The Publican Chest

Till We Return...

2012-02-10T21:51:00.000-08:00

We're headed down to the Golden State for a little bit. As such, there will not be any blog updates until we return. In the meantime consider these ten commandments for blogging:

1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity.

2. You shall not make an idol of your blog.

3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your

anonymity to sin.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week

from your blog.

5. Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do

not give undue significance to their mistakes.

6. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation

or feelings.

7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery

in your mind.

8. You shall not steal another person’s content.

9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.

10. You shall not covet your neighbour’s blog ranking. Be content

The Prosperity Gospel

2012-02-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of talk recently about the prosperity gospel in the light of the evangelical brouhaha over the recent Elephant Room episode with T. D. Jakes.

It is particularly interesting to me that Jakes is now a name being talked about in circles like the gospel coalition. I think I am fascinated with this because I was a huge Jakes fan in high school. Me and a couple of buddies, being bored out of our mind, ran across Jakes on TBN one afternoon. The thing we were drawn to was Jakes' yelling. Seriously. He would pace around the stage yelling stuff, and we found that fascinating (this was, ah, 14 years ago now, long before TGC).

Looking back, what kept us hooked on Jakes was his passion. He would look straight into the camera, tell you that whatever you were going through would pass if you were faithful to give everything to the kingdom. If you gave everything to the kingdom (meaning mostly your money), then all these things would be added unto you, namely, deliverance from everything oppressing you, and yes, maybe a cool car to boot. As high-schoolers, there was a lot oppressing us, we wanted deliverance, so we watched Jakes, and we even gave (I used to get the TBN newsletter!). Sweaty, twirling around stage, screaming, it was entertaining preaching. It was a lot different than the more subdued, evangelical pastors that we were accustomed to. Yet overtime, even at a highschool age, I realized he was preaching bunk. I wasn't a pastor, I hadn't been to seminary, I was a stupid high school kid, yet I realized with my buddies after awhile (and after we gave our hard earned minimum wage dollars) that Jakes was passionate but, as we talked then, "he was full of ****."

What is sadly ironic to me now, is how Jakes could be so passionate about his brand of prosperity teaching, and how many are a lot less passionate about the true gospel. I am not equating passion with sweaty foreheads or screaming (although I am still single-handedly wanting to bring the sweat-rag back into Reformed pulpits, especially if you wear a hot black robe, you need the rag...;). But I do think there could be more passion oriented pleading in our pulpits, not for giving, but for believing in Jesus, turning from sin, and loving God out of gratitude.

Which is why this clip from John Piper is so refreshing. I do wonder if fellow gospel coalition members have seen this clip from Piper. I was definitely saddened to see Jakes get such a pass from the people involved. I stand with Piper and others (see Thabiti Anyabwile's awesome post here) in declaring that the prosperity gospel is not the gospel, it is a false gospel that leads not to life, but to death.

Social Media Explained

2012-02-06T12:14:00.000-08:00

Government and Its Rivals

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

To find a good essayist is to find a rare treasure. That's what we have in Ross Douthat. I have been a fan of his for years (even used some of his articles in a Sunday School class once), and here is a piece that exhibits his usual effortless excellence. I was surprised to find him on the gospel coalition's website. My hope is that he can be introduced to an ever-widening audience.

Call for Catholic Renewal, and Bulat

2012-01-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

A couple of things that caught my eye around the web:

1) A call for catholic renewal by a number of catholic leaders overseas. An interesting read.

2) And if that is not your thing. Be charmed by the ever-talented Basia Bulat on NPR's tiny desk concert. I love the song in Polish (at the 5:20 mark).

3) Oh yea, and I can't believe I haven't posted on this yet. But cult phenom Jeff Mangum has resurfaced. One of my favorite all time albums is "Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Jeff's band Neutral Milk Hotel. Jeff went underground and didn't appear anywhere for at least a decade. And now he has come out of hiding and is playing shows. And he is coming to Seattle. Hokey Cats!!!! Check out the bootleg videos appearing around now. No, seriously, hokey cats!

4) And speaking of cult icons, i'll continue updating this post by asking the question: Is Morrissey to old? I am a fan of the Smiths and all, but this?....yea.

