Enchanted Community

BLOG 1/28/17. BAPTISM AS A ‘STATEMENT OF CONSENT’?

      What if baptism could cost you your life? Actually, it does! Yes, of course, we focus on God’s extravagant love and reconciling, recreating ministry to us in and through Jesus Christ. Those are the promises we love to celebrate. … But then there are also the demands of Christ’s message, and the requirements of obedience to those who choose to come to him. Here’s another part of our message.

Somewhere back there in history, when it became legal for Christians to even exist, being baptized into a identity with Jesus Christ became something of safe experience, … almost routine because it was a polite rite of entrance, celebrated by friends and family. In some regions of the world it is still illegal to be a follower of Jesus, and can still cost you your life in any lethal sense. When church and ‘empire’ or dominant order, become congenial to the Christian faith, the danger diminishes. When the church and the empire became congenial to each other, it was also routine to even baptize infants, though they had no engagement of mind or will in the rite, only a promise to their parents that there were promises given to them about their children. Adults responding to Jesus Christ and expressing faith in him were baptized as a part of becoming members of Christ’s church. Baptized children were expected at some early stage to state their own faith (though most had known no other faith) in a rite called confirmation. But my readers know all of this, and there are libraries arguing it, pro and con, so I will not pursue that.

What provokes this Blog is the fact that Jesus’ call to discipleship is anything but casual: “Unless a person forsakes all that he has he/she cannot be my disciple.” “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many/ For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself, take his cross, and follow me.” “He who saves his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake and the gospels shall find it.” … for starts. But there is no need to refer you to the many books on this costly reality, and, ultimately, of the risks one takes in receiving baptism—one has only to read the teachings of Jesus: his was the teaching that those who follow him must be totally committed to his servant role, to lose all, even to be willing to die for his sake and the gospel’s.

I, personally, had a profound ‘conversion’ experience as a young adult (and an ordained pastor) reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, … “when Jesus calls a man he bids him ‘come and die.’” Costly obedience.  Forsaking one’s own self-centered agenda. Becoming a servant to all.  These are not cheap, or safe. Yet as the church became immunized to such claims, and became a ‘comfort zone’ of religious Christianity, such radical demands moved more and more to the margins of the church’s disciplines of entrance. Even the classical baptismal formula included the vow to “renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God … renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God … renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God … turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior … put your whole trust in his grace and love … promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?” (plagiarized from the Episcopal rites)

A person might think twice about that if there were doubts about his or her willingness to be crucified with Christ, and had mixed motives about identifying with the people of God.

I thought of that recently in a strange moment of my own life. I was about to have a delicate surgical heart procedure done, and shortly before they rolled me into the operating room, the staff brought me a legal “Statement of Consent” to sign, since heart surgery is risky business, at best. It meant that I was putting my life in the hands of my surgeons, and that I absolved them from legal procedure is it all ‘went south’. That’s something like the vows of baptism, i.e., placing my whole life and career as a living sacrifice to God in Christ, to be his faithful disciple, no matter the cost … and then to rehearse that all-encompassing vow regularly so that its consequences don’t become dim and ineffectual in my life. To live in Christ, is to have his genome operational in me by His Spirit.

But it could cost me my life. It is not cheap, … but it is the way to the that life beyond asking or imagination that Jesus promises to those who sign His statement of consent.

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BLOG 1/24/17. DURING POLITICAL AND SOCIAL UNCERTAINTIES, CONSIDER DANIEL LIVING IN BABYLON.

These are crazy days of political, economic, and social uncertainties and unrest. The question comes as to how we keep our personal perspective and our integrity during it all. Well, for starts, it helps a bit to realize that peace and order and justice are hardly the dominant social order anywhere. We live in a world of unrest, of questionable governments, of great economic disparity, of prejudice and ethnic rivalries, … so, what’s new? We’ve too often lived with the illusion that this is a Christian nation, but that is highly questionable. Many of the founding fathers were deists, or much more influenced by economic factors than by the Christian faith (though the influence of the Hebrew-Christian traditions of the western world was significant).

