Episode 439 - William Willimon - The ABCs of Christian Faith

Hello friends, your host Rick Lee James here. I wanted to give you a heads up that I am in the process of migrating the podcast to a new feed on rickleejames.substack.com where you will be able to find all my podcasts in one place. You can still subscribe and listen through all the places where you normally listen, but the podcast will be showing up in a new feed. So if you want to continue getting the latest episodes, the best thing to do is to go to rickleejames.substack.com .com and subscribe using your email address. And from there, you can be notified every time a new episode is released, and you will also be given a link to listen through whatever platform you prefer. So don't wait, go to rickleejames.substack.com and subscribe today so you don't miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening.

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to Please let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. And by the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay. Where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you're back with us again for what I know is going to be another great conversation. Today, my guest once again on the podcast is Dr. William Willimon. He's a best-selling author, a popular preacher and teacher. William Willimon has just published one of his liveliest books, God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of the Christian Faith. The challenge of the Christian life is learning to talk Christian. Somebody has got to tell us, give us the words that open the door to the faith called Christian, says Willimon in his introduction. The book takes terms like atonement, Christ, incarnation, justice, creed, and speaks about them in wonderfully accessible ways. The vocabulary begins with an essay on abortion and runs all the way to Zacchaeus. His signature humor and mischievousness comes through along with his truth-telling witness to the theological richness of the Christian faith. Bishop Kenneth Carter calls this a sometimes jarring, always interesting, consistently insightful, and persistently provocative invitation to talk the talk and walk the walk of Christian discipleship. Whether a new or longstanding Christian, God Turned Toward Us is sure to enliven your faith. We're so glad to have him back on the podcast today, Dr. William Willimon. Welcome back to Voices in My Head.

Well, thanks, Rick Lee James. Great to be back with you.

Well, congratulations on yet another wonderful new book. I've been enjoying reading through God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of the Christian Faith. And it's always a treat to get to speak with you and to be able to talk more about new books that you're writing and new endeavors. At this point, it's no secret that you've done a lot of writing over the years, and you've written about just about every topic that's imaginable. So I think it's kind of a clever idea to put this in kind of a vocabulary format. And so I kind of was wondering, first of all, what gave you the idea to kind of structure it this way in sort of an ABC format?

I really wanted to discipline myself, set myself a challenge of talking about some fairly deep and complicated matters as concisely as I could and as lively a way as I knew how. I was influenced, I think, by a book that came out the first year I was pastor, and that was Frederick Buechner. He did, I think it was called "A Theological ABC," mm, "You Treasures." And I remember as a young pastor reading it, I'm not as masterful a writer, communicator as Frederick Buechner, but I remember as a pastor, I was sort of having to learn how to talk again after years of higher education and seminary and graduate school. And Buechner's light but serious way of speaking about the Christian faith I found really helpful. So, uh, years later I thought, well, I might try a similar exercise because I realized over the years I think I've spent a good bit of effort trying to entice people into talking Christian, trying to demonstrate how Christian concepts are beautiful and interesting and open up things. So That, that was my attempt.

Oh, that's great. Well, you know, I did something different with this book than what I've done with other books of yours in the past. Often with your books, I sit down and I just read them cover to cover. I start at the beginning and I, and I just go to the end. And the nice thing about this format, for me anyway, is it can be used a number of different ways. You've set it up to be read as a, as a either a daily devotional kind of format which I think it works very well for because they're short enough snippets. But I really also like that in the end of the book, you've set up these pathways in the back that are provided in a very helpful way for pastors, for teachers, even for seekers and people who are just curious that they can actually use the book and follow different readings in the book for different pathways at different times for different things that they're interested in and different ways of teaching.

I wonder if you picked that up. Thank you.

Yeah, and I wonder if you might just elaborate a little bit on sort of some of your ways of writing that and some of the people that you had in mind for writing that for, because I do think it is helpful in some ways that maybe some of your other books— this is even more accessible, I think, for church people and for church use and group gatherings gatherings just to talk about those pathways a little bit?

Well, the— in one sense, like in Christian theology, everything relates to everything else. And sometimes the challenge in Christian believing is to keep things linked so that when you talk about grace, you got to talk about law. When you talk about reconciliation, you also have to talk about judgment. And those trajectories, I think, I hope— I can imagine a pastor sitting down, say, before Christmas and thinking about the incarnation and how do I preach God with us. And I tried to link together various separate passages, sections, that I think link up together around that theme. I also would hope that maybe somebody who's conducting new members class or an inquirer's class at your church, you could see there's a trajectory there. There's even a trajectory for thinking about leaving your church. If you're thinking about splitting, Hey, here's some things to think about before you go.

Yeah.