Sinai, Zion, and Tradition

2012-01-25T09:23:00.000-08:00

It is clearly the case that our day is one in which there is more known about the biblical world than ever before. Fields of study such as archaeology, philology, epigraphy, etc. have yielded positive gains over the past 200 years, and have greatly increased our understanding of the life, the times, and the language we encounter in the Bible.

Unfortunately, these gains in our understanding of the Bible usually create an awkward relationship between biblical scholarship and ecclesiastical tradition. If traditions that claim that the bible is their book find their traditions wanting in light of new insights into the scriptures, either the new data must be shoehorned, marginalized, ignored, or just tossed. A tension is created between advancement and recital. New wine and old wineskin.

I was recently reminded of this tension as I embarked into Jon Levenson’s oft recommended gem Sinai & Zion: An Entry Into the Jewish Bible.

Regarding the relationship between biblical scholarship and Rabbinic tradition, Levenson laments that sometimes:

The ultimate criterion for acceptance of an idea is not the intrinsic cogency of the argument and of the evidence upon which it stands, but whether it conforms to inherited dogma. Biblical history is to be merely confirmatory. Anything new that it finds must not be discordant with what is known, or assumed on faith. Real discovery becomes impossible.

Levenson highlights a problem here that touches every tradition in church and synagogue. It is the problem of adjudicating data within a tradition. How does one adjudicate between faithful and unfaithful readings? This poses the problem of discerning between whether something is advancement in a tradition or a departure from the tradition.

Levenson brings up an example from the Talmud where one Rabbi argues that Moses did not compose the last eight verses of Torah on the grounds that Moses could not have written about his own death. Another Rabbi quickly retorts that it was not Moses but God who wrote all the verses; thus Moses wrote these last eight verses in tears. Levenson then notes that, “the revealing point is that the first position assumes that a commitment to tradition does not require the Jew to ignore empirical evidence in the name of an increasingly blind faith.”

There is always a defensive fear in any tradition that some new insight is seeking to undermine the tradition, while others are open to seeing how the two might compliment one another.

While Levenson is discussing these issues from the standpoint of biblical scholarship, I think the issues can be easily transferred to the discussions about church tradition in general.

How can a tradition allow for new insights while at the same time do justice to inherited insights? Or how can a tradition legitimately engage new data and not be fearful about what it means for old data?

As Levenson shows, throughout the centuries Rabbinic tradition has held to halakhah (Talmudic tradition) while offering a wide array of views on various matters. Levenson then remarks that, “this would imply that Jewish tradition includes a form of biblical scholarship which is more than the mere repetition, rearrangement, or extension of data known through the tradition itself. Tradition, so understood, will include novelty, even contradiction. It will not be fossilized, but vital, growing, and, to a certain extent, changing.”

Again, Levenson is talking about the tradition of biblical scholarship (not ecclesiastical dogma). But just to state up front, I don’t get too jazzed about an ecclesial tradition that codifies contradiction. That seems like it defeats the purpose of a tradition as something that is meant to help us to “hold fast” to the truths that have been passed down. However, the perennial tension in the phrase “living tradition” is what I find stimulating here.

In my own context, Levenson’s remarks make me wonder how best a Christian ecclesiology can account for new insights and old insights. In the confessional Reformed world, debates often surface around how felicitous certain beliefs and practices are to the confession of faith of the church. I readily sympathize with communions such as the PCA, for instance, who are trying to develop ways of having “civil conversations” and “safe places” for discussion without the threat of doctrinal trials and unwanted mud slinging. Some retort, saying the place for dialogue is the floor of presbytery.

Whatever the case, I do wonder if in the current North American context there is not a need to thoroughly examine how it is the church does theology and exegesis. When does our current conception of being confessional have the result of over-fossilizing tradition rather than stimulating theological reflection and furthering the truth of the Bible as it encounters the rapidly increasing amounts of data? Isn’t it true that doctrinal sanctification means that we will grow in the knowledge we have of the truth? How then can our churches best account for that growth? In short, I do think there is a good way of doing Presbyterian, churchly theology. One that I think is modeled well to some degree when churches of the NAPARC variety study issues and the conclusions come through the courts of the church (read: study committee report). However, I am in no way saying that things cannot be improved, they can and should be improved.

One final thought: Levenson’s reflections have reminded me once again that no tradition is monolithic. There has always been diversity in matters of doctrine and life in varying degrees in every tradition, Christian or otherwise. That is the reality of living in between the times.

