“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”
“Could that point by any chance be—the cross?”
“That's right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified.”
“Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You're an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you're an admirer not a disciple.”
“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn't have a church, would we?”
“The question,” Clarence said, “is, 'Do you have a church?'”
~ From a dialogue in Biography as Theology by James McClendon.
Stanley Hauerwas quotes this bit of dialogue in his “theological commentary” on Matthew in order to further emphasize the difference between Jesus' disciples and the crowds who also gathered around Jesus. The disciples, Hauerwas argues, are those who follow Jesus and who end up suffering with him; the crowds, Hauerwas goes on to say, are those who admire Jesus but, at the end of the day, also call for Jesus' crucifixion.
This is an interesting point to keep in mind, especially considering the observation that most everybody these days seems to profess admiration for Jesus. Yes, we say that Jesus was a good man… but we live lives that are sustained by crucifixions. And the question is, “Do we have a church?” Are we followers or admirers?

1. Christianity is necessarily communal.
There is no such thing as an individual Christian. Certainly there are times when a Christian can be alone, but to be a Christian is to be incorporated into the body of Christ. In the words of N. T. Wright: “It is as impossible, unnecessary, and undesirable to be a Christian all by yourself as it is to be a newborn baby all by yourself.”
Furthermore, because being a Christian means participating in the mission of God, and because God's mission is rooted in a love that actively pursues reconciliation and shalom, one cannot be faithful to one's Christian identity apart from community.
In this regard it is helpful to look to the ministries of both Jesus and Paul.
In relation to Jesus it is worth asking, “Why did Jesus engage in a three year ministry?” After all, if Jesus simply came to “die for the sins of the world” (or something like that) then why bother wandering around for a few years? Why not just get it over with? We need to realize that Jesus did not just come to die, he came to live — and in that living he intended to found an alternate community — a newly constituted “Israel.” Jesus wants to make sure that there will be a community of faith to continue his work after he is gone.
In relation to Paul it is worth noting that Paul's letters are all written to faith communities, and not to individual Christians. Paul is not so concerned with seeing people develop “personal relationships” with Jesus (although such language should not be dismissed altogether), as he is with developing communities of faith that live subversively in the midst of the Empire. As Michael Gorman says: “the ekklesia, then, is not for Paul an optional supplement to a private spirituality of dying and rising with Christ. Rather, the ekklesia is what God is up to in the world: re-creating a people, whose corporate life tells the world what the death and resurrection of Jesus is all about. This people, the 'Church,' lives the story, embodies the story, tells the story. It is the living exegesis of God's master story of faith, love, power, and hope.”
Indeed, the entire biblical narrative, is the story of a people. Our focus on particular persons — beginning with our Sunday school lessons that focus on individuals — like King David or the Prophet Elijah, or whomever, often causes us to forget that a King is only defined by his role within a nation of people, and that even the prophets lived as communities of prophets within the community of Israel, and so on and so forth. There is no way to live alone within this narrative.
Finally, it is also worth noting that, given the fact that the Christian God exists as a community (Father, Son, Spirit), it is not surprising that humans, who are created to reflect God's image into the world, must exist as a community as well.
2. Therefore, as Christians, we pursue community because we wish to be faithful.
Community is “hot” for a lot of reasons right now. As our culture reacts to the hyper-individualism of modernity, a new “postmodern” tribalism has developed. More and more, intentional relationships, small communities, are seen as the solution to our failures, our loneliness, our fractured lives, and our sufferings. In this regard, the pursuit of community is simply an extension of the cultural pragmatism that continues to be a driving force in the West.
However, Christians do not pursue community because that seems to be the pragmatic thing to do. We pursue community because we want to be faithful to God's calling. It is only being rooted and grounded in this faithfulness that will sustain us when the current fad for community passes. It is only faithfulness that will cause us to remain in communities that fail to solve all our problems (and all communities will fail in this regard). Faithfulness leads us beyond idealism and sustains us in the midst of a reality that is often a lot more hard work, and a lot more miserable (or just plain annoying) that we first thought. Read Nouwen, read Vanier, read the monastics, or any others who have lived and worked within an intentional community and you quickly learn that community is not the be-all-end-all utopian state that we imagine it to be. Faithfulness, and not idealistic fictions, causes us to remain.