It may help to look at the Biblical account of the young prophet Daniel (and his three Jewish friends: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—their Babylonian names). The Babylonian empire had the practice of taking the most gifted of their conquered people and making them servants of the emperor. These four are described as: “of royal family and of nobility, youth without blemish, of good appearance, and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace …” What we soon find out is that they were also those deeply committed to their Jewish faith and the disciplines it required, who suffered no alternative gods. And there they were, uprooted from their homes and traditions and suddenly inhabiting the royal palace of their conqueror in Babylon. Their Babylonian counterparts were ethnically jealous of them and sought clandestine ways to destroy them. They were tempted with all the perks of the palace in food and pleasures. But they maintained their purity and disciplines, which were quite obvious to the other courtiers, and ultimately the source of destructive jealousy.

What did they do? First of all, they were very self-conscious of who they were, and that Babylon was not their home country, though it was for them at that point the inescapable place of their incarnation. But they didn’t belong to Babylon—they were the servants of Yahweh, the God of Israel. Then they lived out their faith and engaged in their daily ministries to the court with such amazing skill that they were being recognized and given increasing responsibilities by the emperor. Their lives were different, and observable and only explainable by God and God’s power. And, … they recognized the idols of that culture and refused to be lured by them (which earned them, due to the malice of others in the court, a fiery furnace and a lion’s den). Ultimately they were vindicated and exalted by the emperor, and they made their mark.

Do you see the lesson? In today’s world, most Christian people live in social and political cultures that are hostile to the Christian faith. Ostensibly, the largest Christian community in the world is in China, though much of it must exist ‘underground’ and in opposition to the regime. There are growing, but clandestine communities in Islamic and Hindu and totalitarian cultures. It is more the norm than the exception. (Yes, and there are Christian communities among the sixty-three million refugees who are homeless in the tragic world!)

Our calling is to live as those who are so formed into the image of Christ that our hostile, or irreligious, or whatever, neighbors will observe our good deeds and be curious and ask questions. We do not live in a political, economic, or social setting that is neutral or congenial to the radical demands of God New Creation. We are the servants of our God and of his Christ right in the midst of this confusing darkness, and as the children of the light. We are to be, like Daniel, God’s instruments of peace, and the demonstration of his divine nature in the most confusing, perhaps hostile, and continually difficult contexts. We have a different center, a different authority, a different creative source, a different guiding line, and a different final goal that those of our Babylonian neighbors, …and we engage this calling with God’s joy. Always sojourners and exiles in whatever our context.

What do we do? We take heart, claim our true identity, and live out our New Humanity faithfully in the realities of our present context. This is a high calling. We live always in confrontation with the principalities and power of this age. Hallowed be Thy Name.

BLOG 1/21/17. “HOW CAN I SUBMIT MYSELF TO ELDERS WHO DON’T EVEN KNOW MY NAME?

I loved Linda Spencer though she was one remarkable and demanding personality. Linda was a gifted, even brilliant musician, vocalist, and composer. She had come into our Christian congregation because of the mentor who had brought her to faith in Jesus Christ, who was part of our community. I gather that Linda’s college career had been one in which she had been in engaged in some difficult seasons. Linda died some months back after a long and fruituful ministry of teaching music and blessing generations at French Camp Academy in Mississippi.  Getting the notice of her death brought back all kinds of memories. One thing about Linda: you never doubted what she thought or what she was requiring of you. She was confrontational, but not in a destructive way, but rather in a very insistent and inescapable way. She would land in our church sanctuary early on a Sunday morning and insist that she had written a new song and wanted to sing it during the worship service. I learned early on that there was no sense in trying to explain to her that the service was planned and was already complete. She always got her way.