In God’s Harvest Plan for His people, he has chosen to use institutional diversity, plain and simple. This doesn’t make the truth a wash. Someone is right and someone is wrong. May the “cogency of the argument” and evidence be our guide. Yet wisdom loudly beseeches us that not all differences are of equal importance, and that not all fences are necessarily bad, and that not all advancements in biblical scholarship are departures from the faith.

LA calls Seattle snow wimps?

2012-01-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

I got a kick out of this little article. We get record breaking snow and ice and are called wimps by those fearing some rain. Wait..wait...yes, that was a 1/3 inch of rain we just got in Seattle in the past 5 seconds.

Gotta love it. I fondly remember Californians pulling out the heavy wool and fashionable mink coats when it got below 60 degrees (as they sat in their house with the heat on).

I have to say this Northwest snow is beautiful as it lays on all the surrounding mountains and evergreens. Who wants to go snowboarding?

The Internet, be a Patron of the Arts, and the Celtics

2012-01-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

A few things of interest around the web today:

1) Video about you and the internet

2) Help back one of the greatest lyrical songwriters of our time. Good Omaha pal Simon Joyner has a kickstarter campaign to celebrate his 20th anniversary of making records that enrich the human experience. Support the project if you can. It is well worth it.

3) My mind can take it, but my heart gets dragged around regarding the rumors of blowing up the Celtics before the trade deadline.

Facts are facts. The Celts window has closed. But the story is messy which is why the decision is hard. The window closing was self-induced by the worst trade in recent NBA history, when Ainge sent Kendrick Perkins to OKC for ...who? Exactly. Even Ainge has now admitted that it was a mistake (one writer for the Globe is calling for a trade of Ainge!).

Emotions got in the way to reconstruct the team in 2010. The big 3, Rondo, and Perk never lost a playoff series. If Perk was healthy to rebound and defend, the Celtics would have defended their 2008 title in 2010. Game 7 was ours if we had Perk. So it was understandable to try and get the band back together and go at it again. But with Perk gone, there is no reason. The Perk trade was the demise of this era of Celtics basketball, period. He was the enforcer and he had the heart of the city and the respect of the superstars.

So while my heart wants the big 4 to bear up their old age, and turn on the switch and start beating teams, my mind knows its over. Pierce and Allen would be good trades. Its time for Ainge to redeem himself and try and build a championship team once again. I say keep Rondo and KG, Bass, and Petrius. But trade Pierce, Allen, JO, and anyone else who will clear up cap space and bring in #1 picks for trade value. Harsh, brutal business. But its reality for the C's if they want banner 18 in the next five years. And the C's should still retire Pierce's jersey in the rafters.

My, We Had Fun

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Our first Northwest snow!

As Goes Wine, So Goes Theology (2)

2012-01-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

One of the central themes in Terry Theise’s new book Reading Between the Wines is the idea of connectedness. Throughout the book, Theise shows how globalization presents itself in the world of wine and creates disconnect and fragmentations not only in the business of wine, but also in the taste of wine itself.

With pun unavoidable, Theise longs for a rooted-ness in his wine. Practically, this looks like artisan wine makers who know their land, their family, and their role as a steward (not a master) of the vines and barrels.

Theise waxes poetic in his reflections upon the Mosel valley in Germany. Every March Theise travels to Mosel to taste the new vintages that at times have been world class. One wine family in particular, the Selbachs of Zeltingen, is his foil for explaining connectedness.

The Selbachs are a generational wine family, and in the 90’s Hans Selbach died and passed the torch to his son Johannes. Theise, in what proves to be a powerful section of prose, contrasts the death of Hans, and the death of his own father. Hans died in the living room surrounded by family, was wheeled through the house one last time, wheeled through the bottle cellar (with one of Hans’ other sons remarking that “it was as if you could see and hear the bottles stand and applaud papa”), and then buried on family property, in the same soil in which the vines grow. Theise’s father, unnamed, died in a hospital room in Manhatten, and is buried in an enormous cemetery in Queens. Theise doubts that he, “could even find the gravesite.”

Point being here, you can’t separate the Selbachs and the wine they make. There is no substitute. The two are connected in an invisible yet vital way. To disconnect the Selbachs from their land, would be to disconnect them from the world of wine. They could not, and would not, do wine anywhere else. Which is completely contrary to the way the world of wine is going these days, with “fly-around” vintners and transplants trying to make overpriced wine of all kinds.

