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This was fascinating title that instantly had me pop onto it (BBC article of same name). It turned out to be the overwhelming uninvited responsibility, demand and pressure of having Banksy show up, unknown to the owner of the small business, and leave his infamous social commentary via art that will outlive him and rival any of the artists in the past three hundred years. That’s just it – he has a life, a business and now he’s managing an art installation and has a responsibility for it, though he never asked for and is not prepared for such pressure or responsibility. I get it! We bear burdens that we never asked for all the time. We bear pressures that are not ours, but we must as responsible people bear them.
What it left me thinking about was actually the pressure of today – a day and age where there is instant, immediate in nanoseconds what is occurring around the world. It’s not more, we just know about more now. In fact, there is so much, news agencies (editors) must prioritise what to even share with us, because it’s overwhelming. For Christians well over 100,000 saints are martyred every year. How many a day? …a lot! BUT we get an article a week – and I’m thankful we get that.
Yet, this is only the tip: there are climate issues, economic issues, refugee issues, famine, war, a plethora of natural disasters, crime, malfeasance and crazy national leaders doing really dumb stuff EVERY DAY! Honestly, I’m so pulled to retreat, to hide, to simply respond to how I am doing questions with, “Just doing me.” It’d be simpler, I could find my emotional and psychological Zen space with God and love people from the overflow. I could monastic it so easy! Read, pray, Scripture, and nice small very localised faith.
Yet we cannot do that! It’s not the nature of the one emulating and following Jesus. Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox priests are assigned a cure when they are the priest, vicar of local parishes. Bishops have a see (larger cure). In simple terms, there is the responsibility to care, to give a damn, to pastor, love, bear witness, speak into, heal, right, disciple the entire cure (area) assigned. As the church we are assigned cure of the world. Yes, the world. Sure, it begins with our immediate cure, our church’s cure, our diocesan cure/see, but it is for us, the Body of Christ to care for the world, and to help individuals and entire societies to get a glimpse of God’s face in how we act, speak, feel, prophetically speak to power, right wrongs, heal, and share-sacrifice our lives for them… even loving enemies. I need not quote verses if you are still reading. If you need verses – use Google!
But as the sun sets where you are today, yes, it’s not what you asked for, it’s not even within our ability to carry. It’s not within our ability to even carry in our hearts. Somehow we trust God through it, in it, and as we walk through it. We must steward, care for our cure – even if we now know so much more of what is happening. As we go, we depend, trust, that Christ will weave our small efforts and prayers and entrust it to Him. BUT like the small business owner, now stewarding what will be a historic treasure, we cannot simply walk away either.
7 January 2019 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation, Uncategorized | Leave a comment
A preach up!
Today I had the privilege to preach Pentecost! This was as the church filled with “billows of smoke” (as it says in Acts 2!)… I took a risk – time to speak plain, to give it straight from what I felt the Spirit saying. I had pondered this message for three weeks – how Pentecost was already an established feast, what it was, why Peter quoted Joel, the context for Joel’s prophesy, the implications of the day, how the birth of the church, the coming of the Spirit was not a reaction – but God’ plan from the beginning and the mandate we have as a result of it! It went really well – only offended a few (unintentionally!), but most loved it – though it pricked them to incarnate their neighbourhoods as the body of Christ!
I don’t often push the recordings out there, but thought I might share it with you while it’s hot off the press. If you are in need of a laugh, want to do a little critique, give it a listen.
Click here to listen
15 May 2016 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
Preamble: This is not a theological defense or attack. It is not a thesis. It is a thought or two, a consideration, an encouragement. I also confess I am an Anglican, a Catholic Evangelical… So, get over those hurdles and start from a post-reformation saint trying to authentically and orthodoxically follow the Messiah… Now, read on!
I have Catholic roots. I have evangelical roots. I am an Evangelical Anglo-Catholic who is a missional missionary and leader in an urban post-Christian post-modern reality in a western context. I suffer the same over marketed drowning culture as you, if you’re reading this! There is no space for reflection, getting perspective unless one turns off, tunes out, blocks space to slow down and actually really do real thinking and meditating.
Ever been in a time praying with others and the most common phrases were, “Lord we just…” or “hmmm…” and rambling 1000 words to say what could be said in 50? Yet in those times come birthing authenticity and earnestness. There is strength and weakness. Like most things in life, it is not complete or holistic. It becomes trite and shallow and only includes what we feel and think about right now… in the moment and doesn’t help us see, think, feel (also known as align) with God, His will, or transform us, but reduces prayer to our limited shallow theology and emotions of the day. BUT it also presents the real needs of the day – and mysteriously God includes us in His efficacious engagement with the world by moving in our prayer! A mystery! I heard it said recently that God somehow includes us, begins our reign with Him even now, even sharing His power with us, by making us part of the way He moves! A huge mandate to intercede!
Yet that is incomplete.
I have experienced seasons (two plus years to be gut honest!) where it was dark, real dark. I had no words. I was out of words. I didn’t feel and what I did sense was dark! I didn’t even have energy to intercede regularly. The only thing that kept me; what healed me; what sustained me – was praying the Divine offices…. regular times of prayer every day, where I was led, like spiritual therapy, as compared with physical therapy. It impacted me emotionally, mentally from the core of spiritual therapy. It guided me, reminded me, told me and exhorted me – because my heart was too dark to remember. I am every grateful for those times of liturgy.
I am also limited – I need and have come to find encouragement, even transformation in liturgy! I have found that it helps me get how to worship and adore Him, without a string of dime store, supermarket check out queue romance novel empty words I don’t relate to beyond mental ascent, but certainly not with the faithfulness of the command to Love the Lord my God with all of my mind, all of my body, all of my heart, all of my strength (will).
Why? What is the draw to the liturgy? Most holistically, what is the draw to a holistic and authentic use of liturgy – which makes plenty of room for the need of the day, the intentions of the heart, the aches and emotions that need and should be expressed?
There are several reasons for this BOTH AND to be holistic and healthy and that any liturgy provides for the former and while shaping us in the latter. First, We don’t reflect seasonally or thoroughly through all of the things we should reflect upon without a plan, a calendar. We don’t remember well at all. Liturgy drives this. Second, Liturgy is mostly Scripture! All Anglican and Catholic, and Orthodox liturgies are formed and collected from Scripture. Can one object to praying Scripture? Third, by the first two, it helps form us, transform us, and align us. Ever pray, “Your will be done?” Ever pray “we want what you want God?” Well, this is how we align our desire, our posture, our perspective to God. Scripture guides us, and the liturgy is in a schedule, a routine that helps us think through and worship in a holistic way. Fourth, Liturgy aligns our world, our lives along God’s paradigm, instead of a pagan calendar… these two are a step closer to a Biblical world view. In a world where there is less than 10% Biblical world view held by the Christian population of all traditions, this would be very helpful.
Furthermore, when you reach – and you will – if you’re young and in denial, okay, I’ll wait for life to slap the ever loving s*** out of you and you’ll be back to tell me you now get it – that point where you cannot even form a prayer, the liturgy takes you there, where you should and need to be and that transformation and slow realignment, rebirth of your soul can occur – because it aligns you with Him, His will, His perspective, and the release to trust and allow God to be, well, God! It’s surrender, but that’s not popular today.
These well written, theologically thought through liturgies and prayers are the 50 words to say what can be said in 50 words, verses 1000 to say what could be said in 50! They are thought out, constructed, well chosen vocabulary, and have been prayed and reflected upon and sharpened over centuries. There is wisdom in listening to good orators, or reading good writing – well, here you are! AND it’s shared and prayed with thousands of others same day and in a world where the time zones shift, it means it is prayed repeatedly every hour for twenty-four hours! AND it’s been prayed for centuries. It exposes you to others. Within the Anglican tradition there are approved liturgies and prayer books across the globe. They are the same, but also include innovative thought through contributions of others.
Then for those who are passionate about expressing what’s on the heart, liturgy provides space every time you gather to pray openly, in your own earnest passion about anything and everything! It also frames prayer to include the things and reflect the values of a diocese, a society, today. So, there is nothing lost.
I think the resistance when we get honest, is a) uneducated fear of it being unorthodox or boring, or too rigid, b) not accustomed to anyone having any form – we so embrace no form (discipline) of any type, we resist it even when it’s good to allow input to help form us holistically. Think of it as doing sit-ups; if you only do crunches and belly muscle work, you’ll be humped over in a short time, because you haven’t holistically trained your body to also address the counter balance of strengthening the back; and c) the lie of our time that if it’s old its irrelevant and modern only is good. Additionally, I think we don’t know how to focus, to slow down, to listen well. Liturgy provides that space – we need it desperately! Our lack of it has birthed theology for how we feel today – lack of orthodoxy at best and heresy at worst. We’re moved by the emotion of today… because we feel it earnestly doesn’t make it right or true; yet it has become the arbitrating reality today.
So, give it a consideration! Don’t go nuts. Where I am, we practice morning and evening prayers together. It’s not some painful hour for our busy contemporary lives. It’s 8.30a and 5.30p… It frames the day. The New Zealand Anglican Prayer book also offers a short mid-day prayer and compline/night prayer for the end of the day. It is chalked with variations and options, festival days, etc, providing variance and routine and freedom to adapt and move with the earnestness of the day. It is respected not just by the global Anglican Communion, but other traditions as well. There is also the Book of Common Prayer – still used (with editing over time) since the early 1600’s! One can also draw from the Orthodox and Catholic Missals. Our fore-fathers and mothers developed Divine offices, set times of day where different forms/types/postures/purposes of prayer occur. I practice seven offices each day – none are ordinarilly long, five alone, some very brief, altering time when conflicting in a meeting, etc. I vary how I do it, but it helps me, forms me, reminds me, makes sure I practice all the postures from intercession, to repentance, to adoration, etc. Do I ever just pray? You bet – regular form of life for me; and at times do retreats, as well as long prayer walks on my own, where I just talk with God – telling Him more than one would ever want!
To sum it up, in good consolation seasons of life, or the dark nights of the soul, it keeps me. It keeps me when I can’t keep it. It helps me holistically seek, know and be known, to posture myself and keep perspective. I’ll give you one short example. At 4p daily, my phone/laptop/pad gives me a reminder for none (9th hour of the day prayer… anytime from 3-4p daily… I set mine for 4p because it best fits my life demands. At none prayer, the reminder in my phone has notes to help remind me, a very short liturgy that helps me keep perspective, to think, be reminded and to align my heart to God’s – to surrender. How? Here is my None prayer: “It is mid to late afternoon. It is the fading part of the day, the time of decline, when shadows begin to lengthen. The fading of time brings home death and impermanence and the need to connect with something transcendent.” This simple reminder puts my very temporal time here on earth in perspective with the eternal reality inwhich I live. I don’t take myself or my contribution in this world so serious that I think “I’m all that.” It reminds me I am small and I serve with authenticity and sincerity, but the world is His! In the notes of this reminder for None, is “None is nine; the night hour of the day. It is mid to late afternoon. It is the fading part of the day, the time of decline, when shadows begin to lengthen. The fading of time brings home death and impermanence and the need to connect with something transcendent (beyond time). This perspective helps us connect with what is most important. It is an opportunity to acknowledge the limits of our lives.” You see? It keeps me. It keeps me a humble disciple. I’ll not bore you with all of my prayer structure here, but will gladly share them with you if they would help. In the mean time, I encourage you to consider adding liturgy to your rhythm of life as a Christ follower. For a taster, I’d recommend Common Prayer, http://commonprayer.net/. It’s a once a day contemporary taster for anabaptist traditions. You can also source the NZ Prayer Book, http://anglicanprayerbook.nz/, or the Book of Common Prayer, along with many other resources, http://anglicansonline.org/resources/bcp.html. Feel free to research divine offices, etc. Don’t go nuts! Start slow – mine grew over years of practice and experimenting, participating with monks and living in and amongst Anglicans here in New Zealand.
In closing – I’m not saying ditching spontaneity in prayer. Of course pray without ceasing. Pray when needs arise, when parting or gathering, or for a specific move in the heart – including the persecuted church which is always on my heart (!). BUT be holistic, as one is with exercise or diet. Be healthy! Your body will wear out and die. Your soul – who you are is eternal! So be healthy! Learn to see life (think, feel, posture, attitude, action) in a holistic healthy full orthodoxy and allow yourself to be shaped by Scripture as you pray and pray together! My experience is people who practice this, especially committed with a group of others, come to faithfully value it and miss it immensely when it’s not a regular part of their lives! And I’m talking about millennials, not boomers or x’ers.
I’d love to hear how others are experiencing this!
6 May 2016 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
We’re in a world of undefined people. I speak as a man, so I am writing at this moment to men, as I am not confident to speak to women on this subject. What in the heck do I mean by “undefined”?
I use undefined to refer to us as people – not knowing deeply in our heart, from the centre of who we are, “who” we are. It comes across as insecurity, which can present itself as over confidence, self aggrandising and looking for value in external “skins” of materialism, consumerism, stuff, roles, fame, glory, etc. This isn’t new news. Simply look at the phenomena of celebrity through the media or sport, the arrogance of politic, the drunken power of the oligarchy now masquerading as nation state. Simply stated – we as people – especially men – basically have no idea who we are, and why we exist. Therefore, we grope for it in temporal shallow trite ways. We then try and convince ourselves of our identity and worth and remind ourselves (thanks, soccer mom/mum generation!) through rootless messages of ‘being exceptional – being exceptional to the point of confidence through cognitive dissonance… where we hold to our lie, in the face of overwhelming reality, facts and arguments… We believe the norm doesn’t apply, that the normal results, normal ability, normal foibles aren’t true about “me”. We tell ourselves we have so much specialness, worth, value, contribution and that the world will actually miss us when we leave.
This past two and a half years, I’ve spent more time on reflecting upon the reality of my own self, and life. I’ve thought about it for a longer time, but focused here over an extended time. The reality is: I’m normal. Yes, I am imperfect, have foibles, fail, am weak, am not always nice, am capable – but not exceptional…and if I am in one area, I am only okay in most and fail at several. I am not important – no qualifying adjectives allowed (that, very, or others that soften “not important”). I will get old… some think I am now… but will get elderly, and will diminish, and many opportunities are already closed for me, and will die. On the day, or season of my demise and decline – very, very few will notice, or stop, or care. A generation later, I’ll be forgotten, just like my great and great great grandfathers and do not even ask about great or great great uncles, aunts, etc., or 2nd and 3rd cousins. Who?
So is my message we do not matter? Well, ugh, sort of – but that’s not the end. We’re not something because the sun shines our of our butts (sorry, ladies, that was for the men)… but we are special – we are special to the Living God and we have value and worth because we matter to Him and He gives us identity, belonging, family and a purpose. Outside of that and we are left groping for little gods of meaning made of mere wood and stone, straw, sand. BUT in our true identity, beyond the circumstances and fate of the families we’re born into, we have immeasurable worth – but we must always remember that we are but dust and will not last in this world, but in His world, in His home, we will and can live as sons of the King. Tim Keller, noted pastor, church planter, author and speaker, wrote recently something to the effect, “Who dares wake a king at 3 in the morning for a drink of water, other than his child?” Us – that’s who! We are weak, quite helpless really… reality will visit us, if not in our family of origin, in the fate of life. Steve jobs got cancer and died, as do presidents, and tyrants alike, and even holy awesome souls like Mother Teresa.
Remember – you are a moment and gone, but remember who numbers your steps, hair on your head, knew you before you were and will know you eternally. Stand up and be a man, living out of that reality and not fooled by the false messages of a lost, empty meaningless world.
20 March 2015 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | 1 Comment
The division within the church on sin and redemption…. Why do “we” fight over sin being individual, society or systemic and not all?
In admittedly simplistic presentation, I submit this paragraph. There has been much divide in the past century – more divisiveness within the church than about anytime in history. There was a divide over reliability of the Word, and then a divide on “what is it to be a Christian” and “what is it to be the church”. The former was conservative versus liberal, and the battle circled around fights over relying on God’s Word, and therefore the efficacy of Christ’s work to redeem people to salvation – what it takes to go to heaven… The conservatives centred on Jesus’ work saves us, and we are to believe in faith. The liberals position circled around being good people and God’s Word being a guide, but not literal. This fight widened to the conservatives embracing “what we think” and the liberals embracing doing good things in society. Outside of this fight within western Europe, the UK and North America, was the theological developments through the developing world, which was awakening to the implications of massive colonialism, and the government manipulations. They began seeing the corporate systemic sins, and how God did not like this. They centred their theology on this experience.
All of this divided the church and dismissed the others. My issue is as one who holds to God’s Word being reliable, and yes, within literature genres but also in context of culture, circumstance and the weighing of God’s Word in the “whole counsel of God”… in other words, you must look at all of what God says implicitly and explicitly. What is meant is god flat tells us something very directly… do this, don’t do this. BUT there are clearly implied issues as well – where God tells us what He thinks and expects by how often He talks about it, how much it is weighed out in the actions of people.
The result is that God’s Word addresses our individual salvation (dealing with individual sin), but also dealing with systemic sins (where injustice is legitimised, codified and made “legal” or even “moral” by consensus or decree), and also the behaviour of individual saints and churches, and the whole church in being like Christ in how it engages people, individually and society. In summary, all is correct and part of what it is to be the church.
I’ve faced direct attack, and been dropped from financial support because I hold this position. If I talk about systemic sin by our society, if I talk about our “being like Christ” in loving and blessing people in simple sacrificial love, and I fail to talk solely or directly about individual sin, if I fail to discuss intellectual “think right” Bible Studies, then I’ve faced being labelled a liberal or social Gospel Christian. I resist these labes, because each is heresy without the other; each incomplete and to label one is to ignore or dismiss the other. Yet, there is so much implicit and explicit in God’s Word to address all three means of sanctification of the believer. We are called to individually be sanctified by believing, but this believing is never seen measured by having every detail in theology straight, but in the behaviour of the saint in trusting Christ by how the saint behaves towards others – social and systemic sanctification… how we love people practically and collectively as a society.
