00:00:19.340 - 00:00:38.700

a quick look back in the first curry lecture, we considered whether it might be helpful to call our current cultural context the great awakening. Are there historical parallels to the first two great awakenings? I answered

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. Yes. Does identifying and exploring those parallels enable us to get a better interpretive grip on the current moment. Again, I answered, yes. Our current woke moment and the first two great awakenings share

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the following hallmarks and dynamics. One moral and ethical issues occupy a central place in the broader cultural conversation . Two human sin and moral failures are identified as a concern for both individuals and society. Three moral

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judgment is severe. The irredeemable face, threats of punishment, you will burn in a lake of fire , you will be cancelled. Four. The push for greater moral accountability brings about positive change. And

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five, it also divides communities. People disagree over the pronouncements made, and the tactics being employed by the awake and the woke. We concluded the first lecture by considering flannery, O'Connor's story. Everything that

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rises must converge in this story, the methods a young man uses to confront his mother's real and toxic racism plunged, the two of them deeper into Brokenness and grief. In the second curry lecture, we

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considered three challenges the great awakening presents to the church . One, we live in a post protestant moment . American society bears the imprint of protestantism ethical instincts , but it no longer shares the church's metaphysics,

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its belief in God at the same time, protestant churches and the clergy who lead them do not wield the cultural influence they did even a half century ago , protestant churches in this country have largely been de

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centred. Two, we suffer from cultural truth decay aspects of american society no longer seem to share the same reality. We trust each other's judgement less and less. Our sense of alienation is on the rise

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. Truth decay has been especially hard for communities of diverse perspective and moral discourse like churches. Three righteous anger is everywhere. The slogan of the great awakening is if you're not angry, you're not paying attention

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. We use anger as a critique, a currency and a lover. On one hand, we described the anger of our cultural enemies as unhinged, frightening and dangerous. On the other hand, we hold

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our own anger up as a badge of honor, as a rallying point. In the midst of all this anger, we have become vulnerable as individuals and groups to manipulation, to those who seek to fan

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the flames of our rage for political gain or for profit. All this anger has toxic consequences for churches . We concluded the second lecturer by considering scott alexander's dystopian story, sort by controversial. In this piece

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of short fiction, a silicon valley startup tasks. It's computer with generating statements that will, when dropped into a social media feed or a water cooler conversation , trigger volatile arguments. The story calls these toxic

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nuggets scissor statements weaponized opinions designed to tear communities apart . The 3rd and Final Curry Lecturer for 2021 is entitled Church Today, we will focus on ways in which the contemporary Church might respond to the pressures and

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opportunities presented by the great awakening. three questions will hover over our work. one can the greater opening move the church toward faithfulness. Two, what might the Contemporary Church bring to the table, set by

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the great awakening? And three. What faithful roles can today's D center churches play in this new season of ethical revival? These questions will, I hope set the stage so that we can consider a theological

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framework or or maybe more accurately, a spiritual mindset for engaging this moment. Peace, unity, and purity, when the presbyterian Church usA ordains and installs elders and deacons, the candidates for ordination are asked

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a series of constitutional questions. These ordination vows ground people in God's calling and the reform tradition, even as they sketch a sweeping and humbling vision of what the church expects of its leaders, reverend thomas R

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. Jr, a former curry lecturer, provocatively suggests that the shortest of these vows also happens to be the most challenging. Do you promise to further the peace, unity, and purity of the church?

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I think tom R. Is right, and I want to take a moment today to zoom in on this vow first, because awakening movements typically put those in the church who strive for purity and those in

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the Church who work for unity at odds with each other. And second, because this vow, can , I think, be a resource, as we consider the church's role in this time. The purity

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of the church. Those who prioritize purity often find the church and its leadership lacking too passive, too mealy math, too weak. When it comes to contentious moral issues and broad ethical conversations, these folks

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prod the church, its leaders and preachers to describe the ethical landscape Cape in the clearest possible terms and to direct listeners toward a righteous path. They fear that churches that do not address pressing ethical issues with

00:08:07.800 - 00:08:30.540

moral passion have sold their souls. This you will remember was precisely the criticism theodorus frail in Hoisin offered of colonial congregations in the cultural wind up to the first. Great awakening. Those concerned with the purity

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of the church's witness can be found at every point along the theological or political spectrum. And they may they do disagree as to what constitutes impurity, but they share the same general concern. The church is

