The Confession and the Purpose of the Pulpit

I've been an ardent John Grisham fan for a long time. I even argued, relatively vehemently, that Grisham counted as "literature" with a sort-of snob in college. Grisham's recent books have been less excellent, though, than his early ones, often focusing on personal stories rather than legal intrigue and thriller pacing. One of his latest, The Confession, tells the story of Keith Schroeder, a Lutheran minister who attempts to get a wrongly convicted man off of death row through the confession of a dying man, the real killer. The morality of capital punishment plays a large role in the novel, and Grisham leaves no doubt as to where he stands. The relevant passage, near the end of the novel:

As a minister, he steadfastly refused to mix politics and religion. In the pulpit, he had stayed away from issues such as gay rights, abortion, and war, preferring instead to teach what Jesus taught -- love your neighbor, help the less fortunate, forgive others because you have been forgiven, and follow God's laws. 

However, after witnessing the execution, Keith was a different person, or at least a different preacher. Suddenly, confronting social injustice was far more important than making his flock feel good each Sunday. He would begin hitting the issues, always from the Christian perspective and never from the politician's, and if it rankled folks, too bad. He was tired of playing it safe. 

"Would Jesus witness an execution without trying to stop it?" he asked. "Would Jesus approve of law that allow us to kill those who have killed?" The answer to both was no, and for a full hour, in the longest sermon of his career, Keith explained why not.

Now. Put aside for a moment that Keith's previous preaching seems pretty terrible in its own right. "Love your neighbor, help the less fortunate, forgive others because you have been forgiven, and follow God's laws?" Ugh. How about some Gospel, please? Keith seems to have moved only from killing his people with unfollow-able laws to killing them with lofty morality. Let's look at the key line in the passage: "Suddenly, confronting social injustice was far more important than making his flock feel good each Sunday."

Excuse me? Isn't THE GOOD NEWS (note the inclusion of the word "good") supposed to be the thing that is proclaimed each Sunday? Shouldn't that make the flock feel good? At least for a moment? And the idea that Keith's law-based preaching used to make his flock feel good is laughable. Didn't Paul tell the Corinthian church that he "resolved to know nothing" among them "except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2)? And what a smug dismissal of comforting preaching: that we silly little people who just want to feel good are somehow missing out on real Christianity, which ought to make us feel rankled...no thanks.

The pulpit is for the proclamation of the Gospel, the Good News that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, even those who witness executions without stopping them and those who make laws that allow us to kill those who have killed. The pulpit is not for confronting social injustice...there are other places for that. We hear the Gospel...the true, unadulterated Gospel...so rarely in the world. We hear about how we ought to act and what we ought to think all the time.  Let's save Sunday morning for Good News.

The Bachelor: The Law Before the Final Rose...

As you're all well aware, I'm a reality TV junkie. I watch Top Chef, Project Runway, Little People Big World, Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, Dinner: Impossible, Ace of Cakes, What Not to Wear, and even (gulp) The Hills. But, of course, the class of the reality shows, at least as far as Gospel theology goes, is The Bachelor. Clearly, it's not the best hour of TV entertainment on this list (in fact, other than The Hills, I prefer ALL these other shows), but it so clearly illuminates the Law vs. Gospel distinction that we talk about in these pages.

Picture it: A man and a woman go on a date. Will it work? Is there chemistry? On the old-school show Blind Date, the climax was always when the participants turned to the camera and said whether or not they would go out on another date. As you might imagine, the men almost always said they would, and the women almost universally said that they wouldn't. On The Bachelor, the question is, "Will he give her a rose or won't he?" This is how a bachelor lets us know that he wants to go on another date with this woman. The wrinkle is that if he DOESN'T give her a rose, she has to go home immediately. She has to be packed and ready to go before the date.

The hilarious (and profound) addition on the Bachelor is that they turn the ethereal pressure of a date into a physical object: a rose. And then, they have the rose sitting there for the whole date! Both people comment about how the rose ruins the evening. They can't stop looking at it, wondering what the outcome will be.

We've said before, and in fact, we say often, that judgment kills love. It's one of the maxims that we live by. The presence of the rose is the embodiment of judgment. The sword of Damocles (will he or won't he) hangs over the date from the very beginning. The knowledge of impending judgment kills any possibility of love. Rather than discovering whether or not she is in love with the bachelor, the woman toils under the weight of being the kind of person who gets a rose. And, so, love dies.

The conclusion? Love can thrive only without judgment; without roses. What if The Bachelor gave the rose to the girl at the beginning of the date? Before she proves her worth? What might happen then? They could get to know one another without the pressure, without the judgment, and see if they might fall in love.