That background brings me to a question from her that needs to be raised and grappled with in any Christian community of any size. It was one of those Sunday mornings in our proper Presbyterian Church, and I was all vested in my Geneva gown and on the way through the side door into the pulpit when Linda blocked the way and blurted out: “How can I submit myself to Elders who don’t even know my name?” The background for that was that in our Presbyterian Church’s guide to its organization and government there is an overseeing body of elected Ruling Elders, one of whose responsibilities is to receive members. In the constitutional questions, in addition to acknowledgement of one’s sinfulness and need of a Savior, and one’s whole-hearted embrace of Jesus Christ by faith, etc. … is the question: “Do you submit yourself to the government and discipline of this church?” which question involves submitting oneself to the oversight of the Elders.

Linda was no ‘knee-jerk’ respondent. She wanted to know what were the implications of such a submission, which brought her to the conclusion that most of the Elders to whom she was being asked to submit herself didn’t even know her name, … other than perfunctorily from their formal encounter with her as she came seeking membership in the church.

I have never been able to escape that question and it has haunted me in all the years that have intervened. Is it acceptable to have anonymous members of a church, who formally have agreed to be subject to its leadership, but for whom that person may not have a name, be one of those anonymous members whose name is on the church’s roster, but whose name you cannot retrieve, and certainly are not in a position to have them in any way subject or submissive? Do any of those elders sensitively care about my walk of faith?

The source of that vow, of course is quite Biblical. The New Testament church communities seem to have been house churches, or small colonies, in which the more mature and wise and nurturing had been chosen as Elders or Overseers by the rest of the community. But they also were evidently small and intensely interactive and intimate. So, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews will make such a statement as: “Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls” (Hebrews 13:17). There were those who were the models of faith and practice who were mutually agreed upon leaders, or father-figures to the rest. But they were not an impersonal board of directors. They were models of God to the community. The Good Shepherd calls his sheep by name. They are never anonymous. The leadership of the larger and more formal/traditional church institutions need to come to grips with Linda’s question. It is insistent and requires rethinking the whole dynamics of our communal life as the colonies of Jesus’ New Humanity. It is always heartening to have someone who genuinely cares about my walk of faith and who senses a responsibility to be my knowledgeable encourager in that walk, who knows my name and cares.

Thank you, Linda Spencer.

BLOG 1/17/17. DID YOU KNOW THAT EVEN IRRELIGION IS A RELIGION?

Those of us who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, need to be alert and very sensitive to the realities of the real people with whom we mingle day by day, and to be sensitive to their responses to ultimate questions, or to anything that smacks of religion. We learn this from Jesus, who pretty much by-passed the religious establishment of his day, and wandered among ordinary persons doing helpful actions, and with message that registered with them. He didn’t really come to make persons more religious, but to meet the deepest longings of their lives, and to make them more human. At the same time, he realized that there were always going to be those who were hostile to what they conceived to be religion, and would build up anti-bodies against it. He wasn’t dismayed by this, and loved them all the same. Even the most apparently irreligious are actually religious–but don’t know it.

We live in this post-Christian culture in which what used to be commonly accepted information about the Christian faith is fading into obscurity, and more and more the really cool people we interact with are those for whom God is not even in their thoughts. They get involved in their daily pursuits, their occupations or professions, their families, their affinity for sports and entertainment–daily stuff– so much that they have no place for reflection on ultimate questions—even though those questions may voice themselves in silent moments.

Others are hostile to religion, usually because of some bad experience with it, or some betrayal by those who professed to be religious or Christian. Some seek that meaning in a whole plethora of other religions. Even today, in the New York Times, there was an article that the famous monastic Thomas Merton, and the famous Muhammed Ali found good in all religions—and that is undoubted a valid observation. Other world religions and contemplative orders do, in fact, often perform commendable good works. People with no religion at all are frequently at the forefront of humanitarian efforts.

But then there are the philosophers who put together what they consider bastions of intellectual disassembling of anything that pertains to be religious, as was true of the secularist George Jacob Holyoake, who defined secularism as: “the doctrine that morality should be based on regard for the well-being of mankind in the present life to the exclusion of all consideration drawn from belief in God or a future state.”  Alright. That’s a choice, but it’s also a faith assumption, a religion, if you will. It is that set of assumptions upon which one bases his/her life.

