Category: Archive

We had our memorial for Daniel last Saturday. I have to say that, despite the great pain, it was the most profound worship experience I have ever had. It is ironic to say that about a memorial service for a young man who died way too soon.

We found that while we were digging in the cave of darkness and grief, that we were actually mining gold in God’s eternal country. Sometime during that service we went from earth to the eternal realm of glory.

I am not one to exaggerate. The Spirit of God really descended on 780 grievers on the eve of Pentecost 2008 at Christ Episcopal Church in Denver.

The cynic in me wonders where He was while we were praying desperately for Daniel to recover, but I have to say that I was moved to my core at His palpable presence among us last Saturday.

Christ is risen. I didn’t think I would feel that as powerfully amidst the reality of death.  I did not think my song would be ‘Alleluia’ looking at mourners.

Somehow, eternity was not that far away and I am still feeling its effects.

This Saturday we say goodbye to one of our young parishioners, Daniel Burtness, who was killed as a result of a car accident last weekend. Dan was attending Whitworth and was in his first year. Dan–only 18, was a faithful, called, wonderful Christian young man. His call to ministry was obvious.

From my perspective, this is the most difficult situations I have ever been a part of. I have had  a hard time keeping my tears away and my emotions in check. I have been involved in funerals of young kids who died, but almost always, there was some kind of irresponsibility, or an alcohol related accident or mishap.

Not so in Dan’s case. It was just a good kid in a car accident.

The Sunday before he died, the entire church held hands and prayed for a miracle. That night, his Young Life leader and I also prayed for a miracle and, I admit, I felt a great sense of hope that God would pull of the impossible.

It was not to be. The Lord did not answer our prayers.

This was perhaps the most frustrated I have ever been with God. “Has [God’s] loving-kindness come to an end for ever? Has his promise failed for evermore? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he…withheld his compassion? And I said, ‘My grief is this: the right hand of the Most High has lost its power'” (Psalm 77:8-10).

The ‘whys’ can never be sufficiently answered. Even if we saw the script from the hand of God, there would be little consolation.

The only consolation I have was expressed by one of Dan’s classmates: ‘Dan is exactly where he wants to be, in the presence of Christ. ‘  Daniel was wired for God in a way that was unusual. He was the budding youth leader who was full of joy and was becoming quite the prankster. He was the gentle warrior, quiet, yet full of unusual depth.

His call has now become a call to the presence of the Lord.  While we mourn and grieve, he fulfills his desires and destiny, to walk directly in the Light of Christ.

And the Lord says, “Come, Daniel, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”  Grant this, O merciful Father, through Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Redeemer.

I live in the East side of Denver. I went to the movies last Friday with my wife. Monday I went to Denver Health with our Sudanese guy and his mom, and later went to Wal Mart. I distinctively remember that in each of these three places, nary a word of English was spoken. I heard French (from Africans), Arabic, and Russian, but mostly Spanish.

For me, it is rich to hear ‘divers of tongues’ in my own nation. I know for others to hear other languages, especially Spanish, it is a huge threat. Sheer numbers have brought the Hispanic language and culture to a neighborhood near you.

I’ll let you decide as a citizen how you feel about a wall around the southern border of the U.S. What does it say? What does it not say?

I’ll also let you decide why the Northern border is no threat to Homeland Security.

There are deeper questions to consider, though, if you are a Christian. The people of God have always been told that they were once sojourners and aliens (Exodus 22:21; 1 Peter 2:10), therefore they ought to treat the “stranger” with mercy and even to give them a share in the blessings of the covenant. Yet are Christians willing to do this in their own church communities?

The deeper question might pertain not to the wall around the Rio Grande, but to the wall around all of our hearts. It is trite, but you know what hour of the week is the most segregated in churches in the U.S. The movie theater, the mall, the restaurant, the marketplace, Starbucks, all of these places are more representative of Acts 2 and Revelation 5, than the Christian community.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Bible is a dangerous and radical document–if we would just let it speak. We have an opportunity to see the massive immigration to the U.S. as a huge test for the church, but also a huge blessing. Millions of God-fearing, hard-working ‘family values’ folks, just a neighborhood away. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few–at least the ones with papers.

