Enchanted Community

BLOG 6/29/18. THE END OF AN ERA? OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE?

How do you know whether we are observing the end of an era, or the demise of the American empire? We do know that no human institutions are forever. There is an old familiar hymn that goes: “O where are kings and empires now of old that went and came?” But to any astute observer there are those disturbing evidences in both government and in many church institutions that we are watching the twilight of an era. In our government, there is dis-function at so many levels, and the seeming absence of a priority on those purposes of peace, order, and justice which should be the hallmarks of any viable governmental authority. Political parties also are now in confusion, and so often seem captive to the principalities and powers exhibited in lobbies, wealth, and the self-aggrandizement of the politicians.

But then again, so much of the visible church institution in the nation seems also ill-focused and having so little to do with the radical justice and love that Jesus both demonstrated and taught. One wonders if the governmental institutions, its courts, its legislatures, or its administration have any concern for those principles upon which they were founded, that of seeing to the welfare of all its citizens? The power of wealth/mammon/Wall Street, or the gun lobby, or other hidden forces make it look often like it’s totally out of control.

How do the people of God, the followers of Jesus Christ, see their role in this turbulent time? The church was birthed in the midst of an all-powerful empire in which Christians were often outlawed, taken into slavery, having to meet clandestinely, never assured that they would survive, … and yet the church of Jesus Christ permeated the empire and its like leaven, and so transformed the culture for those first centuries from the underside. The church  understood that it was composed of aliens and exiles, and that it was to be obeying one Lord in his missionary design for his people. They knew that they were to be salt and light in the midst of corruption, in all the evidences of inhumanity, in the face of the impossible, … and they prevailed. They were transforming the empire notwithstanding their lack of status. But then … they were offered security and status by the Emperor Constantine (which seemed so irresistible after centuries of persecution). And things “went south”. The church’s irresistible growth slowed, and it became focused on its security and status and on the creating of church institutions, what with sacred buildings, with clergy, and with all those accoutrements of other religions. How to explain this?

A.W. Tozer, a colorful and effective preacher of a couple of generations ago, explained it this way (as I recall his words): “Jesus called into being his church to live in faithful obedience to his teachings and missionary mandate, and so long as it obeyed that calling the church grew irresistibly. But,” Tozer went on “… when the church ceased to obey its calling, and dug in to secure its gains, … like the manna in the wilderness, it bred worms and stank.” I love that imagery.

That is the danger that those of us in the church face here and now. To be faithful to the costly teachings of Jesus and to be constantly refining ourselves to be the “dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit” comes at a cost. Our present situation has been likened to the experience of white-water canoeing in which we have left the security of one place and are now at the mercy of the turbulent forces over which we have little, or no control, and not knowing where all this will lead us. We may indeed be witnessing the twilight of both forms of government, and of the traditional church institutions, but our calling to faithful obedience to the word of Christ in the realities of our day to day lives is unequivocal.

Hang on!

BLOG 6/26/18. CHURCH AND STATE IN AN EVER-CHANGING CONTEXT

The evidence is everywhere that that there is a quest for stability, for the familiar, and for the illusion that life can somehow stabilize and be predictable, that we can make yesterday permanent. Politically, it evidences itself in the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) mantra of those of conservative temperament. But that can never happen. There can no longer be autonomous, self-sufficient nations. The world is now too inter-linked in every way, so that to attempt to fulfill some illusion of economic, political, communications, ideological autonomy is an impossible dream. Tomorrow’s world requires cooperation and sensitivity to what happens here and happens half-way across the world in humanitarian, economic, political realms. We need each other.

I’ve been reading a fascinating book about the ethical journey of the humanitarian medical organization Doctors Without Borders / Medicines Sans Frontiers. (Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders). This is an international organization (with several national chapters) whose design is to get adequate and skillful medical help to areas of crisis (natural disasters, plagues, famine, etc.) as quickly and efficiently as possible. What they have encountered along the way in their forty-some year history is that nothing is ever the same. Local circumstances are different in every new mission. Ethical challenges are never easily resolved. What was valid yesterday is not valid today. Personnel requirements change. The challenges are endless. What is remarkable is that the organization has factored-in this reality and regularly seeks to fine-tune the current situation to the realities of their mission. To fail to be sensitive to this fact makes the organization more and more inefficient in its operation.