We live, also in a culture that has been labelled post-modern, in which ‘truth’ is whatever I, or those in power, conceive it to be. As one ‘wag’ put it: it is the belief that there is no there, there. That also is a faith assumption. In our North American culture at this moment there is a vast popular religion of hedonism, where life is finding where the fun is, whether in entertainment, in sports, in finding the best restaurants, in physical challenges like running marathons. All of these are quite valid pastimes, but they can also become all that one lives for, and upon which one determines the meaning of one’s life …but don’t ultimately satisfy our need for the ultimate design of life.

But always there is buried down there somewhere ,in these friends of ours, these cool people, is that hungering to know what life is all about, whether it has meaning or hope. There is some longing after a spirituality that has always been elusive. There may be some quest for justice in society. Jesus knew this. He knew that while he fed the multitudes of the loaves and fishes, that they would soon be hungry again, but he offered them himself as one who is the ‘bread of life’ and the ‘water of life’ and that if they would come to him, that subliminal hungering thirsting would be satisfied. What we know is that we don’t argue others into faith, or communicate the gospel of peace by theological dissertation, but by our moving among real people always knowing that for all their apparent contentment, there is a “aching void” that longs to be filled. We are God’s agents of Christ’s gospel of peace.

“Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” – Jesus –

BLOG 1/14/17. THE CHURCH IS NOT AN IDEAL, OR MERELY HUMAN COMMUNITY … BUT A DIVINE REALITY.

For my part, I am prone to believe that anyone who is continually dissatisfied with the church needs to take a long drink at the fountain of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wonderful Life Together. You may (or may not) recall that Bonhoeffer lived in the era of Adolph Hitler in Germany. Hitler had pretty much co-opted the church, and insisted that true Christians were those German Christians who supported his regime. But there were those whose Christian faith was much more formative than their approval by the Reich Chancellor, Adolph Hitler. But because they did, in fact, become an alternative, and protesting, Christian community, they also became a threat to Hitler and so were outlawed. This resulted in an underground church, or as more properly designated: ‘the witnessing church’.

It was out of that clandestine experience, and under extreme political pressures, that the fertile mind of Bonhoeffer (as one of its most influential leaders) wrote this brilliant work on the Christian fellowship (the communion of the saints). It is not painless reading. Bonhoeffer shatters our comfort with many mistaken motivations for wanting to be a part of the community of God’s people. He had strong rebukes for those who came making demands upon the church, and insisting that meet their desires for a homogeneous fellowship of persons such as themselves. What was true was that there were evidently quite a few who, while they were dissatisfied with the compromised German church, were looking for a congenial setting in which to practice their ostensible life of faith without cost. Bottom line, they were looking for an illusion, a church made up of people who were all well put-together, and so would be a comfortable fit. He had strong rebukes to such people who came making their personal demands upon the church. The church, he reminds them, is made up of real sinners, real children of grace, persons who can be troublesome in their need, people who make demands on us.

It is a basically superficial understanding of the church, that refuses to look at it as that creation of Jesus Christ, made up of those who embrace Christ and his commands by faith, and who in turn are embraced in grace by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit … who thereby have the genome, the DNA, the life of Christ incarnated in their human lives. This means that they then become that New Humanity in which we, and those in whom Christ lives, respond to this world what with all of its troubled, seeking, difficult, gifted and non-gifted, pleasant and not-so-pleasant persons out of our oneness with Christ. And so, the Christian community is one in which we enter as ministers to one another—not making demands, but giving ourselves, our Christ-in-us selves as ministers to one another. We become ministers of reconciliation and healing and new creation to one-another, with all of the complex others who also are part of those colonies of New Creation.

