Do you believe in infant baptism?
           Believe in it?  Hell, I’ve seen it!

The General Synod of my church—the Reformed Church in America—begins the day after tomorrow, Thursday, here in my town of Pella, Iowa. General Synod is the widest decision-making body of our church; the annual conclave of ministers, elders, and sundry other staff, groupies and hangers-on. Synod is part family reunion, part business meeting, and part promotional bonanza.

One of the more intriguing, perhaps controversial, items that will come before this year’s RCA General Synod is known as “R-16” (“R” for recommendation).

On the hottest, most divisive issues in the church, rarely do we really debate the issue itself. Instead, it becomes a matter of “polity” (how we structure ourselves). Are we true to our Constitution? Are we following our order? And on the issues surrounding LGBT inclusion in the church, it is happening again. I’m not quite sure what to think of this. Is this the church’s way of lawyering up? Or are we simply trying to fight fair?

Here’s the back story. Last year’s Synod reaffirmed the long-held RCA position that homosexual behavior is sin. Whatever you happen to think about that position, it isn’t really new or surprising for the RCA. But General Synod statements are hardly towering or binding pronouncements. Don’t be thinking Protestant versions of papal encyclicals. Past General Synods have made statements about Styrofoam cups and gun control which no one seems to notice, let alone revere.

What was new last year was Synod’s assertion that advocating for LGBT inclusion or presiding at a gay wedding were “disciplinable offenses.” You could get in trouble for them. In other words, General Synod was telling local bodies who they should discipline and for what. This seemed to many like a provocative overreach of General Synod power, a radical breach in our polity.

So this year’s “R-16” comes to Synod as the recommendation from the “Way Forward” task force, appointed in light of last year’s rancor. After proposing a “grace-filled conversation” about the reach and extent of a General Synod’s authority, and the possible profound changes in the way we do church together, the recommendation ends with an escape-hatch. If the grace-filled conversation does not reach consensus, then congregations and ministers could chose to leave via a “grace-filled and accountable separation from membership within the Reformed Church in America without recriminations such as forfeiture of property.” All sorts of images come to mind—amicable divorce; prearranged funeral plans so the kids don’t have to deal with the mess and expense.

Are you still with me? If so, then you realize this is a pretty incredible proposal. Basically a church is saying that if we can’t find agreement on a way forward, then we can go our own way. Take your marbles and go home. The first time I read R-16, I thought it was facetious.

Al Janssen, a RCA minister and “General Synod Professor of Theology”—about whom it is true that he has forgotten more about Reformed polity, theology, and history than most of us will ever know—has written a blog subtly titled Why R-16 is a Spectacularly Bad Idea. Among other things, Janssen posits that churches just don’t split. By definition, it is contrary to our very nature—one, holy, catholic and apostolic. “It is incoherent for Reformed folk to propose disunity,” says Janssen.

In a deliciously ironic twist, Janssen reminds us that “unity” is one of the main points of the RCA’s recently adopted doctrinal standard, the Belhar Confession. Just three years after boldly declaring that “unity is both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ” and “accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted,” the RCA is now proposing “grace-filled separation”? According to Janssen, churches split only when apostasy is the issue. When you split a church, you yell “You Christ-denying heretic!” not “Blessings as you find your grace-filled way forward.”

My brief response is posted below Al’s blog. Basically I wonder if different churches, denominations, and splits might not be more like families than a deep affront to the Gospel. I recognize your family as good and decent folk, but I don’t want to move in or celebrate holidays with you. Similarly, I can like Methodists and Baptists and people who disagree with me about LBGT matters. I recognize them as brothers and sisters in Christ, part of the same one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. But I may not really want to have formal ties with them, share General Synod with them, and continually bang heads with them. And they likely say to me, “Right back at you!”

Or might we look at church splits the way we look at war, divorce, and other ethical accommodations? Tragic and unfortunate, but maybe a necessary “way forward” fraught with collateral damage. I’ve often quipped that all the broadly Reformed bodies—from the United Church of Christ to United Reformed or Orthodox Presbyterians—should release all congregations to realign and re-sort themselves into three different piles. Like Goldilocks, every congregation would select between too hard, too soft, and just right. Pick one. No oxymoronic “independent Reformed” churches. Of course, no one is delusional enough to think these new arrangements and bodies would be harmonious and unified, but it’s a fun exercise to while away the hours!

Instead of being facetious, maybe R-16 is more like the mature parent saying to the petulant child, “Is this really what you want?” R-16 invites us to walk to the edge of the cliff as a church and carefully deliberate, do we want to jump? We might wonder if a recommendation to General Synod is the place to do psychotherapy on the church via semi-serious proposals that stand almost no chance of ever happening. But maybe after watching the Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Presbyterians tear themselves apart, perhaps R-16 is an earnest attempt to truly look for a “grace-filled” alternative.

We all are familiar with those programs that provide a schedule to read the entire Bible in a single year. Often they are pitched as an antidote to biblical illiteracy. If people read it all, have the whole thing under their belt, then it will make sense and fall nicely into place. I don’t think so. 

Usually the readers end up worn down, dejected, plodding to the end only because of a compulsive need for closure. There is typically too much to read beneficially in a single day. As with many of the best things in life, less is often more when it comes to reading scripture—a few verses, a paragraph, prayerfully pondered.