Sider’s work was one of my Lenten books.  Daniel Clendinin writes in sum of the book:

Drawing upon scientific polling from groups like Gallup and Barna, Sider takes the measure of American evangelicals on five data points: divorce, care for the poor, sexual infidelity, racism, and physical abuse in marriage. He is appalled. People who claim to be born again divorce at a slightly higher rate than the general population. Evangelicals give a meager 4% from their income. The most likely people to object to neighbors of a different race are white evangelicals. Sexual promiscuity among evangelical kids is rampant. Is it any wonder that “a mere 22% of people have a positive view of evangelicals” (p. 28)? Sider contrasts these findings from Chapter 1 with an overview in Chapter 2 of the Biblical vision of what God’s kingdom on earth ought to look like, with successive paragraphs full of Scripture quotations from the Gospels, the book of Acts and the Epistles. In stark contrast to our current reputation, Sider notes that the early Christians had a well-known and well-deserved reputation for integrity and care for the weak. Tertullian (AD 155–220), for example, wrote, “Our care for the derelict and our active love have become our distinctive sign before the enemy…See, they say, how they love one another and how ready they are to die for each other.” Even the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate (ruled AD 361–363) acknowledged the radically counter cultural life of the early Christians: “The godless Galileans feed not only their poor but ours” (p. 52).

I was reared in evangelicalism and still consider myself evangelical, so this was not a ‘point the finger’ read for me.  The book made me wonder what progress has been made by creating a ‘Religious Right’ and a ‘Dittohead’ culture over the last couple of decades if we cannot get our own house in order.  Are we ‘gaining the world’ at the expense of our souls?

I long for a ‘third way’ in the way the church can engage culture, perhaps it is being the kind of polis that the  Scripture describes–a holy and loving people.  A people who love God, neighbor, and each other.  A people who are attractive to the culture because of their holiness, wholeness, and love.

NT scholar Marcus Borg says,

“I think of the great Easter hymn, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” with all its soaring hallelujahs. And I see that hymn as profoundly true even though I don’t think its truth depends upon the tomb having been empty or something happening to the corpse of Jesus.”

I’m not exactly sure what he means. Without going into the ‘proofs’ for the resurrection, Borg’s perspective is a pretty boring take on the whole thing. Last night at our Easter Vigil, 12 Burundians were baptized. Amidst the clouds of incense and the ringing of bells, a group of them sang in thankful celebration to Jesus for what he had done 2000 years ago and what he did among us.

All of the Burundian children baptized last night were born in refugee camps. The living Lord Jesus has been their companion and has brought us to our parish. Should I tell them that the empty tomb is ‘irrelevant’ (as Borg says elsewhere) and that the corpse of Jesus may be lying around somewhere? If Christ is not risen, I pity us all for the sham we are a part of!

Stealing from my boy Chris Martin,

http://chrismartinsblog.com/2008/02/19/the-celtic-way-of-evangelism-george-hunter/

who is the real St. Patrick and when did St. Paddy’s become an excuse to drink ’till you puke? George Hunter provides an exceptional work in which he says that Patrick’s ‘way of evangelism’ is possible to imitate even and especially in our day.

What was Patrick’s ‘way?’

Patrick took a group of men (and women), clergy, seminarians and others to live among the ‘barbarian’ Celts (who had previously enslaved Patrick years earlier) to plant ‘holy communities.’ In these communities, Patrick’s folks would live in community to pray and work together, as well as to invite the locals to participate–to ‘come and see’ what Christians were all about. They built churches, prayed, partook of the sacraments, fed the hungry and healed the sick. These so called barbarians discovered that Patrick’s communities were ‘thin places,’ holy places where the presence of God penetrated space and time in an unusual, palpable way.

The Celts found their own experience of the world, with its violence, fear, and degradation, could not hold a candle to Patrick’s holy and peaceable communities. Violence, killing and idolatry ceased wherever Patrick’s communities took hold.

Perhaps people use March 17th as an excuse to drink themselves senseless because Patrick’s story has never been told by his spiritual descendants. Perhaps they don’t know that Christ can actually change people en masse, transform people groups and neighborhoods and that Kingdom living is possible to find–if you look in the right places.

We got a new puppy named Coconut. I don’t think there is anything more fun to watch than a boy and his dog. My little ‘Jedi Knight’ loves to roughhouse with his new puppy and it’s as if they’ve known each other for years already.  Of course they like to chill together.