Which brings us to an often-neglected dimension which leads to our misunderstanding of the church. It is all of those one another passages given to God’s people in the New Testament: love one another, confess you sins to one another, bear the burdens of one another, be reconciled to one another, pray for one another, rebuke and reprove and exhort one another (and reciprocally, be rebuked, etc. by one another), teach and exhort one another, etc. Now note: such one-another ministry requires that there exists a relationship of knowledge and intimacy among those in the community, which means also that the community, or colony must be quite small, and in which there is a mutual consent to live out these ‘one another’ injunctions. This is only possible as the Holy Spirit is the divine reality that is our motivation—that motivation of the divine life of Christ indwelling us. Otherwise we become part of the problem. Read Life Together.

BLOG 1/10/17. HOW DOES THE CHURCH GET READY FOR TOMORROW’S WORLD?

The past and the present are somewhat familiar to us, and there is a very resilient human proclivity to hang-on to what is familiar. It is, likewise, very difficult to think into what might be in tomorrow’s world, … or even to understand the rapidity of change in this present world. There is only a minority of the populace who think creatively into the possibilities that are potentially out there. A recent web article spells out that 65% of the jobs that our children will need have not even been invented yet. We read with amazement of the Silicon Valley wizards who created those mind-boggling enterprises such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and others.

It’s worth stopping and looking at Larry Page and Sergei Brin, who were two super-bright grad-students at Stanford, who got bored early in their graduate program and conceived of a search-engine that processes billions of bytes of data almost instantly, and so we got Google. Then you will have to stop and figure how that discovery went from those two, to twenty-thousand employees very quickly, and how they structured the company to be assured that everyone functioned and was accountable to the company’s purpose. There were few, if any, patterns to look to, so it was creativity every step of the way.

Who could have imagined? Those wedded to the familiar got left behind. Change comes hard. One of the biographers said that those two, essentially, realized that if you were going to make tomorrow’s world a better place, then you would have “to break a lot of rules, and piss a lot of people off.” People cling to what they have always known, i.e., to the familiar, … and the familiar quickly becomes history in this present world.

The church has been very slow to catch on. It still studies its history, and celebrates its awesome accomplishments of the past, its orthodoxy and ecclesiastical patterns, but finds it difficult to see beyond what is familiar today, to the challenges of a radically changing cultural scene. Businesses have found that traditional office buildings have become obsolete as more and more of the transactions of the business world are on line, and people operate from their laptops, and have access to more information on that laptop or iPhone than one can imagine. The new offices become one’s laptop and a chair in the coffee shop, or in a pleasant patio.

Churches, however, are slow to realize such changes, … yet God has always provided those who had a capacity to do cultural analysis on behalf of his people, those this is forgotten easily as those people cling to the familiar. Look at the sons of Issachar (I Chronicles 12:32) “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” Or, look at the four necessary gifts given to the church for the equipping of God’s people in Ephesians 4, one of which is the gift of prophecy. Yes, in the carrying out the mission of the church, one necessity is that of some kind of equipping in cultural analysis so that the people of God are engaging their context knowledgeably, realistically and creatively. For us this means that tomorrow’s church may incarnate those colonies of God’s New Humanity in ways and forms that are anything but familiar to the church patterns of yesterday or of today.

As communications, commerce, and businesses can quickly become obsolete and ineffective, so can church forms that are irrelevant to their contexts. Familiar church institutions, what with their ecclesiastical hierarchies, clergy, stained-glass, and pipe-organs … may be the detritus on the cultural market of tomorrow. Such familiar patterns will become obsolete (though a diminishing few will cleave to such familiar forms until the very end.) And those who understand their times and their cultures will come up with what is fresh and creative and effective … and so will engage tomorrow fruitfully, as God’s New Creation people, in the mission of God. But it will not be familiar to those wedded to yesterday or today. Count on it!

BLOG 1/7/17. THE CHURCH … YOU NEED CHARITY AND HUMOR

The church can be a fascinating, and often confusing enigma. It is this crazy mix of true and obedient faith, along with those participants who like the familiarity of it all, and then there are those confused seekers who are on a quest and who see contradictions and engage those stumbling-blocks on that quest. On one hand, it is quite easy to be judgmental about it all, on other hand one needs that charity to realize that it is composed of real imperfect human beings … and a good sense of humor.

