It's Time to Grow Up (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

"All things are lawful for me, but all things are not beneficial. All things are lawful for me, but all things do not edify. Let no man seek his own, but every man [seek] another's well-being." I Cor. 10.23-24

Christian liberty is not meant for ourselves, a fact we too often miss. If after salvation your attitude is, "I am free from the law and the wrath of God, so now I can do what I please," then you have yet to grasp the Christ-like life. There was no drop of selfishness in that Great-Heart, and the life that lives for itself (even in the name of "Christian liberty") is a selfish life, immature and in need of God's hard hand to knock the adolescent arrogance out of it. Understand, that though we are not enslaved to others, we are enslaved to Christ, bought with a price (I Cor. 7:22-23), and the Christ-like life lays down His life for others, for their benefit and edification and even the salvation of their souls (I Cor. 10:33).

It is not about us anymore. It never was. That is the hard yet beautiful truth. All of our misery (globally, nationally, corporately, communally, relationally, and individually) comes whenever we make everything about our self: our wishes, wants, desires, preferences, opinions, prejudices, biases, cleverness, and good intentions. The self-centered life, no matter how pious, is the Devil's playground. Real freedom and real life are only found when we acknowledge and accept the fact that everything is not about us and never will be about us. It is about God: His kingdom, His glory, and His great works that he has done. Get this straight: we belong to Him, and He did not free us from Sin so that we might live for ourselves. He set us free to be His Body and His presence in the here-and-now, and to save a people unto Himself so that he may present them spotless unto Himself, and to let His goodness be good to us so that we might show forth His praises (I Pet. 2:9) in the hope that some might hear and be saved. It's time to grow up, children. Finish with yourself so that you might find true life in Christ (Matt. 10:39).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily 27: How Jesus Trumps Social Justice and Religious Legalism (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"When the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, 'Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.' But Jesus...said to them..., 'You always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.'" Matt. 26:6-13

The woman of Bethany comes to adore Jesus as best she knows how, sacrificing what was most likely her most prized possession. The disciples, being socially conscious religious types, rebuke her "waste" and lack of concern for those underprivileged few who lack a voice in the community. Jesus, the supposed radical reformer, rebukes the disciples instead. Coming off like a cranky fundamentalist, He points out that their pious social activism was missing one thing: Himself. He took priority, even over social justice.

Compare this story to the incident with Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). Martha is busy fulfilling her duties and obligations as hostess, while Mary is lounging starry-eyed at the feet of Jesus. Martha asks that Jesus rebuke Mary for her inordinate abstractionism. Jesus, the supposed Rabbi and teacher of the Law, informs Martha that there is only one "needful thing," the thing that Mary has chosen: Himself. He took priority, even over duty-bound cultural obligations.

There is a certain balance, a certain sanity, to Jesus. We are so easily overcome by various extremities and ecstasies, falling from one miry pit of insanity to the next. We get caught up in global activism, striving by a great moral effort to end world suffering and satiate our white-guilt. And all the while we have forgotten Jesus. We get all tangled up in holiness living, taking great pains to make our attire and activities God-approved so that we won't "smoke or chew or run with girls who do." And all the while we have forgotten Jesus. On the one hand, we make Him into our great leader and radical example, but He ceases to be Lord and the only Salvation. On the other hand, He becomes our ever-disapproving taskmaster and all-seeing eye, but never our Friend and Savior. Jesus anticipates our insanities; He anticipates the heart of man (John 2:24-25). He offered only one corrective to our wild and weary exuberance: Himself. "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). May we strive always and only for such rest.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Homily 25: Unnecessary Divorces: The Errors of both Fundamentalism and the Emergent Church (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God." Matt.22:29

"On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." Matt. 22:40

Christianity, in coming from and leading to God, is the holistic religion. Everything finds its place within its framework and context. Why, then, do we continually find the need to break it up and apart? Why do we always tear asunder what God has joined together? Many errors crop up in the Church, but what is worse than the errors themselves is the hysteria they create that drives people to opposite yet equal errors. Thinking we've found the center, we've merely found another extreme. Such a circus can be see even to this day.

