My least favorite part of moving is packing. My second least favorite part would be unpacking. Today I’m making the move from Blogger to WordPress based on the advice of a more seasoned blogger. Fortunately, there isn’t much packing or unpacking to do, other than setting up the site a bit!

Although there may be minor changes in the days ahead, I’m pretty much simply going to start blogging over here. I don’t have a ton of posts over at Blogger since I’m still a relative novice, so I won’t be missing much in the archives. I look forward to the switch, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Based on some good advice from The MethoBlog, I’m making the shift from Blogger to WordPress. There are some great things about Blogger, but I’ve been looking at the WordPress platform for some time now. It seems like the trouble with Blogger-beta will be over eventually, but I’m ready for a change. I’m not moving anything from this web address to WordPress. I’m just packing up and leaving.

WordPress here I come! http://catchingmeddlers.wordpress.com/

Sometimes I’m not sure why I started blogging. I’ve wanted to for at least a year, but I’ve just started working on it with any consistency. Writing has always been something I’ve loved. In fact, I can still remember one of my first stories from gradeschool. It was an incredibly predictable western except for the very end when the hero dies by plunging off a cliff. For whatever reason, I’ve also continually been fascinated by plunging off cliffs…and digression.

So, back to the point. Scot McKnight, one of my favorite bloggers, wrote an article that helped clarify my blog-urge. He quotes James Vanoosting who says, “Writing is not pedagogy but an epistemology.” That’s it! I write as a way of knowing. The other thing McKnight describes is that the only way to improve as a writer is simply to write! That’s probably my main motivation here. I can’t start off by writing anything deep, even though I am published (The fascinating titles of these two works are Characterization of exochitinase of cantaloupe fruit tissue & The lymphocyte metalloprotease MDC-L (ADAM 28) is a ligand for the integrin alpha 4 beta 1.). However, I can write regularly with a desire to improve and sharpen my skills. That’s the reason I blog.

Scot McKnight begins this chapter with the following piece of information, “In the 1980s the government of Guatemala banned any public reciting of Mary’s Magnificat because it was deemed politically subversive (p. 15).” The Magnificat is a song about righting injustice and overthrowing power. This is a powerful reminder that the Mary in the creche is incomplete unless we picture Mary as a woman of justice. McKnight compares the Magnificat with members of the African American community signing We Shall Overcome in the 60s and 70s.

How many of us think of Mary as a revolutionary? Maybe some of us. Yet, I would wager a guess that most of the average churchgoers in the United States would not catch this particular emphasis in the birth narratives of Jesus. McKnight even suggests that Mary is much like the disciples in that she has expectations of a earthly Davidic dynasty with Jesus enthroned in Jerusalem (p. 21).

Some folks won’t appreciate this work because it doesn’t go deeply into the composition of the gospel narratives and talk about the editor/authors much, simply attributing everything said to ‘the real Mary’ at face value. Even though I appreciate this sentiment, I think it is interesting and important to read Mary’s voice as Mary’s voice and see where it leads. In this chapter, it leads to justice, peace, and freedom from oppression. How could we disapprove?

In this chapter McKnight focuses on Mary’s response, “may it be.” He examines the socio-cultural factors that would have discouraged Mary from responding to God’s call. Imagine a thirteen (or so) year old girl agreeing to pregnancy outside of marriage. Public shame, mockery, and a ruined reputation were the best she could hope for. McKnight also describes the awareness Mary must have had regarding the way her son-to-be would be treated. Joseph, Mary, and their son would all be subject to horrible social ostracism. McKnight writes, “She must have wondered if there was an easier way (p. 13).”

Immediately, my mind is drawn to Gethsemane. The NRSV gives us the end of Jesus’ grueling prayer session in the garden, “…yet not what I want but what you want.” Should we be surprised that Jesus would respond this way? When his mother was facing the same order of shame for embracing the vocation God offered she said, “…let it be with me according to your word.” “Mary, in faith, began to carry a cross before Jesus was born. Mary began to suffer for the Messiah before the Messiah suffered (p. 13).” I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a powerful display of how the “Christ-bearing” that begin with Mary resulted in the “cross-bearing” modeled by Jesus. Yet it shouldn’t be a surprise. Bearing Christ is never far removed from bearing a cross. May God grant us the spiritual resolve to answer with Mary, “May it be with me according to your word.”

