by Leonard Sweet
At a United States senator’s retirement party in the late 80s, Michael Deaver, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan, told this story about what was in the senator’s future.
A man and his wife were getting ready for bed. The wife said she had a hankering for some ice cream.
“OK,” said her husband. “I’ll go get it.”
She said, “Now I want vanilla with chocolate sauce.”
“Vanilla with chocolate sauce,” repeated the husband.
“And don’t forget the cherry on top.”
“Cherry on top,” repeated the husband.
“And whipped cream.”
“Whipped cream,” responded the husband.
So the husband set out for the kitchen. When he returned the wife was already in bed, but he took the bag up. She opened it and there was a ham sandwich.
She said angrily: “I told you to write it down. You forgot the mustard.”
I like this story because it brings to mind all those times I feel like I’m caught cross-wise in two different conversations, all those times when it seems that someone suddenly changed channels on me, all those times when I wonder whether I am living in the same world as everyone else, or if the world suddenly changed while I was off somewhere.
It did. If you don’t think it did, you ought to have your clocks examined. Or your screens. At least check the date on your newspaper. Didn’t it tell you that in 2000, more United States citizens watched the Survivor finale than voted for George W. Bush or Al Gore? Haven’t you noticed that sound bites beat sound policy every time? Haven’t you noticed the number of churches who bear the scars of worship wars and financial fractures brought about by social and economic change?
There are many ways to talk about this new world out there – a world that I’m convinced sweeps away generational cultures analysis. Some academics call it “the end of modernity”; others “late-modern” and “high modern”; still others “late capitalist.”
Many writers, including myself, are calling this age “postmodern”–a word that is used in the same way and for the same reason they named the first cars “horseless carriages.” Why that? They didn’t know what else to call this new thing that ate gas rather than hay. So they gave it a name that defined it in terms of what it wasn’t.
We don’t know what to call this new thing that’s out there, so we call it in terms of what it isn’t: postmodern. If the word “postmodern” sticks in the craw, try another way of talking about the new world out there. If you’re born before 1962, you’re an immigrant in an alien culture. If you’re born after 1962, you’re a native of a new, emerging culture–one where rationality has been trumped by relationality and experience, representation by participation, word by image, and individualism by connectivity.
Certain movies you watch because of their beginnings and endings. Before and After, the 1997 Hollywood film starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson, is one of those. It is narrated by the youngest member of a family beset by trouble. Her words open the film and haunt us for the next 108 minutes:
Your whole life can change in a second. And you never even know when it’s coming. Before you think you know what kind of world this is. After everything is different for you. Not bad, maybe. Not always. But different. Forever. . . I didn’t even know there could be such a thing as after. I didn’t know that before was already over.
As the final credits begin their roll-over, the girl finishes where she began: “Each is us is marked forever now: Before and After.”
My life is marked “Before.” I’m an immigrant, a child of Gutenberg culture who thought “before” he knew what kind of a world it was but awoke in 1987 to discover the world of after. I was born BC (Before Computers). All my kids were born AC (After Computers). My conceptual architecture and ministry apparatus were inherited from the modern past. My kids’ experience of the world has been shaped by a digital, global, multi-cultural, non-linear future. The biggest challenge in my life has been moving my ministry from Before to After. My life may be marked “Before.” But I want my ministry to be marked “After.”
The question for both Befores and Afters is this: how do we sing the Lord’s song in this strange, new land?
First, we have to want to sing. This means moving from a reformational hermeneutic to a missional hermeneutic. A reformational hermeneutic focuses on the church and on differences between
Christians–what’s a true church vs. a false church, etc. A missional hermeneutic focuses on a world where people don’t believe the gospel in the least and where too many believers keep their heads down. In the words of James V. Brownson, “Each culture is called to repentance; yet a missional hermeneutic understands that call to repentance not as the obliteration of each culture but rather as the sanctification of each cultural setting so that it may offer a fuller and more perfect praise to God. Repentance is not an abandoning of identity but a turning toward God” (James V. Brownson, Speaking the Truth in Love: New Testament Resources for a Missional Hermeneutic).
Purity is the goal if you’re in the reformational paradigm. Communication is the goal (how do we mediate the saving grace of Jesus to a fallen world) if you’re in the missional paradigm. The reformational hermeneutic is egocentric – inward looking and obsessed with ecclesial issues. The missional hermeneutic is “ecocentric” – outward looking and obsessed with evangelical issues that have reformational issues (e.g., “How do we learn how to sing some strange songs in the Lord’s land?”).
Second, we sing the same old songs in new, fresh ways–just as our ancestors have done through 2000 years of church history. How did our ancestors do this? How did they transition the church from apostolic to patristic, from patristic to medieval, from medieval to modern? By putting the past and future on speaking terms with each other. By a mutual interaction between the gospel and the culture.
My peculiar way of conveying this is in my Image Statement. Moderns obsessed over “mission statements.” I don’t get it. (Except as an immigrant I do understand the love of playing with words and “perfecting” documents). Didn’t Jesus give his church the same mission statement? “Go into all the world and make disciples.” And how do we make disciples? Like Jesus did: by preaching, teaching, and healing.
Where each ministry is different is in their image statement (especially in a culture where you cannot say one word or read one word and still be exposed to at least 13,000 images a day).
My Image Statement is the swing (see www.leonardsweet.com).
There is a new theory among physicists about how the swing works. Previous theories revolved around the principle of “parametric instability,” which pivoted the action of swinging at the middle of the arc, and the rocking forward into a higher center of gravity. Physicist William Case of Grinnel College, while watching how children actually swing, has now posited a new principle which physicists call “driven harmonic oscillator.” The key to the swing is not in the middle of the arc, but at each end of the arc, where and when the swingers at the same time lean back and throw their feet forward.
That’s my image statement. As a historian of Christianity, I want the church to lean back–not just back to the 50s, not just back to some nostalgic golden time, not just back to the premodern (like Lot’s wife) but all the way back through 2000 years of history, all the way back until we’re, in the words of that Sunday School song, “Leaning, Leaning, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
But at the same time (and I do mean simultaneously) we must use that energy and power that comes from “learning to lean” on Jesus to kick forward into the future. Not carpe diem – the latest trend. Not seize the new and the novel. (Modernity’s cult of the new and novel still has inertia.) Not stay abreast and be informed, up-to-date, “contemporary.” Not keep track of the rush of new breakthroughs, new discoveries, new technologies. Not kick forward to a new building campaign. Not even kick forward to the postmodern.
Kick forward and carpe manana (seize the future) . . . God’s kingdom.
Kick forward to the New Jerusalem, a city not made with hands, our ultimate home. In John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, there is no temple. Why? Because Jesus is the temple. The church today has become the very thing that killed Jesus: a temple-based religion.
Our clocks are set in buildings made with hands. It’s time to reset our clocks in buildings not made with hands but with prayer and praise, service and surrender.
So the whole “postmodern” discussion boils down to this: Do we know what time it is? Can religious leaders even tell time? Jesus told us we better (Matthew 16:3).
Have you reset your clock?
Or for all you golfers: Have you changed your swing? In a contemporary reworking of “The Legend of Bagger Vance” (DreamWorks, 2000), Bagger Vance tells Junuh: “Inside each and every one of us is our true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that’s ours and ours alone. Something that can’t be learned . . something that’s got to be remembered.”
At the top of his game Tiger Woods changed his swing, and his game improved even more. He felt his swing ought to be his own. Even if you think you’re at the top of your game – being church, being clergy, being “relevant” – will you take the risk to learn a new swing to get your ministry in full swing?