Worse yet, and what occasioned this blog, was a pastor colleague reporting that people started “losing their faith” as they slogged on. 

You might think that sounds like a “teachable moment,” a wonderful opportunity to explain the beauty, balance, and complexities of the Bible. But we’re beyond that by now. So much blood and gore. Such an arbitrary and angry god. Such primitive and crude stories. How could they belong to a faith that finds guidance and life in these embarrassingly awful texts? 

Similarly, I occasionally encounter the person determined to read the Bible from front to back, cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation. Although warned against it, they insist, motivated by some sort of obsession with order, because “this is how they read other books,” and maybe a need to show their obstinacy, to prove to be the exception to the rule. Like the read-the-Bible-in-one-year crowd, these folks have that merit-badge mentality, and a belief that if they can do this, then all the pieces of the Bible will finally fit. At long last, it will become clear. Despite their determination, they are stopped in their tracks somewhere in the latter Pentateuch. 

We don’t have cable TV so I didn’t watch the recent series “The Bible” on the History Channel. But I’ve heard similar comments about it. When the stories just continue to unfold back-to-back, with no framework, no direction, no prioritizing, they all become of equal importance—or equally unimportant. In the end, it is only the memories of the especially violent and baffling events that rise above the blur to stay with the viewer. 

Coming from a very different beginning place, but behaving similarly, are those folks with that burning desire to read the apocryphal books, or extra-canonical texts, especially if there is some faint whiff of scandal or forbidden fruit. Having read The Da Vinci Code ten years ago, these people are certain that the gnostics were: a.) correct, b.) more humane, c.) wronged by the Christians, d.) their true soul mates. Never mind that that their own understanding of Christianity is based on hit-and-miss attendance at Sunday School through the sixth grade. And let’s not forget those people eager and intent on reading the Koran or Upanishads, but would groan if invited to read the Letter to the Romans. 

These things have an allure—reading the entire Bible is for the Marine Corps and P90X sorts. The Gospel of Thomas or the Upanishads for the literati. What would it mean to bring some allure to a more balanced and mature reading of scripture?

To be clear, go ahead and read 2 Chronicles and 2 Peter. Read Tobit (the Belgic Confession’s openness to the apocryphal books surprises many) and the Gospel of Thomas. Read the Koran and Upanishads. But if you’re a Christian, I suggest reading the four canonical gospels twenty times each, before you bother with Obadiah or 3 John. Read each of Paul’s letters fifteen times each, before you try to pull off reading through the Bible in one year. 

We do have a canon in a canon. And we should. Some parts of the Bible are central, others peripheral. And some parts, while not peripheral, require seasoning and training to appreciate. Being deeply familiar with the Gospel of Luke, Galatians or Philippians will not make all the carnage and capriciousness in the Bible go away. But it will put them in a framework. It will move them from the foreground to the background. 

Rather than a read-through-it-in-a year program, someone should take a stab at developing a prioritized biblical reading guide. Gospels, Psalms, Genesis, Exodus, Paul, Acts, Isaiah, would be at the top of my list. No Daniel until Year 13. And while I doubt anyone is willing to take on such an assignment—“fraught with controversy” might be an understatement—shouldn’t Christians at least be clear and open about such priorities and canons within the canon, even if we don’t use those terms? 

To be sure, part of the wonder of scripture is the story of that traveling salesman who in a fit of desperation opens the Gideon’s Bible in his motel room and has his life turned-around by what he reads in Nahum. I’m not discounting that. But if you’re not desperate in a hotel room, I’d suggest reading 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, even James, fifteen times before you mess around with Nahum.

Back then I viewed the Trinity more as divine minutiae, an arcane embarrassment, the byproduct of underworked and overly-imaginative theologians, a topic one could not discuss for more than thirty seconds without falling into some heresy. If I slip into heresy here, please let me know. 

Now, the Trinity has become for me a mystery to be celebrated, a delightful eccentricity that refuses to be digested by our schemas. Trinity is the very heart of God, and in turn, informs us greatly about what it is to be human.

As my appreciation for the Trinity has increased, I’ve also come to welcome Trinity Sunday. In fact, the trio of Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday has become a fun, faint echo of Easter and the Holy Week events. Of course, this relishing of the Trinity is not some solo journey, my great personal revelation. Trinity has been a hot topic in theology for a couple of decades, richly mined by all sorts of good folk.

The Trinity tells us that within the one God there is an eternal and perfect community of love. Even if there had never been a universe for God to love, it still would be correct to say that “God is love” because in the innermost, mystical heart of God there is love between the three persons of the Trinity. God would have never been lonely or bored because of the dynamism and relationships within the life of God. 

Although I’m not entirely certain, I believe it was Karl Barth who once said something like, “The Trinity tells us that before there was time or creation, there was love and relationships. And when time is no more, there will still be love and relationships.”

When I teach about the Trinity, we often have an exercise of trying to come up with good symbols, metaphors, and analogies for the Trinity, fully realizing that all analogies will fall woefully short. I tell the class that good Trinitarian images need to convey at least three different things: first, threeness and yet oneness; second, love, relationality, and sharing; third, dynamism, motion, and flow.

