully that gives you at least some picture of the event.
The event definetly transcended my normal experiences and was eye opening. I think the saddest part was the Drag Show and they way the croud reacted. When these women came on stage (they do like to be called women) the crowd (about 1,500-2,000 people) reacted to them with more excitement and more zeal than rock stars normally get by their screaming fans. It wasn't just the gay men that were excited but everyone was cheering them on with and was excited to see them "strut their stuff"(for lack of a better descriptor). It made me sad to see these men who found their fulfillment in dressing and acting like women, and buying into the lie of society. It almost made me cry, it was sad because they really seemed to be enjoying who they "were." Now obviously I tried to justify their joy by saying, 'well i bet they're really broken, they probably cry to themselves a lot, they probably aren't really happy, they're probably hurting really bad on the inside.' But ya know what, I can't make those kind of qualifications. That's just a stereo type I've been taught by society since I was young. These people may be truly happy with who they are, yes they're lost, they need Jesus, they're flling themselves with lies, but they may be happy with being drag. It was thinking back on this and the rest of the event that led me to my thoughts about postmodernism. Yes I'm finally getting to the point.
The experience was wierd, and my mind has images in it that I wish weren't there, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, i mean i really think that this event typifies a whole segment of the population, i think this was post modern america, not what we vaguely concieve of as postmodernism. I guess my thoughts on this issues aren't as formed as I would like them to be, but it just seems that we treat postmodernism like it's something that we can look at and examine in a lab. I feel like what we concieve of didn't match up at all with what I observed saturday night. I'm entirely sure how to describe the difference, but I know there was one and it seems to me that after observing these differences these people do not need postmodern ministries. They don't need us to understand postmodernism they don't need us to keep talking about it as if it's a static reality that we can fix once we crack the code. This is a whole group of society, they're all governed by different assumptions and different things make them tick, they may be postmodern, they may be modern, who cares, they are lost and broken people. What they need is for the church to stop dialogue over how best to reach them and to start being the church. They don't need the church to create new lame ministries that will reach to their inherent postmodern philosophies (or lack thereof) but what they need is for the church to be the church.
We spend all our time, especially in academia trying to asses the culture, asses the postmodern world thinking that we can crack this code, churches can implement the solution and then all the culture's probelems along with ours will be solved. Can we not see past this ridiculous fallacy? All the church was ever asked to be from God was the church. All we were asked to do was love God and love others. Creating postmodern christian raves is not the answer, creating christian coffehouses isn't the answer, sure they may be fun and good, but the answer is to renew the church, to call the people of God to set their focus on one thing and one thing alone - Loving God. We need to abandon, what seems to me to be, our faulty conception of postmodernism and embrace intimate love with the Holy Triune God, rather than embrace a newer more accurate conception of postmodernism.
I guess these really aren't new thoughts. I feel I've said this same thing before. I feel these people looked more like true postmodernism than what we concieve it to be. I don't know exactly how to describe it (for that I apologize), but I do believe that it doesn't matter how this differes from our conception, as long as we focus on being the real church, which is by nature overflowing with love.
~ Ben
The Ball is basically a masquerade rave. The costumes varried quite a bit, a few examples are: tetris blocks, S&M gear, rabbit suits, and stategically placed duct tape. The people were mainly 20-30 something with the few exceptions of older people in their 40s and 50s. The events for my stage were as follows:
8:30-10:30 - 1st DJ
10:30-11:15ish - Drag Show (fashion show with drag queens)
11:20-2:00am - 2nd DJ (with a fashion show at the begining)
To describe the event a little more it was basically a dark room with loud techno music with people "dancing" all over each other. It's hard to describe it without getting really graphic, but lets just say that I saw guys kissing guys, girls kissing girls, and guys kissing girls, I saw people wearing nothing but dog collars and chainlink thongs, and a bunch of other stuff. So the event was truly eclectic, to put it one way.
Ok, hopefully that gives you at least some picture of the event.
The event definetly transcended my normal experiences and was eye opening. I think the saddest part was the Drag Show and they way the croud reacted. When these women came on stage (they do like to be called women) the crowd (about 1,500-2,000 people) reacted to them with more excitement and more zeal than rock stars normally get by their screaming fans. It wasn't just the gay men that were excited but everyone was cheering them on with and was excited to see them "strut their stuff"(for lack of a better descriptor). It made me sad to see these men who found their fulfillment in dressing and acting like women, and buying into the lie of society. It almost made me cry, it was sad because they really seemed to be enjoying who they "were." Now obviously I tried to justify their joy by saying, 'well i bet they're really broken, they probably cry to themselves a lot, they probably aren't really happy, they're probably hurting really bad on the inside.' But ya know what, I can't make those kind of qualifications. That's just a stereo type I've been taught by society since I was young. These people may be truly happy with who they are, yes they're lost, they need Jesus, they're flling themselves with lies, but they may be happy with being drag. It was thinking back on this and the rest of the event that led me to my thoughts about postmodernism. Yes I'm finally getting to the point.
The experience was wierd, and my mind has images in it that I wish weren't there, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, i mean i really think that this event typifies a whole segment of the population, i think this was post modern america, not what we vaguely concieve of as postmodernism. I guess my thoughts on this issues aren't as formed as I would like them to be, but it just seems that we treat postmodernism like it's something that we can look at and examine in a lab. I feel like what we concieve of didn't match up at all with what I observed saturday night. I'm entirely sure how to describe the difference, but I know there was one and it seems to me that after observing these differences these people do not need postmodern ministries. They don't need us to understand postmodernism they don't need us to keep talking about it as if it's a static reality that we can fix once we crack the code. This is a whole group of society, they're all governed by different assumptions and different things make them tick, they may be postmodern, they may be modern, who cares, they are lost and broken people. What they need is for the church to stop dialogue over how best to reach them and to start being the church. They don't need the church to create new lame ministries that will reach to their inherent postmodern philosophies (or lack thereof) but what they need is for the church to be the church.
We spend all our time, especially in academia trying to asses the culture, asses the postmodern world thinking that we can crack this code, churches can implement the solution and then all the culture's probelems along with ours will be solved. Can we not see past this ridiculous fallacy? All the church was ever asked to be from God was the church. All we were asked to do was love God and love others. Creating postmodern christian raves is not the answer, creating christian coffehouses isn't the answer, sure they may be fun and good, but the answer is to renew the church, to call the people of God to set their focus on one thing and one thing alone - Loving God. We need to abandon, what seems to me to be, our faulty conception of postmodernism and embrace intimate love with the Holy Triune God, rather than embrace a newer more accurate conception of postmodernism.
I guess these really aren't new thoughts. I feel I've said this same thing before. I feel these people looked more like true postmodernism than what we concieve it to be. I don't know exactly how to describe it (for that I apologize), but I do believe that it doesn't matter how this differes from our conception, as long as we focus on being the real church, which is by nature overflowing with love.
~ Ben
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