This is nothing new. In one of the marvelous slave-songs (they contained impressive wisdom), was the one that concludes each stanza with: “Heav’n, Heav’n, Ev’rybody talkin’ ‘bout Heav’n ain’t goin’ to go there. Heav’n, Heav’n …Goin’ to shout all over God’s Heaven,” … which was their way of seeing through the contradictions of their white slave owners. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at some of the participants one encounters inside of ostensible church communities. I quite well remember, early on in my career, being invited to preach the Good Friday meditation as a neighboring Episcopal Church. After the service, at a social gathering in the parish hall, an elegant and out-going lady approached me to thank me for the message. When I asked her about her own spiritual journey, she effusively and with a flair responded: “Oh, I haven’t believed in God for years, but I just love the Episcopal Church.”

That alerted me to a reality that I have tripped over time and again. There are a host of those inside the Christian community, who have a spiritual blank spot in their lives, and the institutions of the Christian faith offer a secure sense of familiarity, and so they identify with the church, and yet miss its message and role as the communities of God’s New Humanity in Christ. When I served as the Presbyterian Church’s denominational resource person in evangelism, and with my initial optimism about what I was called to do, I was soon disillusioned with the reality that what the church really wanted was not equipping in evangelism, but rather some program of marketing to get new members. I found that the church itself was a mission field, and in need of being formed by its own message and mission.

One more episode—again one needs good humor and wisdom and charity when encountering many expressions of the church—when I was the somewhat well-received and popular pastor of a prestigious church, I conceived the plan of involving the congregants in my sermon one Sunday morning. The text was: “… always be prepared to give a reasoned response to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect ….” (I Peter 3:15-16). So, after I had given a brief comment on how essential it was that we make others curious about or hope in Christ, that we ought also to be prepared to give then a brief but thoughtful answer if they asked what or lives and hope were all about. So, I thereupon asked the folks in the congregation to take a few minutes, turn to the person near them, and verbalize the reason for their faith in Christ (with gentleness and respect). Sound reasonable? Not so. I have never gotten such a negative response from so many (not all, but a whole bunch): “Don’t you ever do that to us again.” “How embarrassing!” “You should be ashamed for proposing such a thing in a worship service!” etc. How does one explain such?

Living out our New Creation calling and giving such an answer to those who inquire requires some forethought on our parts, but should be expected. One also needs those qualities inside the church that were used to describe the late Seamus Heaney: Warmth, humor, caring, and courtesy. Church institutions can be an enigma, but our lives need to be incarnations of God’s New Creation, and that involves humor and wisdom in our encounter with others – inside and outside the church community.

BLOG 1/3/17. WEALTH AND POWER ARE NOT CHRISTIAN VIRTUES

At the beginning of this bizarre new year of 2017, and with the ascent of a whole new cadre of national leadership (aristocracy?) so focused on wealth and power, … it is going to be difficult for us to remember that God’s Kingdom/New Creation is an “up-side down Kingdom” where rich is poor, and where power is in weakness.  This, if you will remember, was the prophet Isaiah’s description of the coming Messiah (cf. Matthew 12:18 ff.). It will be difficult for those of us in the Christian community to remember, equally, that the true witness of the Christian community is not in famous clergy, or in impressive religious sanctuaries, … but, rather, in the quiet presence of Christ’s followers living out his Kingdom/New Creation lifestyle, showing the love of God, and “having their feet shod with the readiness of the gospel of peace” in their daily relationships 24/7.

The apostle also reminds us that: “not many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you … not many influential, not many from high society families, … God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’” (I Corinthians 12:28 ff. The Message).

