Acts: We are this people

Here is a part of script of a sermon I wrote. It is part of a series that me and Josh Mitchell are taking a group of youth and young adults at our local church. This is an attempt at an introduction. I say attempt because it turned out to be quite long and the subject matter calls for a series in and of itself. The reason I want it to be an introduction though, is because I feel it is of utmost importance for the church to continue to see itself in the context of the full revelation of God to his people. A revelation that connects Creation, Fall, the call of Israel, the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Sending of the Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Church.

Narrative of Redemption in broad strokes:

• Last week Josh talked about the bigger picture. In introducing the book of Acts he moved further and further back until we came to the beginning of the narrative. The premise from which all the rest of the scriptures derive. “In the beginning there was God” . And this God is a loving God, Three in One, eternal community, eternal love.  This God creates a creation which would reflect his glory, and a creature who would be like him, who would dwell with Him and in Him. This is the groundwork for the rest of the narrative. Until we grasp the love of the Triune God, the desire for a creation to love, create, and live with we cannot understand truly what God has done and is doing in the world.

• Then there is the turn… where the creatures who were intended to love God, who were intended to live with him, determine that they are better suited with out God, they are better suited if they would not listen to God, better off deciding what is good and evil without him.

• This is the great conflict: Humanity refuses to acknowledge that it is creature, not creator. Thus, humanity refuses the offer of God, to live as his people and in his community. And yet, God will not capitulate to humanities attempts to construct their own community. Communities constructed on distorted versions of truth, versions of truth that begin with ‘did God really say?’

• The people of Israel can be seen as a microcosm of this great conflict. Even the people God calls and covenants with, turn to reject his offer, his kingdom.In 1 Sam. 8, “it is me that they have rejected as their king. Just as they have done from the day that I brought them up from Egypt until this very day, they have rejected me and have served other gods” (1 Sam. 8: 7-8).Yet he continues to offer himself, “Although it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it will be said to them, “You are children of the living God!” (Hos. 1: 10).

God calls a people

• How will this loving, creative, mysterious God bring his creation back to it’s intended mode of existence? He will call a people, a people which would be a glimpse, a picture of the hope for God’s restored community. The Kingdom of God manifests particularly in this community. Thus he speaks to show a people a way of life that will bear the image of the Triune community, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. He calls a people and he forgives this people, he washes this people and bestows his holiness upon them. Dwelling with this people is his intent. This people display a relationship between humanity and Trinity that God desires for all of humanity. A people called out of sin and idolatry and in to holiness and worship, life with and in reverence to, the Triune God.

God sends a people to all people

• God then sends this people in to the world. To declare his love for all people, for all nations. To pronounce his covenant to all of humanity. The king has issued a decree, “come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, come to me and have life, eternal life, abundant life, true life, whole life, full and everlasting life. Away from evil, away from lies, away from these fallacies, those unfounded claims of peace and prosperity” and this people are to be the heralds. By word and deed, they are heralds.

• Life is offered to this people in the light of the cross, offered in the light of the suffering servant, the one who defines love as giving up life for others. It is in the light of Easter morning that this people receive life. This is a king who has defeated the last of his enemies, death itself has been destroyed. This kingdom knows no end, life here does not stop at death. This is a kingdom that will reign in grace and truth, it is kingdom that does not defeat and conquer by the sword, but rather, one which overcomes by love. They, like their God, will not relent, will not capitulate to the false kingdoms of humanity. Assured of their position, they do not declare themselves ‘lords’ or ‘kings’, but servants. In this there is a combination of confidence and humility that allows for this people to display the love of the Triune God.

Acts shows us this people:

• The community that we encounter in Acts is a community who have received by faith in Jesus of Nazareth, life in this kingdom of God, life witnessed by the presence and reality of God dwelling with them.

• At Pentecost, the day when God fulfills his promises to his people, God establishes himself with this community by sending the promised Holy Spirit, who will guide them in to all truth, who will come with power, who will come as a comforter.

• Pentecost represents the initiation of a new age. This is why Peter quotes from the prophet Joel in Acts chapter 2.

• In the light of this understanding, this people become a people driven by faith in the power of God which brought Jesus back from the tomb.

• They are a people who live with a faith that expects imminent actions from a living God.

• They are a people driven by a hope that this Jesus brought the first fruit of the eternal kingdom which was still to come.

• They expect this kingdom to come at any moment. Every present moment is a moment that carries the potential to become a moment where God interrupts the line of history. This develops this people into a people who love and cherish God, who love and cherish one another, and who love and cherish Others.

• This people are a sent people. God has created them for a purpose, that the world may know that it is ‘world’, that it might by way of contrast, and sometimes by way of conflict, understand that God lives. It is important, therefore that this people understand and know their identity in Christ. Not only individually, but also collectively.