There is a lot of room for the church and for Christians to be speak prophetically, and to be behave prophetically in our individual and collective lives. This is not license to be ugly and repeatedly battling the society, as is so common today. Rather, the call is to be counter-to-the-culture, live differently; to shine as lights, be salt, be a fragrance – each of which is a positive experience for the world who encounters the church and believers.
So, may we not be in frontal combat with the world, but let us be a sweet fragrance, salt to enhance the taste, and bright to light up contrasting darkness. May we be the defenders who give preference for the disenfranchised, under resourced and oppressed, the poor, weak and vulnerable. May we not embrace Babylon’s system of power, or forcing Christ’s Kingdom on the world – Christ rebuked that when He was arrested in the garden that last night. Let us be the suffering people who redeem people through our humility, lives resisting sin, a people making a difference in society by bringing healing and as a church working for the Kingdom’s value lived out in changing the systemic wrongs.
27 February 2015 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
What does a missionary in a post-Christian western urban context – within the USA actually do? Why are you needed? How do you do it? Is there an impact? Aren’t all Americans Christians, or rebellious people who know the Gospel? These are common and realistic questions to ask.
It’s been a while since I unpacked that – and to be honest, it’s a challenge at times to explain in ways that most Christians can get a handle on…. We’ve been working on how to best unpack it. I openly admit I’ve borrowed terms from others who are better words smiths than us! I’ll make another attempt to refresh and unpack our work.
In a post-Christian context of the US, especially in cities along our costs, where the church’s influence is drastically diminished within society and communities, things have changed and for many Christians, they aren’t daily thinking about how secular it is, save when the media brings the hot topics to our door step or embraces licentiousness that offends us. People are busy, including Christians… but did you know the best estimates are under 15% of the US is marginally Christian and in the coastal cities, it’s even lower? That’s the big why! But it’s more personal, and intentional for us. Here’s our gig… It’s not to make people projects, or convert by baiting them. It’s about authentic relationships. Let me unpack it.
Our neighborhood – 30,000+ people… two churches (one small, elderly & declining – one alive and present). Hence our call to inhabit the neighborhood and be a blessing?
What we do: In many ways, we do exactly what missionaries in many countries do… from meeting real and tangible needs, to helping develop neighborhoods, to meeting direct spiritual needs! This prepares hearts to hear the hope we have and then communicating so they “can hear”. We’ll unpack that more below.
Who we target: We are called to work in engaging people “beyond the reach of the church… any church.” We use this phrase to simply refer to people who, be they secular, another religious background, or distant Christian backgrounds; they have no interest or a disposition against relating with, wrestling with, or participating in a relationship with God, or His church…any church. That’s not a fringe, but a major percentage of people in the West, in the US, and an even higher percentage in major cities, cities like New Orleans!
Why we do it: God loves all people – He created them to relate with Him, and see them become everything He created them to be, in right relationship with Him! He tells us to leave the 99 to get the one! Sometimes, there are “life happened” and oher times, they are clearly underserving – openly sinners. One of my favorite stories is the Prodigal, which included his father and his brother. It moves me deeply at the father’s posture – God’s posture…read Luke 15. As Jesus told this story to the critical Pharisees for his cavorting with “sinners”, his ultimate point was the posture of the good son. It motivates us to live our lives sacrificially.
How we do it: In summary, the vision is to create the “beloved community”… where the values of the kingdom are seen lived out pragmatically… In other words, what if.., “Your Kingdom come; Your will be done; on earth as it is in heaven” were real in our neighborhood – in your neighborhood? It’s that simple, and that hard – because we have to live in what a pastor mentor, Tim Jack from Seattle taught me years ago, live in deference to others before ourselves. We’ve learned that this is what He calls all of us to do – live in deference.
We work hard to incarnate (be like Jesus – in the flesh), to inhabit Christ to these people (live life in the same space, same neighborhoods)… By inhabit and incarnate, we simply mean we live life alongside people in normal contexts of life – in our normal contexts of life. They need to “bump” into God (people) daily as they live life, in the same tasks of normal life – who smell different; act different; look different; but yet look like them, are just like them, facing normal life like they do.
First, we work hard to create situations where they are so touched by the people (us) in front of them, in these normal life situations, that they cannot help but see God and be thirsty for more. Traditionally, we’ve called this “evangelism”. We honestly do not use this term often, simply because it has meant confrontational “truth telling” in the past and it makes people feel like “a project”. We want to get to the place where we can “explain” (unlock the mystery of the radical truths of who Jesus is, what He accomplished, and God’s heart to relate with them) the great news. We often need to gain trust, be authentic, unconditional, constant friends over time. Some people have bad tastes in their mouth from the past, or have such brokenness in their life story that we need to “take down the brick wall” keeping them being able to emotionally and/or intellectually understand our message.
This often comes through meeting real world needs – physical, material, emotional and spiritual. We are working to relate with people in an urban, complex area of the city – bohemian, artistic, multi-ethnic and cultural. From musicians, to artists or various kinds, from elderly to immigrants, from the poor to homosexuals, this area is ripe with brokenness and also a spiritual thirst that makes them ready to have real conversations.
Funny reality… we “never” bring up God first, but they always do, always taste and see, smell it, see the light on the hill and initiate the conversation about spiritual things, God, living following Him. It may start with asking us to pray, or a discussion about bad things happening to people – but they introduce God into the relationships, and regularly!
But, how do you do it? Okay, okay, let me attempt to give you some handles. Ever hear of John Perkins? He’s a legend in how to work with and heal broken communities… reaching them spiritually while through being obedient to minister to physical needs-as God so repeatedly commands as we emulate Him. He uses some great concepts….
1) Relief (working on physical and financial needs that are immediate, right now). Think of the Good Samaritan Story. This might look like helping people get financial help from government or church sources. It also might look like financial training to manage their funds and bills, or parenting mentoring.
2) Development (working to move people from need of relief to economic and personal development that leads to financial self-sufficiency and healthier families and neighborhoods, that see families stay together, kids getting educated, neighborhoods safer). This can be by helping in youth sports, advocating for education, neighborhood association and collaboration. It can be job training or helping them access training for a future.
3) Through the 3-R’s;
Relocation is the first part…. To do what we do – you must inhabit – in other words, live where they live; same schools, stores, streets, cafés, clubs, problems, etc. You can’t “drive to ministry” in this context – you have to be one of them.
Redistribution is often seen as a “take from one and “give” to another. That’s not what we or Perkins means. In broken communities there is economic blight, loss of jobs and the money there, from poor paying jobs or government subsistence, it flows out to businesses owned by people somewhere else and usually worked by people somewhere else… no momentum locally! Even well meaning banks removes funds from the local context. Therefore, in working with people to get business owned and operated locally, employing local, and banks designed to help people in these neighborhoods gain more financial freedom and success. It includes to working on the beauty of the neighborhood, and events (like block parties) that build unity and momentum for a future together.
Reconciliation is the last part. People usually think white people apologizing for past and present bigotry and systems that discriminate, at times unknowingly and unintentionally. Yet it’s bigger than this. It means empowering the locals to lead – not paternal external (almost always white males). We work to empower local leaders (male-female, white-black-brown-yellow) to working for their own futures. We have a role, because we live there also, but we know we must empower the local people for it to last or have deep transformation and not just create a new dependency and no confidence to make progress without external help.
Have you connected why we use the quote from Job here (at the top of this article)? You see, Job understood that to be a God serving person, it was more than the sincere religious habits, but a faith lived out in the most intentional, sacrificial and pragmatic ways. Job worked to stop injustice, to advocate for those in need and to meet real needs – sacrificially. To translate it to today – he spent more of him self (time, money, resources – including his business) to “incarnate God” far more than he spent on himself (material stuff – cars, house, items for the house), or vacations, or spending the majority of his time with people like him. Read the passage – it’s impressive! The prophet Micah tells us the same message, as does Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, then Jesus, Luke and Matthew, Paul, Peter and James. This isn’t just a means to “getting to” explain the “Gospel” – but is inherent to and foundational as part of the Gospel.
We hope this inspires you and encourages you! We pray it empowers you to advocate and be the hands, feet, eyes, ears, mouth and heart of Christ in your own neighborhood as you posture to be light, be salt, be the fragrance and see the needs right there, no matter what the economic context you live within!
11 December 2014 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Tags: Life purpose | Leave a comment
Yours O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours… Wealth and honor come from You; You are the ruler of all things. And Your hands are strength and power to exalt and to give strength to all… But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from You, and we have given You only what comes from Your hand. ~ 1 Chronicles 29.11-14
David got it – all we have is not ours, but a gift from God. Two key Old Testament words used over and over again, especially in dealing with our stewardship of money is mizpah (justice) & tzadequah (righteousness). OT scholar B Waltke writes, “The righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”
Therefore, if it is all a gift from Him, what is our responsibility? Deuteronomy 24 tells us that when harvesting the fields which we haverovsionally in our control, we are to leave the corners and the fallen shafts… For the immigrant, the widow, the fatherless, the poor. (v. 14-19) you see part of the harvest wasn’t for the owner, but the poor. There is a recognition of God’s care, our participation and grace, mercy built into production, into profit. A refusal refuses to acknowledge all is a gift from God and part of our gifting for others is thT ability to produce. It’s not a hard jump to today. When we consider children in poverty; the failing schools, the environment that is not conducive to learning, the neighborhoods that are not known for values or morals, much less reaching for goals with delayed gratification, financial planning, or even that the glass ceiling can be broken in something greater obtained… They are doomed to reply their legacies. Some argue it is the parents’ fault; others that a failure of government (we the people) to break broken systemic evil and immoral systems. Both have merit! Yet, we don’t say it’s the kids’ fault.
My sons attend prep school. We teach them values morals and give them the confidence to reach for gGod tells us very clearly in Deuteronomy 1016 through 19oals, we teach them fiscal responsibility and understanding how to plan for the future. They have a completely different outlook on life. Due to their parents, their education and the Headstart we’ve given them, As well as through connections via their parents relationships, they will have the privilege to be successful and get ahead in life.as their parents we do this intentionally and work hard to position our children to be successful in life. We don’t apologize for that. Yet, we do have a compassion, God’s compassion, for the poor and want to advocate and do what we can to help them clean and make progress themselves, and for their children.
God tells Israel, and us, in Deuteronomy 10:16–19 that we are to circumcise our hearts and not be stiffnecked. He tells us to not show partiality not to accept bribes, and to defend the fatherless and the widow and the alien and to give them what they need. Why? It is simple. Because we were needy, independent, and got saved and provided for us.if we cannot grasp this, to live justly, to have hearts that are circumcised it’s very simply means Heartcenter transformed and changed because of God’s compassion on us, then our religion is cheap and shallow and external, and has not changed us, and I would argue saved us. God tells us to the prophet Isaiah chapter 58 that we humble ourselves but we haven’t noticed that while we fast, referring to Yom Kippur, that we still do as we please and export our workers he goes on to ask is this the kind of worship he wants. It is a rhetorical question. The profit goes on to tell us that what he really wants his heart that are transformed, and for us to do justice and care for those less fortunate. We are recipients of grace and must therefore do the same. This same key ethic, more, value and expectation is repeated throughout the Gospels of our Lord’s life. Every time we see the verses on stewardship and grace for what was first given to us we are reminded that he actually really does expect us to show unmerited grace and compassion on others less fortunate than ourselves
This takes us full circle to the beginning above; mizpah (justice) & tzadequah (righteousness). If we do not have compassion, do not reprioritize how and how much we consume, reordering our priorities, to where we give more to what God cares about than we spend on self indugence ( luxuries such as cars, vacations, “get-a-ways” we don’t call vacations, toys, discretionary consumption, and life extras), then I exhort that we are not appreciating our grace received and must wrestle our lack of radical conversion.
So, what is God calling you to change, to surrender, to repent? Where are you grateful? I would challenge that possibly you take up I have it I learned from the Jesuits, the daily examen. I take a moment as I am to each day and I replay my day and take note of the graces, the compassion, the unmerited favor, the mercies, and many kindnesses that I received. I take note of the ways in which I have failed to be my brother’s keeper, and to give the same graces kindnesses and compassionate to others, and I repent. I ask God to help me inhabit him in my world better tomorrow.
In closing, as any common reader of what I right here will not be surprised, I challenge that we have a very un-biblical worldview of God, his word, and literally what it is to be a Christian. I propose that the gospel most Christians were converted to was actually a spiritual prosperity gospel, where God gives order and success, and comfort, and security, and eternal investment for a higher pay out later. This self oriented gospel is not biblical, does not take the radical free grace the calls for absolute surrender, repentance – changing direction, and living as a living sacrifice to be in ambassador, representing the king and his kingdomin this world, so that people can grow in perception of the real God, his love, and be subverted to his kingdom. Our lives here are not about us, our success, our toys, our comfort, our security but… Loving him so completely and so consumed that we become his hands and his feet and his eyes and his mouth and his purse.
8 November 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
What in the heck is wrong with us as a people? Treachery from one of the most tolerant cities in the western world….
Our democracy (picture Norman Rockwell’s painting of the man standing up in a community meeting and having his say…) where everyone is “supposed” to have his/her say – where power transitions peacefully with the power of the people… to today’s ugly mean spirited vilifying political campaigns (thank you super PAC’s)… to NAZI GERMANY 1933… [see article below]
It has begun. Right here in New Orleans where nothing gets the people too upset…where a republican can still be HAPPILY married to a democrat, or even a socialist, it has landed on our doorstep! This violence at some one involved in the political process is beyond hate – it is the outright criminal political activity we see in supposedly far less stable parts of the world where people will attack and murder some one for a different view of solving OUR common issues, challenges and problems!
Thank you Super PAC’s for creating the hate mongering violence we clucked our tongues at in more extreme nations… wait, we are now them!
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SEE ARTICLE ON POLITICAL HATE ATTACK IN NEW ORLEANS 6 November 2014: http://www.wwltv.com/story/news/crime/2014/11/06/prytania-fire-home/18590919/
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There is a dark “hatefulness” over taking us as a people…. We hate anyone who differs with us, is different than us. We vilify foreigners, ethnic groups, nations, political systems different from us – internal & external… (just reflect on every ad prior to Tuesday!) and we’re more and more predisposed to violence… be it war or violence against anyone daring to think differently than us. We idealize the 1950’s as if everyone was the same… they simply disagreed peacefully and respectfully between political parties, but wait…maybe not… only between republicans and democrats, but we then had state sponsored terrorism against any other political conviction (McArthy anyone?) and unless you were born with black skin… then you were free game. The 1950’s were good and bad and we are returning to terror – violent terror in our politics…
Can I suggest a third way? This friend’s wisdom, thoughtfulness and insights are a great read and a great response to this hate displayed today in my own city. His name is Alan Cross. He recently released a book, When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and a Better Way of Jesus. Even if you are secular, Jewish, Muslim, etc – this book has a REAL pragmatic approach that yes, is truly “red letter” Christian, but it is a way that will pull your heart towards a new posture in being a citizen and person. I strongly recommend this read!
YOU, WE – individually & collectively – need to be concerned about the direction we’re going! We all must stop falling into the trap of “hating”, condemning, disrespecting, dismissing anyone and any message different than us. We must stop watching the programs (i.e. sorta news casts), listening to the pundits (pick your side’s shock jock) and reading (politicizing facades masquerading as journalism) and start thinking critically – that is to understand all sides of an argument. The right champions the right of the individual – slaves to the enlightenment – and ignores the social – common good; the democrats champion the group and ignore moral responsibility of the individual or collective responsibility for the individual – slaves to the same enlightenment. With no compass, it is no surprise we’re lost at sea in this horrible mess and growing storm. May we stop being so d*** adolescent and grow up, listen well before we speak – understand before we form conclusions, be open to critique of our own argument… It is what education is supposed to build into us. We WILL NOT SURVIVE as a free society into the future if we do not heed this. Today, November 2014, the political right wins… tomorrow – see all social trending – the left will succeed and win. Neither conclusion is good for us – the right needs the left; the left needs the right! ONLY then does this prevent extremism where one side is totally intolerant of the other… sort of like the Tea Party’s hi-jacking of the GOP!
Above, Montgomery Alabama 1961… Attending a wedding of an extended relative in 2012, a great aunt made a comment that is “shortened” to this, “Those busy body yankees came down and stirred our up nigras (N word + negro… this allowing southern Baptists to use the N word but be Christian about it). They were perfectly fine and happy until those yankees stuck their nose into our business.” In other words, our “way of life” where we rule, make the rules, benefit from said rules and lord over a servant class was great… for us… and we had them in their place and they liked it; being poor, discriminated against, having no say, being made to be scape goats, used and consumed to do what we don’t want to do..
I’ve heard so many arguments about “them” imposing their views upon me, from left and right – but the blind spot is that what is really being said is that “WE” want to impose our view upon “them”… what we want is OUR right way… This huge blind spot and resumption of moral high ground is very dangerous and adolescent.
If we can attack some one who is participating in the political system and for a candidate that is not my party, just what would the next step in destroying a democratic republic look like? Did you know that when the US State Department works internationally to help nation build with new emerging democracies that they do NOT help them build a US form of republic? They help them build a British parliamentary system, to prevent massive one sided government, forcing more conciliatory working together? Think about it in our own nation!
6 November 2014 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
While most of our society is secular today, or adheres to the US National Religion of Patriotism, I can safely say that I live in a Catholic city, filled with reflections of this French, plus Spanish (Spain & Central America), Italian, plus Irish, German, etc waves of immigrants that descended upon New Orleans. It is reflected everywhere – 50+% of kids still go to Catholic schools (27 Catholic High Schools, etc). The football team is known as “The Saints” for the number of statues of saints everywhere in the city – most on the planet. The orders yet in 2014 run most of the mission/ministry to the poor, aged, handicap, and yes, schools. many of these people lead lives that reflect God’s high place in their lives.