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forever being tempted to tone down the radical truth of the gospel, to escape conflict, soft pedaling the gospel, they assert is not the way of faith . It's not consistent with the vision of a sacrificial

00:09:05.640 - 00:09:24.800

and suffering church as presented in the new testament and as such, those concerned with purity encouraged preachers to pursue the moral high ground. Even when it's painfully divisive, there's a cost to discipleship, the teaching

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and proclamation of jesus christ got him crucified. How about you, preacher Sidebar, One of the most intriguing examples of a purist preacher in contemporary literature, can be found in James McBride's the Good Lord Bird

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, winner of the 2013 National Book Award. Mcbride tells the tale of john Brown, the christian firebrand and commander of a militia whose revulsion over the moral scourge of slavery leads him to make violent attacks on

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slaveholders, and eventually, a doomed assault on Harpers Ferry, a botched scheme that nonetheless pushes the country into civil war. In the novel, Brown's intense purity is viewed by some as courageous by some as

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lunacy, by some as evil and by some as nothing short of glorious. I commend this powerful and thought provoking portrait to you sidebar over the unity of the church. Those who prioritize unity point out that

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the church has always been composed of folk who disagree over consequential matters. It's always been easier, you know, fires point out to split a church than it is to nurture a diverse community. There have

00:11:05.020 - 00:11:22.070

been plenty of how ideologically pure preachers who hammered away on some of the finer points of an ethical issue until their congregations were reduced to close knit communities of one doesn't. The Book of Acts tell the story

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of Peter being encouraged by the Holy Spirit to let go of his demands for ethical purity and to expand his vision of whom God welcomes into community. Those who lean towards unity in the church acknowledged that the

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important role that moral clarity and ethical action play in the body of christ, but they also point out that those who champion particular moral issues are not the only folk bringing heartfelt concerns to worship. This is

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a basic point, but I think it bears repeating precisely because it's so often lost in the shuffle every sunday when preachers step into the pulpit, they bring with them a jumble of faithful concerns summarize from the

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biblical text or the liturgical season. Some come from a tearful conversation held alongside a freshly dug grave. Some come from the fight that broke out after friday night's high school basketball game, and some from a

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text sent by a member of the youth group and yes, some come from the op ed section of the newspaper. All of this is to say. People come to church hoping to hear a word from

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God that might be relevant to all sorts of different topics and circumstances. And this variety belies a laser beam. Focus on purity. Yeah. Think of it this way say those who lean toward the unity

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side of the equation, Jesus was crucified for who he was and for what he proclaimed. But we cannot forget that Jesus spent a whole lot of time gathering a diverse group of disciples who would have splintered

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into a million pieces if the glue holding them together was moral or theological purity. Simon, the zealot and Matthew, the tax collector had every reason to hate each other. Simon would have considered Matthew a

00:13:35.140 - 00:13:52.290

traitorous sell out to the romans and Matthew would have looked on. Simon is a violent radical. What brought these two rivals together was not ideological agreement but the summons of christ, the love of christ and

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in this we would do well to remember according to the gospel of john, that christ's final prayer before being crucified was that his followers be unified. Do you promise to further the peace, unity and purity

00:14:11.680 - 00:14:28.630

of the church? The words in this vow want to spring away from each other and therein lies the theological genius of the peace, unity and purity vow . In binding your unity and purity to each other

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. The vow grounds christian leaders in a healthy theological tension. Our passion for embracing a righteous ethical path ought to be flavored with love for the diverse people . Christ calls into community and vice versa. The

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affection we have for our communities ought to be infused with christ's calling to live radically moral lives in embracing this tension. The peace, unity and purity vow offers congregations, clergy and even seminaries away to think

00:15:05.810 - 00:15:22.520

about christian, about how christian community might engage the great awoken ng in calling us to work for the purity of the church's witness. This vow encourages us to wade into conversations about the ethical issues of the

00:15:22.520 - 00:15:45.290

day and to do so in a way that manifests God's love for all who gather around the table doing this, engaging moral issues in a community of diverse perspectives, plunges us into a brave new world swimming

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in choppy water. Does the current context really present a unique challenge to the church? Hasn't christian community always been called to discuss complicated moral issues? Well , yes, this is true, but the growth

00:16:03.510 - 00:16:25.920

and use of social media platforms as the primary gathering places, testing grounds and bullhorns for today's ethical conversations and moral movements presents the contemporary church with fresh challenges . Case in point. The Me Too movement and

