The Purpose of the Church, Christmas and Creation

Today I turned in a pretty crappy paper. It was actually really interesting reading for it, but I just didn't devote enough time to it. "Technology, the Bible and the Church." That was the title, so it was about how we in the church should think about technology. I did rock a test this morning though which which made up for not feeling all that great about turning in my paper. I should've probably spent the afternoon studying for my last final of the semester that I will take Monday morning. It's for "E & E," or, Ecclesiology and Eschatology. I've had a really bad attitude about this class. Honestly, it's the only class ever in which I've spent the better part of the hour working on other assignments or working on bibliographies for other classes. Really, get this, we had three quizes on different books that we read and two "paparettes" along with a couple tests. I'm pretty sure that I spent, oh, five hours on the three books for the quizes and a total of one and a half hours on the two papers combined. I got perfect scores on all of them. That's pathetic! Anyway, I'm going to spend the day tomorrow studying for that final. I really am. I just don't want to do it right now.

It's supposed to snow tonight. That should nice.

This evening I went to an advent vespers service and then came home and went through Sufjan Stevens Christmas songbook with one of my new roommates, Neil. I told him that a few of Sufjan's original Christmas songs are going to be sung by my kids and he told me I need a family. I agreed. Oh yeah, I moved. I'm stoked about it. I live just a mile from church and the park and the art museum and a whole lot closer to the Walkers and the Bechtels and other folks. Nate and I have commuted together a few times this week which has been nice. I'm heading over to their house Sunday for a Christmas feast. I love their feasts! Wine and singing and dinner and wine. Good times.

Ok, so I read this from Mere Christinity this evening and really thought that it was a good reminder, so I thought that I would share it:

"It is easy to think that the church has a lot of different objects - education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects - military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in hi own room or digging in his own garden (or getting together for Christmas feasts) - that is what the State is there for...
"In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose."

A connection between lots of drinking and lots of sexual activity? No way!

So I thought that I would share two things that I heard on the way to school this morning on the local college radio, 89.1 “The Wood.” It’s the only St. Louis station that plays any rock that is outside the mainstream, and even then they don’t do such a hot job. The good thing about them is that they have no commercials and they don’t talk too much. Anyway, to the two things that I heard on their short news section.

First, a study came out yesterday that was done at Washington University that says that we now know that there is a connection, a “strong” connection, between those who have a high level of drinking and those who have a high level of sexual activity. It therefore said that if you are someone who is given to drinking you ought to go get yourself checked out for STD’s. Now, personally, I always wondered what universities do with all of the money that they get from charging students 40 grand a year (or something like that; I don’t really know how much it costs to go there), but now we know. They do studies to tell us stuff that we know already. Well, ok, I’m sure they do loads of other good studies, but common! The local bum could have told us that!

Second, and this is a lot more positive, the St Louis government will be taking initiative in the city to promote the National Fatherhood Initiative. This is an initiative to promote the importance of Fathers in the development of families and particularly the health of their children. Good job St Louis.

Turkey

This afternoon I went and picked up leaves in this guys yard that I work for accaisionally. When I got there these turkeys were hangin' out. I don't ever remember seeing wild turkeys, so it's kinda cool for me. I know the image carity isn't very good, but it's the best picture that I got.

A Unifying Meal

Ok, another quote from Leithart's book:

Private dinners in the Greco-Roman world were used to inflate the honor of the patron and frequently displayed social divisions in the arrangement and fare of the meal. Pliny was opposing a common custom when he complained that the host of one banquet and his social equals were given food and wine, while those of lower social status were seated at a seperate table and givven ordinary foor and bad wine.

The Corinthians were, in short, simply following standard custom when they introduced social and other divisions into the meal.

But Paul condemned this "standard custom."

