Torn Sky

On Dancing, or, "So It Turns Out That that Evil Pastor from Footloose was Wrong After All"

The drums, the drums… and the dark… and the disregard for whether or not I look good. The freedom of anonymity and the safety of my beloved’s happy gaze.

I watch the drunk girl with her Ke$ha posturing and the guy who grinds on her in of-all-things-to-wear-to-the-club, really, pajama pants and it all seems so staged and fake and Jersey Shore-sad and desperate but maybe beautiful because of that… and good for you, pajama pants and all, because even the lamest among us long to be loved.

For years I danced almost every weekend, a blur of big, ravey Jncos and glittery makeup and shady boys with shady intentions and jungle and drum n bass and happy hardcore. As much as it was about the hormones and the alcohol, it was also about the freedom of being young and wild and beautiful (though I never really felt that way) and reckless.

And maybe even more, it was about the freedom from constant self-consciousness and fear of judgment, the two things that have been bearing down on me for my whole life right up to this very day.

And then like a needle scratching across the vinyl, I stopped. I got it into my head that the way I danced attracted the wrong kind of attention, that I could just walk away from it, that it wasn’t grown-up or ladylike or Christian or whatever.

That’s so much crap.

I think it’s true that faith can be tremendously liberating – it has been for me in many ways. But just as often, we find ways to use faith as a convenient excuse to reinforce our pre-existing insecurities or fears or prejudices or politics. I am as guilty of this as anyone.

And saying that I wasn’t going to dance anymore because it wasn’t ladylike or Christian or grown-up was convenient and sounded better to me than the truth, which was closer to “I’ve gained some weight and my body is changing and I’m mostly afraid of looking ridiculous and I never really learned how to do this sober in a way that feels natural.”

I’ve been slowly, meanderingly reading the book of John since Christmas, grappling once again with what it means that God showed up with a body, that the Word became flesh.

Not took on flesh.

Not pure light-and-spirit putting on awkward, clumsy body like an ill-fitting, unfortunate coat.

But became flesh –

- and what that says about God’s regard for human bodies, human bodies being us – because I still have trouble reconciling “I am a body” rather than “I have a body.”

Because if I confess that the clearest and truest truth about God is not words on paper or a vague and nebulous sense of Spirit but Jesus the man with skin and teeth and glands and maybe even parts that jiggled and sagged, then I can no longer hide behind the idea that somehow crawled into my head that God disapproves of bodies or God doesn’t want me to dance, because a God who became flesh surely didn’t mean for us to sit primly in the bleachers until we could be tidily spirited away to heaven, gazing as the dancers float across the floor, the way I spent entirely too many Friday nights in junior high. Longing to be down there, waiting desperately for an invitation instead of simply joining in or God-forbid getting out of my head long enough to notice that there were kids who felt even more left out than me and extending an invitation of my own.

I still struggle with feeling awkward when I dance. Part is being sober. Part is the echo of years of American-Christian-Puritianism and Midwestern-Norwegian stoic culture. Part is that my body doesn’t move quite the same at 33 as it did at 18, so I have to find new movements.

But I can lose myself in the rhythm for whole minutes at a time. 

I find things I can express and ways to be for which words are inadequate.

And I feel a kinship with the others who have also dared to step onto the floor, also awkward, also imperfect, but drawn to the drums and the dark, and I think to myself, “I won’t judge if you won’t, or at least I’ll try not to, and for just this little while I'll try not judge myself either.”

And in the movement the Spirit that dwells within finds its freedom to fly so much more than when I held it safely in my hands from the sidelines.

Rejection and My Beautiful Theological Sweater of Truth

Back in January, I applied for an amazing fellowship that would have given me the opportunity to have a full year to travel wherever I wanted to study whatever I wanted. It seemed like the kind of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that only comes along, well, once in a lifetime.

I decided that if I had the chance to study any harebrained thing anywhere in the whole wide world for a whole year, I would travel all over Europe to study heavy metal culture and the theology of the cross. I wanted to spend 1/3 of my time in Norway, Sweden and Finland… where about 20 years ago a few isolated metal fans got a lot of attention for burning down some churches – but where there’s also an underground “Christian black metal” movement, the Metallimessu (Metal Mass – a power metal liturgy) made it to Finland’s Top 40, and where a ton of influential metal bands and a ton of American Lutherans’ ancestors hail from. I wanted to spend the summer traveling around to Europe’s huge outdoor festivals and studying the scene from a theological/sociological perspective. I wanted to meet with people like the Reverend Rachel Mann, who holds similar ideas about metal and Christianity. (Plus, hello, another female clergy extreme metal fan exists? Amen!)

