I present myself afresh as one pledged to your service, as one for whom You paid too much, as an unlikely prize for whom You decided to fight hard and to the very end to make Your own.  I confess my position as Your possession.  In response to your hard fought ownership over me, I reaffirm my loyalty.

Yet this stage in my life feels unreasonably demanding.  It seems to cost too much.  It feels overpriced.  In fact, perhaps I’ve taken the wrong cup from Your hand.  Maybe there was another one less bitter, even if less full.  Or perhaps You extended the right cup to the wrong person.  Its sweetness is so delightfully sweet… but its bitterness so distasteful.

Forgive me.  What I mean to say is that I present myself afresh as one pledged to Your service.  Your demands are not as unreasonable as the exorbitant costs expended to gain me, as if a squirming, half-loyal, temperamental servant could be so treasurable.

As one stumbling in the haze, help me to stumble forward.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen.

I took a writing course with Lauren Winner when I was at Duke.  Lauren’s a really good writer, and she did a great job assigning us the sort of creative writing assignments that really good writers tend to put themselves through… like tell a story only through dialogue or write the same scene from the perspective of multiple narrators or write a sentence evoking the emotion “love” without using the word “love”.  Well, in the linked post, my wife has given herself a rather unique writing assignment: describe your life in another English-speaking country using their indigenous dialect.

Really, really good.  Check it out….

The Resurrection is the premise for a hopeful realist.  That Christ punctured a hole in Death’s impenetrable ramparts and then walked through it signals that something freakishly amazing is underway—the system (of evil) has a virus.  Not only is our world ex-Eden and pre-Parousia, but invaded by the powers of New Creation.  The hopeful realist has ground for hope not only because of Jesus’ forthcoming return, but because mysterious Resurrection powers at work even now, enlivening (cynic-)saints for divine service and seeping into darkened souls whose eyes are on the verge of opening wide.

So eschatology is critical for understanding idealism, realism and cynicism as perspectives in the life of faith.  If the idealists’ eschatological shout can be reduced to “now,” and the cynics’ eschatological cry reduced to “never,” the hopeful realists can claim “already… and not yet.”  I was reading the Greek text of John’s Gospel the other day and realized that the Johannine take on this can be rendered, “coming… and now is” (see Jn 4:23, 5:25).

The great challenge of the hopeful realist is to conjoin mourning with rejoicing.  We groan with creation (Romans 8:18-25) in longing for the day (the Day) when all things are made new.  We also rejoice that glimpses persist hinting that the newness is already underway.  Groaning and celebrating simultaneously—these are the honest joint disciplines for the hopeful realist in a world out of kilter, yet assured a new life.

(my study space is a hole in one of these awesome walls)

Below is the list of papers and their presenters for the Durham New Testament Seminar this term.  I am very thankful that here at Durham the Seminar meets every week, rather than fortnightly (which is a great British way of saying “every other week”).  On the off-weeks not listed below, our NT Faculty members will be leading the doctoral candidates in translations and discussions of early Jewish and Christian texts pertaining to Scriptural interpretation (Selections from 4 Maccabees, Pseudo-Philo, and Qumran are on the roster).

I must say, I am quite pleased to see two seminars directly concerned with John’s Gospel (my field of research).  As a PhD candidate with a thesis project I deem worthwhile and exciting, it is both thrilling and intimidating to see a scholar of Prof. Bauckham’s rapport writing on something similar!  I am sure to learn much by Easter….

16 January: Dr Wendy Sproston-North, “The Anointing in John 12.1-8: A Tale of Two Hypotheses”

30 January: Prof Francis Watson, “Prologue” to Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective

13 February: Prof Richard Bauckham (Emeritus Professor, University of St Andrews), “Divine and Human Community in the Gospel of John”

27 February: Dr Rodrigo Morales (Humboldt Research Fellow, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich), “1 Corinthians 6.9-20 and Baptismal Participation in Christ”

12 March: Dr Martin Kitchen, “Reading the Transfiguration: Characters and Plot”

The New Doctoral Programme…

Another exciting bit of news to pass on is that Durham’s Department of Theology is now offering a new option for potential PhD applicants.  The new “Integrated PhD” extends the traditional British doctoral program from 3 years to 4.  The clearest distinction between British and American PhD programmes is that the former does not require a list of courses but directs all emphases on a thick, specialized thesis to be completed after three years of research and writing under a primary and secondary Faculty supervisor.  The American program is usually 5 years long, with the first 2 years devoted to coursework and a considerable amount of time focused on taking a range of “comps,” or competency exams.  The result is that the longer American route is deemed more well-rounded, and the shorter British path a bit more specialized.  Here in the UK, it is assumed that British PhD candidates will have already developed the competencies tested after a couple of years in the American system.  The reality for American students entering a British program is that many of us are lagging behind, especially in terms of skills in German and French.

