Meet Eric Duwe

I'd like for you to meet my great friend, Duwe (pronounced like "do-ee"). He is near the top of the short list of my faith-heroes. And that's saying alot to have someone younger than me to look up to for my own journey.

Duwe is from around these parts in southeast Wisconsin. But for the past 18 months or so since he graduated from college, he's been living in Thailand as a missionary. One of my highlights in life that I look forward to is catching up with Duwe and hearing all about his experiences.

But you don't have to wait until he comes home to hear about his adventures in person. You can follow along on his blog: sabaisabaiduwe.blogspot.com. Duwe delivers regular updates about what he's learning in his immersion within several facinating cultures, as well as reflections of his own process of growing in faith.

Dive in.

Digest.

Do it.

Duwe!!!

Salvation and Evangelism (Pt.2)

In part one of this series, I discussed the topic of salvation. The good news the church shares with the world is that the kingdom of God is here and now, and Jesus offers you the gift of Holy Spirit so that you can participate in it. This articulation of the good news is earth shattering to many of my fellow Lutherans. Rather than limiting our view of salvation through the Law-Gospel lens, we see that our vocation is inherent to the gospel itself. What we do is not merely in response to the gospel. Rather, the good news is a calling to participate in the kingdom of God.

This brings us to the topic for part deux: what the church's mission looks like when proclaiming this good news.

Let me first be clear about what the church's mission is not.

(1) We're not trying to save souls. First of all, you'd have to explain to me what a soul is, because I've never seen one. By 'soul', we certainly can't mean some sort of immortal essence distinct from our bodies. God's interested in you, in your whole person. Is there any other version of you? Secondly, if we accept the definition of "soul" in the Bible, we discover two things: (a) the Hebrew word translated as 'soul' is nephesh, meaning the life force of the whole person, or simply the whole person. (b) The Bible makes great effort to show that the force that gives and sustains the lives of our whole person is Holy Spirit.

(2) We're not offering a good deal. This deal often takes the form of a commercial for a used car dealership: "Come on down and get your ticket to salvation. All you have to do is believe and it's yours FREE." The good news is about what God is doing now to be all in all, and that doesn't rely on what we believe. God's going to keep doing it whether we believe it or not.

So this is what the church's mission looks like in sharing the good news of God's kingdom:

Rather than providing the consumer service of soul-saving and offering salvation-deals, we help people recognize God's kingdom breaking in all around them. We help people see Jesus already present in their lives, transforming them into the people God has in mind. Holy Spirit is already in them sustaining their lives; with every breath they inhale, Holy Spirit comes into them to give life again and again. Now the resurrected Jesus gives Holy Spirit in a new and ultimate way to transform their lives for God's kingdom.

We are not the good news. Yet the way most institutional churches do evangelism, you would think we are. Typically we stay in our gathered communities and designate a committee to do our advertising and outreaching to invite people to come check us out. Maybe then, they'll happen to hear the good news from the pastor. That's why congregations emphasize hospitality much like businesses emphasize customer service.

But what if congregations emphasized evangelism instead of simply hospitality? This is what evangelism looks like as the mark of discipleship called "Invite" in our "living W.O.R.S.H.I.P." covenants. We invite people to recognize what Jesus is already doing through them to reconcile all things to his Father. If a congregation should even have an evangelism committee, it would be for the sole purpose of training every disciple to be evangelists 24/7/365. Holy Spirit is unleashed; the Temple curtain is torn; the heavens are ripped open. God's kingdom is all around us.

Although the kingdom of God is not yet come completely, it is already here so that we can experience it now. In Hebraic thought, we live in the olam hazeh, which means "this world." The messiah, God's anointed king-judge, ushers in olam haba, meaning "the world to come." The gift of salvation offered by Jesus the messiah is Holy Spirit, who empowers us to participate in the tikkun olam, "the restoring of the world" from the olam hazeh to the olam haba. In other words, Jesus welcomes us into his messiahship. By being united to him in baptism, we are king-judges of the world so that we too may participate in the tikkun olam.

The olam haba is identified as the gan Eden, the garden of Eden. Our messianic vocation in Jesus' mission is to restore the garden of Eden to the world. Without the garden, the world is trashed; we're left only with the cosmic junk. God help us! Thankfully, God hears our cries for help and restores the garden to the world. Remember, that in the creation story the garden of Eden is not the entire world; it is the place in the world where God dwells. So it is in the world to come. Eden is not the whole world, but the location of God's dwelling.