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black lives matter. Both of these movements raise topics of moral concern that resonate with the church's core ethical teachings about human dignity, the equality of people before the law and the corrosive effects of violence. The

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church must talk about these movements, evaluate their arguments and consider the ethical path They chart. These movements have the power to unmask significant wrongs in culture and church. Still, many churches and clergy fear touching

00:17:03.100 - 00:17:22.330

these topics. Part of this has to do with a polarized and politicized media who characterized these movements in such starkly different ways. People walk into church or or tune into zoom church with already formed and strongly

00:17:22.330 - 00:17:44.460

held opinions depending on their preferred news sources. The faithful approach these movements ready to embrace and defend or to criticize and dismiss. Now this sort of tribalism is nothing new, but like other periods of awakening

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, it's especially zealous in the great awakening. Mhm . Another reason churches have difficulty speaking about these movements has to do with their decentralized nature. These movements are grounded in real life events, but they arise

00:18:03.440 - 00:18:21.680

out of online moral laboratories. In other words, anyone can post something to a social media platform and append the hashtag black lives matter to it. There's no communications department out there vetting these posts, making

00:18:21.680 - 00:18:40.720

sure that they hew to the core values and stated goals of an organization when it comes to standards for evidence, rules for respectful dialogue and editorial control over what these movements are about. It's the Wild West

00:18:40.720 - 00:19:00.210

out there, every online conversation is a swirl of voices and opinions. Some are new voices tentatively trying to find their way into a conversation. Some are docents trying to teach others how to engage. Some

00:19:00.210 - 00:19:15.980

are ethicists seeking to define the terms and rules of a new vocabulary. Some are trolls deliberately trying to stir up vitriol. Some are virtue posters eager to show off their ethics and boost their brand. Some

00:19:15.980 - 00:19:37.610

are simply trying to tell their story as you know this conversation, if you can even call it, that plays out across multiple platforms in free flowing, fast paced and sometimes quite cruel exchanges. The rough

00:19:37.610 - 00:19:55.590

and tumble nature of hashtag debates provides grist for those who want to dismiss or ignore these conversations. Every time I referenced one of these movements, people will point me to some egregious or unsettling post that comes

00:19:55.590 - 00:20:11.230

branded with the hashtag, look at this terrible thing , This is what this movement is all about. These are its values. The open source nature of online moral movements means that they can be difficult to

00:20:11.230 - 00:20:30.440

define and easy to question, but this shouldn't scare the church away. A simple question can move us forward. Does the church need to accept everything that is said or done when accompanied by one of these

00:20:30.440 - 00:20:49.680

hashtags? Of course not. In fact, understanding the dynamics now, the hashtag movement can help christian communities who seek to join these moral debates at their best. A hashtag take something that a person has

00:20:49.680 - 00:21:10.300

experienced or witnessed and graphs it into a larger conversation , a shared pool of experience. These online conversations evolve and shift almost like a school of fish flashing through the ocean as they move. These flashing fish

00:21:10.310 - 00:21:30.720

probe the boundaries of ethical conversations the edges of a particular hashtag consider as an example. This question, what counts as a me to experience JIA Tolentino describes a post in which a woman speaks about an awkward

00:21:30.730 - 00:21:48.210

first date, a dinner in which a guy speaks too much about himself and concludes by typing hashtag Me too. The online response to this post was a fairly robust, you might even say brutal discussion as

00:21:48.210 - 00:22:07.400

to whether the posts author understands or appreciates the difference between feeling uncomfortable and the experience of sexual harassment or sexual assault. In a way, of course, this sort of hammer and tongs education is nothing new

00:22:07.410 - 00:22:26.960

. Moral philosophers have explored the edges of ethical issues . For millennia, christian communities have done the same . Churches are forever debating and clarifying moral issues. This experience means we bring critical resources to the contemporary

00:22:26.960 - 00:22:48.310

table to quote napoleon dynamite, We've got skills. What does the church bring to the table? The brutal nature of contemporary online dialogue points to an area where I believe the church ought to play a critical

00:22:48.310 - 00:23:08.140

role in the great awakening, simply put churches, seminaries and denominations have a good deal of practice. Moderating conversations about controversial issues, often with an eye toward making space for diverse voices to be heard and