Let’s start with some classics—    
     Patrick’s beloved shamrock: good on three-in-one. Not so great on loving relationships.
     Triangle: terribly austere and stark. Hard to catch much love or dynamism. 

Here are some of the better or more memorable ideas from discussions and classes over the years—
     Waltzing, not the dancers themselves, but the dance. Three steps, moving, flowing, sociability, gracious give-and-take.
     A beautiful, complex wind ornament: spinning, twisting, rotating in a manner so intricate it is hard to know exactly how it holds together. The parts pulse and move and reflect light at unexpected angles. Good marks for the vitality and mystery. Less so on the three-in-one and love.
     Sound effects: Trinity tells us God sounds more like whir, buzz, zip, zing, not thud, clunk, or plop.  It’s trying to convey energy and movement, undoing our impressions of God as a glacial force or a massive slab of granite.
     Prepositions: Trinity tells us that God is a God of prepositions. This came from a discussion of Romans 5:1-15, one of the lectionary passages for this coming Sunday. Someone noted how many prepositions are here.

• By faith
• With God
• Through our Lord Jesus
• In whom
• Access to grace
• In which we stand
• Love poured into our hearts
• Through the Holy Spirit.

Prepositions are words that make a connection, juxtaposition, or combination between words. They show a relationship between objects. All these prepositions in the Romans passage help us see that God is not so much a stationary sovereign, an immoveable monarch, rather God is moving, connected, in relationship.

And how do we understand ourselves if God is more like a dance than a boulder?  The Trinity tells us that we were created for relationships, to give and take, to share love just as the three persons of the Trinity share love. To be Trinitarian people is to be outward looking people, to be connected, curious, involved, giving and receiving people.

If the Trinity tells us that God is a dancing God, then we are to be dancing people, dancing with God, each other, dancing with prairies and planets, dogs and trout and geraniums. 

If God is like a shimmering, twisting, wind ornament, then our lives too are to be spinning in mystical coordination with one another and with God.

If God is a God of prepositions, then we should be prepositional people.

• care for
• despite differences
• abide with
• walk along
• aspire to
• enthusiastic about
• among the poor
• beside one another
• in Christ

Today, I’m posting part of a piece by Anthony Robinson.  It appeared originally in Crosscut, an online Seattle periodical. You can read it in full here. Tony is a minister in the United Church Christ who now serves as a consultant, speaker, and author. I became aware of him when he wrote occasionally in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and we’ve had him in Perspectives a few times.

Typically writing to a very secular audience, Tony always manages to be overtly theological and explicitly Christian, not to mention often compelling—for both Christians and others. That's what I think Tony does here, pushing beyond the whodunit headlines to ask questions about society, ourselves, and the deeper state of things.Thanks to Tony for allowing me to share these excerpts.

The Boston bombing: The weakness of evil

After the death of suspect #1, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the arrest of a seriously wounded suspect #2, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, my reaction was to recall the famous phrase that is the title of Hannah Arendt’s book on the 1968 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, The Banality of Evil.

Arendt argued that, in the end, evil is not grand, nor is it glamorous. It is not heroic in any sense. It is not even quite the sinister power we often imagine. Arendt’s impressions, after listening to days of Eichmann’s testimony, were of the banality of it all. Evil was not grand, but petty; not compelling, but trite; not energizing, but tired.

Looking at the pictures of these two sad-looking young men, one of whom may have caught the virus of extremism and terror on a recent extended trip in Russia, evil looked banal. It looked tired, trite, small and petty.

Augustine, a precursor to Arendt and arguably the greatest Christian thinker, wrestled with the topic of evil on a more sustained basis than any theologian before or since.  He did so in the context of a theological debate with the Manicheans, whose view of the world was a thoroughgoing dualism. The Manicheans insisted on a radical distinction between Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, Spirit and Matter. In a frequently overwhelming and perplexing world, dualism is a very powerful explanatory device. President George W. Bush used it after 9/11: 'You are either for us or you are against us.' Such dualism is quite compelling, but often wrong.

For those influenced by moral dualism, evil is something both grand and powerful. Its powers are prodigious — more than a match for good. And there is something deeply fascinating, even glamorous, about evil.

Augustine, like Arendt, did not perceive evil as being so compelling, nor did he think it wise to portray it that way. For him, it was an emptiness, a wasteland, a nothing. Not a positive or substantive thing in itself.

The consequences — the terrible damage of evil — are real and significant, but evil itself is a nullity, a banality, something that can only deplete and not create.

There are two reasons it is worthwhile to ponder Augustine and Arendt in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.

It seems that we — or, let’s say, popular culture — are verging toward a new Manichaeism, a new dualism, in which we imagine evil as a vast, sinister, creative and glamorous power. If so, we are in danger of inflating evil’s power, its reach and its disabling effects.

Looking at photos of the thousands of police and security forces deployed in Boston, the city and region in lockdown and the legions of officers in SWAT gear (all of which we’ve seen countless times in the movies), I couldn’t help but wonder if we were giving evil more than its due.

There is a kind of not-so-latent Manichaeism in our nearly apocalyptic newscasts and extreme weather alerts. Remember that, for the Manichaeans, the world is in the grip of a comprehensive and destructive power.