For this reason, it has become standard for the British programmes to expect of American applicants another Masters’ degree in addition to the M.Div.  Durham’s new Integrated PhD is essentially an MA + PhD program, but students who are accepted will presumably get to avoid the stressful (and costly) process of re-applying for the doctoral course (as well as for the visa).  The programme makes great sense and would be ideal for U.S. students who are interested in studying in the U.K. but have yet to gain enough confidence and clarity for a proper research proposal (a, if not the, major component in the application process) and need a bit more confidence in the area of languages and background material.

If you are so compelled to torture yourself with doctoral studies (like me), then this is a great option to look into!

I really appreciate Joel’s emphasis on my conviction that cynical, jaded, and disillusioned Christians may be the most suited demographic to bring reform to the church in the West… if they forsake their  cynicism.

The folks God so often enlisted in His program to reform Israel were not idealists reeking with cheery optimism and full of trite platitudes for the downtrodden.  The prophets, sages, and tragic-poets of Israel were often trodden down themselves by the very people they were called to love and embrace.  But God’s call on them demanded a movement away from a disengaged cynicism.  The modern-day cynic-saint  is someone who discards their idealism but not in exchange for an embittered vocation of deconstructing the messed up people of God.  They embrace a realism that will be grim at times, but ever hopeful of a breaking dawn….

“Follow.”  That’s the word you click with the trackpad to connect with someone.

“Follow” is a loaded word for Christians, but yeah—I am probably reading too much into it.  Not many people are following me anyway, so I don’t have to feel that presumptuous.  But then I have the problem of not knowing what in the world I am going to offer any of those who assume clicking “Follow” for “@Byers_Andy” is a worthy move.  Honestly, this is a problem for me.  I signed up for Twitter to try to sort out what it does and how it would affect the way I interact and communicate.  So far, I have found it helpful in directing me to a number of interesting articles.  That’s great.  But if signing up for Twitter means you are going to Tweet, I am afraid I am a poor citizen in the domain of that silhouetted blue bird.

I should not be that surprised at my poor performance on Twitter.  I signed up for Facebook when I entered my second stint as a college pastor, assuming I should succumb to the way of things and get in touch on the terms of the 20somethings under my pastoral care.  That was over three years ago, and I have yet to really catch on to that social medium either.  I have gotten better about doing status updates.  I should admit, however, that it seems as though half of my updates are links to my most recent blog posts.  My guess is that many of my (eventual) Tweets will serve a similar purpose.

So my limited social media experience is limited to promoting my other media products: blog posts, and sometimes my book.

Sick.

Or is it?

(Probably).

But maybe not. (But probably).

Surely there are biblical grounds for finding an outlet when you believe you have something helpful and edifying to voice…?  Follow me.  Where?  To something else I have written that extends beyond 140 characters.

I wonder about the prophets.  I’ve written about their embrace of a vocal vocation.  Crying out in the city streets (or in the outlying wild) may well have seemed a presumptuous move.  But that fire needed release from the quivering bones.  And then there is Paul’s emphasis on spiritual gifts.  They are to flourish in the church and for the church.   In John 7, Jesus’ brothers are in the know when it comes to celebrity marketing—you gotta be in the right place at the right time to gain a following, meaning Jerusalem during Feast-time.  Jesus shrugs off their counsel, yet shows up a few days later in Jerusalem at Feast-time.  A curious portrayal, perhaps, of fine lines along slippery slopes.

The church, the city street, the desert, the Temple—locations of edifying speech.  The space in which helpful words are publicly aired.  Church, street, desert, Temple…

Internet?

A strange “place.”  But when someone clicks on “Follow,” the underlying assumption is that you are going somewhere… some place.

Twitter: still trying to figure you (and me) out.

Reader: your comments are invited.

We Need Boring Christians

A lot of folks are finding their way to the blog via Relevant Magazine’s re-posting of an article I wrote in August called “We Need Boring Christians” (you can click on the link to the left to read it).  I thought it might be helpful to point interested readers to a new book written by a friend of mine that promotes to-the-death passion in mission service.  I just got the book for Christmas (thanks to my sweet wife!), so I have not yet had the chance to read it.  I can make the recommendation in confidence, though, because of my confidence in the author.