My basic working thread of an idea is that both metal and Christian faith (particularly in the theology of the cross) are ways that people enter intentionally into an encounter with evil / suffering / pain / death that paradoxically becomes a profound source of relationality and reconciliation, personal transformation, and maybe most importantly, community with others… and that the metal world and the church are not these sort of polar opposites as people see them (How many people have asked me, “How can you listen to that stuff and be a Christian?”), but have a lot to say to each other.

Anyway. I didn’t get the fellowship.

A lovely and amazing woman I know got it, and she might be reading this blog (we’re in the same Media class), and I have no doubt that she deserves it.

But I really, really wanted it.

I daydreamed about it. I made little plans in my head. I was convinced (and still am) that this is something I’m called to study and engage and something that could have a deep impact on my future ministry.

When I got the e-mail notifying me that I didn’t get it, my stomach flipped over and I tried not to cry because I was in public… and for weeks afterward I’d catch myself doing the kind of fantasizing and daydreaming that I’d been doing, and I’d have to remind myself that the decision had been made and I wasn’t going.

And now that about 2 months have gone by and I still feel myself deeply drawn to engage it, I find myself more and more convinced that it’s something I’m called to look into in some way… and more and more confused about how that fits into my already busy school schedule and my likely-even-busier schedule after graduation.

So today when I read this Stuff Christians Like post about rejection and talking honestly with God, I could relate. He writes:

I wrestle with this sometimes but what I am starting to think is that disappointment, sunset moments, only point to how bright my sunrise really is. Throughout the Bible, we are told that God knows our true desires, those things we really need above all else. And in his midst alone, do we find our satisfaction. So when I experience something that hurts, an expectation that was unmet, maybe what I should think is, “If that felt good at first and that’s not the thing that God has planned for me, how amazing is that thing going to be?”

I hope I can take that to heart. I believe that if God is calling me to explore something or take some crazy direction or just learn some truth, then it will happen, because it’s God. And maybe pursuing the fellowship, even though I didn’t get it, was God’s way of putting me on a path… not the path I thought it was supposed to be, but a path where some of the loose strings in my own theology and experience are ready to come together into some kind of beautiful theological sweater of truth.

(I’ll bet a theological sweater of truth looks an awful lot like the colorful Scandinavian sweaters that all of my professors wear all winter long. Actually, those are probably their own theological sweaters of truth!)

So yeah. Rejection hurts, but I believe if I was just supposed to let it go then it wouldn’t keep popping into my head all the time. There’s something there.

Maybe something real.

Maybe something awesome.

Maybe something God is preparing that will totally blow my mind and make me realize all over again that “once-in-a-lifetime” is just plain not the way that a God of grace and reconciliation and second (and third and four-hundredth) chances works.

Or maybe at least a beautiful theological sweater of truth.

Fair Use and Unfair Laws

This week in my Media & Ministry class, we're talking about copyright issues. Talking about copyright law is not high on my list of awesome things to do. But you know what is?

Listening to Girl Talk.

Girl Talk is a mashup artist, probably one of the best and unarguably one of the best-known working today. A "mashup artist" takes previously recorded bits of music and chops them up and mixes them together to make new artistic works. In the case of Girl Talk, those works are usually easily recognizable pieces of pop music. While many mashups involve a simple combining of 2 songs to create one new work, Girl Talk's most recent album, All Day, includes 373 different samples in the space of 71 minutes. (Download here for free - via a Creative Commons license from Girl Talk's official site.)

(A documentary about Girl Talk and copyright laws and other fun stuff called RIP!: A Remix Manifesto, is available for free viewing online (Thanks, Canada!) and was really helpful for me in thinking about these issues.)

It seems oddly fitting that earlier this month, Girl Talk performed not one but two sold-out shows at Minneapolis' First Avenue.

Meanwhile, a few hundred miles away in Brainerd, Minnesota, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a young mother of four, continues in her 5+ year-long battle with the RIAA. The most recent court ruling determined that she owes record companies $1.5 million for sharing 2 dozen songs via a peer-to-peer file sharing network in 2005. About three weeks prior to the sold-out Girl Talk shows, the Minneapolis City Pages published a cover story on Thomas-Rasset, calling her "The Download Martyr."

