Once again tragedy strikes, the question is asked “Why?”, and people start saying stupid things to find some cause or person to blame. It tends to follow the same pattern as it has for eons: something hugely bad has happened, so God must known; God must have allowed or inflicted it for some reason; the reason has to do with those who were affected by it. Choose: God in his wrath punished the victims because it was their fault and a just God had to judge them OR no loving God could allow such tragedy, so there must not be a God at all.

But are those the only choices? If they are they leaving us saying stupid things like all victims are actually the guilty party or turning God into some kind of sadistic puppet master. That seems to be all that gets reported from Haiti in recent weeks. However, there is another option. Maybe we don’t have to justify or prove God – maybe we need to allow God to live through us and keep our mouths shut.

Download the podcast here.

Links:

Lutheran Disaster Relief

Food For the Poor

The Red Cross

Tomorrow I will be posting a new podcast – God, Tragedy, and Stupid Christians – but I still get questions about what is podcasting, especially when I do consults with churches who wonder how it can help them in ministry and communication.

Well, here’s your answer. Podcasting is like apple pie for whales. Now its perfectly clear. Thanks, Shelly.

I have found it fascinating how much some people in congregations struggle with “new” music in worship, completely forgeting that the “old classics” were once new and equally criticized by their ancestors. It is simply human nature that we forget our past often in favor of our own preferences.

Its too bad because it means for now only very few of us hear artists like Regina Spektor who have so much to say about God and the life of faith. Sure, its pop song but the words say more about the 21st Century desire to know and walk with God than what many congregations are willing to embrace. For those who have the opportunity, this is a video worth using in worship and discussing the lyrics.

Laughing With lyrics

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor

No one’s laughing at God
No one’s laughing at God
No one’s laughing at God
We’re all laughing with God

I came across this ancient hymn in my readings this morning and just goes to show that when our tendency is to make the church more like a funeral of facts, the ancients remind us that life with Jesus is party for all our senses. It reminds me of the great scene in The Last Temptation of Christ, where after the water turns into wine, Jesus toasts the steward of the feast and goes dancing out into the center of the wedding celebration. The kingdom is not about justice, its not about judgment, its about God being here in our midst right now. Our problem is that that we don’t know how to deal with it and want God to dance to our tune, not join in the dance with him.

I have invited You, Lord, to a wedding feast of song,
but the wine- the utterance of praise- at our feast has failed.
You are the guest who filled the jars with good wine,
fill my mouth with Your praise.

The soul is Your bride, the body Your bridal chamber,
Your guests are the senses and the thoughts/
And if a single body is a wedding feast for You,
how great is Your banquet for the whole Church!

St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Faith 14:1-5

Finally, podcast #50 is posted to start a new year, making five years of podcasting. Hard to believe.

In this episode I reflect on the impact of social networking on how we form relationships and the generational gulf between the Boomer emphasis on information/communication and the hunger for authentic relationships by emerging generations. I have included links to our ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans and our denomination facebook page to give you a feel for how its is being used in those arenas.

One thing you will notice is that I don’t say much about Twitter and, frankly, I’m still trying to figure out how best to use it. 144 characters leaves me quoting bumper sticker type wisdom or updates on my latest random thought. Len Sweet is probably my model on how one person can use it effectively and I follow his tweets. I haven’t risen to that level yet but perhaps I talk too much – I need the extra space of facebook and my blog. Your thoughts?

Download the podcast here.

I found this link while researching the backstory of O Little Town of Bethlehem for my weekend sermon on the origin of American Christmas carols. Its from a blog called CrunchyCon that is being shut down on Monday because the author has taken a new job that doesn’t permit partisan publications.

However, his commentary on this very cool video of the vastness of the universe bears repeating going into the new year.

This visual representation illuminates the power of Kierkegaard’s Absolute Paradox (the idea that the infinite could become finite — that the all-powerful and eternal deity could enter temporality as a tiny baby). It is also an illustration of what Mark Shea sees in this holiday celebrating the incarnation of the eternal and infinite God as a poor Jewish child in an insignificant village in a backwater of the Roman Empire.

Kind of puts things into perspective that the things we tend to argue and get hung up on in faith and church really pale when you consider God’s perspective.

Today as I watched football, I completed all the updates and repairs on the blog and the RSS is now working again. If you go to your subscribed podcasts, all the posted podcasts appear. If you go to the Itunes listing for Wired Jesus, the most recent post, a rerun to test the system, now appears.

So, tomorrow morning, the transcript and recording of the long awaited #50, Facebooking Faith, and a working wordpress.

Well, what can I say? The second half of 2009 did not go the way that I expected for Wired Jesus and there were no podcasts, much to your dismay. In the midst of it all, the new versions of Itunes don’t seem to play nice with my version of Wordpress and its plugins. So what it boils down to is that I will be taking some vacation time after Christmas to completely update and renovate the whole Wired Jesus web page and possibly have to create a second rss feed to get Itunes working again.

So, my new year’s resolution – a working web page, new content from some of the Wired Jesus on the Road consultations from the past year, and yes, finally, podcasts. My pastors and wife agree – Wired Jesus is a key part of my creative sanity and I’m grumpy without it.

Here’s to shaking off the dust and a renewed WJP in 2010.

So, if you resubscribe to the feed, you should get a listing of podcasts 43-49 with GET buttons, as well as any new podcasts, which I am aiming for on Monday.

Hopefully between a wordpress and podpress upgrades, the rest should fall into place. Otherwise, I may have to create a second RSS feed to address the issue.

However, it is not repopulating the listing on the Itunes listing page. Review are still there but no podcasts are listed. I’ll try and work on it some more but I may have to create a new rss feed to get Itunes to play nice again.

Frustrating. I’d rather spend time on a podcast but no sense in that if its not going to get out.