The basic gist is that Carissa has served over a decade as a missionary through some of the most daunting, deflating, and dangerous circumstances of anyone I know or have ever heard tell of.  Her life is indeed “biography-worthy” (a phrase I use in the Relevant article).  What she is doing in the book is offering the practical wisdom and missional vision that extends beyond the excitement of an energetic 20-something with an airline ticket in hand and a burning ambition to change the world.  To be clear, I love the iconic 20-something with that itinerary and uncontainable fire—not only have I been one, but I have worked with hordes of them during seven years of college ministry.  Carissa has been one, too, and she has hosted a great number of those passionate young folks as interns in her overseas ministry.  But passion alone is not thick enough as a resource when you are squirming in pain from malaria, wondering how you will offer breakfast to the abandoned kids under your care, and facing not only physical threats from fellow humans but spiritual threats from dark, supernatural powers. 

All at the same time.

This new book offers counsel on developing a passion that endures and sustains through heaps of pain and disillusionment.  Join me in giving it a read….

A casual glance at Tweets did, however, allow me to notice Publishers Weekly reporting that print book sales are up right now.  I have conveniently hyperlinked that phrase so you can instantly launch from this post to the PW article if you would like.

If you are still with me, resisting the urge to click that underlined phrase in calm, sky blue, then I thank you.  Nicholas Carr has written that the type of reading rewarded online is distracted reading—the hyperlinked text promises adventure, like a surprising new detour branching off in a promising new direction (still with me, or did you follow the link to Carr’s blog or to his book’s page on Amazon?).

An interesting phenomenon of the Internet’s textual dimension is what I just did with Carr’s name.  The underlined blue signifies a portal.  Click his name and you are directed to his very own plot of digitized real estate on the Web.

Paradoxically, the Internet is an invisible world that only exists visibly (at least for most of us who have never seen any of those databank-thingys that apparently exist out there in material form).

If you are going to be somebody in this strange invisible-visible realm, your name should appear underlined, and not in dull black but cool blue.

If your name is not adorned so, your identity in this world is, well, a bit diminutive.  Online validation occurs by the accumulation of “hits.” If your name cannot represent some site to which hits are directed, I am afraid to say that your cyber-self status is rather low.  Of course, this is tongue-in-cheek chatter, but I think it is important to recognize that the Internet in many respects depicts that bedeviling inevitability for any society—stratified echelons.  You have your online commoners and your online elites.

It is regularly emphasized that the Internet democratizes media.  This is certainly true to an extent.  Media-production has historically been the domain of the powerful, but now any of us can make a video and publish it on YouTube…

Wait… did I say anyone?  I suppose one would need a video camera and one of those cords that hooks up to a computer.  Ah yes, one would need access to that computer.  So we have eliminated massive swaths of humanity already.  (Follow the underlined blue to read a previous post on this called “History, Media, the Bible, and the Poor“).

Computer and Internet access is bound to expand and increase, so the democratization of media is indeed underway.  Well and good.  But we should recognize that the Internet is nonetheless a tiered, stratified society.  Those who names do not appear on the Google search are nonexistent citizens in that realm.  And the property owners can be easily identified… just look for the underlined blue.

[What do you think, dear readers?  If I am going to be writing a new book on media stuff, I should take advantage of the access this quasi-democratizing realms avails for input.  Would you agree or disagree that the Internet is a stratified society?  I am shooting from the hip here, thinking aloud, and eager to learn... and commenters with un-hyperlinked names are warmly welcomed!]

Since we are all rather festive, I figure I’ll make an indulgent post about coffee establishments here in Durham. (I may have to stop if the snowing continues).  Though most of my sermon prep, writing, and theology reading used to be done at Primavera Coffee and sometimes Urban Standard and O’Henry’s in Birmingham, AL, I spend little time in coffee shops here in England.  Part of it is price.  But I also have a designated study desk in the Theology Department, and it is hard to do the type of concentrated reading and writing required for a doctoral thesis in public venues!  So I get coffee at Whittards (or Square Mile Coffee Roasters, by mail order), grind it at home, and then use a French press (“cafetiere”) to brew the stuff in the study room.

England lends itself to drinking coffee.  The climate demands that you end up with a hot drink in your hands—windy, often dark, sometimes very cold, and frequently raining… now that’s good coffee weather.  And pedestrian sections mean that there is a high concentration of shops.  Durham is a smallish city, but in the pedestrian centre of town we have close to ten places to get a cup of tea or espresso, most them pretty good.  Here are a smattering of them….