00:23:08.150 - 00:23:26.890

in a manner that models respect, care and love for those with whom we disagree. While most contemporary american churches have not participated in anything like the rigorous work done in South Africa by the Truth and reconciliation

00:23:26.890 - 00:23:47.390

commission, many have been informed by that work and of course, many, many more christians are shaped by the weekly liturgical practices of confession, pardon and peace. The patterns of repentance, forgiveness and regeneration

00:23:47.400 - 00:24:08.700

are knit into the church's DNA. These ethical commitments can should and do, change the tone of our dialogue, the court teachings of Christianity, Christianity also encourage us to engage others to expand the tent to

00:24:08.700 - 00:24:30.170

broaden the conversation every week in facing our own Brokenness and our complicity in the world's moral failings. The faithful lean into a paradigm modeled by jesus and his disciples. It goes like this difficult ethical conversations are

00:24:30.170 - 00:24:52.450

more than a zero sum game, a tooth and nail battle fought by enemy tribes, difficult ethical conversations are a vital crucible in which understandings can dawn opinions can be changed, souls can be saved, reconciliation

00:24:52.460 - 00:25:15.270

forged and surprising relationships grow. One of the contemporary preachers who models this is reverend William Barber to the Second, Barbara is appropriately identified as a critical voice in today's moral conversation and as the modern preacher who

00:25:15.270 - 00:25:36.000

has most clearly picked up the mantle of martin Luther King JR Barbers preaching offers a no holds bar no holds barred criticism of America's moral failures. It's racism , its tolerance of poverty, it's inadequate public education

00:25:36.000 - 00:25:52.370

system, it's oppressive treatment of immigrants and migrants and , yep, When Barbara preached at 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church to a diverse congregation of people from all over this city, he paired his criticism, as he

00:25:52.380 - 00:26:07.580

always does, with a clear invitation for others to become part of the conversation, part of the poor people's campaign, part of a broad based movement grounded in faith in doing this. Barber refuses to hew

00:26:07.580 - 00:26:26.610

to the fundamentalist strictures governing contemporary political speech on the left and on the right, he sh eyes away from the sort of puritanical rigidity that Andrew Sullivan so frequently critiques, rather than using ethical issues as a

00:26:26.610 - 00:26:42.650

lever to pit race against race. And rather than speaking in broad terms about racial privilege, Barber stretches the boundaries of the conversation. He links the struggles of black urban America to the poverty of white rural

00:26:42.650 - 00:27:02.430

America. He notes that that the disparities african americans experience in receiving quality healthcare are real, and he notes that the death rate for young white men in this country, largely because of opioids and suicide is

00:27:02.430 - 00:27:22.320

rising faster than any other demographic rather than pit struggling people against each other. Barbara bids them joined together to embrace a larger vision. In a similar vein , the church has the potential to influence and already

00:27:22.330 - 00:27:45.250

is influencing in some quarters contemporary moral conversations by providing an alternative to call out or cancel culture. Professor Loretta Ross teaches an incredibly popular class at smith College that models a different approach to moral conversation. A

00:27:45.250 - 00:28:03.650

veteran of decades of contentious ethical debates, Ross argues that we need to replace our current call out culture with a call in culture. She points out that while while calling someone out may make you feel momentarily

00:28:03.650 - 00:28:22.810

superior, it ultimately leads to anger and alienation. Were caught, says Ross, in almost unbreakable cycles of anger. We doom scroll. We read post after post that fans are rage and then out of

00:28:22.820 - 00:28:41.230

fear, anxiety and overflowing anger at those who do not get it. Those we have determined are about to destroy all that we hold precious. We lash out us argues that we sabotage our own happiness with

00:28:41.240 - 00:29:02.490

unrestrained anger. She regularly asks her students, why are you making choices to make the world crueler than it needs to be? And calling that being woke the alternative to calling people out, Ross argues,

00:29:02.630 - 00:29:18.140

is calling them in into conversation and into relationship. This, Ross says, is a call made out of love here. The Professor makes an appeal to the work of one of the most influential voices in

00:29:18.140 - 00:29:36.990

the civil rights movement, reverend C. T. Vivian in many, many marches and imprisonments and and beatings that Vivian endured while working as martin Luther King's Field general. He lived and modeled christ's seemingly impossible

00:29:36.990 - 00:29:56.960

command. Love your enemies. This says Ross is the sort of commitment. Today's moral conversations desperately need , they need radical love 2000 years and counting, and the thing that the world desperately needs from the

00:29:56.960 - 00:30:11.980

church hasn't changed. Not really what has changed and what continues to change, of course, is the place that the church occupies in society, the platform , it has to talk about the love of God

00:30:11.990 - 00:30:29.600

and love of neighbor. In the course of these lectures, we have considered the argument that America is now in a post protestant era. Others like Stanley , how ross would say post christendom or post christian

00:30:29.610 - 00:30:47.640

period. And while we may disagree on the finer points of these arguments, I think most of us would agree that the church is no longer the primary initiator or adjudicator of ethical conversations in this country.

