Jesus — Clayfire Curator

A Way in a Manger

by Guest Blogger | December 16, 2011

This post was written by Patrick Oden.

Do you know (well of course you know) the old hymn Away in a Manger? Here are the words:

Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head

The stars in the bright sky
Looked down where He lay
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay

The cattle are lowing
The poor Baby wakes
But little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

I love Thee, Lord Jesus
Look down from the sky
And stay by my side,
‘Til morning is nigh.

Be near me, Lord Jesus,
I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever
And love me I pray

Bless all the dear children
In Thy tender care
And take us to heaven
To live with Thee there

This is a popular carol to be sure, one of the most popular. The sentiment is nice, indeed steering pretty much into being sentimental, emphasizing the peace of the moment, the quiet, the contented, inviting us into this still moment so as to still our hearts, encouraging us to imagine ourselves in this most pastoral of scenes so as to renew our faith in the God who cares for us and will take us, as well, to the place of peace. Lovely.

And yet… I wonder about it a little bit, and I wonder about it in a way that reflects some of my thoughts on so much of our Christmas liturgies and celebrations.

We’re docetic. This carol is docetic.

Now, before you get offended, let me tell you more exactly how you should be offended, since I basically called us heretics. There were two main ways in which the early Church erred in their thinking about Jesus. There were those who tended to see him only as this guy, this great guy mind you, but just a guy, with a special message and work that should inspire us. On the other side, there were those who really emphasized the fact Jesus was God, and the conceptions of God being what they were they couldn’t see how this Jesus was really a real human. So, they danced around the idea of how this Jesus appeared in human form, but didn’t really cavort with real flesh, blood, or any of the other trappings of physical life. This latter approach was called docetism.

Now, we’ll confess that’s wrong. The incarnation is in our creeds, after all. We confess Jesus was both this guy and this God, and would heartily argue with someone who suggested anything different. And yet, like with this carol, our worship and liturgy is much better about emphasizing the glory of Christ’s divinity than the earthiness of Christ’s humanity. We want to be lifted up, lifted away, given space within God’s throne room, transported out of our present troubles and be promised that this impassive savior will deliver us to live in a safe, protected, always still, paradise. The baby wakes, but the baby doesn’t cry. That’s what we want all our life to be like. All our problems would appear, but not disturb us in any way. Just like the little Lord Jesus.

Only that’s almost certainly not how it was. We worship in a way that seems like we’re honoring God, but in a way that so often dismisses the real glory of what happened. We want to protect God, to keep Jesus safe, to honor him and make up stories that are more impressive. Sort of like what some in the early church did with the gnostic infancy stories.

That’s not really honoring God, though, is it? The reality of the Christmas story is not that it was this moment of perfection, of stillness, of beauty and life and constrained adoration. The reality of Christmas was that everything was going wrong. Joseph was ordered by a hated ruler to travel at most inconvenient time. His wife was very pregnant. The roads were dangerous, the weather probably was bad, and in general they were pulled away from their life. One thing went wrong after another. They finally got to the town of Bethlehem, but they couldn’t find a place to stay. We know this story, but think about it again, now. Think about how you might feel if you had to travel during the Christmas season, the airports shut down, and all the local hotels were booked.

Think about how you feel when you go to the store, to many stores, and can’t find that thing—that ingredient or that perfect present—no matter where you go. Think about the frustrations that come with visiting family (after all Joseph had to go to the town where his family originated). We like to reflect on peace and stillness, and get annoyed with all the frustrations pulling us away from our ‘proper’ religious focus. Only, it’s precisely with those frustrations that we can understand the fullness, the glory, of the incarnation. God isn’t this otherworldly being, away from us, distant from us, separated.

Jesus wasn’t this still, little child in this nicely arranged nativity scene—put the shepherds over there, and Mary and Joseph standing beside the small little manger, with maybe an angel or two off to the side and the wise men hovering over the manger right behind Mary and Joseph. The nativity was messy. It was a barn and a stable. Birth is messy. Travel is messy. It’s all messy and it’s all frustrating and it’s the sort of thing that makes a person confused and angry about why everything seems to be going wrong, the best laid plans going awry no matter how much we try to get things going right.

To this, God entered into this world. Into this, was Jesus born. In the midst of the messiness and frustration and distraction, God became a human, participating with us so as to restore us. We want to ignore the trappings of real life when we create our Christmas worship. Only that’s precisely what God didn’t want to ignore. It came to pass in the midst of messiness. That’s the way of God’s work with humanity. It does not lift us out and away, it leads us through the times of wilderness and struggle, forming us and shaping us, creating us anew. The earliest Christians called their faith The Way, and that’s because it was precisely in the midst of struggles and frustrations that Christ gave a new way of living, one that resonates the work of God even, and especially, when things just don’t seem to be going right.