Jesus is said to be the messiah, because his followers see in him shekinah , the glorious presence of God. The shekinah was thought to be in the Temple, but Jesus claims to be the true Temple. With the gift of Holy Spirit in baptism, we are joined to the true Temple; we become the Temple in which God dwells. Our vocation is to be the garden of Eden in the world so that God dwelling in us reigns the entire cosmos. God's glorious presence, shekinah, is no longer constrained to one geographic location, but now dwells in the garden of Eden that is dispersed throughout the world. When we are the garden of Eden, the world is restored; all of creation lives in peace, wholeness, and harmony known as shalom.

I have a fancy theological phrase to describe the vocational nature of the gospel by which we participate in God's reigning. I call it "collaborative eschatology." This term means that God restores the olam haba -- the world to come --through our whole lives dedicated to Jesus' mission.

Evangelism, then, means sharing the message with people: "Don't you realize Holy Spirit is your life force, so who you are is the person in whom God reigns the entire cosmos?! Come, then, and be transformed into who you really are." In other words, evangelism is helping people recognize the gift Jesus gives them so they can be who they are: dwelling in God's glorious presence and God dwelling in them for the sake of the world.

Evangelism is sharing the news that a new age -- a new world, the olam haba -- is here, and it's coming through you in the tikkun olam, the world's restoration. To use a simple illustration, evangelism is telling the good news to coworkers, neighbors, friends, party goers, and all people: "The long night is over. The sun is dawning to shatter the darkness. It is not yet at its brightest and warmest, but already we can see the sun's light and warm up in its glow. OPEN YOUR EYES! The fields are ready for us to harvest. Get with the program and join the feast."

Can Chunk See the Kingdom?

Late Gen-Xers and early Millennials have at least one thing in common: we love "The Goonies"! Whether you were old enough as a Gen-Xer to see it in the theater like me, or you saw it on VHS with other Millennials, we all hold a special place in our heart for Chunk, the lovable roly-poly kid who couldn't shut his mouth even when his life depended on it. Scared out of his wits when captured by the evil Frittelli family bandits who want to find the hidden treasure, Chunk tells them everything -- starting when he was in the third grade:

In third grade I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade I stole my Uncle Max's toupee, and I glued it on my face when I played Moses in my Hebrew school play. In fifth grade I knocked Mike Cisterini down the stairs, but I blamed it on my dog . . .

But the worst thing I ever done, I took a bucket of fake puke from home. Then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony, and then . . . then I made a noise like this: huah, hewaaaagh, hewaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. And then I dumped it over the side, on all the people in the audience. Then . . . th-then this was horrible. All the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.

Whenever I see this scene, I feel awful. Guilty. Shameful. Because it reminds me of my own "Chunk-moment" in life.

The church I grew up in held an Easter egg scramble every year for the Sunday School kids. For a little kid, this was the coolest day at church ever. But for older students, the booty failed to impress us, so we looked forward to the day when we'd be in junior high and able to help set up the scramble. I took this responsibility very seriously at first -- doing my best to place the eggs strategically. But one year temptation got the better of me.

Just on the other side of the ribbon marking of the boundary, was a chunk of dog poop. Always quick to show off to my friends for an easy laugh, I ate the piece of candy from one of the pink plastic eggs, scooped up the chunk into the egg, and placed it in an enticing spot in the sixth graders' area. Then we watched with muffled laughter to see who the lucky winner would be.

I thought I was the greatest comic genius alive . . . until I watched an excited boy innocently pick up the pink pill of poop and place it in his poke. (That's Pittsburghese for brown paper bag.) At that moment, I felt guilt hit me in the stomach. As Chunk says in "The Goonies", "I never felt so bad in my entire life." As soon as I could slip out of sight, I ran to find the boy. I caught up to him moments before worship was to begin. I told him what I had done, and warned him to open his plastic eggs very carefully. To my shame, I cannot recall if I even apologized to the boy. But I know he did not absolve me of my sin. How could he? He just stood motionless, looking at me with shock and confusion.

As I grew up and discerned a call to ordained ministry, I thought I knew what Jesus was talking about in Luke 4:24, "no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown." Of course not, I reasoned. People from my hometown know me too well -- the real me, a side of me that most people in my adult years thankfully never see. How could I ever go back there as someone with a public vocation as a pastor, a discipleship coach, a church leader?

I figured that Jesus must have had this in mind when he returned to his hometown of Nazareth and spoke these words to the village that helped to raise him. I know the Bible says he's without sin, but he was a human boy and adolescent after all. Surely he must have some shameful skeletons in his closet that are out of the public's eye but known to those closest to him.

But over the past few years, I have begun to rethink what Jesus meant by this saying. Every time I go back and visit my hometown, and every time I speak with people now who knew me then as an awkward adolescent, I experience God's grace profoundly. These are good people, loving people. Yes, they know the stupid and mean things I did. But that's not how they see me now, because that's not even how they saw me then. They saw a young boy who needed the love of his church family to help him grow in awareness of God's grip on his life.