Given this lay of the land, Theise describes the Selbachs kind of connectedness in wine and in life as one that, “salves a kind of loneliness. Though it isn’t my home, it is at least a home, and the people are particular people, and the wines are particular wines. I spend to much of my life driving among strip malls and their numbing detritus, and so when I descend the final hill over the Eifel and the village of Zeltingen comes into view, sitting peacefully along the Mosel, I have a momentary thrill of arriving. Here is somewhere. I see it, I know it, I will soon embrace people who embody it—and I also get to taste it.”

Too much of the wine world is defined by “international consultants” and wineries that import grapes from somewhere else, hire someone else to mix, and produce wines that taste like someplace else.

This is true in many fields of work today. Globalization has touched the world in an irretraceable way. There is no going back. But how do we go forward?

More important to my interest here, is do we, or how do we, see globalization in the church? How many pastors are trying to produce someone else’s community, and farm out the task of shepherding a particular people in a particular place to homogenous ministries that anyone can buy? To what degree does the church need a rooted-ness?

Given the fact that the Bible calls us pilgrims and exiles in this life, there is a certain degree in which Christians will always feel a longing to arrive. There is a tension between the already and the not yet. Whatever city or town you live in, that is not your ultimate home as a Christian.

This reality then causes me to question, in what sense do we as churches need to be raising up indigenous leaders to plant indigenous churches (churches that somehow “embody” the culture)? Does Theise’s kind of connectedness fly in the ecclesial landscape? Should it fly? How much is an indigenous leader blind to the defects in his culture so that he can prophetically speak the gospel in that soil, and seek to change it? In other words, in so far as a pastor is like a farmer (2 Tim 2:6), isn’t his job to till up the soil, and to produce a community that does not look like the world’s community in a certain place, but to produce a covenant community that is counter-cultural, and that stands out as a light in a dark place?

I can’t help but think of Abraham in this regard. Instead of God keeping him where he was as an indigenous leader, God called him to, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

In the NT we see Paul appointing someone like Titus who was a journeymen with Paul, to be a local pastor in a place different from his birthplace.

I guess I am wondering how much I too long, like Theise, for a connectedness and rootedness in culture, yet at the same time realize that in God’s wisdom, he constantly upsets our idea of “home” in the tender process of having us set our sights on the New Jerusalem that is yet to come.

In short, place can become idolatrous. The city can become idolatrous, a way of hiding our real need to be connected to each other in word and sacrament, rather than with the cultural affiliations of the world.

In a recent conversation I was reminded about Cain’s fear in Genesis 4. His fear was that, “he would be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth,” something too great for him to bear. God then graciously marks him. Then Cain has a son, Enoch (which means “to dedicate”) and he names the first city after his son. His fear was disconnect, his fear was to be a wanderer, to be fragmented from a place and from a people. So he builds a city.

In contrast, look again at Abraham. Hebrews 11 says that, “Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going…living in tents…for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”

In a very real way, the response of faith in a fallen world is that of accepting the role of exile, the role of wanderer, the role of fugitive in the world. In contrast, the other response is to cope by yourself, which is the response of Cain. Building a city and building a community dedicated to your own fear of being a sojourner, and thus dedicated to a fleeting city to try and stabilize the soul, is the response of fear and not faith. In contrast to Cain, we are called like Abraham to seek a lasting city yet to come, and let our fearful hearts find stability in the peace of Christ as he comes to us in our weak churches, and in our peculiar communities that the gospel (not the city) creates. Our lack of faith tends to want to build communities around something other than the gospel. We long to find identity in the structures of the world over-against the structures of the Spirit. May God grant us the faith to look at the city and see a phoney alternative, and may God grant us the faith to look at the wasteland and see the way home.

We all have this longing for a place. In the world of wine Theise puts it like this, “I don’t have time to waste on processed wines that taste as if they could have come from anywhere, because in fact they come from nowhere and have no place to take me. We crave spirit of place because of our own need to be located, which reassures us that we belong in the universe. We want our bearings. We want to know where home is. We can deny or ignore this longing, but it will scrape away at us relentlessly while we wonder why we feel so homesick, why we never feel whole.” From Cain to Theise, our great fear is to be a wonderer, consumed by our disconnect. By faith however, we connect to the world to come in word and sacrament, over-against the constant temptation to connect to the city by synchronizing its ways with the way of the gospel.