00:30:47.650 - 00:31:04.810

We're not entirely out of the game, but we have most certainly been de centred. Now, some suggest that this is the church's natural posture and this may be true in any case being de centred raises

00:31:04.810 - 00:31:27.940

a strategic question for contemporary congregations and pastors. How should we engage in the moral conversations of the day ? How should a d centre church approach the great awakening? I want to close today by examining two

00:31:27.950 - 00:31:47.000

different cultural signposts that I think point the way for the contemporary church. one comes from the art world and one from literature before we go there. However , we need to take a brief excursion into philosophy

00:31:47.050 - 00:32:12.110

and logic philosophers tend to divide human reasoning into three logical types, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning and abducted reasoning. Deductive reasoning. Makes a series of inferences based on and beginning with a widely accepted fact or

00:32:12.110 - 00:32:28.780

truth. The Church of christendom relying on broad cultural agreement as to the truth of the faith, frequently made appeal to deduct of reasoning. God is love . We all agree on that. This truth has

00:32:28.790 - 00:32:49.380

implications for how you should live your life. three points and a poem today, inductive reasoning reverses this logic. It moves from a series of observations about the world to draw a conclusion. Sherlock Holmes employed

00:32:49.390 - 00:33:08.620

inductive reasoning to solve crimes 50 years ago. Ha Miletich in fred craddock urged preachers to employ inductive reasoning in their sermons informed by the writings of Soren Kierkegaard . Craddick sensed atrophy and apathy among american christians in

00:33:08.620 - 00:33:29.010

the latter part of the 20th century, he urged preachers to equip their listeners with observations about text and life, that would enable them to draw their own passionate conclusions about faith. If deductive reasoning works from

00:33:29.010 - 00:33:52.550

a truth, an inductive reasoning leads toward the truth , abducted reasoning imagines a framework that makes sense of that explains what we're seeing. American philosopher Charles purse described abduction as a sort of educated. Guess others

00:33:52.550 - 00:34:14.930

say that the best example of abducted reasoning is a medical diagnosis. To engage in abducted logic is to offer a theory, a story, a song, a creed that has explanatory power, abducted logic is

00:34:14.930 - 00:34:31.670

how humans make sense of what they're observing or encountering . I want to argue that abducted reasoning is what the Diy center church and her clergy need to pursue in the midst of the great awoken ng. Okay

00:34:32.240 - 00:34:54.040

, the angry, the truth deprived and the afraid are all eager for stories, songs and creeds that can shine light on and bring understanding to this anxious and contentious moment. What does this Abduct of work

00:34:54.050 - 00:35:15.540

look like fearless girl and charging bull? Where can the church find examples of abducted reasoning that effectively you might even say subversively offer explanations for who we are and what we are called to be? I want

00:35:15.540 - 00:35:32.020

to tell you a story from the world of art that offers a model for how the church can exert a sort of sacred left handed power at this moment in time. In december 1989. Under the cover

00:35:32.020 - 00:35:50.750

of night, the italian sculptor, Arturo Di modica unloaded a 3.5 ton statue and installed it next to a christmas tree in front of the new york stock exchange. According to Di Modica. The statue,

00:35:50.760 - 00:36:07.930

which he called Charging Bull was intended as a gift to bolster the spirits of traders in the aftermath of the 1987 market crash. Now at first Wall Street wasn't sure it like the bull workers removed it the

00:36:07.930 - 00:36:24.130

next day. Then a short time later the bull reappeared and was temporarily installed on Bowling Green, a public city park in the area. It's remained in that spot to this day. Over the years,

00:36:24.130 - 00:36:45.140

charging bull has become a popular and frequently photographed symbol in new york it represents, says the artist, prosperity and strength. In March of 2017, another statue received a permit for Bowling Green and was temporarily