And that’s precisely the place where God enters in, joining with us, bringing life and hope. When it is messy, when it is loud, when everything seems out of hand, God is with us, incarnated among us, joining together in our struggles right when they seem the most overwhelming. We don’t ignore the struggles. We look for the God who became a baby in the midst of a messy, awkward, frustrating manger. Because we know this incarnation means all things are made new.

And, no doubt, that little Lord Jesus cried. Because that’s what babies do.

Thanks be to God.

Patrick Oden, blogging at dualravens.com, is a PhD candidate at Fuller Seminary, studying theology with a minor in church history. His first book, It’s a Dance: Moving with the Holy Spirit, explored the topic of pneumatology, using a fictional emerging church as the setting for conversational theology. His latest book is called How Long?: The Trek Through the Wilderness. Patrick’s in-process dissertation focuses on the emerging church in conversation with theologian Jürgen Moltmann, with some liberation theology mixed in for texture. When he isn’t buried in his many books of deep theology, he loves to camp on islands, ponder the activities of local ravens, and spend as much time as possible with his wife of three years, Amy.

Categories: Curation

Live Wires: Evidence of the Kingdom in the Worship Act

by Guest Blogger | November 25, 2011

This post was written by Aaron Klinefelter.

I grew up in the church. I mean that quite literally. I spent more time in our small town United Methodist church or church-related activities than almost any other past-time as a kid. It was where I made my first friends, have some of my earliest memories, and was lovingly nurtured and raised. And, I hasten to add, I’m not bitter, repressed, angsty or resentful about any of it. That little church in Paris, KY was and is a place of welcome and nurture.

And I never once heard about the Kingdom of God. Well, that’s not exactly true. I heard about it as a passing reference to what happens when you die. I came to internalize an interpretation of Jesus’ references to the Kingdom as bible-times way of saying “heaven” (cue soundtrack “I’ll Fly Away”). The gospel was good news for us lucky folk who heard about Jesus and “made a decision for Christ” and we’d get to spend heaven hanging out with him singing and floating and something. Any talk of the Kingdom of God breaking into our world now, well, that was just unheard of. Or maybe it was what those liberals were talking about, but surely it wasn’t what Jesus was about.

Somewhere along the way I heard the Good News. I think it was Lesslie Newbigin’s fault. The Good News of the inbreaking of God’s will on earth as in heaven. It was the “earth” part that I had missed before. I’ve increasingly become convinced, or at the very least convicted, that this is precisely what Jesus was about back in the day. The overwhelming sense that Jesus was, through his teaching, healing, and prophetic ministry, enacting a new world where God is King. A new world, or more precisely, a re-newed world, where the poor hear good news, prisoners are free, the blind see, the oppressed are not so, and where we are invited into Jubilee (see also Luke 4).

Well, faithful reader, I suspect you are asking, “Just what does this have to do with curating worship?” Everything, naturally. In worship curation we are engaged in the creative process of enacting the Kingdom of God breaking into our world. Worship is a creative moment, not a product to be consumed, a doctrine to be understood, nor a ritual to be perfected. We invite others into this creative moment when we curate worship. It is in this moment that the Kingdom of God, now, but not quite yet entirely, becomes evident.

This is precisely what liturgy is about. Whether that liturgy is a centuries old litany or a meditative electric guitar riff, it is the purview of liturgy to invite us into the creative moment. Good liturgy operates as something of a wedge that opens space between our status quo and world that God desires. We become aware of the space between what is and what is yet to be. Likewise, the liturgical act is the peeling away of the layers of apathy, egotism, and ultra-pasteurized homogeneity to reveal and revel in something meaningful, communal, and sublimely diverse. It is this space between, the creative moment, the liminality of the threshold between that pulls us closer to God’s heart. The worshiping community of faith experiences the Kingdom in these open spaces that liturgy creates.

Our worship also provides evidence of the Kingdom by being operationally conductive. In other words, our act of worship brings into being a functional reality that was not but now is. Worship does something. It is not an act of self-congratulation (aren’t we great for doing this) nor is blind obedience to tradition (we’ve always done it that way) or doctrine (God said to do it). Worship is like grabbing hold of a live wire. The electricity flowing through that wire must find a place to go and, when you grab it, it goes through you. Worship is conductive in the same capacity. When we enter into worship—and as we curate said worship—we become conduits through which, and by which, the Kingdom becomes evident in our lives together because it is conducted through us. The Kingdom is evident because it is operational. God’s will and ways are given specific and contextual shape as we worship together. We become more loving, compassionate, mindful, peaceful, and Christ-like as we worship. And that’s a very good thing indeed.