3. Christian community is sick unto death if the confessing members of Christ's body are separated from the crucified members of Christ's body.
Mt 18.20 is often seen as one of the central verses upon which the sacramental nature of the Church is founded. Jesus is present wherever two or more are gathered together in his name. Or, stated another way, those who gather together confessing Christ, are members of the body of Christ.
However, although it is generally ignored in this regard, Mt 25.31-46 is just as important to our understanding of the nature of the body of Christ and Jesus' sacramental presence in the world. Within this passage Jesus tells us that whatever we do (or do not do) for the “least of these,” we do (or do not do) for him. This means that Jesus is also sacramentally present within this group of people. Liberation theologians are correct to remind as that the poor are the tangible crucified body of Christ in history. Thus, those who are crucified by the powers of today are also members of the body of Christ.
Therefore, if the Church is to be the Church these two groups, the confessing members of Christ's body and the crucified members of Christ's body, must be united with one another. When these two groups are not united the body of Christ is fundamentally fractured.
Indeed, if these two groups are not united, it is likely that the body of Christ is “sick unto death.” What do I mean by this phrase, “sick unto death”? I mean, on the one hand, that the crucified members are bound to die if the confessing members are not united with them. After all, when the poor are abandoned, they are abandoned unto death — death caused by disease, by hunger, by violence, by addictions, by neglect, and so on and so forth. However, I also mean, on the other hand, that the confessing members who just do ignore the poor may also be sick unto death because of this decision. Indeed, this is precisely the point that Paul makes in 1 Cor 11.17-34. The wealthy members of the church in Corinth were gathering together and celebrating the Eucharist in such a way that the poor were ostracised and (at best) treated as second class citizens. What was the result of this, according to Paul? The result was that wealthy members of the congregation were falling ill and dying! Indeed, living in this way reveals that one is not living under Jesus' lordship but is allowing one's life to be dictated by other lords — wealth, honour, social status, etc. — and all of these lords ultimately serve one lord — death. Thus, when the confessing members of Christ's body neglect the poor they serve the kingdom of death, and not the kingdom of God, and they are, accordingly, claimed by their lord. These are hard words indeed!
Thus, the union of the confessing with the crucified in community is an essential element of Christian faithfulness. As Jean Vanier reminds us, we come to the poor “not just to liberate those in need, but also to be liberated by them; not just to heal their wounds, but to be healed by them; not just to evangelise, but to be evangelised by them.”
4. Consequently, the Christian community must be known as a risk-taking community of suffering love.
The proposition that “love is absolutely essential to Christianity” seems so obvious that it barely registers with us. We read that proposition and think, “well, of course it is,” and then move on. However, given the violence, division, and hatred that is embodied within, and proclaimed by, much of contemporary Christianity, we would do well to pause here.
In particular, it must be stressed that, for as long as the world is broken, suffering is an inescapable element of love. Really it is quite simple: if the one I love suffers, my love causes me to suffer with them. It is the suffering of our love that makes our community — our solidarity — genuine. Any community that seeks to flee from suffering will always be superficial. Alas, too often the Christian community has been presented as that which will lead us away from suffering. In reality, the Christian community is the community of those who sustain one another in the midst of suffering until the day when all sufferings are put to an end.
Furthermore, we must realize that love is about the pursuit of a trajectory, and is not about the achievement of a static state. That is to say, love leads us into ever deeper levels of intimacy with God and with one another. Thus, in my life time, I never come to a place where I can say, “I am adequately loving my neighbour and my God.” Indeed, love itself leads me to discard that way of thinking, for love delights in loving ever more. Thus, like Jesus, we pursue a trajectory of love that leads us to be poured out more and more for others.