I’m a veteran of church leadership for decades, and I’ve watched this in the self-image of so many church communities who look back to “the good old days” or to “the old-time religion” and to the comfortably familiar, seemingly oblivious to the cultural realities and challenges around them. Institutional Christianity is notorious for this. It assumes that what was useful and acceptable in the era of Christendom is still valid in an era disinterested in such institutions. Tribalism, self-satisfied humanism, increasing suicides among those who evidently have no hope, the dominance of economic principalities and powers, and in general, something of a ‘cultural whitewater’ is the context, and when this is not understood, those communities fade into non-existence, and their venerable sanctuaries are demolished and replaced with high-rise office or apartment complexes, or become green-spaces.

There are those Christian think-tanks that attempt to do what the Doctors Without Borders teams do, and seek to keep the church attuned to its mission, but so many of those Christian communities have long-since forgotten their calling to be God’s missionary agent in a world so often indifferent, even hostile, … and ever changing from day to day. So often we watch ostensibly Christian people and communities doing exactly what the apostle said they should not do, they are being conformed to the world rather than transformed and continually transforming by the renewing of the minds. But such transforming is often painful, and requires leaving behind patterns that were satisfactory yesterday, and engaging in the challenging and often painful role of being faithful in their role as aliens and aliens in a culture that demands continual exegesis.

We can never rest in this quest to be culturally alert. I’d love your feed-back.

[http://wipfandstock.com/homebrew-churches.html]

BLOG 6/22/18. ‘EVANGELICAL’ PHONIES

Yes, I know it may sound tacky to label the segment of our populace who are (mistakenly) identified politically and culturally as ‘evangelical’ Christians as ‘tacky’, … but when anyone hijacks that noble designation and uses it to espouse policies that are the antithesis of that whole New Creation/Kingdom of God, which was taught and demonstrated in Jesus Christ, … then I’m going to come off the bench in protest. There is an old saying, that: “If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck.” Then, the obverse of that must also be true, if it doesn’t look like a duck, or doesn’t walk like a duck, or quack like a duck, … then in must not be a duck!

However, you approach the New Testament documents and absorb the life and mission of Jesus—which is designated by Jesus as the evangel, or the “thrilling news” of God’s New Creation, God’s great ‘search and rescue mission,’ God’s invasion of his creation in the person and work of Jesus to reconcile the world to himself—then the prejudices, the policies, the attitudes heralded by the religious right-wing… are anything but ‘evangelical’. Jesus came into a scene of a rigid religious establishment, a global political empire, of prejudices and broken-ness, of poverty and injustice … with his demonstration and teaching about a radical new ethic of love and mercy, of zeal for justice, of healing and forgiveness, of his creation of a whole new humanity that would demonstrate/incarnate the design of God for that human community that was recreated in the image of God’s Son. His was a ministry of reconciliation.

And just what were to be the evidences of those who were his followers, who were the products of this “thrilling news”?

1. They were to be those among whom his word was embraced richly and knowledgeably so that it transformed their lives into demonstrations of Christ’s life and teaching. This being so, they were also to be able to give a gentle and sensitive reason for their life and hope to anyone who asked.
2. They were to so wear their New Creation/Sermon on the Mount ethic-behavior that other could see the evidence and see God at work in their humanity.
3. They were to live-out Christ’s radical love first toward one another, but then to their neighbors, to strangers, and even to their enemies. Note: this is lived in a very complicated, often ambiguous cultural setting full of prejudices and hostility, or just plain indifference.
4. And they were to be aware that they were to do this so that the watching world would both hear and see God’s ‘thrilling news’ in flesh-and-blood human beings. They were to be the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity. They were to be the “sweet aroma of Christ” in the world.

That being so, for one to seek to justify political and social prejudices, insensitivity to human need, policies of injustice or indifference to justice under the cloak of being ‘evangelical’ Christians is more than ‘tacky’, … it is totally blasphemous.

There, I’ve said it. Christ’s people, his church, is to be the dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit in the world. Jesus shattered prejudices against Samaritans, Syro-Phoenecians, and Roman occupiers. This is radical stuff. To call one a true evangelical is to be the walking-talking demonstration of Jesus among the often-sordid stuff of daily life, … and not anything less. It is a calling that makes God’s people the light of the world, and the salt of the earth. They are those who wear the gospel of peace on their feet. Go for it! [I always love your comments, and your recommendation to friends that they subscribe to these blogs.]