I can't help but wonder if Jammie Thomas-Rasset is a Girl Talk fan.

And I can't help but believe there's a gigantic disconnect here.

It would seem that the people have spoken. Girl Talk, an artist whose work is entirely created from hundreds of works by others, and who then gives his work away for free, sold out one of Minneapolis' premier live music venues two nights in a row. And yet somehow, in this country where we are repeatedly told that we the people make the laws by which we live, a court rules that Jammie Thomas-Rasset owes the RIAA $1.5 million for sharing a few songs on KaZaA.

Something is broken.

I'm not saying that what Jammie Thomas-Rasset did was right - as a fan of underground/extreme music, I feel especially strongly about paying artists fairly for their work, and I make an effort to buy directly from artists (via BandCamp or similar sites) when possible so the artists get the biggest possible cut of the album price. 

But it seems that in a country where we the people supposedly make our own laws, the contrast between Girl Talk's extreme popularity and the extreme verdict rendered against Jammie Thomas-Rasset is evidence that our copyright laws need a dramatic overhaul. It would seem, too, that based on dramatically declining physical album sales the public has already voted with their modem for a number of years against current copyright laws.

So why haven't the laws kept up with the values of the people who supposedly make the laws? Why on earth would anyone reasonably think that Jammie Thomas-Rasset owes anyone $1.5 million for anything?

I suppose it's possible that we don't really make our own laws at all.

Sigh. Something needs to change.

Here Comes Opeth, or Let's Create The World We Want

There are a lot of intriguing ideas and stories in Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, but probably the most intriguing to me this week is this:

The current change, in one sentence, is this: most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.

I go to a lot of concerts – mostly small heavy metal shows with about 100 - 300 fans. The way a tour usually comes together, at least as I understand it, is that a band's booking agent will work with local promoters to put together a tour, and then each local promoter finds a venue, prints flyers and posters and publicizes the show, and sells tickets to fans. *This is probably an oversimplification, and anyone in the business can feel free to clarify what I’ve muddied. The point I want to emphasize is that fans are relatively passive in the process up until the point that they buy a ticket.

But a few weeks ago, something a little bit different happened. I read a post from a metal blogger who posted about a new facebook group, “Petition for Opeth to bring Ihsahn as support on their U.S. Headlining tour.”

Here’s what you need to know:

Opeth is a progressive metal band from Sweden. They do not have a U.S. headlining tour scheduled at this time.

Ihsahn is a progressive metal solo artist from Norway who has never toured the U.S.

But... Opeth and Ihsahn *have* worked together on previous projects, and toured together in Europe in 2008.

What makes this so intriguing is that it’s not as if Opeth has a tour scheduled and people are speculating about possible opening acts. It's not as if Ihsahn has U.S. a tour scheduled and people would also like to see Opeth. My guess is that the person who started the group is simply a fan of both bands and thinks it would be fun to see them tour together, and figured that other fans might feel the same way.

Now, prog-metal fans are a small but passionate subset of society. Shirky writes about how niche groups find each other using social media:

Many more people were watching Everybody Loves Raymond in 2002 than were watching Xena: Warrior Princess, but Xena-fandom was a better predictor of real commonality... it's easier to like people who are odd in the same ways you are odd, but it's harder to find them.

The "Petition for Opeth to bring Ihsahn" gained traction because Opeth fans, like Xena fans, are a relatively small group of people who really like something outside the mainstream. Social media enables them to find each other.  The petition is really just a manifestation of the kind of conversation music fans have with each other all the time: “Wouldn’t it be great if Opeth and Ihsahn toured together?” Before the age of social media, that’s usually where those conversations stopped. Now, in the space of about a month, hundreds of people have joined the facebook group, and multiple music blogs have publicized their efforts and encouraged readers to join.

So now, the conversation has gone from 2 or 3 people to 500+ participants. Now the door breaks open for fans to imagine their own “dream tours” and come together in groups large enough to (maybe) make them happen – or at least to make bands and promoters take notice. Just as the recorded music industry has been deeply changed by technology, the live music industry is changing, too.

This is about more than just music… the “Petition for Opeth to bring Ihsahn…” is just an example. If people can connect with each other outside the traditional streams of power and influence to dream together and create the world we want, so much more becomes possible. This isn’t to say it’s always a great thing – criminals and hate groups can use social media to dream and scheme together also – but it does mean that the centers of power and influence are shifting in important ways, and with far-reaching impact.