Paul did not permit the Corinthians to organize their festivals like the banquets of Roman aristocrats. He did not allow the rich and powerful to take the head seats at the table. He insisted that the meal of the new city should reflect the civic order of the new city. The meal of the new city manifests the perichoretic unity of the members of the Church in one another, which reflects and participates in the eternal perichoretic koinonia of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Me:

In other words, the Eucharist, the meal of Jesus, is socially subversive in that the Greco-Roman society, and, let's face it, our society, divides people by money, education, family ties. But the gospel of Jesus unites. Those who were prohibited from the table are invited as they find their common bond in their relation to the Triune God rather than how much money they make, school they went to, or...

The Last couple of Weekends

So the last post I just mentioned today. I actually meant to mention the last two weekends while I was at it. They were great! Though I have to say, it kinda messed with my school routine, and the last few days, thought I have spent the time in the library, have been really unsuccessful as far as productive studying goes. Anyway, two weekends ago my older brother, who is one of the greatest guys I've ever known, had a competition for lineman's (which is basically high-power electricians) out in Kansas city. So my dad flew into the Lou and he and I made our way over to KC. It was a fun time. I got a little taste for what Jeremy does for work and I got to hang out with him and my dad. They came back to St Louis with me and spent a couple of days here. I really love those guys. It's hard to get better.

Here's a few pictures from our time in KC:

The next weekend my good friend Patrick was out here for the Youth Specialties National Youth Workers Conference. There's nothing really like speading time with someone who really knows you. But I didn't take any pictures - pathetic, huh? - and it's time to go to bed, so that is all I'm going to say about that .

Today's Table

So today is the Lord's Day. I haven't written on this blog about anything that is going on in my life for a long while. Well, since about April. I've just given you (whoever that really is, since I lost any sort of regular reader due to my six month hiatus) some highlights from some "fun" reading that I've been doing. I really don't have the time for any of fun reading except for the first in seven days when I'm commanded to do stuff that is restful. I thought that I might mention what I did today. I do this out of a desire to be encouraging.

This morning I went to church to worship the Triune God. It was glorious, as usual. About ten months ago I started going to Memorial Presbyterian Church, which calls itself "an urban evangelical church seeking to renew the city spiritually, culturally and socially." I loved going to Cornerstone but wanted to join one of the churches that is seeking to the city. Today I went to a couple's house in the church for lunch. It was fantastic! We sat down at the table at about 2:00 and got up at 5:15 - not that I was timing it or anything, i just have a good clock in my head. This was a really wonderful time of eating delicious food (Jenny made pumpkin lasagna, which was really wonderful even though I wasn't expecting it to be all that great) and having great conversation. When I left I made my way over to Crossroads Fellowship where my good friend Nate Walker was going to give the sermon for the evening worship. Crossroad's evening sermons this month are on a theology of food. He had some great things to say and did a really wonderful job at explaining some helpful things for people to understand. There are two holy places in the house, he said, the bedroom and the dinner table. It's in the bedroom where the husband and the wife show that they are not just friends or not just family members or not just brothers and sisters in Christ, but they are one body as husband and wife. It's at the dinner table where people move from acquaintance to friends. One is exclusive while the other is inclusive. I think that I experienced the truth of this today. It's incredible what having a meal with someone does to the relationship between the people that have the meal together. I don't what having the meal this afternoon did for my hosts, but for me it made me feel more like a part of Memorial, glad to be part of the body of Christ, and interested in how Gary is doing in his new job. I moved from someone who care from a distance to someone who cares from across the table. I feel closer and it feels right.

We are not invited into one of the holy places of the house, nor should we be. It has it has its own way of building people together, which is limited to the one that said "I do" to the other. But the dinner table is open. I was one who was blessed today to be invited to sit around one of the holy places of another's house, and it encouraged me to be more intentional in having people join me in the formative act of eating.

Up above is a painting by Mattise entitled "Dinner Table."

Two quotes just because I read them today and I think that Chesterton is brilliant:

"A man's soul is as full of voices as a forest; there are ten thousand tongues there like all the tongues of the trees: fancies, follies, memories, madness, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes. All the settlement and sane government of life consists in coming to the conclusion that some of those voices have authority and others not."