Yet this is a hard road, for it must be remembered that it was only on the cross that Jesus was able to say, “It is finished.” Only in the moment of being utterly poured out, poured out unto death, can we say that our love has arrived at the static place where movement ceases. And even then, because Christ has triumphed over death, this cessation of movement is but a pause before our resurrection by love into love.
Thus, Christian love is essentially cruciform. It is shaped by the form of discipleship that is defined by cross-carrying.
Furthermore, this Christian openness to suffering (combined with previously mentioned union of the confessing and crucified members of Christ's body) causes the Christian community to be a risk-taking community. This is the folly of love, for love does not know fear — or at least does not allow its actions to be controlled by fear. This risk-taking folly, this irresponsibility, manifests itself in two central ways.
On the one hand, love leads us to journey into dark places so that those who are abandoned there can discover the presence of God among the godforsaken. Thus, love enters into places of violence and of illness and risks suffering there. Love leads us to walk into alleyways at night and talk with prostitutes and drug dealers, just as it leads us to embrace lepers and share the kiss of peace with those who are infected with various diseases. We do this because we believe that love's infection is stronger than violence and disease. Indeed, even if we suffer violence and illness ourselves we remain convinced that, even in these things, we are more than conquerors (as Paul reminds us in Ro 8).
On the other hand, love leads us to confront the powers who continue to oppress the poor and destroy the earth. As Jim Wallis once said (before he got confused and mistook the State for the Church), “prophets speak hard words from broken hearts.” Thus we speak against government officials who favour the rich over the poor; we speak against police officer who beat, rob, and rape, homeless youth; we speak against corporations that steal the resources and children from other nations. We risk confronting those who are more powerful than we are, not simply because we love those who are oppressed, but also because we love the powerful and long to see them set free.
Thus, our love for the poor leads us to a risky solidarity with the poor, just as our love for the powerful leads us to a risky confrontation with the powerful.
Furthermore, in loving in this way, we do not only risk ourselves, but we allow our loved ones to risk themselves, and sometimes we even risk our loved ones. I do not merely take this risk, we take this risk together — and by taking this risk together we are able to sustain one another when things go ill for us. It is essential that we realize this point within our contemporary context because it is the (supposed) desire to protect loved ones from harm that is the single greatest justification for violence in our world. Christians are those who are willing to even expose loved ones to harm until that day when all violence ceases. More hard words!
5. Finally, Christian community is superficial and largely inconsequential unless it is an eschatological community formed through the practice of counter-disciplines.
To be an eschatological community, is to be a storied community. This means allowing the biblical story to define our existence, and this requires us to live with both memory and hope. Over against the popular desire to “live in the now,” Christians are those who proleptically and hopefully embody the future in the present based upon their memory of God's past actions and promises.
It must be noted that this is a deeply subversive way of living, for it is memory and hope that empower us and encourage us to create transformation here and now. Losing these things, losing our story, leaves us at the mercy of the powers that be and gives their story control over our lives.
Thus, if the Christian community is to be genuinely Christian, it must be a community of discipline. This is true in part because our culture — despite popular opinion — is a disciplined culture. From infancy we are disciplined to desire certain things, we are disciplined to consume, and consume more all the time; we are disciplined to be suspicious of all authorities by ourselves and our own desires; we are disciplined to hope in the State; we are disciplined to hope for very little real change; we are disciplined to have our lives follow the same patterns as everybody else; we are disciplined to pursue distraction; and so on and so forth.
Therefore, Christian communities must exercise counter-disciplines if they are to live meaningfully in our context. Thus, we are disciplined to call Jesus “Lord,” and not Caesar, or the President, or whomever. Thus, we celebrate a liturgy that reminds us of our story and shapes our life by a very different pattern, and we follow the Church calendar, recognising that is is seasons like Advent and Lent that define us year to year — and not holidays like Thanksgiving or Veterans Day or whatever. Thus, we are taught to live simply and compassionately and not extravagantly and selfishly. In this way, we become agents of God's new creation and not members of the status quo.