Lovestoned Jesus

I wrote my final paper for the Gospel of John on the "love-drunk Jesus" encountered in the poetry of Jacopone da Todi. And that's not just my crazy-nontraditional-rebel-Christian interpretation of what he wrote... (although his nickname - which he embraced - was "Crazy Jim"... so yeah) Anyway, here's an excerpt:

****

Jacopone da Todi sees in the Word becoming flesh a God so all-consumingly enamored with humanity that God becomes foolish with love. We usually think of God's love as majestic, magnanimous but controlled, drenched in Terence-Malick-gold light and festooned in flowers, but ultimately clean and pure – never messy, never foolish, never scandalous.

In other words, nothing like how we actually experience love.

“Were these the actions of someone drunk, or out of his senses?
How could You abdicate kingdom and riches,
A renunciation that verges on madness?
Did someone promise You other and greater treasure?
O measureless love that would cede
Such glory as Yours for such humble estate!

“High-born Love, who is it You love
So deeply and tenaciously and wildly?
Love holds You bound so tightly
You give all of Yourself – this You can hardly deny.
And this love will lead You to Your death,
For it gives no signs of diminishing or cooling.” (from Second Canticle of the Nativity)

For da Todi, the Divine Word is captive to the Word’s love for humanity to the point that the Word becomes Love. And high-born Love, deliriously in love with humanity, is willing to forsake all to be with the beloved. This basic premise we understand all too well – it is the basis for countless popular songs and works of fiction (Cinderella, Survivor's "Poor Man's Son," and roughly half of John Hughes' films, to name a few).

But Jacopone da Todi’s application of this premise to God seems scandalous and surprising. He writes:

“It was almost as if You did not grasp or sense
The depth of the descent, when You came among us.
It was almost as if Your understanding was darkened,
Your power and insight lost. Wounded by Love,
You did nothing to defend Yourself;
Surrendering to Love, You gave it Your strength.”
(also from Second Canticle of the Nativity)

We can accept the idea of a God-on-high who loves us. We can accept the idea of a faraway God who forgives and forgets our sin. But the reality of a God so overcome with love that “It was almost as if Your understanding was darkened, / Your power and insight lost?” This speaks of something that some might perceive as a weakness in the Word that is all too close to our own weakness.

The Word “wounded by Love” – the Word holed up listening to The Cure’s Disintegration, the Word leaving mumbled messages on our answering machine in the middle of the night, the Word standing outside our bedroom window with a boombox?

How could that be the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who made all things, the Word who was life, and the life was the light of all people?

Boombox Serenade
Say Anything... at MOVIECLIPS.com

 

 

If Jacopone da Todi is on to something, and the Word became flesh because the Word was “lovestoned” with all humanity, then how does that color the way we read the rest of the Gospel of John in particular and the rest of Scripture in general?

 

9 Top 9's - Live Shows!

It's been almost forever since I posted a blog that wasn't one of my sermons. Sorry about that. I guess for a while I just didn't feel much like blogging, and there's no sense in forcing it, right? I still plan on using this site to post my sermons, but I also want to get back into the habit of regular blogging. (We'll see if I actually do.)

So here is the first of 9 Top 9 Lists for 2009!

Top 9 Concerts I Attended

1. Scion Rock Fest, The Masquerade, Atlanta, GA. (Bands included: Neurosis, Baroness, Kylesa, Krallice, Wolves in the Throne Room, A Storm of Light, Trash Talk, Warbringer, Alestorm, Tyr.) An awesome day of metal goodness. (Even though I got too tired to stay for Mastodon, and Nachtmystium didn't get to play.)

2. Cannot Justify, opening for Mantic Ritual and Pro-Pain, Station 4, St. Paul. This was Colin's band's first show with their new singer, Jorge/Escorpion. They rocked it hard, and it was so awesome to see the guys having fun again after a few months of turmoil and drama. Also, Mantic Ritual is really awesome.

3. Mastodon / Kylesa / Intronaut, Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis. Mastodon puts on a simply mind-blowing live set. They played "Crack the Skye" all the way through, and a number of songs from Leviathan and Blood Mountain. 

4. Mastodon / Dethklok / Converge, Roy Wilkins Arena, St. Paul. I got to see Mastodon again! And they were awesome again! So awesome that we skipped Dethklok, and I wasn't *too* upset about arriving too late to see Converge.