"A man dying for his country does not talk as if local preferences could change. Leinidas does not say, 'In my present mood, I prefer Sparta to Persia.' William Tell does not remark, 'The Swiss civilization, so far as I can yet see, is superior t othe Austrian.' When men are making commonwealths, they talk in terms of absolute, and so they do when they are making (however unconciously) thsoe smaller commonwealths which are called families."

Both of these come from his essay "Questions of Divorce," found in The Uses of Diversity, which is the best collection of his essays that I've read.

"Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed forever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers." - G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Where have we gone? Or are we just invisible?

"We are but of yesterday, and already we have filled all your world: cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market places, the camp itself, tribes, companies, the palace, the senate, the forum"

-Tertullian, A.D. 200

An Alternative Culture in his Back Pocket

So I'm rereading Leithart's Again Christianity and I came on somthing that I thought that I would share since it in some ways speaks to the ideas of identification and seperation, as Newbiging had.

"When an apostle showed up in a synagogue in the diaspora, he preached the gospel into a culture, the Jewish culture, that already had its own myths (he uses this in Lewis' sense of myth, that is, it is an extraordinary story) and rites and rules of behavior. When an apostle showed up in a city in the Greek east, he entered a culture that had its own set of civic myths, inculcated from childhood, recited on public occaisions, celebrated in the festivals and rituals of civic religion. When an apostle ended up in Rome, he entered a citty shaped by myths of Aeneas and Augustus, memorialized in festivals and sacrifices to the genius of the emperor.
"And when the apostle came, he came with an alternative myth (which is callled the 'gospel'), taught his converts to perform rituals of initiation and conviviality (which Christians eventually called 'sacraments'), and called men to an alternative way of life (which he called 'becoming a disciple of Jesus').
"The wandering apostle may have no money in his kit; but ge came to a town with an alternative culture in his back pocket."

Identification, in that he showed the common themes of man and his longing to be part of a biger story (myth) in which he plays a part. Seperation, in that the story of Jesus is diferent than the story of civic Greek or Aeneas or Ceasar.

In that Christians are called to be on mission, we are called to show how the alternative culture centered around the person and work of Jesus is plausible and holds weight against ceasar or materialism or individualism or...

Some Wisdom from Newbigin on Contextualization

"In using this term (contextualization) we start with the notion that every man is in a context which is not static but subject to movement. The culture which he shares is itself something changing and he has a part in directing the change. To speak of contextualisation in this connection means that each man has to seek to understand the way in which Christ is leading his own people towards the fulness of the New Man, and to try to follow and help others to follow. This means that his relation to his culture is a double one: there is both an identification and a separation. A man should love and care for his own people, his own culture, his own traditions. A man who has lost that love is less than human. But it has to be a critical and discriminating love. His participation in the New Humanity through Christ makes him aware of the fact that his own culture cannot be absolutised. It has to grow and change in the direction that the Gospel points out. Every Christian, in his relation to his own culture, must live in this tension - the tension that is always involved in true leadership, for a leader must both be one with those whom he leads and also be more and see more than they."

He finishes his essay with these words:

"In one of his poems written in prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer asks the question ‘Who am I?’ and confesses in the end that he cannot answer the question except by confessing ‘Whoever I am, thou knowest O God, I am thine’. The more ready we are to leave the securities of our small cultural solidarities and to launch out in the quest for the new humanity, the more we shall find that our human-ness depends upon our being able to confess to the one who alone is utterly faithful: I am thine."
- Salvation, the New Humanity and Cultural-Communal Solidarity

Another Rocky Votolato Show and Another Video

So I should really be working on my word study assingment for OT History right now. I'm having a really hard time with it though. I don't know what it is; I just don't feel motivated. Of course, that doesn't justify procrastination, but it does give a little background to why I would post anything on this blog that has been silent for the past 6 plus months. Well also, I went and saw Rocky Votolato at Off Broadway here in St Louis on Monday night and I thought that, despite my camera's memory card messing with the picture, I would share a video that I took. The concert was just as good as I was expecting. It was really nice just to get out and do something out of the ordinary, which has basically consisted of going from home to school and back home again. No, I did go on a youth group retreat with church this past weekend to lead singing. That was a lot of fun. Also I've been playing music at church and learning quite a few new tunes to old songs and new tunes to new songs, which has been great. Anyway, here's the video. The song is called Montana.