Just thought that my Ontario readers might be interested to know that I have been invited to speak at “The Evolving Church Conference” in Toronto on March 24 (cf. http://www.epconference.net/). The theme of the conference is “Restoring Justice” and the plenary speakers are Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, and Shane Claiborne. Besides these three fellows, there is also a number of very experienced and gifted seminar leaders speaking at the event (and it really makes me wonder how in the world I was invited to speak). For any who might be interested, I'll be speaking on the theme of “Justice in Exile.”

Well, for those who might still pass by this blog, I apologize for my recent silence. I have been traveling for the last week or so and haven't been able to sit down and write (or respond to comments/emails). I hope to return to these dialogues (and write with some regularity) in the next few days.
For now permit me to ask one question. An acquaintance of mine who is a pastor (and who is, therefore, in much closer contact with churchy sort of people than I am) was approached by a fellow who asked him: “How do I know that I am a Christian?” Of course, the fellow was really asking this: “How do I know that I am saved?” but churchy sort of people tend to overlap the two (not entirely unrelated!) concepts.
As my friend related this story, I felt sort of surprised. Thinking: “Oh yeah! I remember I used to ask myself that question. Man, I forgot that Christians actually struggle with that.” So then I began to think about how I would respond to that question. However, before I write a post on the issue, I would like to ask my few readers:
“How do you know that you are saved?”

I was cruising some theology blogs last week and I stumbled upon an entry written by Shane Wilkins, entitled “Six Propositions on What Makes Good Theology” (this post was written on Dec 3rd, and can be found here: http://shanewilkins.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html). Now, it seems to me that Shane's entry aptly describes the elements that should be present so that a theological paper can attain a good grade… but I got to wondering if these six things were really the key elements of a good (Christian) theology. After some reflection upon these things, I have decided to post an alternate list. Without further ado:
1. Good theology is a transformative, embodied proclamation.
Contra Shane, I would like to argue that the goal of the theologian is not to persuade me that his or her theological theory is true. The goal of the theologian is to proclaim God. This proclamation is not simply (nor even primarily) a propositional proclamation; rather, it is one that is embodied in our day to day activities, priorities, choices, and relationships. Good theology is a lifestyle.
Furthermore, and in part because this is an embodied proclamation, this is also a transformative proclamation. To proclaim God is to be transformed into the image of God and to see the Spirit of God's cruciform power bursting into the world. Thus, this proclamation transforms (a) the people making the proclamation, (b) the people to whom the proclamation is made, and (c) the place in which the proclamation is made. This means that good theology will be missional. It also means that good theology will be doxological — it will be an act of worship and of faithfulness to the God who is hidden within the proclamation.
Finally, because good theology is a transformative, embodied lifestyle, it must always be seen as incomplete, as pressing ever onwards towards its goal, as moving into ever deeper intimacy with one's God and one's neighbour. Until the day when God is “all in all,” good theology will remain unfinished.
2. Good theology is a communal activity.
Despite the Academy's (and Modernity's) love of rugged individual experts, good theology is never something done by a solitary individual. Good theology occurs in the community of faith. It does not simply heed the opinions of “experts” and “theologians;” it is also aware of the voice of Spirit speaking through the single mother who comes to the Monday night prayer gathering, or through the voice of the alcoholic who comes in for a free meal on Wednesday night. Good theology is done in community and as community. Or, to employ a slightly different metaphor, the theologian is to be viewed simply as the mouth speaking on behalf of the united members of the body of Christ.
3. Good theology is contextual.
All theology is, inevitably, contextual. Good theology is aware of this and engages both implicitly and explicitly with issues of context. This has at least three major implications: (a) it means that good theology calls this community to act this way at this time; (b) it means that good theology takes especial care to address the particularly insidious blindspots of the time and place in which it discovers itself; and (c) it means that it enters into dialogue with other contemporary voices. Good theology should not, and cannot, attempt to formulate “timeless” propositions, or “universal” truths based upon claims of detached objectivity — in part because there is no such thing as “detached objectivity”!
