Keep It Simple, Stupid

I used to think that being intelligent meant being complicated.

It just seemed like the more complex, convoluted, and intricately byzantine a person could be, the smarter they appeared. When our culture places so much emphasis on cerebral intelligence (think of the value we place on IQ and ACT scores), it is no wonder that so many of us chase this distorted professorial image – the esoteric thinker, stroking his Rasputinian beard, waxing eloquently about something so mind-blowing and magnificent that none of us simpletons could possibly understand it.

We sit back in awe of such people, with a wonderment that approaches worship, and imagine all the good they’re doing in the world (while consequently feeling inconsequential about our own mundane contributions). “They are so smart,” we mumble, which often merely translates: “I have no idea what he/she just said.”

It seems this phenomenon can infect the Christian ranks as well. We often equate the verbose with the very smart, the opaque with the omniscient. If you really want the good stuff, we intuit, you gotta read the heavy-hitters - Aquinas and Augustine, Bonaventure and Barth, Schweitzer and Schleiermacher (no knock on any of these, by the way). When the Rahnarian run-on sentences become so long that we forget what day it is before reaching the fifth semi-colon, we rest assured that we’re really onto something sophisticated and fresh (though we haven't a clue what that is). 

It is perhaps not surprising that Soren Kierkegaard, nineteenth century Danish philosopher (and no dunce himself) suggested:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.[1]

Well, I don’t exactly share Kierkegaard’s conspiracy theory about theological reflection. I don’t think of Christians as scheming swindlers (well, at least not all of them).  But I do think he’s touching on something important.  It has to do with the relationship between simplicity and power:

Simple truths transform us.

This perennial axiom is nowhere more important than in our presentation of the gospel. It’s what Pope Francis was getting at when he said, “The message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing.”[2] We should not be “obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines,” he urges. “Do not be preachers of complex doctrines, but rather be announcers of Christ.”[3]

So the question becomes, “What is the core, the essential, the most beautiful, the heart of the Christian message?” Try a few of these on for size, taken from Pope Francis’ exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel:

·      “In [its] basic core, what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead.”[4]

·      “Before all else, the Gospel invites us to respond to the God of love who saves us.”[5]

·       “The joyful, patient and persistent preaching of the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ must be your absolute priority.”[6]

·      “The salvation which God offers us is the work of his mercy. No human efforts, however good they may be, can enable us to merit so great a gift.”[7]

·      “What is essential is that the [Christian] be certain that God loves him, that Jesus Christ has saved him and that his love has always the last word.”[8]

What Pope Francis is getting at here is of supreme importance. It’s a message that we’ve heard proclaimed and prescribed by every pontiff before him in the modern era. “The essence of Christianity is Christ,” Pope Benedict XVI said, “not a doctrine, but a person.” Pope John Paul II declared, “We shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person.”[9] “Nothing,” Pope Francis reminds us, “nothing is more solid, profound, secure, meaningful and wisdom-filled than the initial proclamation.”[10]

The point is that the most essential thing, the heart of the Christian message, the essential core of the Gospel is not complicated. It is not complex. It is not a doctrine even. It is a living, breathing reality. It is the simple presence of God among us. It has a gentle face and tender flesh. “Christian doctrine,” Pope Francis pronounces, “is called Jesus Christ.”[11]

The unparalleled brilliance of the mind of God shines forth in the humility of the stable, in the selflessness of a servant, in the scandal of the Cross. It is the simplicity of the Savior, not the complexity, which makes all the difference in the world. For Protestants and Catholics alike, our primary mission is the same – to announce, in word and deed, to each and every human being, the Person of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more important (and more intelligent).

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[1] Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. Charles E. Moore (Farmington, PA: Plough, 2002), 201.

[2] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 35.

[3] Pope Francis, Address to the National Ecclesial Congress of Italy (Nov 10, 2015).

[4] Evangelii Gaudium, 36.

[5] Ibid, 39.

[6] Ibid, 110.

[7] Ibid, 112.

[8] Ibid, 151.

[9] Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 29.

[10] Evangelii Gaudium, 165.

[11] Pope Francis, Address to the National Ecclesial Congress of Italy (Nov 10, 2015).

How Do You Pray?

Pope John Paul II was once asked how to pray. He responded, “This is a simple matter. Pray any way you like, so long as you pray.” This is a reassuring thought for those of us who can get caught up in the “right” or the “wrong” way to do just about anything. Shall I recite a traditional prayer or use my own words? Catholics wonder if they should recite the Our Father or thumb through a decade of the Rosary. Evangelicals have so many acronyms for prayer it’s hard to keep them straight (is it F.A.C.T. or A.C.T. or P.R.A.Y. or P.R.A.I.S.E.?). Long before Nike coined the phrase, Saint John Paul the Great’s approach might’ve been summed up in three words, “Just do it.”