5. Clutch, First Avenue, Minneapolis. Considering that I didn't know much about Clutch's music (I live in a musical bubble), and I mainly went to see Baroness and they weren't even there (I guess the singer's girlfriend was having a baby?), I had a great time at this show. Clutch play fun, bluesy hard rock that makes you want to dance and sing along.

6. Tyr / Alestorm, Station 4, St. Paul. Tyr is a fun band to watch live, especially if you're of Scandinavian heritage. Even if you're not, you'll feel like you are by the end of the show. Gorgeous harmonies, songs about Norse lore (sung in Faeroese!), and Viking dudes. What more do you want?

7. Disciple, Project 86, Children 18:3, Marshall H.S., Marshall. Marshall doesn't get many big concerts. This Christian rockstravaganza was a lot of fun, and I especially dug Children 18:3's brand of punk-pop. I dug it so much that I'm willing to overlook the fact that there was an altar call (ugh!). Disciple was pretty darn good too.

8. Danzig, Myth, Maplewood. Ah, the Myth. The Twin Cities' now mysteriously-vacant venue, once a mainstay for too-big-for-First-Ave-but-not-big-enough-for-the-Target-Center concerts. While the Myth closed amid a cloud of accusations of unpaid bills and shady dealings, what I'll always remember is the overzealous security staff, poorly planned layout that caused bottlenecks and near-riots when people would try to get to the restrooms between sets, and the lack of *anyplace* to sit down at sold-out shows (they had removable benches in the back of the show space, that were invariably removed during big shows). The Danzig show was memorable for a few reasons... Danzig's performance was amazing, the Myth's sound system kept screwing up and angering the Mighty Glenn. (You do *not* want to anger Glenn Danzig!) The Myth's legendary security stormtroopers were in full effect, disallowing not only the usual video and picture-taking, but any cell phone usage at all in the show space. Kids were getting thrown out left and right! Despite the jack-booted thuggery, and despite the sound system issues, Danzig put on a great show. 

9. Cannot Justify, the Rock, Maplewood. Driving furiously, if not recklessly, through the night, I arrived at the Rock after CNJ had already started performing. As I entered the venue, CNJ was just starting "Reverie," my personal favorite song (which will hopefully be making it back into their live set!) It was the first time I saw my favorite guy in about 3 weeks, and it was wonderful.

Justin Bieber, The Golden Girls and Koinonia

A sermon on Philippians 1:3-11

I initially wrote this sermon for a preaching class in Spring 2009, so some of you may recognize it. When preaching it at First Lutheran in Marshall on December 6, 2009, I changed and added a little bit to make it fit this particular time and place.

*****

You can tell a lot about people by what they sing about.

The Billboard Hot 100 for this week features songs with lines like these: From Justin Bieber: “you’re my one love, my one heart, my one life for sure, let me tell you one time.” Or from Iyaz, “Shawty's like a melody in my head, That I can't keep out, Got me singin' like, Na na na na everyday, It's like my iPod stuck on replay.” Or from Colbie Caillat, “I’ve been waiting all my life, and now I found you, I don’t know what to do, I think I’m fallin’ for you.”

From “Hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name?” to “We’ve got a thing that’s called radar love” to “I’m gonna love you forever, forever and ever amen,” right up to “Shawty’s like a melody in my head.” Psychedelic or soul, heavy metal or hip-hop, crunk or country… we sing about love a lot. Paul McCartney muses that, “you’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs, I look around me and I see it isn’t so.” I would tend to agree with him.

Of course, most of these songs focus on one narrow experience of love – boy plus girl, romantic, sentimental, surging-hormones, crushy, gushy, mushy love. And a closer look at the same Billboard Hot 100 list reveals that just as often as that kind of love goes right, it goes wrong. Lady Gaga sings, “I want your love and I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad romance.” Reba McEntire’s latest single has her singing about love grown cold and distant – “If you don’t get drunk on my kiss, If you think you can do better than this, then I guess we’re done, let’s not drag this on, consider me gone.” And Akon has a hard time finding the words to describe an attractive young woman without being disrespectful, which I guess is somehow supposed to be a compliment.

From Kenny Rogers’ begging Ruby not to take her love to town, to Pat Benatar’s anthemic cry that “love is a battlefield” to Beyonce’s infectious, told-you-so cadence of, “If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it,” it’s clear that this kind of love runs off into the ditch just as often as it lasts.