BLOG 6/19/18. OUR OWN VERSION OF THE HOLOCAUST

In the 1930s in Poland and Germany, the civil authorities instituted a horrific program to purge the countries of Jews because, in their minds, “the Jews don’t belong here, they’re not Aryan.” What followed is now history, and resulted in the holocaust what with Auschwitz, and the other concentration/death camps. As unbelievable as it may seem in our “land of the free and home of the brave,” our own government has now instituted its own version of the holocaust with its immigration policy. Thankfully, there are strong voices being raised against it (and I want to add my voice here) but it is still government policy to separate children from their parents and ‘warehouses’ them in huge holding facilities, to take infants from their mothers’ arms, all because “they do not belong here.” Here are those desperate parents who are taking huge risks to flee from dangerous countries in Latin America with a hope of survival and a life of safety for their families, … only to be met by such inhumane forces.

In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler and his propaganda chiefs told the Christian folk in Germany that to be a good ‘German Christian’ one would support the policies of Hitler, … and so most of the church in Germany remained silent in the face of the anti-semetic holocaust. Millions died. Now our own president and attorney general are insisting on their policy toward the immigrants along the Texas-Mexico border (along with prejudice toward immigrants from other ethnic/religious immigrants). The attorney general, like his predecessors in Poland and Germany, is adamant that “these people do not belong here” and quotes a bit of scripture (out of context): “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” to justify the policy, … but following close on that text (Romans 13:1) is the further humanitarian principle: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

A generation ago, when this nation was engaged in the struggle over racial segregation and civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King was imprisoned, with other leaders for his protest against the segregation laws of the state of Alabama. The Episcopal bishop and other church leaders sought to persuade Dr. King (as are our authorities of today) to obey the laws of the state. Out of his prison cell, Dr. King wrote his (now classic) Letter from the Birmingham Jail. In it he addressed the church authorities (and anyone else to whom it communicated) quite respectfully, but insisted: “… but I appeal to a higher law.”

Dr. King’s words resonate with incredible force to the immoral, inhumane, destructive policies of this current government. Those of us who are primarily citizens of the Kingdom of Our God and of His Christ (before we are citizens of these United States) must insist on that higher law. Jesus insisted that those who follow him are those who have a heart for the strangers, the homeless, the hungry, and the unjustly imprisoned. To those who call upon his name, but refuse these humanitarian obligations, Jesus responds (listen carefully!): “Depart from me you wicked … I was a stranger and you took me not in.”

Those of us who are serious in our discipleship as followers of Jesus, are a radical bunch. We will not be muted by the policies of the current government. Rather, we weep with those who weep. We open our arms to those fleeing tyranny. Our churches become agents of righteous protests, and self-sacrificing love to the very real human beings making their way into our country and neighborhoods. Of course they make demands and cause problems, so what’s new? Where else would they look, or seek survival? One hopes they would find the compassion of Christ in the people of Jesus Chrrist.

Yes, we do indeed appeal to a higher law. Lord have mercy on a nation that refuses such a just and humane response to the victims of the tragedies that have driven them to seek survival and life among us.

BLOG 6/15/18. THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH

In our current cultural context when there are all of those entities identifying them as Christian churches, and ranging all over the ideological map, … it is worth taking a step back and asking the question: what is God’s ultimate purpose for the church? What is its place in his design in reconciling the world to himself? Where does it fit in our understanding of the work of Christ? What makes a church an authentic church?

For myself, I have always been fascinated by, first, the apostolic designation of the church as the body of Christ. But then, even more, by those last three chapters of the Book of the Revelation at the end of the Bible, where the church is identified as the Bride of the Lamb of God. This has provoked me into making a note in my own prayer journal to always ask the question as to what my life and influence have to do with creating a Beautiful Bride for the Lamb?

I know that is strange and mystical language for some. But it has profound roots. In God’s New Creation, God’s in-breaking Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus Christ, a huge part of that is the re-creation of the human community so that it is in conformity with God’s original design for humankind, created to live in intimate fellowship with its Creator. When, in the fullness of time, Jesus entered our human community in his reconciling mission, he immediately began to call out a community to come be with him and to be formed by his life and teachings, to know his heart and mind and to be intimate with him—the band of disciples.