Untitled from pjrowan on Vimeo.

Finally an Answer!

This is compliments of David Richmond and it is probably the answer to a bunch of the crazy question we ask.

What's Up

So once again its been a while since I've put anything on here. Actually it's been a while since I've even looked at this blog, let alone since anyone else has probably looked at it. I feel like life has been pretty busy. Basically just school and all. Since I've posted anything Easter passed, which I spent with a bunch of really fun people down in Chattanooga. I went by my old house from when I lived there in seventh grade. I don't really know why I did that. I really wasn't that nostalgic. I kept remembering how I used to skateboard in the garage. That was really fun. My mom helped me find the place on the phone as she looked at signal mountain on Google Earth. Technology is awsome! Here's a couple pictures from the weekend:

Nevermind, that's not working. Hmm..

I'm going back down there this weekend (which I'm stoked about) and then the following weekend I'm heading up to the beautiful state of Washington for a weekend with the Acton Institute, for their weekend conference entitled "Towards a Free and Virtuous Society". It's pretty sweet, they pay for the whole deal and I get to spend an extra day at home visiting the fam. Oh yeah, and I get to learn about economic and social justice and how they relate to the freedom of humanity, their being made in God's image, and how, still holding to freedom, society and government is to promote virtue and morality. I've read a couple of the articles in the reading packet that I'm to have done by the time I get there and I think the whole experience will be very stimulating. I'm going with Gustavo and Stephen Jones. It'll be nice to have some friends to spend the time with and to bounce questions off of.

I picked up five hours a week as a research assistant to one of my favorite teachers here at Covenant, Professor Perry. All I will really be doing is his footnoting for his disertation. I still don't really know what it's on. Something in Luke-Acts. It should be a good learning experience for me and it'll hopefully give me a better idea if I should go on and do the ThM after the Mdiv, which is what my current plan is.


I still want to write something about NTW's lectures on the sacraments but most of it is grounded on a strong belief in the implications of the New Creation. I like that stuff alot, but I'm not yet fully convinced. I think I'll try to read his book The Resurrection of the Son of God this summer (it's a 900 pager!). That'll give me a better understanding of what he believes some of the implications of the resurrection are.


I think that'll be it for now. I wish the pictures would be working so I could share some. No one will probably read a blog entry without photos. I wouldn't.

Oh, here's a video that I took the other day at a concert that one of the dudes from my church gave.






Caleb Travers and Big City Lights on Vimeo

Spring Break

It's been a couple of weeks now since I wrote anything on this new blog of mine. I really don't mean to start it only to drop it after a month like I've done with other interests, and it's not like I haven't had anything to share, but... well, I don't know really why I haven't written anything. This is going to be more of photoblog about my spring break, so you who read this (which is probably Dad and Zach) can have a little look into my life this last week.

The picture up top is of me and N T Wright. David Richmond and I went up to Chicago last Friday to hear him give a couple of lectures on the sacrements. I'll probably post some ideas that I had from that time in another blog, but for now I'll just say that it was very stimulating. After the lectures we went to this bar in the city, The Map Room , which had a selection of 200 beers. It was all around a great short trip. I also took the train for the first time in the US on my way back which was conciderably less exciting than any of my train rides in Europe. I think a lot of that had to do with it going from Chicago to St Louis rather than Aix to Florence.

I had some great meals with friends throughout the week. This is Monday night with the Bechtels and Cheneys chez moi. I really love these guys. I also had dinner over at the Cheneys on Wednesday night, where I once again appreciated Deana's mad cooking skills. Afterward we watched a few episodes of Arrested Developement which is certainly the best television show to ever be taken off the tele before it should have been.