Uh, so I, I hope that that way of organizing gets sort of beyond the alphabetical into the thematic.

Yeah. Well, and I think that's very helpful, and I think even especially now with so many people talking about deconstructing their faith and leaving their church, I'm glad that you included that actually is one of the pathways in the book of before you actually do leave, let's think through some matters. And I've told you before that your book What's Right with the Church has been such a help to me over the years, you know, in helping me love the church.

Appreciate that.

In so many times of when I've felt like at times I'm ready to toss it all in, there is a lot to love and a lot of beauty to it. And so I think that's a good thing. Well, you know, your book wastes no time. Just, uh, it goes to zero to 60 in a matter of, uh, of no time at all, I think, with the very first topic. And, um, one thing I appreciate about you— I appreciate about you and the way that you write, um, it could be very easy in the times that we are in, um, to be very partisan in the way that we write as far as politically. And the way that you write, and, and you start because you're in A and it's the letter A, you start right off with abortion. And the temptation would be, well, I'm gonna either write as a Republican or as a Democrat here, but you don't let either side off the hook very easily. And, uh, you, you go right in and say, no, we're gonna look at this as Christians, and we're gonna— we're not gonna make either side comfortable with this. So I, I wonder if this morning, just as kind of a helpful sort of introduction to the, the kind of things people will get in, in the book here this morning. And we don't have to do like a direct reading or anything, um, but it's a topic that right now is, is hotly debated. We've got this Texas abortion ban that has happened that's causing a lot of, uh, debate and a lot of things in the world that people are on both sides of the issue that are up in arms about it. And you give a very helpful reading about abortion in that book. So I wonder if you just pastorally would speak to us this morning for a minute? Just—

well, it's a— I really struggle with that. I didn't want to open with abortion.

Yeah, I bet not.

I thought of Bimelech, uh, you know, uh, absenteeism, another word. But, uh, on the other hand, it is something that appears to have captured the imagination of the energies of, of the church in various ways. Abortion is a tough topic. I mean, for one thing, it's not a Christian word. It's not a— like most of the words in the book are Christian words, they're biblical words. Well, one of the things that makes abortion both difficult and also simplistic to talk about is We don't have good biblical, direct, explicit material on abortion of any age. Uh, to who? It's, it's not— abortion is a name for a medical procedure. It's not a theologically immediate theological word. So it's quite a challenge. And as I talked about abortion, I found one of my problems is that, as you said, we got both sides of the issue. We got two sides. And maybe I was implicitly appealing for a third perspective, and that is, what does it mean to think about abortion as Christians, as church people? And with a couple of very quick strokes, I try to say, uh, you know, what kind of church do we need to be to help people make difficult decisions, to support them in those decisions, and indeed to make what the world makes as a personal decision, to make that a church decision. What would that mean? And I do it very quickly, very lightly, I hope, as a catalyst, as a stimulus to further thinking. If I'm critical in my entry on abortion, I think it's— I'm critical of attempts to use politics, to use legislation, to coerce what ought to be Christian decisions, Christian, uh, moral stands, to make those stands universal for everybody, and, uh, through legislation. So I wish Christians would make abortion less a political fight over who's got the votes, who's got the people on the Supreme Court, etc. And both sides are guilty of this. And more of a church thing about what kind of congregation we need to be to have appropriate empathy with, connection with people making tough decisions, and to help people make those decisions knowing that they're backed up by Christian sisters and brothers who are standing with them, walking with them through this time. And I applaud those churches, whether the right or the left, that talk about abortion that way.

And I love how you, even in, in the writing and how you just did it now, you put the emphasis back on what so many people want to make a personal choice into the community of— oh good— the, the body of Christ.

And you are being influenced by Catholics. Good. I, I know years ago, Stanley Harawasa had a wonderful essay in which she talked about in the liberal mainline church, that is like my church, we've made abortion a right to privacy issue or a personal issue. And we've said to people contemplating this abortion, we've said to them, now this is your decision and we trust you to make it in a careful, loving, compassionate way. And whatever you decide, that's fine. Well, unfortunately, what that also means is, hey, keep us out of it. We'll stay out of your life if you promise to stay out of our lives. Or we say to some troubled 16-year-old, for instance, hey, this is your problem. We'll try to be sympathetic with you as you solve your problem, rather than to say, we're Christians and we don't believe in the personal and the private. We believe church. We believe that your problems are my problems. We believe that I have a responsibility for you, uh, in your problems. And that in a sense, uh, I have to ask myself, I wonder how contributed to your problem. I wonder how I am complicit here. And so maybe throughout the book is an appeal to enjoy, to celebrate the oddness of Christian thinking, to remind that being a Christian is not natural.

Yeah, normal.

It's not innate. It's something somebody's got to teach you how to move in the world with Christ rather than as the world moves.