4. Good theology is biblical.
Despite the importance of being aware of one's contemporary context, an awareness of the biblical narrative is even more foundational. Contemporary dialogue partners are important but dialogue with scripture is more important still because this dialogue is more fundamental to the creation of good Christian theology. This is so because, within the Christian tradition, the bible is the primary authoritative witness to the Word of God. It is the bible that provides the Christian with the story of God's activities (and incarnation!) within the world God has created. Therefore, good theology is theology that lives within the trajectory of the biblical narrative.
5. Good theology is historical and ecumenical.
I could, perhaps, restate this point another way and say that good theology is traditional. By using the terms “historical” and “ecumenical” I want to stress two things. First, I use the term “historical” because all good theology is born out of the traditions of the Church — it does not simply appear out of nowhere. Therefore, it is essential that those who engage in theology are aware of what has been taught and believed by the saints who have gone before (in part because this is an especially useful way of becoming aware of contemporary blindspots, and in part because the Spirit has been active and present in the words and deeds of the Church from Pentecost until the present day, and one would be a fool to ignore that witness).
Second, I use “ecumenical” because good theology must enter into dialogue with the various Christian traditions. Good theology will listen to Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Anabaptist voices. It will dialogue with contemplative and spiritual voices and with practical and political voices.
It is the recognition of the authority found in these traditions that also prevents good theology from simply blown here and there by whatever contemporary issues happen to be “hot” or urgent or whatever. Furthermore, it is this dialogue with the traditions of the Church that is continues to mark Christian theology as Christian theology.
6. Good theology is trinitarian.
As stated previously, good theology proclaims God. However, the God of Christianity is uniquely revealed as a Tri-unity, as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Therefore, theology must consistently be faced with the question of what it means to proclaim a God who is known in this way.
However, to say that God is known in this way is slightly deceptive. For any notion of three-in-one, leads, inevitably, to the admission of mystery and God's transcendence. Thus, the fact that good theology is trinitarian, also leads us to the admission that good theology is also humble and proclaimed in utter reliance upon the One who is the subject of that proclamation.
Summary
If we were to boil all of this down to one sentence we could define good (Christian) theology as follows:
Good (Christian) theology is the embodied communal proclamation of the Christian God within the contemporary context, founded upon the biblical narrative and the traditions of the Christian Church.

When we go to the poor embodying the proclamation that, yes, they are forgiven, they are embraced they are beloved by God — even now, already, at this very moment — then perhaps they will find it in their hearts to forgive us for our apathy and for all that we have taken from them.
The problem is that we have been inclined to view ourselves as the forgiven — instead of as those in need of forgiveness — and we have made God's free offer of forgiveness conditional. Instead of proclaiming, “God has forgiven you!” we have said, “God will forgive you if…”. Instead of saying, “Please, forgive us!” we have said, “Clean up your act and we'll put up with you on Sundays.” And in this way we go from being lights to the world to being fires that burn ourselves and those around us.
Lord, forgive us, and help us to know that we cannot ask for forgiveness from a crucified Lord without seeking forgiveness from the crucified people of today.

I remember Wesley's old saying, “If I should die with more than ten pounds, may every man call me a liar and a thief,” for he would have betrayed the gospel.
~ quoted by Shane Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution.
I've been thinking about materialism a bit these days. No, no, not just the general materialism of our society (who is not thinking about that? Being anti-materialism is hot these days!), but I've been thinking about my materialism — about the number of books I own, about the CDs I just bought, and so on and so forth. I find that this line of thinking is less popular than general critiques of “the materialistic West,” and it's easy to understand why. Because it requires me to start living differently and less “comfortably” (although, perhaps, more freely).