Paul McCartney looked around and saw that the world needed more silly love songs. The Apostle Paul looked around and saw not this kind of silly, crushy, gushy, mushy, short-lived love – but rather, how life in Christ meant experiencing a different kind of love. That different kind of love is what he writes about in the letter to the Philippians. In looking at the passage for today, it was helpful for me to look at it in The Message, a translation of the Bible in modern, everyday language. Here is how The Message phrases today’s passage from Philippians:

3-6 Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this partnership with us, believing and proclaiming God's Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.

7-8 It's not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you. My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality. You have, after all, stuck with me all the way from the time I was thrown in jail, put on trial, and came out of it in one piece. All along you have experienced with me the most generous help from God. He knows how much I love and miss you these days. Sometimes I think I feel as strongly about you as Christ does!

9-11 So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

The different kind of love Paul talks about is not “sentimental gush.” It’s not necessarily the romantic love of a couple that we usually think of, although there is certainly room in Paul’s vision for a genuine love relationship of that type. This is a love that makes you break out in exclamations of thanks to God. This is a love that sticks with you when things get bad, like going-to-prison bad. This is a flourishing love, a thoughtful love, an unselfish love. This is a love not limited to two people, but rather, a love that grows and bears fruit and diligently seeks to draw others in.

I can’t help but think of another love song at this point… “Thank you for being a friend. Travelled down the road and back again. Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidant.’” Those lines began the theme song for the show The Golden Girls. The Golden Girls, I think, was and is radically countercultural. Four women, all over sixty, with not particularly bikini-friendly bodies. Four women who smashed the TV stereotype of older women as sweet, pie-baking grandmas, and lived full, exciting, independent lives. Four women who faced careers, sex, death and mourning, Alzheimer’s, jail, ageism and sexism and racism, emotional abuse, pregnancy out of wedlock, and well, life.

But these issues weren’t the thing that made The Golden Girls radically countercultural. Rather, it was the women’s relationship with each other – because this was a different kind of love than what you usually see on TV. Most sitcoms rely on a romantic duo to carry the show along. Jim and Pam today, Ross and Rachel in the 90’s, Sam and Diane in the 80’s.

The thing that makes The Golden Girls so unique is that its central love relationship is this community of four close friends. These friends who share in each other’s joys and sorrow, who hold each other accountable and take each other to task when necessary, who snipe at each other and bicker and each lead their own independent lives, but always manage to gather again, usually late at night around a cheesecake, in a strong and loving community of friendship. This different kind of love – this central, loving community of deep friendship – this is what was countercultural about The Golden Girls.

The Greek word that Paul uses for this different kind of love is ‘koinonia.’ He uses it three times in the letter to the Philippians to describe his relationship with this community. It’s translated a few different ways into English – “partnership,” “sharing,” “fellowship.” This is the word Paul uses to describe his relationship with the church at Philippi, and then again to describe the relationship of the church with the Holy Spirit. It’s also the same word Paul uses in 1 Corinthians to describe what happens when the community comes together for Holy Communion.

He emphasizes this connection – that the koinonia of people in the church is intimately connected to the Trinitarian koinonia of God, when he says, “For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Jesus Christ.” The Message phrases this, “Sometimes, I think I feel as strongly about you as Christ does!” But neither of those English translations really gets at the depth of emotion the way that the Greek word for Paul’s feelings does. The word he uses here means, “love, affection, tender mercies, and compassion,” but it also means, “viscera, entrails, bowels, or guts.” So in other words, Paul is saying, “I love you with all my guts.”

This is a different kind of love than what we’re used to. This is not the genteel love one sees in craft-show artwork extolling the pious virtues of friendship. And it’s not the fleeting “sentimental gush” of pop love songs. Rather, the kind of relationship Paul is writing about is, well, more like The Golden Girls – honest, loving community, community that shares in joy and sorrows together, community that holds each other accountable but forgives quickly, community that “loves much and loves well... and is bountiful in fruits from the soul.”