Augustine and Arendt do not deny or gainsay the reality of evil or its hideous consequences, but neither do they inflate it to monstrous proportion. Today we risk magnifying evil to such vast dimension that we deify it. Our allocations for defense and security are impressive, but disproportionate. Playing on our fears, the security state seems to encroach all around us.

Another feature of strict moral dualism is to imagine all evil as “out there,” in some other race, nation, religion, demonic force or enemy. Both Arendt and Augustine resist this. We too should resist the impulse to draw conclusions about Chechnyans or Muslims or immigrants from the acts of the Tsarnaev brothers.

There is a distinction to be made — and held — between good and evil, but no one in Augustine’s thinking is beyond temptation, beyond the capacity for evil. Assuming for the moment that the Tsarnaev brothers are found guilty of the marathon bombing, they are not so ‘other’ that we cannot see or imagine ourselves in them. One appears to be a young man lost between two worlds, while the other was drawn in by the influence of his troubled brother. They are not the evil masterminds of film and fantasy, but sad and pathetic.  

This is not to excuse what they have done, but to point out that their evil is not brave, so much as banal. It is not so foreign to us as to be beyond recognition.

Augustine believed that it was both false and misleading to portray life as irredeemable and in the grip of a comprehensive and destructive power. In the end, good is stronger than evil and life is redeemable. Believing this and acting on it is the meaning of faith.

If you responded, “What is truth?” you are correct.

Honestly, this isn’t a pastoral question I receive often. A mother of a spooky-smart teenage girl (going to Cal Tech sort of smart) told me that she and her daughter were having conversations about truth—“What is it? Is there really even such a thing? How do we know?” Mom asked me what I thought.

“Boy that’s a tough question. I’m inclined to say truth is just a stick that smart men use to beat up people who disagree with them.” 

Both mom and I were somewhat surprised by my semi-reckless words. Maybe a Foucaultian-slip, so to speak. I’m not sure that I would defend my initial answer in its entirety. It just bubbled out of me.

As a minister of the Christian Gospel shouldn’t I have something more substantial and robust, let alone theological, to say. But we had an interesting, honest, and theologically-rich conversation.

Truth isn’t really a topic that lends itself to an 800 word blog. But that conversation and two other recent encounters with “truth” got me thinking. I’m wondering just how invested Christians should be in the truth game. It doesn’t do much for me. I’m not sure it is really our strong suit, one of our compelling attractions, “Come join us. We’ve got more truth!” In fact I wonder if the more we Christian go down the path after truth, we don’t just become distracted and far from home.

At the local liberal arts college, an outdoor meditation alcove is adorned with the well-known words of the Johannine Jesus, “You shall know the truth and truth shall set you free.” The construction design of the place makes me think it was built in the 1960’s—the decade of hippies and Woodstock. Although, I wonder if the early 60’s weren't filled with a more innocent air, when truth was a pretty unassailable subject, at least on small, bucolic college campuses. Truth was a noble goal, the source of freedom, not to mention a uniter. Even the most secular and skeptical on campus would support these words of Jesus. I suspect that the truth embossed on the alcove wall was of the garden-variety sort: knowledge, information, facts.

In that context, I hear Jesus’ words as conveying “You shall collect credentials and these credentials will make you autonomous.” Yet the truth of John’s gospel is nothing other than Jesus himself. This freedom-giving truth isn’t even knowing about Jesus. It is Jesus.

Across town there is a fundamentalist church whose outdoor sign has “Thy Word is Truth” superimposed over an image of a Bible. I take this as code for “We’re biblicists here. We know and obey the scriptures at this church.” That these words from Jesus’ farewell discourse in the Gospel of John are not actually speaking about the Bible—at least not directly—seems a pretty blatant contradiction of the church’s claim. Like the college meditation niche across town, truth here seems to be viewed as this fixed and free-standing entity—correctness, right answers—to which Christian have special access.

This sort of truth sounds to me as if we Christians have been given the cosmic library card, or admittance to that giant government warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, filled with countless cartons and crates.

I’m not advocating a smaller, more personal or inward “truth.” Nor is this meant to sound anti-intellectual, anti-education, or a truth "more of the heart than the head,” or “why theology is better than philosophy” or anything like that.

I think John Howard Yoder once said something like, “The claim that ‘Jesus is Lord’ is not only or primarily a personal or consoling claim. It is a political and cosmos-shaping claim.” Likewise, the claim that Jesus is “truth.” But our discussions of truth so quickly get far afield from this. I see Christians expending a lot of energy and making a lot of noise defending “truths” whose connection to the truth of the person Jesus is iffy or invisible. The stuff that is most distinctively and centrally Christian, finally seems pretty extraneous at the end of those long and complicated discussions about “Christian truth.”

Over the last months in Perspectives and here on The Twelve, there has been a nice exchange prompted by John Van Sloten’s The Day Metallica Came Church. Jason Lief, Jamie Smith, Josh Banner, Scott Hoezee, as well as Van Sloten all weighed in. The conversation went in several directions. I found the latest response, by David Stubbs, “The Whole Counsel of God” to have some comments on a “doctrine” of scripture that might be equally relevant to a discussion of truth.