Jump over, then, to a seminal passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:29 in loc.) and you will find that God’s eternal (predestined) design is that those who are called to him through Christ are to … “be conformed to the image of his Son.” This design/purpose is fleshed out in in the letter to the Colossian community and one to the Ephesian community and comprise a fascinating description of that which the church is to be about in its formation. God’s people called to himself through Christ are to be conformed to the image of God’s Son in knowledge, in righteousness, and in true holiness—or, to be those who think like the Son, whose life-style mirrors his life and teachings, and in its being totally in intimate harmony with the Trinitarian community (holiness). It is to be that fulfillment of Christ’s/the Lamb’s self-giving love, … his Beautiful Bride whose whole purpose to be the fulfillment of the Lamb’s redemptive love, — His glory.

The church is not some mindless and unfocused religious assembly professing some identity with Christ. The same Spirit that is in Christ also empowers the true church, and with a purpose. It is to be a community that is to have the mind of Christ, that sees all things from his point of view, and which is the incarnation of his life, his love for confused, lost, guilty and hopeless men and women, i.e., his zeal for the salvation of real sinners, for ministry to the poor, the sick, the stranger and the homeless, and the unjustly imprisoned. It is to be in total harmony with Christ and the incarnation of his redemptive design.

All this so at the consummation of the ages, there will be the marriage feast of the Lamb, when he shall be forever perfectly at one with those for whom he gave his life, and called to be conformed to his image—it will be his  Beautiful Bride.

The leadership of every small or large Christian community needs to keep this design always before itself in evaluating the authenticity of is communal life, and its identity as a church: Are we self-consciously seeking to be conformed to the image of God’s Son? Are we creating a Beautiful Bride for the Lamb? … or are we simply proliferating ‘church activities’?

Come, Holy Spirit!

BLOG 6/12/18. WHAT IS THE PRIMARY TASK OF THE CHURCH?

Periodically, it is the worth the effort of that minority of our population, who identify themselves as part of Christ’s church, to ask the basic question: What is the primary task of the church? From its very first generation it has been a danger of that community to become foggy or forgetful about what it is that Christ has called his people to be, … or maybe to adopt secondary priorities as though it were the first.

In that stint of my career when I was my denomination’s leader in its evangelism office there were those zealots for my particular emphasis, who would insist that evangelism was the ‘urgent and primary task of the church’. Such well-meaning folk were a bit uncertain of me when I insisted that the primary and urgent task of the church was not evangelism, but rather it is worship. Humankind’s response to any real meeting with God has been precisely that: worship. Consider the classic encounter that the young courtier by the name of Isaiah had in the temple when he saw the Lord, high and lifted so that his train filled the temple. Isaiah’s only response was to fall on his face in contrition and worship before such an encounter with the thrice-holy God. It was only in response to that encounter that Isaiah was open to God’s commission to him to be his prophetic (evangelistic) voice to the straying nation of Israel.

Worship, to be quite honest, in all too many Christian communities become the expected program for a Sunday morning, where it is possible to sing magnificent, yet familiar words, quite mindlessly. It is for some a Sunday morning habit, or a quest for some moment of quiet, or spirituality, after a taxing week. All of this is quite appropriate in one sense, yet it misses the true purpose of worship which it to totally refocus our lives as we focus our lives on the being, the heart and mind, the mission and love of God in sending his Son, Jesus Christ. Worship is to be a transformational encounter. It may not always be ‘inspirational’ but rather painfully transformational (such as it was for Isaiah, or any of those who have chosen to follow God).

For those of us who have made the decision of mind and will to be the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, worship is the weekly (as well as daily) renewal of our baptismal vows, or our call to discipleship. Then, … if our vision of God in Christ is so refocused, we will be refreshed to be faithful to his teachings and mission, agents of his love and his gospel of peace. This, then, will focus us again on his mission and our participation in it. That will primary and urgent will call us again to engage in the mission of our Lord Jesus to be his agents in communicating his love for his creation, to love and care for his creation, to be his instrument of seeking and saving the lost (evangelism), of having his eyes and heart for the hurting, the lost, the displaced and homeless, the empty and hollow persons with whom we rub elbows daily.  We will become those with his mind and will and character, i.e., the continuing incarnation of Christ in the ordinary stuff of every day.