OK so I’m still working on a Lenten Rule and, well, Lent is over half way over. Clean Monday starts for the Orthodox in March and I know they’ve got this Lent thing figured out, but by the time they can give me advice, we’ll be done.

I’ve always been attracted to Benedict and his Rule (That’s him and sis), and my wife and I were married on the Feast of Benedict (July 11), so I have hoped for an Idyllic Benedictine household. But, alas, even the Rector’s home is filled with unmet expectations. What are some elements of our readers’ Rules of Life? Any good Anglicans or Catholics out there keeping a holy Lent? There’s still time!  A little help here!

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams argued recently for a ‘modified’ Sharia law for Muslims in Great Britain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3328024.ece

What does he mean exactly? On the surface it puts everyone’s knickers in a knot, but it leads the way to other kinds of questions. How does anyone in the West consistently follow their religion in a culture of pluralism? The Archbishop is not foolish enough to think that Britain is a Christian nation (despite what is ‘on the books’), and it is certainly not a Muslim nation–so what is it? A secular nation.

In the West, how does a Muslim follow the Koran, how does a Jew follow the Torah, how does a Christian follow the Gospel without all kinds of state and cultural interference? I think this is what Rowan is wrestling with, he is not trying to make Britain an Islamic state.

Here’s what I said yesterday to my parish…

You have come today perhaps by some instinct that Lent is a good thing. We know that last night (despite Super Tuesday) Mardi Gras was celebrated throughout the world by many who have never even heard of Shrove Tuesday and who have no desire to even think about Lent. We live in a world of pleasure and entertainment, not a world of repentance and fasting. We live in a world where pleasure is a right and difficulty is an inconvenience.

Maybe now, more than ever, we need Lent.

Prior to the 4th century, the early Christians had a strict, three year training period for baptism. It was serious business to be a Christian because it was a life or death decision. At the beginning of the 4th century, with the emperor Constantine putting an end to the persecution of Christians, the training period for baptism was changed from three years to the 7 weeks before Easter. This became also a time for those who had renounced Christ during the age of persecution to come back to the church, undergoing a time of prayer and fasting.

Many have reduced Lent to a time when we give up candy or chocolate and that’s not a bad thing. We certainly to not need more candy or chocolate in our lives. However, what brings us to the heart of Lenten discipline are Jesus’ words: ‘For wherever your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’

How do you know where your heart is? Easy. How do you spend your time? How do you know where your treasure is? Easy. How do you spend your time?

TV time. Work time. Family time. Tinker time. Fun time. Me time. God time?

Jesus says, ‘when you fast, when you pray, when you give alms.’ He says ‘when’ and not ‘if.’ The greatest thing you can give the Lord is your time. Time in doing what is right. Time in giving money and skills, time in prayer and fasting, and studying the Scriptures.

I have to say that if Jesus were to preach to us today, his emphasis would not be on our self-righteousness, but our lack of desire for righteousness.

Maybe to us he would say, ‘When you get that smudge on your head, leave it on, maybe then you’ll have to talk about your faith!’ ‘When you fast and pray, hey, when’s the last time you fasted and prayed?’ ‘When you give alms, hey, when’s the last time you helped someone in need?’

What Jesus describes as prayer, fasting and almsgiving are meant to help us gain an eternal perspective. We pray because we believe there is someone on the other end listening. We believe there is someone on the other end who is not controlled by our space and time.

We fast so we can take ourselves away from the American consumer and food addiction. The bread of heaven and the cup of salvation become our food. The nourishment of the Word of God becomes our staple.

We give alms so we won’t store up treasures on earth, but in heaven. We give alms so we can invest in eternity. As C. S. Lewis said, “All that is not eternal is eternally useless.” More than ever we need to be aware of the suffering of our world and do our part to bring Jesus into it and alleviate it. This Lent, perhaps read some books that will shake you out of our cultural selfishness. There is a book called Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza or God Grew Tired of Us by Jon Dau which tells the story of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Prayer. Fasting. Almsgiving.

Why Lent? Augustine said, ‘Love God and do as you please.’ In other words, when you love God and draw near to him, there is no question about what will please you–his word and his will. Lent is a chance for us to draw near to him and a chance to evaluate our relationship with Christ. It is a time for perspective of the fleetingness of our lives. For we are dust, and to dust we shall return.