In the second half of Matthew 22, Jesus is questioned first by the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the Jewish skeptics, the post-modernists of their day. Post-modernism, of course, is nothing new. It is merely the old skepticism rehashed, recycled, repackaged, and regurgitated. The Sadducees were ancient pomos. If you don't believe it, then just look at the question that they posed to Jesus (Matt. 22:24-28). It is philosophically tangled. It is ironic. It is subversive. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, and thus their question is deconstructive: it is trying to expose tensions in the resurrection narrative that will reveal it to be artificial. Jesus responds by throwing down a radical notion of his own (Matt. 22:30) that effectively subverts their subversion, and then He quotes the Pentateuch at them (Matt. 22:31-32), the only part of the Old Testament that they liked (similar to how modern day pomos like the gospels but not the rest of the New Testament).

Before Jesus answered the Sadducees, however, his initial response laid down His primary position, His starting place for the whole issue. He exalted both the principles of God ("the Scriptures") and the practices of God ("power of God"). He starts his response by asserting that He holds these two things together. There are many people today (both skeptical and credulous) who will not abide such a union. Some want the principles only, becoming scrupulous scholars and dogmatic doctrinaires. They have systematized the whole with impeccable perfection. God, however, is merely an abstract concept to them, as remote as the furthest star. Despite their tremendous elucidation, one wonders if they truly believe all of their humbug. Meanwhile, others want only the practices, to see angels and demons behind every bush, and fire fall from heaven everyday. They dismiss doctrine as mere shackles, and thus confuse every odd occurrence as having massive spiritual import. Despite their fiery credulousness, one wonders if they even know what they're talking about. The resulting spirituality of the former is a stifling deadness and petrification. The resulting spirituality of the latter is religious insanity and chaos. Both have divorced what Jesus never divorced.

The Pharisees catch wind of the unholy smackdown that Jesus laid upon the Sadducees, and they decide to throw their own hat into the ring. Of course, the Pharisees were the stuffy fundamentalists of their day, again a very old and very common occurrence. The stagnant conservative and the anarchistic progressive are as old as the hills. The Pharisees, being good solid fundamentalists, asked Jesus a very straightforward, simple, yet profoundly doctrinal question (Matt. 22:36). Jesus, in return, provided a very straightforward, simple, yet profoundly doctrinal response (Matt. 22:37-40). Per His usual tactic when dealing with the Pharisees, He attacks their brand of religionism by stating what they already know (vs. 37-38) but then tacking on what they have missed (vs. 39). The Pharisees had "loving God" down pat (or so they thought), but as Jesus pointed out many times before and after this incident, their love towards people was non-existent. Like the Sadducees, in answering their question He also rebuked them.

Also like the Sadducees, Jesus lays down in His answer a twin set of ideas that He holds together in tandem that the Pharisees wanted to separate. He summarized the entirety of their precious "Law and the Prophets" under two commands: love God and then love people. Again, there are many (both credulous and skeptical) who will not abide such a union. For some, the only true command is to love God, to develop the private spirituality of the devotional and the closet. Other people are merely distractions, having no real value in and of themselves other than being teaching tools to learn more about God. They become means to an individual end, no more and no less. Meanwhile, for others, the only true command is to love people, to develop the public spirituality of missional friendship. "Quiet Time" and other devotional trappings are merely stumblingblocks to religious work and activity in the community. Even church becomes a distraction, having no real value in and of itself other than being a convention center to gather more people. The resulting spirituality of the former is an isolated occultism that grows weary of others. The resulting spirituality of the latter is an endless guilt-induced sense of doing that also grows weary of others. Again, they have divorced what Jesus never divorced.

All of these silly, unnecessary divorces that we see back then and still today are fundamentally anti-incarnational. In some way or another, they deny "the Word made flesh". For some, "the Word" in its uncreated exaltation is everything: doctrinal discovery followed by a spiritual introspection that never learns to work itself out "through the fingertips." For others, "the flesh" in its rugged reality is everything: continual immersion and outward activity that has no greater foundation than our own emotional sentimentalism. Both ways are incomplete, and thus are wrong. Both ways have partial truth, and thus are dangerous. Each can bash the others weakness from their own strong point. The former can bash the latter for their "worldliness" and scriptural compromise, while the latter can bash the former for their "insensitivity" and lack of concern for the Kingdom of God. Both positions are right in pointing out the others error. In other words, both positions are right, thus both positions are wrong.