Yet, make no mistake about it, true worship is a discipline. It takes discipline to focus on the meaning of scripture, on the implications for my own life, to not be conformed to passive religion, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and hearts, to be demonstrations of God’s New Creation, God’s new humanity. Yet that discipline of worship becomes for us an ongoing work of God conforming us to the image of his Son.

When truly engaged, worship will call forth the response in us: Here am I, send me! Each of us will become (what one termed) the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity. Alright!

Response? And if these blogs are provocative and helpful, suggest them to your friends.

[http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html]

BLOG 6/8/18. CHRIST’S MANDATE TO ALL OF US: “GO MAKE DISCIPLES!”

Forgive me if I keep tracking the indescribable obscurity of that discipline that is at the heart of Jesus’ final mandate to his followers: “Go make disciples … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.” That word: make disciples is a very specific Greek word that demands both our understanding, and our continual obedient response. It is given to all of us, both the weak and the strong, the new followers of Christ as well as the seasoned veterans in the gospel enterprise. In Jesus’ significant encounter with his followers at Caesarea Philippi he asked them who they had determined that he was, and they were persuaded that he was, in fact, God’s great anointed agent to make all things new, to inaugurate his kingdom, God’s New Creation. … Now follow this this sequence as it is critical to our understanding, note: Jesus affirmed that they were correct in understanding this huge reality about himself, … but then …

Nothing would ever be the same. Jesus drops in a whole new dimension to this design of God: Jesus tells them that on that all-encompassing eschatological-ultimate reality, he was going to build his church, i.e., he was going to call forth a New Humanity. Note: he was going to build this new people called out to belong to himself. He was going to build his church. So then, comes the question, what was the role of his disciples in this eschatological enterprise. If he was going to build his church, what was their role. Ah! That is where we come to his final commission to them which would explain their role. They were to “go and make disciples.” He would build his church, … but theirs was to make disciples—those persons who would be his followers, and formed by his teaching. His own disciples were to go and do to others precisely what Jesus had done with them.

Jesus had met his disciples along the way and invited them to come and be with him. Over the course of many months he taught them, modeled his teachings for them, and sent them out on missions and then refined them, i.e., Jesus reproduced himself in his disciples. They were now to go and do the same with others. The apostle Paul would later tell the believers in the church at Phillipi: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” That’s disciple-making. Paul would also tell others: “Be imitators of me even as I am of Christ.”

I learned this lesson only after I was a credentialed Presbyterian pastor (and had never been introduced to it as a critical discipline in my several years in theological schools). It was my friend, the late Pete Hammond of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, who described disciple-making to me as: “spending such significant time with others that you reproduce yourself in them.” … Do with others what Jesus did with the twelve. This is not tossing out Bible verses, or engaging others in Bible studies (thought that may be a part of it). It is being the model of the teachings of Christ, a communicator of his teachings, and then the mentor to help others to understand them.

As a young pastor trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing in a very fractured congregation, I stuck up a friendship with a long-time member on the fringe of the congregation who was a salesman for an electronics company. One day, out of the blue, he asked if I would go on his sales route with him. I did. We spent the day together in his car and making calls, and engaged with his deluging me with his question. Toward the end of the day, he turned to me and remarked (to my amazement, as  though pastors were paid to perform some professional church role): “Bob, you really believe in God, don’t you?” That was the beginning of a friendship and disciple-making engagement that had long-range consequences in both his life and mine. He later became a quiet but key voice in critical decisions that brought that church into a powerful witness. It was Pete Hammond’s definition working itself out in my life. The mandate is also yours if you are one baptized into faith in Christ. It doesn’t belong to church professionals, but to you (and all of us). Comments?

BLOG 6/5/18. ‘CHURCH MEMBERSHIP’ OFTEN OBSCURE, EVEN MINDLESS

It helps me to step back periodically and examine what forms my understanding of my participation in the church. After all, in these two millennia since the church’s birth in Jerusalem when it often had to meet in secret and behind locked doors, … to the era of Christendom when the church is established as a part of the empire, is a journey that has taken its toll. It has meant that the itd has now, essentially, become a ‘plus’ to be identified as a member of the church. Going to church was something one did on Sundays. It became habit. One went to church, or was at church as though it was a place, or an activity, or an identification with an institution.

