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Previously on 24
Any 24 watchers out there? Fox is absolutely crucifying the competition and who would have ever thought it from their humble beginnings?
So I'm thinking what if we learned to read and teach the Gospel in narrative sequence instead of in "chicken soup for the soul" methodology. Don't you appreciate the prelude now to television's best stories. Previously on Alias (jumped the shark) or Previously on Lost or Previously on The Apprentice. They do an amazing job of clipping and narrating the essential scenes and plotlines in a 90 second presentation such that a "regular" or a complete "newcomer" can enter into the drama. I've never watched 24 until now-- SEASON 5, and I'm totally hooked. And now I'm looking forward to the "off-season" when I can go back and rent Seasons 1-4 to really get all the interrelationships and dynamics of the plot. There's a sense in which I (a 24 Gentile) "get it" coming in on season 5, but not nearly as clearly as say my friend, Kevin Henson (a true 24 Jew), (who first "shared" the 24 "good news" with me back in season 1). I suspect I will much more clearly understand the "Jack Bauer death-and-resurrection thing" which seems a bit cryptic to me now.
Now consider this whole analogy with respect to the Bible. Television understands the crucial nature of "shared memory" much better than most preachers. Most sermons we hear tend toward shucking away the "story" in order to get to the "self-help" or "spiritual-help." The narrative becomes more like the wrapping on a package that is torn away and discarded to get to "the point(s)." Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the celebrated preachers of the 20th century, once said "People don't come to church much to hear what happened to the Jebusites." My own preaching professor, a master narrative preacher, cited Fosdick in a surprising effort to say "get to the point." The Epiphany dawns on me more and more every day: THE STORY IS THE POINT. I know this is getting longer than I intended, but what I am trying to say is that GETTING IMMERSED IN THE TRUE STORY IS THE POINT. At this moment I struggle to remember a single "point" any preacher has ever preached---even my own. The question is can I remember the Story in any significant way. You see, when our memory is loaded with the Story our lives and communities become pregnant with imaginative "applications." Not applications as moralistic behavior management techniques but bold faith-acting-in-love initiatives that cause us to see God. I'd be interested in seeing some comments on how this connects in your minds out there?
Let me press this analogy a bit more with an illustration. Today is MARDI GRAS-- Fat Tuesday-- the final Feast of the Epiphany. Today is the eve of a new season of "24." (Think of "24" like 7 days of creation-- only it's the New Creation being enacted by the Word Made Flesh.) This is Season #6-- some would say the final season. The Season Premiere airs tomorrow: Ash Wednesday. So how would we do
Previously on 24. . . . . . .
I picture scenes of demonstrative miracles, compassionate, intimate interactions, mysterious sound-bytes of wisdom, capped off with the immensity of the mystery and sensuality and intimacy of the transfiguration, but the "previously" trailer would end with Jesus facing his disciples with an expression of serious joy, saying:
34Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. 35Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. 36What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? 37What could you ever trade your soul for?
Here we go. . . . . posted by John David Walt | at 2/28/2006 08:07:00 AM | 6 comments
Monday, February 27, 2006
There's more where this came from but it's not what you think. click the photo to be led to more family shots.
posted by John David Walt | at 2/27/2006 10:47:00 PM | 4 comments
Dad-- I'm so glad you are blogging again.
Samuel Benjamin Walt. . . . 14 weeks and counting. He's so good we're actually thinking about #5.
;-) posted by John David Walt | at 2/27/2006 09:16:00 PM | 6 comments
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Epiphany Closes
Epiphany ends at a high place on a high note and with a temptation to camp out. But the valley of vision calls-- the 40 days of Lent are upon us. So within the span of a few short days we move from "on earth as it is in heaven" with an inbreaking vision of glorified humanity in Christ down to the dust of the earth. . . . . . as in from dust you have come and to dust you shall return. Humus, or soil. See the connection to humility. Now think of the ONE who didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped, but HUMBLED himself and became obedient. . . . even to death on a cross. . . . . therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.
so this HUMBLE ONE, took the disciples up to a "high mountain" where he was TRANSFIGURED before them. The HUMAN one viewed in his DIVINE status. EPIPHANY. Only visions like this can sustain us in the WAY OF THE CROSS.