Yeah, well, and I think even, you know, moving into another topic that you write about in the book with baptism and this idea of Christian initiation and what it means getting again back into the communal, and what does it mean that you're one of us and we care for you. And what does it mean that if it's that 16-year-old that is one of ours who has been baptized into the family, and she's our responsibility now, and we say, yeah, not your choice, you're part of our family. And together, we, we need to decide this together, you know, like, how are we going to care for this child, you know, and how do we raise you along with this baby, maybe, you know, and yeah, hard, hard choices, you know, but they're things that as the body of Christ, we're called to do and, and to think about. And it's not often something something that I guess in our world of privacy and, and personal and yeah, things that are all about me that we often want to think about.

It's, uh, I think it, it's sad that you got Christians out there who made wearing a mask, uh, a personal decision, right? This is my right. And you have politicians standing up saying, well, I, I think vaccinations are good, but that's, that's purely, that's That's your right to decide and all. Well, Christians' rights language is found nowhere in scripture. It's in a European Enlightenment notion of human beings. For Christians, we're just not impressed with issues like privacy and personal and individual. Jesus makes us corporate body. Suddenly your life impinges on mine because of Christ. And, uh, one of the points I make in, in my little foreword to the book is that, uh, being a Christian means learn— learning to talk the vocabulary. I'm sorry, but there's just no good other word in con— in, in widespread usage that can replace a word like atonement, redemption. And you're going to have to just sit for us to teach that to you. This doesn't come naturally. And, and behind this is— I think behind a lot of American Christianity is what we've called elsewhere, like in the book Resident Aliens, a kind of Constantinian assumption, and that is, hey, we're all Americans, and to be an American is to be a Christian, sort of, and Christian values are universal, and here's what everybody should be thinking if everybody were as rational and sensitive and caring as we are. No, to be a Christian is to be somebody who has heard a story, otherwise known as the Gospel, that makes you think differently, that makes you live differently in the world. And so when some fellow American says, "Well, we all know that," or "We must," Christians somewhere got to ask, "Well, wait a minute, wait, who is we here?" Yeah. And Christians know that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, And that means that that makes a difference in how we talk and how we think.

Yeah, very much so. Well, you know, for everybody listening, and if they're like me, they're forgetful, and I want to remind everybody of the name of your new book. It's God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of the Christian Faith, just in case everybody is— I don't want to pretend everyone's as forgetful as me, but I'm awfully forgetful, so I want everybody to have that.

I'm very forgetful at my age. My age cohort is that way. Yeah, often.

Well, um, as we're talking about your new book today, and these are some wonderful topics that you address in the book today, but I, I also wanted to ask you, for those who are listening today, I know we have some aspiring writers and, and people that really enjoy your writing specifically. And I know it, with all that you do as not only a teacher, uh, but as a writer and someone who does a lot of preaching around, it must require a great amount of discipline discipline on your part to fit so many things into your schedule and do it well. I was wondering if you could give us an idea of what does your writing routine look like?

You know, Rick, I get that question from people. You've used two words there that I don't think of my writing in this way, Maybe that's because I'm not honest or self-conscious enough, but I don't, I don't think of it as a discipline or as a routine. In fact, I always think one of the things I enjoyed about pastoral ministry was, uh, it wasn't routine. Then Sunday rolls around every week, but, uh, often other people and their lives set your agenda, uh, I think if my writing is disciplined, it's diff— it's disciplined in the same way that a pastor's preaching ministry is disciplined, in that you got Sunday looming before you. The minute you fish— finish one sermon on Sunday, you got another sermon. So most pastors develop some kind of rhythm. I guess I prefer rhythm to routine, uh, some kind of rhythm of, uh Hey, I work on— I start on Mondays and look at the scripture, and then I play with the scripture for a couple of weeks, a couple of days, and then I kind of start putting down ideas, you know. I think I tend to enjoy writing when I want to write, and I The first little church I served in Georgia, I had to produce 3 sermons a week. I was fresh out of seminary. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. And I think that kind of got me into a routine of not being inspired to write, but sitting down and saying, okay, here's the biblical text. Okay, Lord, uh, tell me something, show me something that I wouldn't see on my own. In other words, prayer. And then being surprised by the biblical text and then writing about it. And the way I learned to preach was to write, was manuscript, writing it out. In those days it was longhand. Of course, now it goes more quickly with a computer. But the— that sort of got me in the routine. And I remember I loved reading about great writers like Anthony Trollope, who would get up every morning and be at his writing desk at 6:00, and he wrote from 6:00 to 8:00, and then he went to work. Then next day, he'd get up at 6:00 to 8:00, write 10 pages, and go to work. In a way, that's kind of closer to the way preachers write. I keep telling my fellow preachers that if you want to write, being a preacher is great training in writing because you kind of have to produce a weekly message. And so, but I think I enjoy it. I look upon my writing as an extension of my preaching. And sometimes my writing sounds like I'm preaching a sermon, and that's okay. On the other hand, like any preacher, I also enjoy kind of slipping up on people. And another great thing about being a preacher is you sort of stand up on a weekly basis and you say, hello, I'm going to get you to think about something you think you don't want to think about. Get you to ponder things that you have been avoiding thinking about. And I'm going to do it in about 20 minutes. I've got a whole bag of tricks to get you into this, and I'm going to use them on you, and you're too dumb to know that I am busy winning you over a hearing. And, uh, that joyous moment— they don't come as often as I'd like, but they they do come often enough, when after, at the end of church, somebody comes out and says, "Huh, I thought about that before," or, "You know, I had read that passage of Scripture, I reckon, a dozen times, and I'd never seen that before. That's interesting." Or to say, even better is to say, "How in the world did you know that I was dying to hear that?" 'Today.' 'Did God tell you to say that to me?' To which I always say, 'Uh, maybe.' Uh, you know, that's great.