Someone wrote the limerick: “They do it every Sunday.  They’ll be over it on Monday. It’s only a habit they’ve acquired.” Or, “The clock on the steeple chimed twelve, and the Presbyterian Church on the courthouse square gave up its dead, back to the world where they knew how to live.” These are, confessedly, cynical critiques from the watching world, … but they do remind us that we need to be very clear about what Christ’s message and mission are all about. We need to be lucid and persuaded about how it is that the church is designated by the apostles as the body of Christ, how it is the dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit, how it is the community of God’s New Creation/Kingdom. Are we aware of the cost of discipleship?

The very Greek word ek-klesia (which comes into our English translations as the word church) is a composite word that means ‘called-out’. It is an assembly/community of those who are called out, so then the insistent question is: called-out from what? And, therefore, called into what? What is the ‘calling’ of those who identify themselves with this community? What is God’s purpose for calling me/us out of one condition/culture/community, … and into another? How is the church the community of God’s New Humanity, and what are the demands of my identification with that. It, obviously, has to encompass much more than going to Sunday morning gatherings? What change in purpose? What change in lifestyle? What transfer of loyalties so that I/we serve one Lord, and not conformed to what we have been called out of?

We speak of being saved, … but saved from what? To say, simply, saved from sin is true enough, but incomplete. What is the dominion of sin and darkness from which we are told we are delivered? What are its components, its subtleties and seductions? In the realities, the vicissitudes of my daily life, what have I been called into that is transformational? The apostle says tells us that God’s design in calling us is to conform us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Elsewhere he ‘fleshes that out’ as consisting of being conformed to God’s Son in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness—the image of God in our lives.

Stop! Take a deep breath. This is costly, but it is the cost of discipleship, which should also translate into the meaning of our participation/membership in the Christian community/church. It is such that we are called into. Elsewhere, the apostle spells-out that the mature participant/believer in Christ is one who is equipped to participate in the mission of God in the world, to discern the cultural context in which he/she operates, is able to effectively communicate the message of Christ, and this because he/she is formed by the Word of Christ (cf. Ephesians 4:11 ff.). It is not a community dominated by church professionals/clergy, but rather a community continually being equipped to demonstrate God’s in-breaking New Creation.

One does not (or should not)  join such a radical, counter-cultural community mindlessly. And if a community is not self-consciously engaged in such a calling, it’s integrity should be questioned!! There should be no fuzzy-brained, or mindless ‘church members’. But, alas! this happens continually and the church deteriorates into salt-less salt, into simply a religious component of the dominion of darkness. Run with that.

[http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html]

BLOG 6/1/18. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IS DEEPLY HUMANITARIAN

This Blog is triggered by my reading of a book, Lives in Crisis, which is a very thorough and provocative study on the ethical crises encountered by the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders. This amazing organization is composed of a company medical personnel who are deeply humanitarian and ethical, and who engage in dangerous and complicated crises and emergencies around the globe. This is not a ‘Christian’ organization (though it contains many Christians), but is deeply humanitarian. The study is very detailed and complex as it details the origins and struggles of the organization. In some ways, it origins were provoked by the silence of other humanitarian organizations in the face of such highly charged political issues as their silence over the holocaust. The organization, evidently continues to be an ongoing and intense debate among its gifted and intense personnel over the continually emerging ethical issues it encounters in its humanitarian quests.

Reading that alongside my daily readings in the gospel of Luke reminds me of how radically humanitarian also is the true community of Christ’s disciples. One has only to look at what engaged Jesus and his followers, and what are his radical social and ethical teachings and practices: … feed the hungry, heal the sick, set prisoners free, take the stranger into your home, etc. More than that, Jesus is, on one hand come to inaugurate God’s new creation in the midst of this fallen creation, and he was intent on going to Jerusalem where he would reconcile us to God by his blood, and so give us his forgiveness of sins, and all of those redemptive mercies made possible by his suffering and death.

At the same time he was challenging the destructive and deteriorating forces of darkness all along the way. The Christian faith is, in its very essence, deeply humanitarian, and to identify with him and to become a part of the community of his disciples, the church, is to embrace this radical sense of mission, to acknowledge that all men and women are our neighbors, that there are no ‘ordinary’ men or women. The very people we rub shoulders day by day are our neighbors, and to be indifferent to them is to contradict our profession. This is costly. Just as no doctor joins Doctors Without Borders who is not committed to the dangers and challenges of its mission, so we read that in the first-generation church, among the populace of Jerusalem none of the rest dared join the Christian community though they respected its participants.

