Sunday, December 4, 2011

Chips, Salsa, Beer, and Theology

For the past 18 months or so, I, along with a handful of other friends, have been meeting on a quarterly basis to talk about theology. We meet at Kerbey Ln (a 24 hr Austin restaurant) where we eat, drink, and discuss a book we've read over the 3-4 preceding months. These meetings have been refreshing and encouraging. The busy-ness of life fades into the background when we commit an evening to our thoughts about God, sharing a meal, and friendship. It's usually about 3 hours after we start, around 11:30 or midnight, that we reluctantly leave our booth, which the waiter has long since stopped checking on for refills, and tiredly return to life's duties.

Although I don't want to over-spiritualize our little theological book club, I also don't want to underestimate its powerfully sacred nature. What we do every few months is create a space for dialogue to flourish. This dialogue is not the empty words of 'how are you doing?' 'Fine, how are you?' 'Good!' 'Yes, good!'. Instead, it's the dialogue of faith - believers reading together, asking tough questions, and doing so apart from denominational/organizational restraints (within reason - we all bring our baggage). Pretense (well, mostly) is gone. So this is a sacred space, where the deeper truths of God intersect with the simplicity of life. 

It's this intersection of the sacred and profane, spiritual and secular, earthly and heavenly, that I find fascinating. I find it fascinating first of all because 15 years ago I would have considered those things to have been mutually exclusive. However, now I find them so intertwined that it actually takes conscious effort to separate them, if even separating them is necessary. Now I see all of truth as God's truth, and all of life as God's gift. For example, one of our group members talked about how he worships God while listening to Radiohead. Although that sounds bizarre, I know what he means. I think anyone who loves music knows what he means. If you are a jazz musician and you had the opportunity to visit the smokey jazz club, The Five Spot, in New York in 1957, to hear John Coltrane play, you would be in heaven. Or if you are a fan of the British Invasion and stepped into the crowd at Shea Stadium in 1965 to hear the Beatles give one of their most famous concerts, you would be in heaven. Neither Radiohead, Coltrane, nor the Beatles had (or have) intentions of leading anyone to Christ. However, the appreciation of great music, just like the appreciate of anything great in this world, always returns to the Father, Son and Spirit. Music only exists because God has created people who make it. It may be 'secular' in its message and in aspects of its form, but it's the creation of the created - and it's beautiful. It has aesthetic value completely apart from whatever message the song writers might be trying to send to his (or their) listeners.

But, back to the sacred space. Despite the intersection of the sacred and profane, sacred space is critical to Christian living. And it's not just a nerdy theology group that creates sacred space. Ultimately, it's the job of the church (not the organization per se, but the people, who are the church). At our small group on Wednesday nights we have about 18 people who are all parents of young kids (except one couple - but at our church, it's only a matter of time). We drop our kids off with baby sitters after a long day, and all us adults converge on one house with food in hand, prepared for 2 hours of sacred space. We do mundane things - we eat, we talk about kids, the weather, football, vacations, work - or whatever. And then we huddle around and pray for one another. And we open Scripture and talk about last Sunday's sermon. In so doing, we step out of the normal rhythms of life and create a period of time (albeit short) in which we create sacred space. Note: We don't do so at the expense of the mundane or earthly. Instead, we join the two. We eat, we pray, we talk, we read the Bible. But it's in the sacred space that we slow down the grind of regular life and invite the Holy Spirit to do his work.

Those are just two example of sacred space. There are many more. We had one last night with our family as we talked to our children about Advent and read from Isaiah 9 and Luke 1. And I'll have to say, that kind of sacred space takes a lot of work. It's not always easy getting four kids to listen to Bible reading at 7:30 in the evening. But it's worth it.

Our theology group meets this coming Thursday to step into that sacred space together, with beers in hand, and chips and salsa ready for devouring. We may even say something helpful to one another in the span of three hours, Lord willing. Or, we may even have a conversation with the wait staff that will spark something of the spiritual in his or her mind that was previously not there, or that lay dormant too long. That's when the sacred and profane, spiritual and secular, meet.

(Anyone reading this is invited to come! Thursday at 8:30 at Kerbey Ln. We're talking about Rob Bell's book Love Wins, which if you have a copy you could probably read it in a few days.)

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