We’ll start with Esquires.  They have the advantage of having one of the best locations for any coffee shop I have seen, poised on the bank of the River Wear and right on the edge of Silver Street Bridge.  The wifi is free and they have a spacious upstairs that is usually quieter than the street level (and you can see the castle from the upstairs windows).  Another plus: a great babychanging facility in the bathroom.  I usually get an Americano when I am scouting for a cup of joe.  My opinion is that Esquire’s espresso is so-so.  Some other Brits I know esteem the place for its frillier drinks, but not so much for the coffee.

Just past Esquires, a couple of nondescript alleyways cut down and northward from Silver Street and spill out onto the river edge.  There is a pub down there, and also a great coffee shop called Leonard’s.  It is a favorite around here.  The espresso is very good, and—an extra touch—the hot drinks come in a groovy-handled mug (see the pic).   Leonard’s has a great atmosphere with the the feel of an old house, it’s layout triangular from being at the corner of a street and a sharply angled alleyway.  It’s a classy little place with an upstairs, hot meals, and the best muffins in town (no wifi, but again, the muffins and espresso are so good).

Leonards Coffee House

Costas and Cafe Nero are standard chains here in England.  We have one of each.  I prefer Nero’s—the espresso is great for a franchise place and, though it gets a bit crowded, the darker setting and lower ceilings give me that sense that I am hunkered down in a shelter over my hot drink, a sense I love while drinking my coffee.

Durham just got a Starbucks.  I managed to wait about 6 weeks before I tendered my pence for a cup of Christmas Blend.  I have nothing against Starbucks, per se.  But as an American, I tend to wince over some of our most commercial cultural exports.  Then again, I love a Big Mac and I love a Coke with  pizza (which is on the lunch menu in the Byers home in a few minutes, by the way).  And this new Starbucks in Durham has one of the best atmospheres of any I have darkened the door of.

I have to mention Vennel’s.  I think of it mainly as a restaurant, but I hear they have the best filtered coffee in town.  Getting to it is a blast, because you have to walk up a narrow passageway/tunnel thing (it’s called a “vennel”) to find it. The seating is outdoor and indoor.  Only been there a few times, but it is one of our favorite places in town.  Many of the tables inside are old sewing machine cabinets, and the floor and walls are all old wood.  The hug fireplace would be a great place to have a bowl of soup and a cup of tea.

Vennel's: Photo from thisisdurham.com

My favorite coffee shop is Flat White.   I think the espresso is probably a touch better than anywhere in town.  It is literally a hole in the wall with a wall.  What I mean is that the place is tiny and seems hollowed out of the masonry work in Elvet Arch, and then there is this massive, stone wall awkwardly occupying a huge portion of the already tiny room.  The limited seating, like Vennel’s, is provided by old sewing machine tables.  There would be room for more of them, of course, were it not for that stone wall along opposite the barista’s bar.  I used to do masonry work, so I think of possible ways to remove it.  Dynamite comes to mind—I am not much of a business man, but I do know that optimizing space could create more profits.    But then it turns out that the stone obstacle is a section of the old city wall—we’re talking about a 700-yr old piece of craftsmanship.  Forget extra sewing machine tables—nothing makes the atmosphere of a coffee shop like a 13th century wall.  And besides, whenever I get coffee these days, I get it “take away” (read “to go,” if you are American).  It’s cheaper… and I’ve got a thesis to write.

Flat White (photo from The Northern Echo)

If you’re like me, you pass over these words as if they were no big deal. But wait a second.

Our God — holy, living, true, glorious, high and exalted — came?

The Word became flesh and….dwelt. among. us?

So, Let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare him room.

Make space in our hearts and lives for this really real reality: Our God here. This coming has consequences. It requires response. — Heaven and nature sings.

By the way, This savior reigns. While humankind celebrates, so do the fields, rocks, hills and plains.

For the earth, the biggest-news-ever is too much to handle. The earth itself cannot contain the excitement.

While men their songs employ, the creation itself repeats the joy.  Repeats the joy. And repeats the joy. If we don’t celebrate, the rocks and trees would….Of course, this is God we’re talking about. And He has come.

The Savior who came, will also come. We celebrate his Arrival, but we also look forward to his Re-arrival.

Then, not quite yet, but then, sins and sorrows — though plentiful now — will not be able to grow, thorn won’t even infest the ground. Because he, the one who came, brings his salvation and redemption as far as that age-old curse is found.

Because, He — no one else — rules the world with truth and grace. And despite evidence to the contrary — in fact, at this very moment — he is already making the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and the wonders of his love.

Joy to the World, the Lord has come. It’s a gospel song. And it just so happens to be all our hope.

Our God came and He will come. And, in the meantime he comes. In the very ordinary realities of our lives, he arrives.

So let’s celebrate.