Savannah

When I meet folks and answer the obligatory, “Where are you from?” question, I am unusually interrupted in the following way…

“I grew up in Savannah….”

“Oh, Georgia?” the other person says.

“No, Tennessee”

“Where is that?” comes the inevitable response.

I have rehearsed this line so many times its like clockwork. “Its where Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi all come together.”

Folks do not usually know about Savannah, TN.

It’s an interesting place.

It is a place I have taken for granted.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to go back home and preach at First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Savannah. Upon reflecting on my short time being home, I have come to realize just how incredibly blessed I am to have been brought up in Savannah by two of the most ridiculous, incredible parents one could imagine.

I do not always see just how blessed I am…

As with most small-towns, Savannah certainly has a penchant towards conservatism that often manifests itself in folks holding some closed-minded ideas. I often found this frustrating.

However, I have come to realize that in reaction to what I saw as closed-minded thought, I can become equally as guilty if I choose to swing to the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. 

As I prepared to speak this past Sunday, I found myself presupposing folks’ response to my sermon. I tried to season my words to the nth degree. I assumed people might not enjoy my call to take up the cause of fighting for justice.

… the assumption of the haughty.

The outpouring of love and support I received yesterday was truly phenomenal. As I stood in the
back after the service, folks came by shake my hand. Person after person told me how much they appreciated what I had to say.

I thought back to my preparation…

“Well, people are not going to like this.” I thought.

… the assumption of the haughty.

Many of the members of Savannah FUMC came to show their support. First Cumberland Presbyterian welcomed me with open arms. Both were incredibly receptive and supportive.

I think about the beauty of this experience combined with my brief time at home with my family this

weekend.

Cindy Rogers shrieks every time she sees me, listens to me as I go on and on about the same thing for hours on end, and showed me a workout at Elite this weekend that still has my legs sore.

(Erin once you have put a little more effort into  an improved spirit of sibling congeniality I will fill in all your merits here :) Jk- Erin is cool)

Then there is Dad with his newest building project, his incredible stories about boats going through windshields, unknown chair craftsman, and his new and astounding penchant towards constant communication.

What an incredibly loving, supportive, absurd, awesome support network I have.

Savannah, TN was good to me this weekend.

Good work Savannah.

Thanks to all of those who were present yesterday. I hope I did not let you down :)

Evolving Ideas about the Old Testament

I have struggled over the past couple of months to figure out what to do with some of the knowledge I have been given in seminary. Seminary busts up a lot of the conventional wisdom when it comes to reading the bible. If you do not like having conventional wisdom busted or think that that bible must be read literally at all times in order to have authority, you may want to quit reading now.

So in Old Testament we are given lots of theories that inevitably lead to the conclusion that… wait for it, “these stories likely did not happen the way they are presented here. This writers of the bible may not have intended for it to be read for literal, historical accuracy.”

I have found these theories profoundly reassuring. I have always had trouble with the massive amount of violence that is carried out in the Old Testament, much of it being attributed to God. It seems God is either smiting somebody over here to telling somebody else to kill another person over there. I was not always cool with that. So, I have learned that maybe, just maybe it did not quite go down exactly like that. However, I have been left thinking, “So what do you do with all this?”

I have come nowhere close to that answer, but I had a small epiphany as I was riding my bike this morning, listening to 2 Samuel. Preface, the theory we have been presented claims this book was likely written or compiled in a time period much later than the events it is describing.

2 Samuel 6:6-7 “Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. The anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God.; so that place is called Perezuzzah, to this day”

Prior to coming to seminary I might have had this thought on this passage: “Jeez, God, the dude just touched the ark. Also, why is it that God went around striking people down back in the day, but he does not seem to do that today? This story makes no sense and sort of makes me want to believe that this Old Testament stuff is a bunch of made up nonsense.”

To me, saying that this text must only be read literally and historically produces an arbitrary demonstration of God’s strength that is completely disconnected from modern reality.

However, seminary has allowed me to discover a slightly different approach to stories such as this. In Old Testament, we have been trained to hear phrases like “so that place is called Perezuzzah, to this day” as etiologies, stories explaining how things came to be.

 So maybe what we have in 2 Samuel is a group of people using their resources, cultural understandings, and stories of the past to describe their relationship to God.

To me, understanding the cultural context of the story allows me to relate to the authors. They were a people trying to understand and grapple with the Unfathomable. In their attempts to understand how this town “Perezuzzah” received its name, they tell this story.

Their story seems insane to modern ears, but an attempt to describe the Divine will always end in craziness.

Their output may seem crazy to us, but I imagine that when people thousands of years from now look back at the ways in which modern communities attempt to understand and wrestle with the Divine, it will likely seem ridiculous.

God was present and moving then. He is present and moving now. I do believe that God was moving in a unique way in the coalition and authorship of Scripture, and thus I see the Scripture as holding an uncommon authority. However, I am learning to be careful about conflating "authority" with "inerrancy."

This specific story these writers told was meant to give voice to God’s power, a claim I can certainly affirm. The way in which we choose to give voice to God’s power today may sound crazy in a thousand years, but that does not diminish the power and presence of God. God moved then, and He moves now. It may sound absurd, but that does not diminish the power and presence of Yahweh. 

Idealism and Presence

I have been called an idealist. It’s a badge I wear with pride.

After three years of teaching in some pretty difficult environments, I claimed that teaching “grounded my idealism” and it did. But it seems that the past six months has shown me that my idealism is still very much alive. Anyone who has been following any of my social media outputs can plainly see that my idealism manifests itself in an outpouring of my opinions online.

I have gone on so many tears that I can’t even keep up with them all. I’ve railed against churches, politicians, the media, schools systems, and on and on. I’ve found myself creating a system of elevation in which my “enlightened” opinion is superior and those that disagree “just don’t get it.” Grounding was needed.

A bit of the grounding came after a sermon I preached while I was in Helena on fall break. A good friend, who is well versed in bringing me back down to earth, told me she was distracted by the strong content of my sermon by my punchy delivery.

“But I’ve learned all these great things, and its my time to set people straight,” I thought to myself.

“Do you not understand yet?” Jesus said to his disciples over and over.

I hear him saying the same to me.

"Yes, of course I do! I’ve got this figured out, and its time to go change some folks’ minds!" I think to myself.

I see Jesus smiling and laughing my way… “Haha, just keep going. One day you will see just how much you have yet to understand.”

As I think back on all my rallying points, my self-righteous indignation towards those who refuse to see the world the way I see it, I hear Jesus words “Do you not understand yet?”

The answer to that question is no. I do not. But I will keep moving forward, hopefully with a bit more humility.

I firmly believe there are issues about which I should scream loudly to anyone that will listen. But I am simultaneously reminded of a story about a boy who cried out so many times that people stopped listening.

My idealism tells me to cry out all day everyday, in whatever manner I feel compelled. If folks are offended, they need to get over it.

But the problem with idealism is that it doesn’t always work so well in reality.

Regardless, the point where the beauty of idealism meets the harshness of reality is the point where I feel called to exist.

It is to that point I will bring all my frenzied, hyper, shouts for justice.

It is to that point I bring who I am and marvel at what can happen when I allow myself to become truly present in the fullness of a situation.

“Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world's greatest need.” As I search for that vocation, I am reminded of the necessity of my presence here.

In a season of learning, rest, and discernment, I pray that I can simultaneously ignite my passions while cultivating the seasoning of my words.

Amen.