Well, thank you for, for sharing that. I think that does actually help a lot, and it makes a lot of sense because many— you're right, preachers, it's much more a rhythm than it is a routine, I think, with, with our lives and the way it gets structured. So that helps a lot. Um, I do wonder, and we're running short on time, so, so we'll, we'll try to wrap it up as quick as we can. But I wonder if, and maybe it was in your new book God Turned Toward Us, um, but maybe it's just something else that, that is just lately, um, I know that there's different things along the way that we just find new and fresh and exciting. Um, I don't know if it was maybe something in the writing of this book that you found that, boy, I can't wait to put pen to paper on this one because I'm really excited about this topic. Um, or is there just something that you're finding right now is, is really exciting to you that you're kind of finding some freshness with that you'd like to share with us today? I'd love to hear it if there was.

Well, I've had my mind much on preaching. Uh, I did the Beecher Lectures at Yale a few weeks ago and gave me an opportunity to do extended reflection on preaching. But I guess I was just reminded, and I mentioned in this book, I've got an entry on preaching sermons, but I have related entries on humor, the Bible, matters like that that play a part in my preaching. But I think it's just amazing how on a regular basis a thoroughly flawed, frail human being stands up in front of other thoroughly flawed, frail human beings, otherwise known as the church, and tries to say a word for God, tries to find the words to bring the inarticulate to speech. You are a musician, a poet. You know what it is to agonize over just the right word. I remember somebody telling me when I was a young preacher, "Do you write poetry?" And I said, "No." "Oh, really? It'd be better if you did write poetry." What? And said, and I've noticed I read poetry, and one reason I read poetry is the, just that every poet, every songwriter just agonizes over a word. You take that a step farther, Rick Lee James, and you've got the word and the music together. Well, in a way, with less intensity, That's what preachers do. And you, uh, it's fun to share some of that with other people, as I think I have in this book, is to say, uh, preachers say a word about death, or, uh, hey, what do we believe about life after death? Uh, preachers get asked And in one level, that's to say, we're standing in a hallway of a hospital and you ask me to give you a response to a question like that? That's ridiculous. Pastors do it all the time. And I can remember standing in a stairwell of a hospital where a wife and I had stepped out of the room as a man was breathing his— gasping his last breaths. And in the hall, in the stairwell there of the hospital, she said to me, "Preacher, I want you to tell me everything you know about what happens when we breathe our last." And I want to say, wait a minute, I need to get back to you, or give me a moment to organize my thoughts. Well, pastors don't have that luxury, and I had to stand and deliver. I had to stand there in that stairwell, and I knew that whatever I said— I mean, she was hanging on every word, and, and that would make— whatever I said was going to make a huge difference in her life. And dying. Well, not, not to be overly dramatic about it, but like in this book, I, I wanted to share some of that with other people, that, uh, hey, let me stand and deliver, and, and here's the most important thing I know about atonement and why you should be interested in this weird Christian notion.

Well, thank you for sharing that. Once again, for all of our listeners today, Dr. William Willimon has been our guest, and his new book is God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of the Christian Faith. Dr. Willimon serves as the professor of the practice of Christian ministry at Duke Divinity School and oversees the Doctor of Ministry program there. He has served as the bishop for the United Methodist Church in North Alabama for 8 years. He's a prolific author and preacher, and he continues to serve the church by offering an unapologetic attempt to articulate the language of the Christian faith on the page and in various pulpits around the country. It's always so good to visit with you, and Dr. Wilimon, I just want to say thank you for being one of the voices in my head again this week.

Thanks, Rick.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.