The media, and social networks of our day, tend to be dominated by extravagant, power-seeking, publicity-seeking personalities in politics, entertainment, sports, business, and other public arenas, … but meanwhile, quietly, often out of the limelight have always been those quiet practitioners of Christian discipleship who incarnate the life of Christ by the Spirit living in them in the excellence of their lives, in the fruits of the Spirit exhibited in lives of sensitivity to the needs of their neighbors, in self-denying love, and in the display of what God’s New Humanity in Christ is all about. This takes place, first, in the family, but then in the work-a-day world, what with all of its imperfections, difficult (and frequently destructive) personalities, irresponsible individuals, and inconvenient interruptions.

So, weak is strong, poor is rich, and God works in his New Humanity in places that nobody would think to look. One has only to look at Jesus. The political and religious power-brokers of his day found this peasant prophet a threat and so sought to destroy him, but in their act of seeking to destroy him, they ultimately destroyed themselves. Now we look back at over two millennia of his people, who like leaven, have been those identifying with the poor, those peacemakers, those given to mercy, those who have mourned with those who mourn, and those willing to suffer for what is right. God’s divine nature has lived in them in warp and woof of society. His gospel of the Kingdom has been (and is) permeating all the people groups of the world.

For my part, I do find our national scene distressing, but I also find in myself a renewed resolve to be the salt and light of God’s New Creation in the vicissitudes of each day of my ordinary life, and praying for those influences that quietly enhance God’s irresistible in-breaking Kingdom. God has always dealt, in God’s own way, with the arrogance of wealth and power. Yes, “This is my Father’s world, and let me ne’er forget, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.”

“Hallowed be Thy Name on earth …”

____________

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BLOG 12/31/16. THE QUESTION THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY

It is interesting that the New York Times published an interview this week between its gifted columnist Nicholas Kristof, and New York’s incredibly effective and thoughtful pastor, Timothy Keller. Kristof’s question: “Am I Christian, Pastor Keller?” Ah! That question seems never to go away: What is required for one to be a Christian? The proclivity on the part of so many seems to want an answer that meets one’s own religious and intellectual qualifications … rather than what is the sine qua non of Jesus’ own life and teachings. Happily, Nicholas Kristof could not have asked a more authentic witness. Tim Keller has undoubtedly handled that question on a regular basis in his Christian outreach to Upper West Side New York. Keller is a gifted and classically orthodox proponent of New Testament Christianity, who stays in dialogue with the questing young urban professionals of his neighborhood—a good choice for Kristof’s inquiry.

The question is lurking in the most primordial records of human history—like from the Garden of Eden account in Hebrew tradition, and in the ancient records from across the globe. Once one encounters human experience without God, there is an aching void to know what life means, or if there is hope, or justice, or something/Someone out there to fill that void? But then human autonomy kicks-in, and so the tendency to create religions that give something to fill that void. Idols. Religious institutions. Holy Men. Priests and Priestesses. Philosophers. Attempted answers that range all the way from bleak atheism to agnosticism to one’s own designer gods, i.e. those we create to suit our own parameters. In these two millennia of the history of the Christian church there have all sorts of ‘clip-and-paste’ versions of the Christian faith, which can be most confusing to many, i.e., whole denominations that add-to, or leave-out pieces that are uncomfortable to them.

I have often been in conversation with persons who, when confronted with the message of Jesus, or of the larger Bible, would respond: “Oh, I could never believe in a God like that!” Not surprising. The essence of the New Testament message is God’s costly desire to communicate his love for his creation and to fill that aching void. But he does not send a philosophical treatise, rather he comes in the person of Jesus, and that defies human rationality. And the Christian message is based on historical events, and the New Testament is the first-generation record of those who were eye-witnesses, and recipients of Jesus’ teachings. The early messengers candidly acknowledge that their message is foolishness to the intellectuals, and a stumbling-block to the religious, …  but to those who respond to the invitation of Jesus, it is an entrance into a whole New Creation. Always comes the question: Can this one who is so obviously human also be divine?  But we always come to Jesus on his terms!