I am also blessed with many evangelical and mainline friends. They have a love for God also.
Now, these two (or three, depending upon with whom you speak) sects (many would not be comfortable with that term, but sociologically, that is what our religious camps/denominations/convictions make us, where ever we land) have not gotten along since the reformation. Today, admittedly, there is more good will than every before in history… thank God. Yet, it still divides, and a lot of energy is spent on disparaging the other… Evangelicals versus main line, and evangelicals vs Catholics (mostly).
There are many arguments to critique the other. Some are ill informed, failure to really understand, or take the time to understand… easier to quote a celebrity is his ax to grind, because he is “an expert” by virtue of celebrity status, right? Some has merit in critique… but we usually see it as the critique we have on “them”, and we never do get honest enough to say that we don’t have it all figured out and we don’t stop and re-analyze (presuming we ever did analyze to begin with) our presumed accepted positions, making suppositions dogma. Be it a Calvinist or Arminius position on security of salvation & election, or the legitimacy of saints and asking them to pray intercede for us, or praying one time specific words are what saves you versus reflected in a repented direction of life, or dare I even say the Eucharist (communion) – there are issues of disagreement.
I have three responses…to all my friends who spend energy on this.
1. We live in glass houses and should self examine our own doctrines first. Does a junior high emotional moment and no signs of salvation for decades really save us? Were we ever saved to begin with, or too late a night, mood lighting, emotionally manipulated story in the sermon and too much pizza to blame for those tears so long ago? Or for our liturgical friends, if you miss a holy day of obligation (I am for attending worship as faith communities and even agree with important calendar days being a high importance!) is it a sin?
2. When the world is fast going to hell – FAST – and the west leading the way… when we’re no longer influencing culture, but to be honest, it influences us more, do we need, should we be arguing amongst ourselves? Isn’t there enough demonic enemy to keep us quite occupied sacrificing for others, loving recklessly, to avoid all of that? To be honest, there is a lot of Enlightenment philosophy driving our split within the church – not just theology. By the way, the Enlightenment is no more from God than democracy or capitalism, or socialism… all have pro’s and cons and reflect cultural mores more than Biblical ones and both can be plied in Godly or hellish ways.
3. My friend, Christ McKenzie, who is a pastor in Glasgow, at Mosaic Glasgow recently spoke on following Christ. He spoke from the text found in Luke 9, when Jesus “set his face towards Jerusalem” – His last trip culminating in His propitiation for sin through the cross & His resurrection. During this trip, he went through Samaria, instead of around it. Here is the section that caught my attention:
51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. 53 But the people did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. 54 And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 And they went on to another village.
Jesus, the iconoclast, blew apart our human walls. Samaritans, half breeds, Jewish faith gone wrong, a sect in an ugly slant from the Orthodox Jewish perspective. Remember, Jesus was a Rabbi, his disciples good Jews… He not only when through there multiple times, but spoke to a Samaritan woman, saw her village come to faith through her, and used them in positive spot light in parables (ugh hmm, the Good Samaritan?). Here, He goes through there…. The disciples want to unleash their newly given promotion with powers… and drawing on History when a prophet smote a Samaritan King, they thought they’d be religiously zealous and do one for God… 🙂 Somethings in the Middle East just don’t change, do they!?! 🙂
Jesus’ response was amazing – He rebukes them! Here is where Chris had such great insight! He rebukes them and makes the new covenant real in practical ways! Grace, love, inclusion, acceptance, blessings… the power of God’s love woos people, not angry dogmatic debates! They wanted to step over Jesus and execute judgment for their heresies… these wayward Jews the Samaritans, with their incorrect theology and allegiances. Jesus rebukes them and has for the past several years blessed them over and over.
Now back to our situation… May we stop stepping over Jesus to be right, to win the theological argument, to feel better about ourselves. May we become those who practice the New Covenant in practical ways – blessing each other, supporting each other, loving each other. Gang, when we get there, I am sure we will all have some theologies fallacies that get explained to us! Let’s major on the majors, and minor the minors and start being united… not united as in the United States disunited congress, but in the Biblical unity and love we are to be known for. Let’s focus on the evils in the world – from war to poverty, from injustice to oppression, from moral sin to sin of consumerism, materialism and self indulgence, from the 90+% of the church who does NOT have a Biblical world view on why we are even here!
I’ve come to appreciate swimming in all these waters, to use the euphemism of Richard Foster… I love the intimate worship of the low liturgy contemporary churches, the passion in praying of the Charismatics, the love of the Word of the Evangelicals, the mystery and awesomeness of God in the Catholic Mass. I love to pray from the heart and the written ancient prayers through through and written long ago to guide me when I am so tied up I can’t find the words myself. AND big secret… I know people in all camps – they all sincerely love Christ and want to follow Him correctly. Maybe we can learn from each other and stop being afraid we’ll get coodies…
Okay, enough for a Friday… Coming soon… the reality that Jesus hung out with the who[re]s and pimps, the thieves and the collaborators, the trash and villans… not the religious.. and we’re supposed to imitate Him and be light into the darkness…salt, ambassadors… Hmmm. I’ll save it.
1 August 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
My journey the past two years has been complex. How does one reduce an epic into a short posting? Simple. You can’t. What I can do is share what is coming into view recently. It involves Hupotasso, the Oikos or New Testament Greek much of that portion of Holy Scripture was penned. It simply translates – literally – to “hear under”. Pause and consider that definition and the impact. This Greek was very specific in meaning. In Latin, the word is oboedire, to listen, hear, obey. Both convey not just a letter of the law obedience, discipline, compliance, which our understanding has morphed to mean, especially today when obedience is good for a dog, but calls forth a resistance emotive response when considering one’s self allowing another – charged word here – control over our greatest western cultural more: freedom. Yet these root words imply a posture, a receptivity to “hear” and take on board what the one with sovereign role over one’s life. This is vastly different.
Rather than a treatise on obedience, I’m writing to [attempt] to summarize a long, complex, and often very humble and painful season in my life. It’s not to glorify that journey at all, nor to elicit some special spiritual journey, but rather, my own learning, realization and what I am realizing – which is NOT informational, not realization, but rather, capacity, ability, transformational manifestation and reality in my life.
I thought I understood “surrender” to God… I had surrendered to the best of my capacity, ability and will as far as God has brought me during my life. I had done this several times, including during this two year experience where Lamentations 3 became my heart’s tears before the Lord.
Yet, just now is there an awakening, from Him – not due to any ability, effort, or work on my part. I’ve been listening, seeking, submitting, but just now “getting” – being given a new capacity to embrace, thank and appreciate, obedience in a completely new light. My hearing under actually is due to something that may appear tangential… ability and capacity for intimacy with the Father. Yes, there is lots tied to early origin issues, my own life, coping and protection from those unhealed areas – which by the way, I had invested in healing from, but have come to see this journey is far more than counseling, spiritual formation and that God does work over an entire life time and somethings are only revealed, transformed, digested over such decades and journey with Him. This intimacy, or capacity for intimacy with Him, trust to His lead, abandon of dreams, self need for worth, be it position, esteem, relations, circumstance, success, ability, competency, comes from a growth in the ability to embrace His love, delight, joy, and complete focus of His attention and love… Simply, but so complex – God loves me. Woe. The words don’t capture the enormity of that reality… no work, no worthiness, no success, no improvement, no sacrifice – He does. Over time comes the surrender to trust Him, then to trust Him when we don’t understand, then when it hurts, then when there is nothing, but Him.
Then the great transformation that whatever He allows or brings – all of it is brought as part of the journey with Him – that to live present TODAY – THIS HOUR – as well as calling, contribution, vocation (spiritual calling), job, location… that right now – no matter what He is calling us to emulate, cooperate, be with, imitate, BE Christ to every person, every circumstance, every moment, event if nothing and no one, but to be with Him, see it all from Him, see it all as us with the royal honor to embody Him to others and to see them as we are engaging Him. This type trust, this capacity, this abandonment for my success, future, ambition is transformed to my opportunity to serve – to be an ambassador – my honor to sacrifice, surrender, trust, love, experience with Christ right now…
Martyrs, the Saints, the oppressed and their courage, so sentimental, so seemingly trite, is a peak inside an intimacy that we don’t understand from the outside – No, only from experience personally does it make sense! Only then can one “get” this fraternity of those who have a deep intimacy and shared experience of being obedient. Only then can one surrender and allow whatever and have real joy.
As I write that, I re-read the words. It feels or could communicate an elitism. Far from it. The past two years have stripped me, shown me coping defensive mechanism, ugly sides of me I couldn’t see, didn’t realize, revealed my wounding of others, my forceful personality that could control, intimidate, draw in and then exact. I spent over a year “done” with even having close relationships, daring to ever trust anyone again, sealed inside a cocoon of shame, in reality rejecting grace, healing, risk for future. I felt ugly and dirty and horrible as I had not seen so much of it. I wasn’t horrible – but there was truth in the indictments. Yet, the end of the day, so much had been lost, some relationships lost; shame my due portion. To end up at my end and He still loves me, no matter what the future holds, that if there is no future serving the King in an outward tangible manner, that I am yet His, yet called to imitate Him engaging the postman, or barista, the silence of a day alone, or the demands of work or unfair anger released at me. All of it is from Him, a journey with Him, my calling to be trustingly surrendered and “hearing under” His hand, His words, His leading, the transformation of who I am to be like Him… and to be like Him in my heart, even is silent and not known by another. The capacity to be this person is a grace, a mystery yet to me.
Can I live out what I am realizing? I am making a humble sincere effort to be that person in every encounter. It’s easy with the pharmacist at the drug store, the person who made my coffee, even my kids. Can I do it when it’s not fair, mean, rejection. I want to! I can accept the intimacy of God more and more, and therefore, more capacity to follow Him each moment of each day.
Mount Flemish in NE part of the Isle of IRE where Patrick as a teenager herded sheep as a slave; thought to be lost, dead to family in Britain.
I think of my hero, St Patrick, the years lost in slavery, cold on a small mountain herding sheep, alone… no future told him. I think of Joseph’s 22 years journey from his cruel brothers’ selling him into slavery through to becoming Regent of the Egyptian empire; of Paul’s unfair treatments, the end of life for almost all the early Apostles, the life of most of the Saints, the martyrs in China, Russia, the Arab world as I type. This is not just gritting of the teeth, mind you, but a heart “hearing under” to obey, be formed in the seasons of every day, throughout the seasons of the decades of life…to trust and walk with Him, trusting – burning, murdering (to mortify) my will, my ambition, my understanding, my preferences to His will for me…and to do so not gritting my teeth, but with the joy and honor to be given the life He decrees. Brother Lawrence makes more sense now. Joan d’Arc makes more sense, the stories of Chinese Christians make more sense.
My concern, this is less and less known in our consumer, materialistic, self absorbed western world where indulgence, entertainment, self realization and happiness are the priority; where freedom to pursue “my” desires is paramount, my rights, my avoidance of even delayed gratification, much less anything I do not “get” is less and less appreciated. I spent decades myself wrestling to where I am now, and only after being dashed against the rocks, does it begin to make sense.
The result – peace; even joy; rest and end of striving for tomorrow; not an emptiness as in nothing there, but a contentment and openness that if He leads me to pursue something more, dare I say, “ambitious” then I can do so without question and not worrying about the results for me… but the results of being able to have intimate relationship together as I live to be Christ in the small moment by moment day as I engage people.
I am nearing being able to say – “thank you” to God for the deep crevice of the past two years. I am human; I do want to hear Him dispatch me with Holy orders to make a contribution that fully envelops my experience, talents, gifts, desires, passions, and potential. I do want to intentionally and overtly be used in the Kingdom – BUT – I can wait and if He says, no; if He says I am to spend these last decades hidden, silent, quiet, prayer and not actor, then I have the capacity to surrender, hear under, embrace and celebrate that He is forging me in and through this, that I CAN trust Him, CAN be intimate and that it is NOT punishment, but His and my journey together, my formation and transformation and it is specially designed for me.
27 July 2014 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
I read the news today… first time I’ve had time to sit and digest it thoroughly.
Three boys executed, tortured in Israel’s West bank; Iraq continues in turmoil with Arab factions slaughtering each other – so many different conflicting alliances (the news trying to resize it to a two way fight) that one cannot count; central America, Asia, Africa; corporations guilty of massive abuses yet no one goes to jail… because their crime is executed through a corporation; gun murder spiking from Chicago, New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, New Orleans… partisan wars within the US have ground to dysfunction beyond repairing the republic; social values wars ripping us apart within – proving secular pluralism does not work, yet man made religious governance is autocratic and oppressive; secularization is so deep that faith in the west is now a remnant, and shrinking yet.
Eight Christians crucified in Syria here in this photograph
I revisited familiar passages… reminding me we are to expect just this, that time is ticking down, that it will become bad and we will live into it, but how we respond is the key. Yet most of the church is intoxicated with the same materialism, consumerism, entertainmentism and distraction as the lost world around us, less than 10% having a Biblical world view…. Take a moment and read the passages I went to this morning:
Matthew 24
Jesus Foretells Destruction of the Temple
24 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
Signs of the Close of the Age
3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. 5 For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ’, and they will lead many astray. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
9 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
The Abomination of Desolation
15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 19 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! 20 Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. 22 And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. 23 Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand. 26 So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness’, do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms’, do not believe it. 27 For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.
The Coming of the Son of Man
29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
The Lesson of the Fig Tree
32 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 34 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
No One Knows That Day and Hour
36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 47 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed’, 49 and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know 51 and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
2 Timothy 3.1-9
Godlessness in the Last Days
3 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.
Luke 21.10ff
Jesus Foretells Wars and Persecution
10 Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. 12 But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. 13 This will be your opportunity to bear witness. 14 Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, 15 for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. 17 You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your lives.
Jesus Foretells Destruction of Jerusalem
20 “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, 22 for these are days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written. 23 Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. 24 They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
The Coming of the Son of Man
25 “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, 26 people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
The Lesson of the Fig Tree
29 And he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. 30 As soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near. 31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Watch Yourselves
34 “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
37 And every day he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet. 38 And early in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him.
It can make one sad. The only solution I see for western saints is to finally do what the wisdom of the Scriptures has told us from the earliest days of the church… during the Roman Empire, which we see relived today… See Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, chapter 3;
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
We are not citizens of the US… capital free market and empirical foreign policy, national interests, corporate interests, not empirical financial maneuvering globally… we are citizens of the Kingdom, under The Sovereign King, not elected official. Our loyalty is there and we are ambassadors of this Kingdom, therefore called to live those values in our presence here.
Instead of being sad, I further emotionally remove myself from belonging to lost broken worldly systems, aspirations and priorities and further align myself with the Kingdom, as pitiful as my vein attempts are to emulate Him. Is there anyone else sensing the Spirit of the Living God saying the same to you?
The cost? Martyrdom in many ways… let us stop fighting and imitate the Christ, humble, quiet, resolved, choosing to love in the face of hate – for this changed the world, not legal fighting, not religious fighting, not demanding our rights, but giving ourselves up in subtle and grand ways. Upside down Kingdom is a real concept…and flies in the face of the NRA, GOP, DNC, Wall Street. 5th Avenue & Hollywood…. your first persecution will be humiliation as you are mocked, scoffed at, dismissed, shunned ostracized and belittled. That’s a hard one for us in the west…for acceptance and what others think is huge. We’re accustomed to a Gospel of attraction, not a stark line of choose you this day whom you will serve. Those days are gone… we are back to the historical…choose. Sobering.
1 July 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
A Slave’s Triumphal Reminder: A Sermon for Ash Wednesday
A Sermon Delivered on Ash Wednesday 2014
Saint John’s Cathedral
7:00am, 12:00pm, 7:00pm masses
From the early days of the Roman Republic through the fall of the Roman Empire, whenever a general achieved a great victory on the battlefield, a Triumph, a grand civil and religious parade was held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement.
On the day of his triumph, the general wore a crown of laurel and the all-purple, gold-embroidered triumphal toga, this was regalia that identified him as near-divine, almost a demi-god. He rode in a four-horse chariot through the streets of Rome in procession with his army, captives and the spoils of his war.
Yet, interestingly enough, amidst this pageantry and procession, as the general was paraded through the streets celebrating his accomplishments, and applauded by adoring throngs, standing behind him was a slave. This slave was tasked with a very simple job. The slave was to constantly remind the general that he was only a mortal. The slave whispered the warning, “Memento mori” – remember that you are mortal, said the slave, over and over, into the general’s ear.
Amidst the clamor, over and over, “remember that you are mortal” he was told. Remember that you will die.
Each year, the Church issues this reminder to us in this ritual, remember that you are dust. Remember that you are mortal.
The Christian faith is the constant intermingling of the reality of death with the truth of God’s promise. When we are baptized, we are said to be dead to sin and born into new life. Each week on Sunday, each day in our chapel, and today, we remember Christ’s death and proclaim his Resurrection.
This annual reminder of death is the remembrance that our time is short – no matter our triumphs or our tragedies – we do not have long to gladden the hearts of those we love and to make peace with those we have harmed. It is an annual reminder of the desperate need for honesty in our lives.
Lent is not a call simply to acts of self-abasement – it is a call to honesty. To honestly see our faults. To honestly ask for forgiveness, from God and from those we have hurt. And to honestly believe that our sins are put away – that we are forgiven, that we walk in newness of life.
An incarnated faith requires, from time to time, that we come to terms not only with the miracle and the promise of our faith but with the messiness and the pain.
This dust is a sign that reminds us of brutal realities. Yet, the dust we are marked with today is a shadow of the sign we received at our baptism.
In Christ, dust is never the end of the story. It is a reminder of our story’s greatest power. When we sin and even, even when we go down to the grave we know that we are raised to new life, forgiven, and transformed.
Repentance fixes that Baptism in our hearts and minds. This holy season of Lent is not about becoming perfect, but about turning toward and walking toward the perfection that we were made one with at the baptismal font.