Paul never says that the church at Philippi is perfect or that they always agree on everything, but he praises their commitment to God and to each other. He thanks them for sticking with him and supporting him, just as we thank you for sticking with First Lutheran by being here, and by supporting your church and pledging to contribute in the year to come. He emphasizes how together, they have experienced the generous help of God in tough times, just as I have witnessed so many moments of surprising and unexpected ‘amazing grace’ in my short time here at First Lutheran, even as we go through a time of conflict and uncertainty in the ELCA. He misses them terribly, he earnestly prays for them, and he deeply wants the best for them, even as he tells them honestly that they don’t always do what he thinks is best. Does this sound like any church you know?

The ‘koinonia’ communion Paul shares with the church at Philippi, and the communion that the Golden Girls seem to have, is the communion we share with each other – not gathered in the wee hours of the morning around a cheesecake, but around the table for Holy Communion. With bread and wine, we gather around and receive Jesus Christ on our tongues. We gather in the sure knowledge that our sins are forgiven, that Christ is risen, that death itself has been put to death. We gather with the kingdom of God breaking into the world day by day, and like Paul, we wait eagerly for the day of Christ Jesus to bring it to a “flourishing finish.”

Paul McCartney looks around from where he sits in the 1970’s, post-Beatles, rich and comfortable and happily married… and sees a world in need of more silly love songs. Paul the Apostle looks around from where he sits – imprisoned, alone, poor… and he sings a different song – he sings to the church at Philippi, “Thank you for being a friend, traveled down the road and back again, your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidant.” He sings to them, “You’re like a melody in my head that I can’t keep out.” From the bowels of prison, from the depth of his guts, he sings “Jesus loves me, this I know,” and “Amazing Grace.” He sings to the Philippians about Jesus humbling himself to death, even death on a cross, and sings to us that we share in Christ’s death and in his resurrection, “forever and ever, amen,” and we sing along. Paul sings a love song about a different kind of love that echoes and grows from and participates in the love that exists between God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. He sings a love song about a different kind of love that is selfless and humble and wild and growing and unstoppable. This is the love we have, together in Christ. This is a love worth singing about.

The Greatest

This is a sermon on Mark 9:30-37 that I gave on September 19-20, 2009 at First Lutheran Church in Marshall, MN.

She arrived at the awards show in a sparkling horse and carriage that would remind any little girl of a Cinderella fairy tale. Dressed in a shimmering silver beaded gown, with cherry-red lips and an angelic halo of blonde curls, country singer Taylor Swift bubbled to interviewers about how excited she was to be nominated for an award, but that she didn’t expect to win when she was up against so many other talented performers.

The show got underway, and soon it was time for the Best Female Video award – one of the two that Swift was nominated for. The nominees were listed –it was practically a roll-call of the biggest names in pop music today. Taylor Swift won. A look of shock spread across her face. She hugged her best friend, and walked slowly to the stage, seemingly genuinely surprised at her win. And she took the MTV moon-man in her arms, cradling it, she took the microphone and said – “Thank you so much! I always dreamed about what it would be like to maybe win one of these someday, but I never actually thought that would happen…”

And then it happened. Chances are you’ve heard about it, but just in case you haven’t – just as Taylor Swift started her acceptance speech, rapper Kanye West came onto the stage, grabbed the microphone from Taylor’s hand, and said, “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!” Kanye then handed the microphone back to Taylor, who looked at it like a poisonous snake had just been shoved into her hand. The audience alternated between cheers for Taylor and boos for Kanye – and the young girl who’d showed up looking like Cinderella stood there on the stage, stricken, silent, caught like a deer in the headlights.

I can’t imagine how it felt to be Taylor Swift on that night. To have your big moment, and to have it taken away so suddenly and awkwardly and painfully… well, It’s been really easy this past week to hate Kanye West. He’s already known for having an overblown ego, even in the community of overblown egos that make up American celebrities.  He’s interrupted awards shows in the past. Even the President weighed in on it – calling Kanye West a name that I won’t repeat from the pulpit today. In fact, if we all had a vote right now for “most hated celebrity,” I’d be willing to bet Kanye West would win by a landslide. This was quite possibly his worst moment, one of his biggest mistakes – and we all got to see it on national TV, replayed over and over for our viewing pleasure.

But, the thing is that there’s more to Kanye West than his worst moment. Kanye West has spoken out about the plight of children in Africa who are enslaved in diamond mines, about injustice here in America, and also about prejudice within the world of hip-hop. Kanye West is a grieving son who lost his mother. Kanye West is a Christian who knows all too well the struggle between the flesh and the Spirit that we all face – he wrote these words in his song “Jesus Walks”: “God show me the way because the Devil trying to break me down / The only thing that that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now / And I don't think there’s nothing I can do now to right my wrongs / I want to talk to God but I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long / Jesus walks / Jesus walks with me.”