Those who claim to be Christians and those who claim to be "Christ-followers" or "emerging" (or whatever) both need to reexamine what their Master taught. It is not a choice between God's principles or God's practices, not love God or love people, neither is it half and half. The true "Christ-like" life knows the principles of God and thus believes in the practices of God. The true "Christ-like" life passionately and unapologetically loves God and thus passionately and unapologetically loves people. There is no severance or neglect. Both sides of the coin are intimately connected and burning at full capacity. It is the true incarnational life, "the Word" made "flesh". May we from henceforth strive to cease from divorcing the two.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Homily 18: The Christian Imperative (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"And a certain scribe came and said unto Him, 'Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.' And Jesus said unto him, 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.' And another of His disciples said unto Him, 'Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.' But Jesus said unto him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.'" Matt. 8:19-22

This is not about aestheticism nor cold and cruel detachment. This is about the one and only rule of Christianity: Christ first, Christ last, Christ always. Christianity is about following a Person, not adhering to a rulebook or code of ethics. It is true that this Person that we follow is the embodiment of the perfection of all the rules and codes, but that is why we follow Him: He will lead us where we could never go or find. He will lead us to that perfection. He will lead us to Himself.

"Follow me," says the God-man, and that is the imperative. Following Christ may very well lead you away from house and home, and it may not. It may sever all familial ties, or it may strengthen them. The point is that those issues become peripheral rather than central. The central issue is whether or not you are following Christ. That is the mainspring. All else becomes shadows, not because they have no importance whatsoever, but because their importance becomes secondary to the one needful thing, viz., Christ Himself. Follow Him, and "the dead [will] bury their dead," i.e., all other things will be handled (c.f. Matt. 6:33).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

The Salt, the Salty, and the Stale (a lecture by an orthodox rebel)

"Ye are the salt of the earth...." Matthew 5:13

We all know that salt is a preservative: that it fights corruption and enhances flavor. Oft times, however, we forget our place as salt. We are not meant to be stuck in the salt-shaker; we must be in the meat that spoils and the wound that infects. Salt can lose its flavor by being too entangled with what it salts, disappearing into the boiling broth; but it also loses it through disuse, growing stale on the shelf. In Christianity today, we see these two extremes all the time. Some Christians, so terrified of the corruption of the world, make their churches and all affiliate institutions air-tight canisters where a lack of oxygen leaves them dry and brittle. Other Christians, repulsed by the staleness and ineffectiveness of canister Christianity, get so encumbered by the trappings and tastes of the world that they become indistinguishable from it and thus of no consequence to it. Both have forgot their purpose: corruption is to be fought, not coddled or ignored.

The sooner that we stop treating the Christian life like either a siege or a johnny-come-lately spectacle and start treating it like the battle that it is, the better off we will be. There are in equal parts enemies to fight and souls to rescue; there are songs to sing and swords to wield. We are to be in the thick of things, in the very midst of fallen men: fighting, singing, loving, weeping. We must not be like them, but we must not be less than them. We must be more than them, all that they are plus the awesome supernatural presence of God that smacks them across the face like fresh air from the sea. We are neither detractors nor imitators of the world. We are the children of God who carry His burning Spirit right into their very midst.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

Into the Meat-Grinder: Or, On Christ-likeness and Seeing Reality (a lecture by an orthodox rebel)

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil." Matthew 4:1

The Christ-like life is never a matter of anemic safety. It is a head-on collision with the darkness, often in dry and desolate places. The red-cross of Christ is not to be borne by the fainthearted or apathetic. No naivete or cynicism is allowed, because no naivete or cynicism would survive. One's mind, heart, and senses must be attuned to the reality of Evil and the presence of God. Lose one of those two truths and you will fall away from Christ-likeness into ignorance or despair.

"...led up by the Spirit into the wilderness...." God is not interested in placating our preference for limited liabilities and safe investments. If we are being conformed into the image of Christ, then we are cast into the meat-grinder daily. This is a fact that the Enemy does not want you to understand or consider. Everyday guided by God is a step across the divine adventure, and every step contains perils of enormous spiritual significance. The Enemy would take advantage, however, of our one true handicap (i.e., our literal blindness to the spiritual) and convince us that life is a mere traipsing and traversing from one doldrum to the next. Read the word of God; it makes no such claim: We who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake (II Cor. 4:8-11).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010