In Lent, we clear away the clutter of temptation, pride, anger, and fear and remember who God has made us to be. We make room for the wholeness of Christ’s Presence to well up in us freshly.
There are forces, people, times, things, desires, fears, and so much more that twist and contort our very selves and our sense of who we are – until we are wandering and wondering who we are and how we got here.
The Devil makes use of our insecurities, as we struggle in the Wilderness, to draw us, bit by bit, fear by fear, rejection by rejection, dashed hope by dashed hope, into loathing – of ourselves and others and, finally, even into unbelief.
Whether it is hubris, greed, or apathy – the world’s values ultimately lead to a painful place in which our only hope is that there are others lower than us – others we can use, hurt, or simply ignore .
Lent is our chance to reclaim Christ’s values as our own – to remember and to reaffirm his hold on our hearts, bodies, and minds – and to remind ourselves of his Presence in those we wrong and who wrong us.
Let’s take this Lent to be honest with ourselves – where are we falling short of the person God baptized us to be? Where are we forgetting, in our lives, that we are simply mortal, and that all we have is a gracious gift from God?
Wear these ashes today as a mark of your mortality. Wear them as a mark of penitence. Wear them also as a gritty reminder that we are marked as Christ’s own, we are made for holiness, and we are called to a life that makes Christ known.
In forty days, we will come together for the liturgy of the Easter Vigil which reminds us of the grace of creation and baptism. The Vigil liturgy echoes across not only that night but across the centuries, between our heartbeat and God’s, drawing the Body of Christ to prayer and holy remembrance:
“How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord. How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God.”
The power and promise of Baptism is the very stuff of creation and redemption. Earth and Heaven – Dust and Divinity – are joined in in the love of a God who hates nothing He has made – a God whose Son spans the chasm between our fears and God’s mercy.
Christ, as Philippians says, emptied himself when he came among us, and took on the form of a slave. And now his voice, that slave’s voice, is calling to us this Lent –
Remember that you are mortal. Remember that time is short. Remember that you are my own. Remember my promise. Remember my voice. Remember me. Remember.
Robert
http://thesubdeansstall.org/2014/03/07/a-slaves-triumphal-reminder-a-sermon-for-ash-wednesday/
10 March 2014 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
This one is worth the read:
Christianity Today, March, 2014
An Open Apology to the Local Church
Though much have I attended you, late have I loved you.
Katelyn Beaty / posted March 7, 2014
Dear Church,
I trust this letter finds you sustained by your Groom as you face bombings and threats on one side of the hemisphere, and attacks of a more offhand sort on the other. By now you have likely received word of a popular blogger confessing his boredom with your recent Protestant iterations, noting that he instead connects with God by building his company. At the least, I was heartened to see it spark a lively discussion about who you are and what exactly the Spirit had in mind when he showed up in Jerusalem 1,980 years ago to kick off this whole crazy thing. (I imagine those are sweet memories for you, seeing your people giving their things away with abandon, like it was the end of the world.) As you near your 2,000th birthday, we rugged individuals in the land of a thousand denominations are wise to get reacquainted with you.
Outside your walls, of course, you continue to be derided for all manner of intolerance, backwards thinking, and political apathy. But inside your walls, at least from my narrow vantage of Christendom, you are quite the hot ticket these days. A whole generation of evangelical Christians has grown impatient with inherited ways of gathering together.
From pastors like Eugene Peterson, we have learned to question modes of worship that mimic the mall and the stadium. From theologians like Robert Webber, we have discovered a much longer and richer history than our Sunday school teachers ever mentioned. We bandy about words like ecclesiology and sacramentality to demonstrate our new, sophisticated ways of thinking about you. Just this week, we wore our ashes proud. And when the popular blogger confessed to finding you a bit hard to get through, we were quite ready to pounce with charges of individualism and narcissism, and proclaim our love for you, the institution.
You might think I’m writing to throw my lot in with your strongest defenders. After all, I’ve faithfully attended one of your high-church Anglican iterations for seven years, watching with disdain as peers hop from building to building, seeking an “awesome” and “powerful” worship experience (and attractive members of the opposite sex). Instead, I’m writing to apologize. While claiming publicly to have loved you as Christ does—like a spouse—in spirit I have loved you like an on-again, off-again fling. My faithful attendance suggests a radical commitment to gathering with your people. But many Sundays, my heart is still in it for me. And while I think the blogger is ultimately misguided about his relationship (or lack thereof) with you, I can appreciate his honesty. At least he’s not leading you on.
Here’s where I need to confess my true feelings about you, Church: The romance of our earlier days has faded. The longer I have known you, the more I weary of your quirks and trying character traits. Here’s one: You draw people to yourself whom I would never choose to spend time with. Every Sunday, it seems, you put me in contact with the older woman who thinks that angels and dead pets are everywhere around us. You insist on filling my coffee hour with idle talk of golf, the weather, and grandchildren. As much as I wax on about the value of intergenerational worship, a lot of Sundays I dodge these members like they’re lepers. (This is of course my flesh talking, to borrow a phrase from one of your earliest members.) Many Sundays I long to worship alongside likeminded Christians who really get me, with whom I can have enlightening, invigorating conversations, whom I’m not embarrassed to be seen with in public. I confess to many times lusting over one of your sexier locations, wondering if I would be happier and more fulfilled there.
It hasn’t helped that you have made growing demands of me, something I also confess to resenting. Truth be told, it strikes me as a bit clingy. I’ve now served on the church board, played piano at Friday night worship services, taught Sunday school. You also want me to give you money every week—when I still have student loans to pay off? I am there not to be served but to serve, of course. But I do wonder when these investments of time and energy will pay off. A bit of appreciation from fellow members would help.
While we’re at it, let me make one more confession: I resent how much you want to go out these days. I don’t understand why we can’t stay inside and reconnect over a cup of wine. After a stressful workweek, I want to be renewed and refreshed, to feel myself falling in love again with the Groom. I want the kind of connective mornings we had when I first met you. I admit to finding our morning routine a bit snoozy as of late, especially on Sundays led by a guest preacher. (Another sports metaphor?) And you think going out and mixing it up with refugees and orphans and homeless people is what we need? Granted, their needs are a bit more tangible than mine, but I’m starting to think mine are being ignored entirely.
Well, this letter turned out to be more negative than I wanted. But with all the conversations about your central place in the life of God’s people, I needed to put all my cards on the table. And to apologize. Because even though in practice the aforementioned blogger and I are worlds apart, in spirit we are more similar than might be assumed. The difference is that I mask my Sunday morning self-centeredness with a “nuanced” theology of worship.
I believe your Head would have choice words to describe me. Make no mistake: Until he changes my heart from the inside out, stoking in it an ever increasing flame of sacrificial love for you, I’m no better than a whitewashed tomb—or, to put more fine a point on it, a worshiper who in truth longs to get back under the covers.
In remorse—and hope,
KRB
Katelyn Beaty is managing editor of CT magazine.
10 March 2014 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
There are two liturgies competing for which Christmas you embrace.
One starts with Advent… marking the historic Christmas… heralding in the celebration remembering the birth of the Son of God as a human, and the anticipation waiting for His return… the other filled with meaningless schedule (& tummy stuffing) distractions.
One marked with Good Friday, the other marked with Black Friday. Accident or not, there is a spiritual significance to that contrast.
One marked with worship, the other marked with long lines of shopping – before Black Friday!
Okay, Okay! Yes, I am an iconoclast. Yes, I did preach to a large, large church – four services – dashing tensil, red & green, and parties in gold sequence dresses and Thomas Kenkade paintings… I’m sorry! Yes, I took down the one dimensional Christmas of Rudolf instead interjecting that the cute little baby we embrace at Christmas came for ONE reason – to die a horrible tortured death at the hands of people who hated what he stands for.
Yes, I’m wrestling the reality of two competing Christmases… this year it has me more ampted than normal: Thanksgiving surrendered to 24 hour shopping…
The secular Christmas has no meaning, but proposes celebration for celebration’s sake. It proposes happiness for it’s own sake – because all is well – at least if we are the top 10% in consumer western cultures – wait – the top 20% in the top 10% of the western successful world. Don’t get me wrong at all – there is nothing wrong with the parties, the gifts, the tree, the lights, the events, the family and friends. I like it – a lot. My issue is that Christmas gets shallow and misses the point. You know how “the means becomes the end and we lose what the means was even about and for?”
The sacred Christmas is amazing and the symbolism of the liturgical traditions are ever more so – giving us intentional changes to color, to song, to read Scripture, to our posture, to celebrate and prepare – keeping the Christ in perspective! The anticipation and celebration then has meaning, the gift giving has iconic meaning… You know the gifts – while I think we focus way, way too much on stuff – I’m not a fan of Staff Mart… Well, I like gifts, and I love to give them. The real joy I love in giving gifts reminds me of the Imago Dei we have – for He loves giving us gifts. I love to give my sons gifts, my wife, my friends.
This weekend as I attended a service and the Advent candle was lit – marking, anticipating, growing, and the passages chosen – marking the waiting – the turning of waiting to His coming and making all right.
When I wait – when I anticipate and when I’m eager for God’s rescue to fix so, oh so many thing… I stop and wonder why people do not get excited about His return… because most of us only have the “apple pie by and by” concept. Maybe a picture-an idea- a vision of what will be… Maybe then we anticipate with joy that coming, that future… which makes Christmas more, so much more, so rich… Ever read CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia? An epic of seven books where there is an allegorical story with Christ depicted as Aslan, a lion, and a group of young brothers and sisters who again and again return to their real world – London, middle of WWII… returning the minute they left – even when gone a long time.
Please allow me to share this vision – the last page – the last chapter – the last book of the Chronicle series….
Further up and further in! roared the Unicorn, and no one held back…And soon they found themselves all walking together – and a great bright procession it was – up towards mountains higher than you could see in this world even if they were there to be seen. But there was no snow on those mountains: there were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing waterfalls, one above the other, going up or ever. And the land they were walking on grew narrower all the time, with a deep valley on each side: and across that valley the land which was the real England grew nearer and nearer.
The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-colored cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty…
Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.” Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our world so often.” “No fear of that”, said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. “There was a real railway accident”, said Alsan softly. “You’re father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
This anticipation, this joy, this future – this celebration of the baby in perspective, yes, with the life & death & His resurrection – but also the coming again! For some, it’ll be a disaster – a horrible ending, for those listening, waiting and anticipating His return – JOY!
So this Christmas, don’t diminish Christmas to only be parties, gifts to support a consuming materialism, but put all of the celebration habits we know as Christmas into a larger picture – joy at the baby Jesus, anticipating Easter to celebrate all He accomplished for us and anticipating no more, no more, no more but joy!
1 December 2013 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
On Being Silent
~Abbot John Klassen, OSB, 2002
[Adapted from a talk given at a conference of his seminary where his Benedictine community resides and serves.]
In its most basic sense, silence means “not talking”, or abstaining from unnecessary noise, turning off TV’s, radios, etc. But while not taking is the necessary pre-condition for silence, we all know that silence is more than that. Silence is a means to an end for a monk. Anyone who cares about God cares about silence. No one can meet God without silence.
Silence is a self-emptying, creating room, bench-space, for the Holy Spirit to toil. Silence removes obstacles that prevent us from hearing God. God speaks to us in silence. As the psalmist says, “be still and know that I am God”. If we do not have silence in our lives, God will call and call, but always get a busy signal. God will not always use 2” x 4” therapy – sometimes that voice will be the still, small voice that Elijah hears. Only silence will reduce the background noise enough to allow our detectors to pick up the signal.
You cannot hear God or meet God, so the ancient monastics said, because the world is noise, people talk and hammer, and advertise and shout slogans that demand your attention. So you go out into the wilderness, to a forest or oasis where you can easily live, where water may be found, a little food easy to grow, a little shelter easy to build, not too far from human habitations so that you can walk over to the neighboring church on Sunday morning for Eucharist but far enough so that you are off the beaten path to avoid tourists. Then you will be undisturbed.
You will not need to work long hours to keep your body nourished. Your other needs are few or nothing, unless you fall ill’ a blanket, a Bible, and another book or two; a knife, a few materials to occupy your hands, to make baskets, or ropes and a pen/ink to copy manuscripts. Then you will have time to be quiet, and hours of time to be alone with God, time to praise God in the psalms and in silence.
This was the monastic ideal; the soul alone before its Maker. But, in fact, the ancient monastics found out that it is not so simple. They found out that people walked out in the desert to pray and ended up as madmen, or thieves, or suicides.
“A man goes out expecting peace and quiet and his expectation is shattered. But, he might be deafened by demons that seemed to howl into the night.
He goes expecting to find God and escape the self. But, in solitude he finds that the self swells up larger than ever, ‘till it fills all the space that should have gone to God.
He expects to escape passion and lust because he will never see an object of desire. But, shapes of beautiful women or other sexually desirable creatures float through his subconscious and consciousness.
He expects to escape greed because all he has is a little patch of vegetables. But, he finds that his stomach growls through the day and is harder to forget than at home.
He expects that the joy of God will flood his heart as God fills his cave and his heart. But he finds, especially at noontime, a melancholy, a sadness or depression that lays him low.”
So writes Own Chadwick of the monastic dilemma.
It is precisely this set of phenomena that led, over time, to Benedict’s wisdom of living in Community. Benedict is deeply respectful of the eremitical way of life but he is not just thinking of using community as a means to that end. The needs and demands of community temper our silence, and shape and focus our search for God in contemplation. Monastic silence is golden because it is a precious distillation of sustained fidelity to grace. Silence is not a cheap grace and it is not easily achieved. Silence is acquired by personal discipline, not an external asset whose absence is bewailed and blamed on others.
Silence in the Rule of St Benedict
Chapter Six of Benedict’s Rule is devoted to silence. Compared with the two long chapters of the Master, this little treatise of eight verses is a good example of how Benedict takes material from Master and shapes it to his purposes. He gives a quotation from Psalm 39, briefly commented upon, and two quotes from Proverbs: to avoid bad words entirely, and good words as much as possible. It is so laconic, that it seems that Benedict is trying to model the teaching. It is significant that Benedict uses the Latin word “taciturnitas” rather than “silentium”. Taciturnity, or restraint of speech, refers more directly to human noise or conversation that Benedict is trying to limit, not environmental noise. Ambrose Wathen points out that taciturn means more than physical silence. It refers to a person who is sufficiently serene and wise that his words arise out of silence and his silence itself speak eloquently. Such a person will not use words to mask an inner emptiness, nor will he be silent when a good word is needed.
One of the great desert sayings sums up this attitude: “A brother asked a boy monk: ‘Is it good to speak or to keep silence?’ The said to him, ‘If the words are idle, leave them unsaid. If good, find room for them and speak them. But event if the words are good, do not prolong what you say but cut it short: And you will have peace of mind.’”
Benedict’s concluding comment on avoiding crude jokes (“scurrilatates”) is probably best understood in light of the level of obscenity of much of ancient comedy. It was probably a notch down from the old Benny Hill programs.
In Chapter Seven on humility, the ninth, tenth, and eleventh steps deal with silence. Obedience and patience are humility in action; [Read that again! – my comment] silence is humility in word. Benedict comments that in the face of our infidelity God is silent as a loving Father. “This you did and I said nothing.” Later at the ninth step, a monk controls his tongue and remains silent, not speaking unless asked a question and does so out of love for silence. As Scripture says, “in a flood of words you will not avoid sinning, and a talkative man goes about aimlessly on the earth.”
The tenth step of humility again cautions about being too quick to laugh. It is frivolity that is being condemned, not a good sense of humor. At the eleventh step Benedict holds that a monk speaks gently and without laughter, seriously and with becoming modesty, briefly and reasonably, but without raising his voice. “A wise man is known by the fewness of his words.”
Michael Casey comments that these steps describe a higher level of integration in monastic life. After much learning and insight we discover the need to be silent. We don’t expect these steps to be realized in the early years of monastic life. As Casey writes, “This means short-circuiting the need to express oneself, to communicate, to feel in a state of relatedness to others, to recreate. It means standing more intensely alone, not yielding to the attraction of a moment’s relaxation, but keeping intact the creative tension that mindfulness and a purposeful existence involve.”
In chapter thirty-eight, “On the reader for the week,” Benedict asks for silence during table reading: Let there be complete silence. No whispering, no speaking – only the reader’s voice should be heard. Since the reading at table was scripture, one is silent in order to hear the Word of God.
Chapter forty-two is the next big chapter on silence, Silence After Compline. “Monks should diligently cultivate silence at all times, but especially at night.” In the evening, they should pray Compline, and on leaving Compline, no one will be permitted to speak further. The only exception is when guests require attention or the Abbott wishes to give someone a command. But otherwise, after Compline: silence. This used to be called The Great Silence. It was this silence that was broken only by the praise of God in the early morning.
Chapter forty-three comments that those who come late to prayer should not stand outside and end up engaging in idle chatter. Not that Benedict has a bias here – If you are late, come any way. Benedict resists catastrophic thinking. And he does so, I think because he knows that the commitment to come for that little piece is the beginning of change – It is conversatio [convertion] – it is the little step.
Finally, Benedict knows monks and in Chapter fifty-two he writes: “After the Work of God, all should leave in complete silence and with reverence for God, so that a brother who may wish to pray alone will not be disturbed by the insensitivity of another.” One is silence for the sake of spiritual life of one’s brothers. This is not a matter of pickiness or a silly rule – but trying to ensure that prayer is possible for others.
Because our honorarium has changed – we no longer go to bed within an hour of evening prayer – our practice of silence has changed. But our Customary [policy/habit/standard practice] still states: “Quiet should generally be observed in the rooms and corridors of the monastery, but especially at night after evening prayer.” We used to say, “After ten o’clock, no words.”