It was these words that I couldn’t help but think of this week while I was reading through the gospel text. Jesus… walking with Kanye West.

This week’s gospel text was about Jesus walking with his disciples. They’re walking through Galilee, and Jesus tells them about how He will be betrayed into human hands, how He will be killed, and how He will rise again. Jesus has talked about this before, and at least for most of us here in a Christian church in 2009, it just seems like he’s hinting at the end of the story that we already know. We confess it every Sunday – “Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day, he rose again, he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

But the disciples didn’t know that. For the disciples, this is their friend and teacher -- the one they’ve given up their lives to follow -- saying some really strange and scary stuff. And they probably want to believe him, and want to understand, but they just plain don’t get it. And they’re too afraid to ask him what on earth he’s talking about.

So instead they start arguing about something else. And isn’t that just what we do when we don’t understand something and we’re too afraid to admit that we don’t understand it – we change the subject really fast. Now, when they got where they were going, Jesus asked them, “what were you arguing about on the way?” And then things got really quiet – because they were arguing about which one of them was the greatest. The exact same thing Kanye West was arguing about last weekend.

You’d think that would be annoying to Jesus. Here He is, trying to tell them about the mystery of the resurrection – and not for the first time, he’s tried telling them about this before, and he’ll try again one more time in Mark’s gospel – and instead, I imagine one disciple saying “This is awesome for me, I never thought I’d get to walk with the Son of Man,” and another one probably jumped in said, “Yo, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but Peter’s one of the best disciples of all time!”

Lucky for us, Jesus doesn’t get annoyed by the same things that annoy us. He shakes his head, sits them all down, and says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” They’ve been going about it all wrong – each one trying to get to the front of the line, each one trying to earn status and respect, each one trying to score points with Jesus and prove that they’re the greatest. Each one trying to prove they’re better than the other guy and tearing each other down, instead of building each other up. And because they’re so busy worrying about themselves and how they look to other people, they’re missing out on the awesome mystery of Jesus’ sacrificial, unselfish kind of love.

It’s easy to shake our heads at the disciples and at Kanye West here, saying “See, they’ve got it all wrong. Aren’t they selfish and terrible? They should be paying more attention to Jesus. Like us.” But we can only really say that when we ignore our worst moments. We’re lucky, because most of us have the privilege of not having our worst moments preserved forever in either the Bible or on national TV, countless Hollywood gossip shows, and a Youtube video with about 2 million views.

And when we point the finger at Kanye, repeating that name that the President called him, talking with everyone about how terrible he is, aren’t we really doing the exact same thing that he did and the same thing the disciples did? We’re arguing about who’s the greatest – and declaring ourselves the winner.

Oops.

I’ve never gone on stage during an awards show and stolen someone’s big moment from them. But I remember feeling really satisfied when the boy who beat me in the 8th grade spelling bee didn’t get to go to Nationals because the judges made a mistake, even though he spelled the word right. And I remember pouting and gossiping about my boss when someone else got picked for a promotion I wanted at my old job. And I remember all those times I did the right thing because I secretly wanted to make sure other people saw me doing the right thing, rather than doing the right thing just because it was the right thing to do.

Even when we’re trying to be unselfish, we can’t always escape that thing in us that wants, desperately, selfishly, foolishly – to be the greatest. And that’s how we miss the point. Because while that thing in us that wants to argue about who’s the greatest is driving us to do all kinds of silly things, Jesus is trying to tell us about what happens on the cross. Jesus is trying to tell us that he’s going to die on the cross for you and for me and for Kanye West and for everyone else. And in that death on the cross, in the utter degradation and humiliation and ugliness of that death, Jesus takes last place, and Jesus shows the most selfless love and the greatest greatness, the greatness that’s better than anything we can do and big enough to cover the whole world.

Jesus walks with a bunch of desperate, selfish, foolish sinners. Jesus walks with Kanye West. Jesus walks with you and me. And when we’re walking along and we get caught up in arguing about who is the greatest, Jesus doesn’t declare a winner. God isn’t keeping score. Last place already won. Jesus, on the cross, won. He conquered sin and death and the Devil, and is giving the prize of redemption and forgiveness and the freedom to love your neighbor to you every day.