• They strive to continue to teach one another that they are God’s people, sent to this world that it might be saved. Equipped with the Good News, directed and instructed by the Holy Spirit of God himself, this people know and act on the basis that God is King, and that he is coming.

This introduction to the people in the book of Acts functions to introduce us, the present day church, to ourselves. This story is our story. We are this people.

No one wants to be called a ‘hipster’ (especially hipsters)

I was given an article a few months ago about the emergence of what has been deemed ‘hipster Christianity’. It was written by a guy named Brett McCracken, the author of a book called ‘Hipster Christianity’. I would like to get the book at some point, but the article will have to suffice for now.

The article is a brief look at what McCracken sees as an emergence of a new ‘subculture’ within American evangelical Christianity. His observances are mingled with an overriding critique of the move. His critique is multifaceted, centering around the idea that the new culture of American evangelical Christianity, which he labels ‘Hipster Christianity’, is really not all that new. In other words, what they are doing is simply a reproduction of what  the previous generations did in their attempt to be accepted by our American culture.

Christianity and cool:

McCracken sees that Christianity has been plagued by an attempt to be ‘cool’. He traces this back to the 60s, noting that it was when the hippies began to follow Jesus that things like Christian rock, youth ministries, and communes brought new fervour to American Christianity and it’s pursuit of cool. A people who grew up in a culture of revolution, came to the faith unafraid of looking at things in a new way. The ‘Charismatic movement’  also added a very emotive, personal and Spirit-filled element to what was seen to be a staid and traditional faith. These elements carried through in to other various attempts at ‘cool’, which later manifested in various expressions of ‘just how you like it’ church services. Here is McCracken:

“Evangelicalism in the ’90s had a firmly established youth culture, built on the infrastructure of a lucrative Christian retail industry and commercial subculture. Huge Christian rock festivals, Lord’s Gym T-shirts, WWJD bracelets, Left Behind, and so forth. It was big business. It was corporate. It was schlocky kitsch. And it was begging to be rebelled against”

Hipster Christianity, then, according to McCracken is the rebelling that evangelicalism has been begging for since the 90s.

“They sought a more intellectual faith, one that didn’t reject outright the culture, ideas, and art of the secular world. In typical hipster fashion, they rejected the corporate mentality of the purpose-driven megachurch and McMansion evangelicalism, and longed for a simpler, back-to-basics faith that was more about serving the poor than serving Starbucks in the church vestibule.”

In a way it’s a return back to the hippie/hipster roots of modern American Evangelicalism. But here, I think McCracken gives valuable insight, he states that what is happening now is the reverse of what happened in the 60s.

“But the Jesus People were secular “hipsters” first, then—having converted to Christianity—began to shed their hippie clothes and customs to form communities that were set apart, ultimately becoming their own subculture (e.g., Jesus People USA). Today’s Christian hipsters are doing the reverse. They seek to break out of the Christian subculture. The clothes and customs they shed are nothing less than the evangelical establishment itself, formed through decades of attempts at cool Christianity”

This is what forms the basis for McCracken’s critique then. He finds it worrying that ‘Hipster Christians’ are abandoning Evangelical subculture to find solace in a secular culture. Though this is often done with the mantra ‘the church has fallen in to the hands of modern american culture!”, what McCracken is arguing is that Hipster Christianity is mimicking the same cycle and only capitulating to a different secular culture. Thus, though they are claiming that they are moving away from church culture that is too melded with modern America, corporations, capitalism, and all the evils of Right-wing empires, they pour themselves into the mold of the new secular culture instead.

What drives the hipsters: Coolness or faithfulness?

McCracken’s description of the ‘Hipster Church’ reaches pretty wide in my opinion. (Including church’s like Mars Hill in Seattle. I don’t know what definition of ‘hipster’ most people are working with, but Mark Driscoll doesn’t quite fit into mine). Because McCracken is making the definition of ‘hipster christianity’ it is hard to say what is and what isn’t right about his description of the ‘movement’. If you don’t know what an apple is, and I tell you it’s a brown, bitter tasting, root vegetable, then you would be hard pressed to disagree with me.

What he does is identifies trends, and it is true, a lot of the trends he names, he does so accurately. Things are changing in the American evangelical church. Changes in worship, old hymns instead of CCM style music; changes in theological parlance, new creation and community/ecclesiocentric understanding of salvation instead of ‘soul-winning’ and heaven (esp. the up in the air, cloudy version); concern for creation and environment instead of apathy towards such concerns. These things are all changes that are occurring in evangelical christianity today, but to name them all ‘Hipster’ seems to reduce them to mere whims of cultural preference when in reality, these changes are all funded biblically and theologically.

For example, McCracken suggests that many of these ‘Hipster Christians’ prefer serving the poor rather than Starbucks coffee in the vestibule. They have a revived sense of justice, for both people and planet, and the end result will be positive. This concern for justice, McCracken does concede, is a positive aspect of this new shot at cool. However, the end is not always the most important concern when speaking of discipleship and ecclesiology, the means and the motive also needs to be considered. For if churches are simply becoming more concerned about justice because the culture demands it, it remains submissive to the wrong forces. What happens when this cultural fad is discontinued? Will the church then opt for Starbucks again? This is McCracken’s concern, and it’s fair.