On Being Silent in our Culture
We know all about the external threats to silence – our mass pop culture abhors silence. It is a “consumption economy”, that is, an economy that generates enormous quantities of consumer goods that are used only a short while. Such an economy has to generate a climate of hyperactivity, of sensual over-stimulation in order that more goods may be consumed. Silence is our culture produces the withdrawal D.T.’s in many.
As Albert Borgmann points out in his Crossing the Post-Modern Divide, Max and Engels saw this a long time ago: “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.”
Our monastery, because of the close proximity to pop culture, not just because of the students we work with, but the radio/TV signals, the Internet that pulses into our midst, is vulnerable to the loss of silence, the incapacity for sustained silence. If we do not hear the freeway, the radio, or other stuff in the background, we feel something is very wrong.
But if our analysis of silence stops here, it would be superficial indeed. For it is not only external silence we desire, but that deep internal silence where we can be aware of the voice/presence of God. We know that stuff that goes through our heads and hearts during the one-minute pauses in church:
- The task we have procrastinated on or simply forgot;
- The throw-away comment by a conferee that somehow hits a vulnerable spot – suddenly we are aware of the wound;
- The unresolved anger we feel toward someone, anger that blocks all peace of mind and heart;
- Anxiety about tomorrow’s or today’s work;
- Boredom – “God, how long will this go on…?”
The discipline of silence will help us to let go of this stuff – to take these experiences as nods to our subconscious and not let them rule us. “I only have to be one place in the universe, and that is right here.” Or if we are nervous or afraid, silence will help us turn it into an expression of faith: “Lord, You light the path in front of me, and You are a shield behind me.” Each of us needs to work to build significant periods of silence in out life each day.
The Relationship Between Silence and Contemplative Prayer
Our culture prizes articulate, verbal speech. Picturing a monk who has moved far into contemplative prayer, Benedict insists that his remaining in contemplation is of greater benefit to himself and others than any words he might utter. The Cistercian, Michael Casey, comments, “Contemplation occurs in a nonverbal zone of the human spirit. Insofar as contemplative prayer has content, it does not translate easily into words and concepts; only images of evocations can be used to partially disclose its reality. The Word is beyond words. Contemplation brings us so close to God that God ceases to be a clear object of consciousness.” With wry humor, he continues, “A monk whose life is given fully to contemplation has no inclination to write a book on contemplation (as I have done).”
The experience of mystics and contemplatives from across religious traditions agrees that the further one moves along the road of silence and contemplation, the more incommunicable the mystery of God becomes, the more complex the relationship and the more difficult it becomes to speak about silence leads to more silence. The traditions are also eloquent about God’s silence in these times.
Another story from the desert tradition on the need for silence: “This story was told in the desert. There were three friends, earnest men, who became monks. One of them chose to make peace between men engaged in controversy, as it is written: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ The second chose to visit the sick. The third chose to be quiet in solitude. Then the first, struggling with quarrelling opponents, found that he heal everyone. Worn out, he came to the second who was ministering to the sick, and found him flagging in spirit, and unable to fulfill his purpose. And the two agreed, and went away to see the third who had become a hermit, and told him their troubles. They asked him to tell them what progress he had made.
He was silent for a little, and poured water into a cup. Then he said: ‘ Look at the water.’ And it was cloudy. After a little he said again: ‘Now look, see how clear the water has become.’ And when they leant over the water, they saw their faces as in a glass. Then he said to them: ‘So it is with the man who lives among men. He does not see his own sins because of the turmoil. But when he is at rest, especially in the desert, then he sees his sins.’” In community we need to be aware of silence – that we are monks – that when we think of the archetype of a monk, one of the qualities is the capacity for silence, where lots of activities go on, but in relative quiet.
Some Practical Considerations
The following are some specific considerations – I am sure you can think of others:
- Learning to sit still in choir may be a matter of stretching or loosening up before we get there. Otherwise the tension in our bodies will insist on release one we are sitting in a choir stall. This is not easy to be aware of – working at a computer for an extended period of time tends to leave us wired unless we consciously stretch periodically. I realize that some of our backs will stay in one position for a given length of time.
- Silence is an immediate preparation for our community prayer. There is great value in coming to choir 5-10 minutes early, to sit in silence, emptying oneself, head and heart, to be available for the Work of God. Especially in the middle and at the end of the day, I know what I carry within myself – it takes an effort to quiet down. This practice of giving ourselves some time to get ready to pray gives a positive witness to the value we place on our prayer together. We are not just dragging ourselves into church at the last possible minute, perhaps by accident missing the hymn and part of a psalm. Our life is about prayer, about giving God enough space in our hearts so that He can transform them.
- Always be aware of your stereo, radio or TV [or computer!] and how far the sound is traveling down the corridor. Each one of us has to practice silence each day. “A brother went to Abba Moses to ask a word. And the old man said to him, “Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”
- When you meet someone in the hallway, street, etc, use a slight hand gesture to acknowledge their presence or greet them quietly. However, to walk past someone and not acknowledge the person in any way is incredibly hurtful.
- The problem with setting down concrete expectations regarding silence for each one of us can be forgetful and break silence. These guidelines should not become an occasion for correcting each other in a nasty, judgmental way. Rather, as Benedict says, we should encourage each other gently.
- I hope that silence is of such significance that we do it well in liturgy. Our Liturgy of the Hours has a finely tuned relationship between singing, speaking and silence. However, our Liturgy of the Eucharist could use some work. To celebrants and musicians, we have a significant responsibility to build in appropriate silent pauses in the opening rite, after the response psalm, after the homily on Sunday and after Communion.
Summary
- It is silence that ultimately allows us to know ourselves, to come to understand what we care about, where our treasure is. Silence purifies the Word we hear. Otherwise, we may simply be echoing the echo of our interior noise. Silence is essential for prophetic insight.
- If we find ourselves constantly worrying about something it is a signal to us that we need to take action or surrender to that which we cannot control.
- If we find ourselves, our interior filled with anger, it tells us that we really need to look at this, and develop the skills to handle anger in a more effective manner.
- If silence is a sign of an uncluttered interior, it relates directly to an uncluttered external world, to simplicity and to the good of order.
- Each one of us knows the healing, regenerative power of silence.
- There is a balance between silence and speaking, between solitude and our need for community, for that deep space which God can fill and our need to laugh, and shout for joy with others.
- With respect to TV [& internet] ask yourself the question: “Am I on automatic pilot or is this program really better than the practice of lectio [time in God’s Word] other reading or silence?”
- The practice of silence is one way that we attend to the work of stability, of staying with the spiritual work in our lives, of staying with the issues, or not giving in to noise and distraction and never really being available for God.
Silence is truly one of the places where we can do the work of reflection and integration in our spiritual lives. In the last conference I tried to show the role of conversation in the work of integration. Silence complements our conversation in the work of conversation. The fertility of silence allows for the Holy Spirit to be at work.
© 2002 by St John’s Abbey, MN 56321-2015, all rights reserved / Rev. 04/23/2005 12:45:30 / http://www.osb.org/oblate/46/klasssilent.html
11 August 2013 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
We live in an age of wanton consumption, where we are kept busy, distracted and consuming, discontent unless we have… It is so deeply pervasive that it is mere impossible for the common 1st world person to stop, reflect and consider that it is even remotely not a healthy or sustainable life, much less maybe not the best option, or even much less, not healthy! In fact, for Americans (I cannot speak authoritatively for the rest of the 1st world – though I have much experience in Europe and the Antipathies – but I suggest it is exactly true & possibly in places, more true), it is now near impossible to even conceive or imagine that the life “we” experience and “how” we define it (consumed with mass consumption of entertainment, stuff, distraction, noise, materialism, consumerism, unaware of what our life of distraction costs others to provide for us, cheaply) is not Godly… we even, as saints, interpret what a healthy Christian lifestyle is through our American affluent (even the poor in the US are wealthy and consumers contrasted with the 2/3’s world) lenses.
What is it God calls us to? Who are we called to be? Are we not called to be imitators of him, ambassadors, co-laborers, sent ones (Rom 12, 1 Cor 12, Phil 2.5ff for starters only)? What is out life to be when we face trials and difficulties? In our consumptive paradigm, any trial/suffering is bad – not God’s will… “for God wants us happy, safe, comfortable and consuming (with the rest of society)”.
May I suggest two things? First, space, silence and reflection. Second, maybe we are formed more from how we navigate, endure and allow God to transform us in trials than from any other event in life?
Reflection. In the romantic comedy, Kate & Leopold, Kate inquires of Leopold (transported to the late 20th century miraculously from18th century France) what he misses most. His reply was poetic and simple… He missed time, pace and space to reflect. Nice touch by the screen play authors. They got it! In our crazy consumptive life (which kills mercy, love, charity, gentleness as the primal value is greed – me consuming endlessly). We need to intentionally embrace, seek and determine through disciplined action to seek space, silence, quiet, absence of distraction and …”reflect”. This is part of our pace and life in Communitas. From weekly, to seasonal retreats, to annual and even jubilee seven year cycles, we build in space to reflect and take stock of what has occurred, what is occurring, and what God is doing, has done and wants to do and amazingly, what He has to say about all of this. We’re not perfect, but I would have burned up (not out – but burned up) a long time ago with out this intentional habit.
2. Maybe we should not run from the painful times, the trials, the minor persecutions, or major for that matter. For in these come the deepest transformation seasons where we are transformed to be more like Christ and used the loudest as ambassadors for him…even if we don’t know it at the time. Ever hear of Radegund, Austria? Ever hear of a poor nobody from that town, named Franz Jägerstätter? Me neither. Read on;
Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943) was a humble peasant born to a poor German farm maid in the small town of Radegund, Upper Austria. He was baptized, married and worked as a sexton (person who keeps the church prepared for services, maintenance, assists the pastor, etc) in the same small parish. Though he was never part of any formal resistance groups Franz was his village’s sole conscientious objector to the annexation of Austria to Germany under Hitler. He felt deeply that his Christian faith could not permit him to fight in Hitler’s army. Even under pressure by local priests and bishops (??? !!!) to conform and serve in the military, Franz refused. He was imprisoned and beheaded for his refusal to serve in the Nazi Army.
In our world of consumption with the value being about me being satisfied “now”, to suffer, endure, trans navigate through a hard season is beyond consideration. Hence why marriages, careers, relationships, commitments of all types, even our kids are disposable. Sad, but we don’t even bother committing anymore but literally accept whoring ourselves out repeatedly for a night’s sexual gratification, a new relationship… A few months ago, I sat at a café table waiting for a friend. The two young women next to me chatted away, not loudly, but our close proximity made it impossible to not overhear. The one shared how she was leaving New Orleans and the other lamented. The first said she had met a guy, no commitments (but she was moving up the Atlantic seaboard in case it might work out…the sex was good…so they must be a good match for each other…no kidding, her reasoning) and that it just didn’t work out in New Orleans… She had had sex with twelve men in her two years there through grad school at Tulane, and while some lasted two months or so, they never had any meaning, depth or real lasting romance and the guys moved on though she longed for a deep relationship. Wow. Yes, that’s accurate, not on iota made up. Maybe, that deep image cast within her longs for meaningful, lasting, committed, deep, but she lives out everything that is a) more common than most readers of this might ever, ever conceive, and b) everything I wrote above.
Possibly, God calls us to a life of purpose, commitment, sacrifice, and the grit to stand (humbly, but unwaveringly) for Him. We’re not part of an ideology, a religion, or an association, but lovers of, subjects of, servants of, princes & princesses of the King. Maybe real life, beyond consumption is about something more tacit, more earthy, more costly than consumption. Maybe?
“Through his bitter suffering and death, Christ freed us only from eternal death, not from temporal suffering and mortal death. But Christ, too, demands a public confession of our faith, just as the Führer, Adolf Hitler, does from his followers.”
~ Franz Jägerstätter (1943)
8 August 2013 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
Here is an article from Sojourners that should remind us that if we claim to follow the Christ, the Living God, then we are called to emulate Him, and even more, have the same, very same nature (character, values, convictions, emotions, actions & reactions, behaviors) as Him. This crosses over to our politics, our social convictions, etc. I do think we have forgotten that in the USA today… I in fact claim that most, most of the church has opted American nationalism, conservative politics over Biblical theology and our churches have been co-opted by the political movements, reducing God’s people to a special interest group to be used for their gain. Even a grass roots effort by people to take back “Government by, for and of the people” from the special interest groups and super powerful lobby groups… and they have been co-opted by the very same and the most radical, non-democratic movement in US history controls the House of Representatives.
Please take a moment, read this article and consider God’s Word in over laying our politics… rather than the opposite.
In response to my last article, “10 Things You Can’t Do While Following Jesus [6],” I was accused multiple times of being political. All I was trying to do was follow Jesus. So, I thought it’d be interesting (and generate tons more hate mail) to show what a list would actually look like if I were being political intentionally. Like the first list, this is not a complete list but it’s a pretty good place to start.
Jesus at church across from the Alfred P Murrah Memorial by tonystl / Flickr.com
There will be those who comment and send me messages berating me for “making Jesus political.” It’s okay. Fire away. Jesus didn’t worry much about stepping on political toes, and the Bible insists that governments be just toward the least of these (the books of the prophets alone make this point very clear). Frequently, people who are the most vocal about not making Jesus political are the same people who want prayer in school and laws based on their own religious perspectives. By a happy little circumstance that brings us to my list:
10) Force your religious beliefs and practices on others.
One of the strengths of the faith Jesus taught was in its meekness. The faith he taught valued free will over compulsion – because that’s how love works. Compelling people to follow any religion, more or less your personal religion, stands over and against the way Jesus practiced his faith. If you are using the government to compel people to practice your spiritual beliefs, you might be the reason baby Jesus is crying. This does get tricky. There is a difference in letting your beliefs inform your political choices and letting your politics enforce your religion. This article is about the first part.
9) Advocate for war.
There’s a reason why he was called the Prince of Peace. Sure, you can quote, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and even two or three other verses, but they don’t hold a candle to the more than fifty-some verses where Jesus speaks about peace and peacemaking. It’s funny how things keep coming back to love but it needs to be said, it is way far away from loving a person to kill them. I guess there’s a reason why we say, “God is love.” In the end, love wins.
8) Favor the rich over the poor.
This is actually related to #4. Favoring the rich over the poor is a slap in the face of Jesus, his life, and his teachings. In terms of the teachings of Jesus, it is bad enough when we allow the rich to take advantage of the poor, but when we create laws that not only encourage the behavior but also protect it? Well, let’s just say it becomes crystal clear how ironic it is that we print, “In God We Trust,” on our money.
7) Cut funding that hurts the least of these.
To some degree, this is the inverse of #8. Favoring the rich is despicable. We Jesus minions should avoid it. Hurting the poor? Well, that’s just … just … um, something a whole lot worse than despicable. Despicabler? Über-despicable? When Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do it to me,” he meant it. When you cut funding and it hurts people, according to Jesus, you are hurting him.
6) Let people go hungry.
Well, well, well. What have we here? Is this an item from the original top ten list which I claimed was not politically motivated? Looks like I’ve stepped into my own clever trap! Muh wah ha ha! Seriously though, of course it’s on both lists. It is a spiritual issue and it is a political issue. Spiritually, Gandhi said, “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Politically, hunger causes problems with education, production, and civil behavior that are all necessary for a successful nation. More importantly for Christians, Jesus said when we feed the hungry, we are feeding him. So, yes, this item is on both lists – and I’m going to do it again.
5) Withhold healthcare from people.
This time I’m not only repeating an item, I’m repeating a lot of what I said. Did you ever play the game “Follow the Leader?” If you don’t do what the leader does, you are out. Following means you should imitate as closely as possible. When people who were sick needed care, Jesus gave it to them. If we are following Jesus, we will imitate him as closely as possible. No, the government can’t repeat the miracles he did but I’ve seen modern medicine do things that are about as close to a miracle as I expect to get. While the government can’t do miracles, it can supply modern medicine. Every year, 45,000 people die in the U.S. because of the lack of healthcare [8]. We Christians like to talk about “saving” people. Well, I know of about 45,000 people who’d love for us to do it and we should – because that’s how love works.
4) Limit the rights of a select group of people.
Jesus loves everybody – but he loves me best. Kind of sits the wrong way with you, doesn’t it? Well, it should and with good reason. If you spend any time reading the Bible you know that we all were made in God’s image. Exactly which part of us is in God’s image is less clear, but what is clear is that we were equally made in the image of God. Any law that doesn’t treat people equally is as good as thumbing your nose at God. Even worse? Doing it in the name of God or based on religious beliefs (see #10).
3) Turn away immigrants.
Christian heritage runs through Judaism. We are an immigrant people. Even our religion began somewhere else. Our spiritual ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, were told by God to pick up what they had and start traveling. Moses, Miriam, and Aaron led a nation out of Egypt, into the desert and ultimately to new lands. Even Jesus spent part of his childhood as a foreigner in a foreign land. As Exodus says, we know how it feels to be foreigners in a foreign land. If you don’t think being foreigners in a foreign land is still our story, ask the Native Americans. At best, turning away immigrants makes us hypocrites; at worst, it makes us betrayers of our ancestors and our God.
2) Devalue education.
We learn in Proverbs that wisdom is something in which God delights daily. As a matter of fact, according to Proverbs, wisdom is better than gold. When you look at the percentage of our budget that goes to education and at what Congress is trying to do to student loans, it’s pretty clear that delighting in wisdom is something our government no longer does.
1) Support capital punishment — execution.
Jesus died by execution. He was an innocent man. Every year, innocent people die by execution in our nation. It’s time to be a shining city on a hill. It’s time to express the fullness of love, to express the value of life. It’s time to stop the government-sanctioned killing.
Mark Sandlin [9]currently serves as the minister at Vandalia Presbyterian Church [10] in Greensboro, N.C. He received his M. Div. from Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity [11] and has undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and English with a minor in Computer Science. He’s an ordained minister in the PC(USA) and a self-described progressive.
