Ascension over American Exceptionalism

Whether you go to church or not, everyone knows Christmas and Easter and its Christian roots: Christmas remembers Jesus’ birth and Resurrection is self-explanatory. You don’t have to believe the stories to be part of the festivity. Daniel Dennet, an atheist philosopher, has little tolerance for religion but sings “O Come All Ye Faithful” by heart in Latin on Christmas Eve. But there is another important holy day in the Christian calendar which has not made the same leap into the secular world. Ascension day. Actually, Thursday (5/25) is Ascension day and the fact that most are clueless about it, including Christians, is evidence of its cultural irrelevance. Which is ironic because in the Apostle’s Creed, a basic statement of faith for Christianity, talks about ascension right smack in the middle with the Christmas and Easter story. In fact, the ascension story gives Christianity its unique texture, its missional energy and amazing adaptability, because it became an antidote to exceptionalism, the inward pressure of all institutions, and it might be the antidote for our day.

The basic story of ascension is that Jesus, after resurrection and spending 40 days with his closest friends, said farewell and disappeared. It sounds fishy to secularists, as it did to me when I was working through the Christian story for myself. It seems so convenient for the first followers to reply, “Well Jesus disappeared,” when seekers asked to see the resurrected Jesus with their own eyes. But here is a historical anomaly: It was only after this story that the first followers became missionaries, going out sharing the story of Jesus as a story that mattered to everyone they met. This is because the story of ascension rapidly scattered this new movement, for it neither had a tomb or a body to point to and say this is ground zero. With Jesus disappearing, Jerusalem could not claim for itself an exceptional status. Whether you believe or not. You’ve got to appreciate this brilliant move.

Lamin Sanneh, a professor of world Christianity at Yale Divinity School and an expert on Christian and Muslim history, credits this quality of non-exceptionalism that allowed Christianity to grow, adapt, and express itself within an ever-changing array of cultural and historical contexts. This non-exceptionalism is appreciated when contrasted to Islam, which remains a faith rooted in specific geographical places, Mecca and Medina, and to a single language, Arabic. Translations of the Quran ….

(please continue to read at North State Journal)

How Art Saved My Marriage

My wife, Suyun Son, picked up the painter’s brush again. The brush had been locked up in a storage box for ten years. Our third and final child was now in the hands of public school. Time, in large chunks, suddenly made itself available so my wife began to paint again.

One of her first paintings is “Genesis,” capturing the childlike exuberance God must’ve felt when She was creating the world. She stretches the canvas of sky and earth, then throws colors at it, blues and whites of clouds and sun, yellows and reds of trees and flowers. God as a painter and creation as Her masterpiece, and as such, Genesis is not just about God’s creativity but the artist’s creativity. It is art about art. This is my favorite piece and it was exhibited with six other pieces in a solo exhibit on May 12th. As happy as I am to see the start of her career — not to mention extra cash as a local art collector bought her piece titled “Door” for his wife on Mother’s Day — I am most glad for what art has done for our relationship.

She began painting and it saved our marriage.

For ten years we’ve only talked about parenting and kids. I’m sure…

(please continue to read at Cultural Weekly)

Why I Need to Hear a Black Preacher Regularly

The church I co-pastor has been rotating between three preachers of different ethnicities for a year. But it was only last week that I began to realize how hearing only one preacher voice at at time affects how we view God.

Our ears naturally come to hear Jesus talk like our preacher — their voice stands in for his. Jesus’ words come through the preacher’s language and tone. If we hear it every week, we start to assume that Jesus, two thousand years ago, preached in English. Our head knows Jesus spoke Aramaic, but your heart hears Jesus whisper in English.

This starves our theology. If Jesus speaks like a white person, he must be white.

The power of language can override our visual assumptions. Most American movies and pictures depict Jesus with pale skin and blue eyes, something the black church has never bought because most black congregants hear Jesus speak through the cadence of the black preacher. When I hear a sermon from a Korean pastor, Jesus suddenly speaks in Korean, and I see him teaching the Sermon on the Mount sitting lotus position and wearing a Korean dopo. When we speak a language, we breathe in all its assumptions.

The first few times I heard Elder Gerald preach at our church, the way he had Jesus speak to Peter as “my man,” to the disciples as “his homies,” and reprimand the Pharisees with, “ain’t that the truth,” I laughed — the language was novel and unexpected…

(please continue to read at Sojourner)

SpaceTime

Space

I am standing in the rain

between Broadway and 42nd

for centuries people pass me

I begin to think I’m a ghost

when a child stops and asks me

what are you seeking?

I answer

a question

to en-flesh me

Time

Everything eventually

falls into place

Everything given time

falls   a   p   a    r    t

We live between…

(please continue to MadCrabJournal to read rest of the poem)