This is a picture of Gusto at Kaldi's that proves that I did do some studying. No, it doesn't prove that I did any studying, it proves that Gustavo did some studying. You'll jsut have to take my word that I did too because he was studying rather than playing with my camera and talking pictures of me. I really like this picture.

This is another picture from our time at Kaldi's when I found out from playing with my camera that I can change the shutter speed.


One of the neighbor houses hosted a nice breakfast Thursday morning to which I brought my camera but I don't think that any of the pictures are worth sharing. That's what happens when you're still trying to figure out how to use your camera after over a year, you end up taking a bunch of photos that don't turn out so well.






Rocky V on Vimeo

This is a song by Owen, not Rocky. I went to a Rocky Votolato concert Tuesday night and this was one of the dudes opening for Rocky. About half way through you can hear me and Karen Morton talking. The video stinks but if you can hear the song the guitar is pretty sweet.






Rocky Votolato on Vimeo

This is Rocky playing "She Was Only in it For the Rain". I took these clips on my camera but unfortunately the memory stick that I bought a year ago now from Costco has never come through for me, so there's little glitches throughout these clips. I hope you enjoy these because these are the first videos I've put up on the internet. Ok, so these aren't working too well. I'm going to try to figure it out tomorrow. Ifigured it out. But now there's a larger gap than I would like between the videos and the writing underneath them. I'm still trying to work out how to do all these nifty blogging things.

Saturday night the Mortons hosted a little wine and cheese party which are two of my favorite things to consume, so I went. No, I went 'cause the Mortons rock. It was also a surprise birthday party of sorts for Luke whose birthday was the day of the concert that we were all at. This a picture of Luke and Keifer.

Sunday afternoon was spent with some of my roommates out on our deck. It was a great time of just hangin' out, grilling, playing some music and all around just enjoying one another's company. This is Pat, Justin, Jeremy and Luke.

So, with getting to do all of these fun things, getting some studying in, working in some people's yard for a few mornings, I had a great break. Now I'm just looking forward to Easter Break when I'll be going down to Chattanooga.

Baxter on Going to Battle

"Satan will not be charmed out of his possession: we must lay siege to the souls of sinners, which are his garrison, and find out where his chief strength lieth, and lay the battery of God's ordnance against it, and ply it close, til a breach is made; and then suffer them not by their shifts to repair it again"

- Richard Baxter

Just a note:

Thinking through how God is redeeming all of his creation, which means our physical as well as as our spiritual bodies (as though those can be seperated), when I read the puritans and their spiritual offspring I always wish that they would use a different term than "soul". But I have to always remind myself that they did not pit the soul against the body. Or at least they didn't in the same way we moderns often do. The best of them thought that the testing grounds of theology is praxis, life lived. They wanted to live, like Death Cab for Cutie, where soul meets body.

Death and Resurrection

A week and a day ago one of my uncles died. We saw it comming. In many ways this was one of those wierd deaths that give you more relief than sadness. Don't get me wrong, we were all sad. But his body had been giving him mortal trouble for the past two years, and it had failed him so much that, as my dad mentined to me after he went and visited him two weeks ago, Bill Webster was no longer Bill Webster. I've kind of felt this last week that my emotions against death should be stronger, that I should hate it more and more. One of the emphases here at Covenant is the teaching that God's creation was glorious, but that now its a gloirious ruin needing to be put to rights. This is were the mixed emotions that Christian death brings can maybe make a little sense.

Check this out:

But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish person! (yes, that's in the Bible) What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of what or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body... So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.

-1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42

Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and dies it bears no fruit. Untill Christ returns, unless our bodies give way we will not experience the imperishable bodies.

Now what kind of body does my uncle have? With what kind of body does he come? He comes with one that can be hugged and one that can go fishing like it used to love to do.

The other night I read an essay by Chesterton in which he says, writing against Marry Baker Eddy and the idea that there can be any purely spiritual religion (a heresy unfortunetly that the Church has found herself a part of at times), "Hope has not been thought of as something light and fanciful, but as something wrought in iron and fixed in rock."