For me, I agree with most of what he says. Furthermore, though, we as His people, following God’s Words about being like Him, need to for theological conviction, as well as pragmatic conviction, consider that most of this invests in our nation to do these things well. It makes us healthier as a nation, and therefore prosperous, deep health, deep “bench” in sporting terms. The less we are economically, spiritually, socially, educationally prosperous (aka middle class) the less healthy and sustainable we are as a nation state. While I do not even concede nation states are the best model of governing and organizing, nor do I disagree, it is our reality and a healthy state (nation) ensures the advancement of all it’s people on every front. To do other wise builds a feudal system that will ultimately collapse.
6 July 2013 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
I find it interesting watching the media and public response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act…
Not surprising, almost every white person feels “what’s the big deal”; “those things are ancient history” and no longer valid and honestly distracted with the dog days of summer and vacations.
Also not surprisingly, people of ethnic minority (very, very soon to see the white population no longer the outright majority) feel quite different. They feel this is a huge step backwards and that is absolutely relevant and important still today to have these checks and balances in place.
I agree with the latter. Why? Because I’m white and I hear people talk… the common view and thought of people. I hear the lack of interest if nothing else, which opens huge opportunity for abuse yet. I watched Florida’s and Arizona’s partisan politics in voting maneuvers that would impact one partisan opposition group after another – in a negative manner. I don’t disagree that voting fraud is something that must always be kept in mind and that proof of identity is important. Yet, when people of privilege find getting to voting places and obtaining needed papers easy and do not comprehend the challenges poorer people face and then in the waning days right before a HUGE presidential election “decide” it is time to alter the rules, there is a problem we need to consider.
No, I think the rules are yet needed because large parts of the nation still need oversight. This move is something saints should be involved in – to ensure all of us have access to participate. Why in a bog about faith?
Because God spends a lot of ink in His Word to state very clearly that we are a) to have His character and value system, b) emulate Him and c) in very pragmatic ways be involved in making sure there is justice, and those disempowered are empowered. Consider Jesus’ mandate passage (Isaiah 61) or Isaiah’s (God’s) major indictment sheet against Israel (Isaiah 58) or Jeremiah’s words to Israel in exile for failing to get it (Is 58) in Jeremiah 29. It’s pretty clear… we are to be the loudest voice in the argument FOR the disempowered.
Have a look, this article from Sojourners is well written and says some things we need to hear.
Watch the Vote: Supreme Court Effectively Kills Voting Rights Act
by Lisa Sharon Harper [3] 06-25-2013 | 2:13pm
Today is a dark day in our nation’s history. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, rendering the 48-year-old legislation impotent to protect citizens from voter suppression. Section 4 lists the states that must obtain “preclearance” from the Department of Justice before instituting changes to their voter laws. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said [7]: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Demonstrator outside the Supreme Court on Monday, Brandon Hook / Sojourners
Only 48 years ago, on March 7, 1965, men, women, and children absorbed blasts of water, bone-crushing blows from police batons, and profound humiliation as Selma, Ala., police dragged limp black bodies over concrete on the far side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They had assembled on that day, which came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” to march from Selma to Montgomery in protest of voter suppression and intimidation that had plagued the entire South. Ten days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent the Voting Rights Act to Congress. The bill passed in the Senate on May 26 by a vote of 77 – 19 and passed in the House on July 9 of that year. President Johnson signed the Act into law with Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and others present on August 6.
Flash forward to Fall 2012. I launched a blog series called “Watch the Vote [9]” because, as of August 2012, 30 states had introduced legislation or enacted laws to hinder voters’ access to voting over the previous year. The Fair Elections Legal Network crafted this map [10] to chart the spread of legal voter suppression initiatives across the nation. Notice, Alabama [11] is one of the states that has recently passed voter restriction law that has not been precleared by the Department of Justice. Its new law, requiring photo ID and proof of citizenship, was set to take effect in 2014 before the Supreme Court ruled last week that Arizona’s voter ID law [12], which Alabama used as a model for its own, is unconstitutional.
In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act with overwhelming bipartisan support. In her dissenting opinion today, which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, Ginsburg pointed out [7]: “It was the judgment of Congress that ‘40 years has not been a sufficient amount of time to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination following nearly 100 years of disregard for the dictates of the 15th amendment and to ensure that the right of all citizens to vote is protected as guaranteed by the Constitution.’”
Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, put it this way [13]: “By second-guessing Congress’ judgment about which places should be covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Court has left millions of minority voters without the mechanism that has allowed them to stop voting discrimination before it occurs. This is like letting you keep your car, but taking away the keys.”
One might respond: “Well, why not just get Congress re-issue a list of states that is more up-to-date?” Nice thought. Take a look at the 21 states [10] where voter suppression legislation has either passed or was still pending as of August 2012. You get the point. Blood had to flow from Edmund Pettus Bridge to prompt Congress to craft its original list [14], which was still largely viable. I fear blood may have to flow again before Congress and the much of the American public are convinced that 40 years is, indeed not long enough.
For now, though, Congressman John Lewis, whose blood mixed with the other saints on Bloody Sunday, said it perfectly. ABC News reporter, Jeff Zeleny, Tweeted [15]: “‘What the Supreme Court did was to put a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act,’ John Lewis tells me.”
A dagger, indeed.
Lisa Sharon Harper is Director of Mobilizing for Sojourners and a member of Emerging Voices [16].
6 July 2013 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
This is a must read as a follow on to the previous posting:
Listening to Young Atheists: Lessons for a Stronger Christianity
Left, the pastor George Whitefield; right, the philosopher David Hume (Wikimedia Commons)
“Church became all about ceremony, handholding, and kumbaya,” Phil said with a look of disgust. “I missed my old youth pastor. He actually knew the Bible.”
I have known a lot of atheists. The late Christopher Hitchens was a friend with whom I debated, road tripped, and even had a lengthy private Bible study. I have moderated Richard Dawkins and, on occasion, clashed with him. And I have listened for hours to the (often unsettling) arguments of Peter Singer and a whole host of others like him. These men are some of the public faces of the so-called “New Atheism,” and when Christians think about the subject — if they think about it at all — it is this sort of atheist who comes to mind: men whose unbelief is, as Dawkins once proudly put it, “militant.” But Phil, the atheist college student who had come to my office to share his story, was of an altogether different sort.
Phil was in my office as part of a project that began last year. Over the course of my career, I have met many students like Phil. It has been my privilege to address college students all over the world, usually as one defending the Christian worldview. These events typically attract large numbers of atheists. I like that. I find talking to people who disagree with me much more stimulating than those gatherings that feel a bit too much like a political party convention, and the exchanges with these students are mostly thoughtful and respectful. At some point, I like to ask them a sincere question:
What led you to become an atheist?
Given that the New Atheism fashions itself as a movement that is ruthlessly scientific, it should come as no surprise that those answering my question usually attribute the decision to the purely rational and objective: one invokes his understanding of science; another says it was her exploration of the claims of this or that religion; and still others will say that religious beliefs are illogical, and so on. To hear them tell it, the choice was made from a philosophically neutral position that was void of emotion.
Christianity, when it is taken seriously, compels its adherents to engage the world, not retreat from it. There are a multitude of reasons for this mandate, ranging from care for the poor, orphaned, and widowed to offering hope to the hopeless. This means that Christians must be willing to listen to other perspectives while testing their own beliefs against them — above all, as the apostle Peter tells us, “with gentleness and respect.” The non-profit I direct, Fixed Point Foundation, endeavors to bridge the gaps between various factions (both religious and irreligious) as gently and respectfully as possible. Atheists particularly fascinate me. Perhaps it’s because I consider their philosophy — if the absence of belief may be called a philosophy — historically naive and potentially dangerous. Or maybe it’s because they, like any good Christian, take the Big Questions seriously. But it was how they processed those questions that intrigued me.
To gain some insight, we launched a nationwide campaign to interview college students who are members of Secular Student Alliances (SSA) or Freethought Societies (FS). These college groups are the atheist equivalents to Campus Crusade: They meet regularly for fellowship, encourage one another in their (un)belief, and even proselytize. They are people who are not merely irreligious; they are actively, determinedly irreligious.
Using the Fixed Point Foundation website, email, my Twitter, and my Facebook page, we contacted the leaders of these groups and asked if they and their fellow members would participate in our study. To our surprise, we received a flood of enquiries. Students ranging from Stanford University to the University of Alabama-Birmingham, from Northwestern to Portland State volunteered to talk to us. The rules were simple: Tell us your journey to unbelief. It was not our purpose to dispute their stories or to debate the merits of their views. Not then, anyway. We just wanted to listen to what they had to say. And what they had to say startled us.
This brings me back to Phil.
A smart, likable young man, he sat down nervously as my staff put a plate of food before him. Like others after him, he suspected a trap. Was he being punk’d? Talking to us required courage of all of these students, Phil most of all since he was the first to do so. Once he realized, however, that we truly meant him no harm, he started talking — and for three hours we listened.
Now the president of his campus’s SSA, Phil was once the president of his Methodist church’s youth group. He loved his church (“they weren’t just going through the motions”), his pastor (“a rock star trapped in a pastor’s body”), and, most of all, his youth leader, Jim (“a passionate man”). Jim’s Bible studies were particularly meaningful to him. He admired the fact that Jim didn’t dodge the tough chapters or the tough questions: “He didn’t always have satisfying answers or answers at all, but he didn’t run away from the questions either. The way he taught the Bible made me feel smart.”
Listening to his story I had to remind myself that Phil was an atheist, not a seminary student recalling those who had inspired him to enter the pastorate. As the narrative developed, however, it became clear where things came apart for Phil. During his junior year of high school, the church, in an effort to attract more young people, wanted Jim to teach less and play more. Difference of opinion over this new strategy led to Jim’s dismissal. He was replaced by Savannah, an attractive twenty-something who, according to Phil, “didn’t know a thing about the Bible.” The church got what it wanted: the youth group grew. But it lost Phil.
An hour deeper into our conversation I asked, “When did you begin to think of yourself as an atheist?”
He thought for a moment. “I would say by the end of my junior year.”
I checked my notes. “Wasn’t that about the time that your church fired Jim?”
He seemed surprised by the connection. “Yeah, I guess it was.”
Phil’s story, while unique in its parts, was on the whole typical of the stories we would hear from students across the country. Slowly, a composite sketch of American college-aged atheists began to emerge and it would challenge all that we thought we knew about this demographic. Here is what we learned:
They had attended church
Most of our participants had not chosen their worldview from ideologically neutral positions at all, but in reaction to Christianity. Not Islam. Not Buddhism. Christianity.
The mission and message of their churches was vague
These students heard plenty of messages encouraging “social justice,” community involvement, and “being good,” but they seldom saw the relationship between that message, Jesus Christ, and the Bible. Listen to Stephanie, a student at Northwestern: “The connection between Jesus and a person’s life was not clear.” This is an incisive critique. She seems to have intuitively understood that the church does not exist simply to address social ills, but to proclaim the teachings of its founder, Jesus Christ, and their relevance to the world. Since Stephanie did not see that connection, she saw little incentive to stay. We would hear this again.
They felt their churches offered superficial answers to life’s difficult questions
When our participants were asked what they found unconvincing about the Christian faith, they spoke of evolution vs. creation, sexuality, the reliability of the biblical text, Jesus as the only way, etc. Some had gone to church hoping to find answers to these questions. Others hoped to find answers to questions of personal significance, purpose, and ethics. Serious-minded, they often concluded that church services were largely shallow, harmless, and ultimately irrelevant. As Ben, an engineering major at the University of Texas, so bluntly put it: “I really started to get bored with church.”
They expressed their respect for those ministers who took the Bible seriously
Following our 2010 debate in Billings, Montana, I asked Christopher Hitchens why he didn’t try to savage me on stage the way he had so many others. His reply was immediate and emphatic: “Because you believe it.” Without fail, our former church-attending students expressed similar feelings for those Christians who unashamedly embraced biblical teaching. Michael, a political science major at Dartmouth, told us that he is drawn to Christians like that, adding: “I really can’t consider a Christian a good, moral person if he isn’t trying to convert me.” As surprising as it may seem, this sentiment is not as unusual as you might think. It finds resonance in the well-publicized comments of Penn Jillette, the atheist illusionist and comedian: “I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward…. How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?” Comments like these should cause every Christian to examine his conscience to see if he truly believes that Jesus is, as he claimed, “the way, the truth, and the life.”
Ages 14-17 were decisive
One participant told us that she considered herself to be an atheist by the age of eight while another said that it was during his sophomore year of college that he de-converted, but these were the outliers. For most, the high school years were the time when they embraced unbelief.
The decision to embrace unbelief was often an emotional one
With few exceptions, students would begin by telling us that they had become atheists for exclusively rational reasons. But as we listened it became clear that, for most, this was a deeply emotional transition as well. This phenomenon was most powerfully exhibited in Meredith. She explained in detail how her study of anthropology had led her to atheism. When the conversation turned to her family, however, she spoke of an emotionally abusive father:
“It was when he died that I became an atheist,” she said.
I could see no obvious connection between her father’s death and her unbelief. Was it because she loved her abusive father — abused children often do love their parents — and she was angry with God for his death? “No,” Meredith explained. “I was terrified by the thought that he could still be alive somewhere.”
Rebecca, now a student at Clark University in Boston, bore similar childhood scars. When the state intervened and removed her from her home (her mother had attempted suicide), Rebecca prayed that God would let her return to her family. “He didn’t answer,” she said. “So I figured he must not be real.” After a moment’s reflection, she appended her remarks: “Either that, or maybe he is [real] and he’s just trying to teach me something.”
The internet factored heavily into their conversion to atheism
When our participants were asked to cite key influences in their conversion to atheism–people, books, seminars, etc. — we expected to hear frequent references to the names of the “New Atheists.” We did not. Not once. Instead, we heard vague references to videos they had watched on YouTube or website forums.
***
Religion is a sensitive topic, and a study like this is bound to draw critics. To begin with, there is, of course, another side to this story. Some Christians will object that our study was tilted against churches because they were given no chance to defend themselves. They might justifiably ask to what extent these students really engaged with their Bibles, their churches, and the Christians around them. But that is beside the point. If churches are to reach this growing element of American collegiate life, they must first understand who these people are, and that means listening to them.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this whole study was the lasting impression many of these discussions made upon us.
That these students were, above all else, idealists who longed for authenticity, and having failed to find it in their churches, they settled for a non-belief that, while less grand in its promises, felt more genuine and attainable. I again quote Michael: “Christianity is something that if you really believed it, it would change your life and you would want to change [the lives] of others. I haven’t seen too much of that.”
Sincerity does not trump truth. After all, one can be sincerely wrong. But sincerity is indispensable to any truth we wish others to believe. There is something winsome, even irresistible, about a life lived with conviction. I am reminded of the Scottish philosopher and skeptic, David Hume, who was recognized among a crowd of those listening to the preaching of George Whitefield, the famed evangelist of the First Great Awakening:
“I thought you didn’t believe in the Gospel,” someone asked.
“I do not,” Hume replied. Then, with a nod toward Whitefield, he added, “But he does.”
27 June 2013 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
The church in the western world, faces populations who are increasingly “secular” – people with no Christian memory, who don’t know what we Christians are talking about. These populations are increasingly “urban” – and out of touch with God’s “natural revelation”. These populations are increasingly “post modern”; they have graduated from enlightenment ideology and are more peer driven, feeling driven, and “right-brained” than their forebears. These populations are increasingly “neo-barbarian”; they lack “refinement” or “class”, and their lives are often out of control. These populations are increasingly receptive – exploring worldview options from astrology to zen – and are often looking “in all the wrong places” to make sense of their lives and find their soul’s true home.
~ George Hunter III, in his preface to The Celtic Way of Evangelism, How Christianity Can Reach The West ….Again, 2000.
Dr. Hunter is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Asbury Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission and Evangelism, where he served as Dean for 18 years and Distinguished Professor for 10 years. He served as the founding dean of Asbury’s E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism.
This work of Dr. Hunter was the single most influential work that gave shape to what is now Communitas. It fueled my thinking, my methodology and eventually shaped my theology as I wrestled a postmodern world of neo-barbarians who knew the name of Jesus and that He saves, but have no earthly idea of its implications, or third hand experiences of Christianity mis-understood or mis-communicated. This along with key people, such as Darren Prince and John Hayes (InnerCHANGE, of which Communitas is a part) shaped my thinking, my conviction and my call.
Now thirteen years later, I am ever more convinced that his work is ever more essential for all saints, of all tribes, to understand and live and it is a mandate, a powerful exhortation for leaders, professors, missionaries, to re-imagine the church in a more holistic manner, where there is:
– a greater understanding, respect & love for the host culture and people in which we live, but are not full participants in. There is a distinct difference in the 20th century anti-cultural stance of the church and a counter-to-the-culture Celtic example and concept.
– We don’t civilize them to behave like us first to accept them, but accept them unconditionally, fully FIRST – then invite them to behave with us as we live out our lives as apostolics (sent ones) as James K.A. Smith so well argues in his work, Imagining the Kingdom (p. 9ff) where he states, “so much of our orientation to – and action in – the world is governed by pre-conscious habits and patterns of behavior, and those habits are formed by environments of practice.”