But I don’t think that the desire for justice and righteousness can simply be said the be a PR move for the church. The theological and biblical weight is too evident for such suggestions. The Scriptures make it clear that the church is to love justice because her God loves justice. If it happens to be an attractive aspect of our faith in this present culture, then it’s a good side effect, but not the main driver of the shift. This shift is good because it a change guided by scripture, tradition and the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, McCracken’s tone presents most of the changes negatively, as if ‘Hipsters Christians’ are unable to have deeper motives for their passions and interests than the desire to be accepted by the cool kids. They are only singing old songs because its cool, not because they have determined through theological thought and the guiding of the Holy Spirit that the older songbooks connect their local community with the greater history of what God has been doing since the beginning of time. His description, therefore, mostly comes across as an abrasive dismissal of the changes that are occurring rather than a respectable discussion of their validity.

A more sustainable challenge:

That said, one thing he points to did present a challenge that I think is sustainable. This came when he was describing how ‘Hipsters’ are quick to appreciate the smaller and simpler things in life. Admiring the goodness of creation and the creativity and craftiness of human vocation. He says this, and does seem to admire it, and then offers this challenge:

“On the other hand, some wonder if hipster Christianity goes too far in embracing worldly things—especially when those things arguably become stumbling blocks or idols in the Christian life. Some suspect that its rebellious embrace of formerly taboo behaviors actually might do more long-term harm than good.”

He goes on to describe that part of the rebellion of the ‘Hipster’ movement is to indulge in practices that were, in conservative evangelicalism, largely forbidden. McCracken again:

“If hipsters cannot completely overthrow the structures that bind them, they can at least destabilize them by engaging in hedonistic behavior: smoking, drinking, cursing, sexual experimentation, and so on. It’s about freedom, partying, and transgression—not in the Jersey Shore, frat-party sense (unless ironically), but in the “bourbon cask ales taste good and I don’t care if I get drunk” sense. Hipsters ridicule bourgeois concerns such as “cigarettes cause cancer” and “drinking should be done in moderation,” opting instead to recklessly embrace such vices with “why not?” abandon. If you aren’t willing to engage in at least some of this “subversive hedonism,” you will have a hard time maintaining any hipster credibility.”

The reason that I found this so cutting is that I have basically found myself thinking these thoughts many times. Especially the one about cask ale… And I think he is right here. I will admit that I have too often forgone the ‘rules’ of Christian living and embraced these ‘hedonistic’ subversive and destabilizing practices (though I wouldn’t quite name them as such). That said however, it is hard to argue that this would be that much of a ‘moral’ decline from the state that the American evangelical church is in today. Divorce and pornography come to mind most readily. But let’s not point fingers, at the end of the day the matter is a misunderstanding of what it means to follow Jesus. For it means neither the rule creating, legalistic evangelicalism of the past, nor, the ‘why not?’ abandon of today that gives structure to the practices of discipleship.

In reading a book by NT Wright (who, ironically, is one of the author’s McCracken associates with ‘Hipsters’) he shows how neither the morality which upholds rules with strict order, or the morality which advocates for each person to follow his or her heart in matters of right and wrong, can be adapted in the church. Instead, the church needs to learn how to foster the building of character. Which is the development of a particular second-nature, which shapes people and gives them the skills necessary to navigate secular culture while displaying Christ faithfully. This does challenge the ‘Hipster’ Christian today, to understand and realise that it is not about doing whatever feels right, or whatever is cool, or tasty, but it is about acting in accordance with the character which the Holy Spirit is developing in the body of Christ. A character that takes work and practice, that is affected by practices, and habits, and that acts as a rudder in our pursuit of the King of Kings. McCracken’s concerns for the ‘worldliness’ of the Christian hipsters should be heeded but what is needed is not a return to legalistic formalised rule keeping. Rather his concern should produce the inculcation of character formation as a fundamental aspect of discipleship and worship.

Final Word:

I found the article by McCracken to be very insightful, though in places, I felt that his descriptions carried an implicit negativity that is unwarranted. The changes he notes, are for the most part, changes that I would say can be founded biblically and theologically. Though there probably are instances where the changes are more driven by the quest for cool than the desire for faithful Christian living, to write off all of the changes as flighty cultural fads is off-base. His warning about the ‘worldliness’ of the movement should be heeded, though his alternatives need to be explored. The recovery of notions of character and virtue seem to be appropriate ways forward for this discussion. Many of the changes McCracken points to are changes that needed to happen in the church, and that they are changes which, when driven by motives of faithfulness to the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, will be changes for the good of the church and thus, for the good of the world.