So I doubt Jesus felt that the Nazarenes did not honor him because they knew the "real Jesus" the public never saw. In fact, the scripture says that they spoke well of him. He told them that the coming of the messiah, who would usher in God's kingdom as foretold by the prophet Isaiah, had been fulfilled in their presence. They were amazed and asked one another, "Is not this Joseph's son?" Their question is not doubting Jesus, as I had assumed for so long (I come from a tribe of Christianity with a lot of Jew-bashing in our past, which sometimes goes unnoticed in its more subtle forms). Rather, their question praises Jesus, as in: "Is this not Joseph's son whom we helped to raise and teach? Yet his gracious words surpass anything he picked up from us. Could he be God's anointed messiah?"

This explains why Jesus goes off on them -- not because they doubted him, but because they got it pretty close. Every time a new baby boy was born to a Jewish mother, the family and townspeople would celebrate, because maybe -- just maybe -- this boy would grow up to be the messiah. Could their dreams have come true? If so, then they could expect the things Jesus just told them were fulfilled: good news to the poor, release of captives, the blind gain sight, and the oppressed are liberated.

So Jesus puts on the brakes. Someone with better stage presence would have known to take a bow and quit while he has the crowd in the palm of his hand. But not Jesus. Not this messiah. "Whoah, people. Don't get carried away. Keep in mind that all widows experienced the hardship of famine in Elijah's time, but God only sent him to one widow in Sidon. And remember that lots of people had leprosy in the time of Elisha, but he cured only Naaman the Syrian." Neither of these people belonged to God's chosen people, the Israelites. The prophets were enacting a message of judgment upon Israel.

What Jesus is saying here is, "I'm the messiah who is to judge God's people." The Nazarenes are excited at first, because they assumed they are about to see God's kingdom. But just like earlier in Luke when John tells his audience not to take refuge in the fact they are children of Abraham because God can turn rocks into children of Abraham, likewise Jesus is saying, "Don't think you are automatically in the kingdom just because you happen to be the children of Abraham whose prodigy is the messiah."

My NRSV Harper Collins Study Bible puts a subtitle before this story in Luke that reads "The rejection of Jesus at Nazareth." But really the Nazarenes didn't reject Jesus, (especially not because they thought he was pridefully raising himself up above his roots -- again, my tribe called German Lutherans have an innate humility gene). Instead, Jesus rejected their presumption to have a right to the kingdom. This is what enraged them and made them try to throw him off the cliff. "How dare he tell us we have no right to God's kingdom!!!"

Sorry folks, no one has a right to it. Not even Jesus' own immediate family. Scripture tells us that once when they tried to come to him, he prevented them saying "those who do the will of God are my mother and my brothers."

"But I believe in Jesus," you may say. "I've invited him to be my personal savior!" Or, if you're a good Lutheran, you may say, "But I'm baptized!" Well, you're right. If what that means to you is that you're going to heaven after you die so you don't have to do the church thing after confirmation, then so be it. In your baptism, God has promised never to give up on you, always to be faithful to you, even beyond the power of death.

But why wait until death to experience God's kingdom when your baptism calls you and gifts you with Holy Spirit to experience God's kingdom now 24/7/365!?! Kids and teens, if your parents told you that once you finish confirmation you don't have to do the church thing anymore, they're selling you short. Parents, if you told your kids this, it's not too late to take it back and make them do the church thing. Being an adult in the church, doesn't mean being free to decide against doing the church thing. Being an adult in the church means being freed by our messiah to follow him in his community so we too may see God's kingdom 24/7/365.

This is what coaching discipleship is all about. It took a family in partnership with their village to raise the messiah, and it takes families in partnership with their church to raise his disciples. Our baptism invites us into a life of discipleship, but it doesn't guarantee that we'll actually be disciples. Jesus says those who follow him by doing God's will are his family, are the ones who are witnessing the kingdom of God already in our midst. Those who think they already have a right to God's kingdom are missing out.

That doesn't mean you have to be perfect. Heavens no. Jesus came not for the righteous but to call sinners. Take it from one who knows sin -- one who would stain the celebration of Easter with a stinking practical joke. My mean spirited assault on the faith of an unsuspecting boy did not banish me beyond God's kingdom. But I would never have come to realize that, if it wasn't for my connection to my church family well beyond my confirmation years. I have come to know God's grace because my family makes sure the church is always a part of our home, and because my church makes sure I am always a part of their family.

For our kids to be disciples, who strive to do God's will and seek God's kingdom here and now, they need their parents to keep them connected to their church, and they need each of us in their church to make them fully a part of our family. But if we're going to be content with youth choosing to step away from the church thing after confirmation, if we're going to encourage them to rely on their baptism as their right to God's kingdom, then don't be surprised when Jesus passes through their midst and goes on his way, just like he did in Nazareth.