The “Word” of God most fundamentally is the second person of the Trinity, who works in tandem with the Spirit…Our doctrine of scripture should not be isolated “as a quasi-independent topic” but should rather, according to Webster, be treated within the larger discussion of other “affirmations about God's communicative presence and activity.” When talk about scripture is separated too far from, say, discussions of sacraments, tradition, the book of nature…it is too easily misunderstood.

I hear Stubbs rightly saying that discussions of scripture as a "quasi-independent topic" don’t do justice to scripture, just as cosmic library card/Raiders warehouse understandings of truth aren’t sufficiently tied to the truth Christians know.

Christian discussions of truth that are not quite obviously subordinate to and subsumed within a discussion of the Living Word, Jesus Christ, quickly become artificial and strained. That may make it harder for us to be part of larger, broader discussions of truth, although they seem to have plenty of participants without us.

I turn now to the addendum to the John’s Gospel, the 21^st chapter (the lectionary passage for this coming Sunday) which contains a verse that might be my “favorite,” certainly the most significant verse to me, and probably my most dreaded Bible verse.

Chapter 21 is mostly known for Jesus’ restoration of Simon Peter. The man who denied Jesus three times is now interrogated three times by the risen Lord. Good stuff. Nice symmetry. But this focus on Peter’s reinstatement often causes us to overlook the ominous words that follow. “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” We are told that Jesus’ words to Peter indicated the kind of death he was to die. Tradition says that later in life Peter was crucified upside down, at his own request, believing himself unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord.

Fifteen years ago Eastertide was one of the darkest and most discouraging times in my life. I had received that terrible phone call telling me that I was not going to be hired for a position I wanted very badly, a “dream job,” the one that felt like a perfect fit.

A freshly minted Ph.D., cobbling together three part-time jobs, I also did a lot of guest preaching around the area. That week, in my pain and turmoil, I was slated to preach. I opened the Bible to read the lectionary passage, John 21. When I came to “But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go” the words seared my soul like a branding iron. They still do.

This was Jesus’ message directly to me. My dream was over. That hope was snuffed out. I was being taken where I did not want to go.

After receiving this portentous message, Peter looks over to another disciple and asks Jesus “What about him?” “Is his future as bleak and foreboding as my own?” This other disciple—the one whom Jesus loved—is generally presumed to be John. An interesting kicker, however, suggests that the unnamed, beloved disciple was Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha, the man Jesus raised from the dead. If that is the case, Peter’s question becomes even more pointed. “Jesus, you give me a death sentence, yet this one, you raised from the dead?”

This too rang so true to my experience. Comparison, bitterness, envy, injustice. What about him? Doesn’t he receive any bad news? Why do others get jobs? Why does that person get the life I had hoped for and worked for?” Jesus’ reply, not especially gentle, “What is it to you? Follow me!”

Six months later, my wounds still oozing, Sophie and I were contacted by the church where we serve as pastors to this day. You might say that what being crucified upside down was to Peter, moving to Pella, Iowa was to us! Of course that is not what I’m saying. I’m not telling you I’m unhappy. But this isn’t what I imagined myself doing when I was younger. In the ministry, in Iowa—it is not what I expected.

I’ve thought about these words of Jesus again recently when two students—bright, conscientious students—did not get into the graduate school they had hoped for. I’m sure many people are attempting console and encourage them. “It will all work out in the end. Into each life a little rain must fall. Keep your chin up. Who knows, this might be a blessing in disguise.” Jesus’ words to Peter have a tougher edge. Could I or should I say to those young students, “Perhaps you are being taken where you do not want to go?”

Jesus is telling all of us, in some way, in some manner, that to be his follower is to be redirected, to be taken to places where you do not want to go. That sounds pretty bleak, pretty tough. And it should.

There is no promise that by following Jesus your dreams will be fulfilled. Your dreams will be changed. And that is almost always painful and disappointing. Our dreams, our desires, our delusions may have to be crucified upside down. Our thought that we can fasten our own belt and go wherever we want, has to be killed, so that we might instead go where Christ leads us. That is solemn and scary news, yet strangely enough I have come believe it is also good news.

Now, when I look at my own life through the lens of Jesus’ words to Peter, I feel an odd ambivalence. Occasionally, when I am robing prior to worship and the cincture rope tightens around my waist, those searing words will still float through my head, “someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” I may not like it and yet I trust I’ve been taken to where I need to be.

Perhaps it speaks of a world where people have no idea that Pontius Pilate is the name of the Roman Prefect of Judea who presided at Jesus’ trial.

I have never liked Pontius Pilate. Sunday School socialization works. That some Christians venerate Pilate and his wife as saints, based on apocryphal texts? That legend says he died in Switzerland, where, presumably, there was plenty of clean water for frequent hand washing—well, who knew?

I always resented Pilate’s presence in the creeds. He felt like such an inappropriate presence, a festering sliver, an interloper. There, in our brief summary of faith, where Peter and Paul and countless others receive no mention, Pilate intrudes week after week. It’s like the vice-governor of the Idaho territory being included in a brief bio of Lincoln. 