My, how I feel the tension….

As Wine Goes, So Goes Theology (1)

2012-01-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Terry Theise has recently chimed in again with another insightful and penetrating piece on everything right and wrong in the world of wine. In his newest book Reading Between The Wines Theise notes how so much of what people say matters the most in wine, actually matters the least. Theise goes so far as to relate the current debates among the elite crop of connoisseurs as mirroring Gore Vidal’s famous answer to the question of why academic quarrels were so fierce in his day, with the answer being: because the stakes were so low.

In a lucid section about wine yeast, Theise again laments the current state of wine polemics. He observes how it is usually the up-and-coming wine taster that makes much ado about yeast (which even Theise admits is interesting and worth discussing), yet Theise points out how yeast is never decisive in the taste of a wine and is way over blown in recent debates. Theise believes the controversial subject of yeast is, “a useful illustration of wine people’s need to take categorical positions.” Then, in what caught my eye, Theise remarks that in this regard:

wine gets uncomfortably near to theology at such times, and it seems a pity to reduce this sensuous, civilizing being to a mere object over whose non-salient details we squabble desperately. Still, in the context of a list of tangential matters that wine folk spend far too much time obsessing over, the last thing I need to do is indulge in obsessive detail to prove my point that detail isn’t warranted…In that spirit, and do skip ahead the moment your eyes start glazing over…I present the Apostasy of the Yeasts!

First, I found it interesting to once again hear people bemoan unnecessary polemics in a different field beside theology. Secondly, don’t miss how Theise labels theology as some kind of mere object that is worthless to quibble over (at least the non-salient details). It is always sad to see people outside of Christianity look in and see this (I would fancy Theise a universal spiritualist if I had to guess his religious persuasion). No matter how unjustified this claim may be about the field of theology, there is at least some truth to it.

Thirdly, and what I found most interesting in Theise’s remarks about the current state of the wine world, are the parallels it has with the ecclesial world. The infighting over micro issues, the squabbles over important yet not-so-important matters sound quite familiar to laments I have heard in the church. What’s interesting is how Theise sees these debates typically arising from a plethora of inferiority complexes that mostly deal with identity and of course, market share. That is, Theise notes that so much of what passes for legitimate wine producing, tasting, and excellence, is merely for the end of getting a higher ranking in wine media, which in turn boosts sales. People debate yeast because they want to prove that so-and-so’s great wine had the yeast process done a certain way, and thus certain writers then tend to pass off other great wines completely, just because of the way they fermented. Theise’s point then becomes obvious. Wine people get combative when they fear a threat to the existence of the kinds of wines they like (even though different world class wines have done yeasting differently). As Theise then says, “[then] combativeness becomes a habit, a default position for people unwilling to make the effort entailed by reasonableness. And suddenly every little nonissue is absurdly exacerbated by people staking claims on categorical positions. If we don’t, we look, what –weak? We are often wrong, but never uncertain!”

How many theological battles are really about fear of a threat to the existence of the kind of theology one likes? In theological circles can combativeness become a habit, a default position? Are smaller issues (and every theological system acknowledges some issues are more or less important) exacerbated by people staking claims on categorical positions? It is something to ponder.

I hope to write next time on another parallel currently afoot in the wine world that is also hot in the church world: a longing for connectedness.

Real March Madness

2012-01-06T14:53:00.000-08:00

Hey Northwesterners, if you aren't really into college basketball when March rolls around, maybe you'll be interested in another kind of madness coming to the Northwest in March. Kronos quartet, a San Francisco based string-quartet has been making avante-garde classics for 30 years now and they will be playing at the Neptune theater on March 23rd. If not familiar, welcome to the strange new world of Kronos.

Check out some of their tuneage here.

History vs. Mystery?

2012-01-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

The fine publication Books & Culture has just published a web exclusive article reviewing the recent conference I was able to attend at Regent College. Daniel Treier, of Wheaton College fame, writes the review here which I think is a good one.