A Little Bit of Pixie Dust

My four year old daughter is really into Disney movies now (and has been for a long time!). She has gone through phases of loving everything from Snow White to Ratatouille. Their catalog is extensive enough that we don't have to repeat very often, though she often gets stuck in a rut, requesting the same film over and over again. The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast are her two favorites. Recently, though, we watched Peter Pan, and, as I sometimes am, I was struck by a theological chord in the first scenes.

When Peter tells the Darling children that they can go with him to Neverland, they ask how to get there. He tells them that they'll fly. When they try and fail, Peter is puzzled. "This won't do," Peter mumurs. "What's the matter with you? All it takes is faith and trust." I could almost hear the frustrated preacher behind those words. "What's the matter with you, congregation of mine? Why aren't you doing Good Christian Thing A or Good Christian Thing B? All it takes is faith and trust!"

Most pastors, and for that matter, Christians in general, have too high a view of human ability (anthropology). We are left wondering what is the matter with us when we try to do something and fail. We wonder why our minds drift to the same selfish or impure places day after day, despite our efforts to control them. We wonder why our children exasperate us so...they're just kids. We wonder why our relationships seem to falter when we've tried so hard to make them work.

But Peter Pan is forgetting something: "All it takes is faith and trust. Oh! And something I forgot...dust! A little bit of pixie dust." And so, the magic ingredient introduced into the situation, flight is possible. Sure it helps to set your mind on "the happiest things," but the pixie dust is the key. It's the fuel that makes the flight go.

In the same way, it is the Holy Spirit that makes our "Christian" lives possible. But unlike Tinkerbell's dust, we can't grab the Holy Spirit and shake a little out. No, it's better than that. The Holy Spirit is promised to us.

But it's the pixie dust that allows for flight, not the quality of the faith and trust of the Darling children, and the Holy Spirit that allows for Christian life in the Christian. Someone said that as one's anthropology increases (as one's opinion of human ability goes up) one's Christology decreases (one's reliance on Jesus goes down). Let's always remember that, without that pixie dust, no one's getting to Neverland.

The Long Arm of LeBron's Law

I've never been more happy to be wrong. In both my NBA Playoffs preview column and my Finals preview, I picked the Heat (and therefore LeBron James) to lose in the NBA finals. They (and he) didn't. LeBron played so excellently that many of his critics have had to reconsider their criticisms. And it's that reconsideration that has been so interesting.

The most common talking point of the post-championship coverage (other than the celebration of LeBron's performance) is a question: Who will the pressure to win, that pressure that was once LeBron's, pass to? In other words, who will the sports world now begin to judge for their failure to win a championship? For several years, it was Phil Mickelson who "couldn't win" a major. He consistently fell short in big tournaments, seemingly wilting under pressure...until he won. Then it was LeBron...until he won. The question that sports pundits have been asking each other all week is...so who's next? Here's an example.

A wittier man than I once said that we are born lawyers, and that we have to learn about grace. The urge to judge, the urge to find fault, is powerful, and seemingly inbred. It is sourced in self-justification; that is, the desire to find at least one person who is worse that you, so that if someone's going down, it's them, and not you. This is true from elementary school playgrounds to high-powered boardrooms.

The urge to transfer the "Why haven't you won yet?" pressure to another athlete puts the lie to the claim that LeBron put the pressure on himself with "The Decision" and with the Heat's welcome party, etc. Certainly those things intensified the pressure, but the fact that everyone agrees that the pressure must go somewhere proves that it exists outside of Mickelson, James, and "not five, not six, not seven..." We require someone to put the pressure on because we cannot bear the thought that it might end up on us.

This is the most generic of all laws, and therefore perhaps the most powerful. Even when we reject directives like "Honor your father and mother" or "Love your neighbor as yourself" we find ourselves beholden to the law of "be good." But what's good enough?

Our number one job as self-interested human beings is self-justification. It was a great comfort to be able to say, when confronted with a personal failure, "Well, at least I never jilted a city, joined another superstar, and then failed time and again in clutch moments!  At least I'm not a championship level loser!" Now that LeBron is no longer such a loser, we are thrashing around, flailing, for some other poor (read: wonderfully talented) athlete on whom to pin our outrageous expectations, all in the hope that they'll fail, so that we can look better by comparison.  If we worry about living up to the law of "be good," we can least be better than someone.

Tellingly, the thing that LeBron credits with enabling his success this year is his "owning" of his failures from years past. It is when we can stop our search for someone to whom we're superior that we can have the freedom to be ourselves...and possibly succeed.