Aaron Klinefelter is a campus minister, gardener, and barista. He’s also the father of three very loud, very creative, very wonderful kids and husband to Sarah. Check out his campus ministry work here, read his blog, and follow him on Twitter.

Categories: Curation

Do you more often curate celebration or hope?

by Eric Herron | November 21, 2011

The Feast of Christ the King (a.k.a. Reign of Christ the King or Solemnity of Christ the King) was celebrated yesterday as the last Sunday on the Christian calendar. I don’t know all the history associated with this holy day, but the placement is not lost on me.

Here we are, at the cusp of a new (liturgical) year. What comes next? Advent. Next Sunday, we ‘begin to wait’ for the arrival of Jesus. But this week, we revel in the triumphant sovereignty of Christ in God. And, what is a king without a kingdom? It seems as good a time as any to reflect on the kingdom of God—which, from the Christian perspective, began its arrival with Jesus, himself.

One of my favorite verses in the Gospels is Mark 1:15, in which Jesus says:

The time has come… The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. (TNIV)

Jesus’ first words in Mark remind this post-Baptist boy that the “good news” of Jesus doesn’t start and finish with his death and resurrection—what so many like to call “the gospel.” According to the Markan Jesus, the “gospel” is precisely that “The kingdom of God has come near.” Or, as other translations say, it is “at hand.” (NKJV)

What does it mean for the kingdom to be near? To be, at hand? Looking around at all the tent-towns popping up in major cities globally, with their disgruntled, disheartened, dissatisfied campers, many would conclude that the kingdom is ‘far from near’! In the eyes of so many today—and throughout history—the kingdom of God has been primarily a future hope. However, if what Jesus said is to be taken literally, in some authentic way, this king’s kingdom is imminent, present is powerful ways, even at this moment. What should we make of the tension?

I reckon, we rest in it. Like so many other tensions found in an (honest) reading of scripture, this one cannot be wished away. The kingdom is now. AND. The kingdom is not yet.

Our reflections this week are on the kingdom of God and the inherent tension it brings. Perhaps a good question to start us off is this: When you observe your own worship practices, do you find your church emphasizes the “now” or the “not yet” of Christ’s kingdom? In other words: Is your weekly worship focused on the beauty and victories found in our present lives or is it, rather, infused with future longing for the “kingdom come”? Do you mostly curate celebration of the here and now, or hope for what is to be?

After your reflection, share with us where you think your congregation lands. When it comes to this week’s poll, I recommend voting “now,” rather than “not yet.”

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Categories: Q of the Week

Inviting Children to Worship

by Guest Blogger | November 18, 2011

This post was written by Connie Lannom.

Recently our church has gone through a series focused on spiritual disciplines. One of the weeks we focused on worship and the different forms of worship. This is a familiar conversation to our students (elementary aged children) as we often encourage them to worship not just by singing. We want them to learn that there are so many ways they can engage praising God.

One of our favorites is to roll out a huge piece of butcher paper or a canvas, art supplies, and pose to students a question or statement. This particular week they were asked to finish the statement “Thank You, God, for…” If you want to get a clearer picture of how much children know or understand about God, this is a great activity.

Each time we do this I’m humbled and in awe of how God speaks to children. Their statements included: Thank you God… that you are perfect, that you still perform miracles, that my parents don’t make me eat peas, that you sent your son to die because I sin a lot sometimes, because you helped my parents love each other again…

Freedom in worship is truly portrayed by children when they are worshiping as a community. Some of the best examples of this that I’ve experienced have been at camps or Vacation Bible School. In these settings you see a mass of kids, doing hand motions, singing, dancing, and worshiping with nothing hindering them.

Hmmm, this sounds familiar. Mark 10:13-15 (NIV) says: When Jesus saw this, He was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

I love the week of Vacation Bible School for the unhindered worship alone. It’s kind of funny because the Sunday after VBS when the kids are in “Big Church” with the adults, they become more reserved. We’ve noticed that if you add adults who won’t engage in a childlike manner or at minimum embrace the atmosphere, you see kids pull back from the freedom they have felt all week long.

Often times, I’ve seen congregations invite the children into “Big Church” to worship with the adults. They are invited to participate and worship the way adults do. Meaning, come children, conform to our stuffy, serious, face-forward form of standing and maybe clapping. Hear me that I find high value in children being included in the “Big Church” gathering, but, I think our mentality needs to shift a bit.