Those who are followers of Christ are, in effect, a true resistance movement. We are those called to move toward the destructive works of darkness, toward the evidences of this creation’s brokenness, with the redemptive presence of God’s love for the most unlikely. Even as Doctors Without Borders began primarily as a movement staffed by youthful rebels, … so if one reads the accounts of the church in its God-given power, it is inhabited by those who have embraced a radical ethic and so become redemptive rebels.

Whenever a church community/institution seeks ‘acceptability’ or approval by the larger community (i.e., tax-deductibility?), and to be given ‘status’ as it becomes the religious and institutional expression of that culture of darkness, … then that church is effectively a failure, it is neutered, it has forsaken its calling to be radically and redemptively humanitarian and radically ethical in incarnating the teachings of Christ in his love for all humankind.

That is sobering, considering how conformed the church is to the world, and how easily it embraces the promises of Christ while effectively ignoring the gospel’s demands! What would it look like if a Christian community were composed of redemptive rebels formed by the teachings of Christ?

[If you find these Blogs helpfully provocative, recommend them to your friends. Thanks.]

LOG 5/29/18. “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NOT A MATTER OF WORDS, BUT …”

What with a bevy of (what I would call) counterfeit ‘evangelicals’ out there hustling all kinds of agendas that are inimical to the teachings of Christ, it is a good moment to stop and remember that that Jesus and the apostles are not those who make a big noise about their profession of faith (though they articulate their gospel message very carefully), or engage in many words that contradict that very profession: “The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.” (I Corinthian 4:20). Or, perhaps even more demanding is Jesus’ own word: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of my Father, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)

That provokes me to share the story of one of my own models of faithful obedience with you. John Perkins is an African-American civil rights practitioner, who, with his family, shared all the venom of the racism in his native Mississippi. John pre-dates many of the better known civil-rights figures. But the fact that John (who designates himself humorously as a “third-grade drop-out”) has just received his 14^th honorary doctorate speaks worlds about his enormous influence. There is a compelling humility about John, yet he is bold and insistent in practicing and heralding racial reconciliation, economic and community redevelopment so effectively. The story is that when John’s brother (a WWII veteran) as killed for no reason by deputy-sheriffs, John escaped to California to make a new life for himself. But it was there that he was ‘found’ by Jesus Christ, and was well ‘discipled’ by Christian folk. It was out of that encounter with Jesus Christ, and his commands, that John (and his remarkable wife, Vera Mae) were constrained to move back to Mississippi to be heralds of the gospel, and to practice reconciliation in all of its interpersonal and communal-economic dimensions.

What emerged was so unmistakable that the day came when the state of Mississippi declared a day in his honor. He reproduced himself in a whole new generation of such agents of racial reconciliation and community development. He turned the leadership over to them, and moved back to Pasadena, California to do the same thing there. (Stick with me here). I had gotten to know John early on in his work in Mississippi at a student weekend conference, and we had bonded. So, when he had moved back to California, and I was visiting in Pasadena to engage in my own ministry that I stayed with John in his home. His study was also his guest-room, and on the walls by that time were pictures of John in the oval office of the White House, many honors, and honorary degrees.

He and I were having supper together, and I asked him: “John, how do you maintain your humility with all of the accolades you have received?” Then, after a few moments of reflection, with his mouth half-full of fish, he replied: “Bob, I just have to remember that whether I am chopping cotton in the fields of Mississippi, or a guest in the oval office, that there I am the glory of God.” Wow! I have never forgotten that. I have that recorded I my own prayer notes. It says ‘worlds’ about the ethical responses that flow out of one’s identity with Christ. (Gregory Boyd interprets ‘glory’ as the radiant display of the divine nature. Yes!).

In the midst of all the political confusion, ethnic tensions, ethical differences, and complex encounters that come with the vicissitudes of daily life, those of us who are followers of Christ are to identify as his glory, the radiant display of his divine nature in all our ethical responses. I am continually thankful for the influence John Perkins has had on my life. His latest (and he says it is his last) book: One Blood is just off the press. I commend it. The kingdom of God is not a matter of ‘talk’, but of power and of our Christ-like love, and ministries of reconciliation.

Don’t be hood-winked by the counterfeits. Their very works expose their fraudulence. Look for those whose lives incarnate the life and teachings of Jesus, yes, who are the glory of  God.