To some that entrance into Christ’s life is quiet and profound, to others it is convulsive, … but it is always built upon the foundation of Jesus, his life and teachings, his death on a cross and his resurrection. In its second-generation the Christian community created a brief codification of the essentials, known as the Apostles’ Creed (which you can Google if interested). It contains the answers to many of Kristof’s questions. On this New Year’s Eve, let me leave with you Jesus’ own invitation.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matthew 11:28-30 The Message).

Or … you could join the innumerable hosts over the centuries who have discovered God’s love in Christ by reading the four introductory witnesses of the New Testament. If you’re serious in knowing if you are a Christian (along with Nicholas Kristof), this is a good place to begin.

BLOG 12/27/16. HOSPITALITY TO MUSLIMS A MANDATE FOR CHRISTIAN FOLK

I may sound like something of a scold here, but I am a bit undone by those persons who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ who are engaged in the anti-immigrant protest, especially as it pertains to those of the Islamic community. Many of such protesters are a part of those churches that, ostensibly, put a high priority on global missions. It’s something of an oxymoron, don’t you think? I always assumed that when our gospel says that “God so loved the world,” that that world included the huge number of its population who are part of the Islamic faith—right? Many of those persons and churches even send missionaries to Islamic countries, at great risk to the missionaries themselves, … but when large numbers of Islamic folk seek escape from their own countries, and seek refuge in ours, … many of these same, ostensibly Christian, folk raise their voice in protest. Such a contradiction.

Jesus had a way of destroying ethnic caricatures in his own ministry. When asked by an inquirer about who might be his neighbor, Jesus told his parable of the Good Samaritan. Now, one has to realize that the Jewish folk were more than a bit mildly hateful toward the Samaritans. The Samaritans were half-breeds, enemies of Israel, unclean, and anything else bad you can say about such an ethnic group. So, in the parable a chap is beaten up and robbed by bandits and left in the ditch. Jesus “goes for the jugular vein” of Jewish prejudice, and makes those who see the wounded man, but don’t want to get involved—a priest and a temple lawyer (maybe a theology professor and an evangelical pastor)—or to defile themselves religiously, as they hasten on their way to church meetings in Jerusalem. But then, who comes along but a despised Samaritan, who acts compassionately, at personal inconvenience and expense, binds up the man’s wounds, pours in oil and wine, put him on his donkey, and takes him to an inn where he pays the bill for the man’s care. Who is the neighbor? The despised Samaritan, of course.

So, I live in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. We now have Hindu temples spotted around the metropolitan area, and a handsome Islamic mosque right behind Georgia Tech in mid-town Atlanta. These are our neighbors. And God has reconciled the world to himself in Jesus Christ, and has given to each of us the ministry of reconciliation. Those un-reached Islamic folk, who lived in nations hostile to the Christian faith, have now come here, and if there is anyone who should become their neighbors and offer to them the hospitality the so deserve from us, it is the Christian community. How else will they discover God’s recreating grace and love?

Our gospel says that while we were enemies to God, he loved us and gave us his Son, so that we ought also not to be too rough on others. Jesus taught his followers that they are blessed when they do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us. We are to love as God loves us, and that includes those who are new and strange to us, and who are the adherents of other religions. But it just may be one of the great missionary moments of the church’s history, when God brings migrants into our neighborhood, and within the scope of our hospitality and love, and makes of us the incarnation of his love for all humankind. The Great Commission sends the church to make disciples of every nation/ethnic group, and that includes those who are followers of Islam. Truth be told, I don’t have many Muslim folk in my circle of neighbors and contacts, but when I do meet such at check-out counters, I can, and do, look for opportunities to inquire if they are finding their relocation satisfactory, and to wish them well—I as a follower of their Prophet Isa (Jesus), of which the Quran has good things to say. In this new 2017, I can pray that the Christian community will be at the forefront of advocacy for hospitality to our Islamic neighbors, and that when we encounter anti-Muslim diatribes, that we will be quick to rebuke such. This present global context of our 2017 lives is very, very multi-ethnic. This is the world that God so loved that he gave his Son … “who moved into the neighborhood.”