With a heavy heart in the presence of our our living messiah, I feel this is our church's "Chunk-moment." We all have our "Chunk-moments" in life. For some of us, our "Chunk-moment" may be a youthful regret that sullies our conscience. For some of us, our "Chunk-moment" may be not embracing our young ones into the full worship life and mission of our church family. Still for some of us, our "Chunk-moment" may be having told our kids that they can stop doing the church thing after confirmation if they so choose.

But our "Chunk-moments" don't have to petrify us as if we are banished beyond God's kingdom. God frees us for discipleship. We don't always do God's will, but when youth, parents, and all adults in our church stay connected and committed to raising up disciples of Jesus, we are likely to hear again and again God's word of grace first spoken to us in our baptism. This promise assures us that God is faithful to us, never giving up on us, that through our participation in church we will grow in our awareness of Jesus leading us in our lives 24/7/365.

Graced Disciples

I share with you some reflections upon one of my recent interesting reads:(1)

When we look at the relationship between Jesus and his disciples, we see clear parallels to a typical relationship between a rabbi and his students. Jesus calls young men to follow in his way. (Indeed, women also followed him, but the Bible only depicts the call narratives of the 12.) He teaches people about the kingdom of God. He interprets scripture and guides his disciples in doing the same.

But Jesus' relationship to his disciples may be more akin to prophets and their protege. Prophets had a particular gift from God, and when they called a disciple they communicated their gift to the new prophet of equal status. We see this in Elijah's relationship to Elisha.

Likewise, Jesus' disciples participate in his grace. They receive the authority to heal, to forgive sin, to exorcise demons, and to perform the actions only possible in the kingdom of God. Participating in Jesus' mission and authority means sharing in his acceptance of an 'outsider stigma', in devotion to seeking God's kingdom above all else. In a very real and plain sense, his disciples share his homelessness (Matt. 8:19), his redefining family by the bonds of his mission (Matt. 8:21, Mark 3:35). His followers are to take no staff to ward off attackers and no bag for provisions, but rely solely on their trust in God to provide for those who seek first the kingdom. In doing so, Jesus' disciples participate now in the promise of his future. That is, the messiah shares his authority and mission by making his followers into the messianic community. We are raised to the status of family.

Yet, how often and how drastically do we, Jesus' disciples, compromise our kingdom mission for fear of the accompanying stigma? In our consumeristic culture, our compromise often takes the form of material possessions. I'm entitled to treat myself to an i-pod for all the hard work I do. I've been holding off, but it's time I caught up with technology and buy an HD flat screen. What's that, Jesus? Take no bag of provisions, you say?

Trusting fully upon God is both the most difficult and simultaneously the easiest thing we could do. It's like falling off a log. The roundness of the log and the force of gravity do all the work for us, yet we still struggle to maintain our balance rather than gliding to the ground gracefully. So it is with trusting God. We're both created and called to do so, yet we cling to our bag of provisions.

Worse still, we are quick to wield our staff for self-protection. I can't serve on that ministry team, because I need to get that promotion. I can't come to Bible study, because I gotta get into a good college. I can't worship on Sunday mornings, because I have to drive my kid to the game if he's going to have a chance at making it big. These examples illustrate how Jesus' followers today often resist being his gathered messianic community.

However, the biggest staff we take with us in mission is that of self-deception by becoming so consumed with our participation in the gathered community, that we fear being the church in the world 24/7/365. I go to worship every week, but don't expect me to speak of Jesus in my workplace lest I get fired. I do stuff with the youth at church, but if I share my faith at school my friends would laugh at me. I'll introduce myself to visitors who come to our church, but I won't make friends in town with alcoholics, drug dealers -- and definitely not sex offenders.

The most subtle form of not trusting God is our attempt to stay 'pure' by walling ourselves off in our congregations. We seek God's kingdom, so we stay clear of 'impurity' and 'unclean' people. This posture, which is prevalent in Christianity today, is the same approach the Pharisees took to restore Israel so the messiah would come.

Well, they never did purify Israel, and guess what...the messiah did come -- in the midst of the impurity to eat with tax collectors and prostitutes. Jesus has a much different understanding of purity. It's infectious. Purity, not impurity, is contagious.

Jesus' purity plays offense and charges down the field as impurity's defense back peddles. His disciples follow him, passing the ball back and forth, shredding holes through impurity. Sharing in Jesus' messianic mission in the world 24/7/365 may give us a dirty stigma by society's standards, but our participation transforms the unclean into the kingdom of God.

(1) Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996) 215-217, 229.