– a re-imagining of mission to our own “barbarian people”. The Western Church has been pre-occupied with the uncivilized “unreached people groups” and this is a legitimate concern. Yet may I argue that that pre-occupation is partly to blame for why the western church has collapsed and continues to collapse. It is true and has been true for years that though populations have increased, there is not one county equivalent in the US or western world (UK, US, Canada, Europe, Australia & New Zealand) where the percentage of Christians has increased in over fifty years! In fact, many denominations are in steep decline, including the courageous Southern Baptist Convention. It is only in the US where we find denial. Though I would merely encourage people to look outside their own growing church, composed mostly of transfer growth from other dying congregations, to see how many former churches are gone, or on life support in their final days. In my own mission sphere, there were five Catholic parishes, a Lutheran church, an Evangelical [denomination] church and a Baptist church. Today there is one healthy Catholic parish and one elderly Lutheran church in its final decade. May we consider that we no longer need conventionally defined pastors, but pastors and missionaries who are all missionaries – who FIRST understand, listen and live life with and come to deeply love our own host neighborhood, community, town/city… then we will better know “how to” engage them with the hope of Christ. For this is exactly what Patrick did and after six years as a slave, and returning for several years first learning to understand as an apostolic, he then launched a Celtic monastic movement that did not look like the European model – but was forged for the Celtic peoples and thus in Patrick’s lifetime saw over 6000 churches established in the isolated village/rural world of Irish Celtic peoples. Imagine – 6000! After him, came Columba who with several other key apostolic leaders, saw the Celts in Scotland, what is now Wales and England come to Christ and then they together expanding to re-evangelize Europe, which had fallen back to paganism as the institution of the church had withdrawn with the legions as the Roman Empire shrunk. BUT I cannot over emphasize that it begins with really, really loving, besotted by the people to whom we are sent!
– A going to where the communication and travel lines are… This is physical. In Patrick and Columba’s day that was sea and river travel. Hence establishing places like Iona. Today it is key cities, such as New York, London, Boston, post-Katrina New Orleans, Chicago, Sydney, Vancouver, etc. When one sees a bell curve and applies this to creativity – few are reaching the leading creative edge, yet they influence so much in our very, very, very fast changing world. Where are they? Why are we not there? This means a comfort and contentment not being wrapped in out cotton wool safety of church culture, but the disharmonious world of real sinners, who’s lives are often out of control.
– We must be more…
– Right brained, consumed by the imminence and providence of God and not merely left brained, mapping out systems of theology which may or may not be real. We in our left mind, try to understand, and navigate, even control… God is not an ideology, but a complex, passionate, emotional being who is, yes, good, but He is not safe, nor predictable. Proverbs are rhythms and postures for life, not contracts.
– More aware of the spiritual world and the in-between reality, not just program, if program.
– More an organism, a people who love and share life, not programs and institutions. Real life must be shared
– Less clergy, more a people led and deployed.
– Less answers, more shared journey
– Less tic tac bumper sticker knee jerk quips, more silence, patience, peace and willingness to work through the toughest conflicts and hurts. Iron sharpening iron implies sparks, grinding and heat; not quaint hello’s at church to strangers.
– Humbly coming alongside, not confrontation
– Ceasing trying to fight moral wars in a lost society, trying to keep it from acting lost, when it is; accepting it is godless and allowing it to be so. In such darkness our light, our peace, our health is every brighter. These are not unimportant or even vital issues, but a godless people will rationalize the same. In spending our energy fighting these things, we male enemies, rather than seekers, we lost voice, rather than gaining voice and we get no opportunity to love unconditionally, for we become an enemy. Same sex marriage is all but a given and legalization of marijuana is coming behind. This is not the end. We need to move to accept our present and ever growing reality that we are back on the margins, not influencing society any longer in any way.
– Instead, may be become lovers of Him, bathing in His truth; laboring in real prayer where we’ll have greater impact anyway.
Let us not mourn being on the margins again. For it is the bottom of our fall from being the central shaper and influencer of society. We didn’t do too well, for He was co-opted for wars and prejudice, dominance and empire. Yet, from the margins we see the greatest advances of the Kingdom! May we celebrate that and move to again save our people.
Pragmatically, what does this mean? It’s simple and yet so hard.
– Sacrifice; give yourself away – till it costs, hurts, means you give up not from excess or spare, but from the core… not just fat, but muscle.
– Risk; to give yourself away means you can be a) taken advantage of financially and relationally; you can be hurt or cheated; you can be betrayed; you can lose out. Just last night, I found myself giving an elderly gentleman a ride. His pleas seemed honest, but was he going to pull a gun on me? Was he in real need?
– God’s priorities, calling – not mine. Maybe we turn down promotion, honor where “we can use our gifts in wider ways” to stay committed to and where He has sent us because “they” matter more and mission with and to these people would be hurt. Maybe we don’t have the fiscal security, social monopoly, even respect of the “good people of the church”. Maybe we miss the comfort of Christian culture and even worship as we invest and spend ourselves amongst those who deny Him?
– Possibly, maybe we walk away from success. Maybe it’s not a good “rule” that if God is blessing you, then it is His will? Possibly, He wants you to become downwardly mobile, not upwardly mobile? Maybe He wants you to move towards pain, suffering, living with less option, power, privilege. I find young leaders in their 20’s and now 30’s who are reluctant to commit t0 anything! As soon as they choose, they know that it means commitment and they give up options, mobility, independence and parachutes… committing is serious and from a very young age they’ve been given the “sky is the limit” and “you can become anything” and “the options are endless”. Problem is as soon as you decide to “become anything” you say no and options go. I challenge the “Y” and “iY” generations to grow up, become mature, commit, dig in, get dirty, tired, and walk away from endless options. Yes, you’ll miss out – but you’re already missing out because you are paralyzed and committed to nothing and consumed with slactivism (causes mentioned on Facebook) to alleviate the reality that you are actually contributing little!
– Be and get an and possibly a few Anomchara. This is a Celtic term for a “soul friend” … one whom shares everything, every sphere of life, spiritual parenting is the closest idea. This person is not a mentor or counsel you pay for, or for an area or skill in life, but one who is for you, a fan, an over-watcher. It includes the Italian or French idea of a God Father or Parrain (still used in New Orleans). It is a person who is committed to you and will challenge, speak into, defend, encourage and exhort you – for you that you may become all of who He calls you to be so you can contribute all He has for you to contribute!
– Most of all posture – and do not take that word lightly, for it implies action from intention, attitude, perspective, conviction and moral will – to engage the world, not – as much of cloistered monasticism (not all monasticism mind you, i.e. Cistercians, Jesuits, Franciscans, etc) did in the past and even today. BUT a contemporary Celtic model of “Christian Monastic Communities” must a) have a “wall” (rhythms of life for the interior formation, people and the heart) but b) constantly have their gaze outward towards the world. This requires a few clergy types, but more – normal people who are abnormal in their radical commitment to the apostolic call to expand the Kingdom.
This is enough for today. This is what perks within me this week. Peace, rest and silence to hear for you is my prayer. May the Lord who sees watch over. May the Son who walks with you see. May the Spirit within you help you see.
Mike
26 June 2013 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
Seeing a lot of references by the secular world to the new Superman Movie – and the Messianic overtones.
One quick watch of the trailer and you’ll get why… note the words chosen, the hope inspired, the rejection by the “world”, etc… Even the “S” is a symbol from his original planet for “hope”.
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/manofsteel/#videos-automatic
Exciting, funny, amusing, bewildering and sad how the world loves the hope of a savior, the joy of one for us, but rejects Him. Funny how they even copy the story, but reject Him. Why can they not embrace the Christ? Why do they reject the creator who loves us so? Do we have anything to do with that perception that alienates the world? Not just “us” but “us through history”… from our arrogance today, empire today and yesterday, Crusades, inquisitions, slaughter of other peoples, marriage of His church to governments? Why? Is it merely spiritual and rebellion by the creation, or is it a complex mire of all?
More than that – what are we to do, say, be, act, see, hear today? How can we listen better? How can we be humble servants – imitating Him? How can we tear down that wall? Is it loud in your face evangelism, or the simple servants who change one at a time? …It worked once before, no twice… 33AD-325AD and again with Patrick’s Celtic monastic mission movement 500-1000AD.
Maybe?
22 June 2013 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
Our 20th century felt a need to define things… I guess part of our expansion of understanding of science, industry, machines, etc and even knowledge-information. In doing so, we defined theology in systematic ways that made sense to us… hence, systematic theology. With it came a systematization of orthopraxis (correct practice, or living). Through this, though said at times, it was more “caught” through action that discipleship was codified, codified into a program for “new believers”… it was a catechism to use an older label.
I believe this was done to our detriment. It reduced being formed into Christ’s image to a) knowledge; b) beginner’s indoctrination (Christianity 101…literally); something one does and “graduates” beyond. This is sad… so much is lost. For, when we step back and consider any Biblical or post Canon saint, we see lives that were and today are to be formed through life. In our egalitarian nature on one end of the spectrum, and our institutionalization on the other, we either see no need of it, and-or see it as only done by the clergy on high. I feel this is sad…
We often find that in the West, our privacy, so expanded with a) the affluence born post WWII; and b) our western culture’s individualism and privacy born of centuries of enlightenment and cultural proprieties that require us to at least appear “together”. It has reduced “iron sharpening iron” to tensile. Again, sad.
Having been called and shaped to start Communitas; having lived in community for years; having failed repeatedly as a person-leader-saint-friend-lover-father-mentor, I have come to know first hand just how I yet need to be formed into the image of Christ. It has forged in me a deep awareness of how I cannot and in fact have nothing to boast in of myself. I am, rather, a humble servant of the Lord, who needs my brothers and sisters to yet sharpen me, help me, encourage me and remind me.
You see, we tend to consider discipleship, formation, training, equipping to be linear, as in a discipler teaching a disciple. This is so western, so Greek, so didactic, so institutional, and not what Scripture teaches, nor is lived out in Eastern Cultures of which the Bible was written through. Rather, discipleship, formation, and equipping; iron sharpening iron; is a multi-directional life – not activity or course. It is life on life.
In contrast to a course or catechism, Scripture models for us lives that ebb and flow. There is an ebb and flow to life. My decades’ increasing tell me this. There are times when my wisdom, my years of grit in the trenches, my own gifings coming to bear are useful to those behind me in the journey. With this said, though, there are times, and have been for many years, those behind me who become my teacher, my formateurs. For God gifts, gives wisdom, and smile when we are shown our humble dependency. Our culture tends to think of dependency upon God as a spiritual matter with no other people involved. I disagree with this and rather challenge that it is through others, mutually dependent upon each other, upon Christ, together, that we are best formed, sharpened, matured. My mission calls this “constellations of mentors”… the idea of a sky full of starts – different locations, distances, brightnesses, but all having roles in giving us light.
Just yesterday, I sat on the porch of one of my communities, the leaders and I rocking back and forth in the later afternoon sun. I listened, encouraged and spoke to them wisdom they thirst for and encouragement to be used to shape and make them more successful. Last night, the leader of the community in which I reside chided me for some actions that did not reflect my station, maturity, or Christ likeness. He did so to make me sharper, more mature and to encourage me to live into my calling. He is many years younger and could be my son. I’ve also sat this week with a leader who resented my words, though I worked to be gentle and kind and encouraging. There is something needed by each of these relationships. The one at the moment calling a sister or brother to allow him/her self to be formed must do so to build up, to bring life, to encourage and call them to a higher place – not to shame and hurt. Ever had that done to you. I have. I’ve had it hurt so bad it wounded me for a year. Ever done that to some one where they are really damaged and hurt? I have and lost dear, dear relationships that I humbly and shamefully confess are not restored and I seriously doubt ever will be. I bear that loss the rest of my life and it hurts yet. The other is that it must be received by the one being formed. One must be humble enough to allow a sister or brother to speak the hard things, knowing you’re seen, knowing you’re dependent, knowing you need him or her to love you this way and allow it. This is not just for exhortation or rebukes, but to broaden one’s thinking, to be teachable, to be humble enough to allow another, above, peer or subaltern to speak into your life – even when they may not do so perfectly. One must trust them, even if the actions and words seem hard. It is who they are, not the immediate how they say it that is important.
Furthermore, this requires trust… it requires real relationship. It requires life being shared… It is not effective to do in an academy setting, not a lab, but in real life, as you go… It requires transparency, commitment, selflessness, surrendering boundaries, rights, and indulgences for others. It requires an unconditional relationship that allows offense, hurt and can heal and love them more, seeing their love and commitment in spite of failings.
Most often though, it is a formateur and disciple being formed… This arrangement, be it for a new convert, one not yet converted, or one who has walked with the Lord many years, must become in some fashion a parental one. A parental role requires a person to love and commit to the disciple with a sacrificial love and commitment to walk them to maturity. It is not about getting one’s needs met. On the contrary, it is a posture of deference for the other. It also requires the disciple to allow that type of life invasion and love, a radical commitment and being allowed to be seen proverbially “naked” before this person – allowing them to see just how broken, or immature, or wounded, or sinful, or incapable, or gifted we actually are. It requires trust – that this spiritual father or mother really is committed to “me” and he/she really does really love me in a Christ like manner.
Warming – be ready to be let down! Be ready as a disciple to have this spiritual parent fail you. Be ready for your disciple to fail you. Be ready to hurt one another. Be ready to give grace when it’s not earned, or even appreciated. Can you see how one learns to be Christ like? It is by being placed in situations where we are given opportunity (or challenged) to behave, think and feel like Jesus. Your spiritual dad will fall off the pedestal! He can’t live up to your expectations or replace Christ. Over time, you’ll grow and become more equals though there will always be a special relationship between you, but you’ll come to see the real man and have more opportunity to speak into his life also, and more so. It’s okay.
I have had many formateurs… Geography, life stage, life situations for me and them have often altered, or cycled our relationships. Our western culture, moving and moving and moving, I don’t know – is it best, or healthiest, or God’s plan? Would it be better to be formed by a person through life? There is a freshness to a new person forming you, but there is something about deep deep roots we’ve lost in our culture. Can it be a bit of both?
What does one form? Is it merely creedal information? I challenge that is elementary – milk the Paul calls it. I challenge it is begun maybe with theological issues, but must go far beyond that to institutions of life – church, family, work, friendships, children, to deeper things – woundings, life stages, deep sinful character issues, circumstantial.
Navigating this type of relationship must be seen as that though – relationship, and not “lessons”. That gets old. There may well be a regular rhythm of reflection, or “mentoring”, but it might also be more shared life and living it together. I like a combination. One might have a mentor outside of your weekly rhythm, but if God is good, it is great to have mentor(s) that share common life with you as they’ll see you as you really are, not as you report. It’ll be harder at first… and sweeter, deeper and more meaningful later.
This is often one on one, but as it may be circumstantial and a way of life, it might be multiple disciples or multiple disciples investing into a discipler. My richest seasons have been investing intentionally into a small group of guys, or having a couple of guys invest into me. It adds a depth and 3 dimensional aspect that I appreciate.
There are many more things I could say here, but I’ll close for now. I would appreciate dialogue if you are so moved and can be bothered.
Grace and Peace
mike
27 May 2013 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | 1 Comment
Today is exceptional so far. For this morning, after a very early morning meeting with my community leaders (normal, not exceptional), I returned home, and God met me. I say God met me because I felt a desire, emotive, to spend time with Him, but there He was waiting for me. Do you understand? Allow me to contrast. Often, while trying to resist it, I go to spend time with God… I get a nugget or two, ponder some point, see some application or posture I should have and maybe a point for another person in my world. BUT, on the rarest occasion, far too rare and more reflective of me, than the Living Good God, He shows up and finds me, tells me something. Today is such a day.
All of Communitas is working through Ezekiel in our weekly spiritual formation times. In preparing for that time this evening I read Chapter five, then six. Ezekiel’s task as prophet was not an easy one, nor a one off “go tell them off” and you are finished and then go home… No. His task was years… humiliation, people laughing at him, scoffing at him, hurling insults, thinking he was crazy… they later wanted to kill him for “his insults” as he proclaimed the coming condemnation and judgment that would end up in the cannibalism he forecast as they suffered being besieged and then destruction. Chapter five repeats over and over again how they rebelled against the Lord’s statutes, his commandments, disobedience. We usually without thinking much about it, think they did immoral things, which they did, that they secularized and did not worship the Living God, but there is not a lot of evidence of that, but they did worship other gods and idols also. But, what were the statutes God gave them? Closer examination reveals God gave them statutes (guides, postures and boundaries) on how to relate with not only Him, but each other, foreigners, strangers, aliens, the poor, the destitute, widows, etc. Think I’m wrong? Later God tells His people through Ezekiel that Sodom & Gomorrah were destroyed not merely for their vile immorality, but their affluence and failure to care for those less fortunate. No? See chapter 16, “As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your faughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.” Scary to think about…
Why write about this? How did God meet me? I was struck by this and began to think how I, how we, our society thinks… we are affluent, but do not think in a dependent upon Him posture… but think rationally and God therefore must submit His rationale and thinking and guides for us to our rationale… backwards. Rather that He calls us to pass all we do and think, our decisions, our emotion, our will, our attitude to Him. Stay with me…
My average day finds me praying a five office prayer day… “called praying the daily office” or “praying the hours”. It is a great habit I picked up from friends in different orders (Benedictines, Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans). Some habits include seven or even nine offices of prayer a day. My phone (handheld computer more like it) reminds me five times a day to pause and pray. It looks different each office. Sometimes it is merely listening; or worship; or thankfulness; or intercession. It may be short one day, longer another. Right now though, my 2d office (lauds), I use the Common Prayer, A liturgy for ordinary radicals. This joint project of two acquaintances and another I do not know, is a nice guide. It has Scripture, prayer, worship – but the most interesting for me, I confess, is little anecdotes on saints who went before us. BUT, what does this have to do with God meeting me – there waiting for me, today? It was today’s office there… It celebrates William Booth. Take a look;
William Booth (1829-1912) was a Methodist preacher in Britain who co-founded the Salvation Army. He was born in Nottingham and ended up living and working with his wife, Catherine, among the poor and ostracized. Out of there work on the streets was born the Salvation Army, with its uniforms and discipline. The movement became structures as a quasi-military organization with no physical weaponry, but with an army of people passionate about salvation and healing the broken wounds of our world.
It goes on to say near the closing of the prayer office today;
William Booth said, “Consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”
This was not the end of my encounter with the Living God, who actually was waiting for me this day. I was stunned enough, for I, for we, for the church, for our society has so become this, even those of us who claim Him as ours. We have become just this. I confess it, though I did not intend or want to, though I never consciously devolved to seeing life like this – it was in reading this that He showed me my heart if not my mind.