Then one day I was reading Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. “The inclusion of Pontius Pilate in the creed means, inter alia, that the Church wished to pinpoint the death of Jesus as an event in time” (III.2.441). Barth then notes the insistence on precise times (cock’s crows, third hour, etc.) surrounding Jesus’ death as recorded in the synoptic Gospels. These particular and in-time details distinguish the events of Jesus’ death from the "once-upon-a-time" of classic myths or timeless ideals, such as “after winter, comes the spring” or “from the ashes, the phoenix rises.” Barth may have been poking at Rudolf Bultmann’s de-mythologizing project, but for me it just makes it easier to include Pilate in the creed.

I’ve always liked the suggestion, fanciful as it may be, that we should punctuate that line of the creed differently. Rather than professing, “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried…” what if we were to profess instead, “born of the virgin Mary, he suffered. Under Pontius Pilate was crucified, died and was buried…” The focus of Christ’s suffering would be shifted from solely under Pilate to his entire life.

It reminds me of Q&A 37 of the Heidelberg Catechism.
What do you understand by the word "suffered"?
That during his whole life on earth, but especially at the end, Christ sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.

That phrase—“during his whole life on earth”—always catches me. It is a small and surprising treasure. All through his life, Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering.

• Escaping to Egypt, the infant Jesus suffered.
• Hungry, lonely, and tired in the wilderness, thirty-year-old Jesus suffered.
• When his town folk tried to push him off a cliff, Jesus suffered.
• Not thanked by nine of ten healed lepers, Jesus suffered.
• When the rich young man walked away, Jesus suffered.
• In numerous confrontations with the religions authorizes, Jesus suffered.
• When his friend Lazarus died, Jesus suffered.
• Weeping over Jerusalem, Jesus suffered.

This isn’t to say he was the melancholy, miserable Jesus often found in movies. Despondent, eyes glazed over, shuffling through life mumbling mysterious maxims. “Man of sorrows” doesn’t equal “gloomy Gus.” Recall Jesus was also called “gluttonous” and a “winebibber.”

Attending to the whole life of Jesus might seem like a variant on the watered-down “Jesus as moral exemplar” theology, whose life “showed” more than his death and resurrection “did.” But that’s not the case here. The Catechism rightly reminds us that it was “especially at the end” of his life that Jesus suffered, but it also refuses to make an artificial distinction between Jesus’ ministry and his passion. Instead it holds together both “his whole life on earth” and “especially at the end.”

Jesus’ whole life, suffused as it was with suffering, is redemptive. Jesus didn’t spend thirty-three years wasting time and hanging out until he could finally suffer and die. A few years ago in Perspectives, Calvin College religion professor, Thomas Thompson strikingly suggested that today’s typical Christian "embraces too glib a conception of Christ's atoning sacrifice…Go to the cross; go directly to the cross; do not pass go; do not collect 200 disciples; do not have a life or ministry…With a greater emphasis on Christ's life as itself a life-of-sacrifice, we can assay his death not so disjunctively—as the isolated moment of salvation—but in better continuity with his life as epitomizing his sacrifice and obedience to God the Father's will."

This week we focus on the end of Jesus’ life, events that are at the center of our faith. As I recite the creed, Pilate’s intrusive presence will remind me of the concrete particularity of Jesus’s suffering, during his whole life on earth, but especially at the end.

For me, this focus on the election of a new pope and the Roman Catholic Church raises the question of why am I not a Roman Catholic? What separates me from my Catholic brothers and sisters? What keeps me from joining them? Not much, or is it?

Many years ago, I recall feeling guilty while reading A Reformation Debate: John Calvin & Jacopo Sadoleto, because I thought Sadoleto made a lot good points. A few years ago, I wrote a Reformation Day note to my congregation suggesting that given the Pandora’s Box the Reformation opened, an appropriate way to mark the day might be to repent. I was amazed at the pushback I received. 

The key doctrinal issues that divided Catholic and Protestant 500 years ago have largely evaporated. Justification by grace alone through faith is universally accepted—at least formally. I would say the Catholics have become Protestant! The centrality and uniqueness of Jesus Christ is agreed upon. Last January, leaders of Catholic and Reformed churches in North America signed a “Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism” in Austin, Texas

Of course, there are still differences. Do I accept transubstantiation? Not exactly, but also not in a way that would keep me from the Catholics. It might, however, keep them from accepting me. Seven sacraments versus two? I’d opt for two, but don’t find seven to be anathema. Saints? I like saints. Birth control? I know many faithful Catholics who reject their church’s teaching about it—and not with an apathetic shrug, but a compelling theological argument. Semi-Pelagian? So are most people in Reformed churches!

I appreciate Catholic worship, not just its form, but that there are typically both day-laborers and blue haired ladies in attendance. In many areas, the diversity in Catholic congregations looks like the United Nations General Assembly. When my church assemblies and governing bodies are clunky and dysfunctional, I envy a hierarchical episcopate. There is something almost primal, clean, about a Catholic understanding of the Church, even if in modern America it also almost incomprehensible. I wince, but usually don’t correct them, when I hear even Catholic friends refer to Catholicism as their “denomination”!  