I particularly enjoy his highlighting the fact that sociology (or more particularly, sociological abberations) cannot be an accurate adjudicatory of theology (referencing recent works by the likes of Christian Smith). Abuse of a thing (here, evangelical hermeneutics) does not cancel out the correctness of a position. As Treier puts it for example, "the priesthood of all belivers is no more right or wrong based on functional aberrations than is priestly celibacy." Well said.

I also appreciate Treier's realistic expectations of biblical interpretation in this life. He closes his reflections by saying, "speaking for protestant theology, then, moments when heaven and earth touch as we interpret Scripture will only be episodic for now." I like then how Treier talks about how we must take "a long view [of sound biblical interpretation], cheerfully resting in Christ's lordship over the history of his church--even its embarrassing moments when earth seems utterly disconnected from heaven."

Indeed, there may be (and have been) embarrassing times when brothers cannot come to agreement on matters of biblical interpretation. But may we be humble and patient always as we approach the word, knowing we don't master it, but it masters us.

Auld Lang Syne

2011-12-31T17:17:00.000-08:00

As the year winds down its only natural to want to reflect on the past year. I tend to wax nostalgic as the year comes to a close.

To keep it short, this year was a great year in many respects. We Brittons made a big move up to the Northwest and shortly after we were blessed with an addition to our group, the beautiful and lovely Alethea Louise Britton.

Our Isaiah turned two and has developed quite well for a two-year old.

God was gracious and took me many places to preach the gospel. It has been a very edifying experience to see all that God is doing in his various local communions all around. Grace abounds.

We have had to say goodbye to friends, and we have had the privilege to say hello to many new ones. It has been a good year.

As a musician I have always tried to take some time to reflect on the most meaningful and enjoyable music I have heard in the past year, live or on record. So here goes my take.

Perhaps my biggest darkhorse pick is the very young band (at least one high-school-ager I know) Riverview Cruise and their album “your not really there, and neither am I”.

Just a fantastic listen all the way through. There is something on this record, that I believe captures the elusive ‘omaha sound’ better than anything I have heard out of Omaha in the past few years. It is rough around the edges, it has space, it has philosophy bred with a resignation that savors of Simon Joyner era Omaha music.

Other good listens this year were:

Wilco- Whole Love

Feist- Metals

Big Harp- White Hat

Blind Pilot- we are the tide

Gillian Welch- The Harrow and the Harvest

Tune-yards- WHOKILL

Last year I spent New Year’s Eve in sub-arctic conditions (no hyperbole here, it was bout 25 or so below zero) outside of the fancy Hilton Hotel in downtown Omaha serving concierge and valet parking duties to partying patrons. This year, I will spend it with family and friends in a warm house, with the prospect of preaching at Westminster OPC in Monroe, WA the following day on New Year’s Day. Different year, different times.

So Auld Lang Syne from the NW, happy new year!

What is in God's Name?

2011-12-28T09:30:00.000-08:00

I recently translated Exodus 3, and then ran across an engaging essay by Michael Allen on the topic of God’s name, all of which inspired this post (its also up at Grace’s website).

Juliet Capulet, Shakespeare's well-known character, famously asked, "What's in a name?"

For centuries, thoughtful bible readers have asked this question in light of God revealing his name in Exodus 3 to Moses at the burning bush.

In this passage God calls Moses to go to Egypt and deliver his people from the cruel tyranny of Pharaoh. Moses asks God the question, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God famously responds to Moses with the verbal clause, “I AM WHO I AM.”

If you are like some of my friends of the deep American south you might respond to God’s answer with, “Come again now?”

For the name God gives is quite enigmatic. You could translate the Name with the past tense, present tense, and future tense. “I have been whom I have been, I am who I am, I will be whom I will be” all fit the verbs here in the Divine Name. So what is God really revealing here with this Name?

In short, God is revealing a mystery. As the church father Augustine once wrote, God can only be known by comparison with himself. God is wholly other. He is transcendent. He is not on the same plane with his creation in any way. He is altogether his own category. Indeed, classic, orthodox theology has often gone to Exodus 3 to teach the creator-creature distinction. For when God reveals his name, he reveals that he is not quantitatively different than creation, but that he is qualitatively different. This is a humbling truth. The name God gives, following Augustine once again, is really all about God’s limiting human knowledge as it pertains to God. As theology professor Michael Allen has observed about this passage, it shows us that our human limitations of the knowledge of God, “are not naturally apparent, but are revealed to us by God himself.”