The point is not to get too caught up in forms. Perhaps prayer, best articulated, wasn’t meant to be formulaic at all. The “Little Flower,” Therese of Lisieux once described prayer as a “surge of the heart.” Teresa of Avila, the Carmelite mystic and reformer, suggested that “prayer is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it is taking time to frequently be alone with him who we know loves us.” Nehemiah records the longest prayer in the Bible.[1] A penitent sinner babbled one of the shortest prayers in Scripture, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”[2] Not to be outdone, the ever-impetuous Peter manages an even shorter prayer, “Lord, save me!”[3]

Pope Francis, in a recent homily, turns the question on us. “How do you pray?” he asks.[4] And there are many answers. For those who pray the prayers they learned as children, he responds, “Good.” For those who pray the Rosary, “It is good to pray the Rosary,” he says. For those who talk to the Lord conversationally, “This is good too.” It seems that Pope Francis is simply swimming in the same stream as his Polish predecessor. Pray any way you like, as long as you pray.

And then he surprises us.

If you really want to know the Lord, Pope Francis says, “pick up the Gospel and pray in contemplation.” Letting his Ignatian colors shine, he continues:

“Pick up the Gospel, a short passage, imagine what is happening, and talk to Jesus about it.” In doing so, “your eyes will be fixed on Jesus and not as much on soap operas. Your ears will be fixed on the words of Jesus and not as much on the gossip of your neighbor.”

This is the way Pope Francis prays and he urges us to do the same. With his heart buried in the Gospels and his eyes fixed on Jesus, Pope Francis compels us all with this simple, biblical, Christ-centered practice: “Read the Gospel, imagine, and speak with Jesus. Nothing more.”

So pick up that Bible. Every day. Open the Gospels. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Spend some time in contemplation. Then talk to Him. Let your heart surge. Be alone with He who loves you. Truly contemplate the Savior. Simple. Powerful. Transformative. Just do it . . . today.

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[1] Nehemiah 9:5-38 suggests that in addition to this most verbose prayer, the Israelites also spent at least 3 hours reading Scripture (OT) and 3 hours in confession and worship that day.

[2] Luke 18:13.

[3] Matthew 14:30. This is the shortest recorded prayer in the Bible.

[4] Pope Francis, homily from Santa Marta Mass, February 3, 2015.

Hail Mary

Today is the feast of the Annunciation. Translation: This post is going to cause a reaction. Why? Well, have you heard the joke about the three issues that Protestants have with Roman Catholicism? Mary, Mary and Mary. Certainly not a joke, this feast day in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox liturgical calendar, otherwise known as the Solemnity of the Annunciation of our Lord, is all about Mary.[1] And therefore, it is all about Jesus. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Today we celebrate the coming of the angel Gabriel and his shocking announcement to Mary, a young, poor, Jewish woman who was still months away from proper marriage – “You will be with child and give birth to a son . . . the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”[2] On this day, more specifically, we celebrate Mary’s fiat, the courageous “may it be done to me,” not because it represents any merit outside of God’s grace but because Mary’s freely chosen “yes” was the chosen avenue for God’s very Incarnation and a model of Christian discipleship for us today.

If you are Protestant, you are probably squirming in your chair already. Like me (raised Presbyterian), you may have reacted so much to Mary as to push her out of your consciousness and spirituality altogether. As Evangelical scholar Scot McKnight put it, “Most of us know far more about what we don’t believe about Mary – that she wasn’t immaculately conceived, that she had other children and wasn’t perpetually virgin, etc. – than what we do believe about Mary.”[3]

That’s why McKnight chose to write a book about Mary, encouraging his Evangelical friends to desist from such “reaction formation” and begin to see Mary in a fresh and biblical light. “We are Protestants!” he says forcibly. “We believe in the Bible; Mary is in the Bible; we need to believe what the Bible says about Mary.”[4] Ultimately, he writes, and I use his own words, “Because the real Mary always leads us to Jesus.”[5]

This is what most Protestants miss regarding Marian devotion – the Rosary, Novenas, scapulars and pilgrimages to places like Lourdes or Madjugorje. It is all about Jesus. At least that’s the intended design. Our understanding of, our attention to, and yes, our relationship with Mary can and should point to, awaken our faith in, and strengthen our primary relationship with Jesus.