Labels: passion year
posted by John David Walt | at 2/26/2006 09:50:00 PM | 0 comments
Saturday, February 25, 2006
American Idol-atry
I love this show and find it irresistably watchable. Why is that?
1. AI (American Idol) taps into the most dominant value in the American culture: Performance. My worth = how well i do plus what Simon (+ all of America) thinks of me.
2. AI taps into the other most dominant value in the American culture: Fame. Everyone wants to be famous-- fifteen minutes is enough. And this show makes it conceivably possible for anyone willing to wait in line a few days to audition.
3. AI inversely taps into the most deeply subversive value in our culture: Humility. Only humility comes on reality television via humiliation. And for some strange reason we love it. AI has a high humiliation factor. Back to Simon again.
4. AI dials into the most powerful symbol of freedom: Song. Here is where it gets interesting. This is where the idolatry is exposed. Song, the great symbol of freedom, is placed into the service of slavery. In other words, singing and song actually become the slave of fame-- the quest to be god-like.
5. While feeding our insatiable appetite for fame and tapping into our deep need to perform, AI makes us vicarious, virtual participants. (I made a text vote for the first time this week!!! and it felt great!!!)
6. For the most part, AI feeds on the currency of imitation, leaving us hungry for true creativity and originality-- yet another mark of idolatry.
7. It is probably the most popular television show of all time-- in its 5th season and only getting started. (lapping the quadrennial winter olympics three times) And it comes on almost every night of the week?!?
I love this show and find it irresistably watchable. . . . . Have you seen it? posted by John David Walt | at 2/25/2006 09:54:00 PM | 9 comments
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Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Epiphany--getting our groove back together I happened across a great quote yesterday on the trailer of Jim Hampton's (Asbury Youth Ministry Professor) email.
"Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future; faith is having the courage to dance to it today." Peter Kuzmic
This is the work of worship in the season of Epiphany. We must find our way to a vantage point-- a high lookout-- where we can gaze across the vistas of God's Kingdom. We must look up and see the star and then train our eyes on the horizon to catch a glimpse of the obscure wise Kings, unlikely subjects making pilgrimage to worship the peasant child-Royal. We must recalll the "sign" a "baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a manger" and remember the wandering sheep herders who in God's economy merited angelic visitation and divine invitation. Has it occurred to us that poverty was the sign of Divinity. It brings new dimension to the haunting question of the judgment, "Lord, when did we see you?" We must re-visit the crowded temple courts and scan the crowds for the obscure Galilean family making their way to the pigeon counter while cradling their infant child. Only two "saw" them that day, Anna and Simeon, who prophesied. We must make the trek through the wilderness to the waters of the Jordan in order to hear the voice of one crying in the desert--Prepare the Way of the Lord. And we must strain our ears to listen for the Voice, who speaks over the one hidden in the heart of the Father from before the foundation of the World, "This is my Son. My Beloved. With Him i am well pleased.
All of these witnesses, obscure as they were at the time, heard the music, saw the vision and began to learn the dance. The trouble for us is that we can see them now, in the plain light of day and yet miss the point altogether. This is the nature of Epiphany. It is to finally see what we have been looking at for so long. Epiphany happens when the Obvious begins to break forth like the dawning of a new day.
Epiphany is a kind of hearing that becomes seeing. It is a learned way of listening that becomes a visionary way of living. It is to move from the objective observation of texts to an active participation in the holy dialogue of "on earth as it is in heaven."
The challenge is all of our ears are plugged up with our own music. Literally and figuratively, the ipod (of which I own one) is the controlling symbol of our time-- everyone creating their own customized playlist, listening to their own preferences and dancing to their own beat. Another profound symbol-- literally and metaphorically-- is the reality that many churches in our land, both large and small, made the decision to forgo Christmas Day Sunday Morning Corporate Worship in order for people to celebrate the holiday with their families at home. Don't hear this as a shame oriented jab, but rather a reality that bears some significant reflection in a non judgmental post-mortem kind of way. In other words, we can learn something from it. Confession: i didn't go to church on Christmas morning either. Why didn't I?