So God reveals a name of mystery in Exodus 3:14, but as many commentators have pointed out, in the very next verse, God then reveals a second name of mercy. Verse 15 reads, “God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘the LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations’” (emphasis mine).

God attaches himself to certain persons and events in Israel’s past as a very tangible way for the Israelites to identify him. After all, if Moses would have simply told the Israelites God’s Divine Name, it probably wouldn’t have done much for them. They needed something tangible to identify their God, and to know what divinity for whom Moses was claiming to speak.

Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson has said this twofold naming in Exodus 3 would help the Israelites to speak in this way about God in the future: “Asked about who God is, Israel’s answer would have been, ‘whoever rescued us from Egypt,’ asked about her access to this God, Israel’s answer would be ‘well, we are permitted to call on him by name.’”

If God’s mysterious name reveals his transcendence, then God’s merciful name surely reveals his immanence. God is wholly other, but God is also wholly near to his people. The God who is, is the God who heard Israel’s groaning in Egypt and rescued them.

And so it is still today, that the all powerful, mysterious, transcendent God is also near to his people. The mysterious God of creation is the gracious God of redemption. We can also call on him by name this very day. We also have access to him through the blood of Jesus Christ this very day. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev 1:8). This is the name of our God who has done great things for us by sending his son Jesus Christ to rescue us from the cruel tyranny of sin and death.

So what is in a name? When it comes to our great God there is great mystery, yet there is also great mercy. Praise God for his Name and what he has done for us.

The Book of Books

2011-12-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a great piece by Marilynne Robinson on what literature owes the Bible (ht: TGC).

Why We Need More Scrooge's

2011-12-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

For years I have seen Dickens' play performed. And in recent years I have had similar thoughts to Jim Lacey's found here. Fantastic, provocative article that I think says what a lot of people think, but don't want to say (ht: Wes White).

MEETING JESUS AT THE FEAST: Israel’s Festivals and the Gospel

2011-12-22T05:25:00.000-08:00

If you are anything like me, your year-long bible reading plan can sometimes get bogged down in Leviticus. Verse after verse of dietary restriction, cleanliness law, and grain offering instruction just doesn’t leap off the page like the great narratives of say, Genesis and Exodus.

So books like John R. Sittema’s Meeting Jesus At The Feast: Isreal’s Festivals and the Gospel naturally appeal to me. Although Sittema only deals with the festal sections of Leviticus, getting a solid, redemptive-historical understanding of these passages can only serve to help illumine the book as a whole. That was my hope in purchasing the book, and I can say that this book served that end.

Sittema’s great strength as a writer is that he can take complicated material and make it more accessible to the lay reader. So much so, I found myself teaching a Sunday School class on the topic of the Levitical feasts after being inspired by Sittema’s lay friendly style.

I must say however, that I did find at times Sittema’s illustrations to be a bit too lengthy and perhaps not as directly tied to his point as one would hope (the introduction serves as one example). Nevertheless, the noble interest in bringing the riches of Leviticus to a broader audience is clear and appreciated, even when the bridges made to our contemporary context sometimes don’t connect as strongly as this reader would have liked.

Here’s how the book is structured: Sittema takes Leviticus 23 as his main text for unpacking the Levitical feasts. He spends the first chapter of the book explaining the command of the Sabbath and showing how Sabbath rest grounds all the festivals, and also displays the movement of redemption as a whole (i.e. bringing a restless people to rest). Sittema then unpacks the seven feasts prescribed by God to Israel under the old covenant, and ends the book with a helpful discussion on the sometimes-enigmatic year of Jubilee.

Each chapter follows a similar path. Sittema usually begins by placing the feast in its original historical context, then he shows how the feast developed over time up until the first century, he then seeks to show how Jesus embodied the feast, and then closes by reflecting on the implications for God’s new covenant people.

Even with this pattern in place, Sittema’s book never seems formulaic or unduly repetitive. Rather, he freshly engages the Levitical feasts with an eye towards how they reveal Christ and the many facets of the gospel. In addition, each chapter has study questions to help prompt further reflection, which is very helpful when using the book in a bible study, or Sunday School class.