With all this being true, why when I see the Cardinals in Rome, do I feel unmoved, unsettled, not fascinated, not attracted? It is hard for me to put my finger on it exactly, to find a single word for what separates us. I want it to be more than just “style” or familiarity or preference.

Is the maleness of it all merely incidental? It doesn’t seem that way to me. Why isn’t the maleness of the Catholic church just as easy to ignore as the Catholic teaching on birth-control or transubstantiation? Is celibacy for priests reason enough to remain separate from Catholicism? It hardly seems so. Yet an all-male celibate clergy is emblematic of something that I distrust. It all feels so detached, off-putting, unsuitable for the church of Jesus Christ.

Those clergy—all male, all in their regalia, all vowed to celibacy—flitting around St. Peter’s Square seem artificial and unreal. Isn’t there delicious irony in calling the Catholic church “unnatural”? But that’s what I think. It isn’t real, or at least real enough. My critique isn’t about opulence or materialism. And I’m not a longing for some pure and primitive church from the Book of Acts.

My reaction to the conclave makes me wonder about how others experience my form of Christianity. How are guests in my congregation left to feel? What do they observe among us? Are they deterred by our fixation on Jesus? Probably not. Does it bother them that we insist on hearing from the Bible a lot? Meh. I wonder if it isn’t more about impressions, atmosphere, and ethos—and less about “exclusionary” doctrine. Do they find us authentic? Or do we feel artificial and out of touch?

I don’t want my objections to Catholicism to be about simply “my way of doing things” or being uncomfortable with the unfamiliar. We Protestants owe it ourselves occasionally to figure out why we’re not Catholic—not in the sense of how wrong they are. But if there aren’t significant differences should we go back?

Let me tell you a little bit about Jim Brownson. Longtime and respected New Testament professor at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. Thorough, thoughtful, moderate, careful. Definitely don’t read that as “milquetoast,” but don’t read it as firebrand, radical, or pot-stirrer either. Jim has been very involved in all sorts of RCA committees and assemblies. He seems like a fixture at our annual General Synod. (This may be because he holds the uniquely Reformed ecclesiastical office known as “General Synod Professor.” More on that later.) At Synod, his unofficial role often seems to be finding a middle way, negotiating a compromise between two warring sides. He often wears what I call the “blue helmet”—as in United Nations peacekeepers. Others have it called him the “white knight.” And not completely irrelevant, Jim is the son of the beloved Reformed Church radio preacher of years gone by, Bill Brownson, a warm and pious gentleman. To say the Brownson family is part of the RCA pantheon doesn’t feel like exaggeration.  A few years ago, the thought that Jim would write such a book seemed unlikely.

Jim’s views and conclusions were widely known before Bible, Gender, Sexuality actually appeared, but his stature as centrist, loyalist, and serious scholar make it difficult to dismiss. Yet I don’t want to make so much of Jim-the-person that the content and aim of his book become secondary.

“Reframing” could be the key word in the book’s title. Jim wants to push the discussion to a deeper and wider level, rather than simply assuming we already know what the Bible says. His attempt is to look for the “moral logic,” the why beneath the key biblical texts, while also looking at pertinent scriptural themes and frameworks such as patriarchy, one flesh, procreation, purity, nature, etc. It is not a book of quick fixes, but of scrupulous scholarship.

Jim uses the labels “traditionalist” and “revisionist” for the two camps in the debate about same-sex relationships. He sides with the revisionists, but is still grounded in what I would call “conservative” sexual ethics and evangelical sensibilities. He pushes other revisionists to do more substantial scriptural exegesis rather than relying on “love” or “justice” in almost slogan-like fashion to support their views. Jim demonstrates that one can be a serious, conscientious, evangelical biblical scholar and also support same-sex relationships.

Not surprisingly, reactions are mixed, sometimes volatile. I hear folks use words like “admirable,” “impressive,” and “courageous.” Others say “disappointing” or “saddened.” Second-hand, I hear some in the RCA wonder “how come Western Seminary didn’t fire him yesterday!”

I mentioned that Jim, along with a handful of other people, holds this peculiarly-RCA ecclesiastical office, “General Synod Professor.” This means, among other things, that is he is accountable to the General Synod of the RCA, when most ordained RCA officeholders are accountable to more local bodies such as their consistory or classis. When last summer’s General Synod declared that “any person, congregation, or assembly which advocates homosexual behavior…has committed a disciplinable offense,” it was seen by many as a dubious and problematic overreach of Synod authority into the business of the other church assemblies (regional synod, classis, consistory). But there is no doubt that Jim is directly answerable to the General Synod. In hindsight, was that action of last year’s General Synod intended as a warning shot across Jim’s bow?

Can hearts and minds actually be changed on this extremely controversial topic? Are opinions so polarized, positions staked out so firmly as to make discussion, let alone conversion, impossible? If often seems that way. Maybe Jim didn’t write Bible, Sex, Gender so much to “change minds” as to push us into deeper, truer discussions, to make us better readers of scripture. And perhaps there still is a moldable middle, people unsure, questioning, searching, unsatisfied with the debate the way they’ve seen it so far.