These are certainly reflections in rough draft and may not be comprehensible at all, but they lead me to ask these kinds of questions: What would it mean for us to really listen for the Music together, to see the Vision together and to begin to dance the Dance together?
"Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future; faith is having the courage to dance to it today."
Labels: passion year
posted by John David Walt | at 2/21/2006 09:34:00 AM | 2 comments
Friday, February 17, 2006
Imagine the View from Here I am part of a strategic planning task force here at the seminary. I lead one of the sub groups who is asking the strategic questions about the people we teach and train here-- our students. Given the charge we have been issued, it's been a struggle. This morning I was reflecting about our task when I remembered something that happened to me when I worked in Washington D.C.
I served as a Legislative Aid in the Office of Senator David Pryor. Legislative work is non glamorous stuff most of the time, keeping you more in the bowels of Capitol Hill than in the congressional chambers. It's true. Congressional staffers in D.C. spend most of their time actually underground, walking back and forth between the office buildings and the capitol. In retrospect, legislative work looks more like a bunch of gophers tunneling around at high speeds than sophisticated negotiations over tea.
If I am honest, any job I have ever had, despite high flying titles and strategic job descriptions, has looked like this. Day to day work is often a grinding process, an ever increasing sequence of small details. It's why we use phrases like "I'm buried" to talk about a lot of our days at the office. Too long in that mode leads to the inevitability of losing sight of the vision.
One day in the middle of a typical afternoon on "the Hill" my schedule was interrupted with an invitation to come to the grand Capitol rotunda. We arrived to find a young Congressman from Oklahoma and a small group of people. He indicated he was going to give us a tour. A tour? That's the last thing I needed or wanted at this point in the week. I thought I had seen it all. That's when he took us over to the side of the grand room and through a door that looked like a part of the wall. It was pitch black so the Congressman turned on his flash light. He then led us up a narrow, winding, scaffolding-like staircase that seemed to be endless. It became apparent from the trajectory of our climb that we were actually scaling the rotunda of the United States Capitol building above the interior ceiling and yet underneath the outer dome. After about an hour of climbing, we came to a small padlocked door. Now we understood why a United States Congressman escorted us. Only they are entrusted with the keys to this lock. As opened the lock and pushed open the door, the bright light of the afternoon pierced our eyes. We walked through amazed to find ourselves standing on the very top of the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building. By law, this is the highest point in the District of Columbia. From here we could see miles across the city and beyond to the neighboring states. All of the grand monuments and memorials were not only visible but formed a kind of constellation across the landscape, narrating a story among themselves that couldn't be glimpsed from the ground. In fact, in our underground legislative existence you could forget their storied presence entirely. We walked around the small enclosed open air circle for half an hour, in a kind of awe-struck gaze. Then it was time to make our descent back down through the gates into the grind.
I have never forgotten that moment nor the view it afforded. It brought a greater sense of awe to the menial nature of what by all accounts was a meaningful job. Beyond that it gives me a metaphor that lends meaning to my present job. This is the essence of strategic planning isn't it? I find myself wondering how our task force is going to accomplish this large task between 10:15 and 11:45am on five or six Friday mornings over the next three months. To jump from 50 hastily processed emails to 10 returned telephone calls to three other pressing meetings with urgent agendas into a 1.5 hour slot in which we are charged to develop a strategic plan for an institution purporting to carry the banner of Jesus Christ in the World. . . . . . it seems insane. And then I remember that unplanned afternoon excursion to the top of the free world and of my forever changed perspective.
Where is that place for us today and how do we get there? For you?
Labels: passion year
posted by John David Walt | at 2/17/2006 08:42:00 AM | 5 comments
Thursday, February 16, 2006
He is risen i just had to break the silence-- it's small, but now I am blogging again. Man-- how to explain where i've been. the two prior pictures perhaps say it best. but there's more. enough now that the silence is broken. it's small, but i'm back. thanks to you faithful few who have stuck with me and encouraged me through the long winter. ;-) posted by John David Walt | at 2/16/2006 10:18:00 PM | 3 comments
Today...