If this book is used for a Sunday School class, note that Sittema doesn’t discuss every detail there is to discuss about the feasts and the biblical texts that are considered in the book. As such, I suggest supplementing Sittema’s book with other works. In my situation, I supplemented Sittema’s books with a couple of Leviticus commentaries as well as some other books on the feasts (i.e. Moishe Weinfold’s book Christ In The Passover has more details surrounding the Seder meal than does Sittema).

All in all, this book really helped to open up the design of the Levitical feasts in God’s purposes for his people. It would be a good book for a bible study, Sunday School class, or the like.

How Bout' Them Clippers!

2011-12-20T12:52:00.000-08:00

Wow, its been awhile since the NBA preseason has been this exciting. Check out what's new in Los Angeles. The Clippers. Taking it to the Lakers. This team will be fun to watch. DeAndre Jordan is a beast.

This Rules--Glass Harp Performance

2011-12-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

I just think this rules. Now, lets pour wine for everybody in those glasses and have a Christmas party.

The High Drama of Free Agency

2011-12-16T11:26:00.000-08:00

One could well make the case that perhaps the NBA free agency season is sometimes more exciting than the actual regular season of basketball. With an NBA lockout, a shortened season, and thus a shortened free agency season, high expectations have been fulfilled in this years free agency circus.

Needless to say, the LA clippers win big time with Chris Paul, Billups, and Blake Griffin. They should be an exciting club to watch. Their biggest piece in question now is the defensive coordinator. Can they play defense?

As for my Boston Celtics, well, they continue to be the team with great obstacles, yet who still seek great goals.

Fact is, life is short. NBA life is even shorter. The hall-of-famers Garnett, Pierce, and Allen have only gotten older. Their minutes will have to be shortened in a shortened season. The Celtics bench has been somewhat encouraging: Dooling, Brandon Bass, and Chris Wilcox are all tough defenders who can rebound and contribute offensively.

Yet, as one columnist correctly points out, the Celtics championship window ended with the biggest mistake Danny Ainge has ever made in trading Kendrick Perkins. Chemistry is harder to build than a roster. Doc had built it with Perk and the other 4 starters. That just isn't there anymore, although I expect J.O. to go out with a bang. And to the naysayers who argue that Perk would of left at the end of this year and so Danny had to get something for him. What did he get? Jeff Green is the only one still around, and now his season is up in the air after failing his physical (this makes any celtic cringe, if you followed the Reggie Lewis story in 93...on the day Lewis, our star player, was set to go in for his last set of tests, he collapsed and died in a shootaround at the age of 27). So we hope Jeff Green's life is ok. And, then we hope he can play ball.

Being a fan, I of course cast my lot again with the Celtics this year. I cast my lot with a team that looks at the impossible and counts it as their goal. I cast my lot with a new bench that is hungry, unselfish, young, and athletic. So the Guiness will be poured once again on Christmas day, the Green will be worn, and I will route for a team that everyone counts out.

I also will enjoy watching the Bulls, Thunder, Heat, and the Knicks, all of whom got way better.

Despite the NBA being a really stupid league right now, at the end of the day, I am excited to watch the best basketball in the world.

Benny Hinn and the Gospel

2011-12-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

I am no fan of Benny Hinn. I have major problems with his ministry. I wouldn't recommend his books or his church or his ministry to anyone. I also have problems with some of what is said in this clip. But there was something in this clip that got me a little excited about the gospel, gospel preaching, and my savior Jesus Christ. So for the sake of conversation: what do you think? Should Benny feel like punching preachers more often? Maybe some more sola Christus preaching would emerge.

...I also wonder how it would effect my preaching if I had some organ punches during my sermons for emphasis...

This Week at the Beach (2)

2011-12-09T11:56:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more pics. You can see that we went to the Seaside Aquarium which was really cool. Isaiah got to feed seals, and we got to see the largest octopus we've ever seen. Here are a couple of videos: this one of the beach, and this one of the starfish in the tide pools.

This Week at the Beach (1)

2011-12-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

Off to Cannon Beach

2011-12-05T06:13:00.000-08:00

We're off to Cannon Beach Oregon for a few days of pastoral refreshment. Packed up the van, the kids, the new tunes, and we head down south this morning. We are looking forward to a nice time of R&R, and stopping at Stumptown coffee in Portland (yes!).

New blog posts likely resume at the end of the week, which is of course when NBA training camp begins, so there is actually something to write about again;)