Yet I’d have to admit as a Catholic that at times Marian devotion can obscure its Christocentric focus. I often joke about Catholics giving the impression that Mary is the fourth person of the Trinity, but only half in jest. The way we talk about Mary, if it doesn’t lead us to Jesus, makes non-Catholics very uneasy. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t also make Mary herself uncomfortable.

Msgr. Peter Hocken, Catholic priest and noted ecumenist, cautions against such a consequential separation, suggesting that the Spirit will convict us if in honoring Mary we obscure the clear centrality of Jesus:

The Spirit will make Catholics uneasy, not about honouring Mary (Luke 1:48), but about all forms and expressions of Marian devotion that downplay or ignore the centrality of Jesus. Anything that obscures the uniqueness of Jesus’ role as mediator between God and the human race will be contested by the Spirit.[6]

And so it should. What we celebrate today has been celebrated for centuries because it marks the moment that God “became flesh and dwelt among us.”[7] It marks the moment when, “with the entrance of the eternal into time, time itself is redeemed.”[8] Mary is “full of grace,” because, in a quite literal sense, she is full of Jesus. On this day, I wonder if we, Catholics and Protestants alike, with our eyes fixed on the Lord, might together be able to join in the angelic chorus. . .

“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.”

Luke 1:29

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[1] Documented celebrations of the feast of the Annunciation date back to the fourth and fifth centuries.

[2] Lk 1:31, 35.

[3] Scot McKnight, The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2007), 5.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 6.

[6] Peter Hocken, The Glory and the Shame: Reflections on the 20^th Century Outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Guildford, UK: Eagle Publishing, 1987), 117; taken from Paul M Miller, Evangelical Mission in Co-operation with Catholics: A Study of Evangelical Missiological Tensions (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 138-139.

[7] Jn 1:14.

[8] Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater (The Mother of the Redeemer), 1.

Desire is the Destination

Having a hard time getting where you want to go? Jesus’ first followers had the same problem.

Three or four miles out to sea, tossed and turned by gale-force winds and swelling waves, the disciples were having a very hard time getting to their destination. They were exhausted, having spent the day feeding thousands in the Galilean hill-country, and they wanted what we all want after a long and trying day - the comforts of home.[1] This is where the storm-battered disciples encountered the first miracle, one that is very familiar to us – Jesus walking on water.

But then we have the second miracle(s). In Matthew’s gospel, we have Peter walking out onto the water to meet Jesus. Mark’s gospel has Jesus climbing into the boat with them and the waters are calmed. Yet in John, perhaps my favorite ending, a most subtle and curious thing happens. After identifying himself and assuaging their fears, the Scriptures say:

Then they were willing to take him into the boat,

and immediately the boat arrived at their destination.[2]

It is easy to glance over this tiny verse. Reading it quickly, the passage seems to do little more than document two ordinary events – Jesus getting into the boat and the boat arriving at its destination. Nothing miraculous here. Upon closer examination, however, we find another beautiful miracle.

When the disciples were willing to invite Jesus in, they immediately arrived at their destination. We’re talking Star Trek, teleportation stuff here. They suddenly zipped across another four miles of tumultuous sea and arrived at the shore where they were heading because they received Jesus among them.

But the Scriptures go further. It wasn’t that the disciples did receive Jesus into the boat. The weary travellers didn’t reach out their hands and help their water-walking leader into the boat. Various translations put it this way:

“They were willing to take him” (NIV)

“They wanted to take him” (NRSV, NAB)

“They were glad to take him” (RSV)

“They were eager to let him in” (NLT)

The passage tells us that the disciples got to where they were going by the mere desire or willingness to receive Jesus. As Scripture scholar Brooke Westcott put it, “Opposing forces were removed. . . the desired end was gained. . . both from the presence of Christ welcomed.”[3] Pope Francis assures us, “Whenever we take a step toward Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms.”[4] And he's right: our desire for Jesus, allowing that deep and holy longing come to the surface, is all it takes. 

Having a hard time getting where you want to go? Maybe the question should be, “Am I willing to let Jesus in?” It seems like the destination is in the desire.

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness;

He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you;

He is the beauty to which you are so attracted;

It is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness

that will not let you settle for compromise;

It is He who urges you to shed the mask of a false life;

It is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices,

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives.

~Pope John Paul II, World Youth Day, 2000

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[1] Five of the twelve disciples were from the seaside villa of Capernaum. Peter and Andrew were originally from Bethsaida but moved to Capernaum. The Zebedee brothers, James and John, were from Capernaum. Finally, Matthew, the former publican and tax collector, was from Capernaum.

[2] Jn 6:21.

[3] Brooke Foss Westcott, John, 1:219; taken from Frederick Dale Bruner’s The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2012), 372.

[4] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 3.