This special day, I had also pulled form my desk to read a chapter from “The Indwelling Life of Christ”, by Sir Ian Thomas, a British noble who after the 2nd World War turned his family estate into a Bible School, known today around the world, Capernwray Hall. The Torchbearers have gone on to establish similar Bible schools around the world and I have had the grace to meet and know many touched by this ministry and to have been personally changed by a week with Sir Ian, a week I will never forget, and the privilege to know several of his children. Today’s entry stunned me – silenced me. Please read on:
“God is the absolute source of righteousness, but there is also an absolute source of unrighteousness—the devil. All human activity derives from one or the other of these two origins.
That is why the Bible says, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23 KJV). Whatever does not derive from your attitude of total dependence upon God, whatever does not release God’s activity through your life, is sin. It is sin because it stems from an attitude of independence that makes you open to any and all of Satan’s deceptions in his long history of usurping God’s authority.
Every step you take, every attitude you adopt, every decision you make, everything you do and all you hope to be, is either in dependence upon the God who created you as His own dwelling place, or else the byproduct of the demon spirit of this world, “who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2), and who perpetuates his lies through a mindset of self-reliance in fallen humanity.
The Bible calls this attitude of independence a “carnal mind” (Romans 8:7). It is a mind that is set “on the things of the flesh” rather than on “the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5). It means exercising the faculties of your personality in ways that are not dependent on the God whose presence alone imparts to you the quality of true humanity that He always intended for you.
It means thinking godlessly. In other words, thinking lightlessly, with a mind still in darkness. You take a step, you make a decision, you conceive your plans, you assume a responsibility, all without relating the situation to God and to His light and to all that He is within you.
This carnal mind can be in the believer just as much as in the unbeliever. Carnal or fleshly Christians have been regenerated by the restoration of the Holy Spirit to their human spirit, but in certain ways they still repudiate the Spirit’s legitimate right to reestablish the rule of Christ in their minds, in their emotions, and in their wills. Although they profess Christ as Redeemer, their actions and decisions typically are taken for the sake of their own interests and for who they are in themselves, rather than for God’s interests and for who He is. Their minds are still the plaything and the workshop of the devil, for the devil is smart enough and cunning enough that he can always persuade countless numbers of professing Christians to try and be Christians without Christ. They are willing to do anything for Jesus’ sake, but they fail to understand that His presence is absolutely imperative to do it, that without Him we are nothing, have nothing, and can do nothing.
To be a carnal Christian is still to claim the right to exercise your own jurisdiction, make your own decisions and plans, and choose your own pathway. But you will be useless to God, and you will make it into heaven only “as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15).
What kind of Christian do you want to be? To choose to be a carnal Christian is to choose spiritual oblivion. But if you decide genuinely that Christ must be everything and have everything in your life, if you say in your heart, “I want nothing less than to be all that for which the blood of God’s dear Son was shed,” then He is ready to lead you into discoveries that can completely revolutionize your whole humanity for time and eternity.
—From The Indwelling Life of Christ by Major W. Ian Thomas, pp 33-35.
After reading this, I stopped, paused, pondered…and then read it again, twice…each time more powerful than the last. The power of those words, of our lives, my life, lived in my own good common sense and discernment, and my interests…. my money, my house, my family, my priorities, my time, my endeavors… rather than that dependent posture of His to whom I am submitted – subject of the King, sovereign and merciful and for whom I have no right but gratitude that He chose me – chief amongst sinners, not on any justice or fairness, but His grace. I am floored, silenced and pause.
Please read just a bit more.
As if not stunned for a week, He had a touch more. He had also nudged me to take along one more book in my time with Him today, as if I am slow. Okay, I am slow. A friend of mine, Matt Woodward, urged me to take a look into a book months ago. I had read it but it was a hectic and unsettled time, and I’ve been rereading it. The chapter I read today, of which I will only share a portion is the icing on this spiritual cake”
If you have ever seen the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, you will probably remember the delightful give-and-take that Tevye, the Jewish mil-man, has with God. He is always pausing mid-scene to discuss something with the Lord right out loud. Back and forth he goes, arguing with God, arguing with himself, pleading, cojoling, even waving his fist, bantering with God as though He’s an old friend who can be buttonholed for advice or a favor anything. God might be invisible, but His presence is palpable. Tevye has a profound sense of God’s continual nearness and an easy comfort in his prayer life that many of us might envy.What if there were a way to feel a little more like Tevye? What was it about his culture that cultivated a sense of God’s immediacy? Believe it or not, Tevye understood an ancient practice that dates from Jesus’ time, one that can greatly enrich our lives today.At one point in the movie, some one questions the rabbi of the Russian village in which Tevye lives, asking him, “Is there a blessing for the sewing machine?”
“There’s a blessing for everything!” the rabbi replies. He was talking about the rich Jewish tradition of the blessing. This little habit of prayer can be truly transformational, instilling a sense of God’s continual presence in those who practice it. Let’s take a closer look. A few hundred years before jesus’ time, Jes began to pay close attention to the words Moses spoke on the edge of the Promised Land: “When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the LORD your God for the land which He has given you” (Deuteronomy 8.10). He then went on to warn the people that when their silver and gold multiplied, they would be tempted to forget the Lord’s great gift, thinking that their own efforts had produced their prosperity (8.14).
In order to heed this warning, the Jewish people developed a tradition (habit) of offering specific, short prayers throughout the day, from the instant they awoke until the moment they fell asleep. This has been the practice for many Jews from Jesus’ time until today, to remind themselves of God all day long by saying short prayers of Blessing.”
Uuuhh… I saw here the morning sun dancing in and out of the clouds racing by from the Gulf this morning… I could, to borrow from the author’s words, taste the palpable presence of God, The Living God, the one whom I can talk to, argue with and consider that friend who can with a smile, show me myself to encourage and to admonish. Today’s exhortation to entwine, reintegrate Him into my entire life, day, posture, attitudes, through my decisions, emotions, actions, will… sought me out.
For this, I am grateful. Thank you for reading my treatise and encounter. May you be encouraged by His gentle nudge as well.
Selah.
10 April 2013 | Categories: Forging Leaders, Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | Leave a comment
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
~The prophet, Micah; 6.8
Contrasted….
In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.
~Pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, & Neo-reformed movement, Seattle Washington
I take unbelievable exception with this quote and posture – to the point that it is heretical, scandalous and demonic. It has bothered me to the point that I am writing this – one of two times in many months. I’ve been on a sabbatical from writing. But, this is so egregious to what the Word of God calls His people to, that I cannot remain silent.
With this said, I would like to have a civil, respectful, and respectable conversation. I’m, very, very concerned about the theology we in the west, particularly the USA, are shaping for ourselves. We’ve confused what it is to be a believer, and what it is to imitate Christ, and we’ve even begun to shape a Jesus that doesn’t resemble the Biblical narrative and historic context we’ve had for 2000 years. We’ve begun shaping a Messiah who stands proudly, tear in his eye, as he watches the Roman Legions, oops, US Military, march off to some foreign place we can’t pronounce, to “protect our freedoms” and “way of life”…as Americans… but it looks more like our national interests ($) and our low prices. We slowly shift what it is we’re doing in the world, what and how we live in our own world and who is the Christ.
Two articles, I want to share with you:
1. DJesus Uncrossed: Tarantino, Driscoll and the Violent Remaking of Jesus in America, by David Henson
2. SNL’s ‘DJesus Uncrossed,’ Mark Driscoll, and the American Worship of Satan, by Adam Ericksen
Some of you will not like the articles. I’m not asking for quip insulting responses. I’m asking for conversation – dialogue and a critique where we wrestle what we believe, whom we actually follow and if there is some real business we need to do during this Holy Week culminating in Easter this Sunday. I find their articles right on target. I think they say quite well how we’ve wavered from what it is to follow Christ, and made a Rambo Jesus out of the Lamb of God. I think we’ve modified the character of God who desires no one to perish – not a war lord punishing the vanquished with extreme prejudice.
I’ve included both articles here. You can access the TV sketch mentioned also. The sketch is satirical, but also offending and obnoxious, but they do nail an attitude that is creeping into how we view being a saint, and it is often masked behind being an “American”… where the holy more of individualism, and “my rights” over ride Biblical commands of humility, turning the other cheek (cause we all know Jesus wasn’t speaking literally) and self sacrifice.
These two articles are provoking and poignant. I ask you to read each, watch the video, and then ponder a day or so, before responding. BUT I do invite you to respond and participate in an adult conversation where others are respected and the goal is to imitate Jesus, not defend an American ideal, which is a-Biblical at best, and possibly (?) un-Biblical?
Here are the articles:
Article One:
SNL’s ‘DJesus Uncrossed,’ Mark Driscoll, and the American
Worship of Satan
Whenever I talk with people about Jesus and nonviolence, a curious thing happens. Someone will inevitably raise his hand (and it’s always his hand), call me a wuss, and then accuse me of making Jesus-Christ-Our-Lord-And-Savior into my own wussy image.
Screenshot of SNL’s skit, DJesus Uncrossed. From Hulu.com
A pledge by church leaders from diverse theological and political beliefs who have come together to form a Circle of Protection around programs that serve the most vulnerable in our nation and arou
First, the accusation that I’m a wuss is totally true. No one can surpass my wussiness. I run from confrontation, and if I ever get into a fight my money is on the other guy.
Now, to the second accusation that a nonviolent Jesus is a projection of my own wussy imagination: That is false and, in fact, the reverse is true – a violent Jesus is a god made in our own image. As a self-professed wuss, I would love a bad-ass-machine-gun-toting Jesus who violently defends me against my enemies. I want the Jesus depicted in Saturday Night Live’s sketch DJesus Ucrossed. (A sketch satirizing Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.) As David Henson brilliantly states in his post “DJesus Uncrossed: Tarantino, Driscoll and the Violent Remaking of Jesus in America,” the sketch “pulls back the curtain and shows us just how twisted our Jesus really is: We want a Savior like the one SNL offers. We want the Son of God to kick some ass and take some names. Specifically, our enemies’ names.”
David goes on to quote Mark Driscoll, a megachurch pastor from Seattle whose theology of hate has had a major influence on American Christianity. Driscoll states,
In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.
But there’s a big problem for Driscoll and all Biblical inerrancy believing Christians who quickly go to Revelation 19:11-16 to proof text a violent return of Jesus. If they’re going to honestly hold to Biblical inerrancy then they have to deal with that nagging passage in Hebrews that insists “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8). Hebrews continues, “Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace.”
It is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by violence. The point of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is precisely that the Christian version of God Incarnate was beaten up, crucified, and killed by human hands. As James Allison says in his course The Forgiving Victim, “there is an angry divinity in this story, needing sacrifice, and it is us.” Jesus returned, not to enact violent revenge, err, justice against his enemies, but rather to offer God’s grace, peace, and forgiveness to those who betrayed him. Anything else is a strange teaching that Hebrews warns against.
But let’s take it a step further than “strange.” Jesus’ disciples had a lot in common with Driscoll and much of American Christianity. They protested when Jesus began to act like a hippie, diaper-wearing, halo Christ that they could beat up. Jesus said that he would have to suffer and be killed. Then Peter rebuked Jesus, “God forbid it Lord! This must never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22). Peter, apparently, didn’t want to worship a guy he could beat up, either.
Jesus, never one to mince words, replied to Peter, “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
The word Satan has two meanings: Adversary and Accuser. Please notice the distinction Jesus sets out between “divine things” and “human things.” Satan is the human thing, the human desire to accuse one another, to cause suffering to others rather than endure it for others, to kill others rather than be killed for others. Satan divides humanity into warring camps of “us” and “them.” When we do this we become adversaries and hurl satanic accusations against one another, all too often in the name of God.
When Christians use Jesus to justify violence by dividing the world into us and them, we no longer worship Jesus. We worship Satan.
Jesus, the One who calls us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, the One who offered peace and forgiveness to those who betrayed him, is the same Jesus yesterday and today and forever. Still, what should we make of that passage in Revelation? What we need to know, contra Driscoll’s violent fantasy, is that Jesus does not carry the sword in his hand. This is Revelation’s symbolism at its best, because the sword comes from his mouth. The sword that Jesus carries is the spoken Word of God. There can be no doubt that a day will come when Jesus will judge the world with that sword. His words of judgment will cut through our lies, hatreds, and betrayals. The Word of God will pierce our souls with words of forgiveness that embrace everyone, including our enemies.
Will we resent God’s forgiveness? Will we continue to make accusations against one another? In the face of God’s universal forgiveness will we continue to demand violent justice against our enemies? If so, we risk damning ourselves to a satanic hell of our own making.
The only way out of the possible hell then is to follow Jesus by practicing nonviolent forgiveness now.
(For more on Satan, listen to this great discussion called “the satan” between Michael Hardin, Brad Jersak, and Raborn Johnson in the Beyond the Box podcast.)
Adam Ericksen blogs at the Raven Foundation, where he uses mimetic theory to provide social commentary on religion, politics, and pop culture. Follow Adam on Twitter @adamericksen.
Second Article:
DJesus Uncrossed: Tarantino, Driscoll and the Violent Remaking of
Jesus in America
No doubt, a lot of people are upset, or are going to be upset, about Saturday Night Live’s recent skit “DJesus Uncrossed.” The two-minute sketch lampooned director Quentin Tarantino’s penchant for turning tragic history into gory revenge and imagined what Tarantino might do with the crucifixion and resurrection. (Have they been reading my blog?).
I’ve already heard some rumblings of anger at the skit’s treatment of Jesus, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned into a full-blown manufactured firestorm of outrage.
But you won’t hear any complaints about the sketch from me (and many others).
That’s because even though the sketch satirized Tarantino, it also said something quite profound and revealing, if unintentionally, about how Americans have remade Jesus in our own violent images.
Because, if truth be told, we’ve been trying to uncross Jesus for decades in this country, long before SNL got their pens into him.
We have tried to arm him with our military-industrial complex, drape him with our xenophobia, outfit him with our weapons, and adorn him with our nationalism. We’ve turned the cross into a flagpole for the Stars and Stripes. We have no need for Tarantino to reimagine the story of Jesus into a fantasy of violent revenge. We’ve done it for him. We’ve already uncrossed him, transforming him from a servant into a triumphalist who holds the causes and interests of our country on his back rather than brutal execution.
The SNL sketch reveals the paucity of American popular theology with its camouflage and flag-draped Bibles that segregate the story of God for American patriots only. It pulls back the curtain and shows us just how twisted our Jesus really is: We want a Savior like the one SNL offers. We want the Son of God to kick some ass and take some names. Specifically, our enemies’ names. And maybe the names of a few godless Democrats. Definitely the Muslims. And the atheists. And the … I could go on.
In fact, DJesus Uncrossed kind of reminds me of the Jesus who appears in Revelation (or at least how he is understood in pop theology and throughout a fair amount of Christian history).* He returns, riding a war horse. He is armed with a sharp sword for a tongue with which to destroy the nations. He is harboring a righteous rage that’s been smoldering for quite some time. And who came blame John of Patmos for envisioning Jesus in such a way after all he and his fellow Christians had been through?
It’s human to imagine divine vengeance.
It just isn’t Jesus, though. And seeing the vengeful Jesus of Revelation roll away the stone of the tomb and exact bloody revenge on the executioners he had just asked God to forgive three days prior should jar us.
But this vengeful Jesus of Revelation is the one many of us prefer. The one who gets even. The one who finally settles the 2,000-year-old score. The one who, at last, gets to send the unbelieving, unrepentant masses off to an eternity of torment in hell. It’s the Jesus someone like Mark Driscoll seems to worship: “In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” This, of course, sounds a great deal like a certain group of Roman soldiers who mocked Jesus, calling on him to man up and come down and uncross himself. It’s enough to make one wonder whether all this time, it has been DJesus that Driscoll has been worshipping rather than Jesus.
In the end, whatever the fallout from the skit, American Christianity didn’t need Tarantino or SNL or anyone in Hollywood to think up something as absurd and as base and as hysterically inaccurate as DJesus Uncrossed.
We’ve already done that for ourselves.
Say what you will about how offensive SNL’s sketch was. Our popular theology is more so. Because we should know better.
But satire reveals truths that are hard to hear. That triumphalist Savior many of us worship? He more resembles the sword and gun-toting DJesus who brings righteous vengeance than the prophetic vagabond foot-washer Jesus who preaches liberation and love of neighbor in the Gospels. The Savior we have created in our own violent images seems more like a character of a Tarantino film than the one at the heart of God’s story of eternal love.
The truth is, deep down, I suspect we like DJesus the Uncrossed better than Jesus the Crucified. It’s the same reason why we like Tarantino films as opposed to actual history.
In the wake of horror, we like revenge.
In the aftermath of the unspeakable, we like scores settled.
And we like justice, but only in the name of our God, Retribution.
Update: I thought I was clear in the post that I was engaging with American pop theological understandings of Revelation a la Driscoll and that I was critiquing the militant and vengeful understandings of Jesus through the lens of Revelation. It should also be noted that the vengeful and violent Jesus has been the common understanding of Revelation for much of Christian history and it is important to challenge the myth of redemptive violence it helps to create. But based on the enormous feedback I’ve received (some of it via links that framed my post in different terms), I could have been more clear that there is work offering different intepretations. I have added a line in the original post that I hopes clarifies things. I don’t want a side point and rhetorical strategy to distract from the primary point of the post nor to sidetrack the discussion into the symbolism and style of apocalyptic literature. We could spend a semester on that.
Adam Ericksen blogs at the Raven Foundation, where he uses mimetic theory to provide social commentary on religion, politics, and pop culture. Follow Adam on Twitter @adamericksen.
Now that you’ve waded through this, may we stop and read the Counsel of God – no one else. May we form our conviction of what and whom we follow from what God tells us, only? May we then wrestle with the church, faith and kingdom we call home.
27 March 2013 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus, Spiritual Formation | 1 Comment
Live to be Forgotten 