It’s not about inviting them to come and worship the way we do, but actually about truly inviting children to come and be children. Invite them to dance, sing, worship without the inhibitions that we adults sometimes walk into service with. I love that children don’t often care about how the person next to them is worshiping. They are just excited to be next to their buddy and getting the freedom to celebrate what God is doing in their lives and who He is.

We also need to hold with this the tension that examples of worship are caught not taught. Children watch us in everything we do. We may not feel like our participation (or lack of) affects those around us, but I’d say our examples of how we passionately pursue God are so contagious.

Children watch us express our deep gratitude, joy, pain, peace, love, struggles, and excitement, really, all of life. I can clearly recall as a child watching my parents struggle with the passing of my brother. It was by watching them process this that I learned to deal with grief. I believe we have a responsibility to be authentic followers of Christ that appropriately invite children into the journey of learning to worship God with our whole selves.

The opportunity to worship in the midst of children is what I think heaven will be like. I don’t think we will be so focused on caring what others around us think. So for now, I pray we will give ourselves permission to worship our Heavenly Father with all of our heart, strength, and mind… like children do!

Connie Lannom is the Elementary Ministries pastor at NewSong Church in San Dimas, California. Whenever Connie is around children, she possesses a contagious energy. Every day, she boasts her appreciation to work alongside such an incredible volunteer team. Connie has worked in children’s and youth ministry since 1993. Her passion is to see families pursue Christ together and be transformed. She recently launched a new ministry called “the Attic,” which reaches out to children who have experienced extreme loss. It’s a place for children and students to come to receive care and support through their season of grief. She also helps people to find healing and comfort in Christ through her additional role as overseer of Community Care. Connie has her B.A. in Human Development from Azusa Pacific University.

Categories: Formation

Let Jesus Draw Us Together

by Eric Herron | November 8, 2011

A Baptist pastor, an Episcopal rector, a Pentecostal minister, and a Roman Catholic priest are going to plan worship together for a special ecumenical gathering coming up in several weeks. The problem is, they can’t seem to agree on any aspect of the service.

The Episcopal wants an 8 minute homily and real wine for communion. The Baptist wants a 50 minute sermon and feels communion is unnecessary because they did it last month—although an altar call may very well be in order. The Roman Catholic likes the rector’s train of thought, but wants to make sure the Table is securely ‘fenced’ and is hopeful that the group won’t deviate from the prescribed lectionary readings for the date in question. The Pentecostal doesn’t understand the fuss and wants to close the meeting in prayer (in tongues) and just call everybody together on the scheduled date to see what happens when the Spirit shows up.

Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? But, there is no punch line.

Still, it can be funny to consider how different we are when it comes to our unique approaches to curating worship. I suppose we should just count the blessing that we don’t often (if ever) have to plan worship together. On second thought, is this a blessing to be counted? A blessing by any measure?

I think the true blessing would be an increase—globally and locally—in ecumenical worship. For the reasons already mentioned and many more, this is difficult to imagine. I am no expert on the subject but it seems to me there is one simple key to designing worship that will be embraced by the widest variety of believers.

The key? Make Jesus your central theme.

According to one renowned New Testament scholar, the diversity of worship practices—and therefore the difficulty of worshiping together—has always been a problem.

Of the diversity of earliest Christian worship there can be little doubt. We have seen clear evidence of the range of this diversity—diversity over the continuing relevance of Jewish traditions of worship and the extent to which form and order should be left to the creative inspiration of the Spirit in each assembly; diversity as to whether worship is primarily an individual or communal affair; the diversity of hymns whose style reflects different modes and moods of worship and whose language and concerns reflect the different apologetic environments of the worshippers. (James D.G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, 161.)

Despite the variety of approaches to worship that have set us apart from one another since the beginning, there is one thing that can bring us together according to Dunn:

Where in all this diversity can we find unity? Not in established catechetical and liturgical forms… One clearly unifying element does seem to appear—and that is Christ. (Dunn, 161)

Can we all agree that Jesus is God? That Jesus is the second person of the Trinity? That Jesus lived, died, and rose again? Can we also agree that in some way (though we may disagree on exactly how) the cross of Jesus changed things for us, bringing us as close to God as we once were? If we can agree on these, then more than any liturgical form, the person of Jesus can unify our worship diversity.

Years ago I was leading some last minute music for a small gathering of organic house-church planters—many of them from the Brethren denomination. I asked the person in charge what the theme was for the evening so I could choose appropriate songs. At first, he said there was no theme. But after a minute, this leader responded that, in fact, “Jesus” was the theme. “After all,” he said, “who can go wrong with that?” Indeed.

Categories: Curation