00:36:45.440 - 00:37:05.900

installed facing charging bull standing with her hands on her hips in front of the snorting bovine is a much smaller but no less fierce figure, Fearless girl. This new statue by the artist, christian visible was

00:37:05.900 - 00:37:21.750

commissioned by a Wall Street investment firm to call attention to the lack of women leaders and finance. It's also some say a sneaky bit of advertising for the sponsoring firms Index fund. The plaque below the statue

00:37:21.750 - 00:37:38.230

states know the power of women in leadership. She makes a difference with S. H. E. Referring both to the statue and to the funds. NASDAQ ticker symbol is shortly after Fearless Girl was installed

00:37:38.250 - 00:37:55.240

. Di modica, the sculptor of charging bull, cried foul in an emotional press conference. He accused fearless girl of attacking charging bull. He argued that fearless girl distorted charging bull by taking this proud creature

00:37:55.250 - 00:38:14.200

and turning it into a villain. Di modica threatened to sue to have the smaller statue removed for her part visible. The sculptor of fearless Girl stood firm . She calls the bull a stunning piece of art

00:38:14.210 - 00:38:31.540

. But she also remarked the world changes. The controversy surrounding these temporary statues has been picked up and hashed over by countless blogs and journalists and you can see why it raises all sorts of fun cocktail party

00:38:31.540 - 00:38:49.840

questions how much control do artists have over the way their work is interpreted? What does power look like a charging bull? A girl who will not back down? What's the difference between art and crafty marketing

00:38:50.820 - 00:39:06.250

? We could spend all day debating these topics spoil sport that I am though. I want to focus our attention on the aspect of this controversy that no one is disputing. It goes like this. Art

00:39:06.920 - 00:39:23.250

. Good art interprets everything around it. French philosopher immanuel Lebanon's argued that if If you were to take two books and print them side by side in two columns on the pages of a larger volume, the

00:39:23.250 - 00:39:40.230

two texts would immediately start to interpret each other. You can also put two paintings next to each other on the wall from different artists in different centuries with different styles and subjects and contexts and they will start

00:39:40.230 - 00:39:58.390

to talk to each other as well. Art interprets art. Art also interprets the place where it's displayed , the street where it's installed and the culture in which it is viewed. Art interprets the viewer to

00:39:58.400 - 00:40:20.030

art. Good art goes after us. It questions us wrestles with our beliefs and inspires us to action . Art is abducted, It stands within the world exuding a subtle, often de centred interpretive power and

00:40:20.030 - 00:40:37.910

that's not a bad definition for the church. Churches are God's art. Now many will say that a sunset is God's artwork or a rose or the last chart allowing call a balloon on a moonlit lake and

00:40:37.910 - 00:41:00.470

that's all true. The natural world displays God's general artistry, but God gets specific to, you know the story christ came and talk and healed. He suffered and died and rose. He called the disciples

00:41:00.480 - 00:41:15.730

, gave them the gospel and charged them to love each other and to go around preaching, casting out demons and living the good news, Jesus challenged this motley crew to become the church to be God's art

00:41:16.710 - 00:41:30.750

. The church is the vision that God is painting for the world. And sometimes of course we mess up God's art in a major way. The church can obscure the good news through its foibles and failures

00:41:30.760 - 00:41:50.030

. And yet God never gives up. God persists in asking groups of people to offer holy vision to the world. God does this because God loves the world and God knows that without these visions, without

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a fearless girl, the charging bulls of the world would run rampant without the artistry of God. To use a phrase coined by Professor Cynthia Rigby, the world would be in trouble. What is the nature

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of this trouble? That question takes us to today's short story All that by David Foster Wallace. The most provocative short story I've read in recent years, comes from David Foster Wallace. It appeared in the

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new yorker after his death, his suicide. The story is entitled All that. The narrator in this story is an adult man reflecting on his childhood at the tender age of five years old, the man's

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parents gave him for christmas a toy cement truck. It was made of solid wood, Except for two steel rods that served as axles. The boy pulled the truck around on a string. The boy played

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with the cement mixer more than he played with any other toy. He did this because his parents led him to believe that it was an unusual cement mixer . It was, they told him magic. According

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to his parents, the trucks magic worked like this . Whenever the boy pulled it, the drum on the back, the portion responsible for mixing the cement would rotate the enchantment was such that the drum rotated

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, though only when the boy was not looking on hearing this. The boy is thrilled. Immediately, he begins to devise all sorts of experiments to catch sight of the rotating drum. He tries whirling around

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really fast. He takes sidelong peaks and a mirror as he walks by, he asks his parents too to pull the cement truck across the living room while he watches from outside the room through a keyhole.