When I think of my own thoughts on same-sex matters, it was and still is a pilgrimage, steps taken over time, some noticeable, others almost imperceptible. For me James Alisons’s “But the Bible says...”? A Catholic reading of Romans 1 probably served as the tipping point, but it alone did not “change my mind.” Bible, Sex, Gender will likely be a small step for some and a milestone for others on their own journeys. For the little pond that is the RCA, it is a pretty big splash.

It was a seminary prof, many years ago, who uttered those words. I had probably heard the word “hermeneutics” for the very first time only a month or so earlier, so it seemed like a sweeping and startling statement.  Hermeneutics?  It all comes down to hermeneutics?

Apparently, the Reformed Church General Synod of 2010 agreed with my professor—more or less.  After the other “Formula of Agreement” partner churches—the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), and the United Church of Christ—took more progressive steps on issues of human sexuality, especially same-sex inclusivity, the RCA invited the partners to an ecumenical conversation about “Scripture and Moral Discernment.” 

Instead of discussing the presenting issues, maybe they could even be considered surface issues, why not take a step back?  Somehow, try to get at what is behind these differences on moral issues, especially sexuality. The answer, it seems, is hermeneutics—from the Greek messenger god, Hermes. Interpretation.  Theories and methods of interpreting, especially texts.  For Christians, particularly the interpretation of scripture. 

For the past couple years, I’ve had the joyful privilege of representing the RCA in this ecumenical conversation. (The other RCA reps were Jim Brownson of Western Seminary, Wes Granberg-Michaelson, former General Secretary and now ecumenical officer, and Taylor Holbrook of Hopewell Reformed Church in Hopewell Junction, New York.) The four “Formula” churches widened the invitation to include the Moravian Church in North America, the Christian Church (Disciples), and the Christian Reformed Church. (Laura Smit of Calvin College represented the CRC.)

When hastily departing for one of our meetings, a church member asked me where I was heading.  “I’m going off to discuss scripture and moral discernment.”  A face of puzzlement and concern conveyed that I wasn’t being understood.  “We’re for it!” I added to ease the confusion.  Indeed we are. 

After our first gathering, in the autumn of 2011, I blogged here about the experience. At that point, we were all taken by the energy, esprit-de-corps and warmth among those who were there.  If we were supposed to be suspicious and fight, that wasn’t the case. The group’s desire to serve and write for the Church of Jesus Christ, even and especially for the person in the pew, was clear and compelling.

A year and a half later our group has completed its work.  “Scripture and Moral Discernment” is now available.  It is, I believe, a good, strong statement.  I hope that it shines with our mutual discovery of the “great depth and richness (of) the bonds that unite us.”  It will, I trust, “strengthen the capacity of churches to walk together in relationships of mutual affirmation and admonition.”

The paper has three parts.  The first section focuses on our unity; our commonality in the assertion that “Jesus is Lord.”  Perhaps originally this sprouted out of the group’s sense of commonality.  Quickly, however, it went deeper than simply enjoying one another.  Our commonality is found in our common Lord.  Because Jesus is Lord, he has claims upon every part of life—morality, sexuality, and more. While Jesus’s lordship pushes us to moral living, it also reminds us that our Christian unity is never found in moral living but in Jesus. “Jesus is Lord” asserts that what unites us is always much greater than whatever moral disagreements divide us. 

The second section is my personal favorite.  It explores our common understanding of what scripture is and how it functions in our life together.  It includes some pithy and provocative statement such as 

• Scripture does not always shed direct light on contemporary questions, but it…shapes and forms our identity, our imagination, our language, and our moral development.
• Scripture is best read and understood in community, in conversation with other followers of Jesus across time and around the world. While disagreement in interpretation sometimes requires loving critique and dialogue as the church moves toward greater clarity, diversity in interpretation is often a gift from the Holy Spirit.
• Scripture is always and necessarily interpreted. Whenever anyone reads the Bible, he or she always brings a framework of interpretation, whether recognized fully or not…At the same time, to say that we all always interpret the Bible does not imply that all interpretations are equally valid.
• Rarely does a single verse, phrase, or passage from the Bible constitute an adequate guide for moral discernment…Rather, every passage and phrase stands within the entire wisdom and arc of Scripture
• We affirm that the sciences and other contemporary sources of wisdom can illuminate our reading of Scripture. We affirm that scriptural interpretation occurs in the flow of human experience.
  (italics are my emphases)

As I tell my college students, “When someone claims they are simply ‘reading’ scripture, while you are mistakenly ‘interpreting’ it, don’t listen to them—unless they are missing a hand and have no possessions.”  Debates about the moral life of Christians are not debates between “Bible-believing” Christians and those who ignore scripture.  On questions of sexuality and other moral issues, all sides look to scripture for guidance and formation. 

The third section focuses on the often neglected role of how scripture functions.  It isn’t just what we say about scripture.  It is also about how we use and read scripture together.  This section might be considered a catalog of “best practices,” a compendium of “how-to.”  It includes things like trust, repentance, prayer, worship, and developing ground rules for disagreement. Hermeneutics is not simply ethereal interpretive principles.  It is also about concrete community.  The experience of this FOA group together is a case in point.

As pleased as I am with the document, no one is under the illusion that it will make biblical interpretation simple and clear cut, let alone end disagreement among Christians over moral issues.  You’re invited to read it, interpret and deliberate, and then respond.