Scot McKnight begins this work by answering the “why” question. He gives nine reasons for writing a book on Mary:

1.) The story of the “real Mary” has never been told.
2.) There is immense value of this story of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary vocation.
3.) Too often Mary has been depicted as “unreal,” a sort of docetic Mary.
4.) Because Jesus matters, his mother should matter too.
5.) The Magnificat is a significant expression of God’s purposes in the Messiah.
6.) Many protestants are more certain of what they do not believe about Mary.
7.) The author believes it is important for evangelicals to recover an appreciation for Mary.
8.) The “Cold War” between Protestants and Roman Catholics is over.
9.) The real Mary always leads us to Jesus.

Most of these reasons are very solid. I haven’t read enough about Mary to agree or disagree with #1 and I’m not sure everyone will agree with #8. In my estimation, it is #2 & 9 that offer the greatest reasons. N.T. Wright has done a lot of great work on Jesus’ response to vocation, and I believe he is right on. However, I’m not sure the average person will accept Jesus’ response to vocation.. Too often, people have a docetic view of Jesus who only “seems” human. However, I think most people are open enough to a real Mary to understand vocation through her story. The Christocentric portrayal of Mary in the gospels is a great reason to study her life. As we struggle to find and live out our vocation, we can only hope to imitate Mary by pointing to Jesus in all that we do.

I just received my copies of The Real Mary as a part of my agreement to serve on Paraclete’s “Real Mary Street Team.” Several of us around the country have agreed to host discussion groups for The Real Mary in December. This will coordinate with the release of the new movie, The Nativity Story. In this movie Mary will be played by Keisha Castle-Hughes of Whale Rider fame. Just the other day, we were talking about unwed mothers in a bible study group, and someone said they were afraid that churches tend to accept and encourage this behavior far too often. I said, perhaps a little too facetiously, “You know there’s this story about an unwed mother in the bible. Have any of you heard of Mary?” We had to pause and rethink our conversation just a bit. I look forward to reading this work and will comment on it on the blog some as well.

I’m about to finish reading a great book by Alan Jacobs: The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis. I’m not going to blog through this book, but it is an incredible biographical work on one of the great modern Christian authors. Jacobs interweaves Lewis’ life and work into a seamless exposition of the imaginative world of this amazingly interesting man. There are several surprises for a relative Lewis newbie like myself. Although I have read several of his works, I knew less about his life than I had imagined. For instance, I had no idea about the older woman he lived with for much of his adult life. There are aspects of Lewis’ life that I would love to recreate in my own. The section on the Inklings (a literary group that met at the local pub and included greats such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, etc.) is most fascinating. I can see myself now: gathered around a rustic wodden pub table with a small group of brilliant men and women discussing theology and the church. I think my English blood runs deep. Now, I would like to get my hands on a similar biography of Tolkien. Perhaps Jacobs will do us the favor of writing this as well! He would be excellent considering his lucid writing style, which is perfectly paced and describes the thought-world of Lewis perfectly.

This week I have been making several pastoral visits. As I bounce back and forth from living rooms to hospitals to nursing homes, I have had a variety of experiences. Pastors eventually realize that the pastoral visit is a complex interaction and their own responses are as varied as the people they visit. Although I’m not one to go for hard and fast categories, I have started sensing two different types of visits.

There are visits that I would characterize as “gifts.” Here, I enter the context as an agent of God’s grace. It is sheer gift. I expect nothing. The person I visit, even if the visit is planned, is gracious and sometimes genuinely surprised that their pastor cares enough to simply be there. It is a moment of community and grace. The other visits are “obligations.” These parishioners expect you there because it is what you are supposed to do. It is your obligation as a pastor, and they expect you to fulfill it. True to form, I enter the context of the visit as an agent fulfilling my duty. There is no sense of gift. At some level, I simply expect to have my “made visit” card punched. Predictably, the other person doesn’t respond graciously. Usually, these are the people you cannot visit often enough. I realize that everyone needs God’s grace and I try to model that, yet the dynamics are always different with people who receive life as something they are owed.

How do you and I approach life? Do we approach it as a gift or as something God is obligated to provide us with? Are we owed the great joy and suprising moments of grace we receive? I pray that I will begin to receive life and joy as a gift – sheer grace. It makes a world of difference in pastoral visitation, and I think it makes a profound difference in our lives.