Jesus was the firstborn among the dead. His resurrection is our hope. He rose with a physical body and for that reason Christian death is a bag of emotions. We are going to be raised in glorious bodies to a glorious physical new creation that is as solid and real as iron and rock. But in order to be raised in glory we have to suffer in death.

This helps me understand the strangness of Lenten Lord's Days. They're somber and joyous at the same time as we wait for easter.

Mount Rainier National Park Turns 108 Years Old

One of the most regular sights of my life (when it hasn't been cloudy) is Mount Rainier. Today is the 108th aniversary of the National Park and so I thought that I would share a few photos. Of course photos don't do it justice - though pretty close, so anyone who hasn't seen it will have to go to the beautiful state of Washington and check it out. While your there run over to Vashon Island, you'll be glad you did.

235,625 acres

1,173,897 visitors a year

14,410-feet high

25 glaciers

Here are two of the main dudes who helped establish the conservation of our national parks, President Teddy Rosevelt and John Muir. By the way this is at Yosemite, not Mount Rainier. A shame, I know.

A few photos to delight in

First, the "mundane":













This is my little brother Ethan. I really hope the ability to do his hair like this is duly appreciated 'cause not all of us can do this anymore.


And for the extraordinary:




This is from Annabelle Mauss' baptism party when Trevor decided to start a new tradition. When his kids get baptized (woot woot!) the other kids will get to spray him with silly string. I think this is a briliant idea and one that I will probably knock off. Because AB was the one baptized and because she's can't hold a silly string can yet we who are going to be blessed by participating in the nurturing of AB in the ways of the Lord who were hanging out chez Mauss' Sunday afternoon got to spray daddy.

Here's Nate and Charlie goin' at it with Kriten and AB in the backgroound.


By the way, the extraodrinary aspect of this is not the silly string but baptism.

Alright, now for an explanation. For any of you who spent Sophomore year at Covenant High school in the glory days (when Henry V was taught how its supposed to be taught), you will have had your life changed by learning two of the most rousing speeches ever given to encourage troops to fight. The first of these is in the middle of the siege of Harfleur. His men are retreating and he tells them “once more to the breach, dear friends, once more!” They take Harfleur and continue on to beat the French at Agincourt.

I retreat on a regular basis. And this despite Jesus’ words to Peter when he said that he will build his church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Jesus is taking the breach as he sits on the throne and has invited us to participate. I probably won’t talk about all of the ways that I retreat on this blog - some things just don’t need to be published on the internet - but rather I hope that this will be a means of me thinking through some of the ways in which retreat is not possible or desired. The picture of the earth on the bottom of the page is a reminder that all of the earth is to shout for joy to God. Of course it’s not shouting for joy all of the time; in many ways it’s groaning in pain. But that’s where the fighters need to go to the breach and take the siege. So this will probably be my thoughts and reflections about things that I’m thinking through and learning, but most likely it will mostly be about life, what I doing with friends and the like. One of the most important things to realize is that loving the “mundane” is one of the best ways to take ground. So there will probably be more mundane that high falootin’.

One of the best writers ever about the joys of the mundane is G. K. Chesterton. Today is the anniversary of the publishing of an obscure short story written by him in 1901, which would define his work as a popular philosopher and critic. In honor of him, and because this conveys some of the struggle of loving all of life and going to battle with against it all to bring it into subjection to the King but also constantly wishing things were different, here’s one of the million brilliant quotes that speak to the beauty and messed-up nature of life.

"For our titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the old acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stoned, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. "

Fierce delight and fierce discontent. That’s what I want.

Ultimate Journey - Sky Diving Down a Mountain

I was thinking that it would be best to explain the title of this blog, my desire for what role it will play in my life (probably not a very big one) and why I would even think about adding one more blog to blogdom, but I saw this video and thought that I would post it. I always say that there's nothing like jumping out of a plane and baring missing jagged peeks as I soar around at over 100 mph. Good times!