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Nothing, of course works. The boy's father is proud. His son's research has uncovered an important fact . There is no magic in the world, but that is not ironically what the boy has discovered.

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As an adult, the narrator observes, I came to realize the reason I spent so much time trying to catch the drum rotating is that I wanted to verify that I could not spot it curiously. The

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failure of the boys experiments became a source of joy to him. Why all the boys experiments led him to conclude that there are some things in this world in this life that you simply cannot see when the

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next christmas rolled around. The boy was no longer playing with the truck. Although looking back on that experience, the narrator realizes that the magic cement mixer left a lasting impression on him. It opened inside

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of him, a place, a space for reverence . This is how he describes it. The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are at times invisible to us seems to me a

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compelling argument for religious reverence. The most powerful and significant connections in our lives are invisible. That's quite a discovery. And later in the story, we learned that this discovery compels the narrator to enroll in

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seminary in pursuit of mysterious, invisible, life changing stuff, ironically, the thing that is too often missing from christian proclamation, including my own is God . It's the audacious daring suggestion that the mysterious,

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powerful, life changing, loving and love inspiring God attested to in the life of jesus christ is still at work in our midst, seeking to redeem the world. Do you sense this? I wish we

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could sit this afternoon on a bench on the often Austin seminary campus today so that I could hear your take on this diagnosis. I really do. And I will imagine that happy possibility as I run back

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through the canaries in the coal mine to whom I've been listening and about whom we've been talking for the past three days Andrew Sullivan laments arguments that have moral fervor but lack any sense of piety religious practice or

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the acknowledgement to use til IX words of the ground of all being ross. Douthat claims that our cultural moral conversations echo with theological language, but no longer connect with the metaphysics of faith. JIA Tolentino describes

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having ecstatic experiences in the flawed church of our childhood and having rejected organized religion, seeking to mimic these ecstatic experiences through drug use. David Foster Wallace writes about parents who use a prank to try and convince

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their son that there is no magic in the world . Each of these accounts is a lament. Each of these accounts laments the absence not of ethical conversation because there's plenty of that, but the absence of

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the transcendent God and of those who are eager to point in that God's general direction to talk of mystery and wonder to testify to transcendent moments. It seems to me, is the calling that people desperately want

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the church to embrace. In the midst of this great awakening. This is the missing foundation for all the ethical conversations our culture needs to have. I was so excited when I saw that the title of

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my friend Carlos Cardoza, or Landes lectures referenced the world of enchantment. We have so much to learn from Pentecostal churches and other Southern hemisphere christians and from mystics like Julian Norris, who are willing to talk

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about their experiences of the Divine, they help us to remember. But before there were ethical codes carved into stone tablets, there was a burning bush Before there was a sermon on the mount. There were

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40 days in the wilderness, and before there was the tightening argumentation of the epistle to the Romans, there was Paul Sauls knocked off his horse, sitting in the dust, listening to a voice calling to

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him from the darkness. All this takes me back to Carl Bart and the discussion we had about preaching and context. In lecture number one Bart argued that proclamation requires that we hold the Bible in one hand

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and the newspaper and the other, but his focus , we noted was on the incarnation. All miracle that happens when these two live wires are brought together . God is present on sunday morning, when when

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when the bells ring to call the congregation and minister to church. Bart once wrote, there is in the air and expectancy. That's something great crucial and even momentous is about to happen. Worship services do

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this part, observes in song and prayer and scripture . Worship is constantly communicating that God is present here . So naturally the people who come to these strange occasions, pastor barred calls worship services grotesque bring with

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them. A single burning question. Is it true ? Is it true that this sense of a stationary pole, amid changing appearances of righteous? Not righteousness ? Not not somewhere behind the stars, but within

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the events which are our present life is true. This talk of a loving and good God, who is more than one of the friendly idols, whose rise is so easy to account for, and whose

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Dominion is so brief? What the people want to find out, and thoroughly understand? Is is it true? Our willingness to answer this question will distinguish the church from all the other voices in the time

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of the great awakening, and it will pave the way for urgent moral conversations that can be conducted with surprising gentleness and even beauty? Is there anything more important for the church to do right now than to

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answer this question over and over and over again.