parables of a prodigal world

I ran across this video clip today with Bono of U2 talking about and performing a song originally written back in the 80's during the recording of Joshua Tree. Its about his experience visiting Ethiopia in 1984. Its a great song, and I love pretty much everything from U2. But what caught my attention was the retelling of the Beatitudes at the end of the song. The lyrics go like this: Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt For they shall inherit what's left of the earth Blessed are the kings who've left their thrones They are buried in this valley of dry bones Blessed all of you with an empty heart For you got nothing from which you cannot part Blessed is the ego, it's all we got this hour Blessed is the voice that speaks truth to power Blessed is the sex worker who sold her body tonight She used what she got to save her children's life Blessed are you, the deaf cannot hear a scream Blessed are the stupid who can dream Blessed are the tin canned cardboard slu...

Something interesting I noticed while perusing some of the mandatory year-end Top 10 lists. Beware of titles. For example, Time Magazine's web site posted its Top 10 Religion Stories of 2007 . Included in the list were stories such as Mother Teresa's personal letters that may have revealed that she could not sense God for the last half-century, the homosexual controversy in the Episcopal church, and the hot-selling books about atheism. I don't know, I guess those might be "Religion Stories" per se , but for me, something like Yahoo's Top 10 Inspirational Stories of 2007 , which included stories about the One Lap-Top Per Child Project, Ishmael Beah's memoir "A Long Way Gone," the $100 million anonymous donation to Erie, PA, and Everson Walls donating his kidney to former Dallas Cowboys teammate Ron Springs says "Religion" to me a lot more powerfully than the overt stories about "Religion." I don't know, maybe it has som...

Merry Christmas. As Christmas 2007 has arrived, so concludes my little week-long "Countdown to Christmas" series. Here's a re-cap: Part 1: What if... Part 2: The Most Dangerous Baby Ever Born Part 3: Top 10 Christmas Quotes Part 4: The Christmas Manifesto Part 5: When we say "God Became Flesh at Christmas," ... Part 6: Christmas, Easter, and The Usual Suspects So now we're left with the last post in the series. I thought long and hard about what that post should be. And it occurred to me that, as people start to think about going back to work, taking down their Christmas lights, recycling their Christmas trees, we should really look at the big question, the big "So What" of it all. What does Christmas, the birth of Jesus, who would go on to do some pretty interesting things, mean for us living 2,000 years later. How is this baby relevant to the 21st century western world. The answer, as always, has been given by one far more able to give such a hug...

Part 6 of 7: Christmas, Easter, and the Usual Suspects. Have you ever seen the movie The Usual Suspects ? Remember how at the end, after we discover that Verbal was, in fact, Kaiser Soze, we get a series of snapshot-flashbacks of the various points in the narrative that suddenly make sense based on that startling revelation? You remember that feeling of “ah-hah!” you got right there at the end. I don’t know about you, but I went back and watched the story again after my newfound revelation. In fact, I’ve watched the movie about six or seven times, all told. I think Christmas is kind of like that. It comes from, and only in light of, the perspective of people who already know the secret of the shocking climax, who have reflected and lived for many years in light of it, and who then retell the story in light of that revelation. And the shocking climax, of course, is that the baby born on that day, a birth that caused quite a stir, would go on to be bodily raised from the dead, thereby i...