As I have been thinking about my possessions, I have also been thinking about how the Christian life is a life that should be lived along the lines of a certain trajectory. I call this trajectory the road of cruciform love — the road of the cross. Now, this road should impact all areas of our life. Following the road of cruciform love has just as much to do with how I spend my money, as it has to do with how I make my money. However, like any journey, it takes a number of steps along the way to get to the cross. Jesus didn't start on the cross, but he did take concrete steps along the way that anticipated that goal, and ensured that he ended up there. Similarly, we don't have to force ourselves to try and live as we will at the end of the road — but we do need to take steps right now that anticipate that goal, and ensure that we get there.
And so, as I think of these things in light of my materialism, this is what I hope to do. I hope, in conjunction with an intentional Christian community, to map out a road that would see all of the members arrive at a place where they no longer have personal possessions (except, perhaps, the clothes that they wear). Of course, within a community house it is easy to simply give one's possessions to the community house (and thereby not really lose anything). So I would also like to, with that community, map out the ways in which the community can live together simply. Of course, because I am not yet in that type of community, there are still steps I can take to make that transition easier. I can begin to scale back what I already own, and I can read more books from the library, instead of buying them all.
I suppose that that's about where my thinking is at on this subject these days. Suffice to say that I feel a great amount of dis-ease in relation to the amount of things that I own, and I would like to pursue another way of living. I would be curious to hear about steps that any of my readers take to confront their materialism (and not just the materialism of our general culture).

I have often wondered about the accolades that go to actors in Hollywood for playing certain roles. Two examples come to immediately to mind: Felicity Huffman was recently widely applauded for her portrayal of a pre-op male-to-female (MTF) transgendered person in the movie Transamerica and, not so long ago, Tom Hanks won an Oscar for his portrayal of a man with a mental disability in Forest Gump. Thus, in the first instance, we have a woman portraying a person born male who is transitioning to being a female, and in the second case who have a person with a normal intelligence, portraying a person with a “low IQ.”*
This then is my question: why wouldn't the movie studies hire an actual pre-op MTF person to play the first role, and an actual person with a mental disability to play the second role? There are, after all, aspiring actors who possess these characteristics. I wonder what this says about Hollywood's (and, by extension, popular culture's) attitude to people with these characteristics. Is it possible that, even as we produce movies that are intended to increase audience sensitivity to certain issues, we are actually promoting the marginalization of said individuals?
Now I realize that acting is about entering into the role of a fictional character and thereby becoming somebody or something that you are not. I mean, I don't expect Hollywood to only film soldiers as soldiers, or doctors as doctors, or whatever. However, there is something about the first two examples that irks me. Perhaps another example might help explain this. Imagine, if you will, a white actor being hired to portray a black hero — say Brad Pitt is hired to play Martin Luther King Jr. Now, do we think that Pitt would be widely applauded for playing this role? I suspect not. Indeed, I suspect that there would be a rather large outcry from the black community. I suspect that hiring Pitt to play that role would be seen as (at best) highly insensitive, and (at worst) as blatantly racist. Heck, I suspect that Pitt, and any other white actor, wouldn't touch that role with a ten foot pole.
Thus, when we read our first two (real) examples in light of this (fictional) example, my suspicion is that similar complaints have been voiced by the transgendered community, and by the community of people with disabilities — but I suspect that they, by and large, lack media attention and lobbying power in Hollywood and so those complaints have gone unheard.
I suppose I will have to ask my friends who are involved in those communities what they think about these things. I would, however, be curious to hear what any readers think about this (if y'all even care).
_________
* I also wonder a little bit about the way in which Hollywood seems to be enamoured by “beautiful” people playing “ugly” roles. After all, both Hillary Swank (in Boys Don't Cry) and Charlize Theron (in Monster) were awarded Oscars for playing characters that required them to disguise their beauty. Would more “ugly” women have received such accolades if they had portrayed these characters convincingly?

Well, apparently my blog has been nominated as the December “blog of the month” over at Theology Blogs (cf. http://theologyblogs.blogspot.com/). I am, of course, delighted (and a wee bit surprised) to find myself in such good company, and I now expect all of my readers to accept everything that I say as gospel truth.